To strength and sweetness: but the voice that brake
The cedars upon Lebanon—none else—
Taught him to rend more stubborn stocks than they,
The obdurate hearts of men.
It is right to add, that the few extracts we have given afford but a narrow glimpse of the merit of a volume of poems which every Lake Schoolman (conventionally, however incorrectly, speaking) will wish to put on his shelf.
We have just grace enough left to confess that our knowledge of the Portuguese language is simply nil; and therefore our incompetency to "tackle" Mr. Quillinan's translation of the "Lusiad" stands out in hideous distinctness. The ergo may be called a non sequitur, according to the practice and precedents of the Art of Criticism; but let that pass. Shortly before his death, Mr. Quillinan was spoken of in the Quarterly Review as "probably the first Portuguese scholar in the kingdom." In undertaking a translation of Camoens, he engaged in a labour of love, uncheered by any confident hope of popularising a minstrel whom foreigners are content to admire at a distance, and whom translators have commonly found it difficult to acclimatise as an exotic—as M. de Souza[1] and others learnt to their cost. Camoens is, as Sismondi says, the sole poet of Portugal, whose celebrity has extended beyond the Peninsula, and who had the honour of writing the earliest epic in any of the modern tongues;[2] yet people are wont to accept the celebrity as a tradition, finding it less convenient in such cases to prove all things than to hold fast that which is, by courtesy, good. So Camoens, like the hero of the drinking-song, is chorused as a "good fellow," whose goodness "nobody can deny"—under penalty of reading his epic. In translations of such a kind, therefore,
'Tis not for mortals to command success:
but Mr. Quillinan has done more—deserved it/ If spirit, elegance, and finish,[3] can render the "Lusiad" acceptable to an English public, his
- ↑ "Called upon Madame de Souza, and saw her husband's Camoens. This book has cost him near 4000l., and he has never sold a copy."—Diary of Thomas Moore, 1820. (Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 105.) This is "the splendid edition" described by Sismondi. By poet Phillips's philosophy in the "Splendid Shilling," M. de Souza was a happy man, as retainer extraordinary.
- ↑ Neither Ariosto nor his fellow-romancers aspired to the character of epic writers. Nor did Tasso publish his "Jerusalem Delivered" until the year after the death of Camoens. Trissino had essayed an epic on the liberation of Italy from the Gauls, but broke down.
- ↑ A rough line here and there remains to show that he had not, as his editor, Mr. Adamson, remarks, "given his last supervision to the versification." For instance, not at all in Mr. Quillinan's style is the second line in the couplet:
Until his rabid fangs enfix his throat,
And down at last tumbles the exhausted brute.C. iii., st. 47.
Or the scansion of the third line following:
The startled mother, feigning then to sue
On my behalf; address'd her. The divine
Enchantress said, as half compliant,
"How shall a Nereid learn to love a giant?"C. v., st. 53.
But such instances are too rare not to be remarkablee.
