ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL OF CHICHESTER,

&c. &c. &c.

MY LORD,

WHEN I solicited your Lordship's permission to dedicate to you this Translation of the Lusiad of Camoens, I was less ambitious of the very high and flattering distinction of gracing these humble pages with an illustrious and universally respected name, than desirous of your acceptance of this production as a simple and unfeignedly sincere testimony of my gratitude to you for numberless acts of unbounded kindness, which have most essentially and permanently promoted my welfare.

I can never sufficiently thank your Lordship for your generous and friendly solicitude for my best interests; and if I feel myself incapable of duly expressing to you my deep sense of the many and great obligations which you have conferred on me, this failure is to be attributed to the difficulty of conveying, by any senti

ments whatever, an acknowledgment at all adequate to their importance, their number, and their extent.

However small may be the portion of vanity that may flatter the feelings of an individual, who, in the character of an author, aspires to the notice of the public, he cannot so entirely divest himself of its influence as not to indulge a wish, that the result of his literary labors may not be consigned to oblivion. But I have a powerful, additional motive for entertaining a hope that this unpretending performance, notwithstanding its many imperfections, may be rescued from a mere ephemeral existence :-an anxious desire that it may be a lasting record, both of my gratitude to your Lordship, and of those sentiments of pure, sincere, and unalterable attachment and high esteem, with which I have the honor to subscribe myself,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's

Most devoted

and most faithful Servant,

THOMAS MOORE MUSGRAVE.

PREFACE.

I ORIGINALLY intended to prefix to this Translation of the Lusiad a Biographical Sketch of the Poet, and a Dissertation on the Poem. Various considerations, however, have induced me to leave this design unexecuted. Its fulfilment, indeed, was by no means imposed on me as a necessary task, in order to supply any existing deficiency. No facts have recently come to light which shed a new interest on the life of Camoens, and it would be difficult to impart much of novelty to a critical analysis of the imperishable monument which he has raised to the glory of his native land.

What is now omitted by myself, has been amply supplied by others. Prefixed to Mickle's highly poetical but paraphrastic Translation is a Life of this eminently gifted poet, and also a Dissertation on the Lusiad. He has, perhaps, been more liberal in praise, than just in discrimination: but it is difficult for a congenial poet, in performing the office of Translator, to avoid identifying himself with his author; and his feelings of admiration will scarcely permit him to detect and condemn what to others may appear to be, and may really constitute, material defects.

Lord Strangford's prefatory introduction to his version of some of the minor poems of Camoens contains some interesting remarks on his life and writings. But the Memoirs, published by Mr. Adamson, present the fullest, the most satisfactory and most valuable information, that has hitherto been industriously collected, and judiciously arranged, to illustrate both the affecting incidents in the poet's chequered career, and the splendid and various productions of his Muse.

In his own country, the life of Camoens has been written by many authors of celebrity, and numerous dissertations have been published on the Lusiad and his other poems. But as the Portugueze language has here been comparatively but little cultivated for literary purposes, it is the less necessary to allude to them. It may, however, be proper to mention, that Mr. Adamson has translated the most recent Essay on the Lusiad, by the late Don Jozé Maria de Sousa. It will be found in the excellent Memoirs to which I have alluded; and though allowance must be made for a predilection which has naturally biassed the judgment of the critic in favor of a native poet, yet it presents a pleasing and enlightened analysis, which may beperused with much interest.

German and French literature are pursued with such ardor, that the very valuable works of Bouterwek and Sismondi can scarcely fail to be generally known, and no one can have read, without great satisfaction, their masterly criticisms on the Lusiad, and the very inte