In the last cantos Venus, well pleased with the success of her beloved race, places in their path the Isle of Love, where the ships anchor and where the crews receive joyous welcome. The song of a siren foretells the future of a glorious nation, and the goddess Tethys, leading Vasco da Gama to the top of a high moun tain, points out the lands of the earth and prophesies the share that the Portuguese shall have in them, naming to him the great men who shall follow and make worthy his dis covery. There follows the closing address to the unfortunate king, Dom Sebastian, in a pas sage of great dignity, earnestness and patriot ism, a fitting close of a great poem.
The management of the poem evidently rests on an anachronism: the constant use of pagan and classical gods furnishes the movement of the epic, while at the same time the facts are those which the poet has observed for himself or taken from history, and the morality and religion are contemporary. The episodes, how ever, are combined with unusual skill, and serve to show a complete and general picture of the spirit which animated the nation. Alto gether the poem is, as Hallam said, the first successful attempt in modern Europe to con struct an epic poem on the ancient model and it is also the work of a man in whom the love of the fatherland was unfailing.
In style, the epic is regarded by native critics as the best model in the language. At its best, it is direct, reserved, swinging, sometimes brilliantly emphatic; at its worst, prolix and without humor. Like the Portuguese style, it is
accumulative,— that is, it works by massings and repetitions, rather than by swift epigram, terseness, spontaneity and the single phrase.
The influence of The Lusiads' has been great in Portugal and elsewhere. In Portugal it was followed by many epics dealing with the deeds of the Portuguese, of which the 'Lisboa Edificada' of Gabriel Pereira de Castro and the
da Sepulveda' by Jeronymo de Cortereal are good examples. The epic period lasted for 30 or 40 years in Portugal, and the form has had several recur rences both in Portugal and Brazil in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Outside of Portugal, 'The Lusiads' has been translated over 80 times into as many as 15 different languages. There are at least nine published versions in English, ranging from that of Sir Richard Fanshaw in 1665, to that of Sir Richard Bur ton in 1880, the most ambitious and sympa thetic of all. The most accurate translation in almost all respects, the best for the reader who wishes to follow the Portuguese with an almost line for line English version, is that of J. J. Aubertin. The reader should refer to the Vis conde de Juromenha's 'Vida de Luis de
(in Vol. I of the authorized edition of the
; to Theophilo Braga's 'His toria de Camped ; to Oliveira Martin's 'Ca rates, Os Lusiadas e a Renascenca em Portu gal' ; and, in English, to Sir R. F. Burton's