sculptors assumed Greek names, and perhaps pretended to be Greeks. Some of them probably, although long domesticated in Rome, also came of Greek ancestry; at all events, we know it was the fashion among dandies and literary men in Rome to talk Greek, and to quote Greek, and put on Greek airs, and to wear Greek dresses; and it is quite probable, therefore, that this affectation extended to sculptors. To such an extent was this carried, that the great Julius Cæsar himself, while dying, remonstrated in Greek with his assassins; and Cicero in his "Officiis" recommends the Romans "not to lard their talk with Greek quotations, though, as far as his own letters are concerned, he greatly sinned against his own precept.

Bel. Yes; and I remember Shakespeare, who divined everything, girds at this peculiarity of Cicero in his Julius Cæsar.' Cassius says, "Did Cicero say anything?" and Cassius answers, "Ay, he spoke Greek."

Mal. Well, suppose a thousand years to pass by, and some Australian or South American or Patagonian to be endeavoring to trace the history of music from the records we have-would we not be as much justified in declaring that all the singers of this age were plainly Italians, inasmuch as their very names were evidences of the fact, as we are in declaring all the Roman sculptors to have been Greeks?

Bel. In like manner in later terms, when Latin was the literary language, most of the writers assumed Latin names, of whatever nation they were—as for instance the old chroniclers, Luitprandus, Frisingius, Ditmarus, Arnulphus, Adelboldus, Rupertus, Adhemarus Ostiensis, Chronographus Saxo, and others. Nay, even in our own day we see the German historian of the middle ages in Rome calling himself Gregorovius, after the old fashion.

Mal. It is a curious fact, however, that Rome itself has given us no great names in literature or art. None of the great Latin writers of ancient times in prose or poetry were Romans; and none of the great painters, poets, or writers of the Renaissance. Among the former, for instance-Virgil was a Mantuan; Terence a Carthaginian and a slave; Lucan and Sen. eca were Spaniards, and were both born

at Cordova; Plautus was an Umbrian; the elder Pliny came from Verona, and the younger was born at Como; Cicero was born at Arpinum, in the Abruzzi; Sallust was a Sabine, and came from Amiternum; Catullus came from Verona ; Propertius was an Umbrian; Tibullus came from Pedum, in the Sabine hills; Juvenal probably was born at Aquinum, though the exact place of his birth is not known; Martial was a Spaniard from Bilbilis; Persius was an Etrurian from Volterra; Livy came from Padua, where he was born and died; Cornelius Nepos was a Veronese; Ovid was born at Sulmo, in the country of the Peligni; Horace was an Apulian from Venusia; Phædrus was a Thracian or Macedonian ; Strabo came from Amasia, in Pontus; Julius Columella from Cadiz ; Quinctilian from Calagurris, in Spain; Apuleius from Madaura, in Africa; Ausonius from Bordeaux ; Statius from Naples; Valerius Flaccus from Padua ; Fronto from Numidia.

Bel. This is very remarkable, but you have left out in your list Tacitus, Lucretius, and Suetonius.

Mal. I shall have to give up Lucretius, and also Varro. These were both born at Rome, and in the whole range of authors these are the only exceptions. As for Tacitus, the time and the place of his birth are unknown, as well as the time of his death, so we can say nothing about him. If he were a Roman he was an exception, as you see, to the general rule, and there is no reason to suppose he was. So also the birthplace of Suetonius is unknown. Rome has therefore no great name among authors to beast of in the ancient days, with the exception of Julius Cæsar, Lucretius, and Varro. The same observation holds good of the time of the Renaissance. All the great painters, and sculptors, and poets, and historians, and essayists came from other places-principally from Venetia, from Umbria, from Tuscany, from Naples. I cannot recall a single one who was born in Rome, unless, perhaps, Julio Romano. Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, Pulci, Tasso, Macchiavelli, Muratori, Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, Titian, Correggio, Veronese, Palma, Da Vinci, Giotto, Massaccio, Lippi-in a word, all the great men who illustrate the literature and art of Italy-were born out of Rome. The Eternal City can show "no single volume paramount' - -no master spirit.

Bel. Ah! but you cannot make good all your quotation. You cannot say, "No single volume paramount--no code. There at least the Romans were great-in their laws and their science of government. The Roman code is the basis of

all our law.

Mal. I am not so sure even of that. The Institutes, Digests, Code, and Novella-that is, the whole Corpus Juris Civilis-was indeed compiled under the order of Justinian, then emperor of Constantinople. But he was not born in Rome, and we have no knowledge that on the commission of jurists to whom the compilation of this great work was confided there was a single Roman. There may have been, but there is no proof, nor even probability, that there was. So, too, the Theodosian Codex was compiled in the east in the reign of Theodosius, called the Great, and he was not a Roman. We do not even know that Gaius, the great Roman jurist, whose "Institutiones" were the text-book of the Roman law before the Institutes of Justinian, was a Roman by birth. Besides, the law was not a science, and scarcely a system, in the time of Cicero, and the advocate founded his cases more upon appeals to the passions and prejudices of his jurors than on strictly legal arguments. Cicero, in one of his speeches, casts a slur upon the condition of the law in his day, and says, "Occupied as I am, I could yet make myself sufficient of a lawyer in three days." In trials of state criminals the jury selected from the senators were judges as well of law as of fact, and the presiding magistrate was scarcely more than the curule chairman, without any power of decision.

Bel. You must add to the list of Ro. mans the name of Marcus Aurelius, who was certainly born in Rome.

He

Mal. How could I have omitted him? Yes, truly his name does make up for a great deal. I know nothing nobler in spirit than his "Meditations," though perhaps his name could not properly come in among the great authors of Rome. was the purest and noblest character that ever wore the purple, and one of the purest and noblest spirits that ever lived. It is not the literary merit of his book, how ever, that gives it value. It was but a private journal, and not a book intended for the public, and I was rather thinking of authors who wrote for the world.

Bel. Well, at all events you will admit that the great artists in Greece were Greeks, and that Athens was not as poor in native artists as Rome.

Mal. That depends on what you mean by Greeks. Many of them certainly were not Greeks proper, and very few Athenians. Polygnotus, for instance, was a Thracian by birth, and came from Thaos, and his Athenian citizenship was only conferred upon him on account of his distinction. Zeuxis, again, was a Macedonian from Heraclea; Parrhassius was an Ephesian from Asia Minor; Pamphelus was also a Macedonian from Amphipolis. Bel. Who was Pamphelus? His name is not familiar to me among the great Greek painters.

Mal. Still he was a very distinguished man, and of great repute in his countrya Greek Leonardo da Vinci, skilled in mathematics, geometry, various branches of science, and painting in all its methods, of wax, encaustic, etc. He was the master, among others, of Apelles, Melanthius, and Pausias, and it was through his influence that the arts of Greece were greatly developed. He had a school of art, in which the course of study occupied ten years, and his entrance fee was a talent, which the scholar was obliged to pay whether he pursued the whole course or

not.

But to go on with the Greek artists who were not Greeks, we must add the great name of Apelles, who was born in Asia Minor, though at what precise place is not agreed upon. Suidas refers his birth to Colophon, but Pliny to Cos. The Apelles to whom Lucian refers as an Ephesian is probably another person : whatever he was, however, he was not a Greek proper. Dionysius was also a native of Colophon; Athenion was a Thracian from Maurea; Autophilus an Egyptian; and Protogenes, either a Carian from Caunus, or, according to Suidas, a Lycian from Xanthus.

Bel. Were there none of the great painters of antiquity who were Greeks proper? -none who were Athenians?

Mal. A few. Timanthes was a Greek from Sicyon; so was Eupompus, I believe. Apollodorus, Nicias, and Pancenus (the nephew of Phidias) were Athenians; but I recall no one else among the paintYes, I do. Nicomachus and Aristides were both Baotians from Thebes. As for the sculptors—

ers.

Bel. No, I thank you. I am sufficiently upset now in my ideas. You will go on and prove that Greece never produced any great men. I decline. I am not sure that you won't undertake to prove, in Mrs. Gamp's phraseology, that "there wa'nt never no such place as Athens," and that it is a sort of "Harris" among cities-a 'Apploσómoλis, and that Haristides is as apocryphal as William Tell. I should not dare to ask you who Pericles

was.

Mal. Your last statement reminds me of a pretty girl, not over-cultivated in literature and classical lore, who was turning over the leaves of Shakespeare's plays one day, and came to Pericles. Here she paused for a moment, and then looking up, said, with a delightful smile, and pro

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nouncing the great Athenian's name as she would obstacles" or "manacles". Pericles, Pericles-what are Pericles ?'' Bel. Did you tell her?

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Mal. I told her they were a queer sort of shell-fish, or periwinkle, or oyster, found in Greece, and that when the Greek girls got tired of a man they wrote his name on the half-shell, which was a deli cate way of sending him off, and this they called ostracizing him.

Bel. And what did she say?
Mal. No matter.

Bel. That reminds me of a definition of mind and matter, which I once heard: "What is mind?" "No matter." "What is matter?" " Never mind."Blackwood's Magazine.

THE bistory and language of Portugal, save for a comparatively brief period at the commencement of the Peninsular War, may be classed among subjects which have been unpopular, or at any rate unfamiliar, in the case of most English readers. The Portuguese language, though a fine and sonorous one, shares, perhaps from its difficulty, the same fate which Dutch, Russian, and the Scandinavian languages have experienced from English students in general. But there are many life stories which are more well known that are less interesting in episode and tenor than is that of the Poet of Portugal. "The" Poet I call him, inasmuch as he stands, in the estimation of the majority at any rate of his own nation, alone -none but himself being his own parallel. England has Shakespeare and Milton; France, Boileau and Racine; Italy, Dante and Petrarch; Germany, Goethe and Schiller-but Portugal puts no second name in juxtaposition with that of Camoens, and few authors for successive centuries have so concentrated in their individual names the patriotic pride of their countrymen. The great epic of the "Lusiad," which has been translated into many languages, including our own, by two standard authors presently to be noticed, was the sole object of his life after

the loss of the woman whom he had hopelessly loved from his youth, and it so immediately attained celebrity that Continho his admirer, but sixteen years after his death, could inscribe on his tomb "Prince of the Poets of his time." Yet his reward was nothing but a fame which resembles the state of things shown in the linesAnd bailiffs shall seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be borne by princes to-mor

row.

save that Camoens was too honorable and high-souled to get into debt. But his life closed prematurely in utter misery, from no neglect of any of the rules of worldly wisdom on his part, from none of the recklessness of genius, but rather as if some destiny akin to that which runs through the Greek tragedies influenced his whole life. It is a story which must remain vividly fresh in the memories of those who can appreciate the vicissitudes of genius, and it certainly is less known to that convenient abstraction the general reader than are those of Dante, Tasso. Shakespeare, Racine, or Milton. It is a story of unhappy but pure and unchangeable love, of constant misfortunes varied by gleams of success, of ills borne in varied shapes with manly courage and patience, of spurns taken by patient merit of the unworthy, of crowning misfortune private

and patriotic, and of death in utter penury; but through all these varied phases of his life-story the unchanging devotion to his great work remains the one unalterable and strongest emotion of the poet which consoled him for all his woes.

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Of Castilian family, which had migrated to Portugal after the downfall of Pedro the Cruel, to whose cause his forefathers had steadily adhered-in its way a proof of the chivalry of his breed-Luis de Camoens was born in what was formerly the Moorish part of Lisbon in 1524, and was educated at Coimbra, and some years later, after the fashion of men in his position, appeared at court, the only road to success then for persons of quality." It is necessary to remember that Portugal then was famous in Europe as owning an enormous empire in the East, and having reaped the full harvest of laurels which Vasco de Gama had planted. With such unexplored realms before them, it is easy to imagine that power, place, and wealth in many shapes depended on the favor of the sovereign, and all the high-born youth of Portugal surrounded the throne as eager aspirants to preferment. None had greater reason to hope for it than Cam. oens, both on the score of his family history and personal genius. But, if ancient and knightly blood as he was, he had that disadvantage which then as now weighs heavily against any gift of intellect-he was poor.

And he soon found that at the Court of Lisbon in the sixteenth century merit had no chance against money, and venalty was the motive power of everything. Being poor and neglected he proceeded to improve his prospects by falling in love with a lady of rank and wealthy family, whose relatives would not dream of giving her to any but a suitor of ample means. But Catharine de Atayde returned Luis de Camoens's love with a passion as fervent as his own; and through their joint lives the "hapless pair who looked their last" when Camoens sailed for the Indies continued tenderly attached to each other though separated by time and ocean, and never ceased to cherish the hope of a union which was never destined to be. At the very outset this hapless love was clouded by misfortune. One of the curious laws of the Portuguese Court was that all lovemaking was forbidden within its precincts, even on pain of death. Indeed, one courtier, a favorite

At

too of the reigning monarch, had at a former era been sent to the stake for it. Such grim reality of penalties, however, did not influence young Camoens, and the result was he was banished to Ceuta, doubtless much in the same mood as Romeo's under the same circumstances. Ceuta there was fighting, and in an action at sea he lost an eye. Returning when his term had expired the young poet again visited the Court, thinking his services might find him some favor; but save for Catharine's constant but hopeless love all was dark, and wearied out with waiting he sailed for the Indies in 1553, with no special design save to seek his fortunes. Out of all the fleet Camoens's ship alone reached Goa, after such a lengthened and dangerous voyage as the modern traveller is quite unable in his wildest moments to imagine. At Goa Camoens got plenty of fighting; it was the hereditary fashion of his gallant house to "draw and strike in," and he joined in the battles between two of the native sovereigns. After this he joined in a barren expedition to the Red Sea against Arab pirates, where he wrote one of his minor poems, which is a favorite with Portuguese scholars, and in masterly style describes the arid, barren surroundings of the locality, comparing it with his own desolate feelings. In this poem is seen the first glimpse of the genius yet unknown perhaps even to himself.

Returning to Goa he got into some dispute, the merits of which at this distance of time it is impossible to decide upon, with Barreto, the Governor, and was exiled by him to the Malaccas, whence after some time he was removed to Macao, which possibly Eastern travellers who have visited it will chiefly remember for the gambling which is, or at any rate was, so prominent. But, little known as it is to many who have been to the place, Macao has an interest of its own in the eyes of all lovers of literature, for here during the years of his exile-which however was softened by the possession of a good civil appointment Camoens composed the concluding part of his great epic. cording to the local traditions, a natural grotto which overlooked the sea was the poet's favorite resort. Meanwhile, with as much common sense as if he were not a genius (and which belongs to our geniuses of the latter years of the nineteenth

Ac

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century), he was looking after his money as well as his poem, and gradually realizing a competence from his savings, while constantly filled with the hope of returning to Lisbon rich, and so becoming the husband of Catharine de Atayde. Thus everything concurred for the time in smoothing the poet's progress with the Lusiad," which was to secure his fame. Here it seems appropriate to speak of the epic, which is possibly less known for its contents than for its name and reputation to many northern readers. No translation can do full justice to the Portuguese, but, on the whole, though Mickle has ever since his rendering in the last century been considered the popular translator of Camoens, those who wish to see the exact work of the poet far more faithfully reflected will turn to the translation made in the seventeenth century by Fanshaw at Lord Strafford's seat in Yorkshire, from whose walls the author never stirred till the translation was finished. Old-fashioned as is the style, and quaint as are the phrases, Fanshaw's is a genuine translation, whereas Mickle's work is in great part his own composition, which was not for some time discovered, owing to the scarcity of Portuguese scholars in this country.

The "Lusiad" appealed to every heart in Portugal which was ready to respond to the chord of patriotism. It is a glorification of the discoveries of Gama, and Portugal's part in the opening of the Indies to European domination. Mythological machinery, according to the taste of the time, is interwoven-allegories more suitable to the sixteenth-century reader than to the nineteenth. Of the poem, the most famous passages are those relating to the Floating Island, the apparition of the Spirit of the Cape, and the episode of Inez de Castro, one of the most pathetic in literature. The epic has faults, but on the whole merits the estimation in which Portugal holds it-that of the poem of the nation. It is as regards them much what Chaucer and Spenser combined would be here the chief source of the enriching and purifying of the language. And Camoens's language has a musical fitness of its own which reminds one of Edgar Poe in English. In fact, the best scholars in the language have found a kind of inexplicable charm in the choice of the words which any other writer has found it NEW SERIES, VOL. L., No. 1.

3

impossible to attempt to rival, and which of course disappears in any translation, however faithful. But with all its defects, and after all the criticisms which have been passed upon it, it is to this charm of diction and collocation of words as much as to its imaginary episodes and general scheme that the "Lusiad" owes the position it occupies and the renown that it has secured for its author. It was published first in 1571, and the edition was rapidly sold, a second being soon called for, and others in succession. It was translated into several languages, and, what is probably unique in epics, one of the most learned and laborious of Portuguese scholars set himself in the next century to write a most elaborate and erudite Commentary on the book, which had then gone through twenty-two editions. This was Faria e Sousa-a man who literally devoted all his life to his books, shortening it by reason of the constant confinement in his study, for he secluded himself from all society and his wife shared his feelings. His great book was published in 1639, and is a masterpiece of learning and minute detail; and as the whole history of Portugal is brought into Camoens's poem, such a complete Commentary was of course very valuable in explaining the innumerable allusions which were made in the course of the epic. Faria e Sousa did his work thoroughly well, and such enormous labor is he said to have bestowed on his Commentary as to have recopied it five times himself.

But we must now return to Camoens, whom we left having completed the work of his life. That current of misfortune which was henceforth to bear him upon it now commenced. He had amassed from his office a competence, and he obtained permission to return from Macao to Goa and thence to Europe. He realized all his gains, and placed his whole fortune on board the ship which bore him, as he hoped, to happy ease and wedded felicity. At the mouth of the river Mecon the ship was wrecked, and Camoens escaped, it is said, almost miraculously, only saving his great MS.; his whole fortune was engulfed in the waves. He found his way to Goa in 1561, where he was received with kindness by the Governor. He continued some years here, and took part in military reconnaissances. But now came the news of woe far deeper than any he had experi