reached it he sank, rose to it again, and again fell from it. He was unable to produce a classically perfect whole of any extent. But the more beautiful passages of his poems, particularly of his Lusiad, will stand the test of the most rigid criticism according to the rules of pure poetry and classic excellence. Every style of poetic composition of which he had formed a definite idea was attempted by Camoens. But the Lusiad rises so vastly above his other works, and bears such powerful and various traces of the peculiar character of his poetry, that all his lesser compositions must be considered merely as inferior scions sprung from the same root. The Lusiad of Camoens is a heroic poem; but so essentially different in the unity of the epic plan from all other heroic poems, that to avoid falling into the unwarrantable misconception with which this noble work is every where judged except in Portugal and Spain, it is necessary in considering it, to drop the ordinary rules of comparison, and to proceed upon the general idea of epic poetry unmodified by any prepossession for known models.[137] Camoens struck out a totally new path in the region of epopœia. The style of his poem is indeed formed chiefly on the ancient models, and in his diction he has imitated the elegant stanzas of the Italians; but the epic idea of the work is entirely his own; and the kind of composition, which forms its groundwork, was something entirely new in poetic literature. The object of Camoens was to recount in epic strains, with pure poetic feeling, the atchievements of the heroes and great men of Portugal in general, not of any individual in particular, and consequently not of Vasco da Gama, who is commonly considered the hero of the Lusiad. He was not to be satisfied with drawing up a poetically adorned official report, like the Spanish Araucana, written at a later period by Ercilla.[138] The title which Camoens gave to his heroic poem sufficiently denotes the nature of its subject. He named it _Os Lusiadas_, that is to say, the Lusitanians, or Portuguese. This choice of a title was doubtless influenced by the prevailing taste of the Portuguese poets of that age, to whom the common name of their nation appeared unpoetic, and also by the popular notion that the favourite term _Lusitania_ was derived from a certain mythological hero, named _Lusus_, who visited Portugal in company with Ulysses, and who conjointly with the Greek warrior, built the city of Lisbon (_Ulyssipolis_). Camoens is not to blame if the editors of his poem, wishing to reconcile its somewhat unusual title with the names of other epic compositions, have converted the _Lusiadas_ into the _Lusiada_.[139] But the poem may be designated by its common title without offence to its spirit or its subject. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the Lusiad is a totally different kind of heroic poem from all those epopees, whether successful or unsuccessful, in which a single hero is the main