The introductory stanzas mark with sufficient precision the tone which the poem maintains to its close. “Arms and the renowned men, who from the western shore of Lusitania, penetrated beyond Taprobana by seas never before navigated; who amidst frightful dangers and warfare accomplished more than could be expected from human powers, and in a remote region of the world founded and raised a new kingdom: also the glorious atchievements of those kings, who extended their faith and their dominion, and spread terror through the wicked regions of Africa and Asia; and others whose glorious deeds have raised them above the laws of mortality;” are announced as the objects of the poet’s strains.[140] Then follows an effusion which has more of a patriotic than a poetic character, combined with a panegyrical dedication to King Sebastian, containing no less than sixteen stanzas. The narrative which commences with the nineteenth stanza opens amidst the course of the events, and in a truly epic strain.[141] The reader may now readily perceive that he must not expect to find in the Lusiad a work written in the spirit and the style of classic antiquity. It betrays indeed a certain degree of loquacity which seems to run counter to the effect of the lofty epic. But there is something captivating in the enthusiasm of the poet’s manner; his patriotism rouses sympathetic feelings; we expect to find his poem the offspring of an overflowing heart; we are charmed with the natural, elegant and noble language of the work; and as soon as the narrative begins, the poetic point of view seems likewise to be fixed. The mythological machinery which Camoens conceived to be indispensably necessary to epic dignity, forms a peculiar kind of ornament, for which indeed the reader is prepared from the commencement of the poem. The description of the council of the gods on Olympus, with which the narrative opens, though somewhat at variance with the ancient costume, is nevertheless pleasing and not devoid of dignity. Here the poetic spirit of Camoens is evinced in some picturesque comparisons in which he vies even with Homer. All these similies bear the impress of the poet’s powers of active perception and representation. They are neither far fetched nor common, and they abound in poetic truth and energy.[142] In the forty-fourth stanza, Vasco da Gama is for the first time mentioned, and in few words characterized as a man of “proud and lofty spirit, on whom fortune ever smiled.”[143] But there soon occur passages in which the poetic light of the representation is totally extinguished.[144] Passages of this kind are afterwards frequently repeated, and their prosaic dryness is the more displeasing when contrasted with the deep poetic spirit which pervades the more beautiful parts of the composition. The description of the first engagement between the Portuguese of Gama’s fleet and the treacherous Moors of Mosambique, affords the poet another opportunity