canto, form finished pictures; they are mere sketches, and are, in general, deficient in poetic warmth; but the ninth canto makes ample amends for this fault. The magic festival, which Venus prepares to recreate her beloved navigators after the fatigues they have encountered, is boldly conceived and charmingly executed; and in this part of the composition the poet’s fancy has revelled with evident delight. Camoens, like all the Portuguese poets of his age, next to the indulgence of heroic feeling and all powerful patriotism, was fond of luxuriantly pourtraying the passion of love. Except the fate of Inez de Castro, and the atchievements of Nuno Alvarez Pereira at the battle of Aljubarota, the poet has executed no portion of his poem with such decided predilection as the visit of the navigators to the enchanted island; and to no other part of the poem is so much space allotted in proportion to the whole. The long description of the preparations for the luxuriant festival, and of the festival itself, which commences at the eighteenth stanza of the ninth, and extends into the tenth canto, is full of picturesque beauty. Its great prolixity however, must, even according to the incorrect plan which Camoens followed, be accounted a defect in the composition. But the reader, like the poet himself, soon forgets every thing except the seductive painting, which sometimes, it must be confessed, only just respects the boundaries of decorum, which yet upon the whole offends no elevated feeling, and which has not been surpassed by any later poet in the same style. The first idea of the island of love, on which Camoens makes Venus entertain the Portuguese navigators, seems borrowed from Ariosto, but Ariosto’s description of the magic gardens of Alcina scarcely affords a groundwork for the scenes and situations in the Lusiad. There is, however, little room to doubt that Tasso, when he trod in Ariosto’s footsteps in order to describe the abode of Armida, availed himself of the description of Camoens. In the tone of frank simplicity with which the festival is announced, the character of the poet is again manifested. It is described as merely “a refreshment for restoring the exhausted strength of the navigators; some interest for those fatigues which render short life still shorter.”[162] Venus, in her car drawn by doves, descends from Mount Ida in quest of Cupid. She finds him with a throng of loves employed in forging arrows. The fuel used in the process of forging is allegorically and whimsically described to be human hearts, and the red-hot arrows are cooled in tears. Cupid and his little deputies are directed to wound a number of goddesses and sea nymphs, so that every individual on board Vasco da Gama’s fleet, shall on landing on the magic island, find himself in the situation of a happy lover. Meanwhile Venus adorns the island with the loveliest charms of nature.[163] On first landing, the navigators know not