The odes are followed by some _Sextinas_, the artificial beauty of which Camoens has not failed to render pleasing. His one-and-twenty elegies are, however, more worthy of particular attention. Next to the Lusiad these compositions may in general be numbered among the longer poems of the author, and also among those in which the poet is most frequently represented in his real character as a man. Camoens had, however, no correct notion of the elegiac style. Like Ferreira, he blended it with the epistolary. But such a junction is no less detrimental to the tenderness than to the unity of the elegiac character, and in general deprives elegy of half its poetic interest. Were the language less copious and facund, this method of confounding the boundaries of the elegiac and the epistolary styles, would be still more striking. But the harmonious softness and rich flow of the expression, even where it approaches to prolixity, establish, at least, in a certain degree, a unity of character among the heterogeneous ingredients of which the elegy of Camoens is composed.[174] The feeble and tedious passages are readily overlooked, as they are amply counterbalanced by others possessing real elegiac beauty:[175] and the occasional deficiencies of these elegies in the poetry appropriate to their class, are compensated by the inappropriate, in which the poetic character of Camoens is every where prominent. The romantic soul of the unfortunate poet is completely unveiled in his elegiac compositions. His earliest productions in this class were written in his youth, when he was exiled to Belem; the others are expressive of the feelings which he experienced in his oriental voyages and adventures. There he fondly cherished recollections of the tranquil happiness which he persuaded himself he had enjoyed in his native country, though he had indignantly abandoned it as a place to existence in which he could not be reconciled. The common fate of humanity, which, independently of his personal circumstances, he always viewed profoundly and poetically, was in India more than ever present to his imagination; and in his elegies he has poured forth, without restraint, all the feelings of his heart. Thus is sympathy more powerfully excited by these compositions than by many of the same class, the beauties of which are of a less prosaic character. No other works of the poet so irresistibly command the reader’s regret for his misfortunes, and love for him as a man.