In 1820 appeared José Agostinho de Macedo’s _Censura dos Lusiadas_, in which he noted with some asperity Camões’ _erros crassissimos_. Prosaic lines, hyperbole, the use of the supernatural, lack of proportion,[422] absence of unity, and historical improbabilities are the main heads of his indictment, and he quotes Racine as to Camões’ ‘icy style’. He also has much petty detailed criticism, for he finds in Camões a _notavel falta de grammatica_. And Macedo was certainly right. Most of the faults he attributes to Camões do exist in the _Lusiads_. Macedo himself could write more correctly. When he says that the line _Somos hum dos da ilha, lhe tornou_ (i. 53) is unpoetical (_não tem tintura de poesia_), we agree; it is sheer prose. We can add other instances: the line _as que elle para si na cruz tomou_ (i. 7) is as unmusical as the rhyming of _Heliogabalo_, _Sardanapalo_ (iii. 92), or _impossibil_, _terribil_ (iv. 54). Only Macedo forgot that genius is justified of its children, and that these details are all merged in the incomparable style, imaginative power, and lofty theme of the poem. If a man is unable to feel the heat of the sun for its spots, we will vainly try to warm or enlighten him, but it is not pedantic grammarians such as Macedo[423] who could obscure the fame of Camões. That could only be done by those whom Macedo calls _os idolatras camoneanos_. Lope de Vega[424] effusively professed to place the _Lusiads_ above the _Aeneid_ and the _Iliad_, and Camões’ fellow-countrymen have eagerly followed suit. He has also suffered much at the hands of translators. Since the _Lusiads_ is clearly not the equal of the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_, it may be worth while to consider by what reasons Camões really is one of the world’s greatest poets. There is celestial music in much that he wrote, in incidents of the _Lusiads_ such as the death of Inés de Castro,[425] in his eclogues and _canções_ and elegies, in many of the sonnets, and in the _redondilhas_, most of all perhaps in the seventy-three heavenly _quintilhas_ beginning _Sobolos rios que vam_. But other Portuguese poets have been musical; Diogo Bernardez in this respect vies with Camões: Camões excels them all in the vigour and transparent clearness that accompany his music. But his principal excellence is that, still without losing the music of his _versos deleitosos_, he can think in verse[426]--the thought in some of his elegies and _oitavas_ is remarkable--and describe with scientific precision, as in the account of the _tromba_ (_Lus._ v. 19-22). Like Milton, he could transform an atlas into a fair harmony of names. His influence on the Portuguese language has been very great. Whether it was wholly for good may be open to doubt--a doubt mentioned by one of his earliest biographers, Severim de Faria, in 1624. The _Lusiads_, he says, ‘greatly enriched the Portuguese language by ingeniously introducing many new words and expressions which then came into