I prefer the "Lusiads," but the Portuguese think that if Camoens had never written the "Lusiads," his sonnets would have immortalized him, and prefer his to Petrarch's. Besides this, we used to fence a great deal during those years. We set up a _tir au pistolet_, and used to practise every morning after breakfast. When snow was deep we drove in a sledge. We attended the school feast annually, and sometimes we had village serenades. At Opçina, on the Eve of St. John's, the peasants light fires all over the country, and the superstition is that you must see eleven fires burning at the same time in order to have a lucky year. When we went up there, we lived absolutely alone, without any servants, and we used to take long walks and drives. "GERALD MASSEY TO RICHARD F. BURTON. "'_Englished by Richard Burton._' And well done, As it was well worth doing; for this is one Of those old Poets, who are always new, That share eternity with all that's true, And of their own abounding spirit do give Substance to Earth's dead Shadows; and make men live Who in action merely did but flit and pass; Now fixed for ever in thought's reflecting-glass. This is the Poet of weary wanderers In perilous lands; and wide-sea Voyagers, And climbers fall'n and broken on the stairs. A man of men; a master of affairs, Whose own life-story is, in touching truth, Poem more potent than all feignèd truth. His Epic trails a story in the wake Of _Gama, Raleigh, Frobisher,_ and _Drake_. The poem of Discovery! sacred to Discoverers, and their deeds of derring-do, Is fitly rendered in The Traveller's land, By one of the foremost of the fearless band." ----GERALD MASSEY. "BURTON'S CAMOENS. (A cutting from the Press.) "In his wanderings afar from the world's highway, he made Camoens his companion, and discovered a peculiar sympathy of mind between himself and the noble Portuguese--an affinity which Mrs. Burton seems inclined to trace even in the fortunes of the two men (_absit omen!_)." * * * * * The _Daily Telegraph_, February 21, 1881.