"'Camoens,' he says, 'is the perfection of a traveller's study. A wayfarer and a voyager from his youth; a soldier, somewhat turbulent withal, wounded and blamed for his wounds; a doughty sword and yet doughtier pen; a type of the chivalrous age; a patriot of the purest water, so jealous of his country's good fame, that nothing would satisfy him but to see the world bow before her perfections; a genius, the first and foremost of his day, who died in the direst poverty and distress.' These are good titles to admiration in any case, and we cannot wonder that a great English traveller, himself too a poet, should have been captivated all these long years by the charms of that beautiful Portuguese tongue, and those noble and stirring sentiments which stand enshrined in Camoens' deathless pages. If it be true that Chapman's 'Iliad' is a great work because of the intense love and admiration which its author had for the blind old bard of Greece, then certainly Captain Burton's labour, which has taken up twenty years of a much-occupied life, ought, for the same reason, to be able to stand the test of time, inasmuch as it is the fruit of genuine and heartfelt devotion on the part of the translator to the author and his poetic masterpiece." * * * * * The _Daily Telegraph_, February 21, 1881. "'My master, Camoens,' Captain Burton calls him, and goes on to pay his tribute of gratitude for the real solace which the much-loved volume has been to him in many wanderings. 'On board raft and canoe, sailing vessel and steamer, on the camel and the mule, under the tent and the jungle tree, on the fire-peak and the snow-peak,' writes the accomplished 'Hadji,' 'Camoens has been my companion, my consoler, my friend;' and we may remark that a study of Camoens, who is an ideal patriot, as well as a constant lover, whose fair one was snatched away by death at the age of twenty, would be useful in the present day as an antidote to schools of thought which banish both patriotism and romance, as far as they can, into the region of forbidden sentiments. Indeed, so intensely patriotic is the bard, that in the opening of his epic he bids Achilles, Alexander, and all other ancient warriors and travellers, cease to 'vaunt long voyages made in bygone day,' as if the 'better bravery' of the Lusitanian explorers fairly threw into the shade all attempts in the same line which had been made before. This may be going a little too far, but, at all events, it is a fault in the right direction, which deserved better treatment than King Ferdinand's annual dole of five golden sovereigns." [Sidenote: _A Little Anecdote about a Capuchin_.]