[In the following essay, Letzring comments on Perry Clinton Sidney Smythe's free translations of Camões's verse in Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens, the first collection of the poet's lyrics in English.]

Even in his own Portugal, the reputation of Luis de Camoens has always rested primarily on his epic The Lusiads. Despite the fact that he is in no sense inferior as a lyric poet, his numerous canzones, elegies, odes, sonnets, and other short poems have always taken second place to his epic. And although the Lusiads, first published in 1572, was early translated into several languages and became known throughout Europe, the same is not the case with the lyrics, published posthumously in 1585. The English came to know the Lusiads as early as 1655 with the translation of Sir Richard Fanshawe; another translation by William Julius Mickle was published in 1776 and reprinted ten times before the end of the nineteenth century when a number of new translations appeared. But it was not until 1803 that English readers were made aware of Camoens as a lyric poet. This was through the small volume of translations by Percy Clinton Sidney Smythe, Sixth Viscount Strangford, Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens.

Because of Strangford's translations, the American Monthly Anthology said, “the minor poems of Camoens now attract admiration and applause, which they never before received.”¹ But Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese was something more than just a collection of translations introducing the lyrics of Camoens to English readers. The volume as a whole, that is, the lyrics taken together with Strangford's prefatory “Remarks on the Life and Writings of Camoens” and the appended notes to the poems, was virtually a romanticized biography of the Portuguese poet himself. To a considerable extent it was the Camoens of Strangford's Poems as much as the poems of Camoens which brought “admiration and applause” from Strangford's readers, their romantic spirit finding nourishment in the tragic story of the unappreciated poet, exiled because of his unfortunate love for Caterina de Ataide, and, reduced to penury in his last days, sustained only by what his loyal servant could beg for them.

These romantic adversities of Camoens' life had been noted in the biography by Mickle prefixed to his translation of the Lusiads, but it was to these aspects of the poet's life that Strangford gave almost exclusive attention in his biography and notes. Likewise, it was those lyrics chosen primarily for their supposedly autobiographical erotic or melancholy content, and thus contributing to the total picture of the poet himself, that most attracted readers of the nineteenth century. In addition, his final neglect and impoverishment as well as his misfortunes in love gave such poets as William Lisle Bowles and Elizabeth Barrett Browning subject matter for their own poems.

Before Strangford published his translations in 1803, Camoens as a lyric poet had been all but unknown in England. Neither Fanshawe nor Mickle had translated any of the lyrics. A few translations had appeared previous to Strangford's, but they had gone unnoticed.

The first appearance of any of Camoens' lyrics in English was a translation of the sonnet “Verdade, Amor, Razão, Merecimento” by Philip Ayres, published in 1687 in his Lyric Poems, Made in Imitation of the Italians of Which Many are Translations from Other Languages.² Except for a gratuitous line in the sestet, the translation follows the sense of the original. However, Ayres, perhaps under the influence of his friend Dryden, cast the fourteen lines in couplets rather than in the Italian form which Camoens consistently used. His translation does not appear to have been noted by his contemporaries.

Ayres' Lyric Poems in itself stands as a lonely attempt to revive lyric forms, especially the sonnet, forms by this time so out of favor that Ayres' preface is both an apology and a justification for writing and publishing them at all: “none of our great men, either Mr. Waller, Mr. Cowley, or Mr. Dryden, whom it was most proper to have followed, have ever stoop'd to anything of this sort”; on the other hand, such “eminent persons” as Spenser, Sidney, and Milton had written sonnets, even if their success in these forms “cannot much be boasted of” (p. 269). Ayres' principal models were, logically enough, sonnets by Petrarch. But it is perhaps significant in terms of his reputation in England that Camoens was one of the few earlier sonnet writers singled out at this time by an English would-be sonneteer. Ayres started no new trends; the revival of the sonnet would not come for another hundred years. But when it did come, Camoens would again be among those masters of the form whom the new sonneteers paid homage to and learned from by translation and imitation.³

With the appearance of the Essay on Epic Poetry (1782) by William Hayley, almost a century after Ayres' Lyric Poems, we have for the first time explicit English recognition of Camoens as a lyric as well as an epic poet:

'Twas thine to blend the Eagle and the Dove
At once the Bard of Glory and of Love;
Thy thankless Country heard thy varying lyre
To Petrarch's Softness melt,
and swell to Homer's Fire!

(Lines 279-282)

In a note to these lines Hayley calls attention to England's ignorance of the lyrics: “The Epic powers of Camoens have received their due honour in our language, by the elegant and spirited translation of Mr. Mickle; but our country is still a stranger to the lighter graces and pathetic sweetness of his shorter compositions” (p. 273). And to help correct this deficiency, he includes translations of three sonnets as samples of Camoens' lyric ability. One is his own translation; the other two are by an anonymous friend. That translated by Hayley is “Quando de minhas magoas a comprida,” a record of a dream in which the poet's love appears to him. One of the anonymous translations is a sonnet on the death of Camoens' mistress, “Alma minha gentil,” of all his lyrics the most popular and most frequently translated. The other, “Em quanto quis Fortuna que tivesse,” introduces the reader to his “sad plaints” and is traditionally printed as an introduction to Camoens' sonnets. All three sonnets are closely but not literally translated, but “Alma minha gentil” is translated in the English rather than the Italian form. Hayley's knowledge of the lyrics of Camoens extended beyond the sonnets: Camoens' elegies, he remarks, also warrant attention because “they illustrate many particulars of his interesting life, which ended in 1579, under the most cruel circumstances of neglect and poverty” (p. 276).

The only other lyrics of Camoens appearing in English before the publication of Strangford's Poems in 1803 were two “imitations” in Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems (1789) by Thomas Russell (1762-1788). The imitations are free translations of “A fermosura desta fresca serra” and “Chorai, Ninfas, os fados poderosas.”⁴ Russell's Sonnets is significant in the revival of the sonnet form. Literary trends had changed considerably since 1683 when Philip Ayres had felt the need to defend his publication of sonnets. By 1789 the sonnet had not only become respectable again, but this year the appearance of William Lisle Bowles' Fourteen Sonnets and Russell's Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems marked the renaissance of the sonnet in England, and Camoens was again among those poets identified with the form. Russell's role in the revival is attested by the posthumous recognition he received; poems from his small collection published the year after his death were reprinted in various anthologies of sonnets throughout the century.⁵

By the end of the eighteenth century, then, public recognition in England of Camoens as a lyric poet consisted of only six scattered sonnets and the brief homage by William Hayley. The British Critic could say with accuracy, “To Lord Strangford, we are solely and exclusively indebted for the minor productions of Camoens.”⁶

Twenty years after the first printing of the Poems, Thomas Medwin put this question to Byron: “Why did Lord Strangford call his beautiful Sonnets &c. translations?” Byron's answer was “Because he wrote … in order to get the situation at the Brazils, and did not know a word of Portuguese when he commenced.”⁷ That Strangford had his eye on the diplomatic service hardly seems doubtful, but it is unlikely that the publication of the Poems brought him his post first in Portugal (1803) and later in Brazil (1808), or that he even considered that they would. Strangford graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1800, at which time he would have been available for and seeking some post fitting his position as Viscount Strangford and the interest in political affairs to which his long career attests. In 1801 he shared rooms in London with Thomas Moore where he worked on his translations,⁸ one of which appeared in the Poetical Register before the volume was published in 1803.⁹ On December 27, 1803, he was commissioned secretary of the legation at Lisbon.¹⁰ A more likely explanation than Byron's is that Strangford, anticipating a diplomatic post requiring a knowledge of Portuguese, and in preparation for it, set himself the task of translating the work of Portugal's national poet as an exercise in learning the language, just as Sir Richard Fanshawe, the first English translator of Camoens' Lusiads had done in the seventeenth century.¹¹ If so he may have been perfecting his Spanish as well, for several of the translations are from Spanish.

It would seem that Strangford did not even have publication in mind when he undertook the translations. In a letter dated June 20, 1802, Moore urges him to publish: “I am delighted to find that your present intentions coincide so much with the advice I have so often given—publish the translations from Camoens most certainly—I have seen your gems upon the dunghill of the Poetical Register, and I am convinced that a collection of such things would do you infinite credit.”¹²

There was apparently some question of whether or not Moore had assisted in the translations. The poems, as Medwin said, “are very Moorish.” This “Moorishness” had not gone unnoticed by others. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review had particularly objected to Strangford's dressing Camoens “in the meretricious ornaments of Mr. Little's school.”¹³ And Byron, in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” advised him not to “teach the Lusian bard to copy Moore.”¹⁴ Southey found Strangford's writing in “the purest manner of Little Moore.”¹⁵ And later in the century Richard Francis Burton, the most prolific of Camoens' translators, found in Strangford's versions “that fatal Irish fluency, that flowery fruitless Hibernian facility which culminated in Thomas Moore.”¹⁶ The charges of “Moorishness” and licentiousness were not infrequently connected, for example, by Jeffrey.

But when Medwin put to Byron the question of whether Strangford had actually obtained assistance from Moore (“Moore was suspected of assisting his Lordship … Was that so?”), Byron's response was: “I am told not.” And he added, in defense of the character of both, “They are great friends, and when Moore got into difficulty about the Bermuda affair, in which he was hardly used, Lord Strangford offered to give him 500 l.; but Moore had too much independence to lay himself under an obligation.”¹⁷ A letter from Moore dated June 20, 1802 indicates that Strangford asked for information about Camoens since Moore directs him to Mickle's life of the poet and other essays; and April 17, 1803 Moore writes his mother that Strangford has sent him proof sheets.¹⁸ But there is no indication that Moore actually assisted in the translating.

At the conclusion of his “Remarks on the Life and Writings of Camoens,” Strangford does acknowledge the assistance of Bishop Percy and William Hayley, the latter especially for lending him books (p. 32). Thomas Percy had much earlier done some translating from Portuguese as well as from Spanish, his first major literary production being a translation of a part of a Chinese novel, Hau Kiou Choaun (1761), from a Portuguese manuscript. He himself had learned Portuguese expressly to read Camoens.¹⁹

Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens contains a total of forty-nine selections: twenty sonnets, eight canzones, nine canzonets, five madrigals, one rondeau, six ottava rima stanzas from Canto VI of the Lusiads (describing a tournament in London during the time of John of Gaunt at which twelve Portuguese knights met and vanquished twelve English knights), and part of the third elegy and four other short poems called simply “stanzas.”

These “translations” are for the most part less translations than original compositions on a theme by Camoens. But when Strangford presented them to the public he did so with no pretense that they were completely faithful to the originals: “The translator begs to observe that for the most part, he has closely copied his author, but that where circumstances demanded, he has not hesitated to be, ‘True to his sense—but truer to his fame'” (p. 31). He invited comparison with the originals by printing the initial lines of the Portuguese above his versions, and admitted frankly that he had translated two sonnets as canzones and had interpolated into another poem part of the notes of Manuel de Faria y Sousa, the seventeenth-century Portuguese commentator on Camoens' lyrics.

Strangford's frankness is misleading, however, for the extent of his changes is much greater than he suggests. Three of his canzones and two of his canzonets are based on sonnets; one of his madrigals is a translation of the first two stanzas of Ode V; and the concluding lines of Ode I are translated as “Stanzas.”²⁰ The rest are translations of redondilhas, short poems in native Portuguese meters. These, almost always shorter than the originals, have from one to six stanzas of four to eleven lines, the great majority being in quatrains of six-line stanzas, the most common meter being iambic tetrameter, the rhymes varying. The forms he uses are perhaps the closest possible English equivalent to the native Portuguese redondilhas (including voltas, trovas, glosas, and esparsas) which were verses of from five to seven syllables, the accents falling in two specified places, the stanzas usually from seven to ten lines long. They were forms all but impossible to reproduce in English.

Since no attempt was made to establish the canon of Camoens' lyrics until the late nineteenth century, Strangford's selection includes a number of poems not now considered to be by Camoens.²¹ By Strangford's own admission, one is not (the canzon, “El pequeño sonriso,” from the Spanish of Luis de Riachuelo); and two others, he says, are of doubtful authorship (the madrigal, “Pr'ythee, Cupid, hence—desist,” and the canzonet, “Lady! when with glad surprise”).

Strangford's decision to include these poems despite the question of authorship was perhaps determined by the subject matter, all three of them being in part a description of the lover's lady in the tradition of the blazon, the second incorporating the traditional anacreontic Cupid, the third the fearful and jealous lover. The three poems thus fit into the whole scheme of Strangford's collection, for in his prefatory “Remarks” his interpretation of Camoens is first of all that of a lover-poet, romantic and pathetic. And from the notes to the poems, as well as his handling of the poems themselves, it is clear that Strangford chose to include only lyrics which were distinctly amorous or which could be read as poetical accounts of events in the life of the poet and thus complemented the biography. It is this romantic view provided by Strangford in the biography, the notes, and the poems which prevailed until the 1880s when a number of new translations of both the lyrics and the epic, as well as new commentary, appeared in conjunction with the tercentenary celebration of Camoens' death.

It is obvious from the ordering of biographical material, and even in the phrasing, that Strangford based his life of Camoens in large part on the life by Mickle contained in his “Dissertation on the Lusiad, and Observations on Epic Poetry” prefixed to his translation of the Lusiads. His text and notes indicate, however, that he did consult other sources, some of them the sources which Mickle himself had used.²² We know for certain that he obtained books from William Hayley, and a letter to him from Moore indicates that when he applied to him for bibliographical and biographical information, Moore directed him to several collections of biographies and literary histories. But Moore implied that he might well make use of Mickle: “I should think that Mickle has made every profitable research upon the subject.”²³

That Strangford was not entirely satisfied with Mickle's biography is evident from his opening remarks: “[he] has pourtrayed the character, and narrated the misfortunes of our poet, in a manner more honourable to his feelings as a man, than to his accuracy in point of biographical detail” (p. 2). The errors he finds are actually few; his correction is by way of addition of autobiographical information which he interprets from the lyrics, or of reinterpretation of material that he finds in Mickle and his sources. Ultimately, however, the changes he makes go far beyond correcting biographical detail. Strangford gives us an interpretation of the character of Camoens that is notably different from that offered by the earlier translator of the epic. Each translator sees his subject in light of the work that he is translating, Mickle of the epic, Strangford of the lyrics. Thus Mickle's Camoens was first of all a valorous, adventuring man of arms, much like Vasco da Gama of the epic. Strangford's Camoens was no less valorous, but he was much more the lover than the hero.

Both biographies begin with an account of the origins of the family of Camoens, place him at the University of Coimbra until the age of eighteen, take him then to the court from which he was banished for some intrigue, from there to an expedition against the Moors, and then back to the court from which he this time banished himself. But the emphasis in the two accounts is entirely different. Mickle covers this period in Camoens' life briefly, with emphasis on the valor which he displayed on the expedition to Ceuta.²⁴ Strangford, on the other hand, gives more attention to the meeting with Caterina de Ataide at court, the intrigue and consequent banishment. After this Camoens joined the expedition, Strangford explains, because “Love … inspired him with the glorious resolution of conquering the obstacles which fortune had placed between him and felicity,” only to find, when his heroism had won him back his place at court, that Caterina had died in his absence.

Both biographers record that after several fruitless years of pursuing advancement at court Camoens, neglected and unappreciated, sailed for India. And both accounts report that he distinguished himself in expeditions out of Goa but was eventually banished from there by the viceroy Barreto, who found one of his satires personally offensive. Both translators defend Camoen's actions and applaud his virtue, Mickle characteristically sounding the note of magnanimity, Strangford the pathetic as well. To Strangford, the satire was more than a personal attack on the viceroy; it arose out of Camoens' sense of honor and outrage at the “rapacity and avarice” in his countrymen's treatment of the “friendless natives,” the arrival of the new viceroy merely providing an occasion for the satiric attack.

After an absence of sixteen years, Strangford notes, Camoens arrived back in Portugal “poor and friendless as when he departed.” Yet the Lusiads, after some delay because of the plague, was finally published in 1572 and received “with all the honour due such a glorious achievement of genius” (pp. 15-18). Strangford, like Mickle before him, repeats the story that King Sebastian of Portugal honored Camoens with a sizable pension, questions its authenticity, and suggests that if indeed there ever was a pension it would probably have been stopped by Cardinal Henry, successor to Sebastian. Henry, Mickle had explained, would have taken personally Camoens' recommendation at the end of the Lusiads that all clergymen be excluded from state affairs, and besides was “one of these statesmen who can perceive no benefit resulting to the public from elegant literature” (“Diss.,” p. xciv). Strangford's explanation, though different, is entirely in keeping with his interpretation of the life and character of Camoens: Henry, being a man to whom “the cowl of monkhood seemed a more graceful ornament than the noblest laurels of the muse” was more given to patronizing a poet like de Sá (whose muse, Strangford says contemptuously, was of a “theological turn” and who wrote “orthodox sonnets to St. John, and pious little epigrams on Adam and Eve, &c”) than to supporting or rewarding a poet like Camoens whom he left to starve.²⁵

In the final summing up of the character of Camoens, the distinction between the points of view of Mickle and Strangford is clear. For Mickle, “the courage and manners of Camoens flowed from true greatness and dignity of soul”; he was “in martial courage, and spirit of honor, nothing inferior to her greatest heroes” (“Diss.,” p. cxvi). For Strangford, Camoens' character, inferred from his writings, was “an open and undisguised contempt of everything base and sordid,” a conclusion with which Mickle would not have argued. Yet, more important to Strangford, “gallantry was the leading trait in the disposition of Camoens” (p. 23), a conclusion with which Mickle and other critics would disagree. “The truth is,” Mickle concluded, Camoens was the kind of “true genius [who] feels his greatest happiness in the pursuits and excursions of the mind” (“Diss.,” p. cxvi). Strangford's emphasis here, as elsewhere, is quite different from that of Mickle: “woman was to him as a ministering angel, and for the little joy which he tasted in life, he was indebted to her.” Camoens' favorite theme was “the magic of female charms,” the painting of which “transported [him] into that heaven which he describes.” Even in his old age “he feelingly regretted the raptures of youth, and lingered with delight on the remembrances of love” (pp. 23-24). Remarking on the spuriousness of one of the poems attributed to Camoens, about the martyrdom of St. Ursula and 11,000 virgins, Strangford adds, “But it is not probable that the persevering chastity of these unhappy ladies could ever have found favour in the sight of our amorous bard. It is still less likely that he would have celebrated it in song” (pp. 29-30).

These themes of gallantry and romantic misfortune on which Strangford builds his life of Camoens²⁶ are reinforced by both his selection of poems relative to them and by his handling of the original material. His translations of two poems, Sonnet II, “Eu canterei de amor tão docemente,” and the voltas “Não sei quem assela” serve to demonstrate how he changed the original poems to develop his themes. The Portuguese versions quoted are from the Pimpão edition of Camoens' lyrics. Sonnet II reads:

          Eu canterei do amor tão docemente(27)
por uns termos em si tão concertados,
que dous mil acidentes namorados
faça sentir ao peito que não sente.
          Farei que amor a todos avivente,
pintando mil segredos delicados,
brandas iras, suspiros namorados
temerosa ousadia e pena ausente.
          Também, Senhora, do desprezo honesto
de vossa vista branda e rigorosa,
contentar-me hei dizendo a menos parte.
                    Porém, para cantar de vosso gesto
a composição alta e milagrosa,
aqui falta saber, engenho e arte.

Strangford's version of this, Sonnet XV, is:

I sang of love—and in so sweet a strain,
          That hearts most hard were soften'ed at the
sound,
          And blushing girls, who gaily throng'd around,
Felt their souls tingle with delightful pain—
For quaintly did my chanted songs explain
          Those little secrets that in love abound—
          Life in a kiss, and death in absence found—
Feign'd anger—slow consent—and coy disdain,
          And hardihood, at length with conquest crown'd.
Yet did I not with these rude lips proclaim
          From whom my song such sweet instructions drew,
          Too weak, alas! to pour the praises due
From youthful gratitude, to grace the name
          Of her, who kindly taught me all she knew.

The “blushing girls,” the “life in a kiss,” the “slow consent,” and the “hardihood, at length with conquest crown'd” are all Strangford's invention and produce a poem that is unquestionably more erotic than the original.

Camoens' voltas and Strangford's version are:

                                                  Não sei quem assela
                                        vossa fermosura;
                                        que quem é tão dura
                                        não pode ser bela.
                                        Vos sereis fermosa,
                                        mas a razão tem
                                        que quem é irosa
                                        não parece bem.
                                                  A mostra é de bela,
                                        as obras são cruas;
                                        pois qual destas duas
                                        ficará na sela?
                                        Se ficar irosa
                                        não vos está bem:
                                        fique antes fermosa,
                                        que mais força tem.
                                                  O Amor, fermoso
                                        se pinta e se chama:
                                        se é amor, ama,
                                        se ama, é piadoso,
                                        Diz agora a grosa
                                        que este texto tem,
                                        que quem é fermosa
                                        há-de querer bem.
                                                  Havei do, minina,
                                        dessa fermosura;
                                        que se a terra é dura,
                                        seca-se a bonina.
                                        Sede piadosa;
                                        não veja ninguém
                                        que, por rigorosa,
                                        percais tanto bem.
Thou hast an eye of tender blue,
And thou hast locks of Daphne's hue,
And cheeks that shame the morning's break,
And lips that might for redness make
                    Roses seem pale beside them:
But whether soft or sweet as they,
Lady! alas, I cannot say,
                    For I have never tried them.
Yet, thus created for delight,
Lady! thou art not lovely quite,
For dost thou not this maxim know,
That Prudery is Beauty's foe,
                    A stain that mars a jewel!
And e'en that woman's angel face
Loses a portion of its grace,
                    If woman's heart be cruel!
Love is a sweet and blooming boy,
Yet glowing with the blush of joy,
And (still in youth's delicious prime)
Though ag'd as patriarchal Time,
                    The withering god despises:
Lady! would'st thou for ever be
As fair, and young, and fresh as he—
                    Do all that love advises!

The entire first stanza of this translation is an interpolation and the last two a very free rendering of Camoens. Strangford admits that in the composition of this canzone “some of the comment of Faria has been introduced … and certain very necessary liberties taken with the original.”²⁸ These liberties could be considered “necessary” insofar as they strengthen Strangford's carpe diem theme, only a hint of which can be found in the original, and thus contribute to the picture of Camoens and the erotic tone of the poems which he intends to create. As Southey among others pointed out, Strangford's poem was more original than it was a translation or even an imitation, “differing totally” as it did “in every part and point” from Camoens' lines. Southey's critical explanation for the liberties taken with this poem could as well serve for the liberties taken with others: evidently Strangford “thought Camoens too low, and has therefore raised him upon stilts.” And Southey explains what he means by “low”: “Camoens is never so amorous as his translator. There may be as much fire, but there is less flame; as much passion, but more modesty.”²⁹

Some of the notes in Poems from the Portuguese also contribute specifically to the picture of Camoens as gallant that Strangford develops through his biographical “Remarks” and the poems which he translates. For example, about the canzone “Why should I indiscreetly tell” he comments, “The chaste discretion of delicate Love is admirably pourtrayed in this little Poem. Happy for our Author had he always obeyed its dictates!” (p. 130). And the reader is reminded of the misfortunes in the poet's life in Strangford's note to his sonnet “Slowly and heavily the time has run”: “The touching melancholy of many of these compositions in which Camoens complains of his sorrows, becomes truly interesting when we consider, that he laments what he actually suffered, that he was not fastidiously unhappy, but underwent real misery in its fullest extent” (p. 138).

Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese was on the whole very successful. In the seven years after its publication in 1803 it was reprinted six times in England, three in America, with a new edition in 1824 and a French translation in 1828. The reputation of William Julius Mickle, who had been credited with introducing Camoens' Lusiads to the English speaking world, was such that his translation also went through ten printings, but not in such a short period of time, and he never had the pleasure of seeing his version translated into another language.

From the various references to the volume of poems it is clear that its appeal was in the life of Camoens portrayed in it as much as in the poems themselves. Byron's friend, John Cam Hobhouse, for example, included with the volume which he presented to his future wife a short dedicatory poem of his own in which he alluded to Strangford's account of Camoens' unfortunate love for Caterina de Ataide.³⁰ The impression created by Strangford is clear in Hobhouse's lines:

Accept what youth to matchless beauty gives;
Here Camoens' soul in Strangford's numbers lives,
A soul how vigorous, and how skill'd to move
All other breasts, a slave alone to love.

(Lines 11-14)

It is for its moving picture of the hapless lover that Hobhouse recommends the volume.

According to Moore, the Poems was among Byron's favorite reading about 1806. Byron later listed Strangford among the English bards in his satiric “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” but at this time, as Moore explains, “it was natural that he should settle with most pleasure on those works from which the feelings of his age and temperament could extract their most congenial food.”³¹ Despite charges from some quarters that it was at times indelicate or even licentious, the volume seems to have been considered an appropriate gift for young ladies. From his “Stanzas to a Lady with the Poems of Camoens” (1807) we might infer that Byron, like Hobhouse, had presented a copy, recommending it, as Hobhouse had, for its supposedly autobiographical romantic content:

He was, in sooth, a genuine bard;
          His was no faint, fictitious flame:
Like his, may Love be thy reward,
          But not thy hapless fate the same.(32)

The second line echoes the remark of Strangford cited above: “… he was not fastidiously unhappy, but underwent real misery in its fullest extent” (p. 138).

Among the reviewers, those of both the Monthly Review and the British Critic pick up this “hapless fate” theme, quoting the description of the final destitution of “this neglected favourite of the Muses,” who, the British Critic says, “as a man of talent and misfortune, strongly demands our sympathy.”³³

William Lisle Bowles, a friend of Thomas Russell, the earlier translator of two of Camoens' sonnets, makes Strangford's description of the melancholy end of Camoens the basis for his own “Last Song of Camoens.”³⁴ The poem, which is dedicated to Strangford, opens with a somewhat modified and more dramatic rendering of the often repeated picture of Camoens' last days. In Bowles' version not Antonio the slave but the destitute poet himself begs for food:

When, rising from his melancholy bed,
And faint, and feebly by Antonio led,
Poor Camoens, subdued by want and woe,
Along the winding margin wandered slow.

(Lines 3-6)

For Camoens' song, which deals mostly with his voyage to India and includes a description of Adamastor, the spectral monster that guards the Cape of Good Hope, Bowles draws directly on the Lusiads (Mickle's translation), but at the conclusion, he returns to Strangford:

Alas, forlorn, I gaze around:
Feeble, poor, and old I stand
A stranger in my native land! …
My harp is silent,—famine shrinks mine eye—
“Give me a little food for charity!”

(Lines 60-68)

Bowles uses the Lusiads and Strangford's Poems again in his unfinished, five-canto “The Spirit of Discovery” (1804).³⁵ In the canto given to the discoveries of Portugal his indebtedness to accounts in the Lusiads can be seen in several places. Canto IV ends as his “Last Song of Camoens” does, with the modified Strangfordian picture of the aged, neglected Camoens playing his harp, singing his mournful song as he begs on the streets of Lisbon.

Strangford's influence can also be seen in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's “Caterina to Camoens (Dying in his Absence Abroad, and Referring to the Poem in which he Recorded the Sweetness of Her Eyes)” (1844).³⁶ The poem consists of nineteen eight-line stanzas, each stanza ending with the line “Sweetest eyes were ever seen,” or a slight variation on it. Although it has been suggested that the poem is an answer to Camoens' sonnet “Ah Natercia cruel,”³⁷ there is no evidence that Mrs. Browning knew Portuguese or had read Camoens' lyrics in the original. A far more probable source is Strangford's translation of Camoens' Spanish glosa, “Mi corazon me han robado,” “The heart that warm'd my guileless breast.” The line which closes the stanzas of Mrs. Browning's poem does not appear in the Spanish of Camoens. Strangford's version, however, consists of two six-line stanzas, both ending with the refrain, “And sweetest eyes that e'er were seen!” The same line comes into Mrs. Browning's poem, “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” (1844):

And this morning as I sat alone within the
inner chamber
With the great saloon beyond it, lost in pleasant thought serene,
For I had been reading Camoens, that poem
you remember,
Which his lady's eyes are praised in as the sweetest ever seen.(38)

As late as 1851 the influence of Strangford was still being felt. In the Dublin University Magazine of that year there appeared “A Canzonet from Camoens,” signed “M. C.”³⁹ The poem is less “from Camoens” than from Strangford, for, although it professes to be based on Camoens' voltas, “Não sei quem assela,” it is actually based on Strangford's canzonet, “Thou hast an eye of tender blue,” a version of Camoens' voltas. The rarely used term “canzonet” in itself suggests Strangford as a source. In the poem “M. C.” makes exactly the same kind of interpolation that Strangford had earlier, that is, one entire stanza in which he describes the woman addressed. And the description is in precisely the same terms:

Eyes of violet brightness,
          Waving golden dresses [sic],
Cheeks of ruddy lightness,
          Such as Morn possesses;
Lights that pale the roses in their summer redness
Unto waxen deadness,
          Lady, all are thine.
Are they, too, as soft and fragrant?
Ah, to press them, pretty vagrant,
          Never has been mine.

(Lines 1-10)

The eyes have become violet rather than blue, the hair golden rather than “Daphne's hue.” But the cheeks are still the color of morning, the lips rosy, the lover unrequited. The other two stanzas follow suit: the “sweet and blooming boy” becomes “a youngster joyous, / Eloquently blooming,” and Strangford's concluding appeal becomes

Wouldst thou ever, gentle lady,
          Live in beauty's blushing mayday—
                    Trust to Love's mad rhyme.

(Lines 28-30)

The source of this, as of Mrs. Browning's “Caterina to Camoens,” is certainly Strangford, not the original Camoens. Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese appears to have enjoyed a comparable success in America. It went through three American editions, in 1805 (Philadelphia), 1808 (Baltimore), and 1809 (Boston), and even before that, in 1803, the weekly Port Folio reprinted the entire “Remarks on the Life and Writings of Camoens,”⁴⁰ and in various other issues through 1805 reprinted more than half of the poems in the volume as well as some of his translations of other poets which Strangford had included in his notes. All of the poems reprinted reflect on the loves and/or misfortunes of the poet. Occasionally the Port Folio appends its own notes which, in the manner of Strangford's, mark the supposed character of Camoens; for example, it comments on the sonnet “These charming eyes,” which was written, Strangford says, on the death of Caterina de Ataide (p. 152), “Camoens when he describes himself a fortunate or wretched lover always adopts the tone of Genius, Passion and nature. In the following he bewails the loss of a mistress, and Lord Strangford has embalmed his tears.”⁴¹

The reviewer in the Literary Magazine and American Register almost surpasses Strangford himself in his sentimental sketch of the life of the “unfortunate” poet whose genius went “unnoticed and unregarded” and whose last days “were spent in poverty the most abject, and wretchedness the most absolute.” As Strangford had suggested, “his great susceptibility of love was a source of many sorrows,” and the five poems reprinted in the review serve to demonstrate this, one of them being the sonnet on the death of Caterina (“Those charming eyes”), another the canzonet supposedly written on the occasion of Camoens' banishment from court when his mistress first confessed her affection for him (“I whispered her my last adieu”). The review concludes, Camoens “will be admired by ages yet to come, and every emotion of honest indignation, of sorrow and regret, which arises on the recollection of his history, will serve as an expiatory sacrifice to his manes, and cause us to contemn the people who were so regardless of his sufferings.”⁴²

Eventually the unfortunate effect of Strangford's romantic and pathetic picture of Camoens, actually a vigorous poet, is the reduction of him to the role of “Woman's poet.” The poems written to accompany gift volumes suggest this as does Byron's reference to “Hibernian Strangford … Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires” in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” (lines 297-299). We can see it also in Robert Dunbar's “Sonnet, to Camoens. On a Lady Having Lent the Author his Poems, and recommended them to his Perusal.”⁴³ Although sadly unrecognized in his time, the sonnet says, Camoens, “Flower of the Tagus,” will live in the hearts of women; and the poem concludes with a plea that women long love and treasure him and his songs. The same attitude can be found among the American readers. When the Monthly Anthology lamented the impropriety of the love poems (“The noble lord … frequently offends against purity and delicacy”) it did so particularly because of their intended feminine audience: “This little volume is intended to be read, during the intervals of other pleasures and pursuits; and when the ladies rise from the harpsichord, or return from their walk, they are often attracted by the sonnets of Lord Strangford, which lie on the easy sofa or the pleasant parlour window.”⁴⁴

The Monthly Anthology was not the only voice raised against the erotic content of Strangford's volume. A particular target was his poem “Thou hast an eye of tender blue” (quoted above). Southey had criticized Strangford for the interpolation and liberties which he had admitted taking. But Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review was sharper and more personal. The poem appears to have been written, Jeffrey says, “for the express purpose of conveying to the world the very interesting particulars which they contain with regard to the noble author; there not being to be found in the original … any mention whatever of blue eyes, auburn hair, young freshness, amorous disposition, or any other of those advantages which the noble writer either possesses, or thinks he has the prospect of possessing, over the rest of the world.”⁴⁵ Jeffrey's remarks are, however, directed not to the poem alone but also to the long note which Strangford appended to it:

Notwithstanding all that has been said, and all that has been written to disprove the existence of a real and positive standard of beauty, were we to argue from the universality of poetical taste in every age, we should place the essence of female loveliness in the description before us.—Locks of auburn, and eyes of blue, have ever been dear to the sons of song. The Translator almost ventures to doubt whether these two ideas do not enter into every combination of charms created by the poetical mind. The former are almost constantly accompanied by the advantages of complexion, and by that young freshness which defies the imitation of art. Sterne even considers them as indicative of moral qualities the most amiable, and asserts that they denote exuberance in all the warmer, and, consequently, in all the better feelings of the human heart. The Translator does not wish to deem this opinion as wholly unfounded. He is, however, aware of the danger to which such a confession exposes him—but flies for protection to the temple of “Aurea Venus” [pp. 121-122].

It is to this poem and its note, as they represented Strangford's technique throughout his collection, that Byron directs his barb in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”:

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,
Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires
And o'er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author's sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,
By dressing Camoens in a suit of lace?
Mend, Strangford! mend thy morals and thy taste;
Be warm, be pure; be amorous, but be chaste.

(Lines 297-307)

But Jeffrey takes Strangford to task not for the one canzone only but for his whole interpretation of the author and for the tone of the poems. Neither the biographical comments nor the translations are accurate, Jeffrey charges, but “the misrepresentation of Camoens' character is … more inexcusable.” Even if, as Strangford asserts, “gallantry” was his leading trait, the fact is of little importance at the moment and the establishment of it hardly entitles him to “such profound admiration as his translator expresses when he triumphantly proclaims his discovery.” Such errors as he is led to in the translations of the poems could only be explained by a misconception of Camoens' character, for in Camoens they are not to be found: “There is nothing in Camoens to make a girl blush; his feelings were delicate, and he wrote as he felt.” Furthermore such delicacy is totally lacking not in these poems only, but unfortunately in the poems of far too many young poets:

The young author of the present day suffers his mind to wander without restraint or control; and the extravagant creatures of a prurient imagination, tricked out in all the tinsel and frippery of the modern poet's effeminate vocabulary, are thoughtlessly put into the hands of youth, by those who would have been shocked at the far less seducing danger of downright obscenity.⁴⁶

The tone of Jeffrey's comments is remarkably like that of his comments on Moore's “Odes and Epistles” a year later. Moore he then calls the “most licentious of modern versifiers,”⁴⁷ and, as many had noted, Strangford had obviously made his friend Moore his model.

The British Critic, though far less severe than the Edinburgh Review, and in sum more complimentary than critical, nevertheless had reservations about Strangford's indiscriminately sympathetic treatment of the amorous Camoens, although it does not, as does the Edinburgh Review, question the accuracy of Strangford's remarks: “Genius, however, is unhappily but seldom accompanied by prudence, and we cannot but feel that the greater part of the distresses, which fell upon Camoens, were occasioned by his own irregularities, and by yielding too implicitly to the dictates of his passion. We are willing with Lord Strangford to make every allowance for the effervescence of youth, and the infirmities of human nature, but there is an obvious danger in palliating glaring errors, so far as to term them ‘the little wanderings of amatory frolic.'”⁴⁸

On the whole, however, the volume was well received, the poems being judged unsurpassed in “delicacy and sweetness,” the biographical notes “sprinkled with sentiments which accord with the finest feelings of the heart.” In America the Literary Magazine concluded that the Poems “cannot fail to interest all whose bosoms have beat with the fervour of love.”⁴⁹

These remarks, while offered as commendations, also serve inadvertently to point out the major weakness of Strangford's translations, a pervasive infidelity in tone. There is in the translations a tendency to flaccidity, an excess of “delicacy and sweetness” not found in Camoens' lyrics, which are as substantial as the best in the Petrarchan tradition. Many of Strangford's critics had noted this, some attributing the weakness to the influence of Moore. The explanation lies at least in part with Strangford's desire to maintain congruence between the tone of the poems and his interpretation of the character of the poet as gallant.

Yet if neither Strangford's interpretation of Camoens' character nor his versions of the lyrics is remarkable for fidelity, this fact does not significantly diminish the historical importance of Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens. To Strangford must go the credit for having introduced Camoens as a lyric poet to English readers, who had theretofore known him only as the author of the epic The Lusiads. Camoens' reputation suffered little if any by the inaccuracies and distortions of Strangford; these were almost immediately revealed by various reviewers and his reputation further strengthened by the corrections. Southey, for example, to show what Camoens “actually” wrote, included in his review of Strangford's Poems his own translation of five sonnets,⁵⁰ three of which had never been translated previously, thus augmenting the small body of poems by which the English reader could come to know Camoens the lyric poet.

The translations of Strangford and Southey were followed by translations of sixteen sonnets, three songs, and part of the eclogue on the death of Caterina de Ataide by Felicia Hemans published in Translations from Camoens, and Other Poets (Oxford, 1818). Of these Felix Walter says, “Il est vraiment étonnant que le public qui possédait les traductions de cette admirable jeune femme ait pu demander une réimpression de l'œuvre de Strangford” (p. 92), but the effusion which Mrs. Hemans substitutes for the Portuguese saudade is hardly preferable to the “tinsel” of Strangford's versions.

The translations of Southey and those which had appeared in Hayley's Essay on Epic Poetry were reprinted by John Adamson in 1820 in his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Luis de Camoens, together with a number by himself and others in verse and prose. Except for a few scattered translations in various periodicals and volumes of miscellaneous poetry, no new translations appeared until the 1880 tercentenary celebration of the death of Camoens. At that time John J. Aubertin and Richard Francis Burton, both translators of the Lusiads, published volumes of translations of lyrics, Aubertin's Seventy Sonnets of Camoens, probably the finest English translations of any number of Camoens' lyrics, appearing in 1881, and Burton's Camoens. The Lyricks, in two volumes, in 1884. Burton gives us most of the lyrics published in the 1860⁵¹ edition of Camoens' works plus a few from the edition of Wilhelm Storck,⁵² a total of 360 sonnets, twenty canzones, fourteen odes, and five sestinas. Before the end of the century, Richard Garnett also published translations of forty sonnets in his Dante, Petrarch, Camoens, CXXIV Sonnets (London, 1896).

In this century the number of translations of Camoens' works, epic as well as lyrics, is much smaller. A few of the lyrics have been translated, most notably by Aubrey Fitzgerald Bell in Poems from the Portuguese (Oxford, 1913), George Young in Portugal, An Anthology (Oxford, 1916), Edgar Prestage in Minor Works of Camoens (London, 1924), and Roy Campbell in Collected Poems (Chicago, 1957).

Of all the translators of Camoens, Strangford is certainly now among the least known. Except for the redondilhas, few of which have been translated since his attempt, his versions of Camoens' poems have been superseded. His biographical approach as well has come to be considered somewhat less than reputable. But his romantic picture of Cameons, in the poems of supposed autobiographical content, and in his comments on them found a receptive audience in his own time. Strangford's Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens succeeded not only in bringing Camoens the lyric poet to the attention of English readers, but in gaining for his lyrics a popular renown among them that they had never before enjoyed, and in fact have never enjoyed since.

Notes

1. III (April, 1806) Notes, 216.

2. In Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, ed. George Saintsbury (Oxford, 1906), II, 303-351. Ayres titles the sonnet “The Vanity of Unwarrantable Notions.” Ayres' collection includes several different forms, including odes, songs, a sestina, a shaped poem, and a number of twelve and sixteen-line poems. About a third of the poems are sonnets.

3. When Wordsworth justifies the sonnet long after such justification is necessary (“Scorn not the sonnet,” 1827), he like Ayres before him lists Camoens among the great poets who wrote in the form.

4. Russell's translation of “A fermosura …” also appeared in the Annual Register for 1789. The same sonnet was among those translated by Strangford (“Silent and cool, now fresh'ning breezes”). William Beckford, in a letter from Portugal dated Nov. 8, 1787 records an encounter with a young poet who justly charged, “You think we have no bard but Camoens, and that Camoens has written nothing worth notice, but the Lusiad. Here is a sonnet worth half the Lusiad.” And he recited for Beckford this sonnet, which Beckford found more pleasing than any of the poems of the modern favorite Monteiro (The Travel-Diaries of William Beckford of Fonthill, ed., Guy Chapman, Cambridge, 1928, II, 135-136).

5. See Eric Partridge's introduction to Poems of Cuthbert Shaw and Thomas Russell (London, 1925), pp. 10-11, 38 et passim. Bowles, also an admirer of Camoens, pays posthumous tribute to his friend Russell in his “Elegy Written at Hotwells, Bristol [where Russell died]. July, 1789. Inscribed to the Rev. W. Howley.” Howley, a junior admirer of Russell at Westminster and Oxford, later Archbishop of Canterbury, published Russell's poems the year after his death from consumption (although Bowles, Landor, and others liked to think it was from a broken heart) (Partridge, 29-30).

6. XXIV (Dec., 1804), 606.

7. Medwin's Conversations of Lord Byron, ed., Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. (Princeton, 1966), p. 239.

8. G. E. Cockayne, The Complete Peerage of England, ed. V. Gibbs (London, 1953), XII, 361. On Feb. 19, 1928 Moore writes, “Went with Keppel to his lodgings, 28 Bury St. (formerly 27) for the purpose of seeing the rooms where he lives (second floor), which were my abode off and on for ten or twelve years. The sight brought back old times, it was there I wrote my ‘Odes and Epistles from America’ and in the parlour Strangford wrote most of his ‘Camoens.’” (The Journal of Thomas Moore, 1818-1841, ed. Peter Quennell, New York, 1964, p. 171).

9. Poetical Register, I (1801), 68-69. The poem is “Ode. Translated from the Spanish of Luis de Riachaelo. To Inès De Guete.” In Poems the title is changed to “Canzone. ‘El Pequeño Sonriso.’ From Riachuelo. To Ines De Guete” and some changes are made in the text. Although this poem is included with those of Camoens, it is, as the title indicates, not by Camoens.

10. Royal Historical Society, British Diplomatic Representatives, 1789-1852 (London, 1934), p. 90.

11. Herbert C. Fanshawe, The History of the Fanshawe Family (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1927), p. 160.

12. The Letters of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Oxford, 1964), I, 36-37.

13. VI (April, 1805), 48.

14. Line 308, The Complete Poetical Works of Byron (Boston, [c1933]), p. 246.

15. Annual Review, II (1803), 572.

16. Camoens: His Life and His Lusiads (London, 1881), I, 182.

17. Conversations, p. 239. Moore was held responsible for funds embezzled by a deputy he had left in charge of his post in Bermuda in 1818.

18. Letters, I, 37, 39.

19. Letter to Edmond Malone, Sept. 28, 1805 in The Percy Letters. The Correspondence of Henry Percy and Edmond Malone, ed. Arthur Tillotson (Baton Rouge, 1944), p. 192.

20. Canzones, “When day has smil'd a soft farewell,” “Should I but live a little more,” “Thou pride of the forest”; canzonets, “Spring, in gay and frolic hour,” “How sprightly were the roundelays”; madrigal, “Dear is the blush of early light”; stanzas, “Night! to thee my vows are paid.”

21. There is still no definitive edition of Camoens' lyrics, and considering the problem of sifting out apocrypha which made up so large a part of the lyrics in editions from the time of the posthumous first edition in 1595, there probably never will be. The most reliable edition of the lyrics is that of Alvaro J. da Costa Pimpão, Rimas (Coimbra, 1953). The following poems in Strangford's volume, in addition to the one by Riachuelo and the two of doubtful authorship noted above, do not appear in the Pimpão edition: Sonnets III, VII, IX, XVI, XX; canzones, “Canst thou forget the silent tears,” “Why should I indiscreetly tell”; canzonets, “Flowers are fresh, and bushes green,” “Since in this dreary vale of tears”; rondeau, “Just like love is yonder rose.”

22. Manuel Severim de Faria, Discursos varios politicos (Evora, 1624), which includes a life of Camoens; Rimas Varias de Luis de Camoens (Lisbon, 1685), with a life of the poet and commentary by Manuel de Faria y Sousa. Hayley refers to this edition when he comments on the lyrics of Camoens in his Essay on Epic Poetry and may have recommended it to Strangford. The copy in the Hispanic Society Library (New York) contains the signature of Strangford and the date 1804; La Lusiade, tr. Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera (Amsterdam and Paris, 1735), with life and notes; Obras de Luis de Camoens … a custa de Pedro Gendron (Paris, 1759), with a life by Garcez Ferreira (Mickle called this “the best edition of his works”; Lusiad, p. cxiii). Strangford also refers to the life of Camoens by Thomas José de Aquino in Obras (Lisbon, 1782).

23. Letters, I, 37.

24. “Dissertation on the Lusiad,” pp. cix-cx. Subsequent references to Mickle's essay will be indicated in the text by “Diss.”

25. Poems, p. 19. Aubrey F. Bell, in Studies in Portuguese Literature (Oxford, 1914), pp. 142-143, remarks concerning the stories of the pension (15,000 reis) which Camoens was awarded but failed to receive, “A story of these years, which has a greater air of truth, relates that Camões threatened to ask the King to change the reis into lashes for the officials whose duty it was to pay the pension.”

26. Strangford repeats the story that Camoens, shipwrecked in the China Sea, swam ashore with one arm, holding up his manuscript of the Lusiads with the other (pp. 20-21).

27. The Portuguese line which Strangford quotes at the head of his translation reads “Eu cantey ja, d'amor tão docemente / Que, &c &c.” Camoens is the author of another sonnet beginning “Eu cantei já,” but the line concludes, “e agora vou chorando,” the second line beginning “O tempo.” However it is clear from the rest of the poem that despite the inconsistency in the opening words, the sonnet quoted is the original of Strangford's translation. In eighteenth century texts which Strangford might have used, the final word in line 7 is “magoados” rather than “namorados” which appears in modern editions.

28. The “Faria” is Manuel de Faria y Sousa; see note 22 above. Almost all of Strangford's notes relative to sources and parallels are translations of Faria's Spanish commentary.

29. Annual Review, II (1803), 572, 575.

30. “Verses Written in Lord Strangford's Translation of Camoens and presented to a young lady who was going to Lisbon for her health” (1804), in Imitations and Translations … together with Original Poems … (London, 1809), pp. 164-167. In a note to another poem in the same volume, “To … A Water Drinker,” Hobhouse remarks, “Lord Strangford has written elegant verses, not translations of Camoens, but imitations of Mr. Little” (p. 73).

31. Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (London, 1920), p. 39.

32. Poetical Works, p. 92, lines 13-16.

33. Monthly Review, XLV (1804), 13; British Critic, XXIV (Dec., 1804), 606.

34. The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles (London, 1879), I, 182-184.

35. Ibid., p. 231. The influence of the Lusiads might also be seen in some descriptions, e.g., that of the waterspouts, in his earlier, shorter “The Spirit of Navigation.”

36. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Harriet Waters Preston (Boston, [c 1900]), pp. 181-182. This poem is sometimes printed at the head of Sonnets from the Portuguese and is reportedly the source of the title; see Garner G. Taplin, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New Haven, 1957), pp. 233-234.

37. See for example Felix Walter, La Littérature portugaise en Angleterre à l'époque romantique (Paris, 1927), p. 116.

38. Complete Works, p. 123, stanza 1vii.

39. XXXVII (June, 1851), 668. The “M. C.” is probably Michael Constable.

40. III (Oct. 22, 29, 1803), 339-340, 348.

41. V (Sept. 14, 1805), 288.

42. IV (Sept., 1805), 192-194.

43. First published in his volume of miscellaneous verse, Indian Hours: or, Passion and Poetry of the Tropics (London, 1839), p. 150. From a note recommending Strangford's volume for an account of the life and misfortunes of Camoens, it is clear that the “Poems” referred to in the title of Dunbar's sonnet are Strangford's translations.

44. III (April, 1806), 216.

45. VI (April, 1805), 50.

46. Ibid., pp. 46-49.

47. Ibid., VIII (July, 1806), 456.

48. XXIV (Dec., 1804), 606.

49. Monthly Magazine, XVII (1804), 666; Monthly Review, XLV (1804), 12; Literary Magazine, I (Oct., 1803), 51.

50. Annual Review, II (1803), 569-577. The five sonnets are “Alma minha gentil” (also in Hayley's Essay on Epic Poetry), “Brandas agoas do Tejo que passando” (not in the Pimpão edition), “Alegres campos, verdes arvoredos,” “Quando da bela vista e doce riso,” and “Quem diz que amor he falso ou enganoso” (also translated by Strangford; not in Pimpão). While he would willingly increase public knowledge of Camoens, it is doubtful that Southey would have been honored by the assertion that he contributed to his reputation. At this time Southey had an irrational aversion to all things Portuguese—the country, its people, its culture, as well as its literature. In this review he gives Strangford credit for having increased the reputation of Camoens by passing off his better poetry as that of Camoens, just as earlier he had judged Mickle's translation of the Lusiads an improvement over the original (Monthly Magazine, IV, Aug., 1798, 99.) In time, however, his opinions changed, even if he never publicly reversed himself. His adverse judgments do not appear to have influenced anyone but Wordsworth, who was set right by his son-in-law and translator of the Lusiads, Edward Quillinan. The Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Wordsworth Circle (1808-1866), ed. Edith J. Morley (Oxford, 1927), II, 770.

51. Obras de Luiz de Camões, ed. Visconde de Juromenha, 6 vols. (Lisbon, 1860). Many of the short poems in this edition have been eliminated by modern editors. Pimpão includes only 166 sonnets in his modern edition whereas Juromenha had included 352.

52. Luis de Camoens Sämmtliche Gedichte (Paderborn, 1880). Storck's edition of the lyrics together with his Luis de Camoens Leben (Paderborn, 1890) is especially important; these are the first rigorously critical studies of the life and poems of Camoens. Storck translated into German all of the poems attributed to Camoens, including by this time 362 sonnets, but he carefully annotated them, indicating which were spurious. His work was completed and translated into Portuguese by Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Vida e Obras de Luis de Camões (Lisbon, 1897).