He was afterwards killed by a lance while
kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300
stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir.
kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300
stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir.
Camoes - Lusiades
_--The commander of Diu, or Dio, during
this siege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese history.
[624] _Fierce Hydal-Kan. _--The title of the lords or princes of Decan,
who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men
into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at
last finally subdued by Don John de Castro, the fourth viceroy of India,
with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic song.
Albuquerque laid the plan, and Castro completed the system of the
Portuguese empire in the East. It is with propriety, therefore, that the
prophecy given to GAMA is here summed up. Nor is the discretion of
Camoens in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a
few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India.
But whatever he had said of his contemporaries would have been liable to
misconstruction, and every sentence would have been branded with the
epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in
such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the silent contempt of
Camoens does him true honour.
In this historical song, as already hinted, the translator has been
attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into these universal
languages, the picturesque and characteristic. To convey the sublimest
instruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar
province of the epic muse. The striking points of view in which the
different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in
the most happy conformity to this ingenious canon of the Stagyrite.
[625]
_In whirling circles now they fell, now rose,
Yet never rose nor fell. --_
The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every system, bear at all times
the same uniform relation to each other; these expressions, therefore,
are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the second to
the reality. Thus, while to us the sun appears to go down, to more
western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises
to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being
entirely relative to the various parts of the earth. And in this the
expressions of our poet are equally applicable to the Ptolemaic and
Copernican systems. The ancient hypothesis which made our earth the
centre of the universe, is the system adopted by Camoens, a happiness,
in the opinion of the translator, to the English Lusiad. The new system
is so well known, that a poetical description of it would have been no
novelty to the English reader. The other has not only that advantage in
its favour: but this description is perhaps the finest and fullest that
ever was given of it in poetry, that of Lucretius, l. v. being chiefly
argumentative, and therefore less picturesque.
Our author studied at the university of Coimbra, where the ancient
system and other doctrines of the Aristotelians then, and long
afterward, prevailed.
[626] _He holds His loftiest state. _--Called by the old philosophers and
school divines the sensorium of the Deity.
[627] _These spheres behold. _--According to the Peripatetics, the
universe consisted of eleven spheres inclosed within each other; as
Fanshaw has familiarly expressed it by a simile which he has lent our
author. The first of these spheres, he says--
"Doth (_as in a nest
Of boxes_) all the other orbs comprise. "
In their accounts of this first-mentioned, but eleventh, sphere, which
they called the Empyrean, or heaven of the blest, the disciples of
Aristotle, and the Arab Moors, gave loose to all the warmth of
imagination. And several of the Christian fathers applied to it the
descriptions of heaven which are found in the Holy Scripture.
[628] _Hence motion darts its force. _--This is the tenth sphere, the
_Primum Mobile_ of the ancient system. To account for the appearances of
the heavens, the Peripatetics ascribed a double motion to it. While its
influence drew the other orbs from east to west, they supposed it had a
motion of its own from west to east. To effect this, the ponderous
weight and interposition of the ninth sphere, or crystalline heaven, was
necessary. The ancient astronomers observed that the stars shifted their
places. This they called the motion of the crystalline heaven, expressed
by our poet at the rate of one pace during two hundred solar years. The
famous Arab astronomer, Abulhasan, in his Meadows of Gold, calculates
the revolution of this sphere to consist of 49,000 of our years. But
modern discoveries have not only corrected the calculation,{*} but have
also ascertained the reason of the apparent motion of the fixed stars.
The earth is not a perfect sphere; the quantity of matter is greater at
the equator; hence the earth turns on her axis in a rocking motion,
revolving round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the procession
of the equinoxes, and makes the stars seem to shift their places at
about the rate of a degree in 72 years; according to which all the stars
seem to perform one revolution in the space of 25,920 years, after which
they return exactly to the same situation as at the beginning of this
period. However imperfect in their calculations, the Chaldean
astronomers perceived that the motions of the heavens composed one great
revolution. This they called the _annus magnus_, which those who did not
understand them mistook for a restoration of all things to their first
originals.
{*} However deficient the astronomy of Abulhasan may be, it is nothing
to the calculation of his prophet Mohammed, who tells his disciples,
that the stars were each about the bigness of a house, and hung from the
sky on chains of gold.
[629] _And binds the starry sphere. _--This was called the firmament, or
eighth heaven. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Diana,
were the planets which gave name to, and whose orbits composed, the
other spheres or heavens.
[630] _In shining frost the Northern Chariot rides. _--Commonly called
Charles' Wain. Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia,
and of Cassiope. Cassiope boasted that she and her daughter were more
beautiful than Juno and the Nereids. Andromeda, to appease the goddess,
was, at her father's command, chained to a rock to be devoured by a sea
monster, but was saved by Perseus, who obtained of Jupiter that all the
family should be placed among the stars. Orion was a hunter, who, for an
attempt on Diana, was stung to death by a serpent. The star of his name
portends tempests. The Dogs; fable gives this honour to those of
different hunters. The faithful dog of Erigone, however, that died mad
with grief for the death of his mistress, has the best title to preside
over the dog-days. The Swan; whose form Jupiter borrowed to enjoy Leda.
The Hare, when pursued by Orion, was saved by Mercury, and placed in
heaven, to signify that Mercury presides over melancholy dispositions.
The Lyre, with which Orpheus charmed Pluto. The Dragon which guarded the
golden apples of the Hesperides, and the ship Argo complete the number
of the constellations mentioned by Camoens. If our author has blended
the appearances of heaven with those of the painted artificial sphere,
it is in the manner of the classics. Ovid, in particular, thus describes
the heavens, in the second book of his Metamorphoses.
[631] _Such are their laws impress'd by God's dread will. _--Though a
modern narrative of gallant adventures by no means requires the
supposition of a particular Providence, that supposition, however, is
absolutely necessary to the grandeur of an epic poem. The great examples
of Homer and Virgil prove it; and Camoens understood and felt its force.
While his fleet combat all the horrors of unploughed oceans, we do not
view his heroes as idle wanderers; the care of heaven gives their voyage
the greatest importance. When GAMA falls on his knees and spreads his
hands to heaven on the discovery of India, we are presented with a
figure infinitely more noble than that of the most successful conqueror
who is supposed to act under the influence of fatalism or chance. The
human mind is conscious of its own weakness. It expects an elevation in
poetry, and demands a degree of importance superior to the caprices of
unmeaning accident. The poetical reader cannot admire the hero who is
subject to such blind fortuity. He appears to us with an abject,
uninteresting littleness. Our poetical ideas of permanent greatness
demand a GAMA, a hero whose enterprises and whose person interest the
care of Heaven and the happiness of his people. Nor must this
supposition be confined merely to the machinery. The reason why it
pleases, also requires, that the supposition should be uniform
throughout the whole poem. Virgil, by dismissing Eneas through the ivory
gate of Elysium, has hinted that all his pictures of a future state were
merely dreams, and has thus destroyed the highest merit of the
compliment to his patron Augustus. But Camoens has certainly been more
happy. A fair opportunity offered itself to indulge the opinions of
Lucretius and the Academic Grove; but Camoens, in ascribing the
government of the universe to the will of God, has not only preserved
the philosophy of his poem perfectly uniform, but has also shown that
the Peripatetic system is, in this instance, exactly conformable to the
Newtonian.
Though the Author of nature has placed man in a state of moral agency,
and made his happiness and misery to depend upon it, and though every
page of human history is stained with the tears of injured innocence and
the triumphs of guilt, with miseries which must affect a moral, or
thinking being, yet we have been told, that God perceiveth it not, and
that what mortals call moral evil vanishes from before His more perfect
sight. Thus the appeal of injured innocence, and the tear of bleeding
virtue fall unregarded, unworthy of the attention of the Deity. {*} Yet,
with what raptures do these philosophers behold the infinite wisdom and
care of Beelzebub, their god of flies, in the admirable and various
provision he has made for the preservation of the eggs of vermin, and
the generation of maggots. {**}
Much more might be said in proof that our poet's philosophy does not
altogether deserve ridicule. And those who allow a general, but deny a
particular providence, will, it is hoped, excuse Camoens, on the
consideration, that if we estimate a general moral providence by analogy
of that providence which presides over vegetable and animal nature, a
more particular one cannot possibly be wanted. If a particular
providence, however, is still denied, another consideration obtrudes
itself; if one pang of a moral agent is unregarded, one tear of injured
innocence left to fall unpitied by the Deity, if _Ludit in humanis
Divina potentia rebus_, the consequence is, that the human conception
can form an idea of a much better God. And it may modestly be presumed
we may hazard the laugh of the wisest philosopher, and without scruple
assert, that it is impossible that a created mind should conceive an
idea of perfection superior to that which is possessed by the Creator
and Author of existence.
{*} Perhaps, like Lucretius, some philosophers think this would be too
much trouble to the Deity. But the idea of trouble to the Divine Nature,
is much the same as another argument of the same philosopher, who having
asserted, that before the creation the gods could not know what seed
would produce, from thence wisely concludes that the world was made by
chance.
{**} Ray, in his Wisdom of God in the Creation (though he did not deny a
Providence), has carried this extravagance to the highest pitch. "To
give life," says he, "is the intention of the creation; and how
wonderful does the goodness of God appear in this, that the death and
putrefaction of one animal is the life of thousands. " So, the misery of
a family on the death of a parent is nothing, for ten thousand maggots
are made happy by it. --O Philosophy, when wilt thou forget the dreams of
thy slumbers in Bedlam!
[632] _Here Christian Europe. --Ves Europa Christian. _--As Europe is
already described in the third Lusiad, this short account of it has as
great propriety, as the manner of it contains dignity.
[633] _Afric behold. _--This just and strongly picturesque description of
Africa is finely contrasted with the character of Europe. It contains
also a masterly compliment to the expedition of GAMA, which is all along
represented as the harbinger and diffuser of the blessings of
civilization.
[634] _Gonsalo's zeal shall glow. _--Gonsalo de Sylveyra, a Portuguese
Jesuit, in 1555, sailed from Lisbon on a mission to Monomotapa. His
labours were at first successful; but ere he effected any regular
establishment he was murdered by the barbarians. --CASTERA.
[635] _Great Naya, too. _--Don Pedro de Naya. . . . In 1505 he erected a
fort in the kingdom of Sofala, which is subject to Monomotapa. Six
thousand Moors and Caffres laid siege to this garrison, which he
defended with only thirty-five men. After having several times suffered
by unexpected sallies, the barbarians fled, exclaiming to their king
that he had led them to fight against God. --CASTERA.
[636] _In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze. _--Christianity was
planted here in the first century, but mixed with many Jewish rites
unused by other Christians of the East. This appears to give some
countenance to the pretensions of their emperors, who claim their
descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and at least reminds us of
Acts viii. 27, where we are told, that the treasurer of the Queen of
Ethiopia came to worship at Jerusalem. Numerous monasteries, we are
told, are in this country. But the clergy are very ignorant, and the
laity gross barbarians. Much has been said of the hill Amara--
"Where Abyssin kings their issue guard . . .
. . . by some suppos'd,
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus head, inclos'd with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high"--MILTON;
and where, according to Urreta (a Spanish Jesuit), is the library
founded by the Queen of Sheba, and enriched with all those writings of
which we have either possession or only the names. The works of Noah,
and the lectures on the mathematics which Abraham read in the plains of
Mamre, are here. And so many are the volumes, that 200 monks are
employed as librarians. It is needless to add, that Father Urreta is a
second Sir John Mandevylle.
[637] _Thy son, brave Gama. _--When Don Stephen de Gama was governor of
India, the Christian Emperor and Empress-mother of Ethiopia solicited
the assistance of the Portuguese against the usurpations of the pagan
King of Zeyla. Don Stephen sent his brother, Don Christoval with 500
men. The prodigies of their valour astonished the Ethiopians. But after
having twice defeated the tyrant, and reduced his great army to the last
extremity, Don Christoval, urged too far by the impetuosity of his
youthful valour, was taken prisoner. He was brought before the usurper,
and put to death in the most cruel manner. Waxed threads were twisted
with his beard and afterwards set on fire. He was then dipped in boiling
wax, and at last beheaded by the hand of the tyrant. The Portuguese
esteem him a martyr, and say that his torments and death were inflicted
because he would not renounce the faith. --See Faria y Sousa.
[638] Infidel, pagan.
[639] _Before the virgin-martyr's tomb. _--He must be a dull reader
indeed who cannot perceive and relish the amazing variety which prevails
in our poet. In the historical narrative of wars, where it is most
necessary, yet from the sameness of the subject, most difficult, to
attain, our author always attains it with the most graceful ease. In the
description of countries he not only follows the manner of Homer and
Virgil, not only distinguishes each region by its most striking
characteristic, but also diversifies his geography with other incidents
introduced by the mention of the place. St. Catherine, virgin and
martyr, according to Romish histories, was buried on Mount Sinai, and a
chapel was erected over her grave. It is now the Monastery of St.
Catherine. --_Ed. _
[640] The crescent, the sign of Turkish supremacy. --_Ed. _
[641] _De Branco's sword. _--Don Pedro de Castel-Branco. He obtained a
great victory, near Ormuz, over the combined fleets of the Moors, Turks,
and Persians.
[642] _There Barem's isle. _--The island of Bahrein is situated in the
Persian Gulf. It is celebrated for the plenty, variety, and fineness of
its diamonds.
[643] _Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire. _--This was the
character of the Persians when GAMA arrived in the East. Yet, though
they thought it dishonourable to use the musket, they esteemed it no
disgrace to rush from a thicket on an unarmed foe. This reminds one of
the spirit of the old romance. Orlando having taken the first invented
cannon from the King of Friza, throws it into the sea with the most
heroic execrations. Yet the heroes of chivalry think it no disgrace to
take every advantage afforded by invulnerable hides and enchanted
armour.
[644]
_There Gerum's isle the hoary ruin wears
Where Time has trod. --_
Presuming on the ruins which are found on this island, the natives
pretend that the Armuzia of Pliny and Strabo was here situated. But this
is a mistake, for that city stood on the continent. The Moors, however,
have built a city in this isle, which they call by the ancient name.
[645] _He who first shall crown thy labours, Gama. _--Pedro de Cabral, of
whom see the preface.
[646] Ceylon.
[647] _Some Macon's orgies. _--Macon, a name of Mecca, the birthplace of
Mohammed.
[648] _The tomb where Thomas sleeps. _--There is (to talk in the Indian
style) _a caste_ of gentlemen, whose hearts are all impartiality and
candour to every religion, except one, the most moral which ever the
world heard of. A tale of a Brahmin, or a priest of Jupiter, would to
them appear worthy of poetry. But to introduce an apostle---- Common
sense, however, will prevail; and the episode of St. Thomas will appear
to the true critic equal in dignity and propriety.
To renew and complete the labours of the apostle, the messenger of
Heaven, is the great design of the hero of the poem, and of the future
missions, in consequence of the discoveries which are the subject of it.
The Christians of St. Thomas, found in Malabar on the arrival of GAMA,
we have already mentioned. The Jesuit missionaries have given most
pompous accounts of the Christian antiquities of India and China. When
the Portuguese arrived in India, the head of the Malabar Christians,
named Jacob, styled himself Metropolitan of India and China. And a
Syriac breviary{*} of the Indian Christians offers praise to God for
sending St. Thomas to India and China. In 1625, in digging for a
foundation near Sigansu, metropolis of the province of Xensi, was found
a stone with a cross on it, full of Chinese, and some Syriac characters,
containing the names of bishops, and an account of the Christian
religion, "that it was brought from Judea; that having been weakened, it
was renewed under the reign of the great Tam" (cir. A. D. 630). But the
Christians, say the Jesuits, siding with the Tartars, cir. A. D. 1200,
were extirpated by the Chinese. In 1543, Fernand Pinto, observing some
ruins near Peking, was told by the people, that 200 years before, a holy
man who worshipped Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived there; and
being murdered, was thrown into a river, but his body would not sink;
and soon after the city was destroyed by an earthquake. The same Jesuit
found people at Caminam who knew the doctrines of Christianity, which
they said were preached to their fathers, by John, the disciple of
Thomas. In 1635, some heathens, by night passing through a village in
the province of Fokien, saw some stones which emitted light, under which
were found the figure of crosses. From China, St. Thomas returned to
Meliapore in Malabar, at a time when a prodigious beam of timber floated
on the sea near the coast. The king endeavoured to bring it ashore, but
all the force of men and elephants was in vain. St. Thomas desired leave
to build a church with it, and immediately dragged it to shore with a
single thread. A church was built, and the king baptized. This enraged
the Brahmins, the chief of whom killed his own son, and accused Thomas
of the murder. But the saint, by restoring the youth to life, discovered
the wickedness of his enemies.
He was afterwards killed by a lance while
kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300
stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir. 800, by an Armenian
named Thomas Cananeus. In 1533, the body of the apostle, with the head
of the lance beside him, was found in his church by D. Duarte de
Meneses; and in 1558 was, by D. Constantine de Braganza, removed to Goa.
To these accounts, selected from Faria y Sousa, let two from Osorius be
added. When Martin Alonzo de Souza was viceroy, some brazen tables were
brought to him, inscribed with unusual characters, which were explained
by a learned Jew, and imported that St. Thomas had built a church at
Meliapore. And by an account sent to Cardinal Henrico, by the Bishop of
Cochin, in 1562, when the Portuguese repaired the ancient chapel of St.
Thomas,{**} there was found a stone cross with several characters on it,
which the best antiquarians could not interpret, till at last a Brahmin
translated it, "That in the reign of Sagam, Thomas was sent by the Son
of God, whose disciple he was, to teach the law of heaven in India; that
he built a church, and was killed by a Brahmin at the altar. "
{*} The existence of this breviary is a certain fact. These Christians
had the Scripture also in the Syriac language.
{**} This was a very ancient building, in the very first style of
Christian churches. The Portuguese have now disfigured it with their
repairs and new buildings.
A view of Portuguese Asia, which must include the labours of the
Jesuits, forms a necessary part in the comment on the Lusiad: this note,
therefore, and some obvious reflections upon it, are in place. It is as
easy to bury an inscription and find it again, as it is to invent a
silly tale; but, though suspicion of fraud on the one hand, and silly
absurdity on the other, lead us to despise the authority of the Jesuits,
yet one fact remains indisputable. Christianity had been much better
known in the East, several centuries before, than it was at the arrival
of GAMA. Where the name was unknown, and where the Jesuits were
unconcerned, crosses were found. The long existence of the Christians of
St. Thomas in the midst of a vast pagan empire, proves that the learned
of that kingdom must have some knowledge of their doctrines. And these
facts give countenance to some material conjectures concerning the
religion of the Brahmins.
[649] _When now the chief who wore the triple thread. _--Of this, thus
Osorius: "_Terna fila ab humero dextero in latus finistrum gerunt, ut
designent trinam in natura divina rationem. _--They (the Brahmins) wear
three threads, which reach from the right shoulder to the left side, as
significant of the trinal distinction in the Divine Nature. " That some
sects of the Brahmins wear a symbolical tessera of three threads is
acknowledged on all hands; but, from whatever the custom arose, it is
not to be supposed that the Brahmins, who have thousands of ridiculous
contradictory legends, should agree in their accounts or explanations of
it. They have various accounts of a Divine Person having assumed human
nature. And the god Brahma, as observed by Cudworth, is generally
mentioned as united in the government of the universe with two others,
sometimes of different names. They have also images with three heads
rising out of one body, which they say represent the Divine Nature. {*}
But are there any traces of these opinions in the accounts which the
Greek and Roman writers have given us of the Brahmins? And will the wise
pay any credit to the authority of those books which the public never
saw, and which, by the obligation of their keepers, they are never to
see; and some of which, by the confession of their keepers, since the
appearance of Mohammed, have been rejected? The Platonic idea of a
trinity of divine attributes was well known to the ancients, yet perhaps
the Athanasian controversy offers a fairer field to the conjecturist.
That controversy for several ages engrossed the conversation of the
East. All the subtilty of the Greeks was called forth, and no
speculative contest was ever more universally or warmly disputed; so
warmly, that it is a certain fact that Mohammed, by inserting into his
Koran some declarations in favour of the Arians, gained innumerable
proselytes to his new religion. Abyssinia, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and
Armenia were perplexed with this unhappy dispute, and from the earliest
times these countries have had a commercial intercourse with India. The
number, blasphemy, and absurdity of the Jewish legends of the Talmud and
Targums, bear a striking resemblance to the holy legends of the
Brahmins. The Jews also assert the great antiquity of their Talmudical
legends. Adam, Enoch, and Noah are named among their authors; but we
know their date; Jerusalem, ere their birth, was destroyed by Titus. We
also know, that the accounts which the Greek writers give of the
Brahmins fall infinitely short of those extravagances which are
confessed even by their modern admirers. And Mohammedanism does not
differ from Christianity, more than the account which even these
gentlemen give, does from that of Porphyry. That laborious philosopher,
though possessed of all the knowledge of his age, though he mentions
their metempsychosis and penances, has not a word of any of their idols,
or the legends of Brahma or his brothers. On the contrary, he represents
their worship as extremely pure and simple. Strabo's account of them is
similar. And Eusebius has assured us they worshipped no images. {**} Yet,
on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their
idols; and all the superstition of ancient Egypt, in the adoration of
animals and vegetables, seemed more than revived by the Brahmins. Who
that considers this striking alteration in their features, can withhold
his contempt when he is told of the religious care with which these
philosophers have these four thousand years preserved their sacred
rites.
{*} To these undoubted facts the author will not add the authority of a
Xavier, who tells us, that he prevailed upon a Brahmin to explain to him
some part of their hidden religion; when to his surprise, the Indian, in
a low voice, repeated the Ten Commandments.
{**} . . . ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . --EUSEB.
Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, p. 275. Ed. Paris, 1628.
[650] _Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd. _--The
versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who
are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.
"Choraraote Thome, o Gange, o Indo,
Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;
Mas mais te chorao as almas, que vestindo
Se hiao da Santa Fe, que lhe ensinaste;
Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo,
Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste. "
[651] _Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue. _--It is now time to
sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically
opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where
they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual
sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as
a united body was the lust of power and secular emolument, the
possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by
rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In
consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was
to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the
people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the
Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to
instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits,
Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven
them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete
his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a
veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign
of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual.
Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the God of the
Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the
churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his
wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the
worship of _tien_, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court
of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge
was fully proved, and Clement XI. , in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the
small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform
these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in
Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded
him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola,
_Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis_, gained innumerable proselytes.
They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they
only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well.
But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the
East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of
Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen
princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar),
and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same
arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost
their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order
at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without
trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he
could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars.
In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill
in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court,
but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their
unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a
profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in amassing
riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power
(the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared,
and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the
new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their
religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded
that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the
cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and
the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.
Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society
of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest
blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great
learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to
promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been
employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great
design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the
purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest
hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But
though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to
mankind.
"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds
That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,
Still will some rotten part betray the structure
That is not bas'd on simple honesty. "
{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these
twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians
their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that
Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from
France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also
to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the
wicked Londoners.
[652] _The dying. _--The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks
of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of
humanity.
this siege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese history.
[624] _Fierce Hydal-Kan. _--The title of the lords or princes of Decan,
who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men
into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at
last finally subdued by Don John de Castro, the fourth viceroy of India,
with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic song.
Albuquerque laid the plan, and Castro completed the system of the
Portuguese empire in the East. It is with propriety, therefore, that the
prophecy given to GAMA is here summed up. Nor is the discretion of
Camoens in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a
few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India.
But whatever he had said of his contemporaries would have been liable to
misconstruction, and every sentence would have been branded with the
epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in
such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the silent contempt of
Camoens does him true honour.
In this historical song, as already hinted, the translator has been
attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into these universal
languages, the picturesque and characteristic. To convey the sublimest
instruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar
province of the epic muse. The striking points of view in which the
different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in
the most happy conformity to this ingenious canon of the Stagyrite.
[625]
_In whirling circles now they fell, now rose,
Yet never rose nor fell. --_
The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every system, bear at all times
the same uniform relation to each other; these expressions, therefore,
are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the second to
the reality. Thus, while to us the sun appears to go down, to more
western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises
to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being
entirely relative to the various parts of the earth. And in this the
expressions of our poet are equally applicable to the Ptolemaic and
Copernican systems. The ancient hypothesis which made our earth the
centre of the universe, is the system adopted by Camoens, a happiness,
in the opinion of the translator, to the English Lusiad. The new system
is so well known, that a poetical description of it would have been no
novelty to the English reader. The other has not only that advantage in
its favour: but this description is perhaps the finest and fullest that
ever was given of it in poetry, that of Lucretius, l. v. being chiefly
argumentative, and therefore less picturesque.
Our author studied at the university of Coimbra, where the ancient
system and other doctrines of the Aristotelians then, and long
afterward, prevailed.
[626] _He holds His loftiest state. _--Called by the old philosophers and
school divines the sensorium of the Deity.
[627] _These spheres behold. _--According to the Peripatetics, the
universe consisted of eleven spheres inclosed within each other; as
Fanshaw has familiarly expressed it by a simile which he has lent our
author. The first of these spheres, he says--
"Doth (_as in a nest
Of boxes_) all the other orbs comprise. "
In their accounts of this first-mentioned, but eleventh, sphere, which
they called the Empyrean, or heaven of the blest, the disciples of
Aristotle, and the Arab Moors, gave loose to all the warmth of
imagination. And several of the Christian fathers applied to it the
descriptions of heaven which are found in the Holy Scripture.
[628] _Hence motion darts its force. _--This is the tenth sphere, the
_Primum Mobile_ of the ancient system. To account for the appearances of
the heavens, the Peripatetics ascribed a double motion to it. While its
influence drew the other orbs from east to west, they supposed it had a
motion of its own from west to east. To effect this, the ponderous
weight and interposition of the ninth sphere, or crystalline heaven, was
necessary. The ancient astronomers observed that the stars shifted their
places. This they called the motion of the crystalline heaven, expressed
by our poet at the rate of one pace during two hundred solar years. The
famous Arab astronomer, Abulhasan, in his Meadows of Gold, calculates
the revolution of this sphere to consist of 49,000 of our years. But
modern discoveries have not only corrected the calculation,{*} but have
also ascertained the reason of the apparent motion of the fixed stars.
The earth is not a perfect sphere; the quantity of matter is greater at
the equator; hence the earth turns on her axis in a rocking motion,
revolving round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the procession
of the equinoxes, and makes the stars seem to shift their places at
about the rate of a degree in 72 years; according to which all the stars
seem to perform one revolution in the space of 25,920 years, after which
they return exactly to the same situation as at the beginning of this
period. However imperfect in their calculations, the Chaldean
astronomers perceived that the motions of the heavens composed one great
revolution. This they called the _annus magnus_, which those who did not
understand them mistook for a restoration of all things to their first
originals.
{*} However deficient the astronomy of Abulhasan may be, it is nothing
to the calculation of his prophet Mohammed, who tells his disciples,
that the stars were each about the bigness of a house, and hung from the
sky on chains of gold.
[629] _And binds the starry sphere. _--This was called the firmament, or
eighth heaven. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Diana,
were the planets which gave name to, and whose orbits composed, the
other spheres or heavens.
[630] _In shining frost the Northern Chariot rides. _--Commonly called
Charles' Wain. Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia,
and of Cassiope. Cassiope boasted that she and her daughter were more
beautiful than Juno and the Nereids. Andromeda, to appease the goddess,
was, at her father's command, chained to a rock to be devoured by a sea
monster, but was saved by Perseus, who obtained of Jupiter that all the
family should be placed among the stars. Orion was a hunter, who, for an
attempt on Diana, was stung to death by a serpent. The star of his name
portends tempests. The Dogs; fable gives this honour to those of
different hunters. The faithful dog of Erigone, however, that died mad
with grief for the death of his mistress, has the best title to preside
over the dog-days. The Swan; whose form Jupiter borrowed to enjoy Leda.
The Hare, when pursued by Orion, was saved by Mercury, and placed in
heaven, to signify that Mercury presides over melancholy dispositions.
The Lyre, with which Orpheus charmed Pluto. The Dragon which guarded the
golden apples of the Hesperides, and the ship Argo complete the number
of the constellations mentioned by Camoens. If our author has blended
the appearances of heaven with those of the painted artificial sphere,
it is in the manner of the classics. Ovid, in particular, thus describes
the heavens, in the second book of his Metamorphoses.
[631] _Such are their laws impress'd by God's dread will. _--Though a
modern narrative of gallant adventures by no means requires the
supposition of a particular Providence, that supposition, however, is
absolutely necessary to the grandeur of an epic poem. The great examples
of Homer and Virgil prove it; and Camoens understood and felt its force.
While his fleet combat all the horrors of unploughed oceans, we do not
view his heroes as idle wanderers; the care of heaven gives their voyage
the greatest importance. When GAMA falls on his knees and spreads his
hands to heaven on the discovery of India, we are presented with a
figure infinitely more noble than that of the most successful conqueror
who is supposed to act under the influence of fatalism or chance. The
human mind is conscious of its own weakness. It expects an elevation in
poetry, and demands a degree of importance superior to the caprices of
unmeaning accident. The poetical reader cannot admire the hero who is
subject to such blind fortuity. He appears to us with an abject,
uninteresting littleness. Our poetical ideas of permanent greatness
demand a GAMA, a hero whose enterprises and whose person interest the
care of Heaven and the happiness of his people. Nor must this
supposition be confined merely to the machinery. The reason why it
pleases, also requires, that the supposition should be uniform
throughout the whole poem. Virgil, by dismissing Eneas through the ivory
gate of Elysium, has hinted that all his pictures of a future state were
merely dreams, and has thus destroyed the highest merit of the
compliment to his patron Augustus. But Camoens has certainly been more
happy. A fair opportunity offered itself to indulge the opinions of
Lucretius and the Academic Grove; but Camoens, in ascribing the
government of the universe to the will of God, has not only preserved
the philosophy of his poem perfectly uniform, but has also shown that
the Peripatetic system is, in this instance, exactly conformable to the
Newtonian.
Though the Author of nature has placed man in a state of moral agency,
and made his happiness and misery to depend upon it, and though every
page of human history is stained with the tears of injured innocence and
the triumphs of guilt, with miseries which must affect a moral, or
thinking being, yet we have been told, that God perceiveth it not, and
that what mortals call moral evil vanishes from before His more perfect
sight. Thus the appeal of injured innocence, and the tear of bleeding
virtue fall unregarded, unworthy of the attention of the Deity. {*} Yet,
with what raptures do these philosophers behold the infinite wisdom and
care of Beelzebub, their god of flies, in the admirable and various
provision he has made for the preservation of the eggs of vermin, and
the generation of maggots. {**}
Much more might be said in proof that our poet's philosophy does not
altogether deserve ridicule. And those who allow a general, but deny a
particular providence, will, it is hoped, excuse Camoens, on the
consideration, that if we estimate a general moral providence by analogy
of that providence which presides over vegetable and animal nature, a
more particular one cannot possibly be wanted. If a particular
providence, however, is still denied, another consideration obtrudes
itself; if one pang of a moral agent is unregarded, one tear of injured
innocence left to fall unpitied by the Deity, if _Ludit in humanis
Divina potentia rebus_, the consequence is, that the human conception
can form an idea of a much better God. And it may modestly be presumed
we may hazard the laugh of the wisest philosopher, and without scruple
assert, that it is impossible that a created mind should conceive an
idea of perfection superior to that which is possessed by the Creator
and Author of existence.
{*} Perhaps, like Lucretius, some philosophers think this would be too
much trouble to the Deity. But the idea of trouble to the Divine Nature,
is much the same as another argument of the same philosopher, who having
asserted, that before the creation the gods could not know what seed
would produce, from thence wisely concludes that the world was made by
chance.
{**} Ray, in his Wisdom of God in the Creation (though he did not deny a
Providence), has carried this extravagance to the highest pitch. "To
give life," says he, "is the intention of the creation; and how
wonderful does the goodness of God appear in this, that the death and
putrefaction of one animal is the life of thousands. " So, the misery of
a family on the death of a parent is nothing, for ten thousand maggots
are made happy by it. --O Philosophy, when wilt thou forget the dreams of
thy slumbers in Bedlam!
[632] _Here Christian Europe. --Ves Europa Christian. _--As Europe is
already described in the third Lusiad, this short account of it has as
great propriety, as the manner of it contains dignity.
[633] _Afric behold. _--This just and strongly picturesque description of
Africa is finely contrasted with the character of Europe. It contains
also a masterly compliment to the expedition of GAMA, which is all along
represented as the harbinger and diffuser of the blessings of
civilization.
[634] _Gonsalo's zeal shall glow. _--Gonsalo de Sylveyra, a Portuguese
Jesuit, in 1555, sailed from Lisbon on a mission to Monomotapa. His
labours were at first successful; but ere he effected any regular
establishment he was murdered by the barbarians. --CASTERA.
[635] _Great Naya, too. _--Don Pedro de Naya. . . . In 1505 he erected a
fort in the kingdom of Sofala, which is subject to Monomotapa. Six
thousand Moors and Caffres laid siege to this garrison, which he
defended with only thirty-five men. After having several times suffered
by unexpected sallies, the barbarians fled, exclaiming to their king
that he had led them to fight against God. --CASTERA.
[636] _In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze. _--Christianity was
planted here in the first century, but mixed with many Jewish rites
unused by other Christians of the East. This appears to give some
countenance to the pretensions of their emperors, who claim their
descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and at least reminds us of
Acts viii. 27, where we are told, that the treasurer of the Queen of
Ethiopia came to worship at Jerusalem. Numerous monasteries, we are
told, are in this country. But the clergy are very ignorant, and the
laity gross barbarians. Much has been said of the hill Amara--
"Where Abyssin kings their issue guard . . .
. . . by some suppos'd,
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus head, inclos'd with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high"--MILTON;
and where, according to Urreta (a Spanish Jesuit), is the library
founded by the Queen of Sheba, and enriched with all those writings of
which we have either possession or only the names. The works of Noah,
and the lectures on the mathematics which Abraham read in the plains of
Mamre, are here. And so many are the volumes, that 200 monks are
employed as librarians. It is needless to add, that Father Urreta is a
second Sir John Mandevylle.
[637] _Thy son, brave Gama. _--When Don Stephen de Gama was governor of
India, the Christian Emperor and Empress-mother of Ethiopia solicited
the assistance of the Portuguese against the usurpations of the pagan
King of Zeyla. Don Stephen sent his brother, Don Christoval with 500
men. The prodigies of their valour astonished the Ethiopians. But after
having twice defeated the tyrant, and reduced his great army to the last
extremity, Don Christoval, urged too far by the impetuosity of his
youthful valour, was taken prisoner. He was brought before the usurper,
and put to death in the most cruel manner. Waxed threads were twisted
with his beard and afterwards set on fire. He was then dipped in boiling
wax, and at last beheaded by the hand of the tyrant. The Portuguese
esteem him a martyr, and say that his torments and death were inflicted
because he would not renounce the faith. --See Faria y Sousa.
[638] Infidel, pagan.
[639] _Before the virgin-martyr's tomb. _--He must be a dull reader
indeed who cannot perceive and relish the amazing variety which prevails
in our poet. In the historical narrative of wars, where it is most
necessary, yet from the sameness of the subject, most difficult, to
attain, our author always attains it with the most graceful ease. In the
description of countries he not only follows the manner of Homer and
Virgil, not only distinguishes each region by its most striking
characteristic, but also diversifies his geography with other incidents
introduced by the mention of the place. St. Catherine, virgin and
martyr, according to Romish histories, was buried on Mount Sinai, and a
chapel was erected over her grave. It is now the Monastery of St.
Catherine. --_Ed. _
[640] The crescent, the sign of Turkish supremacy. --_Ed. _
[641] _De Branco's sword. _--Don Pedro de Castel-Branco. He obtained a
great victory, near Ormuz, over the combined fleets of the Moors, Turks,
and Persians.
[642] _There Barem's isle. _--The island of Bahrein is situated in the
Persian Gulf. It is celebrated for the plenty, variety, and fineness of
its diamonds.
[643] _Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire. _--This was the
character of the Persians when GAMA arrived in the East. Yet, though
they thought it dishonourable to use the musket, they esteemed it no
disgrace to rush from a thicket on an unarmed foe. This reminds one of
the spirit of the old romance. Orlando having taken the first invented
cannon from the King of Friza, throws it into the sea with the most
heroic execrations. Yet the heroes of chivalry think it no disgrace to
take every advantage afforded by invulnerable hides and enchanted
armour.
[644]
_There Gerum's isle the hoary ruin wears
Where Time has trod. --_
Presuming on the ruins which are found on this island, the natives
pretend that the Armuzia of Pliny and Strabo was here situated. But this
is a mistake, for that city stood on the continent. The Moors, however,
have built a city in this isle, which they call by the ancient name.
[645] _He who first shall crown thy labours, Gama. _--Pedro de Cabral, of
whom see the preface.
[646] Ceylon.
[647] _Some Macon's orgies. _--Macon, a name of Mecca, the birthplace of
Mohammed.
[648] _The tomb where Thomas sleeps. _--There is (to talk in the Indian
style) _a caste_ of gentlemen, whose hearts are all impartiality and
candour to every religion, except one, the most moral which ever the
world heard of. A tale of a Brahmin, or a priest of Jupiter, would to
them appear worthy of poetry. But to introduce an apostle---- Common
sense, however, will prevail; and the episode of St. Thomas will appear
to the true critic equal in dignity and propriety.
To renew and complete the labours of the apostle, the messenger of
Heaven, is the great design of the hero of the poem, and of the future
missions, in consequence of the discoveries which are the subject of it.
The Christians of St. Thomas, found in Malabar on the arrival of GAMA,
we have already mentioned. The Jesuit missionaries have given most
pompous accounts of the Christian antiquities of India and China. When
the Portuguese arrived in India, the head of the Malabar Christians,
named Jacob, styled himself Metropolitan of India and China. And a
Syriac breviary{*} of the Indian Christians offers praise to God for
sending St. Thomas to India and China. In 1625, in digging for a
foundation near Sigansu, metropolis of the province of Xensi, was found
a stone with a cross on it, full of Chinese, and some Syriac characters,
containing the names of bishops, and an account of the Christian
religion, "that it was brought from Judea; that having been weakened, it
was renewed under the reign of the great Tam" (cir. A. D. 630). But the
Christians, say the Jesuits, siding with the Tartars, cir. A. D. 1200,
were extirpated by the Chinese. In 1543, Fernand Pinto, observing some
ruins near Peking, was told by the people, that 200 years before, a holy
man who worshipped Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived there; and
being murdered, was thrown into a river, but his body would not sink;
and soon after the city was destroyed by an earthquake. The same Jesuit
found people at Caminam who knew the doctrines of Christianity, which
they said were preached to their fathers, by John, the disciple of
Thomas. In 1635, some heathens, by night passing through a village in
the province of Fokien, saw some stones which emitted light, under which
were found the figure of crosses. From China, St. Thomas returned to
Meliapore in Malabar, at a time when a prodigious beam of timber floated
on the sea near the coast. The king endeavoured to bring it ashore, but
all the force of men and elephants was in vain. St. Thomas desired leave
to build a church with it, and immediately dragged it to shore with a
single thread. A church was built, and the king baptized. This enraged
the Brahmins, the chief of whom killed his own son, and accused Thomas
of the murder. But the saint, by restoring the youth to life, discovered
the wickedness of his enemies.
He was afterwards killed by a lance while
kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300
stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir. 800, by an Armenian
named Thomas Cananeus. In 1533, the body of the apostle, with the head
of the lance beside him, was found in his church by D. Duarte de
Meneses; and in 1558 was, by D. Constantine de Braganza, removed to Goa.
To these accounts, selected from Faria y Sousa, let two from Osorius be
added. When Martin Alonzo de Souza was viceroy, some brazen tables were
brought to him, inscribed with unusual characters, which were explained
by a learned Jew, and imported that St. Thomas had built a church at
Meliapore. And by an account sent to Cardinal Henrico, by the Bishop of
Cochin, in 1562, when the Portuguese repaired the ancient chapel of St.
Thomas,{**} there was found a stone cross with several characters on it,
which the best antiquarians could not interpret, till at last a Brahmin
translated it, "That in the reign of Sagam, Thomas was sent by the Son
of God, whose disciple he was, to teach the law of heaven in India; that
he built a church, and was killed by a Brahmin at the altar. "
{*} The existence of this breviary is a certain fact. These Christians
had the Scripture also in the Syriac language.
{**} This was a very ancient building, in the very first style of
Christian churches. The Portuguese have now disfigured it with their
repairs and new buildings.
A view of Portuguese Asia, which must include the labours of the
Jesuits, forms a necessary part in the comment on the Lusiad: this note,
therefore, and some obvious reflections upon it, are in place. It is as
easy to bury an inscription and find it again, as it is to invent a
silly tale; but, though suspicion of fraud on the one hand, and silly
absurdity on the other, lead us to despise the authority of the Jesuits,
yet one fact remains indisputable. Christianity had been much better
known in the East, several centuries before, than it was at the arrival
of GAMA. Where the name was unknown, and where the Jesuits were
unconcerned, crosses were found. The long existence of the Christians of
St. Thomas in the midst of a vast pagan empire, proves that the learned
of that kingdom must have some knowledge of their doctrines. And these
facts give countenance to some material conjectures concerning the
religion of the Brahmins.
[649] _When now the chief who wore the triple thread. _--Of this, thus
Osorius: "_Terna fila ab humero dextero in latus finistrum gerunt, ut
designent trinam in natura divina rationem. _--They (the Brahmins) wear
three threads, which reach from the right shoulder to the left side, as
significant of the trinal distinction in the Divine Nature. " That some
sects of the Brahmins wear a symbolical tessera of three threads is
acknowledged on all hands; but, from whatever the custom arose, it is
not to be supposed that the Brahmins, who have thousands of ridiculous
contradictory legends, should agree in their accounts or explanations of
it. They have various accounts of a Divine Person having assumed human
nature. And the god Brahma, as observed by Cudworth, is generally
mentioned as united in the government of the universe with two others,
sometimes of different names. They have also images with three heads
rising out of one body, which they say represent the Divine Nature. {*}
But are there any traces of these opinions in the accounts which the
Greek and Roman writers have given us of the Brahmins? And will the wise
pay any credit to the authority of those books which the public never
saw, and which, by the obligation of their keepers, they are never to
see; and some of which, by the confession of their keepers, since the
appearance of Mohammed, have been rejected? The Platonic idea of a
trinity of divine attributes was well known to the ancients, yet perhaps
the Athanasian controversy offers a fairer field to the conjecturist.
That controversy for several ages engrossed the conversation of the
East. All the subtilty of the Greeks was called forth, and no
speculative contest was ever more universally or warmly disputed; so
warmly, that it is a certain fact that Mohammed, by inserting into his
Koran some declarations in favour of the Arians, gained innumerable
proselytes to his new religion. Abyssinia, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and
Armenia were perplexed with this unhappy dispute, and from the earliest
times these countries have had a commercial intercourse with India. The
number, blasphemy, and absurdity of the Jewish legends of the Talmud and
Targums, bear a striking resemblance to the holy legends of the
Brahmins. The Jews also assert the great antiquity of their Talmudical
legends. Adam, Enoch, and Noah are named among their authors; but we
know their date; Jerusalem, ere their birth, was destroyed by Titus. We
also know, that the accounts which the Greek writers give of the
Brahmins fall infinitely short of those extravagances which are
confessed even by their modern admirers. And Mohammedanism does not
differ from Christianity, more than the account which even these
gentlemen give, does from that of Porphyry. That laborious philosopher,
though possessed of all the knowledge of his age, though he mentions
their metempsychosis and penances, has not a word of any of their idols,
or the legends of Brahma or his brothers. On the contrary, he represents
their worship as extremely pure and simple. Strabo's account of them is
similar. And Eusebius has assured us they worshipped no images. {**} Yet,
on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their
idols; and all the superstition of ancient Egypt, in the adoration of
animals and vegetables, seemed more than revived by the Brahmins. Who
that considers this striking alteration in their features, can withhold
his contempt when he is told of the religious care with which these
philosophers have these four thousand years preserved their sacred
rites.
{*} To these undoubted facts the author will not add the authority of a
Xavier, who tells us, that he prevailed upon a Brahmin to explain to him
some part of their hidden religion; when to his surprise, the Indian, in
a low voice, repeated the Ten Commandments.
{**} . . . ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . --EUSEB.
Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, p. 275. Ed. Paris, 1628.
[650] _Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd. _--The
versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who
are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.
"Choraraote Thome, o Gange, o Indo,
Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;
Mas mais te chorao as almas, que vestindo
Se hiao da Santa Fe, que lhe ensinaste;
Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo,
Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste. "
[651] _Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue. _--It is now time to
sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically
opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where
they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual
sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as
a united body was the lust of power and secular emolument, the
possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by
rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In
consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was
to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the
people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the
Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to
instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits,
Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven
them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete
his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a
veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign
of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual.
Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the God of the
Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the
churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his
wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the
worship of _tien_, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court
of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge
was fully proved, and Clement XI. , in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the
small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform
these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in
Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded
him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola,
_Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis_, gained innumerable proselytes.
They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they
only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well.
But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the
East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of
Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen
princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar),
and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same
arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost
their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order
at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without
trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he
could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars.
In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill
in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court,
but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their
unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a
profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in amassing
riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power
(the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared,
and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the
new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their
religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded
that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the
cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and
the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.
Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society
of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest
blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great
learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to
promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been
employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great
design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the
purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest
hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But
though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to
mankind.
"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds
That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,
Still will some rotten part betray the structure
That is not bas'd on simple honesty. "
{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these
twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians
their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that
Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from
France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also
to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the
wicked Londoners.
[652] _The dying. _--The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks
of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of
humanity.
