What blessings to us all would then ensue !

The enamoured pair of torment leave would take,

Restored to pristine form and rosy hue,

And mirth no more this happy nook forsake.' Rinaldo cries: Fine paladin of France

Am I, on such adventure to advance !'

To bed the knight betakes him, till the sky
Was dyed vermilion by the opening dawn;
Then up, in arms of proof, and spirits high,
Alone on foot he treads the dewy lawn ;
But first o'er a small book he casts his eye
(Gift of a dame on whom he used to fawn),
To see if aught of useful knowledge he
Might haply reap from her astrology.

There reads, at page six hundred forty-five,

What her profound foreknowledge doth command, How he the fay must bind, and burn alive;

And, gathering up the ashes in his hand,
Strew them where most the doe was used to drive
Her once betrothed buck along the strand

In furious speed, sans pity or remorse,
Impelled by sorcery's resistless force.

How, passing o'er that path, they each shall doff
(Doe-bride and bridegroom-buck) their bestial hide;

And he, a buck no more, shall lead her off,
Making this whilom doe (so long a bride)
His wife, who many a hymeneal strophe

Shall joyous sing, right blithely, by his side;
'But mind, if you release the captured witch,
She'll whip you dead with scourge of giant Strich.'

He scales the mount-Traggea hears the clang

Of arms, and spies the knight; then bawls: 'Some broth Wouldst have, my lad?' (in Babylonish slang). 'Come, win it first.' Rinaldo, waxing wroth, Cries, 'Beast! right soon we'll give thee such a bang, 'Twill change to dying groans thy vapouring froth.' Traggea hurls huge stone with hasty hand

At our brave peer. He ducks, and draws his brand.

Now presses on to where, in garden fair,
There sat a damsel weeping and forlorn ;
Loose flowed the soft redundance of her hair,

Part clothed she was, part naked as when born.
Her alabaster breast and arms were bare;

Her eyes the stars of heaven itself might scorn Like Orient suns on flowery meads they shine, Shedding mild lustre o'er her face divine.

The knight draws near; the damsel trembles sore, The trembling seems more beauteous in his sight; And as his fury melteth more and more

By gazing on those humid eyes so bright,

The dame, provided with a copious store

Of cunning, sighing loud, exclaims, 'Sir Knight,
Help! help! for honour's sake, commiserate
A poor devoted maiden's ruthless fate.'

Unmanned he stands, and, less alive than dead,
From nerveless arm lets fall his trusty sword.
The sorceress' eyes, now tearless, burning red,
Dart forth a sulphurous flame and smoke abhorred,
And straight to seize him as her prey she sped ;
But, governed by his book's unerring word,

Now following up his system stout and steady,
A ball of cord he dexterously gets ready :

Then binds her as our woodmen fagots bind,

Ties her, thus fettered, to a neighbouring tree,
And clips her flowing locks with shears unkind,

When, lo! no more fair maiden seemeth she,
But (which the book foretold him he would find),
O strange result of all her sorcery!
A goblin old, unsavoury, and uncouth,

Wrinkled, deformed, eyes bleared, and ne'er a tooth!

He then piles round the witch of wood a heap,

Which, kindled, smokes and blazes towards the skies, Shrieks the foul fiend, and tries to bound and leap, Soon as the crackling flame did upwards rise; But tethered fast, and forced her place to keep, The fire soon meets the sulphur of her eyes, And soon her worthless life remains extinguished, A mass of ashes, by no shape distinguished.

Our hero gathers up the wretch's embers,

And with assiduous care and hastened pace
(For all the book had taught he well remembers)
He makes his way to the predicted place;
And putting in a sieve the pristine members

Of her, thus brought to death in vile disgrace,
Sifts them where doe and buck were doomed to pass,
And take again the form of lad and lass.

The neighbours all had seen each marvellous feat;
The giants slain; the knight's triumphant entry
Within the precincts of that steep retreat,

Spite of those monsters fierce who there stood sentry,

And safe escape from that unhallowed seat;
And now those rescued, gladsome, happy gentry,
Embrace him warmly, and with laud and song
Joyful surround him as he moves along.

Meanwhile the doe and buck came on with speed,
And as they crossed the path, grew maid and man ;
Oh! then what acts of grateful thanks succeed!

Their words rebounding through the mountain ran, Giving, 'in good set terms,' the knight his meed.

At length the 'what' and 'how' to ask began, When, as they bow and courtesy long and low, Rinaldo tells the whole, from top to toe.

Camoen's Lusíad.

HE memoirs of literary men of eminence, it has

THE

been said, are seldom possessed of greatly exciting interest or romantic incident; but the life of the author of 'Os Lusiadas' possesses both interest and incident in a higher degree than that of any author known, with the exception perhaps of Cervantes, whose biography is one of the most variegated on record. The writer of this great and solitary Portuguese epicof all epics perhaps the most charming in versification-was born at the time when the discoveries and conquests of Portugal in Asia, Africa, and America, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had brought that country to the zenith of her material prosperity; and Camoens and his contemporary, Gil Vicente, soon after brought the language and literature of their fatherland to a culminating point likewise. After the conquest of Portugal by Spain, the Portuguese lost all feeling of independence, gradually renouncing even their native