HIS LIFE AND HIS LUSIADS. A COMMENTARY BY RICHARD F. BURTON IN TWO VOLUMES.-VOLUME II. LONDO BERNARD QU 15 PICCADILLY. 1881. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHAPTER IV. (GEOGRAPHICAL) § I. PRELIMINARY: COSMOGRAPHY OF CAMOENS : NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS. WE HILE the historical Cantos of The Lusiads have been copiously annotated, Commentators have perfunctorily treated the geographical,—opus impeditum et facundiæ minimè capax. Yet, as Hakluyt says, topography and chronology are the "Sunne and Moone, the right eye and the left of all historie." The admirers of Camoens could not fail to remark the poetic genius which presents the orbis situm with so much and such beautiful picture; and the bardic art with which his description of the various regions, the complement of his annals, is made to reflect honour upon the Fatherland. Even the dry waste of cosmical and astronomical science (x. 77–9 and x. 120–141) is overgrown with flowers and fruits. The few stanzas (iii. 6-20) in which Da Gama describes Europe before entering upon the national story, are models of compression; and, to mention no more, the course of the Armada (Cantos i. and ii.) proves that the Poet, who devotes some 130 stanzas to the voyage, had thoroughly mastered his subject. Before entering into the Geography of Camoens, I would offer a few observations upon his Cosmography, which is that of Lucretius, Virgil and Lucan, Dante and Ariosto, Spenser and all the host of præ-Copernicans. The "geocentric theory," depending upon the imperfect evidence of man's eye, was the earliest speculation, at one time adopted by all races, from the Egyptians and the Chaldæans to the Tahitans and Polynesian, the Peruvian and the Mexican peoples. "Earth in the middle centre pight" is flat, and four-cornered or circular, domed by a solid sky wherein the luminaries are fast fixed. The sun, which the Hebrews created after earth,1 moves round it; and can therefore be "stopped." This greater light, like the others, in fact like all creation, served for the use of man, whose ignorance flattered his feebleness and vanity by representing his speck of matter as the Core of Cosmos. Cosmas (Indicopleustes) holds earth an oblong of 6,000 by 12,000 miles. The "Heathens," bound to no such Hebrew belief, approached much nearer truth. Nigidius, the Roman philosopher, was called "Figulus," because, on return from Greece (B.C. 60), he taught that the globe whirls round like a potter's wheel. The diurnal periaxis was known to Hicetas of Syracuse (Cicero, Acad. Quæst., ii. 39), to Philolaus the Pythagorean (fifth century), to Heraclides Ponticus (third century B.C.), and to Diog. Laertius the heliocentric system was recognised by Pythagoras, Aristotle and Nicolaus of Cusa. Neither, : 'Genesis i. 10-13; and 14-19. The four corners of the Earth are mentioned by the Prophets (passim) and Enoch (xviii. 2). The however, was generally accepted by the Greeks. natural theory died hard; and, despite Bacon who refuted it, and the many Pontifical decrees against the motion of the earth, Nicolaus Copernicus of Frauenberg (1543), Galileo (1615) and Newton finally demolished it.1 And as with Earth, so with the "Heavens." Some hypothesis was necessary to explain the independent. movements of the sun and moon, the planets and stars; and hence the doctrine of sphere-layers, concentric and eccentric. The Chaldæans owned seven great heavenly bodies revolving in seven orbits: these were, doubtless, borrowed from the Egyptian hierophants, who had proposed seven circles, the number of their planets, each being "domified" in its solid Crystalline. Luna, in the first or terrene heaven, a copy of earth, revolves round the latter: Sol occupies the second stage with Mercury and Venus for satellites, and the other "firmaments" belong to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The Sabæans numbered ten, the highest being the sphere of spheres"; and the same is still the case among the Maoris of New Zealand.2 Pythagoras, who 66 There are still men who believe in the flat earth of Hebrew or rather Egyptian cosmography; but the nineteenth century looks upon them as eccentrics. For the " Pontifical Decrees," see 2d edit., Longmans, 1870. Copernicus (Koppernik), when Camoens was still young, printed at Nürnberg, his great work, De Revolutionibus orbium cœlestium, libri sex, 1543. For Nicolaus de Cusa see Humboldt's "Cosmos" (Bohn), ii. 692. 2 The lowest of the Maori heavens is separated from earth by a |