Note 160 — CABINET OF BIOGRAPHY. (continued 8)

Doctor Southey has, in his article on the 'life of Camoens', in the twenty-seventh volume of the "Quarterly Review," given an account of the attack made by Jose Agostinho de Macedon on the Lusiad, and the poem he wrote in rivalship on the same subject. Macedo was an acute critic: as such, he could more readily detect defects than beauties. He saw with discerning eye the faults of plan in the Lusiad;—but he was not warmed by its fire, nor elevated by its genius. The most entire vengeance a friend of Camoens could take, he himself achieved when he wrote his poem, whose machinery and plan are no better, and which possesses none of the transcendant merits of its predecessor. To subvert a national idol, is an invidious task—to set himself upon the same pedestal, a ridiculous pretension. A poet of the present day, whom the Portuguese, of whatever political creed, agree in admiring, Almeida Garrett, has written a poem, entitled "Camoens," worthy of his great countryman.