Note 24 — Chapter II · THE SPANISH LEARNED POETS.

Whether because the subject is maritime, or in consequence of our long trading and fighting alliance with Portugal, the Lusiads has been translated into English with an almost curious persistence. Sir Richard Fanshawe made a very quaint version in the middle of the seventeenth century. The flowing, and extremely free, translation of Mickle proved lucrative to its author as late as 1776. In our time Mr Aubertin has translated it closely, and Sir Richard Burton has given a version both of the Lusiads and of the minor poems which is admirably fitted to introduce the English reader—to the translator.