Note 65 — BOOK I.

To Holy Faith unnumber'd altars rear'd.—In no period of history does human nature appear with more shocking, more diabolical features than in the wars of Cortez, and the Spanish conquerors of South America. Zeal for the Christian religion was esteemed, at the time of the Portuguese grandeur, as the most cardinal virtue, and to propagate Christianity and extirpate Mohammedanism were the most certain proofs of that zeal. In all their expeditions this was professedly a principal motive of the Lusitanian monarchs, and Camoëns understood the nature of epic poetry too well to omit it.