Note 360 — BOOK V.
William Julius Mickle translation
The critics have vehemently declaimed against the least mixture of the comic, with the dignity of the epic poem. It is needless to enter into any defence of this passage of Camoëns, farther than to observe that Homer, Virgil, and Milton have offended the critics in the same manner, and that this piece of raillery in the Lusiad is by much the politest, and the least reprehensible, of anything of the kind in the four poets. In Homer are several strokes of low raillery. Patroclus having killed Hector's charioteer, puns thus on his sudden fall: It is a pity he is not nearer the sea! He would soon catch abundance of oysters, nor would the storms frighten him. See how he dives from his chariot down to the sand! What excellent divers are the Trojans! Virgil, the most judicious of all poets, descends even to burlesque, where the commander of a galley tumbles the pilot into the sea:—
——Segnemque Menœten In mare præcipitem puppi deturbat ab alta. At gravis ut sundo vix tandem redditus imo est Jam senior, madidaque fluens in veste Menœtes, Summa petit scopuli siccaque in rupe resedit. Illum et labentem Teucri, et risere natantem; Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.
And, though the character of the speakers, the ingenious defence which has been offered for Milton, may, in some measure, vindicate the raillery which he puts into the mouths of Satan and Belial, the lowness of it, when compared with that of Camoëns, must still be acknowledged. Talking of the execution of the diabolical artillery among the good angels, they, says Satan—
"Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell As they would dance, yet for a dance they seem'd Somewhat extravagant and wild, perhaps For joy of offer'd peace.—— To whom thus Belial, in like gamesome mood. Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, Of hard contents, and full of force urg'd home, Such as we might perceive amus'd them all, And stumbled many—— ——this gift they have beside, They show us when our foes walk not upright."