Note 538 — BOOK VIII.

The hov'ring demon gives the dreadful sign.—This has an allusion to the truth of history. Barros relates, that an anger being brought before the Zamorim, "Em hum vaso de agua l'he mostrara hunas naos, que vin ham de muy longe para a India, e que a gente d'ellas seria total destruiçam dos Mouros de aquellas partes.—In a vessel of water he showed him some ships which from a great distance came to India, the people of which would effect the utter subversion of the Moors." Camoëns has certainly chosen a more poetical method of describing this divination, a method in the spirit of Virgil; nor in this is he inferior to his great master. The supernatural flame which seizes on Lavinia while assisting at the sacrifice alone excepted, every other part of the augury of Latinus, and his dream in the Albunean forest, whither he went to consult his ancestor, the god Faunus, in dignity and poetical colouring, cannot come in comparison with the divination of the Magi, and the appearance of the demon in the dream of the Moorish priest.