Camoens : Nautical Instruments
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C A M O E N S : HIS LIFE AND HIS LUSIADS. A COMMENTARY BY RICHARD F. BURTON (translator of the lusiads). IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOLUME IL LONDON : BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY, W. 1881. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. LONDON : wyman and sons, printers, great queen street, Lincoln's inn fields. — CHAPTER IV. (GEOGRAPHICAL) § I. Preliminary : Cosmography of Camoens : Nautical Instruments. WHILE the historical Cantos of The Lusiads have been copiously annotated, Commentators have perfunctorily treated the geographical, optts impeditum et facundice minhne capax. Yet, as Hakluyt says, topo- graphy and chronology are the " Sunne and Moone, the right eye and the left of all historic." The ad- mirers of Camoens could not fail to remark the poetic genius which presents the orhis situm with so much and such beautiful picture ; and the bardic art with which his description of the various regions, the complement of his annals, is made to reflect honour upon the Father- land. Even the dry waste of cosmical and astronomical science (x. 77-9 and x. 1 20-141) is overgrown with flowers and fruits. The few stanzas (iii. 6-20) in which Da Gama describes Europe before entering upon the na- tional stor}', are models of compression ; and, to mention no more, the course of the Armada (Cantos i. and ii.) proves that the Poet, who devotes some 130 stanzas to the voyage, had thoroughly mastered his subject. Before entering into the Geography of Camoens, I VOL. II. 2 B 3 7 o Geogi'aph ical. would offer a few observations upon his Cosmography, which is that of Lucretius, Virgil and Lucan, Dante and Ariosto, Spenser and all the host of prse-Copernicans. The "geocentric theory," depending upon the imperfect evidence of man's eye, was the earliest speculation,- at one time adopted by all races, from the Egyptians and the Chaldaeans to the Tahitans and Polynesian, the Peruvian and the Mexican peoples. "Earth in the middle centre pight" is flat, and four-cornered or cir- cular, domed by a solid sky wherein the luminaries are fast fixed. The sun, which the Hebrews created after earth,^ moves round it; and can therefore be "stopped." This greater light, like the others, in fact like all crea- tion, served for the use of man, whose ignorance flattered his feebleness and vanity by representing his speck of matter as the Core of Cosmos. Cosmas (Indi- copleustes) holds earth an oblong of 6,000 by 12,000 miles. The " Heathens,^' bound to no such Hebrew belief, approached much nearer truth. Nigidius, the Roman philosopher, was called "Figulus," because, on return from Greece (b.c. 60), he taught that the globe whirls round like a potter's wheel. The diurnal periaxis was known to Hicetas of Syracuse (Cicero, Acad. Quaest., ii. 39), to Philolaus the Pythagorean (fifth century), to Heraclides Ponticus (third century B.C.), and to Diog. Laertius : the heliocentric system was recognised by Pythagoras, Aristotle and Nicolaus of Cusa. Neither, ' i. Genesis 10-13 J ^.nd 14-19. The four corners of the Earth .are mentioned by the Prophets (passim) and Enoch (xviii. 2). ; Pj-eliminary : Cos?nography of Ca?noens. 371 however, was generally accepted by the Greeks. The natural theory died hard ; and, despite Bacon who refuted it, and the many Pontifical decrees against the motion of the earth, Nicolaus Copernicus of Frauen- berg (1543), Galileo (16 15) and Newton finally demo- lished it.^ And as with Earth, so with the '' Heavens." Some hypothesis was necessary to explain the independent movements of the sun and moon, the planets and stars and hence the doctrine of sphere-layers, concentric and eccentric. The Chaldceans owned seven great heavenly bodies revolving in seven orbits : these were, doubt- less, borrowed from the Egyptian hierophants, who had proposed seven circles, the number of their planets, each being "domified" in its solid Crystalline. Luna, in the first or terrene heaven, a copy of earth, re- volves round the latter : Sol occupies the second stage with Mercury and Venus for satellites, and the other '' firmaments " belong to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The Sabseans numbered ten, the highest being the "sphere of spheres"; and the same is still the case among the Maoris of New Zealand.^ Pythagoras, who ' There are still men who believe in the flat earth of Hebrew or rather Egyptian cosmography ; but the nineteenth century looks upon them as eccentrics. For the " Pontifical Decrees," see 2d edit., Longmans, 1870. Copernicus (Koppernik), when Camoens was still young, printed at Nlirnberg, his great work, De Revolu- tionibus orbium ccelestium, libri sex, 1543. For Nicolaus de Cusa see Humboldt's "Cosmos" (Bohn), ii. 692. " The lowest of the Maori heavens is separated from earth by a 2 B 2 372 Geographical. followed the Egyptians, assumed seven transparent spheres which carried with them the " heavenly bodies"; and through these strata he saw the darker circle in which stood the fixed stars. His system was adopted by Plato and Aristotle ; and was preserved with some modifications by Ptolemy.^ The eleventh, highest or external sphere, is the Em- pyrean, the throne or sensorium of the Deity. Beneath lies the "first mouer or primum mobile, who in euery twenty-four hours doth perform his circular motion from east to west, carrying with him all other inferior bodies whatsoever." 2 Below it again, the crystalline heaven of the fixed stars revolves,^ according to the Arabs, in 49,000 years, their anmts magnus : moderns, calculating by the precession of the Equinoxes (12" per ann. east), diaphanous solid, ice or crystal ; and along its inner side glide the sun and the moon. Above are the reservoirs of rain and wind ; the abodes of spirits of light and similar substances ; and, lastly, Rehua the Blessed. Thus are explained the stepped pyramids of the "Otaheitans" (Cook, Pinkerton, xi. 514), which reflect the planetary temple-stages of the Chaldaeans and Mexicans. In poetical and popular parlance, Puck is "swifter than the moon's sphere" ; and we still talk of the "music of the spheres" and of being "in the seventh (highest) heaven." ' The sequence is best explained by a diagram : for a good specimen see "John Davis, the Navigator," ably edited for the Hakluyt Society (1880) by Captain A. H. Markham, R.N. ^ " Seaman's Secrets," Davis (loc. cit.), p. 293. ^ Sir J. Ilerschel finds that luminiferous ether, which acts as a solid rather than a fluid, "will go far to realise the ancient idea of a crystalline orb." — Prelhninary : Cosmography of Camoeiis. 373 reduce the term to 20,980. Under the firmament or zodiacal heaven (No. 8) are the stars, each in his several circle; the opposing motions produced that sweet accord and " harmony of heaven," unheard by the gross ears of mortal men. In Camoens the Empyrean (" of pure fire," x. 81) is the Throne of God, the seat of the Angels and the Home of the Blest. He speaks of the sevenfold skies (i. 21), alluding to the planets, but he expressly admits (x. 82) eleven spheres fitting into one another, —As in a nest Of boxes. (Fanshaw, X. 81, 1-2.) The Ptolemeian system did good work : it proved itself, in poetic hands from Lucretius (lib. v.) to Tasso, as far superior for poetry as its modern successor is for prose. The schema was adopted from Ptolemy by the Christian Fathers, by the Poets and by the Arab philo- sophers, who garnished it with marvellous details. In mediaeval and Moslem astronomy the succession is : ' 374 Geographical. Empyrean, the sphere of The Deity. In Arabic : —Arsh el-Rahman ('* throne of the Merciful "). f Primum mobile Seraphim, Angelic hierarchies.' J Fixed Stars Cherubim. ^ Thrones, contemplators : Saturn \ *- 1 Jannat'Adn (Eden) of Pearls. Dominions, Kings : Tupiter \ ^ Firdaus,^of Red Gold. Mars Virtues, Crusaders : \ I ' J. el-Naim (delights) ; white silver. Sun S Powers, Theologians : I El-Khuld (eternity) of green coral. Pi"incipalities, lovers : r Venus \ ( J. el-Ma'wa (rest); of chrysolite. Archangels, men of fame : Mercury . \ (peace), of ruby. ( J. el-Salam I Angels, etc. : jyjQQj^ Monks, (glory) ; of white pearls. L I J. el-Jelal To understand the Erdkunde of Camoens, we must study it from the map of Ptolemy with due regard to ^ Above it are the seven seas of light, the crystal sphere of Anaximenes, "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold" (Spenser). ^ Bacon with Dionysius the Areopagite makes the seraphim, or angels of love, precede the cherubim (angels of light), and these take higher rank than their congeners of office and domination ("Inst. Magna," lib. i,). ^ A more material use is now found for this planet : observers note that its cycle of twenty-nine and a half years has influenced the bad seasons of i8i6, 1845 ^^^^^ 1S79. * The Sansk. Paradeshas and the Zend Paradaeso (afterwards Gangdiz) ; whence the Greek Paradeisos (a garden) ; and the Arab. Firdaus. The Elysian Fields (Alizuth = El-lizzat, joy) or regions of the vulgar Blest were near the moon: higher spirits affected " ^ther," the source of pure fire. Preliininary : Cosmography of Camoe7is. 375 the changes, some for the better, others for the worse, introduced by the Moslem and the early European, especially the Portuguese, explorers who travelled with the Periplus and the Pelusian in hand.^ Our Poet pro- bably accepted the first meridian in the Fortunate ^ Islands : he certainly adopted the nine Climates and the five Zones of Parmenides (nat. B.C. 513): moderns propose to substitute for them three primaries and six secondaries determined by the course of the isobars. But he devanced Aristotle, and his learned disciple Averrhoes (Abd el-Razi) of Cordova, when he practi- cally ascertained that the tropical zone must no longer be styled 71011 habitabilis cestui His voyage to the 1 English is almost the only European tongue which has not '* translated the immortal Geographia" : our geographers declare that the book is mathematical, our mathematicians that it is geo- graphical ; and thus the public must take it either in Greek or in foreign tongues.