. China, in a series of views : displaying the scenery, architecture, and social habits of that ancient empire . MacaOj is the cave or grottoof Camoens, the most celebrated poet of the Portuguese. It is a rudely-constructedtemple, standing on the brink of a precipice, and commanding a most glorious pros-pect over the peninsula, and the sea that embraces it, and the mountains that riserapidly on the opposite side of the roadstead. Visitors are led to the pleasure-grounds of a private seat, the Casa, with no inconsiderable degree of vanity,and thence to the little pavilion on the rock, where a b
. China, in a series of views : displaying the scenery, architecture, and social habits of that ancient empire . MacaOj is the cave or grottoof Camoens, the most celebrated poet of the Portuguese. It is a rudely-constructedtemple, standing on the brink of a precipice, and commanding a most glorious pros-pect over the peninsula, and the sea that embraces it, and the mountains that riserapidly on the opposite side of the roadstead. Visitors are led to the pleasure-grounds of a private seat, the Casa, with no inconsiderable degree of vanity,and thence to the little pavilion on the rock, where a bust of the poet is they, by any accident of education or defect of memory, be unacquainted at themoment with the chief labours of the poet, they are exultingly informed that hereCamoens wrote the greater portion of his Lusiad.* Louis de Camoens is an illustration of those great men whose merit was first appa-rent in after-times, while their own age abandoned them to want; one of those whose• Lord Clarendon wrote much of his History in an alcove in the grounds of York House at ^ ^ ^ s i ^ ^ THE GROTTO OF CAMOENS, MACAO. 43 tomb was honoured with the laurel-wreath that should have adorned his temples. The sonof a ship-captain, and born at Lisbon about the year 1324, he was placed at the college ofCoimbra; from which he returned, after passing the required time, to his native he fell passionately in love with a lady of the palace, Catherine dAttayde, andwas banished to Santarem, as the result of a dispute in which his luckless attachmenthad involved him. Strong passions are frequently found united with eminent talents;and the ardent lover of Lisbon, was now the delightful poet of Santarem. It was herethat he poured forth his spirit of poetry, that he bewailed the pangs of broken hopes, innumbers which are compared to the lyiics of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; and,inspired with the most noble sense of patriotism, that he attuned his
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, bookidchinainserie, bookyear1843
