both bowra and cidade suppose that the given totality of the lusiads has been artificially achieved, or that camoes is guilty of an inconsistency which can, however, be disregarded without making any substantial difference to what is held ot be the poem's unity. a rather steep descent is thus marked since the intoxicated days of early romanticism; the progressive corrosive of realism has driven the symbolic into the unreal retreat of art for art's sake.

(frank pierce in comparative literature, spring 1954, volume 6, no.2 )