302 



CAMOENS. 



acquiring a small fortune. This fortune he unhap- 

 pily lost on his return to Goa, by the permission of 

 a new viceroy. He was shipwrecked in the gulf, 

 near the mouth of the river Mecon, saving only his 

 poems, which he held in one hand, whilst he saved 

 himself with the other. At last, reaching Goa, he 

 fou .id a friend in the new viceroy, Don Constantine 

 de Braganza. Still, however, the fate of the poet 

 Seemed to be 



" Marking each change of place with change of woe." -f 



A new governor succeeded Constantine, who suf- 

 fered Camoens to be thrown into a common prison, 

 on a charge of misconduct in the commissariat of 

 Macao. He fully acquitted himself at a public trial, 

 but was detained in confinement by his creditors till 

 the gentlemen of Goa set him at liberty. He now 

 resumed the profession of arms, and attended Don 

 Pedro Baretto, who went as governor to the dis- 

 tant and barbarous settlement of Sofala. A ship 

 bound homeward having touched at this place, Ca- 

 moens determined to return in her to Europe. He 

 was detained for a while by the governor, on a mean 

 charge for the hospitality he had received at his table. 

 Two friends of the poet paid the pitiful demand ; 

 and thus, says Faria, Camoens and the honour of 

 Baretto were sold together. 



He returned to Lisbon after an absence of sixteen 

 years, unfortunate even in the time of his arrival, 

 when the pestilence raged in the city, which prevent- 

 ed the appearance of his poem for three years. At 

 last the Lusiad was printed in 1572. It is not cer- 

 tain whether he ever obtained a pension from Se- 

 bastian, then the sovereign of Portugal. If he 

 ever did, it was but a small one, and was probably 

 revoked by Cardinal Henry, who succeeded Sebas- 

 tian. The latter prince was young and illiterate, 

 and more capable of enjoying the sports of the field 

 than the beauties of poetry. But though the story 

 of the pension is doubtful, and is said to have been 

 held on condition of the poet's residing at court, an 

 expence which the sum would not afford, it is not 

 more wonderful that the young king should be sen- 

 sible of the honour bestowed on him by Camoens 

 in his address at the opening of the first, than that 

 a bigot like Cardinal Henry should neglect the great- 

 est genius of his age and country. Henry patroniz- 

 ed learning indeed, at least what was called learning 

 by the monks and friars. They transmitted to him 

 all their childish forgeries of inscriptions and mi- 

 racles. This same Henry was the persecutor of 

 George Buchanan ; the patron of the Inquisition, of 

 which he extended the horrors even to Goa in the 

 east. Under his weak and wicked hands, the king- 

 dom fell into utter ruin. When we find Camoens ex- 

 horting, in his patriotic poetry, young Sebastian, 



this priest- king's predecessor, to exclude the clergy, Camoen*, 

 by which he meant, in the first instance, Cardinal s ' "" 

 Henry from state affairs ; when we 1 >ok to the man 

 of genius neglected by this worthless sovereign ; tra- 

 duced by his monkish contemporaries ; yjt, in his 

 old age and misfortunes, lamenting less for his own 

 fate, than for the approaching ruin of his degenerate 

 country, Camoens, with these worthy sentiments, 

 and this unworthy destiny, commands an elevated and 

 respectful sympathy. It is not merely the old man, 

 or even the neglected man of genius dying in an 

 hospital it is the patriot and the patriot bard the 

 hero and the soldier- the friend of truth, as well as 

 the enchanter of fiction, ennobling even his death 

 upon a flock-bed, by those sentiments, which deepen, 

 by contrast, the disgrace and degeneracy of his coun- 

 try. " I am ending (he says in one of his letters) 

 the course of my life the world will witness how I 

 have loved my country." By some, it is said, he 

 died in an alms-house. It appears, however, that he 

 had not even the certainty of subsistence which those 

 houses provided. He had a black servant who had 

 grown old with him, and who had long experienced 

 his master's humanity. This grateful Indian, a na- 

 tive of Java, who, according to some writers, had 

 saved his master's life in the unhappy shipwreck, 

 where he lost all his effects this Indian, grown old 

 and white haired in his service, begged in the streets 

 of Lisbon for the only man in Portugal on whom 

 God had bestowed those talents which have a ten- 

 dency to erect the spirit of a downward age. He 

 died in the year 1579, in his 62d year. 



While Trissino, says Voltaire, was clearing away 

 the rubbish in Italy which barbarity and ignorance 

 had heaped up for ten centuries in the way of the 

 arts and sciences, Camoens, in Portugal, steered a 

 new course, and acquired a reputation which lasts 

 still among his countrymen, who pay as much re- 

 spect to his memory as the English to Milton. This 

 criticism, though true as it respects Camoens, is 

 quite French with regard to Trissino. Ariosto did 

 a thousand times more to restore poetry in Europe 

 than Trissino, who wrote a heavy poem in strict 

 imitation of the ancients, intended as an antidote to 

 the magic wonders of the bard of Reggio. But it 

 did not succeed ; and Tasso, who made the ancients 

 more expressly his models, was still obliged to ad- 

 here to the spcciosa miracula of the fabulous school. 



The able translator of the Lusiad, Julius Mickle, 

 has indignantly spurned at the charge of incongruous 

 machinery which Voltaire brought against the Lu- 

 siad. Voltaire, as an instance of this, quotes the pas- 

 sage where Gama, in a storm, addresses himself to 

 Christ, and where Venus comes to his relief. " There 

 is -no such passage," answers Mickle, " in the Lusiad. 

 Gama, in a tempest, prays to the Holy Power, to 

 whom nothing is impossible the Sovereign of earth, 



~Y Falconer's Shipwreck. 



$ If we could fancy a man to start from the grave to deny an act of meanness, the disgrace of this meanness might awak- 

 en Barcito. Let us hope, in charity, what is seemingly hinted at by the biographers of Camoens, that the Governor of So- 

 j,ala only used this pretext of .debt as the means of keeping Canjoens to be an entertaining companion in a desert station. If 

 this creditor of the poet could have foreseen the look of contempt on every human brow that was to read, through 'succeeding 

 ages, this story of his demand, can we believe that, allowing him to be the veriest wretch, he would have taken, as board 

 wages for his guest, all the gold of the Indies ? 



