No. 60.— 1908.] 



LIFE OF COUTO. 



II 



be made to him for them. I enjoin upon you and charge you 

 much that you tell him of the favor that I am bestowing upon 

 him, and that you order to be passed to him the necessary 

 dispatches, in the form that is notified to you" 1 . This shows 

 that King Philip appreciated Couto's services ; but as the 

 historian was now over the three score years and ten, it was 

 unlikely that he would long enjoy the royal grant, and so it 

 proved. 



Before passing on, however, I must mention that during 

 the year in which the king wrote the above letter (1615) there 

 was published in Lisbon what professed to be Barros's Decade 

 IV. The manuscript left by Barros had, by the king's orders, 

 been intrusted to Joao Baptista Lavanha 2 , principal cosmo- 

 grapher of Portugal, who not only altered the order of events 

 as Barros had arranged them, but actually interpolated in 

 the text passages written by himself, some of them utterly 

 anachronistic 3 . He also added footnotes embodying informa- 

 tion from Couto's Decade IV. and from other writers. Conse- 

 quently it is impossible to say how much of this work is 

 actually by Barros, and whether he is responsible for this or 

 that statement occurring in it. 



In 1616 was published in Lisbon Couto's Decade VII., a 

 copy of which he was, however, destined never to see. Mean- 

 while an event had taken place in India that embittered Couto's 

 last days and will ever remain a matter of vexation to students 

 of the history of Portuguese Asia. The old man tells the 

 story in a letter 4 to King Philip written from Goa, 28 

 January 1616. It seems that by the end of 1614 he had 

 completed Decades VIII. and IX. , and was to have sent them 

 in 1615 to the king ; but some evil-disposed person stole the 



1 On the margin of the original is the note : — " He was informed of 

 it and a dispatch was passed to him." 



2 According to Man. Sev. de Faria two persons had previously been 

 intrusted with the work of editing, but neither had been able to fulfil 

 the task. 



3 See the caustic remarks of Faria y Sousa in the Advertencias pre- 

 fixed to torn. I. of his Asia Porhiguesa. And yet Man. Sev. de Faria 

 highly commends this piece of patchwork, which he describes as " one 

 of the best books that we have today in our vulgar tongue." 



4 Prefixed to Dec. VIII. 



