The Lusiads

Front matter

THE

L U S I A D;

OR, THE

The Life of Luis de Camoens

THE

LIFE OF LUIS DE CAMOENS.

WHEN the glory of the arms of Portugal had reached its meridian splendor, Nature, as if in pity of the literary rudeness of that nation, produced one great Poet, to record the numberless actions of high spirit performed by his countrymen. Except Osorius, the historians of Portugal are little better than dry journalists. But it is not their inelegance which rendered the poet necessary. It is the peculiar nature of poetry to give a colouring to heroic actions, and to express indignation against the breaches of honour, in a spirit which at once seizes the heart of the man of feeling, and carries with it instantaneous conviction. The brilliant actions of the Portuguese form the great hinge which opened the door to the most important alteration in the civil history of mankind. And to place these actions in the light and enthusiasm of poetry, that enthusiasm which particularly assimilates the youthful breast to its own fires, was Luis de Camoens, the poet of Portugal, born.

Different cities have claimed the honour of his birth. But according to N. Antonio, and Manuel Correa his intimate friend, this event happened at Lisbon in 1517. His family was of considerable note, and originally Spanish. In 1370, Vasco Perez de Caamans, disgusted at the court of Castile, fled to that of Lisbon, where King Ferdinand immediately admitted him into his council, and gave him the lordships of Sardoal, Punnete, Marano, Amendo, and other considerable lands; a certain proof of the eminence of his rank and abilities. In the war for the succession, which broke out on the death of Ferdinand, Caamans sided with the King of Castile, and was killed in the battle of Aljabarrota. But though John I. the victor, seized a great part of his estate, his widow, the daughter of Gonsalo Tereyro, grand master of the Order of Christ, and general of the Portuguese army, was not reduced beneath her rank. She had three sons, who took the name of Camoens. The family of the eldest inter-married with the first nobility of Portugal, and even, according to Castera, with the blood royal. But the family of the second brother, whose fortune was slender, had the superior honour to produce the author of the Lusiad. Early in life the misfortunes of the Poet began. In his infancy, Simon Vaz de Camoens, his father, commander of a vessel, was shipwrecked at Goa, where, with his life, the greatest part of his fortune was lost. His mother, however, Anne de Macedo of Santarene, provided for the education of her son Luis, at the university of Coimbra.—What he acquired there, his works discover: An intimacy with the classics, equal to that of a Scaliger, but directed by the taste of a Milton or a Pope.

When he left the university, he appeared at court. He was handsome, had speaking eyes, it is said, and the finest complexion. Certain it is, however, he was a polished scholar, which, added to the natural ardour and gay vivacity of his disposition, rendered him an accomplished gentleman. Courts are the scenes of intrigue, and intrigue was fashionable at Lisbon. But the particulars of the amours of Camoens rest unknown. This only appears: He hard aspired above his rank, for he was banished from the court; and, in several of his sonnets, he ascribes this misfortune to love. He now retired to his mother's friends at Santarene. Here he renewed his studies, and began his Poem on the Discovery of India. John III. at this time prepared an armament against Africa. Camoens, tired of his inactive obscure life, went to Ceuta in this expedition, and greatly distinguished his valour in several rencounters. In a naval engagement with the Moors, in the straits of Gibraltar, in the conflict of boarding he was among the foremost, and lost his right eye. Yet neither the hurry of actual service, nor the dissipation of the camp, could stifle his genius. He continued his Lusiadas, and several of his most beautiful sonnets were written in Africa, while, as he expresses it,

One hand the pen, and one the sword employ'd.

The fame of his valour had now reached the court, and he obtained permission to return to Lisbon. But while he solicited an establishment which he had merited in the ranks of battle, the malignity of evil tongues, as he calls it in one of his letters, was injuriously poured upon him. Though the bloom of his early youth was effaced by several years residence under the scorching heavens of Africa, and though altered by the loss of an eye, his presence gave uneasiness to the gentlemen of some families of the first rank, where he had formerly visited. Jealousy is the characteristic of the Spanish and Portuguese; its resentment knows no bounds, and Camoens now found it prudent to banish himself from his native country. Accordingly in 1553, he sailed for India, with a resolution never to return. As the ship left the Tagus, he exclaimed, in the words of the sepulchral monument of Scipio Africanus, Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea! Ungrateful country, thou shalt not possess my bones! but he knew not what evils in the East would awake the remembrance of his native fields.

When Camoens arrived in India, an expedition was ready to sail to revenge the king of Cochin on the king of Pimenta. Without any rest on shore after his long voyage, he joined this armament, and in the conquest of the Alagada islands, displayed his usual bravery. But his modesty, perhaps, is his greatest praise. In a sonnet he mentions this expedition: We went to punish the king of Pimenta, says he, e succedeones bem, and we succeeded well. When it is considered that the Poet bore no inconsiderable share in the victory, no ode can conclude more elegantly, more happily than this.

In the year following, he attended Manuel de Vasconcello in an expedition to the Red Sea. Here, says Faria, as Camoens had no use for his sword, he employed his pen. Nor was his activity confined in the fleet or camp. He visited Mount Felix, and the adjacent inhospitable regions of Africa, which he so strongly pictures in the Lusiad, and in one of his little pieces, where he laments the absence of his mistress. When he returned to Goa, he enjoyed a tranquility which enabled him to bestow his attention on his Epic Poem. But this serenity was interrupted, perhaps by his own imprudence. He wrote some satires which gave offence, and, by order of the viceroy, Francisco Barreto, he was banished to China.

Men of poor abilities are more conscious of their embarrassment and errors than is commonly believed. When men of this kind are in power, they affect great solemnity; and every expression of the most distant tendency to lessen their dignity is held as the greatest of crimes. Conscious also how severely the man of genius can hurt their interest, they bear an instinctive antipathy against him, are uneasy even in his company, and, on the slightest pretence, are happy to drive him from them. Camoens was thus situated at Goa; and never was there a fairer field for satires than the rulers of India at this time afforded. Yet, whatever esteem the prudence of Camoens may lose in our idea, the nobleness of his disposition will doubly gain. And, so conscious was he of his real integrity and innocence, that in one of his sonnets he wishes no other revenge on Barreto, than that the cruelty of his exile should ever be remembered. The accomplishments and manners of Camoens soon found him friends, though under the disgrace of banishment. He was appointed commissary of the estates of Defunct in the island of Macao, on the coast of China. Here he continued his Lusiad; and here also, after five years residence, he acquired a fortune, though small, yet equal to his wishes. Don Constantine de Braganza was now viceroy of India; and Camoens, desirous to return to Goa, resigned his charge. In a ship, freighted by himself, he set sail, but was shipwrecked in the gulf near the mouth of the river Mecon, in Cochin-China. All he had acquired was lost in the waves: his poems, which he held in one hand, while he swam with the other, were all he found himself possessed of, when he stood friendless on the unknown shore. But the natives gave him a most humane reception: this he has immortalized in the prophetic song in the tenth Lusiad; and in the seventh he tells us that here he lost the wealth which satisfied his wishes:

Agora da esperança ja adquirida, &c.

Now blest with all the wealth fond hope could crave, Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave For ever lost;——— My life, like Judah's heaven-doom'd king of yore, By miracle prolong'd———

On the banks of the Mecon, he wrote his beautiful paraphrase of the psalm, where the Jews, in the finest strain of poetry, are represented as hanging their harps on the willows by the rivers of Babylon, and weeping their exile from their native country. Here Camoens continued some time, till an opportunity offered to carry him to Goa.—When he arrived at that city, Don Constantine de Braganza, whose characteristic was politeness, admitted him into intimate friendship, and Camoens was happy till Count Redondo assumed the government. Those who had formerly procured the banishment of the satirist, were silent while Constantine was in power; but now they exerted all their arts against him. Redondo, when he entered on office, pretended to be the friend of Camoens; yet, with the most unfeeling indifference with which he planned his most horrible witticism on the Zamorim, he suffered the innocent man to be thrown into the common prison. After all the delay of bringing witnesses, Camoens, in a public trial, fully refuted every accusation of his conduct, while commissary at Macao, and his enemies were loaded with ignominy and reproach. But Camoens had some creditors; and these detained him in prison a considerable time, till the gentlemen of Goa began to be ashamed, that a man of his singular merit should experience such treatment among them. He was set at liberty; and again he assumed the profession of arms, and received the allowance of a gentleman volunteer, a character at that time common in Portuguese India. Soon after, Pedro Barreto, appointed governor of the fort of Sofala, by high promises, allured the poet to attend him thither. The governor of a distant fort, in a barbarous country, shares, in some measure, the fate of an exile. Yet, though the only motive of Barreto was, in this unpleasant situation, to retain the conversation of Camoens at his table, it was his least care to render the life of his guest agreeable. Chagrined with his treatment, and a considerable time having elapsed in vain dependence upon Barreto, Camoens resolved to return to his native country. A ship, on the homeward voyage, at this time touched at Sofala, and several gentlemen who were on board, were desirous that Camoens should accompany them. But this the governor ungenerously endeavoured to prevent, and charged him with a debt for board. Anthony de Cabral, however, and Hector de Sylveyra, paid the demand; and Camoens, says Faria, and the honour of Barreto were sold together.

After an absence of sixteen years, Camoens, in 1569, returned to Lisbon, unhappy even in his arrival, for the pestilence then raged in that city, and prevented his publishing for three years. At last, in 1572, he printed his Lusiad, which, in the opening of the first book, in a most elegant turn of compliment, he addressed to his prince, king Sebastian, then in his eighteenth year. The king, says the French translator, was so pleased with his merit, that he gave the Author a pension of 4000 reals, on condition that he should reside at court. But this salary, says the same writer, was withdrawn by cardinal Henry, who succeeded to the crown of Portugal, lost by Sebastian at the battle of Alcazar. But this story of the pension is very doubtful. Correa, and other contemporary authors, do not mention it, though some late writers have given credit to it. If Camoens, however, had a pension, it is highly probable that Henry deprived him of it. While Sebastian was devoted to the chace, his grand uncle, the cardinal, presided at the council board, and Camoens, in his address to the king, which closes the Lusiad, advises him to exclude the clergy from state affairs. It was easy to see that the cardinal was here intended. And Henry, besides, was one of those statesmen who can perceive no benefit resulting to the public from elegant literature. But it ought also to be added in completion of his character, that under the narrow views and weak hands of this Henry, the kingdom of Portugal fell into utter ruin; and on his death, which closed a short inglorious reign, the crown of Lisbon, after a faint struggle, was annexed to that of Madrid. Such was the degeneracy of the Portuguese, a degeneracy lamented in vain by Camoens, whose observation of it was imputed to him as a crime.

Though the great patron of one species of literature, a species the reverse of that of Camoens, certain, it is that the author of the Lusiad was utterly neglected by Henry, under whose inglorious reign he died in all the misery of poverty. By some it is said he died in an almshouse. It appears, however, that he had not even the certainty of subsistence which these houses provide. He had a black servant, who had grown old with him, and who had long experienced his master's humanity. This

grateful Indian, a native of Java, who, according to some writers, saved his master's life in the unhappy shipwreck where he lost his effects, begged in the streets of Lisbon for the only man in Portugal on whom God had bestowed those talents, which have a tendency to erect the spirit of a downward age. To the eye of a careful observer, the fate of Camoens throws great light on that of his country, and will appear strictly connected with it. The same ignorance, the same degenerated spirit, which suffered Camoens to depend on his share of the alms begged in the streets by his old hoary servant, the same spirit which caused this, sunk the kingdom of Portugal into the most abject vassalage ever experienced by a conquered nation. While the grandees of Portugal were blind to the ruin which impended over them, Camoens beheld it with a pungency of grief which hastened his exit. In one of his letters he has these remarkable words, "Em fim accaberey à vida, e verràm todós que fuy afeiçoada a minho patria, &c. "I am ending the course of my life, the world will witness how I have loved my country. I have returned, not only to die in her bosom, but to die with her." In another letter, written a little before his death, he thus, yet with dignity, complains, "Who has seen, on so small a theatre as my poor bed, such a representation of the disappointments of fortune? And I, as if she could not herself subdue me, I have yielded and become of her party; for it were wild audacity to hope to surmount such accumulated evils." In this unhappy situation, in 1579, in his sixty-second year, the year after the fatal defeat of Don Sebastian, died Luis de Camoens, the greatest literary genius ever produced by Portugal; in martial courage, and spirit of honour, nothing inferior to her greatest heroes. And in a manner suitable to the poverty in which he died was he buried. Soon after, however, many epitaphs honoured his memory; the greatness of his merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into various languages. Nor ought it to be omitted, that the man so miserably neglected by the weak king Henry, was earnestly enquired after by Philip of Spain, when he assumed the crown of Lisbon. When Philip heard that Camoens was dead, both his words and his countenance expressed his disappointment and grief.

From the whole tenor of his life, and from that spirit which glows throughout the Lusiad, it evidently appears that the courage and manners of Camoens flowed from true greatness and dignity of soul. Tho' his polished con was often courted by the great, he appears so distant from servility, that his imprudence in this respect is by some highly blamed. Yet the instances of it by no means deserve that severity of censure with which some writers have condemned him. Unconscious of the feelings of a Camoens, they knew not that a carelessness in securing the smiles of fortune, and an open honesty of indignation, are almost inseparable from the enthusiasm of fine imagination. The truth is, the man possessed of true genius feels his greatest happiness in the pursuits and excursions of the mind, and therefore makes an estimate of things very different from that of him whose unremitting attention is devoted to his external interest. The profusion of Camoens is also censured. Had he dissipated the wealth he acquired at Macao, his profusion indeed had been criminal; but it does not appear that he ever enjoyed any other opportunity of acquiring independence. But Ca was unfortunate, and the unfortunate man is viewed

———through the dim shade his fate casts o'er him: A shade that spreads its evening darkness o'er His brightest virtues, while it shews his foibles Crowding and obvious as the midnight stars, Which in the sunshine of prosperity Never had been descried———

Yet, after the strictest discussion, when all the causes are weighed together, the misfortunes of Camoens will appear the fault and disgrace of his age and country, and not of the man. His talents would have secured him an apartment in the palace of Augustus, but such talents are a curse to their possessor in an illiterate nation. In a beautiful digressive exclamation, at the end of the Lusiad, he gives us a striking view of the neglect which he experienced. Having mentioned how the greatest heroes of antiquity revered and cherished the Muse, he thus characterizes the nobility of his own age and country:

Alas! on Tago's hapless shore alone The Muse is slighted, and her charms unknown. For this, no Virgil here attunes the lyre, No Homer here awakes the hero's fire. Unheard, in vain their native poet sings, And cold neglect weighs down the Muse's wings. And what particularly seems to have touched him——

Even he whose veins the blood of Gama warms Walks by, unconscious of the Muse's charms: Eor him no Muse shall leave her golden loom, No palm shall blossom, and no wreath shall bloom. Yet shall my labors and my cares be paid By fame immortal3

In such an age, and among such a barbarous nobility, what but wretched neglect could be the fate of a Camoens! After all, however, if he was imprudent on his first appearance at the court of John III. if the honesty of his indignation led him into great imprudence, as certainly it did, when at Goa he satirised the viceroy and the first persons in power; yet let it also be remembered, that "The gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task upon the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which doth not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet difficult as nature herself seems to have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness and of folly to point with Gothic triumph to those excesses which are the of faculties they never enjoyed. Perfectly unconscious that they are indebted to their stupidity for the consistency of their conduct, they plume themselves on an imaginary virtue, which has its origin in what is really their disgrace.—Let such, if such dare approach the shrine of Camoens, withdraw to a respectful distance; and should they behold the ruins of genius, or the weakness of an exalted mind, let them be taught to lament, that nature has left the noblest of her works imperfect."

And Poetry is not only the noblest, but also not the least useful, if civilization of manners be of advantage to mankind. No moral truth may be more certainly demonstrated, than that a Virgil or a Milton are not only the first ornaments of a state, but also of the first consequence, if the last refinement of the mental powers be of importance. Strange as this might appear to a Burleigh or a Locke, it is philosophically accounted for by Bacon; nor is Locke's opinion either inexplicable or irrefutable. The

great genius of Aristotle, and that of his great resembler, Sir Francis Bacon, saw deeper into the true spirit of poe

and the human affections than a Burleigh. In ancient Greece, the works of Homer were called the lesson

or philosophy of kings; and Bacon describes the effects of poetry in the most exalted terms. What is deficient of perfection in history and nature, poetry supplies; it thus erects the mind, and confers magnanimity, morality, and delight; "and therefore, says he, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness." The love of po

is so natural to the stronger affections, that the most barbarous nations delight in it. And always it is found, that as the rude war song and eulogy of the dead hero refine, the manners of the age refine also. The history of the stages of poetry is the philosophical history of manners; the only history in which, with certainty, we can behold the true character of past ages. True civilization, and a humanized taste of the mental pleasures, are therefore synonimous terms. And most certain it is, where feeling and affection reside in the breast, these must be most forcibly kindled and called into action by the animated representa

, and living fire, of the great poetry. Nor may Milton's evidence be rejected, for though a poet himself, his judgment is founded on nature. According to him, a true taste for the great poetry gives a refinement and energy to all other studies, and is of the last importance in forming the senator and the gentleman. That the poetry of Camoens merits his high character, in a singular manner, he that reads it with taste and attention must own: A Dissertation on it, however, is the duty of the Translator———

Footnotes

Book I

THE

L U S I A D.

BOOK I.

ARMS and the Heroes, who from Lisbon's shore, Thro' seas where sail was never spread before, Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast, And waves her woods above the watery waste,

With prowess more than human forc'd their way To the fair kingdoms of the rising day: What wars they wag'd, what seas, what dangers past, What glorious empire crown'd their toils at last,

Vent'rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne, And all my country's wars the song adorn; What kings, what heroes of my native land Thunder'd on Asia's and on Afric's strand: Illustrious shades, who levell'd in the dust The idol-temples and the shrines of lust; And where, erewhile, foul demons were rever'd, To holy faith unnumber'd altars rear'd:

Illustrious names, with deathless laurels crown'd, While time rolls on in every clime renown'd!

What lands he saw, what toils at sea he bore; No more the Trojan's wandering voyage boast, What storms he brav'd on many a per'lous coast: No more let Rome exult in Trajan's name, Nor eastern conquests Ammon's pride proclaim; A nobler hero's deeds demand my lays Than e'er adorn'd the song of ancient days; Illustrious GAMA, whom the waves obey'd, And whose dread sword the fate of empire sway'd.

If e'er your meadows were my pastoral theme, While you have listen'd, and by moonshine seen My footsteps wander o'er your banks of green, O come auspicious, and the song inspire With all the boldness of your hero's fire: Deep and majestic let the numbers flow, And, rapt to heaven, with ardent fury glow; Unlike the verse that speaks the lover's grief, When heaving sighs afford their soft relief, And humble reeds bewail the shepherd's pain: But like the warlike trumpet be the strain To rouse the hero's ire; and far around, With equal rage, your warriors' deeds resound.

To guard our freedom and our glories raise,

Given to the world to spread Religion's sway, And pour o'er many a land the mental day, Thy future honours on thy shield behold, The cross, and victor's wreath, embost in gold:

At thy commanding frown we trust to see, The Turk and Arab bend the suppliant knee: Beneath the morn, dread king, thine empire lies, When midnight veils thy Lusitanian skies;

And when, descending in the western main, The sun still rises on thy lengthening reign: Thou blooming Scion of the noblest stem, Our nation's safety, and our age's gem, O young Sebastian, hasten to the prime Of manly youth, to Fame's high temple climb: Yet now attentive hear the Muse's lay While thy green years to manhood speed away: The youthful terrors of thy brow suspend, And, O propitious, to the song attend, The numerous song, by patriot-passion fir'd, And by the glories of thy race inspir'd: To be the herald of my country's fame My first ambition and my dearest aim: Nor conquests fabulous nor actions vain, The muse's pastime, here adorn the strain: Orlando's fury, and Rugero's rage, And all the heroes of th' Aonian page,

The dreams of bards surpass'd the world shall view, And own their boldest fictions may be true; Surpass'd, and dimm'd by the superior blaze Of GAMA's mighty deeds, which here bright Truth displays. Nor more let history boast her heroes old, Their glorious rivals here, dread prince, behold: Here shine the valiant Nunio's deeds unfeign'd, Whose single arm the falling state sustain'd; Here fearless Egas' wars, and, Fuas, thine, To give full ardour to the song combine; But ardour equal to your martial ire Demands the thundering sounds of Homer's lyre. To match the twelve so long by bards renown'd, Here brave Magricio and his peers are crown'd (A glorious twelve!) with deathless laurels, won In gallant arms before the English throne. Unmatch'd no more the Gallic Charles shall stand, Nor Cæsar's name the first of praise command: Of nobler acts the crown'd Alonzos see, Thy valiant sires, to whom the bended knee Of vanquish'd Afric bow'd. Nor less in fame, He who confin'd the rage of civil flame, The godlike John, beneath whose awful sword Rebellion crouch'd, and trembling own'd him lord.

Those heroes too, who thy bold flag unfurl'd, And spread thy banners o'er the eastern world, Whose spears subdued the kingdoms of the morn, Their names and glorious wars the song adorn: The daring GAMA, whose unequall'd name Proud monarch shines o'er all of naval fame: Castro the bold, in arms a peerless knight, And stern Pacheco, dreadful in the fight: The two Almeydas, names for ever dear, By Tago's nymphs embalm'd with many a tear; Ah, still their early fate the nymphs shall mourn, And bathe with many a tear their hapless urn: Nor shall the godlike Albuquerque restrain The muse's fury; o'er the purpled plain The muse shall lead him in his thundering car Amidst his glorious brothers of the war, Whose fame in arms resounds from sky to sky, And bids their deeds the power of death defy. And while, to thee, I tune the duteous lay, Assume, O potent king, thine empire’s sway; With thy brave host through Afric march along, And give new triumphs to immortal song: On thee with earnest eyes the nations wait, And, cold with dread the Moor expects his fate; The barbarous mountaineer on Taurus' brows To thy expected yoke his shoulder bows; Fair Thetis woos thee with her blue domain, Her nuptial son, and fondly yields her reign;

And from the bowers of heaven thy grandsires see Their various virtues bloom afresh in thee; One for the joyful days of peace renown'd, And one with war's triumphant laurels crown'd: With joyful hands, to deck thy manly brow, They twine the laurel and the olive-bough; With joyful eyes a glorious throne they see, In Fame's eternal dome, reserved for thee. Yet, while thy youthful hand delays to wield The sceptre'd power, or thunder of the field, Here view thine Argonauts, in seas unknown, And all the terrors of the burning zone, Till their proud standards, rear'd in other skies, And all their conquests meet thy wondering eyes.

The Lusitanian fleet triumphant rode;

Onward they traced the wide and lonesome main, Where changeful Proteus leads his scaly train; The dancing vanes before the zephyrs flow'd, And their bold keels the trackless ocean plow'd; Unplow'd before, the green-tinged billows rose, And curl'd and whiten'd round the nodding prows. When Jove, the God who with a thought controls The raging seas, and balances the poles, From heav'n beheld, and will'd, in sov'reign state, To fix the Eastern World's depending fate: Swift at his nod th' Olympian herald flies, And calls th' immortal senate of the skies; Where, from the sov'reign throne of earth and heav'n, Th' immutable decrees of fate are given. Instant the regents of the spheres of light, And those who rule the paler orbs of night, With those, the gods whose delegated sway The burning south and frozen north obey; And they whose empires see the day-star rise, And evening Phoebus leave the western skies, All instant pour'd along the milky road, Heaven's crystal pavements glittering as they trod: And now, obedient to the dread command, Before their awful Lord in order stand.