In spirit and in form Ferreira’s two comedies perfectly resemble those

of Saa de Miranda. One which is called “Bristo,” (_Comedia do Bristo_)

takes its name from the principal character in the piece. The other is

entitled the “Jealous Man,” (_Comedia do Cioso_). The comedy of Bristo

was the production of Ferreira’s early youth. In his dedication to the

king, he says that he wrote it during the holidays, in the course of

the few days which he was able to snatch from his more serious studies

at the university of Coimbra. To this task he was in all probability

incited by the example of Saa de Miranda. It may also be presumed that

at a subsequent period, Ferreira gave a finer polish to this comedy,

to which Portuguese writers usually refer, when they wish to prove how

admirably their native language is adapted to light and elegant prose.

But it is not merely in this philological point of view that the

merits of this work ought to be estimated. In facility, precision and

elegance of dialogue, it surpasses the comedies of Saa de Miranda, and

many which in other respects are justly ranked among the best in modern

literature. The delineation of character, so far as it goes, is natural

and decided: indeed some of the characters, among which is a hectoring

profligate knight of Rhodes, who resembles the ostentatious soldiers of

Plautus, are particularly well sustained. In the _Comedia do Cioso_,

the principal character, though somewhat overcharged, is strikingly

sketched. Both dramas contain some comic scenes; but they are upon the

whole as deficient in real comic force as they are overburthened with

common place morality; and that morality too, as in the comedies of Saa

de Miranda, is conveyed in tedious soliloquies.

But the public favour which the court conferred on the regular

dramas of Ferreira, in common with those of Saa de Miranda, and the

rude compositions of Gil Vicente, may be regarded as one of the

circumstances which operated to prevent the formation of a national

drama in Portugal. For the rise, as in Spain, of a national party,

which might rouse and incite a poet to advance from the point at which

Gil Vicente had stopped, became now much more difficult. Thus the art

of dramatic invention and composition long wavered amidst heterogeneous

forms, until the Portuguese poets who wished to write for the theatre,

had no alternative but to become imitators of the Spanish authors who

had preceded them, or entirely to renounce the formation of any thing

like a national drama. No Portuguese Lope de Vega arose; and Ferreira’s

name was only preserved in the recollection of the learned.

* * * * *

After having perused with critical reflection the history of Portuguese

poetry and eloquence, from the introduction of the Italian style to the

present point, the reader will be prepared to recognize the rank which

Camoens holds among the poets of his country. Respecting this most

celebrated of the Portuguese poets, indeed almost the only one among

them who has obtained any celebrity beyond the limits of his native

country, all the writers of the classic school of Saa de Miranda,

Diogo Bernardes excepted, are silent, which is a sufficient proof

that they did not include him in their party. But the public voice of

Portuguese criticism, combined with the general national approbation,

has long since elevated him above those who neglected to mention his

name, though they were always ready to bestow praise on each other.

Camoens, it is true, was a poor adventurer, wandering in India, at the

period when Ferreira, Andrade Caminha, and other contemporary writers

were setting the poetic fashion at the brilliant court of Lisbon. But

the poems which he produced previously to his departure for India,

approximate in a striking degree to the classic works of the school

of Saa de Miranda; and hence it is probable that the influence of

that school, and of the older Portuguese poetry, may have operated

in an equal degree on his genius. This relationship of Camoens with

all parties in the polite literature of his native country, will be

placed in the clearest point of view by introducing him after Ferreira,

and before the other poets, who hand in hand with the latter pursued

the newly opened course. Thus the genius of Camoens, as the first of

Portuguese poets, may be considered conjointly with his merits as a

poet in the spirit of the age in which he lived.

CAMOENS.

The biography of Luis de Camões, or Camoens, again brings to

recollection that period in which the poets of Portugal considered

their character very imperfectly maintained, if their real life did

not prove a faithful mirror of the poetic joys and sorrows embodied in

their works. Camoens was born at Lisbon, probably in the year 1524.

His parents, as it appears, were not rich; but they belonged to the

class of ancient nobility, and they were enabled to give their son an

education which facilitated his entrance on the career of military

and civic honor. From his father, who was captain of a vessel, and

who lost his life in shipwreck on the coast of India, it is probable

that Camoens heard many stories, which were calculated to inspire him

with a taste for adventure and daring enterprize. Of the history of

his early youth no remarkable particulars are recorded. He attended

the university of Coimbra, where he acquired a fund of historical and

mythological knowledge. Some of his elegies and sonnets which have

descended to posterity, seem to have been written at this period,

though it does not appear that those productions gained for him the

friendship of Ferreira, and other contemporaries of eminent talent, who

were about the same time studying at Coimbra. It is probable that these

young men, who had joined in a mutual and earnest endeavour to attain

classic correctness, anticipated nothing extraordinary from the ardent

Camoens, who adopted the new style, but did not disdain the old, and

whose fancy was too restless to submit to the didactic controul of the

judgment. On quitting the university Camoens returned to Lisbon, but

with what design is not mentioned by Portuguese authors, nor has any

conjecture been formed respecting the views of success which he might

have had in that city. He soon, however, became an object of public

notoriety through his imprudent conduct in gallantry, which, next to

poetry, at that time engrossed his thoughts. The particulars of a love

affair, in which he became involved, are not accurately known; and,

therefore, how far with respect to it, he was to blame, cannot now be

ascertained. It however appears, that the object of his regard was

named Catharina de Attayda, and that she was a _dama do paço_, (lady of

honor) at the court. Either on account of this lady, or of some other

circumstance which operated unfavourably for the romantic poet, he was

banished from Lisbon; and with this event commences the second part of

the life of this extraordinary man.

Thus cut off in the age of aspiring pretension and glowing enthusiasm,

from the hope of advancing by the course usually open to youthful

ambition, Camoens remained for some time tranquilly at Santarem, the

place of his exile, in the neighbourhood of Lisbon. There instead

of considering what was now necessary to be done with a view to his

future welfare, he occupied himself in writing verses, which have been

handed down to posterity, but which only served to fix more deeply a

passion the object of which was still near him. With a caprice not

uncommon in such a state of feeling, Camoens, who cherished at once

romantic ideas of patriotism, and indignant emotions of disgust,

suddenly changed the whole system of his life. He became a soldier,

and served against the Moors as a volunteer on board the Portuguese

fleet in the Mediterranean. To be at once a hero and a poet was now

the object of his ambition. Whenever time and opportunity permitted,

he composed verses, which often, particularly those of the lyric and

elegiac class, had for their subject the recollection of his hopeless

passion. Whether he had at this period clearly conceived the plan of

his national heroic poem, or whether he was actually engaged in its

execution, are questions which, like almost every other fact relative

to the history of this poet’s talent, remain enveloped in doubt. It is

known, however, that he combated the enemies of his country in a naval

battle fought off Ceuta. During this action, in which he eminently

distinguished himself, he received a gun-shot wound in consequence of

which he lost the sight of his right eye. He now hoped to obtain, in

the character of a hero, that reward which he had failed to acquire

as a poet. He returned to Lisbon. But no individual at court took any

active interest in his welfare. All his efforts to gain an honourable

competence were unsuccessful; and he was now verging on the age of

maturity. More dissatisfied, and yet more proud than ever, he loudly

accused his country of ingratitude, while at the same time his poetic

effusions prove that his heart overflowed with the warmest feelings of

national attachment. At last, determined to leave for ever a land to

which his heart was still bound by the ties of another passion besides

patriotism, he embarked in the year 1553, at the age of twenty-nine,

for India. That his thankless country should not have even his bones,

was the sentiment which, on his departure, his indignant feelings

prompted him to exclaim in the words of Scipio:--_Ingrata patria, non

possidebis ossa mea!_

From this period the life of Camoens exhibits a chain of successive

adventures and calamities; but fate watched over him with miraculous

care, and seemed to rescue him from every danger in order that he

might complete his poetic career. The squadron with which he sailed

to India consisted of four ships. Three were lost in a storm, but

Camoens arrived on board the fourth, in the port of Goa. From this

circumstance he augured that fortune was now about to smile on him.

He soon found, however, that employment was not to be obtained at Goa,

and he entered as a volunteer in a military corps, forming part of an

expedition which the Portuguese viceroy was fitting out for the aid of

an Indian prince. On the arrival of the troops at the place of their

destination, a great portion of the Portuguese fell a sacrifice to the

insalubrity of the climate; but Camoens returned in safety to Goa after

the object of the expedition had been attained. In the situation in

which he then stood, there remained for him no other alternative than

to embark in a new expedition which was about to sail for the Red Sea

to attack the Arabian corsairs. At the island of Ormus, where he passed

the winter, Camoens again found leisure to indulge in the workings of

his imagination. His mind gave a poetic colouring to every thing which

he saw or heard; and the ardour of his patriotism continued to increase

in proportion as he became more intimately acquainted with the theatre

of the Portuguese atchievements in India. But many circumstances which

came within his observation induced him also to indulge in satirical

sports of wit. The government of Goa had hitherto done nothing for him.

He did not, however, try to promote his interest by flattery. On the

contrary, he ridiculed the _disparates na India_, (follies in India)

as he unceremoniously styled some portion of the proceedings of the

government of Goa. The viceroy, who took particular umbrage at this

satire, banished Camoens to the Chinese island of Macao. The fate of

the unfortunate hero and poet was now more deplorable than ever. He

however gained permission to quit Macao and visit the Molucca islands,

where he collected fresh materials for pictorial poetry; but he could

no longer, as the lines beneath his portrait express, “bear in one

hand the sword, in the other the pen.[132]” He was glad to accept

the very unpoetic and unheroic post of _provedor mòr dos defuntos_,

(administrator of the effects of deceased persons) by the emoluments of

which he was enabled to subsist. Whenever circumstances permitted he

turned his attention to his heroic poem, and thus indemnified himself

in the ideal world for the part which he was compelled to perform

in real life. At length, on the arrival of a new viceroy at Goa, he

obtained permission to return to that island, but in the passage

thither was shipwrecked on the coast of Camboya. With difficulty he

saved his life, and also his poem, the manuscript of which, soaked with

sea-water, he brought to land. This circumstance is noticed in the work

itself.[133] The story of his swimming ashore with his poem in one

hand, while he supported himself by the action of the other, and thus

saving his _Lusiadas_ as Cæsar saved his commentaries, has obtained

currency through the statement of a German writer, who seems to have

misunderstood a very intelligible passage of a Portuguese author.[134]

On his return to Goa, Camoens was well received; but he had not long

enjoyed the smiles of fortune, when another change took place in the

viceroyship. The new viceroy lent a ready ear to the enemies of the

poet, who was now publicly accused of malversation in the discharge

of the office which he had filled at Macao. Camoens was thrown into

prison, and there left to work out his justification. It appears he

fully cleared himself of the charges which had been brought against

him; but he was still detained because he was unable to satisfy the

demands of his creditors. A poem, which he addressed to the viceroy,

at length procured his liberation. After experiencing many other

disagreeable adventures he ardently wished to return to Europe, but

it was not in his power to defray the expence of his passage. Even

when prepared to embark he was stopped by a demand for the re-payment

of a loan, and was nearly reduced to despair, but several liberal

individuals stepped forward and provided the sum necessary for his

relief. Finally, in the year 1569, Camoens, after an absence of nearly

sixteen years, arrived at Lisbon, from the rich shores of India, well

in health, but in a state of the most abject poverty.

The third part of the history of this ill-fated poet is the most

melancholy. On his return he found Lisbon ravaged by the plague. During

this calamity it was not to be expected that much regard should be

paid to poetry, and the last hope of Camoens rested on his poem, the

only treasure which he had brought with him from India. Considerable

changes had likewise taken place at the court. King Sebastian was

concerting the plan of his unfortunate expedition to Morocco. In so

romantic an enterprise Camoens was predisposed to take an interest,

and it served to stimulate his zeal in dedicating his poem to the

youthful sovereign. The dedication was graciously received, but the

poet obtained no other reward than a wretched pension, just sufficient

to mark but not to relieve his misery. The honour was conceded to

him of constantly accompanying the court, while he wanted means to

procure the necessaries of life. It is said that a faithful slave

who had accompanied him to Europe, begged in the streets of Lisbon

at night, in order to enable the poet, whose name was now celebrated

throughout Portugal and Spain, to appear decently in public during the

day. The last blow which the patriotic heart of Camoens received, was

the fatal issue of the African expedition. The poet’s hitherto robust

constitution now sank under the pressure of sorrow and indigence. His

last hope had vanished, and overwhelmed with affliction, he withdrew

himself from the world. A few monks were the last individuals with

whom he maintained any intercourse. Shortly before his death, he is

said to have written a letter, which, if it be genuine, proves that he

himself considered his misfortunes unparalleled. He styles it a sort of

presumptuousness to attempt to oppose that fate, which had at length

compressed all his sorrows within the narrow limits of a sick-bed.

It appears that he ended his life in an hospital, in the year 1579,

at the age of fifty-five. It was not until sixteen years after his

decease that the spot where his ashes repose, was distinguished by

a monument erected by one of his admirers. During the same year the

learned Rodriguez Lobo Zurupita, who must not be confounded with the

poet Rodriguez Lobo, published the first collection of the hitherto

scattered poems of Camoens.[135]

The life of Camoens constitutes an essential part of the history

of Portuguese poetry. With the exception of Dante no poet of the

first rank has in his works so fully represented his own inward

feelings combined with every extraordinary circumstance that came

within his observation. His poems can only be perfectly intelligible

to the reader who never loses sight of the poet; for his character

is precisely theirs. But the poetry of Camoens must not on this

account be confounded with the self-subjective effusions of certain

enthusiasts who express their feelings clearly enough in verse, though

not in poetry, except, perhaps, in their own opinion. Among the poets

of all ages Camoens is one of the most eminent; and though to a

foreigner it may at first sight seem strange that he has permanently

obtained in the literature of his country the surname of _O Grande_

(the Great), a title given in history only to a few distinguished

sovereigns, yet in the unbounded homage which the Portuguese render

to the name of the man, who during his life was suffered to languish

in penury, the citizen of the world will readily recognize a general

desire to compensate for the injustice with which he was treated by

his contemporaries. On this side of the Pyrenees, indeed, however

frequently the name of Camoens may be mentioned and written, as a

poet he is still scarcely known except by name. But to form a just

appreciation of his merit, he must, like Homer, be viewed in the

spirit of his nation and his age. It was the ambition of Camoens to

be to the Portuguese what Homer was to the Greeks, the first and at

the same time the most national of poets; and if he did not entirely

attain his end, he nevertheless so far approached it that no other

modern poet has been able to combine all the national interests of his

country, with the fulness of poetic spirit exhibited in the Lusiad.

But it must be recollected that at the period when Camoens wrote, the

more correct style, formed on the ancient and Italian models, had just

penetrated into Portuguese literature, and that it had not yet taken

deep root. Under these circumstances, Camoens, in sketching the plan of

his national Epopœia, stood, as it were, severed from the age in which

he lived. Modern literature contained no similar work, and, generally

speaking, no epic poem worthy of perusal, except the chivalrous

compositions of Bojardo and Ariosto. From Trissino Camoens could

learn nothing; from Bojardo and Ariosto he might have learned much,

but assuredly not the spirit and style of a serious national heroic

poem; and Camoens was numbered with the dead before Tasso’s Jerusalem

Delivered appeared in print.[136] Camoens was the first modern who

succeeded in the production of a serious heroic poem. But with all

his endeavours to attain classic perfection, he was a Portuguese in

the spirit of his age, and too good a patriot to wish to be any thing

else. He rose to the height at which he aimed only by flights; having

reached it he sank, rose to it again, and again fell from it. He was

unable to produce a classically perfect whole of any extent. But the

more beautiful passages of his poems, particularly of his Lusiad, will

stand the test of the most rigid criticism according to the rules of

pure poetry and classic excellence.

Every style of poetic composition of which he had formed a definite

idea was attempted by Camoens. But the Lusiad rises so vastly above his

other works, and bears such powerful and various traces of the peculiar

character of his poetry, that all his lesser compositions must be

considered merely as inferior scions sprung from the same root.

The Lusiad of Camoens is a heroic poem; but so essentially different

in the unity of the epic plan from all other heroic poems, that to

avoid falling into the unwarrantable misconception with which this

noble work is every where judged except in Portugal and Spain, it is

necessary in considering it, to drop the ordinary rules of comparison,

and to proceed upon the general idea of epic poetry unmodified by any

prepossession for known models.[137] Camoens struck out a totally new

path in the region of epopœia. The style of his poem is indeed formed

chiefly on the ancient models, and in his diction he has imitated

the elegant stanzas of the Italians; but the epic idea of the work

is entirely his own; and the kind of composition, which forms its

groundwork, was something entirely new in poetic literature. The object

of Camoens was to recount in epic strains, with pure poetic feeling,

the atchievements of the heroes and great men of Portugal in general,

not of any individual in particular, and consequently not of Vasco da

Gama, who is commonly considered the hero of the Lusiad. He was not

to be satisfied with drawing up a poetically adorned official report,

like the Spanish Araucana, written at a later period by Ercilla.[138]

The title which Camoens gave to his heroic poem sufficiently denotes

the nature of its subject. He named it _Os Lusiadas_, that is to say,

the Lusitanians, or Portuguese. This choice of a title was doubtless

influenced by the prevailing taste of the Portuguese poets of that

age, to whom the common name of their nation appeared unpoetic,

and also by the popular notion that the favourite term _Lusitania_

was derived from a certain mythological hero, named _Lusus_, who

visited Portugal in company with Ulysses, and who conjointly with

the Greek warrior, built the city of Lisbon (_Ulyssipolis_). Camoens

is not to blame if the editors of his poem, wishing to reconcile its

somewhat unusual title with the names of other epic compositions, have

converted the _Lusiadas_ into the _Lusiada_.[139] But the poem may be

designated by its common title without offence to its spirit or its

subject. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the Lusiad

is a totally different kind of heroic poem from all those epopees,

whether successful or unsuccessful, in which a single hero is the main

spring of the whole epic action. According to the plan which Camoens

sketched for his national poem, he was enabled to dispense with the

choice of a hero whose atchievements should throw those of all others

into the shade, and form the sole source of epic interest. To this

plan, however, an essential beauty of epic poetry was necessarily

sacrificed. The composition lost the advantage of those little groupes

of characters which would otherwise have been assembled around the

principal character. From its plan, therefore, the Lusiad cannot be

accounted such a model of epic perfection as the Iliad, or even as the

Æneid, in which that perfection more faintly presented is still to

be found. But as a narrative poem, deriving a total effect from the

union of its parts, the Lusiad may be considered an epic whole, and

consequently, a poem entirely different in kind from the Metamorphoses

of Ovid, or even the _Divina Comedia_ of Dante. A poetic and epic

grouping of all the great and most interesting events in the annals of

his native country, was what Camoens wished to accomplish. He therefore

very happily selected the event which constitutes the most brilliant

epoch in Portuguese history, as a common keeping point for all the

different parts of his epic picture. The discovery of the passage to

India by Vasco da Gama was certainly not an heroic atchievement in

the usual sense of the term, but in that age, when such adventures

bordered on the incredible, it was a truly heroic enterprize. Camoens

made this event the groundwork of the epic unity of his poem. But

in that unity Vasco da Gama is merely the spindle round which the

thread of the narrative is wound. His dignity, as the leader of his

intrepid countrymen, renders him in some degree conspicuous; but in

other respects he is not distinguished, and the interest of the whole

poem depends no more on him than on his companions. The heroes who

shine with the greatest lustre in the Lusiad, even the Constable,

Nuno Alvarez Pereira, who is the most remarkable among them, are all

introduced in what are styled the episodes. But the Lusiad has in

reality no episode, except the short story of the giant Adamastor.

Another portion of the work, which is commonly called an episode, is

a poetic sketch from the ancient history of Portugal, and belongs as

essentially to the whole as any of the other principal parts of the

great picture. It even occupies nearly one half of the poem. It is

precisely on these parts, called episodes, that the epic grandeur

of the whole composition rests; and in them the finest passages of

the poem occur. Unless the idea of the plan of the Lusiad be rightly

seized, the composition will appear in a false light on whatever side

it may be viewed.

The Lusiad, designated as a whole, may therefore be termed an epic

national picture of Portuguese glory, something greater than a mere

gallery of poetic stories, but less than a perfect epopee. The

principles of the composition are exceedingly simple; but that they may

not be misconceived, it is necessary to understand the epic machinery

of the poem, as the poet himself would have it understood, and as

it was understood in the spirit of the age by his contemporaries.

Camoens was too truly a poet to exclude from his Lusiad the charm of

the marvellous and the co-operation of supernatural beings. But he

was either accidentally less happy than Tasso in the choice of epic

machinery for a modern heroic poem, or he purposely preferred the Greek

mythology as the most beautiful. Nothing prevented him from assigning

the necessary parts in his machinery to the good and bad agents of

popular christian belief; and the subject seems particularly calculated

for such an application as the diffusion of christianity by the

discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese is in the poem itself made

the highest merit of the nation. Camoens, however, appears to have been

of opinion that an epic poem, such as he had planned, should be adorned

with learning, and particularly mythological learning; and besides, by

the introduction of the Greek deities the whole composition seemed

to be raised to the true poetic region of the ancient epopœia. Thus

there remains the singular incongruity of the Greek mythology and the

atchievements of the Portuguese christians, who, on no occasion neglect

to act and discourse in the true spirit of their faith. But in the

mind of Camoens this incongruity was removed by the opinion, which he

shared in common with his contemporaries, that the machinery in epopœia

was merely a poetic figure, and that all the heathen deities might

be introduced as allegorical characters, in modern narrative poetry,

by the same privilege which enables Cupid to retain his place in the

lyric compositions of christian poets, without any theological or

literary offence. Thus Camoens allegorically introduced Olympus into

his poem. The erroneous opinion which misled the poet does not, it is

true, redeem this defect in the poem, though it contributes to cast a

veil over it. But if the reader admits this opinion, which he must do

in order to understand the poet in his own sense, then will even the

offence against taste be found to vanish imperceptibly. This compromise

once made, the whole poem becomes not only singular, but even wonderful

in its singularity, particularly where Vasco da Gama and his companions

sport with Thetis and her nymphs allegorically, and yet in good

earnest; and the historical material begins, as if suddenly ennobled by

magic, to shine in the full light of poetry.

The Lusiad assumes a mythological character immediately after the

introductory stanzas. Vasco da Gama with his squadron has already

doubled the Cape of Good Hope; and steering along the eastern coast

of Africa, he approaches the Indian seas. The gods are then assembled

on Olympus, to deliberate on the fate of India. Venus and Bacchus

form two parties, the former in favour of the Portuguese, and the

latter against them. In this application of the allegory, the poet,

doubtless, gratified his patriotic pride; for Portugal was, even by

the Spaniards, styled the native land of love; and temperance in the

use of wine, was a national virtue of the Portuguese. In order to give

a still higher import to this allegory, Venus is made to consider the

Portuguese as modern Romans, and to entertain for them the same regard

which she formerly extended to the people of ancient Rome: but Bacchus

recollects his expedition in India, and is indignant at the Portuguese,

whose enterprize threatens to eclipse his glory. Among the gods who

declare themselves friendly to the Portuguese, Mars is particularly

conspicuous. Meanwhile Vasco da Gama’s fleet touches at several places

on the coast of eastern Africa. Vasco endeavours to enter into amicable

relations with the King of Mombaza; but Bacchus transforms himself into

a Mahometan priest, and by treacherous tokens of friendship plans the

destruction of the Portuguese in Mombaza. Venus, however, discovers the

treachery in time to prevent it. She appeals to Jupiter. Her prayers

for the Portuguese fleet are heard. Mercury warns Vasco da Gama in a

dream, and Vasco escapes the danger that is prepared for him. He sails

onward to the African kingdom of Melinda. The King of Melinda, though

also a Mahometan, gives a hospitable reception to the Portuguese,

whose courage and national glory excite his warmest admiration. Here

the poet connects the thread of those narratives which have been

erroneously regarded as the episodes of the Lusiad. At the request

of the King of Melinda, Vasco da Gama relates the most interesting

incidents of Portuguese history, and closes his patriotic narrative

with a description of his own voyage up to the period of his arrival

at Melinda. The King of Melinda now becomes the enthusiastic friend

of the Portuguese; and here the second half of the poem commences.

Vasco da Gama proceeds on his voyage with the pilots, who are to shew

him the nearest course to India. Bacchus, however, descends to the

bottom of the sea, and implores the gods and goddesses of Neptune’s

kingdom, to assist him in destroying the Portuguese fleet before it

shall reach India. A dreadful storm arises, and seems to promise the

accomplishment of Bacchus’s wish: but at the critical moment Venus

again rescues her favourites, and the Portuguese arrive in safety at

the kingdom of Calicut, on the coast of Malabar. Vasco da Gama is at

first very favourably received by the Zamorim, or Prince of Calicut.

This opportunity is seized by Camoens to supply a sort of supplement to

the poetic narrative of the events of Portuguese history; for he makes

Paulo da Gama, the brother of the admiral, explain to the Catual, or

Indian governor of Calicut, the historical tapestries and pictures on

board the Portuguese ships. At length, Bacchus, who is not yet weary of

playing the part of a Mussulman, for the annoyance of the Portuguese,

stirs up such a misunderstanding between Vasco da Gama and the Zamorim

of Calicut, that the projected commercial treaty between Calicut and

Portugal is set aside, and the Portuguese fleet is once more exposed

to the risk of destruction. But the grand object of the voyage is now

attained, and Vasco da Gama weighs anchor, and directs his course

back to Europe. During the homeward voyage Venus prepares for the

enterprizing navigators a brilliant festival on an enchanted island in

the great ocean, where goddesses and sea nymphs, wounded by Cupid’s

darts, become enamoured of the Portuguese who land on the island. The

voluptuous magic festival, at which the goddess Thetis, or Tethys,

(for both names denote the same deity), becomes the bride of Vasco da

Gama, affords the poet the last opportunity of completing his picture

of Portuguese national glory; for a prophetic nymph relates the most

conspicuous atchievements of the Portuguese commanders in India, and

Thetis taking Vasco to the top of a high mountain, explains to him on a

magic globe the geographical positions of the different countries.

All the objections which may be urged against an epic composition of

this kind, are so very obvious, that from a mere sketch of the contents

of the Lusiad, it is impossible to conceive how a poet, even of the

most uncommon talents, could form a grand and beautiful whole on a plan

at once so trivial and so irregular. But the plan of the composition of

this poem resembles a scaffolding, which is surrounded and concealed by

the beauty and grandeur of the building; and which serves to connect

the parts in a singular kind of union, yet has no share in producing

the unity of the effect. The unity of effect, and consequently of the

poem, rests wholly and solely on the execution of the plan, out of

which only a poet like Camoens could have created a Lusiad. But the

historian of Portuguese poetry, who is not inclined to concede the just

claims which this poem possesses on the admiration of all ages, must

present to his readers another and a totally different analysis of the

work from that which has just been given. A suitable opportunity will

thus be afforded for more particularly noticing the beauties with which

the Lusiad abounds, and the faults in which it is not deficient.

The introductory stanzas mark with sufficient precision the tone which

the poem maintains to its close. “Arms and the renowned men, who from

the western shore of Lusitania, penetrated beyond Taprobana by seas

never before navigated; who amidst frightful dangers and warfare

accomplished more than could be expected from human powers, and in

a remote region of the world founded and raised a new kingdom: also

the glorious atchievements of those kings, who extended their faith

and their dominion, and spread terror through the wicked regions of

Africa and Asia; and others whose glorious deeds have raised them above

the laws of mortality;” are announced as the objects of the poet’s

strains.[140] Then follows an effusion which has more of a patriotic

than a poetic character, combined with a panegyrical dedication to

King Sebastian, containing no less than sixteen stanzas. The narrative

which commences with the nineteenth stanza opens amidst the course

of the events, and in a truly epic strain.[141] The reader may now

readily perceive that he must not expect to find in the Lusiad a work

written in the spirit and the style of classic antiquity. It betrays

indeed a certain degree of loquacity which seems to run counter to the

effect of the lofty epic. But there is something captivating in the

enthusiasm of the poet’s manner; his patriotism rouses sympathetic

feelings; we expect to find his poem the offspring of an overflowing

heart; we are charmed with the natural, elegant and noble language

of the work; and as soon as the narrative begins, the poetic point

of view seems likewise to be fixed. The mythological machinery which

Camoens conceived to be indispensably necessary to epic dignity, forms

a peculiar kind of ornament, for which indeed the reader is prepared

from the commencement of the poem. The description of the council of

the gods on Olympus, with which the narrative opens, though somewhat

at variance with the ancient costume, is nevertheless pleasing and not

devoid of dignity. Here the poetic spirit of Camoens is evinced in some

picturesque comparisons in which he vies even with Homer. All these

similies bear the impress of the poet’s powers of active perception

and representation. They are neither far fetched nor common, and they

abound in poetic truth and energy.[142] In the forty-fourth stanza,

Vasco da Gama is for the first time mentioned, and in few words

characterized as a man of “proud and lofty spirit, on whom fortune ever

smiled.”[143] But there soon occur passages in which the poetic light

of the representation is totally extinguished.[144] Passages of this

kind are afterwards frequently repeated, and their prosaic dryness is

the more displeasing when contrasted with the deep poetic spirit which

pervades the more beautiful parts of the composition. The description

of the first engagement between the Portuguese of Gama’s fleet and the

treacherous Moors of Mosambique, affords the poet another opportunity

of displaying his talent in picturesque comparison. But it becomes

obvious that this talent must have been formed on the model of Ariosto

rather than on that of Homer. There occur indeed in his representations

of the tumult of the battle, some imitations of Ariostic exuberance,

which do not strictly harmonize with the prevailing style of the

Lusiad.[145]

In the second canto the singularity of the mythological machinery

becomes still more remarkable, when at Mombassa, on the coast of

Africa, Bacchus assumes the disguise of a Christian priest, and on an

enchanted altar goes through the ceremony of the christian worship

for the purpose of deceiving the Portuguese.[146] But the grotesque

application of the machinery in this passage, prepares the mind for

scenes of a similar character, and thus the comic effect of subsequent

parts of the poem is in anticipation softened. The reader who enters

into the spirit of the poet becomes unconsciously accustomed to this

view of the ancient mythology; and he is even soon reconciled to the

incongruity of Vasco da Gama offering up prayers as a christian to

Providence, and those prayers being heard by Venus. The description

of Venus, who once more intercedes with Jupiter in favour of the

Portuguese, resembles Ariosto’s description of Alcina. Here the poet

for the first time evinces his predilection for voluptuous pictures of

beauty. This charming description may be said to possess a nationally

classic character.[147] The speech by which Vasco da Gama’s ambassador

gains the King of Melinda to the interests of the Portuguese is

excellent, and the pompous meeting of the king with Vasco, on board the

Portuguese admiral ship, is elegantly and picturesquely described.

At the commencement of the third canto, a new life is infused into the

poem. But to try this poetic survey of Portuguese history, as it stands

in connection with the whole, by any rule of prosaic verisimilitude,

would be to depart from the poetic spirit of the Lusiad. In order

to understand the narrative which Vasco da Gama relates to the King

of Melinda, it is necessary to possess that knowledge of the events

alluded to, which Camoens presumed every Portuguese to possess, but

which in all probability could not have been possessed by a sovereign

of Melinda. The reader who peruses this narrative without the necessary

knowledge of the history of Portugal, will be incapable of appreciating

many of the most essential beauties of the Lusiad. In so far as Camoens

may be denominated the Portuguese Homer, he is indebted for that title

to the poetic epitome he has given of the history of his country;

and this epitome is a rapid succession of pictures, which flit away

like shadows, before those who are unacquainted with their historical

ground work, for the poet evidently expected readers who would be

gratified to observe how art was capable of elevating the events of

real life to the region of epic invention. This portion of the poem,

which extends from the third to the end of the fifth canto, contains

passages, which in point of classic elegance leave nothing more to be

desired; but even here Camoens has in some instances made an unpoetic

display of his erudition. Previously to the narrative of Vasco da Gama,

the poet speaks in his own character, and patriotically elevates the

Portuguese nation above every other. Vasco’s narrative commences with

a cold geographical enumeration of the different countries of Europe,

in which the Swedes, Danes, Prussians, Russians, and Livonians are

styled _estranha gente_, (strange people) just as a modern traveller

might speak of the Ostiaks and the Samoides. Spain is denominated the

head of Europe, and Portugal the crown of that head.[148] Viewed in

the light of probability, the invectives in which Vasco da Gama at

every opportunity indulges against the Mahometans, must be supposed

offensive to the King of Melinda; but Camoens, in his patriotic

zeal, lost sight of many circumstances which would have claimed the

consideration of any other poet. Among the most beautiful passages

in these three cantos of the Lusiad, may be numbered the tribute to

the memory of Egaz Moniz, the Portuguese Regulus, who, however, ended

his career more happily than the Roman consul;[149] the description

of the battle of Ourique which laid the foundation of the kingdom

of Portugal;[150] the description of the visit of Queen Maria of

Spain to her father the King of Portugal, to implore assistance for

her husband in his contest with the Moors;[151] the relation of the

tragical fate of Inez de Castro, which is the most celebrated of all

the exquisitely beautiful passages in the Lusiad;[152] the description

of the sanguinary battle of Aljuabarrota, the greatest victory the

Portuguese ever gained over the Castilians:[153] and some others,

of the like character, which might still be enumerated. The picture

of the battle of Aljuabarrota excels all the similar descriptions

which occur even in the Lusiad, remarkable as that poem is for such

passages. The valiant Nuno Alvares, who by his eloquence and his

personal authority, no less than by his courage, saved the political

existence of Portugal, shines with such conspicuous lustre at the

head of the Portuguese warriors, that he with far more propriety than

Vasco da Grama might be denominated the hero of the Lusiad, were it a

work which ought to be judged according to the rules usually applied

to epic poetry.[154] Even in this great battle picture, the finest

touches are unquestionably copied from nature, for the poet was no

less in his place amidst the tumult of war than in the more tranquil

region of the Muses.[155] In the continuation of the narrative of

the first discoveries of the Portuguese in the east, the particular

interest which the poet took in allegoric description is again

displayed in a novel manner. The two principal rivers of India, the

Indus and the Ganges, are made to appear to King Emmanuel in a dream

under the personification of two old men. The representation is truly

excellent.[156]

In Vasco da Gama’s narrative of his own voyage, the following passages

must always be particularly distinguished: first, the description of

the farewell to the Portuguese shore:[157] secondly, a sort of didactic

episode, consisting of reflexions made by an old man on the vanity of

human ambition, quite in the spirit of that true poetry which embraces

the whole range of human existence;[158] and thirdly, another kind of

episode which introduces the giant Adamastor, whom Camoens conjured up

from the old world of fable to render him the spirit of the Cape of

Good Hope.[159] In the description of this part of the voyage, Camoens

for the first time uses the freedom of relieving the solemn seriousness

of his narrative by some comic touches. Fernaõ Velloso is the humourist

among the enterprising followers of Vasco da Gama.[160] Camoens also

occasionally breaks the poetic tone of the whole description by

a display of his mythological and historical pedantry, and by his

endeavours to express in a poetic manner things which are totally

unpoetic; as for example, in alluding to the day of the departure of

the fleet, he says:--“When the eternal orb of light had entered the

sign of the Nemæan monster, and when the decaying world in its sixth

age, moved feebly and slowly after having observed the sun’s circuitous

course repeated fourteen hundred and ninety-seven times.”[161] These

deformities sometimes injure the beauty of the finest parts of the poem.

The chief portion of the second half of the poem, from the sixth to

the tenth canto, is thrown into shade by the first half; and the

essential want of a rising interest, weakens the epic character of the

whole. But these last five cantos of the Lusiad abound in classically

beautiful passages; and that kind of unity at which the poet aimed is

on no occasion forgotten. The description of the palace of Neptune

and the sea deities in the depths of the ocean is equally charming

and novel; though it must be allowed that the portrait of Triton

degenerates into the grotesque. In order to omit no opportunity of

interweaving into the composition of the Lusiad whatever might shed a

poetic lustre on the Portuguese name, Camoens makes Velloso, for the

amusement of the ship’s crew, relate the history of the Lusitanian

knights, who according to Portuguese tradition, are called _Os doze de

Inglaterra_ (the twelve of England.) In the description of the storm

which follows, the powerful painting of the dreadful picture once more

reveals the poet who had himself passed through like scenes of danger.

The same stamp of truth is apparent in the succeeding descriptions of

Indian objects, which no great poet, except Camoens, has sketched from

nature. The poem is not injured by the long and energetic apostrophe

to the European powers, with which the seventh canto commences.

According to the view to be taken by a catholic christian, Camoens

was justified in extolling the national glory of Portugal above that

of other christian nations, on the ground that while the Portuguese

by their valour, were extending the dominion of the catholic faith,

and had not, for a considerable period waged war against any of the

European states, those states were contending against each other, and

even in a certain measure against the church of Rome. To strengthen in

some degree the poetic probability by a matter of fact, Camoens has

introduced, at the period when the intercourse between the Portuguese

and the Indian Prince of Calecut commences, a Moor named Monzayde,

whose destiny had actually conducted him over land to India. Through

this mediator, who speaks Spanish, and who finally becomes a christian,

the Indians are made acquainted with the power of the Portuguese and

Spanish arms. This Moor is also the interpreter, who, in the eighth

canto assists Paulo da Gama in explaining the historical pictures

and embroideries to the Indian ambassador. In point of poetic merit,

this supplement to the abstract of the history of Portugal is far

inferior to the narrative in the third and fifth cantos:--but Camoens

could find no other means of accomplishing his purpose; for he was

equally reluctant to omit anything which he conceived to belong to

his pictures of Portuguese national glory, or to crowd too many of

the events of former times into one part of his poem. None of these

historical descriptions, which occupy a large portion of the eighth

canto, form finished pictures; they are mere sketches, and are, in

general, deficient in poetic warmth; but the ninth canto makes ample

amends for this fault. The magic festival, which Venus prepares

to recreate her beloved navigators after the fatigues they have

encountered, is boldly conceived and charmingly executed; and in this

part of the composition the poet’s fancy has revelled with evident

delight. Camoens, like all the Portuguese poets of his age, next to the

indulgence of heroic feeling and all powerful patriotism, was fond of

luxuriantly pourtraying the passion of love. Except the fate of Inez

de Castro, and the atchievements of Nuno Alvarez Pereira at the battle

of Aljubarota, the poet has executed no portion of his poem with such

decided predilection as the visit of the navigators to the enchanted

island; and to no other part of the poem is so much space allotted in

proportion to the whole. The long description of the preparations for

the luxuriant festival, and of the festival itself, which commences

at the eighteenth stanza of the ninth, and extends into the tenth

canto, is full of picturesque beauty. Its great prolixity however,

must, even according to the incorrect plan which Camoens followed, be

accounted a defect in the composition. But the reader, like the poet

himself, soon forgets every thing except the seductive painting, which

sometimes, it must be confessed, only just respects the boundaries of

decorum, which yet upon the whole offends no elevated feeling, and

which has not been surpassed by any later poet in the same style.

The first idea of the island of love, on which Camoens makes Venus

entertain the Portuguese navigators, seems borrowed from Ariosto, but

Ariosto’s description of the magic gardens of Alcina scarcely affords

a groundwork for the scenes and situations in the Lusiad. There is,

however, little room to doubt that Tasso, when he trod in Ariosto’s

footsteps in order to describe the abode of Armida, availed himself

of the description of Camoens. In the tone of frank simplicity with

which the festival is announced, the character of the poet is again

manifested. It is described as merely “a refreshment for restoring the

exhausted strength of the navigators; some interest for those fatigues

which render short life still shorter.”[162] Venus, in her car drawn

by doves, descends from Mount Ida in quest of Cupid. She finds him

with a throng of loves employed in forging arrows. The fuel used in

the process of forging is allegorically and whimsically described to

be human hearts, and the red-hot arrows are cooled in tears. Cupid and

his little deputies are directed to wound a number of goddesses and

sea nymphs, so that every individual on board Vasco da Gama’s fleet,

shall on landing on the magic island, find himself in the situation of

a happy lover. Meanwhile Venus adorns the island with the loveliest

charms of nature.[163] On first landing, the navigators know not

where they are, but they are soon satisfied with the pleasing reality

without concerning themselves about the nature of the miracle which has

transported them to a terrestrial heaven.[164] When the festival is

drawing to a close, the poet for the first time explains the object of

the fiction, by stating it to be an allegorical representation of the

happiness which is the reward of courage and virtue. After this cold

manner of dissolving the enchantment, the unprejudiced reader feels

little interest in the conclusion of the poem. The stanzas in which the

prophetic nymph celebrates the future atchievements of the Portuguese

are historical fragments, the connection of which must be studied in

order to form a just estimate of their poetic merits and demerits. The

geographic supplement which is put into the mouth of Thetis is still

colder, notwithstanding the singular idea of the globe which hovers

in the air, and which exalts the miracle of the geographic lecture.

But thus is the sympathy of the reader the more powerfully excited by

the passage towards the end of the Lusiad, where Camoens speaks of

himself; which he had refrained from doing in the preceding part of

the work. As he approached the close of his labour he was impressed

with the conviction that no earthly happiness awaited him; and now saw

“his years descending, and the transition from summer to autumn near

at hand; his genius frozen by the coldness of fate, and he himself

borne down by sorrow into the stream of black oblivion and eternal

sleep.”[165] His heart then pours fourth the epiphonema of the poem,

consisting of a didactic apostrophe to his sovereign, full of loyalty,

but not less abounding in honest zeal for truth, justice and virtue.

An epic poem so powerfully imbued with intensity of feeling and

character as the Lusiad, naturally calls to mind Dante’s _Divina

Comedia_, and Klopstock’s Messiah. But the Lusiad bears in other

respects no more resemblance to the Messiah, than to every other great

poem in which the beauties make amends for the exercise of indulgence

towards numerous faults. The Lusiad presents a greater similarity to

the work of Dante. Both poems are epic, though neither are epopees in

the strict sense of the term. Both are singular, but truly poetic in

invention; and in both the full stream of purest poetry is incessantly

broken by false learning and various unpoetic excrescences. But with

respect to invention the Divina Comedia is, in its original plan,

trivial, and only becomes grand by the poetic filling up of the vast

divisions of hell, purgatory and heaven: the Lusiad is more poetic in

its outline, but not so rich in its internal parts. Finally, the two

poems are distinguished by the kind of feeling which prevails in each

and by a total difference of style. Dante introduced all the variety

of the terrestrial world, of which he had perfect command, into the

mystic region of a celestial and subterraneous existence, in which he,

as a Christian, placed faith; and the whole plan of his extraordinary

poem has for its object the pious apotheosis of his beloved Beatrice.

Camoens glowed with patriotism and heroism; and to avoid weakening the

patriotic and nationally heroic character of his poem, by the force

of religious interest, he preferred introducing into his terrestrial

fiction the heaven of mythology, because he felt that it afforded him

the finest imagery. Dante’s style is throughout energetic, frequently

rude, and always characteristic of the spirit of the extraordinary

writer, who stood alone, and who in a great measure himself created the

language in which he expressed his feelings. Camoens, like Ariosto, was

wholly the man of his age and his country; a fact which is sufficiently

evident from the delicate and luxuriant style, which he partly borrowed

from Ariosto, and which he only cultivated as far as was necessary for

the expression of the serious epopæia.[166]

* * * * *

The other poetic works of Camoens, appeared even in the eyes of the

poet himself, when compared with the Lusiad, merely secondary effusions

of his feelings and his imagination. It appears, as far as the point

can be ascertained, that he never collected them himself, and many

may therefore be lost. Among those productions which were collected

and published after the death of Camoens, by his admirer Lobo de

Soropita, under the affected title of _Rhythmas_, there are several

which were not printed from the best and latest copies. Some other

poems which escaped the notice of the first collectors, and which

have only been included by modern writers among the miscellaneous

productions of Camoens, may be found in a somewhat different form

among the poems of the pious Diogo Bernardes. This writer, who was a

contemporary and admirer of Camoens, and who was the first among the

celebrated Portuguese poets of that age, to render justice to the

preponderating genius of the author of the Lusiad, is now, in spite of

all his piety, accused of gross plagiarism on that author. The writer

of a general history of modern poetry and eloquence has, however, no

occasion to take part in the controversy respecting these problematic

works; for none of the disputed poems are of a kind which was new in

Portuguese literature; and among the miscellaneous remains of Camoens

are many pieces of similar species, the authenticity of which is

undisputed.[167]

But the miscellaneous poems of Camoens, are calculated to involve the

literary historian in another kind of embarrassment. They are, if

not extremely numerous, at least sufficiently various; and among the

number are many so poetically conceived, and admirably executed, that

to give merely to one of each class of these minor poems that kind of

detailed consideration which it has been thought necessary to bestow

on the Lusiad, would be to incur the risk of converting the history of

Portuguese poetry into a compendium of the history of the poetic works

of Camoens. In every species of poetic composition then practised in

Portugal, Camoens has left specimens of no common merit; and in some of

those species his example has formed and fixed the favourite style for

his native country. Indeed a careful perusal of the various productions

of the author of the Lusiad, is alone sufficient to afford a summary

notion of the whole range of Portuguese poetry in the sixteenth

century. This will account for the preponderating authority still

conceded to the works of this poet in the polite literature of his

country. To that authority Portuguese critics and writers are always

disposed to defer in discussing the merits of any poem; and when they

wish to select a model in any particular kind of poetic composition,

they invariably turn first to the works of Camoens. The predilection

of the Portuguese for the greatest of their poets, has rendered them

unjust towards the merits of others who have not chosen to compose in

his manner. But in the poetry of Camoens the national style is combined

with correctness and elegance, precisely in the manner which suited the

taste of his country: and Portuguese taste has never risen above the

degree of cultivation to which Camoens attained.

In sonnets the fancy of Camoens was particularly prolific. Like Tasso,

he seems throughout the whole of his life to have made it a rule to

compose sonnets as long as he could compose verse. The number of his

sonnets which have been preserved is three hundred and one. Some

appear to be occasional sonnets; and of these several are written in

fictitious names. It is known that, in India, Camoens was frequently

applied to for poetic aid in affairs of the heart; for according to the

spirit of the age a lover could not more elegantly recommend himself

to the good graces of a fair lady than by the composition of a tender

sonnet; and a poet, like Camoens, who was himself so often poetically

occupied with his amatory feelings, would find but little difficulty in

celebrating another lady besides his own mistress. Most of his sonnets

have love for their theme, and they are of very unequal merit: some

are full of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with classic

correctness; others are impetuous and romantic, or disfigured by false

learning, or full of tedious pictures of the conflicts of passion with

reason. Upon the whole, however, no Portuguese poet has so correctly

seized the character of the sonnet as Camoens. Without apparent effort,

merely by the ingenious contrast of the first eight with the six last

fines, he knew how to make these little effusions convey a poetic

unity of ideas and impressions, after the model of the best Italian

sonnets, in so natural a manner, that the first lines or quartets of

the sonnet excite a soft expectation, which is harmoniously fulfilled

by the tercets or six last lines.[168] In this way he has occasionally

imparted a romantically beautiful effect to well known stories in

the sonnet form, by the introduction of a single tender idea at the

close.[169] Among these sonnets there are likewise some of a moral and

religious character.

In the series of the minor poems of Camoens, the sonnets are succeeded

by seventeen _Canções_ (songs) written on the model of Petrarch’s

canzoni. These compositions more particularly prove how deeply Camoens

was penetrated with the spirit of the Petrarchic poetry. They also

display the utmost elegance of language, combined with the soft harmony

of the Italian verse.[170] In these canções, as well as in the other

poems of Camoens, the painting of natural scenery, wherever the lyric

picture embraces it, presents a character of lively perception, which

never could be imitated in the closet by any laboured exercise of the

imagination.[171]

The canções are followed by twelve compositions styled odes. In their

essential characteristics, these pieces are but little distinguished

from the canções, though the object of the poet seems to have been

that they should approximate more nearly to the ancient style. The

structure of the verse corresponds with that which Ferreira and the

Spanish poets, since the time of Luis de Leon, selected for this class

of lyric composition. The bold fancy of Pindar, or the energy of

Horace, is not to be expected in these any more than other Portuguese

and Spanish odes. But Camoens never limited his poetry merely to

sonorous language. The first ode is particularly distinguished for

its beauty. It is addressed to the moon. The idea is mythological,

like all the lofty ideas of Camoens. But in none of his other odes has

the poet so well succeeded in combining the grace of antiquity with a

romantic tenderness of feeling free from every trace of affectation.

The commencement is in the pure ode style. The poet invokes his muse

to stem “the current of lovers’ tears, and attired in a rich and gay

robe to do homage to the goddess who converts night into day.” He then

addresses the goddess of the moon herself, she “whose silver beam

penetrates the thick clouds, and prevents night from obscuring the

image which love traces and re-traces in his heart; she whose pure

forehead is crowned and encircled with stars; she who strews the plains

with roses and with flowers, created by spring through her heavenly

influence.”[172] But a still finer passage occurs at the conclusion of

the ode, where the poet bids farewell to night, “the silent friend whom

he obeys; and, that she may listen to his complaints, presents to her

roses and fresh amaranth still wet with the tears of the fair bride of

the jealous Titan.”[173]

The odes are followed by some _Sextinas_, the artificial beauty of

which Camoens has not failed to render pleasing. His one-and-twenty

elegies are, however, more worthy of particular attention. Next

to the Lusiad these compositions may in general be numbered among

the longer poems of the author, and also among those in which the

poet is most frequently represented in his real character as a man.

Camoens had, however, no correct notion of the elegiac style. Like

Ferreira, he blended it with the epistolary. But such a junction is no

less detrimental to the tenderness than to the unity of the elegiac

character, and in general deprives elegy of half its poetic interest.

Were the language less copious and facund, this method of confounding

the boundaries of the elegiac and the epistolary styles, would be

still more striking. But the harmonious softness and rich flow of the

expression, even where it approaches to prolixity, establish, at least,

in a certain degree, a unity of character among the heterogeneous

ingredients of which the elegy of Camoens is composed.[174] The feeble

and tedious passages are readily overlooked, as they are amply

counterbalanced by others possessing real elegiac beauty:[175] and the

occasional deficiencies of these elegies in the poetry appropriate to

their class, are compensated by the inappropriate, in which the poetic

character of Camoens is every where prominent. The romantic soul of the

unfortunate poet is completely unveiled in his elegiac compositions.

His earliest productions in this class were written in his youth, when

he was exiled to Belem; the others are expressive of the feelings

which he experienced in his oriental voyages and adventures. There

he fondly cherished recollections of the tranquil happiness which he

persuaded himself he had enjoyed in his native country, though he had

indignantly abandoned it as a place to existence in which he could not

be reconciled. The common fate of humanity, which, independently of his

personal circumstances, he always viewed profoundly and poetically, was

in India more than ever present to his imagination; and in his elegies

he has poured forth, without restraint, all the feelings of his heart.

Thus is sympathy more powerfully excited by these compositions than by

many of the same class, the beauties of which are of a less prosaic

character. No other works of the poet so irresistibly command the

reader’s regret for his misfortunes, and love for him as a man.

A few poems, widely differing from each other in character, are

printed under the common title of _estancias_, (stanzas) because they

are all composed in Italian octaves. Camoens seems to have felt that

in Portuguese, as in Italian, this measure was, in universality of

application, nearly equivalent to the Greek hexameter, because it was

capable of being united and blended with most of the romantic poetic

forms, in the same manner as that hexameter with the different styles

of ancient poetry. The three first poems which occur under the title of

_estancias_, are truly poetic epistles, and at the same time faithful

mirrors of the character and principles of the poet. Through them

Camoens, in a spirit of fervent loyalty, but with a no less honest zeal

for truth and justice, addresses useful advice to his sovereign. The

estancias which immediately succeed these epistles, are glosses in the

Spanish manner on two of the author’s own sonnets. A tender epistle

addressed to a lady, is the subject of the next: and the last estancias

form an epic legend, which, with some alterations, also appears among

the works of Bernardes. It is founded on the history of St. Ursula.

Whether this epic legend be really the production of Camoens, or of

his admirer Bernardes, it far excels Ferreira’s similar talc of St.

Colomba, though the materials are less poetic.

Among the miscellaneous poems of Camoens, the eclogues occupy a

considerable space, particularly if we include those of which Bernardes

claimed to be the author. Much care appears to have been taken to give

them an elegant polish. By the Portuguese they are regarded as models;

and according to the received idea of the modern eclogue, particularly

in Spain and Portugal, they certainly deserve that distinction. But

with all their unquestionable merits, they do not reach the pure

eclogue style of Saa de Miranda. The rural character which they ought

to possess, is besides much impaired, in consequence of Camoens having,

like Ferreira, employed the bucolic form merely to give a poetic

interest to events borrowed from real life. This indeed was a custom

which had been more or less followed in Portuguese poetry since the

time of Ribeyro, and of which even Saa de Miranda did not disdain to

avail himself. But those Portuguese poets who endeavoured to form

their eclogue style after Saa de Miranda, were in general content with

pastoral names and pastoral scenes, when they wished to throw a bucolic

disguise over known characters and events; and thus the spirit of

pastoral poetry often entirely vanished in those compositions in which

its form was most ostentatiously displayed. The eclogues of Camoens

partake of this essential fault. Still, however, they are sufficiently

pleasing even without the aid of the historical key, with which the

reader would doubtless willingly dispense. The descriptive passages

are in general the best. In the expression of sentiment these eclogues

perfectly resemble the sonnets, canções, and similar poems with which

in reality they constitute one species. Passages in the Spanish

language are occasionally interspersed.

In the collected works of Camoens, a separation is made of his poems

in the Italian style and the Italian syllabic measure, from those

which are composed in redondilhas, and which afford examples of an

improved national style. In this style also he has enriched every

species of poetic composition practised in Portugal and Spain. Much

and justly celebrated are the redondilhas in which he poured forth

the inmost feelings of his soul, on his return from Macao to Goa,

after he had narrowly escaped death by shipwreck.[176] The number of

his smaller poems, in all the possible forms of the old lyric style,

proves how much, as a poet, he was attached to his native country.

Romantic, gallant and comic plays of fancy and wit, glossed mottos

in the Spanish style, voltas[177] in the genuine Portuguese manner,

and other poetic trifles in the Portuguese and Spanish languages,

appear to have been dealt out at every opportunity with a profuse

hand by Camoens. In these compositions he paid no rigid attention to

the correctness and elegance of the ideas, and indeed no mental sport

of this kind seems to have been too homely for him. He even composed

in honour of a lady, a romantic mythological _a b c_ in redondilhas,

in which, in correspondence with the initial letters, the names

Artemisia, Cleopatra, Dido, Eurydice, Phædra, (spelt Fedra, according

to the Italianized orthography of Camoens) Galatæa, &c. are played

on in succession. But in some of these compositions, the simplicity

and amenity of the old lyric style are combined with a peculiar

grace, which alternately defies[178] and disarms[179] the severity of

criticism.

The same national spirit which prevented the patriotic Camoens from

rejecting the old lyric forms of the Portuguese poetry, induced him to

write several dramas, and thus to leave no kind of poetic composition

unattempted. It is not known at what period of his life these dramatic

works were produced; but it is probable that they were written

previously to his departure for India. They belong more completely to

the age of Camoens than to the poet himself. They are, however, highly

deserving of attention, though they should be merely considered as the

last proofs of the poetic versatility and plastic genius of an author

who comprised his whole age within himself, as far as a Portuguese

national poet could accommodate himself to his age. Camoens was too

much a poet to wish to supplant the national drama of his native

country, however rude it then might be, by a prosaically modelled

imitation of the ancient drama. He adhered to the party formed by the

Spanish dramatist Naharro, and his ingenious countryman Gil Vicente.

But his determination to dramatic poetry was not sufficiently decided

to enable him to fix, by his productions, the taste of the Portuguese

nation. Had the genius which animates the Lusiad, taken a dramatic

direction, Camoens would have been the Calderon of Portugal, before

a Lope de Vega had arisen in Spain. But Camoens in the composition of

his dramas contented himself with slightly overstepping the bounds

of Gil Vicente’s manner, and with refining, also, only in a slight

degree, the construction of the plot and the language. The rudest of

the three dramas, which are now attached as a supplement to the other

works of the author, is, _El Rey Seleuco_, (King Seleucus) a singular

production, founded on the well known anecdote of the history of that

monarch, who resigned his wife Stratonice to his son Antiochus, lest

the youth should fall a sacrifice to the passion of love. Camoens seems

to have had no idea of treating this delicate subject in a sentimental

way. The burlesque prelude or prologue, as it is called, in prose, is

calculated to raise the expectation of a farce rather then of a serious

drama. The theatrical manager, a lad who acts as his servant, a man of

condition, who presents himself as a spectator, and his _escudeiro_,

(attendant) are the characters in this prologue. The manager’s servant

is the _gracioso_ of the piece, and his jokes are at least so far

useful that they afford an idea of the kind of wit which was at that

time relished by the fashionable world in Lisbon. The drama itself,

to which this prologue is the introduction, is entitled a comedy in

the Spanish acceptation of the term, and is likewise denominated an

_auto_, probably because royal personages are brought upon the scene,

a circumstance which according to the Portuguese notions of poetry

in that age elevated the piece above a mere comedy. The historical

material is moulded according to the romantic forms; the composition

is not only inartificial but trivial; and in the execution the

ludicrous is quite as prevalent as the comic. The king and queen first

enter, to converse on the melancholy state of the prince, and the

king takes the opportunity of lamenting that he is no longer young

enough for so fair a consort. The prince next appears attended by his

pages, to whom he complains of his passion, but without naming the

beloved object. The king and queen in vain endeavour to ascertain the

cause of the prince’s grief, and orders are given to prepare a bed

for him. A bed is introduced on the stage, and a chamber-maid who is

engaged in making it, is surprised by her lover in disguise, who is a

_porteiro_ (usher) of the castle. This scene is altogether an interlude

in the romantic style. The prince again enters, and after many tender

complaints betakes himself to bed. A band of music arrives to sooth

him while he reposes. One of the musicians named Alexander de Fonseca,

enters into conversation with the usher and a page, concerning the

melancholy of the prince. With the consent of the prince the usher

sings a romance, and the queen again enters with an attendant. Various

scenes thus succeed each other, until the physician by feeling the

prince’s pulse, discovers the secret. The catastrophe is merely a

representation of the dose of the anecdote, without any reference to

the queen, who is resigned by the father to the son, like an article

of household furniture. The physician in this comedy is a Spaniard. He

is made a native of Castile in order that one of the characters might

speak Spanish, and thus introduce a variety into the dialogue which it

appears was agreeable to a Lisbon audience. The dialogue is in other

respects natural, and the versification in redondilhas is pleasing

and not devoid of elegance. But there is not a single excellent scene

to compensate for the grotesque frivolity of the composition. It is

impossible to consider this work as any thing else than a mere juvenile

essay of such a poet as Camoens.

The second comedy of Camoens, _Os Amphitryões_, (the Amphitryons),

was, however, a valuable contribution to the dramatic literature of

Portugal. The merit of the invention of this purely comic piece,

belongs indeed to Plautus, whose Amphitryon Camoens has freely

imitated. But even the imitation must have marked an epoch in the

history of the dramatic literature of Portugal, had the public been

inclined to favour so happy a combination of the national and ancient

forms. Any one unacquainted with the Amphitryon of Plautus would regard

the Portuguese comedy as an original. The whole story of the piece

is modernized without weakening the comic force of the situations.

Jupiter indeed remains unchanged; but Mercury who attends him in his

disguise, performs the servant in the true Portuguese style. Amphitryon

is a sea captain, according to the Portuguese idea of that character.

The servant of Amphitryon is converted into a perfect gracioso, who

speaks Spanish, but still retains the name of Sosia. The humour of

the burlesque scenes in which Sosia appears, is heightened by making

Mercury, who converses with Jupiter in Portuguese, always speak

Spanish, when he plays his part as the pseudo Sosia. It would be worth

while to ascertain whether this pleasant comedy is ever performed in

Lisbon.

_Filodemo_, the third comedy of Camoens, is one of those dramatized

novels, of which the Spanish theatre afterwards afforded many examples.

It is not a drama of intrigue, but a variegated collection of grave

and half comic scenes, which are combined together as a whole by their

common reference to the result of a singular event. That event is the

saving of two twins, a boy and a girl, whose mother is a princess of

Denmark. A shepherd finds the twins and brings them up. Shepherds and

shepherdesses, gentlemen and ladies, a waiting woman, a hunter, and

other characters of a similar kind, form the romantic groupe. The scene

is sometimes in town in the open streets, or within a house; sometimes

in the country, and among barren mountains. The denouement is the

most trivial part of the whole composition. It is brought about by a

shepherd initiated in the art of magic, who, by his necromantic skill,

discovers the parentage of the twins, and by this discovery removes the

obstacles which impede the happy issue of two parallel love stories.

In this drama Camoens has interspersed, and evidently not without

design, scenes in prose among scenes in verse. In conformity with his

inclination to unite all manners, he was desirous of approximating

to the party, which on the pretext of adhering strictly to nature

endeavoured to banish verse from Portuguese comedy. He accordingly

gives the dialogue in prose where the conversation is entirely of a

popular character; and whenever the style becomes somewhat elevated,

redondilhas are again introduced. Some of the shepherds speak Spanish,

and among them a lad who is the _bobo_ (buffoon) of the piece. Thus

it would appear that Camoens in all his dramas, sought to exercise

the right of retaliation upon the Spanish poets, who were fond of

making their _gracioso_, or buffoon, express himself in Galician or

Portuguese. The jokes in the Spanish language which Camoens has in this

instance put into the mouth of his gracioso, would be sufficiently

unpolished even if they were less broad and spiritless.[180]

MONTEMAYOR.

From Camoens, whose name now becomes a waymark for the whole domain

of Portuguese poetry, the historian of that poetry cannot properly

revert to the classic school of Ferreira, without previously reviving

the recollection of Jorge de Montemayor, who was a contemporary of

Camoens and Ferreira. The history of the life and writings of this

excellent poet, belongs indeed rather to the literature of Spain than

to that of Portugal.[181] But the spirit of the pastoral romance of

Diana, by which Montemayor gained immortal fame, is in fact the spirit

of Portuguese poetry transfused into the Spanish language. Without

being an imitator of Ribeyro,[182] Montemayor followed in the same

path with the same kind of susceptibility to impressions. But the

cultivated delicacy of his feeling, and the romantic enthusiasm of his

imagination, rendered him the first poet who enlarged and dignified the

plain antiquated form of the Portuguese pastoral romance. He renewed

and riveted the old link of connection between the Spanish and the

Portuguese poetry. Had he confined himself to writing in his native

tongue, he would probably have been succeeded by a Portuguese Gil

Polo;[183] and the romantic pastoral poetry of the Portuguese would

then have remained single in its kind. But Montemayor composed verses

in the Portuguese language only for the sake of variety, and not with

the view of extending the sphere of Portuguese poetry.[184]

CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF SAA DE MIRANDA AND ANTONIO FERREIRA.

The comparatively correct style of poetry introduced into Portuguese

literature by Saa de Miranda, and the still more coldly correct style

of Antonio de Ferreira, though favoured by that portion of the polite

world which valued a reputation for learning, were but little esteemed

by the great bulk of the public. The poets of this sect may fairly

be said to constitute a classical school, without thereby admitting

them to an equal rank with the incorrect men of genius whose irregular

effusions could scarcely fail to possess more poetic character, than

other works which are now to be noticed; such, for example, as the

poems of Andrade Caminha, who formed himself entirely on the model

of Ferreira. The efforts made by the poets of this classic school to

attain the correctness of the ancients seem to have checked their

powers of fancy, and it may be presumed that imaginations which were so

easily repressed, could not be very creative and energetic. Those who,

like some modern German writers would, in defiance of every rule of

language, render genius the measure of classic excellence, must find a

new term to designate that poetry, the greatest merit of which is the

elegant perfection and pure rounding of poetic forms after the example

of the ancients. This, which is in other respects an inferior style

of poetry, is nevertheless held in consideration by all cultivated

nations. To reject it as altogether worthless would indeed be very

unjust, since it serves to shew how judgment, talent, and taste, can by

the study of ancient models, produce, even without the aid of genius,

a certain kind of poetic beauty, which is not unmeritorious, though it

frequently presents scarcely a shadow of that pure and sublime beauty

which is the offspring of real genius. Poetry of this kind is therefore

styled classical, merely in reference to a certain degree of affinity

which its forms bear to the classical forms of Greek and Roman art.

ANDRADE CAMINHA.

One of the warmest friends, admirers and imitators of Ferreira, was

Pedro de Andrade Caminha, _Camareiro_ (gentleman of the chamber)

at the court of the Infante Dom Duarte, brother to King John III.

He survived his friend Ferreira six-and-twenty years. During his

life his poems seem rather to have been esteemed by a small circle

of connoisseurs and dilettanti, than to have been favourites with

the public. Thus it happened that at that period they were only

circulated in manuscript, and that afterwards, with the exception of a

few which had been admitted into spiritual collections, they totally

disappeared; they have, however, been recently discovered, and have

been printed at the expense of the Portuguese Royal Society.[185]

Andrade Caminha seems to have had no notion of any thing more perfect

in poetic composition than the works of his friend Ferreira, who,

however, barely avoided the dangerous boundary where poetry ends and

versified prose begins. Caminha’s compositions in elegant verse are,

however, still more deficient in genuine poetry, than the works of

Ferreira, and indeed they can scarcely be termed poems. His eclogues

are cold, and their coldness is the more striking, as they are intended

to express forcibly the language of romantic love. His epistles are

better deserving of attention. They possess just about as much poetic

warmth as is necessary to maintain the character of didactic poems.

In these epistles Caminha, as a painter of manners and a moralist,

alternately describes and reasons energetically and without pedantry

in the style of Ferreira, and his unassuming manner gives more effect

to the agreeable colouring of that style.[186] But Andrade Caminha is

by no means so rich in ideas as Ferreira. He limits the circle of his

free reflections, by constant reference to the relations in which he

lived. In the epistles to his brother, and in those to Ferreira, he,

however, indulges in a more unconstrained expression of feeling.[187]

Of all these epistles, the seventeenth, in which he inveighs against

impertinent critics, possesses most didactic merit.[188] Andrade

Caminha seems to have supposed that he possessed a particular talent

for elegiac poetry. Twenty of the elegies he composed are still

preserved, exclusive of many songs of complaining love in redondilhas,

to which the title of elegies is likewise given. But the sorrow

for the death of the royal personages and ingenious friends, which

is lavished in the first half of Caminha’s elegies, and the tender

anguish occasioned by the inexorableness of his beloved Phyllis, which

appears in the second half, seldom rouses any poetic sympathy in the

reader, notwithstanding the beauty of language with which the sorrow

and anguish are expressed. In some of the elegies to Phyllis, the

descriptions of natural scenery possess considerable merit.[189]

But the most remarkable of all Caminha’s works are his epitaphs

and epigrams, of which no Portuguese poet has bequeathed so many

to posterity. His _Epitafios_ which amount to eighty-one, and his

_Epigrammas_ which exceed two hundred and fifty in number, are almost

all written in octave verse. In these little pictures of reflection and

sentiment, which derive so much of their value from correctness and

elegance, a limited fancy aided by solid taste is capable of rising

above the level of prose. The labour which Andrade Caminha bestowed

on the composition of his epitaphs and epigrams, sufficiently proves

that he felt what was his proper vocation at the foot of Parnassus.

But even there he could not travel without a guide, and the spirit of

his age induced him to choose Ausonius for his conductor. He had, like

Ausonius, sufficient talent for the proper keeping of the tenderness,

precision and energy which distinguish the serious epigram of the

Greeks; but in his imitation of the style of the Greek epigram, he

missed the refined correctness of Ausonius by confounding poetic with

prosaic simplicity. Of the eighty-one epitaphs which Caminha composed

in honour of celebrated and exalted individuals, not one can claim an

equal rank with the best ancient productions of the same kind. In most

of them the reader finds only dry encomiums accompanied by trivial

reflections.[190] In others the ideas rise but very little above the

level of the commonest observation.[191] In Caminha’s epitaphs the

result of the epigrammatic compound of the ideas, where he wishes to be

uncommon, has sometimes a singularly frigid effect; as, for example,

when speaking of the hero Affonso d’Albuquerque, he pompously says: “He

sprang from kings, he honoured kings, and he subdued kings.”[192] Even

the language of powerful feeling sinks, as in the epitaph on Ferreira,

beneath the common place of the reflections.[193] The serious epigrams

are more ingenious, though even they are, for the most part, merely

agreeable plays of fancy.[194] In some the formality of the diction

produces a very happy effect; in others the epigrammatic expression of

feeling displays an astonishing degree of romantic intensity;[195] a

few are truly excellent.[196] To this last class, however, the comic

epigrams of Caminha do not belong. A truly comic turn of thought is

scarcely ever to be found in them, and it is only occasionally that

they betray a poignant conceit.[197] But it must be acknowledged that

a poet of more fertile fancy would find it difficult to write nineteen

strictly comic epigrams on an ugly face, (_a uma feissima_.)

BERNARDES.

Diogo Bernardes was the friend of Andrade Caminha, and like him an

admirer and disciple of Ferreira. He was capable of receiving more

lively impressions than Caminha, and he passed less tranquilly through

life. At first he only endeavoured to distinguish himself as a poet,

and he succeeded in gaining a degree of celebrity in his native town

Ponte de Lima, whence he is called the poet of Lima. He then wished to

become the historian of his native country, but in this undertaking

he did not experience the support on which he had calculated. It is

probable that he became intimately acquainted with Ferreira at the

court of Lisbon. Desirous of entering upon a life of active occupation,

he visited the court of Philip II. at Madrid, where he resided for

some time in quality of secretary to the Portuguese embassy. Fate at

length involved him in the unfortunate expedition of King Sebastian.

After fighting valiantly in the battle of Alcacer Seguer in Africa,

he was made prisoner by the victorious Moors. During his captivity he

composed several elegies and spiritual songs. On recovering his freedom

he returned to his native country where he lived until the year 1596.

Since his death he has been the object of severe animadversion, owing

particularly to the supposition, which has already been noticed, of

his having appropriated to himself some poems of Camoens. But were

there no reason to doubt the fact of this plagiarism, Bernardes has

sufficiently suffered for it in the esteem of posterity, by the unjust

depreciation of his poetic talent in the critical writings of some

Portuguese authors of the seventeenth century, more particularly in

those of Manoel de Faria e Sousa, with whom this tone of criticism

originated. In the eighteenth century, however, justice was rendered

both to him and to Ferreira.[198] Without striking out a new course in

poetry, and indeed without paying any rigid regard to the distinction

between poetry and prose, Bernardes evinces a far greater share of

poetic feeling than Ferreira; and, as a poet, if not as an elegant

versifier, he is far superior to Andrade Caminha. His spiritual poems

are among the very best in the class to which they belong. The title

which he gave them, namely:--“Miscellaneous poems to the good Jesus,

and the glorious Virgin his mother, &c.”[199] is quite in the spirit

of the poetry of the catholic religion. But Bernardes was not capable

of viewing catholic Christianity on its only true poetic side, that is

to say, the bold character of a miraculous working faith. He confined

himself to the representation of the inconceivable grace of the

Saviour, of the anguish of heart which the sinner should feel in the

deep consciousness of his unworthiness, and of similar dogmata, which

certainly may be expressed in poetic phrases, but which unavoidably

fetter the imagination, and convert even hymns into litanies.[200] It

is only through a pious childishness of feeling, to which catholic

Christianity gives birth, that some portion of poetic life has been

imparted to the spiritual songs, sonnets, and estancias of Bernardes.

That feeling led him to introduce into his sonnets to the holy virgin,

a mixture of romantic love; for example, when the poet complains to the

virgin that he loves something beside herself;[201] or, when he admires

her beauty in a picture, and reflects how beautiful she herself must

be. The spiritual songs in the popular style, which are included among

the works of Bernardes, are written in Spanish. The temporal songs,

elegies, and sonnets of this poet, have the same soft and infantine

character, and are therefore not inappropriately presented to the

public as an appendix to his pictures of spiritual feeling.[202] A few

elegies which he composed during his captivity among the Moors,[203]

and some _endechas_ in the old national style,[204] belong to this

class. Bernardes has also left behind him eclogues, epistles, and

numerous sonnets. His epistles shew the veneration he entertained for

the critical judgment of Ferreira, whose cold style, however, certainly

could not please him.[205] Many of his sonnets are expressive of the

homage with which he submitted his poetry to the judgment of Ferreira,

as he did his faith to the doctrines of the church. The elegy in which

he laments the death of Ferreira may, therefore, be numbered among his

sincerest effusions of the heart.[206]

CORTEREAL.

In the same school of correct poetry with Andrade Caminha and

Bernardes, arose the ingenious Jeronymo Cortereal, another of those

chivalrous spirits of the sixteenth century, for whom every ordinary

sphere of life was too limited. Ambitious of doing honour to his

country and his distinguished family, he served in the Portuguese army

against the infidels in Asia and Africa. He afterwards settled on his

estate near Evora. In his residence, which was situated on a hill, and

surrounded by rude precipices, and which commanded an extensive view

of the surrounding country, he devoted himself to poetic composition;

and sometimes, for the sake of variety, turned his attention to

music and painting. This romantic abode of the muses charmed even

the cold-hearted Philip II. of Spain, when he visited his kingdom

of Portugal. Cortereal, who on that occasion, rendered homage to the

new sovereign in verse, had previously often been unfaithful to his

native tongue. He is included in the number of those Spanish poets, who

indefatigably but vainly vied with each other to convert historical

art into epic art, and to produce a Spanish national epopee.[207]--He

related in Spanish verse and in a poem of fifteen cantos, the history

of the battle of Lepanto, which has given occasion to so much Spanish

poetry of every description. In the Portuguese language, he wrote two

poems of a similar kind, which, at the time of their production were

very much esteemed. The subject of one is the siege of the Portuguese

garrison of Diu in India, which was valiantly defended by the Governor,

Mascarenhas. In the other of these works Cortereal relates in the

same style, the hapless story of Manoel de Souza and his wife, who on

their return from India were shipwrecked on the coast of Africa, and

who after wandering about for a considerable time, perished among the

savages. To impart poetic decoration to prosaic events of this kind,

borrowed from the history of the period, was the prevailing fashion of

the day in Spain and Portugal; and to banish such narrations from the

region of poetry, was an idea that never suggested itself to any poet,

still less to the public.[208]

OTHER PORTUGUESE POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--FERREIRA DE

VASCONCELLOS; RODRIGUEZ DE CASTRO; LOBO DE SOROPITA; &c.

Unconnected with this classical school, which became extinct about the

close of the sixteenth century, several Portuguese poets pursued their

own course, nearly in the same manner as Camoens, though not with the

same success. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, for example, a man of

considerable acquirements, who held a distinguished post in Lisbon,

rendered himself celebrated as the writer of several comedies which

were much esteemed. He was also the author of a new romance of the

Round Table.[209]

At a somewhat later period lived Estevam Rodriguez de Castro, a poet,

and at the same time a learned physician, who was invited to Italy by

the grand duke of Tuscany. He is the author of various sonnets, odes

and eclogues.

Fernando Rodriguez Lobo de Soropita, the publisher of the miscellaneous

poems of Camoens, likewise belongs to this age. Besides his juridical

works, he was the author of various pieces of humour in verse.

The present opportunity may be taken to mention the latin verses, which

were at this period still current in Portugal, and by the composition

of which, men of education, and even men in office of the first rank,

endeavoured to obtain a place near the ancient classics, without

interfering with the poets who adhered to their vernacular tongue. The

learned statesman Miguel de Cabedo de Vasconcellos, who resided for

several years in France, was particularly distinguished as a writer

of latin verse. Ancient literature seems, at this time, to have had a

powerful influence on the education of the Portuguese nobility; and as,

at this period, all the most celebrated Portuguese poets belonged to

noble families, it cannot be doubted that, the invisible link between

the Portuguese and latin poetry, was then much stronger than the

visible one, which never can be mistaken in the works of these poets.

To enumerate the remaining names of the Portuguese poets of the age

of Camoens, is a task which must be resigned to the writer, whose

object it may be to pursue more minutely the details of this particular

department of literature. Another Portuguese classic of the sixteenth

century, must, however, be included among the number of those poets,

who, in a general history of modern poetry and eloquence, are the more

worthy to be placed in a conspicuous light, in proportion as they are

little celebrated beyond the confines of their native land.

RODRIGUEZ LOBO.

That Portuguese writers, who, in other instances have shewn themselves

so careful in the collection of biographic details, should be almost

silent respecting the life of such a poet as Francisco Rodriguez

Lobo, is a circumstance only to be explained by one of those sports

of fortune, through which in literature, as in life, honour is often

withheld from the most deserving, and lavished on the worthless.

Rodriguez Lobo was also a poet of noble extraction; but nothing is

known respecting the history of his life, except that he was born in

the town of Leiria, in Portuguese Estremadura, about the middle of the

sixteenth century; that by talent and industry he distinguished himself

at the university, and afterwards spent the chief portion of his life

in the country; and finally, that, in the passage of the Tagus, he

perished in that river which in his poetry he had often celebrated in

terms of romantic admiration. His remains were interred in the chapel

of a convent not far distant from the spot, where the current of the

stream cast his body on shore.[210]

To no other poet, after Saa de Miranda, Ferreira and Camoens, are the

language and literature of Portugal so much indebted as to Rodriguez

Lobo, with whom, indeed, the history of Portuguese eloquence may

be said to commence. He so highly improved romantic prose in the

Portuguese language, and laid so excellent a foundation for a pure

prose style, that in endeavouring to attain classic perfection in that

department of composition, later writers have merely followed in the

same course. His verse is no way inferior to his prose; and with all

his classical refinement he was not, like Ferreira, a poet of limited

imagination. Of all the Portuguese poets, Rodriguez Lobo is, in every

respect, entitled to the place next in rank to Saa de Miranda and

Camoens. His great erudition did not prevent him from being completely

imbued with poetic natural feeling, and in pictures drawn from the

romantic arcadian world his fancy was inexhaustible. It is indeed only

where his descriptions have a pastoral colouring that he is perfectly

in his poetic sphere. But within that sphere he occasionally draws

resources from practical good sense with a degree of adroitness which

is displayed by no previous Portuguese poet.

The writings of Rodriguez Lobo are susceptible of three divisions which

approximate to each other. To the first belongs his prose work:--“the

Court in the Country,” in which no verses are introduced. Three

connected pastoral romances form the second and most considerable

portion; here the prose is merely a beautiful combining link by

which the work is made a whole. The third comprises the author’s

miscellaneous poems.