[436] Antonio Vieira, _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 24: _esta
historia era o silencio de todas as historias_.
[437] _O primeiro Portugues que na nossa lingoa as [façanhas]
resuscitei._ João de Barros, in his preface, makes a similar claim:
_foi o primeiro_.
[438] Cf. vi. 37, 38; vii. 77, 78; or vi. 100, where the ships
bristling with the enemy’s arrows are likened to porcupines.
[439] 1496, the generally accepted year of his birth, is the
calculation of Severim de Faria, followed by Barbosa Machado, Nicolás
Antonio, &c. As he retired at the end of 1567 it is difficult not to
suspect (from his love of method and the decimal system) that he was
born in 1497--the year of Vasco da Gama’s expedition.
[440] 400,000 _réis_. He also obtained the privilege of trading with
India free from all taxes so as to clear a profit of 1,600,000 _réis_.
Innocencio da Silva adds ‘yearly’ to this sum, mentioned by Severim de
Faria. In any case Barros’ complaints of his poverty seem misplaced.
[441] Faria e Sousa (_Varias Rimas_, pt. 2 (1689), p. 165), says that
neither Lopez de Castanheda nor Barros was widely read, one of the
reasons being the length of their histories.
[442] According to Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo (_Dialogo em defensam
da lingua portvgvesa_) Barros ‘is in Venice preferred to Ptolemy’.
[443] His account of the fleet leaving Lisbon (I. v. 1) _is_ that of an
eyewitness.
[444] _Mais trabalhamos no substancial da historia que no ampliar as
miudezas que enfadam e não deleitam_ (I. vii. 8). Cf. I. v. 10 (1778
ed., p. 465); III. ix. 9 (p. 426); III. x. 5 (p. 489). Yet the vivid
light thrown by the details recorded in other writers, such as the
‘bushel of sapphires’ sent to Albuquerque by one of the native kings,
or the open boat drifting with a few Portuguese long dead and a heap of
silver beside them, is of undeniable value. Goes inserts details, but
is too late a writer to do so without apology, like Corrêa and Lopez
de Castanheda: _pode parecer a algũa pessoa_ [e. g. his friend Barros]
_que em historia grave nam eram necessarias estas miudezas_ (_Cron. do
Pr. D. Joam_, cap. cii).
[445] e.g. the following mortar of conjunctions between the stones on
p. 335 of _Decada_ II (1777 ed.) opened at hazard: _nas quaes ... que
... que ... qual ... que ... como ... que ... que ... o qual ... cujos
... que ... que ... que ... posto que ... como ... porque ... que_.
[446] _E sendo eu moço servindo a El Rey D. João na guardaroupa_
(_Dec._ IV. iii. 8). In _Dec._ VII. viii. 1 he speaks of having served
João III for two years as _moço da camara_ (1555-7). In the same
passage he embarks for India in 1559 aged _fifteen_. In _Dec._ VII. ix.
12 (1783 ed. p. 396) he is eighteen (April 1560).
[447] According to the Governor, Francisco Barreto, he was more at home
with arms than with prices (_Dec._ IX. 20, 1786 ed., p. 160). Another
passage in the _Decadas_ proves him to have been an excellent horseman.
[448] Cf. _Dec._ IV. iii. 8 (1778 ed. p. 234).
[449] He himself describes with great detail and pathos the wrecks of
the ships _N. Senhora da Barca_ (VII. viii. 1), _Garça_ (VII. viii.
12), _S. Paulo_ (VII. ix. 16), _Santiago_ (X. vii. 1), as well as that
of Sepulveda (_Dec._ VI. ix. 21, 22). In his account of the loss of
the _S. Thomé_ (which was printed in the _Historia Tragico-Maritima_,
in the _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima_, and no doubt in the lost eleventh
_Decada_), the separation of D. Joana de Mendoça from her child is one
of the most tantalizing and touching incidents ever penned.
[450] _Não particularizo ninguem_ (_Dec._ XII. i. 7).
[451] What he lacks in _gravidade_ (cf. _Dec._ X. x. 14)--he is
quite ready to admit that he writes _toscamente_ (VII. iii. 3),
_singelamente, sem ornamento de palavras_ (VI. ii. 3), _simplesmente,
sem ornamento nem artificio de palavras_ (V. v. 6)--he makes good by
directness as an eyewitness, _de mais perto_ (IV. i. 7; cf. IV. x. 4
_ad init._). When he had not himself been present he preferred the
accounts of those who had, as Sousa Coutinho’s description of the siege
of Diu (_Commentarios_) _em estilo excellente e grave, e foi o melhor
de todos, porque escreveo como testemunha de vista_, V. iii. 2) or
Miguel de Castanhoso’s _copioso tratado_ (V. viii. 7). Among the traces
of his close touch with reality are the popular _romances_, _cantigas_,
_adagios_, which Barros would have deemed beneath the dignity of
history.
[452] As the fleets grew, long catalogues of the captains’ names were
perhaps inevitable. They are certainly out of place in a biography,
but Couto’s _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima Pereira_ (1765) is really a
collection of those passages from the _Decadas_ which bear on the life
of Couto’s old friend, a _fidalgo muito pera tudo_. As far as chapter
32 it is told in words similar to or identical with those of _Decada_
X. Chapter 32 corresponds with the beginning of the lost _Decada_ XI.
[453] His biographer, Manuel Severim de Faria, says that he left (in
manuscript) ‘a large volume of elegies, eclogues, songs, sonnets and
glosses’ (Barbosa Machado calls them _Poesias Varias_), and that
he wrote a commentary on the first five books of the _Lusiads_.
_Carminibus quoque pangendis non infeliciter vacavit_, says N. Antonio.
[454] _Lendas_, iii. 7: _nom ouve alguem que tomasse por gloria
escrever e cronizar o descobrimento da India_. In an earlier passage
(i. 3) he refers to narratives of travellers such as that of Duarte
Barbosa.
[455] He says (_Lendas_, ii. 5): _quando comecei esta ocupação de
escrever as cousas da India erão ellas tão gostosas, per suas bondades,
que dava muito contentamento ouvilas recontar_.
[456] _Lenda_, iii. 438.
[457] _Fui hum dos seus escrivães que com elle andei tres annos_ (ii.
46). Elsewhere (i. 2) he says that he went to India _moço de pouca
idade_ sixteen years after the discovery of India. 1512 was fourteen
years after the actual discovery (1498), but might be counted the
sixteenth year from 1497.
[458] _Homens da criação d’El Rei_, says Corrêa with some pride, _de
que confiasse seus segredos_ (ii. 46).
[459] Lima Felner, _Noticia preliminar_ (_Lendas_, i, p. xi).
[460] Ibid.; but Corrêa says (_Lendas_, ii. 891) that he held this post
at Cochin (_almoxarife do almazem da Ribeira_) in 1525.
[461] _Por ter entendimento em debuxar._ The portraits, drawn by Corrêa
and painted by ‘a native painter’ so cleverly that you could recognize
the originals (iv. 597), as well as Corrêa’s very curious drawings of
Aden and other cities, are reproduced in the 1858-66 edition of the
_Lendas_.
[462] _Passa de cincoenta annos_ [i.e. 1512-63] _que ando no rodizio
d’este serviço, aleijado de feridas com que irei á cova sem satisfação._
[463] Cf. ii. 608, 752; iii. 437; iv. 338, 537-8, 567-8, 665, 669,
730-1.
[464] He so styles his work in the preface of _Lenda_ iv.
[465] He is writing, he says, in 1561 (_Lendas_, i. 265); 1561 again
(i. 995: _não cessando este trabalho até este anno_); 1563 (iii. 438);
1550 (iv. 25); 1551 (iv. 732).
[466] The value of that evidence varies. For instance, he assures us
(iii. 689) that he saw with his own eyes a native 300 years old and his
son of 200; yet there is something suspicious in the roundness of the
figures.
[467] _Escrevia com elle as cartas pera El Rei_ (ii. 172).
[468] Albuquerque in one of his letters (No. 95) says that in Portugal
a man is hanged for stealing Alentejan _mantas_. Corrêa repeats this
phrase twice (_Lendas_, ii. 752; iv. 731).
[469] Cf. ii. 247: _Eu ouvi dizer a Afonso d’Albuquerque_.
[470] _Neste meu trabalho não tomei sentido senão escrever os feitos
dos Portugueses e nada das terras_ (iii. 66). Cf. i. 651, 815; ii. 222.
[471] Latino Coelho, _Fernão de Magalhães_ in _Archivo Pittoresco_, vi.
(1863), p. 170 et seq.
[472] Corrêa himself seems to have been rather unsuccessful than
scrupulous in amassing money. He tells without a hint of embarrassment
(ii. 432) how he took the white and gold scarf (_rumal_) of the
murdered Resnordim (or Rais Ahmad) and sold it for 20 _xarafins_ (about
£7), and (iii. 281) helped to dispose of stolen goods in 1528 at Cochin.
[473] _Protestando d’em meus dias esta lenda nom mostrar a nenhum_ (i.
3).
[474] _Que colligi dos proprios originaes._ The work is a history of
events in India, not a biography of Albuquerque, the first forty years
of whose life are represented only by half a dozen sentences (1774 ed.,
iv. 255).
[475] _Aquelle tão pouco venturoso como sciente & valeroso Antonio
Galvão_ (João Pinto Ribeyro, _Preferencia das Letras ás Armas_, 1645).
In his youth in India he won the regard of that keen judge of men,
Afonso de Albuquerque, who could see in him nothing to find fault with
except his excessive generosity.
[476] _Tratado. Prologo_ [3 ff.]. _Em este tractado con noue ou dez
liuros das cousas de Maluco & da India que me o Cardeal mandou dar a
Damiam de Goes._
[477] Vol. i, No. 4.
[478] Vol. v, No. 1 (1836).
[479] The name would seem to have been really Tillison, i.e. son of
John Tilly, who married a granddaughter of Moraes, the author of
_Palmeirim_.
[480] He speaks of their _lingua alquanto negletta e lo stile molto
semplice, naturale e piano, la qual cosa deveva apparire un’ anomalia
a confronto della lingua purgata con cui si scriveva allora in
Portogallo_ (_Contenuto della storia del Patriarca Alfonso Mendez_,
p. 115). This work was written in Latin in 1651 by AFONSO MENDEZ
(1579-1656), born at Moura, who became Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1623.
This splendid edition (_Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores_) also contains
three volumes of _Relationes et Epistolae Variorum_ (Romae, 1910-12).
[481] Nicolás Antonio dwells more than once on the invisibility of
Brito’s authorities (_Bib. Vet._ i. 65, 453; ii. 374): _Nos de invisis
hactenus censere abstinemus_. Antonio Brandão, Brito’s successor, he
says, _nullum horum vidit librorum quos Brittus olim historiae suae
Atlantes iactaverat; nihil autem horum librorum (quod mirum si ibi
asservabantur) vidit_. Soares (_Theatrum_) remarks epigrammatically:
_fama est eloquentiam minus desiderari quam fidem_.
[482] From a comparison of inscriptions he notes the similarity between
the Etruscan and ‘our ancient’ (Iberian?) letters. The Iberians may
have originally gone East from Tuscany.
[483] His _Elogios dos Reis de Portugal_ appeared in 1603.
[484] ff. 248 v.-249 v. give a very curious description of Ireland:
_tam remota de nossa conversação e metida debaixo do Polo Arctico_.
Brito had not inherited Barros’ knowledge of geography and confuses
Ireland with Iceland, but is far richer in fables, as these pages
delightfully prove.
[485] To Spanish readers they were presented later by Faria e Sousa in
his _Asia_.
[486] _Flores de España_ (1631), f. 248. Arias Montano refers to him as
a close friend (_Doc. inéd._ t. xli. p. 386).
[487] See _Cronica_, p. 46.
[488] Ten chronicles from Afonso I to João III. He says (1824 ed., p.
12): _Estam em este presente vollume recopiladas, sumadas, abreviadas,
todas as lembranças dos Reys de Portugal das caroniquas velhas e novas
sent mudar sustancia da verdade._
[489] _Dise ̃q hee de jdade de setenta anos, hos faz ẽ este feuʳᵒ ̃q
vẽ_ (Examination before the Inquisition, April 19, 1571). The name
appears as Goes, Gooes, Goiz, Guoes, Guoez, Guoiz, Goyos. Goes is a
small village some twenty miles north-east of Coimbra. The name also
occurs in the Basses-Pyrénées. See P. A. de Azevedo, _Alguns nomes do
departamento dos Baixos Pirineos que teem correspondencia em Portugal_
(_Boletim da Ac. das Sciencias de Lisboa_, viii (1915), pp. 280-1). It
may be one more trace of the former occupation of the whole Peninsula
by the Iberians (= high, on the height, as in Goyetche, &c.).
[490] See Marqués de Montebello, _Vida de Manoel Machado de Azevedo_
(1660), p. 3, ap. J. de Vasconcellos, _Os Musicos Portugueses_, i. 268.
[491] ff. 269 v.-71. The original manuscript disappeared, but a copy
(that of the Marqueses de Castello Rodrigo) is in the Biblioteca
Nacional at Lisbon.
[492] Antonio Galvam, _Tratado_, f. 59 v. He visited the Courts of
Charles V, François I, Henry VIII, and Pope Paul III. Nicolás Antonio
says of him (_Bib. Nova_): _morum quippe suavitate atque elegantia,
ergaque doctos liberalitate insinuabat se in cuiusque animum qui
Musarum commercio frueretur, facile atque alte_.
[493] He arrived on Palm Sunday, 1531, and learning that Luther was
preaching at once left the inn to hear him, but could only understand
the Latin quotations. Next day he had dinner (_jantar_) with Luther
and Melanchthon and afterwards returned to Luther’s house, where the
latter’s wife regaled them with a dessert of nuts and apples. Thence
he went to Melanchthon’s house and found his wife spinning, shabbily
dressed.
[494]
Venisti nimium usque et usque et usque
Expectate tuis.
[495] Lib. III, pp. 264, 265: _Aliud Aeolij Modi exemplũ authore D.
Damiano à Goes Lusitano_.
[496] He had gone with others to negotiate terms and, when barely half
an hour was allowed to refer the terms to the Senate, remained in the
enemy’s camp in order to create a delay by conversing with Longueval.
Meanwhile relief had been received and the Senate refused the terms.
[497] In his trial he says that three of them became monks: _meteo tres
filhos frades_.
[498] Cf. _Prologo_: _em que muitos, como em cousa desesperada, se
nam atreveram poer a mão_. One of these ‘many’ was Goes’ rival, the
eloquent Bishop Antonio Pinheiro.
[499] The fourth part was approved on January 2, 1566.
[500] For the grounds of this disapproval see _Crítica contemporanea
á Chronica de D. Manuel_, 1914, ed. Edgar Prestage from a manuscript
in the British Museum. Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos and Mr. G. J. C.
Henriques have dealt very ably with many interesting points of Goes’
life and works.
[501] His friend Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos (1523-99), Canon of
Evora, says that he died in 1575 _aet._ 80 (so the _Theatrum_: _obiit
octogenarius A.C._ 1575). Probably the 5 is an error or misprint for 3,
and the 80 correct.
[502] Luis de Sousa (_Hist. S. Dom._, Pt. I, Bk. i, cap. 2) praises his
_juizo e curiosidade de bom antiquario_, and there are many similar
passages in other writers. Resende furnished Barros, as Severim de
Faria later furnished Brito, with materials and advice.
[503] In a similar though more elaborate work (88 ff.) Frei Nicolau
Diaz (†1596) told the life and death of Princess Joana (†May 1490):
_Vida da Serenissima Princesa Dona Joana, Filha del Rey Dom Afonso o
Quinto de Portugal_ (1585).
[504] _Casamento Perfeyto_, 2ᵃ ed. (1726), p. 61.
[505] _Monarchia Lusitana_, Pt. V, Bk. xvii, cap. 5. Bernardo de Brito
also praises him, and Frei Antonio Brandão acknowledges his debt to
him. Faria e Sousa says that he received from him _cantidad de papeles_.
[506] _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. 3. Portugal, he says, is a
perpetual Spring, and he speaks of the women who earn their living by
selling roses and other flowers in Lisbon, of the almonds of Algarve,
the excellent honey, &c., &c. Vol. i covers the period from the Flood
to the foundation of Portugal; vol. ii goes down to 1557; vol. iii to
Philip II of Spain.
§ 6
_Quinhentista Prose_
Had latinization and the Renaissance come to Portugal in a quiet age
it is not pleasant to think what havoc they might have wrought on
Portuguese prose in the unreal atmosphere of the study. Fortunately
they found Portugal in turmoil. Stirring incidents and adventures were
continually occurring which needed no heightening of rhetoric or Latin
pomp of polysyllables. A scientific spirit of accuracy was abroad, and
the missionaries and adventurers, travellers, mariners, merchants,
officials, and soldiers who recorded their experiences wrote as men of
action, with life and directness.
Few stories are more intense and affecting than those told by the
Portuguese survivors of shipwreck in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Twelve of these appeared in the original collection edited
by BERNARDO GOMES DE BRITO (born in 1688): _Historia Tragico-Maritima_
(2 vols., 1735, 6).[507] The earliest and most celebrated is the
_Relaçam da mui notavel perda do galeão grande S. João_ [June 24,
1552], an anonymous narrative based on the account of a survivor,
Alvaro Fernandez, probably the ship’s mate, which tells of the death
of D. Lianor de Sepulveda and her husband with a simple pathos and
dramatic power unattained by the many poets who later treated the same
theme. But the accounts of the wreck of the _S. Bento_ (1554), the
_Conceição_ (1555), the _S. Paulo_ (1561), of D. Jorge de Albuquerque
(1565), and others, are scarcely less moving. The ships, of 1,000
tons, as the _Aguia_, ‘the largest vessel that had hitherto sailed
to India’ (1558), and under, often with rotten rudder, or the whole
ship rotten, _sepulturas dos homens_, with few boats, careless and
ignorant pilots, badly careened, overloaded, overcrowded, ill-supplied
with worm-eaten biscuit, ‘poisonous’ wine, and insufficient water,
seemed to invite destruction. Between 1582 and 1602 alone thirty-eight
ships were lost. The sea was not the only enemy: corsairs off the
coast of Portugal, French, Dutch, and English, Lutheran heretics
who threw overboard beads and missals, or a Turkish fleet ‘in sight
of Ericeira’, exacted their toll when all other dangers had been
successfully overcome. The story is told immediately after the event,
sometimes almost in the form of a diary or log, or years later,
by survivors or based on the account of survivors, and it varies
according as the narrator is the captain of the ship, a landsman with
a dislike of sailors, a plain soldier, a Jesuit priest, a Franciscan
monk, a distinguished Lisbon chemist (Henrique Diaz in i. 6), or a
famous historian (ii. 3 by Diogo do Couto,[508] ii. 4 by João Baptista
Lavanha[509]). All or most of their accounts are masterpieces of vivid
phraseology. We follow as in a novel their adventures as the sea
‘breaks into flower--_quebrando em frol_’, as they are stranded on a
desert island, boarded in sight of home, entrapped by savages, devoured
by wild beasts, tottering, _arrimados em paos_, exhausted by thirst and
hunger, or prostrated by heat, in comparison with which the _calmas_
of Alentejo ‘are but as Norwegian cold’: toils and perils borne with
heroic courage, told with the simplicity of heroes, without _adorno de
palavras nem linguagem floreada_.
Many books of travel were the natural consequence of the discovery of
India. The historian João de Barros’ passion for knowledge, especially
geographical knowledge, was the first cause[510] of the learned and
instructive _Chorographia_ (1561) of his nephew Gaspar Barreiros
(†1574), a description of the places through which he passed on his way
to Rome in 1545 to thank the Pope on behalf of the Infante Henrique,
_Cardinalem amplissimum_, for his cardinal’s hat. But this work (edited
by his brother, Lopo Barreiros) was an exception. Most of the travel
books were concerned with the far East.
The _Livro em que da relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente_ (1516) by
DUARTE BARBOSA of Lisbon, brother-in-law of Fernam de Magalhães, exists
in a Portuguese manuscript in the Public Library of Oporto, but was
first published in Portuguese in 1821 as a translation from the Italian
_Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese_, itself a translation from a
copy at Seville. The author had spent the greater part of his youth in
India, and his work contains vivid and accurate notes on Eastern lands
and cities, especially Malabar.
One of the causes that most moved Portugal to curiosity and acted as
an incentive to discovery were the vague rumours of the existence of
a mighty Christian prince, the half-mythical Prester John, Negus of
Abyssinia. The priest FRANCISCO ALVAREZ (_c._ 1470?-_c._ 1540) set out
with Duarte Galvam, first Portuguese Ambassador to Abyssinia, in 1515,
but Galvam’s death delayed the mission, and it was not till 1520 that
Alvarez and the new ambassador, D. Rodrigo de Lima, reached the Court
of Prester John. They remained for six years in the country, and during
this time Alvarez recorded in straightforward notes every detail of the
country and its inhabitants with minuteness and accuracy. He considered
himself old[511] in 1520; he was certainly active: he shoots hares and
pheasants, washes unsuccessfully for gold, looks after his slaves,
his nine mules, his fourteen cows, and organizes a procession against
locusts. On their return, in Alvarez’ friend Antonio Galvam’s ship, to
Lisbon, bringing ‘the length of Prester John’s foot’, he was eagerly
questioned by king, prelates, and courtiers--the whole Court trooped
out along the road from Coimbra to meet them--and when he published
his fascinating diary of travel, _Verdadeira Informaçam das terras do
Preste Joam_ (1540), it was soon translated into almost every language
of Europe.[512] FREI GASPAR DA CRUZ of Evora, missionary in China,
returned to Portugal in 1569, and in the same year began his _Tractado
em que se cõtam muito por estẽso as cousas da China_ (1570). He calls
it a _singella narraçam_, but it contains valuable information about
China, nor did the author neglect his style. The Dominican FREI JOÃO
DOS SANTOS (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1625?)[513] was born at Evora about the
middle of the sixteenth century, and went out to East Africa and India
as a missionary in 1586. He returned to Lisbon in August 1600 and nine
years later published his _Ethiopia Oriental_ (1609), an attractive,
curious account, written in a clear and easy style, of the natives,
their land and customs. It is to be feared that some of the settlers
sadly abused his credulity, as in the case of the _mercador’s_ tale
of the native sorcerer or the man 380 years old, but this does not by
any means impair the interest of his book. More individual and vivid
is the _Itinerario_ (1560) of ANTONIO TENREIRO, who in brief, staccato
sentences describes minutely what he saw (the _rosaes_ of red, white,
and yellow roses in May near Damascus, the red roses of Shiraz, the
fair, white Gurgis, complexioned like Englishmen) during his travels
from Ormuz to the Caspian Sea and in Palestine and Egypt, and his
overland journey from Ormuz to Portugal (1529) in which, alone with an
Arab guide, he spent twenty-two days in crossing the desert. A similar
land journey, a generation later, is described with an equal wealth
of curious detail in the _Itinerario_ (1565) of Mestre MARTIM AFONSO,
surgeon to the Viceroy, Conde de Redondo,[514] while the Franciscan
FREI PANTALEAM DE AVEIRO in his _Itinerario da Terra Santa_, &c. (1593)
described his journey to the Holy Land. Not less adventurous were the
travels of another Franciscan, FREI GASPAR DE S. BERNARDINO, who
related them with greater parade of erudition in a clear, elegant style
in his _Itinerario da India por terra_ (1611), the promised second
part of which was unhappily not finished or at least not published.
Half a century later the Jesuit MANUEL GODINHO (_c._ 1630-1712),[515]
in the _Relaçam do novo caminho que fez por terra e mar_ (1665), gave
a remarkable account, in a style not untouched by the _culteranismo_
of the time, of his return journey in 1663 from Baçaim. But various
and arresting as are the books of Portuguese travellers, they are all
eclipsed by the wonderful _Peregrinaçam_ (1614) of FERNAM MENDEZ PINTO
(_c._ 1510-83). This prince of travellers and adventurers was born at
Montemôr o Velho. His parents were of humble station, and at the time
of King Manuel’s death (1521) he was brought by an uncle to Lisbon in
order to earn his living. Although he remained in Portugal for sixteen
years, in the service first of a lady of Lisbon and later of D. João de
Lencastre,[516] lord of Montemôr o Velho, at Setubal, he was but just
in his teens when, crossing in a boat from Alfama, he was captured off
Cezimbra by a French corsair as a foretaste of pleasures to come. In
March 1537 he set out for India and his odyssey began in earnest. He
had no sooner reached Diu than he re-embarked on an expedition to the
Straits of Mecca. His hope was to make a rich prize and become _muito
rico em pouco tempo_. He went next with three others on a mission to
Ethiopia, and on the return voyage he was captured by the Turks, placed
in a subterranean dungeon, and then sold to a Greek renegade, whom he
describes as ‘the most inhuman and cruel dog of an enemy ever seen’.
Fortunately after three months the Greek sold him for 12,000 _réis_ to
a Jew, who brought him to Ormuz. After spending little over a fortnight
there he embarked with a cargo of horses for Goa, and later was wounded
in a fight with the Turks. He next proceeded to Malacca, and was sent
thence on a mission to the King of the Batas, by whom he was made
welcome ‘as rain to our rice crops’. After accompanying the king on a
campaign he returned to Malacca, losing his cargo of tin and benjamin
on the way. His next mission was to the King of Aaru. He returned to
Malacca a slave, as his ship was wrecked, and after fearful sufferings
he, the only survivor, was bought cheap by a poor Moorish trader. A
trading expedition to Pão and Lugor ended as disastrously: after a
fight with Moors he succeeded in swimming wounded to land, but returned
penniless to Patane. In despair he joined the freebooting Antonio de
Faria, and they preyed on Chinese junks till their ship was weighed
down with silver and silk, damask and porcelain. Faria and his men are
represented fighting, torturing, murdering, plundering, playing at dice
on deck for pieces of silk, praying a litany, and promising rich and
good spoil to Our Lady of the Hill at Malacca. After being shipwrecked
they joined a Chinese pirate and again built up their fortunes. They
weathered a storm by throwing overboard twelve cases of silver, sacked
a Chinese city, were received in honour at Liampo (Ningpo), but again
inordinate greed for gold proved their ruin, and, after a daring
attempt to plunder the rich tombs of the Emperors of China in the
island of Calemplui, they were finally stranded in China and arrested
as vagabonds. After six weeks in the crowded prison at Nanking the
Portuguese were taken to Peking and thence deported to Quansi (Kansu),
where they were freed by the timely attack of the King of Tartary. He
sent them to Cochin-China, but on the way they entered the service
of a Chinese pirate. When they reached Japan only three Portuguese
survived, the first Europeans, Mendez Pinto claims, to set foot there.
When he brought news of this land to Liampo a trading expedition was
hastily equipped and set out in defiance of times and seasons. Few of
those who embarked in the nine junks ever saw land again. Mendez Pinto
eventually reached Malacca (1544). Pedro de Faria later sent him on a
mission to the King of Martavão. Martavão was, however, sacked soon
after his arrival, and he was carried a prisoner to Pegu. He escaped
by night and after many adventures returned to Goa. He immediately set
out again ‘to challenge fortune in China and Japan’. After accompanying
the King of Sunda on a war expedition he was again wrecked and spent
thirteen days on a raft. Of the eleven survivors three were eaten
by crocodiles and the rest sold as slaves. Released by the King of
Calapa, Mendez Pinto served under the King of Siam and returned to Pegu
and thence to Malacca. Once more he set out for Japan, and this time
his voyage prospered and he came back with a fair profit. At Malacca
he was eagerly questioned by St. Francis Xavier (1506-52) as to the
conditions in Japan. He seems to have been infected with the saint’s
enthusiasm, as were most of those who met him, and after his death he
perhaps gave up a considerable fortune in order to return as missionary
and ambassador to Japan. Before leaving Goa (April 1554) with St.
Francis Xavier’s successor, Padre Belchior, he had been received into
the Company of Jesus. After many hardships they landed in China in July
1556. In the spring of 1558, a few weeks after returning to Goa, Mendez
Pinto sailed for home and arrived at Lisbon on September 22. The Lisbon
officials dallied with his pretensions to reward for his services.
During his wanderings in India, Ethiopia, China, Japan, Tartary, and
Arabia he had persevered through captivities, battles, and shipwrecks,
but four or five years of official evasions broke his spirit, and he
retired to live in poverty at Almada. Philip II, stirred to interest
in this legendary figure, granted him two bushels of wheat in January
1583, and in July of the same year he died. He had long before left
the Company of Jesus, either of his own free will or expelled, perhaps
on suspicion of Jewish descent.[517] His name was erased from the
Company’s records and letters. Of his twenty-one years of trader,
envoy, pirate, and missionary in the far East he wrote for his children
a narrative of breathless interest, and, speaking generally, it bears
the stamp of truth. We gather that he was brave and adventurous,
despite a natural timidity, of a consuming curiosity which often got
the better of his fears, pious, temperate, apt to be carried away by
fugitive enthusiasms, but persistent, gay, and optimistic in defeat
and disappointment. He appears not to have been particularly vain. He
does not disguise some of his less creditable actions, and he certainly
does not exaggerate his services in Japan.[518] He may possibly have
been one of the three Portuguese who discovered it in 1542: their
names are given by Couto (V. viii. 12) as Mota, Zeimoto and Peixoto.
Gifted with keen imagination, he could exaggerate[519] when expediency
required, but he knew that in the account of his travels exaggeration
was not expedient, and he was constantly on guard against the notorious
scepticism of his fellow-countrymen.[520] He may have heightened the
colour occasionally, but as a rule he writes with restraint, although
with delight in a good story and skill in bringing out the dramatic
side of events. It is one of the charms of his work that it is very
definite in dates and figures, but this also, through inevitable errors
and misprints, afforded a handle to the pedantry of critics. The fatal
similarity of Mendez and mendacity gave rise to the play on his name:
_Fernam, mentes? Minto_ (‘Fernam, do you lie?--I lie’), and Congreve,
in _Love for Love_, by calling him ‘a liar of the first magnitude’
clinched the matter in England. But comparatively early a reaction
set in,[521] and modern travellers have unequivocally confirmed the
more favourable verdict and corroborated his detailed descriptions of
Eastern countries. The mystery of the East, the heavy scent of its
cities, its fervent rites and immemorial customs, as well as the magic
of adventure, haunt his pages. A hundred pictures refuse to fade from
the memory, whether they are of silk-laden Chinese junks or jars of
gold dust, vivid descriptions of shipwreck (the hiss and swell of the
waves are in his rich sea-Latin) or the awful pathos of the Queen of
Martavão’s death, the sketch of a supercilious Chinese mandarin or of
St. Francis Xavier tramping through Japan.
Five years after Mendez Pinto’s return to Portugal a book scarcely
less strange than his _Peregrinaçam_, of atmosphere as oriental and of
interest as absorbing although more scientific, was printed at Goa. Its
author, GARCIA DA ORTA[522] (_c._ 1495-_c._ 1570), born at Elvas, the
son, perhaps, of Jorge da Orta, owner of a shop (_temdeiro_) in that
town, studied medicine for ten years (1515-25) at Salamanca and Alcalá,
and in 1526 began to practise as a doctor at Castello de Vide. From
1532 to 1534 he was Professor at the University of Lisbon, and in March
1534 sailed with his friend and patron, the insatiable Governor Martim
Afonso de Sousa,[523] to India as king’s physician. The East cast its
spell over his curious and inquiring mind; he remained under twelve
or more Governors and died at a good old age, probably at Goa. There,
on the veranda of his beautiful garden, in this land of _bellissimi
giardini_,[524] served affectionately by many slaves, and with the
books of his well-stocked library ready to his hand,[525] he would
regale his guests with strange fruits--all the _maneiras á gula_ of
India--and with still stranger knowledge. His knowledge was based on
personal observation, for although he respected Galen and Dioscorides
as the princes of medicine and was possessed of great erudition, he
was not disposed to bow blindly to the authority of any writer, Arab
or Greek, least of all to Scholasticism, he went to Nature and in his
_Coloquios dos Simples_ (1563) recorded what he had seen and heard,
the truth without rhetoric, setting aside the _mil fabulas_ of Pliny
and Herodotus. These fifty-nine dialogues, arranged in alphabetical
order, pay more regard to facts than to style. They are full of varied
information and give us a most pleasant insight into the writer’s
character, strong, humorous, obstinate, and into his life at Goa. From
a scientific point of view they are of great importance: not only
did they provide the first description of cholera[526] and of many
unknown plants, but after three and a half centuries they retain their
scientific interest and value. Begun many years earlier in Latin,[527]
they were published in the author’s old age, with an introductory ode
by his friend, the poet Camões. Unhappily they became known to Europe
chiefly in a garbled Latin version by Charles de l’Écluse (Clusius)--a
fifth edition appeared in 1605--from which the Italian and French
translations were made. It was not until the nineteenth century that
the skilful and eager care of the Conde de Ficalho enabled a larger
number of those who read Portuguese to appreciate Orta at his true
worth.
Born at Alcacer do Sal, the celebrated scientist PEDRO NUNEZ
(1492?-1577?), whose name lives in the instrument of his invention, the
_nonius_,[528] was Cosmographer to Kings João III and Sebastian and
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra (1544-62). Prince
Luis and D. João de Castro were his pupils. He wrote indifferently
in Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, declared that as science treats
of concrete things it can be expressed in any language however
barbarous,[529] and, in order to secure for it a wider public,
translated into Portuguese the Latin treatise (_libellus_) _De Sphaera_
by John of Halifax (Joannes de Sacro Bosco): _Tratado da Sphera_
(1537),[530] and into Spanish his own _Libro de Algebra en arithmetica
& geometria_ (1567), originally written in Portuguese and addressed
to his pupil and friend the Cardinal-King Henrique. His other works,
including the _De Crepusculis_ (1542), were written in Latin.
The Homeric hero DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA (1465?-1533?), about whose
life, apart from the hundred days at Cochin (1504) and a fight off
Finisterre (1509) with the French pirate Mondragon, singularly little
is known,[531] on his return from India in 1505 wrote a work entitled
_Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis_ [1505-6?]. This curious and important survey
of the coast of Africa, the work of one more accustomed to wield sword
than pen, but sometimes as picturesque and interesting as Duarte
Barbosa, was to have consisted of five books, but only three and a part
of the fourth were written. It remained in manuscript for nearly four
centuries.
The three _Roteiros_ (logs)[532] written by the famous Viceroy D. JOÃO
DE CASTRO (1500-48) on his voyages (1) from Lisbon to Goa in 1538,
(2) from Goa to Diu, 1538-9, (3) from Goa to the Red Sea in 1541, are
decked out with no literary graces. He wrote, he said, for seamen, not
for ladies and gallants. Yet the scientific curiosity and enthusiasm
of this keen-eyed, broad-minded observer give his descriptions force
and truth, the same practical lucidity that marks his letters, which
according to his friend Prince Luis contained _todas as cousas
necessarias e nenhũas superfluas_, and they were early prized in Spain
as _harto notables, muy curiosos_.[533] The third _Roteiro_ would seem
to have been originally written in Latin, and perhaps translated by
Castro at his beloved Sintra home. The manuscript was bought by Sir
Walter Raleigh, and it appeared in English in 1625, 208 years before it
was published in Portuguese.
Greater historical interest attaches to the letters of an earlier
Governor, AFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE (1461-1515). That grim conqueror of
the East might have smiled somewhat sardonically to be numbered among
Portugal’s writers. He merely said what he had to say, and there
was an end of it, would be his comment. But it is precisely this
directness--the powerful grasp of reality and the horror of useless
rhetoric--which gives excellence to the prose of his _Cartas_. These
incomparable reports, written to King Manuel in moments snatched from
his many occupations as Governor of India (1509-15), sometimes rise to
a biblical grandeur and eloquence, as in the splendid passage beginning
_Goa é vossa; Onor, o rei dele paga-vos pareas_. Perhaps, after all,
he was not wholly unconscious of his art, and certainly the source
of it is clear: as Osorio[534] notices, he was a devoted student of
the Bible. In more familiar mood he can give a vivid sketch in a few
emphatic words, as when he describes the judge, ‘a little man dressed
in a cloak of coarse cloth with a crooked stick under his arm’, or the
impostors who will practise ‘a thousand wiles and deceits for one ruby’.
To turn to lesser men, FERNAM RODRIGUEZ LOBO SOROPITA (born _c._ 1560),
a distinguished Lisbon advocate and the first editor of the _Rythmas_
(1595) of Camões, was a poet celebrated for his wit in his day. That
of his letters is perhaps a little forced, and the obscurity of the
allusions now interferes with our enjoyment. The interest of the
extracts from a manuscript in the British Museum written by FRANCISCO
RODRIGUEZ SILVEIRA (1558-_c._ 1635) in 1608, published under the title
_Memorias de um Soldado da India_ (1877), consists both in the record
of his thirteen years’ service in India (1585-98) and in the account
during the succeeding ten years of Portugal and especially Beira, the
condition of the roads, the land, the peasants, and the sway of the
local _caciques_--thief, Turk, Pasha, tyrant, he calls them--and his
indignation gives a pleasant vigour to his prose. The _Arte da Caça
da Altanaria_ (1616) of DIOGO FERNANDEZ FERREIRA (born _c._ 1550),
page of the Pretender D. Antonio, is a work of great interest. The
writer evidently delights in his theme and has a real love of birds,
the migratory habits of which he describes in Part 6; and he treats
‘of swallows and of the swallow-grass which restores sight’, of
the food made of sugar, saffron, and almonds for nightingales, and
other alluring topics. Among the rare and curious books of the time
we may notice that on the prerogatives of women, _Dos priuilegios &
prœrogatiuas q ho genero femenino tẽ por dereito comũ & ordenações do
Reyno mais que ho genero masculino_ (1557), by RUY GONÇALVEZ, Professor
of Law at Coimbra in 1539 and subsequently Court Advocate at Lisbon.
Two writers especially attract attention even in the feast of interest
which Portuguese prose in this century offers so abundantly. The son
of a distinguished Dutch illuminator and painter settled in Portugal,
Antonio de Hollanda, who painted Charles V at Toledo and may have
illuminated the Book of Hours of Queen Lianor, FRANCISCO DE HOLLANDA
(1518-84), born in Lisbon, painter, illuminator, and architect, in his
short treatises _Da fabrica que fallece á cidade de Lisboa_ and _Da
sciencia do desenho_, showed an enthusiasm for his subject almost
out of place in the Portugal of the second half of the sixteenth
century. Indeed, he nearly ran into trouble with the Inquisition by
seeming to make painting ‘divine’, but prudently altered the passage.
His curious and celebrated treatise _Da Pintvra Antigva_ (1548) is
written in a style which may be rather rejoiced in than imitated,
for, as he tells us, he was more at home with the brush than with
the pen, but it is full of ingenious and original remarks. The first
part deals in forty-four brief chapters with painting generally, and
opens with a fine passage describing the work of God as the greatest
of all painters. The second part contains the _Quatro dialogos_, in
the first three of which he records the conversations of Vittoria
Colonna, Michelangelo, Lattanzio Tolomei, and himself in the church of
St. Sylvester or in a garden overlooking Rome; conversations which,
despite their Portuguese dress, bear the stamp of truth and will retain
their fascination so long as interest in art endures. Francisco worked
first in the household of the Infante Fernando and then in that of the
Archbishop of Evora. In 1537 he set out on a journey to Rome by land
(Valladolid, Barcelona, Provence), and in Italy remained from 1538 to
1547. His friendship with Michelangelo continued after his return to
Portugal, as a letter from Hollanda to Michelangelo in 1553 proves. The
last part of his life he spent in the country between Lisbon and Sintra
among the Portuguese whom he had called _desmusicos_, and despite his
comfortable circumstances--he received a pension of 100,000 _réis_ from
Philip II--he must often have looked back with regret to the fullness
of those nine years in Italy. But his countrymen, thanks largely to
the scholarly researches and studies of Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos,
are now fully alive to his merits. And, indeed, even in the sixteenth
century a passage in Frei Heitor Pinto’s _Imagem da Vida Christam_
sets him side by side with the great Italian.[535] PHILIPE NUNEZ,
who professed as a Dominican in 1591, wrote on painting in the next
century: _Arte poetica e da pintura e symmetria_ (1615). A work on
music by ANTONIO FERNANDEZ of about the same date, _Arte de Mvsica de
canto dorgam e canto cham_ (1626), consists of three treatises which
do not profess to be original. MANUEL NUNEZ DA SILVA wrote on the same
subject in his _Arte Minima_ (1685).
In the preface (1570) to his _Regra Geral_, written in 1565, GONÇALO
FERNANDEZ TRANCOSO[536] (_c._ 1515-_c._ 1590) professed not to have
sufficient literary skill even for this simple calendar of movable
feasts. Yet in the previous year (1569), in which at Lisbon he lost
both wife and children in the great plague (a beloved daughter of
twenty-four, a student son, and a choir-boy grandson), in order to
distract his mind from these sorrows,[537] he wrote a remarkable work,
unique of its kind in Portuguese literature; or at least he wrote
then the first two books, which appeared under the title _Contos
e historias de proveito e exemplo_ (1575).[538] A third part was
published posthumously in 1596. The number and kind of the editions in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to its popularity, but
since the eighteenth century no new edition has been printed and the
book has fallen into a strange neglect.[539] Trancoso did not claim
originality: he merely collected stories from what he had heard or
read.[540] The stories, only thirty-eight in number, are very various.
The subjects of many of them resemble those of Franco Sacchetti’s
_Novelle_ or Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s _Le xiii Piacevoli Notti_,
and some are directly imitated from Boccaccio’s _Il Decamerone_ or
Giovanni Battista Giraldi’s _Gli Ecatommiti_ or from Matteo Bandello
(†1565).[541] But often they are traditions so widespread that they
occur in many authors and languages, as that (ii. 7) which corresponds
to Straparola’s third _Notte_ and of which Dr. F. A. Coelho recorded
twenty-one other foreign versions, besides four popular variants
in Portuguese; or i. 17, in which the cunning answers to difficult
questions are similar to those in Sacchetti, No. 4 (_Mestre Bernabò
signor di Milano_), and Dr. Braga’s _Contos tradicionaes do povo
portuguez_, No. 71 (_Frei Joam Sem Cuidados_). Others are apparently
of oriental origin, as the judge’s verdict, worthy of Sancho Panza
(i. 15), or the king and the barber (iii. 3). But the subject and
place (Lisbon, Oporto, Evora, Coimbra, &c.) of most, although not of
the longest, of these tales are Portuguese.[542] Some are trifling
anecdotes which acquire a charm and vividness through their popular
character and the author’s simple details of description, as the
picture of the peasant family near Oporto sitting round the fire after
their supper of maize-bread and chestnuts (i. 10). The author is not
content that we should draw our own moral, but this scarcely spoils the
reader’s pleasure in these malicious and ingenious tales.
Despite inroads of the exotic and all the chances and changes of
life and literature in this century, the Portuguese maintained their
interest in the romances of chivalry, in which indeed they saw a
reflection of their own prowess in the East. Dull as _Clarimundo_ may
now seem, it made a great impression in its day, and was eagerly read,
from Lisbon to the Moluccas.[543] Even as late as 1589 Bishop Arraez
considers it necessary to say that a prince should have better ways of
spending his time than _ler por Clarimundo_,[544] while Rodriguez Lobo,
thirty years later, brackets it with _Amadis_ and _Palmeirim_.[545]
Many a young page and _escudeiro_ must have aspired not only to pore
over the _cronicas_ but to write one of his own.[546] The facility of a
Barros is, however, given to few, and both Jorge Ferreira’s _Memorial_
and Moraes’ _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_ were written later in life.
FRANCISCO DE MORAES (_c._ 1500-72),[547] a well-known courtier in the
reign of King João III, whose Treasurer he was, and a _Comendador_ of
the Order of Christ, in 1540 accompanied the Portuguese Ambassador,
D. Francisco de Noronha, to Paris as Secretary, and at the French
Court he fell passionately in love with one of the ladies-in-waiting
of Queen Leonor (sister of the Emperor Charles V and widow of King
Manuel of Portugal) named Claude Blosset de Torcy. His love was not
returned: there was a great discrepancy of age between them, his
knowledge of French was very slight, and his passion robbed him of wit
and reason. If the Duc de Châtillon was favoured, or if the English
Ambassador gave Mademoiselle de Torcy his arm, Moraes would flare
up in jealousy, and when in the presence of the queen the elderly
lover went down on his knees _la belle Torcy_ (to whom Clément Marot
had addressed one of his _Étrennes_ and who eventually married the
Baron de Fontaines) prayed him not to continue to make her as well as
himself ridiculous. Moraes, after leaving France in 1543, or early
in 1544, recovered from his passion and married in Portugal. Of his
subsequent life little is known; he appears to have returned to France,
and in 1572 he was murdered at the entrance of the Rocio, the central
square of Evora. His _Cronica de Palmeirim de Inglaterra_, written in
France or Portugal or both, was probably published in 1544, but the
earliest existing Portuguese edition is that of Evora, 1567, which
contains the dedication to the Infanta Maria, written over twenty years
earlier (1544). Chiefly remarkable for the excellence of its style,
_Palmeirim_ will always retain its place in Portuguese literature
as a masterpiece of prose, musically soft, yet clear and vigorous.
Cervantes considered it worthy to be preserved in a golden casket like
the works of Homer,[548] but few of its readers will now differ from
the more modern and moderate opinion of Menéndez y Pelayo that ‘it
requires a real effort’ to read the whole of it. The effort required
to read the miserable Spanish translation of 1547-8 is infinitely
greater. The fact that this translation is of earlier date than any
surviving Portuguese edition gave rise to the theory that Moraes had
translated his work from the Spanish. No competent critic now believes
this; any doubts that may have lingered were dispelled wittily and
for ever in Mr. Purser’s able essay (1904). The Spanish version,
with its painful efforts to avoid _lusitanismos_ and its palpable
mistranslations (such as _suavidad_ or _alegria_ for _saudade_), shows
less knowledge of the sea, of Ireland,[549] and of Portugal. Moreover,
the preference of the author of _Palmeirim_ for Portugal is obvious,
and the passage in which ladies of the French Court are introduced
corresponds to Moraes’ _Descvlpa de hvns amores_,[550] first published
with the _Dialogos_ in 1624. Moraes himself would probably not have
been greatly troubled by the impudent claim set up for Luis Hurtado
and Miguel Ferrer. To have made a masterpiece out of their book would
have been an achievement as great as to have made it out of old French
and English legends in Paris. _Palmeirim’s_ predecessors, _Palmerin de
Oliva_ (1511), _Primaleon_ (1512), and _Platir_ (1533), were probably
all genuinely Spanish, although some doubts have been raised as to
the first of the line, _Palmerin de Oliva_ attributed to a cryptic
lady, a _femina docta_ called Agustobrica.[551] Its successors were as
genuinely Portuguese: to Moraes’ parts 1 and 2 DIOGO FERNANDEZ added
parts 3 and 4 (1587), concerned with the deeds of Palmeirim’s son, _Dom
Duardos_,[552] and BALTHASAR GONÇALVEZ LOBATO parts 5 and 6 (1602), in
which are told those of his grandson, _Dom Clarisol de Bretanha_. Three
brief but very lively and natural _Dialogos_ (1624) show that Moraes
was not only an excellent stylist but a keen observer. The _fidalgo_
and _escudeiro_, the lawyer and the love-lorn _moço_, are all clearly
and wittily presented.