Portuguese literature
esses furtados ao estudo_. It is a _comedia mixta, a mor parte della
motoria_.
[376] In _El Rei Seleuco_ the doctor and in _Filodemo_ the shepherd and
_bobo_ speak Spanish.
[377] _Homem fidalgo mᵗᵒ cortezão & discretto_ (Rangel Macedo,
manuscript _Nobiliario_, in Lisbon _Bib. Nac._); _aquelle galante e
elegante cortesão Portugues_ (_licença_ of 1618 ed. of _Ulysippo_).
[378] _As primicias do meu rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina,
e foi ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro._
[379] _Eufrosina_, ii. 5.
[380] Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and
printed in his _Gil Vicente_ (1902), p. 114.
[381] _Orígenes de la Novela_, vol. iii, p. ccxxx.
[382] Sousa de Macedo, in _Eva e Ave_ (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he
lived in the reign of King João and in the beginning of that of King
Sebastian, which confirms the date 1563 as that of his death.
[383] Some of its heroes have geographical names, as King Tenarife of
the Canary Islands and the Spanish Moor Juzquibel, who now survives in
the name of the mountain that falls to the sea above Fuenterrabía. The
author shows considerable knowledge of the Basque country, and we may
perhaps infer that he was at the French Court and studied the Basque
provinces on the way.
[384] 1867 ed., p. 21: _como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey
Sagramor_.
[385] _Nesta trasladação do triumpho del Rey Sagramor_, ibid., p. viii.
[386] A vague tradition placed the 1554 edition in the Lisbon Torre do
Tombo, but inquiries in 1916 proved that nothing is known of it there.
[387] _Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada_, ibid., p. vii.
[388] _A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressão
emendou o Autor em sua vida_ (_Aduertencia ao leitor_).
[389] Nicolás Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was
often far from accurate, says that there were several editions before
that of 1616, probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page.
The late Menéndez y Pelayo, who also made many slips in dealing with
Portuguese literature, declared that the 1560 edition was in the
British Museum, which, however, only possesses a (mutilated) copy of
the edition of Evora, 1561 (lacking the colophon with the date). Of the
1561 edition several copies exist, that of the Torre do Tombo, that in
the library of the late Snr. Francisco Van Zeller at Lisbon, and that
of the British Museum.
[390] João de Barros, _Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem_ (1540),
wrote that the Portuguese language _parece nam consintir em si hũa tal
obra como Celestina_ (1785 ed., p. 222).
[391] _La Filomena_, 1621 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was
from the 1561 edition, not that of 1616, in which part of the sentence
quoted is omitted, as in the Spanish translation first published ten
years later, in 1631.
[392] They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of
1581 condemns _todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam & torcem
as autoridades & sentenças da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos,
graças, escarnios, fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracções,
superstições, encantações & semelhantes cousas_. The rules were carried
out most mechanically.
[393] Green eyes are beloved by Portuguese writers for their rarity or
from an early mistaken rendering of the French _vair_ (e.g. Sylvia in
the sixteenth, Joaninha in the nineteenth century). The _glosadores_
inclined to them on account of the second person of the infinitive ‘to
see’: _verdes_.
[394] In Arraez, _Dialogos_ (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women
_parecem ... velas de nao inchadas_.
[395] In the first edition she had been called a _beata_. In that of
1618 she became merely a widow woman, _dona viuva_, but the editor
defeated the censor’s intentions by noting the change in the preface
and declaring that but for this she remained exactly the same as before.
[396] Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are _conjurados contra o
mundo_.
[397] Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love.
[398] One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis
(†November 27, 1555) still alive.
[399] _Um largo discurso da cortesania vulgar_, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5:
_pretende mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaã_. On f. 5 v.
it is called _esta selada_ _Portuguesa_. The courtiers spend all the
time they can spare from the pursuit of love in discussing the rival
merits of the _romance velho_ and new-fangled sonnet, of Boscán and
Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of a Latin poet, &c.
[400] _O amor é portugues_ (_Aulegrafia_, f. 38 v.).
§ 4
_Luis de Camões_
The plays of LUIS DE CAMÕES (1524?-80) are in a sense typical of his
genius, for they show him combining two great currents of poetry,
the old indigenous and the classic new. A generation had sprung
up accustomed to wide horizons and heroic deeds, and poets and
historians regretted that there was no Homer or Virgil to describe them
adequately. Camões was not a Homer nor a Virgil, but he was a more
universal poet than Portugal had yet produced, and by reason of his
marvellous power of expression he triumphantly completed the revolution
which Sá de Miranda had tentatively begun. In a sense he was not a
great original poet, but in his style he was excelled by no Latin
poet of the Renaissance. The eager researches of modern scholars have
succeeded in piercing the obscurity that enveloped his life, although
many gaps and doubtful points remain. Four or five generations had
gone by since his ancestor Vasco Perez had passed out of the pages of
history,[401] and some of the intervening members of the family had
also won distinction, but Camões’ father, Simão Vaz de Camões, was a
poor captain of good position (_cavaleiro fidalgo_) who was shipwrecked
near Goa and died there soon after the poet was born in 1524. Through
his grandmother, Guiomar Vaz da Gama, he was distantly related to the
celebrated Gamas of Algarve. His mother, Anna de Sá e Macedo, belonged
to a well-known family of Santarem.[402] Whether he was born at Lisbon
or Coimbra is still uncertain. His great-grandfather had settled at
Coimbra. That Camões studied there scarcely admits of doubt. He alludes
to it in his poems, and nowhere else in Portugal could he have received
his thorough classical education. In the year 1542 or 1543 he went to
Lisbon. The exact dates of events in his life during the next ten years
are difficult to determine, but the events themselves are clear enough.
His birth and talents assured him a ready welcome in the capital.
Whether he became tutor to D. Antonio de Noronha, son of the Conde de
Linhares (the Portuguese ambassador whom Moraes accompanied to Paris),
or not, he soon had many friends and was probably received at Court.
Referring later to this time he is said to have spoken of himself as
_cheo de muitos favores_, and in this popularity he wrote a large
number of his exquisite _redondilhas_ and also sonnets, odes, eclogues,
and the three _autos_. But Camões had fallen passionately in love with
a lady-in-waiting of the queen, Catherina de Athaide.[403] Tradition
has it that he first saw her in church on a Good Friday (1544?). We may
surmise that Natercia’s parents objected to the suit of the penniless
_cavaleiro fidalgo_, and that Camões pressed his suit on them with more
vehemence than discretion. He was banished from Court, and spent six
months in the Ribatejo (Santarem) and two years in military service in
North Africa (Ceuta). He admits that he had been in the wrong, but not
seriously so, and hints that envy had played its part in his downfall.
It is probable that his play _El Rei Seleuco_ had given a handle to
the enemies that his growing reputation as a poet had made. It must
be confessed that its subject was tactless, for in the play the king
gives up his bride to his son, which could easily be interpreted as
a reflection on the conduct of the late King Manuel, who had married
his son’s bride. The two years in Africa passed slowly. In a letter
(_Esta vae com a candea na mão_) he describes sadness eating away his
heart as a moth a garment, and it was with his thoughts in Lisbon that
he took part from time to time in skirmishes against the Moors, in
one of which he lost his right eye. Hard blows, scanty provisions,
and no chance of enriching oneself as in India were the features of
military service in North Africa, and when Camões returned to Lisbon
his prospects contrasted sharply with those which had been his when he
first came from the University a few years before. He was now nearly
thirty,[404] disfigured by the loss of an eye and embittered by the
turn his fortunes had taken. He no longer looked on life from the
inside, gazing contentedly at the show from the windows of privilege,
but was himself in the arena. For the school of Sá de Miranda he had
probably never felt much sympathy, considering it too severe and
artificial. He wished to live and enjoy, and although the patronage of
literary Prince João may have encouraged him to hope for better times,
he meanwhile set himself to sample life as best he might, associating
with rowdy companions (_valentões_), who brought out the Cariofilo
side of his character at the expense of the contemplative Zelotipo.
Whether he had intended to embark for India in 1550, or this be a pure
invention on the part of Faria e Sousa, it is certain that he was still
in Lisbon on June 16, 1552. On that day the Corpus Christi procession
passed through the principal streets. In the crowded Rocio Camões was
drawn into a quarrel with a Court official, Gonçalo Borges, and wounded
him with a sword-cut on the head. For nearly nine months Camões lay
in prison, and then, Borges having recovered and bearing no malice,
he was pardoned[405] (March 7, 1553) and released, but only on the
understanding that he would leave Portugal to serve the king in India.
Before the end of the month he had embarked in the ship _S. Bento_.
Hitherto he had hoped against hope for an improvement in his lot; now
he went, he says, as one who leaves this world for the next, and with
the words _Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea_,[406] turned his
back on the calumnies and intrigues of Lisbon. In one of his finest
elegies[407] he described the voyage, a storm off the Cape of Good
Hope, and the arrival at Goa in September 1553. The voyage was full of
interest to him, and he made good use of it, becoming what Humboldt
called him--a great painter of the sea[408]--but so far as comfort
was concerned he fared probably much as would a modern emigrant. His
disillusion at Goa is poignantly described in a letter[409] written
soon after his arrival. He found it ‘the stepmother of all honest men’,
money the only god and passport, and he sends a note of warning to
_aventureiros_ in Portugal eager to make their fortune in India. We
know from the bitter pages of Couto and Corrêa how difficult it was
for a private soldier to thrive there, and the position of a _reinol_
newly arrived from Portugal was precarious. Camões joined a few weeks
later (November 1553) in a punitive expedition along the coast of
Malabar against the King of Chembe, and in 1554 probably accompanied D.
Fernando de Meneses in a second expedition to Monte Felix or Guardafui
(Ras ef Fil), the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. After his three years’
service (1553-6) he continued to live at Goa. He had found time to
write poetry, and sent home a sonnet and an eclogue on the death of
his friend D. Antonio de Noronha. His play _Filodemo_ was acted,
probably in the winter of 1555, before the popular Governor Francisco
Barreto, who provided him with the post of _Provedor Môr dos Defuntos e