CAMOENS (CAMOES), LUIS DE Portu gal's renowned epic poet and one of the greatest lyric poets of 16th century Europe, was born either at Coimbra or Lisbon about or in the year 1524. He came of Galician stock, owners of land near Finisterre ; his ancestor, the soldier-poet Vasco Perez de Camoes, fled to Portugal after the rout of Montiel in 1369, and in 1385 fought at Aljubarrota on the losing side of Castille. His grandson married Dona Guiomar Vaz da Gama, of an Algarvian family soon to be immortalized by the discovery of the sea-route to India. Their son Simao Vaz de Camoes was born at Coimbra a few years before that world-shaking event ; he married a lady of a Santarem family, Dona Anna de Sa e Macedo, and their son Luis Vaz de Camoes, perhaps an only child, was born probably in the year of his great kinsman Vasco da Gama's death. The death of Simao Vaz at Goa, whither he had gone as captain of a ship in the hope of redressing the fortunes of a poor "cavaleiro fidalgo," left his widow and child in something like penury, and it is perhaps unlikely under these circumstances that the boy would have been sent from Lisbon to study at the famous university which had been transferred to Coimbra in 1537. This seems to incline the scales slightly in favour of Coimbra in the very evenly balanced claims of Coimbra and Lisbon to be the poet's birthplace. We only know that he studied at Coimbra university, then described as a second Athens, to which King Joao III. by lavish salaries enticed professors from many foreign countries ; they included men of world-wide reputation from Salamanca, Paris and Bordeaux, among them George Buchanan. How thorough was the education of the young Camoes is evidenced by the general scientific and literary culture shown in his work, and his constant classical allusions, a knowledge which he could not have acquired at any other time of his unquiet life and retained to the end. His ac quaintance with Latin literature was extensive, and it is very probable, although not certain, that he also knew Greek. These were the years when the Renaissance was making its late appear ance in Portugal; the old national school of poetry represented by Gil Vicente was dying out, while Sa de Miranda was fighting an uphill battle in favour of the "dolce stil nuovo." Camoes was to excel in either school. A document recently un earthed shows that the poet's cousin, Bento Vaz, was not the powerful prior of the College of Santa Cruz but a poor canon; but, whatever assistance Camoes may have received in his studies, there can be no doubt as to his brilliance. His early play, "Os Amphitrioes," perhaps acted at Coimbra, and the beautiful can zone "Vam as serenas aguas," written there, testify to the depth and variety of his genius. The fervent humanism of the beautiful old city on the hill above the transparent waters of Mondego and the exquisite surrounding scenery had sunk deep into his spirit, and we may surmise that it was love rather than ambition that drove the poet from the university, where his learning and talent could not fail to be appreciated.
He had fallen in love with a lady described in his early poetry as having a snow-white face and hair of gold. If she belonged to the court and was first seen by the poet on one of the court's periodical visits to Coimbra, it was but natural that he should follow her to Lisbon. The year of his arrival in what had now be come one of the most important as well as most interesting capitals in Europe, is uncertain, but it may have been For the next eight years of the poet's life we are confronted by a series of fluctuating and contradictory conjectures. It is best to abandon the widely held theory that he came to Lisbon in 1542 as tutor to the son of the second count of Linhares, the infant Dom Antonio de Noronha, who was killed in North Africa at the age of 17 in April 1553. The other tradition, that he fell in love with a lady of the court, Dona Caterina (Natercia) de Ataide, whom he is alleged to have seen for the first time in a Lisbon church on Good Friday of 1544, is older but scarcely less fragile. Camoes sang of a dozen different loves; sometimes they may be the same under different names, sometimes the circumstances are different and make identity impossible. Apart from the charming verses to Barbara, the Indian slave-girl, his most inspired love poems seem to centre round two objects, the early "head of gold and snow," who may conveniently but perhaps incorrectly be called Caterina Natercia, and secondly a lady who was drowned at sea and is sung under the name of Dinamene. To the latter, now generally assumed to be a Chinese slave-girl with whom he was returning from Macao on the occasion of his shipwreck, were addressed some of his loveliest sonnets, including the famous "Alma minha gentil." As to Natercia, she may have been the daughter of Dom Antonio de Lima, that Dona Caterina de Ataide who died at an early age in 1556; but there were two other Caterinas of the same surname, neither of whom can be summarily dismissed, while a more recent learned conjecture rejects all three and considers the object of the poet's love to have been King Manuel's daughter, the Infanta Maria, born in 15 21. A further very real difficulty consists in attributing the evidently sincere and impassioned early love poems to two different passions, that for the Coimbra lady celebrated in "Vam as serenas aguas" and that for the Lisbon lady first seen in 1544. The attribution of this precocious fickleness seems an error in psychology on the part of the critics, and it is preferable to assume that the object of the poet's love between the years 1542 and 1553 was one and the same.
The years before the departure to India were spent at Lisbon, with the exception of two years' military service in North Africa. The poet and penniless fidalgo, after coming to the capital, con tinued to woo Natercia at court, where he wrote and produced his second play, "El Rei Seleuco." Either because the subject of this play was held to contain an allusion to the king or because the suit of the poor and indiscreet gentleman and scholar was less favourably received by Natercia's parents than by Natercia, all his hopes were suddenly dashed to earth, and he found himself wandering disconsolately in the Ribatejo country near Santarem, banished from the capital and court. Two years' service in Africa followed (1547-49), during which, either by an accident or under fire of the enemy, Camoes lost the sight of his right eye. On re turning to Lisbon he found his cousin, Simao Vaz de Camoes, high in favour with the youthful Prince Joao (1537-53), to whom many men of letters looked as their patron, and he probably now made the acquaintance of another of the prince's friends, D. Antonio de Noronha. The poet's hopes again rose high, he had many friends at court, and, although still penniless, enjoyed himself with rowdy boon-companions while waiting to receive some reward for his services in Africa and to win recognition for his literary genius. He continued to write lyrics, probably now composed his play "Filodemo," later acted in India, and began to entertain thoughts of an elaborate epic of the recent glories of his country. The dreamy Coimbra boy had become a rash and generous youth of the world ; ladies of the court might gibe at the "one-eyed devil," but were glad to receive his compliments in verse ; his comrades dubbed him Trincafortes, the Swashbuckler; and beneath these superficial frivolities his love for Natercia continued. As suddenly and completely as in 1547 his hopes and prospects ended. During the Corpus procession on June 16, 1552, Camoes wounded a cer tain Goncalo Borges, a court official, in a street quarrel, and lay for eight months in the Lisbon gaol.
Within three weeks of his release on March 7, he set sail for India (March 26, 1553). He went as a common soldier bound for three years' service, and soon after his arrival at Goa took part in a punitive expedition against the King of Chembe on the coast of Malabar in November. Immediately after his return to Goa he served in an expedition to the Red sea. From Cape Guardafui the Portuguese fleet sailed to Ormuz on the Persian gulf, and after a successful engagement off Maskat, in which six Turkish ships were captured, returned to Goa in November 1554. Camoes must cer tainly have received some of the spoils, and for some months was able to live quietly and happily at Goa, engaged in the composition of some of his noblest lyrics and of the first six books of the Lusiads. The new Viceroy, Pedro de Mascarenhas, had been chamberlain to Prince Joao at Lisbon, and is likely to have been an old friend of the poet, but he died in 1555 within a year of his appointment to India. Under his successor, the Governor Fran cisco de Barreto, Camoes received an appointment at Macao as trustee for the property of dead or absent Portuguese. Posts of all kinds were eagerly coveted in India, the obscurest appointment disappointed a score of claimants, and there is no reason to con sider Camoes' appointment as a punishment, however little it may have corresponded to his hopes in 1555, and many as may have been the envious enemies which his favour with the viceroy and his own sharp satirical tongue brought him in that motley crowded Goa of gossip and intrigue. On his way to Macao, he may have gone to the Moluccas, but this is by no means certain. We know a little more about his return voyage. It would appear that his return was due to a quarrel with the captain of the "silver and silk ship" trading between Japan and Goa. Captain Leonel de Sousa, incensed at being deprived of jurisdiction as provedor at Macao (the post given to Cam6es) is alleged to have arrested him and brought him back to Goa in chains. Much has been made of two words of the Lusiads referring to an "unjust order" (in justo mando), which it is perhaps preferable to take in a more general sense as alluding to the original exile to India in 1553• The poet's term of office at Macao was probably nearly up when Cap tain Sousa put in there at the end of 1558. The desire to give a dramatic cast to every step in the poet's career has been overdone; he may have embarked less picturesquely, without the chains, in the ordinary course of events of ter making a small fortune at Macao. The ship was wrecked on shoals off the coast of Cambodia near the river Mekong, and Sousa and 23 others were the sole survivors. It was here that Dinamene perished. Camoes is repre sented as swimming ashore holding the Lusiads above his head, like Caesar with his Commentaries. The survivors were taken by a passing ship to Malacca and Goa 0559). Camoes at Goa addressed some octaves to the viceroy (1558-61) Dom Constan tino de Braganza. By his successor, the Conde de Redondo (1561 64), Camoes' poetical talent was appreciated, so much so that they could bandy familiar verse and the poet could beseech the viceroy to save him from a debtor's prison and the tender mercies of the usurer Miguel Roiz, the Skinflint (Fios Seccos). We find the poet inviting young fidalgos as his intimate friends to dinner, and another sign of his favour is the fact that when Garcia da Orta published his great work, the "Coloquios," at Goa, he invited Camoes to write a prefatory poem. Redondo, like Mascarenhas, died before his term of office had expired, otherwise he might have made some substantial provision for his poet friend. The next three years are silence. Camoes held the reversion to the post of factor at Chaul, but it might be 20 years before it became his. He preferred to return to Portugal.
The friendship of Pedro Barreto, who was proceeding to Sofala as governor, enabled him to leave Goa in Sept. 1567 and go as far as Mozambique in his company. The poet's fortunes had now reached their lowest ebb ; he was no longer young, the climate was bad, homeward ships were always overcrowded, and Camoes was utterly penniless. He lived on the charity of friends, and was unable to buy himself a new suit of clothes. His spirit was not quite broken; as assets he had his lyrics, his "Parnasso" and his Lusiads, and that belief in itself which sometimes supports genius in extremity. He had shown himself very Portuguese in his im pulsiveness and he was equally Portuguese in his stubborn per sistency. He continued to work at his poems, trusting that they at least might survive. An alleged contemporary account alludes to his "difficult temper" ; he had certainly been tried more than most men. In 1569 the historian Couto and some other friends of Camoes were delayed at Mozambique by bad weather on their homeward voyage, and when they left they took the poet with them, providing for his food on the way.
He reached Cascaes and Lisbon in April 157o. He found the city stricken by the awful plague of 1569, but his aged mother was still alive. Through the friendly services of the influential Dom Manuel de Portugal he received the royal licence to print the Lusiads (Sept. 24, 1571). The poem appeared in 1572 (in two editions) and from March 12 its author was granted an official pension of 15,000 reis. Three and a half centuries later this sum would have been equivalent to half a crown, but in the i6th century, although not munificent, it sufficed to support life. The contrast after the squalor of Mozambique three years before was almost as dramatic as previous reversals in this romantic life. Unfortunately the pension was not always regularly paid, although under the stricter administration of Philip II. it was renewed in favour of the poet's mother, who survived him. A few compli mentary verses are all that we know and probably all that were written during the last 1 o years of his life. Misfortune had, as he said, frozen his genius. He was not chosen to accompany the young King Sebastian on that last rash and royal throw of the dice in Africa in 1578. The poet, weakened by his 17 years in the East, succumbed to the plague which was once more ravaging Lisbon. There are some reasons to assign his death to the summer of 1579, but the date now generally accepted is 158o, and June 1 o is celebrated yearly as a public holiday in his honour in Portugal. On receiving the news of the rout of Alcacer-Kebir, he had written that he was content to die in and with his country. He appears to have died not in his mother's poor house in the Mouraria quarter but in a Lisbon hospital. A Spanish Carmelite friar, Fray Jose Indio, blessed his departing spirit and shed a tear over the death of "so great a genius without even so much as a sheet to cover him." Camoes was buried with other victims of the plague in a common grave. His fame grew and spread gradually through the civilized world. At the third centenary of his death, in 188o, what were assumed to be his remains were removed from the church of Santa Anna and placed beside those of King Sebastian and Vasco da Gama in the national pantheon at Belem.
The life of Camoes after his early years at Coimbra was of an unliterary complexion, and his achievement is one of the most extraordinary instances of the triumph of genius over circum stance. The Renaissance had fast hold of him, and, had he lived a life of ease in a library, might have turned him into a pedant instead of merely enriching his verse. The very title chosen for his epic, Os Lusiadas ("the Portuguese") was a piece of early pedantry. His world travels and adventures at a time when he had lost little of his first sensitiveness but was old enough to have a philosophical outlook enabled him to transfer his delicate sub jectivity to the objects that confronted his eyes as they had con fronted the heroes of the preceding century of whom he sang, and this made him a lyrico-epic poet, a great painter of the sea, capable of infusing his soul's intensity and personal fervour into objective descriptions. All his greatest poetry was written before he was 4o; it is the lyrics composed between the ages of 18 and 32 that cause him to rank with the world's greatest poets, and the greater part of the Lusiads belongs to the same period. Some critics hold that he brought the idea of an epic poem on Portu gal's achievements with him from Coimbra. The epic idea was indeed in the air in the i6th century and proved a thorn in the side of more than one lyric poet, who like Ronsard, would have preferred to sing quietly of his love without the importunate claims of a Franciade. Camoes' exile, taking him over the ground of the maritime discoveries of two generations earlier, enabled him to harness his lyrical genius to the epic form and to make his poem of a nation a living work.
It is possible to judge the Lusiads by comparison with their model the Aeneid (for, although Camoes had Homer also in his thoughts, his epic is mainly Virgilian) or by comparison with the "Araucana" of Ercilla and the multitude of lengthy epics that followed. The latter comparison brings out the immeasurable superiority of the Lusiads; even Ercilla's epic by its side is a wooden narrative of historical fact, while the tedious and in numerable Portuguese epics which continued into the 19th century are an involuntary but emphatic tribute to the genius of Camoes. By comparison with the epic of the ancients what must strike all critics is Camoes's originality. He has made a new thing. If, in the words of Montesquieu, it contains something of the charm of the Odyssey and of the magnificence of the Aeneid, it was essen tially an artificial Renaissance epic such as only genius and ex ceptional circumstances (lacking in Ronsard's case) could justify. Running counter to the precepts of Politian, Camoes chose a recent historical subject, the voyage of Gama (1497-99). The Portuguese adventurers are revealed of ter they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and were approaching Mozambique. They are favoured by Venus but have to count on the malignant hostility of Bacchus (for Camoes, in the spirit of Renaissance poetry, introduced the pagan gods into his epic). It is not until the sixth stanza that they reach Calicut. In the meantime occasions have been devised to work in the earlier part of the voyage from Lisbon round the Cape, which is personified in the giant Adamastor, and much of the history of Portugal, including the romantic fate of Ines de Castro and the victory of Aljubarrota. The account of the return voyage to Portugal is varied by a sojourn in an imaginary island where the "Lusiads" are welcomed by the Nereids and Tethys foretells the deeds of the Portuguese during the next 5o years. It is this skilful working in of the contemporary and past history of the nation that gives to the poem its balance and unity. Vasco da Gama, the nominal hero, is less an individual than a representative of the Portuguese nation. The length of the Lusiads is less than a quarter of that of the epics of Ariosto and Balbuena. In this restraint the poet showed his wisdom, although an early Portu guese admirer of the poem complained that it was too long to be inscribed in gold and too short to be read for ever. Camoes' lyric inspiration maintained the Lusiads, despite some minor blemishes, at a level attained by no other modern epic (if we except Paradise Lost) .
A sensitive genius can only make pearls of the harsh strokes of destiny and build song out of sorrow at a cost ; it burns itself out, and when Camoes returned to Lisbon he seems to have been little more than a sack of ashes, with an occasional glow running through them. His first poems, one or two of them written before he left Coimbra, show that he early attained a perfection of form previously unknown and subsequently unsurpassed in the poetry of his countrymen, an astonishing mastery of the Italian metres; sorrow, suffering and exile gave the poems written during the first years at Goa, including the poem on the "Discontent of the World" and the 73 quintilhas (octosyllabic stanzas of five lines) beginning "Sobolos rios," a deeper thought and philosophy, while the early command of metre and musical rich transparent style were re tained. This humanist's mind was of a national cast, and he ex celled in the native "redondilhas" (octosyllabic verse). He em braces a wide range of poetry, from feathery light love lyrics to profound musings on change and destiny and the solemn accents of religion ; from the satire of circumstance or passing compli ments to the heroic sound and fury of patriotic enthusiasm. His poetry combines softness and vigour, thought and ecstasy, Platonic or neo-Platonic mysticism and the most realistic experience, spontaneous naturalness and technical perfection, rich latinization of language and a severe classical restraint. The diction of the Lusiads is marked by a flowing grace and majestic harmony. A few of the sonnets, canzoni, eclogues and elegies and half a score of poems written in the native octosyllabic metre have been sur passed by not more than six or seven poets since Homer sang, and are as enduring a title to fame as the composition of the Lusiads itself. No authentic contemporary portrait of Camoes is extant, and implicit faith cannot be placed in that published by Severim de Faria in 1624. The fate of the lyrics has been unfortunate ; they remained in manuscript during the poet's life, and no critical edition has yet been published.