CAMOENS (Dom Luis de-Cam6es), called the Homer and Virgil of Portugal, for his celebrated poem of the Lusiad; was born at Lisbon ; though Coimbra and Santarem have disputed this honour with Lisbon. There is no less controversy about the precise year of his birth, which, according to some, was 1517 while most biographers suppose it to be 1524.
His family was of considerable note, and originally Spanish. In his iufaucy, his father, Simon Vas do Camoens, commander of a vessel, was shipwrecked at Goa, and lost, with his life, the greater part of his fortune. His mother, however, Anise de Macedo, of Santarem, was enabled to give her son such an education as qualified him for the military service and for public life. Camnene was sent to the university of Coimbra, where, notwithstanding Voltaire's nab assertion that his youth was spent in idleness and ignorance, it appears from his works that he must have acquired the substance as well as caught the spirit of classical On quitting the university Cameens returned to Lisbon. His prepossessing appearance and great accomplishments, added to his love of poetry and gallantry, which now engrossed all his thoughts, soon made him an object of public notoriety, especially as the charms of Catharine d'Atayada, a lady of honour (lama do pago) at the court, had captivated his heart. This amour with a lady above his rank was the origin of the long series of Camoens' calamities. He experienced the fate of Ovid, with whom he compares himself in his third elegy, written at Santarem, the place of his exile and retirement, where he also began his Lusiad: Camoene soon became tired of an inactive and obscure life. To be at once a hero and a poet was his ambition. He joined, as a volunteer, an expedition which John III. was then fitting out against the Moore of Ceuta, and greatly distinguished him self in several encounters. In a naval engagement with the Moors in the Straits of Gibraltar he was among the foremost to board, and lost his right eye in the conflict. This he relates himself in his Cana() x., Item 9.
Hoping to deserve as a soldier that reward which he had failed to obtain as a poet, he returned to Lisbon; but he failed to gain even an honourable competence. Baffled iu all his expectations, he determined to leave his native country ; and accordingly he embarked in 1553 for India, in search of better prospects, or, at least, an honourable grave for his misfortunes. As the ship left the Tagus he expressed hia
resolution never to return, in the words of the sepulchral monument of Scipio Africanus,—" Ingrate patria, non poasidebis 083a Inca." Camoens arrived safely at Goa, in one of the four ships which sailed to Iudia, after seeing the other three perish in a storm. Not being able to find employment at Goa, he immediately joined as a volunteer a Portuguese expedition, which was ready to sail iu aid of the Kiug of Cochin against the King of Pimenta. Although a great portion of his countrymen were carried off by the insalubrity of the climate, Camoens returned safe after he had displayed his usual bravery iu the conquest of the Alagada Islands. In the following year he accompanied Manuel de Vasconcello in another expedition to the Red Sea, against the Arabian Corsairs. At the island of Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf, where he passed the winter, his imagination gave a poetic colouring to the scenery of that spot, and to the Portuguese achievements iu He visited also mount Felix, and the adjacent part of Africa, which he so strongly pictures in the Lusiad: and in one of the little pieces in which he laments the absence of his mistress. Unfortunately for him he indulged also in satire, and exposed in his Disparates na India,' (Follies in India) some of the government proceedings at Goa. The viceroy immediately banished him to the island of Macao. Soon after be obtained leave to visit the Moluccas, 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, iu the other the pen," and he was glad to accept the very unpoetic post at Macao of provedor-mor dos defuntos' (administrator of the effects of deceased persons), by which employment he was rescued from desti tution, and even enabled to 'make some savings. Having received permission from a new viceroy to return to Goa, he was shipwrecked in the passage on the coast of Cambodia. He saved, on a plank, and with great difficulty, only his life and his poems.