Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/826

748 were powerful, malignant, and treacherous ; aud it is surmised that Barreto was of the number, but it is difficult to imagine that if Barreto intended punishment he should have made of this banishment a stepping-stone to a lucrative appointment, which must have been one of con- siderabb importance, embracing as it did the custody of the property of absentees, and of those Portuguese who had died in India. In a letter from Francisco de Souza to John III. the importance of this office is recognized, grave complaints of embezzlement and misappropriation of the property of deceased merchants and others having reached Lisbon, so that, &quot; early in 1556, a commission was despatched from the mother country to take charge of the effects of deceased subjects,&quot; and, in 1557, &quot;full instruc tions as to the management of this state department followed.&quot; Barreto, with a laudable desire to abate these scandals, may well have appointed a bold energetic man, upon whose integrity he could rely, and Camoens was selected. During the absence of Camoens from Goa his friend Luiz Franco Correia collected the verses he had scattered amongst his friends, shrewdly observing, &quot; that they who knew not the poetic art failed to estimate its value.&quot; Apart from the vices and intrigues of Goa, and in the quietude of the Grotto still shown at Macao as the spot where much of the Lusiad was penned, we may imagine halcyon days for the persecuted poet. Here Antonio, the Javanese slave, is first introduced to history, he who tended Camoens so affectionately and with such solicitude through those latter years of misery and neglect, which were the lot of this unhappy &quot; prince of poets of his time.&quot; It is surmised that the first six cantos of the Lusiad were com posed during Camoens s stay at Macao ; for in the seventh, allusion is made to tli3 shipwreck he suffered on his return to Goa. During his absence slanderous tongues were not silent, and we hear of his return to Goa by order of the governor, to make answer to charges brought against him in his capacity as commissary. Wrecked near the mouth of the River Mekong, Camoens and his faithful Javanese escaped only with their lives. Camoens, rescuing nothing but the manuscript of his epic, at length landed at Goa in the last days of Barreto s governorship, and was cast into prison. Here he received the only news which could aggravate his pain the sad tidings of the death of Donna Caterina de Ataide, the Natercia of his impassioned youth. We can estimate the depth and tenderness of his grief touchingly expressed in many of the Rimas. The arrival in the autumn of the following year of Dom Constantinho de Braganc.a as governor to replace Barreto led to the liberation of Camoens, the charges against him having been proved to be unfounded. Under the protection of Dom Constantinho the poet enjoyed some respite from his persecutors. It was during this period of &quot; cultured calm&quot; that he invited several &quot;versifying friends&quot; to a banquet, where each, on uncovering his plate, discovered, in place of the first course, an appropriate stanza. The surprise gave occasion to considerable mirth and amuse ment. Three years later Dom Constantinho was replaced by the Conde de Redondo, an early friend and companion of the poet s. Towards the close of 1562 Camoens suffered a new reverse. Miguel Rodriguez Coutinho, a rich braggart, nick-named Fios Seccos (dry threads), detained him in custody for a trifling debt. On this occasion Camoens sent a request to the Conde to release him, in epi grammatic verse, which well revenges Coutinho s meanness, commencing &quot; What devil so completely damned but fears the edge of Fios Seccos sword.&quot; Camoens was released, but does not appear to have accompanied the viceroy and his splendid retinue to Zamoriu. Being desirous to return to his native land, a certain Captain Barreto, nephew of the old governor of Goa, charmed with the society of the poet, agreed to carry him to Sofala ; once there he hoped to detain him, and claimed a small sum he was unable to discharge. Here the expedition under Noronha, ex- governor of Goa, found him ; and of Camoens s condition Diogo de Couto wrote : &quot; Here we encountered that prince of poets of his time. my fellow-sailor and friend, Luiz de Camoens, so poor that he lived upon his acquaint ance, who found him necessary clothing and gladly gave him to eat. During that winter he prepared his Lusiad for the press, and wrote much in a book he called the Parnaso of Luiz de Camoens.&quot; The fleet, including the &quot; Santa Clara,&quot; with Camoens on board, sailed from Sofala in November 1569, and on the 7th April 1570 the good ship cast anchor in the broad waters of the &quot; golden-sanded Tagus.&quot; After seventeen years of weary exile we may imagine the thrill of joy that warmed the heart of Camoens at the first sight of the headland which bares its base to the wash of the Atlantic, and marks the entrance to the Tagus. &quot; From the round-top of the loftiest mast a sailor shouts, The land, the land ! This is my native land so fondly loved, which heaven grant, all perils past, my task accom plished, these eyes behold once more before their light be dimmed for ever.&quot; While others from the far Indies brought rich merchandize and gold, he who had suffered banishments and imprisonments, had encountered tempests and shipwreck, came freighted only with a single manu script, on the pages of which were traced in immortal verse the glorious historic deeds of the Portuguese nation, and the touching episode of Ignez ds Castro. Here Fortune still continued to persecute Camoens. He and his com panions were not permitted to land, Lisbon having recently suffered from the effects of a pestilence which had destroyed 50,000 souls. Late in the month of April, the great plague having abated, a procession of our Lady of Health was decreed ; and it is supposed that Camoens had already landed and embraced his mother, then &quot;very old and very poor.&quot; The Lusiad, being now completed and .ready for the press, after much delay and many impediments, was, through the influence of Dom Manoel, ambassador to Castile, presented in manuscript to the young king in the follow ing year, 1571 ; the royal permission to print the work was accorded, the Alvara bearing date the 23d September of that year. Later the &quot; censura &quot; of the holy office was obtained, bearing date 12th March 1572. It carries the signature of Father Ferreira, a man of singular ability and evidently liberal views, and is as follows: &quot;I saw, by order of the Holy Inquisition, these ten cantos of the Lusiad of Luiz de Camoens, relating the valorous deeds in arms of the Portuguese in Asia and Europe, and I did not find in them a single offensive thing, nor aught contrary to the faith and good manners ; only it seemed to me necessary to warn the reader that the author, in order to exaggerate the perils of the navigation and entrance into India of the Portuguese, makes use of a fiction of the heathen gods ; and although San Agostinho in his Rekraetoqoes corrects the having called the muses god desses, nevertheless, as this is poetry and fiction, and the author does not pretend more than to adorn his poetic style, I have not considered it inconvenient this fable of the gods in this work, knowing it for such, and while is always preserved the truth of our Holy Faith, that all the gods of the heathen are devils, and therefore it appeared to me that the book is worthy of being printed,