Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/102

Rh him. One of them speaks of a black slave whom he had brought from the East, and who went regularly into the streets to beg for his master. Then came that fatal expedition to Africa when national liberty for years to come was buried with D. Sebastião on the battlefield of Alcacer-el-Kebir.

"I die with the glory of my country," said Camões, when the news came to Lisbon. In truth, the poet expired a few days later in a hospital, goes the story, and was buried in the Convento de Santa Anna. The Lusiadas is the epic of the golden age of Portugal, the song of Vasco da Gama's adventurous expedition. The poet weaves in all the great figures and events of his country's history, and also episodes of romance, the tragedy of D. Pedro and Ignez de Castro being the subject of one of the finest passages. Over all watch the mythological figures of Homer and Virgil, singularly intermixed with the names of Christ, the Virgin and the saints of the Catholic Church. It was the first epic written since the invasion of the Goths; it was the forerunner and model of Tasso.

From the Praça de Camões the Rua Alecrim (Rosemary) descends to the Caes de Sodré, still precipitous, though not showing as in George Borrow's time the palaces of fidalgos, "massive and frowning but grand and picturesque with here and there a hanging garden overlooking the street at a great height," but chiefly the shops and offices of a busy thoroughfare. A little way down there opens out to the right a quiet little largo, where, against a background of thick, clustering palm fronds, stands, gleaming and white, the monument erected to Eça de Queiroz, with a characteristic quotation from the noted writer inscribed beneath: "sobre a nudez forte de Verdade a manto diaphono de phantazia" (over the strong nudity of Truth the diaphonous cloak of fantasy). Truth 74