N’huma maõ livros, n’outra ferro e aço,
N’huma maõ sempre a espada, n’outra a pena, &c.
[133] The allusion to this event occurs in the tenth canto of the Lusiad, in which the goddess Thetis from the summit of a hill, points out to Vasco de Gama the theatre of the future conquests of the Portuguese. Thetis says, pointing to the coast of Camboya, but without naming Camoens:—
Este recevera placido e brando
No seu regaço os Cantos, que molhados
Vem de naufragia triste e miserando,
Dos procellosos baixos escapados.
[134] Barbosa Machado, in his dictionary says of Camoens:—
Salvou se em huma taboa com o seu divino poema, imitando a Julio Cesar, que no porto de Alexandria em huma maõ levava la espada e em a outra os seus commentarios.
In order to render the miracle perfect in analogy, Dieze in his appendix to Velasquez, has applied to Camoens these last words in which Machado refers exclusively to Cæsar. Inadvertencies of this sort must be expected occasionally to occur in the history of literature.
[135] The original source whence these biographic notices are derived is, it must be admitted, somewhat obscure. About the middle of the seventeenth century, a writer named Manoel Severim de Faria compiled a biographical account of Camoens from the poet’s own works. This biography served as a ground work for Manoel de Faria e Sousa, who annexed a Vida del Poeta to his edition of Camoens and his commentaries on the Lusiad. The facts thus collected were afterwards rectified and arranged by subsequent writers, and among others by Barbosa Machado. Manoel de Faria attaches particular importance to the noble extraction and armorial bearings of Camoens. He gives the passage from the letter which the poet is said to have written on the approach of death, and which Barbosa Machado has re-printed. The words are:—
Quem houvio dizer nunca, que em tam pequeno theatro, como o de hum pobre leito, quisisse Fortuna representar tam grande desventura?
And again:—
Procurar resistir a tantos males, pareceria especie de desavergonhamento.