Camoens appears to have passed his exile at Santarem (the native place of his mother), or in its neighbourhood. He was supremely unhappy; banished from her he loved, banished from the court, where all his hopes of advancement, were centred, the gates of life were closed on him. His genius and his poetical imagination were his only resource and comfort. He wrote many of his lyrics and sonnets here, and among the rest a very beautiful elegy, in which he compares himself to Ovid banished to Pontus, and separated from the country and the friends he loved. He dwells on the Roman's misery, and proceeds—
"Thus Fancy paints me—thus like him forlorn,
Condemn'd the hapless exile's fate to prove;
In life-consuming pain, thus doomed to mourn
The loss of all I prized—of her I love.
"Reflection paints me guiltless though opprest,
Increasing thus the sources of my woe;
The pang unmerited that rends the breast,
But bids a tear of keener sorrow flow.
"On golden Tagus' undulating stream[140]
Skim the light barks by gentlest, wishes sped
Trace their still way midst many a rosy gleam
That steals in blushes o'er its trembling bed.
"I see them gay, in passing beauty glide
Some with fix'd sails to woo the tardy gale,
While others with their oars that stream divide
To which I weeping tell the Exile's tale."
At this period also he is supposed to have conceived and begun the Lusiad. Passionately fond of his country, and proud of her heroes, he believed it to be a glorious task to celebrate their deeds; and while his heart warmed and his imagination was fired with such a subject, he might hope that it would please his sovereign, and that his patriotic labours would bear the fruit of some prosperity for himself. That he hoped much, we know, and felt all the confidence in eventual happiness which the young and ardent naturally feel is certain. How bitter and how blighting was the truth, that as it brought to light, piece by piece, year by year, the course of his life, shewed only barren tracks, storms, and hardship—to end at last in abject wretchedness!
The gleams that a little irradiate the obscurity in which this portion of the life of Camoens is enveloped, shed a very doubtful light upon his motives. Faria y Sousa says, that he returned to Lisbon, and was a second time exiled for the same cause, and then resolved on his expedition to India. But there is no proof of his being banished a second time by any royal order.
The simple facts appear to be these. In 1545 he left the university and began life. He was twenty-one, ardent in his temper, high of hope, of an aspiring but poetic temperament, that could bear all that called him forth to action and glory, but was impatient of obscurity, and the dull sleepy course of hopeless unvaried mediocrity of station and life. He loved, and he was banished.
His heart then spent itself in rhymes, and he conceived the idea of a poem which he deemed to be epic, which spoke of heroes, who were his countrymen, who were but lately dead, and whose path to glory in the east he even saw open before himself. Five years were passed since he had left Coimbra; he was still poor and unprotected: he resolved to be and to do something, and on this, formed the project of going to India. He had formed an intimacy with dom Antonio de Noronha. Dom Alfonso de Noronha (who must have been some relation to this young noble) was at this time named viceroy for India; and the entry in the Portuguese East Indian register shows that Camoens had taken his passage on board the same vessel in which the viceroy sailed. From some reason, however, he changed his intention. Dom Antonio was about to join the Portuguese army in Africa. His father had discovered an attachment between him and dona Margarita de Silva, a lady of high birth and great beauty, but from some unknown cause, not approving of it, he sent his son to Ceuta. Nothing was more natural than that dom Antonio should solicit his friend to accompany him, instead of leaving his native country for the distant clime of India. Other commentators say that the father of Camoens was at that time in Africa, and sent for his son; but facts tend to negative this. We have seen that Simon Vaz was his son's surety on his projected voyage, on board the Don Pedro; nor have we any facility afforded us of reconciling these contradictions.[141] There are several expressions in his poems which indicate that the poet, though innocent, was obliged to go to Africa.[142] These might allude to a paternal command, or simply to the evil fate that pursued him, driven by which, he might term that force, which was only a strongly impelling motive.
1550.
Ætat.
20.