On his return to Goa, he wrote a most beautiful canzone, the ninth, descriptive of the wretchedness he endured, in which he pourtrays that corner of the world, "neighbouring a barren, rocky, sterile mountain; useless, bare, bald and shapeless, abhorred of nature, where no bird flies, nor wild beast crouches—where no stream flows, nor any fountain springs, and whose name is Felix. Here my hapless fortune placed me; here, in this remote, rugged, and rocky part of the world, did fortune will that a short space of my short life should be spent, that it might be scattered in pieces about the world; here I wasted my sad, solitary, and sterile days, full of hardship, grief, and resentment; nor had I, as my only adversaries, life, a burning sun, and chilling waters, a thick and sultry atmosphere, — but also my own thoughts. They assailed me, bringing the memory of some passed and brief delight, which once was mine when I inhabited the world, to double the asperity of my adversity, by showing me that many happy hours may be enjoyed; and thus, in these thoughts, I wore out time and life."
Camoens returned to Goa, only to again encounter the enmity of fate and malice of men. It was natural for him, to behold with indignation and contempt the extortion and tyranny of the Portuguese government; and he is said to have been excited by these feelings to express his dislike of various individuals that composed it in a satire, which he named "Follies in India," (Disparates na India), in which, in general terms, he lashes many potent individuals for their misdeeds. This made him enemies; and being suspected of composing another satire, still more distasteful to several who were named in it, as instituting a feast of canes in honour of the new governor, and getting drunk on the occasion; the persons aggrieved, fearing Camoens' sword as well as his pen, applied for redress to Barreto, and he was glad of the pretence to arrest and banish him to China[147]; or rather, Southey says, we should express it, ordered him to another station; but this is often the worst exile; when a man has sought a new country, where he has friends and prospects, it is an arbitrary and cruel act that drives him out to seek his fortune on unknown shores, where he arrives a stranger, and may be looked on as an intruder; his name already stigmatised by the very circumstances of his removal.
1556.
Ætat.
32.
Camoens departed from Goa in the fleet which Barreto despatched to the South. He felt this arbitrary act bitterly. He denounced it as unjust, and went, he says, "loaded with his recollections, his sorrows, and his fortunes, which were for ever adverse." He disembarked, at first, at one of the Molucca Isles; Ternate, as it is supposed: the term of his stay there is uncertain, but there is every reason to suppose that he soon proceeded to Macao.[148] He here held the office of "Provedor dos Defunctos," or commissary for the effects of the deceased; and here again we find a similarity with Cervantes, who was driven to maintain himself by accepting a clerkship; but in this Camoens was more fortunate than the Spaniard; the situation he held was of greater emolument, and he amassed a little fortune while holding it[149]; nor was it a place that demanded much time for the fulfilment of its duties. Camoens found leisure to retire from the details of business, and to pursue his poetical occupations. He was wont to spend much time in a grotto which commanded a view of the sea, and where, apart from the rest of the world, he wrote a great portion of the "Lusiad." This spot is still shown to strangers who visit Macao, as the grotto of Camoens; and an English visitor thus describes it: "It is pleasantly situated on the western shore of the promontory of Macao, and faces the harbour, which divides it on that side from the main land. This promontory is a narrow neck of land, whose stony and barren surface is only rendered habitable by the sea breezes, that blow from three quarters of the compass, and somewhat temper the natural heat of the climate." At this day, the English possessor has beautified it by a plantation of trees, and crowned it with a small Chinese temple, built on the rock, which is a sort of cromlech; the excavation beneath is the cave, or natural grotto, to which the poet resorted, bare in itself, but commanding a beautiful and extensive view:—"the wide sea flecked with verdant isles, the harbour busy with vessels, the line of woody and cultivated coast, bounded by the majestic Montagna, whose pyramidical form and dark aspect add no small charm to the scenery."
Here Camoens continued the "Lusiad;" here Southey supposes that the happiest years of his life were spent. It may be so, but airy and cameleon-like must that happiness have been. His imagination, his desire of fame, the grasp he held of it, as he added to his immortal work, doubtless often fired his soul with that rapture which poets only know; and, as he gathered together some of the world's pelf, he might dream of dona Caterina, of his native Lisbon, and hope to make her his own when he should return; he could look upon the sky and sea, and the beautiful earth, and feel the loveliness of the creation breathe peace and love around him. But still he was exiled and he was alone; his food was hope; far off expectation, and that too of blessings, which he was never doomed to possess; and as doubtless the human soul does unconsciously receive shadows or sunbeams from the future, so his melancholy mood may often have made him wonder, why on an earth so lovely; beneath so sublime a heaven, he should be doomed to solitude and misfortune.
Thus several years were passed. Whatever the emoluments of his place were, or whatever fortune it was that he amassed, or whatever were the charms of his abode, they did not seduce him to stay a day longer than he was obliged. He obtained leave to return to Goa from, or was invited to do so by, dom Costantino de Braganza, the new viceroy, who had known and entertained friendship for him in Portugal. He embarked carrying with him his little fortune. But here fate at once displayed her unmitigated persecution; he was wrecked at the mouth of the river Mecon, and with difficulty reached the shore; carrying in one hand the manuscript of his poem, while he swam with the other. Every thing else that he possessed in the world was lost.[150]
Camoens was kindly received by the natives who lived on the banks of the Mecon; though he says of them with some scorn—
"The near inhabitants brutishly think
That pain and glory, after this life's end
Even brute creatures of each kind attend."
yet this very belief may have made them more sympathetic and charitable.
He remained on this coast for a few days after his wreck. And here all commentators agree that he wrote what are called his marvellous and inimitable rendondilhas, which commence by an allusion to the Hebrew psalm of exile, "By the waters of Babylon." Southey rejects absolutely the possibility that this beautiful poem could have been written at such an hour of tumult and uncertainty, and brings as proof, that not only, he does not mention his wreck, nor the kindness he received, for which he evidently felt grateful, but speaks of himself as living in exile.