Of Catarina's story we may say, as Shakspeare's Viola does of her own history, it was "a blank." She loved, she wept, she died. Her lover won her heart, and then was driven by fate to other lands at an immeasurable distance, and the course of long years promised no return. He fondly laments and commemorates her loss in poems which breathe tenderness and love in all its purity and truth.[154] He addressed her in that heaven which she had reached, and adjured her:—
"Prefer thy prayer
To God, who took thee early to his rest,
That it may please him soon amid the blest
To summon me, dear maid, to meet thee there."
He had lost all; poverty clung to him, and the last hope of seeing her he loved again, was taken away. Fame and glory only remained. His poem was finished; and weary of hard services in wars—whose objects he condemned, and in reward for which he received but the slender pay of a volunteer—he desired to return to his native country, to publish his poem, and to receive the welcome of his friends, and perhaps the reward of his sovereign. He had left Portugal with an embittered spirit; but his misfortunes in India made him turn with a longing eye to his native land, where he might hope that his enemies would cease to persecute him, and he obtain favour from his sovereign.
Pedro Barreto (a name unlucky for the poet) was appointed governor of Sofala, in the Mozambique, and invited Camoens to accompany him. Whether he offered him an office, or only allured him with the hope of facilitating his return to Portugal, Sofala being on the way, we are not told. It seems likely that Camoens went, induced by the latter motive, and trusting to the friendship of a low-minded and hard-hearted man. Arrived at Sofala, he obtained no situation; it was his place to dine at the governor's table, to follow in his train, and to tell the world that he, a gallant soldier and a poet, who inherited immortality, was the dependant of Pedro Barreto. His proud spirit revolted, and he was content to endure the extreme of poverty, rather than play the servile part of parasite and hanger-on. It is probable that some absolute quarrel ensued, or at least that Barreto was so ill pleased with the independent deportment of the man whom he believed that he held in his power, that he expressed his dissatisfaction with an insolence which Camoens resented. At this juncture some of his Indian friends arrived in the Santa Fé; they found him in a most deplorable condition, dependent on others for his subsistence; in want of clothes and every necessary. They supplied his wants, and invited him to accompany them, a proposal Camoens gladly accepted; when the dastardly and malevolent Barreto refused to permit his departure, until he had been paid 200 ducats, which he alleged he had spent in his behalf. The newly-arrived gentlemen, indignant at this meanness, were only the more eager to rescue their friend out of such a person's hands: they subscribed the money, and as Faria expresses it, "ransomed him; so that at the same time the person of Luis Camoens, and the reputation of Pedro Barreto, were bought and sold at the same price;" and if, as men of genius and virtue fondly think, renown for good or ill in this world is an acquisition to be sought, or to be avoided, even with the loss of life, Pedro Barreto, as he counted his paltry ducats, had better have cast them and himself into the sea, than have put them into his pocket; but even the sea could not have washed out the stain of moral infamy. These friends of Camoens were cavaliers, who loved literature and honoured the writer. Their names have been preserved: Hector da Sylveira, Duarte de Abreu, Diogo de Couto, Antonio Cabral, Antonio Serram, and Luis de Veyga. He was the intimate friend of Hector da Sylveira, who showed himself the most active and friendly, and who contributed the largest share to the payment of the debt, even if he did not, as has been asserted, pay the whole. Sylveira is mentioned in a Barmecide feast, Camoens describes as having given at Goa; and they composed redondillhas and other light verses together. The reputation of Couto is known. He was an historian of great merit.
Camoens felt keenly the depth of adversity in which he had sunk. "Oh, how long drawn out," he exclaims in a sonnet, "year by year, is my weary pilgrimage! I go hastening towards age, while my ills increase; every bright hope becomes a dark deceit, and I follow a good which I never reach. I fail midway in the path, yet falling a thousand times, I have still hoped." And in another, driven by despair into feelings unlike his natural ones, he asks, "where he may find a desert place, unvisited even by the brute creation; some gloomy wood or darksome forest—a place as dismal as his own thoughts, wherein to dwell for ever!"
During the voyage home, however, his spirit revived, refreshed by the kindness and admiration of his friends. They read, they praised, and anticipated success for the "Lusiad." Couto wrote a commentary on it, which was unfortunately lost; and the same writer tells us that Camoens employed himself, on the passage, in composing a work of great erudition and philosophy, which he entitled "Parnasso de Luis Camoens," and which Couto says was stolen from him, and irretrievably lost. Late commentators suppose that this must have been a collection of his minor poems: but as Couto speaks of its erudition, and had read it, he would have been aware of this, and expressed himself differently.
The sanguine spirit of the poet, to whom kindness was medicine, and the hope of fame the dearest joy, again dared look forward—again he trusted. 1569.
Ætat.
45. A young and gallant monarch had just ascended the throne, and he hoped to propitiate his favour by his patriotic work. The moment of his landing, however, was unfavourable; for the plague was raging at Lisbon, and the minds of even the great and prosperous were absorbed by the fear of death. The political state of the kingdom was also disadvantageous. Sebastian had succeeded to the crown when only three years old. The queen, Catherine of Austria, had been appointed regent by the will of the late king; but the cardinal Henrique, uncle to the infant sovereign, so disgusted her with his intrigues, that she resigned her power in his favour. Henrique did not show himself unworthy of the trust; but as Sebastian grew up, the courtiers around him were eager that he should take the government of the kingdom into his own hands. Sebastian's own heart was set on military glory and conquests in Africa: a project favoured by all the young and ambitious, and deprecated by the experienced, who saw only a useless expenditure of life and money in the design. The cardinal, meanwhile, endeavoured to prolong his sway. Camoens must have found it difficult to trim his sail between the actual power of the cardinal and the anticipated influence of the favourites of the king. He wrote the verses in which he dedicates his poem to the young monarch; he corrected and polished it; but the publication lingered, and it was two years after his return to his native country before it appeared. It was hailed with enthusiasm, and reprinted within the year. 1571.
Ætat.
47. The king heard of it, it is said, and granted the poet a pension of 15,000 reis—about five pounds sterling—and required him to live within the precincts of the court, and obtain its payment half-yearly. A soldier who had fought as Camoens had done for his country, would have had his sufferings and mutilation better rewarded. It has been impossible to discover what occasioned the paltriness of the grant; if, indeed, it was not his half-pay as a military man, rather than a pension given to the poet. Some commentators fancy that the cardinal scowled on the poem, as likely to excite the martial ardour of the king, which he wished to repress. This fear almost seems to have gone the length of withholding the book altogether; for had Sebastian read the poem, he would surely have found in it a voice that echoed the emotions of his own heart, and would have regarded its writer with more favour; and when he sailed on his ill-fated expedition to Africa, and selected Diego Bernardes to accompany him as his poet, he would rather have chosen a man who could so well achieve and so well describe deeds of arms, as Camoens had proved that he could do.[155]
But in mentioning this we anticipate. Sebastian did not undertake his fatal expedition until the lapse of several years. Meanwhile the darkest shadows clouded the poet's fate. No court favour, no preferment was extended to him. Her he loved was dead; his poem was finished, published, read, admired; yet it proved barren of any advantage, except what he must have felt to be empty reputation, to its unfortunate writer. The poetry of his life faded before realities the most heartbreaking and oppressive. He continued to reside at Lisbon. He did not write, for he had fallen into a state of ill-health, the consequence of the many hardships he had endured, and the climate of India. He lived, he says, "in the knowledge of many, and the society of few." He enjoyed the acquaintance and conversation of some learned men, who belonged to the convent of S. Domingos de Lisboa, near which he lived.
The most melancholy circumstances attended his last days. He was sick and poor; his very life was supported by charity. His servant Antonio, a native of Java, by whom some say his life was saved when wrecked on the coast of Cochin, whom he had brought with him from India, was accustomed to steal out at night, and beg for bread, to support his miserable master during the following day.
While in this afflicting state, a fidalgo, Ruy Diaz de Camara, paid him a visit in his wretched dwelling, to complain that he had not fulfilled a promise which the poet had made of translating the penitential psalms. Camoens regarded with resentment the man who could urge him to write while starving. "When I wrote those verses," he replied, "I was young, well off, and in love; I possessed the affection of many friends, and was favoured of ladies, which imparted a poetic fire. Now I have neither spirit nor peace of mind for any thing. There stands my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces, to buy fuel, and I have none to give him." We are told, though it seems incredible, that "the cavalier closed his heart and purse and quitted the room." Thus shewing himself as base-minded as he was silly. Yet even in this state, so keen and patriotic were the poet's feelings, that his illness is said to have been increased by the tidings of Sebastian's overthrow and death in Africa.