Prophesying that the ruin of his country would result from this defeat, he says, in a letter written at that time,—"At least I shall die with it!"—and this sad reflection was a consolation. Southey conjectures that those friends who were kindest to him perished in this defeat, and that thus he lost that aid which had hitherto stood between him and absolute want.
1778.
Ætat.
54.
At length illness and suffering reduced him to so low a state that he was incapable of all exertion. He felt that his death was near, and, as a last effort, he expressed in a letter some of the bitter feelings excited by the miserable circumstances with which it came attended. 1779.
Ætat.
55. "Who ever heard," he says, "that fortune should wish to represent such vast misfortunes on the little theatre of a poor bed! and I, as if they were not sufficient, make myself her ally; for it would appear effrontery to attempt to resist such ill."
But the last scene was saddest of all. He breathed his last in an hospital. The month and day of his decease are alike unknown. The sheet in which he was shrouded was the gift of a noble, Don Francisco de Portugal, whose name deserves no praise for so meagre an offering to the dead, whose life a small portion of wealth might have rendered easy. A moralising monk watched his last hours. "How miserable a thing," he writes, "to see so great a genius so ill rewarded! I saw him die in a hospital at Lisbon, without possessing a shroud to cover his remains, after having borne arms victoriously in India, and having sailed 5500 leagues:—a warning for those who weary themselves by studying night and day without profit, as the spider who spins his web to catch flies."[156]
After his death his body was removed to the church of Santa Anna, where he was interred; but no tomb or monumental inscription marked the spot, till sixteen years after his death, don Gonçalo Coutinho placed a stone to his memory, with this inscription—
HERE LIES LOUIS DE CAMOENS,
PRINCE OF THE POETS OF HIS TIME.
HE LIVED POOR AND MISERABLE,
AND THUS DIED,
IN THE YEAR MDLXXIX.
D. GONÇALO COUTINHO ORDERED
THIS STONE TO BE PLACED HERE,
UNDER WHICH
NO OTHER PERSON SHOULD BE BURIED.[157]
We are told that Camoens was handsome in person; and Faria y Sousa speaks of him as elegant and prepossessing in person before he went to India. Hardships and disappointments on his return bowed him down, destroyed his cheerfulness, and made him old before his time.
Camoens was a great man, not only as poet, but in the qualities of his mind and heart. He entered life full of aspiration after the good and beautiful. He loved tenderly and fondly one who was as pure and good as she was lovely; and in absence, and through hardship and sorrow, still he worshipped her idea and mourned her fate. He was gallant and brave in doing, as well as in the harder task of bearing. No mean, no servile, no even dubious act is recorded of him, during the course of many misfortunes, when spirits less high might have bowed before the rich and powerful. He was naturally cheerful, friendly, and fond of society, which he enlivened and adorned by his wit and genius. Fortune warred with him long in vain, but she conquered at last, when poor, and sick, and friendless, he grew melancholy and despairing. At the commencement we compared his fortunes with those of Cervantes; but the career of Camoens was the most disastrous. Every act of his life had an adverse termination. In the early season of youth he loved tenderly and ardently; and this feeling had not injured his fortunes, if his attachment had not been returned. A modern poet asks, "What makes it fatal in this world of ours, to be loved?" It was the love that Dona Catarina bore the poet, that awakened the enmity of her powerful relations, and cast his whole life into shadow. From the hour he was banished for her sake, he succeeded in nothing. He fought for his country in Africa, only to be maimed and deformed for life. He visited India only to encounter the same hardships in a worse climate; he amassed a fortune, and lost it in shipwreck; he trusted to the kind feelings of the powerful, and found himself reduced to absolute want. The most adverse period of Cervantes' life was his captivity at Algiers[158], when he had the spirit of early manhood, the love and admiration of his companions, his own conscience, and stirring hopes and fears to animate him. The happiest portion of Camoens' existence, we are told, were the years he spent at Macao, away from every friend, with hope only to cheer him, and his imagination, while he looked over the wide distant sea that separated him from the dearest objects of life. In his last moments, Cervantes had wife and relation near; and, when dying, he said farewell, to joy; farewell to his friends. In Camoens' last hour his spirit was broken: want and penury, in their most loathsome guise, were his death-bed companions, in a wretched hospital. Southey justly remarks, however, that he is not to be considered a martyr to literature; for he in no way depended on that for bread. He was a martyr to that political system which created a body of men, (the younger sons of the nobility), who, if they inherited no property, could acquire a livelihood only by court favour; and that is never bestowed upon the worthiest. He sought advancement, as well as the "bubble, honour, at the cannon's mouth." He gained the latter only; and unless his spirit now enjoys the fame which he desired during life, it was a bubble indeed, without substance to support him in his necessity. Had he lived a little longer, we are told Philip II. desired to see him when at Lisbon; and he would have found assistance in him. Many is the reprieve fate sends to the suffering after they are dead, as if to show her power, and to impress us with the idea that all depends on her fiat. Wherefore Heaven has established a law, that the best men are to suffer most in this life, is a mystery. All we know is, that so it is, and so learn at least to revere those cast in adversity, and to glory rather than feel shame in the frowns of fortune.[159]
It seems strange that men should let a fellow-creature die as Camoens died; a man, too, who possessed the much-coveted advantage of birth, who had fought for his country, and celebrated her glories in his verse. Long did these very verses—the "Lusiad," and the reputation it promised—bear him up; yet some hope he lost as he concluded it, and at last he breaks off impatiently,—
"No more, my Muse, no more; my harp's ill strung,
Heavy and out of tune, and my voice hoarse—
And not with singing, but to see I've sung
To a deaf people, and without remorse.
Favour that wont t'inspire the poet's tongue,
Our country yields not: she minds the purse
Too much; exhaling from her gilded mud
Nothing but dross and melancholy blood.