Nor know I by what fate or duller chance,
Men have not now the life or general gust,
Which made them with a cheerful countenance,
Themselves into perpetual action thrust.
* * * *
While I, who speak in rude and humble rhyme,
Nor known, or dreamt of by my king at all,
Know yet from mouths of little ones sometime
The praise of great ones does completely fall
I want not honest studies for my prime,
Nor long experience, since to mix withal;
I want not wit, such as in this you see,
Three things which rarely in conjunction be."
An arm to serve you, trained in war have I,
A soul, to sing you, to the Muses bent;
Only I want acceptance in your eye,
Who owe to virtue fair encouragement
We have dwelt so long on the various and melancholy circumstances of Camoens' lot, that small space is left to speak of his works. Of his lesser poems, his lyrics, and sonnets, such mention has been made in the foregoing pages as have informed the reader of their high merit. Impassioned yet tender, earnest, yet soft—full of heart, and all the better feelings of the soul, they are the type of Camoens, and deserve the same praise as he himself merits.
Patriotism, warmed by the heroic deeds of the discoverers of the passage to India, inspired him with the idea of the Lusiad. He named it "Os Lusitanos," that is to say, the Lusitanians or Portuguese. It opens with the arrival of Vasco de Gama in the Mozambique; it carries him thence, after many dangers, to Calicut, and brings him thence home. Episodical narrations vary the poem. It has faults.[160] Its mythology is clumsy. While bringing forward Christians as Moslems in contention, the introduction of the heathen deities, of Bacchus and Venus, is ridiculous; yet the description of Venus presenting herself to Jupiter, in the second canto, may make any lover of the beautiful pardon the incongruity. The Lusiad is full of beauties: stanzas that rise to sublimity, touch the heart by their pathos, or charm it by descriptive beauties, abound. Above all, there is fire, a heart, a soul—flesh and blood, enthusiasm, and the poet's best spirit, to adorn it with magnanimous sentiments, patriotism, and piety.
As such, the Lusiad is an immortal poem, and Camoens a poet that the world may be proud to have brought forth. He has been considered such, and his poem translated into many languages. In English Mickles' is the modern and popular one; but it has no pretension to fidelity; and, though Mickle was a man of taste and a poet, we turn impatiently from his paraphrase to the truer, though uncouth version of Fanshaw.[161]
Experimentou-se alguã hora
Da Ave que chamaõ Camaõ,
Que, se da Casa, onde mora,
Ve adultera a Senhora,
Morre de pura paixaõ.
[128]Lord Strangford dates the migration of this family from the time of this Ancestor Ruy de Camoens—and speaks of him as a follower of king Fernando. Ferreira is his authority, but other commentators give a different account See Vida del Poeta por Faria y Sousa, III. IV.
[129]Faria y Sousa, in his second life of Camoens appended to his "Rimas," mentions having found, in the registers of the Portuguese India House, a list of all the chief persons who sailed to India. In the list for 1550, there is this entry: "Luis de Camoens, son of Simon Vaz and Ana de Sa," inhabitants of Lisbon, in the quarter of la Monraria, escudeiro (a name equivalent to our esquire), with a red beard; he gave his father as surety—and sails in the ship San Pedro los Burgalezes.
[130]Lusiad, Canto VII. 78. Further mention will be made hereafter of this passage.