Camoens was in one sense of the word a practical man, like Ariosto; he had governed a province, and governed it successfully. But he had also taken up arms for his country, and after suffering all the slights that could be put upon him by an ungrateful and forgetful monarch, still loved his native land, loved it the more, perhaps, that he had suffered for it and was by it neglected. He foresaw, also, as did no one else, the future ruin of his country, and loved it the more intensely, as a parent lavishes the fondest, most despairing affection on a child he knows doomed to early death.
The Lusiad is sometimes called the epic of commerce; it could be called far more appropriately the epic of patriotism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE LUSIAD.
J. Adamson's Memoirs of Life and Writing of Camoens, 2 vols., 1820 (vol. 2, account of works of Camoens in Portuguese and other languages, and of the works founded on his life or suggested by his writings);
R. F. Burton's Camoens, his Life and his Lusiad, 2 vols., 1881;
M. W. Shelley's Lives of the most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, vol. 3;
F. Bouterwek's History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature, 1823 (Tr. by T. Ross);
Chambers's Repository, no. 32, Spirit of Camoens's Lusiad; W. T. Dobson's Classic Poets, pp. 240-278;