No More Learning

The king, says the French translator, was
so pleased with his merit, that he gave the author a pension of 4000
reals, on condition that he should reside at court. But this salary,
says the same writer, was withdrawn by Cardinal Henry, who succeeded to
the crown of Portugal, lost by Sebastian at the battle of Alcazar.

But this story of the pension is very doubtful. Correa and other
contemporary authors do not mention it, though some late writers have
given credit to it. If Camoens, however, had a pension, it is highly
probable that Henry deprived him of it. While Sebastian was devoted to
the chase, his grand-uncle, the cardinal, presided at the council board,
and Camoens, in his address to the king, which closes the Lusiad,
advises him to exclude the clergy from State affairs. It was easy to see
that the cardinal was here intended. And Henry, besides, was one of
those statesmen who can perceive no benefit resulting to the public
from elegant literature. But it ought also to be added in completion of
his character, that under the narrow views and weak hands of this Henry,
the kingdom of Portugal fell into utter ruin; and on his death, which
closed a short inglorious reign, the crown of Lisbon, after a faint
struggle, was annexed to that of Spain. Such was the degeneracy of the
Portuguese, a degeneracy lamented in vain by Camoens, whose observation
of it was imputed to him as a crime.

Though the great[11] patron of theological literature--a species the
reverse of that of Camoens--certain it is, that the author of the Lusiad
was utterly neglected by Henry, under whose inglorious reign he died in
all the misery of poverty. By some, it is said, he died in an
almshouse. It appears, however, that he had not even the certainty of
subsistence which these houses provide. He had a black servant, who had
grown old with him, and who had long experienced his master's humanity.
This grateful dependant, a native of Java, who, according to some
writers, saved his master's life in the unhappy shipwreck where he lost
his effects, begged in the streets of Lisbon for the only man in
Portugal on whom God had bestowed those talents which have a tendency to
erect the spirit of a downward age.
To the eye of a careful observer,
the fate of Camoens throws great light on that of his country, and will
appear strictly connected with it. The same ignorance, the same
degenerate spirit, which suffered Camoens to depend on his share of the
alms begged in the streets by his old hoary servant--the same spirit
which caused this, sank the kingdom of Portugal into the most abject
vassalage ever experienced by a conquered nation. While the grandees of
Portugal were blind to the ruin which impended over them, Camoens beheld
it with a pungency of grief which hastened his end. In one of his
letters he has these remarkable words, "_Em fim accaberey a vida, e
verram todos que fuy afeicoada a minho patria_," etc. --"I am ending the
course of my life, the world will witness how I have loved my country. I
have returned, not only to die in her bosom, but to die with her. " In
another letter, written a little before his death, he thus, yet with
dignity, complains, "Who has seen on so small a theatre as my poor bed,
such a representation of the disappointments of Fortune. And I, as if
she could not herself subdue me, I have yielded and become of her party;
for it were wild audacity to hope to surmount such accumulated evils. "

In this unhappy situation, in 1579, in his sixty-second year, the year
after the fatal defeat of Don Sebastian, died Luis de Camoens, the
greatest literary genius ever produced by Portugal; in martial courage
and spirit of honour nothing inferior to her greatest heroes. And in a
manner suitable to the poverty in which he died was he buried. Soon
after, however, many epitaphs honoured his memory; the greatness of his
merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into
various languages. [12] Nor ought it to be omitted, that the man so
miserably neglected by the weak king Henry, was earnestly enquired after
by Philip of Spain when he assumed the crown of Lisbon. When Philip
heard that Camoens was dead, both his words and his countenance
expressed his disappointment and grief.

From the whole tenor of his life, and from that spirit which glows
throughout the Lusiad, it evidently appears that the courage and manners
of Camoens flowed from true greatness and dignity of soul. Though his
polished conversation was often courted by the great, he appears so
distant from servility that his imprudence in this respect is by some
highly blamed. Yet the instances of it by no means deserve that severity
of censure with which some writers have condemned him.