Part 21

Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a _cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript. A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was, having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the eighteenth century.

Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies, returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration which Portuguese history might have been expected to give.

Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente Compõem grandes Iliadas,

wrote Diniz da Cruz (_O Hyssope_, canto 1). The epic-fever had not abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Madeira poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos (_c._ 1770-1824) alone wrote two: _Zargueida_ (1806), _Georgeida_ (1819); and José Agostinho de Macedo in his _Motim Literario_ imagines himself at the mercy of a poet with an epic in sixty cantos entitled _Napoleada_, and himself became the mock-hero of one in nine: _Agostinheida_ (Londres, 1817), written by his unfortunate opponent Nuno Alvares Pereira Pato Moniz (1781-1827). The strange poet of Setubal, Thomaz Antonio de Santos e Silva (1751-1816), published a _Braziliada_ in twelve cantos in 1815. Of the earlier epics Camillo Castello Branco wrote sarcastically: ‘They contain impenetrable mysteries of dullness and inspire a sacred awe, but they are the conventional glory of our literary history, untouched and intangible.’[431]

Of the two long epic poems of JERONIMO CORTE REAL (_c._ 1530-1590?): _Svcesso do Segvndo Cerco de Div_ (1574) and _Naufragio, e Lastimoso Svcesso da Perdiçam de Manoel de Sousa de Sepulveda_, &c. (1594), we may perhaps say that they are excellent prose. He dwells more than once upon the inconstancy of fortune, and this may be something more than a platitude. Of his life little is known. He is by some believed to have been born in the Azores in 1533. A document in the possession of the Visconde de Esperança shows that he died before May 12, 1590. He may have been a musician as well as a poet and a painter. It is probable, but not certain, that he accompanied King Sebastian to Alcacer Kebir and was taken prisoner. Faria e Sousa says that he was too old to go. After varied service by land and sea he wrote these poems when living in retirement on his estate near Evora, and his own experiences stood him in good stead for his descriptions, which are often not without life and vigour, as the account of the battle in canto 18 of the _Segundo Cerco de Diu_, or of the storm in canto 7 of the _Naufragio_. The former poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. João de Mascarenhas and its relief by D. João de Castro (1546), in whose mouth is placed a long and tedious speech. The last two cantos (21, 22) are tacked on to the main theme and occupy more than a quarter of the whole. They tell from paintings the deeds of past captains and prophesy future events and the ‘golden reign’ of King Sebastian. The prophetic vision, although it included a generation beyond the nominal date of the poem (1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578). The hendecasyllables of the blank verse have an exceedingly monotonous fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.[432] The use of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an inclination to multiply words without adding to the force of the picture.[433] The same plethora of epithets, elaborate similes, and slow awkward development of the story mark the seventeen cantos--some 10,000 lines of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the _Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_ (1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen cantos in Spanish blank verse.

LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto 17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India (cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out of place in an epic.

If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus, regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry. The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he consoles himself, if not his reader, with the sincere conviction that his rude verse cannot detract from the greatness of the deeds which he describes (xx. 1-6).

FOOTNOTES:

[401] _Seu quarto avò foi um Gallego nobre_ (Diogo Camacho, _Jornada ás Cortes do Parnaso_).

[402] Dr. Wilhelm Storck, the author of the most elaborate life of Camões in existence, considered that the words _quando vim da materna sepultura_ in one of Camões’ poems could only mean that his mother (Anna de Macedo) died at his birth, and that he was survived by Anna de Sá, his stepmother. It may have been so, but there is not a scrap of evidence in favour of the theory nor were the words _materna sepultura_ anything more than a conventional phrase. Cf. Antonio Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1609), pt. 1, f. 2: _Como Nazianzeno diz ... e tumulo prosiliens ad tumulum iterum contendo, em nacendo saimos de hũa sepultura que foi as entranhas da mãi e morrendo entramos noutra._ So Pinto, _Imagem_, pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 342 v.: _tornar nu ao ventre de sua mãi, o qual é a sepultura da terra_, and Bernardes, _Nov. Flor._ i. 122: _A terra e nossa mãe, de cujo tenebroso ventre que é a sepultura_, &c.

[403] She may have been a distant relation of the poet’s: the name was a common one, but Camões was connected with the Gamas, and the wife and granddaughter of the first Conde de Vidigueira were both named Catherina de Athaide.

[404] According to Dr. Storck he was banished in 1549, and in the same year, after the sentence of banishment had been commuted to service in Africa, left Portugal, returning to Lisbon in the autumn of 1551. Others believe that he was in Lisbon again in 1550 and that his two years in Africa must be placed between 1546 and 1549.

[405] The important document containing his pardon is printed in Juromenha’s edition of his works, i. 166-7.

[406] This quotation is assigned to various other persons, as to Nuno da Cunha when arranging that he should be buried at sea.

[407] _O poeta Simonides fallando._

[408] Cf. _Lus._ i. 19, 43; ii. 20, 67; v. 19-22; vi. 70-9.

[409] _Desejei tanto._

[410] Couto, in the _Dialogo do Soldado Pratico_, remarks that if a man is given a post at the age of twenty he only receives it at the age of sixty (p. 99). The soldier, who wishes _ter logo em tres annos vinte mil cruzados_, suggests, among other posts for himself, that of _Provedor dos Defuntos: porque com qualquer destes ficarei mui bem remediado_. To which the _Desembargador_ objects: _he necessario que quem houver de servir esses cargos seja letrado e visto em ambos os Direitos_.

[411] _Vinde cá._ It is advisable to give the first words of his poems without the number until there is a definitive edition of his works.

[412] It is uncertain whether Camões’ ship was the _Santa Clara_ or the _Fe_.

[413] Barros, _Decada_, III. ix. 1.

[414] It is about the sum (apart from any grant of _pimenta_) which a common soldier on active service might earn in India (see Barros, I. viii. 3: 1,200 × 12 = 14,400); _environ huit cents livres de notre monnoie d’aujourd’hui_ (Voltaire). It would scarcely correspond to more than £50 of to-day.

[415] _Lus._ V. 45.

[416] Prophetically he had echoed (_Lus._ X. 23) the complaint of the historians of India: _Morrer nos hospitaes em pobres leitos Os que ao Rei e á lei servem de muro_.

[417] _Todos hasta oy, y principalmente en Castilla, tuvieron siempre a mi Maestre por mayor en estes Poemas que en el Heroyco_ (_Varias Rimas_, Prólogo, 2 vols., 1685, 1689). Cf. the praise of his _versos pequenos_ in Severim de Faria, _Vida_, p. 121.

[418] See the important work by Dr. Rodrigues: _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_ (1904-1913). Cf. Camões’ _Vão os annos decendo_ (x. 9) and _Leal Conselheiro_ (cap. 1, p. 18), where the words are used in the same connexion. With Virgil he was obviously acquainted at first hand, with Homer perhaps in the translation of the Florentine scholar Lorenzo Valla (1405-57). In _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_ is also discussed the origin of the word Lusiads, as by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in _O Instituto_, vol. lii (1905), pp. 241-50: _Lucius Andreas Resendius Inventor da palavra Lusiadas_. It was one of the Latin words acclimatized by Camões. It occurs in a Latin poem by André de Resende, _Vicentius Levita et Martyr_ (1545), and in his _Encomium Erasmi_ written, but not published, in 1531; in a Latin poem by Jorge Coelho, perhaps written in 1526 but touched up before its publication in 1536; and is twice used by Manuel da Costa (in and about 1537).

[419] The word is undoubtedly _dotto_ in the facsimile of the text given in Antonio de Portugal de Faria, _Torquato Tasso a Luiz de Camões_ (Leorne, 1898) although there, as always, it has been transcribed as _colto_. Diogo Bernardez calls Tasso _culto_, perhaps mistaking the reference in Garci Lasso, whose _culto Taso_ is not Torquato but Bernardo. Lope de Vega called Camões _divino_ and reserved _docto_ for Corte Real.

[420] His works are _ja muitas vezes impressas_ in 1594. In 1631 Alvaro Ferreira de Vera speaks of twelve Portuguese editions (_Breves Lovvores_, f. 87).

[421] _Apologia em qve defende_, &c. (1641).

[422] The instance he gives is the long story of _Magriço e os Doze de Inglaterra_ (vi), which he admits is in itself very fine.

[423] One of the best instances of his pedantry is his comment on the lines _E tu, nobre Lisboa, que no mundo Facilmente das outras es princesa_. The ordinary reader is content to understand ‘cities’ after _outras_. But no, says Macedo, you can only understand Lisbons. Princess of all the other Lisbons!

[424] _Laurel de Apolo: Postrando Eneidas y venciendo Iliadas._

[425] Even here some of the lines are a literal translation of Virgil, but if we compare

Para o ceo crystallino alevantando Com lagrimas os olhos piadosos, Os olhos, porque as mãos, &c.,

with the passage

Ad coelum tendens, &c.,

it is not at all clear that the picture of the older poet is more beautiful than that of _il lusiade Maro_.

[426] He is thus an exception to Macedo’s axiom in the _Motim Literario_ that Portuguese poets (most of whom, it must be admitted, are, like Byron, children in thought) either have _versos sem cousas_ or _cousas sem versos_.

[427] _Discursos politicos varios_ (1624), f. 117: _& com esta obra ficou enriquecida grandemente a lingua Portuguesa; porque lhe deu muitos termos nouos & palauras bem achadas que depois ficárão perfeitamente introducidas. Posto que nesta parte não deixárão algũs escrupulosos de o condenar, julgandolhe por defeito as palauras alatinadas que vsou no seu poema._

[428] Cf. Fr. Manuel do Sepulchro, _Reflexão Espiritual_ (1669): _Não ha duvida que maior mudança fez a lingua Portuguesa nos primeiros vinte annos do reinado de D. Manuel que em cento e cincoenta annos dahi para ca_. Barros, however, in his _Dialogo em lovvor_ (1540), says latinization had not yet begun: _se o nos usáramos_.

[429] The authorship of the fine sonnets _Horas breves do meu contentamento_ (attributed to Camões, Bernardez, the Infante Luis, &c.) and _Formoso Tejo meu, quam differente_ (attributed to Camões, Rodriguez Lobo, &c.) is still under dispute.

[430] _Filodemo_, v. 3.

[431] _Os Ratos da Inquisição_, Preface, p. 97.

[432] e. g. _D. Alvaro de Castro e D. Francisco De Meneses_, or _hum grave Prudente capitam_.

[433] e. g. _valor, esforço e valentia; mar sereno e calmo; abundosa e larga vea; a dura defensa rigurosa; açoutando e batendo_. The line often consists of three adjectives and a noun.

[434] Between Corte Real’s _cruel molesto duro mortal frio_ and Dante’s _eterna maladetta fredda e greve_ (_Inf._ vi) is all the difference between a heap of loose stones and a shrine. The conception of the _Auto_, especially the third _novissimo_, _que he o Inferno_, was no doubt derived from Dante.

[435] These are the first words of the original title of the poem (1578).

§ 5

_The Historians_

It was a proud saying of a Portuguese _seiscentista_ that the Portuguese discoveries silenced all other histories.[436] Certainly this was so in the case of the history of Portugal, which was neglected while writer after writer recorded the history of the Portuguese in India. Nor need we quarrel with a vogue which has preserved for us so many striking pictures in which East and West clash without meeting, new countries are continually opening to our view, and heroism and adventure go hand in hand. Sometimes the pages of these historians seem all aglow with precious stones, emeralds from Peru, turquoises from Persia, rubies, cat’s-eyes, chrysolites, amethysts, beryls, and sapphires from Ceylon, or scented with the opium of Cairo, the saffron of Cannanore, the camphor of Borneo, sandalwood from Timor, pepper from Malabar, cloves from the Moluccas. Blood and sea-spray mingle with the silks from China and ivory from Sofala, and among the crowd of rapacious governors and unscrupulous adventurers move a few figures of a simple austerity and devotion to duty, Albuquerque, Galvão, Castro, St. Francis Xavier.

Little is known of ALVARO VELHO except that he was one of the immortals (unless he was the _degredado_ (convict) from whose _caderno_ Couto derived his account of the discovery) who accompanied Vasco da Gama on his first voyage. To him is attributed the simple, clear narrative contained in the log or _Roteiro da Viagem de Vasco da Gama em 1497_, filled with a primitive wonder, which pointed the way to the historians of India. Indeed, it provided material for the first book of a writer who may perhaps be called the first[437] historian of the discoveries ‘enterprised by the Portingales’. FERNAM LOPEZ DE CASTANHEDA (_c._ 1500-59) was born at Santarem, and in 1528 accompanied his father, appointed Judge at Goa, to India. For the next ten years he diligently and not without many risks and discomforts consulted documents and inscriptions in various parts of the country with a view to writing a history of the discovery and conquest of India, making himself personally acquainted with the ground and with many of those who had played a part in the half-century (1498-1548) under review. After his return to Portugal he continued his life-work with the same devotion for twenty years, during which poverty constrained him to accept the post of bedel at Coimbra University. When he died, worn out by his _continuas vigilias_, his history was complete, but only seven books had been published: _Historia do Descobrimento e Conqvista da India_ (1551-4). He had at least the satisfaction to know that a part had already been translated into French and Italian. The eighth book, bringing the history down to 1538, was published by his children in 1561, but books nine and ten never appeared. This history of forty years, which has less regard to style than to sincerity and the truth of the facts, is written in great detail. It is a scrupulous and trustworthy record of high interest describing not only the deeds of the Portuguese, ‘of much greater price than gold or silver’, ‘more valiant than those of Greek or Roman’, but the many lands in which they occurred. The narrative can rise to great pathos, as in the account of Afonso de Albuquerque’s death (iii. 154), and is often extremely vivid.[438] The interest necessarily diminishes after 1515, and the seventh book is largely concerned with dismal contentions between Portuguese officials. But the great events and persons, the capture of Goa or Diu, the characters of Gama or Albuquerque, Duarte Pacheco Pereira or Antonio Galvão, stand out the more clearly from the deliberate absence of rhetoric.