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Macao's claim to renown rests chiefly upon the fact that Portugal's greatest bard, Camoens, there wrote in part or its entirety the immortal "Lusiad," which in epic form details the prowess of the sons of ancient Lusitania in Eastern discovery and oversea feats of daring, and in which work the voyages and discoveries of Vasco da Gama are recorded with the fidelity of a history prepared by a sympathetic admirer.
He ranks with the world's most intrepid explorers with Columbus, Cabot, Marco Polo, Da Gama and Stanley. Like another famous traveller, he had been "in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfullness." In the words of his beloved Camoens, he had done "Deeds that deserve, like gods, a deathless name."
His wife's proposal to name them "Sonnets from the Bosnian" was dismissed with words which allude to a poem of hers, "Catarina to Camoens," that had long been specially dear to him: "Bosnian, no! that means nothing. From the Portuguese: they are Catarina's sonnets!" Pisa with all its charm lacked movement and animation.
A good share of prize-money fell to his lot; and the squadron having been fortunately ordered to Lisbon, he was there received with so much distinction, that it would seem as if the Portuguese had been willing to make some amends for their neglect of Camoens, by the deference which they shewed his translator.
Boethius, like Savage in our own days, died in a prison; Terence was a slave, and Plautus did the work of a horse. Cervantes perished for lack of food, on the same day that our great Shakspere died; but Shakspere had worldly wisdom as well as heavenly genius. Camoens died in an almshouse.
The intellectual life of Portugal seems to have ceased with Camoens. It is rather pathetic the way in which the ordinary educated Portuguese refers back to the great poet and to the heroic period which he commemorated. No conversation of any length can be carried on without a reference to Camoens and to Vasco da Gama. All history and all progress appear to have culminated and stopped then.
Europe making common cause against the peoples that are not Europe; Europe carrying her domination round the world is that what Tasso and Camoens ultimately mean? It would be too hard and too narrow a matter by itself to make these poems what they are. No; it is not the action of Europe, but the spirit of European consciousness, that gave Tasso and Camoens their deepest inspiration.
Grammar of the Mooltanee Language. Goa and Camoens. He left Goa on 20th February 1847, taking as usual a pattymar, his mind vibrant with thoughts of his great hero, the "Portingall" Camoens, with whose noble epic all Western India, from Narsinga and Diu to Calicut is intimately associated.
As Camoens in Portugal invents a noble utterance for the genius of his nation, for the times of Vasco da Gama and of Emmanuel the Great, so this spirit of pre-Armada England, of England which as yet has but the memory of battles gained and lost wars, finds triumphant expression in Marlowe and his elder contemporaries.
The remoteness and, one might say, the romantic possibilities of the places into which Camoens and Tasso were led by their themes, enable imagination to deal pretty freely with history. But in a little more than ten years after Camoens glorified Portugal in an historical epic, Don Alonso de Ercilla tried to do the same for Spain.
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