IT has always been the case in the history of a nation which can boast of a golden age, that the epoch of its greatest glory is that in which its literature chiefly flourished. The energies of a nation at its zenith cannot be bounded by the vastest schemes of conquest, but develop in other directions as well. It was so with Portugal. The age which witnessed the careers of its famous captains and conquerors was also the age of its greatest poets and prose writers. The establishment of the Inquisition soon checked the progress of Portuguese literature, but before its fatal power had time to thoroughly stifle free thought, and before the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and the annexation of the country by Philip II. of Spain, Portugal had been able to produce many great writers, and one of the most supremely-gifted poets the world has ever seen, Luis de Camoens.

The affection which the first princes of the house of Aviz had felt for literature, and especially for purely national literature, has been alluded to, and the natural result is to be seen in the works of the early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the fifteenth century. The honour given by these princes to literary endeavour heightened its importance in the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard of education. The Portuguese were therefore prepared to take advantage of the stores of knowledge revealed by the revival of classical learning, and to profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of Aveiro, was the first to introduce the study of ancient Greek into the peninsula; he had listened to the lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence, and after teaching “the humanities” at the University of Salamanca for about twenty years from 1495, he returned to Portugal as tutor to the younger sons of King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese pupil was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, who was one of the professors at the University of Coimbra, during the epoch of its greatest reputation, and is well known as the friend and correspondent of Erasmus.

This university,[21] at which the most famous authors and statesmen of Portugal received their education, deserves some slight notice here. A university was founded by King Diniz at Lisbon in 1300, but the turbulence of the students, and their perpetual quarrels with the citizens, caused him to remove it to Coimbra, about the year 1308. During the fourteenth century the habitat of the Portuguese university was moved from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1338, from Lisbon to Coimbra in 1354, and from Coimbra back to Lisbon in 1377. John “the Great” paid great attention to the university, as he did to every valuable institution in the kingdom; and in 1400 he entirely remodelled it, establishing a staff of fourteen regius professors, four of whom were to teach grammar, three Roman law, three canon law, two logic, one medicine, and one theology. On this footing the Portuguese university remained until 1537, when John III., perceiving that the busy pursuits of a noisy capital were hardly suited to quiet study and the acquisition of learning, removed it finally to the beautiful city of Coimbra, and once more changed its constitution. In 1547 the king summoned Andrea Govea back to his native land, and requested him to bring with him other men of learning. Andrea Govea and his brothers were famous as scholars throughout Europe, even in the days which could boast of Scaliger; they were all natives of Beja, and had been educated at Paris; Martial Govea, the eldest, wrote one of the earliest Latin grammars, published at Paris in 1534; Antonio Govea argued the cause of Aristotle against Ramus, edited Virgil and Terence, and was held to be the most formidable rival of Cujas as an exponent of Roman law; while Andrea had been principal of the College of St. Barbe, rector of the University of Paris, and afterwards principal of the College of Guienne at Bordeaux, and was termed by Montaigne, “le plus grand principal de France.”[22] Andrea Govea brought with him to Coimbra, as requested, many of his friends and colleagues, including George Buchanan, the greatest scholar Scotland has ever produced, Patrick Buchanan, his elder brother, Arnoldus Fabricius and Elias Vinetus, learned Frenchmen, and his own countrymen, Diogo de Tieve, JoÃo da Costa, and Antonio Mendes. This brilliant band did not, however, long remain united, for Andrea Govea died in 1548, and his death was followed by the persecution of George Buchanan by the Inquisition. The illustrious scholar was accused of eating flesh in Lent, and of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and after being imprisoned in a convent he was only too glad to escape from the inhospitable country. Though the death of Govea, and the persecution of Buchanan, deprived the remodelled university of its most famous teachers, there yet remained a sufficient number with such coadjutors as Jeronymo Osorio, Bishop of Silves, Andrea de Resende, and Pedro Nunes, the mathematician, to make this the golden age of the University of Coimbra; and the instruction they imparted profoundly impressed the minds of their most promising young Portuguese pupils, such as Ferreira and Camoens.

The result of the introduction of a knowledge of the masterpieces of classical literature was bound to have a great effect upon the development of Portuguese poetry and prose, but before noticing the result of that influence in the works of the “classicists,” headed by SÁ de Miranda and Ferreira, and in the epic of Camoens, it is necessary to devote a little space to the life and works of the greatest Portuguese dramatist, Gil Vicente. The versatility of the Portuguese people during the heroic period is in no way better illustrated than by the fact that in their country appeared the first modern dramatist, nearly a century before Shakespeare or Calderon. The date of Gil Vicente’s birth is unknown, but it is said that he came of a good family, and he is first found attached to the Court of Emmanuel as a dramatic author. He began by writing “autos” or religious pieces, resembling in their nature the miracle plays common all over Europe at the time, and the first, which attracted King Emmanuel’s attention, was written to celebrate the birth of his eldest son, afterwards John III. Most of them are Christmas pieces, and the dramatist took advantage of the story of the shepherds watching their flocks by night, to introduce the elements of what may be called pastoral comedy. Far more important are his comedies and farces, which latter won for him the title of the Portuguese Plautus. Neither the plots nor the language of these productions are very refined, but they are full of dramatic vigour, and represent the life of the lower classes in Lisbon, with a vividness which strikingly recalls the works of his Roman prototype. Gil Vicente died at Evora in 1557, the same year as his patron, John III., who, in his younger days, did not disdain to act in his favourite’s dramas, and he has had no successor as a comic writer worthy to be named beside him, which proves once again, how thoroughly with the extinction of the national greatness, the originality of the Portuguese people in every direction disappeared.

Side by side with Gil Vicente must be mentioned Bernardim Ribeiro, the founder of the most national school of Portuguese poetry, that of the romantic-pastoral type. Though he showed the influence of the revival of classical learning in his style, he did not show it in his ideas, and the shepherds who converse in his eclogues, are as thoroughly Portuguese as those who appear in Gil Vicente’s Christmas “autos.” Ribeiro, like Gil Vicente, was a favourite at the Court of King Emmanuel, where he held the office of “Gentleman of the Chamber,” and it is said that the lady for whom he cherished a hopeless affection was the Donna Beatrice, daughter of the king. A modern writer on Portuguese literature, speaking of Ribeiro and his works, says: “The rivers and mountains of his native land are the natural framework of a poet’s fancy, and the revival of classical learning showed him in the Eclogues of Virgil a model, which he was not slow to imitate. His Eclogues, written in ‘redondilhas’ (octosyllabic nine or ten-lined stanzas), are the earliest in modern Europe, and while replete with the charms and conceits of versification of the troubadours, show a truly poetic love of nature.”[23] Ribeiro was the first true Portuguese poet, as Gil Vicente was the first Portuguese dramatist. While coming under the influence of the classical writers of Greece and Rome, he was not a slavish imitator of their master-pieces, and as the founder of the school of pastoral poetry, he holds an honourable place in the Portuguese literature of the heroic age.

Ribeiro exhibits in his poetry the influence of the revival of classical learning to a slight degree; after his time that influence increased, and his successors, who bridged over the chasm between Ribeiro and Camoens, were thorough classicists, who imitated the Greek and Roman poets, not only in form, but in spirit. The chief poets of this classicist group were SÁ de Miranda and Ferreira. Francisco SÁ de Miranda was born at Coimbra, the Portuguese Oxford, in 1495, of a noble family, and he became professor of jurisprudence in his native town. On the death of his parents, he resigned his professorship, and travelled in Italy, where he studied the works not only of the great classical authors, but of the new school of Italian poets. He returned to his native country with a great reputation, and received an appointment at the Court of John III. He proved an accomplished courtier, but a quarrel with a Portuguese nobleman forced him to abandon his office, and he retired to his country seat at Tapada, near Ponte de Lima, where he died in 1558, while Camoens was still fighting in India. It was in Italy and not in Coimbra, that he learnt to study the great classical poets, and reverencing their works with the almost superstitious admiration of the Italians of the Renaissance, he dared not treat their ideas with the freedom of either Ribeiro or Camoens. SÁ de Miranda devoted himself to the task of polishing the Portuguese language, and in doing this, he did more harm than good, for he introduced many Latin and Spanish forms of expression, which were not needed, and which helped to hinder the natural development of the national literature. He openly expressed his opinion that Spanish was a more dignified language than Portuguese, and many of his best poems are written in the former tongue, and are considered by authorities on Spanish literature to be excellent specimens of sixteenth-century work. SÁ de Miranda’s poems comprise imitations of many poets. He wrote eclogues in the style of Theocritus, epistles on the lines of those of Horace, plays based on Terence, and sonnets of which the form was borrowed from the Italian writers of the Renaissance. All are good and interesting in their way, but all are imitations, and the very best imitations of foreign styles can hardly rank a poet among the glories of his country’s literature. SÁ de Miranda’s right to be included in any work on Portuguese literature is not due to the poems he wrote, or to his questionable improvements in his native language, but to the fact that he familiarized the people with the classic forms of poetry, of which a greater than he was to take advantage. Yet SÁ de Miranda held a very high place in the estimation of his contemporaries, and the writers of the next century did not hesitate to rank him above Camoens, as being more “correct,” a criticism, which irresistibly recalls Voltaire’s avowed preference of Pope over Shakespeare.

Antonio Ferreira, the second leader of the Portuguese classicist school, was like SÁ de Miranda, a slavish adherent to classical forms, but he was at the same time a genuine patriot and a lover of his country, and a student of its past history. He, like SÁ de Miranda, was of a noble family, and he was born at Lisbon in 1528. He was sent to the University of Coimbra, and studied there in the days of its greatness. His favourite teacher was Diogo de Tieve, the friend of George Buchanan, and professor of classical literature, from whom he obtained a knowledge of the classics, not inferior to that possessed by SÁ de Miranda. Even in his youth, Ferreira determined to devote his poetical talent to works in his own language, and he refused to write Latin or Spanish verses. He formed round him at Coimbra, a school of young poets, of whom the chief were Andrade Caminha, Jeronymo Corte-Real, and Diogo Bernardes; and in 1557 he published his first volume of poems. This book established his fame, and on coming to Lisbon, he was appointed a judge of the Court of Appeal, and a gentleman of the Royal Household. He continued to write and publish until his death from the plague in 1569, the year before Camoens returned from India. Ferreira, like SÁ de Miranda, was an imitator of the great classical poets, but he differed from his predecessor, in that he combined with this predilection, an appreciation of the national greatness. He wrote sonnets after the manner of Petrarch, elegies after Ariosto, eclogues after Virgil, and odes and epistles after Horace; but his greatest work was a drama founded on the model of the ancient Greek tragedies. He selected for his subject the touching story of Ines de Castro, and the characters in his play are Ines and her nurse, Dom Pedro and his secretary, King Affonso and his three counsellors, a messenger, and a chorus of women of Coimbra. Ferreira’s tragedy, though more fit for the study than the stage, remains to this day the finest drama in the Portuguese language, and stands almost as far as above other dramatic attempts of subsequent ages, as Camoens’s great epic towers above all imitations.

The history of the development of the revival of learning, as illustrated by the classicist school of SÁ de Miranda and Ferreira, is of great importance to the right understanding of the course of Portuguese literature, but to the world at large its chief interest lies in its share in forming the taste of the one man, whom Portugal has contributed to the small roll of supreme poets, Camoens. His name is more famous than that of any other Portuguese, whether king or captain; his great epic has been translated into every civilized European language, and is a greater subject of pride to his countrymen than their conquests in the East; and no “Story of Portugal” could be complete which did not give some account of the poet who has given immortal fame to the heroic deeds of the great age of Portugal.

LUIS DE CAMOENS. (From the Portrait in “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
LUIS DE CAMOENS.
(From the Portrait in “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)

Luis de Camoes, commonly called in English Camoens, was the son of a captain in the Portuguese navy, who had more than once experienced the perils of the voyage to India, and he was born at Lisbon in either 1524 or 1525. His family was noble, but by no means among the first rank of the Portuguese nobility in wealth or importance. He was educated at the University of Coimbra, before it had been revivified by the energy and learning of Govea and his friends, and there acquired a profound knowledge of the Latin poets, and of the symbolism and the legends of the Greek and Latin mythology. He seems to have left the university, which he ever dearly loved, before the arrival of Diogo de Tieve, and the foundation of what may be called the national-classicist school of poetry by Ferreira, and went to Lisbon to obtain employment. His poetical powers soon became manifest, and he had become somewhat of a favourite, when he fell in love with a great lady of the Court, said to be the Donna Catherine de Athaide, lady of honour to the queen. The lady’s friends were indignant at the poet’s suit, and at their request he was exiled to the little town of Ceuta, on the coast of Morocco, where he lost his right eye in a skirmish with the Moors. Wearied of this life he volunteered for India, the goal of every gallant Portuguese gentleman, and after serving a term in prison for a street brawl in Lisbon, he set sail for the East in 1553. In Asia, Camoens remained for more than sixteen years, and it was there that he gathered the local knowledge which gives truth and charm to many passages of his immortal poem. In 1554 he served in the Red Sea and at the capture of Muscat under Dom Fernando de Menezes, and soon after his return to Goa he was ordered to take up a lucrative appointment at Macao, in 1556. Here he remained for two years, and the chief glory of the little island off Canton is the cave where he is supposed to have worked on his epic, and which is still known as the “Grotto of Camoens.” From Macao he was recalled in 1558, when in spite of his poverty he was thrown into gaol at Goa for peculation, and he was not released until the arrival of an old court acquaintance, Dom Constantino de Braganza, as Viceroy of India. With this prince, he served at the capture of Daman, and he distinguished himself in various engagements under the next governor-general, the Count of Redondo. In 1568 Camoens determined to return to Portugal with his great poem for his only fortune, but on his way, disaster again overtook him, and in 1569 he was thrown into an African prison for debt, by Pedro Barreto, Governor of Mozambique. From this cruel confinement, he was released by some old friends on their way from India, who paid the debt, and in 1570 he once more found himself in Lisbon. His reception in his native land was not encouraging; he was not received at Court; he had made no money in India, and had only shown a peculiar faculty for getting into debt and making enemies; and he now devoted himself to the final recension of his “Lusiads.” The first edition of the great poem was published in 1572, but the fame it at once acquired did little good to the author, who was only granted a pension of £3 8s. 0d. a year, equivalent perhaps to £20 in modern money. The later years of Camoens were utterly miserable; poor and neglected, the arch-poet of Portugal had to subsist upon what his Javan slave could beg for him at night in the streets of Lisbon. He lived long enough to hear of the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and of the death of Dom Sebastian, but he was spared the pain of seeing the Spaniards ruling over the fatherland whose glories he had sung, for he died in a common hospital at Lisbon in June, 1579, or June, 1580.

These are the chief incidents in the life of one of the world’s greatest poets, and they tell their own tragic story without need of a commentary. It serves no good purpose to speculate why Camoens was ever in debt and making enemies, or why he was neglected and left to die in poverty; other poets and men of letters have shared the same lot. It remains rather to examine the causes which make his epic take rank among the works which the unanimous opinion of posterity has decreed to be immortal. Of his sonnets, eclogues, and smaller poems, beautiful as many of them are, there is no need to speak, for it is on his “Lusiads” that the fame of Camoens must ever rest. The subject of the epic is Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India and his return, an achievement of such surpassing difficulty, and of such importance alike to Portugal and to Europe, that Camoens perceived its fitness for poetical treatment. But the poem is not confined to the narration of the perils of the voyage only: it abounds in long episodes, in one of which Vasco da Gama relates the history of the Portuguese people to the king of Melinda, while in another a nymph gives a prophetic history to the great admiral of the achievements of his country-men in the land he had just visited. Sir Robert Walpole is said to have declared that he derived his knowledge of English history from Shakespeare’s historical plays, and it might be affirmed in the same sense that many, if not most, educated people have learned what they know of Portuguese history from the “Lusiads.” Such a knowledge is not to be despised. For, if the poet makes the mistakes of his era, and, for instance, identifies the modern Portuguese with the ancient Lusitanians, he manages in a few stanzas apiece to sum up with dramatic genius all the famous tales of Portuguese history, such as the voluntary surrender of Egas Moniz, the pathetic story of Ines de Castro, and the glories of the victory of Aljubarrota. This power of historical description is of itself enough to make Camoens the national poet of Portugal; every old Portuguese family finds its name enshrined in some of its glowing passages, and the whole Portuguese people feel identified with the actors in the great deeds it describes. But Camoens is not only a national poet; he is a hero telling of an heroic deed done by an heroic people, and this secures for him the interest of readers of all nations, who can appreciate true heroism. Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese sailor, but the results of his enterprise and success were to the advantage of all Europe, and the poet who sings of him deserved to be heard by Europe. If, then, the subject was fitted for epic poetry, the style of Camoens was equal to it. He rises far above the purely classicist school in Portuguese literature; he uses the names of the Roman gods, and narrates their councils and their intervention in mundane affairs with the verisimilitude of Virgil, yet he never falls into a base or servile imitation of the great Latin poet, but preserves throughout the cast of thought of a Portuguese “conquistador.” To criticize the “Lusiads” further is without the purpose of this book, but in conclusion it must be pointed out that the great poem remains the strongest bond of union between the modern Portuguese people, whether in Portugal itself, or in Brazil, Goa, Macao, and Mozambique. It is impossible to meet an educated Portuguese, who does not know his Camoens; he is more to them than Dante to the Italians, Goethe to the Germans, or Shakespeare to the English; he sings of their nation’s glory, and in maintaining his fame, each one of them is interested. Never was this more manifest than in the Camoens Celebration of 1880, when Portuguese-speaking people of all climes, and of all varieties of political and religious opinion, gathered together in Lisbon to do honour to the memory of their great poet, whose glory they felt to be a connecting link between them all.

JOÃO DE BARROS. (From a Print in the British Museum.)
JOÃO DE BARROS.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)

It was not only in the domain of poetry that the boundless energies of the Portuguese of the heroic age distinguished themselves; in prose composition, also, they stood high above their contemporaries of other nations. History, as might be expected, was their chief study, and JoÃo de Barros, the Portuguese Livy, was the writer who bridged over the gap between the old chroniclers, of whom DamiÃo de Goes was the last, and the regular historians. This young nobleman, who was born in 1496, was distinguished at the Portuguese Court by his ardent study of the Latin historical writers, and especially of Livy, and was commissioned by King Emmanuel to draw up an account of the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese in the East. John III. continued the royal patronage to JoÃo de Barros, who received many lucrative appointments, such as Captain-general of Brazil and treasurer of the Indian department at Lisbon. The latter post gave him the opportunity to collect valuable information on his subject, and he made good use of it. His “Asia” is written in exact imitation of the style of Livy; it is divided into decads and abounds in speeches which might have been, but certainly never were, delivered, and in curious theories, entirely without foundation. Nevertheless, JoÃo de Barros possesses the greatest quality of an historian, for he took pains in trying to ascertain the truth, and when he believed he had found it, he told his story simply and directly. He combines the naÏve simplicity of the early chroniclers with the art of making a story interesting, and he deserves a niche in the history of Portuguese literature as the first writer of modern Portuguese prose. In fiction the “Amadis de Gaul” type of romance was followed by imitations of the “Palmeirim de Inghilterra;” both are alike tedious and absurd, and thoroughly deserve the hearty mockery of Cervantes, who laughed them and their school out of existence. Far more interesting, if also somewhat tedious, are the pastoral novels, which were originated by the poet Bernardim Ribeiro, and written with most success by Rodrigues Lobo, for they are truly national, and exhibit the love of nature, which is inherent in the Portuguese character.

Nor was more serious literary work neglected by the universally cultured Portuguese of the heroic age. Mention has been made of the great scholars, who made the University of Coimbra renowned, and who encouraged the study of the classics. Theological inquiry was also much favoured, and Francisco Ferrario, one of the divines at the Council of Trent, and Jeronymo de Azambuja, a learned Hebrew scholar, who wrote a commentary on the Bible, both held a high place in the estimation of their contemporaries. Among grammarians, the name of Manuel Alvares, a Jesuit, is honourably remembered, while scientific research was represented by the mathematician, Pedro Nunes, who was reckoned one of the wonders of his age. Lastly, Andrea de Resende, the greatest Portuguese antiquary, must be again noticed, for his “De Antiquitatibus LusitaniÆ” is a work of exceptional value, and contains a transcription of many Roman inscriptions, since destroyed.

Enough has been said to indicate how great and varied was the literary activity of the Portuguese during their golden age, and it is worthy of notice, that their literature was most abundant in great works at the very time in which their energies were most strained by their Asiatic conquests. It is matter for wonder, that one small nation could do so much, and in the “Lusiads” the key-note of their success is to be found. The Portuguese race, trained under great kings and great captains, believed itself to be invincible, and from that very belief it remained invincible for a time. When the illusion was shattered, the superabundant energy which it had fostered vanished completely. When once a nation has been conquered, and its belief in its invincibility is gone, its power withers away. The greatness of a nation depends upon the opinion its people have of themselves as individuals and members of the body politic; as long as they believe in themselves they can do anything; when their faith in their invincibility disappears, their position among nations speedily declines.

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