Alarmed by the shock of an earthquake as early as 1526, the court removed to Coimbra, where it remained until the pestilence, which devastated Lisbon and the border lauds of the Tagus, had moderated; the nobles and “fidalguia” followed the king and court. Simão Vaz de Camoens having house and possessions at Coimbra, would naturally follow the court there with his family; the more so as his brother Bento had, prior to 1527, taken “the habit in the monastery of Santa Cruz,” where he was often visited by the king. Evidently a man of culture, he was chosen, on the reformation of the university in 1529, “being then prior of his order,” the first chancellor. The popularity of the training at the newly-reformed university drew within its walls most of the sons of the nobility and “fidalguia.” Here Camoens was entered as one of “the honourable poor students” in 1537, remaining there until he had completed his eighteenth year. Of his manner of life during the period which intervened between his removal to Coimbra and the commencement of his university career, something may be gathered from his minor writings, from which it appears that he wandered by Mondego’s banks, “careless and unfettered in the free licence of boyhood.”

The position of the poet’s uncle, Dorn Bento de Camoens, as prior of Santa Cruz, in addition to his status as chancellor of the university, naturally suggested the church as a career for Camoens. This seems to have found no favour with him, as he writes, “I felt the pulse of many states of life. The clergy, I see, take stronger hold of life than of the salvation of souls; and the monks, although shrouded in hood and habit, expose some small tokens inconsistent with the profession that he who turns his back upon the world for God should desire nothing that the world can give.” Freely and injudiciously expressed at an inopportune moment in the ardour of youth, such home truths would tend to mar his advancement in church or state; while his honesty, culture, wit, poetic genius, and comely appearance would induce much jealous enmity at a court where he was the idol of the women.

During his studentship, and possibly at a vacation revel, or when some degree was conferred, the students acted his Amplιitrides in imitation of Plautus. The dramatic representations at the university had usually been of the tragedies of Seneca, or of original Latin compositions. This work of Camoens, in popular “redondilhos,” and in the vernacular, was considered an attempt to popularize a poetic reaction which satirized the mode in which the grave doctors of the university desired that all instruction should be imparted. In a satire of Resende’s, “to Luiz Camoens, reprehending those who, despising the learned, waste their own time with jesters,” he indicates Camoens “as a pitiful poet, an unlucky monster, boasting to be a Latin bachelor.”

With reference to the precise period when Camoens removed entirely from his alma mater and became again resident in Lisbon, some speculations have been hazarded by his biographers. The one carrying the most weight is cited by the Visconde de Juromenha, who founds it upon the statement made by the poet in his first letter from India: “Because, when I reflect that without sin, which would sentence me to thirteen days of purgatory, I have passed thirteen thousand caused by evil tongues.” Upon this Juromenha observes: “These thirteen thousand days are equal to eight years and eight days, and deducting the two years Camoens passed in Ceuta, and the one year of banishment on the upper Tagus, this leaves 1542 as the year of his departure from Coimbra.” Thus we find Camoens quitting college to return to the court at Lisbon in his eighteenth year. A French biographer has assumed, with some force, that “Corte” simply means Lisbon, and not the court; for as Camoens was not of the titular nobility, he would not be received at court. Contemporary evidence, on the other hand, rather favours the assumption that being of the “fidalguia,” gentle born, and well cultured, he would be chosen as companion by many of the young nobles who were his fellow-students at Coimbra.

Gentleness of birth, classical attainments of no mean order, a cultivated intellect, and poetic genius, united to a pleasing personal appearance and witty manner, must have been good passports to the court of John III., in which resided at that time the Infante Dorn Luiz, a man of considerable attainments and a fair poet; also the Infanta Donna Maria, patroness of the Belles Lettres, surrounded by a bevy of fair damsels who could compose song, dirge, epigram, and roundelay, or jest with the quick wit of a Beatrice, and who, like her, knew many “merry tales” by heart. Statesmen, such as the Conde de Sortelha and the Conde de Vimioso, courtly poets, and fellow-students of Camoens at Coimbra, both in the full blaze of court favour, would gladly welcome to Lisbon so polished a youth as Camoens must at that time have been. Of this same court of John III. Gil Vicente writes, “It is a sea in which many fished, but found the pastime dangerous.” Sá de Miranda also blamed “the economic error of herding together all the young nobility in Lisbon.”

Here, no doubt, Camoens formed acquaintanceships if not friendships, and became quickly initiated into the mysteries of court life and manners. Precocious and born a poet, his facility in every style of versification, a mind stored with romances of chivalry as well as popular fiction, and the poetic lore then available in his own, the Spanish, Italian, and classical idioms, would, added to his youth and sprightly manner, render him popular with the gentler, and unpopular with the sterner sex. Abandoning in some degree the antiquated forms of composition in vogue, he introduced eclogues, songs, and sonnets, full of tenderness and beauty, after the manner of the Italian school. Montemayor and Sá de Miranda, both Portuguese, residing in Italy, had already adopted and naturalized to some extent the Italian form of pastoral poetry.

Here we must speak of Camoens’s romantic passion for a certain high-born lady of the court. “The sweet unwitting cause” of so much detriment to his court advancement, and, if we are to credit his muse, of anguish to his heart, was a certain Donna Caterina de Ataide in attendance upon the queen of John IIL The anagram of Natercia for Caterina clearly indicates the lady’s name, in addition to which an acrostic coupling the names of Luiz with Caterina de Ataide, said to be by Camoens, puts the matter beyond all doubt. The tradition is that, on a certain Good Friday, Camoens for the first time encountered the lady’s eyes at her devotions in the Church of the Chagas, Lisbon. That the wound proved deep and permanent there is abundant evidence in his Rimas.

The lady’s father, Dorn Antonio de Lima, held the office of chamberlain in the royal household, a certain Pero de Andrade de Caminha serving in a similar capacity the Infante Dorn Duarte. Caminha was a poet of fair ability, and was probably jealous of the success of Camoens; in addition to which tradition asserts that Caminha himself, favoured by her father, aspired to the hand, if not the heart, of the Donna Caterina. We may infer that the lady was not ignorant of the effect her eyes wrought upon the author of the Lusιαd ; at any rate Caminha was jealous, and revenged himself in weak splenetic rather than satirical verse, while the lady’s father employed his interest to mar the poet’s prospects.

The precise cause which led to Camoens’s banishment from Lisbon is not clear. The principal reason, no doubt, was his passion for the golden-tressed Caterina, but there may have been in addition to this some unintentional contempt of the rigid court etiquette which hedged the royalty of that day; for it was the custom that lyric offerings intended for the ladies of the queen’s court should first be submitted to the chamberlain, and then by him transferred to the chief lady in waiting, who handed the effusion to the queen,—she, in her turn, after perusal, passing the “burning lines of passion” into the hands of the damsel to whom they were addressed. Camoens, doubtless, would essay some safer and more secret mode of conveying his offerings to the lovely Caterina. The dislike of De Lima, and the jealousy of Camιnha, aided by the indiscretion and free-lance life of Camoens, may have led to this mark of the royal severity. Whether such or other causes intervened, the fact remains that he was banished from the court. The precise locality to which he retired, however, still remains conjectural only. Adding the year of his banishment to the two years he was absent with the army of Africa at Ceuta, where, in a naval engagement with the Moors, a chance splinter destroyed the sight of his right eye, we find him again in Lisbon in 1550.

During the three years which intervened between Camoens’s return from Ceuta and his embarkation for India in 1553, he seems to have led a careless and discreditable kind of life, consorting with the least reputable court gallants, and a certain dissolute ex-Franciscan friar, who had abandoned the cowl to adopt the role of a low comedian. Since he inherited the traditions of “fidalguia,”—candid, brave, impetuous, and crossed in love,—much of the free and careless life credited by tradition at this period to Camoens is reasonably accounted for, if it may not be condoned. At this period occurred the fracas which led to his imprisonment and subsequent embarkation for India. On the occasion of a grand procession at the festival of Corpus Christi, one of the king’s equerries appears to have had a dispute with two masquerading companions of Camoens. The latter, unhappily intervening to defend one of these friends hardly pressed, wounded the equerry in the neck, his two friends escaping in the confusion. For this Camoens lay some time in prison, and was only pardoned upon the understanding that he should embark forthwith for India. Juromenha gives the full text of this pardon.

With reference to the poet’s departure for India in March 1553, the indefatigable Faria e Sousa discovered the following entry on the books of the registry of the Lisbon India House:—“Fernando Casado, inhabitant of Lisbon, went in his stead Luiz de Camoens, son of Simon and Ana de Sá.” His father did ∆ot offer himself as the customary surety, while it is seen from a document, dated the 7th of March that year, that he was still alive, and an inhabitant of Lisbon.

Camoens, in his first letter from India, alludes to his departure from his native city; and as he sailed out of the “golden-sanded Tagus” in the twilight, exclaimed in the bitterness of his heart, using the words of Scipio Africanus,—“Ungrateful country, thou shalt not possess my bones !”

The ship in which he sailed, the “San Bento,” parted company with her consorts during a storm,' and reached her destination in the same year, while her missing consorts did not anchor at Goa until the following spring. On landing at Goa, Camoens found the Viceroy Noronha preparing an expedition to act against the king of Pimenta, who had invaded the territories of the allies of Portugal. With this expedition sailed Camoens; and “after chastising the enemy,” he says, “with little trouble, we destroyed the people trained to the use of the curved bow, punishing them with death and fire.” He returned to Goa early in the following year, 1554.

The friendly terms upon which Camoens remained with the governor, and probably his disgust at the vice and venality rampant around him, induced him to join the expedition organized with a view to check the depredations of the Moorish rovers on the coast of Arabia. The commander, Menezes, received instructions to cruise on that coast where he expected to intercept the galleys sailing from Bassorah. The fleet cleared from Goa early in the year 1555; and, after seeking the Moorish galleys in vain, wintered at Ormuz. Returning in the following spring to Goa, Camoens, in canção 10, describes his unpleasant impressions of this voyage: “Here fate’s most cruel chances led me; here in this lonely, sterile, sun-scorched land did Fortune will that part of my brief life be passed, and thus in fragments scattered lie throughout the world.” Some of Camoens’s biographers allude to the governor Barreto as one of his relentless persecutors. Juromenha, however, demurs to this, alleging that two intimate friends of Camoens then at Goa, in the most frank and decided language, laud Barreto as “a liberal obliging comrade, and one ever ready to overlook offences received.” That Camoens was unpopular with the venal many, his expression “This land is the mother of great villains and the stepmother of honourable men” leaves little doubt. He came to uphold the honour of Portugal, and not to intrigue, brawl, and barter his soul for gold. His satirical exposure of the abuses so rife then in the Eastern dominions of Portugal will readily account for his numerous enemies, official and lay. Festivals, banquets, and dramatic representations inaugurated the governorship of Barreto. Camoens’s pen was not idle. He wrote a comedy for the occasion, entitled Filodemo. Correia, who describes himself as “companion in the state of India, and a great friend of Camoens,” happily secured either the original MS. or a copy, which is, or was, in the national library at Lisbon. It is entitled, Ä Comedy made by Luis de Camoens, and represented in India during the governorship of Barreto, and in which the following characters figure, &c.

Camoens’s unpropitious star still dominated his fate. The vices rampant in Goa> the drunkenness, dicing, brawling, and cowardice, were notorious; and during these festivities, which lasted some weeks, were more pronounced than ever.

A certain satire, said to be from the pen of Camoens, passed from hand to hand, entitled A Jest which was made upon some men who did not think ill of wine, feigning that in Goa, at the feasts which were made on the governor’s succession, these gallants went to sport with canes bearing devices on their banners, and verses conforming to their designs and inclinations. It is written chiefly in prose, having verses introduced. No names of the “gallants” appear. After introducing a few of these revellers, the author concludes by stating “that several other illustrious personages desired to be admitted to the feasts'and sports, and to have an account of their qualifications chronicled;” but, he observes, “the writing would be infinite, because all the men in India are so distinguished, and therefore let these suffice as examples.” This jest, intended to satirize the corruption and immorality of the daily life of the Portuguese in India, caused intense amusement to those who did not recognize their own portraits on the canvas; while, on the other hand, those who did, or imagined they did, were furious,—so much so, that “the innocent author remained ready to hang himself.”

The tradition is that this Jest was appended to Camoens’s second letter from India, and that the author desired its source should remain unknown; “because I do not wish that of my little so many should eat.” Be that as it may, Camoens was banished from Goa, and this Jest is said to have been the cattse»· Some of these ridiculeιJ were powerful, maliguant, and treacherous; and it is surmised that Barreto was of the number, but it is difficult to imagine that if Barreto intended punishment he should have made of this banishment a stepping-stone to a lucrative appointment, which must have been one of considerable importance, embracing as it did the custody of the property of absentees, and of those Portuguese who had died in India. In a letter from Francisco de Souza to John III. the importance of this office is recognized, grave complaints of embezzlement and misappropriation of the property of deceased merchants and others having reached Lisbon, so that, “early in 1556, a commission was despatched from the mother country to take charge of the effects of deceased subjects,” and, in 1557, “full instructions as to the management of this state department followed.” Barreto, with a laudable desire to abate these scandals, may well have appointed a bold energetic man, upon whose integrity he could rely, and Camoens was selected.

During the absence of Camoens from Goa his friend Luiz Franco Correia collected the verses he had scattered amongst his friends, shrewdly observing, “that they who knew not the poetic art failed to estimate its value.”

Apart from the vices and intrigues of Goa, and in the quietude of the Grotto still shown at Macao as the spot where much of the Lusiad was penned, we may imagine halcyon days for the persecuted poet. Here Antonio, the Javanese slave, is first introduced to history,—he who tended Camoens so affectionately and with such solicitude through those latter years of misery and neglect, which were the lot of this unhappy “prince of poets of his time.” It is surmised that the first six cantos of the Lusiad were composed during Camoens’s stay at Macao; for in the seventh, allusion is made to the shipwreck he suffered on his return to Goa.

During his absence slanderous tongues were not silent, and we hear of his return to Goa by order of the governor, to make answer to charges brought against him in his capacity as commissary. Wrecked near the mouth of the River Mekong, Camoens and his faithful Javanese escaped only with their lives. Camoens, rescuing nothing but the manuscript of his epic, at length landed at Goa in the last days of Barreto’s governorship, and was cast into prison. Here he received the only news which could aggravate his pain—the sad tidings of the death of Donna Caterina de Ataide, the Natercia of his impassioned youth. We can estimate the depth and tenderness of his grief touchingly expressed in many of the Rimas.

The arrival in the autumn of the following year of Dorn Constantinho de Bragança as governor to replace Barreto led to the liberation of Camoens, the charges against him having been proved to be unfounded. Under the protection of Dorn Constantinho the poet enjoyed some respite from his persecutors. It was during this period of “cultured calm” that he invited several “versifying friends” to a banquet, where each, on uncovering his plate, discovered, in place of the first course, an appropriate stanza. The surprise gave occasion to considerable mirth and amusement. Three years later Dom Constantinho was replaced by the Conde de Redondo, an early friend and companion of the poet’s. Towards the close of 1562 Camoens suffered a new reverse. Miguel Rodriguez Coutinho, a rich braggart, nick-named Fios Seccos (dry threads), detained him in custody for a trifling debt. On this occasion Camoens sent a request to the Conde to release him, in epigrammatic verse, which well revenges Coutinho’s meanness, commencing—“What devil so completely damned but fears the edge of Fios Seccos’ sword.” Camoens was released, but does not appear to have accompanied the viceroy and his splendid retinue to Zamorin, Being desirous to return to his native land, a certain Captain Barreto, nephew of the old governor of Goa, charmed with the society of the poet, agreed to carry him to Sofala; once there he hoped to detain him, and claimed a small sum he was unable to discharge. Here the expedition under Noronha, exgovernor of Goa, found him; and of Camoens’s condition Diogo de Couto wrote: “Here we encountered that ‘ prince of poets of his time,’ my fellow-sailor and...