He could not have done so had he not been so great
a poet, so impassioned a patriot.
Camoens was in one sense of the word a practical man, like Ariosto; he had
governed a province, and governed it successfully. But he had also taken
up arms for his country, and after suffering all the slights that could be
put upon him by an ungrateful and forgetful monarch, still loved his
native land, loved it the more, perhaps, that he had suffered for it and
was by it neglected. He foresaw, also, as did no one else, the future ruin
of his country, and loved it the more intensely, as a parent lavishes the
fondest, most despairing affection on a child he knows doomed to early
death.
The Lusiad is sometimes called the epic of commerce; it could be called
far more appropriately the epic of patriotism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE LUSIAD.
J. Adamson's Memoirs of Life and Writing of Camoens, 2 vols., 1820 (vol.
2, account of works of Camoens in Portuguese and other languages, and of
the works founded on his life or suggested by his writings);
R. F. Burton's Camoens, his Life and his Lusiad, 2 vols., 1881;
M. W. Shelley's Lives of the most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of
Italy, Spain, and Portugal, vol. 3;
F. Bouterwek's History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature, 1823 (Tr. by
T.
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