In this unhappy situation, in 1579, in his sixty-second year, the year after the fatal defeat of Don Sebastian, died Luis de Camoens, the greatest literary genius ever produced by Portugal; in martial courage, and spirit of honour, nothing inferior to her greatest heroes. And in a manner suitable to the poverty in which he died was he buried. Soon after, however, many epitaphs honoured his memory; the greatness of his merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into various languages.[1] Nor ought it to be omitted, that the man so miserably neglected by the weak king Henry, was earnestly enquired after by Philip of Spain, when he assumed the crown of Lisbon. When Philip heard that Camoens was dead, both his words and his countenance expressed his disappointment and grief.
From the whole tenor of his life, and from that spirit which glows throughout the Lusiad, it evidently appears that the courage and manners of Camoens flowed from true greatness and dignity of soul. Tho' his polished con-
- ↑ According to Gedron, a second edition of the Lusiad appeared in the same year with the first. There are two Italian and four Spanish translations of it. An hundred years before Castera's version, it appeared in French. Thomas de Faria, Bishop of Targa in Africa, translated it into Latin, and printed it without either his own or the name of Camoens: a mean, but vain, attempt to ass his version upon the public as an original. Le P. Niceron says, there were two other Latin translations. It is translated also into Hebrew, with great elegance and spirit, by one Luzzatto, a learned and ingenious Jew, author of several poems in that language, and who, about thirty years ago, died in the Holy Land.
