IV

IN April two ships at least of the homebound fleet reached the hospitable harbour of Cascaes, the Santa Clara (April 7) and the Santa Fé (April 23). As if to remind Camões that 'ca como la más fadas ha', his old friend Heitor da Silveira died in sight of the Rock of Sintra (86), while Lisbon was a stricken city, only beginning to recover from the fearful pestilence of 1569. The poet Antonio Ferreira had perished in it, another man of letters, Trancoso, had lost his wife and children. Sá de Miranda, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Jorge de Montemôr, Castanheda, Galvão, had been dead some years. Fernam Mendez Pinto was living in a splendid obscurity at Almada across the Tagus, Diogo Bernardez preferred the quiet of his Minho home, Barros was spending his last years in a country-house near Pombal.

With Caminha Camões can have had little in common, although the former's hostility has probably been exaggerated, but D. Manuel de Portugal, friendly, although not an intimate friend, was still at Court, as was perhaps the author of Palmeirim, and Goes, much aged, was also at Lisbon, as no doubt were Chiado, Prestes, and Falcão de Resende, the two former eager to renew and the latter to make the acquaintance of the poet. Immediately before or immediately after the procession of April 20, 1570, to give thanks for the cessation of the plague, the

His long wanderings
For seventeen years

poet entered Lisbon. were at length over. he had lived an exile, seeing new customs, nations, and languages, unfamiliar conditions under alien skies (87). His mother was alive, perhaps already living in the poor Mouraria quarter of the town. His cousin Simão Vaz was still at Coimbra. Camões' thoughts naturally turned to the publication of the Lusiads, and on September 24, 1571, probably owing to the

good offices of D. Manuel de Portugal (88), he received permission to print it (89). In 1572 the work appeared (90). To our confusion we are confronted with two 1572 editions, and it has been assumed that one of them was a pirated later edition. (But the case was not unknown (91); there were, for instance, two 1566 editions' of Goes' Chronicle of King Manuel.) It appeared early in the year, and in July Camões was granted a pension of 15,000 réis, to date from March 12 (the date of the publication of the Lusiads?), on account of his services in India and his book of the things of India' (92).

Camões felt that his work was done :
Esta é a ditosa patria minha amada,
A qual, se o ceo me dá que eu sem perigo
Torne com esta empresa ja acabada,
Acabe-se esta luz ali comigo.

(Lus. iii. 21.)

It is very improbable that he would have returned to India even if offered the post of Factor of Chaul. If he were not given the reversion now, says Castello

Branco, the condition that the poet must reside at Lisbon in order to receive his pension would be inexplicable, and Storck explains also by the reversion the fact that the pension was only granted for periods of three years, as were posts in India (93). But there are so many things inexplicable in Camões' life. There may have been some special reason for not wishing him to live at Coimbra. It is difficult or impossible to estimate in modern money the pension given to Camões, owing to the rapidly changing values in both the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Severim de Faria (94) considered the pension insignificant. Itwas insignificant compared with the 400,000 réis received by Barros, and even that princely pension would be equivalent to only £7 to-day, whereas in 1911 it would have been worth £80, and in the middle of the sixteenth century a peasant at Madeira could buy a meal of bread and wine for four réis (95). It is quite clear that one could live in reasonable comfort

on 15,000 réis and even save a little for an emergency, so that there was no need for Camões to subsist on the alms given in the Lisbon streets to his Javanese slave, who figures so picturesquely in Mariz' inaccurate account of the poet's last years (96). The pension was not renewed till August 2, 1575 (to date from March 12), for a further period of three years (97), and during the whole of 1575 it remained unpaid, so that he did not receive the sums due till June 22, 1576 (98). On June 2, 1578, the pension was again renewed for three years, from August 2, but Camões must have protested, and the date was changed to March 12 (99).

In 1574 the Pope sent King Sebastian an arrow stained with the lifeblood of St. Sebastian, and Camões celebrated the event in the oitavás beginning Mui álto rei (Oit. iii.); a little later he wrote a sonnet and some tercets for Magalhães Gandavo's Historia da Provincia de Sancta Cruz (1576); but otherwise we know scarcely