Camoens also wrote his great poems mostly in banishment. Tired of solitude at Santarem, he joined an expedition against the Moors, in which he distinguished himself by his bravery. He lost an eye when boarding an enemy's ship in a sea-fight. At Goa, in the East Indies, he witnessed with indignation the cruelty practised by the Portuguese on the natives, and expostulated with the governor against it. He was in consequence banished from the settlement, and sent to China. In the course of his subsequent adventures and misfortunes, Camoens suffered shipwreck, escaping only with his life and the manuscript of his 'Lusiad.' Persecution and hardship seemed everywhere to pursue him. At Macao he was thrown into prison. Escaping from it, he set sail for Lisbon, where he arrived, after sixteen years' absence, poor and friendless. His 'Lusiad,' which was shortly after published, brought him much fame, but no money. But for his old Indian slave Antonio, who begged for his master in the streets, Camoens must have perished. [215] As it was, he died in a public almshouse, worn out by disease and hardship. An inscription was placed over his grave:--"Here lies Luis de Camoens: he excelled all the poets of his time: he lived poor and miserable; and he died so, MDLXXIX." This record, disgraceful but truthful, has since been removed; and a lying and pompous epitaph, in honour of the great national poet of Portugal, has been substituted in its stead. Even Michael Angelo was exposed, during the greater part of his life, to the persecutions of the envious--vulgar nobles, vulgar priests, and sordid men of every degree, who could neither sympathise with him, nor comprehend his genius. When Paul IV. condemned some of his work in 'The Last Judgment,' the artist observed that "The Pope would do better to occupy himself with correcting the disorders and indecencies which disgrace the world, than with any such hypercriticisms upon his art." Tasso also was the victim of almost continual persecution and calumny. After lying in a madhouse for seven years, he became a wanderer over Italy; and when on his deathbed, he wrote: "I will not complain of the malignity of fortune, because I do not choose to speak of the ingratitude of men who have succeeded in dragging me to the tomb of a mendicant." But Time brings about strange revenges. The persecutors and the persecuted often change places; it is the latter who are great--the former who are infamous. Even the names of the persecutors would probably long ago have been forgotten, but for their connection with the history of the men whom they have persecuted. Thus, who would now have known of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, but for his imprisonment of Tasso? Or, who would have heard of the existence of the Grand Duke of Wurtemburg of some ninety years back, but for his petty persecution of Schiller?