The life of Camoens constitutes an essential part of the history of Portuguese poetry. With the exception of Dante no poet of the first rank has in his works so fully represented his own inward feelings combined with every extraordinary circumstance that came within his observation. His poems can only be perfectly intelligible to the reader who never loses sight of the poet; for his character is precisely theirs. But the poetry of Camoens must not on this account be confounded with the self-subjective effusions of certain enthusiasts who express their feelings clearly enough in verse, though not in poetry, except, perhaps, in their own opinion. Among the poets of all ages Camoens is one of the most eminent; and though to a foreigner it may at first sight seem strange that he has permanently obtained in the literature of his country the surname of _O Grande_ (the Great), a title given in history only to a few distinguished sovereigns, yet in the unbounded homage which the Portuguese render to the name of the man, who during his life was suffered to languish in penury, the citizen of the world will readily recognize a general desire to compensate for the injustice with which he was treated by his contemporaries. On this side of the Pyrenees, indeed, however frequently the name of Camoens may be mentioned and written, as a poet he is still scarcely known except by name. But to form a just appreciation of his merit, he must, like Homer, be viewed in the spirit of his nation and his age. It was the ambition of Camoens to be to the Portuguese what Homer was to the Greeks, the first and at the same time the most national of poets; and if he did not entirely attain his end, he nevertheless so far approached it that no other modern poet has been able to combine all the national interests of his country, with the fulness of poetic spirit exhibited in the Lusiad. But it must be recollected that at the period when Camoens wrote, the more correct style, formed on the ancient and Italian models, had just penetrated into Portuguese literature, and that it had not yet taken deep root. Under these circumstances, Camoens, in sketching the plan of his national Epopœia, stood, as it were, severed from the age in which he lived. Modern literature contained no similar work, and, generally speaking, no epic poem worthy of perusal, except the chivalrous compositions of Bojardo and Ariosto. From Trissino Camoens could learn nothing; from Bojardo and Ariosto he might have learned much, but assuredly not the spirit and style of a serious national heroic poem; and Camoens was numbered with the dead before Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered appeared in print.[136] Camoens was the first modern who succeeded in the production of a serious heroic poem. But with all his endeavours to attain classic perfection, he was a Portuguese in the spirit of his age, and too good a patriot to wish to be any thing else. He rose to the height at which he aimed only by flights; having