feelings, and his fortunes.' The first part of his exile wa spent at the Molucca Islands, from whence he removed to Macáo, where he was appointed to the office of Commissary for the Effects of Deceased Persons.' For this appointment, 1 which was rather a lucrative one, he is supposed to have been indebted to the new viceroy, Don Constantino de Braganza, who succeeded Barreto in 1558. A grotto is shewn at Macáo, which still goes by his name, where Camoens is traditionally reported to have employed great part of his time in the completion of his great work. When at length he obtained leave to return, his ill fortune still pursued him: the ship in which he embarked for Goa, was wrecked at the mouth of the river Mecou, and he with difficulty reached shore on a plank, having lost every thing but the manuscript of his immortal poem.' To this almost overwhelming misfortune he alludes in the eightieth stanza of Canto VII.

He returned to Goa in 1561, and was graciously received by the viceroy, under whose protection he enjoyed a brief respite from his misfortunes. On his departing for Europe, the enemies of Camoens seized the opportunity to accuse him of malversation in the administration of his office at Macáo, and on this calumnious charge he was committed to prison. When the accusation was proved to be unfounded, he was detained for some time in custody for a trifling debt. After this, he remained for some years in India, continuing to engage in various naval and military expeditions, and filling up the intervals of military service by prosecuting his great poem. When this was completed, he determined to return to Europe to lay it at the feet of the young king Sebastian, but was unfortunately induced by the solicitations of Pedro Barreto to accompany him to Sofala, of which he was proceeding to assume the government.

He had, however, cause to repent, having been unsuspectingly be trayed; and soon experienced the little trust to be placed in those promises which had been held out to induce him to go to Sofala. Chagrined and disappointed, he sighed to quit a situation where his dependent and unhappy state exposed him to repeated cruelty and insult; and, as if in pity to his distress, the wished-for opportunity presented itself. Diogo de Couto, the Historian, and some of those friends whom he had known in India, arrived in the Santa Fê, on their way to Lisbon, and found him in the greatest misery. In this vessel Camoens resolved to enbark for Portugal. Barreto, however, was no sooner apprised of his intention, than he determined to prevent its being carried into execution; he demanded the payment of two hundred cruzados, which he alleged he had expended on behalf of the poet; and, knowing his inability to raise the amount, fancied himself sure of his victim. The Fidalgos, who were on their return, seeing the baseness of the conduct of the governor, subscribed the sum to satisfy the demand, and released the debtor

were

from his cruel grasp. "For this price," Manoel de Faria writes, sold, at the same time, the person of Camoens, and the honour of Pedro Barreto."'

Camoens arrived at Lisbon in 1569, at a time that the plague was raging in that city, worn down in health, after sixteen years service in India absolutely pennyless, his fondest hopes blasted, (for his mistress was dead,) and his spirit broken by misfortune. One hope, one object of interest and ambition, remained to bind him to life, and to sustain his exertions; the poem which was to crown him with fame, if not to prove a source of opulence. It was, however, two years before the Lusiad was given to the world the royal alvara or grant of copyright bearing the date of September 4, 1571. Camoens dedicated it to the King, whom, in Canto I, he compliments with a prophecy that was never to be fulfilled; but that generous' prince, or his ministers, thought the author of the poem that was to reflect honour on the country, sufficiently rewarded by a pension of 15,000 reis, or about four guineas of our money; the grant being burthened with the conditions, that Camoens should reside at court, and that a new alvara or decree for its payment should be obtained every six months. The design of this last condition it is difficult to conjecture, if it was any thing more than the usual form of grants during pleasure, instead of for life; unless it was intended to keep him in a state of servile dependence on the court. At all events, he appears not long to have enjoyed this mockery of royal munificence. The death of Sebastian deprived him at once of his patron and his pension; for, in the confusion and derangement of public affairs consequent upon the disastrous issue of the campaign in Africa, it was in vain for him to apply for the continuance of the conditional grant. The death of the king is said to have deeply affected the mind of Camoens, and to have increased the malady under which he was suffering. He felt not only for himself, but, with truly patriotic concern, for his country. In a letter which is supposed to have been his last composition, dictated a short time before his death, occur these words: At last I shall finish my life; and all shall see that I loved my country so much, that not only I was contented to die in it, but also to die with it.' What sum of money he derived from the sale of his poem, or whether he obtained any remuneration for it, we are not informed. That the impression which it 'made was considerable,' remarks his present Biographer, is clearly shown by the reprint of it in the same year in which it 'was published.' And Mr. Adamson adds, on the authorities of Manoel Correa and Machado, that a contemporary poet of some celebrity, Pedro da Costa Perestrello, a secretary of the king, who had composed a poem on the same subject, relinquished, after perusing the Lusiad, his intention to publish his

own work. Whatever profits Camoens might obtain from the sale of the Lusiad, were at all events expended long before the termination of his sufferings. He survived his return to Lisbon eight years, living in the knowledge of many, and in the society of few.'

For some time previous to his death, he was in so abject a state of poverty as to be dependent for subsistence upon the exertions of a faithful servant. Antonio, a native of Java, whom he had brought with him from India, was accustomed to beg by night for the bread which was to save his wretched master from perishing by want the next day.

Camoens was applied to, during his last days of affliction, by a Fidalgo named Ruy Dias da Camara, who came to his miserable dwelling to complain of the non-fulfilment of a promise, made him by the bard, of a translation of the penitential Psalms. To this complaint, urged with an anxiety at which the ingenuous mind of Camoens revolted, the suffering poet replied: "When I wrote verses, I was young, had "sufficient food, was a lover, and was beloved by many friends and by "the ladies; therefore I felt poetical ardour: now I have no spirits, no peace of mind behold there my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces to purchase coals, and I have them not to give him."

Camoens, when death at last put an end to a life which misfortune and neglect had rendered insupportable, was denied the solace of having his faithful Antonio to close his eyes. Having survived the publication of his poem seven years, and aged only fifty-five, he breathed his last in the Hospital to which he had been taken, and to which the poor were usually removed for cure. This event occurred in 1579, but so little regard was paid to the comfort or memory of this great man, that the sheet in which they shrouded him was obtained from the house of Dom Francisco de Portugal, and the day and month in which he expired must remain for ever unknown...... After his decease, his body was removed to the church of Santa Anna, where it was consigned to the tomb without any record to mark the place of his sepulture.'

Sixteen years after, Dom Gonçalo Coutinho caused a marble slab to be laid over the supposed place of his interment, inscribed with this epitaph: Here lies Luis de Camoens, the prince of the poets of his time. He lived poor and miserable, and so he died, in the year MDLXXIX. The church itself, however, perished in the earthquake of 1755; and, to the eternal disgrace of his countrymen, no other monument has ever yet been reared to his memory. A subscription has, indeed, been recently set on foot in Lisbon, which has been aided by contributions in London and Paris, for the purpose of wiping off this dishonour from the nation; but hitherto, the Portuguese have not thought it worth while to pay even this tardy and empty tribute to the fame of the Author of the Lusiad.

Art. V. The History and Antiquities of Eynesbury and St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire: and of St. Neot's in the County of Cornwall: with some critical Remarks respecting the two Saxon Saints from whom these Places derived their Names. [Illustrated with fifty Engravings, on copper and wood.] By George Cornelius Gorham, M. A. Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. 8vo. pp. 340. Price 18s. Fine paper 17. 18. London. 1820.

This

his volume is a very efficient and interesting contribution to British Topography; and if we may take the Author at his word, and look to his future labours for the realizing of the hope which his expressions imply, it is a contribution peculiarly acceptable,considered as the first fruits of researches into the Antiquities of a County still without a historian.' The remark made by Gough forty years ago, is still correct, that no steps have been taken towards illustrating Huntingdonshire, since Sir Robert Cotton, its brightest ornament, declined the pursuit.' Judging from the present specimen, no person could be better qualified than Mr. Gorham to prosecute such an undertaking. With the true antiquarian scent, and an adequate portion of black letter lore, he combines the more rare endowments of a very correct taste and a sound judgment. He is not deficient in enthusiasm, but his enthusiasm appears to be of a much soberer and more intellectual cast than in many cases prompts to such pursuits. The present work seems to have originated in that strong feeling of interest which is naturally excited by the scenes and objects which bear to us the relation of neighbourhood, or home, or birth-place.

That those persons who "dwell in the sight of remarkable Monasteries" should endeavour "to rescue the observables of their habitations from the teeth of time and oblivion," was the judicious advice, happily illustrated by the example of no mean historian [Thomas Fuller.] The Writer of the following sheets has been beguiled, almost insensibly, into the spirit and practice of the recommendation. Notwithstanding the popular (and occasionally just) ridicule which is directed by the multitude against Antiquarian pursuits,-he confesses that he is not unsusceptible of that enthusiasm, which impels the mind to cast a retrospect through the "long drawn" vista of past ages; to dwell, with a solemn and mys. terious interest, on objects which are rapidly fading away in the distant perspective; and to dissipate some little portion of the gathering mist, which mantles between the land of oblivion and the region of authentic record. Under such an influence he commenced his inquiries; but without even a remote intention of submitting them to the public eye. He purposely omits to detail the unimportant train of circumstances, by which his materials have been gradually extended from the private memoranda of a portfolio to their present more enlarged and ostensible form.'

The contents of the present volume are distributed into five chapters: 1. On the early history of Eynesbury, previous to the

foundation of the Priory of St. Neot's. 2. On the Religious Houses dedicated to St. Neot, in Cornwall and in Huntingdonshire. 3. Topographical Account of Eynesbury. 4. Topographical Account of St. Neot's, Huntingdonshire. 5. Topographical sketch of St. Neot's, Cornwall. A very copious appendix of original records closes the work.

In the second chapter, Mr. Gorham has entered upon the much perplexed subject of the birth, parentage, and local habitation of the Saxon Saint whose name is perpetuated in the Huntingdonshire town and the Cornish village. Disregarding alike the bold assumptions and the dogmatical assertions contained in Mr. Whitaker's eccentric' volume, Mr. G. has endeavoured to reduce the biography of the oldest of all the brothers to King Alfred,' to a few simple facts; to wit, that Neot was probably descended from a collateral branch of the royal house of West Saxony;' that he was designed for the army, but when he had attained to a military age, he resigned the prospects of temporal glory, that he might devote himself to a spiritual warfare,' professed himself a neophyte, and assumed the habit of a monk in Glastonbury Abbey, about the middle of the ninth century; that he subsequently withdrew from the monastery, accompanied by a single attendant, named Barius, to the village in Cornwall which still bears his name, where, after spending seven years in seclusion, he began, as it should seem, to be tired of the life of an anchoret,-visited Rome, to receive the Pope's blessing, and on his return ga thered together some religious brethren, over whom he was constituted abbot; that finally, he was buried, with due honour, in the church which he himself had built at Neot-Stoke, in Cornwall; but that about a century after, his saintly skeleton was stolen out of the sacred chest in which it was deposited, at the instigation of Earl Alric, the founder of the priory at Eynesbury, in order to give éclat and popularity to the new monastery, which was in sad want of a patron saint. Dead men's bones were then worth more in this country than Mr. Cobbett has since found them to be. It is almost to be regretted, that he had not the good fortune to flourish in that age, for his love of relics might then have been much more reputably gratified; and he might have made some profit by stealing the bones of a saint. We doubt not that he would have made a very good Catholic in those days. From Eynesbury, under the apprehension of a visit from the Danes, the Saint's remains underwent another translation, it is conjectured, in the year 1003, to the abbey of Croyland. This proved to be no idle alarm; for although the monastery escaped the immediate danger, it was afterwards burnt by these savage invaders; probably in 1010, in which year the Danes are traced from Buckingham by the Ouse, to Bedford, and Temsford, (within five