ational death of his
country. The story that his Javanese slave Antonio used to go out at
night to beg of passers-by alms for his master, is one of a number of
touching legends which, as early as 1572, popular fancy had begun to
weave around the poet's life. It is true, however, that Camoens
breathed his last in dire distress and isolation, and was buried
"poorly and plebeianly" in the neighboring convent of Santa Ana. It
was not until sixteen years later that a friend of his, Dom Goncalo
Coutinho, caused his grave to be marked with a marble slab bearing the
inscription:--"Here lies Luis de Camoens, Prince of the Poets of his
time. He died in the year 1579. This tomb was placed for him by order
of D. Goncalo Coutinho, and none shall be buried in it." The words "He
lived poor and neglected, and so died," which in the popular tradition
form part of this inscription, are apocryphal, though entirely in
conformity with the facts. The correctness of 1580 instead of 1579 as
the year of the poet's death is proven by an official document in the
archives of Philip II. Both the memorial slab and the convent-church
of Santa Ana were destroyed by the earthquake of 1755 and during the
rebuilding of the convent, and the identification of the remains of
the great man thus rendered well-nigh impossible. In 1854, however,
all the bones found under the floor of the convent-church were placed
in a coffin of Brazil-wood and solemnly deposited in the convent at
Belem, the Pantheon of King Emanuel. In 1867 a statue was erected to
Camoens by the city of Lisbon.

'The Lusiads' (Portuguese, _Os Lusiadas_), a patronymic adopted by
Camoens in place of the usual term _Lusitanos_, the descendants of
Lusus (the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese), is an epic poem
which, as its name implies, has for its subject the heroic deeds not
of one hero, but of the whole Portuguese nation. Vasco da Gama's
discovery of the way to the East Indies forms, to be sure, the central
part of its action; but around it are grouped, with consummate art,
the heroic deeds and destinies of the other Lusitanians. In this,
Camoens' work stands alone among all poems of its kind. Originating
under conditions similar to those which are indispensable to the
production of a true epic, in the heroic period of the Portuguese
people, when national sentiment had risen to its highest point, it is
the only one among the modern epopees which comes near to the
primitive character of epic