stic perfection, the rich variety of
form, and the melody of his verse. His lyric works fall into two main
classes, those written in Italian metres and those in the traditional
trochaic lines and strophic forms of the Spanish peninsula. The first
class is contained in the 'Parnasso,' which comprises 356 sonnets, 22
canzones, 27 elegies, 12 odes, 8 octaves, and 15 idyls, all of which
testify to the great influence of the Italian school, and especially
of Petrarch, on our poet. The second class is embodied in the
'Cancioneiro,' or song-book, and embraces more than one hundred and
fifty compositions in the national peninsular manner. Together, these
two collections form a body of lyric verse of such richness and
variety as neither Petrarch and Tasso nor Garcilaso de la Vega can
offer. Unfortunately, Camoens never prepared an edition of his
_Rimas_; and the manuscript, which, as Diogo do Couto tells us, he
arranged during his sojourn in Mozambique from 1567 to 1569, is said
to have been stolen. It was not until 1595, fully fifteen years after
the poet's death, that one of his disciples and admirers, Fernao
Rodrigues Lobo Soropita, collected from Portugal, and even from India,
and published in Lisbon, a volume of one hundred and seventy-two
songs, four of which, however, are not by Camoens. The great mass of
verse we now possess has been gathered during the last three
centuries. More may still be discovered, while, on the other hand,
much of what is now attributed to Camoens does not belong to him, and
the question how much of the extant material is genuine is yet to be
definitely answered.

In his lyrics, Camoens has depicted, with all the passion and power of
his impressionable temperament, the varied experiences and emotions of
his eventful life. This variety and change of sentiments and
situations, while greatly enhancing the value of his songs by the
impression of fuller truth and individuality which they produce, is in
so far disadvantageous to a just appreciation of them, as it naturally
brings with it much verse of inferior poetic merit, and lacks that
harmony and unity of emotion which Petrarch was able to effect in his
_Rime_ by confining himself to the portraiture of a lover's soul.

Drama. In his youth, most likely during his life at court between 1542
and 1546, Camoens wrote three comedies of much freshness and verve, in
which he surpassed all the Portuguese plays in the national taste
produced up to his time.