lution, he replied: "No! This is not the way that shall lead me
back to my country. I will return with hasty steps if you, or any other,
can open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame or the
honour of Dante; but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then to
Florence I shall never return." His enemies remaining implacable, Dante,
after a banishment of twenty years, died in exile. They even pursued
him after death, when his book, 'De Monarchia,' was publicly burnt at
Bologna by order of the Papal Legate.

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 hi