SOURCE: “Camoens,” in Silhouettes, William Heinemann, Ltd., 1925, pp. 33-9.

In the following essay, Gosse summarizes the life of Camões: “Portugal's greatest national author.”

Persistent industry of research has not enabled Portuguese scholarship to fix the exact date of the birth of Portugal's greatest national author, but there seems little doubt that the year was 1524. We were therefore at liberty to celebrate the fourth centenary whenever we pleased, so that it does not slip our memory until after last December. Mr. Aubrey Bell—whose admirable studies in Portuguese, or (as we used to say) in the Portingall, language cannot be too warmly praised—marked the moment by publishing a succinct biography of the poet, which tells us all that is certainly known about him. This is an occasion for recollecting Froude's delicious impertinence about the Cornish saint, of whom he recounted “all we know, and more than all...