FOOTNOTES:
[436] Antonio Vieira, Historia do Futuro (1718), p. 24: esta historia era o silencio de todas as historias.
[437] O primeiro Portugues que na nossa lingoa as [façanhas] resuscitei. João de Barros, in his preface, makes a similar claim: foi o primeiro.
[438] Cf. vi. 37, 38; vii. 77, 78; or vi. 100, where the ships bristling with the enemy’s arrows are likened to porcupines.
[439] 1496, the generally accepted year of his birth, is the calculation of Severim de Faria, followed by Barbosa Machado, Nicolás Antonio, &c. As he retired at the end of 1567 it is difficult not to suspect (from his love of method and the decimal system) that he was born in 1497—the year of Vasco da Gama’s expedition.
[440] 400,000 réis. He also obtained the privilege of trading with India free from all taxes so as to clear a profit of 1,600,000 réis. Innocencio da Silva adds ‘yearly’ to this sum, mentioned by Severim de Faria. In any case Barros’ complaints of his poverty seem misplaced.
[441] Faria e Sousa (Varias Rimas, pt. 2 (1689), p. 165), says that neither Lopez de Castanheda nor Barros was widely read, one of the reasons being the length of their histories.
[442] According to Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo (Dialogo em defensam da lingua portvgvesa) Barros ‘is in Venice preferred to Ptolemy’.
[443] His account of the fleet leaving Lisbon (I. v. 1) is that of an eyewitness.
[444] Mais trabalhamos no substancial da historia que no ampliar as miudezas que enfadam e não deleitam (I. vii. 8). Cf. I. v. 10 (1778 ed., p. 465); III. ix. 9 (p. 426); III. x. 5 (p. 489). Yet the vivid light thrown by the details recorded in other writers, such as the ‘bushel of sapphires’ sent to Albuquerque by one of the native kings, or the open boat drifting with a few Portuguese long dead and a heap of silver beside them, is of undeniable value. Goes inserts details, but is too late a writer to do so without apology, like Corrêa and Lopez de Castanheda: pode parecer a algũa pessoa [e. g. his friend Barros] que em historia grave nam eram necessarias estas miudezas (Cron. do Pr. D. Joam, cap. cii).
[445] e.g. the following mortar of conjunctions between the stones on p. 335 of Decada II (1777 ed.) opened at hazard: nas quaes ... que ... que ... qual ... que ... como ... que ... que ... o qual ... cujos ... que ... que ... que ... posto que ... como ... porque ... que.
[446] E sendo eu moço servindo a El Rey D. João na guardaroupa (Dec. IV. iii. 8). In Dec. VII. viii. 1 he speaks of having served João III for two years as moço da camara (1555-7). In the same passage he embarks for India in 1559 aged fifteen. In Dec. VII. ix. 12 (1783 ed. p. 396) he is eighteen (April 1560).
[447] According to the Governor, Francisco Barreto, he was more at home with arms than with prices (Dec. IX. 20, 1786 ed., p. 160). Another passage in the Decadas proves him to have been an excellent horseman.
[448] Cf. Dec. IV. iii. 8 (1778 ed. p. 234).
[449] He himself describes with great detail and pathos the wrecks of the ships N. Senhora da Barca (VII. viii. 1), Garça (VII. viii. 12), S. Paulo (VII. ix. 16), Santiago (X. vii. 1), as well as that of Sepulveda (Dec. VI. ix. 21, 22). In his account of the loss of the S. Thomé (which was printed in the Historia Tragico-Maritima, in the Vida de D. Paulo de Lima, and no doubt in the lost eleventh Decada), the separation of D. Joana de Mendoça from her child is one of the most tantalizing and touching incidents ever penned.
[450] Não particularizo ninguem (Dec. XII. i. 7).
[451] What he lacks in gravidade (cf. Dec. X. x. 14)—he is quite ready to admit that he writes toscamente (VII. iii. 3), singelamente, sem ornamento de palavras (VI. ii. 3), simplesmente, sem ornamento nem artificio de palavras (V. v. 6)—he makes good by directness as an eyewitness, de mais perto (IV. i. 7; cf. IV. x. 4 ad init.). When he had not himself been present he preferred the accounts of those who had, as Sousa Coutinho’s description of the siege of Diu (Commentarios) em estilo excellente e grave, e foi o melhor de todos, porque escreveo como testemunha de vista, V. iii. 2) or Miguel de Castanhoso’s copioso tratado (V. viii. 7). Among the traces of his close touch with reality are the popular romances, cantigas, adagios, which Barros would have deemed beneath the dignity of history.
[452] As the fleets grew, long catalogues of the captains’ names were perhaps inevitable. They are certainly out of place in a biography, but Couto’s Vida de D. Paulo de Lima Pereira (1765) is really a collection of those passages from the Decadas which bear on the life of Couto’s old friend, a fidalgo muito pera tudo. As far as chapter 32 it is told in words similar to or identical with those of Decada X. Chapter 32 corresponds with the beginning of the lost Decada XI.
[453] His biographer, Manuel Severim de Faria, says that he left (in manuscript) ‘a large volume of elegies, eclogues, songs, sonnets and glosses’ (Barbosa Machado calls them Poesias Varias), and that he wrote a commentary on the first five books of the Lusiads. Carminibus quoque pangendis non infeliciter vacavit, says N. Antonio.
[454] Lendas, iii. 7: nom ouve alguem que tomasse por gloria escrever e cronizar o descobrimento da India. In an earlier passage (i. 3) he refers to narratives of travellers such as that of Duarte Barbosa.
[455] He says (Lendas, ii. 5): quando comecei esta ocupação de escrever as cousas da India erão ellas tão gostosas, per suas bondades, que dava muito contentamento ouvilas recontar.
[456] Lenda, iii. 438.
[457] Fui hum dos seus escrivães que com elle andei tres annos (ii. 46). Elsewhere (i. 2) he says that he went to India moço de pouca idade sixteen years after the discovery of India. 1512 was fourteen years after the actual discovery (1498), but might be counted the sixteenth year from 1497.
[458] Homens da criação d’El Rei, says Corrêa with some pride, de que confiasse seus segredos (ii. 46).
[459] Lima Felner, Noticia preliminar (Lendas, i, p. xi).
[460] Ibid.; but Corrêa says (Lendas, ii. 891) that he held this post at Cochin (almoxarife do almazem da Ribeira) in 1525.
[461] Por ter entendimento em debuxar. The portraits, drawn by Corrêa and painted by ‘a native painter’ so cleverly that you could recognize the originals (iv. 597), as well as Corrêa’s very curious drawings of Aden and other cities, are reproduced in the 1858-66 edition of the Lendas.
[462] Passa de cincoenta annos [i.e. 1512-63] que ando no rodizio d’este serviço, aleijado de feridas com que irei á cova sem satisfação.
[463] Cf. ii. 608, 752; iii. 437; iv. 338, 537-8, 567-8, 665, 669, 730-1.
[464] He so styles his work in the preface of Lenda iv.
[465] He is writing, he says, in 1561 (Lendas, i. 265); 1561 again (i. 995: não cessando este trabalho até este anno); 1563 (iii. 438); 1550 (iv. 25); 1551 (iv. 732).
[466] The value of that evidence varies. For instance, he assures us (iii. 689) that he saw with his own eyes a native 300 years old and his son of 200; yet there is something suspicious in the roundness of the figures.
[467] Escrevia com elle as cartas pera El Rei (ii. 172).
[468] Albuquerque in one of his letters (No. 95) says that in Portugal a man is hanged for stealing Alentejan mantas. Corrêa repeats this phrase twice (Lendas, ii. 752; iv. 731).
[469] Cf. ii. 247: Eu ouvi dizer a Afonso d’Albuquerque.
[470] Neste meu trabalho não tomei sentido senão escrever os feitos dos Portugueses e nada das terras (iii. 66). Cf. i. 651, 815; ii. 222.
[471] Latino Coelho, Fernão de Magalhães in Archivo Pittoresco, vi. (1863), p. 170 et seq.
[472] Corrêa himself seems to have been rather unsuccessful than scrupulous in amassing money. He tells without a hint of embarrassment (ii. 432) how he took the white and gold scarf (rumal) of the murdered Resnordim (or Rais Ahmad) and sold it for 20 xarafins (about £7), and (iii. 281) helped to dispose of stolen goods in 1528 at Cochin.
[473] Protestando d’em meus dias esta lenda nom mostrar a nenhum (i. 3).
[474] Que colligi dos proprios originaes. The work is a history of events in India, not a biography of Albuquerque, the first forty years of whose life are represented only by half a dozen sentences (1774 ed., iv. 255).
[475] Aquelle tão pouco venturoso como sciente & valeroso Antonio Galvão (João Pinto Ribeyro, Preferencia das Letras ás Armas, 1645). In his youth in India he won the regard of that keen judge of men, Afonso de Albuquerque, who could see in him nothing to find fault with except his excessive generosity.
[476] Tratado. Prologo [3 ff.]. Em este tractado con noue ou dez liuros das cousas de Maluco & da India que me o Cardeal mandou dar a Damiam de Goes.
[477] Vol. i, No. 4.
[478] Vol. v, No. 1 (1836).
[479] The name would seem to have been really Tillison, i.e. son of John Tilly, who married a granddaughter of Moraes, the author of Palmeirim.
[480] He speaks of their lingua alquanto negletta e lo stile molto semplice, naturale e piano, la qual cosa deveva apparire un’ anomalia a confronto della lingua purgata con cui si scriveva allora in Portogallo (Contenuto della storia del Patriarca Alfonso Mendez, p. 115). This work was written in Latin in 1651 by Afonso Mendez (1579-1656), born at Moura, who became Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1623. This splendid edition (Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores) also contains three volumes of Relationes et Epistolae Variorum (Romae, 1910-12).
[481] Nicolás Antonio dwells more than once on the invisibility of Brito’s authorities (Bib. Vet. i. 65, 453; ii. 374): Nos de invisis hactenus censere abstinemus. Antonio Brandão, Brito’s successor, he says, nullum horum vidit librorum quos Brittus olim historiae suae Atlantes iactaverat; nihil autem horum librorum (quod mirum si ibi asservabantur) vidit. Soares (Theatrum) remarks epigrammatically: fama est eloquentiam minus desiderari quam fidem.
[482] From a comparison of inscriptions he notes the similarity between the Etruscan and ‘our ancient’ (Iberian?) letters. The Iberians may have originally gone East from Tuscany.
[483] His Elogios dos Reis de Portugal appeared in 1603.
[484] ff. 248 v.-249 v. give a very curious description of Ireland: tam remota de nossa conversação e metida debaixo do Polo Arctico. Brito had not inherited Barros’ knowledge of geography and confuses Ireland with Iceland, but is far richer in fables, as these pages delightfully prove.
[485] To Spanish readers they were presented later by Faria e Sousa in his Asia.
[486] Flores de España (1631), f. 248. Arias Montano refers to him as a close friend (Doc. inéd. t. xli. p. 386).
[487] See Cronica, p. 46.
[488] Ten chronicles from Afonso I to João III. He says (1824 ed., p. 12): Estam em este presente vollume recopiladas, sumadas, abreviadas, todas as lembranças dos Reys de Portugal das caroniquas velhas e novas sent mudar sustancia da verdade.
[489] Dise ̃q hee de jdade de setenta anos, hos faz ẽ este feuʳᵒ ̃q vẽ (Examination before the Inquisition, April 19, 1571). The name appears as Goes, Gooes, Goiz, Guoes, Guoez, Guoiz, Goyos. Goes is a small village some twenty miles north-east of Coimbra. The name also occurs in the Basses-Pyrénées. See P. A. de Azevedo, Alguns nomes do departamento dos Baixos Pirineos que teem correspondencia em Portugal (Boletim da Ac. das Sciencias de Lisboa, viii (1915), pp. 280-1). It may be one more trace of the former occupation of the whole Peninsula by the Iberians (= high, on the height, as in Goyetche, &c.).
[490] See Marqués de Montebello, Vida de Manoel Machado de Azevedo (1660), p. 3, ap. J. de Vasconcellos, Os Musicos Portugueses, i. 268.
[491] ff. 269 v.-71. The original manuscript disappeared, but a copy (that of the Marqueses de Castello Rodrigo) is in the Biblioteca Nacional at Lisbon.
[492] Antonio Galvam, Tratado, f. 59 v. He visited the Courts of Charles V, François I, Henry VIII, and Pope Paul III. Nicolás Antonio says of him (Bib. Nova): morum quippe suavitate atque elegantia, ergaque doctos liberalitate insinuabat se in cuiusque animum qui Musarum commercio frueretur, facile atque alte.
[493] He arrived on Palm Sunday, 1531, and learning that Luther was preaching at once left the inn to hear him, but could only understand the Latin quotations. Next day he had dinner (jantar) with Luther and Melanchthon and afterwards returned to Luther’s house, where the latter’s wife regaled them with a dessert of nuts and apples. Thence he went to Melanchthon’s house and found his wife spinning, shabbily dressed.
[495] Lib. III, pp. 264, 265: Aliud Aeolij Modi exemplũ authore D. Damiano à Goes Lusitano.
[496] He had gone with others to negotiate terms and, when barely half an hour was allowed to refer the terms to the Senate, remained in the enemy’s camp in order to create a delay by conversing with Longueval. Meanwhile relief had been received and the Senate refused the terms.
[497] In his trial he says that three of them became monks: meteo tres filhos frades.
[498] Cf. Prologo: em que muitos, como em cousa desesperada, se nam atreveram poer a mão. One of these ‘many’ was Goes’ rival, the eloquent Bishop Antonio Pinheiro.
[499] The fourth part was approved on January 2, 1566.
[500] For the grounds of this disapproval see Crítica contemporanea á Chronica de D. Manuel, 1914, ed. Edgar Prestage from a manuscript in the British Museum. Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos and Mr. G. J. C. Henriques have dealt very ably with many interesting points of Goes’ life and works.
[501] His friend Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos (1523-99), Canon of Evora, says that he died in 1575 aet. 80 (so the Theatrum: obiit octogenarius A.C. 1575). Probably the 5 is an error or misprint for 3, and the 80 correct.
[502] Luis de Sousa (Hist. S. Dom., Pt. I, Bk. i, cap. 2) praises his juizo e curiosidade de bom antiquario, and there are many similar passages in other writers. Resende furnished Barros, as Severim de Faria later furnished Brito, with materials and advice.
[503] In a similar though more elaborate work (88 ff.) Frei Nicolau Diaz (†1596) told the life and death of Princess Joana (†May 1490): Vida da Serenissima Princesa Dona Joana, Filha del Rey Dom Afonso o Quinto de Portugal (1585).
[504] Casamento Perfeyto, 2ᵃ ed. (1726), p. 61.
[505] Monarchia Lusitana, Pt. V, Bk. xvii, cap. 5. Bernardo de Brito also praises him, and Frei Antonio Brandão acknowledges his debt to him. Faria e Sousa says that he received from him cantidad de papeles.
[506] Europa Portuguesa, vol. iii, pt. 3. Portugal, he says, is a perpetual Spring, and he speaks of the women who earn their living by selling roses and other flowers in Lisbon, of the almonds of Algarve, the excellent honey, &c., &c. Vol. i covers the period from the Flood to the foundation of Portugal; vol. ii goes down to 1557; vol. iii to Philip II of Spain.