At thy commanding frown we trust to see,
The Turk and Arab bend the suppliant knee:
Beneath the morn,[1] dread king, thine empire lies,
When midnight veils thy Lusitanian skies;
And
- ↑ Beneath the morn, dread king, thine empire lies.—When we consider the glorious successes which had attended the arms of the Portuguese in Africa and India, and the high reputation of their military and naval prowess, for Portugal was then empress of the ocean, it is no matter of wonder that the imagination of Camöens was warmed with the view of his country's greatness, and that he talks of its power and grandeur in a strain, which must appear as mere hyperbole to those whose ideas of Portugal are drawn from its present broken spirit, and diminished state.
Baena confess, that some of the nobility, after their return to Portugal, acknowledged, that the corpse was so disfigured with wounds that it was impossible to know it. He showed natural marks on his body, which many remembered on the person of the king whose name he assumed. He entered into a minute detail of the transactions that had passed between himself and the republic, and mentioned the secrets of several conversations with the Venetian ambassadors in the palace of Lisbon. The committee were astonished, and showed no disposition to declare him an impostor; the senate however refused to discuss the great point, unless requested by some prince or state in alliance with them. This generous part was performed by the Prince of Orange, and an examination was made with great solemnity, but no decision followed, only the senate set him at liberty, and ordered him to depart their dominions in three days. In his flight he fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who conducted him to Naples, where they treated him with the most barbarous indignities. After they had often exposed him, mounted on an ass, to the cruel insults of the brutal mob, he was shipped on board a galley as a slave. He was then carried to St. Lucar, from thence to a castle in the heart of Castile, and never was heard of more. The firmness of his behaviour, his singular modesty and heroical patience, are mentioned with admiration by de la Clede. To the last he maintained the truth of his assertions; a word never slipt from his lips which might countenance the charge of imposture, or justify the cruelty of his persecutors. All Europe were astonished at the ministry of Spain, who, by their method of conducting it, had made an affair so little to their credit, the topic of general conversation; and their assertion, that the unhappy sufferer was a magician, was looked upon as a tacit acknowledgment of the truth of his pretensions.
