Note 149 — CABINET OF BIOGRAPHY. (continued 7)

That Camoens, banished by Barreto, held a profitable situation under him seems a contradiction; yet since he amassed a sum of money that seemed wealth to him, he must have been appointed during the governorship of Barreto. The Quarterly Review, bent on admiring the virtues of power, deduces arguments in favour of Barreto: but Camoens could not have denounced him as he did had he been under obligations to him, obligations too, which the whole world in India would have considered full compensation for his exile from Goa. Sousa considers that his stay was of longer duration at Ternate than we assign, and that he did not fill the place at Macao till a later period, when it was given him by Barreto's successor. But then he would not have had time to amass a fortune. Here therefore is an enigma, whose solution we cannot discover, unless it be (and it seems the probable conjecture) that the local governor of Macao preferred Camoens to this place, and Barreto had nothing at all to do with it.