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diff --git a/75425-0.txt b/75425-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3668a73 --- /dev/null +++ b/75425-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17658 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75425 *** + + + + + + PORTUGUESE + LITERATURE + + + + + Oxford University Press + +_London_ _Edinburgh_ _Glasgow_ _Copenhagen_ +_New York_ _Toronto_ _Melbourne_ _Cape Town_ +_Bombay_ _Calcutta_ _Madras_ _Shanghai_ + + Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY + + + + + PORTUGUESE + LITERATURE + + BY + AUBREY F. G. BELL + + [Illustration] + + OXFORD + AT THE CLARENDON PRESS + 1922 + + + + + [Illustration] + + TO THE TRUE PORTUGAL OF THE FUTURE + + _La letteratura, dalla quale sola potrebbe aver sodo principio + la rigenerazione della nostra patria._ + + GIACOMO LEOPARDI. + + [Illustration] + + + + +_This book was ready in October 1916, but the war delayed its +publication. A few alterations have now been made in order to bring +it up to date. It is needless to say how welcome will be further +suggestions, especially for the bibliography. Only by such help can a +book of this kind become useful, since its object is not to expatiate +upon schools and theories but to give with as much accuracy as possible +the main facts concerning the work and life of each individual author._ + + AUBREY F. G. BELL. + + S. JOÃO DO ESTORIL, + PORTUGAL. + _July 1921_ + + + + + CONTENTS + + +_Introduction_ + + PAGE + +Portuguese literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--D. +Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos--Dr. Theophilo Braga--Portuguese +prose--Portuguese writers in Spanish and Latin--Character of the +Portuguese--Special qualities of their literature--Splendid +achievement--Lack of criticism and proportion but not of talent 13 + + +I. 1185-1325. + +[i. e. from the accession of Sancho I to the death of Dinis.] + +§ 1. _The Cossantes_ 22 + +Earliest poems--Their indigenous character and peculiar form--Their +origin--Galicia in the Middle Ages--The pilgrimages--Dance-poems--Themes +of the _cossantes_--Their relation to the poetry imported from +Provence--Writers of _cossantes_: Nuno Fernandez Torneol--Joan +Zorro--Pero Meogo--Pay Gomez Chariño--Airas Nunez’ _pastorela_--The +_cantigas de vilãos_--Songs of women--Persistence of the _cossante_ to +modern times--_Cossantes_ and _cantigas de amor_. + +§ 2. _The Cancioneiros_ 37 + +_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_--_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_--_Cancioneiro +Colocci-Brancuti_--Relations of Portugal with Spain, with France, +with other countries--The Galician language--Its extension--Alfonso +X--The _Cantigas de Santa Maria_--Poetry at the Court of Afonso +III--Provençal poetry in Portugal--Monotony and technical +skill of the Portuguese poets--_Cantigas de amigo_--Satiric poems--Joan +de Guilhade--Pero Garcia de Burgos--Pero da Ponte--Joan Airas--Fernan +Garcia Esgaravunha--Airas Nunez--King Dinis. + + +II. 1325-1521. + +[i. e. from the accession of Sancho IV to the death of Manuel I.] + +§ 1. _Early Prose_ 58 + +Comparatively late development of prose--Spanish influence in the +second period of Portuguese literature--King Dinis’ translation +of the _Cronica Geral_--_Regra de S. Bento_--Translations from the +Bible--Sacred legends--Aesop’s Fables--Chronicles--_Livros de +Linhagens_--The Breton cycle--The Quest of the Holy Grail--_Livro de +Josep ab Arimatia_--_Estorea de Vespeseano_--_Amadis de Gaula_--Problem +of its origin--Early allusions--Vasco de Lobeira--Probable +introduction of _Amadis_ into the Peninsula through Portugal. + +§ 2. _Epic and Later Galician Poets_ 72 + +Dearth of epics--Apocryphal poems--Afonso Giraldez--_Romances_--Their +connexion with Spain--Survival of Galician lyrics--Macias--Juan +Rodriguez de la Cámara--Fernam Casquicio--Vasco Perez de Camões--Gonçalo +Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Toro--Garci Ferrandez de Gerena--Alfonso +Alvarez de Villasandino--_Cantigas de escarnho_--The Constable D. Pedro. + +§ 3. _The Chroniclers_ 81 + +Fernam Lopez--_Cronica do Condestabre_--Zurara--Ruy de Pina--_Cronica do +Infante Santo._ Other prose: King João I--King Duarte--Pedro, Duke of +Coimbra--Letters of Lopo de Almeida--_Boosco Delleytoso_--_Corte +Imperial_--_Flos Sanctorum_--_Vita Christi_--_Espelho de +Christina_--_Espelho de Prefeyçam_. + +§ 4. _The Cancioneiro Geral_ 96 + +The break in Portuguese poetry--Its revival--Garcia de +Resende--_Cancioneiro Geral_--Its shallow themes--More serious +poems--Alvaro de Brito--The _Coudel Môr_--D. João de Meneses--D. +João Manuel--Fernam da Silveira--Nuno Pereira--Diogo Brandam--Luis +Anriquez--Rodriguez de Sá--The Conde de Vimioso--Duarte de +Brito--Spanish influence. + + +III. The Sixteenth Century [1502-80]. + +§ 1. _Gil Vicente_ 106 + +The sixteenth century--Gil Vicente’s first play (1502)--The year +and place of his birth--His life--Poet and goldsmith--His +_autos_--Types sketched in his _farsas_--Devotional plays, comedies +and tragicomedies--Origin of the drama in Portugal--Enzina’s influence +on Vicente--French influence--Other Spanish writers--Traditional +satire--Number of Vicente’s plays--Their character and that of their +author--His patriotism and serious purpose--His achievement and +influence in Spain and Portugal. + +§ 2. _Lyric and Bucolic Poets_ 132 + +Bernardim Ribeiro--Cristovam Falcão--Sá de Miranda--D. Manuel de +Portugal--Diogo Bernardez--Frei Agostinho da Cruz--Antonio +Ferreira--Andrade Caminha--Sá de Meneses--Falcão de Resende--Jorge de +Montemôr--Fernam Alvarez do Oriente--Faria e Sousa--Francisco Rodriguez +Lobo. + +§ 3. _The Drama_ 156 + +Gil Vicente’s successors--Anonymous plays--Afonso Alvarez--Antonio +Ribeiro Chiado--Balthasar Diaz--Anrique Lopez--Jorge Pinto--Antonio +Prestes--Jeronimo Ribeiro Soarez--Simão Machado--Francisco Vaz--Gil +Vicente de Almeida--Frei Antonio da Estrella--Classical drama: Sá de +Miranda--Antonio Ferreira--Camões--Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos. + +§ 4. _Luis de Camões_ 174 + +Family of Camões--His birth and education--In North Africa--In +India--Return to Portugal--Last years and death--Camões as epic and +lyric poet--The _Lusiads_--Its critics--His greatness--Influence on +the language--His _Parnasso_--Camões and Petrarca--Later epic +poets--Corte Real--Pereira Brandão--Francisco de Andrade. + +§ 5. _The Historians_ 190 + +Historians of India--Alvaro Velho --Lopez de +Castanheda--Barros--Couto--Corrêa--Bras de Albuquerque--Antonio +Galvam--Special narratives--Gaspar Fructuoso--Frei Bernardo de +Brito--Francisco de Andrade--Osorio--Bernardo da Cruz--Jeronimo +de Mendoça--Miguel de Moura--Duarte Nunez de Leam--Damião +de Goes--André de Resende--Manuel Severim de Faria--Faria e Sousa. + +§ 6. _Quinhentista Prose_ 217 + +Vivid prose--_Historia Tragico-Maritima_. Travels: Duarte +Barbosa--Francisco Alvarez--Gaspar da Cruz--Frei João dos +Santos--Tenreiro--Mestre Afonso--Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino--Manuel +Godinho--Fernam Mendez Pinto--Garcia da Orta--Pedro Nunez--Duarte +Pacheco--D. João de Castro--Afonso de Albuquerque--Soropita--Rodriguez +Silveira--Fernandez Ferreira--Francisco de Hollanda--Gonçalo Fernandez +Trancoso--Francisco de Moraes. + +§ 7. _Religious and Mystic Writers_ 235 + +Mysticism--Frei Heitor Pinto--Arraez--Frei Thomé de Jesus--Frei +Luis de Sousa--Lucena--Preachers: Paiva de Andrade--Fernandez +Galvão--Feo--Luz--Calvo--Veiga--Ceita--Lisboa--Almeida--Alvarez--Samuel +Usque--Frei Antonio das Chagas--Manuel Bernardes. + + +IV. 1580-1706. + +[i. e. from the accession of Philip II of Spain to the death of +Pedro II.] + +_The Seiscentistas_ 251 + +_Culteranismo_--D. Francisco Manuel de Mello--_Fenix Renascida_--Soror +Violante do Ceo--Child Rolim de Moura--Veiga Tagarro--Galhegos--The +epic: Pereira de Castro--Bras Garcia de Mascarenhas--Sá de +Meneses--Sousa de Macedo--Mousinho de Quevedo--The Academies--Martim +Afonso de Miranda--Leitão de Andrade--The Love Letters--_Arte de +Furtar_--Ribeiro de Macedo--Freire de Andrade--Antonio Vieira. + + +V. 1706-1816. + +[i. e. from the accession of João V to the death of Maria I.] + +_The Eighteenth Century_ 270 + +The Arcadias--Corrêa Garção--Quita--Diniz da Cruz e Silva--Filinto +Elysio--Tolentino--The Marquesa de Alorna--Bocage--Xavier de +Mattos--Gonzaga--Costa--Brazilian epics--Macedo--The Drama: +Figueiredo--Antonio José da Silva--Nicolau Dias--The Academy of +Sciences--Scholars and critics--Theodoro de Almeida--Letters. + + +VI. 1816-1910. + +[i. e. from the accession of João VI to the fall of the Monarchy.] + +§ 1. _The Romantic School_ 287 + +Portugal at the opening of the century--Almeida +Garrett--Herculano--Historical novelists--Rebello da Silva--Camillo +Castello Branco--Poetry: Castilho--Mendes Leal--Soares de Passos--Gomes +de Amorim--Xavier de Novaes--Thomaz Ribeiro--Bulhão Pato. + +§ 2. _The Reaction and After_ 304 + +The Coimbra School--History: Oliveira Martins--Pinheiro Chagas--Research +and criticism--The Drama: Ennes--Azevedo--D. João da Camara--Marcellino +Mesquita--Snr. Lopes de Mendonça--Snr. Julio Dantas--The Novel: Julio +Diniz--Eça de Queiroz--J. L. Pinto--Snr. Luiz de Magalhães--Snr. +Magalhães Lima--Bento Moreno--Snr. Silva Gayo--Snr. Malheiro Dias--Abel +Botelho--Ramalho Ortigão--Snr. Teixeira Gomes--Snr. Antero de +Figueiredo--D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho--The Conde de Sabugosa--The +_Conto_: Machado--The Conde de Ficalho--Fialho de Almeida--D. João da +Camara--Trindade Coelho--Snr. Julio Brandão--Poetry: Quental--João de +Deus--Guilherme Braga--A. da Conceição--G. de Azevedo--João +Penha--Cesario Verde--Gonçalves Crespo--Snr. Guerra Junqueiro--Gomes +Leal--Snr. Teixeira de Pascoaes--Antonio Nobre--Colonel Christovam +Ayres--Joaquim de Araujo--Antonio Feijó--Snr. Eugenio de Castro--Snr. +Corrêa de Oliveira--Snr. Afonso Lopes Vieira. + + +APPENDIX + +§ 1. _Literature of the People_ 338 + +Unwritten literature--Traditional themes--_Floras e Branca +Flor_--Bandarra--The Holy Cobbler--Primaeval elements--Connexion of song +and dance--Modern _cantigas_--Links with ancient +poetry--Cradle-songs--_Alvoradas_--_Fados_--Proverbs--Folk-tales. + +§ 2. _The Galician Revival_ 347 + +_Xogos Froraes_ of 1861--Añon--Posada--Camino--Rosalía de Castro--Lamas +Carvajal--Sr. Bárcia Caballero--Losada--Eduardo Pondal--Curros +Enriquez--Martelo Pauman--Pereira--Garcia Ferreiro--Núñez +González--Nun de Allariz--Sr. Rodríguez González--Sr. López Abente--Sr. +Noriega Varela--Sr. Cabanillas--Sr. Rey Soto--_Cancionero Popular +Gallego_--Prose--Pérez Placer--Dª. Francisca Herrera. + + + + + INTRODUCTION + + +Portuguese literature may be said to belong largely to the nineteenth +and twentieth centuries. Europe can boast of no fresher and more +charming early lyrics than those which slept forgotten[1] in the +Vatican Library until the late Professor Ernesto Monaci published _Il +Canzoniere Portoghese_ in 1875. And, to take a few more instances +out of many, the poems of King Alfonso X, of extraordinary interest +alike to historian and literary critic, first appeared in 1889; the +plays of Gil Vicente were almost unknown before the Hamburg (1834) +edition, based on the Göttingen copy of that of 1562; Sá de Miranda +only received a definitive edition in 1885; the _Cancioneiro Geral_ +became accessible in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the +three volumes of the Stuttgart edition were published; the exquisite +verses[1] of Sá de Meneses, which haunted Portuguese poetry for a +century,[2] then sank into oblivion till they were discovered by Dr. +Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.[3] The abundant literature of +popular _quadras_, _fados_, _romances_, _contos_ has only begun to be +collected in the last fifty years. + +In prose, the most important _Leal Conselheiro_[4] of King Duarte was +rediscovered in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and first printed in +1842, and Zurara’s _Cronica da Guiné_, lost even in the days of Damião +de Goes,[5] similarly in 1841; Corrêa’s _Lendas da India_ remained in +manuscript till 1858; so notable a book as King João I’s _Livro da +Montaria_ appears only in the twentieth century, in an edition by Dr. +Esteves Pereira, and the first trustworthy text of a part of Fernam +Lopez was published by Snr. Braamcamp Freire in 1915; D. Francisco +Manuel de Mello, who at the end of his second _Epanaphora_ wrote ‘Se +por ventura tambem despois de meus dias acontece que algum vindouro +honre ao meu nome quanto eu procuro eternizar e engrandecer o dos +passados’, had to wait two and a half centuries before this debt was +paid by Mr. Edgar Prestage.[6] Even now no really complete history of +Portuguese literature exists, but the first systematic work on the +subject was written by Friedrich Bouterwek in 1804. Other histories +have since appeared, and during the last half-century the ceaseless, +ingenious, and enthusiastic studies of Dr. Theophilo Braga have sifted +Portuguese literature, chiefly the poetry, in all directions, and +a flood of light has been thrown on it by the works of D. Carolina +Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Perhaps, therefore, one may be forgiven for +having been tempted to render some account of this ‘new’ literature +which continues to be so strangely neglected in England and other +countries.[7] Yet a quarter of a century hence would perhaps offer +better conditions, and a summary written at the present time cannot +hope to be complete or definitive. Every year new studies and editions +appear, new researches and alluring theories and discoveries are +made. The Lisbon Academy of Sciences during its long and honourable +history[8] has rarely if ever rendered greater services--‘essential +services’ as Southey called them in 1803--to Portuguese literature. A +short history of that literature must, apart from unavoidable errors +and omissions, do less than justice to many writers. In appropriating +the words of Damião de Goes, ‘Haud ignari plurima esse a nobis omissa +quibus Hispania ornatur et celebrari possit,’ one may hope that MR. +EDGAR PRESTAGE, who has studied Portuguese literature for a quarter +of a century,[9] and whose ever-ready help and advice are here +gratefully acknowledged, will eventually write a mellower history in +several volumes and give their full due both to the classics and to +contemporary authors and critics. + +No one can study Portuguese literature without becoming deeply indebted +to D. CAROLINA WILHELMA MICHAËLIS DE VASCONCELLOS. Her concise history, +contributed to Groeber’s _Grundriss_ (1894), necessarily forms the +basis of subsequent studies, but indeed her work is as vast as it +is scholarly and accurate, and the student finds himself constantly +relying on her guidance. Even if he occasionally disagrees, he cannot +fail to give her point of view the deepest attention and respect. Born +in 1851, the daughter of Professor Gustav Michaëlis, she has lived in +Portugal during the last forty years and is the wife of the celebrated +art critic, Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (born in 1849). Her edition +of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904) is a masterpiece of historical +reconstruction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese +literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assistance +of younger scholars are generous.[10] _Femina_, as was said of the +Princess Maria, _undequaque spectatissima et doctissima_. + +Most of the works of DR. THEOPHILO BRAGA are of too provisional a +nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, _Edade Medieval_ +(1909), _Renascença_ (1914), _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), _Os_ +_Arcades_ (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism +of the literature of the nineteenth century is that of DR. FIDELINO +DE FIGUEIREDO, Member of the Academy of Sciences and Editor of the +_Revista de Historia: Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa_ +(1913) and _Historia da Litteratura Realista_ (1914). + +The only completely methodical history of Portuguese literature in +existence is the brief manual by the learned ex-Rector of Coimbra +University, DR. JOAQUIM MENDES DOS REMEDIOS: _História da Literatura +Portuguêsa_ (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it contains that rarity +in Portuguese literature: an index.[11] Dr. Figueiredo published +a short essay in its general bibliography in 1914 (_Bibliographia +portuguesa de critica litteraria_), largely increased in a new (1920) +edition, but otherwise little has been done in this respect (apart +from a few special authors). The bibliography attached to the present +book[12] follows--_longo intervallo_--the lines of PROFESSOR JAMES +FITZMAURICE-KELLY’S _Bibliographie de l’Histoire de la Littérature +Espagnole_ (Paris, 1913). After its proved excellence it would, indeed, +have been folly to adopt any other method. + +It has been thought advisable to add a list of works on popular poetry, +folk-lore, &c. (since in no country are the popular and the written +literatures more intimately connected), and of those concerning the +Portuguese language. Unless energetic and persistent measures are +taken to protect this language it will be hopeless to look for a +great Portuguese literature in the future. Yet with the gradually +developing prosperity of Portugal and her colonies such expectations +are not unfounded. A new poet may arise indigenous as Gil Vicente +and technically proficient as Camões. And in prose, if it is not +allowed to sink into a mere verbiage of gallicisms, great writers may +place Portuguese on a level with and indeed above the other Romance +languages. The possibilities are so vast, the quarry ready to their +hand so rich--the works of Manuel Bernardes, Antonio Vieira, Jorge +Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Luis de Sousa, João de Lucena, Heitor Pinto, +Arraez; an immense mass of sermons (_milhões de sermonarios_), most +of them in excellent Portuguese, as those of Ceita, Veiga, Feo, Luz, +in which, as in a large number of political tracts, notably those +of Macedo, intense conviction has given a glow and concision to the +language; old _constituições_, _ordenações_, and _foros_[13]; technical +treatises,[14] folk-lore, popular phrases,[15] proverbs. But unless a +scholarly use of Portuguese be more generally imposed no masterpieces +will be produced. The same holds good of Brazilian literature, which, +although, or perhaps because, it has provided material for a history +in two portly volumes (Sylvio Romero, _Historia da Litteratura +Brazileira_, 2nd ed., 1902-3), is here, with few exceptions, omitted. + +A supplementary chapter on modern Galician literature has been added, +for although the language from which Portuguese parted only after the +fourteenth century is now quite independent,[16] modern Galician is +not more different from modern Portuguese than is the language of the +_Cancioneiros_ with which Portuguese literature opens. The Portuguese +have always shown a strong aptitude for acquiring foreign languages, +and the individual’s gain has been the literature’s loss. Jorge de +Montemôr, who + + con su Diana + Enriqueció la lengua castellana, + +was not by any means the only Portuguese who wrote exclusively +in Spanish, and others chose Latin. The reason usually given in +either case was that Portuguese was less widely read.[17] It was +a short-sighted view, for the more works of importance that were +written in Portuguese the larger would naturally become the number +of those who read them. While Portuguese literature may be taken to +be the literature written in the Portuguese language, in a sense it +must also include the Latin and Spanish works of Portuguese authors. +Of the former, one collection alone, the _Corpus Illustrium Poetarum +Lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt_ (Lisbonae, 1745), consists of eight +volumes, and Domingo Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo Razonado_ (Madrid, 1890) +contains over 600 names of Portuguese authors who wrote in Spanish. + +Portuguese names present a difficulty, for often they are as lengthy +as that which was the pride of Dona Iria in Ennes’ _O Saltimbanco_. +The course here adopted is to relegate the full name to the index and +to print in the text only the form by which the writer is generally +known.[18] + +The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain love of +magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,[19] an extensive +sea-board and vague land-frontiers, naturally came under foreign +influences. Many and various causes made their country cosmopolitan +from the beginning. It is customary to divide Portuguese literature +into the Provençal (13th c.), Spanish (14th and 15th c.), Italian +(16th c.), Spanish and Italian (17th c.), French and English (18th +c.), French and German (19th c.) Schools. The question may therefore +be asked, especially by those who confuse influence with imitation, as +though it precluded originality: What has Portuguese literature of its +own? In the first place, the Celtic satire and mystic lyrism of the +Galicians is developed and always present in Portuguese literature. +Secondly, the genius for story-telling, displayed by Fernam Lopez, +grew by reason of the great Portuguese discoveries in Africa and Asia +to an epic grandeur both in verse and prose. Thirdly, the absence +of great cities, the pleasant climate, and fertile soil produced +a peculiarly realistic and natural bucolic poetry. And in prose, +besides masterpieces of history and travel--a rich and fascinating +literature of the East and of the sea--a fervent religious faith, as +in Spain, with a more constant mysticism than in Spain, led to very +high achievement. Had one to choose between the loss of the works of +Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, and that of the whole of Portuguese +literature, the whole of Portuguese literature must go, but that is +not to say that the loss would not be very grievous. Indeed, those who +despise Portuguese literature despise it in ignorance,[20] affecting +to believe, with Edgar Quinet, that it has but one poet and a single +book; those who are acquainted with it--with the early lyrics, with the +quaintly alluring eclogues of Ribeiro and Sá de Miranda, with the works +of Fernam Lopez, described by Robert Southey as ‘the best chronicler +of any age or nation’, _naïf, exact, touchant et philosophe_[21]; of +Gil Vicente, almost as far above his contemporary Juan del Enzina as +Shakespeare is above Vicente; of Bernardim Ribeiro, whose _Menina e +moça_ is the earliest and best of those pastoral romances which led +Don Quixote to contemplate a quieter sequel to his first adventures; +of Camões, ‘not only the greatest lyric poet of his country, but one +of the greatest lyric poets of all time’[22]; with Fernam Mendez +Pinto’s travels, ‘as diverting a book of the kind as ever I read’[23]; +or Corrêa’s _Lendas_, Frei Thomé de Jesus’ _Trabalhos_, or the +incomparable prose of Manuel Bernardes--know that, extraordinary as +were Portugal’s achievements in discovery and conquest, her literature +is not unworthy of those achievements. Unhappily the Portuguese, with +a notorious carelessness,[24] have in the past set the example of +neglecting their literature, and even to-day scarcely seem to realize +their great possessions and still greater possibilities in the realm of +prose.[25] The excessive number of writers, the excessive production +of each individual writer, and the _desleixo_ by which innumerable +books and manuscripts of exceptional interest have perished, are all +traceable to the same source: the lack of criticism. A nation of +poets, essentially lyrical,[26] with no dramatic genius but capable +of writing charmingly and naturally without apparent effort, needed +and needs a severely classical education and stern critics, to remind +them that an epic is not rhymed history nor blank verse mangled prose, +that in bucolic poetry the half is greater than the whole, and to +bid them abandon abstractions for the concrete and particular and +crystallize the vague flow of their talent. But in Portugal, outside +the circle of writers themselves, a reading public has hitherto +hardly existed, and in the close atmosphere resulting the sense of +proportion was inevitably lost, even as a stone and a feather will +fall with equal speed in a vacuum. The criticism has been mainly +personal,[27] contesting the originality or truthfulness of a writer, +without considering the literary merits of his work. To deprecate such +criticism became a commonplace of the preface, while numerous passages +in writers of the sixteenth century show that they feared their +countrymen’s scepticism, expressed in the proverb _De longas vias mui +longas mentiras_, which occurs as early as the thirteenth century.[28] +The fear of slovenly or prolix composition was not present in the same +degree. But these are defects that may be remedied partly by individual +critics, partly by the increasing number of readers. Meanwhile this +little book may perhaps serve to corroborate the poet Falcão de +Resende’s words: + + Engenhos nascem bons na Lusitania + E ha copia delles.[29] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] A few Portuguese sixteenth-century writers in touch with Italy may +have known of their existence. But they were neglected as _rusticas +musas_. The references to King Dinis as a poet by Antonio Ferreira +and once in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ do not of course imply that his +poems were known and read. André de Resende seems to have been more +interested in tracing an ancestor, Vasco Martinez de Resende, than +in the poets among whom this ancestor figured (see C. Michaëlis de +Vasconcellos, _Randglosse_ XV in _Ztft. für rom. Phil._, xxv. 683). + +[2] _Illud vero poemation quod vulgo circumfertur de Lessa ... nunc +vera cum plurimum illud appetant_ ... (Soares, _Theatrum_). Cf. F. +Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_, ed. 1722, pp. 240, 356, 469; Eloy de Sá +de Sottomayor, _Ribeiras do Mondego_, f. 27 v., 28 v., 120-1, 186; +_Canc. Geral_ of A. F. Barata (1836-1910), p. 235; Jeronimo Bahia, _Ao +Mondego_ (_Fenix Ren._, ii. 377-9). Cf. Brito, _Mon. Lus._ 1. ii. 2: _O +rio Leça celebre pelas rimas de nosso famoso poeta_. + +[3] The documents of the Torre do Tombo are now in the able keeping of +Dr. Pedro de Azevedo and Snr. Antonio Baião. + +[4] Even its title was inaccurately given, as _O Fiel Conselheiro_ +(Bernardo de Brito), _De Fideli Consiliario_ (N. Antonio, _Bib. +Vetus_, ii. 241), _Del Buen Consejero_ (Faria e Sousa); correctly by +Duarte Nunez de Leam. A _Conselheiro Fiel_ by Frei Manuel Guilherme +(1658-1734) appeared in 1727. + +[5] _De que não ha noticia_ (Goes, _Cronica de D. João_, cap. 6). + +[6] _D. Francisco Manuel de Mello. Esboço biographico._ Coimbra, 1914, +an admirably clear and very important work, in which much light from +new documents is thrown on Mello’s life. + +[7] It would be interesting to know how many English-speaking persons +have ever heard of the great men and writers that were King Dinis, +Fernam Lopez, Bernardim Ribeiro, Diogo Bernardez, Heitor Pinto, Frei +Thomé de Jesus, Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Frei Luis de Sousa, Antonio +Vieira, Manuel Bernardes. Their neglect has been largely due to the +absence of good or easily available texts; there is still nothing to +correspond to the Spanish _Biblioteca de Autores Españoles_ or the +many more modern Spanish collections. But is not even Camões still ‘an +abused stranger’, as Mickle called him in 1776? + +[8] See F. de Figueiredo, _O que é a Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_ +(1779-1915) in _Revista da Historia_, vol. iv, 1915. + +[9] His valuable study on Zurara, which has not been superseded by any +later work on the subject, is dated 1896. + +[10] She has, indeed, laid the Portuguese people under an obligation +which it will not easily redeem. That no formal recognition has been +bestowed in England on her work (as in another field on that of Dr. +José Leite de Vasconcellos, of Snr. Braamcamp Freire, and of the late +Dr. Francisco Adolpho Coelho) is a striking example of our insularity. + +[11] It does not include living writers. Its dates must be received +with caution. + +[12] It has been found necessary to publish the bibliography separately. + +[13] e. g. King Sancho II’s _Foros da Guarda_, printed, from a 1305 +manuscript, in vol. v (1824) of the _Collecção de Ineditos_, or the +_Foros de Santarem_ (1385). The _Livro Vermelho do Senhor D. Affonso +V_, printed in the _Collecção de Livros Ineditos_, vol. iii (1793), is +also full of interest. + +[14] e.g. the fourteenth-century _Livro de Cetreria_ of PERO MENINO; +MESTRE GIRALDO’S _Tratado das Enfermidades das Aves de Caça_ and +_Livro d’Alveitaria_; the _Arte da Cavallaria de gineta e estardiota_ +(1678) by ANTONIO GALVAM DE ANDRADE (1613?-89); _Correcçam de abusos +introduzidos contra o verdadeiro methodo da medicina_ (2 pts., 1668-80) +by the Carmelite FREI MANUEL DE AZEVEDO (†1672); _Agricultura das +Vinhas_ (1711) by Vicente Alarte (i.e. SILVESTRE GOMEZ DE MORAES +(1643-1723)); _Compendia de Botanica_ (2 vols., 1788) by FELIX DE +AVELLAR BROTERO (1744-1828). + +[15] Many will be found in _Portugalia_ and the _Revista Lusitana_. + +[16] In the beginning of the sixteenth century Galician is already +despised in Portugal, and became more so as Portuguese grew more +latinized. Cf. Gil Vicente, ii. 509: _Pera que he falar galego Senão +craro e despachado?_; Chiado, _Auto das Regateiras: Eu não te falo +galego_. + +[17] _Por ser lingua mais jêral_ (Vera, _Lovvores_), _mais universal_ +(Sousa de Macedo). _Os grandes ingenios não se contentão de ter por +espera de seu applauso a hũa só parte do mundo_ (D. Francisco de +Portugal). Cf. Osorio, writing in Latin, _De Rebus_, p. 4, and Pedro +Nunez’ reason for translating his _Libro de Algebra_ into Spanish: _he +mais comum_, and the advice given to Luis Marinho de Azevedo to write +in Spanish or Latin as _mais geral_ (_Primeira Parte da Fundação, +Antiguidades e Grandezas da mvi insigne cidade de Lisboa. Prologo_). +Faria e Sousa condemns the practice of writing Spanish _glosas_ to a +Portuguese _mote_, and declares that he himself wrote in Spanish _con +gran pesar mío_. Frei Antonio da Purificaçam considered that had he +written his _Cronica_ in Latin or Spanish _fora digno de grande nota_, +in this following Frei Bernardo de Brito, who indignantly rejected +the exhortation to use Latin or Spanish (_Mon. Lus._ i, _Prologo_), +although he wrote under Spanish rule. Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda +wrote in Spanish _por ser idioma claro y casi comun_. Simão Machado +explains why he wrote _Alfea_ in Spanish as follows (f. 72 v.): _Vendo +quam mal aceitais As obras dos naturais Fiz esta em lingoa estrangeira +Por ver se desta maneira Como a eles nos tratais._ + +[18] Portuguese spelling is a vexed and vexing question, complicated by +the positive dislike of the Portuguese for uniformity (the same word +may be found spelt in two ways on the same page both in modern and +ancient books; the same person will spell his name Manoel and Manuel). +In proper names their owners’ spelling has been retained, although +no one now writes Prince Henry the Navigator’s name as he wrote it: +Anrique. Thus Mello (modern Melo); Nunez (13th c.), Nunes (19th c.); +Bernardez (16th c.), Bernardes (17th-18th c.). The late Dr. Gonçalves +Vianna himself adopted the form Gonçalvez Viana. In quoting ancient +Portuguese texts the only alteration made has been occasionally to +replace _y_ and _u_ by _i_ and _v_. + +[19] _Este desejo (de sempre ver e ouvir cousas nouas) he moor que +nas outras nações na gente Lusitana._ André de Burgos, _Ao prudente +leitor_ (_Relaçam_, Evora, 1557). It is displayed in their fondness for +foreign customs, for the Spanish language, for India to the neglect of +Portugal, the description of epic deeds rather than of ordinary life, +high-flown language as opposed to the common speech (_da praça_), &c. +Antonio Prestes calls the Portuguese _estranho no natural, natural no +estranjeiro_. + +[20] In Spain it has had fervent admirers, notably Gracián. More +recently Juan Valera spoke of it as _riquísima_, and Menéndez y Pelayo +explored this wealth. + +[21] F. Denis, _Résumé_ (1826), p. xx. + +[22] Wilhelm Storck, _Luis de Camoens’ Sämmtliche Werke_, Bd. I (1880). + +[23] Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple. + +[24] For a good instance of this _descuido portugues_ see Manuel +Pereira de Novaes, _Anacrisis Historial_ (a history of the city of +Oporto in Spanish), vol. i (1912), _Preámbulo_, p. xvii. It is lamented +by the editors of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516) and _Fenix Renascida_ +(1716). + +[25] Portuguese literature begins for most Portuguese with Camões and +Barros, and its most charming and original part thus escapes them. Cf. +F. Dias Gomes, _Obras Poeticas_ (1799), p. 143: Camões ‘without whom +there would have been no Portuguese poetry’; and ibid., p. 310: Barros +‘prepared the beautiful style for our epic writers’. Faria e Sousa’s +homely phrase as to the effect of Camões on preceding poets (_echólos +todos a rodar_) was unfortunately true. + +[26] Much of their finest prose is of lyrical character, personal, +fervent, mystic. As to philosophy proper the greatest if not the only +Portuguese philosopher, Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew, left Portugal as a +child, and Francisco Sanchez (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1620), although probably +born at Braga, not at _a soberba_ Tuy, lived in France and wrote in +Latin. He tells us that he in 1574 finished his celebrated treatise +_Quod nihil scitur_, published at Lyon in 1581, in which, at a time of +great intolerance, he revived and gave acute and curious expression +to the old theory that nothing can be known. To modern philosophy Dr. +Leonardo Coimbra (born in 1883) has contributed a notable but somewhat +abstruse work entitled _O Criacionismo_ (Porto, 1912). + +[27] Or political, or anticlerical, or anything except literary. +The critics seem to have forgotten that an _auto-da-fé_ does not +necessarily make its victim a good poet, and that even a priest +may have literary talent. A few literary critics, as Dias in the +eighteenth, Guilherme Moniz Barreto in the nineteenth century, are +only exceptions to the rule. It has been the weakness of Portuguese +criticism, more lenient than the gods and booksellers of ancient Rome, +to suffer _mediocres_ gladly. + +[28] _C. da Vat._ 979 (cf. Jorge Ferreira, _Eufrosina_, v. 5: _como +dizia o Galego: de longas vias longas mentiras_). + +[29] _Poesias, Sat._ 2. The remark of Garrett still holds good: _Em +Portugal ha mais talento e menos cultivação que em paiz nenhum da +Europa_. + + + + + I + + 1185-1325 + + + + + § 1 + + _The Cossantes_ + + +Under the Moorish dominion we know that poetry was widely cultivated in +the Iberian Peninsula, by high and low. At Silves in Algarve ‘almost +every peasant could improvise’.[30] But the early Galician-Portuguese +poetry has no relation with that of the Moors, despite certain +characteristics which may seem to point to an Oriental origin. The +indigenous poems of Galicia and Portugal, of which thirteenth-century +examples have survived, are so remarkable, so unlike those of any other +country, that they deserve to be studied apart from the Provençal +imitations by the side of which they developed. Half buried in the +_Cancioneiros_, themselves only recently discovered, these exquisite +and in some ways astonishingly modern lyrics are even now not very +widely known and escape the attention of many who go far afield in +search of true poetry. The earliest poem dated (1189) by D. Carolina +Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, in which Pay Soarez de Taveiroos, a nobleman +of Galicia or North Portugal, addresses Maria Paez Ribeira, the lovely +mistress of King Sancho I, _mia sennor branca e vermelha_, does not +belong to these lyrics[31]; but the second earliest (1199), attributed +to King SANCHO I (1185-1211) himself, is one of them (C.C.B.348). This +unique form of lyric requires a distinctive name, and if we adopt that +used by the Marqués de Santillana’s father, Diego Furtado de Mendoza +(†1404), we shall have a word well suited to convey an idea of their +striking character.[32] His Spanish poem written in parallel distichs, +_A aquel arbol_, is called a _cossante_.[33] In an age when all that +seemed most Spanish, the _Poema del Cid_, for instance, or the _Libro +de Buen Amor_, has been proved to derive in part from French sources, +it is peculiarly pleasant to find a whole series of early poems which +have their roots firmly planted in the soil of the Peninsula. The +indigenous character of the _cossantes_ is now well established, thanks +chiefly to the skilful and untiring researches of D. Carolina Michaëlis +de Vasconcellos.[34] They are wild but deliciously scented single +flowers which now reappear in all their freshness as though they had +not lain pressed and dead for centuries in the library of the Vatican. +One of the earliest is quoted by Airas Nunez (C. V. 454) and completed +in _Grundriss_, p. 150: + + 1. Solo ramo verde frolido + Vodas fazen a meu amigo, + E choran olhos d’amor. + + 2. Solo verde frolido ramo[35] + Vodas fazen a meu amado, + E choran olhos d’amor. + +What first strikes one in this is its Oriental immobility. The second +distich adds nothing to the sense of the first, merely intensifying it +by repetition. Neither the poetry of the _trouvères_ of the North of +France nor that of the Provençal _troubadours_ presents any parallel. +The scanty Basque literature contains nothing in this kind. But it is +unnecessary to go for a parallel to China.[36] None more remarkable +will be found than those contained in the books of that religion which +came from the East and imposed its forms if not its spirit on the +pagans of the Peninsula. Verses 8, 9 of Psalm 118 are very nearly a +_cossante_ but have no refrain. The resemblance in Psalm 136, verses +17, 18, is still more marked: + + To him which smote great kings, + For his mercy endureth for ever, + + And slew famous kings, + For his mercy endureth for ever. + +The relations between Church and people were very close if not always +very friendly. The peasants maintained their ancient customs, and their +pagan jollity kept overflowing into the churches to the scandal of +the authorities. Innumerable ordinances later sought to check their +delight in witchcraft and mummeries, feasts and funerals (the delight +in the latter is still evident in Galicia as in Ireland and Wales). +Men slept, ate, drank, danced, sang profane songs, and acted plays and +parodies in the churches and pilgrimage shrines. The Church strove to +turn their midsummer and May-day celebrations into Christian festivals, +but the change was rather nominal than real. But if the priests and +bishops remained spiritually, like modern politicians, shepherds +without sheep, the religious services, the hymns,[37] the processions +evidently affected the people. Especially was this the case in Galicia, +since the great saint Santiago, who farther south (as later in India) +rode into battle on a snow-white steed before the Christians, gave +a more peaceful prosperity to the North-west. Pilgrims from all +countries in the Middle Ages came to worship at his shrine at Santiago +de Compostela. They came a motley company singing on the road,[38] +criminals taking this opportunity to escape from justice, tradesmen and +players, jugglers and poets making a livelihood out of the gathering +throngs, as well as devout pilgrims who had ‘left alle gamys’ for their +soul’s good, _des pélerins qui vont chantant et des jongleurs_. Thus +the eyes of the whole province of Galicia as the eyes of Europe were +directed towards the Church of Santiago in Jakobsland. The inhabitants +of Galicia would naturally view their heaven-sent celebrity with pride +and rejoice in the material gain. They would watch with eager interest +the pilgrims passing along the _camino francés_ or from the coast +to Santiago, and would themselves flock to see and swell the crowds +at the religious services. When we remember the frequent parodies +of religious services in the Middle Ages and that the Galicians did +not lag behind others in the art of mimicry,[39] we can well imagine +that the Latin hymns sung in church or procession might easily form +the germ of the profane _cossante_. A further characteristic of the +_cossante_ is that the _i_-sound of the first distich is followed by +an _a_-sound in the second (_ricercando ora il grave, ora l’acuto_) +and this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs +of singers, treble and bass.[40] It is clear at least that these +alternating sounds are echoes of music: one almost hears the clash +of the _adufe_ in the _louçana_ (answering to _garrida_) or _ramo_ +(_pinho_). The words of these poems were, indeed, always accompanied by +the _son_ (= music). But if born in the Church, the _cossante_ suffered +a transformation when it went out into the world. The rhythm of many +of the songs in the _Cancioneiros_ is so obtrusive that they seem to +dance out of the printed page. One would like to think that in the +ears of the peasants the sound of the wheel mingled with the echo of a +hymn and its refrain as they met at what was, even then, no doubt, a +favourite gathering-place--the mill[41]--and thus a lyric poem became a +dance-song. The _cossante Solo ramo_ would thus proceed, sung by ‘the +dancers dancing in tune’: + + (Verses 3 and 4) Vodas fazen a meu amigo (amado) + Porque mentiu o desmentido (perjurado) + E choran olhos d’amor, + +the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the +first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second +line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding +evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens +danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine +considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre; +in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_). +The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases +as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become +a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de +romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song). +A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is +its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more +than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued +in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of +the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in +Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they +become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower +of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of +snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in +the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the +cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a +mountain-stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away _meus amores_, or +gliding up the river _a sabor_. The _amiga_ lingers at the fountain, +she goes to wash clothes or to bathe her hair in the stream, she meets +her lover and dances at the pilgrim shrine, she waits for him under +the hazel-trees, she implores the waves for news of him, she watches +for the boats _pelo mar viir_. The language is native to the soil, +far more so, at least, than in the _cantigas de amor_ and _cantigas +de amigo_ written under foreign influence. Their French or Provençal +words and learned forms[46] are replaced in the _cossante_ by forms +Galician or Spanish. Despite its striking appearance to us now among +_sirventes senes sal_ in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, it must +be confessed that the early _cossante_ of King Sancho has a somewhat +meagre, vinegar aspect, and the _genre_ could hardly have developed +so successfully in the next half-century had it not been fixed in the +country-side, ever ready to the hand of the poet in search of fresh +inspiration. It is possible to exaggerate the effect of war on the life +of the peasant. Portugal in the twelfth century was only gradually +and by constant conflict winning its territory and independence. It +had no fixed capital and Court at which the Provençal poets might +gather. But while king and nobles and the members of the religious and +military orders were engaged with the Moors to the exclusion of the +Muses, so that they had no opportunity to introduce the new measures, +the peasants in Galicia and Minho no doubt went on tilling the soil +and singing their primitive songs. In the thirteenth century Provençal +poetry flourished in Portugal, but so monotonously that it failed to +kill the older lyrics, and they reacted on the imported poetry. In the +trite conventions with which the latter became clothed the _cossante_ +had a new opportunity of life. _Trobadores_ wearied by their own +monotony, _jograes_ wishing to please a patron with a _novidade_, had +recourse to the _cossante_. The _jogral_ wandering from house to house +and town to town necessarily came into close touch with the peasants. +Talented men among them, prompted by patrons of good taste, no doubt +exercised the third requisite of a good _jogral_ (_doair’ e uoz e +aprenderdes ben_, C. C. B. 388)--a good memory--not only in learning +his patron’s verses to recite at other houses but in remembering the +songs that he caught in passing from the lips of the peasants, songs of +village mirth and dance, of workers in the fields and shepherds on the +hills. These, developed and adorned according to his talent, he would +introduce to the Court among his _motz recreamens e prazers_. When +Joan de Guilhade in the middle of the thirteenth century complained +that _os trobadores ja van para mal_ (C. V. 370), he might almost be +referring to the fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese +_trobadores_ could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the +_cossante_. Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a +Provençal but, rather, like Bernaldo de Bonaval (first half 13th c.). +King Dinis in the second half of the century viewed the _cossante_ +with such favour that he wrote or collected some of the most curious +and delightful that we possess. But although King Dinis set his name +to a handful of the finest _cossantes_, most of the _cossante_-writers +belonged to an earlier period and were men of humble birth. Of NUNO +FERNANDEZ TORNEOL[47] (first half 13th c.), poet and soldier, besides +conventional _cantigas de amor_ we have eight simple _cossantes_ of +which the _alvorada_ (C. V. 242), the _barcarola_ (C. V. 246), and C. +V. 245 with its dance rhythm are especially beautiful. PEDR’ ANEZ +SOLAZ[48] (early 13th c.) wrote a _cossante_ (C. V. 415) celebrated +for its refrain, _lelia doura, leli leli par deus leli_, in which some +have seen a vestige of Basque (_il_ = dead). Of MEENDINHO (first half +13th c.) we have only one poem, a _cantiga de romaria_ (C. V. 438), but +its beauty has brought him fame;[49] and another _jogral_, FERNAND’ +ESGUIO[50] (second half 13th c.), is remembered in the same way chiefly +for C. V. 902: _Vayamos, irmana_. Bernaldo de Bonaval, one of the +earliest Galician poets, and the _jograes_ Pero de Veer, Joan Servando, +Airas Carpancho,[51] Martin de Ginzo,[52] Lopo and Lourenço, composed +some charming pilgrimage songs in the second third of the thirteenth +century. This was a popular theme, but the two poets who seem to have +felt most keenly the attraction of the popular poetry and to have +cultivated it most successfully are JOAN ZORRO (fl. 1250) and PERO +MEOGO (fl. 1250). The _cossantes_ of Zorro, one of the most talented +of all these singers, tell of Lisbon and the king’s ships and the sea. +In this series of _barcarolas_ (C. V. 751-60) and in his delightful +_bailada_ (C. V. 761)[53] he evidently sought his inspiration in +popular sources, as with equal felicity a little later did Pero +Meogo,[54] whose _cossantes_ (C. V. 789-97), each with its biblical +reference to the deer of the hills (_cervos do monte_), are as singular +as they are beautiful. MARTIN CODAX at about the same time was singing +graceful songs of the _ondas do mar_ of Vigo (C. V. 884-90). But the +real poet of the sea was the Admiral of Castille, PAY GOMEZ CHARIÑO[55] +(†1295). He belonged to an ancient family of Galicia, was prominent at +the Courts of Alfonso X (between whose character and the sea he draws +an elaborate parallel in C. A. 256) and of his son Sancho IV, played an +important part in the troubled history of the time, and fought by land +and sea in Andalucía, at Jaen in 1246 and Seville in 1247. On the lips +of his _amiga_ he places a touching _cantiga de amigo_ (C. V. 424: she +expresses her relief that her _amigo_ has ceased to be _almirante do +mar_; no longer will she listen in sadness to the wind, now her heart +may sleep and not tremble at the coming of a messenger) and the two sea +_cossantes_ C. V. 401, with its plaining refrain: + + E van-se as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores, + idas son as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores, + +--one can imagine it sung as a chanty[56]--and C. V. 429, in which she +prays Santiago to bring him safely home: ‘Now in this hour Over the +sea He is coming to me, Love is in flower.’ Beauty of expression and +a loyal sincerity are conspicuous in his poems, as well as a certain +individuality and vigour. He escaped the perils of the sea, the _mui +gran coita do mar_ (C. A. 251), but to fall by the hand of an assassin +on shore. His sea lyrics are only excelled by the enchanting melody +of the poem (C. V. 488) of his contemporary and fellow-countryman ROY +FERNANDEZ (second half 13th c.), who was apparently a professor at +Salamanca University, Canon of Santiago, and Chaplain to Alfonso the +Learned. Of the later poets ESTEVAM COELHO, perhaps father of one of +the assassins of Inés (†1355), wrote a _cossante_ of haunting beauty +(C. V. 321): + + Sedia la fremosa, seu sirgo torcendo, + Sa voz manselinha fremoso dizendo + Cantigas d’amigo, + +and D. AFONSO SANCHEZ (_c._ 1285-1329) in C. V. 368 (_Dizia la +fremosinha--Ay Deus val_) proved that he had inherited part of his +father King Dinis’ genius and instinct for popular poetry. King Dinis, +having thrown wide his palace doors to these thyme-scented lyrics, +would turn again to the now musty chamber of Provençal song (C. V. 123): + + Quer’eu en maneira de provençal + Fazer agora un cantar d’amor. + +The _cossantes_ had become so familiar that Airas Nunez, of Santiago, +could string them together, as it were, by the head, without troubling +himself to give more than the first lines, precisely as Gil Vicente +treated _romances_ three centuries later. The reader or listener would +easily complete them. His _pastorela_ (C. V. 454) would be an ordinary +imitation of a _pastourelle_ of the _trouvères_[57] were it not for the +five _cossante_ fragments inserted. Riding along a stream he hears a +solitary shepherdess singing and stays to listen. First she sang _Solo +ramo verde frolido_,[58] then--as if to prove that she is a shepherdess +of Arcady, not of real life-- + + Ay, estorniño do avelanedo, + Cantades vos e moir’eu e peno, + D’amores ei mal, + +an impassioned cry of the heart only comparable with + + Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth: + Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth; + +or that wonderful line of a wonderful poem: + + Illa cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum?[59] + +Next she sang the first lines of a _cossante_ by Nuno Fernandez Torneol +(C. V. 245) with its dance refrain _E pousarei solo avelanal_. The +refrain is identical in C. V. 245 and C. V. 454, but the distich +has variations which seem to imply that Airas Nunez was not quoting +Fernandez, rather that both drew from a popular source. The fourth +_cossante_ we also have complete, a lovely _barcarola_ by Joan Zorro +(C. V. 757): + + Pela ribeira do rio (alto) + Cantando ia la dona virgo (d’algo) + D’amor: + Venhan as barcas pelo rio + A sabor.[60] + +Lastly she (or he), as he rides on his way, sings: + + Quen amores ha + Como dormira, + Ai bela fror! + +i.e. _este cantar_ which is familiar in the _villancico_ (_Por una +gentil floresta_) by the Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458): + + La niña que amores ha + ¿Sola cómo dormirá? + +Very few, if any, of the _cossantes_ were anonymous, which only means +that modern folk-lore was unknown; it was not the fashion to collect +songs from the lips of the people without ulterior purpose. A variety +known as _cantiga de vilãos_ existed, but it was deliberately composed +by the _trobadores_ and _jograes_.[61] A specimen is given in C. V. +1043: + + Ó pee d’hũa torre + Baila corpo piolo,[62] + Vedes o cós, ay cavaleiro. + +No drawing-room lyric, evidently: more likely to be sung in taverns; +composed perhaps by a knight like him of C. V. 965, whose songs were +not _fremosos e rimados_. Like the Provençal poet Guilherme Figueira +who _mout se fetz grazir ... als ostes et als taverniers_, this +knight’s songs pleased ‘tailors, furriers and millers’; they had not +the good taste of the tailor’s wife in Gil Vicente who sings the +beautiful _cantiga_ + + Donde vindes filha + Branca e colorida? + +The _cantiga de vilãos_ was no such simple popular lyric, but rather +a drinkers’ song, picaresquely allusive, sung by a _jogral_ who _non +fo hom que saubes caber entre ‘ls baros ni entre la bona gen_ but +sang _vilmen et en gens bassas, entre gens bassas per pauc d’aver_ +(Riquier), _cantares de que la gente baja e de servil condicion se +alegra_ (Santillana). The _cossante_, on the contrary, came straight +from field and hill into palace and song-book. Probably many of them +were composed, as they were sung, and sung dancing, by the women. +The women of Galicia have always been noted for their poetical and +musical talent. We read of the _choreas psallentium mulierum_, like +Miriam, the sister of Moses, at Santiago in 1116,[63] and there is a +cloud of similar witnesses. But whether any of the _cossantes_ that +we have in the _Cancioneiros_ is strictly of the people or not, their +traditional indigenous character is no longer doubtful. It would +surely be a most astounding fact had the Galician-Portuguese Court +poets, who in their _cantigas de amor_ reduced Provençal poetry to a +colourless insipidity, succeeded so much better with the _cossantes_ +that, while the originals from which they copied have vanished, the +imitations stand out in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ like crimson +poppies among corn. It is remarkable, too, that of the three kinds of +poem in the old _Cancioneiros_, satire, love song, and _cossante_, +the first two remain in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (1516), but the +third has totally disappeared. The explanation is that as Court and +people drew apart and the literary influence of Castille grew, the +poems based on songs of the people were no longer in favour. But they +continued, like the Guadiana, underground, and D. Carolina Michaëlis +de Vasconcellos has traced their occasional reappearances in poets +of popular leanings, like Gil Vicente and Cristobal de Castillejo, +from the thirteenth century to the present day,[64] while Dr. Leite +de Vasconcellos has discovered whole _cossantes_ sung by peasants at +their work in the fields in the nineteenth century.[65] Dance or action +always accompanies the _cossante_ as it does in the _danza prima_ of +Asturias (to the words _Ay un galan d’esta villa, ay un galan d’esta +casa_).[66] If it be objected that the songs printed by Dr. Leite +de Vasconcellos are rude specimens by the side of a poem like _Ay +flores, ay flores do verde pinho_, it should be remembered that the +_quadra_ (or perhaps one should say distich without refrain) has now +replaced the _cossante_ on the lips of the people, and that among +these quatrains something of the old _cossante’s_ charm and melancholy +is still found. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and others +have remarked that these _quadras_ pass from mouth to mouth and are +perfected in the process, smoothed and polished like a stone by the +sea, and this may well have been true of the earlier _cossantes_.[67] +The _jogral_ who hastened to his patron with a lovely new poem was +but reaping the inspiration of a succession of anonymous singers, an +inspiration quickened by competition in antiphonies of song at many a +pilgrimage. One singer would give a distich of a _cossante_, as to-day +a _quadra_, another would take it up and return it with variations. The +_cossante_ did not always preserve its simple form, or, rather, the +more complicated poems renewed themselves in its popularity. We find +it as a _bailada_ (C. V. 761), _balleta_ (cf. C. A. 123: _Se vos eu +amo mais que outra ren_), as _cantiga de amor_ (C. A. 360 or 361, C. +V. 657-60), _cantiga de maldizer_ (C. V. 1026-7), or satirical _alba_ +(C. V. 1049). But these hybrid forms are not the true _cossante_, +which is always marked by dignity, restraint, simple grace, close +communion with Nature, delicacy of thought, and a haunting felicity of +expression. The _cossante_ written by King Sancho seems to indicate +a natural development of the indigenous poetry. In its form it owed +nothing to the poetry of Provence or North France, but its progress +was perhaps quickened, and at least its perfection preserved, by the +systematic cultivation of poetry introduced from abroad at a time when +no middle class separated Court and peasant. The tantalizing fragments +that survive in Gil Vicente’s plays show all too plainly what marvels +of popular song might flower and die unknown. In spirit the original +grave religious character of the _cossante_ may in some measure have +affected the new poetry. To this in part may be ascribed the monotony, +the absence of particular descriptions in the _cantigas de amor_. +In religious hymns obviously reverence would not permit the Virgin +to be described in greater detail than, for example, Gil Vicente’s +vague _branca e colorada_, and the reverence might be transferred +unconsciously to poems addressed to an earthly _dona_. (Only in the +extravagant devotional mannerisms (_gongorismo ao divino_) of the +seventeenth century could Soror Violante do Ceo describe Christ as a +_galan de ojos verdes_.) _Dona genser qu’ieu no sai dir_ or _la genser +que sia_ says Arnaut de Marueil at the end of the thirteenth century. +The Portuguese poet would make an end there: his lady is fairest among +women, fairer than he can say. He would never go on to describe her +grey eyes and snowy brow: _huelhs vairs_ and _fron pus blanc que lis_. +But introduced into alien and artificial forms, like mountain gentians +in a garden, the monotony can no longer please. In the _cantigas de +amor_ the iteration becomes a tedious sluggishness of thought, whereas +in the _cossantes_ it is part of the music of the poem. + + C. A. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. + + C. A. M. V. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaëlis de + Vasconcellos. 2 vols. Halle, 1904. + + C. A. S.= Fragmentos de hum Cancioneiro Inedito que se acha na + Livraria do Real Collegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Impresso á custa de + Carlos Stuart, Socio da Academia Real de Lisboa. Paris, 1823. + + C. A. V. = Trovas e Cantares de um Codice do XIV Seculo. Ed. Francisco + Adolpho de Varnhagen. Madrid, 1849. + + C. V. = Cancioneiro da Vaticana. + + C. V. M. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. + Ernesto Monaci. Halle, 1875. + + C. V. B. = Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana. Ed. Theophilo Braga. + Lisboa, 1878. + + C. T. A. = Cancioneirinho das Trovas Antigas colligidas de um grande + Cancioneiro da Bibliotheca do Vaticano. Ed. F. A. de Varnhagen. Vienna + (1870), 2nd ed. 1872. + + C. A. P. = Cantichi Antichi Portoghesi tratti dal Codice Vaticano 4803 + con traduzione e note, a cura di Ernesto Monaci. Imola, 1873. + + C. L. = Cantos de Ledino tratti dal grande Canzoniere portoghese della + Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. E. Monaci. Halle, 1875. + + C. D. M. = Cancioneiro d’ El Rei D. Diniz, pela primeira vez impresso + sobre o manuscripto da Vaticana. Ed. Caetano Lopes de Moura. Paris, + 1847. + + C. D. L. = Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal. Ed. Henry R. + Lang. Halle, 1894. + + C. C. B. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti. Ed. Enrico + Molteni. Halle, 1880. + + C. M. = Cantigas de Santa Maria de Don Alfonso el Sabio. 2 vols. + Madrid, 1889. + + C. G. C. = Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano. Ed. H. R. Lang. Vol. i. New + York, London, 1902. + + C. M. B. = Cancionero Musical de los Siglos XV y XVI. Transcrito y + comentado por Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. Madrid (1890). + + C. B. = Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena. Madrid, 1851. + + C. G. = Cancionero General (1511). + + C. R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral). + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[30] Kazwînî ap. Reinhart Dozy, _Spanish Islam_, trans. F. G. Stokes, +London, 1913, p. 663. + +[31] C. A. 38. It is a _cantiga de meestria_, of two verses, each of +eight octosyllabic lines (_abbaccde bfbaccde_). + +[32] Although neither English nor Portuguese, it is a name for these +poems, of lines _pariter plangentes_, less clumsy than _parallelistic +songs_ adopted by Professor Henry R. Lang (who also uses the words +_serranas_--but see C. D. L., p. cxxxviii, note 2; Dr. Theophilo +Braga had called them _serranilhas_--and _Verkettungslieder_), +_Parallelstrophenlieder_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos), +_cantigas parallelisticas_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos +and Snr. J. J. Nunes), _chansons à répétitions_ (M. Alfred Jeanroy). +_Cantos dualisticos_, _cantos de danza prima_, and _bailadas +encadeadas_ have also been proposed. + +[33] Perhaps = rhyme (_consoante_), but more probably it is derived +from _cosso_, an enclosed place, which would be used for dancing: +cf. Cristobal de Castillejo, _Madre, un caballero Que estaba en este +cosso (bailia)_. In the _Relacion de los fechos del mui magnifico é +mas virtuoso señor el señor Don Miguel Lucas_ [_de Iranzo_] _mui digno +Condestable de Castilla_, p. 446 (A.D. 1470), occurs the following +passage: _Y despues de danzar cantaron un gran rato de cosante_ +(_Memorial Histórico Español_, tom. viii, Madrid, 1855). Rodrigo Cota, +in the _Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo_, has _danças y corsantes_, +and Antón de Montoro (el Ropero) asks _un portugues que vido vestido +de muchos colores_ if he is a _cantador de corsante_ (v. l. _cosante_) +(_Canc. General_, ed. Biblióf. Esp., ii. 270, no. 1018). + +[34] In the _Grundriss_ (1894), _Randglossen_ (1896-1905), and +especially vol. ii of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904). + +[35] Or _Solo ramo verde granado_: the green branch in (red) flower. + +[36] Translations of Chinese poems resembling the _cossantes_ are given +by Dr. Theophilo Braga, C. V. B., _Introd._, p. ci, and Professor H. R. +Lang, C. D. L., _Introd._, p. cxlii. A Provençal poem with resemblance +to a _cossante_ is printed in Bartsch, p. 62: _Li tensz est bels, les +vinnesz sont flories_. + +[37] Any one who has heard peasants at a _Stabat_ singing the hymn + + Stabat Mater dolorosa + _Jussa crussa larimosa + Du penebat_ Filius + +realizes that the words for them have no meaning, but that they will +long remember tune and rhythm. Compare, for the form, the Latin hymn to +the Virgin by the Breton poet Adam de Saint Victor (†1177): + + Salve Verbi sacra parens, + Flos de spinis spinis carens, + Flos spineti gloria. + + +[38] Cf. Luis José Velázquez, _Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana_ +(Málaga, 1754) ap. C. M. (1889), i. 168: _las cantares y canciones +devotas de los peregrinos que iban en romería a visitar la iglesia de +Compostela mantuvieron en Galicia el gusto de la poesía en tiempos +bárbaros_. A Latin hymn composed in the twelfth century by Aimeric +Picaud is printed in _Recuerdos de un Viaje á Santiago de Galicia_ por +el P. Fidel Fita y D. Aureliano Fernández-Guerra (Madrid, 1880), p. 45: +_Jacobi Gallecia Opem rogat piam Glebe cujus gloria Dat insignem viam +Ut precum frequentia Cantet melodiam. Herru Sanctiagu! Grot Sanctiagu! +Eultreja esuseja! Deus, adjuva nos!_ + +[39] Cf. Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado +do Brazil_ (1549-62), 2nd ed. (1865), Bk. I, § 22: _chegamos a huma +praça_ [in Santiago de Compostela] _onde vimos hum ajuntamento de +mulheres Gallegas com grande risada e galhofa; e querendo o irmão meu +companheiro pedir-lhe esmola vio que estavão todas ouvindo a huma que +feita pregadora arremedava, como por zombaria, o sermão que eu tinha +pregado_. + +[40] One has but to watch a Rogation procession passing through the +fields in the Basque country (which until recently preserved customs of +immemorial eld and still calls the Feast of Corpus Christi, introduced +by Pope Urban IV in 1262, ‘the New Feast--_Festa Berria_’) to realize +the singularly impressive effect of the singing, first the girls’ +treble _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_, then the answering bass +of the men far behind, _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_ (with the +slow ringing of the church bell for a refrain like the _contemplando_ +and _tan callando_ in the _Coplas de Manrique_). + +[41] Cf. Gil Vicente, _Tambor em cada moinho_. It is a curious +coincidence that the word _citola_ (the _jogral’s_ fiddle) = +mill-clapper. Cf. also _moinante_ in Galicia = _pícaro_. + +[42] Cf. the _leixapren_ and refrain of the _cantiga_ danced and sung +at the end of Gil Vicente’s _Romagem de Aggravados_ (_Por Maio era, por +Maio_). The parallelism and _leixapren_ are present also in religious +poems by Alfonso X: C. M. 160, 250, 260. Snr. J. J. Nunes has noted +that in modern peasant dances, accompanied with song, the dancers +sometimes pause while the refrain is sung. + +[43] C. V. contains many striking pilgrimage songs, sometimes wrongly +called _cantigas de ledino_. The word probably originated in a +printer’s error (_de ledino for dele dino_) in a line of _Chrisfal: +cantou canto de ledino_. + +[44] Cf. the wailing refrains of C. V. 415, 417; and, for the _form_, +compare _e de mi, louçana!_ with _¡ay de mi, Alfama!_ In the _sense_ of +the two refrains lies all the difference between the poetry of Portugal +and Spain. + +[45] C. C. B. 135 (= C. A. 389); C. V. 119, 181, 220, 527, 758, 964. + +[46] _Endurar_, _besonha_, _greu_, _gracir_, _cousir_, _escarnir_, +_toste_, _entendedor_, _veiro_ (_varius_, Fr. _vair_, C. M. 213 has +_egua veira_), _genta_ (_genser_, _gensor_). + +[47] C. V. 242-51, 979; C. C. B. 159-71 (= C. A. 70-81, 402). + +[48] C. V. 414-16, 824-5; C. A. 281. + +[49] Meen di nho in the C. V. M. index. Thus he is scarcely even a name. + +[50] Or Esquio (? = _esquilo_, ‘squirrel’). + +[51] Or Corpancho (Broade) or Campancho (Broadacre); but the word +_carpancho_ (= basket) exists in the region of Santander (_La +Montaña_). There is a modern Peruvian poet Manuel Nicolás Corpancho +(1830-63). + +[52] This is the most probable form of his name, although modern +critics have presented him with various others. + +[53] M. Alfred Jeanroy (_Les Origines_, 2ᵉ ed., 1904, p. 320) compares +with this _bailada_ the fragments _Tuit cil qui sunt enamourat Vignent +dançar, li autre non_ and _N’en nostre compaignie ne soit nus S’il +n’est amans_, but even if there was direct imitation here, which +is doubtful, that would not affect the indigenous character of the +_cossantes_. + +[54] Or, according to D. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Moogo (from +_monachus_). _Meogo_ (= _meio_) occurs in C. M. 65 and 161, _moogo_ (= +monk) in C. M. 75 and 149. + +[55] C. V. 392-402, 424-30, 1158-9; C. A. 246-56. Chariño is buried at +Pontevedra, in the Franciscan convent which he founded. + +[56] Cf. the modern _Ai lé lé lé, marinheiro vira á ré_ or _Ai lé lé lé +Ribamar e S. José_. + +[57] For later reminiscences of the _pastorela_ see C. Michaëlis de +Vasconcellos, _João Lourenço da Cunha, a ‘Flor de Altura’ e a cantiga +Ay Donas por qué em tristura?_ (_Separata da Revista Lusitana_, vol. +xix) Porto (1916), pp. 14-15. + +[58] See _supra_, p. 23. + +[59] A modern Portuguese quatrain runs + + Passarinho que cantaes + Nesse raminho de flores, + Cantae vos, chorarei eu: + Assim faz quem tem amores. + + +[60] By the margin of a river Went a maiden singing, ever Of love sang +she: + +Up the stream the boats came gliding Gracefully. All along the +river-bent The fair maiden singing went Of love’s dream: Fair to see +the boats came gliding Up the stream. + +[61] _Poetica_ (C. C. B., p. 3, ll. 50-1). + +[62] It probably does not rhyme (_e morre_ or _corre_) purposely. D. +Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos proposes _gracioso_ or _friolo_ (_A +Saudade Portuguesa_, Porto, 1914, pp. 84, 140). + +[63] _España Sagrada_, xx. 211. + +[64] C. A. M. V. ii. 928-36. Almeida Garrett had written in a general +sense: _os vestigios d’essa poesia indigena ainda duram_ (_Revista +Univ. Lisbonense_, vol. v (1846), p. 843). + +[65] At Rebordainhos, in Tras-os-Montes, e.g. _Na ribeirinha ribeira +Naquella ribeira Anda lá um peixinho vivo (bravo) Naquella ribeira_. +Other examples of the _i-a_ sequence are _amigo_ (_amado_), _cosido_ +(_assado_), _villa_ (_praça_), _ermida_ (_oraga_), _linda_ (_clara_), +_Abril_ (_Natal_), _ceitil_ (_real_). See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, +_Annuario para o estudo das tradições populares portuguezas_ (Porto, +1882), pp. 19-24. Cf. the modern Asturian song with its refrain _¡Ay +Juana cuerpo garrido, ay Juana cuerpo galano!_ + +[66] Francisco Alvarez, _Verd. Inf._, p. 125, speaks of _cantigas de +bailhos e de terreiro_ (dance-songs). + +[67] Cf. Barros, _Dial. em lovvor da nossa ling._, 1785 ed., p. 226: +_Pois as cantigas compostas do povo, sem cabeça, sem pees, sem nome ou +verbo que se entenda, quem cuidas que as traz e leva da terra? Quem as +faz serem tratadas e recebidas do comum consintimento? O tempo._ + + + + + § 2. + + _The Cancioneiros_ + + +If, besides the _Cancioneiros da Vaticana_, _Colocci-Brancuti_, and _da +Ajuda_, we include King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. M.) +we have over 2,000 poems, by some 200 poets. Of these the _Cancioneiro +da Ajuda_ (C. A.) contains 310. Preserved in the Lisbon _Collegio dos +Nobres_ and later in the Royal Library of Ajuda at Lisbon, it was +first published in an edition of twenty-five copies by Charles Stuart +(afterwards Lord Stuart of Rothesay), British Minister at Lisbon +(C. A. S.). Another edition, by Varnhagen, appeared in 1849 (C. A. +V.), and the splendid definitive edition by D. Carolina Michaëlis de +Vasconcellos in 1904 (C. A. M. V.). C. A. M. V. contains 467 poems, in +part reproduced from C. V. M. and C. C. B. The third volume, of notes, +is still unpublished. + +Of the _Cancioneiro_ preserved as Codex Vaticanus 4803, and now +commonly known as _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ (C. V.), fragments were +published soon after its rediscovery: viz. that portion attributed to +King Dinis, edited by Moura in 1847 (C. D. M.). This part received a +critical edition at the hands of Professor H. R. Lang in 1892; 2nd +ed., with introduction, Halle, 1894 (C. D. L.). A few more crumbs were +given to the world by Varnhagen in 1870, 2nd ed. 1872 (C. T. A.), and +in 1873 (C. A. P.) and 1875 (C. L.) by Ernesto Monaci, who printed his +diplomatic edition of the complete text (1,205 poems) in the latter +year (C. V. M.), and with it an index of a still larger _Cancioneiro_ +(it has 1,675 entries) compiled by Angelo Colocci in the sixteenth +century and discovered by Monaci in the Vatican Library (codex 3217). +Dr. Theophilo Braga’s critical edition appeared in 1878 (C. V. B.). + +In this very year a large _Cancioneiro_ (355 ff.), corresponding nearly +but not precisely to the Colocci index, was discovered in the library +of the Conte Paolo Antonio Brancuti (C. C. B. For convenience’ sake +C. C. B. also = the fragment published by Enrico Gasi Molteni), and +the 442 of its poems, lacking in C. V. (but nearly half of which are +in C. A.), were published in diplomatic edition by Enrico Molteni +in 1880 (C. C. B.). All these (C. A., C. V., and C. C. B.) were in +all probability derived from the _Cancioneiro_ compiled by the Conde +de Barcellos. When his father, King Dinis, died, silence fell upon +the poets. The new king, Afonso IV, showed no sign of continuing to +collect the smaller _Cancioneiros_ kept by nobles and men of humbler +position, a custom inaugurated by his grandfather, Afonso III (if +the _Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Afonso_ in King Duarte’s library was +his), continued by King Dinis (_Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Dinis_), +and perhaps revived by King Duarte a century later (_Livro de Trovas +del Rei_). It was thus a time suitable for a ‘definitive edition’, and +Count Pedro, who was the last of the _Cancioneiro_ poets and who was +more collector than poet, probably took the existing _Cancioneiros_ +(of Afonso III and Dinis) and added a third part consisting of later +poems. Besides the chronological order there was a division by subject +into _cantigas de amor_, _cantigas de amigo_, and _cantigas d’escarnho +e de maldizer_ (Santillana’s _cantigas_, _serranas e dezires_, or +_cantigas serranas_, the Archpriest of Hita’s _cantares serranos e +dezires_). C. V. is divided into these three kinds; in the older +and incomplete C. A. 304 of the 310 poems are _cantigas de amor_. +Eleven years after the death of King Duarte the Marqués de Santillana +wrote (1449) to the Constable of Portugal, D. Pedro, describing the +Galician-Portuguese _Cancioneiro_--_un grant volume_--which he had +seen in his boyhood in the possession of D. Mencia de Cisneros. (This +may have been the actual manuscript compiled by D. Pedro, Conde de +Barcellos and bequeathed by him in 1350 to Alfonso XI of Castille and +Leon--a few days _after_ Alfonso XI’s death. Or it may have been a copy +of the _Cancioneiro_ of D. Pedro or the _Cancioneiro_ of Afonso III or +of Dinis.) It is significant that in this very important letter it is +a foreigner informing a Portuguese. Under the predominating influence +first of Spain then of the Renaissance, the old Portuguese poems, even +if they were known to exist, excited no interest in Portugal. They +were _musas rusticas, musas in illo tempore rudes et incultas_.[68] +With this disdain the _Cancioneiro_ became a real will-o’-the-wisp. +Even as late as the nineteenth century one disappeared mysteriously +from a sale, another emerged momentarily (see C. T. A.) from the +shelves of a Spanish grandee only to fall back into the unknown. In the +sixteenth century the evidence as to its being known is contradictory. +Duarte Nunez de Leam in 1585 says of King Dinis that _extant hodie +eius carmina_. Antonio de Vasconcellos in 1621 declares that time has +carried them away: _obliviosa praeripuit vetustas_. + +A few vague allusions (as that of Sá de Miranda concerning the echoes +of Provençal song) were all that was vouchsafed in Portugal to the +_Cancioneiro_, although prominent Portuguese men of letters--as Sá de +Miranda, André de Resende, Damião de Goes--travelled in Italy and met +there Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), who had probably owned the +_Cancioneiros_ (copies by an Italian hand of a Portuguese original) +acquired by Angelo Colocci; yet at this very time Colocci (†1549) was +eagerly indexing and annotating the _Cancioneiros_ in Rome. It is +this Portuguese neglect and indifference to the things of Portugal +which explains the survival of the _cossantes_ only in Rome while the +more solemn and less indigenous poems of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ +remained in the land of their birth. A fuller account of the Portuguese +_Cancioneiros_, with the fascinating and complicated question of their +descent and interrelations, will be found in the _Grundriss_ (pp. +199-202) and D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos’ edition of the +_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (vol. ii, pp. 180-288).[69] + +When the poetry of the troubadours flourished in Provence Portugal +was scarcely a nation. The first Provençal poet, Guilhaume, Comte de +Poitou (1087-1127), precedes by nearly a century Sancho I (1154-1211), +second King of Portugal, who wrote poems and married the Princess +Dulce of Aragon; and the Gascon Marcabrun, the first foreign poet to +refer to Portugal, in his poems _Al prim comens del ivernaill_ and +_Emperaire per mi mezeis_, in the middle of the twelfth century, spoke +not of her poetry but of her warrior deeds: _la valor de Portegal_. +Gavaudan similarly refers at the end of the twelfth century to the +Galicians and Portuguese among other (Castille, &c.) barriers against +the ‘black dogs’ (the Moors). It was in Spain that the Portuguese had +opportunity of meeting Provençal poets. The Peninsula in the thirteenth +century was, like Greece of old, divided into little States and +Courts, each harbouring exiles and refugees from neighbouring States. +Civil strife or the death of a king in Portugal would scatter abroad +a certain number of noblemen on the losing side, who would thus come +into contact with the troubadours as Provençal poetry spread to the +Courts of Catalonia and Aragon, Navarre, Castille and Leon. The first +King of Portugal, although a prince of the House of Burgundy, held +his kingdom in fief to Leon, and all the early kings were in close +touch with Leon and Castille. Fernando III, King of Castille and Leon +(St. Ferdinand), was a devoted lover of poetry, and his son Alfonso X +gathered at his _cort sen erguelh e sen vilania_ a galaxy of talented +troubadours, Provençal and Galician. Portugal came into more direct +touch with France in other ways, but the influence might have been +almost exclusively that of the _trouvères_ of the North had not the +more generous enthusiasm of Provence penetrated across the frontier +into Spain. Trade was fairly active in the thirteenth century between +Portugal and England, North France and Flanders. Many of the members +of the religious orders--as the Cluny Benedictines--who occupied +the territory of the Moors in Portugal were Frenchmen. With foreign +colonists the new towns were systematically peopled. The number of +French pilgrims was such that the road to Santiago became known as +the ‘French Road’. The Crusades also brought men of many languages +to Portugal.[70] The Court by descent and dynastic intermarriage +was cosmopolitan; but indeed the life of the whole Peninsula was +cosmopolitan to an extent which tallies ill with the idea of the Middle +Ages as a period of isolation and darkness. The Portuguese had already +begun to show their fondness for _novedades_. Yet it was they who +imposed their, the Galician, language. As the Marqués de Santillana +observed and the _Cancioneiros_ prove, lyric poets throughout the +Peninsula used Galician.[71] Probably the oldest surviving instance of +this language in verse by a foreigner is to be found (ten lines) in a +_descort_ (_descordo_) written by Raimbaud de Vaqueiras (1158-1217) +at the Court of Bonifazio II of Montferrat towards the end of the +twelfth century. We cannot doubt that the character and conditions +of the north-west of the Peninsula had permitted a thread of lyric +poetry to continue there ever since Silius Italicus had heard the youth +of Galicia wailing (_ululantem_) their native songs, and that both +language and literature had the opportunity to develop earlier there +than in the rest of Spain. The tide of Moorish victory only gradually +ebbed southward, and the warriors in the sterner country of Castille, +with its fiery sun and battles and epics, would look back to the green +country of Galicia as the idyllic land of song, a refuge where sons +of kings and nobles could spend their minority in comparative peace. +When from the ninth century Galicia became a second Holy Land its +attractions and central character were immeasurably increased. Pilgrims +thither from every country would return to their native land with some +words of the language, and those acquainted with Provençal might note +the similarity and the musical softness of Galician.[72] It is not +certain that the eldest of the ten children of San Fernando, ALFONSO +X (1221?-84), _el Sabio_, King of Castille and Leon, Lord of Galicia, +and brother-in-law of our Edward I, passed his boyhood in Galicia. But +when he was compiling a volume of poems referring to many parts of the +world besides Spain, to Canterbury and Rome, Paris and Alexandria, +Lisbon, Cologne, Cesarea, Constantinople, he would naturally choose +Galician not only, or indeed chiefly, because it was the more graceful +and pliant medium for lyric verse but because it was the most widely +known, and, like French, _plus commune à toutes_ _gens_.[73] He had +no delicate ear for its music and made such poor use of its pliancy +that it often becomes as hard as the hardest Castilian in his hands. +His songs of miracles offer a striking contrast to contemporary +Portuguese lyrics in the same language. Their jingles are only possible +as a _descort_ in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_. At the same time +he would be influenced in his choice of language by his knowledge +of Galicia as the traditional home of the lyric, of the encouraging +patronage extended to Galician poets by his son-in-law Afonso III, of +the Santiago school of poets, and of the promising future before the +Galician language in the hands of the conquering Portuguese. _Multas +et perpulchras composuit cantilenas_, says Gil de Zamora, and likens +him to David. But when we remember the prodigious services rendered by +Alfonso X to Castilian prose, the first question that arises is whether +he was indeed the author of the 450 poems in Galician[74] that we +possess under his name. Of these poems 426, or, cancelling repetitions, +420, are of a religious character, written, with one or two exceptions, +in honour of the Virgin: _Cantigas de Santa Maria_. Many of these poems +themselves provide an answer to the question: they record his illnesses +and enterprises and his _trobar_ in such a way that they could only +have been written by himself: he is the _entendedor_ of Santa Maria +(C. M. 130), he exhorts other _trobadores_ to sing her praises (C. M. +260), he himself is resolved to sing of no other _dona_ (C. M. 10: _dou +ao demo os otros amores_); and his attractive and ingenuous pride in +these poems accords ill with an alien authorship. When he lay sick at +Vitoria and was like to die it was only when the _Livro das Cantigas_ +was placed on his body that he recovered (C. M. 209), and he directed +that they should be preserved in the church in which he was buried. +There is little reason to doubt that he was the author, in a strictly +limited sense, of the majority of the poems, although not of all. +Various phrases seem to imply a double method. C. M. 219 says: ‘I will +have that miracle placed among the others’; C. M. 295: ‘I ordered it to +be written.’ On the other hand, C. M. 47 is ‘a fair miracle of which I +made my song’; C. M. 84 ‘a great miracle of which I made a song’; of +106 ‘I know well that I will make a goodly song’; of 64 ‘I made verses +and tune’; for 188 ‘I made a good tune and verses because it caught my +fancy’; for 307 ‘according to the words I made the tune’; of 347 ‘I +made a new song with a tune that was my own and not another’s’. The +inference seems to be that, the personal poems and the _loas_ apart, if +a miracle especially attracted the king he took it in hand; otherwise +he might leave it to one of the _joglares_, and he would perhaps revise +it and be its author to the extent that the Portuguese _jograes_ were +authors of the early _cossantes_. We know that he had at his Court a +veritable factory of verse. The vignettes[75] to these _Cantigas_ show +him surrounded by scribes, pen and parchment in hand, by _joglares_ and +_joglaresas_. Poets thronged to his Court and he was in communication +with others in foreign lands. Some of the miracles might come to him +in verse, the work of a friendly poet or of a sacred _jogral_ such as +Pierres de Siglar, whom C. M. 8 shows reciting his poems from church +to church: _en todalas eigreias da Uirgen que non a par un seu lais +senpre dizia_,[76] and this would account for the variety of metre and +treatment. Of raw material for his art there was never a scarcity, +nor was the idea of turning it into verse original. In France Gautier +de Coincy (1177-1236) had already written his _Miracles de la Sainte +Vierge_ in verse, and the Spanish poet Gonzalo de Berceo (1180-1247) +had composed the _Milagros de Nuestra Sennora_. But there was no need +for direct imitation. If the starry sky were parchment and the ocean +ink, the miracles could not all be written down, says King Alfonso +(C. M. 110). Churches and rival shrines preserved an unfailing store +for collectors. Gautier de Coincy spoke of _tant miracles_, a _grant +livre_ of them, and King Alfonso chooses one from among 300 in a book +(C. M. 33), finds one written in an ancient book (265) written among +many others (258), in a book among many others (284), and refers to +a book full of them at Soissons. The miracles were recorded more +systematically in France, and the books of Soissons and Rocamadour +(_Liber Miraculorum S. Mariae de Rupe Amatoris_) provided the king with +many subjects, as did also Vincent de Beauvais’ _Speculum Historiale_, +of which he possessed a copy. But the sources in the Peninsula were +very copious, as, for instance, the Book of the Miracles of Santiago, +of which a copy, in Latin, exists in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale. +Of other miracles the king had had personal experience, or they were +recent and came to him by word of mouth. Thus he often does not profess +to invent his subject: he merely translates it into verse and sometimes +appraises it as he does so. It is ‘a marvellous great miracle’ (C. +M. 257), ‘very beautiful’ (82), ‘one in which I have great belief’ +(241), ‘one almost incredible’, _mui cruu de creer_ (242), or ‘famous’ +(195), ‘known throughout Spain’ (191). Many of these miracles occurred +to the peasants and unlettered: then as now the humbler the subject +the greater the miracle. Accordingly we find the king in his poems +dealing not with the conventional shepherdesses of the _pastorelas_ but +with lowly folk of real life, peasants, gleaners, sailors, fishermen, +beggars, pilgrims, nuns; and it is one of the king’s titles to be +considered a true poet that he takes an evident pleasure in these +themes and retains their graphic, artless presentment. The collection +abounds in charming glimpses of the life of the people. Indeed, in many +of the poems there is more of the people than of King Alfonso,[77] +and he sings diligently of the misdeeds of clerics and usurers, of +the incompetence of doctors, and of massacres of Jews. He seems to +have followed the originals very closely, and evident traces of their +language remain, French, English, and perhaps Provençal. The poems are +often of considerable length, sometimes twenty or thirty verses, and +as a rule the last line of each verse must rhyme with the refrain. The +attention thus necessarily bestowed upon the rhymes sometimes mars the +pathos of the subject, and the reader is reminded that he has to do +with a skilful, eager, and industrious craftsman but not with a great +original poet. In the remarkable _Ben vennas Mayo_ and in many of his +other poems materialism and poetical ecstasy go hand in hand. Yet in +several of the more beautiful legends the poet proves himself equal to +his theme. Some of these legends are still famous, that of the Virgin +taking the place of the nun (C. M. 55 and 94), of the knight and the +pitcher (155), of the stone miraculously warded from the statue of the +Virgin and Child (136 and 294), of the monk’s mystic ecstasy at the +_lais_ of the bird in the convent garden (103). Others had probably an +equal celebrity in the Middle Ages, as that of the captive miraculously +brought from Africa and awaking free in Spain at dawn (325),[78] of +the painter with whom the Devil was wroth for always painting him so +ugly (74), or of the peasant whose vineyard alone was saved from the +hail (161). Every tenth poem (the collection was intended originally +to consist of one hundred) interrupts the narratives of miracles by a +purely lyrical _cantiga de loor_, and some of these, written with the +fervour with which the king always sang _as graças muy granadas_ of +the _Madre de Deus Manuel_, are of great simplicity and beauty. The +king had not always written thus, and of his profane poems we possess +thirty[79] (since no one who has read the lively essay by Cesare de +Lollis will doubt that C. V. 61-79 and C. C. B. 359-72 (= 467-78) were +written by Alfonso X). The most important of these are historical, and +invoke curses on false or recalcitrant knights, _non ven al mayo!_ C. +V. 74 is a battle-scene description so swift and impetuous that we must +go to the _Poema del Cid_ for a parallel. And indeed some of the old +spirit peeps out from the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, as when he prays +to be delivered from false friends or praises the Virgin for giving his +enemies ‘what they deserved’. + +From the return and enthronement of Afonso III imitation of French and +Provençal poetry was in full swing in Portugal. The long sojourn of +the prince in France, accompanied by several noblemen who figure in +the _Cancioneiros_ (as Rui Gomez de Briteiros and D. Joan de Aboim), +had an important bearing on the development of Portuguese poetry. +He came back determined to act the part of an enlightened patron of +letters; he encouraged the immigration of men of learning from France +and maintained three _jograes_ permanently in his palace.[80] Princes +and nobles as _trobadores_ for their own pastime, the _segreis_,[81] +knights who went from Court to Court and received payment for the +recital of their own verses, the _jograes_, belonging to a lower +station, who recited the poems of their patrons the _trobadores_, all +vied in imitation of the love songs of Provence. In general, i. e. +in the structure of their poems, the resemblance is close and clear +enough. The decasyllabic love song in three or four stanzas with an +_envoi_, the satirical _sirventes_, the _tenson_ (_jocs-partits_) in +which two poets contended in dialogue, the _descort_ in which the +discordant sounds expressed the poet’s distress and grief, the _balada_ +of Provence, the _ballette_ and _pastourelle_ of North France, were all +faithfully reproduced. + +If, on the other hand, we look for imitations in detail it is perhaps +natural that we should find them less frequently.[82] The conventional +character of the Portuguese poems would sufficiently account for this, +and moreover their models were probably more often heard than read, so +that reproduction of the actual thought or words would be difficult. +When Airas Nunez in a poem of striking beauty, which is almost a sonnet +(C. V. 456), wrote the lines: + + Que muito m’eu pago d’este verão + Por estes ramos et por estas flores + Et polas aves que cantan d’amores, + +he need not have read Peire de Bussinac’s lines: + + Quan lo dous temps d’Abril + Fa ’ls arbres secs fulhar + E ’ls auzels mutz cantar + Quascun en son lati, + +in order to know that birds sing and trees grow green in spring. +And generally it is not easy to say whether an apparent echo is a +direct imitation or merely a stereotyped phrase. The Portuguese +_trobadores_ introduced little of the true spirit of the Provençal +_troubadours_--that had passed to Palestine and to the Lady of Tripoli. +In their _cantigas de amor_ is no sign of action--unless it be to die +of love; no thought of Nature. Jaufre Rudel (1140-70), that prince +of lovers, had ‘gone to school to the meadows’ and might sing in his +_maint bons vers_ of _la flor aiglentina_ or of _flors d’albespis_, but +in the Portuguese _cantigas_ nothing relieves the conventional dullness +and excessive monotony (which likewise marked the Provençal school of +poets in Sicily). Composed for the most part in iambic decasyllables +they describe continually the poet’s _coita d’amor, grave d’endurar_, +his grief at parting, his loss of sleep, his pleasure in dying for his +_fremosa sennor_. She is described merely as beautiful, or, at most, as + + Tan mansa e tan fremosa e de bon sen (C. C. B. 206). + Fremosa e mansa e d’outro ben comprida (C. C. B. 278). + +Vocabulary and thought are spectre-thin. Indeed, it was part of the +convention to sing vaguely. _Eu ben falarei de sa fremosura_, says +one poet[83] (C. C. B. 337)--he will sing of her beauty, but not in +such a way that the curious who _non o poden adevinhar_ should guess +his secret. As to allusions to Nature, perhaps the climate, with less +marked divisions than in Provence, furnished less incentive to sing +of spring and the earth’s renewal or to imitate Guiraut de Bornelh in +going to school all the winter (_l’ivern estava a escola a aprender_) +and singing only with the return of spring. King Dinis, perhaps in +reference to that troubadour, declares that his love is independent of +the seasons and more sincere than that of the singers of Provence: + + Proençaes soen mui ben trobar + E dizen eles que é con amor, + Mais os que troban no tempo da frol + E non en outro sei eu ben que non + An tan gran coita ... (C. V. 127) + +and even as he wrote the words he was unconsciously imitating the +thought of the Provençal poet Gace Brulé, who had spoken of _les +faus amoureus d’esté_. The exceeding similarity of the _cantigas +de amor_ did raise doubts as to the sincerity of all this dying of +love (cf. C. V. 353 and C. V. 988) and as to whether a poem was a +_cantar novo_ or an article at second hand (C. V. 819). Yet the +poets evidently had talent and poetic feeling; indeed, their skill +in versification contrasts remarkably with their entire absence of +thought or individuality. They appear to revel in monotony of ideas +and pride themselves on the icy smoothness of their verse. All their +originality consisted in the introduction of technical devices, such as +the repetition at intervals of certain words (_dobre_), or of different +tenses of the same verb (_mordobre_, as C. V. 681), to carry on the +poem without stop from beginning to end by means of ‘for’, ‘but’, &c., +at the beginning of each verse (_cantigas de atafiinda_,[84] as C. +V. 130, C. A. 205), to begin and end each verse with the same line +(_canção redonda_, as C. V. 685), to repeat the last line of one verse +as the first line of the next (_leixapren_), to use the same word at +the end of each line (as _vi_ in C. A. 7). The poet who addressed +_cantigas de amor_ to his lady also provided her with poems for her +to sing, _cantigas de amigo_ in complicated form, or as the simpler +_cossante_, which the _cantigas de amigo_ include. These are poems with +more life and action, often in dialogue. Perhaps the _dona_ herself, +wearied by the monotonous _cantigas de amor_, had pointed to the songs +of the peasant women, and the form of these _cantigas de amigo_ was a +compromise between the Provençal _cantiga de meestria_ and the popular +_cantiga de refran_. The peasant woman composed her own songs, and +the poet places his song on the lips of his love: thus we find her +describing herself as beautiful, _eu velida_; _eu fremosa_; _trist’ e +fremosa_; _fremosa e de mui bon prez_; _o meu bon semelhar_. Poetical +shepherdesses sing these _cantigas de amigo_; the fair _dona_ sings +them as she sits spinning (C. V. 321). The old _Poetica_ (II. 2-12) +distinguishes between the _cantigas de amor_, in which the _amigo_ +speaks first, and the _cantigas de amigo_, in which the first to speak +is the _amiga_. Both were artificial forms, but the latter are clearly +more popular in theme (the _amiga_ waiting and wailing for her lover), +and in treatment sometimes convey a real intensity of feeling.[85] The +favourite subject of the _cantiga de amigo_ is that the cruel mother +prevents the lovers from meeting. The daughter is kept in the house: +_a manda muito guardar_ (C. V. 535). She reproaches and entreats her +mother, who answers her as choir to choir; she bewails her lot to her +friends, or to her sister. She is dying of love and begs her mother to +tell her lover. Her mother and lover are reconciled. Her lover is false +and fails to meet her at the trysted hour. She waits for him in vain, +and her mother comforts her in her distress. She pines and dies of +love while her _amigo_ is away serving the king in battle or _en cas’ +del rei_. + +The third section of the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ does not sin by +monotony. We may divide Pope’s line, since if the _cantigas de amor_ +are ‘correctly cold’ many of the satiric poems are ‘regularly low’. +In these verses, containing violent invective and abuse (_cantigas de +maldizer_) or more covert sarcasm and ridicule (_cantigas d’escarnho_), +the themes are often scandalous, the language ribald and unseemly. They +were written with great zest, although without the fiery indignation +of the Provençal and Catalan _sirventeses_. They are concerned with +persons: the haughty _trobador_ may take a _jogral_ to task for writing +verses that do not rhyme or scan, but even then it is a personal matter +and he rebukes his insolence for daring to raise his thoughts to _altas +donas_ in song. Some of these poems should never have been written or +printed, but many of them give a lively idea of the society of that +time. They laugh merrily or venomously at the poverty-stricken knight +with nothing to eat; at the knight who set his dogs on those who called +near dinner-time; the _jogral_ who knows as much of poetry as an ass of +reading; the poet who pretended to have gone as a pilgrim to the Holy +Land but never went beyond Montpellier; the physician (Mestre Nicolas) +whose books were more for show than for use (_E sab’ os cadernos ben +cantar quen[86] non sabe por elles leer_, C. V. 1116); the Galician +unjustifiably proud of his poetical talent (_non o sabia ben_, C. V. +914); the _jogral_ who gave up poetry--shaved off his beard and cut +his hair short about his ears--in order to take holy orders, in hope +of a fat living, but was disappointed; the _jogral_ who played badly +and sang worse; the poet who was the cause of good poetry in others; +the gentleman who spent most of his income on clothes and wore gilt +shoes winter and summer. We read of the excellent capon, kid, and pork +provided by the king for dinner; of the fair _malmaridada_, married or +rather sold by her parents; of the impoverished lady, one of those for +whom later Nun’ Alvarez provided; of the poet pining in exile not of +love but hunger; of the lame lawyer, the unjust judge; the _parvenu +villão_, the knighted tailor, the seers and diviners (_veedeiros_, +_agoreiros_, _divinhos_). These _cantigas d’escarnho e de maldizer_ +were a powerful instrument of satire from which there was no escape. A +hapless _infançon_, slovenly in his ways, drew down upon himself the +wit of D. Lopo Diaz, who in a series of eleven songs (C. V. 945-55) +ridiculed him and his creaking saddle till at Christmas he was fain to +call a truce. But the implacable D. Lopo forthwith indited a new song: +‘I won’t deny that I agreed to a truce about the saddle, but--it didn’t +include the mare’,[87] and so no doubt continued till _pascoa florida_ +or _la trinité_. But the majority of these verses are not so innocently +merry. Many of the poets of the _Cancioneiros_ wrote in all three +kinds: _cantigas de amor_, _de amigo_, and _de maldizer_. Of JOAN DE +GUILHADE[88] (fl. 1250) we have over fifty poems.[89] He imitated both +French and Provençal models, and, having learnt lightness of touch from +them, would appear to have contented himself with writing _cantigas +de amigo_ (besides _cantigas de amor_ and _escarnho_) without having +recourse to the _cossante_. There is life and poetical feeling as well +as facility of technique in his poems. + +PERO GARCIA DE BURGOS (fl. 1250) is, with Joan de Guilhade, one of +the more voluminous writers of the _Cancioneiros_. He shows himself +capable of deep feeling in his love songs, but speaks with two voices, +descending to sad depths in his poems of invective. His contemporary, +the _segrel_ PERO DA PONTE, is also an accomplished poet of love, in +the even flow of his verse far more accomplished than Pero Garcia, +and in his satirical poems wittier and, as a rule, more moderate. +He placed his poetical gift at the service of kings to sing their +praises for hire, and celebrated San Fernando’s conquest of Seville +in 1248; Seville, of which, he says, ‘none can adequately tell the +praises’. To satire almost exclusively the powerful courtier of King +Dinis’ reign, STEVAM GUARDA, devoted his not inconsiderable talent, +and the _segrel_ PEDR’ AMIGO DE SEVILHA (fl. 1250) shone in the same +kind with a great variety of metre as well as in numerous _cantigas +de amigo_. MARTIN SOAREZ (first half 13th c.), born at Riba de Lima, +and considered the best _trobador_ of his time (by those who could not +appreciate the charm of the indigenous poetry), wrote no _cossante_ nor +_cantiga de amigo_, and in his satirical poems displayed a contemptuous +insolence--towards those whom he regarded as his inferiors in lineage +or talent--which places him in no attractive light. A notable poet +at the Courts of Spain and Portugal was JOAN AIRAS of Santiago de +Compostela (fl. 1250), of whom we have over twenty _cantigas de amor_ +and fifty _cantigas de amigo_. Contemporary criticism apparently viewed +their quantity with disfavour,[90] for he complains that _Dizen que +meus cantares non valen ren porque tan muitos son_ (C. V. 533). But if +his poems lack the variety of those of King Dinis, which they almost +rival in number, they are nevertheless marked not only by harmony but +by many a touch of real life. Of most of the other singers we have far +fewer poems. Like Meendinho and Estevam Coelho, PERO VYVYÃES (first +half 13th c.) is known chiefly for a single song: his _bailada_ (C. V. +336). By D. JOAN SOAREZ COELHO (_c._ 1210-80) there are two _cossantes_ +(C. V. 291, 292) and numerous other poems. He was prominent at the +Court of Afonso III (1248-79) and in the conquest of Algarve, as was +also D. JOAN DE ABOIM (_c._ 1215-87), whose poems are less numerous +but include a dozen _cantigas de amigo_ and a _pastorela_ (C. V. 278: +_Cavalgava noutro dia per hun caminho frances_), and FERNAN GARCIA +ESGARAVUNHA,[91] whose _cantigas de amor_ show characteristic life +and vigour, and a good command of metre. There is an engaging grace +and spirit in the _cantigas de amigo_ written in dancing rhythm by +FERNAN RODRIGUEZ DE CALHEIROS (fl. in or before 1250), who preceded +those soldier poets; deep feeling and melancholy in the _cantigas de +amor_ of D. JOAN LOPEZ DE ULHOA, their contemporary. Neither of these, +however, possessed the poetical genius and versatility of the priest +of Santiago, AIRAS NUNEZ (second half 13th c.)--the name appears in a +marginal note to one of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. +M. 223 in the manuscript j. b. 2)--whose poems show a perfect mastery +of rhythm and a true instinct for beauty. He wrote a _pastorela_ in +the manner of the _trouvères_, and combined it with some of the most +exquisite specimens of the indigenous poetry.[92] The fact that one +of these was by Joan Zorro makes it probable that Nunez’ celebrated +_bailada_ (C. V. 462) is but a development of Zorro’s (C. V. 761), +unless both drew from a common popular source. Another of his poems +(C. V. 468) reads like an anticipatory slice out of Juan Ruiz’ _Libro +de Buen Amor_. Great importance has been attached to another (C. V. +466) as a remnant of a _cantar de gesta_, but D. Carolina Michaëlis +de Vasconcellos has shown that it was written to commemorate a +contemporary event, probably in 1289.[93] More than any other poet of +the _Cancioneiros_, with the exception, perhaps, of King Dinis, Nunez +anticipated that _doce estylo_, the introduction of which cost Sá de +Miranda so many perplexities. + +The _Cancioneiros_ contain poems by high and low, prince and, one would +fain say, peasant, noble _trobador_ and humble _jogral_, soldiers +and civilians, priests and laymen, singers of Galicia, Portugal, and +Spain, but more especially of Galicia and North Portugal. As in the +case of C. V. 466, the interest of many of the poems is historical: +C. V. 1088, for instance, written by a partisan of the dethroned King +Sancho II; or C. V. 1080, a _gesta de maldizer_ of fifty-six lines in +three rhymes, with the exclamation _Eoy!_ at the change of the rhyme, +which was written by D. AFONSO LOPEZ DE BAYAN (_c._ 1220-80), clearly +in imitation of the _Chanson de Roland_.[94] Almost equally prominent, +though not from any historical associations, is the curiously modern +C. A. 429 (= C. C. B. 314) among the _cantigas de amor_. It tells +of a girl forced against her will to enter a convent, and who says +to her lover: ‘My dress may be religious, but God shall not have my +heart.’ (For the metre, cf. C. V. 342.) Its author was the _fidalgo_ +D. RODRIG’ EANEZ DE VASCONCELLOS, one of the pre-Dionysian poets. But +indeed no further proofs are needed to show that, even had King Dinis +never existed, the contents of the early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ +would have been remarkable for their variety and beauty. When Alfonso +X died his grandson DINIS (1261-1325)[95] had sat for five years on +the throne of Portugal. Plentifully educated by a Frenchman, Ayméric +d’Ébrard, afterwards Bishop of Coimbra, married to a foreign princess, +Isabel of Aragon (the Queen-Saint of Portugal), profoundly impressed, +no doubt, by the world-fame of Alfonso X, to whom he was sent on a +diplomatic mission when not yet in his teens, he became nevertheless +one of the most national of kings. If he imitated Alfonso X in his love +of literature, he showed himself a far abler and firmer sovereign, +being more like a rock than like the sea, to which the poet compared +Alfonso. Far-sighted in the conception of his plans and vigorous in +their execution, the _Rei Lavrador_, whom Dante mentions, though not +by name: _quel di Portogallo_ (_Paradiso_ xix), fostered agriculture, +increased his navy, planted pine-forests, fortified his towns, built +castles and convents and churches, and legislated for the safety of the +roads and for the general welfare and security of his people. Among his +great and abiding services to his country was the foundation of the +first Portuguese University in the year 1290, and in the same spirit +he ordered the translation of many notable books from the Spanish, +Latin, and Arabic into Portuguese prose, including the celebrated +works of the Learned King, so that it is truer of prose than of poetry +to say that he inaugurated a golden age.[96] Had he written no line +of verse his name must have been for ever honoured in Portugal as +the real founder of that imperishable glory which was fulfilled two +centuries later. But he also excelled as a poet, _d’amor trobador_. It +had no doubt been part of his education to write conventionally in the +Provençal manner, but his skill in versification, remarkable even in +an age in which Portuguese poetry had attained exceptional proficiency +in technique, would have availed him, or at least us, little had he +not also possessed an instinct for popular themes, perhaps directly +encouraged by Alfonso X. The _Declaratio_ placed by Guiraut Riquier of +Narbonne on the lips of that king in 1275 marked the coming asphyxia of +Provençal poetry, for it showed the tendency to take the _jogral_[97] +away from tavern and open air and to cut off his poetry from the life +of the people. It was owing to the personal encouragement of Dinis that +the waning star of both Provençal and indigenous poetry continued to +shine in Portugal for another half-century. The grandson of Alfonso X +was the last hope of the _trobadores_ and _jograes_ of the Peninsula. +From Leon and Castille and Aragon they came to reap an aftermath of +song and _panos_ at his Court, and after his death remained silent or +unpaid (C. V. 708). The poems of King Dinis are not only more numerous +but far more various than those of any other _trobador_, with the +exception of Alfonso X, and it may perhaps be doubted whether they are +all the work of his own hand. In poetry’s old age he might well wish to +collect specimens of various kinds for his _Livro de Trovas_. But many +of the 138 poems[98] that we possess under his name are undoubtedly +his, and display a characteristic force and sincerity as well as true +poetic delicacy and power. Among them are some colourless _cantigas +de amor_ and others more individual in tone, _pastorelas_ (C. V. 102, +137, 150), _cantigas de amigo_ (more Provençal than Portuguese in their +spirit of vigorous reproach are C. V. 186: _Amigo fals’ e desleal_, +and C. V, 198: _Ai fals’ amigo e sen lealdade_), a jingle worthy of +the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. V. 136), a poem in 8.8.4.8 metre +(C. V. 131), _atafiindas_ (e. g. C. V. 130), a _mordobre_ in _querer_ +(C. V. 113, _Quix ben, amigos, e quer’ e querrei Ũa molher que me +quis e quer mal E querrá_), and _cossantes_ of an unmistakably popular +flavour: _Ay flores, ay flores do verde pino_ (C. V. 171), two _albas_ +(C. V. 170, 172), C. V. 168, 169, with their refrains _louçana_ and +_ai madre, moiro d’amor_, C. V. 173 with its quaint charm: _Vede-la +frol do pinho--Valha Deus_, and the _bailada-cossante_ (C. V. 195: _Mia +madre velida, Voum’ a la bailia Do amor_). If the king wrote these +_cossantes_ he must be reckoned not only as a musical and skilful +versifier but as a great poet. And certainly, at least, his _graciosas +e dulces palavras_ well earned him the reputation of being not only the +best king but the best poet of his time in the Peninsula. + +It would seem that, unlike his grandfather, who had begun with +profane and ended with religious verse, King Dinis, no doubt at his +grandfather’s bidding, who would be delighted to find a disciple +(_Dized’, ai trobadores, A Sennor das Sennores Por que a non loades?_), +began writing songs in honour of the Virgin and sent them to the +Castilian king. His book of _Louvores da Virgem Nossa Senhora_ is said +to have been seen in the Escorial Library and in the Lisbon Torre do +Tombo, and it is impossible altogether to set aside the statements +of Duarte Nunez de Leam[99] and Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, who says +that he read religious poems by King Dinis at the Escorial.[100] On +the other hand, it must be remembered that it was the common opinion +that King Dinis had been the first to write Portuguese poetry, and +the temptation to attribute ancient poems to him would be strong. The +possibility of confusion with the _Livro de Cantigas_ of Alfonso X +(to which his grandson may well have contributed poems)[101] is also +obvious. But the statement of Sousa de Macedo, who was no passing +traveller in a hurry, and who had wide experience of books and +libraries,[102] is very precise. No trace or + +memory of the existence of this manuscript exists, however, at +the Escorial Library, nor is to be found in the _Catálogo de los +Manuscritos existentes antes del incendio de 1671_. The subjects of +King Dinis’ ten[103] satirical poems are trivial, but he had too much +force of character to descend to such vilenesses as were common among +_profaçadores_. (His concise definition of a bore: _falou muit’ e mal_ +(C. C. B. 411) is worthy of Afonso de Albuquerque.) Of his illegitimate +sons, besides D. Afonso Sanchez, D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos, long had +a reputation as a poet almost equal to that of his father, owing to the +association of his name with the _Cancioneiro_; but of his ten poems +six (C. V. 1037-42) are satirical, and the four _cantigas de amor_ (C. +V. 210-13) are perhaps the heaviest and most prosaic in the collection. +It was as a prose-writer and editor of the _Livro de Linhagens_ that he +worthily carried on the literary tradition of King Dinis. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[68] Antonio de Vasconcellos, _Anacephalaeoses, id est Svmma Capita +Actorum Regum Lusitaniae_ (Antverpiae, 1621), p. 79. + +[69] See also C. V. B., pp. xcv-vi. + +[70] An English Crusader writing from Lisbon speaks of _inter hos tot +linguarum populos_ (_Crucesignati Anglici Epistola de Expugnatione +Olisiponis_, A.D. 1147). + +[71] _Colección de Poesías Castellanas_ (1779), vol. i, p. lvii. The +important passages of Santillana’s letter have been so often quoted +that the reader may be referred to them, e.g. in the _Grundriss_, p. +168. + +[72] Milá y Fontanals (_De los Trobadores_, p. 522) lays much stress on +the resemblance between Galician and Provençal. + +[73] It must be remembered that in the early thirteenth century (1213) +the range of the Galician-Portuguese lyric already extended to Navarre +(C. V. 937). + +[74] Guiraut Riquier and Nat de Mons placed Provençal poems on his +lips, which may be taken as an indication that he also wrote in +Provençal. As proof that he wrote poems in Castilian we have a single +_cantiga_ of eight lines (C. C. B. 363: _Señora por amor dios_). The +other poem of the _Cancioneiros_ in Castilian (with traces of Galician) +is by the victor of Salado, Alfonso XI (1312-50), King of Castille and +Leon: _En un tiempo cogi flores_ (C. V. 209). + +[75] Their antiquarian interest was recognized over three centuries +ago. Cf. Argote de Molina, _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (Seuilla, 1588), f. +151 v.: _es un libro de mucha curiosidad assi por la poesia como por +los trages de aquella edad ̃q se veen en sus pinturas_. + +[76] Some of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas_ were recited in the same way. C. +M. 172 implies this in the lines: + + Et d’esto cantar fezemos + Que cantassen os iograres + +And of this we made a song for the _joglares_ to sing. + +[77] Their popular origin is borne out by the music. See H. Collet et +L. Villalba, _Contribution à l’étude des Cantigas_ (1911). Cf. also P. +Meyer, _Types de quelques chansons de Gautier de Coinci_ (_Romania_, +vol. xvii (1888), pp. 429-37): _paroles pieuses à des mélodies +profanes_. + +[78] Padre Nobrega came upon a crowd of _pobres pedintes peregrinos_ at +Santiago feasting merrily and having _grandes contendas entre si_ as to +which of them was cleverest at taking people in. The trick of one of +them was to declare that, being captive in Turkey, _encommendando-me +muito á Senhora ... achei-me ao outro dia ao romper da alva em terra +de Christãos_ (Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica_, Lib. I, § 22). Cf. +Jeronymo de Mendoça, _Jornada de Africa_, 1904 ed., ii. 34, and Frei +Luis de Sousa, _Hist. de S. Domingos_, I. i. 5. + +[79] i. e. besides the Spanish _cantiga_ (C. C. B. 363), C. C. B. 359, +which belongs to the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, and C. C. B. 372, which +consists of a single line. + +[80] _El Rei aia tres jograes en sa casa e non mais._ + +[81] Riquier’s _segriers per totas cortz_ (King Alfonso X (C. M. 194) +speaks of a _jograr andando pelas cortes_). See also C. V. 556. The +word probably has no connexion with _seguir_ (to follow). Possibly +it was used originally to differentiate singers of profane songs, +_cantigas profanas e seculares_. Frei João Alvarez in his _Cronica do +Infante Santo_ has ‘obras ecclesiasticas e _segrãaes_’; King Duarte +counted among _os pecados da boca_ ‘cantar cantigas _sagraaes_’, The +_Cancioneiros_ show that the _segrel_ was far less common than the +_jogral_ in the thirteenth century. For _segre_ (= _saeculum_) see +_infra_, p. 93, n. 2. + +[82] For instances see H. R. Lang, _The Relations of the Earliest +Portuguese Lyric School with the Troubadours and Trouvères_ (_Modern +Language Notes_ (April, 1895), pp. 207-31), and C. D. L., pp. xlviii et +seq. + +[83] This poet, Fernam Gonçalvez de Seabra or Fernant Gonzalez de +Sanabria (C. V. 338; C. C. B. 330-7; C. A. 210-21, 445-7), apparently +obtained some fame by his mystification, unless the object of his +devotion was as high-placed as the Portuguese princess for love of +whom, according to legend, D. Joan Soarez de Paiva died in Galicia. +The latter wrote in the first years of the thirteenth century (C. +V. 937, _Randglosse_ xi). They are the only two Galician-Portuguese +poets--besides King Dinis--mentioned in Santillana’s letter. + +[84] _Poetica_, ll. 126, 130. Much of the information of this _Poetica_ +(printed in C. C. B.) may be gleaned from the _Cancioneiros_, but it +shows how carefully the different kinds of poem were distinguished. +There were apparently special names for poems to trick and deceive: _de +logr’ e d’arteiro_, and for festive laughter poems: _de risadelha_ (or +_refestela_?) = _de riso e mote_. Santillana’s _mansobre_ is, it seems, +a misprint for _mordobre_. It occurs again in the _Requesta de Ferrant +Manuel contra Alfonso Alvarez_ (_Canc. de Baena_, 1860 ed., i. 253): + + Sin lai, sin deslai, sin cor, sin descor. + Sin dobre, mansobre, sensilla o menor. + Sin encadenado, dexar o prender. + + +[85] e. g. C. V. 300: _Por Deus, se ora, se ora chegasse Con el mui +leda seria._ + +[86] _q’coi_ (C. V. M.), _qual cór_ (C. V. B.). D. Carolina Michaëlis +de Vasconcellos proposes _quiça_ (cf. C. V. 1006, I. 8). + +[87] _Aqueste cantar da egoa que non andou na tregoa_ (C. V. 956). + +[88] Or D. Joan Garcia de Guilhade. See C. A. M. V. ii. 407-15. + +[89] C. V. 28-38, 343-61, 1097-1110; C. A. 235-9; C. C. B. 373-6. + +[90] A large number of _cantigas_ by the same hand would emphasize the +monotony of the kind and provide an unwelcome mirror for contemporary +bards. Of Roy Queimado (fl. 1250) other love-lorn poets said that he +was always dying of love--in verse. + +[91] Soares de Brito in his _Theatrum_ mentions ‘Ferdinandus Garcia +_Esparavanha_, optimus poeta’ (= _bom trovador_). + +[92] See p. 31. + +[93] See _Randglosse_ xii. An incidental interest belongs to this poem +of eighteen dodecasyllabic lines from the fact that in C. V. B. it is +printed in thirty-six lines, as a proof of the early predominance of +the _redondilha_. + +[94] Cf. the Provençal passage in Milá y Fontanals, _De los +Trobadores_, p. 62. + +[95] He thus overlapped Dante’s life by four years at either end. + +[96] T. A. Craveiro, _Compendio_ (1833), cap. 5: _D. Diniz trouxe a +idade de ouro a Portugal_. + +[97] A late echo of the early (Alfonso X) legislation against the +_jogral_ is to be found in King Duarte’s _Leal Conselheiro_, cap. 70: +_Dos Pecados da Obra_. These include _dar aos jograaees_. Nunez de Leam +translates _joglar_ as _truão_ (1606). + +[98] C. V. 80-208 (= C. D. L. 1-75, 77-128, 76) and C. C. B. 406-15 (= +C. D. L. 129-38). C. V. 116 = C. V. 174. + +[99] _Cronica del Rei D. Diniz_, 1677 ed., f. 113 v. + +[100] _Mandou hum livro delles escrito por sua mão a seu avò ... o +qual eu vi na livraria do Real Convento do Escurial, em folha de papel +grosso, de marca pequena, volume de tres ou quatro dedos de alto, de +letra grande, latina, bem legivel, e o que ly era de Louvores a Nossa +Senhora, e outras cousas ao divino_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., pp. 128-9). +This interesting passage is not included in those quoted in C. A. M. +V. ii. 112-17; it is obviously the source of no. 17. It does not imply +that the poems were exclusively religious. Can the book three or four +fingers in height have been the _Canc. da Ajuda_ (460 millimètres) from +which a section of sacred poems may have been torn? If so the letters +_Rey Dõ Denis_ (C. A. M. V. i. 141) would explain the attribution to +King Dinis. + +[101] The language of C. M. and the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ was of +course the same. Identical phrases occur. + +[102] He twice visited Oxford, he says, in order to see the library, +which he describes--_hũa das grandes cousas do mundo_ (_Eva e Ave_, +1676 ed., p. 156). At the Escorial he also examined an original +manuscript of St. Augustine (ibid., p. 150). + +[103] C. C. B. 406-15. + + + + + II + + 1325-1521 + + + + + § 1 + + _Early Prose_ + + +With prose a new period opens, since, although there are Portuguese +documents of the late twelfth century[104] and the Latin chrysalis +was in an advanced stage of development even earlier, prose as a +literary instrument does not begin before the fourteenth century or +the end of the thirteenth at the earliest. The fragments of an early +_Poetica_[105] clearly show how slow and awkward were still the +movements of prose at a time when poetry had attained an exceedingly +graceful expression. The next two centuries redressed the balance in +the favour of prose. The victory of Aljubarrota (1385) made it possible +to carry on the national work begun by King Dinis--the preparation +of Portugal’s resources for a high destiny. In this constructive +process literature was not forgotten, and indeed its deliberate +encouragement, as though it were an industry or a pine-forest, may +account for the fact that it consisted mainly of prose--chronicles, +numerous translations from Latin, Spanish, and other languages, works +of religious or practical import. The first kings of the dynasty +of Avis, who rendered noble service to Portuguese literature, were +not poets, and in the second half of the fifteenth century Spanish +influence, checked at Aljubarrota, succeeded by peaceful penetration +in recovering all and more than all that it had lost, till it became +common to hear lyrics of Boscan sung in the streets of Lisbon,[106] and +uncommon for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.[107] +Prose was more national. King Dinis had encouraged translation into +Portuguese, and among other works his grandfather King Alfonso the +Learned’s _Cronica General_ was translated by his order. The only +edition that we have, _Historia Geral de Hespanha_ (1863), is cut short +in the reign of King Ramiro (cap. ccii, p. 192). The first ‘O’ of the +preface in the manuscript contains the king in purple robe and crown +of gold, pen in hand, with a book before him. The style is primitive, +often a succession of short sentences beginning with ‘And’.[108] In +the convents brief lives of saints, portions of the Bible, prayers and +regulations were written in Portuguese. Thus we have thirteenth-or +fourteenth-century fragments of the rules of S. Bento, _Fragmentos de +uma versão antiga da regra de S. Bento_, with its traces of a Latin +original (e. g. _os desprezintes Deos_ = _contemnentes Deum_); the +_Actos dos Apostolos_, written in the middle of the fifteenth century +by Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça and Frei Nicolao Vieira, that is, copied +by them from an older manuscript; the eloquent prayers (_Libro de +Horas_) translated by another Alcobaça monk, Frei João Claro (†1520?); +the _Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, printed from a +manuscript of the fourteenth century, or of the thirteenth retouched in +the fourteenth. The translation is close; the style foreshadows that of +the _Leal Conselheiro_. The importance of these and other fragmentary +versions of the Bible, in which there can rarely be a doubt as to the +meaning of the words, is obvious. Extracts from the _Vida de Eufrosina_ +and the _Vida de Maria Egipcia_, published in 1882 by Jules Cornu from +the manuscripts formerly in the Monastery of Alcobaça, now in the +Torre do Tombo, show that they were written in vigorous if primitive +prose (14th c.). _A Lenda dos Santos Barlaam e Josaphat_ is perhaps +a little later (end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth +century). The _Visão de Tundalo_, of which the Latin original, _Visio +Tundali_, was written by Frei Marcos not long after the date of the +vision (1140), exists in two Portuguese versions, probably both of the +fifteenth century (Monastery of Alcobaça). The _Vida de Santo Aleixo_ +also exists in two codices belonging to the middle and beginning of +the fifteenth century, and Dr. Esteves Pereira, who published the +latter, considers that the variants point to an earlier manuscript +of the beginning of the fourteenth or end of the thirteenth century. +To about the same period (14th-15th c.) belong the _Lenda de Santo +Eloy_, the _Vida de Santo Amaro_, the _Vida de Santa Pelagia_, and many +similar short devout treatises and legends which concern literature +less than the development of the Portuguese language. Both literature +and philology are interested in the early fifteenth-century work +printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos from the manuscript in the Vienna +_Hofbibliothek_: _O Livro de Esopo_, which consists not of direct +translations[109] from _Exopo greguo_ of Antioch but of _estorias +ffremosas de animalias_, told in the manner of Aesop, half a century +before William Caxton and Robert Henryson, with great naturalness, +vigour, and brevity. + +The earliest entry of the _Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_ is +dated 1391, and both it and the _Cronicas Breves e memorias avulsas +de Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ are laconic annals of the first kings of +Portugal, a few lines covering a whole reign. The _Livro da Noa de +Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ is an extract from the _Livro das Heras_ of +the same convent, and is, as the latter title indicates, a similar +simple chronicle of events by years.[110] It begins in Latin, then +Latin and Portuguese entries alternate till 1405. From 1406 to the +end (1444) they are exclusively Portuguese. The _Cronica da Ordem +dos Frades Menores_ (1209-85) is a fifteenth-century Portuguese +translation of a fourteenth-century Latin chronicle, and has been +carefully edited by Dr. J. J. Nunes from the manuscript in the Lisbon +Biblioteca Nacional; the _Vida de D. Tello_ (15th c.), and the _Vida +de S. Isabel_, the Queen-consort of King Dinis (earlier 15th c.), are +‘historical’ biographies which contain more legend and less history +than the _Cronica da Fundaçam do Moesteiro de S. Vicente de Lixboa_ +(_Cronica dos Vicentes_), a fifteenth-century version from a Latin +original, _Indiculum_, of the eleventh century. There is far more life +if equal brevity in the _Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_ (_Cronica de +como Dom Payo Correa. .. tomou este reino de Algarve aos Moros_)--a +rapid, vivid sketch which reads almost like a chapter out of Fernam +Lopez. Here at last was some one with will and power to make the +dry bones live.[111] But meanwhile history of another kind had been +written from a very early date. As a first rough catalogue of names +the _livros de linhagens_, books of descent, as they were called by +their compilers,[112] go back farther than the chronicles or religious +prose, but so far as concerns their claim to literary form they belong +like those to the fourteenth century. Of the four that have come down +to us the _Livro Velho_ is a jejune family register (11th-14th c.); +the second is a mere fragment of the same kind. The manuscript of the +third (_O Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_) was bound up with the +_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, and together with the fourth, _O Nobiliario +do Conde D. Pedro_, represents the lost original of the _Livro de +Linhagens_ of D. PEDRO, CONDE DE BARCELLOS (1289-1354). The _Nobiliario +do Conde_ has been shown by Alexandre Herculano, who printed it from +the manuscript in the Torre do Tombo, to be the work of various +authors extending over more than a century (13th-14th), the Conde de +Barcellos being but one of them. It was in fact compiled like a modern +peerage,[113] and was not intended to be final, new entries being added +as time made them necessary, so that the passage _diz O Conde D. Pedro +em seu livro_ is as natural as the mention of Innocencio da Silva in +a later volume of his great dictionary. But it was this son of King +Dinis who with infinite diligence searched for documents far and wide, +had recourse to the writings of King Alfonso X and others, and spared +no pains to give the work an historical as well as a genealogical +character. His researches (_Ouue de catar, he says, por gram trabalho +por muitas terras escripturas que fallauam das linhagens_) set an +excellent example to Fernam Lopez. Certainly the _Livro de Linhagens_ +is a vast catalogue of names, with at most a brief note after the +name, as ‘he was a good priest’ or ‘a very good poet’; but it also +gives succinct stories of the Kings of the Earth from Adam, including +Priam, Alexander, Julius Caesar, and the early kings of Portugal, and +it contains rare but charming intervals, green oases of legend and +anecdote, such as the tale of King Lear with its happy ending, or the +account of King Ramiro going to see his wife, who was a captive of the +Moors.[114] Count Pedro, by his humanity and his generous conception +of what a genealogy should be, really made the book his own. It was +naturally consulted by the early chroniclers, its worth was recognized +by the ablest author of the _Monarchia Lusitana_,[115] and recently, +in the skilful hands of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, it +has rendered invaluable service in reconstructing the lives of the +thirteenth-century poets.[116] + +The _Livro de Linhagens_ refers not only to King Lear but to Merlin, +King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Isle of Avalon. Many other allusions, +both earlier and later, to the Breton cycle, the _matière de Bretagne_, +are to be found in early Portuguese literature: to the lovers Tristan +and Iseult, to the _cantares de Cornoalha_,[117] to the chivalry of the +Knights of the Round Table. In the fourteenth century many in Portugal +were baptized with the name of Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival; and +Nun’ Alvarez (1360-1431) chose Galahad for his model, and came as near +realizing his ideal as may be given to mortal man. In Gil Vicente’s +time the name Percival had already descended to the sphere of the +peasants: as Passival (i. II) in 1502 (_Auto Pastoril Castelhano_) and +Pessival (i. 117) in 1534 (_Auto de Mofina Mendes_). + +The early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ contain many references to +this cycle, and the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ opens with five +celebrated songs,[118] imitations of Breton _lais_, with rubrics +explaining their subjects, and mentioning King Arthur and Tristan, +Iseult, Cornwall, Maraot of Ireland, and Lancelot. Whether they were +incorporated in the _Cancioneiro_ from a Portuguese _Tristam_ earlier +than the Spanish version (1343?), or, as is more probable, directly +from the Old-French _Historia Tristani_, their presence here is a +sufficient witness to the Portuguese fondness for such themes. It was +but natural that a Celtic people living by the sea, delighting in +vague legends and in foreign novelties, should have felt drawn towards +these misty tales of love and wandering adventure, which carried +them west as far as Cornwall and Ireland, and also East, through the +search for the Holy Grail. It was natural that they should undergo +their influence earlier and more strongly than their more direct +and more national neighbours the Castilians, whose clear, definite +descriptions in the twelfth-century _Poema del Cid_ would send those +legends drifting back to the dim regions of their birth. (Even to-day +connexion with and sympathy for Ireland is far commoner in Galicia than +in any other part of Spain.) Unhappily, most of the early Portuguese +versions of the Breton legends have been lost. King Duarte in his +library possessed _Merlim_, _O Livro de Tristam_, and _O Livro de +Galaaz_. The probability that these were written in Portuguese, not in +Spanish, is increased by the survival of _A Historia dos Cavalleiros +da Mesa Redonda e da Demanda do Santo Graall_, as yet only partially +published from the manuscript (2594) in the Vienna _Hofbibliothek_. +It was written probably in the fourteenth century, perhaps at the end +of the thirteenth, although the Vienna manuscript is more recent and +belongs to the fifteenth century, in which the work was referred to +by the poet Rodriguez de la Cámara.[119] It is a Portuguese version +of the story of the Holy Grail, and, although not a continuous +translation, was evidently written with the French original (doubtfully +ascribed to Robert de Boron,[120] author of a different work on the +same subject) constantly in view. Traces of French remain in its +prose.[121] This was clearly part of a larger work,[122] perhaps of +a whole cycle of works dealing with the search for the Holy Grail. +The only others that we have in print are the _Estorea de Vespeseano_ +and the _Livro de Josep ab Arimatia_, the manuscript of which was +discovered in the nineteenth century in the Torre do Tombo. This, in +the same way as the _Demanda do Santo Graall_, is a later (16th c.) +copy of a thirteenth-fourteenth-century Portuguese translation or +adaptation from the French, and retains in its language signs of French +origin. The incunable _Estorea de Vespeseano_ (Lixboa, 1496) is a work +in twenty-nine short chapters, which only incidentally[123] refers +to the Holy Grail, but recounts vividly the event mentioned in the +_Demanda_[124]: the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus. +It was also known formerly as _Destroyçam de Jerusalem_.[125] It is an +anonymous translation, made in the middle of the fifteenth century, +not from the French _Destruction de Jérusalem_, but from the Spanish +_Estoria del noble Vespesiano_ (_c._ 1485 and 1499). Dr. Esteves +Pereira believes that the 1499 Spanish edition is a retranslation from +the Portuguese text originally translated from the Spanish. + +Tennyson’s revival of the Arthurian legend in England evoked no +corresponding interest in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and +the primitive and touching story as published in 1887 has left Sir +Percival in the very middle of an adventure for over a generation. The +descent of the Amadis romances from the noble ideal of chivalry of +King Arthur’s Court is obvious, but their exact pedigree, the date and +nationality of the first ancestor of the Amadis who is still with us, +has been the subject of some little contention. + +_Amadis de Gaula_ has indeed been doubly fortunate. The successor +of Lancelot, Galahad, and Tristan as a fearless and loyal knight, he +early won his way in the Peninsula; he was spared by the priest and +barber in the _Don Quixote_ scrutiny, and now when Vives’ ‘pestiferous +books’,[126] those ‘serious follies’, are no longer read widely, he has +received a new span of immortality as a corpse of Patroclus between the +contending critics. The problem of the date and authorship has become +more fascinating than the book. Champions for Spain and Portugal come +forward armed for the fight: Braunfels, Gayangos, Baist are met by +Theophilo Braga, Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Marcelino Menéndez +y Pelayo, while Dr. Henry Thomas holds the scales. The ground is thick +with their arrows. And beneath them all lies the simple ingenuous +story as retold by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in or immediately after +1492 and published in 1508, still worth reading for its freshness and +for its clear good style, which Braunfels, following up the praise in +Juan de Valdés’ _Diálogo de la Lengua_ (_c._ 1535), declared could +not be a translation.[127] The argument, conclusive in the case of +the masterpiece of prose that is _Palmeirim_ _de Inglaterra_, loses +its force here, since Montalvo himself tells us that he corrected +the work from old originals. Naturally we are curious to know what +these _antiguos originales_ were, but the question did not arise in +the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: readers did not then concern +themselves greatly with the origin and authorship of a book; they were +content to enjoy it. Evidently _Amadis_ was enjoyed both in Spain and +Portugal. It is mentioned in the middle of the fourteenth century in +the Spanish translation, by Johan Garcia de Castrogeriz, of Egidio +Colonna’s _De regimine principum_, at the very time, that is, when +the Spanish poet and chronicler, Pero López de Ayala (1332-1407), +was reading _Amadis_ in his youth.[128] Half a century later, in the +last quarter of the fourteenth century, a poem by Pero Ferrus in the +_Cancionero de Baena_ refers to _Amadis_ as written in three books. +This is one of the most definite early references to _Amadis_, but of +course reference to the book by a Spaniard does not necessarily imply +that it was written in Spanish, and indeed some of the vaguer allusions +may refer to a French or Anglo-French original. The most frequent +Spanish references occur in the _Cancionero de Baena_, which was +compiled in the middle of the fifteenth century, at a period, that is, +which the last Galician lyrics written in Spain connected with the time +when all eyes were turned to Portuguese as the universal language of +Peninsular lyrics. Because the Portuguese language was used throughout +Spain in lyric poetry, it is sometimes argued as if the Portuguese had +no prose, could only sing. (The more real division was not between +verse and prose but between the Portuguese lyrical love literature and +the Spanish epic battle literature, and the early romances of chivalry, +although written in prose, belong essentially to the former.) The prose +rubrics of the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ and the _Poetica_ of the +_Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ are sufficient to dispel this delusion. +Whether this _Poetica_ be contemporary (13th c.) of the lyrics or +later (14th c.), it offers a striking contrast between the clumsiness +of its prose and the smooth perfection of the poetry for which it +theorizes. Miguel Leite Ferreira’s statement (1598) that _Amadis_ is +contemporary with the lyrics is therefore remarkable. He says that the +archaic (time of King Dinis) language of the two sonnets--_Bom Vasco +de Lobeira_ and _Vinha Amor pelo campo trebelhando_--written by his +father, Antonio Ferreira (1528-69), is the same as that in which Vasco +de Lobeira wrote _Amadis of Gaul_. We know that King Dinis encouraged +not only lyric poetry but also translations into Portuguese prose, but +all the early Portuguese prose works are assigned to the fourteenth, +not the thirteenth century. One of the earliest, the _Demanda do Santo +Graall_, the language of which bears a close relation to that of the +_Cancioneiros_, still belongs to the fourteenth century. Probably +the later development of prose misled Leite Ferreira into making +fourteenth-century prose contemporary with thirteenth-century verse. +The Infante whom he here on the strength of the passage in Montalvo’s +_Amadis_ identifies with the son of King Dinis, not with the earlier +Prince Afonso (_c._ 1265-1312), may as Infante have expressed dislike +of a certain incident (the treatment of Briolanja) in the already +well-known story, and his preference would be borne in mind when the +Portuguese version was written in his reign (1325-57). If the first +Peninsular version of _Amadis_ was composed in Portuguese in the +middle of the fourteenth century, it may have been eagerly read as a +novelty by López de Ayala. In the fourteenth century most Spaniards +read, a few wrote[129] Portuguese lyrics; and there seems to be no +reason why we should rigorously confine them to the reading of verse, +to the exclusion of Portuguese prose. There is no means of deciding +with certainty whether López de Ayala and Ferrus read _Amadis_ in +Spanish or in Portuguese, but there are inherent probabilities in +favour of Portuguese. No one without a thesis to support would deny +that, generally, the cycle of the Round Table, to which _Amadis_ is +so closely related, was more congenial to the Portuguese than to +the Spanish temperament, that the geographical position of Portugal +facilitated its introduction, and that, in the particular case of +_Amadis_, the style and subject of the work, certainly of the first +three books, are Portuguese rather than Spanish. Melancholy incidents, +sentimental phrases and tears occur on nearly every page. Some critics +even discern traces of Portuguese in the language.[130] + +But if we admit that _Amadis_ was written _c._ 1350, who was its +author? It is noteworthy that while in Spanish it had been attributed +to many persons, in Portugal tradition has persistently hovered round +the name of Lobeira. Unfortunately the Lobeira authorship has given +far more trouble than that of prince, Jew, or saint in Spain. Zurara, +basing his statement on an earlier fifteenth-century authority, +in a perfectly genuine passage of his _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro +de Meneses_,[131] written in the middle of the fifteenth century, +ascribes _Amadis_ to Vasco de Lobeira. In the next century Dr. João +de Barros[132] (not the historian) and Leite Ferreira agree with +Zurara.[133] There was no reason why they should say Vasco rather +than Pedro or João. According to Nunez de Leam, Vasco de Lobeira was +knighted on the field of Aljubarrota (1385), according to Fernam Lopez +he was already a knight in 1383.[134] If he was not a young but an old +knight at Aljubarrota, it is just possible that he wrote the book +thirty-five years earlier, in the same way that the historian Barros +wrote _Clarimundo_ in his youth. + +If he lived on through the reigns of Pedro I (1357-67) and Fernando +(1376-83), and acquired new distinction in battle in the reign +of the latter, this might account for Zurara’s assertion that he +wrote _Amadis_ in the reign of Fernando. But the chief obstacle +to the authorship of Vasco is the existence in the _Cancioneiro +Colocci-Brancuti_ (Nos. 230 and 232 A) of a song by Joan de Lobeira, +_Leonoreta, fin roseta_, which reappears with slight variations in +Montalvo’s _Amadis_ (Lib. II, cap. xi: _este villancico_). It would +seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote _Amadis_. Joan de Lobeira,[135] +or Joan Pirez Lobeira, flourished in the second half of the thirteenth +century, and so we have _Amadis_ dating not only from the reign of King +Dinis but from the first half of his reign. But does the existence of +the poem entail that of a prose romance? The early mention of Tristan, +e.g. by Alfonso X, does not necessarily imply the existence of a +thirteenth-century Peninsular _Tristan_ in prose. May we not accept +the poem, written in the stirring metre, dear to men of action, used +by Alfonso X (C. M. 300), as merely a proof of the popularity of the +story, fondness for an episode perhaps treated in greater detail in +the Anglo-French original than in Montalvo’s version? Certainly it is +in the highest degree improbable that a Spaniard, writing at the end +of the fifteenth century, should extract a poem from the Portuguese +_Cancioneiros_ and insert it in his prose; but the improbability +disappears if in the middle of the fourteenth century a Portuguese +(Vasco de Lobeira), perhaps drawn to the story by the poem of his +ancestor, incorporated it in his romance. The late Antonio Thomaz +Pires in 1904 discovered at Elvas the will of a João de Lobeira, +_mercador_, who died there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s +latest opinion[136] there were three Portuguese versions of _Amadis_: +that of the father, this João de Lobeira, written in the time of King +Dinis (a long-lived race these Lobeiras!), that of the son,[137] Vasco, +and a third by Pedro de Lobeira in the first half of the fifteenth +century. The threefold authorship of this family heirloom is even more +_cruu de creer_ than the theory that a single Lobeira--Vasco--wrote it +in the middle of the fourteenth century. A certain note of disapproval +of _Amadis_ as fabulous, shared by Portuguese and Spanish writers,[138] +perhaps indicates a fairly late date: its irresponsible fiction would +be less excusable if it was written in an age which was beginning to +attach serious importance to _nobiliarios_ and ‘true’ chronicles. +Moreover, if the Portuguese adaptation of an Anglo-French legend had +been even remotely as developed as the form in which we now have +it, the Infante Afonso must have seen at once that the faithfulness +of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But especially the +fact that the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, familiar with Tristan and +the _matière de Bretagne_, are silent on the subject of _Amadis_ is +significant. + +In Gottfried Baist’s argument, based on a rigid division between +early lyric poetry (as Portuguese) and early prose (as Spanish), the +Leonoreta lyric, far from being a stumbling-block, is actually a +sign of the Spanish origin of _Amadis_: as a fragment (14th c.) of a +prose _Tristan_ exists in Spanish, and five Portuguese Tristan _lais_ +figure in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, so the Leonoreta poem +belongs to a Spanish _Amadis_ in prose. But although the priority and +relations of early Portuguese and Spanish prose works are intricate +and have not yet been thoroughly studied, it is clear that in many +cases versions have been more carefully preserved in conservative +Spain, while the Portuguese through neglect, fire, and earthquake have +perished, and also that the natural tendency and development of prose, +in view of the growing power of Castille and the greater pliancy of +the Portuguese, was from Portuguese to Spanish, not from Spanish to +Portuguese. And in one instance at least we have an early Portuguese +prose work of the first importance, the _Demanda do Santo Graall_, +which with its gallicisms can by no stretch of imagination be accounted +a version from the Spanish. It is plainly legitimate to hold that +the story of Amadis was first reduced to book form in the Peninsula +in precisely the same way as was the story of Galahad, i.e. as a +fourteenth-century Portuguese adaptation with the French text in view. +Nicholas d’Herberay des Essarts, we know, claimed to have discovered +fragments of _Amadis en langage picard_, Jorge Cardoso (1606-69) +declared that Pero Lobeira translated _Amadis_ from the French,[139] +and Bernardo Tasso, whose _Amadigi_ appeared in 1560, believed (_non +è dubbio_) _Amadis_ to be derived _da qualche istoria di Bretagna_. +Nor would the Portuguese, for all their familiarity with the story and +topography of the Breton cycle, be likely to compose original works +dealing with Vindilisora (Windsor) or Bristoya (Bristol). Unhappily, +however deep may be our conviction (a conviction which stands in no +need of antedating Hebrew versions of the 1508 _Amadis_) that the +Peninsular _Amadis_ was originally Portuguese, it has now ceased to +belong to Portuguese literature; another instance, if we may beg the +question, of the gravitation to Spain. The Portuguese text, of which +a copy, according to Leite Ferreira, existed in the library of the +Duques de Aveiro in the sixteenth century (1598), and, according to +the Conde da Ericeira, in the library of the Condes de Vimieiro in the +seventeenth (1686), is still missing, as it was in 1726. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[104] Portuguese is then _uma lingua coherente, clara, um instrumento +perfeito para a expressão do pensamento, cuja maior plasticidade +dependerá apenas da cultura litteraria_, F. Adolpho Coelho, _A Lingua +Portugueza_ (1881), p. 87. + +[105] See _supra_, p. 48. + +[106] See p. 160. + +[107] Cf. for the seventeenth century Galhegos’ preface and _Mon. +Lusit._ V. xvi. 3: _achandose neste reino poucos que escrevão versos e +não seja na lingua estranjeira de Castilla_. + +[108] e. g. _E matou a grande serpente dallagoa de lerne que auja sete +cabeças. E persegujo as pias filhas de finees que lhe aujã odio e o +queriã desherdar. E foy cõ jaasson o que adusse o velloso dourado da +ylha de colcos. E destroyu troya_, &c. + +[109] Cf. _Por este exemplo este doutor nos mostra_, or _este poeta +nos dá ensinamento_, &c. The Fables of Aesop were translated into +Portuguese prose by Manuel Mendez, a schoolmaster at Lagos (Algarve): +_Vida e Fabulas do Insigne Fabulador Grego Esopo_. Evora, 1603. + +[110] e. g. of an earthquake: _Era de mil e quatrocentos e quatro +desoito dias do mez de Junho tremeo a terra ao serão muy rijamente e +foi por espaço que disserom o Pater tres vezes._ + +[111] The _Cronica Troyana_, edited in 1900 by the Spanish +scholar and patient investigator D. Andrés Martínez Salazar, is a +fourteenth-century Galician version of Benoît de Saint-More’s _Roman de +Troie_. + +[112] The name _Nobiliario_ is one of the erudite words which in +the sixteenth century, here as in so many other cases, ousted the +indigenous. + +[113] Its object was _por saberem os homens fidalgos de Portugal de +qual linhagem vem e de quaes coutos, honras, mosteiros e igreias som +naturaes_. + +[114] His successful wile is similar to the stratagem in _Macbeth_: _e +pois que a nave entrou pela foz cobrío-a de panos verdes em tal guisa +que cuidassem que eram ramos, ca entonce o Douro era cuberto de hũa +parte e da outra darvores_. + +[115] _A escritura de maior utilidade que temos em Espanha_ (Frei +Francisco Brandão, _Mon. Lus._ V. xvii. 5). + +[116] i. e. the copy printed in _Portug. Mon. Hist._ from the only +existing manuscript (= the copy by Gaspar Alvarez de Lousada Machado +(1554-1634) in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo). + +[117] The ‘songs of Cornwall’ are mentioned in C. V. 1007. Cf. 1140. + +[118] See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, ii. +479-525. They are called _lais_, _layx_ (C. C. B. 7, 8). + +[119] _En la grand demanda de Santo Greal Se lee._ _Gral_ is still a +common Portuguese word (= _almofariz_, a mortar). + +[120] ruberte de borem is mentioned, 1887 ed., p. 44. + +[121] Not to speak of _certas_, _onta_, _febre_ (= _faible_), _a voso +sciente_, which may be found in other Portuguese works of the fifteenth +century, _san_ (p. 136 _ad fin._) apparently = Fr. _s’en_. + +[122] Cf. _asi como o conto a ja deuisado_ (1887 ed., p. 7). + +[123] 1905 ed., p. 95. + +[124] 1887 ed., p. 43: _despois uespesiom os eyxerdou e os destruio_. + +[125] 1905 ed., pp. 17, 23, 106. + +[126] _De Institutione Christianae Feminae_, Bk. I, cap. 5: ‘Tum et de +pestiferis libris cuiusmodi sunt in Hispania [= the whole Peninsula], +Amadisius, Splandianus, Florisandus, Tirantus, Tristanus, quarum +ineptiarum nullus est finis; quotidie prodeunt novae: Caelistina +laena, nequitiarum parens, carcer amorum: in Gallia Lancilotus a Lacu, +Paris et Vienna, Ponthus et Sydonia, Petrus Provincialis et Magelona, +Melusina, domina inexorabilis: in hac Belgica Florius et Albus Flos, +Leonella et Cana morus, Curias et Floreta, Pyramus et Thisbe’ (_Ioannis +Ludovici Vivis Valentini Opera Omnia_, 7 vols., Valentiae Edetanorum, +1782-8, iv. 87). A Portuguese _Tristan_ may have existed, a Portuguese +original of _Tirant lo Blanch_ less probably, although Pedro Juan +Martorell, who began it in the Valencian or Lemosin _a ii de Giner de +lany 1460_, declares that he had not only translated it from English +into Portuguese but (_mas encara_) from Portuguese into Valencian. He +dedicated it to the _molt illustre Princep_ Ferdinand of Portugal. Very +probably the fame and origin of _Amadis_ accounted for this ‘English’ +original, as mythical as the Hungarian origin of _Las Sergas de +Esplandian_, and for its alleged translation into Portuguese. + +[127] Braunfels, _Versuch_: ‘Montalvo hatte, um einer Uebersetzung +den Ruhm des mustergiltigen Styls und des reinsten Kastilianisch zu +verschaffen, ein Geist ersten Rangs sein müssen, was er nicht war.’ +Montalvo was probably not the real author even of the fourth book. +The words (in this _Prólogo_ of his _Amadis_), _que hasta aquí no es +memoria de ninguno ser visto_, refer not to the fourth book but to +Montalvo’s _Sergas de Esplandian_, which is conveniently replaced by +dots in T. Braga, _Questões_ (1881), p. 99, and _Hist. da Litt. Port._, +i (1909), p. 313, and which the priest in _Don Quixote_ properly +consigned to the flames. + +[128] His connexion with Portugal was not voluntary. It was probably +when he was a prisoner after the battle of Aljubarrota (1385) that he +wrote the _Rimado de Palacio_, in which (st. 162) _Amadis_ is mentioned. + +[129] For the later writers of Galician (second half 14th c.) see +Professor Lang’s _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_ (1902). + +[130] _Lua_ (glove), _cedo_, &c., of course occur in early Spanish +prose. _Soledad_ certainly occurs in the first three books more +frequently than in other Spanish prose. The Portuguese atmosphere is +altogether absent in _Las Sergas_. + +[131] Cap. 63: _o Livro d’Amadis, como quer que soomente este fosse +feito a prazer de hum homem que se chamava Vasco Lobeira em tempo d’El +Rey Dom Fernando, sendo todalas cousas do dito Liuro fingidas do Autor._ + +[132] _Libro das Antiguidades_ (1549), f. 32 v.: _E daqui_ [_do Porto_] +_foi natural uasco lobeira ̃q fez os primʳᵒˢ 4 libros de amadis, obra +certo muj subtil e graciosa e aprouada de todos os gallantes, mas +comos_ [so] _estas couzas se secão em nossas mãos os Castelhanos lhe +mudarão a linguoagem e atribuirão a obra assi_ [so]. This passage is, +however, absent in the earliest manuscript. The spelling _couzas_ +implies a late date for its introduction. + +[133] So did Faria e Sousa, but he, too, had his Lobeira doubts, and +after noting that Vasco de Lobeira was knighted by King João I says: +‘si ya no es que era otro del mismo nombre. Pero la Escritura de Amadis +se tiene por del tiempo deste Rey don Iuan’ (_Fvente de Aganipe_ +(Madrid, 1646), § 10). The obvious sympathy of the author for the +_escudero viejo_ who is knighted in _Amadis_ (ii. 13, 14) amidst the +laughter of the Court ladies is perhaps significant. + +[134] _Cronica de D. Fernando_, cap. 177. The year of his death, given +as 1403, is quite uncertain. Soares de Brito in the _Theatrum_ forms +no independent opinion: ‘Vascus de Lobeyra inter Lusitanos Scriptores +enumeratur a Faria.... Floruit tempore Fernandi Regis.’ Antonio +Sousa de Macedo, in _Flores de España_, also follows Faria: Vasco de +Lobeira _fué el primero que con gentil habilidad escribió libros de +caballerías_. Nicolás Antonio (1617-84), _Bib. Nov._, 1688 ed., ii. +322, says that Vasco de Lobeira _vulgo inter cives suos existimari +solet auctor celeberrimi inter famosa scripti_ Historia de Amadis +de Gaula ... _cuius laudes nos inter Anonymos curiose collegimus. +Ostendere autem Lusitanos Amadisium hunc Lusitane loquentem, uti +Castellani Castellanum ostendunt, ius et aequum esset in dubia re +ne verbis tantum agerent._ The challenge in the last sentence is of +interest, as coming in date between the two statements (by Leite +Ferreira and the Conde da Ericeira) asserting the existence of the +Portuguese text. + +[135] There was a Canon of Santiago of this name in 1295, and he may +have come to the Portuguese Court on business concerning certain +privileges of the Chapter which King Dinis confirmed in 1324. + +[136] _Hist. da Litt. Port._ i (1909). + +[137] In the document the only son mentioned is named Gonçalo. + +[138] Zurara, loc. cit., _cousas fingidas_; López de Ayala, _mentiras +probadas_. According to D. Francisco de Portugal (_Arte de Galantería_, +p. 146) such lies could only be written in Spanish (_en la Portuguesa +no se podía mentir tanto_). Portugal was writing in Spanish. + +[139] _Agiologio Lusitano_, i (1652), p. 410: _E por seu mandado_ [of +the Infante Pedro, son of João I] _trasladou de Frances em a nossa +lingua Pero Lobeiro_ [so], _Tabalião d’Eluas, o liuro de Amadis._ + + + + + § 2 + + _Epic and Later Galician Poetry_ + + +Some of the poems of the early _Cancioneiros_, as we have seen, have +an historical character, but they are all written from a personal +point of view. Portuguese history, with its heroic achievements such +as the conquest of Algarve, seems to have begun just too late to be +the subject of great anonymous epics, or rather the temperament of the +Portuguese people eschewed them. Of five poems, long believed to be the +earliest examples of Portuguese verse but no longer accepted by any +sane critic as genuine, only one belongs to epic poetry. This _Poema da +Cava_ or _da Perda de Espanha_ was an infant prodigy indeed, since it +was supposed to have been written (in _oitavas_) in the eighth century. +With a discretion passing that of Horace it kept itself from the world +not for nine but nine hundred years, and was first published in Leitão +de Andrada’s _Miscellanea_ (1629)[140]: _O rouço da Cava imprio de tal +sanha_, &c. + +Of the four other spurious poems, two[141] were alleged to be love +letters of Egas Moniz Coelho, a cousin of the celebrated Egas Moniz +Coelho of the twelfth century; another, published by Bernardo de +Brito,[142] _Tinherabos nam tinherabos_, has a real charm as gibberish. +Fascination, of a different kind, attaches also to the fifth: + + No figueiral figueiredo, no figueiral entrei: + Tres niñas encontrara, tres niñas encontrei, + +for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first +published by Brito[143] at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it +is nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular tradition of a yearly +tribute of maidens to the Moors such as the Greeks paid to the +Minotaur, and must be the echo of some Algarvian song. Its simple +repetitions have a haunting rhythm, but they are perhaps a little +too emphatic. The impression is that its author had been struck by +the repetitions in songs heard on the lips of the people, perhaps +crooned to him in his infancy (cf. _Miscellanea_, p. 25: _sendo eu +muito menino_), and worked them up in this poem. One early epic poem +Portugal undoubtedly possessed, the _Poema da Batalha do Salado_, by +AFONSO GIRALDEZ, who himself probably took part in the battle (1340). +The subject of the poem is the same as that of the Spanish _Poema de +Alfonso Onceno_, but whether its treatment was similar we cannot say, +as only forty lines of the Galician-Portuguese poem survive. Since +the authorship of the Spanish poem is doubtful and its rhymes run +more naturally in Galician than in Spanish, the theory has arisen, +among others, that Rodrigo Yannez, whose name perhaps denotes a +connexion with Galicia, merely translated the poem of Afonso Giraldez. +But against this it is argued that Yannez or Eanez was a Galician +or wrote Galician lyrics (there are several poets of that name in +the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_), and when called upon to compose an +epic--for Spain a late epic--chose Castilian, the traditional language +of such poetry, and in executing his design found that his enthusiasm +had outrun his knowledge of Castilian.[144] It is not strange if so +brilliant a victory inspired two poets independently with its theme. +It is perhaps more extraordinary that both should have chosen a metre +(8 + 8) which has called for remark as showing the _romance_ through +the _cantar de gesta_.[145] Frei Antonio Brandão, indeed, called the +Portuguese poem a _romance_, a type of poem which did not exist in the +fourteenth century. Since the battle was fought in Spain it would be +considered in Brandão’s day a proper subject for a _romance_, but would +be noticeable as being written in Galician. Castilian was throughout +the Peninsula regarded as the fitting medium for the _romance_, as +for its father the epic, just as, a century earlier, Galician was the +universal language of the lyric.[146] Portuguese poets, if they wrote +a _romance_, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known instance +is Gil Vicente’s fine poem (_muy sentido y galan_ as the 1720 editor +says) of _D. Duardos e Flerida_, which only belongs to Portuguese +literature through the excellent ‘translation of the Cavalheiro de +Oliveira’, among whose papers Garrett professed to have found it. +Portugal possessed no epic _cantares de gesta_ of her own, had not +therefore the stuff out of which the _romances_ were formed, and the +birth of the _romance_ coincided with the predominance of Spanish +influence in Spain. It is therefore surprising to find in Portugal a +large number of _romances_ unconnected with Spain, the explanation +being that, having accepted with characteristic enthusiasm the new +thing imported from abroad, the Portuguese turned to congenial themes, +of love, religion, and adventure. Had the _romances_ been elaborated +in the same way as in Spain, we might have expected a large number of +anonymous Portuguese _romances_ dealing with the Breton cycle, and +indeed with early Portuguese history, so rich in heroic incidents. +The fact that this is not the case and the number of _romances_ +collected in Tras-os-Montes alike point to their Spanish origin, while +their frequency in the Azores denotes how popular they became later +in Portugal. In the sixteenth century their Spanish character was +recognized. The poor _escudeiro_ in _Eufrosina_ is bidden go to Spain +to gloss _romances_, and in the seventeenth century, as a passage +in Mello’s _Fidalgo Aprendiz_ well shows, they were better liked if +written in Spanish. The partiality for Spanish applied to poetry of +other kinds, and Manuel de Galhegos says (1635) that it is a bold +venture to publish poetry in Portuguese.[147] But it did not as a rule +extend to popular poetry. It is therefore noteworthy that the nurse +in Gil Vicente sings _romances_ in Spanish.[148] Dr. Theophilo Braga, +who considers Spanish influence on the _romances_ in Portugal to have +been ‘late and insignificant’,[149] is obliged, in order to support +his argument, to quote not Portuguese but Spanish _romances_.[150] Nor +is it a happy contention that Portuguese _romances_ were not printed +owing to _desleixo_, since the publication of Spanish _romances_ at +Lisbon cannot be attributed merely to a craze for things foreign. +More persuasive is the theory, developed by D. Carolina Michaëlis de +Vasconcellos,[151] that many _romances_ in Spanish were the work of +Portuguese poets, especially those related to the Breton cycle, such as +_Ferido está Don Tristan_, those concerned with the sea, and those of +a soft lyrical character, as _Fonte Frida_ and _La Bella Malmaridada_. +However that may be, the fact that _romances_ appear on the lips of +the people in Gil Vicente, that is, before the publication of the +_romanceros_, indicates how rapidly their popularity spread,[152] +and accounts for their numerous progeny in Portugal, collected in +the nineteenth century. True historical _romances_ the Portuguese +did not possess, unless we are to consider that certain lines which +occur in Vicente’s parody of _Yo me estaba allá en Coimbra_, in Garcia +de Resende’s _Trovas_, and elsewhere, are echoes of a Portuguese +_romance_ on the death of Inés de Castro.[153] But that is not to +say that they did not possess _romances_, and many of these might be +almost as old as their Spanish models, although not derived directly +from _cantares de gesta_. These Portuguese _romances_ or _xacaras_ (in +the Azores _estorias_ and _aravias_) often differ from the Spanish +in a certain vagueness of outline and sentimental tone. They are +frequently of considerable length. Many of them are undoubtedly of +popular origin and have a large number of variants in different parts +of the country. If there are none to compare with _Fonte Frida_ or +_Conde Arnaldos_ (which belong to Castilian literature, whatever +the nationality of their authors), they nevertheless, with a total +lack of concentration, present many natural scenes and incidents of +affecting pathos and an attractive simplicity. One of the best and +most characteristically Portuguese is _A Nau Catharineta_, and others +almost equally famous are _Santa Iria_, _Conde Nillo_, and _Brancaflor +e Flores_. The second edition of Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Romanceiro_ +runs to nearly two thousand pages. The first two volumes contain over +150 _romances_ (together with numerous variants). Of these 5 belong to +the Carolingian, 8 to the Arthurian cycle, 63 are _romances sacros_ +or _ao divino_, 11 treat of the cruel husband or unfaithful wife. +In the third volume are reprinted _romances_ composed by well-known +Portuguese authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It must +be admitted that Spain generously repaid to Portugal the loan of the +Galician language for lyrical composition--although in each case it was +the lender’s literature that profited (especially if some of the most +beautiful Spanish _romances_ were the work of Galician or Portuguese +poets). But even after the birth of the _romance_ Spain continued to +cultivate the Galician lyric, until the second half of the fifteenth +century. The last instance is supposed to be a Galician poem by Gomez +Manrique (1412-91), uncle of the author of _Recuerde el alma dormida_, +No. 65 in the _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_. This collection, +published by Professor Lang at the suggestion of D. Carolina Michaëlis +de Vasconcellos, contains the meagre crop of Portuguese verse of the +transition period from 1350 to 1450, meagre in quality and quantity. +One name dominates the period. The love and tragic fate of MACIAS +(second half 14th c.), _o Namorado, idolo de los amantes_, gave him a +renown similar to but far exceeding that of D. Joan Soarez de Paiva +in the preceding century. As the ideal lover he is met with at every +turn in the Portuguese poetry of the fifteenth century,[154] and later +became the subject of Lope de Vega’s _Porfiar hasta morir_ (1638). Of +his story we know definitely nothing, but some lines in one of his +poems, _En meu_ _cor tenno ta lança_ and _Aquesta lança. .. me ferio_, +would appear to have inspired the famous legend which dates from the +end of the fifteenth century. Imprisoned at Arjonilla in Andalucía +for paying court to his _sennora_, he continued to address her in +song and was killed by the lance that her infuriated husband hurled +through the prison window. In an older version, that of the Constable +D. Pedro in his _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, he saved the lady +of his heart from drowning, and afterwards, as he lingered where she +had stood, was struck down by the jealous husband. According to Argote +de Molina,[155] both he and the husband served in the household of D. +Enrique de Villena (1385-1434), who was perhaps only six when Macias +died. Most of the twenty poems ascribed to Macias that survive are +written in Galician, and of many, as _Loado sejas amor_,[156] the +authorship is doubtful. Clearly his fame would act as a strong magnet +to poems of uncertain origin. The matter is of the less importance in +that these poems, however love-sick, have but little literary merit. +If the Galician JUAN RODRIGUEZ DE LA CÁMARA, a native, like Macias, of +Padron, was the real author of the _romance_ of _Conde Arnaldos_ (which +is improbable), he was a far greater poet than his friend. Both the +lyrics and the prose of his _El Sieruo libre de Amor_ are in Castilian. +Of the other two fourteenth-century Galician poets mentioned by +Santillana, FERNAM CASQUICIO and VASCO PEREZ DE CAMÕES (†1386?),[157] +no poems have survived. The latter, a knight well known at the Court +of King Ferdinand and an ancestor of Luis de Camões, played a leading +part in the troubles preceding the battle of Aljubarrota, He had come +to Portugal from Galicia, and his name appears frequently in the pages +of Fernam Lopez (where it is written Caamoões) till the year 1386. In +the middle of the sixteenth century he is mentioned by Sá de Miranda’s +brother-in-law as a Court poet corresponding to Juan de Mena in Spain. +But there were other poets whose verse was probably not inferior to +that of Perez de Camões and Casquicio. Besides Macias the _Cancioneiro +Gallego-Castelhano_ contains the names of sixteen writers whose poems +may not attain high distinction but prove that the Galician lyric +continued to be cultivated by poets in the fourteenth and first half +of the fifteenth century in Castille and Leon, Aragon and Catalonia. +The Archdeacon of Toro, GONÇALO RODRIGUEZ (fl. 1385),[158] was one of +a group of such poets; a man with a keen zest of living and capable of +vigorous verse, in which he took a characteristic delight (_a minna +boa arte de lindo cantar_). In his farewell poem _A Deus Amor, a Deus +el Rei_, which Cervantes perhaps remembered, he bids good bye to the +_trobadores con quen trobei_, and in a quaint humorous testament he +mentions a number of friends and relatives, two of whom, at least, his +cousin Pedro de Valcacer or Valcarcel and Lope de Porto Carreiro, also +wrote verse. In the last of the sixteen stanzas (_abbacca_) of this +_testamento_ the Archdeacon appoints his namesake Gonçalo Rodriguez +de Sousa and Fernan Rodriguez to be his executors. He may have been +alive in 1402, for a Doctor Gonçalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Almazan, +is mentioned as one of the witnesses to the oath taken by the city of +Burgos to the Infante María in that year.[159] In that case he must +have been transferred to Almazan, some 150 miles farther up the Duero. +More chequered was the career of GARCI FERRANDEZ DE GERENA (_c._ +1340-_c._ 1400). Having married one of King Juan I’s dancing girls +(_una juglara_) in the belief that she was rich, he repented when he +found _que non tenia nada_. He next became a hermit near Gerena, and, +this not proving more congenial than married poverty, he embarked +ostensibly for the Holy Land, but in fact landed at Malaga with his +wife and children. At Granada he turned Moor, satirized the Christian +faith, and deserted his wife for her sister. After such proven +inconstancy we may perhaps doubt the sincerity of his repentance when +he returned to Christianity and Castille at the end of the fourteenth +century. But for all his weakness and folly he seems not to have sunk +utterly out of the reach of finer feelings; he sang various episodes +of his life, e.g. when he went to his hermitage (_puso se beato_), in +lyrics of some charm, and addressed the nightingale in a dialogue, as +did his contemporary, ALFONSO ALVAREZ DE VILLASANDINO (_c._ 1345-_c._ +1428). This Castilian Court poet, born at Villasandino near Burgos +and possessed of property at Illescas, was of a sleeker and more +subservient mind than Garci Ferrandez and prospered accordingly, _en +onra e en ben e en alto estado_. He wrote to order and was considered +the ‘crown and king of all the _poetas e trovadores_ who had ever +existed in the whole of Spain’. This extravagant claim of his admirers +need not prevent us from recognizing that there is often real feeling +and music in his poems, of which the _Cancionero de Baena_ has +preserved over twenty. He writes in varying metres with unfailing ease +and harmony, rarely sinks into mere verbal dexterity, and well deserves +to be considered the best of these later Galician poets. Side by side +with the lyric the _cantiga d’escarnho_ continued to flourish. Alfonso +Alvarez (C. G. C. 48) upbraids Garci Ferrandez for renouncing the +Christian faith and leaguing himself with the Devil (_gannaste privança +do demo mayor_); Pero Velez de Guevara (†1420), uncle of the Marqués de +Santillana, addresses a satiric poem to an old maid, and an anonymous +poet in a vigorous _sirventes_ attacks degenerate Castille, _cativa, +mezela Castela_, perhaps, as Professor Lang thinks, immediately after +the Portuguese victories of Trancoso, Aljubarrota, and Valverde in +1385. Five fragmentary poems belong to the Infante D. PEDRO (1429-66), +Constable of Portugal. There are, besides his three short Portuguese +poems in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, only forty-one lines in all, for +while Galician, already separated from her twin sister of Portugal, +went to sleep--a sleep of nearly four centuries--in these last accents +of her muse preserved in the _Cancionero de Baena_, the Infante Pedro +turned definitely to the new forms of lyric appearing in Castille. As +a transition poet he may be mentioned here before his father D. Pedro, +Duke of Coimbra, since his prose works, which would naturally place +him with his father and with D. Duarte, his uncle, belong, together +with most of his poetry (_prosas_ and _metros_) to Spanish literature. +By stress of circumstance rather than any set purpose he inaugurated +the fashion of writing in Castilian, a fashion so eagerly taken up by +his fellow-countrymen during the next two centuries. After the tragic +death of his father at Alfarrobeira (1449) he escaped from Portugal, +of which his sister Isabel was queen,[160] spent the next seven years +as an exile in Castille, and after returning to his native land died +an exile, but now as King of Aragon (1464-6). His life of thirty-seven +years was thus as full of wandering adventure as that of any troubadour +of old. To him Santillana addressed his celebrated letter on the +development of poetry, and his own influence on Portuguese literature +was important, for he introduced not only a new style of poetry, +including _oitavas de arte maior_, but the habit of classical allusion +and allegory. His first work, _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, was +written in Portuguese before he was twenty, but re-written by himself +in Castilian, the only form in which it has survived. This firstfruit +of his studies was dedicated to his sister, Queen Isabel, whose death +(1455) he mourned in his _Tragedia de la Insigne Reyna Doña Isabel_ +(1457), a work of deep feeling and some literary merit, first published +by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos 444 years after Queen Isabel’s +death. His longest and most important poem, in 125 octaves, _Coplas +del menosprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo_ (1455), +reflects the misfortunes of his life and the high philosophy they had +brought him. Under a false attribution to his father, the Duke of +Coimbra[161] (his Portuguese poems were also wrongly ascribed to King +Peter I of Portugal, through confusion with the later King Peter, of +Aragon), it was incorporated in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, which +appeared half a century after the Constable’s death. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[140] 1867 ed., p. 333. + +[141] Ibid., pp. 304-7. + +[142] _Cronica de Cister_, Bk. VI, cap. 1, 1602 ed., f. 372. It has +been several times reprinted: cf. J. F. Barreto, _Ortografia_ (1671), +p. 23; Bellermann, _Die alten Liederbücher_, p. 5; _Grundriss_, p. 163. + +[143] _Monarchia Lusitana_, 1609 ed., ii. 296 (also in _Miscellanea_, +1867 ed., pp. 25-6; Bellermann, pp. 3-4). + +[144] See _Grundriss_, p. 205. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal supports the +suggestion of Leonese authorship (_Revista de Filología Española_, I. i +(1914), pp. 90-2). + +[145] See J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, _Littérature Espagnole_, 1913 ed., p. +64. + +[146] Cf. Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_ (1722 ed.), p. 369: _tinhão +os nossos guardadores por muyto difficultoso fazeremse em a lingoa +Portugueza, porque a tem por menos engraçada para os romances_. Sousa +de Macedo says that _Romance he poesia propria de Hespanha_, but +Hespanha here means Spain and Portugal and he instances Góngora and +Rodriguez Lobo (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., p. 130). + +[147] See _infra_, p. 258. + +[148] _Obras_, 1834 ed., ii. 27. + +[149] _Hist. da Litt. Port._, ii (1914), pp. 267-87. + +[150] Ibid., pp. 280-5. + +[151] _Estudos sobre o Romanceiro Peninsular. Romances velhos de +Portugal_, Madrid, 1907-9. + +[152] Lucena (_Vida_, Bk. III, cap. 3) speaks of _romances velhos +em que elles_ [the natives of India] _como nos, por ser o ordinario +cantar da gente, guardam o successo das memorias e cousas antigas_. +The expression _romance velho_ in the sixteenth century may mean a +_romance_ that has gone out of fashion. Cf. Vicente, _Os Almocreves_: +_Hei os de todos grosar Ainda que sejam velhos._ _Antigo_ may similarly +mean ‘antiquated’ rather than ancient. Barros, _Grammatica_, 1785 +ed., p. 163, mentions _rimances antigas_. D. Carolina Michaëlis de +Vasconcellos considers that the _romances_ came from Spain to Portugal +at the latest in the third quarter and perhaps in the first half of the +fifteenth century. + +[153] See _Estudos sobre o Rom. Penins._ (the lines are _Polos campos +do Mondego Cavaleiros vi somar_). + +[154] In later Portuguese his name was often written Mansias. So Moraes +transforms Mlle de Macy’s name into Mansi. + +[155] _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (1588), ii, f. 272 v. + +[156] This and two other Macias poems (_Ai que mal aconsellado_ and +_Crueldad e trocamento_) are in C. G. C. (Nos. 33, 38, 41) ascribed to +Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino. + +[157] The _Cancionero de Baena_ contains poems addressed to Vasco +_Lopez_ de Camões, _un cavallero de Galizia_, and an answering poem by +him. + +[158] For the name of this hitherto anonymous poet see _The Modern +Language Review_ (July 1917), pp. 357-8. + +[159] Gil Gonzalez Davila, _Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Rey Don +Henrique Tercero_, &c. (Madrid, 1638), p. 173. The name was a common +one. The Spanish translator of Pero Menino’s _Livro de Cetreria_, +Gonçalo Rodriguez de Escobar, may have been a relation. There was also +a fourteenth-century poet called Ruiz de Toro. + +[160] Another sister, D. PHILIPPA DE LENCASTRE (1437-97), lived in +retirement in the convent of Odivellas near Lisbon, and as a dedicatory +poem to her translation of the Gospels wrote the simple, impressive +lines beginning + + _Non vos sirvo, non vos amo, + Mas desejo vos amar._ + + +[161] Cf. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 205: _A +frente de todos os Poetas deste Seculo apparece como hum Ds_ [_Deus_] +_da Poezia o Infante D. Pedro, filho do Snr. Rey D. João I._ In reality +he was not gifted with greater poetical talent than his brothers. + + + + + § 3 + + _The Chroniclers_ + + +The father of Portuguese history, FERNAM LOPEZ (_c._ 1380-_c._ 1460), +had grown up with the generation that succeeded Aljubarrota, and from +his earliest years imbibed the national enthusiasm of the time. He +had himself seen Nun’ Alvarez as a young man and the heroes who had +fought in a hundred fights to free their country from a foreign yoke, +and he had listened to many a tale of Lisbon’s sufferings during the +great siege.[162] Since 1418, at latest, he was employed in the Lisbon +Torre do Tombo (the State Archives), for in that year he was appointed +keeper of the documents (_escrituras_) there. Sixteen years later, +King Duarte, who as prince encouraged him to collect materials for the +work,[163] entrusted him with the task of writing the chronicles of +the Kings of Portugal (_poer em caronycas as estorias dos reys_), and +at the same time (March 19, 1434[164]) assigned him a salary of 14,000 +_réis_. His work at the Torre do Tombo covered a period of over thirty +years. He won and kept the confidence of three kings, was secretary to +João I (_escrivam dos livros_) and to the Infante Fernando (_escrivam +da puridade_), whose will exists in Lopez’ handwriting.[165] His son +Martinho accompanied the Infante to Africa as doctor, and died (1443) +in prison soon after the prince. The last document signed by Lopez as +official is dated 1451; in July 1452 he seems to have resigned his +position at least temporarily, and on June 6, 1454, he was definitely +superseded by Zurara as being ‘so old and weak that he cannot well +fulfil the duties of his post’. That he lived for at least five +years more we know from the existence of a document (July 3, 1459) +referring to the pretensions of an illegitimate son of Martinho which +Fernam Lopez rejected.[166] Of the chronicles of the first ten Kings +of Portugal written by Lopez[167] only three survive: the _Cronica +del Rei Dom Joam de boa memoria_, _Cronica del Rei Dom Fernando_, +and _Cronica del Rei Dom Pedro_. The latter is but a brief sketch, +and lacks the unity which the subject-matter gives to the other two. +His chronicles of the seven earlier kings disappeared in the revised +versions of subsequent historians. Although they no doubt incorporated +large slices of his work with little alteration, the freshness and the +style are gone, the good oak hidden beneath coats of paint. It was a +proceeding the more deplorable in that Lopez had been at great pains to +discover and record the truth, ‘the naked truth’.[168] His successor, +Zurara, represents him as ‘a notable person’, ‘a man of some learning +and great authority’;[169] he travelled through the whole of Portugal +to collect information and spent much time in visiting churches and +convents in search of papers and inscriptions, while King Duarte had +documents brought from Spain for his use. Whatever sources he utilized, +Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, he stamped his work with his own +individuality. He himself frequently refers to previous historians, and +often expresses his disapproval of their methods.[170] He seems to have +drawn largely from a Latin work of a certain Dr. Cristoforus. Keenly +alive to the dignity and responsibilities of history, he was anxious +that his work should be well ordered and philosophical.[171] He has +been called the Portuguese Froissart, but he combines with Froissart’s +picturesqueness moral philosophy, enthusiasm, and high principles, +is in fact a Froissart with something of Montaigne added, and easily +excels Giovanni Villani or Pero López de Ayala. The latter must descend +from the pedestal given him by Menéndez y Pelayo,[172] since he only +occasionally rises to the height of Fernam Lopez, as in the account of +the murder of the Infante Fradique, which Lopez copies very closely +(although abbreviating it as really foreign to his history), evidently +appreciating such dramatic touches as the sentence which describes how, +as the murdered man advanced through the palace, ever fewer went in his +company. By the side of the laborious prose and precocious wisdom of +King Duarte this child of genius seems to give free rein to his pen, +but it is his greatness and his title to rank above all contemporary +chroniclers, not only of Portugal but of Europe, that he could combine +this spontaneity with the scruples of an accurate historian, and be +at once careful and impetuous, or, as Goes calls him, copious and +discreet. He assigns speeches of considerable length to the principal +actors, but they contain not mere rhetoric[173] but arguments such +as might well have been used; and the frequent shorter sayings of +humbler persons, often anonymous and as illuminating as _graffiti_, +have the stamp of truth and bring the scenes most clearly before us. +Indeed, every sentence is living; his unfailing qualities are rapidity +and directness. Sometimes the sound of galloping horses or the loud +murmur of a throng of men is in his pages. He ever and anon rivets the +reader’s--the listener’s--attention by some captivating phrase, by his +quaintly expressed wisdom, by his personal keenness and delight in the +‘marvellous deeds of God’ (_maravilhas que Deos faz_) or in the actions +of his heroes (_Oo que fremosa cousa era de veer!_). His chronicles +are not only a succession of imperishably vivid scenes--King Pedro +dancing through his capital by night, the escape of Diogo Lopez, the +punishment of D. Inés’ murderers, the siege of Lisbon, the murder of D. +Maria Tellez--but describe fully and with skilful care the character +of the actors, pleasure-loving King Ferdinand, cunning, audacious, +and accomplished Queen Lianor Tellez, wise and noble Queen Philippa, +even morose Juan I, and principally the popular Mestre d’Avis and +his great Constable, Nun’ Alvarez Pereira. And the Portuguese people +is delineated both collectively and as individuals, in its generous +enthusiasm, unreasoning impetuosity, and atrocious anger. That Lopez +paid attention to his style is proved by his modest disclaimer bidding +the reader expect no _fremosura e afeitamento das pallavras_, but +merely the facts _breve e sãamente contados, em bom e claro estilo_. +His style is always clear and natural, the serviceable handmaid of +his subject, admirably assuming the colour and sound of the events +described, and his longest sentences are never obscure. He wrote his +history on a generous scale, for in the rapidity of his descriptions +this inimitable story-teller preserved his leisure. His last chronicle +ended with the expedition to Ceuta (1415). The kernel of that chronicle +had been the illustrious deeds and character of Nun’ Alvarez, also +described in the hitherto anonymous _Coronica do condestabre de +purtugal_, of which the earliest edition is dated 1526. Large tracts of +this chronicle are included, with alterations, in Lopez’ Chronicles of +King Fernando and King João I. Dr. Esteves Pereira and Snr. Braamcamp +Freire have now independently come to the conclusion that it is the +work of Lopez, clearly an earlier work[174] written shortly after the +death of Nun’ Alvarez (1431), i. e. before he concluded the _Cronica de +D. Fernando_[175] and wrote the _Cronica de D. Joam_, at which he was +working in 1443.[176] We are forced to accept this view, although of +course it is no argument to say that the conscientious and scrupulous +Fernam Lopez could not be a plagiarist since it was the duty of the +official chronicler of the day to incorporate the best work of other +historians. Lopez’ authorship is borne out by two passages which +at a first glance seem to refute it. In chapter 55 of the _Cronica +de D. Joam_ (1915 ed., p. 120) he introduces the version given in +the _Cronica do Condestabre_ (cap. 22) with the words ‘now here some +say’ (_ora aqui dizem algũs_), and then cites _huũ outro estoriador, +cujo fallamento nos pareçe mais rrazoado_, i. e. he now rejects the +version (of _algũs_) which he had adopted in his earlier work. In +chapter 152 (1915 ed., p. 281) he similarly quotes what _dizem aqui +algũs_ and then the version of _huũ outro compillador destes feitos, +de cujos garfos per mais largo estillo exertamos nesta obra segundo +que compre, rrecomta isto per esta maneira_, a manner which is not +that of the _Cronica do Condestabre_. But indeed the style of the two +works is conclusive. A single age does not produce two Fernam Lopez +any more than it produces two Montaignes or two Malorys. Those who +read the continuation of the _Cronica de D. Joam_ (i. e. the _Cronica +da Tomada de Ceuta_, completed in 1450) by GOMEZ EANEZ DE ZURARA +(_c._ 1410-74) find themselves in a very different atmosphere. We are +told[177] that this soldier, turned historian, acquired his learning +late in life, and he parades it like a new toy. Aristotle, Avicenna, +and all the Scriptures are in his preface; Job, Ovid, Hercules, and +Xenophon, a motley company, mourn the death of Queen Philippa (cap. +44). Sermons extend over whole chapters, although, as he is careful +to state, the exact words of the preachers could not be given.[178] +Philosophy had been graciously woven into Lopez’ narrative, but here +it stands in solid icebergs interrupting the story. And if he wishes +to say that memory often fails in old age he must quote St. Jerome; a +date occupies half a page, being calculated in nine or ten eras;[179] +and the style is sometimes similarly inflated, so that ‘next morning’ +becomes ‘When Night was bringing the end of its obscurity and the Sun +began to strike the Oriental horizon’ (cap. 92). He also delights in +elaborate metaphors.[180] But it must not be thought that Zurara is all +froth and morals: in between his purple patches and erudite allusions +he tells his story directly and vividly, and, what is more, he has his +enthusiasm and his hero. Nun’ Alvarez has faded into the background, +but in his place appears the intense and fervent spirit of Prince +Henry the Navigator. His partiality for Prince Henry appears in the +_Cronica de D. Joam_, and in his _Cronica do Descobrimento e Conquista +da Guiné_ it is still more evident.[181] In this chronicle, written +at the request of King Afonso V and finished in the king’s library +in February 1453, he made use of a lost _Historia das Conquistas dos +Portugueses_ by Afonso Cerveira, and profited by much that he had heard +from the Infantes Pedro and Henrique and other makers of history. For +Zurara was a sincere and painstaking historian,[182] and when the king +bade him record the deeds of the Meneses in Africa (the _Cronica do +Conde D. Pedro de Meneses_ was completed in 1463, and the _Cronica dos +Feitos de D. Duarte de Meneses_ about five years later) he was not +content with the ‘recollections of courtiers’, but set out for Africa +(August 1467) and spent a whole year there gathering material at first +hand. An affectionate letter[183] from King Afonso to the historian in +his voluntary exile shows the pleasant relations existing between the +liberal king and his grateful librarian. He praises him as well learned +in the _arte oratoria_,[184] and for undertaking of his own free will +a journey which was imposed on others as a punishment, and promises +to look after the interests of his sister while he is away. Zurara +was a Knight of the Order of Christ, with a _comenda_ near Santarem, +owned other property, and suffered himself to be adopted by a wealthy +furrier’s widow, an unusual proceeding for a person in his station. But +if, as this indicates, he had a love of riches (satisfied by the king’s +generosity and this fortunate adoption), this in no way interfered with +his work of collecting and verifying evidence nor affects the truth +of his chronicles. He had proposed to write that of Afonso V, but the +king, wisely considering that his reign was not yet over, refused his +consent,[185] and this chronicle was reserved for the pen of RUY DE +PINA (_c._ 1440-1523?).[186] Herculano’s ‘crow in peacock’s feathers’ +has been somewhat harshly treated by modern critics. Not he but the +taste and fashion of his time was to blame if he laid desecrating hands +on the invaluable chronicles of Fernam Lopez, and thus became the +‘author’ of the chronicles of the six kings, Sancho I to Afonso IV. The +mischief is irreparable, but it is well at least that these chronicles +should have been dealt with by Ruy de Pina, and not, for instance, by +the uncritical DUARTE GALVÃO (_c._ 1445-1517); the friend of Afonso de +Albuquerque, who died in the Arabian Sea when on his way as Ambassador +to Ethiopia, and who as _Cronista Môr_ revised the _Cronica de D. +Afonso Henriquez_ (1727). Ruy de Pina has further been attacked because +the people no longer figures, and the king figures too prominently, in +the chronicles for which he was more directly responsible: _Cronica +de D. Duarte_, _Cronica de D. Afonso V_, and _Cronica de D. João II_. +That is to censure him for faithfully recording the changed times and +not writing as if he were his own grandfather. Pina was no flatterer, +but the chronicle of João II inevitably centred round the king, and, in +spite of its excellence and of the moving incident of Prince Afonso’s +death, is less attractive than those which are a record of freer, +jollier times. Born at Guarda, of a family originally Aragonese, Pina +served as secretary on an embassy to Castille in 1482 and on two +subsequent occasions, and in the same capacity in a special mission to +the Vatican in 1484. He became secretary (_escrivão da nossa camara_) +to King João II, and succeeded Lucena as _Cronista Môr_ in 1497. +Both King João II and King Manuel showed their appreciation of his +services, and Barros lent authority to a foolish story that Afonso de +Albuquerque sent him rubies and diamonds from India as a reminder, in +Corrêa’s phrase, to _glorificar as cousas de Afonso de Albuquerque_. +Ruy de Pina in his chronicles of King Duarte and Afonso V used material +collected by Fernam Lopez and Zurara, and he in turn left material +for the reign of King Manuel of which Damião de Goes availed himself, +while his _Cronica de D. João II_ was laid under contribution by Garcia +de Resende. It may be doubted whether the _Cronica de D. Afonso V_ +contains much that is not Ruy de Pina’s own. It was poetical justice +that the interest of the story should be transferred from the Infante +Henrique to the Infante Pedro.[187] His death and that of the Conde de +Abranches at Alfarrobeira are told with the most impressive simplicity, +which produces a far greater effect than the long _exclamação_ that +follows. Lacking Lopez’ genius, but possessed of an excellent plain +style, which only becomes flowery on occasion, and on his guard against +what he calls the _vicio e avorrecimento da proluxidade_, Pina relates +his story straightforwardly, almost in the form of annals. He does not +attempt to eke out his matter with rhetoric and has chapters of under +fifty words. The _Cronica de D. Afonso V_ effectively contrasts the +characters of the weak and chivalrous Afonso, who is praised as man but +not as king, and the vigorous practical João II, and has an inimitable +scene of the meeting of the former and Louis XI at Tours in 1476. The +glow of Fernam Lopez is absent, but Pina none the less deserves to be +accounted an able and impartial historian. + +To the fifteenth century belongs the _Cronica do Infante Santo_. It +is impossible to read unmoved the clear and unaffected story of the +sufferings and death (1437-43), as a captive of Fez, of this the +most saintly of the sons of King João I and Queen Philippa. It was +written at the bidding of his brother, Prince Henry the Navigator, +with the skill born of a fervent devotion, by FREI JOÃO ALVAREZ, an +eyewitness[188] of D. Fernando’s misfortunes and one of the few of his +companions to survive (till 1470 or later). A curious indication of +the writer’s accuracy in detail is the correct spelling of a Basque +name,[189] of the meaning of which he was probably ignorant. + +The founder of the dynasty of Avis, KING JOÃO I (1365-1433), found +time in his busy reign of forty-eight years to encourage literature, +ardently assisted no doubt by English Queen Philippa, and was himself +an author. His keen practical spirit turned to Portuguese prose, and +while as a poet he confined himself to a few prayers and psalms, in +prose he caused to be translated the Hours of the Virgin and the +greater part of the New Testament, as well as foreign works such as +John Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_ (_c._ 1383), and himself wrote a +long treatise on the chase. This _Livro da Montaria_, which has little +but the title in common with Alfonso XI’s _Libro de Montería_, lay +unpublished for four centuries, but is now available in a scholarly +edition by Dr. Esteves Pereira from the manuscript in the Lisbon +Biblioteca Nacional. Valuable and interesting in itself, this book is +of great significance in Portuguese literature by reason of the impulse +thus given to Portuguese prose. It is impossible as yet to estimate +the full value of the prose works that followed: many are lost, others +remain in manuscript, as the _Orto do Sposo_ by Frei Hermenegildo de +Tancos, or the _Livro das Aves_. But with King João’s son and successor +Portuguese prose came into its kingdom. + +Punctilious and affectionate, gifted with many virtues and graces, the +half-English KING DUARTE (1391-1438), _o Eloquente_, shared the high +ideals of all the sons of João I. Liable to fits of melancholy, and +of less active disposition than his brothers Henrique and Pedro, he +proved himself not less gallant in action than they at the taking of +Ceuta in 1415, and had even earlier been entrusted by his father with +affairs of State. His scruples as philosopher-or rather student-king +during his unhappy reign of five years may have hampered his decisions, +but his love of truth made the saying _palavra de rei_ proverbial. +The corroding cares of State prevented him from giving all the time +he would have wished to literary studies, but he was a methodical +collector of books[190] and papers written by himself and others, and +his great work, _Leal Conselheiro_ (_c._ 1430), consisted of such +a collection on moral philosophy and practical conduct, addressed +to his wife, Queen Lianor. It contains 102 chapters, often stray +papers, sometimes translated from other authors.[191] Besides a +detailed consideration of virtues and vices which are treated with an +Aristotelian precision, and always with preference for the Portuguese +as opposed to the latinized word, it has chapters on the art of +translation, food, chapel services, and other subjects.[192] The book +reveals a character of rare charm, combining humility with a clear +instinct for what was right, humanity with common sense. His literary +genius was akin to that of his father; he scarcely possessed poetical +talent, although he translated in verse the Latin hymn _Juste Judex_, +and possessed in his library a _Livro das Trovas del Rei_, in all +probability a collection of the poems of others. Wit and originality +he also lacked. But as a prose-writer he ranks among the greatest +Portuguese authors, and in style was indeed something of an innovator, +using words with an exactness and scrupulous nicety hitherto unknown +in Portugal. He gave the matter long and serious consideration, and +the directness of his style corresponds to his sincerity of thought. +His clear, concise sentences and careful choice of words show a true +artist of unerring instinct in prose.[193] King Duarte wished to be +read as Sainte-Beuve recommended that one should read the _Caractères_ +of La Bruyère: _peu et souvent_ (_pouco ... tornando algũas vezes_). +The first part of the precept has been followed, but unhappily for +Portuguese prose the second has been neglected. In his youth the king +was noted for his horsemanship, and his _Livro da Ensinança de bem +cavalgar toda sella_ is a practical treatise based on his personal +experience (_nom screvo do que ouvi_, as he says) begun when he +was prince, laid aside after his accession, and left unfinished at +his death. It is remarkable, like the _Leal Conselheiro_, for the +excellence of its style and the manly, thoughtful character of its +author. But for his premature death, King Duarte might have done for +Portuguese prose what Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel had done for +Castilian. An excellent translator himself, he encouraged translations +into Portuguese, in Portugal and Spain; the Bishop of Burgos, Don +Alonso de Cartagena, translated Cicero for him, and the Dean of +Santiago Aristotle. More active than King Duarte, more literary than +his younger brother Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), D. PEDRO +(1392-1449), created Duke of Coimbra after the capture of Ceuta in +1415, became almost a legendary figure owing to his extensive travels +(1424-8)--_andou as sete partes do mundo_--and his equally exaggerated +reputation as a poet, through confusion with his son the Constable. +Regent from 1438 to 1448, he resigned when the young king, his nephew +and son-in-law, Afonso V, came of age. His enemies succeeded in +effecting his banishment from Court. Civil strife followed, and D. +Pedro fell in a preliminary skirmish at Alfarrobeira in May 1449. Had +he been granted a peaceful old age he would probably occupy a more +important place in Portuguese literature. Apart from the historical +value of his letters, his chief claim to be remembered literarily +consists in the translations from the Latin, principally from Cicero, +undertaken under his supervision or by himself personally, as the _De +Officiis_, which was dedicated to King Duarte and is still unpublished. +The _Trauctado da Uirtuosa Benfeyturia_ was originally a translation by +the prince of Seneca’s _De Beneficiis_. Except the dedication to King +Duarte (between 1430 and 1433), the work as it stands in six books is +properly not D. Pedro’s, since he had not leisure for the corrections +and additions which he wished to make, and accordingly handed over +his translation and the original to his confessor, Frei João Verba, +who made the necessary alterations,[194] and expanded the book from a +literal translation to a paraphrase of the _De Beneficiis_. The reader +who does not bear this in mind might be startled to find references +in a work of Seneca’s to St. Thomas, Nun’ Alvarez, the noble knight +Abraham, or the virtuous knight Cid Ruy Diaz. The work lacks King +Duarte’s gift of style which set the _Leal Conselheiro_ high above +contemporary prose. + +LOPO DE ALMEIDA, created first Count of Abrantes in 1472,[195] +accompanied D. Lianor, daughter of King Duarte, on her marriage to the +Emperor Frederick III in 1451. In four letters written to King Afonso V +from Italy (February to May 1452) he displays a keen eye for colour and +much directness in description, so that the Emperor bargaining miserly +over the price of damask or the two wealthy Italian dukes so sorrily +horsed (_em sima de senhos rocins magros_) remain in the memory, and +the letters are more original than most of the Portuguese prose of the +century. + +One of the most important early prose works is the _Boosco Delleytoso_ +(1515). It consists of 153 short chapters,[196] and is dedicated (on +the verso of the frontispiece portraying the ‘delightful wood’) to +Queen Lianor, widow of King João II. It is a homily in praise of the +hermit’s life of solitude and against worldly joys and traffics, and +is marked by a pleasant quaintness, an intense and excellent style, +a fervent humanity and love of Nature. The hermit’s independent +and healthy life[197] is contrasted with that of the merchant in +cities.[198] In chapter I the repentant sinner is introduced in ‘a +very thick wood of very fair trees in which many birds sang very +sweetly’ near ‘a very fair field full of many herbs and scented +flowers’--_frolles de boo odor_. He prays to be delivered from this +darkness of death, and a very fair youth appears ‘clothed in clothes of +gleaming fire and his face shone as the sun when it rises in the season +of great heat’. His ‘glorious guide’, _grorioso guyador_, leads him to +a _dona sabedor_ and to _dom francisco solitario_, who in a _fremoso +fallamento_ praises the solitary life and condemns those who are puffed +up with the conceit of learning, in itself ‘a very fair thing’. He +tells of the lives of saintly hermits; St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, +Dom Seneca, Dom Cicero, _a mui comfortosa donzella_, and others exhort +the sinner to leave the world, and he ends by relating his frequent +raptures until his soul is carried to the _terra perduravil_. In its +main subject, praise of the solitary life, the book recalls the title +of the treatise ascribed to D. Philippa de Lencastre: _Tratado da Vida +Solitaria_, a translation or adaptation from the Latin of Laurentius +Justinianus.[199] The latter’s _De Vita Solitaria_ is, however, quite +different from the _Boosco deleytoso_, which was probably composed +before the birth of D. Philippa (1437). + +Another remarkable early work is the anonymous _Corte Imperial_ (14th +or early 15th c.), the language of which often bears traces of a +Latin original.[200] Many of its sentences are veritable _dobres_ and +_mordobres_ in prose,[201] and to a superficial reader will have little +meaning; but in fact this mystic treatise is closely reasoned. It +may have some connexion with similar works by Juda Levi, Ramon Lull, +and Don Juan Manuel. In a _corte_ or parliament the Church Militant, +in the person of a ‘glorious Catholic Queen’ argues with Gentile, +Moor, and Jew on the nature of God and the Trinity. The Gentiles and +Moors gradually accept her doctrines, but the Jewish rabbis prove +more contumacious. Saints and angels and all the company of heaven +discourse sweet music in the intervals of the discussion. One of the +best known of the many other important translations of this time was +the _Flos Sanctorum_ (1513),[202] which begins[203] with extracts from +the Gospels and has a savour of the Bible about its prose. There were +many later versions of the Gospel story, as _A Paxã de Jesu Christo +Nosso Deos e Senhor_, &c. (1551); _Tratado en que se comprende breue +e deuotamente a Vida, Paixão e Resurreição_, &c. (1553); _Traatado em +q̃ se contẽ a paixam de x̃po_, &c. (1589?). But the earliest and most +splendid, an incunable of which Portugal has reason to be proud on +account of its beautiful print, is the _Vita Christi_ (Lixboa, 1495), +translated _em lingoa materna e portugues linguagem_ from the original +of Ludolph von Sachsen by the Cistercian monk Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça +(†1478?), at the bidding of Queen Isabel, sister of the Constable D. +Pedro, in the middle of the fifteenth century (1445). + +Another notable translation for the same queen is the _Espelho de +Christina_ (1518),[204] from the French of Christine de Pisan: +_Livre des trois vertus pour l’enseignement des princesses_ (1497). +The Portuguese manuscript, translated from the French manuscript +nearly half a century before the latter appeared in print,[205] was +published at the bidding of Queen Lianor (wife of João II), who so +keenly encouraged Portuguese art, language, and literature. Her squire +Valentim Fernandez’ version of Marco Polo, _Marco Paulo_, was published +at Lisbon in 1502. The _Espelho de Prefeyçam_ (1533) was translated +from the Latin by the Canons of Santa Cruz, Coimbra, and edited by Bras +de Barros (_c._ 1500-59), Bishop of Leiria and cousin of the historian +João de Barros. A Portuguese version of a scriptural work entitled +_Sacramental_, originally written in Spanish by Clemente Sanchez de +Vercial, was published apparently in 1488 (it would thus be one of the +earliest books printed in Portugal), and was reprinted at Lisbon in +1502. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[162] Lopez himself was probably of humble birth. It appears from +a document presented by Dr. Pedro de Azevedo at a meeting of the +_Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos Historicos_ in July 1916 that his +wife’s niece was married to a shoe-maker. + +[163] Zurara, _Cron. D. Joam_, cap. 2. + +[164] i.e. eighty-nine years before the first English translation of +Froissart was published. Needless to say, no English translation of +Lopez exists. + +[165] A facsimile of a page of this lengthy document is given in Snr. +Braamcamp Freire’s excellent edition of the _Primeira Parte da Crónica +de D. Joam I_ (1915). + +[166] See A. Braamcamp Freire, ibid., pp. xl-xlii. + +[167] _Fez todas as chronicas dos Reis té seu tempo, começando do +Conde dom Henrique, como prova Damião de Goes_ (Gaspar Estaço, _Varias +Antigvidades de Portugal_ (1625), cap. 21, § 1); cf. Goes, _Cron. de D. +Manuel_, iv. 38. + +[168] _Nosso desejo foi em esta obra escrever verdade--nuamente--a nua +verdade_ (_Cr. D. Joam_, _Prologo_). + +[169] Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 2. Cf. Lopez’ preface to his _Cr. +D. Joam_: _Oo com quamto cuidado e diligemçia vimos gramdes vollumes +de livros, de desvairadas linguageẽs e terras; e isso meesmo pubricas +escprituras de muitos cartarios e outros logares nas quaaes depois de +longas vegilias e gramdes trabalhos mais çertidom aver nom podemos da +contheuda em esta obra_ (1915 ed., p. 2). + +[170] Usually he does this without naming the offender, but he refutes +the _razões_ of Martim Afonso de Mello, a person well known at the +Court of King João I and author of a technical book on the art of war, +_Da Guerra_ (see Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 99). Mello refused the +governorship of captured Ceuta in 1415. A work on a similar subject, +_Tratado da Milicia_, is ascribed to Zurara’s friend and patron. King +Afonso V (Barbosa Machado, i. 19). + +[171] _Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 2: _a ordenança de nossa obra_; _Cr. +D. Joam_, 1915 ed., p. 51: _Certo he que quaaesquer estorias muito +melhor se entemdem e nembram se som perfeitamente e hem hordenadas_; +_Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 139: _guardando a regra do philosopho_ [of +cause and effect]. + +[172] _Antología_, iv, p. xx: _Nada hay semejante en las literaturas +extranjeras antes de fin del siglo xv._ The words apply more accurately +to Fernam Lopez. + +[173] _Leixados os compostos e afeitados razoamentos_ (_Cr. D. Joam_, +_Prologo_). + +[174] The references in cap. 76 and 80 to events of 1451 and 1461 are +evidently later additions. + +[175] Cf. _Cr. do Cond._, cap. 14 and 15, with _Cr. del Rei Fern._, +cap. 166. + +[176] A. Braamcamp Freire, _Cr. de D. Joam_ (1915), _Introdução_, p. +xxi. + +[177] By Matheus de Pisano (whom some have considered the son of +Christine de Pisan). He wrote in Latin: _De Bello Septensi_ (_Ined. +de Hist. Port._, vol. i, 1790), Portuguese tr. Roberto Correia Pinto: +_Livro da Guerra de Ceuta_ (1916). + +[178] _Não seja porem algum de tam simples conhecimento que presuma que +este é o teor propria_, &c. (cap. 95). + +[179] But he can also be picturesque in expressing time (like Lopez, +who for ‘early morning’ says, ‘at the time when people were coming from +Mass’), e.g. _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 102 _ad fin._: Ceuta had been captured +so swiftly that ‘many had left the corn of their fields stored in their +granaries and returned in time for the vintage’. The whole description +of the expedition against Ceuta and the attack and sack of the city are +extremely clear. + +[180] Cf. Goes, _Cr. D. Manuel_: _escrevia com razoamentos prolixos e +cheos de metaforicas figuras que no estilo historico não tem lugar_; +_Cr. do Princ. D. Joam_, cap. 17: _com a superflua abundancia e copia +de palavras poeticas e metaforicas que usou em todalas cousas que +screveo_. His style is less involved than is often said. Some of his +sentences may contain as many as 500 words and yet be perfectly plain +and straightforward, whereas Mallarmé could be obscure in five words. + +[181] Cf. cap. 2: _Oo tu principe pouco menos que devinal!_ and _Tua +gloria, teus louvores, tua fama enchem assi as minhas orelhas e ocupam +a minha vista que nom sei a qual parte acuda primeiro._ This chronicle +has the same plethora of learned quotations. Chapter 1 quotes St. +Thomas, Solomon, Tully, the Book of Esther, and introduces Afonso V, +King Duarte, the French duke Jean de Lançon, the Cid, Nun’ Alvarez, +Moses, Fabricius, Joshua, and King Ramiro. + +[182] He re-wrote the _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses_ twice. +João de Barros, who was inclined to slight earlier and contemporary +historians, acknowledges his great debt to Zurara. Damião de Goes +regards him less favourably. + +[183] November 22, 1467 (_Coll. Liv. Ined._ iii. 3-5). There is also an +affectionate letter from King Pedro of Aragon to Zurara, dated June 11, +1466, or 1460. + +[184] Zurara, on the other hand, with feigned diffidence represents +himself as ‘a poor scholar’, ‘a man almost entirely ignorant and +without any knowledge’, and if he has any learning it is but the crumbs +from King Afonso’s table (_Cr. D. Pedro_, cap. 2). He can rise to +real eloquence, as in the beginning of cap. 25 of the _Cr. da Guiné_: +_Oo tu cellestrial padre, que com tua poderosa maão, sem movimento +de tu devynal essencia, governas toda a infiinda companhya da tua +sancta cidade_, &c., or sober down into a Tacitean phrase such as +that of cap. 26, describing the fate of natives of Africa brought to +Portugal: _morriam, empero xraãos_ (they died, but Christians). He has +a misleading trick of saying ‘The author says--_diz o autor_’, meaning +himself. + +[185] _Nunca me em ello quis leixar obrar segundo meu desejo_ (_Cr. D. +Pedro_, cap. 1). + +[186] His son Fernam de Pina became _Cronista Môr_ in 1523. The +immediate successor of Zurara as _Cronista Môr_ was VASCO FERNANDEZ +DE LUCENA, whose life must have coincided almost exactly with the +sixteenth century. He represented King Duarte at the Council of Basel +in 1435, and according to Barbosa Machado, who calls him _um dos varões +mais famosos da sua idade assim na profundidade da litteratura como na +eloquencia da frase_, he was still living in 1499. Unfortunately none +of his works have survived. His manuscript translation of Cicero’s _De +Senectute_ and other works were destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake +(1755). + +[187] Much later, in the first third of the seventeenth century, +CASPAR DIAZ DE LANDIM wrote a _copiosa relação_ from a point of view +unfavourable to D. Pedro and dedicated it to the Duke of Braganza: _O +Infante D. Pedro, Chronica Inedita_, 3 vols. (1893-4). + +[188] _Tudo o contheudo no siguiente trautado eu o uy e ouuy_ (1911 +ed., p. 2). + +[189] 1911 ed., p. 117: Ichoa (= Blind). The fact that no other name is +given shows that then as now Basques were known by their nicknames. The +same name figures in ‘Pierre Loti’s’ _Ramuntcho_ (1897): Itchoua. In +the sixteenth century Martim Ichoa and João de Ychoa appear among the +_moradores_ of King Manuel’s household (1518). The substantive _ichó_ +(= _armadilha_), derived from _ostiolum_, is used by Diogo Fernandez +Ferreira (_Arte da Caça_) and Garcia de Resende (_Cron. João II_). + +[190] The extremely interesting list of his important library has been +published in _Provas Genealogicas_, i. 544, in the 1842 ed. of _Leal +Conselheiro_, and edited by Dr. T. Braga in _Historia da Univ. de +Coimbra_, i. 209. It contained _O Acypreste de Fysa_ (= the Archpriest +of Hita) and _O Amante_, i. e. the translation by Robert Payne, Canon +of Lisbon, of Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_. + +[191] p. 9, _Fiz tralladar em el alguus capitullos doutros livros_: the +_Vita Christi_, St. Thomas Aquinas, Diogo Afonso Mangancha on Prudence, +Cicero, _De Officiis_, St. Gregory. + +[192] It contains papers written at various times (between 1428 and +1438). The date 1435 occurs p. 474. Cf. p. 169, King João I (†1433), +_cuja alma Deos aja_. + +[193] His modern editor, José Ignacio Roquette (1801-70), comments (p. +37) on the passage _he bem de lavrar e criarem_ as a great grammatical +_discordancia_ and _erro_, but it is by no means certain that King +Duarte did not omit one of the personal infinitives deliberately, for +the sake of euphony, as the _-mente_ is omitted in the case of two or +more adverbs. + +[194] _Corregendo e acrecentando o que entendeo ser compridoiro acabou +o liuro adeante scripto._ + +[195] Damião de Goes (_Cr. do Pr. D. Joam_, cap. 88) says 1476. His +father Diogo Fernandez was _Reposteiro Môr_ at the Court of King +Duarte, and his mother a half-sister of the Archbishop of Braga. One of +his sons was the famous and unfortunate Viceroy of India (1505-9), D. +Francisco de Almeida. + +[196] Seventy-four black-letter double column folios, unnumbered, of +fifty lines each. The colophon runs: _Acabouse do_ [so] _emprimir este +lyuro chamado boosco delleytoso solitario p. Hermã de cãpos bombardeiro +del Rey nosso Sẽhor cõ graça & preuilegio de sua alteza em ha muy +nobrem_ [so] _& sempre leal çidad_ [so] _de lixboa cõ muy grande +dilligencia. Ano da encarnaçã de nosso Saluador & Redentor jhesu x̃po. +De mil & quinientos & quinze a vinte quatro de Mayo_ (_Bib. Nacional +de Lisboa_, Res. 176 A [lacking f. 1]). Nicolás Antonio thus refers +to the work (_Bib. Nova_, ii. 402): _Anonymus, Lusitanus, scripsit & +nuncupavit Serenissimae Eleonorae Reginae Ioanis II Portugalliae Regis +Coniugi librum ita inscriptum. Bosco deleitoso. Olisipone 1515._ + +[197] He can do _ho que lhe praz_; at sunrise he goes up _alguũ outeiro +de boo & saaom aar_ far from the _delleytaçoões do mundo_, _arroydo do +segre_ and _os auollimentos & trasfegos das çidades_. + +[198] The _malauẽturado negociador que ̃qr seer rico tostemẽte_. + +[199] See _Grundriss_, p. 249, and _Divi Lavrentii Ivstiniani +Protopatriarchae Veneti opera Omnia_ (Coloniae, 1616), pp. 728-70: _De +Vita Solitaria_. + +[200] Cf. 1910 ed., pp. 1, 4. The writer claims to be only a compiler: +_começo este livro nom como autor e achador das cousas em elle +contheudas mas como simprez aiuntador dellas em huũ vellume_. It has +been attributed to the Infante D. Pedro and to João I. + +[201] e.g. p. 85: _Ca per entender entende o entendedor e per entender +é entendido o entendido e o entendedor entende que elle mesmo é Deos._ + +[202] The title is simply _Ho Flos Sctõrȝ em lingoajẽ ̃porgueˢ_. The +colophon says that it _se chama ystorea lombarda pero comuũmente se +chama flos sanctorum_. + +[203] _Aqui se começa ha payxam do eterno Principe christo Jhesu nosso +Senhor & saluador segundo os sanctos quatro euangelistas._ + +[204] The only known copy exists in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. +The colophon (in Spanish) gives the alternative title (_das tres +virtudes_). The French original was also called _Trésor de la Cité des +Dames_. + +[205] See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições de Philologia Portuguesa_, +p. 137. + + + + + § 4 + + _The Cancioneiro Geral_ + + +The silence that falls on Portuguese poetry after the early +_Cancioneiros_ lasts for over a century, scarcely interrupted by the +twilight murmurings of the later Galician poets, and is only broken +for us by the publication of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ five years before +the death of King Manuel. The native _trovas_ had no doubt continued +to be written by many poets in a country where poetry is scarcely +rarer than prose, far commoner than good prose. But no one had cared +to preserve them in a collection corresponding to the _Cancionero de +Baena_ in Spain. When Portuguese poetry again emerges into the clear +light of day Spanish influence is in full swing and behind it looms +that of Italian poetry, the natural continuation of one side of the +_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_. No Spanish poet now writes in Portuguese, +many Portuguese in Spanish. Popular poetry and royal troubadours have +alike disappeared, leaving a narrow circle of Court rhymesters. It is +to one of these that we owe the collection which embraces the poetry +of the day, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the actual +year of publication, 1516. Stout, good-natured GARCIA DE RESENDE (_c._ +1470-1536), a favourite alike with king and courtiers, often the butt +of the Court poets’ wit--he is a tunny, a barrel, a wineskin, a melon +in August--belonged to an old family which in the sixteenth century +distinguished itself in literature. Born at Evora and brought up in +the palace as page and then as secretary of King João II, he had every +opportunity of observing the events which he so graphically describes +in his _Vida de Dom João II_ (1545).[206] Talented and many-sided, +Resende continued in high favour during the succeeding reigns: in +1498 as secretary he accompanied King Manuel to Castille and Aragon, +and in 1514 was chosen for the much coveted post of secretary to +Tristão da Cunha’s mission to Rome with wonderful presents for Pope +Leo X. Resende not only drew and wrote verses but was a musician and +an accomplished singer: _de tudo intende_ laughed his friend Gil +Vicente. Perhaps it only required the stress of adversity to inspire +to greatness this blunted, prosperous courtier--_fidalgo da casa del +Rei_. He was not a great poet, although he excelled the Court poets of +the fifteenth century. As historian he has been unjustly condemned. If +in his Chronicle of João II he made use of Ruy de Pina’s manuscript +chronicle, first published in 1792, it must be remembered that it was +customary for the official historians to regard their predecessors as +existing mainly for purposes of plagiarism. Herculano called Resende’s +chronicle a poor bundle of anecdotes,[207] and no doubt Resende was not +a Herculano nor a Fernam Lopez but a more limited Court chronicler. +He is none the less delightful because he deals not in tendencies +and abstractions but in concrete details and persons, Court persons. +With an artist’s eye for the picturesque he makes his readers see the +event described, and his chronicle is throughout singularly vivid and +dramatic. He is certainly an attractive writer, and perhaps he is +also instructive. The incident, for instance, of the Duke of Braganza +being kept waiting while a scaffold of the latest Paris pattern is +being erected for his execution (1483), which a grander historian +might have omitted, is possibly not without its significance and +shows _francesismo_ in action four centuries before Eça de Queiroz. +Besides various minor works in prose Resende composed, not without +misgiving,[208] a long survey of the events of his day in some 300 +_decimas_: _Miscellania e Variedade de Historias_, which throws curious +and valuable light on the times. His literary work was prompted by a +real desire to serve his country. His delicate appreciation of the +past appears in his remarkable and charming verses on the death of +Inés de Castro; and wishing in so far as lay in his power to remedy +the Portuguese neglect which had allowed so many poems and records and +_gentilezas_ to perish, he collected what he could of past and present +poets and published them in one great volume which he dedicated to +the Infante João: _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516), often known as the +_Cancioneiro de Resende_ to distinguish it from the Spanish _Cancionero +General_ (1511). Resende wrote to the poets of his acquaintance +requesting them in verse to send him their poems, and they sent him +answers, also in verse, accompanying their poems.[209] The receipt of +these he would acknowledge as editor, promising, still in verse, to +have them printed. Politeness no doubt induced him to include more +than his judgement warranted, for his own poems are superior to those +of most of his contemporaries. A large number of the _Cancioneiro’s_ +poems--some 1,000 poems by between 100 and 200 poets--should scarcely +have been included, for, however well they might answer their purpose +as occasional verse, they were not intended as a possession for ever, +and massed together produce an effect of dull and endless triviality. +These love poems can indeed be as monotonous, the satiric poems as +coarse, licentious, and irreverent, as those of the _Cancioneiro da +Vaticana_. One of the poets, D. João Manuel, like King Alfonso X of +old, does beseech his colleagues to cease singing of Cupid and Macias +and turn to religious subjects. But it was not Garcia de Resende’s +purpose to include religious verse. Poems recording great deeds and +occasions he would gladly have printed in larger number, but, as he +(among others) complained in his preface, it was characteristic of the +Portuguese not to record their deeds in literary form. Satiric verses +he included in plenty, satire being one of the recognized functions +of the poet’s art: _per trouas sam castigados_.[210] But if we turn +to the poems of his collection we are amazed by the pettiness of the +subjects, and our amazement grows when we remember that this was the +period in the world’s whole history most calculated to awe and inspire +men’s minds with the thought of vast new horizons. While Columbus +was discovering America, Bartholomeu Diaz rounding the Cape of Good +Hope, Vasco da Gama sailing to India, or Afonso de Albuquerque making +desperate appeals for men and money to enable him to maintain his +brilliant conquests, the Court poets were versifying on an incorrectly +addressed letter, a lock of hair, a dingy head-dress, a very lean +and aged mule, the sad fate of a lady marrying away from the Court +in Beira, a quarrel between a tenor and soprano, a courtier’s velvet +cap or hat of blue silk, a button more or less on a coat, the length +of spurs, fashions in sleeves: themes, as José Agostinho de Macedo +might say, ‘prodigiously frivolous’. When news reached Lisbon of the +tragic death of D. Francisco de Almeida and of the defeat of Afonso +de Albuquerque[211] and the Marshal D. Fernando de Coutinho before +Calicut, with the death of the latter, Bras da Costa wrote to Garcia +de Resende that at this rate he would prefer to have no pepper, and +Resende answered that for his part he certainly had no intention of +embarking. But, as a rule, such events received not even so trivial a +comment, and no doubt the poets felt that the verse which served to +pass the time at the _serões_ was inadequate to any great occasion. +But the _trovador segundo as trovas de aquelle tempo_[212] had little +idea of what subjects were suitable or unsuitable to poetry. A typical +instance of the themes in which they delighted is an event which seems +to have produced a greater impression than the discovery of new worlds: +the return from Castille of a gentleman of the Portuguese Court wearing +a large velvet cap. For over 300 lines of verse this cap is bandied +to and fro by the witty poets. It must weigh four hundredweight, says +one. Another advises him to lock it up _em arcaaz_ until he can turn it +into a doublet; another bids him sell it in the Jews’ quarter. Small +wonder, chimes in a fourth, that no galleys come now with velvet from +Venice.[213] ‘I would not wear it at a _serão_, not for a million,’ +says another. ‘A Samson could not wear it all one summer,’ is the +comment of a sixth. Another remarks that he would rather read Lucan +(or Lucian) (_antes leria por luçam_) in the heat of the day than +wear it. ‘He will need a cart to bring it to the _serão_,’ says yet +another. The wit, it will be seen, is not brilliant, although it may +have effectively nipped this budding Castilian fashion and enlivened an +evening. But there were duller contests. For score on score of pages +the rival merits of sighing and of loving in silence are discussed by +poet after poet (_O Cuidar e Sospirar_). Such a subject once started +tended to accumulate verses like a snowball. But the _Cancioneiro_ +also contains poems on serious topics, although they are rarer, as +well as delicate, airy nothings (_sutiles nadas_) like Vimioso’s +_vilancetes_.[214] There are two poems on the death of King João II, +there is Luis Anriquez’ lamentation on the death of the Infante Afonso +(1491), that of Luis de Azevedo on the death of the Infante Pedro, Duke +of Coimbra, at Alfarrobeira, and a few poets, like Resende himself, +stand out from the rest. Besides the elaborate Spanish poem by that +noble prince the Constable D. Pedro we have several long poems dealing +with high matters of the soul or the State. The sixty-one interesting +stanzas by the querulous, satirical, intolerant ALVARO DE BRITO +PESTANA treat of the condition of the city of Lisbon and the decay of +morals. The correspondent of Gomez Manrique and contemporary of his +nephew Jorge, in the metre of whose famous _Coplas_ he wrote, he was +present at the battle of Alfarrobeira. His _trovas_ on the death of +Prince Afonso, with the recurrent _choremos perda tamanha_, are wooden +and artificial and his sixteen alliterative verses scarcely belong +to literature, but at least he chose themes which were not concerned +with passing Court fashions. The few simple lines written as he lay +dying show him at his best.[215] His friend and distant relative +FERNAM DA SILVEIRA, _o Coudel Môr_, is concerned with more mundane +matters. A man of noble birth and high character, he was held in great +honour by Afonso V and João II. The latter, a keen judge of men, had +implicit confidence in the justice of this upright magistrate, who +was also a soldier, a poet, and a finished courtier. He deals with +affairs of State, writes an account in _trovas_ of six syllables of +the _Cortes_ held by the king at Montemôr in 1477 and a short poem, on +the appointment of various bishops in 1485. Or he sends a poem to his +nephew Garcia de Mello with detailed instructions as to how he should +dress and behave at Court. His _trovas_ are thoroughly Portuguese, +vigorous, concise, and picturesque. He is less at home in the _trovas +de poesia_ (i. e. _de arte mayor_) written on a journey from Évora to +Thomar, but he could skilfully turn a short love poem, and for a wager +of capons for Easter (with Álvaro de Brito) wrote a stanza containing +as many rhymes as it has words. In fine he belonged to his age, but +his poetry bears the impress of his strong character and his love of +Portuguese ways. On the other hand, the younger brother of the Conde +de Cantanhede, D. JOÃO DE MENESES (†1514), wrote indifferently in +Portuguese or Spanish. He fought for many years in Africa, although +his slight love poems, fluent and harmonious, give no sign of a life +of action, and died in the expedition against Azamor.[216] Another +soldier, courtier, and poet marked out by birth and ability was D. JOÃO +MANUEL (_c._ 1460-99), son of the Bishop of Guarda. Legitimized in 1475 +and brought up at Court with the prince Manuel, he continued to be a +favourite after the latter’s accession, became Lord High Chamberlain, +and was sent to the Court of Castille in 1499 to arrange the marriage +of the king with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. In Spanish +octaves he had written a lament on the death of Prince Afonso, which +both in feeling and technique excels the verses of Álvaro de Brito on +the same subject. Towards the end of his poem he introduces the saying +of St. Augustine that ‘our soul exists not where it lives but where +it loves’, which in the following century was quoted by two writers +so different as Ferreira de Vasconcellos and Frei Heitor Pinto and +soon became a commonplace. In other works he shows a high seriousness, +sometimes a sententious strain, combined with a very real poetical +talent. His death during his mission to Castille was a loss for the +Court and for Portuguese poetry. By another writer, FERNAM DA SILVEIRA +(†1489), we have but a few poems, the principal of which is a lament +for his own death, in the metre of Manrique, which he places on the +lips of various ladies of the Court. His death was tragic, for, having +succeeded his father as secretary to King João II, he took part in +the ill-fated conspiracy of the Duke of Viseu. After lying hidden in +the house of a friend he fled in disguise to Castille and thence to +France, but, although he thus succeeded in prolonging his life for +five years, the king’s justice relentlessly pursued and he was stabbed +to death at Avignon. A favourite of João II, especially before his +accession, was NUNO PEREIRA (fl. 1485), _homem galante, cortesão e bom +trovador_, who married the daughter of the _Coudel Môr_ and valiantly +sustained the part of _Cuidar_ against his relative Jorge da Silveira’s +_Sospirar_ in the great literary tournament of the courtiers. Later, +after serving as Governor (_Alcaide_) of the town of Portel, he retired +to live in the country, and presents a happy picture of himself in the +midst of harvesters and pruners. He finds, he says, more pleasure in +his vines, in the chase, in digging and watering his garden, than in +being a favourite at Court. He had not always thought thus, for when +the lady he was courting married a rival he could devise no worse fate +for her than to bid her go and die among the chestnut groves of Beira. +He had, indeed, made a name for himself by his courtly satire, which +he turned to good use in ridiculing those who came back from Castille +with a supercilious disdain for everything Portuguese. It is pleasant +to find him bidding them not speak their ‘insipid Castilian’ in his +presence. DIOGO BRANDAM (†1530) of Oporto wrote an elaborate poem in +octaves on the death of King João II. He also used the octosyllabic +metre with breaks of single lines (_quebrados_) of four syllables, so +familiar in Gil Vicente’s plays, and in his _Fingimento de Amores_ +(27 verses of 8 octosyllabic lines), under Spanish-Italian influence, +he touches a richer, more generous vein of poetry: the poet-lover +descends into the region of Proserpine, the dominion of Pluto, and sees +the torments of Love’s followers. His _vilancete_ to the Virgin is in +the same metre with the difference that the verses have seven lines +only (_abbaacc_). The spirit of Jorge de Manrique is absent from the +stanzas written in the metre of his _Coplas_ by LUIS ANRIQUEZ on the +fatal accident which ended the life of Prince Afonso in his teens. +His lamentation on the death of King João II is written in octaves, as +that of Diogo Brandam, which they resemble. Both poets invoke Death: _Ó +morte que matas quem é prosperado_ (Brandam); _Ó morte que matas sem +tempo e sazam_ (Anriquez). Other historical poems by Anriquez in the +same metre are the verses written on the occasion of the transference +of the remains of João II and thirty-five stanzas addressed to James, +Duke of Braganza, when he left Lisbon with his fleet to attack Azamor +in 1513. If we turn from these somewhat heavy pieces to Anriquez’ +other poems we find a hymn in praise of the Virgin, written more in +the manner of Alfonso X, and various love _cantigas_. The nephew of +D. João de Meneses, Joam rroiz de saa, that is, JOAM RODRIGUEZ DE +SÁ E MENESES (1465?-1576), studied in Italy as a disciple of Angelo +Poliziano (†1594) and died a centenarian. He wrote a poem in _decimas_ +describing the arms of the noble families of Portugal, and translated +into _trovas_ three long letters from the Latin which by their spirit +of _saudade_ appealed to Portuguese taste: Penelope to Ulysses, +Laodamia to Protesilaus, and Dido to Aeneas. He was also versed in +the Greek language, and for his noble character and courtly ways as +well as for his learning and poetical talent was venerated by the +younger generation into which he lived: Antonio Ferreira salutes him +as the ‘ancient sire of the muses of this land’. The ‘most discreet’ +D. FRANCISCO DE PORTUGAL, first Conde de Vimioso (†1549), although he +did not live to be a centenarian, also survived most of the poets of +João II’s reign and died towards the end of that of João III. Son of +the Bishop of Evora and great-grandson of the first Duke of Braganza, +he was created a count by King Manuel in 1515, and was equally renowned +as soldier, statesman, courtier, and poet, ‘wise and prudent in peace +and war’. His _Sentenças_ (1605), over one hundred of which are rhymed +quatrains, were published by his grandson D. Anrique de Portugal. Some +of these moral sayings have considerable subtlety, and they reveal a +fine character and insight into the character of others.[217] Most of +his poems, in Spanish and Portuguese, preserved in the _Cancioneiro_ +are brief _cantigas_ which prove him to have been a skillful versifier +and a typical Court poet. On the other hand, a feeling for Nature, a +constant command of metre, and a certain passionate sadness mark out +an earlier poet, DUARTE DE BRITO (fl. 1490), the friend of D. João +de Meneses, from most of the other writers in Resende’s song-book. +The _redondilha_ in his hands is no wooden toy but a living, moving +instrument. His most celebrated poem, _em que conta o que a ele & a +outro lhaconteçeo com huũ rrousinol & muitas outras cousas que vio_, +is written after the fashion of Diogo Brandam’s _Fingimento de Amores_ +and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz’ _Infierno de Amor_, in imitation of the +Marqués de Santillana’s _El Infierno de los Enamorados_; but there +is real feeling in these eighty verses of eleven lines (of which the +eighth and eleventh are of four, the rest of eight syllables). The +Italian influence, working through Spanish, was already present in +Portuguese poetry in the fifteenth century, although Brito writes +exclusively in _redondilhas_, as indeed does the introducer of the new +style, Sá de Miranda, in the few and short poems which he contributed +to the _Cancioneiro_ immediately before its publication. Duarte de +Brito did not condescend to those artificial devices which give us +in this _Cancioneiro_ a poem of sixty lines all ending in _dos_, +alliterative stanzas, and other verbal tricks. The real business of the +_serões_, so far as poetry was concerned, was _ouvir e glosar motes_. +These _glosas_ and the similar _cantigas_ and _esparsas_, short poems +of fixed form, often written with skill and spontaneous charm, were +merely one of the necessary accomplishments of a courtier. Such a view +of poetry could scarcely give rise to great poets, and these versifiers +indeed styled themselves _trovadores_, reserving the name of poet for +those who wrote, often but clumsily, in _versos de arte mayor, de muita +poesia_. But, worse still, the poets of the _Cancioneiro_ were often +scarcely Portuguese.[218] Many wrote in Spanish, and Spanish influence +is to be found at every turn: that of Juan de Mena, Gomez and Jorge +Manrique, Rodriguez de la Cámara, Macias, Santillana. Unlike Macias, +who is but a name, Santillana is not mentioned, but his influence is +constantly felt. On the other hand, King Dinis, unexpectedly introduced +once as a poet by Pedro Homem (fl. 1490)--_invoco el rei dom Denis +Da licença Daretusa_--is nowhere imitated. By method, subject, and +foreign imitation, this Court poetry was thus inevitably artificial and +uninspired. Perhaps in the whole _Cancioneiro_ the only poem marked by +authentic fire is that of the obscure FRANCISCO DE SOUSA--the few lines +beginning _Ó montes erguidos, Deixai-vos cair_. The contributions of Sá +de Miranda, as those of three other famous poets, give no sign of the +coming greatness of the contributor. The names of the other three are +Bernardim Ribeiro, Cristovam Falcão, and the prince of all these poets, +here the humblest of Cinderellas, Gil Vicente. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[206] _Historiadores Portugueses_ in _Opusculos_ (1907), ii. 27. +The author of the _Theatrum_ has a similar verdict: _Scripsit +Chronicam Ioannis II ut quidem potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum +magnitudinis._ + +[207] _Sem letras e sem saber_, he says modestly, _me fui nisto meter._ + +[208] The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being +_Lyuro das Obras de Garcia de Resẽde que trata da vida e grãdissimas +virtudes_, &c. + +[209] Or he would seek to obtain them through a friend as in the case +of _o Cancioneiro do abade frei Martinho_ of Alcobaça. It is improbable +that Resende, who valued friendship above good poetry, altered the +manuscripts he received, in spite of Francisco de Sousa’s permission: +_as quaes podeys enmendar_. + +[210] _Prologo._ ‘Had you forgotten that _trovas_ are still written in +Portugal?’ asks Nuno Pereira of one of his victims; and of a dress it +is said that it would be _certo de leuar Trouas de riso e mote_. Cf. +the phrase _dar causa a trovadores_. + +[211] Or Albuquerque would be mentioned in a game of _Porque’s_ (why’s) +common among the _praguentos da India_: _Porque Afonso d’Albuquerque Dá +pareas a el rey de Fez?_ + +[212] Zurara, _Cr. de D. Joam_, cap. 29. + +[213] The _Cancioneiro_ contains many references to Venice. The +_pimenta de Veneza_ mentioned in one of the poems must have sounded +strange to Portuguese readers in 1516. + +[214] e. g. _Meu bem, sem vos ver Se vivo um dia, Viver nam queria. +Caland’ e sofrendo Meu mal sem medida, Mil mortes na vida Sinto nam vos +vendo, E pois que vivendo Moiro toda via, Viver nam queria._ + +[215] _La t’arreda Satanas, Cristo Jesu a ti chamo, A ti amo, Tu Senhor +me salvarás. O sinal da cruz espante Minha torpe tentaçam, Com devaçam +Espero dir adiante._ + +[216] One of his poems has the heading: _Outro vilançete seu estãdo em +Azamor antes ̃q se fynasse_. + +[217] e.g. _A culpa de quem se ama doe mais & perdoase mais asinha, Nam +pede louvor quem o merece, Da fee nace a rezam da fee_, &c. + +[218] D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos goes so far as to call the +Portuguese _Cancioneiro Geral_ a mere supplement or second part of the +Spanish _Cancionero General_ (_Estudos sobre o Romanceiro_, p. 303). + + + + + III + + The Sixteenth Century [1502-80] + + + + + § 1 + + _Gil Vicente_ + + +In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The +discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to +science and literature, also increased religious fervour, since the +Portuguese who contended against the Moors in India were but carrying +on the work of their ancestors five centuries earlier in Portugal. +Old-fashioned Portugal thus only gradually welcomed the Renaissance +and stood firm against the Reformation. But in the reign of João III +(1521-57) the University of Coimbra came to be one of the best-known +universities in Europe. André de Gouvêa (†1548), whom Montaigne called +‘sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France’,[219] and Diogo +de Teive returned from the Collège de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate +its studies, and many of its chairs were offered to distinguished +Portuguese and foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (†1540) and +George Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such +as Antonio de Gouvêa and Achilles Estaço (†1581). Nicholas Cleynarts +or Nicolaus Clenardus (1493 or 1494-1542), Professor of Greek and +Hebrew at Louvain, came to Portugal from Salamanca as tutor to +the Infante Henrique in 1533, and from Portugal wrote some of his +wittiest letters.[220] He found Coimbra a second Athens, and few great +Portuguese writers of the century had not spent some years there or +at the University before it was transferred to Coimbra from Lisbon +in 1537. King João III and especially his son, the young prince João +(1537-54), Cardinal Henrique (1512-80), and the many-sided Infante Luis +(1506-55), _favorecedor de toda habilidad_, himself a poet of no mean +order[221] and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters; the +household of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the ‘home +of the Muses’[222]; learned Luisa Sigea (†1560), of French origin, +but born at Toledo and brought up in Portugal, wrote a Latin poem in +praise of _Syntra_; her sister Angela, Joana Vaz, and Publia Hortensia +de Castro were likewise noted for their learning, and D. Lianor de +Noronha (1488-1563), daughter of Fernando, Marques de Villareal, did +good service to Portuguese prose by her encouragement of translations. +But Portuguese literature lost something by its latinization, and it is +pleasant to turn back half a century to a time when it was humbler and +more national. The ‘very prosperous’ Manuel I, Lord of the Ocean,[223] +Lord of the East,[224] had been seven years king, Vasco da Gama had +returned triumphantly from Calicut (1497-9), Cabral had discovered +Brazil for Portugal (1500), Afonso de Albuquerque (†1515) stood on the +threshold of his career of conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire +was advancing from North Africa to China,[225] the gold and spices were +beginning to arrive in plenty from the East, and hope of honour and +riches was drawing nobleman and peasant to Lisbon, when GIL VICENTE +(_c._ 1465-1536?) introduced the drama into his + + dear, dear land, + Dear for its reputation through the world. + +Dressed as a herdsman on the night of June 7, 1502, he congratulated +the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King João III (born +during the night of June 6), in a Spanish monologue of 114 lines. This +speech gives promise of two qualities apparent in his later work: +extreme naturalness (the embarrassed peasant wonders open-mouthed at +the grand palace and his thoughts turn at once to his village) and +love of Nature (mountain and meadow are aflower for joy of the new +prince born). But, it may reasonably be asked, where is the drama? It +consists principally in the _vaqueiro_, who is restless as one of the +wicked in a Basque _pastorale_. He rushes into the queen’s chamber, +has a look at its luxuries, turns to address the queen, declares that +he is in a hurry and must be going, leaps in gladness, and finally +introduces some thirty courtiers in herdsman’s dress who offer gifts +of milk, eggs, cheese, and honey. There is little in this simple +piece--the _Visitaçam_, or _Monologo do Vaqueiro_--to foreshadow the +sovereign genius,[226] the Plautus, the Shakespeare[227] of Portugal +that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity, and the known +existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vicentes makes research a +risky operation. There was a page (1475) and an _escudeiro_ (1482) of +King João II, an official at Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (†1500), +there was a Gil Vicente in India in 1512,[228] and a Gil Vicente +goldsmith at Lisbon. We know that the poet spoke of himself as near +death (_visinho da morte_) in 1531, although apparently in good health. +This would seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.[229] +Unfortunately the _Auto da Festa_, in which he says that he is over +sixty, is undated. As, however, it was written before the _Templo de +Apolo_ (1526) we may place it probably about 1525. We are thus brought +back to about the same date (_c._ 1465). Almost certainly he was not of +exalted parentage.[230] Indeed, he would appear to have been slighted +for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke of himself as the son +of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira (Estremadura).[231] He may +have been the son of Luis Vicente or of Martim Vicente, ‘said to have +been a silversmith of Guimarães’ (Minho).[232] The frequent mention +of the province of Beira is, however, noticeable in his plays. If it +were only that his peasants use words such as _nega_, _nego_, which +according to the grammarian Fernam d’Oliveira were peculiar to Beira +(in 1536),[233] it might pass for a dramatic device, since Oliveira +remarks that old-fashioned words will not be out of place if we assign +them to an old man of Beira or a peasant.[234] Indeed, the grammarian +seems to have had Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in +another connexion) since three of the six words that he notes--_abem_, +_acajuso_, _algorrem_--occur in three successive lines of the _Barca +do Purgatorio_, and another, _samicas_, is as great a favourite with +Vicente as at first was _soncas_,[235] derived from Enzina. But it is +impossible to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition +that _beirão_ is equivalent to rustic and Beira to Boeotia, for Beira +and the Serra da Estrella intrude constantly and indeed pervade his +work. He shows personal knowledge of the country between Manteigas and +Fundão, and we may suspect that it was in order to connect ‘Portuguese +Fame desired of all nations’ with Beira ‘our province’ rather than with +rusticity that he makes her keep ducks as a _mocinha da Beira_. We do +not know when Vicente came to Lisbon, nor whether, as José de Cabedo +de Vasconcellos, another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe, +he became the tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) of King Manuel, then Duke +of Beja. Of his life at Lisbon our information is almost as meagre. +We know, of course, that he accompanied the Court to Evora, Coimbra, +Thomar, Almeirim, and other towns to set up and act in his plays, that +besides acting in his plays he wrote songs for them and music for the +songs. We know that he received considerable gifts in money and in kind +both from King Manuel and from João III, in whose reign he complains +of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that he married his first +wife, Branca Bezerra, in 1512, that he owned the _Quinta do Mosteiro_ +near Torres Vedras (a supposition no longer tenable), that the name +of his second wife was Melicia Rodriguez, but we have no certainty +as to this, nor as to the number of his children. The accomplished +Paula became musician and lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Maria before +the death of her father, whom she helped--runs the legend--in the +composition of his plays,[236] as she helped her brother Luis in +editing them in 1562. From a document concerning another brother, +Belchior, we know that Gil Vicente (_seu pae que Deus haja_) died +before April 16, 1540. There is some reason to believe that he died in +the year of his last play (1536) or early in 1537. From his assertion +that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to his old +age[237] we might judge him to have been very old, but he may have been +worn out with labour in many fields and his health had not always been +good. He suffered from fever and plague, which brought him to death’s +door in 1525, and he had grown stout with advancing age. An incident +at Santarem on the occasion of the great earthquake of 1531, so +vividly described by Garcia de Resende, shows him in a very attractive +light, for by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in +restraining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace, and thus +saved the ‘new Christians’ from ill-treatment or massacre. + +We know a little more about him if we identify him with Gil Vicente, +the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel and +widow of King João II, whose most famous work is the beautiful Belem +monstrance, wrought of the first tribute of gold from the East (from +Quiloa or Kilwa).[238] The probabilities in favour of identity are +so convincing that we are bound to assume it unless an insuperable +obstacle presents itself. Our faith in manuscript documents and +genealogies is not increased by the fact that one investigator, the +Visconde Sanches de Baena (1822-1909), emerges with the triumphant +conclusion that the two Gil Vicentes were uncle and nephew, while +another, Dr. Theophilo Braga, declares that they are cousins. Perhaps +we may be permitted to believe in neither and to restore Gil Vicente +to himself. For indeed this was a singular instance of cousinly love. +The goldsmith wrote verses; the poet takes a remarkable interest in the +goldsmith’s art.[239] The goldsmith is appointed inspector (_vedor_) +of all works in gold and silver at the convent of Thomar, the Lisbon +Hospital of All Saints, and Belem. The poet is particularly fond of +referring to Thomar,[240] and in its convent in 1523 staged his _Farsa +de Inés Pereira_ (who lived at Thomar with her first husband), while +at the Hospital of All Saints was played the _Barca do Purgatorio_ in +1518. The goldsmith was in the service of the widow of João II, Queen +Lianor, who mentions two of his chalices in her will; the poet at the +request of the same Queen Lianor wrote verses, probably in 1509, in a +poetical contest about a gold chain and was encouraged by her to write +his early plays.[241] The goldsmith was _Mestre da Balança_ from +1513 to 1517; the poet goes out of his way to refer to _os da Moeda_, +familiarly but not as one of them, in 1521. He henceforth devoted +himself more ardently to the literary side of his genius, speaks of +himself as Gil Vicente who writes _autos_ for the king, and with an +occasional sigh[242] that he can no longer afford to stage his plays +as splendidly as of old (in King Manuel’s reign) produces them with +increasing frequency. ‘Had Gil Vicente been a goldsmith and a goldsmith +of such skill,’ said the late Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912), +‘it would have been impossible for him to leave no trace of it in his +dramatic works and for all the contemporary writers who speak of him +to have kept complete silence as to his artistic talent.’[243] But +his work is essentially that of an artist (Menéndez y Pelayo himself +well calls him an _alma de artista_)[244]: involuntarily one likens +his sketches to some rough terra-cotta figure of Tanagra or sculpture +in early Gothic, and his lyrics are clear-cut gems, a thing very rare +in Portuguese literature. Intensely Portuguese in his lyrism and his +satire, he is almost un-Portuguese in the extreme plasticity of his +genius. Concrete, definite images spring from his brain in contrast to +the vaguer effusions of most Portuguese poets. And if Queen Lianor’s +goldsmith, like the troubadour _ourives_ Elias Cairel, or, to come to +the fifteenth century, like Diogo Fernandez and Afonso Valente of the +_Cancioneiro de Resende_,[245] set himself to write verses, this would +call for no comment. Every one wrote verses. Had a celebrated poet--say +the Gil Vicente of 1520--wrought the _custodia_ his contemporaries +might have recorded the fact, but Gil Vicente was not a famous poet +when the _custodia_ was begun in 1503. Stress was therefore naturally +laid on the plays of Gil Vicente the goldsmith, not on the art of Gil +Vicente the poet. The historian Barros refers in 1540 to Gil Vicente +_comico_,[246] and since 1517 he had certainly been more _comico_ than +_ourives_. But the _comico_ who was dramatist and lyric poet, musician, +actor, preacher in prose and verse, may also have been a goldsmith. His +versatility was that of Damião de Goes a little later or of his own +contemporary Garcia de Resende, with genius added. The fact that the +official document in which _Gil Vicente lavrador da Rainha Lianor_ is +appointed to his post in the Lisbon _Casa da Moeda_ (Feb. 4, 1513[247]) +has above it a contemporary note _Gil Vᵗᵉ trouador mestre da balãça_ +should in itself be conclusive evidence that the poet was the goldsmith +of the queen. This modest but intimate position at Court accords well +with what we know of the poet and with the production of his plays. +The offerings at the end of the _Visitaçam_ seem to have suggested +to Queen Lianor the idea of its repetition on Christmas morning, but +Gil Vicente, considering its matter inappropriate, wrote a new play +with parts for six shepherds. This _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ is four +times as long as the _Visitaçam_. The shepherds pass the time in dance +and song, games, riddles, and various conversation (the dowry of the +bride of one of them is catalogued in the manner of Enzina[248] and +the Archpriest of Hita). To them the Angels announce the birth of the +Redeemer, and they go to sing and dance before _aquel garzon_. The +principal part, that of the mystic shepherd Gil Terron, ‘inclined to +the life contemplative’, well read (_letrudo_) in the Bible, with +some knowledge of metaphysics and perhaps of the _Corte Imperial_, +devoted to Nature and the _sierras benditas_, was evidently played by +Gil Vicente himself. A fortnight later, for the Day of Kings, he had +ready the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ (1503), again at the request of Queen +Lianor, who had ‘been very pleased’ with what Vicente himself called a +_pobre cousa_. This brief interval of time limited the length of the +new play. Its action is as slight. A shepherd enters who has lost his +way to Bethlehem. He meets another shepherd and then a hermit, whom +they ply with irreverent problems. To them enters a knight of Araby, +and finally the three kings, singing a _vilancete_. The _Auto da Sibila +Cassandra_ has been assigned to the same year, but is probably a later +play (1513?). Nearly twice as long as the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_, +it combines the ordinary scenic display--_todo o apparato_--of a +Christmas _representação_ with a presentment of the early prophecies +now to be fulfilled, and introduces Solomon, Isaiah, Abraham, and +Moses, who describes the creation of the world. The play includes a +profane theme, since Cassandra in her mystic aversion from marriage +realistically portrays the sad life of married women in Portugal. +Although Cassandra appears as a shepherdess and her aunt Peresica as a +peasant, they speak a purer, more flowing Castilian than the _toscos, +rusticos pastores_ of the preceding _autos_, and the play is remarkable +for the beauty of its lyrics--_Dicen que me case yo_, _Sañosa está la +niña_, _Muy graciosa es la doncella_, and _A la guerra_. For the Corpus +Christi procession of 1504 was provided, at short notice from Queen +Lianor, the _Auto de S. Martinho_. The subject of this piece, merely +ten dodecasyllabic _oitavas_ followed by a solemn _prosa_, is that of +El Greco’s marvellous picture--St. Martin dividing his cloak with a +beggar, whom Vicente treats with characteristic sympathy and insight: + + ¿Criante rocío, qué te hice yo[249] + Que las hiervecitas floreces por Mayo + Y sobre mis carnes no echas un sayo? + +The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, of uncertain date, acted before the Court +in the Lisbon palace of Alcaçova on Christmas morning in or after +1511, opens with a mystic ode on the Nativity and a _vilancete_ (_A +ti dino de adorar_) and proceeds rapidly with snatches of song in a +splendid rivalry between the four seasons. The praises of Spring are +sung with a delightful freshness, as are Winter’s rages, while Summer +in a straw hat appears sallow and fever-stricken. Jupiter comes with +countless classical allusions and David with much Latin, and they +all worship together the new-born King. Very different is the _Auto +da Alma_, written for Queen Lianor and acted in King Manuel’s Lisbon +palace of Ribeira on the night of Good Friday, 1518 (Snr. Braamcamp +Freire’s plausible suggestion in place of the commonly accepted 1508). +It represents the eternal strife between the soul and sin. The soul, +slowly journeying in the company of its guardian angel, is alternately +tempted by Satan with the delights of the world, with fine dresses and +jewels, and exhorted by the Angel, till it arrives at the Church, the +Innkeeper of Souls, and confesses its guilt, imploring protection (_Ach +neige, du schmerzenreiche!_). Then, while Satan in a restless fury of +disappointment makes a last effort to secure his victim, the ransomed +soul is fortified with celestial fare served by St. Augustine and +other _doutores_. The whole theme, to which the language rises fully +adequate, is treated with great delicacy and with a mystic fervour. + +In 1505 King Manuel and his Court in his Lisbon palace had witnessed +the first of those _farsas_ in which Gil Vicente has sketched for all +time Portuguese life in the first third of the sixteenth century. +It rapidly became popular and went from hand to hand as a _folha +volante_, receiving from the people the name of _Quem tem farelos?_ +i.e. the first three words of the play. The plots of the twelve +_farsas_ written from 1505 to 1531 are so slight that only one +calls for detailed notice, the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_[250] (1523), +which in its carefully defined characters and developed story more +closely resembles a modern comedy. It tells how the hapless Inés, +having rejected a plain suitor for a more romantic lover, a poor but +deceptive _escudeiro_ presented to her by two Jewish marriage agents, +learns by bitter experience the truth of the old proverb that ‘an +ass that carries me is better than a horse that throws me’. But the +types and persons in all these farces are etched with so much realism +and humour that they bite into the memory and rank with the living +malicious sketches of _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Who can forget the +famished escudeiro Aires Rosado with his book of songs (_cancioneiro_) +and guitar, continuing to sing beneath the window of his love while +the curses of her mother fall thick as snowflakes on his head,[251] +or the lady of his affections, vain and idle Isabel, or his servant +(_moço_) Apariço who draws so cruel a picture of his master, or that +other penniless _escudeiro_ who considers himself ‘the very palace’ +and calls up his _moço_ Fernando at midnight to light the lamp and +hold the inkstand while he writes down his latest verses?[252] Equally +well sketched is the splendid poverty-plagued _fidalgo_ who walks +abroad accompanied by six pages, but cannot pay his chaplain or his +goldsmith; his ill-used, servile, ambitious chaplain[253]; the witch +Genebra Pereira mixing the hanged man’s ear, the heart of a black cat, +and other grim ingredients: _Alguidar, alguidar, que feito foste ao +luar_[254]; the household of the Jewish tailor who delights in songs +of battles-at-a-distance and is filled with pride when the _Regedor_ +salutes him in the street[255]; M. Diafoirus’ lineal ancestors Mestres +Anrique, Felipe, Fernando, and Torres[256]; the sporting priest[257]; +the unfaithful wife of the Portuguese who has embarked for India with +Tristão da Cunha; the vainglorious, grandiloquent Spaniard who takes +the opportunity to pay his court to her.[258] They are all drawn from +life with a master hand, even the more insignificant figures, the girl +keeping ducks, the _moços_, the gipsy horse-dealers,[259] the old man +amorous,[260] the carriers faring leisurely along with their mules, +the braggart who disables six of his fourteen imaginary opponents, the +Frenchman and Italian with their stock phrases _Par ma foi_, _la belle +France_, _tutti quanti_,[261] the wily and impudent negro, the poor +_ratinho_[262] Gonçalo, who loses his hare and capons and his clothes +as well, the page of peasant birth ambitious to become a _cavaleiro +fidalgo_, the roguish and pretentious palace pages. Side by side with +these farces Vicente continued to write religious _autos_ as well as +comedies and tragicomedies. The difference between these various pieces +is less of kind than of the occasion on which they were produced, the +_obras de devação_ on Christmas morning or other solemn day,[263] +the _farsas de folgar, comedias_, &c., at the evening parties--those +famous _serões_ of King Manuel’s reign to which the courtiers thronged +at dusk, and which Sá de Miranda remembered with regret.[264] All +provide us with realistic sketches since the background is filled with +the common people, the real hero of Gil Vicente’s plays as it is of +Fernam Lopez’ chronicles. Thus the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (Christmas, +1534), besides its heavenly _gloria_ with the Virgin, Gabriel, +Prudence, Poverty, Humility, and Faith, has a very life-like peasant +scene in which Mofina Mendes, personifying Misfortune, represents +a Portuguese version of _Pierrette et son pot au lait_. The _Auto +Pastoril Portugues_ (Christmas, 1523) is a similar scene of peasant +life, relating the cross-currents of the shepherds’ loves and the +finding of an image of the Virgin on the hills. The _Auto da Feira_, +acted before King João at Lisbon in 1527, is a more elaborate Christmas +play. Mercury, Time, Rome, and the Devil attend a fair, and this +furnishes opportunity for a vigorous attack upon the Church of Rome, +with her indulgences for others and her self-indulgence, who has not +the kings of the Earth but herself to blame if she is rushing on ruin, +ruin that will be inevitable unless she mends her ways. But to the fair +also come the peasants Denis and Amancio, as dissatisfied with their +wives as their wives are dissatisfied with them (their conversation +is most voluble and natural), and market-girls, basket on head, come +down singing from the hills. Another Christmas play, the _Auto da +Fé_, was acted in the royal chapel at Almeirim in 1510, and consists +of a simple conversation between Faith and two shepherds. The _Breve +Summario da Historia de Deos_[265] (1527) and the _Auto da Cananea_ +(written for the Abbess of Odivellas in 1534) are both based on the +Bible; the former, which contains the _vilancete_ sung by Abel (_Adorae +montanhas_), outlines the story of the Fall, of Job, and of the New +Testament to the Crucifixion, sometimes in passages of great beauty. +The latter develops the episode of the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv. +21-8). The great trilogy of _Barcas_, which ranks among Vicente’s most +important works, is of earlier date. The first part, _Auto da Barca do +Inferno_, was acted before Queen Maria _pera consolação_ as she lay +on her death-bed in 1517, the second, _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_, +at Christmas of the following year in Lisbon, and the _Auto da Barca +da Gloria_ at Almeirim in 1519. The plot, again, is of the simplest: +the Devil, combining the parts of Charon and Rhadamanthus, ferry-man +and judge, invites Death’s victims to show cause why they should not +enter his boat; and the interest is in the light thus thrown upon the +earthly behaviour of nobleman, judge, advocate, usurer, fool, love-lorn +friar, the cheating market-woman, the cobbler who throve by deceiving +the people, the peasant who skimped his tithes, the little shepherdess +who had seen God ‘often and often’, of Count, King,[266] and Emperor, +Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invocation +to the knights who had died fighting in Africa, and the second begins +with the mystic jewelled _romance_: _Remando vam remadores_. + +The comedies and tragicomedies vary greatly. The _Comedia de Rubena_ +(1521) is, like _A Winter’s Tale_, quite without unity of time or +place (for this primitive humanist, although he might mention Plato, +did not ‘reverence the Stagirite’), but is divided into three acts +(called scenes) as in a modern play. Cismena, like Perdita born in the +first scene, is conveyed by fairies to Crete, where she is wooed and +won by the Prince of Syria. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ (1514) is much more +compact and has a delicate charm. Don Rosvel, a prince in disguise, +serves in the house of a widower at Burgos for love of his daughters. +(He is in love with both, but his brother in search of him arrives and +marries the second.) On the other hand, the _Comedia sobre a divisa da +cidade de Coimbra_, acted before King João III in his ever-loyal city +of Coimbra in 1527, is a lengthy, far-fetched explanation of the city’s +arms, and the _Floresta de Enganos_ (played before the king at Evora +in 1536) is a succession of scenes of pure farce--the deceit practised +upon a merchant, the ludicrous predicament to which love reduced the +grave old judge who had taken his degree in Paris--with a more serious +theme, a Portuguese version of the story of Psyche and Eros. Of the +‘tragicomedies’ two, _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) and _Amadis de Gaula_ +(1533), dramatize romances of chivalry: _Primaleon_, that ‘_dulce & +aplacible historia_ translated from the Greek’,[267] and _Amadis_.[268] +The work is done with skill, for Vicente succeeds here as always in +being natural, and in this twilight atmosphere of garden flowers and +romance keeps his realism.[269] Both plays contain passages of great +lyrical beauty, and _Dom Duardos_ ends with the _romance_ beginning +_Pelo mes era de Abril_. Thus in his latter age he successfully adapted +himself to pastures new. In his letter dedicating _Dom Duardos_ to King +João III he wrote: ‘Since, excellent Prince and most powerful King, +the comedies, farces and moralities which I wrote for (_en servicio +de_) the Queen your Aunt were low figures[270] in which there was no +fitting rhetoric to satisfy the delicate spirit of your Highness, I +realized that I must crowd more sail on to my poor bark.’ For us the +words have a tinge of irony, and however much some readers may admire +the hushed rapture of these idyllic scenes we miss the merry author of +the _farsas_, and gladly turn to the _Romagem de Aggravados_ (1533) in +which Vicente proves that his hand had lost none of its cunning. ‘This +tragicomedy is a satire’ says the rubric, and it introduces us to the +inimitable Frei Paço, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves, gilt +sword, and velvet cap (one of Sá de Miranda’s _clerigos perfumados_), +to the discontented peasant who brings his son to be made a priest, the +talkative fish-wives, the hypocrite Frei Narciso scheming to be made a +bishop, and awkward Giralda, the peasant Aparicianes’ daughter, whom +Frei Paço instructs so competently in Court manners. This long play +was written for a special occasion, the birth of the Infante Felipe. +Gil Vicente for many years, as poet laureate, had celebrated great +events at Court. When the Duke of Braganza was about to leave with the +expedition against Azamor in 1513 he wrote the eloquent _Exhortaçam da +Guerra_, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends with a +rousing call to war (_soiça_): + + Avante avante, senhores, + Pois que com grandes favores + Todo o ceo vos favorece; + El Rey de Fez esmorece + E Marrocos dá clamores. + +When King Manuel’s daughter, the princess Beatrice, married the Duke +of Savoy in 1521 Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, in which the +Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Elements, speed her on +her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants of Lisbon accompany +her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the Tagus. The _Fragoa de Amor_ +(1525) was written on the occasion of the betrothal of King João and +Queen Catherina (who replaced Queen Lianor as Vicente’s protector and +patron). Into the forge, to the sound of singing, goes a negro, and +then Justice in the form of a bent old woman who is forced to disgorge +all her bribes and reappears upright and fair. A similar play, _Nao +de Amor_ (1527), in which courtiers caulk a miniature ship on the +stage, was played before their Majesties in Lisbon two years later. +The _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) was acted when another daughter of King +Manuel left Lisbon to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. The +author introduces the play and excuses its deficiencies on the plea +that he has been seriously ill with fever. He then relates the dream +of fair women--_las hermosas que son muertas_--that he had seen in his +sickness. Apollo then enters, and after declaring that he would have +made the world otherwise mounts the pulpit and preaches a mock sermon. +The world, Fame, Victory, come to his temple and bear witness to the +greatness of the Emperor Charles V. A Portuguese peasant also comes +and has more difficulty in obtaining admittance. The author called the +play an _obra doliente_, and it was propped up by a passage from the +earlier _Auto da Festa_ (1525?), edited by the Conde de Sabugosa from +the unique copy in his possession. Its figures are Truth, two gipsies, +a fool, and seven peasants. Their speech is markedly _beirão_ and the +old woman closely resembles the _velha_ of the tragicomedy _Triunfo do +Inverno_, written to celebrate the birth of Princess Isabel in 1529, +as the _Auto da Lusitania_ celebrated that of Prince Manuel in 1532 +and the _Tragicomedia Pastoril da Serra da Estrella_ that of Princess +Maria in 1527. The latter is a whole-hearted play of the Serra with +a _cossante_, a _baile de terreiro_ and _chacota_, and continual +fragments of song: one of the most Portuguese of Vicente’s plays. +The _Triunfo do Inverno_ contains some most effective scenes and a +bewildering wealth of lyrics: before one is finished another has begun, +and the whole long play goes forward at a gallop. The first triumph +of Winter is on the hills, the Serra da Estrella (_serra nevada_); +the second, on the sea, affords a telling satire against the pilots +on India-bound ships. The pilot here begins by stating that the storm +will be nothing, then he says that he is not to blame for Winter’s +conduct, finally he falls to imploring the Virgin and St. George and +St. Nicholas; and but for his incompetence the ship might have been +lying safe at Cochin. The second part of the tragicomedy is the Triumph +of Spring in the Serra de Sintra. Spring enters in a lyrical profusion +singing + + Del rosal vengo, mi madre, + Vengo del rosale, + +breaks off into _Afuera, afuera nublados_, and resumes his song: + + A riberas de aquel rio + Viera estar rosal florido, + Vengo del rosale. + +Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays, +the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their +author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_, +had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and +from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in +the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic +Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the +people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely +primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were +probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and +players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients +of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_ +for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature, +although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde +do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions +and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further +scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that +in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those +still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were +carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who +invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many +iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The +popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest +in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of +burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and +paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in +France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters. +It was, however, from Spain that the idea of his _autos_ first came +to him, as the direct imitations of Juan del Enzina (1469?-1529?) in +Vicente’s early pieces and the explicit statement of Garcia de Resende +in his _Miscellania_ prove: he speaks of the _representações_ of very +eloquent style and new devices invented in Portugal by Gil Vicente, +and adds the qualifying clause that credit for the invention of the +_pastoril_ belongs to Enzina. But the wine of Vicente’s genius soon +burst the old bottles, and when his plays ceased to be confined to the +_pastoril_ he naturally turned elsewhere for suggestion. He himself +towards the end of his life called his religious plays _moralidades_, +and the real name of the play popularly known as the _Farsa da Mofina +Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_.[274] The introduction of Lucifer +as _Maioral do Inferno_ and Belial as his _meirinho_[275] may have +been derived from French _mystères_; the conception of his _Barcas_ +certainly owed more to the _Danse macabre_ (probably through the +Spanish fifteenth-century _Danza de la Muerte_) than to Dante. The +burlesque _testamento_ of Maria Parda[276] is one of a long list +of such wills (of which an example is the mule’s testament in the +_Cancioneiro Geral_),[277] but in some of its expressions appears +to be copied from the _Testament de Pathelin_. His knowledge of +French was perhaps more fluent than accurate, like his Latin which, +albeit copious, did not claim to be ‘pure Tully’. But there are many +references to France in his plays, as there are in the _Cancioneiro +Geral_, and, although the _enselada_ from France with which the _Auto +da Fé_ ends (i. 75) and the French song (i. 92) _Ay de la noble ville +de Paris_[278] were no doubt some fashionable courtier’s latest +acquisition, Vicente in literary matters probably shared the curiosity +of the Court as to what was going on beyond the frontiers of Portugal. +The great majority of his songs are, however, plainly indigenous. His +knowledge of Italian certainly enabled him to read Italian plays and +poems. We know that he was a great reader--he mentions ‘the written +works that I have seen, in verse and prose, rich in style and matter’. +In Spanish he did not confine himself to Enzina. He read romances of +chivalry, imitated the _romances_ with supreme success, mentions Diego +de San Pedro’s _La Carcel de Amor_, had read the _autos_ of Lucas +Fernandez, the _comedias_ of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro probably, +and without doubt the Archpriest of Hita’s _Libro de Buen Amor_, +possessed by King Duarte, and the _Celestina_. Indeed, for some time +past barriers between the two literatures had scarcely existed and +Vicente enriched both. Celestina would have spoken many proverbs had +she foreseen that he would allow two men (_judeos casamenteiros_) to +take the bread out of her mouth, but he copies her in his Brigida Vaz, +Branca Gil, the formidable Anna Diaz, and the _beata alcoviteira_ of +the _Comedia de Rubena_, although he may also have had in mind the +_moller mui vil_ of King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (No. +64), with the spirit of which--their fondness for popular types and +satire--Vicente had more in common than with the _Cancioneiro Geral_, +compiled by his friend Resende. With this collection he was naturally +familiar, and must have heard many of its songs before it was published +in 1516. A line here and there in Vicente seems to be an echo of the +_Cancioneiro_,[279] although the fact that it mentions some of his +types (as in the _Arrenegos_[280] of Gregorio Afonso) merely means that +he drew from the life around him. His satire of doctors and priests, +although essentially popular and mediaeval--both are present in the +_Cantigas de Santa Maria_--was also due to his personal observation: +that is to say, he gave realistic expression to a satire of which the +motive was literary (since satire directed against priests had long +been one of the chief resources of comic writers in France, Italy, +Spain, and Portugal).[281] The type of the poor _fidalgo_ or famishing +_escudeiro_ on which Vicente dwells so fondly--we have the latter +as Aires Rosado in _Quem tem farelos?_ and anonymous in the _Farsa +de Inés Pereira_ and _O Juiz da Beira_[282]--is another instance of +literary tradition combined with observation at first hand. Of the +priest-satire Vicente was the last free exponent in Portugal. That +of the poor gentleman was even older and survived him. It dates from +Roman times. The _amethystinatus_ of Spanish Martial[283] reappears in +the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, in the Archpriest of Hita’s Don Furon, +in the _lindos fidalgos que viven lazerados_ of Alfonso Alvarez de +Villasandino, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and just before Vicente’s +death is wittily described, as the _raphanophagus purpuratus_, by +Clenardus,[284] and less urbanely in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. With no +Inquisition to crush him he continued to starve in literature--for +instance, in the anonymous later sixteenth-century play _Auto do +Escudeiro Surdo_ he and his _moço_ come on the scene in thoroughly +Vicentian guise: _a vossa fome de pam ... meio tostão gasto quinze dias +ha_[285]--as he starves in the real life of the Peninsula to-day.[286] +In a sense Gil Vicente no doubt borrowed widely; he was no sorcerer to +make bricks without straw, and straw, like poets, is not manufactured: +it has to be gathered in. But the _homens de bom saber_ who, as we know +from the rubric to the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_, doubted his originality +must have been very superficial as well as envious critics, for the +bricks were essentially his own. Indeed, every page of his _autos_ is +hall-marked as his, _ca non alheo_, and he could say with King Alfonso +X: + + Mais se o m’eu melhoro faço ben + E non sõo per aquesto ladron. + +Besides the _Auto da Festa_ we have 42 plays[287]: 12 _farsas_, 16 +_obras de devaçam_, 4 _comedias_, 10 _tragicomedias_. Some of them +were staged with much pomp and _grande aparato de musica_ in the +spacious times of King Manuel, but they lose little in being merely +read. They contain a few scenes of dramatic insight and power, a +few touches of real comedy, but above all we value them for their +types and characters, the insight they afford us into man and that +particular period of man’s history, and for the lyrics and lyrical +passages, fragments of heaven-born poetry thrown out tantalizingly +at random as the dramatist passes rapidly, carelessly on. We do not +possess all Vicente’s plays. A farce which in a poem to the Conde de +Vimioso (?1525) he says that he had in hand, _A Caça dos Segredos_, +was perhaps never finished, or perhaps it was produced seven years +later as the _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532). Others were probably lost as +_folhas volantes_ before the edition of 1562 could collect them. Three +at least, the _Auto da Aderencia do Paço_, _Auto da Vida do Paço_, and +_Jubileu de Amor_ or _Amores_, were suppressed.[288] The latter, in +Spanish and Portuguese, was probably the cause of the loss of the two +other plays, for, having ventured far away from the natural piety of +Portugal, it was acted in Brussels on December 21, 1531, in the house +of the Portuguese Ambassador, D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, and in the +mind of the Nuncio, Cardinal Aleandro, who was among those invited, +this ‘manifest satire against Rome’ caused such commotion that, as +he wrote, he ‘seemed to be in mid-Saxony listening to Luther[289] or +in the horrors of the sack of Rome’.[290] Yet in 1533 impenitent, +the incorrigible Vicente is pillorying the Court priest, Frei Paço. +The fact is that in Portugal no one could suspect the sheep-dog, who +had for so long and so mordantly kept watch over the Court flock, +of turning wolf and encouraging the _seitas_ and _cismas_ against +which Alvaro de Brito had already inveighed. He was himself deeply, +mystically religious and perhaps cared the less for creeds and dogmas. +His mystic philosophy appears as early as 1502. Yet they do him a +poor service who represent him as a profound theologian, a great +philosopher, an authoritative philologist. His plays show us a man +lovable and human, tolerant of opinions, intolerant of abuses,[291] +a man of many gifts, with a passionate devotion to his country. We +have only to turn to the ringing _Exhortaçam da Guerra_ or the _Auto +da Fama_. The whole of the latter is written in a glow of pride and +patriotism at Portugal’s vast, increasing empire and the victories of +Albuquerque: + + Ormuz, Quiloa, Mombaça, + Sofala, Cochim, Melinde. + +Clearly the words to him are a sweet music.[292] From one point of view +Gil Vicente’s position exactly tallied with Herculano’s description +of the _bobo_. He was a Court jester, expected to render the idle +courtiers _muy ledos_. To this purpose he was compelled to saddle +his plays with passages which for us have lost their savour and +significance but almost every line of which must have elicited a smile +or a shout of laughter at the _serões_. We may instance _O Clerigo +da Beira_, which ends with the signs and planets under which various +courtiers were born, the _Tragicomedia da divisa da cidade de Coimbra_, +with the origins of various noble families, the malicious _catalogue +raisonné_ of courtiers in the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Branca Gil’s +comical litany in _O Velho da Horta_, the sixty-four puzzle verses +of the _Auto das Fadas_. But Vicente frequently had a deeper purpose +than to enliven a fashionable gathering. The abuse of indulgences, +the corruption of the clergy,[293] the subjection of married women, +the danger of appointing ignorant men to the responsible position of +pilot, the mingling of the classes--it was not so, he remarks, in +Germany or Flanders, France or Venice--the increasing tendency to +shun honest labour in order to occupy a position however humble at +Court,[294] the ignorance and presumption of the peasants, the false +display and false ambitions, the thousand new lies and deceits, the +decay of piety, the growth of luxury and corresponding diminution in +gaiety--these were matters which he sought not only to portray but to +correct, with much earnestness in his _iocis levibus_. But to the end +of his life he was never able to learn that religion and virtue must +be melancholy. In the introduction to the _Triunfo do Inverno_ (1529) +he complains of the loss of the joyous dances and songs of Portugal +and the disappearance in the last twenty years of the _gaiteiro_ and +his cheerful piping. He himself drew his inspiration from the people, +from Nature, and from the Scriptures, with which he had no superficial +acquaintance. In his love of Nature and his wide curiosity he studied +children and birds, plants and flowers, astronomy and witchcraft--those +myriad forms of sorcery in Portugal, some of which have fortunately +survived in the prohibitory decrees of the Church. He included in his +plays or alluded to many of the traditions, the songs and dances of old +Portugal--the ancient _cossantes_, the _bailes de terreiro_, _bailos +vilãos_,[295] _bailes da Beira_, _chacotas_, _folias_, _alvoradas_, +_janeiras, lampas de S. João_.[296] For he stood at the parting of +the ways. Desirous and capable of playing many parts, tinged unawares +by the new spirit of the Renaissance, but at the same time keenly +national, he linked the Middle Ages with the new learning and the old +traditions of Portugal with her ever-widening dominions, for which he +showed the wise enthusiasm of a true imperialist. But behind the new +glitter and luxury of Lisbon he constantly saw the growing misery of +the people of Portugal for which all the splendour of King Manuel’s +reign had been but a terrible storm[297]; and his latter sadness was +perhaps less personal than patriotic. He had done what he could, far +more than had been required of him. He had been expected to delight a +Court audience, and had mingled warning and instruction with amusement; +and when, having lived and laughed and loved, he went his way, he +was not only spared by a crowning grace from the wrath that was to +come but left to his countrymen an heirloom more enduring than brass, +more precious than all the gold of India, with a breath of that true +Portugal in its simplicity, its mirth and jollity, the disappearance +of which he had deplored. Portuguese literature was never so national +again. A period of splendid achievement followed, but alike in subject +and language it was too often a honeyed sweetness containing in itself +the seeds of decay, and if for the time it swept away all memory of Gil +Vicente, for us it only emphasizes his qualities by the contrast. In +his directness, his close contact with the people,[298] his humanity, +his quick observation, keen satire, love of laughter and malicious +humour, in his unsurpassed lyrical gift and his natural delight in +words, to be used not at haphazard but weighed and set cunningly as +precious stones in the hands of an _ourives_, this great lyrical poet +and charmingly incorrect playwright clearly foreshadowed dramatists so +different as Calderón, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Molière. Yet we +look in vain for a Vicentian school of great dramatists in Portugal. +His fame had reached Brussels and thence Rome, and Erasmus is credited +with having wished to learn Portuguese in order to read Vicente’s +plays. Shakespeare, who was twenty-two when the second edition of +Vicente’s plays appeared and who almost certainly read Spanish, may +also have been tempted. It would have been strange if Erasmus had not +heard of Vicente through his friend André de Resende, who in his Latin +poem _Genethliacon_ declared that had not the comic poet Gil Vicente, +actor and author, written in the vulgar tongue he would have rivalled +Menander and excelled Plautus and Terence. In Portugal the number of +plays written in the sixteenth century was large,[299] but none can +be placed on a level with those of Vicente. One cannot say that he +influenced Camões or Ferreira de Vasconcellos deeply, although they had +evidently read him. In Spain Cervantes, who read everything, _aunque +sean los papeles rotos de las calles_, had read his plays (the _Farsa +dos Fisicos_, _O Juiz da Beira_, the _Comedia de Rubena_ among others), +Lope de Vega likewise, Calderón possibly. Lope de Rueda probably +derived the idea of his _paso Las Aceitunas_ from the _Auto da Mofina +Mendes_. Yet it is almost with amazement, if we forget the crowded +history of Portugal and Portuguese literature in the sixteenth century, +the introduction of the Inquisition, and the great changes in the +language, that we find a Portuguese, Sousa de Macedo, a century after +Vicente’s death, speaking of him as one ‘whose style was celebrated of +old’,[300] and a Spaniard, Nicolás Antonio, declaring that his works +were written in prose and knowing nothing of a collected edition.[301] +It was with reasonable misgivings that Vicente just before his death +wrote: _Livro meu, que esperas tu?_; ‘my book, what is in store for +you?’ We know that it remained in manuscript for a quarter of a +century, that a second edition in 1586 was so handled by the Censorship +that it contains but thirty-five mutilated plays, and that for two and +a half centuries no new edition was printed. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[219] _Essais_, 1. XXV. + +[220] _Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo._ Antuerpiae, 1561. + +[221] Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to him (cf. _Fenix +Renascida_, iii. 252, _Horas breves_, and, with more reason, iii. 253. +_Á redea solta corre o pensamento_), as was also Gil Vicente’s _Dom +Duardos_ and a manuscript _Tratado dos modos, proporções e medidas_. + +[222] Duarte Nunez de Leam, _Descripção_, 2ᵃ ed. (1785), cap. 80: _Da +habilidade das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liberaes._ +Severim de Faria speaks of her _sancto desejo de saber_. The author +of _Dos priuilegios & praerogatiuas q̃ ho genero femenino tem_ (1557) +says (p. 9): _se pode estranhar esta hidade na qual as molheres não se +aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas Romanas e Gregas_. + +[223] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (1834), ii. 414. + +[224] Ibid. iii. 350. + +[225] Cf. João Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses in the _Cancioneiro Geral_: +_De Çeita atee os Chijs_. + +[226] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, vol. vii, p. clxiii. + +[227] A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição_, 3ᵃ ed. (1879), i. 238. +Cf. Camillo Castello Branco, _A Viuva do Enforcado_, _ad init._ No one +of course thinks of comparing Gil Vicente with Shakespeare, but one may +perhaps say that he resembles what Shakespeare might have been had he +been born in the fifteenth century. The shipwreck in the _Triunfo do +Inverno_ recalls the opening scene of _The Tempest_, as the mad friar +recalls poor Tom, and the magnificent fidalgo Falstaff. In the _Farsa +de Inés_ Pereira Inés, without being a shrew, is tamed by her husband, +who says: + + Se eu digo: Esto é novello + Vos aveis de confirmalo. + + +[228] In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ‘the son of Gil Vicente’ +in India. + +[229] It is customary in Portugal to fix the date of his birth in 1470 +owing to the statement of the judge in the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536) +that he--the judge--was already sixty-six. It is a method which might +lead to comical results if further pressed in the case of Vicente or +other dramatists. Was Mello seventy-three when he wrote the _Fidalgo +Aprendiz_? + +[230] ‘A gentleman of good family’ (Ticknor); _hijo de ilustres padres_ +(Barrera y Leirado); _na qualidade nobilissimo_ (Pedro de Poyares). + +[231] iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205. + +[232] The authority is Cristovam Alão de Moraes in his manuscript +_Pedatura Lusitana_ (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto). +This genealogist, says Castello Branco, _era ás vezes ignorante e +outras vezes mal intencionado_. He does not say that Martim Vicente +exercised his alleged profession of silversmith at Guimarães, or that +Gil was born there. What more probable than for Guimarães, proud +of its poetical traditions, to invent a silversmith father for the +famous poet-goldsmith? Pedro de Poyares, _Tractado em louvor da villa +de Barcellos_ (1672), says that Gil Vicente, _em tempo de D. João o +terceiro poeta celebre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas +suas impressas_. + +[233] _Grammatica_, ed. 1871, p. 118. + +[234] Ibid., p. 81. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Gil Vicente e a +Linguagem Popular_, 1902. Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1619), f. +10, mentions the _somsonete de pronunciação_ of the _ratinhos_. + +[235] _Soncas_ occurs no less than seven times in the brief _Auto +Pastoril Castelhano_. It occurs twice in the first twenty-eight lines +of one of Enzina’s eclogues (_Cancionero de todas las obras_ (Çaragoça, +1516), f. lxxviii, and again f. lxxviii verso and lxxx). + +[236] A. dos Reis, _Enthusiasmus Poeticus_ (_Corpus Ill. Poet. Lus._, +tom. viii, pp. 18-19): _Quem iuvisse ferunt velut olim Polla maritum_. +Manuel Tavares, _Portugal illustrado pelo sexo feminino_ (1734), calls +her a _discretissima mulher_. + +[237] _Com muita pena de minha velhice._ Ruy de Pina calls a man _mui +velho_ whose father (King João I) would have been but ninety-one +in that year (_Cr. de Afonso V_, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira, +_Ulysippo_, iii. 3: _velho se pode chamar pois vai aos cincoenta anos_. + +[238] See Barros, _Asia_, 1. vi. 7. Beckford has glowing praise for +‘this gold custodium of exquisite workmanship’: ‘Nothing could be +more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate Gothic sculpture than this +complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles’ +(_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, Paris, 1834). + +[239] Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent +in his plays. The goldsmith in the _Farsa das Almocreves_ uses the +technical word _bastiães_ which occurs in the _Livro Vermelho_ of +Afonso V: _E porque alguns Ouriueses tem ora feita algũa prata dourada +e de bastiães_. It occurs, however, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ +(_galantes bastiães_), in Resende’s _Miscellania_ (_bestiães_), and +other writers. + +[240] Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379. + +[241] An unfortunate interpolation by the 1834 editors in the rubric of +the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ was largely responsible for the belief +that his patroness was not Queen Lianor but King Manuel’s mother D. +Beatriz. + +Yet the rubric of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ says clearly that _a +sobredita senhora_ is King Manuel’s sister. + +[242] _Mas ja não auto bofé Como os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha +com que_ (_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, i. 129). + +[243] _Antología_, vii, p. clxvi. It should be said that Dr. Theophilo +Braga, the late General Brito Rebello, and the late Dr. F. A. Coelho +agree with Menéndez y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that +he can prove an alibi. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos opposed +identity in 1894, and has not definitely expressed herself in its +favour since. On the other hand, Snr. Braamcamp Freire is a convinced +supporter of identifying poet and goldsmith. + +[244] _Antología_, vii, p. clxxvi. + +[245] And later Jeronimo Corrêa (†1660) at Lisbon, author of _Daphne +e Apollo_ (Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes +(1820-69) at Oporto, and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville, +Lope de Rueda (1510?-65), whose _pasos_ are akin to Vicente’s _farsas_, +was fired by his example and success. + +[246] _Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem_, 1785 ed., p. 222. + +[247] Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.) +in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon. + +[248] Cf. _Cancionero_, f. lxxxvi v. + +[249] An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long +pause on _tardas_ in _Oo morte que tardas, quien te detien?_ is equally +impressive, but the 1562 ed. has _de quien_ and Vicente may have +written _Oo morte que tardas, di ¿quien te detien?_ + +[250] _Auto de Inés Pereira_ in the 1562 ed. So _Auto dos Almocreves_. +It will, however, be convenient to call them _farsas_, since _auto_ is +a more general term applicable to all the plays. + +[251] _Quem tem farelos?_ + +[252] _O Juiz da Beira_, a continuation suggested by the success of the +_Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and acted at Almeirim in 1525. + +[253] _Farsa dos Almocreves_ (or _do Fidalgo Pobre_) acted at Coimbra +(1525). It is curious to compare the sterner type of chaplain denounced +in _Don Quixote_. + +[254] _Auto das Fadas_ (1511). + +[255] _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince +Manuel (1531). + +[256] _Farsa dos Fisicos_ (1512). + +[257] _O Clerigo da Beira_ (1529?). + +[258] _Auto da India_ (1509). + +[259] _Farsa das Ciganas_ (or, in the 1562 edition. _Auto de hũas +ciganas_), a very slight sketch acted in a _seram_ before the king at +Evora (1521). + +[260] _O Velho da Horta_ (1513). + +[261] _Auto da Fama_ (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 1510, but +internal evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 1516 +(although perhaps prior to the knowledge of Albuquerque’s death in +India (December 16, 1515) since so splendid a paean in honour of the +Portuguese victories would be out of place afterwards). + +[262] = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted +(or malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience. + +[263] In the palace (at Lisbon, Almeirim, Evora) or in convents +(Enxobregas, Thomar, Odivellas), once (as part of a procession) in a +church (_Auto de S. Martinho_). + +[264] + + Os momos, os serões de Portugal + Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos, + E as graças temperadas do seu sal? + + +[265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a +break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of +Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without +breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito +and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark +this metre in Vicente’s hands. + +[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to +King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance +does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family: +_cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_). + +[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512. + +[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his +language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text +before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable +in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would +welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own. + +[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she +supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic. + +[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is +evidently responsible. + +[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve +momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande +prazer_. + +[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326. + +[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained +these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a +_representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_ +in Barros, II. i. 5. + +[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the +thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_. + +[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309). + +[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches +on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could +not live without it’. + +[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr. +H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of +Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J. +Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915). + +[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether +they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his +song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s +_Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429). + +[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro +Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos +soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_. +The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced +was probably Duarte de Brito. + +[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa, +1649. + +[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of +Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in +his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information +collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga, +and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de +Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre +Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was +never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to +the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the +dangerous voyages to and from India. + +[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact +that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who +thronged the capital and Court. + +[283] _Ep._ ii. 57. + +[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535. + +[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy +fanfarrão_. + +[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were +written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of +sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each, +since they would not trust him with a pair. + +[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have +forty-four in all. + +[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas +Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_ +might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_. + +[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531): +_falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_. + +[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the +original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s +hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one +of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which +Vicente’s plays were staged). + +[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531, +was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de +Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been +burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to +Queen Isabella of Spain: + + Si no pariera Sanctana + hasta ser nacida vos, + de vos el hijo de Dios, + rescibiera carne humana. + + +[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’. +On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his +_Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_, +&c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony. + +[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good +sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the +_Comedia do Viuvo_. + +[294] + + os lavradores + Fazem os filhos paçãos, + Cedo não ha de haver villãos: + Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_). + + +[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold +chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter, +from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo +mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’ +dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados +entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. +4). + +[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas +lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e +Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha +dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta +nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com +perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._ + +[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._ + +[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule +contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_. + +[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de +Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p. +1884, s.v. _Auto_. + +[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5. + +[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae +comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says: +_cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth +century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could +say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the +accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima +cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught +reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui +celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_ +(Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f. +159). + + + + + § 2 + + _Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_ + + +The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it +exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth +century. Together perhaps with Diego de San Pedro’s _Carcel de Amor_, +the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s _Fiammetta_, and especially +Rodriguez de la Cámara’s _El siervo libre de Amor_ (containing the +_Estoria de los dos amadores Ardanlier e Liesa_), it must have been +in the mind of BERNARDIM RIBEIRO (1482-1552) when he wrote that +‘gentle tale of love and languishment’ the book of _Saudades_, which +is always known (like the first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first +three words as _Menina e moça_. Yet it is not really an imitative +work, being, indeed, remarkable for its unaffected sincerity, as the +expression of a personal experience. Its passionate truth continues to +delight many readers.[302] Almost all our information about Ribeiro’s +life is derived from his writings, which are in part evidently +autobiographical, and it shrinks or expands according to the degree +of the critic’s wariness or ingenuity. His birthplace is declared to +have been the quaint Alentejan village of Torrão. A passage in the +eclogue _Jano e Franco_ says that Jano fled thence at the time of the +great famine. The unhappy frequency of famines makes the date doubtful, +but if the year of Ribeiro’s birth be correctly stated in an official +document of May 6, 1642, as 1482, we may suppose--since Jano was +twenty-one--that he left his native Alentejo for Lisbon in 1503. It +is possible that he studied law and took his degree at the University +(at Lisbon) a few years later (1507-11?),[303] and became secretary +to King João III in 1524. As a _cavalleiro fidalgo_ he had his place +at Court, as poet he contributed to the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516). +A hopeless passion drove him from the Court, drove him perhaps to +Italy, and finally deprived him of his reason, so that his last years +were spent in the Lisbon Hospital de Todos os Santos.[304] Successive +generations have busied themselves over the object of his passion. The +romantic tradition that it was the Princess Beatriz, twenty-two years +his junior, the daughter of King Manuel for whose marriage to the Duke +of Savoy in 1521 Gil Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, is now +definitely discarded. That it was Queen Juana la Loca of Castille no +one except Varnhagen has ever imagined. But literary critics continue +to be tempted by the transparent anagrams of Ribeiro’s novel (adopted +evidently in order to make the story unintelligible to all except the +inner circle of the Court). Dr. Theophilo Braga has an ingeniously +fabricated theory that Aonia was Ribeiro’s cousin, Joana Tavares +Zagalo. Lamentor at least can scarcely have been King Manuel, since +he sends his daughter to the king’s Court. The scenery appears to be +a combination of that of the Serra de Sintra near Lisbon with that of +Alentejo. The story opens with an introductory chapter in which a young +girl (_menina e moça_), who has taken refuge in the _serra_ far from +all human society, announces her intention of writing down what she had +seen and heard in a small book (_livrinho_), not for the happy to read +but for the sad, or rather for none at all, seeing that of him for whom +alone it is intended she has had no news since his and her misfortune +bore him away to far-distant lands. Thus we have the thirteenth-century +_amiga_ mourning for her lover. _Ai Deus! e u é?_ Presently, as she +shelters from the noonday _calma_ beneath trees that overhang a gently +flowing stream, a nightingale pours forth its song, and then dying +with its song falls with a shower of leaves and is borne away songless +by the silent stream.[305] She is still bewailing its fate when +another, older but equally sad, lady (_dona_) appears, and the _menina_ +becomes an almost silent listener to the end of the book while the +_dona_ unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the history of two +friends Narbindel and Bastião. But it begins with the love adventure +of Lamentor and Belisa. It is only in the ninth chapter that the +knight Narbindel arrives and falls in love with Belisa’s sister +Aonia, adopting a shepherd’s life in order to be near her palace. It +is in fact a romance of chivalry in pastoral garb. But Ribeiro might +have introduced the pastoral romance without changing the fantastic +features. It is in his singular combination of passion and realism that +his true originality consists. His power of giving vivid expression +to tranquil scenes--the whole of the first part has something of the +quiet intensity of a background by Correggio, as well as his ‘softer +outline’, and although there is no explicit indication of colour it is +clearly felt by the reader--and his gentle love of Nature, or rather +his love of Nature in its gentler aspects, cast over the book a strange +charm. The softly flowing streams, the trees and birds and delicious +shade, beautiful dawns, the birds seeking their nests at evening, the +flowers _que a seu prazer se estendem_, the _mateiros_ going out to +cut brushwood, the shepherds asleep round their fire at night, are +described with great naturalness and truth, often with familiar words +and colloquial phrases. The reason of the extreme intricacy of the plot +was not the wish to conceal the author’s love story in a labyrinthine +maze[306] in order to exercise the ingenuity of nineteenth-century +professors, but to be true to life. In life events are not rounded and +distinct but merge into and react on one another in an endless ravelled +skein: _Das tristezas não se pode contar nada ordenadamente porque +desordenadamente acontecem ellas_ (cap. 1). Ribeiro thus anticipates +by four centuries the theory enunciated in Spain by Azorín that a +novel, like life, should have no plot,[307] and his book has a certain +modernity. We may refuse him the name of novelist, but many a novelist +might envy his lifelike portrayal of scenes and sentiments. It has been +doubted whether he wrote the second part of the story. It consists of +fifty-eight short chapters, and opens with a new episode, the love of +Avalor for Arima, daughter of Lamentor (cap. 1-24), and it is even +more bewildering in its confusion than is Part I. The scenes are less +idyllic, the tone more that of a conventional romance of chivalry, yet +the realism is maintained. It is on no hippogriff that Avalor goes to +the rescue of the distressed maiden: in fact, he had set out on his +adventure in a rowing-boat and his hands blistered. If later there +are mortal combats with wicked knights, with a bear, with giants, +there are also scenes, as in chapters 9, 12, 23--of an impassioned +_saudade_,[308] of dove and nightingale--which could only have been +written by the author of Part I.[309] His own story, still related by +the _dona_, is only resumed in chapter 26, or rather 32, since the +intervening chapters deal with events prior to those with which Part +I begins. Bimnarder, now again Narbindel--the name Bernardim was also +spelt Bernaldim--after Aonia’s marriage lives with an old hermit and +his nephew, Godivo, and passes his time in tears and contemplation, +as in Part I. But he is discovered by his faithful squire, and meets +Aonia, and the lovers are killed by the jealous husband (cap. 48). The +last chapters are concerned with the happier love story of Romabisa and +Tasbião. + +Narbindel, the second of the two knights, the two friends _de que é a +nossa historia_,[310] dies: therefore Bernardim Ribeiro cannot have +written the second part. But it is rather a nice point; one may imagine +that Ribeiro’s delight in so tragic an episode would compensate him +amply for the obvious anachronism, and after all it is the _dona_ who +tells the story.[311] The inconsistencies of detail need not concern us +overmuch. That Belisa has a mother in Part I and is ‘brought up without +a mother’ in Part II, that the Castle of Lamentor exists in Part II at +a time when, according to Part I, it was not yet begun, that the name +of Aonia’s husband is in Part I Fileno, and in Part II Orphileno, are +just such contradictions as an alien continuer would most studiously +have avoided, and we all know what happened to Sancho’s ass in a far +less intricate story. Or they may be explained by the fact that Ribeiro +had not revised his tale before it was printed, or by corrections +made in copies of the original manuscript.[312] Perhaps on the whole +we may conclude that Ribeiro, like Cervantes, by an exception wrote a +valuable second part, but, unlike Cervantes, was unable to maintain it +altogether on a level with the first. The mingling of rapt passion and +colloquialisms is with Ribeiro not the inability of a poet to express +himself but a deliberate mannerism, and is present in the five eclogues +with which he introduced pastoral poetry. By his quiet resolution to +be natural he thus became doubly an innovator, in poetry and prose. +That he was a true poet is proved by the _romances_ in his novel: +_Pensando vos estou, filha_ (Pt. I, cap. 21) and _Pola ribeira de um +rio_ (Pt. II, cap. 11).[313] The eclogues may not excel those poems, +but in their directness, primitive freshness, and grace they form a +group apart, entirely distinct from their numerous eclogue progeny. +One eclogue only, the celebrated _Trovas de Crisfal_, resembles them. +The resemblance is remarkable and cannot fail to strike the most +careless reader. Before Snr. Delfim Guimarães began his spirited +campaign in favour of identification, the similarity had been recorded +by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Grundriss_[314]: the +extraordinary similarity of these _Trovas_ to the poetry of Ribeiro +and to nothing else in Portuguese literature. In this poem of some +900 lines written in octosyllabic _decimas_, like Ribeiro’s eclogues, +we have that romantic, passionate _saudade_ and sentimental grief, +the mystic visions, the simplicity, the ingenuous conceits, wistfully +humorous, the sententious reflections, the elliptical concision, the +real shepherds, the familiar language, the love of Nature which are +peculiarly Ribeiro’s. Tradition assigns the _Trovas_ to CRISTOVAM +FALCÃO (_c._ 1512-53?),[315] who was born at Portalegre, in Alentejo, +was made a _moço fidalgo_ in 1527, and is supposed to have fallen in +love with and secretly married D. Maria Brandão (i.e. the Maria of the +_Trovas_), whom her parents confined as a punishment in the convent +of Lorvão. At the risk of being dubbed incorrigibly _simplicista_ one +must confess that the simultaneous appearance of these two poets from +Alentejo, not _fertil en poetas_, taxes one’s belief to the utmost. May +not the secret marriage deduced from the _Trovas_ have been described +by Ribeiro in his keen sympathy for his friend’s position, so like his +own? The contention is not that Cristovam Falcão did not exist--there +were several--or did not fall in love with Maria Brandão--_a do +Crisfal_--or did not marry her, but that he did not write verses in +the style familiar to us as that of Ribeiro.[316] It is remarkable +that the very critics who represent Ribeiro in his _novela_ as hiding +like a cuttle-fish in his own ink change their method when they come +to the eclogues and accept every name and allusion with the greatest +literalness, as though it were a poet’s duty to wear his heart in +his verses. It is idle to adduce the fact that Cristovam Falcão +wrote ungrammatical letters (so did Keats), or to devise far-fetched +interpretations (such as _Crisma falso_) for the word Crisfal. What +more probable than that Ribeiro and Falcão, born in the same province, +became friends at Court, and that Ribeiro introduced his friend in one +of his poems as he is supposed to have introduced Sá de Miranda in +another, and as Miranda introduces Ribeiro (_Canta Ribero los males +de amor_)? If in his favourite manner he added a little mystification +in the word Crisfal, what more characteristic? The very form of the +poem, in which first the _Autor_ and then Crisfal speaks (_Falla +Crisfal_) suggests this, as does the title: _Trovas de um pastor per +nome Crisfal_, compared with the definite _Trovas de dous pastores_ ... +_Feitas por Bernaldim Ribeiro_.[317] It is not difficult to explain +the printing of the _Trovas_ together with the works of Ribeiro and +the hesitancy of the early editions in ascribing them, on hearsay, to +Cristovam Falcão; but the word Crisfal caught the fancy, and those who +learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcão would inevitably confuse +the explanation of the anagram with the authorship of the poem. One +of those who did so was Gaspar Fructuoso (or Antonio Cordeiro), and +the tradition which had begun so shakily with a _dizem ser_ gained +strength with the years. Presumably the editor of the 1559 edition knew +what was to be known on the subject, yet he speaks with a quavering +uncertainty: it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam +Falcão becomes a fixed belief.[318] The eighth _Decada_ of Diogo do +Couto was not published till 1673, i. e. over half a century after +the death of its author. The explanatory sentence _aquelle que fez +aquellas antigas e nomeadas_ (or _namoradas_) _trovas de Crisfal_[319] +may well be, and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a +few scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, _grammatici +certant_ and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept a +second writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese literature +owing to the marvellous success with which, divesting his muse of any +qualities of its own, he identified himself with a poet who is the +most characteristically Portuguese, but also the most individual of +impassioned singers: Bernardim Ribeiro. + +A kind of continuation of the story of _Crisfal_ (who is now enchanted +within the fountain of his own tears) appeared at the end of the +century in a small collection of poems entitled _Sylvia de Lisardo_ +(1597). It contains forty-one sonnets (of which one only is in +Spanish), three eclogues in _tercetos_ and _oitavas_, and various +_romances_ (in Spanish) and shorter poems, and has been ascribed, +without sufficient reason, to the historian Frei Bernardo de Brito. +These poems must remain anonymous, and they throw no light on the +_Crisfal_ problem, but in their true poetical feeling and power of +expression they deserved their popularity[320] in the first half of the +seventeenth century. + +It is not certain but it is probable that Ribeiro went to Italy, and +his Italian travels may have coincided with those of his life-long +friend, the champion of humanism in Portugal, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE +MIRANDA (_c._ 1485-1558), the most famous of all the Portuguese poets +with the exception of Camões and Gil Vicente. As a lyric poet far +inferior to either of them, his great influence was due partly to his +character, partly to his introduction of the new school of poetry, the +_versos de medida nova_, or _de arte maior_, replacing the national +_trovas de medida velha_ (octosyllabic _redondilhas_) by the Italian +hendecasyllabics: Petrarca’s sonnets and canzoni, Dante’s _terza rima_ +(_tercetos_), and the _octava rima_ of Poliziano and Ariosto. The +exact date of Miranda’s birth is still uncertain, but if he was the +eldest of five sons of the Coimbra Canon, Gonçalo Mendez de Sá, who +were legitimized in 1490, he must have been born about the year 1485. +Yet one would willingly make him younger. His life in Minho certainly +sounds too active for a man of fifty: perhaps _c._ 1490 would be nearer +the mark. He studied at the University at Lisbon and early frequented +the Court. He soon won distinction as a scholar and was a Doctor of Law +when he contributed several poems to Garcia de Resende’s _Cancioneiro_ +(1516). His journey to Italy a few years later, in 1521, may have been +due merely to the natural desire of a scholar to see Rome or there may +have been other motives, a love affair of his own or his friendship +with Bernardim Ribeiro. He was distantly related to the great Italian +family of Colonna (as he was to Garci Lasso) and in Italy perhaps met +the celebrated Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Marchesa di Pescara, +besides probably most of the other distinguished Italians of the time, +Lattanzio Tolomei, Sannazzaro, Cardinal Bembo, Giovanni Rucellai, +Ariosto. During five years he saw the principal cities of Italy and +Sicily and returned to Portugal in 1526 (or earlier, possibly after +three years, in 1524) with a deep knowledge of Italian literature and +the firm resolve to acclimatize in his country the metres in which +the Italians had written things so divine. If he had seen at Rome the +_Cancioneiro_ of thirteenth-century Portuguese poets[321] he must have +realized that the metres were not so foreign as many might think; if +he met Boscán on his homeward journey his determination to become +innovator or restorer[322] would be strengthened. King João III was on +the throne, and we are told in Miranda’s earliest biography (1614), +which is attributed with some probability to D. Gonçalo Coutinho, that +he became ‘one of the most esteemed courtiers of his time’. He was an +enthusiastic believer in monarchy and in the divinity that doth hedge +a king, but was less enamoured of the growing corruption and luxury +at Court: probably he was himself more esteemed by the king than by +the courtiers, and after the poetry of Italy he could scarcely share +their taste for the trivial verses of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ nor +could they see how a compliment could be turned more neatly than in +the old _esparsas_ and _vilancetes_. During these years he wrote his +first play, _Os Estranjeiros_, the eclogue _Alexo_ with _oitavas_ in +Portuguese, and the _Fabula do Mondego_, perhaps in order to show his +superiority over Gil Vicente. + +There was an obvious antagonism between the laughing and the weeping +reformer (for both protested vigorously in their different ways against +the growing materialism of the day), between the learned, philosophical +and the natural, human poet, and Vicente’s humour probably appeared +to Sá de Miranda as unintelligible and undignified as Miranda’s +hendecasyllabic poems may have appeared melancholy-thin and artificial +to Vicente: _et ce n’est point ainsi que parle la Nature_. But the line +in the introduction of the _Fabula do Mondego_ in which Miranda speaks +of the king’s condescension, + + Al canto pastoril ya hecho osado, + +probably refers to some previous effort of his own rather than to the +work of Vicente, and Miranda was in Italy when Gil Vicente was taunted +by certain _homems de bom saber_ and turned the tables on them in the +_Farsa de Inés Pereira_. The _Fabula do Mondego_ is a cold, stilted +production of 600 lines in Petrarcan stanzas, the subject of which was +partly derived from Angelo Ambrogini (Poliziano). In 1532 the King gave +Miranda a _commenda_ (benefice) of the Order of Christ on the banks +of the Neiva in Minho, and having acquired the neighbouring estate of +Tapada (_quinta da Tapada_) he left the Court and retired to it not +many months later. Miranda’s love of Nature was very deep, from his +boyhood at Coimbra he had preferred the country to life in cities, +and probably no other incentive was required, although it is thought +that he may have been too zealous in support of Bernardim Ribeiro and +that a passage in _Alexo_ (1532?) offended the powerful favourite, the +Conde da Castanheira. Whatever the cause of his withdrawal, literature +must call it blessed, for his new life in the country suited his +temperament; the independence of character shown in his fine letter +(one of the most famous poems in the Portuguese language) addressed +to King João III developed, and close contact with the country and +the peasants gave his poetry that indigenous flavour and peculiar +charm which have fascinated all readers of the eclogue _Basto_, that +individual stamp in which the Court poetry was infallibly lacking. He +had already written his best work--for this eclogue and the letters +show the real Miranda, pointed, original, racy of the soil--and written +it in _quintilhas_, when in 1536 he married Briolanja, the sister of +his old friend, now his neighbour at Crasto, Manuel Machado de Azevedo. +Some miles away, at the straggling little village of Cabeceiras de +Basto, he had other intimate friends, the Pereiras, and the gift, by +one of these two brothers, Antonio Nunalvarez Pereira, of a manuscript +of Garci Lasso de la Vega’s poems shortly before Miranda’s marriage +revived his enthusiasm for the alien metres. He turned again to the +hendecasyllable and wrote the eclogues _Andrés_ (1535), _Celia_, and +_Nemoroso_ (1537), the latter in memory of the tragic death of Garci +Lasso in the preceding year. He returned to the _quintilha_ later, +employing it with flowing ease in _A Egipciaca Santa Maria_ (or _Santa +Maria Egipciaca_), which was probably written between 1544 and 1554, +when he was educating his two sons with _amor encoberto e moderado_ +(_A Egipciaca_, p. 3), and nearer the former than the latter date. Its +vigour and the promise of more[323] after 721 _quintilhas_ preclude +the date (1556-8) assigned to it by its first editor, even without +the statement of the 1614 biographer that Miranda wrote scarcely +anything after his wife’s death in 1555; but it may have been written +even earlier, before 1544. And still through all these various poems, +despite their undeniable value and incidental beauties, it is the +man, his life and character, that interest us. The wild yet green and +peaceful scenery of Minho accorded well with his _alma soberana_, at +once active and contemplative, disciplined and independent. At first +hunting the wolf and boar occupied his leisure--we see him out with +his dogs Hunter, Swallowfoot, &c., in crimson dawn and breathless +noonday--and gave him a hundred opportunities for quiet observation +of Nature, the streams, especially the birds, and the peasants. The +poems written soon after his arrival still retain the freshness of +these impressions. His evenings were spent with his friends at +Cabeceiras--true _noctes cenaeque deum_--or in the more formal society +at Crasto or with music--he played the viola--or his favourite authors, +Homer in Greek, or Horace, the Bible, the Italians, or Garci Lasso +and Boscán. Later gardening[324] and the education of his sons and +entertainment of visitors took the place of his favourite wolf-hunting. +As his fame and influence spread, Diogo Bernardez (whose recollections +of Miranda were recorded in the 1614 life) was not the only disciple +who came to see him in his retreat, and he corresponded in verse with +most of the poets of the time, Andrade Caminha, Montemôr, Ferreira, +D. Manuel de Portugal, Bernardez. Cardinal Henrique was a steadfast +admirer of his work, and the young Prince João asked for a copy: _lhas +mandou pedir_. This wide recognition after the first coldness[325] was +some measure of comfort for the many sorrows of his last years, the +death of his eldest son Gonçalo, killed in his teens in Africa (1553), +of his wife (1555), of that promising precocious Prince João (1537-54) +to whom he had thrice sent a collection of his poems, the departure of +his brother, Mem, to become one of the most notable Governors of Brazil +(1557). In the latter year King João died, leaving an infant heir to a +distracted kingdom, and Miranda’s death followed a few months later. +In a sense this philosopher was the most un-Portuguese of poets, for +he had no facility in verse. He went on hammering his lines, altering, +erasing, compressing in a divine discontent. He had a lofty conception +of the poet’s art--to express the noblest sentiment in the best and +fewest words--five versions of _Alexo_, twelve of _Basto_, attest his +untiring zeal and his ‘art to blot’. The elliptical abruptness of his +native _quintilhas_, by which they have something in common with those +of Ribeiro, are not their least charm, and gives an effective emphasis +to his sententious philosophy. In introducing the new measures[326] +he used the Castilian language as being the most natural and suitable +until, but only until, they should be thoroughly acclimatized. He wrote +Castilian not fluently--that was not his gift--but correctly, with +only occasional _lusitanismos_. His best work, however, was written +in Portuguese: in the new poetry with which his name is for ever +associated he is only the forerunner of the work of Diogo Bernardez and +Camões,[327] the founder of a school to which Portuguese literature +owes some of its chief glories. In Portuguese he wrote his comedies +and, about half a century before Samuel Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ (1592), +a tragedy _Cleopatra_, of which we only possess a few lines.[328] The +poem on the life and conversion of St. Mary of Egypt[329] (a favourite +theme a few centuries earlier, as in the Spanish _Vida de Santa Maria +Egipciaqua_ (13th c.?), the fourteenth-century _Vida de Maria Egipcia_, +and the French _Vie de Sainte Marie l’Égyptienne_) is stamped with the +author’s sententious wisdom and love of discipline. It contains quaint +plays on words (_Ide ao mar que por amar_, p. 169), _tours de force_ +such as the three _quintilhas_ of _esdruxulos_ (pp. 179-80), and rises +to wonderful lyric beauty in the saint’s farewell to Earth (_Vou para +um jardim de flores_, pp. 166-9). He intended the poem to be ‘rare, +unique and excellent’ and to some extent he achieved his aim. In much +of his work the diction is rough and halting, but the greatness of +the man nevertheless extends to his poetry. Perhaps the best example +of this is the melancholy grandeur of the sonnet, technically so +imperfect, _O sol é grande_. Force of character made him not only +a laborious but a successful craftsman. When he died, honoured and +admired by all the best intellects in the country, the position of +the new school was assured and he had been able to hail with joy the +support of younger writers: _Venid buenos zagales!_ Foremost in time +among these poets of _el verso largo_ was D. MANUEL DE PORTUGAL[330] +(1520?-1606), son of the first Conde de Vimioso and of D. Joana de +Vilhena, cousin of King Manuel. He outlived all his fellow-poets, +welcomed the appearance of _Os Lusiadas_, and in 1580 took the side of +the Prior D. Antonio. His _Obras_ (1605) consist of seventeen books of +poems, mostly of a religious character and written in Spanish--books 9 +and 15 contain some Portuguese poems, and among them the fine mystic +sonnet _Apetece minha alma_ (Bk. ix, f. 199 v.). + +Among those who welcomed and acclimatized the new style none was a more +talented or truer poet than DIOGO BERNARDEZ (_c._ 1530-_c._ 1600),[331] +who confessed that he owed everything to Sá de Miranda and Antonio +Ferreira.[332] Born of a distinguished family[333] at Ponte da Barca +on the river Lima, he would ride over to visit Sá de Miranda or send +him letters in verse, and he mourned his death in sonnet, letter, and +eclogue with unaffected grief. He himself continued to sing by the +banks of his beloved Lima, endeared to him all the more by disillusion +at Lisbon and captivity in Africa. In a letter to Miranda he alludes +to an apparently unhappy love affair at Lisbon. Later the retirement +of his poet brother, Frei Agostinho, into a convent, the deaths of +Miranda and Ferreira, the great plague of 1569, and the misfortunes of +his country were all deeply felt by his affectionate nature. In 1576 +he went as secretary of Embassy to Madrid, but otherwise he seems to +have been disappointed in hopes of lucrative employment, and he was +always ready to exchange the mud of the streets and the ‘bought meals’ +of Lisbon, with its penurious, importunate _moços_,[334] for the dewy +golden dawns, the hills and streams of Minho, _entre simples e humildes +lavradores_ (_Carta_ 27). In 1578, however, he who had lamented that +no Maecenas encouraged those eager to sing the deeds of Portuguese +heroes was chosen to accompany as official poet[335] the Portuguese +expedition which ended disastrously in _aquelle funeral e turvo +dia_--the battle of Alcacer Kebir. It was not till 1581 that Bernardez +returned from captivity. Whether he was ransomed by King Philip, or +by the Trinitarians or Jesuits, or by himself or his friends, is not +known. After his return and his marriage he frequently laments his +poverty: not, he says, that he wishes to be the Pope in Rome, but +merely to have enough to eat (_Carta_ 31). Yet apparently he had no +cause to regret the change of dynasty so far as his personal fortunes +were concerned. Whereas he had merely held the post of _servidor de +toalha_ at the palace under King Sebastian, he was now (1582) appointed +a knight of the Order of Christ with a pension of 20,000 _réis_ and +was granted 500 _cruzados_ (‘in property and goods’) in the same year. +In 1593 his yearly pension was 40,000 _réis_, of which one-half was to +revert to his wife and children. Either these moneys remained unpaid or +the new _cavaleiro fidalgo’s_ ideas had changed greatly since he had +sung of the joys of rustic poverty and the vanity of riches. Bernardez +found his inspiration in the Portuguese and Spanish poets of the new +school (_cantigas strangeiras_, _strañas_),[336] and through them in +the great Italians. Dante’s name does not occur in his letters, written +in _tercetos_,[337] but Tasso--_o meu Tasso_---Ariosto, Petrarca, and +others are mentioned.[338] In form and sound some of his _canções_ are +not unworthy of Petrarca, but they are more homely and bucolic, have +more _saudade_ and less definite images, no concrete pictures like that +of _la stanca vecchierella pellegrina_ of the fourth _Canzone_. His +second source of inspiration was his native Minho and the transparent +waters and _fresca praia_ of the Lima. He was never happier than when +wandering _lungo l’amate rive_, and this gives a pleasant reality to +his eclogues. His muse, _a bosques dada e a fontes cristalinas_, sings +not only of the conventional ‘roses and lilies’ but of honeysuckle, +of cherries red in May, grapes heavy with dew, golden apples, nuts, +acorns, the trout so plentiful that they can be caught with the hand, +hares, partridges, doves, the thrush and the nightingale, and mentions +oak, ash, elm, poplar, beech, hazel, chestnut, and arbutus. These +eclogues, written in various metres, sometimes with _leixapren_ or +internal rhyme, are collected in _O Lima_ (1596), which also contains +his letters. His other works are sonnets, elegies, odes in _Rimas +Varias_, _Flores do Lima_ (1596), and a third small volume _Varias +Rimas ao Bom Jesus_ (1594) which includes elegies and odes to the +Virgin written during his captivity, a long _Historia de Santa Ursula_ +in octaves, and other devotional verse of much fervour and his wonted +perfection of technique. If, read in the mass, his poems produce the +impression of a cloying sweetness, it must be remembered that never +before had Portuguese poetry risen to so harmonious a music. Faria e +Sousa accused him of plagiarizing Camões, but in the case of a writer +whose accepted poems, the _dulcissima carmina Limae_, are of such +excellence the accusation cannot be seriously entertained. Neither he +nor Camões was a great original poet, but in both the command of the +new style was such that their poems were often confused by collectors. +A passage in one of Bernardez’ letters (5, l. 6) seems to imply that +his poetry was not appreciated at Lisbon. It was too genuine and clear +to suit the clever Court rhymesters. But he had his followers, who +would send him their poems to be corrected, or rather, praised, and +later Lope de Vega recognized him as his master in the eclogue in +preference to Garci Lasso. + +FRANCISCO GALVÃO (_c._ 1563-1635?), equerry to the Duke of Braganza, +was a true poet if he wrote the sonnet _A Nosso Senhor_ ascribed to +him by his editor, Antonio Lourenço Caminha, in _Poesias ineditas dos +nossos insignes poetas Pedro da Costa Perestrello, coevo do grande +Luis de Camões, e Francisco Galvão_ (1791): _Ó tu de puro amor Deos +fonte pura_. Innocencio da Silva vigorously doubts the authenticity of +these poems, which are mostly of a religious character or concerned +with Horace’s theme of the golden mean, as that of the _Obras ineditas +de Aires Telles de Meneses_ (1792) published by the same editor, who +professed to have faithfully copied them from the _antigos originaes_ +of the time of João II. Bernardez’ brother Frei AGOSTINHO DA CRUZ +(1540-1619), born at Ponte da Barca, entered as a novice the Convent +of Santa Cruz in the Serra de Sintra in 1560, and took the vows a year +later. In 1605 he obtained permission to live as a hermit in the Serra +da Arrabida, where he cultivated _saudade_ and the muses, although his +poems were no longer profane, as when in his youth as Agostinho Pimenta +he haunted with his brother Diogo the banks of the Lima. These early +verses he burnt: _Queimei, como vergonha me pedia, Chorando par haver +tão mal cantado_. The eclogues, elegies, letters, sonnets, and odes +that survive prove that _mal_ is here a moral, not an aesthetic adverb, +and that he shared his brother’s love of Nature and in no mean degree +his power of expressing it in soft, harmonious verse. + +That gift was denied to ANTONIO FERREIRA (1528-69), who combined +enthusiasm for the new style--_a lira nova_--and for classical +antiquity with a rooted antipathy against the use of a foreign language +or foreign subjects. His uneventful life as judge, courtier, and poet +was cut short by the plague of 1569. His poetry is not that of a poet +but of the Coimbra law student who had become a busy magistrate.[339] +It is thus at its best when it does not attempt to be lyrical, for +instance in his excellent letters in _tercetos_. His odes are closely +modelled on those of Horace (_o meu Horacio_). Nor did he claim +originality: indeed, his plan of introducing certain new forms was +a little too deliberate for a great poet,[340] and his best sonnet +is a translation from Petrarca. For bucolic poetry neither the grave +doctor’s style nor his inclinations were well suited. Not only is +the smooth flow of the verse which charms us in Diogo Bernardez here +absent but the metre often actually halts,[341] and throughout his work +we have sincerity, lofty aims, a stiff unbending severity, but not +poetical genius. Ferreira was a true patriot, and it was his boast and +is his enduring fame that he devoted himself to exalt the Portuguese +language.[342] It was most fortunate for Portuguese literature that at +this time of changing taste a poet of Ferreira’s great influence should +have forsworn foreign intrusions in the language with the exception +of Latin (in the introduction of which, however, his characteristic +restraint forbade excess), and left both in prose and verse abiding +monuments of pure Portuguese. This was the more remarkable in a poet +who disdained the old popular metres (_a antiga trova deixo ao povo_) +and had no thought apparently for popular customs or traditions. His +_Poemas Lusitanos_, published posthumously, contain over a hundred +sonnets, besides his odes, eclogues, elegies, epigrams (which are but +fragments of sonnets), and letters, and he also wrote a _Historia de +Santa Comba_ in fifty-seven _oitavas_. + +The work of PERO DE ANDRADE CAMINHA (1520?-89), an industrious writer +of verse rather than a poet, is as cold and unmusically artificial as +Ferreira’s in its form, while it lacks Ferreira’s high thought and +ideals and his love for his native language. One may imagine that +it was through friendship with Ferreira--who scolds him for writing +in Spanish--that he became one of the set of Miranda and Bernardez. +Camões he must have known,[343] and indeed refers to him satirically +in his epigrams: he seems to have actively disliked so wayward a +genius, a man so unfitted to be a Court official. Caminha himself +was the son of João Caminha, Chamberlain of the Duchess Isabel of +Braganza, and of Philippa de Sousa of Oporto, where (or at Lisbon) +the poet may have been born. After studying at the University, either +at Lisbon, or after its transference to Coimbra in 1537, he entered +the household of the Infante Duarte. In 1576 the poet retired to the +palace of the Braganzas at Villa Viçosa and died there thirteen years +later. During the last ten years of his life he held a _tença_ of two +hundred milreis besides other sources of income (he was Alcaide Môr of +Celorico de Basto, as his father had been of Villa Viçosa), so that his +lot compares handsomely with that of Camões. He had planned an edition +of his works in nine books, but only a few occasional poems were +published during his lifetime. He wrote short poems in all the usual +kinds, but, although trusted and honoured by the princes he served, he +entirely lacked Camões’ divine _furia_ and had no compensating sympathy +or insight or lyrical charm. What would not Camões have made of his +chanty, _cantiga para çalamear_![344] + +In perfect contrast to the laboured verses of Andrade Caminha is the +spontaneous flow of the lines to the river Leça beginning _Ó rio +Leça_, by which the Conde de Mattosinhos, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE MENESES +(1515?-84), is chiefly remembered. They place him at once among the +principal poets of the century. He succeeded the Conde de Vimioso as +Camareiro Môr of Prince João, held the same post in the first years +of King Sebastian’s reign, and subsequently under King Henrique, who +created him Count of Mattosinhos in return for his services as Governor +of Portugal (during the absence of King Sebastian) and on other +occasions. After the death of the Portuguese king he retired to Oporto, +and no doubt spent the remaining summers at Mattosinhos near the gentle +stream which he had immortalized. + +The Portuguese poems of ANDRÉ FALCÃO DE RESENDE (1527?-98), born at +Evora, nephew of the antiquarian André and of the poet Garcia de +Resende, were first published at Coimbra in an incomplete volume +_Poesias_ [1865], and consist of the _Microcosmographia_ and some +spirited anti-Drake ballads and good sonnets (e.g. _Ó fragil bem_, _Ó +breve gosto humano_) and satires. BALTHASAR DE ESTAÇO (born in 1570), +Canon of Viseu, and his brother the antiquarian GASPAR DE ESTAÇO, Canon +of Guimarães and author of _Varias Antiguidades de Portugal_ (1625), +were both born at Evora. The former’s _Sonetos, Eglogas e ovtras rimas_ +(1604), published, according to the preface, in the author’s mature age +but written in the green, contain some religious sonnets of high merit. + +A far more celebrated writer than these minor poets was JORGE DE +MONTEMÔR (_c._ 1520-61), or _hispanice_ Montemayor, who was early +driven by poverty from Montemôr o Velho (where he was born between 1518 +and 1528) a few years after Mendez Pinto. Fortunately the latter did +not relate his travels in Chinese, but Montemôr, with the exception of +a few brief passages[345] in his _Diana_, wrote exclusively in Spanish. +In Spain his musical talent gave him a livelihood, and as musician +and singer of the Royal Chapel he remained at the Court till 1552, +when he accompanied the Infanta Juana as _aposentador_ on the occasion +of her marriage with that promising patron of letters, the Infante +João. But even before the prince’s death in 1554 Montemôr returned to +Spain. In 1555 he may have gone in the train of Philip II to England, +and subsequently served as a soldier in Holland and Italy till a +duel, perhaps in a love affair, at Turin ended his days in 1561.[346] +Despite his brief and restless life Montemôr, who showed in _Las obras +de George de Montemayor_ (1554) that he was no mean poet, found time +to write one of the most famous books in literature. The date of its +publication--it was dedicated to Prince João and Princess Juana--is +uncertain, but it was probably an early work. In spirit, since not in +the letter, it belongs to Portugal. Its gentle, easy style (Menéndez y +Pelayo calls it _tersa, suave, melódica, expresiva_), the sentimental +love and melancholy, the introduction of bucolic scenes, the references +to Portugal--_cristalino_ applied to the Mondego is no conventional +epithet, as only those who have seen its transparent waters can fully +realize--mark the _Diana_ as the work of a Portuguese. Its fame soon +overleapt the borders of the Peninsula. In Spain it had a numerous +progeny, to which Cervantes refused the grace somewhat grudgingly given +to Montemôr’s work as ‘the first in its kind’. In Portugal this, the +eldest child of Bernardim Ribeiro’s _Menina e moça_, had to wait over +half a century before it found a worthy successor in the _Lusitania +Transformada_. + +Little certain is known of the life of FERNAM ALVAREZ DO ORIENTE (_c._ +1540-_c._ 1595?). Born at Goa, he served in the East, and may have +fought in the battle of Alcacer Kebir. His resemblance to Moraes in +temperament and adventures perhaps gave rise to the assertion that +he wrote the fifth and sixth parts of _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_. The +scene of his _Lvsitania Transformada_ (1617) is partly in Portugal +(the banks of the river Nabão and the seven hills of Thomar) and +partly in India (_no nosso Oriente_). Like Montemôr’s _Diana_, it is +divided into _prosas_ and poems, and it is modelled on the _Arcadia_ +of Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530)--the mountains of Arcadia transformed +into Lusitania[347]--which, however, each of its three books equals in +length. The prose setting, although devoid of thought, is mellifluous +and clear, and the poems, which contain reminiscences of Camões, rival +in the harmony and transparent flow of the verse that ‘prince of the +poets of our time’, as Alvarez calls him. Some critics have even +ventured to attribute the work to Camões, as though his genius were +so poor that he must needs fall to quoting himself in whole lines, as +is here the case. But Alvarez had certainly caught some measure of +Camões’ skill and of _il soave stilo e ’l dolce canto_ of Sannazzaro +and Petrarca. He is, moreover, less vague[348] than many writers +of eclogues, and in singing his own love story describes what his +eyes have seen. It was, however, an aberration to favour the _verso +esdruxulo_ (Ariosto’s _sdruccioli_) (cf. Sannazzaro’s _Arcadia_, Ecl. +1, 6, 8, 9, 12), a truly Manueline adornment which other Portuguese +poets unfortunately copied as a new artifice.[349] + +As a poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa, who was something more than a +pedant of pedants, deserves a place among the multitude of Portuguese +writers of eclogues, since of the twenty long eclogues contained in +his _Fvente de Aganipe y Rimas Varias_ (7 pts., 1624-7) the first +twelve are in his native tongue. They show no originality but have +occasional passages of quiet beauty. Nos. 7 and 8 are both entitled +‘rustic’ and purpose to represent peasants of Minho. They are so +overcharged with archaisms and rustic words and expressions (_samicas_ +and _namja_ of course occur, and _grolea_ (glory), _marmolea_ (memory), +the form _suidade_, &c.) that they would probably have been Greek to +the peasants. As a critic Lope de Vega called Faria the prince of +commentators, on the strength of his learned and copious editions of +the Lusiads and lyrics of Camões, for whom he had a genuine devotion. +Time has lent an interest, if not validity, to his literary criticisms. +In poetry he was as prolific as in prose: he boasted, in the age of +Lope de Vega, that he had written more blank verse than any other poet +and that his printed sonnets exceeded those of Lope by 300. + +ELOI DE SÁ SOTTOMAIOR (or Souto Maior), the author of _Jardim do Ceo_ +(1607) and _Ribeiras do Mondego_ (1623), is generally perhaps more +familiar with the Saints than with the Muses, but some of his poems +are not without merit. The latter work, in prose and verse, has no +originality, although the author was careful to state that he had +composed it before the _Primavera_ of FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ LOBO (_c._ +1580-1622), who in strains not less sweetly harmonious than the Lima +poems of Bernardez sang the little stream of Lis that runs so gaily +through his native Leiria. He went to study at Coimbra in 1593, took +his degree there in 1602, returned to Leiria and before 1604 was in +the service of Theodosio, Duke of Braganza, at Villa Viçosa. He was +drowned in his prime in the Tagus coming from Santarem to Lisbon. He +was alive in 1621, but, as Dr. Ricardo Jorge has shown in his able +biography, died before the end of 1622. The fact of his drowning is +well established, otherwise the tradition might have been attributed +to passages in his works in which he seems to foretell such a fate. +An extraordinarily prolific writer, his fame rests chiefly on his +three pastoral works of mingled prose and verse: _A Primavera_ (1601) +and its second and third parts _O Pastor Peregrino_ (1608) and _O +Desenganado_ (1614). Rodriguez Lobo somewhere speaks disparagingly of +books ‘long as leagues in Alentejo’, but length and monotony are not +absent from his own pastorals. Look into them where you will, beautiful +descriptions, showing deep love of Nature, will present themselves, +and delightful verse and harmonious prose, excellent in its component +parts although allowed to trail in the construction of the sentences. +But the reader who attempts more than a desultory acquaintance is soon +overcome by a feeling of satiety, for the _Primavera_ in its _brandura +sem fim_ and the complete absence of thought is like a stream choked by +water-lilies: lovely, but tiring to the swimmer. + +Through all these love-lorn shepherd scenes runs a vague thread of +autobiography. The passion of Bernardim Ribeiro is replaced by a +suaver melancholy. The poet leaves the Lis for Coimbra and then goes +to Lisbon and thence to distant lands, where he wanders as a pilgrim +till he is shipwrecked at the mouth of the Lis and returns to his home +to find Lisea given to another. It is divided into _florestas_. In the +opening _florestas_ the quiet streams, the green woods and pastures, +are charmingly described; later the scene is transferred to the _campos +do Mondego_ and the _praias do Tejo_. A breath of the sea is welcome in +_O Desenganado_, but the story soon returns to shepherd life and its +series of natural but rather insipid incidents. + +Had Rodriguez Lobo written not better but less, his pastoral romances +would probably be far more widely read. But his finest work is of a +different kind, a long dialogue, _Corte na Aldea e Noites de Inverno_ +(1619), between a _fidalgo_, D. Julio, and four friends in the long +winter evenings near Lisbon. Suggested by Baldassare Castiglione’s +famous _Il Cortigiano_, which had been popularized in Spain by Boscán’s +excellent translation (1534), this work, for which Gracián prophesied +immortality, is full of the most varied interest. The prose, excellent +as is all that of this champion of the Portuguese language, _jardineiro +da lingua portuguesa_ (which his countrymen, he complained, patch and +patch like a beggar’s cloak), is here more vigorous and compact in its +construction without losing its harmonious rhythm, attractive as the +conversations which it records. Besides the beautiful verses lavishly +scattered through his prose works, Rodriguez Lobo wrote a long epic on +Nun’ Alvarez in twenty cantos of _oitavas_: _O Condestabre de Portugal +D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira_ (1610),[350] a volume of _Eglogas_ (1605), in +which he is a recognized master, a volume of _Romances_ (1596) written, +with two exceptions, in Spanish,[351] and, perhaps, a Christmas play +entitled _Auto del Nascimiento de Christo y Edicto del Emperador +Avgvsto Cesar_, published in 1676. It is written in _redondilhas_ in +Spanish and Portuguese.[352] This _auto_ is followed by an _Entremes do +Poeta_ in Portuguese. A poet, an obdurate Gongorist (_Do Gongora tive +sempre opinadas preferencias_), recites a sonnet to a lady: _Celicola +substancia procreada_, which she does not understand, and a _ratinho_, +also at a loss (_he para mim cousa grega_), advises him to give over +his jargon for a more natural language: + + Gerigonças no fallar, + Que amor nam he contrafeito. + +But Rodriguez Lobo has no need of such attributions to justify his +great and enduring fame. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[302] Cf. H. Lopes de Mendonça, _O Salto Mortal_, Act iii: _Tanto +gostaes d’este livro: É por ser triste?--É por ser verdadeiro._ + +[303] Eclogue 5 (_a qual dizem ser do mesmo autor_), which is +undoubtedly by Ribeiro, refers to Coimbra in the lines: _É lembrarme os +sinceiraes De Coimbra que me mata_. + +[304] As in the case of Gil Vicente, we are vexed with homonyms--a +notary, an admiral, &c. Dr. Theophilo Braga, skilfully dovetailing +hypotheses, develops his biography fully. _Casi todo lo que de él se ha +escrito son fábulas sin fundamento alguno_, wrote Menéndez y Pelayo in +1905. + +[305] Fray Luis de Leon may have remembered this passage in _De los +Nombres de Cristo_, Bk. 3 (1917 ed., t. 1, p. 198; _Bib. Aut. Esp._, t. +37, p. 182). + +[306] _Nossos amores contados por um modo que os não entenderá +ninguem_, Garrett, _Um Auto de Gil Vicente_. + +[307] _La Voluntad_, Barcelona, 1902. Camillo Castello Branco held +similar views. + +[308] The word cannot be translated exactly, but corresponds to +the Greek πόθος, Latin _desiderium_, Catalan _anyoranza_, Galician +_morriña_, German _Sehnsucht_, Russian тоска (pron. _taská_). It is the +‘passion for which I can find no name’ (Gissing, _The Private Papers of +Henry Ryecroft_). + +[309] Menéndez y Pelayo’s strict division between the ‘subjective’ pt. +1 and pt. 2 as _externa y de aventuras_ is thus somewhat arbitrary. + +[310] Pt. 1, cap. 9; pt. 2, cap. 25. + +[311] In pt. 2, cap. 9, this is forgotten: _outras_ [_cousas_] _que +não são escritas neste livro_, a slip which throws no light on the +authorship. + +[312] It was characteristic of the hot-house air in which Portuguese +literature existed that the first publication of a book often consisted +in its circulation (_correr_) in manuscript from courtier to courtier, +a special licence being obtained for this apart from the licence to +print. Those to whom it appealed made copies. The earliest known +edition of _Menina e moça_ is of 1557-8: _Primeira & segũda parte do +liuro chamado as Saudades de Bernaldim Ribeiro com todas suas obras. +Treladado de seu propria original. Nouamente impresso._ 1557 (Euora. +The date of the colophon is January 30, 1558). An introductory note +_Aos lectores_ says: _Foram tantos os traduzidores deste liuro & os +pareceres em elle tam diuersos que nam he de marauilhar que na primeira +impressam desta historia se achassem tantas cousas em contrario de como +foram pello auctor delle escriptas ... foy causa de andar este liuro +tam vicioso ... conueo tirarse a limpo do propria original_, &c., &c.). +The edition of 1554, quoted by Brunet, was probably the first in spite +of the words _com summa diligencia emendada_ (i.e. corrections of the +manuscript). The phrase _de nouo_ tells more against than in favour of +an earlier edition (= rather ‘new’ than ‘anew’). + +[313] Ribeiro, so far as we know, wrote no line of Spanish. Boscán’s +_romance Justa fué mi perdición_ and the _romance Ó Belerma_ have been +wrongly ascribed to him. + +[314] p. 287: ... _so ganz persönlichem Stil, dass sie mit keinem +anderen Dichter vor oder nach ihnen, wohl aber untereinander zu +verwechseln wären_; and p. 292: Bernardim Ribeiro writes _ganz im Stile +des Falcão_. Cf. F. Bouterwek, _History of Spanish and Portuguese +Literature_, Eng. tr. 1823, ii. 39: ‘A long eclogue by this writer, +which forms an appendix to the works of Ribeyro, so completely partakes +of the character of the poems which it accompanies that were it not +for the separate title it might be mistaken for the production of +Ribeyro himself. It therefore proves that Ribeyro’s poetic fancies, his +romantic mysticism not excepted, were by no means individual.’ + +[315] According to Dr. Theophilo Braga, he was born in 1515; married +in 1529 Maria Brandão (aged eleven); was profoundly influenced by +Ribeiro’s _Trovas de dous pastores_ (1536) but did not plagiarize it in +the _Trovas de Crisfal_ (1536-41), similar passages being due to the +_situação quasi similar_ (i.e. _quasi identica_) of the two friends; +went to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1541; spent the year 1543 in +Rome and returned to Portugal in the winter of 1543-4; was factor of +the fortress of Arguim from 1545 to 1548; and died in 1577. + +[316] The whole question at issue is whether the _de_ of _Trovas de +Crisfal_ = ‘by’ or ‘about’ (cf. _O Livro das Trovas d’ El Rei_ = rather +‘belonging to’ than ‘by’ the king), and protests against _a illusão +de pretender identificar em um mesmo poeta o apaixonado de Aonia e +o de Maria_ (_Obras_, 1915 ed., p. 10) or _o intuito de converterem +Christovam Falcão em um mytho_ (ibid., p. 42) are beside the point. + +[317] That one of the figures is identical in the woodcuts of these two +_folhas volantes_ is not significant: it appears also in an anonymous +edition of the _Pranto de Maria Parda_. + +[318] In the 1559 ed. the words _hũa muy nomeada e agradauel Egloga +chamada Crisfal ... que dizem ser de Cristouam Falcam, ho que parece +alludir ho nome da mesma Egloga_ may legitimately be held to imply +merely that some persons, misled by the anagram, attributed the poem to +Falcão. + +[319] _Decada_ 8, cap. 34 (1786 ed., p. 322). + +[320] The _licença_ of the 1632 edition says, _Este livrinho ... muitas +vezes se imprimio_. + +[321] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 109: + + Eu digo os Provençais que inda se sente + O som das brandas rimas que entoaram. + +Cf. Boscán ap. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, tom. xiii (_Juan +Boscán_), p. 165: _En tiempo de Dante y un poco antes florecieron los +Proenzales, cuyas obras por culpa de los tiempos andan en pocas manos._ +Menéndez y Pelayo also (ibid., p. 174) gives a reference by Faria e +Sousa to King Dinis: _El rey don Dionis de Portugal nació primero +que el Dante tres ó quatro años y escrivió mucho deste propio género +endecasílabo, coma consta de los manuscritos._ + +[322] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 112: + + ¿Como se perdieron + Entre nos el cantar, como el tañer + Que tanto nombre a los pasados dieron? + + +[323] + + Adeus leitor a mais ver, + Porque ainda haveis de ver mais (_A Egipciaca_, p. 181). + + +[324] He must often have repeated Nuno Pereira’s lines, which may have +influenced him when he read them in the _Cancioneiro Geral: Privar em +cas da Rainha Deos vollo deixe fazer, E a mi hũa vinha E regar hũa +almoinha Em que tenho mor prazer ... Lavro, cavo quanta posso ... O +gingrar de meu caseiro_, &c. + +[325] His complaint in the second elegy (1885 ed., No. 147, l. 17) +shows how far he was in advance of his age in Portugal: _Um vilancete +brando ou seja um chiste, Letras ás invenções, motes ás damas, Hũa +pregunta escura, esparsa triste, Tudo bom, quem o nega? Mas porque, Se +alguem descobre mais, se lhe resiste?_ + +[326] Often he combines several in the same poem. Thus the long (533 +lines) eclogue on the death of Garci Lasso (_Nemoroso_) begins in +_tercetos_, proceeds with _rima encadeada_ (internal rhyme), and ends +with Petrarcan stanzas. + +[327] Cf. the sonnet (1885 ed., No. 126) _Esprito que voaste_ with +_Alma minha gentil_. + +[328] The autograph manuscript of this and of other poems, discovered +in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional by Snr. Delfim Guimarães in 1908, has +been reproduced in facsimile by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos +in the _Boletim_ of the Lisbon _Ac. das Sciencias_, vol. v (1912), pp. +187-220. See _infra_, p. 164. + +[329] Leonel da Costa, the translator of Virgil and Terence, later +wrote a poem in seven cantos of _redondilhas_ on the same subject: _A +Conversão miraculosa da felice egypcia penitente Santa Maria_ (1627). + +[330] Faria e Sousa even makes him the first Portuguese poet to write +hendecasyllabics, setting aside those of Sá de Miranda as unreadable: +_son incapaces de ser leidos!_ (_Varias Rimas_, pt. ii, p. 162). + +[331] He was _Moço da camara_ in 1566. He was appointed a knight of the +Order of Christ in 1582. He married apparently after his return from +Africa in 1581. He was alive in 1596 (although in one of his poems he +refers to a premature old age) and dead in 1605. On the other hand, he +was apparently over twenty-five in 1558. It is thought that the right +of passing on his official posts to his children (_sobrevivencia_), +granted to his father in 1532, may indicate the date of the birth of +the eldest of his eleven children: Diogo Bernardez (who did not, like +some of his brothers, use his father’s second name, Pimenta). + +[332] _Carta_ 12: _Confesso dever tudo áquella rara Doutrina tua_. + +[333] The succeeding generation was also distinguished, one of the +poet’s nephews becoming Bishop of Angra, another Governor of Angola, a +third Professor at Coimbra University. + +[334] Bernardez’ letters in verse contain many such references to +everyday life, e. g. the Lisbon negress selling fried fish in the +_Betesga_. + +[335] A confident sonnet by him in this capacity is extant: _Pois +armarse por Christo não duvida Sebastião._ + +[336] _O doce estillo teu tomo por guia_ and _Escrevo, leio e risco_ +he writes to Miranda, but his muse was far more spontaneous than +Miranda’s, and it appears from another passage (in _Elegia_ 5) that his +alterations were less of style than of matter. + +[337] _Carta_ 32 is an exception, and consists of seventy-two _oitavas_. + +[338] He introduces Italian lines (_Cartas_ 23, 27, 30) and wrote a +sonnet in Italian. + +[339] Cf. _Carta_ 4: _Foge inda o dia ao muito diligente_, although +whether this is due to his work or to the number of his friends is not +clear. + +[340] _Com cujo_ [Miranda’s] _exemplo meu pai, que entam estaua nos +estudos, pretendeo com a variedade destes sens manifestar como a lingua +Portugueza assi em copia de palauras como em grauidade de estylo +a nenhuma he inferior_ (Miguel Leite Ferreira, Preface to _Poemas +Lvsitanos_, 1598). + +[341] To take an example not from the eclogues but from one of his +sonnets, the words + + da guerra + Nossa livres viveis em paz e em gloria + +correspond but ill to their peaceful sense. + +[342] Cf. _Carta_ 2. Bernardez (in an elegy on Ferreira’s death +addressed to Andrade Caminha) records that among all Ferreira’s verses +not a line was written in a foreign tongue: _um só nunca lhe deu em +lingua alhea_. + +[343] Thirteen times the same subject is treated by Camões and Caminha, +sometimes exclusively by them (C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Pero de +Andrade Caminha_ (1901), p. 55). + +[344] _Obras_, ed. Priebsch, p. 361. + +[345] All that he wrote in Portuguese is contained in two pages +(389-91) of Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo_ (1890). + +[346] Fray Bartolomé Ponce, _Primera Parte de la Clara Diana a lo +divino_ (1582?): _Me dijeron como un muy amigo suyo le habia muerto por +ciertos zelos ó amores_ (quoted by Ticknor, iii. 536, and by T. Braga +(omitting _ciertos_), _Bernardim Ribeiro_ (1872), p. 80). + +[347] _Argumento desta obra._ + +[348] e.g. + + No mato o rosmaninho, a branca esteva, + No campo o lirio azul que o chão cubria. + + +[349] _Que estes se chamem poetas!_ rightly exclaims Frei Lucas de +Santa Catharina (_Seram Politico_ (1704), p. 146) of those who revel in +the use of _esdruxulos_. + +[350] The whole of Canto XIV is given to a vigorous account of the +battle of Aljubarrota, already described more vividly in fewer stanzas +by Camões. Another poem in _oitavas_ by Rodriguez Lobo, _Historia da +Arvore Triste_, was published in _Fenix Renascida_, vol. iv. + +[351] In Spanish also are the fifty-six _romances_ which make up the +poem _La Jornada_, &c. (1623), written on the coming of Philip III to +Portugal in 1619. In the eclogues, written chiefly in _redondilhas_, he +sings with spontaneous charm _as praticas humildes e os cuidados Não +por arte fingidos e enfeitados_ of the _rusticos vaqueiros_, as he says +in the prefatory sonnet. Many of the words are pleasantly indigenous: +_milho_, _boroa_, _salgueiraes_, _rafeiro_, _charneca_, _chocalho_, +_abegões_, _ovelheiros_. + +[352] For instance, when the Angel has announced in Spanish _las +alegres nuevas_, the goatherd, _ratinho_, Mendo, says: _A din Rey, +a din Rey ay! Que estou amorrinhentado, Acudame algum Cristom ou +Sancristom._ Laureano, the shepherd, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, +and Silvia says: _Porque o que sinto quisera Dizelo em bom Portugues._ +An _Auto e Colloquio do Nascimento de Christo_ (1646) attributed to +Francisco Lopes was reprinted in 1676. + + + + + § 3 + + _The Drama_ + + +After Gil Vicente’s death the _autos_ continued to flourish in number +if not in excellence, and evidently answered to a very real popular +demand. It was in vain that the Jesuits produced their Latin plays and +that serious poets of high reputation sought to wean the affections of +the people from the _auto_ to the classical drama.[353] This opposition +of the educated did, however, conduce to the swift deterioration of +the _auto_, although some of those of a religious character, chiefly +the Nativity plays, still succeeded in reflecting a part of the charm +that characterized the Vicentian drama. To Gil Vicente’s lifetime +probably belongs the _Obra famosissima tirada da Sancta Escriptura +chamada da Geração humana, onde se representam sentenças muy catolicas +& proueitosas pera todo christã: Feita por huũ famoso autor_ (1536?). +Indeed, the verse runs so easily, the peasants are so natural, that +one might almost suspect him of having had a hand in its composition. +But the metre (8 8 4 8 8 4) is more monotonous than he would have used +throughout. The _dramatis personae_ are angels, peasants,[354] Adam, +Justice, Reason, Malice, two devils, a priest, four saints and doctors +of the Church, a Levite, the Church, the Heavenly Samaritan. Adam +in a scene closely resembling that of the _Auto da Alma_ is tempted +by Malice. Justice intervenes, and finally the Samaritan leads him +to the _estalagem_ of Holy Mother Church. The _Auto de ds [Deus] +padre & justiça & mia [Misericordia]_ belongs to the same period. It +is written in octosyllabic verse and contains a similar medley of +peasants, prophets, and abstract virtues. In the first part the angels +in Portuguese announce to the Virgin the birth of Christ, and in the +second part the peasants, who speak Spanish, go to offer rustic gifts +to _el muy chiquito donzel_. Another early and anonymous play is the +_Auto do Dia do Juizo_, included in the _Index_ of 1559, which for +its subject closely follows Gil Vicente’s _Auto da Barca do Inferno_. +A peasant, a false and lying notary, a market-woman who had offered +weekly bread and wax to Santa Catharina but had ’robbed the poor +people’, a butcher, a miller who had mixed bran in his sacks of flour, +are introduced in turn and duly consigned by Lucifer to Hell. + +If we only knew the quondam Franciscan monk ANTONIO RIBEIRO CHIADO +(_c._ 1520?-91) and his contemporary and rival, the mulatto servant of +the Bishop of Evora, by their mutual abuse, we could form no very high +opinion of their character or their wit. In bitter _quintilhas_ Chiado +reviles the latter for his dark complexion; AFONSO ALVAREZ answers by +upbraiding _nonno Chiado_ as the son of a cobbler and a market-woman +and for the habits which had made the cloister seem so dismal a place +to Frei Antonio do Espirito Santo. Fortunately some of the plays of +both of them survive, and we are better able to judge of their merits. +The mulatto, who was a valued member of his master’s household and +prides himself that Chiado has nothing worse to throw in his face +than the colour of his skin, was certainly Chiado’s inferior in wit +and talent. Both imitate Gil Vicente without having a vestige of his +lyrical genius or greater skill in devising a plot. Alvarez preferred +religious subjects. In his _Auto de Santo Antonio_ St. Anthony restores +to life the drowned son of two peasants, who are imitated from +Vicente’s _Auto da Feira_.[355] The only other of his plays that we +have is the _Auto de Santa Barbara_, but we know that he also wrote an +_Auto de S. Vicente Martyr_ and an _Auto de Santiago Apostolo_. + +Chiado’s plays and witty sayings, _avisos para guardar_ and +_parvoices_, appear to have made him extremely popular in Lisbon, +Camões recognized his talent, and Lisbon’s most famous street still +bears his name in common speech. His boisterous life at Lisbon after +leaving his convent may have given him his name Chiado (cf. the _chiar_ +of ox-carts), but it existed as a surname earlier. His _Pratica de Oito +Figuras_ (1543?), _Auto das Regateiras_ (1568 or 1569), and _Pratica +dos Compadres_ (1572), are the work of an accomplished wit who was +intimately acquainted with the farces of Gil Vicente and, in the last +two, with the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira. Many of Vicente’s types +are present, but all in a town atmosphere, in which cards take the +place of the rustic dances and lyric yields to epigram, the natural +genius of Vicente to a laboured smartness. We have the _clerigo de +vintem_, the _ratinho_ from Beira, the vain _pação_, the poor _fidalgo_ +or _escudeiro_, the negro with his pidgin Portuguese, the witch, the +ill-tempered _velha_, the _trovador_ chaplain, the ambitious priest, +the corrupt judge. The scenes are even more disconnected and less +dramatic, and the ingenious _redondilhas_ necessarily seem artificial +because their author so often challenges comparison with the more +genuine skill of his master, Gil Vicente. Chiado’s _Auto de Gonçalo +Chambão_ was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century, but +is now unknown. Of his _Auto da Natural Invençam_ (_c._ 1550) a single +copy survives, in the library of the Conde de Sabugosa, whose edition +(1917) is of exceptional interest. The play, as reminiscent of Vicente +as are the other plays of Chiado, describes the acting of an _auto_ +in a private house in the reign of João III, and bears witness to the +frequency of such representations at Lisbon and to their extraordinary +popularity. + +BALTHASAR DIAZ, a blind poet (or _jogral_) of Madeira, in the first +half of the sixteenth century wrote plays which have retained their +popularity. He versified at great length traditions of chivalry and +of mediaeval saints. We do not possess his _Trovas_ written on the +death of D. João de Castro (1548), and many of his plays, _Auto da +Paixam de Christo_, _Auto de El Rei Salomão_, _Auto da Feira da Ladra_, +have become rare or unknown. One of the best of them, the _Auto de +Santo Aleixo_, perhaps owes its survival to its subject, akin to +the popular theme of a prince in disguise. The rich and noble Aleixo +wanders in rags to the Holy Land. The Devil, who tempts him in the +form of a wayfarer, declares that now--the eternal querulous ‘now’ +of the poets--only the rich are honoured and learning is neglected. +Later the Devil becomes a courtier and again tempts St. Aleixo, who +is defended by an angel. The _Auto de Santa Catherina_ is a long +devout play of which the persons are St. Catherine, her mother, her +page, the Emperor Maxentius, a hermit, three _doutores_, Christ, the +Virgin, angels. The saint, who receives news of her mother’s death +with admirable equanimity, suffers martyrdom at the end of the play +with equal fortitude. Diaz also dramatized the story of the Marques de +Mantua. Although devoid of dramatic or lyric talent, he is sometimes +interesting. Women, whose dresses and fashions are contrasted in the +_Auto de Santo Aleixo_ with the hard toil of the men, are represented +in the _Auto da Malicia das Mulheres_ as treating their husbands ‘like +negroes’. We do not know whether Diaz spoke from experience, his life +is very obscure; but he may have spent his last years in Beira if the +passage in his _O Conselho para bem casar_: + + estou nesta Beira + tão remoto de trovar (1680 ed., p. 2) + +be not merely a reference to Boeotia, any place far from Lisbon. + +Traces of Vicente and the _Celestina_[356] are apparent in ANRIQUE +LOPEZ’ _Cena Policiana_ or _O Estvdante_, in which a _fidalgo_ and a +student[357] figure. The poor _escudeiro_ and his fasting _moço_ are +prominent in JORGE PINTO’S _Auto de Rodrigo e Mendo_. Spanish romances +are quoted with great frequency, and Vicente’s _En el mes era de Abril_ +is parodied by the _moços_.[358] Indeed, their knowledge of literature +was become embarrassing since, when his master’s guest, invited to a +dinner which did not exist, recites some verses that he has made, +Rodrigo has already read them in Boscán and heard them sung in the +street.[359] + +The exact dates of ANTONIO PRESTES, of Torres Novas, are unknown, but +seven of his plays, after having been acted at Lisbon and published in +_folhas volantes_, were first collected by Afonso Lopez half a century +after Gil Vicente’s death in the _Primeira Parte dos Avtos e Comedias +Portuguesas_, &c. (1588). The _Auto da Ave Maria_, written between +1563 and 1587, is an allegorical play in which Reason is vanquished by +Sensuality; Heraclitus mourns over her fall while Democritus laughs. +A knight in league with the Devil[360] robs in turn an almoner, a +_ratinho_, and Fast, but his pious habit of saying an _Ave Maria_ +causes St. Michael to rescue him from the Devil and reconcile him +with Reason. Of the profane plays, that with the most definite plot +is the _Auto dos Dous Irmãos_, in which an old man, after refusing to +see his sons who have married without his permission, divides all his +money between them and is then neglected by both: he is sent from one +to the other like King Lear. But the story is feebly worked out here +as in the other plays. Their action is mostly that of a puppet show. +Sometimes the _moço_, who always plays a prominent part, seems to be +the only link in the plot, as Duarte in the _Autos dos Cantarinhos_. +These _moços_, who show the author’s acquaintance with Gil Vicente[361] +and _Lazarillo de Tormes_,[362] are quite unlike either Lazarillo or +Apariço. They are certainly hungry, but they combine starvation with +laziness, presumption and abundant learning. The names of Petrarca and +Seneca are on their lips; they read _Palmeirim_ and quote romances +of chivalry and Spanish _romances_ glibly.[363] Indeed, the chief +interest of these artificial plays is the light thrown on the times: +the position of women, the bribery of judges and lawyers, the aping +of foreign manners, the mixed styles of architecture. They contain no +poetry, little drama, and their wit is seldom natural. Like Prestes, +JERONIMO RIBEIRO, perhaps a brother of Chiado, was born apparently +at Torres Novas. Only one of his plays was published: the _Auto do +Fisico_, written in the last third of the sixteenth century. It has +some farcical Vicentian scenes, the inevitable hits against the doctors +and lawyers--the _moço_ dresses up as a _doutor_ to receive a simple +fisherman from Alfama--and is generally more popular and natural than +Prestes’ plays. + +SIMÃO MACHADO (_c._ 1570-_c._ 1640), who as a Franciscan monk--Frei +Boaventura--ended his life at Barcelona, was also born at Torres +Novas. His plays--_Comedias portvgvesas_ (1601?)--are two: _Comedia +de Dio_ and _Comedia da Pastora Alfea_. They are written in Spanish +and Portuguese indiscriminately despite Gonçalo’s admonition _palrar +como Pertigues_.[364] The author explains that, well aware of his +countrymen’s love of what is foreign, he uses Castilian to save his +plays from the neglect often bestowed in Portugal upon works written +in Portuguese. His verse is ordinarily the _redondilha_, although +Nuno da Cunha in the first part of _O Cerco de Dio_ makes a speech in +_oitavas_. He has lyrical facility and his peasant scenes are full of +life, for instance, the dialogue between the cowherd Gil Cabaço and +Tomé the goatherd in _Alfea_. + +The Gospel story was dramatized by FREI FRANCISCO VAZ of Guimarães in +a long _Auto da Paixão_. The oldest edition we have is dated 1559, +and it has been often reprinted, with thirty rough woodcuts. Some of +these are very spirited, as that of the cock crowing after St. Peter’s +denial, or that of Judas hanging himself. After a long introductory +speech in _versos de arte maior_ the play proceeds in _redondilhas_ +(over 2,000 lines). Religious subjects have always been favourites with +the Portuguese, especially those affording scope for lavish scenic +display, not only those of martyred saints, as the _Auto de Santa +Genoveva_, but those based on the New Testament, as the later play +_Acto figurado da degolação dos Innocentes_ (1784) in seven scenes.[365] + +Two plays, the _Auto da Donzella da Torre_ and _Auto de Dom André_, +are attributed to Gil Vicente’s grandson, GIL VICENTE DE ALMEIDA. The +latter, written before 1559, in which a peasant brings his unlettered +son (_nem nunca falei Gramatica_) to Court, and a _ratinho_, on +becoming a page, promises himself to learn to sing and play on the +guitar within a month, has a Vicentian character. + +To the beginning of the seventeenth century also belongs the _Pratica +de Tres Pastores_ (1626), a Christmas play by FREI ANTONIO DA ESTRELLA, +who may perhaps be identified with Frei Antonio de Lisboa, author +of the lost _Auto dos Dous Ladrões_ (1603). The three shepherds, +Rodrigo, Loirenço, and Sylvestre, are awakened by an angel singing +_cousas de preço_. They agree that the song echoing over the hills +is no earth-born music but _algum Charubim ou Anjo ou Charafim_, +and presently they go to Bethlehem to offer their rustic gifts. The +author has caught the charm and spontaneity of the earlier Christmas +_autos_. Another seventeenth-century _auto_ of the same kind is the +_Colloquio do Nascimento do Menino Jesus_ by the Lisbon bookseller, +FRANCISCO LOPEZ. The scene and conversation of the three shepherds, +Gil, Silvestre, and Paschoal, with their _assorda ou migas de alho_ in +the cold night--_mas como queima o rocio_, says Gil--are very naturally +drawn. An echo of the satirical side of Gil Vicente’s genius is to be +found in the _Auto das Padeiras chamado da Fome_ (1638),[366] in which +the various frauds of the bakeresses, sardine-sellers, market-women, +pastry-cooks, and tavern-keepers of Lisbon are shown up by the devils +Palurdam and Calcamar, as in the _Barca do Purgatorio_. There is +nothing of Vicente in the _Auto novo da Barca da Morte_ (1732) by a +Lisbon author who wrote under the name of Diogo da Costa (Innocencio +da Silva, ii. 153, believed that his real name was André da Luz). It +consists of a single scene crowded with classical allusions. Death has +deprived Midas of his gold, Alexander of his victories, Aristotle of +his learning. The actors here are a rich miser, a poor man, a youth, +an old man, and Death, whose boat Time steers. The title of the _Auto +novo e curioso da Forneira de Aljubarrota_ (1815), also attributed to +Diogo da Costa, is misleading, since it is a prose narrative of the +experiences of that _valorosa matrona_, who, dressed as an _almocreve_, +comes to Lisbon with her two _bestinhas_ laden with wine. + +Of the twenty-five plays contained in the _Musa entretenida de +varios entremeses_ (1658) edited by Manuel Coelho Rebello, No. 17 +(_Castigos de vn Castelhano_) is in Spanish and Portuguese, six are in +Portuguese,[367] all the rest in Spanish. Popular plays continued to be +written long after the introduction of the classical drama and in spite +of the antagonism of the priests. They were often composed in a variety +of metres, as the _Acto de Sᵗᵃ Genoveva, Princesa de Barbante_ (1735) +by Balthasar Luis da Fonseca, if its verse can be called metre,[368] or +the _Comedia famosa intitulada A Melhor Dita de Amor_ (1745) by Rodrigo +Antonio de Almeida,[369] which opens with a sonnet and proceeds in +_redondilhas_, hendecasyllables, and prose. + +In the Christmas plays and peasant scenes some of Gil Vicente’s poetry +had lingered; the plays of more fashionable authors caught no gleam +of his lyrism, but sketched types and satirized manners successfully, +none more so than Mello’s _Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz_, written, it must +be remembered, before _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ (1670). Both kinds, +consciously or unconsciously, were derived from Vicente’s genius as +manifested in his plays for the Court and of the people. + +During Gil Vicente’s lifetime, perhaps, Sá de Miranda had written +the two plays, _Os Estrangeiros_ (_c._ 1528) and _Os Vilhalpandos_ +(1538?),[370] with which he introduced classical comedy into Portugal +(nearly a quarter of a century before its introduction into France and +England). _Os Estrangeiros_ was a novelty[371] in more ways than one, +for it was written in prose. Both plays were, as the author admitted, +imitated from Plautus and Terence and also from Ariosto, whose comedies +were composed in the first third of the century. _Os Estrangeiros_ was, +he further observed in a brief introductory letter to the Cardinal +Henrique, rustic and clumsy.[372] Its only claim to be called rustic, +in character as apart from treatment, consists in a few allusions +to popular customs. We would have had it more indigenous. The scene +is Palermo, the plot, _à la_ Plautus, consists of the difficulties +and differences between father and son, and there is the _aio_, +the vainglorious soldier Briobris, _nas armas um Roldão_, and the +_truão_ who plays the part of _gracioso_. The action advances in long +soliloquies to the final reconciliation between father and son. The +character of _Os Vilhalpandos_, which Mello called ‘a mirror of courtly +wit’, is similar, with the difference that Fame instead of Comedy +speaks the prologue and the action between son, father, and courtesan +is placed in Rome. Both the plays were acted before Cardinal Henrique +and printed by his command. As if to mark his initiative in every +field, Miranda also composed a classical tragedy entitled _Cleopatra_ +(_c._ 1550), the title of which is of interest as preceding the plays +of Shakespeare and Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). The twelve octosyllabic +lines (_abcabcdefdef_) that survive (from a chorus?) give no idea +of its character, but it probably followed closely the _Sofonisba_ +(1515) of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550). A Spanish version of +Sophocles’ _Electra_ by Hernan Perez de Oliva appeared in 1528, and +in 1536 Anrique Ayres Victoria had translated this into Portuguese +octosyllabic verse: _A Vingança de Agamemnon_. The date of the first +edition is unknown; the second appeared in 1555. Nor do we know when +_Cleopatra_ was written,[373] although it must have been prior to +Antonio Ferreira’s classical tragedy acted at Coimbra, _Inés de Castro_ +(_c._ 1557), which has hitherto been considered the first of its kind +in Portugal. Written when the author was about thirty, that is, about +the time of Miranda’s death, it copied the form of Greek tragedies +and, the better to acclimatize this, a thoroughly national subject +was chosen--the death of Inés--whereas Miranda had gone to Rome and +Egypt. As might be expected from Ferreira’s other work the conception +was executed with the careful skill of a conscientious craftsman. The +drama has unity, the style is purest Portuguese, the chorus sometimes +soars into poetry, as in the celebrated passage _Quando amor naceo_. +That the same high language is spoken throughout, that, as has often +been observed, scenes of dramatic opportunity--a meeting between D. +Pedro and his father or Inés--are omitted, merely shows that Ferreira +had no dramatic instinct. Perhaps the only dramatic passage--and +even so it is of more psychological than dramatic interest--is that +in Act III: _Inés._ ‘Ah, woe is me! what ill, what fearful ill dost +thou announce?’ _Chorus._ ‘It is thy death.’ _Inés._ ‘_Is my lord +dead?_’ Nevertheless, the play was a remarkable achievement, carried +out without faltering and with a sustained loftiness worthy of its +subject. No one any longer believes that Ferreira copied from the +_Nise lastimosa_ by Geronimo Bermudez, published under the pseudonym +Antonio da Silva eight years after Ferreira’s death. This is a +slightly expanded Spanish translation, closely following the 1587 +edition[374] of _Inés de Castro_, which differs considerably from +that of 1598. The _Nise laureada_ which accompanied it is perfectly +insignificant. Like Miranda, Ferreira wrote, besides one tragedy, two +comedies, _Bristo_ and _O Cioso_. There are indications that he had +in mind Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ as well as Miranda’s +comedies. Bristo soliloquizing is the counterpart of Philtra, and in +his dedication of _Bristo_ to Prince João he acknowledges his debt +to previous plays.[375] In this comedy, written during some vacation +days at Coimbra University, the action is very primitive, but the +braggart Annibal and the charlatan Montalvão account for some farcical +scenes. His later play, _O Cioso_ (the jealous husband is also handled +by Gil Vicente and Prestes), belongs to a higher plane, i. e. to +comedy rather than farce, although _Bristo_ is not entirely devoid of +character-drawing. _Bristo_ was ‘made public’ (_publicada_) before +1554, but neither play was published till 1622. Both are remarkable for +the correctness and concise vigour of their prose. + +The three plays of Camões, written perhaps between the years 1544 and +1549 during his first stay at Lisbon, belong entirely neither to the +classical drama nor to the more ancient _autos_, but combine elements +of both. They are written in _redondilhas_, mostly _quintilhas_. The +third, _El Rei Seleuco_ (1549?), is slighter even than a Vicentian +farce. It has a curious prologue scene (_Vorspiel auf dem Theater_) +in prose. The versification is easy, but its chief interest is the +important part it may have played in its author’s life. The earliest in +date, _Filodemo_, although it lacks Vicente’s savour of the soil, has +a graceful charm and faintly recalls the _Comedia do Viuvo_. Filodemo, +orphan son of a Danish princess and a Portuguese _fidalgo_, is in love +with Dionysa, daughter of his father’s brother, whose son Venadoro +is in love with Filodemo’s sister Florimena. Their relationship is +unknown, but the discovery of their true birth smoothes the path +of love and ends the play. _Os Amphitriões_, in Portuguese and +Spanish,[376] is based on the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus. The predicaments +resulting from the appearance of Jupiter as Amphitrião’s double and +Mercury as the double of Sosia are deftly and humorously worked out in +delightfully spontaneous verse. + +For those so fastidious as to be satisfied neither by the popular +_autos_ nor the staid classical plays, yet another kind was provided +in the shape of Celestina comedies in prose. Of the life of their +author we know scarcely more than that he was very well known in his +day. Judging by literary merit only, one might assign the verses +written by Jorge de Vasconcellos in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ to JORGE +FERREIRA DE VASCONCELLOS (_c._ 1515-63?), since the poems, alike in +the new and the old style, interspersed in his works do not prove +him to have possessed high poetical talent. It is as a dramatist and +still more as a writer of Portuguese prose that the distinguished +courtier of King João III’s reign[377]--deserves a higher place in +Portuguese literature than his ungrateful countrymen have habitually +accorded him. But the dates forbid the identification of the dramatist +with the earlier poet, who was also a notable courtier since he is +specially mentioned in Vicente’s _Cortes de Jupiter_ (ii. 404). One of +the few definite facts known to us concerning Jorge Ferreira is that +affirmed in the preface of his _Eufrosina_: that this play was the +first fruit of his genius, written in his youth.[378] The exact date +of _Eufrosina_ is unknown, but it was written after the University had +been finally established at Coimbra in 1537--the date of the letter +from India (December 20, 1526[379]) is clearly a misprint since mention +is made of the siege of Diu (1538). Ferreira de Vasconcellos evidently +studied law at the University. If he was born, not at Coimbra but at +Lisbon, he may have begun his studies in the capital. At the time +of Prince Duarte’s death (1540) he was in his service, as _moço da +camara_, and he continued as a Court official, first, perhaps, in the +service of the heir to the throne, Prince João, who died on January +2, 1554, and then in that of King Sebastião. In 1563 he was succeeded +as Secretary (_escrivão do Tesouro_) by Luis Vicente, probably son of +the poet Gil. The document[380] which nominates his successor by no +means implies his death, since, as Menéndez y Pelayo[381] observed, +his name is unaccompanied by the formula _que Deus perdoe_ or _aja_. +But it is strange, if he did not die till 1585, the date given by +Barbosa Machado, that nothing more is heard of him after 1563 (we are +told that his son died at the battle of Alcacer Kebir), and that his +son-in-law called _Aulegrafia_, written before the death of Prince +Luis (1555), his swan-song.[382] Apart from manuscript treatises which +were never published, Jorge Ferreira is the author of four works in +prose, the three plays, _Eufrosina_, _Ulysippo_, _Aulegrafia_, and +the _Memorial da Segunda Tavola Redonda_. The latter is an involved +romance of chivalry[383] which describes the adventures of the Knight +of the Crystal Arms, emulator of the Knights of the Round Table and +Amadis of Gaul. Each chapter commences with a brief sententious +reflection, from which the reader is plunged into mortal combats +of knights, centaurs, giants, and dragons. It begins by giving an +account of King Arthur, his disappearance, and the prosperous reign of +Sagramor. It ends with a vivid description of the tournament (August +5, 1552) at Enxobregas (= Xabregas) in which the ill-fated Prince João +was the principal figure. Barbosa Machado included among Ferreira de +Vasconcellos’ works _Triunfos de Sagramor em que se tratão os feitos +dos Cavalleiros da Segunda Tavola Redonda_ (Coimbra, 1554). A passage +in the _Memorial_[384] may have led to the belief that this was a +second part of the _Memorial_, of which the first known edition is +that of Coimbra, 1567, but from the preface[385] it appears that the +_Memorial_ _is_ the _Triunfos_. The title _Triunfos de Sagramor_ may +have been given to an earlier edition,[386] or it may have been the +title of the second half of the work. The author himself declares +that his story had been ‘presented’ to Prince João.[387] The editor +of _Ulysippo_ in 1618 says that the _Memorial_ had been printed at +least twice during the author’s lifetime.[388] Yet it is difficult +not to suspect that the date 1554 was a confusion with the year of +the death of the prince to whom the work was dedicated. The same +uncertainty, as we have seen, prevails as to the date of the first +edition of the author’s masterpiece _Eufrosina_. (He published his +plays anonymously, partly perhaps for the same reason that made him +insist that his characters represented no definite persons but types.) +The earliest edition that we have is that of Evora, 1561, that of +Coimbra, 1560, having disappeared, if it ever existed.[389] The words +on the title-page, _de nouo reuista & em partes acrecentada_, need +not imply more than that, as we know, the manuscript had circulated +among his friends: _por muitas mãos deuassa e falsa_. As a novelty, +_invençam noua nesta terra_, _Eufrosina_ with its proverbs and its +ingenious thoughts and phrases was appreciated in Portugal, whose +inhabitants were justifiably proud now to possess a _Celestina_ of +their own, a _Celestina_ with less action and rhetoric but more thought +and sentiment.[390] Quevedo was loud in its praises, Lope de Vega +perhaps quoted it,[391] its influence on the style of Mello and other +Portuguese writers is clear. It was a legitimate success and its modern +neglect is all the more deplorable because in this play the Portuguese +language, the richness, concision, and grace of which are exalted +in the preface, appears in its purest, raciest form. The author’s +vocabulary is immense, his sentences admirably vigorous and clear. +After heading the E’s in the _Index_ of 1581 (_Evphrosina_ simply, +without author) it was reprinted by the poet Rodriguez Lobo in 1616, +in a slightly modified form, shorn, that is, of some of the coarser +passages and of all reference to the Scriptures.[392] The style is not +the only merit of _Eufrosina_. Despite the lack of proportion in some +of the scenes, in which Jorge Ferreira proves himself to have been, +like Richardson, ‘a sorry pruner’ (four scenes out of the thirty-nine +constitute a quarter of the play), there is a certain unity in this +story of the love of the poor courtier Zelotipo de Abreu for Eufrosina, +proud and beautiful daughter of the rich _fidalgo_ D. Carlos, Senhor +das Povoas, in the little ancient university town above the green +waters and willows of Mondego. The numerous other persons are strictly +subordinate, and both scenes and characters are skilfully drawn. The +artificial construction, the convention by which emotion finds vent +in a string of classical allusions, scarcely mar the exceedingly +natural presentment of many of the scenes. Charming, for instance, is +that in which Eufrosina and her companion and friend Silvia de Sousa, +Zelotipo’s cousin, watch from the terrace of their house the river’s +gentle flow and along its bank the citizens and students taking the air +in the cool of the evening. The play contains as many characters as +a modern novel. There is Cariofilo, a gay good-hearted Don Juan; his +friend, the more serious Zelotipo, type of the Portuguese lover, the +_galante contemplativo_; D. Carlos, quick to anger but easily appeased; +the pedantic, unscrupulous Dr. Carrasco, whose conversation with D. +Carlos gives scope for a vigorous attack on the legal profession; +Silvia, who sacrifices her love and gives up to Eufrosina her cousin’s +verses that she had so carefully kept; the _moços_ Andrade and Cotrim, +greedy, timid, and talkative; the gentleman of Coimbra, Philotimo, a +wise and kindly man of the world. Other phases of Coimbra life are +shown in the _moças de rio_ and _de cantaro_, who fetch water or wash +clothes in the Mondego and metaphorically toss in a blanket Galindo, +the rich D. Tristão’s agent from Lisbon; in the love-lorn student with +his Latin, the morose and jealous workman Duarte, proud of his position +as _official_, the resolute goldsmith and his languid daughter Polinia, +the old servant Andresa and the merry servant girl Vitoria, and, most +prominent of all, Philtra the _alcoviteira_, deploring the wickedness +and degeneracy of the world and full of wise saws--the play contains +many hundreds. Eufrosina herself is first described by the lover--brow +of Diana, lips of Venus, limbs of Pallas, clear green eyes[393] of +Juno, quietly mirthful; then by his servant Andrade--the fairest thing +that ever he thought to see, fan in hand, the sleeves of her dress +like a ship at full sail[394]--so that we have an effective impression +of her beauty. Besides Coimbra life we obtain glimpses of that of the +Court at Lisbon and Almeirim in a letter from the courtier Crisandor, +of India in a very real and interesting letter from Silvia’s brother, +even of Cotrim’s native village. That the unity was not sacrificed to +these many by-scenes says much for the author’s skill. This praise +cannot be given to his second play written some ten years after the +first, _Ulysippo_ (1547?), for here the reader loses his way among the +many courses of true love. There are twenty-one _dramatis personae_, +but the principal interest is in the sketch of Constança d’Ornellas, +the hypocritical _beata_,[395] or, rather, that is the most original +part, since in the play as a whole there is a certain monotony after +_Eufrosina_, and many of the proverbs are the same.[396] Excellent +as the earlier play in its terse and idiomatic prose,[397] full of +interest in the insight it gives into the customs and life of the +people, its chief fault is the intricacy, or absence, of plot which +makes it difficult reading, and of course it would naturally please +less on its first appearance as being no longer a new thing. The +author, who knew how the Portuguese prized _novidades_, appears to have +been conscious of this, since his third play, _Aulegrafia_, written +perhaps in 1555,[398] and first published in 1619, was developed +on somewhat different lines. It is concerned, as its name implies, +exclusively with the Court, and the people and popular proverbs are +in abeyance. In its fifty scenes we are introduced to typical Court +ladies, noble _fidalgos_, poor gentlemen and their servants, one of +whom considers it _mais fidalgo nam saber ler_. The play is by its +author termed ‘a long treatise on Court manners’,[399] and as such it +is admirable and full of interest, however negligible it may be as +drama. Its style, moreover, even excels in atticism Ferreira’s other +works. The most remarkable character is that of the young (_menina +e moça_) and very wily aunt of Filomela. She is twice described in +detail (f. 46 and f. 153 v.), and we perceive that Philtra of the +people, the middle-class Constança d’Ornellas, and the aristocratic +Aulegrafia are really three persons and one spirit. In _Ulysippo_ one +of the lesser personages was the Spanish _Sevilhana_ (mentioned also in +_Eufrosina_), and here a boastful Spanish adventurer is introduced in +the person of Agrimonte de Guzman, who disdains to speak Portuguese. +The scene of both the later plays is Lisbon. The author drew from his +experience here, as previously at Coimbra, and often describes to +the life the persons that he had met. Scarcely any other writer gives +us so intimate an idea of the times--of this the latter heyday of +Portugal’s greatness--or of the gallant, lovesick, dreaming Portuguese, +who considers love as much a monopoly of his country as the ivory and +spices of India.[400] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[353] The disapproval of the popular drama is frequent in religious +writers. In the seventeenth century Antonio Vieira declared that +_uma das felicidades que se contava entre as do tempo presente era +acabarem-se as comedias em Portugal_. Feo earlier, in common with many +others, had similarly denounced the romances of chivalry _pelos quaes o +Demonio comvosco fala; livraria do diabo_ (_Tratt. Qvad._ (1619), ff. +156, 157). + +[354] One of them, João, _lavrador_, says: _Vimos ver se he assi ou nam +De hũa arremedaçam Que s’a ca d’arremedar.... Ora nos dizei se he assi +Que fazem ho ayto cá._ + +[355] e. g. Branca Janes says of her husband: + + He hum grão comedor, + Destruidor da fazenda, &c. + + +[356] Cf. _este leo ja Celestina_ (_Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, &c. +(1587), f. 44). + +[357] The student’s song on f. 44 v. and f. 46, _Polifema mi postema +Grande mal he querer bem_, parodies Lobeira’s _Leonoreta fin roseta_. + +[358] Ibid., f. 49. + +[359] _Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, f. 57: + + _Ro._ Senhor, se me dá licença, + Ja eu aquela trova li. + + _Os._ Qual trova leste? _Ro._ Essa sua, + Como a disse nua e crua. + + _Os._ E onde a leste, vilão? + + _Ro._ Cuido, señor, que em Boscão, + E canta-se pela rua. + + +[360] The Devil speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. All the other +characters in Prestes’ plays, with the exception of an enchanted Moor, +speak Portuguese. On the other hand, there are frequent Spanish words +and quotations. The word _algorrem_ occurs twice in these plays, but +the attempt to retain the old style of peasant conversation is but +half-hearted. + +[361] Duarte in the _Auto dos Cantarinhos_ sleeps on an _arca_ +(chest) like the _moço_ in _O Juiz da Beira_. There are other echoes +of Vicente, as the words _quem tem farelos?_ (1871 ed., p. 65), the +reference to _Flerida e Dom Duardos_ (p. 485), the line _Que má cousa +são vilãos_ (p. 420), the peasant who, like Mofina Mendes, builds up +his future on the strength of an apple of gold, which proves to be a +coal (pp. 407-8). + +[362] _Auto do Mouro Encantado_ (p. 347). Unless there was an earlier +edition of _Lazarillo de Tormes_, this play must therefore have been +written after 1554. Prestes’ _Auto do Procurador_ was written before +1557. + +[363] p. 262. For a corresponding knowledge of _Amadis de Gaula_, &c., +among English servants see Dr. Henry Thomas, _The Palmerin Romances_, +London, 1916, pp. 38-40. + +[364] _Alfea_ (ed. 1631), p. 59. The wonderful spelling is due to +the printer (e.g. _sesse_ = cease) as well as to the peasants (e.g. +_monteplica_ = multiply, _pialdrade_ = piety). + +[365] _Composto por A. D. S. R._ There is an earlier _Acto Sacramental +da Jornada do Menino Deus para o Egypto_ (1746). + +[366] It contains a dispute between Maize and Rye, after the very +popular fashion of the contention between Winter and Spring in +Vicente’s _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, and the poetical contrasts common +in the Middle Ages and in the East, and still in vogue among the +_improvisatori_ of Basque villages, between wine and water, boots and +sandals, &c. + +[367] i.e. No. 3: _De hvm almotacel borracho_; No. 5: _Dos conselhos +de hvm letrado_ (a _ratinho_ figures in this, as a _ratiño_ figures in +No. 17); No. 6: _Do negro mais bem mandado_ (the _escudeiro’s moço_ +is here a negro who speaks in broken Portuguese, e.g. Zesu); No. 11: +_Dous cegos enganados_; No. 13: _Das padeiras de Lisboa_ (besides the +bakeresses there is a _meleiro_ (honey-seller), an _alheiro_ with his +_braços_ of leeks, an _azeiteiro_, &c.), and No. 25. The titles of +these plays sufficiently show their homely character. + +[368] Of its author we only know that he was _Ulysbonense_. The play +had many editions: 1747, 1758, 1789, 1853. + +[369] A priest of the same name wrote political and religious pamphlets +in the middle of the nineteenth century. + +[370] The _affronta de Dio_ is mentioned. It may have been written in +the same year as Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_. + +[371] In a letter sent with _Os Vilhalpandos_ to the Infante Duarte he +says that _ninguem que eu saiba_ had so written in Portuguese. + +[372] _A comedia qual he tal va, aldeaã e mal atauiada._ + +[373] A passage in _Aulegrafia_ (1555?) describes the dramatic death of +Antony as a new thing: _parece-me que o estou vendo_ (f. 129). + +[374] _Tragedia mvy sentida e elegante de Dona Inés de Castro ... Agora +nouamente acrescentada_ (31 ff. unnumbered). The one who published +_first_ was the most likely to be the thief. _Saudade_ is translated +_soledad_. + +[375] _Nesta Universidade ... onde pouco antes se viram outras que +a todas as dos antigas ou levam ou não dam ventagem._ _Bristo_ was +written _por só seu desenfadamento em certos dias de ferias e ainda +esses furtados ao estudo_. It is a _comedia mixta, a mor parte della +motoria_. + +[376] In _El Rei Seleuco_ the doctor and in _Filodemo_ the shepherd and +_bobo_ speak Spanish. + +[377] _Homem fidalgo mᵗᵒ cortezão & discretto_ (Rangel Macedo, +manuscript _Nobiliario_, in Lisbon _Bib. Nac._); _aquelle galante e +elegante cortesão Portugues_ (_licença_ of 1618 ed. of _Ulysippo_). + +[378] _As primicias do meu rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina, +e foi ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro._ + +[379] _Eufrosina_, ii. 5. + +[380] Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and +printed in his _Gil Vicente_ (1902), p. 114. + +[381] _Orígenes de la Novela_, vol. iii, p. ccxxx. + +[382] Sousa de Macedo, in _Eva e Ave_ (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he +lived in the reign of King João and in the beginning of that of King +Sebastian, which confirms the date 1563 as that of his death. + +[383] Some of its heroes have geographical names, as King Tenarife of +the Canary Islands and the Spanish Moor Juzquibel, who now survives in +the name of the mountain that falls to the sea above Fuenterrabía. The +author shows considerable knowledge of the Basque country, and we may +perhaps infer that he was at the French Court and studied the Basque +provinces on the way. + +[384] 1867 ed., p. 21: _como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey +Sagramor_. + +[385] _Nesta trasladação do triumpho del Rey Sagramor_, ibid., p. viii. + +[386] A vague tradition placed the 1554 edition in the Lisbon Torre do +Tombo, but inquiries in 1916 proved that nothing is known of it there. + +[387] _Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada_, ibid., p. vii. + +[388] _A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressão +emendou o Autor em sua vida_ (_Aduertencia ao leitor_). + +[389] Nicolás Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was +often far from accurate, says that there were several editions before +that of 1616, probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page. +The late Menéndez y Pelayo, who also made many slips in dealing with +Portuguese literature, declared that the 1560 edition was in the +British Museum, which, however, only possesses a (mutilated) copy of +the edition of Evora, 1561 (lacking the colophon with the date). Of the +1561 edition several copies exist, that of the Torre do Tombo, that in +the library of the late Snr. Francisco Van Zeller at Lisbon, and that +of the British Museum. + +[390] João de Barros, _Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem_ (1540), +wrote that the Portuguese language _parece nam consintir em si hũa tal +obra como Celestina_ (1785 ed., p. 222). + +[391] _La Filomena_, 1621 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was +from the 1561 edition, not that of 1616, in which part of the sentence +quoted is omitted, as in the Spanish translation first published ten +years later, in 1631. + +[392] They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of +1581 condemns _todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam & torcem +as autoridades & sentenças da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos, +graças, escarnios, fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracções, +superstições, encantações & semelhantes cousas_. The rules were carried +out most mechanically. + +[393] Green eyes are beloved by Portuguese writers for their rarity or +from an early mistaken rendering of the French _vair_ (e.g. Sylvia in +the sixteenth, Joaninha in the nineteenth century). The _glosadores_ +inclined to them on account of the second person of the infinitive ‘to +see’: _verdes_. + +[394] In Arraez, _Dialogos_ (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women +_parecem ... velas de nao inchadas_. + +[395] In the first edition she had been called a _beata_. In that of +1618 she became merely a widow woman, _dona viuva_, but the editor +defeated the censor’s intentions by noting the change in the preface +and declaring that but for this she remained exactly the same as before. + +[396] Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are _conjurados contra o +mundo_. + +[397] Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love. + +[398] One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis +(†November 27, 1555) still alive. + +[399] _Um largo discurso da cortesania vulgar_, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5: +_pretende mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaã_. On f. 5 v. +it is called _esta selada_ _Portuguesa_. The courtiers spend all the +time they can spare from the pursuit of love in discussing the rival +merits of the _romance velho_ and new-fangled sonnet, of Boscán and +Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of a Latin poet, &c. + +[400] _O amor é portugues_ (_Aulegrafia_, f. 38 v.). + + + + + § 4 + + _Luis de Camões_ + + +The plays of LUIS DE CAMÕES (1524?-80) are in a sense typical of his +genius, for they show him combining two great currents of poetry, +the old indigenous and the classic new. A generation had sprung +up accustomed to wide horizons and heroic deeds, and poets and +historians regretted that there was no Homer or Virgil to describe them +adequately. Camões was not a Homer nor a Virgil, but he was a more +universal poet than Portugal had yet produced, and by reason of his +marvellous power of expression he triumphantly completed the revolution +which Sá de Miranda had tentatively begun. In a sense he was not a +great original poet, but in his style he was excelled by no Latin +poet of the Renaissance. The eager researches of modern scholars have +succeeded in piercing the obscurity that enveloped his life, although +many gaps and doubtful points remain. Four or five generations had +gone by since his ancestor Vasco Perez had passed out of the pages of +history,[401] and some of the intervening members of the family had +also won distinction, but Camões’ father, Simão Vaz de Camões, was a +poor captain of good position (_cavaleiro fidalgo_) who was shipwrecked +near Goa and died there soon after the poet was born in 1524. Through +his grandmother, Guiomar Vaz da Gama, he was distantly related to the +celebrated Gamas of Algarve. His mother, Anna de Sá e Macedo, belonged +to a well-known family of Santarem.[402] Whether he was born at Lisbon +or Coimbra is still uncertain. His great-grandfather had settled at +Coimbra. That Camões studied there scarcely admits of doubt. He alludes +to it in his poems, and nowhere else in Portugal could he have received +his thorough classical education. In the year 1542 or 1543 he went to +Lisbon. The exact dates of events in his life during the next ten years +are difficult to determine, but the events themselves are clear enough. +His birth and talents assured him a ready welcome in the capital. +Whether he became tutor to D. Antonio de Noronha, son of the Conde de +Linhares (the Portuguese ambassador whom Moraes accompanied to Paris), +or not, he soon had many friends and was probably received at Court. +Referring later to this time he is said to have spoken of himself as +_cheo de muitos favores_, and in this popularity he wrote a large +number of his exquisite _redondilhas_ and also sonnets, odes, eclogues, +and the three _autos_. But Camões had fallen passionately in love with +a lady-in-waiting of the queen, Catherina de Athaide.[403] Tradition +has it that he first saw her in church on a Good Friday (1544?). We may +surmise that Natercia’s parents objected to the suit of the penniless +_cavaleiro fidalgo_, and that Camões pressed his suit on them with more +vehemence than discretion. He was banished from Court, and spent six +months in the Ribatejo (Santarem) and two years in military service in +North Africa (Ceuta). He admits that he had been in the wrong, but not +seriously so, and hints that envy had played its part in his downfall. +It is probable that his play _El Rei Seleuco_ had given a handle to +the enemies that his growing reputation as a poet had made. It must +be confessed that its subject was tactless, for in the play the king +gives up his bride to his son, which could easily be interpreted as +a reflection on the conduct of the late King Manuel, who had married +his son’s bride. The two years in Africa passed slowly. In a letter +(_Esta vae com a candea na mão_) he describes sadness eating away his +heart as a moth a garment, and it was with his thoughts in Lisbon that +he took part from time to time in skirmishes against the Moors, in +one of which he lost his right eye. Hard blows, scanty provisions, +and no chance of enriching oneself as in India were the features of +military service in North Africa, and when Camões returned to Lisbon +his prospects contrasted sharply with those which had been his when he +first came from the University a few years before. He was now nearly +thirty,[404] disfigured by the loss of an eye and embittered by the +turn his fortunes had taken. He no longer looked on life from the +inside, gazing contentedly at the show from the windows of privilege, +but was himself in the arena. For the school of Sá de Miranda he had +probably never felt much sympathy, considering it too severe and +artificial. He wished to live and enjoy, and although the patronage of +literary Prince João may have encouraged him to hope for better times, +he meanwhile set himself to sample life as best he might, associating +with rowdy companions (_valentões_), who brought out the Cariofilo +side of his character at the expense of the contemplative Zelotipo. +Whether he had intended to embark for India in 1550, or this be a pure +invention on the part of Faria e Sousa, it is certain that he was still +in Lisbon on June 16, 1552. On that day the Corpus Christi procession +passed through the principal streets. In the crowded Rocio Camões was +drawn into a quarrel with a Court official, Gonçalo Borges, and wounded +him with a sword-cut on the head. For nearly nine months Camões lay +in prison, and then, Borges having recovered and bearing no malice, +he was pardoned[405] (March 7, 1553) and released, but only on the +understanding that he would leave Portugal to serve the king in India. +Before the end of the month he had embarked in the ship _S. Bento_. +Hitherto he had hoped against hope for an improvement in his lot; now +he went, he says, as one who leaves this world for the next, and with +the words _Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea_,[406] turned his +back on the calumnies and intrigues of Lisbon. In one of his finest +elegies[407] he described the voyage, a storm off the Cape of Good +Hope, and the arrival at Goa in September 1553. The voyage was full of +interest to him, and he made good use of it, becoming what Humboldt +called him--a great painter of the sea[408]--but so far as comfort +was concerned he fared probably much as would a modern emigrant. His +disillusion at Goa is poignantly described in a letter[409] written +soon after his arrival. He found it ‘the stepmother of all honest men’, +money the only god and passport, and he sends a note of warning to +_aventureiros_ in Portugal eager to make their fortune in India. We +know from the bitter pages of Couto and Corrêa how difficult it was +for a private soldier to thrive there, and the position of a _reinol_ +newly arrived from Portugal was precarious. Camões joined a few weeks +later (November 1553) in a punitive expedition along the coast of +Malabar against the King of Chembe, and in 1554 probably accompanied D. +Fernando de Meneses in a second expedition to Monte Felix or Guardafui +(Ras ef Fil), the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. After his three years’ +service (1553-6) he continued to live at Goa. He had found time to +write poetry, and sent home a sonnet and an eclogue on the death of +his friend D. Antonio de Noronha. His play _Filodemo_ was acted, +probably in the winter of 1555, before the popular Governor Francisco +Barreto, who provided him with the post of _Provedor Môr dos Defuntos e +Ausentes_ (i. e. trustee for the property of dead or absent Portuguese) +at Macao. Whether his satiric verses had anything to do with the +appointment we do not know--some have maintained that the Portuguese +of Goa appreciated his poetical powers best at a distance--but it is +more probable that his appointment was a favour, since every post in +India was eagerly coveted, and it was a kinder action to give him a +comparatively humble one at once than the reversion to a more lucrative +office, filled thrice or even ten times over by the deplorable system +of ‘successions’.[410] He set sail in the spring of 1556, and after +touching at Malacca, arrived at the Molucca Islands, the most lawless +region in India. Camões himself, according to Storck, was wounded +about this time, but in a fight at sea, not in one of the chronic +broils at Ternate or Tidore. In 1557 or 1558 he reached Macao, but +two years later he was relieved of his post owing to a quarrel with +the settlers, whose part was taken by the captain of the silver and +silk ship passing from Goa to China. On his authority Camões was sent +to Goa, protesting against _o injusto mando_, which was a common fate +of officials in India. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Tongking, +lost all his possessions, and arrived penniless and perhaps in +debt at Goa in 1560 or 1561. To these four or five chequered years +are ascribed the wonderful _quintilhas_, the most beautiful in the +language, _Sobolos rios que vam_, which may owe something to Vicente’s +admirable paraphrase of Psalm l, the _canção Com força desusada_, the +_oitavas Como nos vossos_, and the completion of the first six books +of the _Lusiads_. Soon after his return he was probably imprisoned +for debt, but was released, probably at the instance of the Viceroy, +D. Francisco Coutinho, Conde de Redondo, to whom Camões addressed his +first printed poem, the ode in Orta’s _Coloquios_ (1563). Camões’ +thoughts must have now more than ever turned homeward. Fortune had +danced tantalizingly before him, holding out hopes which broke as +glass in his hands whenever he attempted to seize them.[411] Of his +life between 1564 and 1567 we know nothing. He did not occupy the +post of factor of Chaul, the reversion to which indeed he may perhaps +only have received after his return to Portugal. He was eager to get +home. In 1567 he accompanied Pedro Barreto to Mozambique, glad to get +even so far on the return voyage. There poverty and illness delayed +him till 1569, when through the generosity and in the company of some +friends, among whom was the historian Couto, he was able to embark for +Portugal. They reached Lisbon in April, 1570.[412] Sixteen years had +passed. The popular, impulsive, talented youth returned middle-aged, +poverty-stricken, and unknown. Antonio de Noronha and many others of +his friends were dead. Catherina de Athaide had died in 1556 (although +she may have continued to receive Camões’ rapt devotion as the dead +Beatrice that of Dante), Prince João, hope and patron of poets, two +years earlier. The plague, to which nearly half the city’s population +had succumbed, had only recently abated, and Camões may have witnessed +the thanksgiving procession in Lisbon on April 20, 1570. Modern critics +have even denied him the only consolation which probably remained to +him in the _patria esquiva a quem se mal aproveitou_[413], but there +seems no reason to reject the tradition that his mother was alive; in +fact she survived him and continued to receive the pension of 15,000 +_réis_[414] granted him from 1572 till his death on Friday, June 10, +1580. It was a sum barely sufficient to support life, and it was not +always regularly paid, so that he is reported to have been in the +habit of saying that he would prefer to his pension a whip for the +responsible officials (_almoxarifes_). Tradition, to the indignation of +reasonable historians, loves to represent a faithful Javanese slave, +who had accompanied Camões to Europe, begging for his master in the +streets of Lisbon. Camões did not go with King Sebastian to Africa. +He may have been already ill when the expedition set out in June +1578--the plague soon began again to ravage Lisbon, and long years +of suffering and disappointment must have sapped his strength. Two +years later his life of heroic endurance, in patience of the _juizos +incognitos de Deos_,[415] ended. He was perhaps buried in a common +grave with other victims of the plague.[416] Long absence had served +to strengthen his love for his _patria ditosa amada_, and the news +from Africa left him no heart to battle against disease, content, as +he wrote to the Captain-General of Lamego, to die with his country, +with which his name has ever since been intimately linked. Couto and +Mariz agree that he brought _Os Lusiadas_ with him virtually complete +on his return to Portugal. It was published through the influence of +the poet D. Manuel de Portugal in 1572. Camões has often been called +the prince of heroic poets, but it is noteworthy that Faria e Sousa +in 1685 says that ‘all have hitherto, especially in Spain, considered +him greater as a lyric than as an heroic poet’.[417] _Os Lusiadas_ +rather than an epic is a great lyrical hymn in praise of Portugal, +with splendid episodes such as the descriptions of the death of +Inés, the battle of Aljubarrota, the storm, Adamastor, the Island of +Venus. Apart from the style, its originality consists in the skill +with which in a poem but half the length of Tasso’s _Gerusalemme +Liberata_ and a fifth of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ the poet works +in the entire history of his country. It is this which gives unity +to his ten cantos of _oitavas_, this and the wonderfully transparent +flow of the verse, which carries the reader over many weaknesses and +inequalities of detail. It is a nobler poem than the crowded garden +of flowers in a high wind that is the _Orlando Furioso_, and at once +more human and intense than the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. Camões, with a +wonderful memory and intimate knowledge of the legends of Greece and +Rome, read everything, and we find him gathering his material from +all sides[418] like a bird in spring, from a Latin treatise of the +antiquarian Resende, from the historians Duarte Galvão, Pina, Lopez, +Barros, or Castanheda, or literally translating lines of Virgil, as +in his shorter poems he imitated Petrarca, Garci Lasso, and Boscán. +Tasso used the _mot juste_ when in a sonnet addressed to Camões he +called him _dotto e buon Luigi_.[419] If, as seems probable, he had +early wished to sing the deeds of the Portuguese, the first volumes of +Castanheda and Barros must have been an incentive as powerful as the +destiny which made him personally acquainted with the scenes of Gama’s +voyage and of the Portuguese victories in the East. It seems probable +that cantos iii and iv, containing the early history of Portugal, +were already written, and that around them he wove the epic grandeur +revealed in the histories of the discovery of India. The poem opens +with an invocation to the nymphs of the Tagus and to King Sebastian, +and then, in a wonderful stanza of the sea (_Já no largo oceano +navegavam_, i. 19), Gama’s ships are shown in mid-voyage. The gods of +Olympus take sides, and Venus protects the daring adventurers in seas +never crossed before, while Mars stirs up the natives of Mozambique +and of Mombaça to treachery (i-ii). In contrast to the natives farther +south, the King of Melinde receives them with loyal friendship, and +Gama rewards him by relating the history of Portugal (iii-iv). He then +continues his voyage, and after weathering a terrible storm brewed by +Bacchus, arrives at Calicut (v-vi). After a visit to the Samori (the +King of Calicut), the Catual (the Governor) accompanies Gama on board, +and Paulo da Gama explains to him the warlike deeds of the Portuguese +embroidered on the silken banners of the ships (vii-viii). On the +return voyage they are entertained by Tethys and her nymphs in the +island of Venus, supposed to be one of the Azores (ix-x), and the poem +ends with a second invocation to King Sebastian (x. 145-56). Thus the +time of the poem occupies a little over two years (July 1497-September +1499). Into this the previous four centuries had been ingeniously +worked, but in order to include the sixteenth century fresh devices +were adopted, by which Jupiter (canto ii), Adamastor (v), and Tethys +(x) foretell the future. Almost every land and city connected with +Portuguese history finds a place in the poem. Small wonder that it was +well received by the Portuguese, combining as it did intense patriotism +with hundreds of exotic names. The extraordinary number of 12,000 +copies is said to have been printed within a quarter of a century of +Camões’ death,[420] and by 1624 the sale had increased to 20,000 and +his fame had spread throughout the world. It would have been still +stranger if the _murmuradores maldizentes_ had been silent. As early as +1641 we find a critic, João Soares de Brito (1611-64), defending Camões +against the charges of plagiarizing Virgil and of improbabilities of +time and place.[421] Not every one apparently was of the opinion of the +Conde de Idanha, who considered that the only fault of the _Lusiads_ +was that it was too long to learn by heart and too short to be able to +go on reading it for ever. Montesquieu found in it something of ‘the +fascination of the Odyssey and the magnificence of the Aeneid’, and +Voltaire, while objecting to its _merveilleux absurde_, adds: ‘Mais la +poésie du style et l’imagination dans l’expression l’ont soutenu, de +même que les beautés de l’exécution ont placé Paul Véronèse parmi les +grands peintres.’ + +In 1820 appeared José Agostinho de Macedo’s _Censura dos Lusiadas_, in +which he noted with some asperity Camões’ _erros crassissimos_. Prosaic +lines, hyperbole, the use of the supernatural, lack of proportion,[422] +absence of unity, and historical improbabilities are the main heads +of his indictment, and he quotes Racine as to Camões’ ‘icy style’. +He also has much petty detailed criticism, for he finds in Camões a +_notavel falta de grammatica_. And Macedo was certainly right. Most of +the faults he attributes to Camões do exist in the _Lusiads_. Macedo +himself could write more correctly. When he says that the line _Somos +hum dos da ilha, lhe tornou_ (i. 53) is unpoetical (_não tem tintura +de poesia_), we agree; it is sheer prose. We can add other instances: +the line _as que elle para si na cruz tomou_ (i. 7) is as unmusical as +the rhyming of _Heliogabalo_, _Sardanapalo_ (iii. 92), or _impossibil_, +_terribil_ (iv. 54). Only Macedo forgot that genius is justified of its +children, and that these details are all merged in the incomparable +style, imaginative power, and lofty theme of the poem. If a man is +unable to feel the heat of the sun for its spots, we will vainly try +to warm or enlighten him, but it is not pedantic grammarians such as +Macedo[423] who could obscure the fame of Camões. That could only +be done by those whom Macedo calls _os idolatras camoneanos_. Lope +de Vega[424] effusively professed to place the _Lusiads_ above the +_Aeneid_ and the _Iliad_, and Camões’ fellow-countrymen have eagerly +followed suit. He has also suffered much at the hands of translators. +Since the _Lusiads_ is clearly not the equal of the _Iliad_ or the +_Odyssey_, it may be worth while to consider by what reasons Camões +really is one of the world’s greatest poets. There is celestial music +in much that he wrote, in incidents of the _Lusiads_ such as the death +of Inés de Castro,[425] in his eclogues and _canções_ and elegies, in +many of the sonnets, and in the _redondilhas_, most of all perhaps in +the seventy-three heavenly _quintilhas_ beginning _Sobolos rios que +vam_. But other Portuguese poets have been musical; Diogo Bernardez in +this respect vies with Camões: Camões excels them all in the vigour +and transparent clearness that accompany his music. But his principal +excellence is that, still without losing the music of his _versos +deleitosos_, he can think in verse[426]--the thought in some of his +elegies and _oitavas_ is remarkable--and describe with scientific +precision, as in the account of the _tromba_ (_Lus._ v. 19-22). Like +Milton, he could transform an atlas into a fair harmony of names. His +influence on the Portuguese language has been very great. Whether it +was wholly for good may be open to doubt--a doubt mentioned by one of +his earliest biographers, Severim de Faria, in 1624. The _Lusiads_, +he says, ‘greatly enriched the Portuguese language by ingeniously +introducing many new words and expressions which then came into +common use, although some severe critics have censured him for this, +considering the use of latinized forms a defect in his poem’.[427] +An inch farther than he went in this direction, or in that of _furia +grande e sonorosa_, and _estilo grandiloquo_, would have been an inch +too far, and subsequent writers did not always observe his restraint, +the sobriety due to his classical education. But his poem certainly +helped to fix the language, and he cannot be blamed for the excesses of +his followers, or for a change which had begun before his time.[428] + +Couto records the theft of the _Parnaso_ in which Camões was collecting +his lyrics with a view to publishing them. He must have written many +more lyrics than we possess, but even so the number existing is not +small. Successive editors have added to them from time to time, and +often clumsily. Faria e Sousa, a century after Camões’ death, declared +that he had added 200, and, while upbraiding Diogo Bernardez for +his _robos_, was himself the thief. Camões might have been somewhat +surprised to find in the first edition of his lyrics (1595) two poems +which had been in print in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ eight years +before he was born. This 1595 edition contained but 65 sonnets, but +their number grew to 108 (1598), 140 (1616), 229 (1668), 296 (1685), +352 (1860), 354 (1873). D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has +already contributed much towards a critical edition, and it is to +be hoped that before long it may be possible to read the genuine +lyrics of Camões in a complete edition by themselves.[429] That would +certainly cause him to be more widely read abroad. It is perhaps +inevitable that a comparison should arise between Camões and Petrarca +(although it must be remembered that they are separated by two +centuries), yet he would be an extremely bold or extremely ignorant +critic who should place the one of them above the other. In genius +they were equal, but a different atmosphere acted on their genius, the +artistic atmosphere of Italy and the natural atmosphere of Portugal. +Petrarca was the more scholarly writer, so that if he perhaps never +attains to the rapturous heights occasionally reached by Camões, he +also keeps himself from the blemishes which sometimes disfigure Camões’ +work. Camões’ life was far more varied, many-coloured as an Alentejan +_manta_,[430] and this is reflected in his poems. Intensely human, he +is swayed by many moods, while Petrarca is merged in the narrower flame +of his love. Petrarca excels him in the sonnet, for although many of +those by Camões are beautiful, and nearly all contain some beautiful +passage, he was not really at his ease in this scanty plot of ground. +His genius required a larger canvas for its expression. The following +lines from his long and magnificent _canção Vinde cá_ are worth quoting +because they triumphantly display many of the noblest characteristics +of his poetry: + + No mais, canção, no mais, que irei fallando, + Sem o sentir, mil annos; e se acaso + Te culparem de larga e de pesada, + Não pode ser, lhe dize, limitada + A agoa do mar em tão pequeno vaso. + Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando + Co’ gosto do louvor, mas explicando + Puras verdades ja por mi passadas: + Oxalá foram fabulas sonhadas! + +Here we see the force and precision, the amazing ease and rapidity, the +crystalline transparency, the sad _saudade_, and above all the deep +sincerity that mark so much of his work. Both Petrarca and Camões are +representative of their country, the latter not only in his poems, in +which almost every Portuguese hero is included, but in his character +and his life. In his wit and melancholy, his love of Nature, his +passionate devotion, his persistency and endurance, his independence +and sensitive pride, in his lyrical gift and power of expression, in +his courage and ardent patriotism, he is the personification and ideal +of the Portuguese nation. + +Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems +have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a +_cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript. +A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but +after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the +only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões +was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and +traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and +more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till +at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for +inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was, +having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the +eighteenth century. + +Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred +honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of +Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from +the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her +forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies, +returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems +of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud +they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration +which Portuguese history might have been expected to give. + + Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente + Compõem grandes Iliadas, + +wrote Diniz da Cruz (_O Hyssope_, canto 1). The epic-fever had not +abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Madeira +poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos (_c._ 1770-1824) alone +wrote two: _Zargueida_ (1806), _Georgeida_ (1819); and José Agostinho +de Macedo in his _Motim Literario_ imagines himself at the mercy of a +poet with an epic in sixty cantos entitled _Napoleada_, and himself +became the mock-hero of one in nine: _Agostinheida_ (Londres, 1817), +written by his unfortunate opponent Nuno Alvares Pereira Pato Moniz +(1781-1827). The strange poet of Setubal, Thomaz Antonio de Santos e +Silva (1751-1816), published a _Braziliada_ in twelve cantos in 1815. +Of the earlier epics Camillo Castello Branco wrote sarcastically: ‘They +contain impenetrable mysteries of dullness and inspire a sacred awe, +but they are the conventional glory of our literary history, untouched +and intangible.’[431] + +Of the two long epic poems of JERONIMO CORTE REAL (_c._ 1530-1590?): +_Svcesso do Segvndo Cerco de Div_ (1574) and _Naufragio, e Lastimoso +Svcesso da Perdiçam de Manoel de Sousa de Sepulveda_, &c. (1594), we +may perhaps say that they are excellent prose. He dwells more than once +upon the inconstancy of fortune, and this may be something more than a +platitude. Of his life little is known. He is by some believed to have +been born in the Azores in 1533. A document in the possession of the +Visconde de Esperança shows that he died before May 12, 1590. He may +have been a musician as well as a poet and a painter. It is probable, +but not certain, that he accompanied King Sebastian to Alcacer Kebir +and was taken prisoner. Faria e Sousa says that he was too old to go. +After varied service by land and sea he wrote these poems when living +in retirement on his estate near Evora, and his own experiences stood +him in good stead for his descriptions, which are often not without +life and vigour, as the account of the battle in canto 18 of the +_Segundo Cerco de Diu_, or of the storm in canto 7 of the _Naufragio_. +The former poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. João de +Mascarenhas and its relief by D. João de Castro (1546), in whose mouth +is placed a long and tedious speech. The last two cantos (21, 22) are +tacked on to the main theme and occupy more than a quarter of the +whole. They tell from paintings the deeds of past captains and prophesy +future events and the ‘golden reign’ of King Sebastian. The prophetic +vision, although it included a generation beyond the nominal date of +the poem (1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578). +The hendecasyllables of the blank verse have an exceedingly monotonous +fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.[432] The use +of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an inclination +to multiply words without adding to the force of the picture.[433] +The same plethora of epithets, elaborate similes, and slow awkward +development of the story mark the seventeen cantos--some 10,000 lines +of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the +_Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures +the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The +remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of +D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation +to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan +make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_ +(1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is +the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of +Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen +cantos in Spanish blank verse. + +LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer +Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn +mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also +suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor +de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with +the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and +ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous +adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the +excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto +17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his +style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to +that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a +poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India +(cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out +of place in an epic. + +If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE +ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus, +regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a +supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did +not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent +Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows +prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same +level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry. +The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be +adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his +two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether +his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he +consoles himself, if not his reader, with the sincere conviction that +his rude verse cannot detract from the greatness of the deeds which he +describes (xx. 1-6). + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[401] _Seu quarto avò foi um Gallego nobre_ (Diogo Camacho, _Jornada ás +Cortes do Parnaso_). + +[402] Dr. Wilhelm Storck, the author of the most elaborate life of +Camões in existence, considered that the words _quando vim da materna +sepultura_ in one of Camões’ poems could only mean that his mother +(Anna de Macedo) died at his birth, and that he was survived by Anna de +Sá, his stepmother. It may have been so, but there is not a scrap of +evidence in favour of the theory nor were the words _materna sepultura_ +anything more than a conventional phrase. Cf. Antonio Feo, _Trattados +Quadragesimais_ (1609), pt. 1, f. 2: _Como Nazianzeno diz ... e tumulo +prosiliens ad tumulum iterum contendo, em nacendo saimos de hũa +sepultura que foi as entranhas da mãi e morrendo entramos noutra._ So +Pinto, _Imagem_, pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 342 v.: _tornar nu ao ventre de +sua mãi, o qual é a sepultura da terra_, and Bernardes, _Nov. Flor._ i. +122: _A terra e nossa mãe, de cujo tenebroso ventre que é a sepultura_, +&c. + +[403] She may have been a distant relation of the poet’s: the name was +a common one, but Camões was connected with the Gamas, and the wife +and granddaughter of the first Conde de Vidigueira were both named +Catherina de Athaide. + +[404] According to Dr. Storck he was banished in 1549, and in the same +year, after the sentence of banishment had been commuted to service +in Africa, left Portugal, returning to Lisbon in the autumn of 1551. +Others believe that he was in Lisbon again in 1550 and that his two +years in Africa must be placed between 1546 and 1549. + +[405] The important document containing his pardon is printed in +Juromenha’s edition of his works, i. 166-7. + +[406] This quotation is assigned to various other persons, as to Nuno +da Cunha when arranging that he should be buried at sea. + +[407] _O poeta Simonides fallando._ + +[408] Cf. _Lus._ i. 19, 43; ii. 20, 67; v. 19-22; vi. 70-9. + +[409] _Desejei tanto._ + +[410] Couto, in the _Dialogo do Soldado Pratico_, remarks that if a +man is given a post at the age of twenty he only receives it at the +age of sixty (p. 99). The soldier, who wishes _ter logo em tres annos +vinte mil cruzados_, suggests, among other posts for himself, that of +_Provedor dos Defuntos: porque com qualquer destes ficarei mui bem +remediado_. To which the _Desembargador_ objects: _he necessario que +quem houver de servir esses cargos seja letrado e visto em ambos os +Direitos_. + +[411] _Vinde cá._ It is advisable to give the first words of his poems +without the number until there is a definitive edition of his works. + +[412] It is uncertain whether Camões’ ship was the _Santa Clara_ or the +_Fe_. + +[413] Barros, _Decada_, III. ix. 1. + +[414] It is about the sum (apart from any grant of _pimenta_) which +a common soldier on active service might earn in India (see Barros, +I. viii. 3: 1,200 × 12 = 14,400); _environ huit cents livres de notre +monnoie d’aujourd’hui_ (Voltaire). It would scarcely correspond to more +than £50 of to-day. + +[415] _Lus._ V. 45. + +[416] Prophetically he had echoed (_Lus._ X. 23) the complaint of the +historians of India: _Morrer nos hospitaes em pobres leitos Os que ao +Rei e á lei servem de muro_. + +[417] _Todos hasta oy, y principalmente en Castilla, tuvieron siempre +a mi Maestre por mayor en estes Poemas que en el Heroyco_ (_Varias +Rimas_, Prólogo, 2 vols., 1685, 1689). Cf. the praise of his _versos +pequenos_ in Severim de Faria, _Vida_, p. 121. + +[418] See the important work by Dr. Rodrigues: _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_ +(1904-1913). Cf. Camões’ _Vão os annos decendo_ (x. 9) and _Leal +Conselheiro_ (cap. 1, p. 18), where the words are used in the same +connexion. With Virgil he was obviously acquainted at first hand, with +Homer perhaps in the translation of the Florentine scholar Lorenzo +Valla (1405-57). In _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_ is also discussed the +origin of the word Lusiads, as by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos +in _O Instituto_, vol. lii (1905), pp. 241-50: _Lucius Andreas +Resendius Inventor da palavra Lusiadas_. It was one of the Latin words +acclimatized by Camões. It occurs in a Latin poem by André de Resende, +_Vicentius Levita et Martyr_ (1545), and in his _Encomium Erasmi_ +written, but not published, in 1531; in a Latin poem by Jorge Coelho, +perhaps written in 1526 but touched up before its publication in 1536; +and is twice used by Manuel da Costa (in and about 1537). + +[419] The word is undoubtedly _dotto_ in the facsimile of the text +given in Antonio de Portugal de Faria, _Torquato Tasso a Luiz de +Camões_ (Leorne, 1898) although there, as always, it has been +transcribed as _colto_. Diogo Bernardez calls Tasso _culto_, perhaps +mistaking the reference in Garci Lasso, whose _culto Taso_ is not +Torquato but Bernardo. Lope de Vega called Camões _divino_ and reserved +_docto_ for Corte Real. + +[420] His works are _ja muitas vezes impressas_ in 1594. In 1631 +Alvaro Ferreira de Vera speaks of twelve Portuguese editions (_Breves +Lovvores_, f. 87). + +[421] _Apologia em qve defende_, &c. (1641). + +[422] The instance he gives is the long story of _Magriço e os Doze de +Inglaterra_ (vi), which he admits is in itself very fine. + +[423] One of the best instances of his pedantry is his comment on +the lines _E tu, nobre Lisboa, que no mundo Facilmente das outras +es princesa_. The ordinary reader is content to understand ‘cities’ +after _outras_. But no, says Macedo, you can only understand Lisbons. +Princess of all the other Lisbons! + +[424] _Laurel de Apolo: Postrando Eneidas y venciendo Iliadas._ + +[425] Even here some of the lines are a literal translation of Virgil, +but if we compare + + Para o ceo crystallino alevantando + Com lagrimas os olhos piadosos, + Os olhos, porque as mãos, &c., + +with the passage + + Ad coelum tendens, &c., + +it is not at all clear that the picture of the older poet is more +beautiful than that of _il lusiade Maro_. + +[426] He is thus an exception to Macedo’s axiom in the _Motim +Literario_ that Portuguese poets (most of whom, it must be admitted, +are, like Byron, children in thought) either have _versos sem cousas_ +or _cousas sem versos_. + +[427] _Discursos politicos varios_ (1624), f. 117: _& com esta +obra ficou enriquecida grandemente a lingua Portuguesa; porque lhe +deu muitos termos nouos & palauras bem achadas que depois ficárão +perfeitamente introducidas. Posto que nesta parte não deixárão algũs +escrupulosos de o condenar, julgandolhe por defeito as palauras +alatinadas que vsou no seu poema._ + +[428] Cf. Fr. Manuel do Sepulchro, _Reflexão Espiritual_ (1669): _Não +ha duvida que maior mudança fez a lingua Portuguesa nos primeiros vinte +annos do reinado de D. Manuel que em cento e cincoenta annos dahi +para ca_. Barros, however, in his _Dialogo em lovvor_ (1540), says +latinization had not yet begun: _se o nos usáramos_. + +[429] The authorship of the fine sonnets _Horas breves do meu +contentamento_ (attributed to Camões, Bernardez, the Infante Luis, +&c.) and _Formoso Tejo meu, quam differente_ (attributed to Camões, +Rodriguez Lobo, &c.) is still under dispute. + +[430] _Filodemo_, v. 3. + +[431] _Os Ratos da Inquisição_, Preface, p. 97. + +[432] e. g. _D. Alvaro de Castro e D. Francisco De Meneses_, or _hum +grave Prudente capitam_. + +[433] e. g. _valor, esforço e valentia; mar sereno e calmo; abundosa +e larga vea; a dura defensa rigurosa; açoutando e batendo_. The line +often consists of three adjectives and a noun. + +[434] Between Corte Real’s _cruel molesto duro mortal frio_ and Dante’s +_eterna maladetta fredda e greve_ (_Inf._ vi) is all the difference +between a heap of loose stones and a shrine. The conception of the +_Auto_, especially the third _novissimo_, _que he o Inferno_, was no +doubt derived from Dante. + +[435] These are the first words of the original title of the poem +(1578). + + + + + § 5 + + _The Historians_ + + +It was a proud saying of a Portuguese _seiscentista_ that the +Portuguese discoveries silenced all other histories.[436] Certainly +this was so in the case of the history of Portugal, which was neglected +while writer after writer recorded the history of the Portuguese in +India. Nor need we quarrel with a vogue which has preserved for us so +many striking pictures in which East and West clash without meeting, +new countries are continually opening to our view, and heroism and +adventure go hand in hand. Sometimes the pages of these historians +seem all aglow with precious stones, emeralds from Peru, turquoises +from Persia, rubies, cat’s-eyes, chrysolites, amethysts, beryls, and +sapphires from Ceylon, or scented with the opium of Cairo, the saffron +of Cannanore, the camphor of Borneo, sandalwood from Timor, pepper from +Malabar, cloves from the Moluccas. Blood and sea-spray mingle with +the silks from China and ivory from Sofala, and among the crowd of +rapacious governors and unscrupulous adventurers move a few figures of +a simple austerity and devotion to duty, Albuquerque, Galvão, Castro, +St. Francis Xavier. + +Little is known of ALVARO VELHO except that he was one of the immortals +(unless he was the _degredado_ (convict) from whose _caderno_ Couto +derived his account of the discovery) who accompanied Vasco da Gama +on his first voyage. To him is attributed the simple, clear narrative +contained in the log or _Roteiro da Viagem de Vasco da Gama em 1497_, +filled with a primitive wonder, which pointed the way to the historians +of India. Indeed, it provided material for the first book of a writer +who may perhaps be called the first[437] historian of the discoveries +‘enterprised by the Portingales’. FERNAM LOPEZ DE CASTANHEDA (_c._ +1500-59) was born at Santarem, and in 1528 accompanied his father, +appointed Judge at Goa, to India. For the next ten years he diligently +and not without many risks and discomforts consulted documents and +inscriptions in various parts of the country with a view to writing +a history of the discovery and conquest of India, making himself +personally acquainted with the ground and with many of those who had +played a part in the half-century (1498-1548) under review. After his +return to Portugal he continued his life-work with the same devotion +for twenty years, during which poverty constrained him to accept the +post of bedel at Coimbra University. When he died, worn out by his +_continuas vigilias_, his history was complete, but only seven books +had been published: _Historia do Descobrimento e Conqvista da India_ +(1551-4). He had at least the satisfaction to know that a part had +already been translated into French and Italian. The eighth book, +bringing the history down to 1538, was published by his children in +1561, but books nine and ten never appeared. This history of forty +years, which has less regard to style than to sincerity and the truth +of the facts, is written in great detail. It is a scrupulous and +trustworthy record of high interest describing not only the deeds of +the Portuguese, ‘of much greater price than gold or silver’, ‘more +valiant than those of Greek or Roman’, but the many lands in which +they occurred. The narrative can rise to great pathos, as in the +account of Afonso de Albuquerque’s death (iii. 154), and is often +extremely vivid.[438] The interest necessarily diminishes after 1515, +and the seventh book is largely concerned with dismal contentions +between Portuguese officials. But the great events and persons, the +capture of Goa or Diu, the characters of Gama or Albuquerque, Duarte +Pacheco Pereira or Antonio Galvão, stand out the more clearly from the +deliberate absence of rhetoric. + +LOURENÇO DE CACERES, in his _Doutrina_ addressed to the Infante Luis +in twenty short chapters on the parts of a good prince, showed that +he could write excellent prose. His death in 1531 prevented him from +undertaking a more ambitious work, which was accordingly entrusted +to his nephew JOÃO DE BARROS (1496?-1570).[439] But much earlier and +a generation before Lopez de Castanheda’s work began to appear, the +most famous of the Portuguese historians had resolved to chronicle +the discovery of India. Born probably at Viseu, the son of Lopo de +Barros, he came of ancient Minhoto stock and was brought up in the +palace of King Manuel. When the Infante João received a separate +establishment Barros became his page (_moço da guardaroupa_). It was +in this capacity, _por cima das arcas da vossa guardaroupa_, that +with the active encouragement of the prince he wrote his first work, +_Cronica do Emperador Clarimundo_ (1520). It is a long romance of +chivalry crowded with actors and events, and contains affecting, even +passionate episodes. But the most remarkable feature of this work, +written in eight months when the author was little over twenty, is its +inexhaustible flow of clear, smooth, vigorous prose, entirely free +from awkwardness or hesitation. One may also note that he regarded it +merely as a parergon, a preparation for his history, _afim de apurar o +estilo_, that despite its length he assures his readers that he omits +all details in order to avoid prolixity, that much of its geography +is real--all his works prove the truth of Couto’s assertion that he +was _doutissimo na geografia_--and that each chapter ends with a +brief moral. King Manuel, to whom he read some chapters, encouraged +him to persevere in his intention to write the history of India, but +the king’s death in 1521 delayed the project. In the following year +Barros, who meanwhile had married Maria, daughter of Diogo de Almeida +of Leiria, is said to have gone out as Captain of the Fortress of S. +Jorge da Mina (although probably he never left Portugal) and later +became Treasurer of the _Casa da India_ (1525-8), and its Factor in +1532, a post which he retained for thirty-five years. Although he +lost a large sum of money in an unfortunate venture in Brazil, this +was partly made good by the king’s munificence, and when in 1568, the +year after his resignation, he retired to his _quinta_ near Pombal +_sibi ut viveret_ he went as a _fidalgo_ of the king’s household and +with a pension over twenty-five times as large as that of Camões.[440] +In old age he is described as of a fine presence, although thin and +not tall, with pale complexion, keen eyes, aquiline nose, long white +beard, grave, pleasant, and fluent in conversation. Before beginning +his history he wrote several brief treatises of great interest and +importance, _Ropica Pnefma_ (1532), a dialogue written at his country +house in 1531 in which Time, Understanding, Will, and Reason discuss +their spiritual wares (_mercadoria espiritual_), and incidentally the +new heresies; three short works on the Portuguese language, a _Dialogo +da Viçiosa Vergonha_ (1540), and a _Dialogo sobre preceptos moraes_ +(1540) in which he reduced Aristotle’s _Ethics_ to a game for the +benefit of two of his ten children and of the Infanta Maria. He also +wrote two excellent _Panegyricos_ (of the Infanta Maria and King João +III) which were first published by Severim de Faria in his _Noticias de +Portugal_ in 1655. As a historian he chose Livy for his pattern both in +style and system. The first _Decada_ of his _Asia_ appeared in 1552, +the second in 1553, and the third ten years later (1563). Their success +was immediate, especially abroad--in Portugal, like other historians of +recent events, he was accused of partiality and unfairness[441]--copies +soon became extremely rare, the first two Decads were translated into +Italian before the third appeared, and Pope Pius IV is said to have +placed Barros’ portrait (or bust) next to the statue of Ptolemy.[442] +Barros had prepared himself very thoroughly for his task. His work +as Factor seems to have been exacting--he says that it was only by +giving up holidays and half the night and all the time spent by other +men in sleeping the _sesta_, or walking about the city, or going into +the country, playing, shooting, fishing, dining, that he was able to +attend to his literary labours. Yet he read everything, pored over +maps and chronicles and documents from the East, and even bought a +Chinese slave to translate for him. With this enthusiasm, his unfailing +sense of order and proportion, and his clear and copious style he +necessarily produced a work of permanent value. His manner is lofty, +even pompous, worthy of the great events described. If his history is +less vivid and interesting than Castanheda’s, that is because he wrote +not as an eyewitness[443] or actor in them but as Court historian. He +was a true Augustan, and the great edifice that this Portuguese Livy +planned and partly built was of eighteenth-century architecture. He was +fond of comparing his work to a building in which each stone has its +appointed place. The material to his hand must be moulded to suit the +symmetry of the whole--Albuquerque had never in his life used so many +relative sentences as are attributed to him by Barros (II. v. 9)--and +with a pedantic love of definitions and systematic subdivisions we +find him measuring out the proportions of his stately structure, while +picturesque details are deliberately omitted.[444] The merits of his +style have been exaggerated. It is never confused or slovenly, but is +for use rather than beauty; its ingredients are pure and energetic but +the construction is inartistic and monotonous.[445] It is rather in the +forcible, crisp sentences of his shorter treatises than in the _Asia_ +that Barros displays his mastery of style. His great narrative of epic +deeds is interrupted by interesting special chapters or digressions +on trade, geography, Eastern cities and customs, locusts, chess, the +Mohammedan religion, sword-fish, palm-trees, and monsoons. It was +planned in four _Decadas_ and forty books, to embrace 120 years to +1539, but the fourth was not written and the third ends with the death +of D. Henrique de Meneses (1526). Probably he did not find the dispute +as to the Governorship of India a very congenial subject, especially +as the feud was resumed in Portugal. Material and notes were however +ready, and these were worked up into a lengthy fourth _Decada_ by João +Baptista Lavanha (†1625) in 1615, which covers the same ground as, but +is quite distinct from, the fourth Decad of Couto. The _Asia_ was only +a block of a vaster whole. _Europa_, _Africa_, and _Santa Cruz_ were to +treat respectively of Portugal from the Roman Conquest and Portuguese +history in North Africa and Brazil, while Geography and Commerce were +to be the subjects of separate works, the first of which (in Latin) was +partly written. + +Inseparably connected with the name of Barros is that of DIOGO DO +COUTO (1542-1616), who continued his _Asia_, writing _Decadas_ 4-12. +He was born at Lisbon, and at the age of ten entered the service +(_guardaroupa_) of the Infante Luis, who sent him to study at the +College of the Jesuits and then with his son, D. Antonio, under Frei +Bartholomeu dos Martyres, afterwards Archbishop of Braga, at S. +Domingos, Bemfica. When thirteen he was present at the death of his +talented patron Prince Luis, and remained in the palace as page to +the king till the king’s death two years later.[446] Couto then went +to seek his fortune in India, and there as soldier, trader, official +(in 1571 he was in charge of the stores at Goa),[447] and historian he +spent the best part of the following half-century, his last visit to +Portugal being in 1569-71. At the bidding of Philip II (I of Portugal), +who appointed him _Cronista Môr_ of India, he undertook the completion +of Barros’ _Asia_. Probably he needed little inducement--his was the +pen of a ready writer, and the composition of his history was, he tells +us, a pleasure to him in spite of frequent discouragement. He had +received a classical education; as a boy in the palace he had listened +to stories of India[448] and had been no doubt deeply impressed by the +vivid account of the Sepulveda shipwreck.[449] In India he won general +respect. At Goa he married the sister of Frei Adeodato da Trindade +(1565-1605), who in Lisbon saw some of his _Decadas_ through the press; +he became Keeper of the Indian Archives (Torre do Tombo) and more +than once made a speech on behalf of the City Councillors, as at the +inauguration of the portrait of Vasco da Gama in the Town Hall in the +centenary year of the discovery of India, before Gama’s grandson, then +Viceroy, and a gathering of noblemen and captains. Couto knew every +one--we find him conversing with Viceroy, Archbishop, natives, Moorish +prisoners, rich merchants from Cambay or the Ambassador of the Grand +Mogul. This personal acquaintance with the scenes, events, and persons +gives a lively dramatic air to his work. The sententious generalities +of the majestic Barros are replaced by bitter protests and practical +suggestions. He is a critic of abuses rather than of persons.[450] +He writes from the point of view of the common soldier, as one who +had seen both sides of the tapestry of which Barros smoothly ignored +the snarls and thread-ends. He displays a hatred of _semjustiças_, +treachery, and ‘the insatiable greed of men’, with a fine zest in +descriptions of battles, but he has not Barros’ skill in proportion +and the grand style.[451] He can, however, write excellent prose, +and he gives more of graphic detail[452] and individual sayings and +anecdotes than his predecessor. Nor is he by any means an ignorant +chronicler. A poet[453] and the friend of poets, he read Dante and +Petrarca and Ariosto, was old-fashioned enough to admire Juan de Mena, +consulted the works of ancient and modern historians, travellers, and +geographers, and was deeply interested in the customs and religions +of the East. The inequality of his _Decadas_ is in part explained by +their history, which constitutes a curious chapter in the _fata_ of +manuscripts. He first wrote _Decada_ X, which is the longest and most +resembles those of Barros: this was only sent to Portugal in 1600 and +was not immediately published, apparently because the period, 1580-8, +was too recent. It remained in manuscript till 1788. Meanwhile Couto, +working with extraordinary speed, sent home the fourth and fifth +_Decadas_ in 1597, the sixth in 1599, and the seventh in 1601. Noting +the fact that the last two books (9 and 10) of Castanheda’s history +had been suppressed by royal order as being excessively fond of truth +(_porque fallava nelles verdades_), he remarks that, should this happen +to a volume of his, another would be forthcoming to take its place. +Friends and enemies, indeed the very elements, took up the challenge, +but fortunately Couto’s spirit and independence continued to the year +of his death. The fourth _Decada_ was at once printed, but the text +of the fifth was tampered with and its publication delayed, the sixth +was destroyed by fire when ready for publication and recast by Frei +Adeodato, the seventh was captured at sea by the English and re-written +in 1603 by Couto and sent home in the same year, the eighth and ninth, +finished in 1614, were stolen from him in manuscript during a severe +illness. This was a crushing blow, but he partially reconstructed them +_a modo de epilogo_ and, writing in old age from memory, dwelt, to our +gain, on personal recollections: his literary bent appears--his friend +Camões, Cristovam Falcão, and Garcia de Resende are mentioned. Finally +_Decada_ xi (1588-97), which, writing to King Philip III in January +1616, he says ‘survived this shipwreck’, has disappeared and _Decada_ +xii is incomplete, although the first five books bring the history +to the end of the century (1599). His successor in the Goa Archives, +Antonio Bocarro, took up the history at the year 1612, in a work +which was published in 1876: _Decada 13ᵃ da Historia da India_. The +manuscript of his _Dialogo do Soldado Pratico na India_ (written before +the fourth _Decada_) was also stolen. The indomitable Couto re-wrote it +and both versions have survived. They were not published till 1790, the +title given to the earlier version being _Dialogo do soldado pratico +portugues_. With its _verdades chans_, this dialogue between an old +soldier of India, an ex-Governor, and a judge forms a most valuable and +interesting indictment of the decadence of Portuguese rule in India, +where the thief and rogue escaped scot-free, while the occasional +honest man was liable to suffer for their sins, and the sleek soldier +in velvet with gold ribbons on his hat had taken the place of the +bearded _conquistadores_ (_Dialogo_, pp. 91-2). + +GASPAR CORRÊA (_c._ 1495-_c._ 1565) claims, like Fernam Lopez de +Castanheda and Barros, to have been the first historian of the +Portuguese in the East.[454] He went to India sixteen years before +Lopez de Castanheda and no doubt soon began[455] to take notes and +collect material, but he was still working at his history in 1561 and +1563, and his _Lendas da India_ were not published till the nineteenth +century. In the year 1506 Corrêa entered the king’s service as _moço +da camara_,[456] and six years later went to India, where he became +one of the six or seven secretaries of Afonso de Albuquerque.[457] +They were young men carefully chosen by the Governor from among those +who had been brought up in the palace and to whom he felt he could +entrust his secrets.[458] Theirs was no humdrum or sedentary post, +for they had to accompany the Governor on foot or on horseback, in +peace and war, ever ready with ink and paper. Thus Corrêa had occasion +vividly to describe Aden in 1513, and helped with his own hands to +build the fortress of Ormuz in 1515. After Albuquerque’s death Corrêa +seems to have continued to fight and write. In 1526 he was appointed +to the factory of Sofala,[459] and in the following year the _moço da +camara_ has become a _cavaleiro_ and is employed at the customs house +at Cochin.[460] He cannot have remained much longer at Cochin than at +Sofala, since he signed his name in the book of _moradias_ at Lisbon +in 1529, and in 1530-1, in a ship provided by himself (_em um meu +catur_), went with the Governor of India’s fleet to the attack of Diu. +Later he was commissioned by the Viceroy, D. João de Castro, to furnish +lifesize drawings[461] of all the Governors of India, so that he must +then have been living at Goa. The ever-growing abuses in India and +the scanty reward given to his fifty years of service and honourable +wounds[462] embittered his last years, and if his spoken comments were +as incisive as the indictment of the Governors and Captains contained +in the _Lendas_[463] he must have made enemies in high positions: it +seems, at least, that his murder one night at Malacca went unpunished, +as if to prove the truth of his frequent complaint that no one ever +was punished in India. At the time of his death he may still have +been at work, as in 1561 and 1563, on the revision of his _Lendas_ or +_Cronica dos Feytos da India_,[464] originally completed in 1551.[465] +The first three books relate the events from 1497 to 1538; the last +carries the history down to 1550. The account of the discovery is based +on the narrative of one, and the recollections of others, of Vasco da +Gama’s companions, and the subsequent events are drawn largely from +Corrêa’s own experience. He spared no trouble to obtain first-hand +information, from aged officials, Moors, natives, captives, a Christian +galley-slave, or a woman from Malabar, distrusting mere hearsay. He +lays frequent stress on his personal evidence.[466] Without necessarily +establishing the trustworthiness of his work on every point, this +method had the advantage of rendering it singularly vivid, and it +contains many a brilliantly coloured picture of the East. In many +respects he is the most remarkable of the historians of India. It was +not for nothing that he had written down some of Albuquerque’s letters +to King Manuel.[467] If Albuquerque’s words are still striking when +read after four centuries, we may imagine their effect on the boy still +in his teens to whom he dictated them. _Tinha grande oratoria_, says +Corrêa, and many years afterwards some of the phrases remained in his +memory.[468] He no doubt learnt from Albuquerque his direct, vigorous +style, his love of concrete details, his regard for truth. His account +of the sack of Malacca--the rifled chests of gold coins and brocades +of Mecca and cloth of gold, the narrow dusty streets in shadow in the +midday _calma_--must, one thinks, be that of an eyewitness; yet Corrêa +was not in India at the time. The explanation is that it was largely +the account of Albuquerque.[469] + +Corrêa writes in even greater detail than Lopez de Castanheda. There +is no trace of literary leanings in his work; he is sparing of +descriptions as interrupting the story.[470] Whole pages have scarcely +an adjective, and this gives his narrative clearness and rapidity, +yet he is careless of style. It has been called redundant and verbose, +but that is true mainly of the prefaces, which show that Corrêa in +a library might have developed into a rhetorical Zurara of _boas +oratorias_. It is, however, no longer the fashion to sneer at this +‘simple and half barbarous chronicler’, this ‘soldier adventurer in +whose artless words appears his lack of culture’.[471] His _Lendas_ +are infinitely preferable to the sleek periods of Barros and often as +reliable, being legendary in little beyond their title, as understood +by the ignorant (for the word _lenda_ meant not legend but record or +log). They have a harsh flavour of religious fervour and of lust for +gold[472] and an intense atmosphere of the East--_sangre e incenso, +cravo e escravaria_, St. James fighting for the Christians, St. Thomas +transformed into a peacock, all in a region of horror and enchantment. +Corrêa was aware that it was dangerous to write history in India +(iii. 9)--_periculosae plenum opus aleae_--but although he had no +intention of immediately publishing it[473] he evidently expected +some recognition of his work. The appearance of Lopez de Castanheda’s +_Historia_ and Barros’ _Decadas_ must have been a blow almost as cruel +as the daggers of his assassins a few years later. + +The events of India from 1506-15, chronicled by Castanheda and Barros, +necessarily centred round the great figure of Afonso de Albuquerque, +and they were recorded afresh by his illegitimate son BRAS DE +ALBUQUERQUE (1500-80), whom the dying Governor recommended to the king +in his last letter. King Manuel in belated gratitude bestowed his +favour on this son and bade him assume the name of Afonso in memory of +his father. His _Commentarios de Afonso de Alboquerque_ (1557) were +revised by the author in a second edition (1576) four years before his +death. They are written in unassuming but straightforward style and +furnish a very clear and moderate account based on letters written by +Albuquerque to King Manuel.[474] The author seems to have realized that +Albuquerque’s words and deeds speak sufficiently for themselves, but +the reflection produced is somewhat pale. + +The gallant and chivalrous apostle of the Moluccas, ANTONIO GALVAM +(_c._ 1490?-1557), ‘as rich in valour and knowledge as poor in +fortune’,[475] printed nothing in his lifetime but his manuscripts were +handed over after his death to Damião de Goes as _Cronista Môr_.[476] +We have only a brief treatise by him published posthumously. Copious +in matter rather than in length, for it has but eighty small folios in +spite of its lengthy title, this _Tratado_ (1563), or, if we adopt the +briefer title from the colophon, this _Lyvro dos Descobrimentos das +Antilhas & India_, is remarkable for the curious observation shown and +its vivid, concise style of a man of action. Written in the form of +annals, it begins with the Flood, and on f. 12 we are still in the age +of Merlin; but the most valuable part consists in the writer’s direct +experience--he tells of buffaloes, cows and hens ‘of flesh black as +this ink’, of mocking parrots, fires made of earth ‘as in Flanders’. +Goes, who had certainly handled the manuscript, may have added this +comparison; he evidently interpolated the account of his own travels +(ff. 58 v.-59 v.). The life of Galvam gives a further interest to this +rare book, for, a man of noble and disinterested character, himself a +prince by election, he has always been regarded as a stock instance of +the ingratitude of princes. Born in the East, the son of Albuquerque’s +old friend, the historian Duarte Galvam, he won fame by his courage and +martial qualities, both as soldier and skilful mariner. After subduing +the Molucca Islands he, as their Governor (Captain), spent his energies +and income in missionary zeal and in developing agriculture. On the +expiry of his term as Governor (1536-40) he refused the position of +Raja of Ternate, which the grateful natives besought him to accept. He +arrived penniless in Portugal and penniless died seventeen years later +in the Lisbon hospital. + +Besides the general histories many briefer records of separate regions +or events were written, and these are often of great value as the +accounts of men who had seen and taken part in what they describe. + +LOPO DE SOUSA COUTINHO (?1515-77), father of Frei Luis de Sousa and +one of the captains in the heroic siege of Diu (1538)--he is said to +have died by accidentally running himself through with his sword when +dismounting from his horse--wrote a striking account of the siege, +especially of its last incidents, in his _Livro Primeiro do Cerco de +Diu_ (1556). The siege of Mazagam (1562) was similarly described in +clear, vigorous prose by AGOSTINHO GAVY DE MENDONÇA: _Historia do +famoso cerco qve o Xarife pos á fortaleza de Mazagam_ (1607). JORGE +DE LEMOS, of Goa, wrote a careful _Historia dos Cercos ... de Malaca_ +(1585), and ANTONIO CASTILHO, the distinguished son of the celebrated +architect João, published a _Commentario do Cerco de Goa e Chaul no +anno MDLXX_ (1572). Events in the Moluccas were briefly recorded in an +_Informaçam das cousas de Maluco_ (1569) by GABRIEL DE RABELLO, who +went out as factor of Tidore in 1566. + +The anonymous gentleman of Elvas who wrote the _Relaçam verdadeira_ +(1557) of Soto’s discovery of Florida was a keen observer and related +what he saw in direct language. His publisher, André de Burgos, in a +short preface washes his hands of the style as insufficiently polished +(_limado_). + +The deeds of D. Cristovam da Gama, his conquest of a hundred leagues of +territory in Ethiopia, his defeat, torture, and beheadal, are recounted +with the vivid details of an eyewitness by MIGUEL DE CASTANHOSO, of +Santarem, who accompanied him on his fatal expedition. This _Historia_ +(1564) was published by João da Barreira, who dedicated it to D. +Cristovam’s nephew, D. Francisco de Portugal. + +MANUEL DE ABREU MOUSINHO wrote in Spanish a brief account of the +conquest of Pegu by Salvador Ribeiro de Sousa, of which a Portuguese +version appeared in the 1711 edition of Mendez Pinto’s travels: _Breve +discurso em que se contem a conquista do reyno de Pegu_, nearly a +century after the original edition, _Breve Discvrso en qve se cventa_, +&c. (1617). The _Jornada do Maranhão feita por Jeronymo de Albuquerque +em 1614_ is ascribed to DIOGO DE CAMPOS MORENO, who took part in that +_conquista_. It was published in the _Collecção de Noticias para a +Historia e Geographia das Nações Ultramarinas_.[477] The second volume +of this collection contains several re-translations of _Navegações_ (by +Thomé Lopez and anonymous Portuguese pilots) surviving in Italian in +Ramusio. It would require a separate volume to give an account of all +the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century narratives of newly conquered +countries written in Portuguese and often immediately translated +into many European languages, e.g. the _Novo Descobrimento do Grão +Cathayo_ (1626) by the Jesuit ANTONIO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1580-1634), or +the _Relaçam_ of the Jesuit ALVARO SEMMEDO (1585?-1658) written in +Portuguese but published in the Spanish translation of Faria e Sousa: +_Imperio de la China_ (1642). However unliterary, they are often so +vividly written as to be literature in the best sense. + +PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES DE GANDAVO, of Braga, whose _Regras_ (1574) ran +into three editions before the end of the century, described Brazil +and its discovery in two short works: _Historia da prouincia Sãcta +Cruz_ (1576) and _Tratado da terra do Brazil_ first published in 1826 +in the _Collecção de Noticias_. This collection also prints works +of the following century, such as the _Fatalidade historica da Ilha +de Ceilão_[478] by Captain JOÃO RIBEIRO, who had served the king as +a soldier for eighteen years in the _preciosa ilha de Ceilão_. His +manuscript, written in 1685, was translated and published in French +(1701) 135 years before it was printed in Portuguese. Gandavo’s +_Historia_ (48 ff.), his first work (_premicias_), was introduced by +_tercetos_ and a sonnet of Luis de Camões, who speaks of his _claro +estilo_, and _engenho curioso_. The author himself in a prefatory +letter says that he writes as an eyewitness, content with a ‘plain and +easy style’ without seeking _epithetos exquisitos_. + +The Jesuit BALTHASAR TELLEZ[479] (1595-1675) won considerable fame as +an historian and prose-writer in his _Cronica da Companhia de Iesus_ +(2 pts., 1645, 1647) in which he forswears what he calls the artifices +and liberties of ordinary _seiscentista_ prose. He also edited the work +of the Jesuit missionary MANUEL DE ALMEIDA (1580-1646), recasting it +in an abbreviated form: _Historia Geral da Ethiopia a Alta ov Preste +Ioam_ (1660), for which Tellez’ friend, Mello, provided a prefatory +letter. Almeida, born at Viseu, had gone to India in 1601 and in 1622 +was sent to Ethiopia, where he became the head of the mission. He died +at Goa after a life of much hard work and various adventure. In writing +his history of Ethiopia he made use of the _Historia da Ethiopia_ of +an earlier (1603-19) head of the mission, PEDRO PAEZ (1564-1622), who +had started for Ethiopia in 1595 but was captured by the Turks and only +ransomed in 1602. Although a Spaniard by birth (born at Olmeda), Paez +wrote in Portuguese. A third Jesuit missionary, MANUEL BARRADAS, born +in 1572 at Monforte, who went to India in 1612, was also a prisoner of +the Turks for over a year at Aden. In 1624 he went to _Ethiope, terre +maldite_, and remained there some ten years. Of his three treatises +the most important is that entitled _Do Reyno de Tygrê e seus mandos +em Ethiopia_. The modern editor of these works, P. Camillo Beccari, +considers that their authors’ simple style caused their treatises +to be regarded rather as the material of history than in themselves +history,[480] but their value for us is in this very simplicity and in +the detailed observation which bring the country and its inhabitants +clearly before us. Scarcely less important, as material for history and +as human documents, are the _Cartas_ from Jesuits in China and Japan, +especially the collection of 82 letters (Coimbra, 1570), and that of +206 letters (Evora, 1598). The Jesuit FERNAM CARDIM at about the same +time rendered a like service to Brazil in his _Narrativa epistolar_, +edited in 1847 by F. A. de Varnhagen. A more important work on Brazil +was that of GABRIEL SOAREZ DE SOUSA (_c._ 1540-92)--the _Tratado +descriptivo do Brasil em 1587_, which its modern editor, F. A. de +Varnhagen, described in a moment of enthusiasm as ‘the most admirable +of all the works of the Portuguese _quinhentistas_’. Two other works of +interest, half history, half travels, are the _Jornada do Arcebispo de +Goa Dom Frey Aleixo de Meneses_ (1606) by ANTONIO DE GOUVEA, Bishop of +Cyrene (_c._ 1565-1628), in three parts, describing the archbishop’s +life and visits in his diocese; and the _Discvrso da Iornada de D. +Gonçalo Covtinho á villa de Mazagam e sev governo nella_ (1629). The +writer--the admirer of Camões and alleged author of the 1614 life of Sá +de Miranda--who, as he says, had grown white in the council-chamber, +lived on till 1634. He here relates with much directness his voyage and +four years’ Governorship (1623-7). + +The _Saudades da Terra_ (1873) of GASPAR FRUCTUOSO (1522-91), who +was born at S. Miguel in the Azores, was written in 1590 and waited +three centuries in manuscript for an editor. Both its title and the +‘preamble’, in which Truth says that she will write of nothing but +sadness, are misleading, since the book is an account--in good, +straightforward style after the manner of Castanheda and other +historians--of the discovery and subsequent conditions of various +islands, especially of Madeira and the lives of its Governors. ANTONIO +CORDEIRO (1641-1722), Jesuit, of Angra, wrote at the age of seventy-six +an uncritical but interesting work entitled _Historia Insulana das +Ilhas a Portugal sujeitas no Oceano Occidental_ (1717), based partly on +Fructuoso’s manuscript. + +It was only as it were by an afterthought that the historians turned +to consider the history of Portugal as apart from separate chronicles +of the kings or episodes of Eastern conquest. The historical scheme +of João de Barros was too vast to be executed by one man and the +European part was never written. André de Resende likewise failed to +carry out his project of a history of Portugal. PEDRO DE MARIZ (_c._ +1550-1615), son of the Coimbra printer, Antonio, in the last four of +his _Dialogos de Varia Historia_ (1594) between a Portuguese and an +Italian, embraces the whole history of Portugal, but these dialogues, +although industriously written in good plain style, were eclipsed by +the appearance three years later of the first part of the _Monarchia +Lusitana_ (1597). Its author, a young Cistercian monk of Alcobaça, +FREI BERNARDO DE BRITO (1569-1617), in the world Balthasar de Brito de +Andrade, at once became known as one of the best writers of his time, +and he is still reckoned among the masters of Portuguese prose. His +style, clear, restrained, copious, proved that the mantle of Barros had +fallen upon worthy shoulders. But, despite his rich vein of humanity, +as a historian he is far inferior to Barros and even more uncritical +than Mariz. The value of evidence seems to have weighed with him little +when it was a question of exalting his language, literature, religion, +or country, and he used and incorporated documents entirely worthless. +Whether he deliberately manufactured spurious documents to serve +his purposes cannot be known, but he seems at least to have quoted +authorities which had never existed.[481] + +In a word he failed to make good use of the incomparable material which +the library of Alcobaça afforded. His was a misdirected erudition, +and we would willingly exchange the knowledge of where Adam lies +buried, or on what day the world began, or how Gorgoris, King of +Lusitania, who died 1227 years after the Flood, invented honey, for +accurate details of more recent Portuguese history. Yet he had the +diligence and enthusiasm of the true historian and made use, sometimes +a skilful use,[482] of coins and inscriptions. His brief _Geographia +antiga da Lusytania_ also appeared in 1597, and in the same year the +Cistercian Order appointed him its chronicler. Thus he interrupted +his main work--the second part of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ was only +published in 1609--in order to write the _Primeira Parte da Cronica de +Cister_ (1602).[483] This, in many ways his best work, runs to nearly +a thousand pages, and treats of the saints of the Order and especially +of the life of the charming St. Bernard, with contemporary events in +Portugal.[484] It was to be followed by two other parts, but Brito’s +early death at his native Almeida on his way back to Alcobaça from +Spain, a year after he had been appointed _Cronista Môr_ (1616), left +his work unfinished. He is remembered as a fine stylist, a poet who +wrote history rather than as a great historian. Mariana, the Latin +original of whose _Historia de España_ (1592) he knew and quoted, is by +comparison almost a scientific writer--at least he is not, like Brito, +pseudo-scientific. + +The two parts of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ written by Brito ended with +the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy. Parts 3 and 4, by FREI +ANTONIO BRANDÃO (1584-1637), to whose sincerity and skill Herculano +paid tribute, appeared in 1632 and carried it down to the year 1279. +Brandão had spent nearly ten years collecting and sifting documentary +evidence for his work and is a far better historian than Brito, +although in style he is not his equal. His nephew FREI FRANCISCO +BRANDÃO (1601-80), _vir modestus, diligens et eruditus_, succeeded Frei +Antonio as _Cronista Môr_ and wrote Parts 5 and 6 (1650), describing +the reign of King Dinis. The style was less well maintained in Part 7 +(1633) by FREI RAPHAEL DE JESUS (1614-93). Part 8 (1727), the last to +be published, was added by FREI MANUEL DOS SANTOS (1672-1740) over a +century after the publication of the first Part, but only brought the +history to the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Santos’ Part 7 as well as +Parts 9 and 10 remained in manuscript. His prose is worthy of a work +which is a monument of the language, not of the history of Portugal. +Perhaps the truest epitaph of this history as a whole--after allowance +has been made for Brito’s style and the excellent work of Antonio +Brandão--is a severe sentence from the preface of the author of Part 7: +‘There are histories whose tomes are tombs.’ + +It could hardly, perhaps, be expected that the historians of the reigns +of King Manuel and King João III should pass over events in the East as +already fully related, and in Damião de Goes’ _Cronica do Felicissimo +Rey Dom Emanvel_ and Francisco de Andrade’s _Cronica de Dom João III_ +(1613), although they lose much by compression, they still occupy a +disproportionate space. Andrade wrote most correct prose, even in +his poems, and the style of his history is excellent, but neither of +these works gives any adequate account of the internal history of +Portugal, any more than does that of Frei Luis de Sousa on João III’s +reign, in which there should have been more scope for originality. The +same prominence is given to India in the history of JERONIMO OSORIO +(1506-80), Bishop of Silves, _De Rebvs Emmanvelis Regis Lvsitaniae_ +(1571), written in Latin in order to spread the knowledge of these +events _per omnes reipublicae Christianae regiones_.[485] Osorio, whose +father, like Lopez de Castanheda’s, had been a judge (_ouvidor_) in +India, was born at Lisbon, but studied abroad, at Salamanca, Paris, +and Bologna. After occupying the Chair of Scripture at Coimbra for a +brief space, he went to Lisbon and became secretary to the Infante +Luis. In 1560 he was made Archdeacon of Evora and four years later +Bishop of Silves. (The see was removed to Faro three years before his +death and his title is sometimes given as Bishop of Algarve.) A few +remarkable letters in Portuguese, in one of which (1567) he attempted +to convert Queen Elizabeth, show that he was skilled in the use of his +native tongue; his countrymen delighted to call him the Portuguese +Cicero. According to Sousa de Macedo ‘many people came from England, +Germany and other parts with the sole object of seeing him’.[486] In +England certainly his book was highly prized, and both Dryden and +Pope praised Gibbs’ translation, although Francis Bacon noted the +diffuseness of Osorio’s style: _luxurians et diluta_, certainly not +a just verdict on the style as a whole; we have but to think of the +concise sketches of Albuquerque (_De Rebus_, p. 380) and King Manuel +(p. 478). Osorio acknowledged his ample debt to the chronicle of +Goes, which he describes as written ‘with incredible felicity’. FREI +BERNARDO DA CRUZ, who accompanied King Sebastian to Africa in 1578 as +chaplain, in his _Cronica de El Rei D. Sebastião_ wrote the history of +his life and reign and happily describes him as ‘a young king without +experience or fear’. The _Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_ (1840) +completed the history of the house of Avis. It chronicles in fifty-four +diminutive chapters the eighteen months’ reign of the _pouco mimoso e +severo_ Cardinal King Henry. It was written in 1586,[487] and, although +anonymous, is ascribed with some probability to the Jesuit Padre ALVARO +LOBO (1551-1608). + +The _Jornada de Africa_ (1607) by JERONIMO DE MENDOÇA, of Oporto, is +divided into three parts, describing the expedition and the battle +of Alcacer Kebir, the ransoms and escapes of the captives, and the +death of Christian martyrs in Africa. Its object was to refute certain +statements in Conestaggio’s recent work _Dell’unione del regno di +Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia_, but Mendoça had fought at Alcacer +Kebir and had been taken prisoner; he thus writes as an eyewitness, +and his excellent style and power of description give more than a +controversial value and interest to his book and make it matter for +regret that this short history was apparently his only work. + +MIGUEL DE MOURA (1538-1600), secretary to five kings and one of the +three Governors of Portugal in 1593, set an example too rarely followed +by those who have played an important part in Portuguese history by +composing a brief autobiography: _Vida de Miguel de Moura_. It was +written on the eve of St. Peter’s Day, 1594, except a few pages which +were added in the year before the author’s death. Incidentally it has +the distinction of containing one of the longest sentences ever written +(114 lines--1840 ed., pp. 126-9). + +The painstaking and talented DUARTE NUNEZ DE LEAM (_c._ 1530-1608), +born at Evora, son of the Professor of Medicine João Nunez, besides +genealogical and legal works, _Leis extravagantes_ (1560, 1569), wrote +two valuable treatises on the Portuguese language and an interesting +_Descripção do Reino de Portugal_ (1610), which he finished in 1599. +He also found time to spare from his duties as a magistrate to recast +the chronicles of the Kings of Portugal. The _Cronicas dos Reis de +Portugal_ (1600) contain those from Count Henry to King Fernando, and +the _Cronicas del Rey Dom Ioam de gloriosa memoria_ those of Kings +João I, Duarte, and Afonso V. Shorn of the individuality of the early +chroniclers, they yet retain much of interest, and Nunez de Leam +would be accorded a higher place as historian were it not for our +knowledge of the inestimable value of the originals which he edited +and ‘improved’. Two generations earlier Cristovam Rodriguez Azinheiro +(or Acenheiro), born in 1474 (he tells us that he was sixty-one in +May 1535), had treated the early chronicles in the same way, but only +succeeded in retaining all that was jejune without preserving their +picturesqueness in his _Cronicas dos Senhores Reis de Portugal_.[488] + +More interesting personally than as historian, the humanist DAMIÃO +DE GOES (1502-74[489]) was one of the most accomplished men of his +time,[490] and, thanks partly to his trial before the Inquisition, +partly to the not unpleasant egotism with which he chronicled +autobiographical details, not only in his _Genealogia_[491] but +in many of his other works, we know more of his life than we know +of most contemporary writers. Traveller and diplomatist, scholar, +singer, musician, he was a man of many friends during his lifetime, +and the tragic circumstances of his last years have won him fresh +sympathizers after his death. Born at Alenquer and brought up at the +Court of King Manuel, he became page to the king in 1518, and five +years later was appointed secretary at the Portuguese Factory at +Antwerp. In 1529 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Poland, and +in this and the following years, on similar missions or for his own +pleasure, ‘saw and conversed with all the kings, princes, nobles and +peoples of Christendom’.[492] He made the acquaintance of Montaigne’s +_aubergistes allemands, ‘glorieux, colères et ivrognes’_, turned +aside to visit Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg,[493] and was for +several months the guest of Erasmus at Freiburg. In Italy he lived +with Cardinal Sadoletto at Padua (1534-8) and met Cardinal Bembo and +other celebrated men of the day. At Louvain, too, _mihi intime carum +et iucundum_, as throughout Europe, he had many devoted friends. A +senator of Antwerp welcomed him in Latin verse on his return from his +Scythian travels,[494] Luis Vives addressed affectionate letters to +_mi Damiane_, Albrecht Dürer painted his portrait, Glareanus in his +_Dodecachordon_ included music of his composition.[495] + +In 1542 he was on his way to Holland with his Flemish wife when he +heard that Louvain was threatened by a French force commanded by +Longueval and _meus ille in Academiam Louvaniensem fatalis amor_ +took him back to share its perils. He played a principal part in the +defence, and finally remained a prisoner in the enemy’s hands, _quasi +piacularis hostia_, as he says.[496] His imprisonment in France lasted +nine months, and after paying a ransom of 6,000 ducats he went back +to Louvain. The Emperor Charles V rewarded him for his services with +a splendid coat of arms. In 1545, after twenty-one years of European +travel, he returned with his wife and children[497] to Portugal, and +three years later was entrusted with Fernam Lopez’ old post, the +Keepership of the Archives. He lived in the Paços d’Alcaçova with a +certain magnificence, keeping open house for all foreigners, one of +whom records that already in 1565 _il se faict fort vieulx_. Six years +later, on April 4, 1571, he was arrested by the Inquisition and spent +twenty months in prison. + +It was, perhaps, inevitable that he should have incurred suspicion, +nor is it necessary to explain his trial by the enmity of certain +persons at Court due to passages in his works. His life had been out +of keeping with the _gravedades de Hespanha_, and the charges against +him were numerous and varied. He had eaten and drunken with heretics, +he had read strange books, the sound of songs not understanded of the +people and organ music had issued from his house at Lisbon, he had +omitted to observe fasts, he had called the Pope a tyrant, he set no +store by papal indulgences or auricular confession. Even the testimony +of his grand-niece is recorded, to the effect that her mother had +said of Goes, her husband’s uncle, that he had no more belief in God +than in a stone wall (she seems to have had Berkeleian tendencies). +As usual it is less the proceedings of the Inquisition than the bad +faith of the witnesses that arouse disgust. The poet Andrade Caminha, +who apparently came forward of his own accord--we are not told that +he was _chamado_--admitted that certain words of Goes which he now +denounced had not seemed so serious to him before he knew that Goes +was in the prison of the Inquisition. Goes had already been denounced +to the Inquisition in 1545 and 1550, and his book _Fides, Religio +Moresque Aethiopum_ (Lovanii, 1540) had been condemned in Portugal in +1541. He was examined frequently in 1571 and 1572, was left for three +months without news of his family, and complained of being old, weak, +and ill, and that his body had become covered with a kind of leprosy +(July 14, 1572). His sentence (October 16, 1572) pronounced him to +have incurred, as a Lutheran heretic, excommunication, confiscation of +all his property, and the life-long confinement of his person. He was +transferred to the famous monastery of Batalha in December, but his +death (January 30, 1574) occurred in his own house. His return and his +death probably explain one another. He was growing very old in 1565 and +we must suppose that his recent experiences had not made him younger. +His last request--to die among his family--was apparently granted, +and the further explanations (that he fell forward into the fire, +that he died of an apoplexy, was killed by order of the Inquisition, +was beaten to death by the lackeys of the Conde da Castanheira, or +murdered and robbed by his own servants) are superfluous. His works +consist of several brief Latin treatises crowded with interesting +facts (especially his _Hispania_); and in Portuguese the _Cronica do +Principe Dom Ioam_ (1567) and _Cronica do Felicissimo Rey Dom Emanvel_, +4 pt. (1566, 1567). He also found time to translate Cicero’s _De +Senectute_: _Livro ... da Velhice_, (Veneza, 1534). He had not the +imagination of an historian, and unless events have passed before his +eyes, or happen to interest him personally, he can be bald and meagre +as an annalist. But in any matter which touches him closely, as the +expulsion and the cruel treatment of the Jews, or the massacre of new +Christians, or the account of Ethiopia, he broadens out into moving +and detailed description. The result is that this long Chronicle of +King Manuel is a number of excellent separate treatises rather than +a history with unity and a sense of proportion. It is the work of a +scholar who likes to describe directly, from his own experience. The +_Cronica do Principe_ was written some months before that of King +Manuel. The latter was a difficult undertaking,[498] for many persons +concerned were still alive, and subjects such as the expulsion of the +Jews needed delicate handling. For thirty-one years it had hung fire +in the hands of previous chroniclers when in 1558 Cardinal Henrique +entrusted it to Damião de Goes. After eight years the four parts were +ready for press,[499] but the difficulties were not yet over, for +certain chapters met with strong disapproval at Court[500] and had to +be altered, so that two editions of the first part appeared in 1566 +(the first being apparently submitted as a proof and not for sale), but +the publication of the work as a whole was not completed before 1567. + +Scarcely less celebrated than Goes, the archaeologist LUCIO ANDRÉ DE +RESENDE (1493?-1573),[501] friend of Goes, Clenardus, and Erasmus, left +the Dominican convent of Bemfica, in which he was a novice, in order +to study abroad, at Salamanca, Paris, and Louvain. ‘Tall, with very +large eyes, curling hair, rather dark complexion but of a cheerful, +open countenance’, living in his house (_as casas de Resende_) at +Evora among his books and coins, statues and inscriptions--his small +garden hedged with _marmores antigos_ as, according to Brito, too +often were peasants’ vine-yards--he exercised a considerable influence +on the writers of his time[502] and was held in high esteem by the +Emperor Charles V and by King João III. The principal of his own works +were written in Latin, but besides his _De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae_ +(1593), which was edited by Mendez de Vasconcellos with the addition of +a fifth book from notes left by the author, he composed in Portuguese +a ‘brief but learned’ _Historia da Antiguidade da Cidade de Evora_ +(1553). In his _Vida do Infante Dom Duarte_ (1789)[503] he did not +write the ‘very copious history’ which Paiva de Andrade[504] said the +subject required. He did better, for this sketch of a few pages is a +little masterpiece in which the vignettes, for instance, of the boatman +and his figs, or the meal in the mill, must ever retain their vividness +and charm. Resende had been the prince’s tutor and writes of what he +saw; he shows that he could decipher a person’s character as keenly as +a Latin inscription. Resende’s legitimate successor in archaeology, +MANUEL SEVERIM DE FARIA (1583-1655), scarcely belongs to the sixteenth +century although he wrote verses in 1598 and 1599. He succeeded his +uncle as Canon (1608) and Precentor (1609) of Evora Cathedral and +resigned in favour of his nephew Manuel de Faria Severim as Canon in +1633 and Precentor in 1642. Living in ancient Evora when the memory of +Resende was still fresh, this antiquary of the pale face and blue eyes, +‘store-house of all the treasures of the past’,[505] with his medals +and statues and choice library of rare books, soon rivalled Resende’s +fame. His most important works are _Discursos varios politicos_ (1624) +containing four essays and the lives of Barros, Camões, and Couto, and +_Noticias de Portugal_ (1655). + +A less attractive personality is that of MANUEL DE FARIA E SOUSA +(1590-1649), born near Pombeiro (Minho), a most accomplished, +industrious, but untrustworthy author who wrote mainly in Spanish. His +_Epitome de las Historias Portuguesas_ was published in 1628 at Madrid, +where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he died. He +seems to have retained a real affection for his native country, but +he was not a man of independent character and bestowed his flatteries +as his interest required. After the Restoration of 1640 he stayed +on at the Spanish Court, and there appears to be some doubt whether +it was João IV, his nominal master, or Philip IV of Spain that he +served best. His long historical works, _Europa Portuguesa_, _Asia +Portuguesa_, _Africa Portuguesa_, appeared posthumously, between 1666 +and 1681. He is most pleasant when he is not trying to ‘make’ history +but is simply describing, as in his account of the various provinces +of Portugal.[506] In his own not over-modest verdict in Part 4 of the +same volume, _De las primazias deste Reyno_, he was _el primero que +supo historiar con más acierto_. Faria e Sousa was enthusiastic but +unscrupulous and he has been severely handled by the critics. With +posterity he has fallen between two stools, since the Spanish are only +moderately interested in his subject, Portugal, and the Portuguese +consider him to belong to Spanish literature. + + +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. + +[494] + + Venisti nimium usque et usque et usque + Expectate tuis. + + +[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. + + + + + § 6 + + _Quinhentista Prose_ + + +Had latinization and the Renaissance come to Portugal in a quiet age +it is not pleasant to think what havoc they might have wrought on +Portuguese prose in the unreal atmosphere of the study. Fortunately +they found Portugal in turmoil. Stirring incidents and adventures were +continually occurring which needed no heightening of rhetoric or Latin +pomp of polysyllables. A scientific spirit of accuracy was abroad, and +the missionaries and adventurers, travellers, mariners, merchants, +officials, and soldiers who recorded their experiences wrote as men of +action, with life and directness. + +Few stories are more intense and affecting than those told by the +Portuguese survivors of shipwreck in the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. Twelve of these appeared in the original collection edited +by BERNARDO GOMES DE BRITO (born in 1688): _Historia Tragico-Maritima_ +(2 vols., 1735, 6).[507] The earliest and most celebrated is the +_Relaçam da mui notavel perda do galeão grande S. João_ [June 24, +1552], an anonymous narrative based on the account of a survivor, +Alvaro Fernandez, probably the ship’s mate, which tells of the death +of D. Lianor de Sepulveda and her husband with a simple pathos and +dramatic power unattained by the many poets who later treated the same +theme. But the accounts of the wreck of the _S. Bento_ (1554), the +_Conceição_ (1555), the _S. Paulo_ (1561), of D. Jorge de Albuquerque +(1565), and others, are scarcely less moving. The ships, of 1,000 +tons, as the _Aguia_, ‘the largest vessel that had hitherto sailed +to India’ (1558), and under, often with rotten rudder, or the whole +ship rotten, _sepulturas dos homens_, with few boats, careless and +ignorant pilots, badly careened, overloaded, overcrowded, ill-supplied +with worm-eaten biscuit, ‘poisonous’ wine, and insufficient water, +seemed to invite destruction. Between 1582 and 1602 alone thirty-eight +ships were lost. The sea was not the only enemy: corsairs off the +coast of Portugal, French, Dutch, and English, Lutheran heretics +who threw overboard beads and missals, or a Turkish fleet ‘in sight +of Ericeira’, exacted their toll when all other dangers had been +successfully overcome. The story is told immediately after the event, +sometimes almost in the form of a diary or log, or years later, +by survivors or based on the account of survivors, and it varies +according as the narrator is the captain of the ship, a landsman with +a dislike of sailors, a plain soldier, a Jesuit priest, a Franciscan +monk, a distinguished Lisbon chemist (Henrique Diaz in i. 6), or a +famous historian (ii. 3 by Diogo do Couto,[508] ii. 4 by João Baptista +Lavanha[509]). All or most of their accounts are masterpieces of vivid +phraseology. We follow as in a novel their adventures as the sea +‘breaks into flower--_quebrando em frol_’, as they are stranded on a +desert island, boarded in sight of home, entrapped by savages, devoured +by wild beasts, tottering, _arrimados em paos_, exhausted by thirst and +hunger, or prostrated by heat, in comparison with which the _calmas_ +of Alentejo ‘are but as Norwegian cold’: toils and perils borne with +heroic courage, told with the simplicity of heroes, without _adorno de +palavras nem linguagem floreada_. + +Many books of travel were the natural consequence of the discovery of +India. The historian João de Barros’ passion for knowledge, especially +geographical knowledge, was the first cause[510] of the learned and +instructive _Chorographia_ (1561) of his nephew Gaspar Barreiros +(†1574), a description of the places through which he passed on his way +to Rome in 1545 to thank the Pope on behalf of the Infante Henrique, +_Cardinalem amplissimum_, for his cardinal’s hat. But this work (edited +by his brother, Lopo Barreiros) was an exception. Most of the travel +books were concerned with the far East. + +The _Livro em que da relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente_ (1516) by +DUARTE BARBOSA of Lisbon, brother-in-law of Fernam de Magalhães, exists +in a Portuguese manuscript in the Public Library of Oporto, but was +first published in Portuguese in 1821 as a translation from the Italian +_Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese_, itself a translation from a +copy at Seville. The author had spent the greater part of his youth in +India, and his work contains vivid and accurate notes on Eastern lands +and cities, especially Malabar. + +One of the causes that most moved Portugal to curiosity and acted as +an incentive to discovery were the vague rumours of the existence of +a mighty Christian prince, the half-mythical Prester John, Negus of +Abyssinia. The priest FRANCISCO ALVAREZ (_c._ 1470?-_c._ 1540) set out +with Duarte Galvam, first Portuguese Ambassador to Abyssinia, in 1515, +but Galvam’s death delayed the mission, and it was not till 1520 that +Alvarez and the new ambassador, D. Rodrigo de Lima, reached the Court +of Prester John. They remained for six years in the country, and during +this time Alvarez recorded in straightforward notes every detail of the +country and its inhabitants with minuteness and accuracy. He considered +himself old[511] in 1520; he was certainly active: he shoots hares and +pheasants, washes unsuccessfully for gold, looks after his slaves, +his nine mules, his fourteen cows, and organizes a procession against +locusts. On their return, in Alvarez’ friend Antonio Galvam’s ship, to +Lisbon, bringing ‘the length of Prester John’s foot’, he was eagerly +questioned by king, prelates, and courtiers--the whole Court trooped +out along the road from Coimbra to meet them--and when he published +his fascinating diary of travel, _Verdadeira Informaçam das terras do +Preste Joam_ (1540), it was soon translated into almost every language +of Europe.[512] FREI GASPAR DA CRUZ of Evora, missionary in China, +returned to Portugal in 1569, and in the same year began his _Tractado +em que se cõtam muito por estẽso as cousas da China_ (1570). He calls +it a _singella narraçam_, but it contains valuable information about +China, nor did the author neglect his style. The Dominican FREI JOÃO +DOS SANTOS (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1625?)[513] was born at Evora about the +middle of the sixteenth century, and went out to East Africa and India +as a missionary in 1586. He returned to Lisbon in August 1600 and nine +years later published his _Ethiopia Oriental_ (1609), an attractive, +curious account, written in a clear and easy style, of the natives, +their land and customs. It is to be feared that some of the settlers +sadly abused his credulity, as in the case of the _mercador’s_ tale +of the native sorcerer or the man 380 years old, but this does not by +any means impair the interest of his book. More individual and vivid +is the _Itinerario_ (1560) of ANTONIO TENREIRO, who in brief, staccato +sentences describes minutely what he saw (the _rosaes_ of red, white, +and yellow roses in May near Damascus, the red roses of Shiraz, the +fair, white Gurgis, complexioned like Englishmen) during his travels +from Ormuz to the Caspian Sea and in Palestine and Egypt, and his +overland journey from Ormuz to Portugal (1529) in which, alone with an +Arab guide, he spent twenty-two days in crossing the desert. A similar +land journey, a generation later, is described with an equal wealth +of curious detail in the _Itinerario_ (1565) of Mestre MARTIM AFONSO, +surgeon to the Viceroy, Conde de Redondo,[514] while the Franciscan +FREI PANTALEAM DE AVEIRO in his _Itinerario da Terra Santa_, &c. (1593) +described his journey to the Holy Land. Not less adventurous were the +travels of another Franciscan, FREI GASPAR DE S. BERNARDINO, who +related them with greater parade of erudition in a clear, elegant style +in his _Itinerario da India por terra_ (1611), the promised second +part of which was unhappily not finished or at least not published. +Half a century later the Jesuit MANUEL GODINHO (_c._ 1630-1712),[515] +in the _Relaçam do novo caminho que fez por terra e mar_ (1665), gave +a remarkable account, in a style not untouched by the _culteranismo_ +of the time, of his return journey in 1663 from Baçaim. But various +and arresting as are the books of Portuguese travellers, they are all +eclipsed by the wonderful _Peregrinaçam_ (1614) of FERNAM MENDEZ PINTO +(_c._ 1510-83). This prince of travellers and adventurers was born at +Montemôr o Velho. His parents were of humble station, and at the time +of King Manuel’s death (1521) he was brought by an uncle to Lisbon in +order to earn his living. Although he remained in Portugal for sixteen +years, in the service first of a lady of Lisbon and later of D. João de +Lencastre,[516] lord of Montemôr o Velho, at Setubal, he was but just +in his teens when, crossing in a boat from Alfama, he was captured off +Cezimbra by a French corsair as a foretaste of pleasures to come. In +March 1537 he set out for India and his odyssey began in earnest. He +had no sooner reached Diu than he re-embarked on an expedition to the +Straits of Mecca. His hope was to make a rich prize and become _muito +rico em pouco tempo_. He went next with three others on a mission to +Ethiopia, and on the return voyage he was captured by the Turks, placed +in a subterranean dungeon, and then sold to a Greek renegade, whom he +describes as ‘the most inhuman and cruel dog of an enemy ever seen’. +Fortunately after three months the Greek sold him for 12,000 _réis_ to +a Jew, who brought him to Ormuz. After spending little over a fortnight +there he embarked with a cargo of horses for Goa, and later was wounded +in a fight with the Turks. He next proceeded to Malacca, and was sent +thence on a mission to the King of the Batas, by whom he was made +welcome ‘as rain to our rice crops’. After accompanying the king on a +campaign he returned to Malacca, losing his cargo of tin and benjamin +on the way. His next mission was to the King of Aaru. He returned to +Malacca a slave, as his ship was wrecked, and after fearful sufferings +he, the only survivor, was bought cheap by a poor Moorish trader. A +trading expedition to Pão and Lugor ended as disastrously: after a +fight with Moors he succeeded in swimming wounded to land, but returned +penniless to Patane. In despair he joined the freebooting Antonio de +Faria, and they preyed on Chinese junks till their ship was weighed +down with silver and silk, damask and porcelain. Faria and his men are +represented fighting, torturing, murdering, plundering, playing at dice +on deck for pieces of silk, praying a litany, and promising rich and +good spoil to Our Lady of the Hill at Malacca. After being shipwrecked +they joined a Chinese pirate and again built up their fortunes. They +weathered a storm by throwing overboard twelve cases of silver, sacked +a Chinese city, were received in honour at Liampo (Ningpo), but again +inordinate greed for gold proved their ruin, and, after a daring +attempt to plunder the rich tombs of the Emperors of China in the +island of Calemplui, they were finally stranded in China and arrested +as vagabonds. After six weeks in the crowded prison at Nanking the +Portuguese were taken to Peking and thence deported to Quansi (Kansu), +where they were freed by the timely attack of the King of Tartary. He +sent them to Cochin-China, but on the way they entered the service +of a Chinese pirate. When they reached Japan only three Portuguese +survived, the first Europeans, Mendez Pinto claims, to set foot there. +When he brought news of this land to Liampo a trading expedition was +hastily equipped and set out in defiance of times and seasons. Few of +those who embarked in the nine junks ever saw land again. Mendez Pinto +eventually reached Malacca (1544). Pedro de Faria later sent him on a +mission to the King of Martavão. Martavão was, however, sacked soon +after his arrival, and he was carried a prisoner to Pegu. He escaped +by night and after many adventures returned to Goa. He immediately set +out again ‘to challenge fortune in China and Japan’. After accompanying +the King of Sunda on a war expedition he was again wrecked and spent +thirteen days on a raft. Of the eleven survivors three were eaten +by crocodiles and the rest sold as slaves. Released by the King of +Calapa, Mendez Pinto served under the King of Siam and returned to Pegu +and thence to Malacca. Once more he set out for Japan, and this time +his voyage prospered and he came back with a fair profit. At Malacca +he was eagerly questioned by St. Francis Xavier (1506-52) as to the +conditions in Japan. He seems to have been infected with the saint’s +enthusiasm, as were most of those who met him, and after his death he +perhaps gave up a considerable fortune in order to return as missionary +and ambassador to Japan. Before leaving Goa (April 1554) with St. +Francis Xavier’s successor, Padre Belchior, he had been received into +the Company of Jesus. After many hardships they landed in China in July +1556. In the spring of 1558, a few weeks after returning to Goa, Mendez +Pinto sailed for home and arrived at Lisbon on September 22. The Lisbon +officials dallied with his pretensions to reward for his services. +During his wanderings in India, Ethiopia, China, Japan, Tartary, and +Arabia he had persevered through captivities, battles, and shipwrecks, +but four or five years of official evasions broke his spirit, and he +retired to live in poverty at Almada. Philip II, stirred to interest +in this legendary figure, granted him two bushels of wheat in January +1583, and in July of the same year he died. He had long before left +the Company of Jesus, either of his own free will or expelled, perhaps +on suspicion of Jewish descent.[517] His name was erased from the +Company’s records and letters. Of his twenty-one years of trader, +envoy, pirate, and missionary in the far East he wrote for his children +a narrative of breathless interest, and, speaking generally, it bears +the stamp of truth. We gather that he was brave and adventurous, +despite a natural timidity, of a consuming curiosity which often got +the better of his fears, pious, temperate, apt to be carried away by +fugitive enthusiasms, but persistent, gay, and optimistic in defeat +and disappointment. He appears not to have been particularly vain. He +does not disguise some of his less creditable actions, and he certainly +does not exaggerate his services in Japan.[518] He may possibly have +been one of the three Portuguese who discovered it in 1542: their +names are given by Couto (V. viii. 12) as Mota, Zeimoto and Peixoto. +Gifted with keen imagination, he could exaggerate[519] when expediency +required, but he knew that in the account of his travels exaggeration +was not expedient, and he was constantly on guard against the notorious +scepticism of his fellow-countrymen.[520] He may have heightened the +colour occasionally, but as a rule he writes with restraint, although +with delight in a good story and skill in bringing out the dramatic +side of events. It is one of the charms of his work that it is very +definite in dates and figures, but this also, through inevitable errors +and misprints, afforded a handle to the pedantry of critics. The fatal +similarity of Mendez and mendacity gave rise to the play on his name: +_Fernam, mentes? Minto_ (‘Fernam, do you lie?--I lie’), and Congreve, +in _Love for Love_, by calling him ‘a liar of the first magnitude’ +clinched the matter in England. But comparatively early a reaction +set in,[521] and modern travellers have unequivocally confirmed the +more favourable verdict and corroborated his detailed descriptions of +Eastern countries. The mystery of the East, the heavy scent of its +cities, its fervent rites and immemorial customs, as well as the magic +of adventure, haunt his pages. A hundred pictures refuse to fade from +the memory, whether they are of silk-laden Chinese junks or jars of +gold dust, vivid descriptions of shipwreck (the hiss and swell of the +waves are in his rich sea-Latin) or the awful pathos of the Queen of +Martavão’s death, the sketch of a supercilious Chinese mandarin or of +St. Francis Xavier tramping through Japan. + +Five years after Mendez Pinto’s return to Portugal a book scarcely +less strange than his _Peregrinaçam_, of atmosphere as oriental and of +interest as absorbing although more scientific, was printed at Goa. Its +author, GARCIA DA ORTA[522] (_c._ 1495-_c._ 1570), born at Elvas, the +son, perhaps, of Jorge da Orta, owner of a shop (_temdeiro_) in that +town, studied medicine for ten years (1515-25) at Salamanca and Alcalá, +and in 1526 began to practise as a doctor at Castello de Vide. From +1532 to 1534 he was Professor at the University of Lisbon, and in March +1534 sailed with his friend and patron, the insatiable Governor Martim +Afonso de Sousa,[523] to India as king’s physician. The East cast its +spell over his curious and inquiring mind; he remained under twelve +or more Governors and died at a good old age, probably at Goa. There, +on the veranda of his beautiful garden, in this land of _bellissimi +giardini_,[524] served affectionately by many slaves, and with the +books of his well-stocked library ready to his hand,[525] he would +regale his guests with strange fruits--all the _maneiras á gula_ of +India--and with still stranger knowledge. His knowledge was based on +personal observation, for although he respected Galen and Dioscorides +as the princes of medicine and was possessed of great erudition, he +was not disposed to bow blindly to the authority of any writer, Arab +or Greek, least of all to Scholasticism, he went to Nature and in his +_Coloquios dos Simples_ (1563) recorded what he had seen and heard, +the truth without rhetoric, setting aside the _mil fabulas_ of Pliny +and Herodotus. These fifty-nine dialogues, arranged in alphabetical +order, pay more regard to facts than to style. They are full of varied +information and give us a most pleasant insight into the writer’s +character, strong, humorous, obstinate, and into his life at Goa. From +a scientific point of view they are of great importance: not only +did they provide the first description of cholera[526] and of many +unknown plants, but after three and a half centuries they retain their +scientific interest and value. Begun many years earlier in Latin,[527] +they were published in the author’s old age, with an introductory ode +by his friend, the poet Camões. Unhappily they became known to Europe +chiefly in a garbled Latin version by Charles de l’Écluse (Clusius)--a +fifth edition appeared in 1605--from which the Italian and French +translations were made. It was not until the nineteenth century that +the skilful and eager care of the Conde de Ficalho enabled a larger +number of those who read Portuguese to appreciate Orta at his true +worth. + +Born at Alcacer do Sal, the celebrated scientist PEDRO NUNEZ +(1492?-1577?), whose name lives in the instrument of his invention, the +_nonius_,[528] was Cosmographer to Kings João III and Sebastian and +Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra (1544-62). Prince +Luis and D. João de Castro were his pupils. He wrote indifferently +in Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, declared that as science treats +of concrete things it can be expressed in any language however +barbarous,[529] and, in order to secure for it a wider public, +translated into Portuguese the Latin treatise (_libellus_) _De Sphaera_ +by John of Halifax (Joannes de Sacro Bosco): _Tratado da Sphera_ +(1537),[530] and into Spanish his own _Libro de Algebra en arithmetica +& geometria_ (1567), originally written in Portuguese and addressed +to his pupil and friend the Cardinal-King Henrique. His other works, +including the _De Crepusculis_ (1542), were written in Latin. + +The Homeric hero DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA (1465?-1533?), about whose +life, apart from the hundred days at Cochin (1504) and a fight off +Finisterre (1509) with the French pirate Mondragon, singularly little +is known,[531] on his return from India in 1505 wrote a work entitled +_Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis_ [1505-6?]. This curious and important survey +of the coast of Africa, the work of one more accustomed to wield sword +than pen, but sometimes as picturesque and interesting as Duarte +Barbosa, was to have consisted of five books, but only three and a part +of the fourth were written. It remained in manuscript for nearly four +centuries. + +The three _Roteiros_ (logs)[532] written by the famous Viceroy D. JOÃO +DE CASTRO (1500-48) on his voyages (1) from Lisbon to Goa in 1538, +(2) from Goa to Diu, 1538-9, (3) from Goa to the Red Sea in 1541, are +decked out with no literary graces. He wrote, he said, for seamen, not +for ladies and gallants. Yet the scientific curiosity and enthusiasm +of this keen-eyed, broad-minded observer give his descriptions force +and truth, the same practical lucidity that marks his letters, which +according to his friend Prince Luis contained _todas as cousas +necessarias e nenhũas superfluas_, and they were early prized in Spain +as _harto notables, muy curiosos_.[533] The third _Roteiro_ would seem +to have been originally written in Latin, and perhaps translated by +Castro at his beloved Sintra home. The manuscript was bought by Sir +Walter Raleigh, and it appeared in English in 1625, 208 years before it +was published in Portuguese. + +Greater historical interest attaches to the letters of an earlier +Governor, AFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE (1461-1515). That grim conqueror of +the East might have smiled somewhat sardonically to be numbered among +Portugal’s writers. He merely said what he had to say, and there +was an end of it, would be his comment. But it is precisely this +directness--the powerful grasp of reality and the horror of useless +rhetoric--which gives excellence to the prose of his _Cartas_. These +incomparable reports, written to King Manuel in moments snatched from +his many occupations as Governor of India (1509-15), sometimes rise to +a biblical grandeur and eloquence, as in the splendid passage beginning +_Goa é vossa; Onor, o rei dele paga-vos pareas_. Perhaps, after all, +he was not wholly unconscious of his art, and certainly the source +of it is clear: as Osorio[534] notices, he was a devoted student of +the Bible. In more familiar mood he can give a vivid sketch in a few +emphatic words, as when he describes the judge, ‘a little man dressed +in a cloak of coarse cloth with a crooked stick under his arm’, or the +impostors who will practise ‘a thousand wiles and deceits for one ruby’. + +To turn to lesser men, FERNAM RODRIGUEZ LOBO SOROPITA (born _c._ 1560), +a distinguished Lisbon advocate and the first editor of the _Rythmas_ +(1595) of Camões, was a poet celebrated for his wit in his day. That +of his letters is perhaps a little forced, and the obscurity of the +allusions now interferes with our enjoyment. The interest of the +extracts from a manuscript in the British Museum written by FRANCISCO +RODRIGUEZ SILVEIRA (1558-_c._ 1635) in 1608, published under the title +_Memorias de um Soldado da India_ (1877), consists both in the record +of his thirteen years’ service in India (1585-98) and in the account +during the succeeding ten years of Portugal and especially Beira, the +condition of the roads, the land, the peasants, and the sway of the +local _caciques_--thief, Turk, Pasha, tyrant, he calls them--and his +indignation gives a pleasant vigour to his prose. The _Arte da Caça +da Altanaria_ (1616) of DIOGO FERNANDEZ FERREIRA (born _c._ 1550), +page of the Pretender D. Antonio, is a work of great interest. The +writer evidently delights in his theme and has a real love of birds, +the migratory habits of which he describes in Part 6; and he treats +‘of swallows and of the swallow-grass which restores sight’, of +the food made of sugar, saffron, and almonds for nightingales, and +other alluring topics. Among the rare and curious books of the time +we may notice that on the prerogatives of women, _Dos priuilegios & +prœrogatiuas q ho genero femenino tẽ por dereito comũ & ordenações do +Reyno mais que ho genero masculino_ (1557), by RUY GONÇALVEZ, Professor +of Law at Coimbra in 1539 and subsequently Court Advocate at Lisbon. + +Two writers especially attract attention even in the feast of interest +which Portuguese prose in this century offers so abundantly. The son +of a distinguished Dutch illuminator and painter settled in Portugal, +Antonio de Hollanda, who painted Charles V at Toledo and may have +illuminated the Book of Hours of Queen Lianor, FRANCISCO DE HOLLANDA +(1518-84), born in Lisbon, painter, illuminator, and architect, in his +short treatises _Da fabrica que fallece á cidade de Lisboa_ and _Da +sciencia do desenho_, showed an enthusiasm for his subject almost +out of place in the Portugal of the second half of the sixteenth +century. Indeed, he nearly ran into trouble with the Inquisition by +seeming to make painting ‘divine’, but prudently altered the passage. +His curious and celebrated treatise _Da Pintvra Antigva_ (1548) is +written in a style which may be rather rejoiced in than imitated, +for, as he tells us, he was more at home with the brush than with +the pen, but it is full of ingenious and original remarks. The first +part deals in forty-four brief chapters with painting generally, and +opens with a fine passage describing the work of God as the greatest +of all painters. The second part contains the _Quatro dialogos_, in +the first three of which he records the conversations of Vittoria +Colonna, Michelangelo, Lattanzio Tolomei, and himself in the church of +St. Sylvester or in a garden overlooking Rome; conversations which, +despite their Portuguese dress, bear the stamp of truth and will retain +their fascination so long as interest in art endures. Francisco worked +first in the household of the Infante Fernando and then in that of the +Archbishop of Evora. In 1537 he set out on a journey to Rome by land +(Valladolid, Barcelona, Provence), and in Italy remained from 1538 to +1547. His friendship with Michelangelo continued after his return to +Portugal, as a letter from Hollanda to Michelangelo in 1553 proves. The +last part of his life he spent in the country between Lisbon and Sintra +among the Portuguese whom he had called _desmusicos_, and despite his +comfortable circumstances--he received a pension of 100,000 _réis_ from +Philip II--he must often have looked back with regret to the fullness +of those nine years in Italy. But his countrymen, thanks largely to +the scholarly researches and studies of Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos, +are now fully alive to his merits. And, indeed, even in the sixteenth +century a passage in Frei Heitor Pinto’s _Imagem da Vida Christam_ +sets him side by side with the great Italian.[535] PHILIPE NUNEZ, +who professed as a Dominican in 1591, wrote on painting in the next +century: _Arte poetica e da pintura e symmetria_ (1615). A work on +music by ANTONIO FERNANDEZ of about the same date, _Arte de Mvsica de +canto dorgam e canto cham_ (1626), consists of three treatises which +do not profess to be original. MANUEL NUNEZ DA SILVA wrote on the same +subject in his _Arte Minima_ (1685). + +In the preface (1570) to his _Regra Geral_, written in 1565, GONÇALO +FERNANDEZ TRANCOSO[536] (_c._ 1515-_c._ 1590) professed not to have +sufficient literary skill even for this simple calendar of movable +feasts. Yet in the previous year (1569), in which at Lisbon he lost +both wife and children in the great plague (a beloved daughter of +twenty-four, a student son, and a choir-boy grandson), in order to +distract his mind from these sorrows,[537] he wrote a remarkable work, +unique of its kind in Portuguese literature; or at least he wrote +then the first two books, which appeared under the title _Contos +e historias de proveito e exemplo_ (1575).[538] A third part was +published posthumously in 1596. The number and kind of the editions in +the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to its popularity, but +since the eighteenth century no new edition has been printed and the +book has fallen into a strange neglect.[539] Trancoso did not claim +originality: he merely collected stories from what he had heard or +read.[540] The stories, only thirty-eight in number, are very various. +The subjects of many of them resemble those of Franco Sacchetti’s +_Novelle_ or Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s _Le xiii Piacevoli Notti_, +and some are directly imitated from Boccaccio’s _Il Decamerone_ or +Giovanni Battista Giraldi’s _Gli Ecatommiti_ or from Matteo Bandello +(†1565).[541] But often they are traditions so widespread that they +occur in many authors and languages, as that (ii. 7) which corresponds +to Straparola’s third _Notte_ and of which Dr. F. A. Coelho recorded +twenty-one other foreign versions, besides four popular variants +in Portuguese; or i. 17, in which the cunning answers to difficult +questions are similar to those in Sacchetti, No. 4 (_Mestre Bernabò +signor di Milano_), and Dr. Braga’s _Contos tradicionaes do povo +portuguez_, No. 71 (_Frei Joam Sem Cuidados_). Others are apparently +of oriental origin, as the judge’s verdict, worthy of Sancho Panza +(i. 15), or the king and the barber (iii. 3). But the subject and +place (Lisbon, Oporto, Evora, Coimbra, &c.) of most, although not of +the longest, of these tales are Portuguese.[542] Some are trifling +anecdotes which acquire a charm and vividness through their popular +character and the author’s simple details of description, as the +picture of the peasant family near Oporto sitting round the fire after +their supper of maize-bread and chestnuts (i. 10). The author is not +content that we should draw our own moral, but this scarcely spoils the +reader’s pleasure in these malicious and ingenious tales. + +Despite inroads of the exotic and all the chances and changes of +life and literature in this century, the Portuguese maintained their +interest in the romances of chivalry, in which indeed they saw a +reflection of their own prowess in the East. Dull as _Clarimundo_ may +now seem, it made a great impression in its day, and was eagerly read, +from Lisbon to the Moluccas.[543] Even as late as 1589 Bishop Arraez +considers it necessary to say that a prince should have better ways of +spending his time than _ler por Clarimundo_,[544] while Rodriguez Lobo, +thirty years later, brackets it with _Amadis_ and _Palmeirim_.[545] +Many a young page and _escudeiro_ must have aspired not only to pore +over the _cronicas_ but to write one of his own.[546] The facility of a +Barros is, however, given to few, and both Jorge Ferreira’s _Memorial_ +and Moraes’ _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_ were written later in life. +FRANCISCO DE MORAES (_c._ 1500-72),[547] a well-known courtier in the +reign of King João III, whose Treasurer he was, and a _Comendador_ of +the Order of Christ, in 1540 accompanied the Portuguese Ambassador, +D. Francisco de Noronha, to Paris as Secretary, and at the French +Court he fell passionately in love with one of the ladies-in-waiting +of Queen Leonor (sister of the Emperor Charles V and widow of King +Manuel of Portugal) named Claude Blosset de Torcy. His love was not +returned: there was a great discrepancy of age between them, his +knowledge of French was very slight, and his passion robbed him of wit +and reason. If the Duc de Châtillon was favoured, or if the English +Ambassador gave Mademoiselle de Torcy his arm, Moraes would flare +up in jealousy, and when in the presence of the queen the elderly +lover went down on his knees _la belle Torcy_ (to whom Clément Marot +had addressed one of his _Étrennes_ and who eventually married the +Baron de Fontaines) prayed him not to continue to make her as well as +himself ridiculous. Moraes, after leaving France in 1543, or early +in 1544, recovered from his passion and married in Portugal. Of his +subsequent life little is known; he appears to have returned to France, +and in 1572 he was murdered at the entrance of the Rocio, the central +square of Evora. His _Cronica de Palmeirim de Inglaterra_, written in +France or Portugal or both, was probably published in 1544, but the +earliest existing Portuguese edition is that of Evora, 1567, which +contains the dedication to the Infanta Maria, written over twenty years +earlier (1544). Chiefly remarkable for the excellence of its style, +_Palmeirim_ will always retain its place in Portuguese literature +as a masterpiece of prose, musically soft, yet clear and vigorous. +Cervantes considered it worthy to be preserved in a golden casket like +the works of Homer,[548] but few of its readers will now differ from +the more modern and moderate opinion of Menéndez y Pelayo that ‘it +requires a real effort’ to read the whole of it. The effort required +to read the miserable Spanish translation of 1547-8 is infinitely +greater. The fact that this translation is of earlier date than any +surviving Portuguese edition gave rise to the theory that Moraes had +translated his work from the Spanish. No competent critic now believes +this; any doubts that may have lingered were dispelled wittily and +for ever in Mr. Purser’s able essay (1904). The Spanish version, +with its painful efforts to avoid _lusitanismos_ and its palpable +mistranslations (such as _suavidad_ or _alegria_ for _saudade_), shows +less knowledge of the sea, of Ireland,[549] and of Portugal. Moreover, +the preference of the author of _Palmeirim_ for Portugal is obvious, +and the passage in which ladies of the French Court are introduced +corresponds to Moraes’ _Descvlpa de hvns amores_,[550] first published +with the _Dialogos_ in 1624. Moraes himself would probably not have +been greatly troubled by the impudent claim set up for Luis Hurtado +and Miguel Ferrer. To have made a masterpiece out of their book would +have been an achievement as great as to have made it out of old French +and English legends in Paris. _Palmeirim’s_ predecessors, _Palmerin de +Oliva_ (1511), _Primaleon_ (1512), and _Platir_ (1533), were probably +all genuinely Spanish, although some doubts have been raised as to +the first of the line, _Palmerin de Oliva_ attributed to a cryptic +lady, a _femina docta_ called Agustobrica.[551] Its successors were as +genuinely Portuguese: to Moraes’ parts 1 and 2 DIOGO FERNANDEZ added +parts 3 and 4 (1587), concerned with the deeds of Palmeirim’s son, _Dom +Duardos_,[552] and BALTHASAR GONÇALVEZ LOBATO parts 5 and 6 (1602), in +which are told those of his grandson, _Dom Clarisol de Bretanha_. Three +brief but very lively and natural _Dialogos_ (1624) show that Moraes +was not only an excellent stylist but a keen observer. The _fidalgo_ +and _escudeiro_, the lawyer and the love-lorn _moço_, are all clearly +and wittily presented. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[507] For a full list see Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ i. +377, and _Grundriss_, p. 339. Five volumes were announced by Barbosa +Machado as ready for press. The modern editors, besides eleven wrecks +of the sixteenth, eight of the seventeenth, and two of the eighteenth, +have included three of the nineteenth century. Some of the original +chap-books survive, with a fine woodcut of a tossing galleon on the +title-page: _Historia da mui notavel perda do galeam grande S. Joam_ +(1554?); _Relaçam do lastimozo navfragio da nao Conceiçam chamada +Algaravia a Nova_ (1555); _Naufragio da nao Santo Alberto_ (1597); +_Memoravel relaçam da perda da nao Conceiçam_ (1627). The _Relaçam da +viagem do galeão São Lovrenço e sua perdição_ (1651) is by the Jesuit +Antonio Francisco Cardim (1596-1659); the _Relaçam sumaria da viagem +que fez Fernão d’Alvarez Cabral_, by Manuel Mesquita Perestrello, is +an account of the wreck of the fine ship _S. Bento_, which had taken +Camões to India. + +[508] In this _Relaçam do naufragio da nao S. Thomé_, written in 1611, +twenty-two years after the event, he refers several times to his +_Decadas_. + +[509] _Naufragio da nao S. Alberto_ (1593). It is a summary of a _largo +cartapacio_ of the pilot. + +[510] _pedirme meu tio Ioam de Barros que lhe screuesse muito +particularmente todos os lugares deste meu caminho._ + +[511] _Verd. Inf._, p. 110: _nam era pera velhos_. + +[512] This seems to have aroused the resentment of Barros (_Asia_, III. +iv. 3). The author, he says, had no learning. In II. iii. 4 he again +refers to him slightingly as ‘a certain Francisco Alvarez’. Barros as +grammarian similarly ignored Oliveira. + +[513] Barbosa Machado says, _ultimamente em o Convento de Goa, +para onde tinha passado no anno de 1622 falleceu com saudade_, &c. +Innocencio da Silva read this with a comma after _passado_. + +[514] Afonso de Albuquerque mentions another surgeon Mestre Afonso +in India in his time, i.e. half a century earlier. The value of the +_Itinerario_ consists in its having been written as a diary on the +journey, and its author, perhaps thinking of Mendez Pinto, says _hee +hũu grande descuido de homens que fazem semelhantes viagens e as nom +escreuem ... porque a memoria nom pode ser capaz de tamanha cousa e +tantas particularidades_ (p. 82). + +[515] According to Barbosa Machado he entered the Jesuit College as a +novice in 1645 and died in 1712 _aet._ 78. Godinho also wrote a life of +Frei Antonio das Chagas. + +[516] He was the son of D. Jorge, illegitimate son of João II., and was +created Duke of Aveiro. + +[517] See the important works by Colonel Cristovam Ayres, _Fernão +Mendes Pinto_, 1904; _Fernão Mendes Pinto e o Japão_, 1906. + +[518] His work did not appear till 1614 and it is uncertain to what +extent it was edited by the historian Francisco de Andrade. It is +thought that the account of his services as missionary in Japan may +have been excised owing to the hostility of the Jesuits. + +[519] Cap. 223: _eu respondi acrecentando em muitas cousas que me +perguntava por me parecer que era assim necessario á reputação da nação +portuguesa_. + +[520] Cf. caps. 14, 70, 88, 114, 126, 198, 204. The complaint is echoed +by almost every Portuguese traveller of the day. Bishop Osorio refers +to the _fidei faciendae difficultas_; even the truthful and exact +Francisco Alvarez fears his readers’ disbelief. + +[521] Cf. Faria e Sousa (_laudari a laudato!_): _Yo le tengo por muy +verdadero_; A. de Sousa Macedo, _Eva e Ave_, ii. 55, 1676 ed., p. 495: +_El Rey Catholico D. Philippe II, quando veio a Portugal, gostava de +ouvir a Fernão Mendes, em cujas peregrinaçoens & sucessos que dellas +escreveo mostrou o tempo com a experiencia a verdade que se lhe +disputava antes que ouvesse tantas noticias d’aquellas partes_; Soares, +_Theatrum_: _diu apud Lusitanos fidem non meruit donec rerum qui secuti +sunt eventus et aliorum scripta nihil Ferdinandum a vero discrepasse +confirmarunt_; Manuel Bernardes, _Nova Floresta_, i (1706), p. 124: _as +Relações do nosso Fernão Mendez Pinto que não merecem tão pouco credito +como alguns lhe dão_. ‘Either never man had better memory or he was the +most solemn liar that ever put pen to paper’ is the verdict of José +Agostinho de Macedo (_Motim Literario_, 1841 ed., ii. 17). + +[522] In France he was known as du Jardin. Familiarly this great +botanist seems to have been called Herbs. A copy of the first edition +of the _Coloquios_ has GRACIA DORTA O ERVAS on the back of the binding. +This might be an ignorant mistake for D’ELVAS. + +[523] The Governor’s brother, Pero Lopez de Sousa, wrote a _Diario da +Navegação_ (1530-2) first published at Lisbon in 1839. The soldier in +Couto’s _Dialogo_ says, _não vai tão mal negociado hir por Fysico môr +pois todos os que este cargo serviram tiraram nos seus tres annos sete +ou oito mil cruzados_. + +[524] _Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese._ + +[525] He must have spent many a half-hour in the corner bookshop in +Goa mentioned by Couto (_Dec._ VI. v. 8, 1781 ed., p. 400): _o canto +onde pousa um livreiro_--unless this is a misprint for _luveiro_, +as the neighbouring _sirgueiro_ seems to indicate. The growth of +Portuguese literature in the East would furnish matter for a curious +essay. Great folios like the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (see Lopez de +Castanheda, v. 12, and Barros, _Asia_, III. iii. 4, for the strange use +made of it in India) and the _Flos Sanctorum_ were taken out, and it +is improbable that they were brought back when every square inch was +required for pepper. Thousands of precious volumes must have gone down +in shipwrecks, others--profane books and _autos_--were thrown overboard +at the bidding of the priests. For the fate of a case of Hebrew Bibles +(_briuias_) see Corrêa, _Lendas da India_, i. 656-7. _Amadis de Gaula_ +was apparently in India in 1519 (Lopez de Castanheda, v. 16). A most +interesting list of books ready to be sent to the Negus of Abyssinia in +1515 is given in Sousa Viterbo’s _A Livraria Real_ (1901), p. 8. + +[526] Unless Corrêa’s description (_Lendas_, iv. 288-9) is earlier. +Other events recorded by Corrêa which must have closely affected Orta +are the fate of a bachelor of medicine strangled and burnt by the +Inquisition at Goa in 1543 (iv. 292) and the outbreak of small-pox, +from which 8,000 children died there in three months in 1545 (iv. 447). +The _Dialogo da perfeyçam & partes que sam necessarias ao bom medico_ +(1562), with the exception of the dedicatory letter to King Sebastian +and the title, is written in Spanish (25 ff.). Apparently AFONSO DE +MIRANDA found it in Latin among the books of his son Jeronimo (who had +studied at Coimbra and Salamanca) and translated it. + +[527] _Composto_, he says (_Coloquios_, i. 5). Dimas Bosque (ib. i. 11) +says _começado_. + +[528] Thus he contributed to the fact, which he notices in the _Tratado +da carta de marear_, that the Portuguese sea enterprises were based +on careful preparation. The _nonius_ was perfected in the following +century by Vernier. + +[529] _Tratado da Sphera_, Preface. + +[530] This volume contains also two brief treatises by Nunez in +Portuguese: _Tratado ... sobre certas duuidas da nauegação_, answering +certain questions put to him by Martim Afonso de Sousa, and _Tratado +... em defensam da carta de marear_, addressed to the Infante Luis. +The _De Sphaera_ of Joannes de Sacro Bosco was printed with a preface +by Philip Melanchthon in 1538. Arraez, in his _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. +56, says: _sei algo da Sphera porque quando Pero Nunez a lia a certos +homens principais eu me achava presente_. + +[531] He himself says that he was born in the excellent city of Lisbon +(_Esmeraldo_, iv. 6), and he was one of the captains sent out by João +II to continue the discovery of the West Coast of Africa. In 1520-2 he +was Governor of the fortress of S. Jorge da Mina, but his last years +were spent in poverty. + +[532] Other works of a similar nature, _livros das rotas_ or +_derrotas_, are printed in _Libro de Marinharia_. _Tratado da Aguia de +Marear_ [1514] _de João de Lisboa_ [†1526]. _Copiado e coordenado por +J. I. Brito Rebello_, 1903. Cf. also G. Pereira, _Roteiros Portuguezes +da viagem de Lisboa á India nos seculos xvi e xvii_, 1898; H. Lopes +de Mendonça, _Estudos sobre navios portuguezes nos seculos xv e xvi_, +1892, and _O Padre Fernando Oliveira e a sua obra nautica_, 1898 (pp. +147-221 contain _O Liuro da fabrica das naos_, of which, says the +preface, _ninguem escreveo ateegora_); and Sousa Viterbo, _Trabalhos +nauticos dos portuguezes nos seculos xvi e xvii_ (_Historia e Memorias +da Ac. das Sciencias_, tom. vii (1898), _mem._ 3; tom. viii (1900), +_mem._ 1). Diogo de Sá’s _De Navigatione_ was published in Paris in +1549; the _Arte Practica de Navegar_ (1699) by the _Cosmographo Môr_ +Manuel Pimentel (1650-1719) appeared a century and a half later and had +several editions in the eighteenth century. + +[533] Fr. Antonio de San Roman, _Historia General de la India +Oriental_, Valladolid, 1603. + +[534] _De Rebvs Emmanvelis_ (1571), p. 380: _Non erat alienus a +literis, & cum otium erat lectione sacrarum praecipue literarum +oblectabatur._ + +[535] Pt. 1, 1572 ed., f. 224: _não feyto por mão do nosso Olãda nẽ do +vosso Michaël Angelo mas por meu bayxo ingenho_. + +[536] Or Gonçalo Fernandez of Trancoso (Beira). His name has no +connexion with the phrase _contar historias a trancos_ (_de coq à +l’âne_). + +[537] Preface addressed to the Queen in Pt. 1. His object was _prender +a imaginação em ferros_. + +[538] Timoneda’s _El Patrañuelo_ appeared in the following year. + +[539] See, however, Dr. Agostinho de Campos’ selections (1921). + +[540] _O que aprendi, ouui ou li_ (1624 ed.); _o que aprendi, vi ou li_ +(1734 ed.). + +[541] See Menéndez y Pelayo, _Orígenes de la Novela_, tom. ii (1907), +p. lxxxvii et seq. + +[542] The alternation of the indigenous and the exotic may be seen in +the spelling of the same name as Piro (= Pero, Pedro, Peter) and Pyrrho +(Pyrrhus) in iii. 8. + +[543] _Ropica Pnefma_, 1869 ed., p. 2. + +[544] _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 157. A third edition of _Clarimundo_ +(1601) had appeared before the second edition of the _Dialogos_. + +[545] _Corte na Aldea_ (1619), _Dialogo_ 1 (1722 ed., p. 5). + +[546] Moraes, _Dialogo_ 1 (1852 ed., p. 11). + +[547] Barbosa Machado seems to have considered him much under seventy +at the time of his death in 1572. + +[548] The tradition, mentioned by Cervantes, that it was written by +a learned and witty king of Portugal is clearly traceable to that +other tradition that King João III as Infante had been joint-author of +_Clarimundo_. + +[549] Mount Brandon, Smerwick (and The Three Sisters) of the ‘pleasant’ +but ‘densely wooded’ coast of Kerry, are Greek to the Spanish +translator and become San Cebrian (Cyprian) and San Maurique. + +[550] The title continues: _que tinha com hũa dama francesa da raynha +dona Leanor per nome Torsi, sendo Portugues, pela quai fez a historia +das damas francesas no seu Palmeirim_. + +[551] It is scarcely possible that the author (Francisco Vazquez?) +considered that Burgos, as his birthplace--his mother--had a part in +the work. + +[552] From being merely the legend above, the mounted knight on the +title-page _Dom Duardos de Bretanha_ became the title of the book. + + + + + § 7. + + _Religious and Mystic Writers_ + + +Amador Arraez in one of his dialogues defines mysticism thus: ‘There +is a theology called mystic, as being hidden and unintelligible to +those who have no part in it. It is attained by much love and few books +and with much meditation and purity of heart, which alone suffices +for its exercise, and consists mainly in the noblest part of our will +inflamed in the love of God, its full and perfect good.’[553] ‘Our +will inflamed’: perhaps these words explain the excellence of the +style, the intensity and directness, of the writers in this mystic +theology. Style, so shy and elusive to Flaubert and his disciples, +came unsought to the religious writers of the sixteenth century, +because they wrote not with an eye on verbal artifices but out of the +fullness of the heart, ‘self-gathered for an outbreak’; and their +works can still be read with pleasure by priest and pagan. Mysticism, +inherent in the character of the Portuguese, runs through a great +part of their literature; we find it, for instance, in the merry +poetry of Gil Vicente or in the precious accents of Soror Violante do +Ceo. Strength of character, aloofness, rapt enthusiasm, singleness +of purpose: these are the qualities of mysticism at its best, and if +it also manifests itself in vagueness and confusion, this was not +so with the great mystic and religious writers of the golden age of +Portuguese literature. To them mysticism was not a cloudy goodness or +an abstract perception-dulling humanity, not a mist but a pillar of +fire, in the light of which the facts and details of reality stood out +the more clearly. But if the intensity of many of the mystics has its +natural complement in the fervour and directness of their prose, this +was not always the case, and it was not only in profane works that the +Portuguese language fell into the pitfalls of _culteranismo_. All the +more remarkable is the purity, the exquisite taste, the simplicity +and charm of some of the later, seventeenth century, prose. The secret +of this prose lay in fact in _culteranismo_ itself, the points and +conceits of which were based on a recognition of the value of words. +All the _seiscentistas_ set to playing with words as with unset stones +of price. The more critical or inspired writers joined in the game but +selected the genuine stones, leaving the rest to those who did not care +to distinguish between gems and coloured glass. + +A faint vein of mysticism is to be found in the work of FREI HEITOR +PINTO (_c._ 1528-1584?), who was born at the high-lying little town +of Covilhan and professed in the famous Convento dos Jeronimos at +Belem in 1543. After taking the degree of Doctor of Theology at +Siguenza he in 1567 competed for a Chair at Salamanca University, but +came into collision with Fray Luis de Leon, and in a bitter contest +between the Hieronymite and Augustinian Orders Pinto was defeated. He +returned to Portugal, became Professor of the new Chair of Scripture +at Coimbra University in 1576, Rector of the University and Provincial +of his Order.[554] After the death of the Cardinal-King he appears +vehemently to have espoused the cause of the Prior of Crato. King +Philip accordingly invited Pinto to accompany him to Spain--he was +one of the fifty excluded from the amnesty of 1581--and scandal added +that the king had him poisoned there in 1584. Pinto was an eminent +divine, a man of wide learning, a master of Portuguese prose, and he +appears to have inspired his pupils with affection; but King Philip +could scarcely have considered him worth poisoning, especially when +removed from his sphere of influence. No doubt he went to Spain with +extreme reluctance--on other occasions of his busy life when the +affairs of his Order drove him to France and Italy he had sighed in +tears (in spite of his interest in travel, his love of Nature, and +especially his antiquarian curiosity[555]) for his quiet cell at Belem, +‘where he had lived many years in great content’. Perhaps too he had +not forgotten his defeat at Salamanca. ‘King Philip’, he now said +sturdily, ‘may put me into Castille but never Castille into me.’ Pinto +wrote commentaries on various books of the Old Testament, which were +published in Latin, but his principal work consists in the dialogues, +_a maneira dos de Platão_, of his _Imagem da Vida Christam_ (1563), +followed by the _Segunda Parte dos Dialogos_ (1572). The first part has +six dialogues, the subjects being true philosophy, religion, justice, +tribulation, the solitary life,[556] and remembrance of death. The five +of the second part treat of tranquillity of life, discreet ignorance, +true friendship, causes,[557] and true and spurious possessions. It +is impossible to read a page of these dialogues and not be struck by +the extraordinary fascination of their style. It is concise and direct +without ever losing its harmony. Perhaps its best testimonial is +that its magic survives the innumerable quotations, although one may +regret that the work was not written, like the _Trabalhos de Jesus_, +in a dungeon instead of in a well-stocked library.[558] Apart from +the proof it affords of the exceptional capacity of the Portuguese +language for combining softness and vigour, the work contains much +ingenious thought, charming descriptions, and elaborate similes. Some +twenty editions in various languages before the end of the century +show how keenly it was appreciated. It was certainly not without +influence on the _Dialogos_ (1589) of the energetic and austere Bishop +of Portalegre, AMADOR ARRAEZ (_c._ 1530-1600), who spent his boyhood at +Beja and professed as a Carmelite at Lisbon a year after Frei Thomé de +Jesus and two years after Frei Heitor Pinto had professed in the same +city. Like the former he studied theology at Coimbra.[559] Cardinal +Henrique, when Archbishop of Evora, chose Arraez to be his suffragan, +and in 1578 appointed him to the see of Tripoli. Three years later he +was made Bishop of Portalegre by Philip II. He resigned in 1596, and +spent the last four years of his life in retirement, in the college +of his Order at Coimbra. A few weeks before his death he wrote the +prefatory letter for the revised edition of his great work.[560] It +consists of ten long dialogues between the sick and dying Antiocho +and doctor, priest, lawyer, or friends. The longest, over a quarter +of the whole, is a mystic life of the Virgin, and of the others some +are purely religious, as _Da Paciencia e Fortaleza Christam_, some +historical or political (_Da Gloria e Triunfo dos Lusitanos_; _Das +Condições e Partes do Bom Principe_). That on the Jews (_Da Gente +Judaica_) is marred by a spirit of bitter intolerance; on the other +hand there is an outspoken protest against slavery. The whole of this +interesting miscellany, which incidentally discusses a very large +number of subjects,[561] is tinged with mystic philosophy, and at the +same time shows a keen sense of reality. In style as in degree of +mysticism it stands midway between Pinto’s _Imagem_ and the _Trabalhos +de Jesus_. It is evident that its composition, although less artificial +than that of the _Imagem_, has been the subject of much care, and the +author declares in his preface that while adopting a ‘common, ordinary +style’, to the exclusion of forced tricks and elegances, he has striven +after clearness and harmony (the two postulates of his contemporary, +Fray Luis de Leon). The result is a treasury of excellent prose, +in which the harmonious flow of the sentences in nowise interferes +with precision and restraint, that grave brevity which Arraez notes +as one of the principal qualities of Portuguese. It can rise to +great eloquence (as in the lament of Olympio) without ever becoming +rhetorical or turgid. + +The prose of Pinto and Arraez was a very conscious art, that of the +still greater FREI THOMÉ DE JESUS (1529?-82) was the man, and the man +merged in mysticism, without thought of style. He was the son of +Fernam Alvarez de Andrade, Treasurer to King João III, and of Isabel de +Paiva. One of his brothers was the celebrated preacher Diogo de Paiva +de Andrade (1528-75), another the historian Francisco de Andrade; a +third, Frei Cosme da Presentação, distinguished himself in philosophy +and theology, but died at the age of thirty-six at Bologna, while the +work of a nephew (son of Francisco de Andrade), Diogo de Paiva de +Andrade (1576-1660), _Casamento perfeito_ (1636), is counted a classic +of Portuguese prose. His sister D. Violante married the second Conde +de Linhares. As a boy at the Augustinian Collegio de Nossa Senhora +da Graça at Coimbra he is said to have been all but drowned while +swimming in the Mondego. He professed at the Lisbon convent of the +same Order in 1544, went to Coimbra to study theology, and then became +master of novices at the Lisbon convent.[562] Here in 1574 he planned +a reform of the Order, but when all was ready for the secession of the +new _Recoletos_ an intrigue put an end to the scheme, which a kindred +spirit, Fray Luis de Leon, later carried into effect. Frei Thomé was +permitted to retire to the convent of Penafirme by the sea, near Torres +Vedras, where he might hope to indulge his love of quiet and solitude. +He was, however, appointed prior of the convent and Visitor of his +Order, and in 1578 was chosen by King Sebastian to accompany him to +Africa. At the battle of Alcacer Kebir, as he held aloft a crucifix +or tended the wounded, he was speared by a Moor and taken prisoner +to Mequinez. Here he was loaded with chains and placed in a dungeon, +and as the slave of a marabout received ‘less bread than blows’. The +Portuguese Ambassador, D. Francisco da Costa, intervened, and he was +removed to Morocco. Frei Thomé had borne all his sufferings with the +most heroic fortitude, and now, broken in health but not in spirit, +he refused to lodge at the ambassador’s and asked to be placed in the +common prison. During a captivity of nearly four years, regardless +of his own fate,[563] with unflagging devotion he ministered to the +numerous Christian prisoners, and was occupied to the last with their +needs. Costa, who shared the general respect and affection for this +saint and hero, visited him as he lay dying (April 17, 1582). _Vattene +in pace, alma beata e bella!_ It was during his captivity that he +composed the work that has given him the lasting fame earned by his +life and character, writing furtively in the scant light that filtered +through the cracks of the prison door.[564] These fifty _Trabalhos de +Jesus_ (2 pts., 1602, 9) embrace the whole life of Christ, and deserve, +more than Renan’s _Vie de Christ_, to be called a gracious fifth +Gospel. Each _trabalho_ is, moreover, followed by a spiritual exercise, +and these constitute a Portuguese _De Imitatione Christi_. Rarely, if +ever, has such glow and fervour been set in print: none but the very +dull could be left cold by these transports of passionate devotion. The +prose wrestles and throbs in an agony of grief or rapture, of mysticism +carried to the extreme limit where all power of articulate expression +ends.[565] Frei Thomé de Jesus is a master of Portuguese prose not by +any arts or graces but through the white heat of his intensity. No book +shows more clearly that style must always be a secondary consideration, +that if there be a burning conviction excellence of style follows. +It could evidently only have been written by one who had greatly +suffered, indeed by one who still suffered, one who expressed in these +fervid accents of heavenly communion an oblivion of self and an energy +habitually employed in eager earthly service of his fellow men. In a +prefatory letter (November 8, 1581) addressed to the Portuguese people +he declared his intention of publishing as it stood this masterpiece +of mystic ecstasy, which he believed to have been written by divine +inspiration.[566] + +Another celebrated treatise of a mystic character is the _Voz do_ +_Amado_ (1579) by the learned Canon D. HILARIAM BRANDÃO (†1585). The +religious works of this century are very numerous. We may mention the +anonymous _Regras e Cautelas de proueito espiritual_ (1542), which is +written in biblical prose and deals with the fifteen perfections or +excellences of charity and kindred subjects; the dialogues _Desengano +de Perdidos em dialogo entre dous peregrinos, hũ christão e hũ +turco_ (Goa, 1573) by the first Archbishop of Goa, D. GASPAR DE LEÃO +(†1576), and the _Dialogo espiritual: Colloquio de um religioso com um +peregrino_ (1578) by FREI ALVARO DE TORRES [Vedras] (fl. 1550), who was +drowned in the Tagus when on the way to his convent at Belem. + +D. JOANA DA GAMA (†1568), a nun of noble birth who directed a small +community founded by herself at Evora, a few miles from her native +Viana, published a short collection of moral sentences in alphabetical +order, followed by a few poems (_trovas_): _Ditos da Freyra_ (1555). +She insists, perhaps a little too emphatically for conviction, on her +lack of intelligence and ability, and says that these sayings were +written down for herself alone and that she purposely avoids subtleties +(_ditos sotijs_), but her aphorisms contain some shrewd personal +observation. Fact and legend have combined to weave an atmosphere of +romance about the life of Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, better known as +FREI LUIS DE SOUSA (1555?-1632). A descendant of the second Conde de +Marialva, he early entered or was about to enter the Order of Knights +Hospitallers at Malta, but was captured by the Moors in much the same +way and at about the same time (1575) as was Cervantes. He was taken to +Algiers, and may have known Cervantes there, or the statement that he +became Cervantes’ friend may have been an inference from the latter’s +mention of him in _Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda_; they may +have met in Lisbon in 1590, or at Madrid. Sousa Coutinho returned to +Portugal in 1578, and some years later married D. Magdalena de Vilhena, +widow of D. João de Portugal, one of all the peerage that fell with +King Sebastian at Alcacer Kebir. Sousa Coutinho, at the invitation of +his brother in Panama, is said to have gone thither in the hope of +making a fortune, but the date is not clear. His unbending patriotism +was immortalized when as Governor of Almada in 1599 he burnt down his +house rather than receive as guests the Spanish Governors of Portugal. +The prospect of riches at Panama may have seemed especially alluring +after this rash act. He appears to have lived quietly in Portugal for +some years before 1613, when both he and his wife entered a convent. +Their act has been variously explained as due to melancholy disposition +or to the early death of their daughter, D. Anna de Noronha. Probably +after her death the example of their friend the Conde de Vimioso and +the conviction that the only abiding pleasure is the renunciation of +all the rest were prevalent factors in their decision. The legend, +however, related by Frei Antonio da Encarnação and dramatized two +centuries later by Garrett, records that D. João de Portugal, D. +Magdalena de Vilhena’s first husband, had been not killed but taken +prisoner in Africa, and after many years’ captivity he reappears as +an aged pilgrim and bitterly reveals his identity. In the convent of +Bemfica, where he had professed in September 1614, Frei Luis de Sousa +was consulted on various matters by the Duke of Braganza and others +who valued his fine character and clear judgement, but he did not +live to see the Restoration. He was entrusted by his Order with the +revision of works left by another Dominican, FREI LUIS DE CACEGAS (_c._ +1540-1610). These he re-wrote, giving them a lasting value by virtue +of his style. The first part of the _Historia de S. Domingos_, ‘a new +kind of chronicle’ as he calls it in his preface addressed to the king, +appeared in 1623, but the second (1662) and third (1678) parts were +not published in his lifetime. A fourth part (1733) was added by FREI +LUCAS DE SANTA CATHARINA (1660-1740), who among other works wrote a +curious miscellany of verse and prose, romance and literary criticism, +entitled _Seram politico_ (1704). In the biography of the saintly +and strong-willed Archbishop of Braga, _Vida de D. Fr. Bertolomeu +dos Martyres_ (1619), the excellence of Sousa’s style is even more +apparent, for it has here no trace of rhetoric and the pictures +stand out with the more effect for the economy with which they are +drawn--the dearth of adjectives is noticeable. The archbishop’s visits +to his diocese give occasion for charming, homely glimpses of Minho. +Neither of these books is the work of a critical historian (in the +_Vida_, for instance, winds and waves obey the archbishop), but the +latter, especially, is in matter and manner one of the masterpieces of +Portuguese literature, a _livro divino_, as a modern Portuguese writer +called it.[567] The _Annaes de El Rei Dom João Terceiro_, written at +the bidding of Philip IV, was published in 1844 by Herculano, who +described the work as little more than a series of notes, except in +the Indian sections, which summarize Barros. It is as a stylist, not +as a historian, that Frei Luis de Sousa will always be read, and read +with delight.[568] The subject of his biography, FREI BARTHOLOMEU DOS +MARTYRES (1514-90), wrote in Portuguese a simple _Catecismo da Dovtrina +Christam_ (Braga, 1564), resembling the Portuguese work of his friend +Fray Luis de Granada (1504-88): _Compendio de Doctrina Christãa_ +(Lixboa, 1559). + +The _Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier_ (1600), by the Jesuit +JOÃO DE LUCENA (1550-1600), born at Trancoso, who made his mark as +an eloquent preacher and Professor of Philosophy in the University +of Evora, is also one of the classics of the Portuguese language. It +receives a glowing fervour from the author’s evident delight in his +subject--the life of the famous Basque missionary in whose arms D. +João de Castro died. His command of clear, fluent, vigorous prose, his +skilful use of words and abundant power of description, enable him to +convey this enthusiasm to his readers. Part of the matter of his book +was derived from Fernam Mendez Pinto, but the style is his own. + +Like Frei Luis de Sousa, FREI MANUEL DA ESPERANÇA (1586-1670) became +the historian of his Order in the _Historia Seraphica da Ordem dos +Frades Menores_ (2 pts., 1656, 66). We know from remarks in the second +part that he paid the greatest attention to its composition, for which +he had prepared himself by reading _hũa multidão notavel_ of books +on that and kindred subjects. Similar excellence of style marks the +later work of the Jesuit FRANCISCO DE SOUSA (1628?-1713), _O Oriente +conquistado_ (2 vols., 1710), in which he chronicles the history of the +Company in the East. + +The most celebrated Portuguese preacher of his time,[569] Frei Thomé +de Jesus’ brother, DIOGO DE PAIVA DE ANDRADE (1528-75), represented +Portugal at the Council of Trent in 1561. His eloquent _Sermões_ +(1603, 4, 15) were published posthumously in three parts. His mantle +fell upon FRANCISCO FERNANDEZ GALVÃO (1554-1610), the prose of whose +_Sermões_ (3 vols., 1611, 13, 16) is admirably restrained and pure. +Less sonorous than the periods of Paiva de Andrade, the _Trattados_ +[_sic_] _Quadragesimais e da Paschoa_ (1609) and _Tratados das Festas e +Vidas dos Santos_ (2 pts., 1612, 15) of the Dominican FREI ANTONIO FEO +(1573-1627) perhaps gain rather than lose by being read, not heard. In +the clearness and precision of their prose they are scarcely inferior +to the remarkable _Sermões_ (3 pts., 1617, 18, 25) of the Augustinian +FREI PHILIPE DA LUZ (1574-1633), confessor to the Duke of Braganza +(afterwards King João IV), in whose palace at Villa Viçosa he died. He, +too, writes _sem grandes eloquencias_; he is as precise as Feo in his +use of words, and his vocabulary is as extensive. Purity, concision, +clearness, and harmony give him, together with Feo, Ceita, and Veiga, a +high place in Portuguese prose. + +The sermons for which the Dominican FREI PEDRO CALVO (born _c._ 1550) +was celebrated were published in _Homilias de Quaresma_ (2 pts., 1627, +9), and at the repeated request of a friend he wrote his _Defensam +das Lagrimas dos ivstos persegvidos_ (1618) to prove that ‘tears shed +in time of trouble do not lessen merit’. The _Sermões_ (1618) and +_Considerações_ (1619, 20, 33) of FREI THOMAS DA VEIGA (1578-1638), +like his father a Professor of Coimbra University, are written in a +style of great excellence, as, although a trifle more redundant[570] +and latinized, is that of his contemporary, like him a Franciscan, +FREI JOÃO DA CEITA (1578-1633), whose prose has a natural grace and +harmony, if it is less pure and indigenous than that of Luz. His best +known works are the _Quadragena de Sermoens_ (1619) and _Quadragena +Segunda_ (1625). Two more volumes of _Sermões_ (1634, 5) appeared after +his death. Two slightly later writers were FREI CRISTOVAM DE LISBOA +(†1652), brother of Manuel Severim de Faria, and FREI CRISTOVAM DE +ALMEIDA (1620-79), Bishop of Martyria. The former, author of _Jardim +da Sagrada Escriptura_ (1653) and _Consolaçam de Afflictos e Allivio +de Lastimados_ (1742), in the preface to his _Santoral de Varios +Sermões_ (1638) deplores the new fashion of certain preachers who +hide their meaning under their eloquence. He is himself sometimes +inclined to be florid. Bishop Almeida attained a reputation for great +eloquence even in the days of Antonio Vieira.[571] His _Sermões_ +(1673, 80, 86) are simpler than those of Vieira, but for the reader +their prose lacks the quiet precision of Ceita, Veiga, or Luz, whose +sermons may be considered one of the sources from which a greater +master of Portuguese, Manuel Bernardes, derived his magic. The Jesuit +LUIS ALVAREZ (1615?-1709?), who was born a few years after Vieira, and +lived on into the eighteenth century, also had a great reputation as +a preacher. The fire is absent from the printed page, but his works, +_Sermões da Quaresma_ (3 pts., 1688, 94, 99), _Amor Sagrado_ (1673), +and _Ceo de graça, inferno custoso_ 1692), are notable for the purity +of their prose. + +The religious works of the seventeenth, as of the sixteenth century +are very various in subject and treatment. FREI JOÃO CARDOSO (†1655), +author of _Ruth Peregrina_ (2 pts., 1628, 54), also wrote a lengthy +commentary on the 113th Psalm in twenty-one discourses: _Jornada Dalma +Libertada_ (1626). Ten years earlier a Jew, JOÃO BAPTISTA D’ESTE, +had published in excellent Portuguese a translation of the Psalms: +_Consolaçam Christam e Lvz para o Povo Hebreo_ (1616). His title was +suggested by that of a far more remarkable book by another Jew, SAMUEL +USQUE (fl. 1540), _Consolaçam ás Tribulaçoens de Israel_, written +probably between 1540 and 1550[572] and first printed at Ferrara by +Abraham ben Usque in 1553. The author was the son of Spanish Jews who +had taken refuge in Portugal, where he was born, probably at the end +of the fifteenth century.[573] His famous work is an account of the +sufferings of the Jewish race. In three dialogues Jacob (_Ycabo_), +Nahum (_Numeo_), and Zachariah (_Zicareo_) converse as shepherds. +Israel, in person, relates his sorrows down to the fall of Jerusalem, +an event which is described in detail, and so on to the persecutions in +European countries (_novas gentes_), and at the end of each dialogue +the prophets administer their comfort. The book closes with a chorus +of rapturous psalms in biblical prose, rejoicing at the coming end +of Israel’s tribulations and calling for vengeance on their enemies, +and thus finishes on a note of joyful faith and courageous hope, +without an inkling of charity. The first dialogue, which condenses Old +Testament history, has a rhythmical, luxuriant style, rich in Oriental +imagery, but later, where Roman history is the authority, or in the +tragic account of the persecution of Jews in Portugal[574] under João +II and the two succeeding kings, the style is shorn of rhetoric. Nor +is there a trace of false ornament in a long passage of wonderful +eloquence, Israel’s final complaint and invocation to sky and earth, +waters and mortal creatures. The agony and awful glow of indignation +at these recent events had a restraining influence on the style, which +loses nothing by this simplicity. Quieter descriptions are those of +the shepherd’s life and of the chase in the first, and of spring and +evening in the third part. + +The Jesuit DIOGO MONTEIRO (1561-1634), when towards the end of his life +he published his _Arte de Orar_ (1631), promised, should his ‘great +occupations’ allow, to print very soon the second volume dealing +with the divine attributes. This did not appear in that generation: +_Meditações dos attribvtos divinos_ (Roma, 1671). The _Arte de Orar_ +contains twenty-nine treatises (604 ff.). Its subjects are various (of +the virtue of magnificence; of the esteem in which singing is held by +God, &c.), and they are presented with fervour and clear concision, and +especially with a complete absence of oratorical effect. Quintilian +takes part in one of the six dialogues which compose the _Peregrinaçam +Christam_ (1620) by TRISTÃO BARBOSA DE CARVALHO (†1632); he is on a +pilgrimage from Lisbon to the tomb of Saint Isabel at Coimbra, but he +expresses himself in excellent Portuguese, modelled perhaps on that of +Arraez. The prose of the _Retrato de Prvdentes, Espelho de Ignorantes_ +(1664) by the Jesuit FRANCISCO AIRES (1597-1664) often rises to +eloquence, notably in the fervent prayers. His _Theatro dos Trivmphos +Divinos contra os Desprimores Hvmanos_ (1658) is of a more practical +character. The Franciscan FREI MANUEL DOS ANJOS (1595-1653) laid no +claim to originality in his _Politica predicavel e doutrina moral +do bom governo do mundo_ (1693), written in a clear and correct but +slightly redundant[575] style. + +FREI LUIS DOS ANJOS (_c._ 1570-1625) in his _Iardim de Portugal_ (1626) +gathered edifying anecdotes of saintly women from various writers, and +set them down in good Portuguese prose. The Franciscan FREI PEDRO DE +SANTO ANTONIO (_c._ 1570-1641) in his _Iardim Spiritual, tirado dos +Sanctos e Varoens spiritvaes_ (1632) contented himself with translation +of his authorities, adding, he modestly says, ‘some things of my own of +not much importance’. He carefully avoided interlarding his Portuguese +with Latin, his object being _fazer prato a todos_. Even more humble is +the work of the Cistercian FREI FRADIQUE ESPINOLA (_c._ 1630-1708), who +compiled in his _Escola Decurial_ (12 pts., 1696-1721) an encyclopaedia +of themes so various as the fate of King Sebastian, the duties of +women, and the habits of storks. Although it lacks the literary +pretensions of the _Divertimento erudito_ by the Augustinian FREI +JOÃO PACHECO (1677-?1747), it contains some curious matter. A similar +miscellany of anecdotes and precepts was written by João Baptista +de Castro in the eighteenth century: _Hora de Recreio nas ferias de +maiores estudos_ (2 pts., 1742, 3). + +The life of the ardent FREI ANTONIO DAS CHAGAS (1631-82) abounded in +contrasts. Born at Vidigueira, of an old Alentejan family, Antonio da +Fonseca Soares began his career as a soldier in 1650; a duel (arising +out of one of his many love affairs), in which he killed his man, drove +him to Brazil, and it was only after several years of distinguished +service[576] that he returned to Portugal, perhaps in 1657. In 1661 he +attained the rank of captain, but in the following year abandoned his +military career, and in 1663 professed in the Franciscan convent at +Evora, exchanging the composition of gongoric verse for a voluminous +correspondence in prose, and his unregenerate days of dissipation +for a glowing and saintly asceticism. (_Trocando as galas em burel e +os caprichos em cilicios_ are the words with which he veils the real +sincerity of his conversion.) Preferring the humbler but strenuous +duties of missionary in Portugal and Spain to the bishopric of Lamego, +he founded the missionary convent of Varatojo, and died there twenty +years after his novitiate. During those years he built up and exercised +a powerful spiritual influence throughout Portugal, and it continued +after his death. Few of his poems survive, since he committed the +greater part of his profane verse to the flames, but some of his +_romances_ may still be read. It is, however, as a prose-writer, +especially in his _Cartas Espirituaes_ (2 pts., 1684, 7), that he holds +a foremost place in Portuguese literature. There is less affectation +in these more familiar letters than in his _Sermões genuinos_ (1690) +or his _Obras Espirituaes_ (1684). The very titles of some of his +shorter treatises, _Vozes do Ceo e Tremores da Terra, Espelho do +Espelho_, show that he had not even now altogether escaped the false +taste of the time, and artificial flowers of speech, plays on words, +laboured metaphors and antitheses appear in his prose. But if it has +not the simple severity of a Bernardes, it possesses so persuasive, so +passionate an energy, and is of so clear a fervour and harmony that its +eloquence is felt to be genuine. + +The Jesuit FREI JOÃO DA FONSECA (1632-1701), in the preface to one +of his works, _Sylva Moral e Historica_ (1696), which may have given +Bernardes the idea of his _Nova Floresta_, rejects affected periods +and new phrases, and there is no false rhetoric in his _Espelho de +Penitentes_ (1687), _Satisfaçam de Aggravos_ (1700), which takes the +form of dialogues between a hermit and a soldier, and other devotional +works. Another Jesuit, ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO (1629-1724), although born +at Lisbon, spent most (eighty-five years) of his long life in Brazil. +He wrote, among other works, _Rosa de Nazareth nas Montanhas de Hebron_ +(1715), compiled from various histories of the Company of Jesus, and +_Historia do Predestinado Peregrino e seu Irmão Precito_ (1682). The +latter is an allegory in six books which lacks the human interest of +Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, which it preceded. It describes the +journey of two brothers, _Predestinado_ and _Precito_, out of Egypt to +Jerusalem (Heaven) and Babylon (Hell). The style is simpler and more +direct than might be inferred from the inflated title, and often has an +effective if studied eloquence.[577] + +Vieira dying is reported to have said that the Portuguese language was +safe in the keeping of Padre Manuel Bernardes. The aged Jesuit, who +maintained his interest in literature to the end, may have received +Bernardes’ _Luz e Calor_[578] (1696) in the last year of his life, +and the _Exercicios Espirituaes_ (2 vols., 1686) had appeared ten +years earlier. Other works, _Sermões e Praticas_ (1711),[579] _Nova +Floresta_ (5 vols., 1706-28), _Os Ultimos Fins do Homem_ (1727), +_Varios Tratados_ (2 vols., 1737), were soon forthcoming to justify +the prophecy. MANUEL BERNARDES (1644-1710), the son of João Antunes +and Maria Bernardes, was born at Lisbon, studied law and philosophy +at Coimbra University, and at the age of thirty entered the Lisbon +Oratory, where he spent thirty-six years. That was all his life, +yet through his books this modest, humorous, austere priest has +exercised a profound influence not only, as Barbosa Machado declares, +in guiding souls to Heaven, but in moulding and protecting the +Portuguese language. His style is marked in an equal degree by grace +and concision, intensity and restraint, smoothness and vigour.[580] +With him the florid cloak, in which many recent writers had wrapped +Portuguese, falls away, leaving the pith and kernel of the language; +the conceits of the _culteranos_ disappear, and the most striking +effects are attained without apparent artifice. In his hands the +pinchbeck and tinsel are transmuted into delicate pieces of ivory. The +charm of his style is difficult to analyse, but it may be remarked that +his vocabulary is inexhaustible, his precision unfailing, that he is +not afraid to employ the commonest words, and that the construction of +his sentences is of a transparent simplicity, as bare of rhetoric as +is the poetry of João de Deus. His reputation as a lord of language +has survived every test. His works are not merely the _deliciae_ of a +few distant scholars but an acknowledged glory of the nation, praised +by that literary iconoclast Macedo, and quoted as an authority in +the Republican Parliament of 1915. The most popular of his works are +_Luz e Calor_, and especially the _Nova Floresta_, in which moral and +familiar anecdote go quaintly hand in hand, but if one must choose +between excellence and excellence his masterpiece is the _Exercicios +Espirituaes_, in which thought and expression often rise to sublime +heights. One may perhaps compare him with Fray Juan de los Ángeles +(†1609). His simple doctrines spring from the heart and, winged by +shrewd knowledge of men, touch the heart of his readers. One of his +more immediate followers was Padre MANUEL CONSCIENCIA (_c._ 1669-1739), +author of a large number of works on moral and religious subjects, the +best known of which is _A Mocidade enganada e desenganada_ (6 vols., +1729-38). + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[553] _Dial._ x. 4. + +[554] The dates given by Barbosa Machado are Rector 1565, Provincial +1571. + +[555] He introduces himself as a theologian in his dialogues, and one +may infer several facts concerning his life, e. g. that he had been +in Rome (_Imagem_, Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 351 v.), Montserrat (f. 88), +Marseilles (f. 88), Savoy (f. 295), Madrid (f. 190), that he kept a +diary (f. 190), that he was _curioso de antigualhas_ (f. 352). + +[556] Macedo, quoted by Innocencio da Silva (iii. 176), alleged this +to be a ‘faithful translation’ from Petrarca. Why Petrarca (1304-74) +should praise Belem Convent and Coimbra University, refer to the recent +death (1557) of King João III, or speak of ‘our’ Francisco de Hollanda +we are not told. Pinto in a later dialogue, _Da Tranquillidade da +Vida_, refers to Petrarca’s _Vita Solitaria_ (Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 47 +v.). + +[557] Since 1590 is implied as the date of this dialogue on f. 290 +of the 1593 edition it must be emphasized that the _Segunda Parte_ +appeared originally in 1572. + +[558] Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 366 v.: _eu revolvo os livros ... com grandes +trabalhos & vigilias_. + +[559] Cf. _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 346: _Coimbra, onde gastei a flor de +minha adolescencia._ (This edition really has but 344 ff. since f. 29 +follows f. 22.) + +[560] _Dialogos de Dom Frey Amador Arraiz_, Coimbra, 1604. The idea of +the work belonged to his brother, Jeronimo Arraez, who did not live to +complete what he had begun. + +[561] The same variety occurs in _Poderes de Amor em geral e horas +de conversaçam particular_ (1657), by Frei Cristovam Godinho (_c._ +1600-71) of Evora. + +[562] He wrote the life of the prior, Frei Luis de Montoia, whose _Vida +de Christo_ he completed. + +[563] _Tendo elle sua mãi e irmãos muito ricos e a Condessa de Linhares +sua irmãa, todos offerecidos a pagar o grosso resgate que os Mouros +pediam, por saberem a qualidade de sua pessoa_ (_Cronica do Cardeal Rei +D. Henrique_, p. 38). + +[564] See his prefatory letter in the _Trabalhos_. Cf. Antonio, _Bib. +Nova_, ii. 307. Barbosa Machado speaks of _hũa horrivel masmorra_. + +[565] Cf. p. 39 (1666 ed.): _Ó, ó, ó amor; ó, ó, ó amor, cale a lingua +e o entendimento, dilatai-vos vos por toda esta alma_, &c.; or p. +54: _Ah, ah, ah bondade; ah, ah amor sem lei, sem regra, sem medida, +adoro-te, louvo-te, desejo-te, por ti suspiro._ + +[566] He also wrote _Oratorio sacra de soliloquios do amor divino_ +(1628) and various works in Latin. Manuel Godinho refers to his +_Estimulo das Missões_ (_Relação_, 1842 ed., p. 47). + +[567] C. Castello Branco, _Estrellas propicias_, 2ᵃ ed., p. 204. +Its only fault, artistically, is the detailed description of the +commemoration festivities, which come as an anticlimax. + +[568] Other works of the period are similarly read rather for their +style than as history, as the _Historia Ecclesiastica da Igreja de +Lisboa_ (1642) and the _Historia Ecclesiastica dos Arcebispos de Braga_ +(2 pts., 1634, 1635) by D. RODRIGO DA CUNHA (1577-1643), the Archbishop +of Lisbon who had an active share in the liberation of Portugal from +the yoke of Spain in 1640. + +[569] Another renowned Court preacher was D. ANTONIO PINHEIRO (†1582?), +Bishop of Miranda, whose works were collected by Sousa Farinha: +_Collecção das obras portuguesas do sabio Bispo de Miranda e de +Leiria_, 2 vols., 1785, 6. + +[570] e. g. _officio e dignidade, gritos e brados, boca e lingoa, +cuidão e imaginão_. Macedo (_O Couto_, p. 82) rightly calls Ceita _um +dos principaes textos em lingua portugueza_. + +[571] Other noted preachers were the Jesuits FRANCISCO DO AMARAL +(1593-1647), who published the first (and only) volume of his _Sermões_ +(1641) in the year in which Vieira came to Portugal, and FRANCISCO +DE MENDONÇA (1573-1626), a master of clear and vigorous prose in his +two volumes of _Sermões_ (1636, 9); and the Trinitarian BALTASAR PAEZ +(1570-1638), whose _Sermões de Quaresma_ (2 pts., 1631, 3), _Sermões +da Semana Santa_ (1630), _Marial de Sermões_ (1649), may still be read +with profit. + +[572] _Ha poucos annos que he arribado_ (the Inquisition in Portugal), +Pt. 3, 1908 ed., f. xxxii. + +[573] See p. 5 of _Prologo_: Portuguese is _a lingoa que mamei_, but +his _passados_ are from Castile. + +[574] The inhabitants of the Peninsula are _astutos e maliciosos_, +Spain is ‘a hypocritical and cruel wolf’, the Portuguese are _fortes e +quasi barbaros_, the English _maliciosos_, the Italians, since the book +was to appear in their country, merely ‘warlike and ungrateful’. + +[575] If, for instance, the bracketed words in the following +sentence (p. 3, § 5) be omitted it gains in vigour and loses little +in the sense: _Este poder se não deo aos Reys para extorsoens_ [_& +violencias_] _mas para amparar_ [_& defender_] _os vassallos porque até +o propria Deos parece que tem as mãos atadas a rigores_ [_& castigos_] +_& livres a clemencias_ [_& misericordias_]. + +[576] He had been fortunate, for, says Antonio Vieira in 1640, _não ha +guerra no mundo onde se morra tão frequentemente como na do Brazil_. + +[577] e. g. in the following passage (p. 47), in which Calderon and +João de Deus join hands: ‘The world and its glory is a passing comedy, +a farce that ends in laughter, a shadow that disappears, a thinning +mist, a fading flower, a blinding smoke, a dream that is not true.’ + +[578] _Estimulos de amor divino_ (1758) is an extract from this, as the +_Tratado breve da oraçam mental_ (5th ed., 1757) is extracted from the +_Exercicios Espirituaes_. + +[579] Pt. 2 appeared in 1733. + +[580] He often deliberately links a soft and a hard word, as _caça e +cão_, _candores da celestial graça_, _licita a guerra_. Thus his style +becomes _crespo sem aspereza_. + + + + + IV + + 1580-1706 + + + + + _The Seiscentistas_ + + +Philip II entered his new capital under triumphal arches on June 29, +1581, and the subjection of Portugal to Spain during the next sixty +years in part accounts for the fact that nowhere was the decadence of +literature in the seventeenth century more marked than at Lisbon. For +Spain in her sturdy independence and reaction from rigid classicism +had led the way in those precious affectations which invaded the +literatures of Europe, and the universal malady, gongorism with its +Lylyan conceits and cultured style, now found a ready welcome in +Portugal. The literary style which corresponded to the Churriguerresque +in architecture naturally proved congenial to the land of the _estilo +manuelino_. King Philip was glad to conciliate and provide for +Portuguese men of letters,[581] but if in the preceding centuries +many of them wrote in Spanish, that tendency was now necessarily +strengthened. Another cause of decadence was no doubt the Inquisition, +although its influence in this respect has been greatly exaggerated. It +required no immense tact on the part of an author to prevent his works +from being placed on the Index. An examination, for instance, of the +differences between the 1616 edition of _Eufrosina_ and the condemned +1561 edition shows that the parts excised were chiefly coarse passages +or unsuitable references to the Bible (this was also the charge against +the letters of Clenardus). That remarkable mathematician, Pedro Nunez, +pays a tribute to the enlightened patronage of letters by Cardinal +Henrique, the most ardent promoter of the Inquisition in Portugal: +_qui cum nullum_ _tempus intermittat quin semper aut animarum saluti +prospiciat aut optimos quosque auctores evolvat aut literatorum hominum +colloquia audiat_.[582] + +No literary figure in Portugal of the seventeenth century, few in the +Peninsula,[583] can rank with D. FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELLO (1608-66). +Born at Lisbon,[584] he belonged to the highest Portuguese nobility +and began both his military and literary career in his seventeenth +year. He wrote in Spanish, although, in verse at least, he felt it to +be a hindrance,[585] and it was not till he was over forty that he +published a work in Portuguese: _Carta de Guia de Casados_ (1651).[586] +Few men have accomplished more, and towards the end of his life he +could say with pride that it would be difficult to find an idle hour +in it. He was shipwrecked near St. Jean de Luz in 1627 and fought +in the battle of the Downs in 1639. He was sent with the Conde de +Linhares to quell the Evora insurrection in 1637, and took part in +the campaign against revolted Catalonia (1640), which he described in +his _Guerra de Cataluña_[587] (1645), written _em varias fortunas_ +and recognized as a classic of Spanish literature. A man frankly +outspoken like Mello must have made many enemies, enemies dangerous +in a time of natural distrust. During the Catalan campaign he was +sent under arrest to Madrid, apparently on suspicion of favouring the +cause of an independent Portugal,[588] and a little later, when he +was in the service of the King of Portugal, the suspicion as to his +loyalty recurred. On November 19, 1644, he was arrested at Lisbon on a +different charge. It appears that a servant dismissed by Mello revenged +himself by implicating his former master in a murder that he had +committed (of a man as obscure as himself). Whether he did this of his +own initiative or at the bidding of Mello’s enemies is uncertain, but +they saw to it that Mello once in prison should not be soon released. +They might, probably did, assure the king that this was the best place +for one ‘devoted to the cause of Castile’. There are other theories to +account for Mello’s long imprisonment, the most romantic of which--that +he and the king were rivals in the affections of the Condessa de Villa +Nova, and, meeting disguised and by accident at the entrance of her +house, drew their swords, the king recognizing Mello by his voice--is +now generally abandoned. Although no evidence of Mello’s participation +in the murder was forthcoming, he was condemned to be deported for +life to Africa, for which Brazil was later substituted. It was only +in 1655, after eleven years of more or less[589] strict confinement, +that he sailed for Brazil. João IV died in 1656 and two years later +Mello returned to Portugal: he was formally pardoned[590] and spent +the last years of his life in important diplomatic missions to London, +Rome, and Paris. The unfaltering courage and gaiety with which he faced +his adventures and misfortunes win our admiration, but his life can +strike no one as literary. Yet it is probable that but for his long +imprisonment he would never have found leisure to write many of his +best works, and prosperity might have dimmed his insight and dulled +his style--that style (influenced no doubt by Quevedo and Gracián) +which is hard and clear as the glitter of steel or the silver chiming +of a clock, with _concinnitas quaedam venusta et felix verborum_.[591] +Even when full of points and conceits it retains its clearness and +trenchancy, and in his more familiar works he is unrivalled, as the +_Carta de Guia de Casados_, in which, _innuptus ipse_, he brings +freshness and originality to the theme already treated in Fray Luis de +Leon’s _La Perfecta Casada_ (1583), Diogo Paiva de Andrade’s sensible +but less caustic _Casamento Perfeito_ (1631), and Dr. João de Barros’ +_Espelho de Casados_ (1540),[592] or the pithy and delightful _Cartas +Familiares_, of which five centuries--a mere fragment--were published +at Rome in 1664, with a rapier-thrust of his wit and a maxim of good +sense on every page, preserving for us some vestige of what Frei Manuel +Godinho described as his ‘admirable conversation’ when he met him at +Marseilles in 1633.[593] The _Epanaphoras de varia Historia Portugueza_ +(1660) are unequal and often excessively detailed.[594] Three of the +five are, however, the accounts of an eyewitness and as such are full +of interest: the _Alteraçoens de Evora_ (i), the _Naufragio da Armada +Portuguesa em França_ (ii), and the _Conflito do Canal de Inglaterra_ +(iv).[595] + +Mello’s knowledge of men was as wide as his knowledge of books, and +both appear to great advantage in his _Apologos Dialogaes_ (1721). An +individualist in religion[596] and politics,[597] an acute thinker and +a keen student of men and manners, he found no dullness in life even at +its worst and no solitude, for, if alone, his fancy instilled wit and +wisdom into clocks[598] and coins[599] and fountains.[600] The first +three _Apologos_ contain incisive portraits in which types and persons +are sharply etched in a few lines: the poor _escudeiro_, the _beata_, +the Lisbon market-woman, the litigious _ratinho_, the _fidalgo_ from +the provinces,[601] the ambitious priest, the shabby grammarian,, the +worldly monk, political place-hunter, _miles gloriosus_, or melancholy +author, a tinselled nobody boiling down the good sayings of past +writers. The fourth _Apologo_ entitled _Hospital das Lettras_ (1657) +is devoted more especially to literary criticism; Mello with Quevedo, +Justus Lipsius, and Traiano Boccalini (who died when Mello was five) +makes a notable scrutiny of Spanish and Portuguese literature. As a +literary critic Mello is excellent within limits. Himself an artificial +writer, although as it were naturally artificial, bred at Court, versed +in social and political affairs, he considered that the proper study of +mankind was man, and, like Henry Fielding a century later, admired ‘the +wondrous power of art in improving Nature’.[602] For him the country +and Nature, the bucolic poetry and prose of Fernam Alvarez do Oriente, +the ingenuous narratives of the early chroniclers, had no charm; he +preferred Rodrigo Mendez Silva’s _Vida y hechos del gran Condestable_ +(Madrid, 1640) to the _Cronica do Condestabre_.[603] But all that was +vernacular and indigenous attracted him, as is proved in his letters, +in his lively farce _Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz_ (1676), and in the +_Feira dos Anexins_, which is a long string of popular maxims and of +those plays upon words in which Mello delighted. His poetry--_Las Tres +Musas del Melodino_ (1649), _Obras Metricas_ (1665)--is marred by the +conceits which in his prose often serve effectively to point a moral +or drive home an argument. It is far too clever. When in a poem ‘On +the death of a great lady’ we find the line _contigo o sepultara a +sepultura_ we do not know whether to laugh or weep, but we suspect the +sincerity of the author’s grief, and although he wrote some excellent +_quintilhas_, most of his poems, which are, as might be expected, +always vigorous, are too sharp and thin, stalks without flowers, the +very skeletons of poetry. It is to his prose in its wit and grace, its +shrewd thought, its revelation of a sincere and lofty but unassuming +character, its directness,[604] its _bom portugues velho e relho_, that +he owes his place among the greatest writers of the Peninsula. + +The taste in poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is +seen in two collections, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese: _Fenix +Renascida_ (5 vols., 1716-28) and _Eccos que o Clarim da Fama dá_ +(2 vols., 1761, 2). The latter is sufficiently characterized by +its title, too long to quote in full. As to the former the Phoenix +seems to have given real pleasure to contemporary readers, but for +us the bird and song are flown and only the ashes remain, from which +a sixteenth-century poem such as the sonnet _Horas breves_ stands +out conspicuously. The subjects are often as trivial as those of the +_Cancioneiro_ published two centuries earlier and more domestic: to +a cousin sewing, to an overdressed man, to a large mouth, a sonnet +to two market-women fighting, another to the prancing horse of the +Conde de Sabugal, on a present of roses, two long _romances_ on a +goldfinch killed by a cat, verses sent with a gift of handkerchiefs or +eggs or melons, or to thank for sugar-plums--the _Fenix_ rarely soars +above such themes. The magistrate ANTONIO BARBOSA BACELLAR (1610-63) +figures largely, with glosses on poems by Camões, a _romance_ _A umas +saudades_, a satirical poem _A umas beatas_. His _romances varios_ are +mostly in Spanish, but a few of his sonnets in Portuguese have some +merit. The fifth volume opens (pp. 1-37) with a far more elaborate +satire by DIOGO CAMACHO (or Diogo de Sousa): _Jornada que Diogo Camacho +fez ás Cortes do Parnaso_, the best burlesque poem of the century, +in which the author did not spare contemporary Lisbon poets.[605] +The poems of JERONIMO BAHIA likewise cover many pages. He it is who +bewails at length the sad fate of a goldfinch. In _oitavas_ he wrote a +_Fabula de Polyfemo a Galatea_,[606] and in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ +jocular accounts of journeys from Lisbon to Coimbra and from Lisbon +into Alentejo (on a very lean mule) which are sometimes amusing. His +sonnet _Fallando com Deos_ shows a deeper nature, and the collection +contains other religious verse, notably that of Violante Montesino, +better known as SOROR VIOLANTE DO CEO (1601-93). Here,[607] as in her +_Rythmas varias_ (Rouen, 1646) and _Parnaso Lusitano de divinos e +humanos versos_ (2 vols., 1733), this nun, who spent over sixty years +in the Dominican Convento da Rosa at Lisbon, and who from an early +age was known for her skill upon the harp and in poetry--admiring +contemporaries called her the tenth Muse--showed that she could write +with simple fervour, as in the Portuguese _deprecações devotas_ of the +_Meditações da Missa_ (1689) or her Spanish _villancicos_. But she +could also be the most gongorical of writers, her very real native +talent being too often spoilt by the taste of the time.[608] BERNARDA +FERREIRA DE LACERDA (1595-1644), another _femina incomparabilis_, like +Soror Violante and Dercylis considered the tenth Muse and fourth Grace, +wrote almost exclusively in Spanish, nor can her _Soledades de Buçaco_ +(1634) or her epic _Hespaña Libertada_ (2 pts., 1618, 73) be considered +a heavy loss to Portuguese literature. SOROR MARIA MAGDALENA EUPHEMIA +DA GLORIA (1672-? _c._ 1760), in the world Leonarda Gil da Gama, in +_Brados do Desengano_ (1739), _Orbe Celeste_ (1742), and _Reino de +Babylonia_ (1749), rarely descends from the high-flown style indicated +in these titles. On the other hand, the Franciscan nun of Lisbon, SOROR +MARIA DO CEO (1658-1753), or Maria de Eça, in _A Preciosa_ (2 pts., +1731, 3) and _Enganos do Bosque, Desenganos do Rio_ (1741), among much +verse of the same kind has some poems of real charm and an almost +rustic simplicity. + +By reason of a certain intensity and a vigorous style D. FRANCISCO +CHILD ROLIM DE MOURA (1572-1640), Lord of the towns of Azambuja and +Montargil, although more versed in arms than in letters, wrote in _Os +Novissimos do Homem_ (1623) a poem quite as readable as the longer +epics of his contemporaries, despite its duller subject (man’s first +disobedience and all our woe). The four cantos in _oitavas_ are headed +Death, Judgement, Hell, Paradise.[609] Of the life of MANUEL DA VEIGA +TAGARRO we know little or nothing, but his volume of eclogues and +odes, _Lavra de Anfriso_ (1627), stands conspicuous in the seventeenth +century for its simplicity and true lyrical vein. There is nothing +original in these four eclogues, but the verse is of a harmonious +softness. In the odes he succeeds in combining fervent thought with a +classical restraint of expression. He aimed high; Horace, Lope de Vega, +and Luis de Leon seem to have been his models. Some measure of the +latter’s deliberate tranquillity he occasionally attained. The works of +the ‘discreet and accomplished’, keen-eyed and graceful D. FRANCISCO +DE PORTUGAL (1585-1632) appeared posthumously[610]: _Divinos e humanos +versos_ (1652) and (without separate title-page) _Prisões e solturas de +hũa alma_, consisting of mystic poems mostly in Spanish in a setting +of Portuguese prose, and, in Spanish, _Arte de Galanteria_ (1670), of +which a second edition was published in 1682. Lope de Vega praised the +‘elegant verses’ of the _Gigantomachia_ (1628) written by MANUEL DE +GALHEGOS (1597-1665). That he could write good Portuguese poetry the +author showed in the 732 verses of his _Templo da Memoria_ (1635), +in the preface of which he declares that it had become a rash act to +publish poems written in Portuguese but quotes the example of Pereira +de Castro and of Góngora as having used the language of everyday life +and plebeian words without indignity. + +The later epics testified to the perseverance of their authors rather +than to their poetical talent. They are perhaps less guilty than the +critics, who should have discouraged the kind and recognized that +the _Lusiads_ were only an accident in Portuguese literature, the +accident of the genius of Camões. As a rule the epic spirit of the +Portuguese expressed itself better in prose. GABRIEL PEREIRA DE CASTRO +(1571?-1632) forestalled Sousa de Macedo in his choice of a subject. +His _Vlyssea, ov Lysboa Edificada, Poema heroyco_ (1636) was published +posthumously by his brother Luis, and perhaps the most remarkable +thing about it is that it should have run through six editions. The +structure of the poem, in ten cantos of _oitavas_, is closely modelled +on that of the _Lusiads_, and the gods of Olympus duly take a part +in the story. He sings, he says boldly, to his country, to the world +and to eternity, but his sails flap sadly for lack of inspiration and +enthusiasm, and his daring _enjambements_[611] do not compensate for +the dullness of theme and treatment. If, for instance, we compare his +storm[612] with that of the _Lusiads_ (vi. 70-91) it must be confessed +that the former has much the air of a commotion in a duckpond. Ulysses +on his way to Lisbon visits (canto 4) the infernal regions, is +astonished to meet kings there, and (canto 6) relates the siege and +fall of Troy. + +The life of BRAS GARCIA DE MASCARENHAS (1596-1656) was more interesting +than his verses. He was born at Avó, near the Serra da Estrella, +and his adventures began early, for he was arrested on account of +a love affair (1616) and made a daring escape from Coimbra prison +after wounding his jailer. His careful biographer, Dr. Antonio de +Vasconcellos, has shown that there is no record of his having studied +at Coimbra University. Subsequently he travelled and fought in Brazil +(1623-32), Italy, France, Flanders, and Spain, and in 1641, as captain, +raised and commanded a body of horse known as the Company of Lions. As +Governor of Alfaiates, the ‘key of Beira’, he was wrongfully accused +of having a treasonable understanding with Spain and imprisoned at +Sabugal, some ten miles from Alfaiates (1642). He obtained a book (the +_Flos Sanctorum_), flour, and scissors and cut out a letter in verse +to King João IV, who restored him to his governorship and gave him the +habit of Avis. His long epic _Viriato Tragico_ (1699) contains some +forcible descriptions and has a pleasantly patriotic and indigenous +atmosphere--one feels that he is singing _os patrios montes_ as much +as the hero--but in style it differs little from prose. Tedious +geographical descriptions, dry catalogues of names, a whole stanza +(vii. 39) composed exclusively of nouns, another (iv. 63) of proper +names, incline the reader less to praise than sleep, from which he is +only gently stirred when the sun is called _a solar embaixadora_. In +the prevailing fashion of the time the author works in lines of Camões, +Sá de Miranda, Garci Lasso, Ariosto, and other poets. While the work +was still in manuscript another poet, and perhaps a relation, Andre da +Silva Mascarenhas, helped himself liberally to its stanzas (they number +2,287) for his epic _A Destruição de Hespanha_ (1671). He could have +given no better proof of the poverty of his genius. FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE +MENESES (_c._ 1600-1664?), although less true a poet than his cousin +and namesake the Conde de Mattosinhos, won a far wider fame by his +epic poem _Malaca Conqvistada_ (1634), in which he recounts _a heroica +historia dos feitos de Albuquerque_. The reader who accompanies his +frail bark[613] through twelve cantos of _oitavas_ feels that he has +well earned the fall of Malacca at the end. For although the author is +not incapable of vigorous and succinct description he too often decks +out the pure gold of Camões’ style[614] with periphrases and Manueline +ornaments which delay the action. The sun is ‘the lover of Clytie’ or +‘the rubicund son of Latona’. He stops to tell us that a diamond won +by Albuquerque had been ‘cut by skilled hand in Milan’, and some of +his more elaborate similes are not without charm. Canto 7 tells of the +future deeds of the Portuguese in India. The gods interfere less than +in the _Lusiads_ (Asmodeus plays a part in canto 6), but the general +effect is that of a great theme badly handled. After the death of his +wife, the author spent the last twenty years of his life (from 1641) in +the Dominican convent of Bemfica as Frei Francisco de Jesus. + +ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO (1606-82), _moço fidalgo_ of Philip IV +and later Secretary of Embassy and Minister (_Residente_) in London +(1642-6) and Secretary of State to the weak and unlettered Afonso +VI, wrote at the age of twenty-two _Flores de España, Excelencias +de Portugal_ (1631). This historical work of considerable interest +and importance was written in Spanish por ser mais universal, but he +returned to Portuguese presently in a curious prose miscellany, _Eva +e Ave_ (1676), and in the epic poem _Vlyssippo_ (1640) in fourteen +cantos of _oitavas_. He seems to have felt that interest could not +easily be sustained by the subject, the foundation of Lisbon by +Ulysses. Accordingly, following the example of Camões, he inset +various episodes. Canto 6 summarizes the events of the _Iliad_ and +the _Odyssey_, canto 10 describes a tapestry adorned with future +Portuguese victories, in canto 11 the Delphic Sibyl foretells the deeds +of Portugal’s kings, down to Sebastian, in canto 12 the wise Chiron +prophesies of her _famosos varões_. The style is correct, but the poem +as a whole is commonplace. VASCO MOUSINHO DE QUEVEDO, of Setubal, +although no records of his life remain, won high fame by his epic poem +in _oitavas_ (twelve cantos) _Afonso Africano_ (1611), in which ‘the +marvellous prowess of King Afonso V in Africa’ is described. The poem, +admired by Almeida Garrett, is particularly wearisome because it is +largely allegorical. The king conquering Arzila represents the strong +man subduing the city of his own soul, the Moors are the spirits of the +damned, and seven of their knights representing the seven deadly sins +are defeated by seven Christian knights who stand for the virtues. + +The poverty of profane prose, compared with its flourishing condition +in the preceding century, is also remarkable. A few historians of +the seventeenth century have already been mentioned. The literary +academies, of which the most famous were the _Academia dos Generosos_ +(1649-68) and the _Academia dos Singulares_ (1663-5),[615] existed +rather for the interchange of wit and complimentary or satiric verses +than for the encouragement of historical and scientific research. The +Conde da Ericeira’s _Portugal Restaurado_ and Freire de Andrade’s Life +bear no comparison with works of the _Quinhentistas_. Yet it was the +second golden age of Portuguese prose, as the names of Manuel Bernardes +and Vieira prove. The latter’s letters, with those of Frei Antonio +das Chagas and Mello, are in three different kinds--the political, +religious, and familiar--the most notable written in the century. +GASPAR PIRES DE REBELLO in the preface to his _Infortvnios tragicos +da Constante Florinda_ (1625) excuses himself for its publication +on the ground that ‘not spiritual and divine books only benefit +our intelligence’. The book, which records the love of Arnaldo and +Florinda, of Zaragoza, shows the modern novel growing through _Don +Quixote_ out of the _Celestina_ plays and the romances of chivalry, +but has little other interest. A second part was published in 1633, +and _Novellas Exemplares_, six stories by the same author, in 1650. +Numerous other works appeared with more or less alluring or sensational +titles but contents disappointingly dull. MATTHEUS DE RIBEIRO (_c._ +1620-95), in his _Alivio de Tristes e Consolação de Queixosos_ (1672, +4), shows greater skill than Pires de Rebello in the invention of +the story, but it is marred by the diffuse and pedantic style--April +becomes an ‘academy in which Flora was opening the doors for the study +of flowers’. The pastoral novel ended in sad contortions with the +_Desmayos de Mayo em sombras de Mondego_ (1635) by DIOGO FERREIRA DE +FIGUEIROA (1604-74). Its title and the three involved sentences which +cover the first three pages (ff. 10, 11) convey an adequate idea of its +character and contents. + +Of several prose works written by MARTIM AFONSO DE MIRANDA, of Lisbon, +in the first third of the century, the most important is _Tempo de +Agora_ (2 pts., 1622, 4). It contains seven dialogues dealing with +truth and falsehood, the evils of idleness, temperance, friendship, +justice, the evils of dice and cards, and precepts for princes. Much of +their matter is interesting and the comments incisive, especially as +to the prevailing luxury in food and dress. They tell of the infinite +number of curiously bound books at Lisbon, of the soldiers unpaid, +‘eating at the doors of convents’, of the delight in foreign fashions, +and the craze for ‘diabolical’ books from Italy to the exclusion of +_livros de historias_ and books in Portuguese. The anonymous _Primor +e honra da vida soldadesca no Estado da India_ (1630), edited by the +Augustinian FREI ANTONIO FREIRE (_c._ 1570-1634), is a different +work from Geronimo Ximenez de Urrea’s _Diálogo de la verdadera honra +militar_ (1566), which it resembles slightly in title. It is divided +into four parts and contains various episodes of the Portuguese in the +East and some curious information. MIGUEL LEITÃO DE ANDRADE (1555-1632) +went straight from Coimbra University to Africa with King Sebastian. +After the battle of Alcacer Kebir he succeeded in escaping from +captivity, followed the cause of the Prior of Crato, and was imprisoned +under Philip II. In his book, in twenty dialogues, _Miscellanea do +Sitio de N. Sᵃ da Lvz do Pedrogão Grande_ (1629), he disclaims any +purpose of writing history. It reveals an inquiring and observant but +uncritical mind, interested in fossils, inscriptions, astrology, the +early history of Portugal, etymology, heraldry, and the ‘infinite +wonderful secrets of Nature daily being revealed’. It contains a +graphic account of his escape from Fez, but on the whole, in spite +of attractive passages and interesting details, scarcely merits its +great reputation. _Do Sitio de Lisboa_ (1608), which Mello praises as +_aquelle elegantissimo livro_, by the author of _Arte Militar_ (1612), +LUIS MENDES DE VASCONCELLOS, is written in the form of a dialogue +between a philosopher, a soldier, and a politician, and deserves its +place among the minor classics of Portuguese literature. + +The famous love letters of the Portuguese nun MARIANNA ALCOFORADO +(1640-1723), which bring a breath of life and nature into the stilted +writing of that day, only belong to Portuguese literature in the +sense that Osorio’s history belongs to it--by translation. They +first appeared in indifferent French (_Lettres Portvgaises_, Paris, +1669) and were not retranslated, or, if we accept the theory that +the nun originally wrote them in French[616]--French _suranné et +dénué d’élégance_--translated into Portuguese for a century and a +half: _Cartas de uma Religiosa Portugueza_ (1819).[617] Meanwhile, +even before their obscure author died in the remote and beautiful +city of Beja, they had been translated into English and Italian and +had received over fifty French editions. Colonel (later Marshal) +Noël Bouton, Comte de Saint-Léger, afterwards Marquis de Chamilly +(1636-1715), accompanied the French troops sent to help Portugal +against Spain, and was in Portugal from 1665 to 1667. Marianna +Alcoforado, belonging to an old Alentejan family, was a nun in the +convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceição at Beja. Her five letters, +written between the end of 1667 and the middle of 1668 after her +desertion, in their artlessness, contradictions, and disorder, vibrate +with emotion. They are a succession of intense cries like the popular +quatrain: + + Por te amar deixei a Deus: + Ve lá que gloria perdi! + E agora vejo-me só, + Sem Deus, sem gloria, sem ti. + +Sometimes, it is true, a trace of French reason seems to mingle with +the ingenuous Portuguese sentiment, and it is almost incredible, +although of course not impossible, since _omnia vincit amor_, that the +nun should have written certain passages. From these and not on the +amazing assumption of Rousseau that a mere woman could not write so +passionately--he was ready to wager that the letters were the work of a +man[618]--one may suspect that the lover, who did not scruple to hand +over the letters to a publisher (unless he was merely guilty of showing +them to his friends), sank a little lower and edited them, adding a +phrase here and there more peculiarly pleasing to his vanity.[619] In +that case the nun actually wrote these letters, full of passion and +despair, and perhaps in French, to her French lover; but we only read +them as they were touched up for publication by another hand. + +A work which has nothing in common with these fervent love letters +except an enigmatic origin is the _Arte de Furtar_, which in part at +least probably belongs to the seventeenth century. It is a curious +and amusing treatise on the noble art of thieving in all kinds, +private and official, civil and military. Its anecdotes are racy if +not original. Two of the happiest incidents (in caps. 6 and 41) are +copied without acknowledgement from _Lazarillo de Tormes_.[620] The +author seems to have had misgivings that he had presented his subject +in too favourable a light, for he ends by assuring his reader thieves +that many tons of worldly glory are not worth an ounce of eternal +blessedness, and promises them before long another ‘more liberal +treatise on the art of acquiring true glory’. These tardy qualms did +not save his book from the Index. The first edition, purporting to +be printed at Amsterdam, bears the date 1652[621] and attributes the +work to Antonio Vieira. That attribution may be set aside. Were there +no other reasons for its rejection it would suffice to read the book +or even its title in order to be convinced that it is not from the +_veneravel penna_ of that great statesman and preacher. He might dabble +in Bandarra prophecies, but would scarcely have sunk to the picaresque +familiarities of the _Arte de Furtar_ or occupy himself with the sad +habits of innkeepers, the long stitches of tailors, or the price of +straw. It has also been attributed, without adequate ground, to Thomé +Pinheiro da Veiga (1570?-1656), the author of a lively account of the +festivities at the Spanish Court and description of Valladolid in +1605, entitled _Fastigimia_ (it mentions Don Quixote and Sancho (p. +119) but says nothing of Cervantes), and to João Pinto Ribeiro (_c._ +1590-1649), the magistrate who played a notable part in the Restoration +of 1640 and wrote various short treatises such as _Preferencia das +Letras ás Armas_ (1645); and even less plausibly to DUARTE RIBEIRO +DE MACEDO (1618?-80), statesman and diplomatist, an indifferent poet +but an excellent writer of prose and a careful although not original +historian. His halting verses and his treatises were collected in his +_Obras_ (2 vols., 1743). Of the latter the _Summa Politica_ has been +shown by Snr. Solidonio Leite[622] to be copied almost word for word +from the work of identical title by D. SEBASTIÃO CESAR DE MENESES +(†1672), Bishop of Oporto and Archbishop of Braga. Both author and book +were too well known for Ribeiro de Macedo to claim it as his own. He +seems merely to have translated it from the original Latin published at +Amsterdam in 1650, a year after the first Portuguese edition. The work +is remarkable for acute thought and clear and concise expression. A +work of a similar character is the well-written _Arte de Reinar_ (1643) +by P. ANTONIO CARVALHO DE PARADA (1595-1655). The _Tratado Analytico_ +(1715), by MANUEL RODRIGUEZ LEITÃO (_c._ 1620-91), a controversial +treatise written to prove the right of Portugal to appoint bishops, is +also the work of a good stylist. Some would say the same of one of the +best-known books of the seventeenth century, the _Vida de Dom João de +Castro_ (1651), by JACINTO FREIRE DE ANDRADE (1597-1657). The author, +born at Beja, was suspected at Madrid of nationalist inclinations, and +retired to his cure in the diocese of Viseu; after the Restoration +he refused the bishopric of Viseu. His book has often been regarded +as a model of Portuguese prose. Pompous and emphatic,[623] it may be +described as inflated Tacitus, or rather a mixture of Tacitean phrases, +conceits, and rhetorical affectation. But if as a whole it is more akin +to Castro’s garish triumph at Goa than to the scientific spirit of his +letters, it scarcely deserves the severe strictures which followed +excessive praise[624]: it might even become excellent if judiciously +pruned of antitheses and artifice.[625] The second Conde da Ericeira, +D. FERNANDO DE MENESES (1614-99), wrote a _Historia de Tangere_ (1732) +and the _Vida e Acçoens d’El Rei D. João I_ (1677), which ends with +an elaborate parallel between Julius Caesar and the Master of Avis. +Equally clear but far more artificial is the style of the third Count, +D. LUIS DE MENESES (1632-90), in the best-known historical work of the +century in Portuguese: _Historia de Portugal Restaurado_ (2 pts., 1679, +98). Its author ended his life by leaping from an upper window into the +garden of his palace on a May morning in a fit of melancholy. + +The great prose-writer of the century, ANTONIO VIEIRA (1608-97), was +born in the same year and city as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello and +spent a life as unquiet. He was not literary in the same sense as +Mello, but he has always been considered one of the great classics +of the Portuguese language. He was the son of Cristovam Vieira +Ravasco, _escrivão das devassas_ at Lisbon, but at the age of seven +he accompanied his parents to Brazil (1615) and began his education +in the Jesuit college at Bahia. In 1623, by his own ardent wish, +long opposed by his parents, he became a Jesuit novice and professed +in the following year. Before he was thirty he was Professor of +Theology in the Bahia college and a celebrated preacher, the sermons +in which he encouraged the citizens of Bahia in the war against the +Dutch being especially eloquent. In 1641 he was chosen with Padre +Simão de Vasconcellos to accompany D. Fernando de Mascarenhas, son +of the viceroy, to Europe in order to congratulate King João IV on +his accession. Vieira preached in the Royal Chapel on New Year’s +Day, 1642. Both his sermons and his conversation greatly impressed +the king, and from 1641 to the end of the reign (1656) his influence +was great although not unchallenged. They were critical years in +Portugal’s foreign policy, and Vieira, who refused a bishopric but +was appointed Court preacher, was entrusted with several important +missions--to Paris and The Hague (February-July 1646), London, Paris, +and The Hague (1647-8), and Rome (1650). In 1652 he returned to +Brazil as a missionary in Maranhão, and during two years roused the +bitter hostility of the settlers by his protection of the slaves or +rather by his opposition to slavery. In 1655 he again left Lisbon for +Maranhão,[626] and during five arduous years showed unfailing courage +and energy in dealing with natives and settlers. The latter in 1661 +attacked the mission-house and arrested and expelled the Jesuits. At +home King João, Vieira’s friend, was dead. Differences arose between +the Queen Regent supported by Vieira, and her son, and one of the first +acts of the latter on taking power into his own hands was to banish +Vieira to Oporto and later to Coimbra. Here in the spring of 1665[627] +he wrote that curious work _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), which was to +interpret Portugal’s destiny by the light of old prophecies, but of +which only the introduction (_livro anteprimeiro_) was printed. An even +stranger book, in which he had paid serious attention politically to +the prophecies of Bandarra, was denounced in 1663, and in October 1665 +Vieira was consigned to the prison of the Inquisition at Coimbra. His +sentence was not read till 1667 (December 24), and it condemned him to +seclusion in a college or convent of his Order and to perpetual silence +in matters of religion. The deposition of King Afonso VI (1667) and the +accession of his brother Pedro II altered Vieira’s prospects, and his +eloquent voice was again heard in the pulpit. After preaching before +the Court in Lent 1669 he proceeded to Rome on business of the Company +and spent six years there. He preached several times in Italian, and +Queen Christina of Sweden, who had settled in Rome in 1655, offered +him the post of preacher and confessor, which he refused. In August +1675 he returned to Lisbon, where he was coldly received by the Prince +Regent, and in 1681 retired to Brazil. In the same year he was burnt +in effigy by the mob at Coimbra. A special brief given to him by the +Pope secured his person from the attacks of the Inquisition. But even +at Bahia he was not free from troubles and intrigues. His activity +continued to the end of his long life. In 1688 he preached in Bahia +Cathedral, and was Visitor of the Province of Brazil from 1688 to 1691. +Even in 1695 we find him, although feeble and broken, writing letters +and eager to finish his _Clavis Prophetica_[628] (or _Prophetarum_), +which now lies in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris and +elsewhere. Seventy years earlier he had been entrusted by the Jesuits +with the composition of the annual Latin letters of the Company. +Vieira’s vein of caustic satire no doubt made him numerous enemies and +increased the difficulties which his advocacy of the Jews and slaves +and his fearless stand against injustice and oppression were certain to +produce. Ambitious and fond of power, he could devote himself to causes +which entailed a life of toil and poverty. An energetic if unsuccessful +diplomatist, an ingenious thinker, a statesman of far-reaching views, +he was also a fantastic dreamer, but his dreams and restlessness rarely +affected the sanity of his judgement. The works of this great writer +and extraordinary man are an inexhaustible mine of pure and vigorous +prose, at its best in his numerous _Cartas_, written in _selecta et +propria dictio, nusquam verbis indulgens sed rebus inhaerens_. A +Portuguese critic, Dias Gomes, notes his ’sustained elegance’, and +we may sometimes sigh for an interval of Mello’s familiarity or Frei +Luis de Sousa’s charm. In his famous _Sermões_ he bowed intermittently +to the taste of the time for conceit and artifice. He condemned +the practice in a celebrated sermon, but indeed a certain humorous +quaintness was not foreign to his temperament, and in the obscurity, at +least, of the _cultos_ he never indulged. When inspired by patriotism +or indignation his words soar beyond cold reason and colder conceits to +a fiery eloquence. Among writers whom he influenced was the Benedictine +FREI JOÃO DOS PRAZERES (1648-1709), of whose principal work, _O +Principe dos Patriarchas S. Bento_, or _Empresas de S. Bento_, only +the first two volumes were published. Closer imitators of Vieira were +FREI FRANCISCO DE SANTA MARIA (1653-1713), author of _O Ceo Aberto na +Terra_ (1697) and many sermons, and the Jesuit preacher ANTONIO DE SÁ +(1620-78), whose _Sermões Varios_ appeared in 1750. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[581] Bernardo de Brito, no lover of Spain, bears witness to _o favor e +benevolencia com que trata os homens doutos_. + +[582] _De Crepusculis_, Preface. Martim Afonso de Miranda later (_Tempo +de Agora_, _prologo_ to Pt. 2, 1624) writes of _a pouca curiosidade que +hoje ha acerca da lição dos liuros, como tambem o risco a que se expõem +os que escreuem_. + +[583] Menéndez y Pelayo set Mello above all except his friend Quevedo. + +[584] Mr. Edgar Prestage discovered his baptismal certificate and +established the date (1608) beyond doubt, though it is still often +given as 1611. On his mother’s side Mello was great-grandson of the +historian Duarte Nunez de Leam. + +[585] Prefatory letter to _Las tres Mvsas del Melodino_ (1649): _el +lenguaje estrangero tan poco es favorable al que compone_. + +[586] He was writing it in January 1650. + +[587] _Historia de los movimientos y separacion de Cataluña y de la +guerra_, &c. Lisboa, 1645. + +[588] On his release after four months of imprisonment the Count-Duke +Olivares said to him: _Ea, caballero, ha sido un erro, pero erro con +causa._ + +[589] The first five years were, in his own words, rigorous. In 1650 +he was removed from the _Torre Velha_ to the Lisbon _Castello_, and +thenceforth enjoyed greater liberty. He had been transferred from the +Torre de Belem to the _Torre Velha_ on the left bank of the Tagus in +1646. + +[590] The document was discovered by Dr. Braga and published in his _Os +Seiscentistas_ (1916), p. 339. + +[591] _Approbatio of Cartas_, Roma, 1664. + +[592] A copy of this rare and curious work exists in the Lisbon +Biblioteca Nacional (_Res._ 264 v.). It contains 71 ff. divided into +four parts. The author, in his apophthegms on the character of women, +quotes the classics widely, and refers to the Uthopia [so] of Sir +Thomas More and to _Celestina_. + +[593] _Relaçam_, 1842 ed., p. 233. + +[594] His digressions are methodical: _por este modo de historiar (que +é aquelle que eu desejo ler) pretendo escrever sempre_ (_Epan._ ii). In +_Epan._ i he says: _Refiro, pode ser com demasia, todos os accidentes +deste negocio._ + +[595] He re-wrote this _Epanaphora_ twice, the first two versions +having been lost. + +[596] Cf. _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3), 1900 ed., p. 89: _cada +qual desde o logar em que está acha uma linha muito junto de si que é o +caminho por onde pode ir a Deus_. + +[597] Cf. _Hospital das Lettras_ (_Ap. Dial._ 4), 1900 ed., p. 114: +_por falta de cuidar cada um em se aproveitar deste mundo o que delle +lhe toca, o lançam todos a perder todos juntos do modo que vemos_. + +[598] _Relogios Fallantes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 1). + +[599] _Escriptorio Avarento_ (_Ap. Dial._ 2). + +[600] _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3). + +[601] Cf. the backwoodsman described by Couto as _algum fidalgo criado +lá na Beira que nunca vio o Rei_ (_Dialogo do Sold. Prat._, p. 31). + +[602] Cf. _Aulegrafia_ (1619), f. 85 v.: _emendar a Natureza_. + +[603] Edgar Prestage, _Esboço_, pp. 128-9. + +[604] Like another equally brilliant soldier historian, Napier, he +rarely spells a foreign word aright. Cf. _Epanaphoras_, p. 204: _A este +nome_ Milord _corresponde no estado feminil o nome_ Léde. Falmouth, +where he had actually been, becomes Valmud, the Isle of Wight Huyt, +Whitehall Huythal, the Earl of Northumberland Notaborlan (Brito has +Northũbria). + +[605] A more personal and picaresque satirist was D. THOMAS DE NORONHA +(†1651), whose works were collected by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in +his _Subsidios_, vol. ii: _Poesias Ineditas de D. Thomás de Noronha_ +(Coimbra, 1899). The satiric poem _Os Ratos da Inquisição_ by ANTONIO +SERRÃO DE CASTRO (1610-85) was first published by Castello Branco in +1883. + +[606] Vol. iii contains a poem by Jacinto Freire de Andrade with the +same title. + +[607] _Fenix Ren._ ii. 406; iii. 225; v. 376. + +[608] Hers is the deplorable pun of a superior superior: + + Que se Prior sois agora + Sempre fostes suprior. + + +[609] The real title of the first (1623) edition is _Dos Novissimos +de Dom Francisco Rolim de Moura_. Adam is conducted by his son Abel +through Hell and comforted by a vision of Paradise. As he is the first +man and only Abel has died, he must forgo Dante’s pleasure in meeting +his personal enemies there, but there is something perhaps even more +awful in the thought of the emptiness of these _infinitos logares_ +(iii. 48). Virgil’s _Facilis descensus_, &c., is translated in two +lines of great badness: _Onde descer he cousa tão factivel Quanto +tornar atraz tem de impossivel_ (iii. 36). + +[610] _Nihil tamen eo vivente excussum nisi Solitudines (hoc est +Saudades)_, says the _Theatrum_. + +[611] e.g. (x. 126): + + Hũa montanha e serra inhabitada + Se erguia ao ar, em cuja corpulenta + Espalda.... + + +[612] ii. 30-49: + + Do undoso leito, donde repousava + O mar, &c. + + +[613] xii. 79: _Sou fragil lenho._ + +[614] In the storm in canto 2 (_Eis que o ceo de improuiso se +escurece_) he seems to have realized that Camões’ description could not +be improved upon. + +[615] Numerous other academies of the same kind came into being in +this and the first half of the next century. Most of their members now +belong to the (Brazilian) _Academia dos Esquecidos_--the Forgotten. + +[616] The slip in the second letter by which in the French version not +the Beja Mertola Gate but Mertola itself is seen from the convent, does +not favour this theory, which recently has been sustained by the Conde +de Sabugosa. This passage is held to be a convincing proof, were such +proof needed, of the genuineness of the letters. It is rather a proof +of the reality of the love intrigue than of the nun’s authorship. If +Chamilly, for the edification of his vanity, were fabricating such a +letter, what more likely than that he should wish to add his note of +local colour and remembered vaguely the word Mertola in connexion with +the view from the convent terrace? What he could scarcely have invented +or expressed is the real depth of feeling. + +[617] Seven spurious letters, and subsequently others, were added in +many of the editions. Filinto Elysio translated the twelve. + +[618] _Je parierais tout au monde que les Lettres portugaises ont été +écrites par un homme._ + +[619] e.g. ‘You told me frankly that you were in love with a lady in +your own country’ (letter 2). ‘Were you not ever the first to leave +for the front, the last to return?’ (5). ‘My passion increases every +instant’ (4). ‘I do not repent having adored you. I am glad that you +betrayed me’ (3). + +[620] Ed. H. Butler Clarke (1897), pp. 17-18 and 65-7. + +[621] The 1652 edition speaks of _coroneis_ (p. 277) who, it has been +argued, were called _mestres de campo_ till 1708 (Goes, however, +in his _Cron. de D. Manuel_, 1619 ed., f. 213, has _os fez todos +quatro coroneis de mil homens_; cf. Gil Vicente, i. 234: _Corregedor, +coronel_); it refers (p. 393) to João IV as still alive (†1656): _Que +Deos guarde e prospere_. It would appear to have been written at two +periods, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unless the +passages implying the earlier date are as deliberately misleading as +the 1652 title-page. + +[622] _Classicos Esquecidos_ (Rio de Janeiro, 1915). Duarte de Macedo +in his dedicatory letter says: ‘I have taken this _Summa Politica_ from +the Latin and Italian languages.’ ‘I do not offer it as my own, because +I restore it to your Highness as yours’, so that he had armed himself +against such charges of plagiarism. + +[623] It loses nothing in Sir Peter Wyche’s translation. Cf. the +account of Castro’s first arrival at Goa: ‘When the entry was to be, +the two Governours were in a Faluque with gilded Oars, and an awning +of divers-coloured silks; the Castles and Ships entertain’d ’em with +the horrour of reiterated shootings, the Vivas and expectation of the +common people did without any cunning flatter the new Government, &c.’ + +[624] _Cada clausula he filha da eloquencia mats sublime_, &c. (Barbosa +Machado). + +[625] e.g. 1759 ed., p. 342: _cujas ruinas serião de sua fama os +elogios maiores_ would be straightened out from Latin into Portuguese: +_serião os maiores elogios de sua fama_. + +[626] On his homeward voyage in 1654 he had suffered from a violent +storm, and was only saved by a Dutch pirate who landed the passengers +of the Portuguese ship at the Ilha Graciosa without their belongings. + +[627] _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 93. + +[628] See letters from Bahia, July 22, 1695. + + + + + V + + 1706-1816 + + + + + _The Eighteenth Century_ + + +The eighteenth century did not kill literature in Portugal any more +than in other countries, but poetry had lost its lyrism, and under +the influence of French and English writers assumed a scientific, +philosophical, or utilitarian character. No mighty genius arose in +Portuguese literature at the bidding of João V (1706-50), but the +king’s lavish patronage gave an impulse, and he founded the _Academia +Real de Historia_ in 1720. A crop of scholars and poets followed +in the second half of the century, so that it was not without some +unfairness that Giuseppe Baretti wrote of the Portuguese in 1760 that +_di letteratura non hanno punto fama d’essere soverchio ghiotti ... +quel poco que scrivono, sia in prosa sia in verso, è tutto panciuto +e pettoruto_.[629] It was the age of Arcadias: the famous _Arcadia +Ulyssiponense_[630] (1756-74) and the _Nova Arcadia_ founded in 1790 +(i. e. precisely a century after the Italian _Arcadia_). All the +poets of the century belonged to one or other of these societies or +made their mark as _dissidentes_ from them. One of the founders of +the _Nova Arcadia_, FRANCISCO JOAQUIM BINGRE (1763-1856), lived on +into the middle of the nineteenth century, and a few of his poems +were collected under the title _O Moribundo Cysne do Vouga_ (1850). +A typical eighteenth-century poet is D. FRANCISCO XAVIER DE MENESES +(1673-1743), fourth Conde da Ericeira, who in turning to literature +was but following the traditions of his family. A staunch defender of +pure Portuguese against those who, he said, disfigure and corrupt the +language by the introduction of foreign words and phrases, he wrote a +large number of works in prose and in verse. The best known of them is +his _Henriqueida_ (1741), a heroic poem on the conquest of Portugal by +Count Henry in twelve long cantos of prosaic _oitavas_. It may contain +lines more inspiring than these: + + E a contramina fabricou Roberto, + Da mina conhecendo o lugar certo, + +but they do not really differ greatly from the rest of the poem. The +large quantity of poetry still written at the beginning of the century +had met with severe criticism in Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina’s _Seram +Politico_. He slyly calls the _egloga campestre_ ‘_poesia ervada_’. The +objects of the _Arcadia_ of 1756 were to free Portuguese literature +from foreign influences and restore the purity of the language. If +to some extent it merely substituted French or Italian influence for +Spanish, its cry was also back to the classics and to the Portuguese +_quinhentistas_. As to the language its services were invaluable, +for at a time when French influence was great in Portugal and in the +rest of Europe it checked the use of gallicisms; as to literature the +attempt to write poetry on an ordered plan was perhaps foredoomed to +failure: it plodded along in an artificial atmosphere of Roman gods and +antiquities, and became hidebound in imitation of the Horatian ode. + +PEDRO ANTONIO CORRÊA GARÇÃO (1724-72), one of the first members +and most prominent poets of the _Arcadia_, did good service in his +determined efforts to deliver his country’s literature from foreign +imitations and the false affectation of the time, and to revert to the +classics, Greek, Roman, and Portuguese. He even prophesied that Gil +Vicente’s day would come. His master was Horace, _grande Horacio_, and +his Horatian odes, if they show no remarkable lyrical gift, have a dry +native flavour in the purity of their language. He was also successful +in reviving the cultivation of blank verse. There is a fine sound in +some of the sonnets in which he sings Marilia, Lydia, Belisa, Maria, +Nise, writes to a friend to ask for a doubloon or for Spanish tobacco, +sends birthday congratulations or laughs at a bald priest: the themes +are mostly of this level. His satirical vein is marked in his two short +comedies in blank verse, _Theatro Novo_, a skit on the drama then in +vogue, and _Assemblêa ou Partida_, in which certain Lisbon types are +ridiculed and which contains the famous and much overpraised _Cantata +de Dido_. Corrêa Garção’s days ended tragically in prison. The motive +of his arrest is not clear. Tradition wavers between a love intrigue +and political reasons,[631] and declares that the Marques de Pombal, +whom he had offended, signed the order for his release on the very day +of the poet’s death after eighteen months of imprisonment. + +Pombal was effusively praised by DOMINGOS DOS REIS QUITA (1728-70), +a Lisbon hairdresser who wrote bucolic poetry melodiously, but with +perhaps even less originality than we have learnt to expect in that +kind since the time when Virgil mistranslated Theocritus. The influence +of Bernardez and Camões is clear,[632] in many passages too clear, +and he had undoubtedly caught something of their skill and harmony +in technique. But his poems leave the impression that he had no real +feeling for the rustic life which they describe; no doubt he was more +at home with the scissors than with the faithful Melampus or the +nymphs and shepherd’s pipe. When he is relating an event, such as the +earthquake of 1755, which touched him nearly, his ready flow of verse +deserts him, in spite of his skill in improvisation,[633] although the +sonnet written on the same occasion, _Por castigar, Senhor_, stands out +with a certain majesty from most of his other sonnets, which are mere +slices of eclogue. If his mellifluous idylls show no individuality, his +return to the classic poets of Portugal was, as with other Arcadian +poets, a welcome change from the Spanish influence, the _mao uso_, as +he calls it, of ‘rude strangers from the Manzanares’ (Eclogue 6). His +tragedies and pastoral drama _Licore_ are not more original. One of +his tragedies, _Inés de Castro_, suggested that of João Baptista Gomes +(†1813), _Nova Castro_, which had a great vogue in its day but is now +scarcely more remembered than _Osmia_ (1788), a tragedy of which the +blank verse has vigour, although it is often scarcely distinguishable +from prose. This play, published anonymously, was long attributed to +Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo (1754-1817), but its real author was D. +Theresa de Mello Breyner, Condessa de Vimieiro, who married her cousin, +the fourth Count, in 1767. + +It was a cruel kindness to edit the works of ANTONIO DINIZ DA CRUZ E +SILVA (1731-99) in six volumes, for, despite the fame of his high-flown +Pindaric odes, his three centuries of sonnets and his other lyrics +are not of conspicuous merit and are often imitative. Having nothing +to say, _Elpino Nonacriense_, like too many of the Arcadian poets, +said it at inordinate length. _Que enorme confusão!_ he exclaims in an +elegy on the Lisbon earthquake, and most of his poems are on a like +plane of thought and expression. The son of a _Sargento Môr_,[634] he +was born at Lisbon, and after studying law at Coimbra was appointed a +judge at Castello de Vide. With Manuel Nicolau Esteves Negrão (†1824) +and Theotonio Gomes de Carvalho (†1800) he founded the _Arcadia +Ulyssiponense_, of which he drew up the statutes in September 1756. +The first aim of these early Arcadians was, as we have noticed, to +break the shackles of Spanish influence and _gongorismo_, which was, +indeed, on the wane in the land of its birth. Diniz da Cruz’ own poems +were written in good idiomatic Portuguese. In _O Hyssope_ he satirizes +with telling vigour the use of gallicisms, and his comedy _O Falso +Heroismo_ is thoroughly Portuguese in subject and treatment. From +1764 to 1774 he was stationed at Elvas, and here a quarrel between +the bishop, D. Lourenço de Lancastre, and the dean, D. José Carlos de +Lara, furnished him with the subject of his celebrated mock-heroic poem +_O Hyssope_. The legend runs that he was summoned to read his satire +to the all-powerful Pombal in the presence of the infuriated bishop, +and that the poem proved too much for the gravity of the minister, +who appointed him a judge at Rio de Janeiro (1776). Thence he was +transferred to Oporto (1787), but in 1790 was again appointed to Rio de +Janeiro, and showed himself merciless in sentencing the Brazilian poets +Claudio Manuel da Costa, Gonzaga, and Ignacio José de Alvarengo Peixoto +(1748-93), accused of conspiring to secure the independence of their +country. _O Hyssope_ was first published in 1802, three years after +the author’s death. The idea of the poem was derived from Boileau’s +_Le Lutrin_. Boileau would have been horrified by its eight cantos of +slovenly and monotonous blank verse, which often scarcely rises above +prose; but as a satire on the times and in its grotesque portraiture +of prelate and lawyer and notary it is sometimes irresistibly comic. +The mock-heroic _Benteida_, written by ALEXANDRE ANTONIO DE LIMA of +Lisbon (1699-_c._ 1760?) and published fifty years before _O Hyssope_, +consisted of three cantos of _oitavas_. Two editions appeared in +1752, published at ‘Constantinople’ as written by ‘Andronio Meliante +Laxaed’. Pedro de Azevedo Tojal (†1742) had used the same metre for his +_Foguetario_ (1729). The burlesque poem _O Reino da Estupidez_ (1819), +written in four cantos of easily-flowing blank verse by the Brazilians +Francisco de Mello Franco (1757-1823) and José Bonifacio de Andrade e +Silva (1763-1838), is professedly an imitation of _aquelle activo e +discreto Diniz na Hyssopaïda_, only the butt here is not the Chapter of +Elvas but the professors of Coimbra University. + +Like the less celebrated poet son of an Alentejan painter, JOSÉ +ANASTASIO DA CUNHA (1744-87), artillery officer, mathematician, +Professor of Geometry at Coimbra, who translated Pope and Voltaire and +had milk in his tea and buttered toast on a fast-day, FRANCISCO MANUEL +DO NASCIMENTO (1734-1819), better known as _Filinto Elysio_,[635] +was denounced to the Inquisition. His thrilling escape in the year +of Cunha’s condemnation for apostasy and heresy (1778) brought him +almost as much fame as his poems. The son of a Lisbon lighterman and +a humble _varina_,[636] he was accused of not believing in the Flood +and of throwing ridicule on the doctrine of original sin, and by +another witness of being simply an atheist. He succeeded in locking +up in his own rooms the official sent to arrest him early on the 4th +of July, hid for eleven days in Lisbon, and then, disguised as a poor +man carrying a load of oranges, escaped on a boat bound for Havre. Had +this persecution come earlier, the disquieting atmosphere of Paris, +into which he was now transplanted and where, except for a few years +at The Hague, he lived for the rest of his life, might have given some +originality to his talent. But his mind and poetic style were already +fixed, and through every political disturbance he continued his steady +flow of Horatian odes and similar artificial verse. He wrote for +seventy years (Lamartine notes the _précoces faveurs_ of his muse), +and at the age of sixty-four calculated that he had already composed +730,000 lines, probably too modest an estimate. He received by royal +decree an amnesty and the restoration of his property, but never +returned to Portugal. His influence on younger Portuguese poets was +nevertheless great. Bocage, when his verses were praised by the older +poet, exclaimed: + + Filinto, o gran cantor, prezou meus versos + ... Posteridade, és minha! + +His influence was bad and good. It encouraged a dry and artificial +classicism, but also careful versification in pure Portuguese. Although +the poems of Lamartine’s _divin Manuel_ are no longer even by his +countrymen held to be divine, they may be read with satisfaction +by virtue of their indigenous expressions and a hundred and one +allusions to popular traditions. It was by these characteristics +that he expressed his revolt from the _Arcadia_. Half a long life +spent in Paris was unable to imbue Filinto with the _mimo de fallar +luso-gallico_, against which he vigorously protested to the end. This +purity of style gives excellence to the many translations which he was +obliged to write for a bare livelihood, and his native land is present +even in his closest imitations of Horace (Falernian becomes _louro +Carcavellos_). Unfortunately his contemporaries and successors were not +always so discreet. + +The genial satirist NICOLAU TOLENTINO (1741-1811), son of a Lisbon +advocate, after studying law at Coimbra spent some years teaching +rhetoric to the raw youth (_bisonhos rapazes_) of Lisbon. He was +perpetually discontented with his lot or ready to profess himself so. +‘Long years have I already spent in begging,’ he says candidly, ‘and +shall perhaps pass my whole life in the same way.’ He harps on his +poverty; the kitchen, he complains, is the coolest room in his house. +In 1781 he obtained a comfortable post in the civil service, his poems +were printed for him in two volumes twenty years later, he would +receive a pheasant from one friend, a Sunday dinner of turkey from +another, he acknowledges a thousand benefits, and still begs on. Before +he had had time to grow rich the habit had become incurable. His was no +lyrical gift, but he imitated with success the _quintilhas_ of Sá de +Miranda,[637] in which much of his work is composed (_O Bilhar_ is in +_oitavas_). He writes naturally; his style is thoroughly Portuguese, +often prosaic. His satire, repressed for personal reasons rather than +from any failure of wit or talent, reducible to silence by the gift of +a pheasant, lacks independence and thought, but sheds a gentle light +on the manners of the time--on the travelled coxcomb who returns to +Portugal affecting almost to have forgotten Portuguese, or the rich +nun who knows by heart whole volumes of the _Fenix Renascida_--and one +or two of his entertaining sonnets are likely to endure. The _Obras +Poeticas_ of the MARQUESA DE ALORNA (1750-1839), in Arcadia _Alcippe_, +are now more often praised than read, but her poetry is scarcely +inferior to that of many even more celebrated writers of the time. As a +child she defied the anger of the Marques de Pombal. She was detained +with her sister Maria and her mother D. Leonor de Almeida in the +convent of Chellas from the age of eight till the death of King José +(1777). Two years later she married the Count of Oeynhausen, who became +minister at Vienna in 1780. After his death in 1793 she lived partly +in England, but spent the last twenty-five years of her life in the +neighbourhood of Lisbon, and exercised considerable influence on young +writers--not Garrett but Bocage, and especially Herculano--and thus +with Macedo formed a link between the poets of the _Arcadia_ and the +nineteenth century. Her works contain over 2,000 pages of verse. There +are sonnets and odes, eclogues, elegies, epistles, translations or +paraphrases of Homer, Horace, Claudian (_De raptu Proserpinae_), Pope +(_Essay on Criticism_), Wieland, Thomson’s _Seasons_, Goldsmith, Gray, +Lamartine, and the Psalms. There is a long poem on botany which notices +more than a hundred kinds of scented geranium, and indeed the range +of her subjects is very wide, from May fireflies to the ‘barbarous +climate’ of England, from Leibniz to the ascent of Robertson in a +balloon. Classical allusions are everywhere; she even drags in Cocytus +in a sonnet on the death of her infant son. At the same time we have a +constant sense of high ideals and love of liberty. + +The compositions of the ‘pale, limber, odd-looking young man’, which +‘thrilled and agitated’ William Beckford in 1787, now scarcely move +us, vanished the fire and glow which BOCAGE (1765-1805) brought to his +improvisations. For the reader they are for the most part _carboni +spenti_. His parents were a Portuguese judge and the daughter of a +French vice-admiral in the Portuguese Navy, and he enlisted in an +infantry regiment in the town of his birth, Setubal, in 1779. Ten +years later he deserted at Damão, and after wandering in China reached +Macao and thence Goa, which he still found a stepmother to poets, and +Lisbon. Here he continued to live a dissipated life, till in 1797 his +revolutionary opinions and his poem _A Pavorosa Illusão da Eternidade_ +brought him first to the Limoeiro and then for a few months to the +prison of the Inquisition. His unstable romantic spirit was influenced +as much by the French Revolution during the latter years of his life +as by the wish in his youth to become a second Camões, but he wrote an +elegy on the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette, which he described +as ‘a crime from Hell’. He supported life during his last years +principally by translation. He was himself his chief enemy, and he +was also the victim of the critics who applauded his improvisations +until he no longer distinguished between poetry and prose, sense and +absurdity. No better Portuguese pendant to the celebrated line of +blank verse ‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman’ will be found than that in +one of Bocage’s elegies: _Carpido objecto meu, carpido objecto_. The +undoubted talent of _Elmano Sadino_, as he was in Arcadia, was thus +frittered away in occasional verse in which his fecund gift of satire +found expression, and a great poet was lost to Portuguese literature. +His impromptu sallies against rival poets, such as Macedo, brought him +contemporary fame, but in some of his poems, especially the sonnets, +we have proof of a possibility of greater things. No doubt his work +is disfigured by pompous phrases[638] and hollow classical allusions. +He did not always rise above the bad taste of the period; he was +unable to concentrate his talent or separate prosaic from poetical +subjects. Thus he sang of an ascent in a _balão aerostatico_ in 1794, +and saw in the _vil mosquito_ a proof of the existence of God. But +his was nevertheless a very real and above all a very Portuguese +inspiration,[639] and some of his sonnets have force and grandeur +and hover on the fringes of beauty, especially when they voice his +unaffected enthusiasm for Portugal’s past greatness and heroes. + +One of the foremost poets of the _Nova Arcadia_ was BELCHIOR MANUEL +CURVO SEMEDO (1766-1838), two volumes of whose _Composições Poeticas_ +appeared in 1803. A crowd of secondary lights revolved round the great +planets of the two _Arcadias_. The poems of _Alfeno Cynthio_, DOMINGOS +MAXIMIANO TORRES (1748-1810), are not without vigour (_Versos_, 1791). +Their unfortunate author died a political prisoner at Trafaria. The gay +and lively Abbade of Jazente, PAULINO ANTONIO CABRAL[640] (1719-89), +was the son of an Oporto doctor, and was parish priest at Jazente +(near Amarante) from 1753 to 1784. His poems are still read for their +pleasant satire, but he was careless of literary fame. Some of the +sonnets of both these writers deserve not to be forgotten. JOÃO +XAVIER DE MATTOS (†1789), a fourth edition of whose _Rimas_ appeared +in the year after his death, is now remembered chiefly for some of his +sonnets, as that beginning _Poz-se o sol_, with its melancholy charm. +He was a true but not a great or original poet. Born at Oporto, the son +of a Brazilian father and a Portuguese mother, THOMAS ANTONIO GONZAGA +(1744-1807?) was a judge at Bahia when he was accused of taking part +in the Republican conspiracy of Minas Geraes (1789), and after three +years’ imprisonment was deported (1792) to Mozambique, where he died +several years after his sentence had expired. Some of his Horatian and +Anacreontic _lyras_ in many metres, addressed to Marilia and collected +under the title _A Marilia de Dirceo_ (_Dirceo_ being his Arcadian +name), are graceful lyrics of an idyllic character. Of the other poets +implicated in the conspiracy, CLAUDIO MANUEL DA COSTA (1729-69), who +was found dead in his prison cell, was an Arcadian poet of the Italian +school, and shows a gentle love of Nature in his sonnets. Of the +hundred sonnets printed in his _Obras_ (1768) some are in Italian. +The eclogues number twenty. In Brazil at this time, as earlier in +Portugal, patriotism if not poetry suggested epics. JOSÉ BASILIO DA +GAMA (1740-95), who spent the greater part of his life in Portugal and +died at Lisbon, wrote _O Uraguay_ (1769) in five cantos of prosaic +blank verse--an account of the struggle between Portuguese and Indians. +JOSÉ DE SANTA RITA DURÃO (_c._ 1720-84), Doctor in Theology (Coimbra), +composed an epic entitled _Caramurú_ (1781) on the discovery of Bahia +in the sixteenth century by Diogo Alvarez Corrêa. This poem in ten +cantos of _oitavas_ is inferior to _O Uraguay_, but it contains some +interesting notes on the country and the customs of Brazil.[641] + +If a great poet lurked in Bocage, he had certainly never existed in +Bocage’s contemporary and rival in Arcadia, JOSÉ AGOSTINHO DE MACEDO +(1761-1831), who lived to be confronted by an even more formidable +adversary in his old age, Almeida Garrett. (In one of his fierce +political letters he prays that either he or Garrett may be sent to +the galleys.) Born at Beja, he took the vows as an Augustinian monk +at Lisbon in 1778. The future champion of law and order provoked the +displeasure of his superiors at Lisbon, Evora, Coimbra, Braga, Torres +Vedras, by his pranks and mutinies, his boisterous and dissipated +life. Methodical theft of books was one of his minor failings. At +last after fourteen years, his Order, tired of transferring and +imprisoning, formally expelled the delinquent in 1792. He, however, +obtained recognition as a secular priest, won fame as a preacher, and +for the next forty years wrote in verse and prose with an amazing +copiousness.[642] He is said to have composed a hundred Anacreontic +odes in three days: _Lyra Anacreontica_ (1819). During the last three +years of his life, after he had, as he said, capitulated to the +doctors, he continued to write, although in great pain. His financial +circumstances did not require this effort. His works had brought him +considerable sums, he had become Court preacher and chronicler, and had +many friends in high places, including Dom Miguel himself. His vanity +was soothed, the unfrocked Augustinian had won the regard of princes. +But to this learned[643] and splenetic priest virulent denunciation of +his literary and political opponents had become a necessity, and he was +at work on the twenty-seventh number of his periodical _O Desengano_ +a fortnight before his death. He was spared the mortification of +seeing his enemies triumph in 1832. His character was not amiable, +and a large part of his life was unedifying, but there is something +fine in his unfailing energy, for by sheer energy he imposed himself, +and his self-conceit was so colossal as to be virtually innocuous, +while his real horror of revolution, a horror based on experience, +was expressed with persistency and courage. He seems to have been +quite honest in the belief that the poems of Homer, which he could +not read in the original, were worthless,[644] and that his own _O +Oriente_ was a great epic. His utilitarian conception of literature +was inevitably fatal to his verse. He wished to extend the boundaries +of poetry.[645] He wrote a long poem--four cantos of blank verse--on +_Newton_ (1813), recast and increased to 3,560 lines under the title +_Viagem Extatica ao Templo da Sabedoria_ (1830), because Newton had +conferred greater benefits on humanity than many a great conqueror (yet +so may a dentist). He composed a long poem, _Gama_ (1811), re-written +as _O Oriente_ (1814),[646] to show how Camões should have written +_Os Lusiadas_. His poem is no doubt more correct; it observes all the +rules, but unfortunately it lacks genius and is as dull and turgid +as Macedo’s other verse. A good word for the sea in Portuguese is +_mar_; the poets often call it _oceano_, Camões had ventured to name +it _o falso argento_, _o liquido estanho_, _o fundo aquoso_, _o humido +elemento_; with Macedo it becomes _o tumido elemento_ (or perhaps +he adopted the phrase from _Caramurú_, in which it occurs). We can +scarcely blame Bocage for labelling him _tumido versista_.[647] Among +his other philosophical poems are _Contemplação da Natureza_ (1801), +_A Meditação_ (1813), _A Natureza_ (1846), and _A Creação_ (1865), +now not more often read than his many odes and other verse. The most +scandalous of his satires is _Os Burros_ (1827), in blank verse, in +which he lavishly and outrageously insults nearly all the writers of +the time, and which may have been suggested by Juan Pablo Forner’s _El +Asno Erudito_ (1782). Like his poems, his dramatic works usually have +some ulterior object; their purpose is not less practical than his +pamphlets against _Os Sebastianistas_ (1810) or _Os Jesuitas_ (1830): +behind Ezelino and Beatriz in his tragedy _Branca de Rossi_ (1819) loom +Napoleon and Joséphine, and the prose comedy _A Impostura Castigada_ +(1822) is an attack upon the doctors. The fact is that Macedo was +essentially not a poet or a dramatist or a philosopher, but a forcible +and eloquent pamphleteer. His philosophical letters and treatises, _A +Verdade_ (1814), _O Homem_ (1815), _Demonstração da Existencia de +Deos_ (1816), _Cartas filosoficas a Attico_ (1815), are at their best +not when he is developing a train of scientific thought but when he is +arguing _ad hominem_; and his literary criticism in _Motim Literario_ +(1811) is primarily personal. As a critic militant he has his merits, +and he is pleasantly patriotic in denouncing the glamour of _missangas +estranjeiras_. But it is in his political periodicals, pamphlets, and +letters, _Cartas_ (1821), _Cartas_ (1827), _Tripa virada_ (1823), +_Tripa por uma vez_ (1823), _A Besta Esfolhada_ (1828-31), _O +Desengano_ (September 1830-September 1831), that he puts forth all his +spice and venom. Ponderous and angry like a lesser Samuel Johnson, he +bullies and crushes his opponents in the raciest vernacular. He may be +unscrupulous in argument, but his idiomatic and vigorous prose will +always be read with pleasure. + +Macedo’s dramatic works were neither better nor worse than those of +other playwrights of the time. It was the professed object of MANUEL +DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-1801) to ‘write plays morally and dramatically +correct’. The effect of this didacticism in the fourteen volumes of his +_Theatro_ (1804-15) is disastrous. He wrote in prose and verse, but the +plays in ordinary prose are to be preferred, since in the others, like +M. Jourdain, he made _de la prose sans le savoir_. He wrote comedies, +and tragedies in which he is involuntarily comic. Even in _Ignez_ he +keeps the even tenor of his dullness, and he warns the reader in a +preface that his Inés is not to be considered beautiful since she was +probably over thirty, and that her and Pedro’s passion had had time +to cool.[648] There is more life in the plays written in a medley +of prose and verse by ANTONIO JOSÉ DA SILVA (1705-39), whom Southey +considered ‘the best of their dramatic writers’, but it is doubtful +whether they would have received any attention in the nineteenth and +twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of their author’s +life. He was born at Rio de Janeiro, the son of Portuguese Jews, +his mother had been arrested by order of the Inquisition as early as +1712, and the whole family came to Lisbon, where the father practised +successfully as a lawyer. In 1726 his mother was re-arrested, and this +time Antonio José with her. He was released after suffering torture and +publicly abjuring Jewish doctrines in an _auto da fé_. Eleven years +later, after studying at Coimbra and following his father’s profession +in Lisbon, he was again arrested, with his wife--he had married his +cousin despite the dangerous fact that her mother had been burnt and +she herself imprisoned by the Inquisition--and on October 18, 1739, he +was first strangled and then burnt in an _auto da fé_ at Lisbon. For +some years (1733-8) before his death the people of Lisbon had admired +the plays of ‘the Jew’, as they called him, at the _Theatro do Bairro +Alto_. Of the eight plays that have survived in print it must be said +that they are for the most part very purposeless and ineffective. He +attracted his audience sometimes by wit, more often by sheer farcical +absurdity; the constant plays on words, the meaningless snatches of +verse interpolated, do not increase the interest, which flags on every +page because the author has not the slightest power of concentration. +The action at least is quick and varied; it shows Silva’s inventive +talent and explains the popularity of his _galhofeiras comedias_,[649] +however much it may weary the reader. His plays with classical +subjects are especially cold and dull, _A Ninfa Syringa ou Amores de +Pan e Syringa_,[650] _Os Encantos de Medea_,[651] _Esopaida_,[651] +_Amphitrião_,[651] _As Variedades de Proteo_,[652] _Laberinto de +Creta_.[652] His best play, _Guerras do Alecrim e Mangerona_ (1737), +contains some elements of character-drawing and describes the devices +of the starving gentlemen D. Gilvaz and D. Fuas to obtain rich wives at +the expense of miserly father and country cousin. The action consists +in a bewildering succession of disguises, the scene (Pt. ii, Sc. 5) +in which Gilvaz and Fuas doctor their stolid rival and ridicule the +medical profession has humour but shows the usual inability to end +before the reader’s patience has been long exhausted. In the _Vida do +Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha_ (1733) Silva made bold to dramatize +_Don Quixote_ in a series of scenes not over-skilfully connected. Of +his own invention there is a comical scene (Pt. i, Sc. 8), in which +Don Quixote is harassed by doubts as to whether the enchanters have +not transformed Dulcinea into Sancho Panza: he begins to see a certain +likeness; but most of the scenes are directly copied and here become +signally insipid, as that of Sancho’s judgements (ii. 4), or that of +the lion (i. 5), which is as far removed from Cervantes as the sorry +lions of the Alhambra at Granada from those in Trafalgar Square. +The drama of NICOLAU LUIS, whose life is obscure but whose name was +possibly Nicolau Luis da Silva, belongs to the _literatura de cordel_, +popular plays imitated and often directly translated from the Spanish +and Italian and acted with great applause in the eighteenth century +at Lisbon. Most of them were published without the author’s name, and +although it is believed that he wrote over one-third of the numerous +_comedias de cordel_ of the century[653] only a few, as _O Capitão +Belisario_ (1781) and _O Conde Alarcos_ (1788), can be definitely +assigned to him, a fact which incidentally bears witness to his lack of +individuality. His best-known tragedy is _D. Ignez de Castro_ (1772), +an imitation of _Reinar después de morir_ by Luis Velez de Guevara +(1579-1644). + +In prose it was not an age of great writers, but of research and +learning. The Lisbon _Academia Real das Sciencias_,[654] founded by +the Duque de Lafões, met for the first time in 1780, and was not slow +in inaugurating the work which has won for it the gratitude of all who +care for the language or literature of Portugal. D. ANTONIO CAETANO +DE SOUSA (1674-1759) had published his valuable _Provas da Historia +Genealogica_ (1739-48) in seven volumes, and the learned _curé_ of +Santo Adrião de Sever, DIOGO BARBOSA MACHADO (1682-1772), had spent +a long life in bibliographical study and compiled his indispensable +and magnificent _Bibliotheca Lusitana_ (1741-59) with a generous +inaccuracy which is attractive in the minute pedantry of a later age. +The scarcely less famous _Vocabulario Portuguez_ of RAPHAEL BLUTEAU +(1638-1734), who was born of French parents in London but spent over +fifty years in Portugal, began to appear in 1712. The work of research +was now carried on, among others by FRANCISCO JOSÉ FREIRE (1719-73); +FREI JOAQUIM DE SANTA ROSA DE VITERBO (1744-1822); the librarian +ANTONIO RIBEIRO DOS SANTOS (1745-1818); D. FRANCISCO ALEXANDRE LOBO +(1763-1844), Bishop of Viseu; CARDINAL SARAIVA (1766-1845), Patriarch +of Lisbon; and FREI FORTUNATO DE S. BOAVENTURA (1778-1844). Critics of +poetry were LUIS ANTONIO VERNEY (1713-92), Archdeacon of Evora, ‘El +Barbadiño’, whose criticisms in his _Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar_ (2 +vols., 1746) are severe, even harsh; FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES (1745-95), +whom Herculano called _o nosso celebre critico_, and who was indeed a +better critic than poet, as may be seen in the notes and poems of his +_Obras Poeticas_ (1799); and MIGUEL DE COUTO GUERREIRO (_c._ 1720-93), +who showed good sense in the twenty-six rhymed rules of his _Tratado da +Versificaçam Portugueza_ (1784). + +The best-known work of the learned son of a Lisbon blacksmith who +became the first Bishop of Beja and Archbishop of Evora, MANUEL DO +CENACULO VILLAS-BOAS (1724-1814), is his _Cuidados Litterarios_ (1791). +THEODORO DE ALMEIDA (1722-1804), an erudite and voluminous writer, one +of the original members of the Academy of Sciences, was more ambitious. +In _O Feliz Independente do Mundo e da Fortuna_ in twenty-four books (3 +vols., 1779), he took Fénelon’s _Télémaque_ for his model and sought +to combine the gall of instruction with the honey of entertainment. +He wrote it first (_uma boa parte_) in rhyme, then turned to blank +verse, but, still dissatisfied, finally adopted prose, taking care, +however, he says, that it should not degenerate into a novel. The +book had a wide vogue, but is quite unreadable. One may be thankful +that it was not written in verse like that of his _Lisboa Destruida_ +(1803), an account of the earthquake of 1755, with sundry moralizings +in six cantos of _oitavas_, of which a Portuguese critic has said that +the author, in an excess of Christian humility, resolved to mortify +his pride of learning by making himself ridiculous to posterity in +verse. A flickering interest enlivens the _Cartas Familiares_ (1741, +2) of FRANCISCO XAVIER DE OLIVEIRA (1702-83). Their subjects are +various: love, literature, witchcraft, and even the relation of a man’s +character to the ribbon on his hat. The author gave up a diplomatic +career, perhaps on account of his Protestant tendencies, and went to +Holland (1740) and England (1744), where he publicly abjured Roman +Catholicism (1746). After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 he addressed +a pamphlet in French to the King of Portugal, exhorting him to mend +his ways; to become Protestant with all his subjects and abolish the +Inquisition. He was duly burnt in effigy at Lisbon (1761), but died +quietly at Hackney twenty-two years later. The letters of ALEXANDRE DE +GUSMÃO (1695-1753), born at Santos in Brazil, have not been collected; +those of the remarkable Portuguese Jew of Penamacor, ANTONIO NUNES +RIBEIRO SANCHES (1699-1783), physician to the Empress Catherine II of +Russia, _Cartas sobre a Educação da Mocidade_, appeared in 1760 at +Cologne. The _Cartas Curiosas_ (1878) of the Abbade ANTONIO DA COSTA +(1714-_c._ 1780) consist of thirteen letters written from Rome and +Vienna from 1750 to 1780, mainly on the subject of music. The century +was not rich in memoirs. The _Miscellaneas_ of D. JOÃO DE S. JOSEPH +QUEIROZ (1711-64) contain some interesting and amusing anecdotes. He +speaks of the _Memorias Genealogicas_ of Alão de Moraes and of the +general discredit of genealogists, and attributes Mello’s imprisonment +to his polite acquiescence in the suggestions of the Condessa de Villa +Nova, made at the instigation of King João IV: _para lisongea-la disse +que seguiria o partido de Castella_. But without seeing the manuscript +it is impossible not to suspect that there is as much of Camillo +Castello Branco as of the Bishop of Grão-Para in the _Memorias_ (1868), +which he was the first to publish. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[629] _Lettere Familiari_, No. 30. + +[630] Or _Arcadia Lusitana_. For a list of its members see T. Braga, +_A Arcadia Lusitana_ (1899), pp. 210-29; for its statutes, ibid., pp. +189-205. + +[631] Debt might seem a more probable cause, were it not for the +apparent rigour of his confinement. + +[632] _A sua alma conversava com Bernardes e Ferreira_, says his friend +Tolentino, who advises another _cabelleireiro_ poet to cease writing +verses, since _vale mais que cem sonetos a peior penteadura_. The _Arte +de Furtar_ mentions a barber who sank still lower, since he left his +profession in order to cut purses. The modern writer Antonio Francisco +Barata (1836-1910) likewise began life as a poor hairdresser at Coimbra. + +[633] Cf. _Ecloga_ 1. Dorindo to Alcino (_Alcino Mycenio_ was Quita’s +Arcadian name): + + E tu és dos pastores mais famosos + No cantar de improviso o verso brando. + + +[634] i. e. the military governor of a district, with rank next to that +of _Capitão Môr_. + +[635] This Arcadian name was given to him by the Marquesa de Alorna, +although he did not properly belong to the _Arcadia_, being, like +Tolentino, one of the _dissidentes_. + +[636] = fishwife; literally ‘woman of Ovar’, a small sea-town between +Aveiro and Oporto. + +[637] Sá do Miranda, he says, _em quem das doces quintilhas Sómente +a rima aprendi.... Falta-me arte e natureza, Mas pude delle imitar A +verdadeira singeleza._ + +[638] The sky is _a estellifera morada_ (the starry abode), birds _o +plumoso aereo bando_, bees _mordazes enxames voadores_, &c. + +[639] Menéndez y Pelayo (_Antología_, tom. xiii (1908), p. 377) calls +him _el poeta de más condiciones nativas que ha producido Portugal +después de Camoens_, ‘the most indigenous Portuguese poet since +Camões’, and elsewhere gives the highest praise to his sonnets. + +[640] His modern editor, Visconde (Julio) de Castilho, has shown that +the additional surname de Vasconcellos was bestowed on him gratuitously. + +[641] The _Couvade_ (ii. 62) is also described by Henrique Diaz, +_Naufragio da Nao S. Paulo_, 1904 ed., p. 25, and Pero de Magalhães +Gandavo, _Historia da Provincia Sancta Cruz_ (1576), cap. 10. + +[642] His works in the _Dicc. Bibliog._ go from J. 2163 to J. 2475. +Many are, however, single odes, sermons, &c. Other eighteenth-century +sermons worth reading are those of the learned Franciscan Frei +Sebastião de Santo Antonio: _Sermões_, 2 vols. (1779, 84). + +[643] Superficially, at least, more than Manuel Caetano de Sousa +(1658-1734) he deserves to be called a _varão encyclopedico_. + +[644] He admires Cicero--not only as philosopher and orator but as a +‘sublime poet’! (_O Homem_ (1815), p. 98)--and Seneca, calls Petrarca +immortal, Tasso incomparable, and is generous in his appreciation of +English writers. At about the same time John Keats, as Petrarca five +centuries earlier, was also reading Homer in translation, but in a +somewhat different spirit. + +[645] _Newton, Proemio._ + +[646] In the second edition (1827) he says that this poem, in twelve +cantos and about 1,000 _oitavas_, written with ‘more fire and a purer +light’ than those of Camões, had cost him ‘nine years of assiduous +application’. + +[647] Macedo called Bocage _fanfarrão glosador_, and much abuse of the +same kind varied the monotony of _elogio mutuo_. + +[648] Such woodenness was unlikely to appreciate El Greco’s pictures. +In the preface to his _Agriparia_ (_Theatro_, vol. v, 1804) he speaks +of _a extravagancia do vaidoso Domenico_, herein following Faria e +Sousa, who calls Theotocopuli the Góngora of painters and adds: _Pero +vale más una llaneza del Ticiano que todas sus extravagancias juntas +por mas que ingeniosas_ (_Fuente de Aganipe Prólogo_, § 37). + +[649] Arnaldo Gama, _Um motim ha cem annos_, 3ᵃ ed. (1896), p. 35. + +[650] _Theatro Comico Portuguez_, 4 vols. (1759-90), vol. iii. + +[651] Ibid., vol. i. + +[652] Ibid., vol. ii. + +[653] Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ vi. 275-85; xvii. 91-3, +gives 217 titles. + +[654] Now _Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_, but it is found +convenient to retain the original title in order to distinguish it from +a more recent (private) institution, the _Academia das Sciencias de +Portugal_. + + + + + VI + + 1816-1910 + + + + + § 1 + + _The Romantic School_ + + +In Portugal the first quarter of the nineteenth century was filled +with violence and unrest. The French invasion and years of fighting +on Portuguese soil were followed by a series of revolutions and civil +wars. It seemed as if a more general earthquake had come to complete +the ruin of 1755, against which Lisbon had so finely re-acted. The +historian who attempts to record the conflicts between Miguelists +and Constitutionalists, and the miserable political intrigues +which accompanied the ultimate victory of the latter, must waver +disconsolately between tragedy and farce. But horrible and pitiful as +were many of these events, they succeeded in awakening what had seemed +a dead nation to a new life. The introduction of the parliamentary +system called into being eloquent orators, and, more valuable than +much eloquence, the conviction sprang up, partly under foreign +influence, partly through love of the soil, deepened by persecution +and banishment, that literature might have a closer relation to earth +and life than a philological Filintian ode. Returning exiles brought +fresh ideas into the country, and the two men who dominated Portuguese +literature in the first half of the century had both learnt much from +their enforced sojourn abroad. ALMEIDA GARRETT (1799-1854), one of +the strangest and most picturesque figures in literature, was born at +Oporto, but spent his boyhood in the Azores (Ilha Terceira), where his +uncles, especially the Bishop of Angra, gave him a classical education +and destined him for the priesthood. He, however, preferred to study +law at Coimbra (1816-21). Here politics were in the air and he soon +made himself conspicuous as a Liberal. The fall of the Constitution +drove him into exile (1823) in England (near Edgbaston and in London), +and France (Havre and Paris), and for the next thirty years politics +remained one of his ruling passions. His first great opportunity for +rhetorical display was his defence in the law-courts against the +charge of impiety incurred by the publication of his poem _O Retrato +de Venus_ (1821), although even before going to Coimbra he is said to +have preached to a church full of people. He was able to return to +Portugal in 1826, and edited _O Chronista_ and _O Portuguez_, which +evoked Macedo’s wrath and ended in Garrett’s imprisonment. When Dom +Miguel returned from Brazil and, instead of ‘signing the paper’ (the +famous _Carta_ of 1826), had himself declared absolute king (1828) +Garrett again became an exile, chiefly in London, and did not return +to his country till July 1832, when he landed as a private soldier at +Mindello, one of the famous 7,500 who fought for King Pedro and his +daughter, Maria da Gloria. His zeal and outspokenness rendering him an +uncomfortable colleague at Lisbon, he fared rather badly in the ignoble +scramble for office which followed the triumph of the cause. He was +sent first on a mission to London and then as _chargé d’affaires_ to +Brussels (1834-6). The diplomatic service was in many ways congenial +to his character, but his enemies made the mistake of slighting and +neglecting him, and, refusing the post of Minister at Copenhagen, +he returned to Portugal and helped to bring about the Revolution of +September 1836. But his life is the whole history of the time: enough +to say that for the next fifteen years his activities in politics and +literature were unceasing. In a hundred ways he showed his versatility +and energy. He served on many commissions, was appointed Inspector of +Theatres (1836), _Cronista Môr_ (1838), elected deputy (1837), raised +to the House of Peers (1852). As journalist, founder and editor of +several short-lived newspapers, as a stylist and master of prose, his +country’s chief lyric poet in the first half of the nineteenth century +(coming as a fire to light the dry sticks of the eighteenth-century +poetry) and greatest dramatist since the sixteenth; as politician and +one of the most eloquent of all Portugal’s orators, an enthusiastic +if unscientific folk-lorist,[655] a novelist, critic, diplomatist, +soldier, jurist and judge, Garrett played many parts and with success. +This patriot who did not despair of his country, this marvellous dandy +who seemed to bestow as much thought on the cut of a coat as on the +fashioning of a constitution, and who refused to grow old, preferring +to incur ridicule as a _velho namorado_ (his love intrigues ended only +with his life and he wrote his most passionate lyrics when he was over +fifty), this artist in life and literature, lover of old furniture +and old traditions, this lovable, ridiculous, human Garrett, whom his +countrymen called divine, can still alternately charm and repel us as +he scandalized and fascinated his contemporaries. His motives were +often curiously mixed. His immeasurable peacock vanity as well as his +generosity prompted him to champion weak causes and assist obscure +persons. A man of high ideals and an essential honesty, he only rarely +deviated into truth in matters concerning himself. When past fifty +he was still ‘forty-six’ and he wrote an anonymous autobiography and +filled it with his own praise. He often gave his time and talent +ungrudgingly to the service of the State and then cried out that his +disinterestedness went unrewarded. Fond of money but fonder of show +and honours, he died almost poor but a viscount. Although of scarcely +more than plebeian birth he liked to believe that the name Garrett, +which he only assumed in 1818, was the Irish for Gerald and that he +was descended from Garrt, first Earl of Desmond,[656] and through +the Geraldines from Troy.[657] At the mercy of many moods, easily +angered but never vindictive, capable occasionally of half-unconscious +duplicity but never of hypocrisy, he remained to the last changing +and sensitive as a child. His faults were mostly on the surface and +injured principally himself, offering a hundred points of attack to +critics incapable of understanding his greatness. That he did not play +a more fruitfully effective part in politics was less his fault than +that of the politics of the day; but the twofold incentive of serving +his country by useful legislation and of a personal triumph in the +Chamber prevented this ingenuous victim of political intrigue from +ever devoting himself exclusively to literature. In politics he was an +opportunist in the best sense of the word and a Liberal who detested +the art of the demagogue. His few months as Minister in 1852 gave no +scope for his real power of organization and of stimulating others. +In the life and literature of his country he was a great civilizing +and renovating force. He taught his countrymen to read and what to +read, and, having freed them from the trammels of pseudo-classicism, +did his utmost to prevent them from merely exchanging pedantry for +insipidity. _Adozinda_, based on the _romance_ _Sylvaninha_ and +originally published in London in 1828 and reviewed in the _Foreign +Quarterly Review_, October 1832) or by others, e. g. Balthasar Diaz’ _O +Marques de Mantua_, or popular _romances_ revised and polished by their +collector. His own compositions (vol. i) often have great charm, as +_Miragaia_, _Rosalinda_, _Bernal Francez_.] + +His early verses, many of the poems published or reprinted in _Lyrica +de João Minimo_ (1829), _Flores sem Fructo_ (1845), and _Fabulas e +Contos_ (1853), were written under the influence of Filinto Elysio +and the eighteenth century, but, fired by romanticism during his +first exile in France, he introduced it into Portugal in his epic +poems _Camões_ (1825) and _Dona Branca_ (1826),[658] in which prosaic +passages alternate with others of fervent poetic beauty and glimpses +of popular customs which in themselves spell poetry in Portugal. But +Garrett was no super-romantic, in fact he deprecated ‘the extravagances +and exaggerations of the ephemeral romanticism which is now coming to +an end in Europe’.[659] At Brussels he learnt German, and the poetry, +and especially the plays, of Goethe cast a steadying influence over +his work. Garrett had early been attracted towards the theatre. His +_Merope_, in its subject derived from Alfieri, and _Catão_ (1821) +were both written in his student days. Neither of them can be called +dramatic. In vain a glow of liberty[660] and rhetoric strives to melt +the ice of _Catão_: its parliamentary debates still leave the reader +cold. When fifteen years later, in the tercentenary year of Vicente’s +last comedy, he was able definitely to undertake his favourite scheme +of providing Portugal with a national drama, he found difficulties. +He had to provide not only theatre, actors, and audience, but also +the plays. He succeeded in instilling his keenness into some of his +more lethargic countrymen, but, not content with translating from the +French, Italian, or Spanish, himself wrote a series of plays to pave +the way. His themes, unlike those of his earlier efforts, were now +entirely national: the legendary love of the poet Bernardim Ribeiro for +the daughter of King Manuel in _Um Auto de Gil Vicente_ (1838);[661] +the patriotism of the Condessa de Athouguia in arming her two sons +on the morning of December 1, 1640, to throw off the Spanish yoke, +in _Dona Philippa de Vilhena_ (1840); an early incident in the life +of one of the most chivalrous soldiers that the world has seen, the +Constable Nun’ Alvarez, in _O Alfageme de Santarem_ (1842); the fall +of Pombal in _A Sobrinha do Marquez_ (1848);[662] two famous episodes +in the life of Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, the first of which, the +setting fire to his palace rather than entertain the Spanish Governors, +preserves the national atmosphere, in _Frei Luiz de Sousa_ (1844). +These plays, with the exception perhaps of the hastily improvised _D. +Philippa de Vilhena_, are all remarkable, although their merit is +unequal. The characters, and especially the epoch in which they are +presented, lend their chief interest to the first and third. The fifth, +overpraised by some critics but praised by all--Menéndez y Pelayo +called it ‘incomparable’--_Frei Luiz de Sousa_, far excels the others +by reason of the concentration of interest and the really dramatic +character of the plot (or at least of the anagnorisis of Act II) and +by its intensity and deliberately simple execution. The intensity may +be almost too unrelieved, but the conception of the play showed a fine +dramatic instinct. Like most of Garrett’s work it was composed in a +white heat, and the effect is enhanced by its excellently clear and +restrained style, which brings out every shade and symptom of tragedy +without distracting the attention by any extraneous ornaments. But all +these plays are written in admirable prose. Indeed, a value is given +even to Garrett’s slighter pieces--_Tio Simplicio_ (1844), _Fallar +Verdade a Mentir_ (1845)[663]--apart from their indigenous character, +by his pliant, transparent, glowing prose, to which perhaps even more +than to his poetry he owes his foremost place in Portuguese literature. +Although essentially a poet, his poems of enduring worth are a mere +handful of beautiful episodes and graceful lyrics--in _Folhas Cahidas_ +(1853) and vol. 1 (1843) of his _Romanceiro_--but his prose stamps with +individuality works so diverse as his historical novel _O Arco de Santa +Anna_ (2 vols., 1845, 51),[664] his charming miscellaneous _Viagens +na minha terra_ (1846) with its famous episode of Joaninha of the +nightingales, his treatises _Da Educação_ (1829), _Portugal na balança +da Europa_ (1830), _Bosquejo da Litteratura Portuguesa_ (1826), as well +as his plays. All his work was thoroughly national, and when he died a +group of younger writers was at hand ready to continue it. + +Garrett intended as _Cronista Môr_ to write the history of his own +time. More serious historians existed in the Canon of Evora, ANTONIO +CAETANO DO AMARAL (1747-1819); his fellow-academician the Canon JOÃO +PEDRO RIBEIRO (†1839); LUZ SORIANO (1802-99), author of a _Historia da +Guerra Civil_ (1866-90) in seventeen volumes; the VISCONDE DE SANTAREM +(1791-1856), whose able and persistent researches were of inestimable +service to the history and incidentally to the literature of his +country; and the patient investigator CUNHA RIVARA (1809-79). + +While scientific research work was accumulating the bones of history +a creator arose in the person of ALEXANDRE HERCULANO (1810-77). He +had emigrated to France and England in 1831, lived for a time at +Rennes, and from the Azores in 1832 with Garrett accompanied the +Liberal army to Oporto as a private soldier. In the following year he +obtained work as a librarian. His _A Voz do Propheta_ (1836) (Castilho +in this year translated Lamennais’ _Paroles d’un Croyant_), written +in the impressive style of a Hebrew prophet, although it appeared +anonymously, brought its author fame, and in 1839 the King Consort D. +Fernando appointed him librarian of the Royal Library of Ajuda. The +salary was not large, under £200 a year, but the post gave him the +two necessaries of literary work, quiet and books. From that year to +1867 his life was taken up with his work, with which politics only +occasionally interfered. He edited _O Panorama_ from 1837 to 1844 and +joined in founding _O Paiz_. Although he was elected deputy to the +Cortes in 1840 he rarely attended the sittings. His friendship with +D. Fernando and King Pedro V continued unbroken till their death. In +1867 with characteristic abruptness he left Lisbon and literature and +gave his last ten years almost entirely to agriculture on the estate +of Val de Lobos, near Santarem.[665] The call of the land was combined +with disgust at the politics of the capital and probably a natural +disinclination to a sedentary mode of life. His retirement was greeted +as a betrayal, and attacks formerly directed against his historical +work were now directed against him for abandoning it. But since he had +no intention of continuing his history, his literary work was really +ended. It has three main aspects, poetry, the historical novel, and +history. From the prosaic height of forty-six he informed Soares de +Passos in a letter that he had been a poet till he was twenty-five. +Some of the poems of _A Harpa do Crente_ (1838),[666] especially _A +Tempestade_ and _A Cruz Mutilada_, rise to noble heights by reason +of a fine conviction and a rugged grandeur, as of blocks of granite. +Herculano had returned to Portugal imbued with profound admiration +for the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, ‘immortal Scott’ as he +called him, and Victor Hugo, and in his remarkable stories and sketches +contributed to _O Panorama_ and published as _Lendas e Narrativas_ +(1851), as well as in the more elaborate _O Monasticon_, consisting of +two separate parts _Eurico o Presbytero_ (1844) and _O Monge de Cister_ +(1848), he wrote romance based upon scrupulous historical research. A +slight leaning towards melodrama is as a rule successfully withstood, +and his intense and powerful style enchains the attention. _Eurico_ +is really a splendid prose poem,[667] in which the eighth-century +priest Eurico is Herculano brooding over the degeneracy of Portugal in +the nineteenth century. His glowing patriotism unifies the action and +raises the style to an impassioned eloquence. The Middle Ages were well +suited to him in their mixture of passion and ingenuousness and their +scope for violent contrasts of evil and virtue, light and shadow. Most +of the _Lendas e Narrativas_ and _O Bobo_ belong to that period, and +his _Historia de Portugal_ (4 vols., 1846-53) ends with the year 1279. +That he should have stopped there when the character and achievements +of King Dinis must have offered him a powerful incentive to proceed +shows how deeply he had felt the controversial attacks levelled at +his work; but with the Renaissance and the subsequent history of +Portugal he was too intensely national to have great sympathy. As a +historian he has been compared with Hallam, Thierry, and Niebuhr, and +he stands any such comparison well. A passion for truth drove him to +the original sources and documents, and, since _alle Gelehrsamkeit +ist noch kein Urteil_, he brought the same patience and impartial +sincerity to their interpretation. The results obtained he imposed on +thousands of readers by his impressive and living style.[668] In his +case the style was the man. Beneath coldness or roughness he concealed +an affectionate, impetuous nature, a hatred of meanness and injustice. +In his personal relations austere and difficult, sometimes no doubt +unfair and undiscerning in the severity of his judgements, he was a +perfect contrast to Almeida Garrett, compared with whom he was as +granite to chalk or as the rock to the stream that flows past it. His +strong will was fortunately directed by the Marquesa de Alorna in his +youth to the thoroughness of German writers. Thoroughness marked all +his work. When the Academy of Sciences entrusted him with the task of +collecting documents on the early history of Portugal he threw himself +into the labour with a fervour which produced the splendid _Portvgaliae +Monvmenta Historica_, a series of historical works and documents of +the first importance which began to appear in 1856. From 1867 to 1877 +he undertook agriculture not as an amateur’s pastime but as the work +of his life, with the result that he achieved another great success +scarcely inferior to his success as a writer. The same thoroughness is +evident in the Cyclopean fragment of his history and in his shorter +writings, the _Opusculos_ (1873-76). His _Da Origem e Estabelecimento +da Inquisição em Portugal_ (3 vols., 1854-9), a deeply interesting +account of the negotiations and intrigues at the Vatican, in ceasing +to be dispassionate may suffer as a purely historical work, but its +vigour brooks no denial and its literary excellence is acknowledged +even by those who dispute its fairness. Great as scholar and man, too +great to be always understood during his life, his memory received a +tribute from men so different as Döllinger and Núñez del Arce, and it +is probable that his reputation will only increase with time. + +In the historical novel Herculano had many followers. ANTONIO DE +OLIVEIRA MARRECA (1805-89) wrote two laborious fragments in _O +Panorama: Manoel Sousa de Sepulveda_ (1843) and _O Conde Soberano +de Castella_ (1844, 53). JOÃO DE ANDRADE CORVO (1824-90), poet and +dramatist,[669] author of a novel of contemporary politics, _O +Sentimentalismo_ (1871), which contains excellent descriptions of +Bussaco, wrote a long historical novel, _Um Anno na Corte_ (1850), in +which interest in the actors at the Court of Afonso VI, in incidents +such as a bullfight or a boarhunt, in witchcraft or the Inquisition, +is skilfully maintained. His style in its sober restraint is superior +to that of ARNALDO DA GAMA (1828-69), whose historical episodes of the +French invasion of 1809 (_O Sargento Môr de Villar_ and _O Segredo do +Abbade_), or of Oporto in the fifteenth century in _A Ultima Dona de +S. Nicolau_, or in the eighteenth in _Um Motim ha cem annos_ (1861), +are of considerable interest despite their author’s excessive fondness +for Latin quotations. Perhaps the influence of Camillo Castello +Branco may be traced in his novel _O Genio do Mal_ (4 vols., 1857). +GUILHERMINO AUGUSTO DE BARROS (1835-1900) is the author of a novel of +the fifteenth century, _O Castello de Monsanto_ (2 vols., 1879), of +great length and dullness. Its chief interest is for the student of the +Portuguese language, owing to its large vocabulary. BERNARDINO PEREIRA +PINHEIRO (born in 1837) in _Sombras e Luz_ (1863) described scenes from +the reign of King Manuel, and drew a strange portrait of King João +III in _Amores de um Visionario_ (2 vols., 1874). But the mantle of +Herculano, as historical novelist, fell especially upon LUIZ AUGUSTO +REBELLO DA SILVA (1822-71), politician and journalist. His _Rausso por +Homizio_, a short novel of the time of King Sancho II, written with +the exaggeration of extreme youth, appeared in the _Revista Universal +Lisbonense_ (1842-3), followed by _Odio Velho não cansa_ (reign of +Sancho I), with similar defects, in 1848. In the same (the first) +volume of _A Epocha_ appeared his short _conto_ entitled _A Ultima +Corrida de Touros em Salvaterra_, which won and has retained popularity +by its skilful presentment of a stirring and pathetic episode in the +reign of José I (1750-77). Four years later Rebello da Silva published +his principal novel, _A Mocidade de D. João V_ (1852). In its somewhat +tedious descriptions the reader soon loses the thread of the story, +but is entertained by the quick dialogue and almost clownish humour of +the separate scenes. _Lagrimas e Thesouros_[670] (1863) may interest +English readers from the fact that its principal character is William +Beckford, but it has not the great merits of the preceding novel. The +author was already at work on his unfinished _Historia de Portugal nos +seculos XVII e XVIII_ (5 vols., 1860-71). In this, as in his _Fastos da +Igreja_ (1854-5) and _Varões Illustres_ (1870), his defects fall away, +while his real skill as a historian, his intensity, and his excellent +style remain; indeed, an added intensity gives his style a new vigour +and simplicity. His _Historia_, although less rigorously scientific +and far less methodically ordered than that of his master Herculano, +has value as history as well as literature. Rebello da Silva wrote too +much, but his work generally improved with the years and might have +resulted in a real masterpiece had he not died before attaining the age +of fifty. + +Meanwhile the novel had entered on a new and intensely modern phase +in the hands of a slightly younger contemporary. The life of CAMILLO +CASTELLO BRANCO (1825-90), whose numerous novels have been and still +are read enthusiastically in Portugal, had about it an element of +improbability which is reflected in his works and made it possible to +combine their apparent sincerity with a peculiar unreality. Born at +Lisbon but left an orphan at the age of eight, and brought up by a +sister, wife of a doctor, in a small village of Tras-os-Montes,[671] a +widower in his teens, then a boisterous Oporto medical student, twice +imprisoned for love affairs and finally guilty of abducting an heiress +as a bride for his son, his whole life was spent in a whirlwind, actual +or imaginary, a tragicomedy which, stricken with blindness, he ended +by suicide. He read and wrote in the same tempestuous fashion. The +sentimental atmosphere of his novels is relieved systematically by +outbursts of cynicism and sarcasm. When he began to write romanticism +was in full swing, but his last twenty years were spent under what +was to him the vexing and tantalizing shadow of the new realism. His +first story, _Maria não me mates, que sou tua mãe!_ (1848),[672] +was sentimental and sensational, and something of these qualities +remained in the greater part of his work. His first more elaborate +novel _Anathema_ (1851), in which the story is interrupted by lengthy +musings and moralizings, he himself described as ‘a kind of literary +crab’, and most of his novels are somewhat lop-sided: he confessed +that his discursiveness was incurable. It is the more hysterical among +his works, such as _Amor de Perdição_ (1862)--its character is well +described by the title of the Italian version, _Amor sfrenato_--or +_Amor de Salvação_ (1864) and those which combine this character with +a chain of amazing coincidences, as _Os Mysterios de Lisboa_ (1854) +and _O Livro Negro do Padre Diniz_ (1855), which were read most avidly +in Portugal. He himself favoured the quieter _Romance de um Homem +Rico_ (1861) and _Livro de Consolação_ (1872). We may prefer the attic +flavour of the humorous sketch of a country gentleman (born in the +year of Waterloo) at Lisbon, in _A Queda d’um Anjo_ (1866), which +somehow recalls the best work of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. Castello +Branco had a true vein of comedy, and although a great part of the +work of this specialist in hysterics has an air of unreality, he is +many-sided and yields frequent surprises. The true Camillo appears +only intermittently in his novels, and charms with a simplicity of +style and description worthy of Frei Luis de Sousa, as in some of +his _Novellas do Minho_ (12 vols., 1875-7), the country-house in +_Coração, Cabeça e Estomago_ (1862), the Tras-os-Montes _fidalgo_‘s +house in _Os Mysterios de Lisboa_, the village priest in _A Sereia_ +(1865), Padre João in _Doze Casamentos Felizes_ (1861), the farrier +in _Amor de Perdição_, the charcoal-burners in _O Santo da Montanha_ +(1865). Then (as if with the question: what will the Chiado, what +will the Lisbon critics say?) he pulls himself up, lashes himself +with sarcasms, and plunges into his improbabilities and passions. +A poet and a learned and ingenious if unscholarly critic, he saw +and described the charm of the villages of North Portugal, but he +satirized with peculiar venom the _bourgeois_ life and the enriched +_brazileiros_ of Oporto, as in _A Filha do Arcediago_ (1855), _A Neta +do Arcediago_ (1856), _A Douda do Candal_ (1867), _Os Brilhantes do +Brazileiro_ (1869), _Memorias de Guilherme do Amaral_ (1863), and _Um +Homem de Brios_ (1856),[673] the last two being continuations of _Onde +está a Felicidade?_ (1856). This last work has a broader historical +setting, and many of his novels are really historical episodes,[674] +some of which bear a strong resemblance to Pérez Galdós’ _Episodios +Nacionales_. Especially is this the case with the latter part of _As +Tres Irmãs_ (1862) and with _A Bruxa de Monte Cordova_ (1867), both +written before the appearance of the first _Episodio Nacional_. In +_Eusebio Macario_ and _A Corja_ he set his hand to the naturalistic +novel, and in _A Brazileira de Prazins_ (1882) modified this method to +suit his favourite phantasy of extremes, in which the angel and martyr +are contrasted with the romantic Don Juan or vulgar _brazileiro_ or +narrow-minded Minho noble. Apart from their historical interest and +occasional charming glimpses of life and literature, his books are +invaluable for their style, and he is the author of many masterly +passages rather than of any masterpiece. He sometimes--here, as in all +else, leaving moderation to the _bourgeois_ _épaté_--allows himself to +be carried away by his immense vocabulary, but often, indeed usually, +his language is a flawless marble, a rich quarry of the purest, most +vernacular Portuguese, derived from the Portuguese religious and mystic +writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[675] Absorbed in +his work night after night till the first songs of birds announced the +dawn, writing in or after a paroxysm of grief or excitement in his +own life, he first lived, then swiftly set on paper, the incidents +of his novels--_Amor de Perdição_ was written in a fortnight. Their +plot may be ill constructed, the delineation of characters shallow, +Balzac _manqué_, the episodes far-fetched and melodramatic, but they +corresponded, if not to life, to the life of their author and thereby +attained intensity of style and a certain unity of action. Yet he was +always greatly concerned with schools and tendencies (he imitated Émile +Zola in _Eusebio Macario_, although he declared the realistic school +to be the perversion of Nature, Émile Souvestre in _As Tres Irmãs_, +Octave Feuillet in _Romance de um Homem Rico_), sure of his genius but +not of the channels into which he should direct it, at his best perhaps +in brief essays and sketches from which his high-flown romanticism is +absent, as in the studies of the lives of criminals in _Memorias do +Carcere_ (2 vols., 1862) and his many scattered reminiscences of life +in Minho, the valley of the Tamega, and Oporto. With his sensitive +restless temperament, his imagination, his satire and sadness (of tears +rather than _saudade_, for which the action in his stories is too +rapid), his intolerant hatred of tyranny and intolerance, his essential +interest not in things nor even characters but in life and passion, and +his unfailing power of expression, he may well be called ‘the [modern] +Portuguese genius personified’.[676] His life is a strange contrast to +the almost idyllic serenity of that of ANTONIO FELICIANO DE CASTILHO +(1800-75), whose admirable persistency as poet and translator during +a period of nearly sixty years--he had been blind from the age of +six--enabled him to attain an extraordinary pre-eminence in Portuguese +poetry after Garrett and other poets had been broken like crystals +while he remained as a tile upon the housetop. A romantic with a +natural leaning to perfection of form, he always retained something +of the Arcadian school, and like the Arcadians sought his inspiration +in Bernardim Ribeiro and other bucolic _quinhentistas_. Unsympathetic +critics incapable of appreciating Castilho’s masterly style may feel +that in the twenty-one letters of the _Cartas de Echo e Narciso_ +(1821), in _A Primavera_ (1822)[677] and _Amor e Melancholia ou a +Novissima Heloisa_ (1828) he combined the classical school’s dearth +of thought with the diffuseness of the romantics. But his _quadras_ +(_A Visão_, _O São João_, _A Noite do Cemiterio_) and his blank verse +are alike so easy and natural, his style so harmonious and pure that, +despite the lack of observation and originality in these long poems, +they have not even to-day lost their place in Portuguese literature. +In their soft, vague melancholy and gentle grace they were even more +popular than his romantic poems, _A Noite do Castello_ (1836)[678] +and _Os Ciumes do Bardo_ (1838), and influenced many younger writers. +Like Garrett he taught them to seek the subjects of their verse in the +popular traditions of their own land. Indeed, so great was his bent +for the national in literature that his numerous translations (from +the French and English, Latin and Greek, to which, with an occasional +aftermath of poems such as _Outono_ (1862), his later years were +devoted) are often remarkable rather for their excellent Portuguese +versification than for faithfulness to the originals, and the _Faust_ +of Goethe, whose powerful directness was unintelligible to his +translator, especially as he only read the poem in a French version, +became translated indeed. + +The most prominent or the least insipid of the numerous group of +romantic and ultra-romantic poets, a generation younger than Garrett +and Castilho, who published their verses in _O Trovador_ (1848)[679] +and _O Novo Trovador_ (1856), were LUIZ AUGUSTO PALMEIRIM (1825-93), +whose _Poesias_ appeared in 1851, and JOÃO DE LEMOS (1819-89), some +of whose poems (one of the best known is _A Lua de Londres_) in +_Flores e Amores_ (1858), _Religião e Patria_ (1859), and especially +_Canções da Tarde_ (1875), have a delicacy of rhythm and are more +scholarly than those of most of the romantic poets. The three volumes +form the _Cancioneiro de João de Lemos_. JOSÉ DA SILVA MENDES LEAL +(1818-86), author of _Historia da Guerra no Oriente_ (1855), and, like +Palmeirim, a successful dramatist, in _Os Dois Renegados_ (1839) and +_O Homem da Mascara Negra_ (1843), and also a novelist (_O que foram +os Portugueses_), as a poet is at his best in patriotic, military, +or funeral odes: _O Pavilhão Negro_ (1859), _Ave Cesar_, _Gloria e +Martyrio_ (perhaps suggested by Tennyson’s _Ode on the Death of the +Duke of Wellington_), _Napoleão no Kremlin_ (1865), _Indiannas_, in +which his sonorous verse has a certain grandeur. His _Canticos_ (1858) +contain among others a good translation of _El Pirata_ of Espronceda, +whose influence is evident in the ode to Vasco da Gama, which forms +the first part of _Indiannas_. ANTONIO AUGUSTO SOARES DE PASSOS +(1826-60), son of an Oporto chemist, studied at Coimbra and published +a volume of sentimental romantic poems in 1856 (_Poesias_). The most +remarkable is the noble if a little too grandiloquent ode entitled +_O Firmamento_, which far excels the poems of death, pale moonlight, +autumn regrets, and vanished dreams of this excellent translator of +Ossian. After his death a fellow-student, Dr. Lourenço de Almeida e +Medeiros, accused him of having stolen _O Firmamento_ and other poems. +He had himself, he said, written the melancholy ballad _O Noivado do +Sepulchro_ in February 1853, but unfortunately for his contention it +had appeared over Soares de Passos’ signature eight months earlier in +_O Bardo_. A miscellaneous writer, like so many of his contemporaries, +FRANCISCO GOMES DE AMORIM (1827-92) achieved popularity with his plays, +published two volumes of sentimental poems, _Cantos Matutinos_ (1858) +and _Ephemeros_ (1866), of which perhaps _O Desterrado_ is now alone +remembered, and several pleasantly indigenous stories of his native +Avelomar (Minho) collected in _Fruitos de Vario Sabor_ (1876), with an +attractive sketch of the priest, Padre Manuel, _Muita parra e pouca +uva_ (1878), and _As Duas Fiandeiras_ (1881). He played the sedulous +Boswell to Almeida Garrett during the last three years of the latter’s +life, and the result was one of the few interesting biographies in the +modern literature of the Peninsula: _Garrett, Memorias Biographicas_ (3 +vols., 1881-8). Among the host of pale moon-singers following in the +wake of Castilho it is a relief to find a satirist, FAUSTINO XAVIER +DE NOVAES (1822-64), who in his _Poesias_ (1855), _Novas Poesias_ +(1858), and _Poesias Postumas_ (1877), preferred to take Tolentino for +his model. He ridiculed the _janota com pouco dinheiro, com fumos de +grande_ and other types of his native Oporto, where for some time he +worked as a goldsmith. Later he emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, but there +found ‘everything except literature well paid’. + +Two of the romantic poets lived on into the twentieth century, one +even survived the Monarchy. THOMAZ RIBEIRO (1831-1901), born at Parada +de Gonta in the district of Tondella (Beira), advocate, journalist, +playwright, historian, politician, deputy, minister, peer of the realm, +won enduring fame with his long romantic poem _D. Jayme_ (1862), which +opens with fifteen striking stanzas addressed to Portugal. In this +introductory ode he rises on the wings of ardent patriotism and sturdy +faith in Portugal to a fine achievement in verse. Less rhetorical, +the rest of the poem (or series of poems in varying metre) would have +gained by reduction to half its length, but is sometimes not without +charm in its meanderings. Yet it is a kind of inspired rhetoric and +natural grandiloquence that best characterize Ribeiro, and when his +inspiration falters it leaves but a hollow and metallic shell of +verse. We will expect no delicate shades from a lyric poet who calls +the sky _o celico espectaculo_. Subsequent volumes--_Sons que passam_ +(1867), which contains poems written as early as 1854, _A Delfina do +Mal_ (1868), _Vesperas_ (1880), _Dissonancias_ (1890), _O Mensageiro +de Fez_ (1899)--maintained, but did not increase, his reputation as a +poet. The chief work of RAIMUNDO ANTONIO DE BULHÃO PATO (1829-1912), a +Portuguese born at Bilbao, was _Paquita_, which he began to publish in +1866, and to the completion of which he devoted nearly forty years of +loving care. It is a facetious romantic poem of sixteen cantos, mostly +in verses of six lines (_ababcb_ or _ababca_), intended to be in the +manner of Byron but more akin to Antonio de Trueba, whose verses are +imitated in _Flores Agrestes_ (1870). The modern reader, after readily +agreeing with Herculano that the poem has its faults, will perhaps be +disposed to inquire further if it has any merits; but, although its +subject is often unpoetical and trivial, the versification is easy +and occasionally excellent. Bulhão Pato published other volumes of +gentle album poetry, as _Poesias_ (1850), _Versos_ (1862), _Canções da +Tarde_ (1866), and _Hoje: Satyras, Canções e Idyllios_ (1888), besides +sketches and recollections in prose. Nearly fifty years before his +death the romantic school in Portugal had received a severe shock, and +the fact that long romantic poems continued to appear is proof how deep +its roots had penetrated. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[655] His _Romanceiro_ published in 3 vols. (1843, 51) contains poems +of national themes drawn from popular songs and traditions, written by +himself (as + +[656] The name of the first Earl of Desmond (cr. 1328) was Maurice +fitzThomas (†135) not Gerald, Gerod, Gerott, Garrett, or Garrt (see +Lord Walter FitzGerald, _Notes on the FitzGeralds of Ireland_). The +forms Garret and Gareth existed in Catalonia in the fifteenth and +sixteenth centuries, e. g. the Catalan poet Bernardo Garret, born at +Barcelona, who wrote in Italian and became known as Chariteo (_c._ +1450-_c._ 1512). + +[657] Amorim, _Memorias_, i. 28. + +[658] Of _O Magriço_, a still longer epic, only fragments remain; it +went down in manuscript in the _Amelia_, sunk by the Miguelists off the +Portuguese coast. + +[659] Preface to 4th ed. (1845) of _Catão_. + +[660] The ‘tyranny’ of the day was that of General Beresford. Some +scenes of _Catão_ (derived from the _Cato_ (1713) of Addison), of which +a Portuguese version by Manuel de Figueiredo (_Theatro_, vol. viii) +had appeared in Garrett’s boyhood, were directed against this English +despot. A few years later Garrett learned to enjoy English society, as +his Anglophobe biographer, Amorim, admits. + +[661] Published in 1841. + +[662] Written ten years earlier. + +[663] These two plays were published in vol. vii of his _Obras_ (1847) +with _D. Philippa de Vilhena_. + +[664] A contemporary novel, _Helena_ (1871), remained unfinished at his +death. + +[665] It was, however, no sudden decision. As early as 1851 he wrote, +in a letter to Garrett, ‘... _me ver entre quatro serras com algumas +geiras de terra proprias, umas botas grossas e um chapeu de Braga, +bello ideal de todas as minhas ambições mundanas_’. + +[666] The second edition with additional poems was entitled _Poesias_ +(1850). + +[667] _Cronica, poema, lenda ou o que quer que seja_, he says. + +[668] The late Dr. Gonçalvez Viana considered Herculano ‘the most +vernacular, scrupulous and perfect writer of the nineteenth century’ +(_Palestras Filolójicas_, 1910, p. 116). + +[669] _O Alliciador_ (1859), _O Astrologo_ (1860). + +[670] The last novel to appear in Rebello da Silva’s lifetime was _A +Casa dos Phantasmas_ (1865). _De Noite todos os gatos são pardos_ was +published posthumously. + +[671] After Camillo, as he is always called in Portugal, had been +created Visconde de Corrêa Botelho in 1885, his descent was traced back +to Fruela, son of Pelayo. + +[672] That is, a year before the novel _Memorias de um Doudo_ (1849) by +Antonio Pedro Lopes de Mendonça (1826-65). + +[673] Cf. also _Carlota Angela_ (1858), _O que fazem mulheres_ (1858), +_Annos de Prosa_ (1863), _O Sangue_ (1868), _Estrellas Propicias_ +(1863), _Estrellas Funestas_ (1869). + +[674] e. g. _Lagrimas Abençoadas_ (1857), _Carlota Angela_ (1858), _O +Santo da Montanha_ (1865), _A Engeitada_ (1866), _O Judeu_ (2 vols., +1866), _O Regicida_ (1874), _A Filha do Regicida_ (1875). + +[675] That it is not impeccable such a phrase as _confortar o palacio_ +(_O Livro Negro do Padre Diniz_, 1896 ed., p. 135) well shows. + +[676] M. A. Vaz de Carvalho, _Serões no Campo_ (1877), p. 171. + +[677] Part 2 is entitled _A Festa de Maio_ (two cantos). + +[678] Written in 1830. + +[679] This ‘collection of contemporary poems’ contains verses of +considerable merit. Of some 200 poems by twenty-one poets twenty-eight +are by João de Lemos, thirty by José Freire de Serpa Pimentel +(1814-70), second Visconde de Gouvêa, author of _Solaos_ (1839), +thirty-four by Antonio Xavier Rodrigues Cordeiro (1819-1900), and +thirty-six by Augusto José Gonçalves Lima (1823-67), who reprinted his +contributions in _Murmurios_ (1851). A similar collection of verse was +_A Grinalda_ (Porto, 1857). + + + + + § 2 + + _The Reaction and After_ + + +It was in 1865 that Castilho, the acknowledged high-priest of literary +aspirants, wrote a long letter which was published as introduction (pp. +181-243) to Pinheiro Chagas’ _O Poema da Mocidade_ (1865), in which he +deprecated the pretentious affectations of the younger poets. For while +Castilho was dispensing his patronage to the acolytes of romanticism +a new school of writers had grown up at Coimbra, who refused to know +Joseph. They turned to Germany as well as to France, professed to +replace sentiment by science, and in the name of philosophy chafed +unphilosophically at the old commonplaces and unrealities. Castilho +stood not only for romanticism but for the classical style of the +eighteenth century, and in some respects the secession from his school +may be described as the revolt of the Philistine against Filinto. +Anthero de Quental now voiced the cause against the aged Castilho’s +preface in an article entitled _Bom Senso e Bom Gosto_ (1865). For +the next few months it rained pamphlets.[680] Snr. Julio de Castilho, +subsequently second Visconde de Castilho (1840-1919), and author of +many well-known works, including the drama _D. Ignez de Castro_ (1875) +and the eight volumes of _Lisboa Antiga_ (1879-90), took up the cudgels +on behalf of his father. The high principles at stake, good sense and +good taste, were sometimes forgotten in personal bitterness; a duel was +even fought between Quental and Ramalho Ortigão, in which both the poet +and his critic were happily spared to literature. + +But romanticism in Portugal has nine lives, and raised its head at +intervals during the second half of the century. In the domain of +history JOAQUIM PEDRO DE OLIVEIRA MARTINS (1845-94) always remained +more than half a romantic. His life explains the character of his +historical writings. Born at Lisbon, obliged to work for a living when +he was barely fifteen, he succeeded at the same time in educating +himself, supported his mother and her younger children, married before +he was twenty-five, had published a dozen works before he was forty, +was elected deputy for Viana do Castello in 1886, became Minister of +Finance in 1892, and died in his fiftieth year. A career so meteoric +could scarcely give scope for that scrupulous research, that careful +sifting of evidence which modern ideas associate with the work of the +historian; and Oliveira Martins as historian embraced not only the +whole of Portuguese but the whole of Iberian history, and that of +Greece and Rome to boot. But even had he had more time, the result +would only have been more subjects treated, not a different treatment. +His whole idea of history was coloured with romance, his work impetuous +and personal as that of a lyric poet. His first book, the historical +novel _Phebus Moniz_ (1867), passed almost unnoticed. After several +pamphlets, appeared his first historical work, _O Hellenismo e a +Civilisação Christã_ (1878), and then in marvellous rapidity the +_Historia da Civilisação Iberica_ (1879), _Historia de Portugal_ +(1879), _Elementos de Anthropologia_ (1880), _Portugal Contemporaneo_ +(1881), and a further succession of historical works ending with the +_Historia da Republica Romana_ (1885). Although politics now occupied +much of his time he continued to publish, and wisely emphasized +the biographical side of his work, of which _Os Filhos de D. João +I_ (1891) and _A Vida de Nun’ Alvares_ (1893) are not the least +valuable part. _O Principe Perfeito_ (1896), dealing with King João +II, appeared posthumously and incomplete. A master of psychology +and impressionistic character-sketching, all his work is a gallery +of pictures--and especially of portraits--from Afonso Henriquez to +Herculano, which reveal the artist as well as his subjects. His style, +nervous, coloured, insinuating, is a swift and supple implement for his +exceptional power of skilfully summarizing a person or a period. He +is capable of vulgarity (as in the account of Queen Philippa and the +frequent use of colloquialisms perfectly unbefitting the dignity of +history) but not of dullness. He uses and abuses epigram and metaphor, +and is not free from the pompous rhetorical antitheses of Victor Hugo +(e.g. _De Cid transformou-se em Wallenstein_), till the reader suspects +him of being ready at all times to sacrifice truth to a phrase. Yet it +is surprising, considering the circumstances of his life and the extent +of his work, how often he bases his history, if not on documents, on +the work of reliable earlier historians, Portuguese and foreign. If +he fills in the gaps with pure romance or an uncritical use of texts +(for instance, in _A Vida de Nun’ Alvares_ he incorporates as authentic +those charming ‘letters of Nun’ Alvarez’ which a mere glance at their +style shows to be apocryphal) these are but the poet’s arabesques, +the main structure is often sound enough. Were there no other history +of Portugal it might be necessary to consider his work not only +fascinating but dangerous, nor would _Portugal Contemporaneo_ alone +convey an impartial or complete idea of Portuguese history in the first +two-thirds of the nineteenth century. We may deny him the title of +great historian, we cannot deny him a foremost place in the literature +of the century as a writer of brilliant intellect and feverish energy +and a powerful re-constructor of characters and scenes in their +picturesqueness and their passions. + +The work of MANUEL PINHEIRO CHAGAS (1842-95), poet, playwright, critic, +novelist, historian, was even more abundant and for the most part +of a more popular character and more commonplace. He is also more +Portuguese, and his works deserve to be read if only for their pure and +easily flowing style. Many of his novels are historical. _A Corte de D. +João V_ (1867) has an account of an _outeiro_[681] in which figures the +_Camões do Rocio_ as the poet Caetano José da Silva Souto-Maior (_c._ +1695-1739) was called. The subject of the earlier novel _Tristezas á +beira-mar_ (1866) is that which Amorim in his _A Abnegação_ derived +from an English novel, but is here more naturally treated. _A Mascara +Velha_ (continued in _O Juramento da Duqueza_) appeared in 1873. _As +Duas Flores de Sangue_ (1875) is concerned with revolution in France +and at Naples. _A Flor Secca_ (1866) treats of more everyday scenes +and contains some amusing if rather obvious character-sketches, as +the old servant Maria do Rosario (a rustic Juliana), or the devout and +vixenish old maid D. Antonia. His _Novelas Historicas_ (1869) contains +six historical tales dealing with Afonso I, Nun’ Alvarez, Prince Henry +the Navigator, King Sebastian, Pombal, and the French Revolution. His +_Historia de Portugal_ (8 vols., 1867), begun on a plan originally laid +down by Ferdinand Denis, contains lengthy and frequent quotations from +previous historians but is coloured by later political ideas. The two +shorter works _Historia alegre de Portugal_ (1880) and _Portugueses +illustres_ (1869) are admirably suited for their purpose--to interest +the people in the history and heroes of their country. + +The chief work of the able and industrious critic and historian JOSÉ +MARIA LATINO COELHO (1825-91) was his _Historia Politica e Militar de +Portugal desde os fins do seculo XVIII até 1814_ (3 vols., 1874-91). +ANTONIO COSTA LOBO (1840-1913), editor of the instructive _Memorias +de um Soldado da India_, in his _Historia da Sociedade em Portugal no +seculo XV_ (1904) began a meticulous and well thought-out study of an +earlier period of Portuguese history. JOSÉ RAMOS COELHO (1832-1914) +is chiefly known for his elaborate romantic biography of the brother +of King João V: _Historia do Infante D. Duarte_ (2 vols., 1889, 90). +Dr. HENRIQUE DA GAMA BARROS (born in 1833) in the invaluable _Historia +da Administração Publica em Portugal nos seculos XII a XV_ (3 vols., +1885, 96, 1914) has collected an abundance of concrete, carefully +verified details, and thrown a searching light on the early history of +Portugal.[682] + +In literary criticism as well as in historical research the nineteenth +century worthily continued the traditions of the eighteenth. FRANCISCO +MARQUES DE SOUSA VITERBO (1845-1910) after first appearing in print +as a poet in _O Anjo do Pudor_ (1870) rendered excellent service in +both those fields; the best-known work of LUCIANO CORDEIRO (1844-1900) +is his study _Soror Marianna_ (1890); ZOPHIMO CONSIGLIERI PEDROSO +(1851-1910) and ANTONIO THOMAZ PIRES (†1913) were celebrated for their +studies in folk-lore[683]; the VISCONDE DE JUROMENHA (1807-87) for his +edition of the works of Camões; the CONDE DE FICALHO (1837-1903) for +several remarkable studies and his edition of Garcia da Orta; ANNIBAL +FERNANDES THOMAZ (1840-1912) as a bibliographer; AUGUSTO EPIPHANIO DA +SILVA DIAS (1841-1916) as scholar and critic; JOSÉ PEREIRA DE SAMPAIO +(1857-1915), who used the pseudonym _Bruno_, as a critic; ANICETO DOS +REIS GONÇALVEZ VIANA (1840-1914) and JULIO MOREIRA (1854-1911) as +philologists; LUIZ GARRIDO (1841-82) as critic and classical scholar in +his _Ensaios historicos e criticos_ (1871) and _Estudos de historia e +litteratura_ (1879). After the death of the diligent and enthusiastic +but sadly unmethodical bibliographer INNOCENCIO DA SILVA (1810-76), +his celebrated _Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez_ was carried on +by BRITO ARANHA (1833-1914), and the task of continuing it is now +entrusted to Snr. GOMES DE BRITO. To the eminent folk-lorist FRANCISCO +ADOLPHO COELHO (1847-1919) the language, literature, and folklore +are indebted for many works of permanent value. Notable among living +scholars, apart from D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Mr. +Edgar Prestage, who both write in Portuguese, are Colonel FRANCISCO +MARIA ESTEVES PEREIRA, whose editions of early works are invaluable; +Dr. JOSÉ JOAQUIM NUNES, who has devoted his careful scholarship to the +early poetry and prose; the Camões scholar, Dr. JOSÉ MARIA RODRIGUES; +Snr. PEDRO DE AZEVEDO, archaeologist and historian; Snr. DAVID LOPES, +a scholar equally versed in literature and history; Snr. CANDIDO DE +FIGUEIREDO (born in 1846), enthusiastic student and exponent of the +Portuguese language; while Dr. FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO has a wide +and growing reputation as critic and as editor of the _Revista de +Historia_. Snr. ANSELMO BRAAMCAMP FREIRE (born in 1849), founder and +editor of the _Archivo Historico Portugues_ and a most sagacious critic +and keen investigator, is the author of attractive and important +historical studies and editions, which have become more frequent since +he has been able to spare more time from public affairs. Dr. JOSÉ +LEITE DE VASCONCELLOS (born in 1858) has a European reputation as +archaeologist, folk-lorist, philologist, and founder and editor of +the _Revista Lusitana_. Ethnology, numismatics, and poetry are among +his other subjects, and he maintains the renown of the Portuguese as +polyglots, since he writes in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Latin, +and Galician. His untiring enthusiasm for all that is popular or +genuinely Portuguese is reflected in his numerous books and pamphlets, +and he happily infects younger scholars. The gift and training of +exact scholarship were denied to Dr. THEOPHILO BRAGA (born in 1843), +but his exceptional ardour, industry, and ingenuity have been of +inestimable value to Portuguese literature, which will always venerate +his name even though his works perish. More than thirty years ago they +numbered over sixty, and that was, as it were, only a beginning. His +volumes of verse, _Folhas Verdes_ (1859), _Visão dos Tempos_ (1864), +_Tempestades Sonoras_ (1864), _Ondina do Lago_ (1866), _Torrentes_ +(1869), _Miragens Seculares_ (1884), which was intended to succeed +where Victor Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_ had failed through lack of a +_plano fundamental_, have been variously judged, some regarding them as +real works of genius, others as a step removed from the sublime; his +works on the Portuguese people are always full of interesting matter. +His important _Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa_ was to have been +completed in thirty-two volumes, but his energies have been spent in +many directions, and he has further written works of history, including +that of Coimbra University in four volumes, positivist philosophy, and +sociology, as well as short stories and plays. + +The Portuguese novelists in the nineteenth century showed an increasing +tendency to write plays, while authors whose reputation belonged more +exclusively to the drama rarely rose above mediocrity. The success +of Garrett’s plays was bound to fire a crowd of dramatists. Gomes de +Amorim’s _Ghigi_ (1852), on a fifteenth-century theme, was followed by +plays with a thesis, such as _A Viuva_ (1852), _Odio de Raça_ (1854), +written on the slavery question at Garrett’s request, and _Figados de +Tigre_ (1857), which entitles itself a parody of melodramas. Having +emigrated as a boy to Brazil, he was able to use his knowledge of South +America, sometimes with more zeal than discretion, as in _O Cedro +Vermelho_, an exotic play in five acts and seventy-nine scenes, which +the unfamiliar dresses and hybrid dialogue helped to make popular at +Lisbon.[684] + +The notable success of more recent playwrights has perhaps developed +in proportion as the drama has ceased to be drama in order to become +a series of isolated scenes, a novel or _conto_ in green-room attire. +They are at their happiest when they abandon formal drama for the +lighter _revista_. Pathos is theirs and a deft handling of social +themes; they can reproduce the peasant or _bourgeois_ or noble as a +class in thought and action and external conditions. Some of them +possess technical skill, choose indigenous subjects and an atmosphere +of chastened romanticism. But individual psychology and dramatic +action are scarcely to be found. A reader with the patience to peruse +the hundreds of plays acted and published in Lisbon during the last +fifty years would be rewarded by many delicate half-tones, polished +and impeccable verse, excellent prose, admirable sentiments, and +poignant scenes, but could with difficulty afterwards recall a striking +character or situation. FERNANDO CALDEIRA (1841-94) was a poet, +and his plays, _O Sapatinho de Setim, A Mantilha de Renda_ (1880), +_Nadadoras, A Madrugada_ (1894), are read less for the plot than for +his carefully limned verse. His volume of poems, _Mocidades_, appeared +in 1882. ANTONIO ENNES (1848-1901), journalist, librarian, politician, +diplomatist, Minister of Marine, showed command of pathos and humour +as well as of style in his plays _O Saltimbanco_ (1885), the tragedy +of the noble devotion of a mountebank, Falla-Só, descendant of Jean +Valjean, for his daughter, who has been brought up in ignorance of +her birth, _Os Lazaristas_ (1875), and _Os Engeitados_ (1876), which +insists throughout on its thesis, the wickedness and cruelty of +exposing children, but has some good scenes and living characters, +and the notable one-act piece _Um Divorcio_ (1877). The principal +play of MAXIMILIANO DE AZEVEDO (1850-1911), author of many light and +commonplace comedies, as _Por Força_ (1900), was the drama _Ignez de +Castro_ (1894). The scene in which Inés, full of foreboding, takes +leave of Pedro before he goes hunting, and that at the end of Act IV, +in which Pedro returns to find Inés, in the words of their little son, +_ali a dormir_, are effective. A fifth act six years later [1361] +comes as an anti-climax. _O Auto dos Esquecidos_ (1898) is the work +not of a dramatist but of a poet, JOSÉ DE SOUSA MONTEIRO (1846-1909), +whose poems were published under the title _Poemas: Mysticos, Antigos, +Modernos_ (1883). The _auto_, written in the old _redondilhas_ +of which another modern poet has sung the praises, necessarily +suffers by comparison with plays in which Gil Vicente touched +upon the subject--the humbler forgotten heroes of the Portuguese +discoveries--but it has its own charm and pathos. + +But the most noteworthy of the dramatists of the latter part of the +century was D. JOÃO DA CAMARA (1852-1908), son of the first Marques +and eighth Conde da Ribeira Grande and grandson of the third Duque +de Lafões. He early began writing for the stage one-act pieces such +as _Nobreza_ (1873). His work is various, for it includes elaborate +historical dramas in heroic couplets, as _Affonso VI_ (1890), in +which the king is treated with a sympathy denied to Cardinal Henrique +in _Alcacer-Kibir_ (1891), slight pieces in verse, as _O Poeta e +a Saudade_ or the _Auto do Menino Jesus_ (1903); and prose plays +of contemporary Lisbon society: _O Pantano_ (a series of scenes of +madness and murder), _A Rosa Engeitada_, _A Toutinegra Real_, _A Triste +Viuvinha_, _Casamento e Mortalha_. In these he is lifelike and natural, +but many may prefer him in his more fanciful pieces, portraying the +old Canon who lives up under the roof of Lisbon Cathedral, in _Meia +Noite_ (1900), or the _prior_ and other rustic worthies of Alentejo, +in _Os Velhos_ (1893), or the ancient mariner of _O Beijo do Infante_ +(1898). The mad José of _O Pantano_, the scatterbrained Clytemnestra +in _A Toutinegra Real_, the _parvenu_ Arroiolos and select Dona +Placida in _A Rosa Engeitada_ give little idea of the essential mellow +humanity of his work, enhanced by a prose style carefully chosen +and at times slightly archaic. Snr. Abel Botelho is more peculiarly +concerned with the novel, and his plays _Germano_ (1886), _Os Vencidos +da Vida_ (1892), _Jucunda_ (1895) derive their interest from the +description of certain phases of Lisbon life which could have been +presented equally well in novel form. MARCELLINO MESQUITA (1856-1919), +doctor and deputy, wrote historical dramas, _O Regente_ [1440] in +prose, _Leonor Telles_ (1889, published in 1893) in verse, _O Sonho +da India_ (1898) (scenes from the discoveries of Gama and ten other +famous Portuguese navigators), and _Pedro O Cruel_ (1916). If these +historical tragedies are somewhat ponderous, he has a lighter touch in +the _redondilhas_ of _Margarida do Monte_ (1910) and in the charming +sketch _Peraltas e Secias_, and displays psychological insight in prose +plays dealing with more modern problems: the comedy _Perola_ (1889), +_Os Castros_ (1893), _O Velho Thema_ (1896), _Sempre Noiva_ (1900), +_Almas Doentes_ (1905), which treats of hereditary madness and suicide, +and in the moving tragedy _Envelhecer_ (1909), although it is perhaps +out of keeping with the finely portrayed character of Eduardo de +Mello that he should so end who had endured so nobly. His prose style +has great merit (a few words require excision, e. g. _restaurante_, +_rewolver_, _desconforto_), and he wrote many shorter problem pieces +or episodes in prose: _Fim de Penitencia_ (1895), _O Auto do Busto_ +(1899), _O Tio Pedro_ (1902), _A Noite do Calvario, A Mentira_ (in +which a wife lies to her husband by the life of their child, who +dies). The monotony of the rhymed couplets in _Leonor Telles_ is +intensified in the work of Snr. HENRIQUE LOPES DE MENDONÇA (born in +1856). His verse is more declamatory, the use of strained _esdruxulo_ +endings is carried so far that it becomes a mannerism and the verse +often resembles a hurdle-race, the line running on smoothly to the +obstacle at its end (_thalamo_--_cala-m’o_; _silencio_--_recompense-o_; +_phantasma_--_faz-m’a_). This no doubt helps to increase the effect +of hollow resonance. Nor is there a compensating skill in psychology. +There is nothing subtle, for instance, in the characters of _O Duque +de Vizeu_ (1886): the cruel João II, the timid Manuel, the high-minded +Duke, and self-sacrificing Margarida. _A Morta_ (1891) deals with Pedro +I’s justice and _saudade_ for the dead Inés. _Affonso d’Albuquerque_ +(1898) has a tempting subject (handled previously by Costa Lobo in +his play--also in verse--_Affonso d’Albuquerque_, 1886), but it is +embarrassing to find the most unrhetorical of heroes, will of iron +but not as here tongue of gold, solemnly haranguing in couplet after +couplet, (although here, as in the other plays, the atmosphere of +Portugal’s spacious days is well maintained): + + E em psalmos de christão se ha de mudar o cantico + De Brahma, confundindo o Indico no Atlantico. + +It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909, +written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio, +_Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to _O Salto +Mortal_, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the +admirably natural fishermen’s scenes and dialogues enacted at Ericeira +in the second half of the nineteenth century, in _Amor Louco_ (1899). +The author succeeds in giving a more definite picture of a whole +community here than of any of his individual heroes in high places. _A +Herança_ (1913) also has the lives of fishermen for its subject. An +equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse is _Saudade_ (1916), +while the dramatist’s power of evoking past scenes is shown in the +glowing historical tales of _Sangue Português_ (1920), _Gente Namorada_ +(1921), and _Lanças n’Africa_ (1921). + +The most conspicuous among slightly younger dramatists is Snr. JULIO +DANTAS (born in 1876), who published a first volume of poems, _Nada_, +in 1896. He is gifted with wit, lightness of touch, an excellent style, +and a sense of atmosphere, which enables him to bring a pleasant +archaic flavour to reconstructions of the past and observe the true +spirit of history in periods the most diverse. His malleable talent +is equally at its ease in _O que morreu de amor_ (1899) and _Viriato +Tragico_ (1900); in Spain of the seventeenth century: _Don Ramón de +Capichuela_ (1911); contemporary Lisbon: _Crucificados_ (1902), _Mater +Dolorosa_ (1908), _O Reposteiro Verde_ (1912); the Inquisition-clouded +Portugal of the seventeenth century: _Santa Inquisição_ (1910), or its +lighter side, with the _bonbon_ marquis: _D. Beltrão de Figueiroa_ +(1902); the gentle, romantic Portugal of the middle of the nineteenth +century: _Um Serão nas Laranjeiras_ (1904), or the bull-fighting +Portugal of the same period: _A Severa_ (1901) with the gallant Marques +de Marialva and the beautiful and magnanimous gipsy of the Mouraria. +The filigree of his elaborate stage directions is skilfully used +to enhance the effect,[685] and some of his scenes are exquisite, +especially the simple, very charming, and tragic one-act comedy _Rosas +de todo o anno_ (1907). If the characters are usually sacrificed to +their setting, here and there a slight sketch stands out, as that of +the cynical old cardinal who delights in the mental torture of others, +in _Santa Inquisição_, the attractive bishop of _Soror Mariana_ (1915), +or the characters in _A Ceia dos Cardeais_ (1902). ERNESTO BIESTER +(1829-80) in the middle of last century wrote lively comedies of +contemporary Lisbon life. The comedies of GERVASIO LOBATO (1850-95), as +_Os Grotescos_, _A Condessa Heloïsa_ (1878), _O Festim de Balthazar_ +(1892), _O Commissario de Policia_, _Sua Excellencia_, and many others, +are natural, farcical scenes of high spirits and real good humour and +good feeling. More literary and charming is the work of Snr. EDUARDO +SCHWALBACH, whose _O Dia de Juizo_ (1915) and _Poema de Amor_ (1916) +came to crown a long series of plays and _revistas_. There are touches +of real comedy in the lightly sketched scenes and characters of Snr. +AUGUSTO DE CASTRO’S _Caminho perdido_ (1906), _Amor á Antiga_ (1907), +_As nossas amantes_ (1912), _A Culpa_ (1918), as in his slight, +attractive essays _Fumo do Meu Cigarro_ (1916), _Fantoches e Manequins_ +(1917), and _Conversar_ (1920); thought and character in Snr. AUGUSTO +LACERDA’S _O Vicio_ (1888), _Casados Solteiros_ (1893), _Terra Mater_ +(1904), _A Duvida_ (1906), _Os Novos Apostolos_ (1918). In Snr. BENTO +MANTUA’S _O Alcool_ (1909) and _Novo Altar_ (1911) the problem may be +a little too much in evidence, but in his prose plays _Má Sina_ (1906) +and _Gente Moça_ (1910) the human interest is insistent. _Má Sina_, +apart from the author’s weakness for strained coincidences, is a story +of peasant life very naturally told. A young playwright of promise is +Snr. VASCO DE MENDONÇA ALVES, author of _Promessa_ (1910) and _Filhos_ +(1910). The subject of _Filhos_ is unpleasant if not original (it is +that of Eça de Queiroz’ _Os Maias_ and Ennes’ _Os Engeitados_), but is +treated with dignity and in a good prose style. Snr. JAIME CORTESÃO, +hitherto known rather as a poet, has turned to the drama in _Egas +Moniz_ (1918). + +The novelists of the second half of the century were numerous and, as +a rule, too dependent upon foreign models, chiefly French. JOAQUIM +GUILHERME GOMES COELHO (1839-71) neither by date nor inclination +belonged to one or other of the two schools between which lies his +brief ten years’ activity. His talent developed early. As a medical +student at his native Oporto he published poems and several stories, +originally printed in the _Jornal do Porto_ and later collected with +the title _Serões de Provincia_ (1870), and at the age of twenty-one, +under the pseudonym JULIO DINIZ, he wrote the novel which brought him +immediate fame and is still sometimes preferred to his later works: +_Uma Familia Ingleza_ (1868). In these scenes of the life of Oporto he +drew with the most elaborate analysis the relations between English +and Portuguese which he had had frequent opportunities of observing in +that city. Portuguese critics hint that what to superficial readers has +seemed the tediousness of his novels is due to the influence of Dickens +and other English novelists who revel in detail, and it is interesting +that Gomes Coelho’s maternal grandmother was an Englishwoman, Maria, +daughter of Thomas Potter. But it is a mistake to call his work +tedious; the deliberate dullness of his novels has an excitement of +its own, ‘’tis a good dullness’. The reader, tired with sensational +plots and strained incidents, follows not only with relief but with +growing absorption the homely daisy-chain of his stories, in which +not the tiniest link in the development of the action or thought, +especially the latter, is omitted. The interest never flags and never +disappoints, leading gently on with carefully measured steps; the +approval of virtue and disapproval of wickedness only occasionally +becomes obtrusive and insipid. Julio Diniz confessed to a preference +for _bourgeois_ types, but his real interest was in the country, +and _As Pupillas do Senhor Reitor_[686] (1866), a village chronicle +suggested by Herculano’s _O Parocho de Aldea_, is by many held to be +his best work. The characters are delineated with the same delicate +charm as that of Jenny in his earlier novel, and there is a background +of curious observation--_esfolhadas_ (husking the maize), _espadeladas_ +(braking flax), _ripadas_ (dressing the flax), _fiadas_ (gatherings +of women to spin at the winter _lareira_ in the faint light of a lamp +hanging on the smoke-blackened wall), the men at cards in the tavern, +the old country doctor going his rounds on horseback, the solemn +greetings _Guarde-o Deus, Louvado seja nosso Senhor Jesu Christo_. If +he sometimes sees the peasants as he would have them be rather than as +they are, if his realism is subdued and gentle, his descriptions are +at least truer than those of the naturalistic school. In _A Morgadinha +dos Canaviaes_ (1868), another village chronicle of Minho, the winter +life of the peasantry is described, the _consoada_ preceding ‘cock-crow +mass’ on Christmas Eve, the _auto_ represented on a rough stage in the +village on the Day of Kings, together with the inevitable missionaries, +_beata_, enriched ‘Brazilian’, and electioneering intrigues. Some +critics have seen a falling off in his last novel, _Os Fidalgos da Casa +Mourisca_ (1871), written in the winter of 1869-70 at Madeira, whither +he went in vain quest of health, but it is perfectly on a level with +his previous work. There may be a slight tendency to exaggerate some of +the characters, as there was in _A Morgadinha_, the contrast between +Jorge and Mauricio may be too crude, the last scenes may be touched +with melodrama, the style may have traces of the _francesismo_ which +Castilho noticed in his first novel, the execution may be excessively +minute--these were not new defects in his works. On the other hand, +the ruined _fidalgo_ D. Luiz, his chaplain and agent Frei Januario, +who scents a Liberal doctrine leagues away, the large-hearted peasants +Anna do Vedor and Thomé da Povoa, are as interesting as Tio Vicente +the herbalist or any of his previous characters, and the charming and +accurate descriptions of the country that he loved so well show him at +his best. This demure chronicler of quiet scenes, this specialist in +the obvious, in his _romances lentos_, as he calls them--a Portuguese +blend of Jane Austen, Enrique Gil, and Fernán Caballero: his delicacy +is essentially feminine--achieved an originality which so often eludes +those who most furiously pursue it. His _Poesias_ (1873), partly +consisting of poems interspersed in his novels, have a quiet, intimate +charm. A curious originality had been attained earlier by a young naval +lieutenant, FRANCISCO MARIA BORDALLO (1821-61). When he published +_Eugenio_ (1846) at Rio de Janeiro, and a second edition at Lisbon in +1854, it was claimed that this sea novel (_romance maritimo_) was the +first of its kind to be written in Portuguese; but his use of naval +technical terms and descriptions of the sea is perhaps too deliberate. +His _Quadros maritimos_ appeared in _O Panorama_ in 1854. + +Few authors are more interesting to the critic (owing to the +courageous and persistent development of his art) than JOSÉ MARIA DE +EÇA DE QUEIROZ (1843-1900), a far more robust writer than Julio Diniz +and the greatest Portuguese novelist of the realistic school. Born at +Villa do Conde, the son of a magistrate, he was duly sent to study law +at Coimbra, and after taking his degree contributed in 1866 and 1867 a +series of _feuilletons_ to the _Gazeta de Portugal_. These _folhetins_, +reprinted in _Prosas Barbaras_ (1903), are remarkable because they show +beside a love of the gruesome and fantastic (_O Milhafre_, _O Senhor +Diabo_, _Memorias de uma Forca_) at least one story (_Entre a neve_) +of a perfect simplicity, such as the author is sometimes supposed to +have attained only towards the end of his life. His partiality for +the exotic was fostered by travels in Egypt and Palestine in 1869 and +manifested itself in _A Morte de Jesus_, _Adão e Eva no Paraiso_, +and _A Perfeição_, as well as in _A Reliquia_ and in part of _A +Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_. In 1873 he went to Havana as +Portuguese Consul, and twenty-six years as Consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne +(1874-6), Bristol (1876-88), and Paris (1888-1900), where he died, +enabled him to see his own country in a new light. His prose lost +its exuberance, his taste became more severe, his extravagant fancy, +so strangely combined with realism in many of his works, was merged +in natural descriptions of his native land. He regained his own soul +without losing that peculiar mockery with which he veiled a kindly, +sensitive temperament, and which agreeably stamps the greater part of +his writings. But indeed the introducer of the naturalistic novel into +Portugal only played with materialism, which in his hands was always +unreal: legendary and romantic, as in _Frei Genebro_, _S. Christovam_, +_O Tesoiro_; deliberately false and artificial, as _A Civilisação_; +a macabre fantasy, as _O Defunto_; or half-intentional caricature, +as _O Primo Basilio_ and _Os Maias_. What more chimerical than _A +Reliquia_ or more elusive than _O Suave Milagre_, or more fanciful +than _O Mandarim_ (1879), in which without himself knowing China the +author makes his readers know it! All through his life he was as it +were groping through Manueline for a purer Gothic; the pity was that +his education from the first should have thrown him into contact +with French models--so that his very language too often reads like +translated French--instead of directing him to a truer realism (such +as that of his nearer neighbour Pereda), to which he turned in his +last works, and in which he might have written regional masterpieces +had he not died at a moment when his art apparently had lost nothing +of its vigour. More probably, however, his still unsatisfied craving +for perfection would have sought relief in mysticism. His first novel +was a sensational story written in collaboration with Ramalho Ortigão: +_O Mysterio da Estrada de Cintra_ (1870), originally published in the +_Diario de Noticias_ (July 24-September 27, 1870). It was, however, +_O Crime do Padre Amaro_ (1876), in which he grafted the naturalistic +novel on the quiet little town of Leiria, and the two notable if +unpleasant Lisbon stories _O Primo Basilio_ (1878) and _Os Maias_ +(1880), that marked him out as the most powerful writer of the time in +Portugal. But he was still feeling his way. _A Reliquia_ (1887) is as +different from _Os Maias_ as it is from the remarkable and charming +letters of _A Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_ (1891) and his last +two novels, _A Illustre Casa de Ramires_ (1900), most Portuguese of +his works, and _A Cidade e as Serras_ (1901). The three fragments +in _Ultimas Paginas_ (1912) were probably written earlier. There +are samples of all his phases in his _Contos_ (1902), and the short +story gave scope for his powers of observation and insight without +calling for an elaborate plot, in which he often failed. _A Cidade e +as Serras_, after developing the earlier story _A Civilisação_, is +but a fascinating succession of country scenes. All Eça de Queiroz’ +characters are caricatures, some more so, others less, but they are +nevertheless true to a certain degree, that is to say, they are good +caricatures, and living, and this is so especially in these later +novels, which show how great a regionalist writer was lost in him +through the influence of French schools. Yet no one can deny that his +works have an originality of their own as well as power and personal +charm, and all contain some striking character-sketches or delightful +descriptions that are not easily forgotten. + +The dullness of the naturalistic novels of JULIO LOURENÇO PINTO +(1842-1907) is not relieved by Eça de Queiroz’ pleasant irony and +definite characterization. These ‘scenes of contemporary life’, +while they display a praiseworthy restraint, give the idea rather +of exercises in imitation of a French exemplar or of one of Eça de +Queiroz’ early novels than of living stories. Their style is slovenly, +the development of the plot prolix and monotonous. A certain interest +attaches to _Margarida_ (1879)--although even here the author is too +methodical in detailing the past lives of the four protagonists, the +nonentity Luiz, the aspiring Adelina (a Portuguese Madame Bovary), +Fernando, and Margarida, after they have been duly presented in the +opening pages--and to the descriptions of a fair, a bull-fight, +a flood, or provincial politics in _Vida Atribulada_ (1880), _O +Senhor Deputado_ (1882), _Esboços do Natural_ (1882), and _O Homem +Indispensavel_ (1884). Snr. JAIME DE MAGALHÃES LIMA (born in 1857) +in _O Transviado_ (1899), _Na Paz do Senhor_ (1903), and _O Reino +da Saudade_ (1904), has written novels _à thèse_ which are quite as +interesting as naturalistic novels and more natural, but his art, +especially in the presentation of contemporary politics, is a little +too photographic. Snr. LUIZ DE MAGALHÃES (born in 1859), author of +several volumes of verse, wrote a single novel, _O Brasileiro Soares_ +(1886). It would offer little new in theme or treatment to distinguish +it from other naturalistic novels were it not for the author’s success +in drawing in Joaquim Soares a natural and attractive portrait of +the Portuguese returned rich from Brazil (the _Brasileiro_). None +of these novelists can rival the reputation of FRANCISCO TEIXEIRA +DE QUEIROZ (1848-1919). He became prominent as a novelist of the +realistic school over forty years ago when under the pseudonym of +BENTO MORENO he inaugurated the series of his _Comedia do Campo_ (8 +vols.), of which the last volume is _Ao Sol e á Chuva_ (1916), followed +by a second series: _Comedia Burgueza_ (7 vols.), which began with +_Os Noivos_ (1879). The obvious defects of his work--its laborious +realism, its insistence on medical or physical details, its vain load +of pedantry[687]--need not obscure its real merits. The careful style +has occasional lapses, the psychology is thin, the conversations +commonplace. His art, like a winter sunshine, fails to penetrate. +Yet even in the _Comedia Burgueza_, where the interest must depend +on the psychology, he succeeds in _D. Agostinho_ and _A Morte de D. +Agostinho_ (1895) in giving individuality to that strange rickety +figure of the old _fidalgo_ in his ruined Lisbon _palacio_. And in the +Minho scenes of the _Comedia do Campo_ his scrupulous descriptions +obtain their full effects. In the _romaria_ (pilgrimage), the +_cantadeira_ (improvisator), the _diligencia_ with its load of priests +(in _Amor Divino_), the girl shepherdess, the _abbade_ fond of hunting +wolves and boars, the old women spinning, the lawsuit of centuries over +the fruit of an orange-tree, the sexton Coruja and his dog Coisa (in +_Vingança do morto_ and _O Enterro de um Cão_), and especially some old +familiar country-house, with Dona Maria and her preserves and _receios +infernaes_, in _Amor Divino_ and _Amores, Amores_ (1897), Minho and the +Minhotos are presented with naturalness and skill. Many of these scenes +are from the short stories of _Contos_, _Novos Contos_ (1887), _A Nossa +Gente_ (1900),[688] and _A Cantadeira_ (1913),[689] some of which have +been collected in an attractive volume, _Arvoredos_ (1895). + +Snr. MANUEL DA SILVA GAYO (born in 1860), poet and novelist, wrote +in _Peccado Antigo_ (1893) a short _novela_ as it calls itself, +or rather a _conto_, remarkable for its combination of colour and +restraint. It describes country scenes and customs in a style that +may not be spontaneous but is well subservient to the matter in hand, +and has a vigour, purity, and concision too often lacking in modern +Portuguese prose. Some of his early stories were collected in _A Dama +de Ribadalva_ (1904). In his later novels this style is not maintained. +We will not quarrel with its abruptness in _Ultimos Crentes_ (1904), a +remarkable story of nineteenth-century _Sebastianistas_ in a fishing +village to the extreme north of Estremadura, but it is more slovenly +in _Os Torturados_ (1911), in which a certain originality of thought +seems to have damaged the form in which it was expressed. There is a +welcome Spanish directness in the work of the able journalist Snr. +CARLOS MALHEIRO DIAS (deputy for Vianna do Castello in 1903-5) in his +novels _O Filho das Hervas_ (1900), _Os Telles de Albergaria_ (1901), +and _A Paixão de Maria do Ceo_ (1902). Frankly sensational in _O Grande +Cagliostro_ (1905), he displays his gift for the short story in _A +Vencida_ (1907), a volume of dramatic tales, of which _A Consoada_ +is especially effective. Snr. JOÃO GRAVE (born in 1872) carefully +elaborates his prose in _A Eterna Mentira_ (1904) and _Jornada +Romantica_ (1913). It turns to marble in the musings of the marble faun +in _O Ultimo Fauno_ (1906), but loses this unreality in studies of the +poor in country, _Gente Pobre_ (1912), and town, _Os Famintos_ (1903), +a tragic story of a workman’s family at Oporto. More recently he has +treated historical themes with success in _Parsifal_ (1919) and _A Vida +e Paixão da Infanta_ (1921). In the historical novel Snr. FRANCISCO DE +ROCHA MARTINS has won a special place by picturesque works such as _Os +Tavoras_ (1917). He has an eye for dramatic episodes and has composed +many a living picture of the past. + +ABEL BOTELHO (1856-1917), a colonel in the Army, and for some years +Minister of the Portuguese Republic at Buenos Aires, author of a volume +of verse, _Lyra Insubmissa_ (1885), showed an intermittent power of +description in seven stories of his native Beira, collected under the +title _Mulheres da Beira_ (1898). In his series of novels published +under the heading _Pathologia Social: O Barão de Lavos_ (1891), _O +Livro de Alda_ (1898), _Fatal Dilemma_ (1907), _Prospera Fortuna_ +(1910), he would seem to have laboured under a misapprehension, +believing apparently that the introduction of physiology into +literature might prove him an original writer.[690] Sainte-Beuve may +speak of the _saletés splendides_ of Rabelais, a great stylist like +Signor Gabriele d’ Annunzio, except when his art fails, may redeem +if he does not justify any theme. But Abel Botelho’s style in these +wearisome novels can only be described as worthy of their matter. +They are a welter of shapeless sentences, long abstract terms, French +words, gallicisms, expressions such as _pathognomonico_, _autopsiação_, +_neuro-arthritico_, _a etiologia dos hystero-traumatismos_. This +may be magnificent pathology, but it is not art or literature. _As +Farpas_ had come to an end some years before these novels began to +appear, otherwise their defects might have been pilloried by an adept +in ridicule who in contemporary literature occupies a place apart. +As critic JOSÉ DUARTE RAMALHO ORTIGÃO (1836-1915) took his share in +the controversy of 1865, as a traveller he wrote a vivid, witty, +and charming account of Holland, with malicious side-reflections +on Portugal: _A Hollanda_ (1883). Between these two dates a series +of papers, _As Farpas_ (1871-87), originally suggested by Alphonse +Karr’s _Les Guêpes_ and begun in collaboration with his friend Eça +de Queiroz, had made him famous. His clear and pointed style was an +excellent instrument for the barbed shafts of his satire and irony and, +having discovered how powerful a weapon he possessed, he wielded it to +right purpose. With abundant good sense he ridiculed and undermined +the foibles and follies of Lisbon life, obstinately determined to +bring health to the minds and the bodies of his fellow-countrymen and +succeeding by his wit where a more sedate reformer might have failed. +The range of subjects covered was very wide--the interest of many of +them necessarily ephemeral--and his skill in brief character-sketches +is remarkable. But although Ramalho Ortigão will always be remembered +as the author of _As Farpas_ it is perhaps _A Hollanda_ that will +be read. The former work was imitated by Fialho de Almeida in _Os +Gatos_ (1889-94), which achieved popularity in Lisbon. His is a more +lumbering wit: the rapier of Ramalho Ortigão is exchanged for bludgeon +or umbrella. But _Os Gatos_, despite much that is vulgar and much +that is dull, contains some good literary criticism and successful +descriptions, of places rather than of persons. A battling critic was +MANUEL JOSÉ DA SILVA PINTO (1848-1911) in _Combates e Criticas_ (1882), +_Frente a frente_ (1909), and _Na procella_ (1909). Equally vigorous +and pure was the style of JOAQUIM DE SENNA FREITAS (1840-1913) in _Per +agoa e terra_ (1903) and _A Voz do Semeador_ (1908), as likewise that +of FRANCISCO SILVEIRA DA MOTA in _Viagens na Galliza_ (1889). The +literature of travel is not extensive. Oliveira Martins published in +the _Jornal do Commercio_ of Rio de Janeiro in 1892 his _A Inglaterra +de hoje_ (1893); Eça de Queiroz showed a deeper acquaintance with +England in his _Cartas de Inglaterra_ (1905). Snr. WENCESLAU JOSÉ DE +SOUSA MORAES (born in 1854), sometimes called the Portuguese Pierre +Loti, has skilfully described China and Japan in _Traços do Extremo +Oriente_ (1905), _Paisagens da China e do Japão_ (1906), and _Cartas do +Japão_ (three series, 1904-7). In a letter in French at the end of his +_Traços_ he says: _J’ai dit ce que je pensais, naïvement, au gré de mes +souvenirs._ + +Snr. MANUEL TEIXEIRA GOMES, versatile and gifted, traveller, +diplomatist (Portuguese Minister at the Court of St. James), and +author, is essentially an artist. With a clear, coloured, liquid style +he excels in painting the blue seas, transparent air, and sun-burnt +soil of Algarve in _Agosto Azul_ (1904). His pagan and unconventional +art has the power of impressing incidents on the mind, as of giving +sharp relief to fantastic persons such as the Canon and his three +witless sisters in _Gente Singular_ (1909), the Danish literary lady +in _Inventario de Junho_ (1899), or the avaricious Dona Maria and the +inane Minister of _Sabina Freire_ (1905). This ‘comedy in three acts’ +contains sufficient shrewdness, humour, and clever characterization +for a long novel instead of a short play. The tiny volumes _Tristia_ +(1893) and _Alem_ (1895) by Snr. ANTERO DE FIGUEIREDO (born in 1867) +were notable for their style, and in other works, _Partindo da Terra_ +(1897), the passionate letters of _Doida de Amor_ (1910), the novel +_Comicos_ (1908), and the fascinating historical studies _D. Pedro +e D. Inês_ (1913) and _Leonor Teles, Flor de Altura_ (1916), his +prose maintains a restraint and charm which place him among the best +stylists of the day. One of the noblest qualities of this prose is its +precision, the scrupulous use of the right word, common or archaic. +It is the more disconcerting to find good Portuguese words such as +_estação_, _hospedaria_, _comodo_, _bondade_ ousted by _gare_, _hôtel_, +_confortavel_, _bonomia_. But these are only occasional blemishes in +a style of rare distinction. It can paint a whole scene in a brief +sentence, as _os milheiraes amarellecem-se caladamente_. This power of +description gives excellence to his _Recordações e Viagens_ (1905), +whether the recollections be of Minho or of _uma aldeia espiritual_ in +Italy. It is really as a writer of short sketches and essays that he +excels. In _Senhora do Amparo_ (1920) and especially in the seventeen +sketches of _Jornadas de Portugal_ (1918) skill in the choice of +indigenous words gives a forcible and original poetry to glowing +descriptions redolent of the soil. + +D. MARIA AMALIA VAZ DE CARVALHO (1847-1921) collaborated with her +husband, the poet Gonçalves Crespo, in _Contos para os nossos filhos_, +and in _Serões no Campo_ (1877), three stories, in one of which, _A +Engeitada_, one may perhaps see reminiscences of Julio Diniz’ _A Casa +Mourisca_, and _Contos e Phantasias_ (1880) treated slight themes with +a delicate charm. But she is less well known as writer of _contos_ or +as poet, in _Vozes do Ermo_ (1876), than as the author of a notable +historical biography, _Vida do Duque de Palmella_ (1898-1903), and +of critical essays on Portuguese and foreign literatures. In the +latter the English predominates, but French, German, and Italian, +as in _Arabescos_ (1880), are not forgotten. The sane judgement, +sympathy, and insight of _Alguns homens do meu tempo_ (1889), _Figuras +de Hoje e de Hontem_ (1902), _Cerebros e Corações_ (1903), _No Meu +Cantinho_ (1909), _Coisas de Agora_ (1913), and other volumes have been +appreciated by countless readers in Portugal and Brazil. A writer who +likewise combines literary and historical criticism with original work +in verse (_Poemetos_, 1882) and prose is the CONDE DE SABUGOSA (born in +1854), skilful and delicate reconstructor of the past in _Embrechados_ +(1908), _Donas de Tempos Idos_ (1912), _Gente d’Algo_ (1915), _Neves +de Antanho_ (1919), and _A Rainha D. Leonor_ (1921), who collaborated +with another stylist, the CONDE DE ARNOSO[691] (1856-1911), author of +_Azulejos_ (1886), in the volume of _contos_ entitled _De braço dado_ +(1894). His historical portraits are full of life and charm, painted in +the warm colours of knowledge and emotion. + +If we except D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, the literary achievement +of women in Portugal in recent years has not been remarkable. Like D. +CLAUDIA DE CAMPOS, author of the novels _Elle_ (1898) and _A Esfinge_ +and short stories, D. ALICE PESTANA (_Caiel_) has cultivated with +success both the novel, as in _Desgarrada_ (1902), and the _conto_, as +in _De Longe_ (1904), which contains stories of familiar life written +with sincerity and truth. If D. ANNA DE CASTRO OSORIO’S _Ambições_ +(1903) gives the impression rather of a series of scenes than of a +long novel, in her short stories _Infelizes_ (1898)--especially _A +Terra_--and _Quatro Novelas_ (1908) she ably describes common family +life in town or country, or (in _A Sacrificada_) the lives, past and +present, of aged nuns in a dwindling convent. D. VIRGINIA DE CASTRO E +ALMEIDA has written two novels concerning the development of the soil +in Alentejo: _Terra Bemdita_ (1907) and _Trabalho Bemdito_ (1908).[692] +They are frankly novels with a thesis to prove, but contain so much +vigour and zest of living that they stand out from other more futile or +anaemic novels of contemporary Portugal. + +The growing prominence of the _conto_ is felt in the work of Castello +Branco, Eça de Queiroz, Teixeira de Queiroz, Snr. Jaime de Magalhães +Lima (_Via Redemptora_, 1905, _Apostolos da Terra_, 1906, _Vozes +do Meu Lar_, 1912), and many other novelists. JULIO CESAR MACHADO +(1835-90) showed talent in _Contos ao luar_ (1861), _Scenas da minha +terra_ (1862), _Quadros do campo e da cidade_ (1868), _Á Lareira_ +(1872). His skill in the description of rustic scenes would have been +more convincing had he not thought it necessary to introduce touches +of extraneous elegance and humour into his very real love of the +country, so that the patent leather boot is ever appearing among the +_tamancos_ in these light humorous sketches and romantic tales. As +slight but perhaps more natural are the _Contos do Tio Joaquim_ (1861) +by RODRIGO PAGANINO (1835-63); the pleasant stories of village life, +_Contos_ (1874) and _Serões de Inverno_ (1880), written by CARLOS LOPES +(born in 1842) under the pseudonym PEDRO IVO; and _Contos_ (1894) +and _Azul e Negro_[693] (1897) by Afonso Botelho. The poet AUGUSTO +SARMENTO (born in 1835) also wrote stories of village life, _Contos do +Soalheiro_ (1876), but stories _à thèse_, treating of emigration and +other _minhoto_ evils, among which he includes _beatas_, witches, and +_brasileiros de torna-viagem_. A writer of _contos_ as disappointing +as Machado is ALBERTO BRAGA (1851-1911). He has a sense of style +and technique, and some of his tales, especially _O Engeitado_, are +pathetic, but after reading his _Contos da minha lavra_ (1879), _Contos +de aldeia_, _Contos Escolhidos_ (1892), _Novos Contos_, one has the +perhaps somewhat unfair impression that they are mainly concerned +with _viscondessas_ and canaries. The learned Conde de Ficalho in +_Uma Eleição Perdida_ (1888) evidently relates his own experiences, +and this and the five accompanying _contos_ contain some charming +descriptions of Alentejo, of the _reisinho cacique_ Lopes, Paschoal +the _passarinheiro_, the gossips of the village _botica_, the girls +carrying _bilhas_, the scent of rosemary in morning dew. The same +province supplies the background of the work of JOSÉ VALENTIM FIALHO +DE ALMEIDA (1857-1912). Born at Villa de Frades, the son of a village +schoolmaster, he spent seven years sadly against the grain as chemist’s +assistant before he was able to turn more exclusively to literature. +No recent writer has had a greater vogue in Portugal. One must account +for this by the fact that in the somewhat nerveless literature of +the day he showed a virile and often brutal colour and energy. A few +descriptions of Alentejo gave interest to his _Contos_ (1881) and _A +Cidade do Vicio_ (1882), an interest strengthened in _O Paiz das Uvas_ +(1893). This collection of naturalistic stories of great variety and +very unequal merit is, indeed, redeemed by the author’s love for his +native province. He sometimes obtains powerful effects when his subject +is the wide spaces, the night silences, or the summer drought and +midday zinc-coloured sky of Alentejo. The shepherdess with her distaff, +the village crier, the small proprietor, the harvesters with their +week’s provision of coarse bread, goat’s cheese, and olives, toiling in +a temperature of 122 degrees, appear in his stories. His art is wholly +external. One need not have complained of his lack of psychology had he +been able to express what he saw in good Portuguese prose. But if we +turn to his style we find uncouth constructions, the constant use of +French words, and worse still, French words disguised as Portuguese: +_deboche_, _coquettemente_, _crayonar_. This is the more pity because, +had he written in Portuguese, he might have left robust pictures of +the Alentejan peasant’s life in its grim reality which would have been +read with pleasure. A sober and fastidious style, sometimes recalling +that of the Spanish essayist Azorín, marks the _Contos_ (1900) of +the dramatist D. João da Camara. The clear etching of the blind man +and his grandson going through the streets on Christmas Eve in _As +Estrellas do Cego_ and, especially, the poignant sketch of the ruined +old scholar _fidalgo_ in _O Paquete_ show admirably what a skilful +craftsman can make of the slightest of themes. This is true to an even +greater degree of the best of all the Portuguese _contistas_, JOSÉ +FRANCISCO DE TRINDADE COELHO (1861-1908). His _contos_ collected under +the title _Os Meus Amores_ (1891), natural and deeply felt scenes +of peasant life, are all marked by an exceptional delicacy of style +and by a most alluring freshness and simplicity. The tinkling of the +bells of flocks, the thin blue smoke above the roofs, the evening +mists, the flight of doves are in these pages. And the peasants are +treated with the same sympathetic insight as their surroundings, the +women singing at their work in the fields, the olive-gatherers at +supper in the great farm kitchen; vintage and harvest, tragedy and +idyll. The sympathy is extended to the animals, donkey (_Sultão_), +goat (_Mãe_), and hen (_A Choca_). The _saudade_ of peasant soldiers +for the land in _Terra-Mater_ gives an opportunity for describing the +life of the peasants with its hardy toil and many simple pleasures. +In _Á Lareira_, the longest of these stories, a rustic _serão_ of +peasants _ao borralho_ is pleasantly drawn out with quatrains, riddles, +anecdotes, fairy-tales, only interrupted by the ringing of the angelus +for the saying of prayer on prayer. Two little masterpieces stand +somewhat apart from the rest: _Abyssus Abyssum_, the tragic story of +two small boys, brothers, rowing to overtake the evening star, and +_Idyllio Rustico_, which with its two ingenuous little shepherds and +their flocks of sheep in the lonely places might almost be a chapter +from Don Ramón María del Valle Inclán’s _Flor de Santidad_ (1904). _Os +Meus Amores_ shows realism at its best, that is to say, hand in hand +with idealism. The author is not so enamoured of his delightful style +that he does not make the peasants speak their natural language, and +although he realizes keenly and expresses the poetry of their life, he +never sacrifices truth to this perception any more than to the strange +and essentially false propensities of the naturalistic school, nor +refines his descriptions to a rose-colour insipidity. A good scent of +the earth and of wild flowers pervades these realistic descriptions. +On such lines, if this book influences younger writers, it might lead +the way to many a delightful novel of the _parfum du terroir_ of +Portugal. Snr. JULIO BRANDÃO (born in 1870), equally distinguished +in prose and verse, is the author of _Maria do Ceo_ (1902), mystic +love letters in a chiselled style, only with the mystic writers of +old the style flowed naturally from an inner fervour, here it has +evidently been the chief consideration. If the effort is apparent it is +sometimes very successful, and in _Perfis Suaves_ (1903) and _Figuras +de Barro_ (1910), fantastic stories and fascinating fairy-tales, he +occasionally achieves simplicity. Equally studied is the prose of +Snr. JUSTINO DE MONTALVÃO’S _Os Destinos_ (1904), twelve stories, of +which _Conto dos Reis_ relates the death of a peasant child as voices +outside sing _São chegados os tres Reis_. The VISCONDE DE VILLA-MOURA +(born in 1877) has shown in the five _contos_ of _Doentes da Belleza_ +(1913), as in _Bohemios_ (1914), that his sensitive plastic style is +excellently suited to the short story. Snr. ANTONIO PATRICIO’S _Serão +Inquieto_ (1910) contains two poignant _contos_: _O Precoce_ and _O +Veiga_. _Os Pobres_ by Snr. RAUL BRANDÃO (born in 1869) is a succession +of scenes, a striking analysis of suffering as exhibited in various +strange types of the poor and of its beauty and necessity in the +philosophy of Gabiru. Snr. SEVERO PORTELA displays a tortured style +in _Os Condemnados_ (1906) and _Agua Corrente_ (1909); smoother but +equally artificial is that of Snr. HENRIQUE DE VASCONCELLOS in _Contos +Novos_ (1903) and _Circe_ (1908), the former of which contains the +slight sketch _O Caminheiro_. _Excentricos_ is the title of a volume +containing some notable stories by Snr. ALBERTO DE SOUSA COSTA. The +large number of _contos_ is a sign of the times, corresponding to the +favour shown towards the brief _revista_ in the drama and the host of +sonnets which now replace the long romantic poems of the past. + +ANTHERO DE QUENTAL[694] (1842-91), the Coimbra student who waved the +banner of revolt against a too complacent romanticism in 1865, was that +rare thing in Portuguese literature, a poet who thinks. Powerfully +influenced by German philosophy and literature, his was a tortured +spirit, and when in his sincerity he attempted to translate his +philosophy into action the result was too often failure. Born at Ponta +Delgada in the Azores, he studied law at Coimbra from 1858 to 1864, +became a socialist, worked for some time as a compositor in Paris, +in spite of his independent means; then, after a visit to the United +States of America, settled at Lisbon for some years and figured as an +active socialist. Weary and ill, he retired in 1882 to the quieter town +in the north, Villa do Conde, but he could not escape from his own +turbulent thoughts and nine years later he shot himself in a square of +his native town. If his life was ineffectual in its series of broken, +noble impulses, there is nothing vague or uncertain about the splendid +sonnets of _Odes Modernas_ (1865) and _Sonetos_ (1881). They are the +effect, often perfectly tranquil, of a previous agony of thought, like +brimmed furrows reflecting clear skies after rain. His search was for +truth, not for words to express it, far less for words to describe his +own sensations. Indeed, he was far from considering poetry as an end in +itself and destroyed more of his poems than his friends published. In +his autobiographical letter addressed to Dr. Storck in 1887 he states +that his poetry was written _involuntariamente_. That is to say, after +much thought on the great problems of existence verse came to him +unrhetorical and spontaneous, as it did to João de Deus without any +thought whatever: + + Já sossega depois de tanta luta, + Já me descansa em paz o coraçam. + +Quental’s poems owe their strength and intensity to the fact that they +had passed through the fire of _tanta luta_. + +Totally different from Quental’s was the genius of JOÃO DE DEUS +(1830-96), the most natural Portuguese poet of the nineteenth century. +Born at Messines in Algarve, he studied law at Coimbra, became a +journalist, but did not come to live permanently at Lisbon until he +was elected to represent Silves in the Chamber of Deputies in 1868. It +is significant that many of his most perfect lyrics were contributed +to provincial journals. They are written in the simple language of a +peasant composing a quatrain. He sought his inspiration not in books +or any of the rival schools of poetry but in his native soil and +popular speech, and through him Portuguese poetry was renovated. His +first published work, _A Lata_ (Coimbra, 1860), in _oitavas_, gives no +measure of his genius, but some of his best poems, such as _A Vida_, +were widely known before _Flores do Campo_ (1868) appeared, followed +by _Ramo de Flores_ (1875), _Folhas Soltas_ (1876), and finally the +collected edition, _Campo de Flores_ (1893). His last years were spent +in advertising and perfecting his special method for teaching children +to read. If ever poet was born, not made, it was João de Deus. He is at +his best when he does not attempt thought or philosophy or even give +rein to his satire. His verse, clear and light as a leaf, a cloud, a +stream--its favourite metaphors--and entirely free from rhetorical +effects, has a most spontaneous charm. Despite occasional defects, the +use of lukewarm or unpoetical words, _objectos_, _chaile_, _affavel_, +_bussola_, or such rhymes as _gotta_--_dou-t-a_, his work, which lacks +the fire that more spacious times might have elicited, abounds in +exquisite love lyrics. The popular inspiration is also evident in the +_Peninsulares_ (1870) of JOSÉ SIMÕES DIAS (1844-99), many of whose +poems are a mere string of _quadras_. + +GUILHERME BRAGA (1843-76), who wrote vigorous political verse against +‘Jesuit reactionaries’ and the like in _Os Falsos Apostolos_ (1871) and +_O Bispo_ (1874), proved himself a talented poet in _Heras e Violetas_ +(1869), although even here are to be found words and expressions +frequently out of tune. Like ALEXANDRE DA CONCEIÇÃO (1842-89), whose +best-known volume of verses, _Alvoradas_ (1866), belongs to the +romantic school, GUILHERME DE AZEVEDO (1846-82) began with romantic +verse in imitation of Garrett in _Apparições_ (1861), wavered in +_Raçõdiaes da Noite_ (1871), and succumbed to the new school in _A +Alma Nova_ (1874). JOÃO PENHA (1839-1919) in _Rimas_ (1882) and _Novas +Rimas_ (1905) shows a command of metre and harmony worthy of something +better than his commonplace themes. Gonçalves Crespo heard in his +verse ‘the plaining music of a guitar of Andalucía’, but Penha never +cared to be serious. CESARIO VERDE (1855-86) was a Lisbon poet who +in verse written between 1873 and 1883, _O Livro de Cesario Verde_ +(1886), showed a most promising gift of presenting reality in phrases +limpidly clear without straining after effect. Another poet who died +almost as young left a far more definite achievement, although his +poems are scarcely more numerous than those of Verde. Few Portuguese +writers have, indeed, published less than ANTONIO CANDIDO GONÇALVES +CRESPO (1846-83), a Portuguese born at Rio de Janeiro. He studied +at Coimbra University, and became a distinguished journalist and a +colonial member of the Portuguese Parliament from 1879 to 1881. Two +tiny volumes of lyrics, _Miniaturas_ (1870) and _Nocturnos_ (1882), +comprise his whole work, but his restraint and his fastidiously +chiselled verse place him at the head of the Portuguese Parnassians. +Portuguese in his hands becomes a pliant medium crystallizing round an +emotion, _longes de saudade_, or, more frequently, round a concrete +image, a parting at sunset (_Mater dolorosa_) or a village in a +summer noontide (_Na Aldeia_). The latter sonnet recalls a few lines +of Leopardi’s _Il Sabato del Villaggio_, and in one respect, the +perfection of form with which he describes quite ordinary scenes, the +Portuguese poet need not fear the comparison. An old woman spinning, +children at play, a peasant’s song in the fields, an orange-grove at +dawn musical with birds--these are incidental pictures in his poems, +and by his combination of a vague dreaming temperament with a delicate, +definite artistic sense they receive a new significance. An earlier +Brazilian poet, ANTONIO GONÇALVES DIAS (1823-64), author of _Primeiros +Cantos_ (1846), _Segundos Cantos e Sextilhas de Frei Antão_ (1848), and +_Ultimos Cantos_ (1851), made a name for himself by his _sextilhas_. + +It might be said of that marvellous poet Victor Hugo that he is not +for exportation: the tendency has been for those who lack his genius +to take shelter in his defects. Since one of his earliest followers, +CLAUDIO JOSÉ NUNES (1831-75), published _Scenas Contemporaneas_ +(1873) his influence has been very marked in Portugal and manifests +itself in the grandiloquence, over-emphasis, and love of antithesis +of much of Snr. ABILIO MANUEL GUERRA JUNQUEIRO’S work. The greatest +of Portugal’s living poets was born at Freixo de Espada á Cinta in +1850 and was thus a small child when Hugo’s poems _Les Contemplations_ +(1856) and _La Légende des Siècles_ (1859) appeared. After studying +law at Coimbra he was returned to Parliament in 1878. Enthusiastically +revolutionary until 1910, he became Portuguese Minister at Berne in the +following year, but retired from the service of the Republic in 1914. +His first verses were published at the age of fourteen, _Duas paginas +dos quatorze annos_ (1864), and before he was twenty he had written +_Mysticae Nuptiae_ (1866), _Vozes sem Echo_ (1867), and _Baptismo do +Amor_ (1868), with a preface by Camillo Castello Branco. But it was +_A Morte de Dom João_ (1874), a poem or series of poems in which Don +Juan and Jehovah are attacked impartially, that brought him resounding +success, a success followed up and increased by _A Velhice do Padre +Eterno_ (1885) and, under the influence of the political crisis of +1890, _Finis Patriae_ (1890) and the play _Patria_, in which his eager +and vigorous patriotism found vent. In all these, as in the quieter +volume _A Musa em Ferias_ (1879), there is true poetry (as well as +unfailing sincerity and passionate sympathy for the oppressed), but it +has to be looked for. A weird ghostliness in _Finis Patriae_ and in the +_doido’s_ part in _Patria_ is accompanied by a strange and impressive +lilt in the rhythm[695] which corresponds to the haunting refrains of +some of the shorter poems. But there seemed a danger that on the wings +of applause, in political invective, and turgid rhetoric the poet +might allow his genius to be totally misdirected, and it is his most +remarkable achievement that in _Os Simples_ (1892) he laid all that +aside and returned to the simpler themes of peasant life which cast +a spell over some of the lyrics in _Finis Patriae_: harvesters, the +_linda boeirinha_ guiding her great oxen, the old shepherd with his +flute and crook on the scented hills, the _cavador_ going to his work +at cockcrow beneath the red morning star. _A Caminho_, the inimitable +opening poem, has a delicate inspiration which is masterly in its +restraint and ingenuous charm. It was well to rest on such laurels. In +two subsequent odes, _Oração ao Pão_ (1902) and _Oração á Luz_ (1904), +filled with a vague music, Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s poetry merges into +a mystic philosophy which he intends to express in prose. Some early +poems appeared in _Poesias Dispersas_ (1921). A victim of Victor Hugo +to whom it is not easy for a critic to do justice, is the Lisbon poet +ANTONIO DUARTE GOMES LEAL (1849-1921). His capacity is felt to be so +much greater than his achievement. The grandiloquence and declamatory +character of the verse in his first volume, _Claridades do Sul_ (1875), +are accentuated in subsequent works: _A Fome de Camões_ (1880), _A +Historia de Jesus_ (1883), _O Fim de um Mundo_ (1900), _A Mulher de +Luto_ (1902). His satire here, as in _Satyras Modernas_ (1899), or +the biting sonnets of _Mefistófeles em Lisboa_ (1907), is sincerely +indignant but too often based on ignorance. In _O Anti-Christo_ +(1884) it voices the eternal revolt against false civilization and +materialism. This, the most celebrated of his works, presents a strange +medley of persons, from Barabbas to Tolstoi and Huysmans, who have +this in common that they all declaim in hollow sonorous Alexandrines. +Science, saints, Hebrew prophets, Chinese philosophers, the eleven +thousand Virgins pass in a vision before the Anti-Christ and converse +with him. It is as if a Goethe without genius had written the second +part of _Faust_. But _Claridades do Sul_ contains poems in a totally +different kind, poems like _De Noute_ and _Os Lobos_, which seem to +have caught something of the pathos and simplicity of _Les Pauvres +Gens_, satire and _humorismo_ forgotten. In his descriptions of homely +scenes his verse becomes quiet, natural, and effective; after reading +the restrained and skilful _tercetos_ of _De Noute_ one is inclined to +wonder whether the secret of his comparative failure is that here was +an excellent Dutch genre-painter striving to be a high-flown Velazquez. +But certainly he has no lack of talent, imagination, and power of +expression in resonant verse. + +The cult of _saudade_ has been deliberately revived by a group of poets +in the north who have founded the school of _Saudosismo_, and in their +monthly _A Aguia_ and the _Renascença_ press seek to foster all that +is native in Portuguese literature. Their creed is a vague pantheism, +their poetry is often equally vague and lacking in individuality, +but they have the advantage of being remote from Lisbon and of not +concerning themselves with foreign schools, and can therefore be +natural and Portuguese. At the head of these poets Snr. JOAQUIM +TEIXEIRA DE PASCOAES (born in 1877) sings musically in an enchanted +land of mists and shadows of pantheism, _saudade_, and his native +Tras-os-Montes. Merging itself entirely in Nature, his poetry becomes +a wavering symphony[696] woven of night and silence. The vagueness +present in the lyrics of _Sempre_ (1897), _Terra prohibida_ (1899), +_Jesus e Pan_ (1903), _Vida Etherea_ (1906), _As Sombras_ (1907), is +more marked in his longer poems _Marános_ (1911), in eighteen cantos, +and _Regresso ao Paraiso_ (1912), in twenty-two cantos of monotonous +blank verse. But Nature is justified of her child, and _Marános_, like +a mountain-stream threading its transparent pools, shows abundantly +that the author has also the power of condensing a picture into a +single line. To this group belong Snr. MARIO BEIRÃO (born in 1891), +whose verse in _O Ultimo Lusiada_ (1913) and _Ausente_ (1915) is strong +and concrete; Snr. AFONSO DUARTE (born in 1896), Snr. AUGUSTO CASIMIRO, +author of _Para a Vida_ (1906), _A Victoria do Homem_ (1910), and _A +Evocação da Vida_ (1912), and other young writers of promise. + +Few if any of the younger poets have found in Portugal so ready a +reception for their work as ANTONIO NOBRE (1867-1900), whether this +be due to the all-pervading melancholy, _saudades de tudo_, to the +metrical skill, or to the haunting intensity of his verse. In a series +of poems written between 1884 and 1894 he combined the dreams of a +student at Coimbra, _a lendaria Coimbra_, the home-sickness of a +Portuguese in Paris, and a real sympathy for the poor and miserable. +In these poems of suffering and disillusion, published under the title +_Só_ (1892), a strange alternation of ingenuousness and satanism, +fantastic visions and serene simplicity, genuine poetry and sheer +prose, refrains of rustic gaiety and of morbid sentiment, produces +a certain measure of originality. He can fit his pliant metres to +his will, mould them like wax, and if the book contains no perfect +poems this is partly due to a deliberate intention to reflect his own +incoherent moods and to an evident pleasure in incongruous effects. A +second volume, of poems written between 1895 and 1899, _Despedidas_ +(1902), appeared posthumously. + +The permanent Secretary of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Colonel +CRISTOVAM AYRES (born in 1853), has won distinction in many fields. +Well known as an historian of the army (_Historia Organica e Politica +do Exercito Portuguez_, 8 vols., 1896-1908) and as a critic, he has +also written short stories and volumes of verse which have placed +him in the front rank of the living Parnassian poets of Portugal. In +_Indianas_ (1878), _Intimas_ (1884), _Anoitecer_ (1914), and _Cinzas +ao Vento_ (1921), he displays great technical skill, especially +in the reproduction of still scenes as in the sonnets _Paizagem_, +_Aguarella_, or _Ao luar_. The Parnassian verse of JOAQUIM DE ARAUJO +(1858-1917) in _Lyra Intima_ (1881), _Occidentaes_ (1888), and _Flores +da Noite_ (1894) has a narcotic spell, a slow lulling music. And there +is real opium in the pliant melodies of ANTONIO FEIJÓ (1862-1917), +during sixteen years Portuguese Minister at Stockholm, in _Lyricas e +Bucolicas_ (1884) and _Ilha dos Amores_ (1897). The words are heavy +with sleep like cistus flowers: _Astros das noites limpidas velae-vos_ +or _A neve cae na terra lentamente_ (_les lourds flocons des neigeuses +années_). This perfection of metre is seen at its highest in his +_Cancioneiro Chinez_ (1890), translations from the French _Livre de +Jade_ (1867), itself a translation by Judith Gautier from various +Chinese poets. The poems of JOÃO DINIZ, in _Aquarellas_ (1889); MANUEL +DUARTE DE ALMEIDA (1844-1914), in _Estancias ao Infante Henrique_ +(1889), _Ramo de Lilazes_ (1887), and _Terra e Azul_; Snr. Manuel da +Silva Gayo, in _Novos Poemas_ (1906); Snr. Julio Brandão, in _Saudades_ +(1893), in which he weaves the _linho luarento das saudades_, _O +Jardim da Morte_ (1898) and _Nuvem de Oiro_ (1912); Snr. FAUSTO GUEDES +TEIXEIRA (born in 1872), in his remarkable _O Meu Livro, 1896-1906_ +(1908); Snr. LUIZ OSORIO, in _Neblinas_ (1884), _Poemas Portuguezes_ +(1890), and _Alma lyrica_ (1891); Snr. GUILHERME DE SANTA RITA in +_Vacillantes_ (1884) and _O Poema de um Morto_ (1897), and indeed of a +great _caterva vatum_,[697] belong to this school. The chiselling of +faultless sonnets has become a mannerism, but the critic who recalls +the vague and often slipshod diffuseness of earlier romantic poems +pauses before condemning. Perhaps it may be possible in time to combine +the cunning artifice of the verse-cutter with thought and a breath of +life and Nature. + +The CONDE DE MONSARAZ (1852-1913) wrote some pleasant regional +verse in _Musa Alemtejana_ (1908), in which he describes life in the +_charnecas_ (moors) and _herdades_ (estates) of Alentejo: the sound of +the well-wheel among orange-trees, the ringing of _trindades_, the long +lines of women hoeing, the old herdsman singing melancholy _fados_, +the smoking _açorda_ of the workmen’s meals, the storks fleeing from +the July heat, the processions to pray for rain. The same out-of-door +air and fullness of treatment pervade the work of Snr. AUGUSTO GIL, +with a more popular strain, in _Musa Cerula_ (1894), _Versos_ (1901), +_Luar de Janeiro_ (1909), _Sombra de Juno_ (1915), _Alba Plena_ (1916), +Snr. JOSÉ COELHO DA CUNHA’S _Terra do Sol_ (1911) and _Vilancetes_ +(1915),[698] and D. BRANCA DE GONTA COLLAÇO’S _Canções do Meio Dia_ +(1912). A more vigorous talent, also, is that of Snr. JOÃO DE BARROS +in _Algas_ (1899), _Entre a Multidão_ (1902), _Dentro da Vida_ (1904), +_Terra Florida_ (1909), and _Anteu_ (1912). At the head of the +Portuguese Symbolists (their symbolism has been rather external than +philosophic) stands Snr. EUGENIO DE CASTRO (born in 1869). He wished, +while retaining perfection of form, to fill it with a new imagery and +colour, and that his verse in describing Nature through his sensations +should remain detached and impersonal: the poet is _uma sombra saudosa +d’outras sombras_. The success achieved in _Oaristos_ (1890) was +strikingly maintained in _Sagramor_ (1895), _O Rei Galaor_ (1897), +_Constança_ (1900), _Depois da Ceifa_ (1901), _A Sombra do Quadrante_ +(1906), _O Annel de Polycrates_ (1907), _O Filho Prodigo_ (1910), and +the twenty-one sonnets of _Camafeus Romanos_ (1921). His versification +is not sufficiently varied (a defect naturally less apparent in the +shorter poems), his rare words and rhymes often have a cumbrous air, +but a real fire occasionally runs through the cold monotony of his +verse, lighting up its heavy jewels with a glow almost of life. If +it is sometimes an echo of Baudelaire, it is a Baudelaire thoroughly +acclimatized.[699] His debt was not wholly to French Parnassian or +Symbolist, for he had also drunk deep of Greek and German literature. +His originality in modern Portuguese poetry is a very real one. Yet +it is a pleasure to pass from verse often so perfect, always so +artificial, to the more natural poems of two younger writers. Snr. +ANTONIO CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA (born in 1880) in his _Auto do Fim do Dia_ +(1900), _Raiz_ (1903), and _Auto de Junho_ (1904) shows a true lyrical +gift, an inspiration of the soil, of the quatrains of popular poetry: + + Passou Maio taful, Maio magano, + E por onde passou nasceram rosas. + +In his later works, _Alma Religiosa_ (1910), _Auto das Quatro Estações_ +(1911), _Os Teus Sonetos_ (1914), _A Minha Terra_ (1916), the effect is +sometimes strained or marred by an almost morbid iteration. Snr. AFONSO +LOPES VIEIRA (born in 1878) displays a genuine talent in _O Naufrago_ +(1898), _O Encoberto_ (1905), _Ar Livre_ (1906), and _O Pão e as Rosas_ +(1908). _Ilhas de Bruma_ (1918) is filled with the rhythm of the sea +and with the traditions and native poetry of Portugal. There is a +certain strength as well as a subtle music about his verse which is of +good promise for the future. Whatever that future may be for Portuguese +literature, Portugal will join the more worthily in the great literary +age which will eventually spring from years of terrific upheaval if she +studies and utilizes her full heritage of prose and verse. There is +the less excuse now for its neglect since the devoted labour of many +Portuguese scholars is rendering it yearly more accessible. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[680] The incomplete list in the _Dicc. Bibliog._, vol. viii. records +forty-four published in 1865 and 1866. These include Julio de +Castilho’s _O Senhor Antonio Feliciano de Castilho e O Senhor Anthero +de Quental_ (1865, 2ᵃ ed., 1866), R. Ortigão’s _Litteratura d’Hoje_ +(1866), Snr. Braga’s _As Theocracias Litterarias_ (1865), Quental’s +_A Dignidade das Lettras_ (1865), and C. Castello Branco’s _Vaidades +irritadas e irritantes_ (1866). + +[681] The _outeiro_ (lit. ‘hill’) was an assembly of poets to _glosar +motes_. Often the gathering-place was outside a convent, from the +windows of which the nuns gave the _motes_ for the poets to gloss. + +[682] Historical research and compilation are carried on by Snr. +Fortunato de Almeida in his _Historia da Igreja em Portugal_ (1910, +&c.), and by Snr. Afonso de Dornellas (_Historia e Genealogia_, 1913, +&c.). Snr. Lucio de Azevedo, well known for his studies of Pombal (_O +Marquez de Pombal e a sua epoca_, 1909) and Antonio Vieira (_Historia +de Antonio Vieira_, 2 vols., 1918, 21), is a Brazilian. + +[683] For the works of these and other authors here mentioned consult +the Bibliography. + +[684] It was published, with the necessary explanations, in two volumes +(1874). + +[685] In this most delicate upholstery, if Wedgwood and Baedeker (as +well as Maple and Mappin) are introduced, they should surely be spelt +correctly. + +[686] _The Athenaeum_ in 1872 announced that Lord Stanley of Alderney +was preparing a translation of _As Pupillas_. According to a letter +of Julio Diniz (March 25, 1868), ‘an Englishman, a relation of Lord +Stanley, who is here [Oporto] studying the history of the Portuguese +discoveries’, had expressed a wish to translate it. The translation was +never published. The date of the first Portuguese edition is 1867. It +was dramatized at Lisbon in 1868. + +[687] e.g. a girl, Rosario, in _Amor Divino_, is +described--annihilated--with the assistance of Cybele, Goya, the Venus +of Milo, Reynolds, Shakespeare. Cf. the names, from Descartes to +Darwin, in _O Conto do Gallo_. + +[688] _Comedia do Campo_, vol. vi. + +[689] Vol. vii. + +[690] Pathology, religious and social, crops up in the later novels +of Snr. Vieira da Costa, _Irmã Celeste_ (1904), _A Familia Maldonado_ +(1908); yet his earlier work, _Entre Montanhas_ (1903), a story of +contemporary life in the high-lying vine-lands of Douro written in +1899, was more original. The modern Portuguese novelists are nearly, +although not quite, as numerous as the poets. José de Caldas is the +author of _Os Humildes_ (1900) and _Cartas de um Vencido_ (1910), D. +João de Castro of _Os Malditos_ (1894) and _A Deshonra_, in which a +strange situation is too long drawn out. + +[691] He wrote under the name Bernardo de Pindella or Bernardo Pinheiro. + +[692] In novels intimately connected with the Portuguese soil such +expressions as _colorido gritante_ (_criard_), _lunchar_ (to partake +of luncheon), _endomingado_ (_endimanché_) are more than ever out of +place. The authoress has written other stories: _Capital Bemdito_ +(1910), _Fé_ (a Socialist novel), _Inocente_ (1916), _A Praga_ (1917). + +[693] A _conto_ written by Snr. Julio de Lemos in 1905 bears the same +title. + +[694] de Quental or do Quental. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições +de Philologia Portuguesa_ (1911), p. 125 _ad fin._ + +[695] e.g. _Tive castellos, fortalezas pelo mundo.... Não tenho casa, +não tenho pão._ The cadence here, as in many of Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s +lines, is singularly arresting. The tendency to morbid repetition is +exaggerated in _Patria_ and has influenced many younger poets, as +Snr. Corrêa de Oliveira and, especially, Antonio Nobre. The reader +is credited with no imagination and the effect is diminished. For +instance, in _Patria_: _deixa-me dormir, Dormir em paz ... dormir!_ +That is excellent; but the word _dormir_ is then again thrice repeated, +until the reader sleeps. + +[696] In details his ear is not faultless. Cf. the unscannable line _E +que na corda do remorso enforçou Judas_ (unless this is deliberately +onomatopoeic). + +[697] Without counting those of Brazil, which had an exquisite +word-chiseller in the poet OLAVO BILAC (1865-1918), author of +_Panoplias_ and other verse published in _Poesias_ (1888, Nova ed. +1904). + +[698] He is the son of Snr. ALFREDO CARNEIRO DA CUNHA (born in +1863), whose _Versos_ (1900) contains the poignant lines _A uma +creança morta_, which recall Coventry Patmore and the pathos of Dr. +Robert Bridges’ _On a Dead Child_. The earlier edition, _Endeixas e +Madrigaes_, appeared in 1891. + +[699] The word _Nephelibatas_ (= Cloud-treaders), formerly applied to +poets of the decadent school in Portugal, is now seldom heard. + + + + + APPENDIX + + + + + § 1 + + Literature of the People + + +Side by side with literature proper there has always existed in +Portugal a literature of the people. Indeed, before Portuguese poetry +was written it flourished on the lips of the people, in the songs of +the women. Sometimes this popular literature almost coalesced with +written literature, as in the case of the _cossantes_ in the thirteenth +century. Its poetry lent a glow and magic to the work of Gil Vicente +and later to some of the lyrics of Camões; its proverbial lore was +reproduced in Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ prose plays and later +by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello; in indigenous folk-tales Trancoso +found part of his material. Eighteenth-century writers neglected it, +but Filinto Elysio returned to popular sources, and in the nineteenth +century they inspired two great poets, Almeida Garrett and João de +Deus. Literature and illiteracy have often gone hand in hand. In +Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ (Act III, sc. ii) we read of +the workwoman (_lavrandeira_) who ‘sings _de solao_, composes songs, +loves to learn _trovas_ by heart, gives a schoolboy farthings to buy +cherries in return for reading _autos_ to her’; and the _Pratica de +Tres Pastores_ gives us a picture of an old peasant reading out from +the Bible[700] of an evening to the whole village: + + Esse velhinho + Tinha hum cartapolinho + Feito de letra de mão + Em papel de pergaminho, + E chamava-se o feitinho + Do livro da creação. + E então + Que sempre cada serão + Á noyte depois da cea + Com oculos á candea + O lia por devoção + A toda a gente d’aldea. + +The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of +saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the +literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is +reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the +present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a +_romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do +Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos +Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s +Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at +Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira +de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance +of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any +case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_ +(Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from +the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524) +and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande +Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a +belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came +to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da +Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France +(14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its +popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_. +The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in +1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca +Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it) +of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701] +was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the +Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and +in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned +by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_ +is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed +at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e +perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_. +García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a +Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets +are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the +1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The +portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person +than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess +Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_ +of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel +Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted +at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as +_Astucias de Mengoto_, _Industrias de Malandrino_ (both Porto, 1879), +_Astucias de Zanguizarra_ (Porto, 1878), _Vida de Cacasseno_ (Porto, +1904), contain little of the real people and less of literature. More +indigenous, but still attracting by virtue of its foreign episodes, is +the _Auto_, _Livro_ (1554?), _Historia_ or _Tratado do Infante D. Pedro +que andou as quatro (sete) partidas do mundo_, which is attributed to +Gomez de Santo Estevam, one of the prince’s attendants in his long +travels, and of which the first known edition (1547) is in Spanish. It +has been constantly reprinted and, with romances of chivalry, formed +the education of the notary in _O Hyssope_.[706] Nor do the _Trovas do +Bandarra_ belong to literature, although these verses of the cobbler +prophet of Trancoso, GONÇALO ANNEZ BANDARRA (†1556?), which caused him +to figure in one of the earliest trials before the Inquisition (1541) +and were subsequently interpreted as referring to the return of King +Sebastian, exercised the fancy of the people and even the wits of the +educated for some three centuries. Forbidden in Portugal, they were +printed abroad, probably at Paris in 1603, at Nantes in 1644, Barcelona +1809, London 1810 and 1815. It was not until 1852 (Porto) that an +_Explicação_ of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest was +then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse, + +Augurai gentes vindouras +Que o Rey que de vos ha de hir +Vos ha de tornar a vir +Passadas trinta tesouras, + +had been thought to signify the year 1808, i.e. thirty closed scissors += 30 × 8: 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign (1568). A more +reasonable computation would have been from Alcacer Kebir (_de vos ha +de hir_) = 1818, or, if the scissors were open: ✂ (10), = 1878. Many +sought to connect with Bandarra’s prophecies the sayings of Simão +Gomez (1516-76), the ‘Holy Cobbler’, and his biography, written by +the Jesuit MANUEL DA VEIGA (1567-1647), _Tratado da Vida, Virtudes e +Doutrina Admiravel de Simão Gomes, vulgarmente chamado o Çapateiro +Santo_ (1625), a book in more than one respect singular and charming, +was burnt by the public hangman at Lisbon in 1768 in ‘Black Horse +Square’. The 1759 edition had received the ordinary _licenças_. But +farther afield, deeper in the heart of the people and far more ancient, +exists another literature. Writers who have gone to this source have +never come away unrewarded. Their work has gained a freshness and a +charm[707] which the most successful disciples of imported learning +and latinity have in vain attempted to rival, and gives the reader +the impression that if he is not plucking the bough of gold he is not +far from the tree on which it grows. And the reason is, perhaps, that +the Portuguese people still retains an element pre-Christian, even +pre-Roman, an element which goes back to solar myths and pagan beliefs, +and about which hangs a primaeval mystery and wonder, a glamour and +enchantment born of direct contact with the forces of Nature, and the +worship, fear, and propitiation of many unseen powers and divinities. A +great part of the people still inhabits a region of fiery dragons and +apples of gold, and with ready imagination peoples streams and woods, +sea and air with spirits. December and June are connected with the +birth and supremacy of the sun’s power, and paganism, thinly disguised, +survives in several of the ceremonies of the Christian Church, and +serves to increase the Church’s hold on the minds of the people. +Both the songs and the dancing with which it was accompanied were no +doubt originally religious. The movements of the dance seem to have +influenced the song, so that its metre was divided by real feet. When +the Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres, was visiting +his diocese in the sixteenth century he was met by Minhoto peasants +with _danças e folias_ and with _cantigas que entoavam entre as voltas +e saltos dos bailes_,[708] songs evidently similar to those in the +works of Gil Vicente, with _leixapren_ and refrain (_aaxbbx_[709] +or _abxbcx_).[710] The _volta_ would correspond in action to the +_leixapren_[711] of the song, the _salto_ to the refrain. The origin of +the refrain was perhaps the pause (preceded by a final leap into the +air) made by the breathless dancers, as in the words _no penedo_ of +this version of ‘The House that Jack Built’: _Quaes foram os perros que +mataram os lobos que comeram as cabras que roeram o bacello que posera +João preto no penedo._[712] The phrase _ver cantar_, ‘to see these +songs sung’, might be defended.[713] + +In modern times the refrain has not been entirely lost, it occurs +occasionally, e.g. _Valhame Deus_, or _Valhame Deus e a Virgem Maria_, +but the usual song is a refrainless quatrain rhyming in the second and +fourth lines, perhaps originally a distich broken up into four lines +like the sixteen-syllable lines of the old _romances_, and from which +the refrain has disappeared. It is essentially a love song: instead of +the song of the people, sung to the tread of dancing feet, the song of +the love-lorn individual, sung to the strumming of his guitar or of the +professional _cantadeira_ at a rustic pilgrimage. But they are also +sung by the people generally, often by women[714] who can neither read +nor write but have a large stock of these _cantigas_, which, indeed, +are almost innumerable. They may be read in their thousands in Antonio +Thomaz Pires’ _Cantos Populares Portuguezes_ (4 vols., Elvas, 1902-10), +Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_ (2 vols., +Lisboa, 1911, 1913), Snr. Jaime Cortesão’s _Cancioneiro Popular_ +(Porto, 1914), and in other collections, and hundreds of thousands die +uncollected and unknown. Although it is perhaps a pity that all the +popular poetical talent should tend to adapt itself to one mould--the +quatrain--their brevity is excellent in that it imposes concision. +Their thought has to be expressed in some twenty words, although they +are rarely epigrammatic in the sense of the modern epigram. Some are +geographical, or local, in praise of some town or village, river or +fountain. Many are religious, that is, they combine love and religion +in honour of the Lady of the Hills, the Star, the Snows, the Rosary, +the Sands, Pity, Affliction, Health, Hope, or in honour of saints, +and especially of the three popular saints of June: St. Anthony, St. +John, and St. Peter. Others are devoted to special festivals: Christmas +(_Natal_), the New Year (_Anno Bom_), the Epiphany (_Os Reis_), the +Resurrection.[715] The majority are concerned with Nature, either +generally or in detail. Sometimes they are frankly pantheistic, more +often they content themselves with singing the praises of a favourite +flower, rosemary, myrtle, the rose, and especially the carnation--the +red _cravos_ which glow in doorway or window-ledge of countless houses +and cottages in June. Among the birds the swallow,[716] ‘the bird of +the Lord’, as the peasants call it, is rare--perhaps its rhyme is +disdained as too easy--the parrot, the dove, and the nightingale are +far commoner. Numerous _cantigas_ are concerned with the sea, fewer +with the sun, the stars, superstitions, witches, sirens; many with +dancing and various occupations--the herdsman (_ganadeiro_), yokel +(_ganhão_), shepherd (_pastor_), harvesters (_ceifeiros_, _ratinhos_, +_malteses_, _mondadeiras_). But of course the principal subject +is love, jealousy, separation, constancy, _saudade_, satire. The +occasional presence of a French word, e.g. _négligé_ or _cache-nez_, +is not necessarily a proof that the _cantiga_ in question is not of +popular origin, but merely that it is urban. Of many _cantigas_ the +first line consists simply of a long-drawn _Ailé_ (αἴλινον, αἴλινον +εἰπέ, τὸ δ’ εὖ νικάτω) or _Ai lari lari lolé_ (where the fanatic of +Basque can find _il_ (= dead) as easily as in the refrain of C. V. +415), so that they really consist of three lines, the _ailé_ being +introductory. + +Some of the quatrains rise to real poetical beauty, and most of +them are charmingly spontaneous, forming in their unpremeditated +art the natural song-book of a nation of poets. The number in print +already approaches fifty thousand. In the mass they perhaps produce a +monotonous effect, being mostly of the one pattern, despite the variety +of their contents: + + Tudo o que é verde se seca Em vindo o pino do verão: + Só meu amor reverdece Dentro do meu coração.[717] + + Inda que o lume se apague Na cinza fica o calor: + Inda que o amor se ausente No coração fica a dor.[718] + + Os tres reis foram guiados Por uma estrella do ceu: + Tambem teus olhos guiaram Meu coração para o teu.[719] + +A few links in these modern _cantigas_ carry us back to the songs in +Gil Vicente’s plays and beyond: a dialogue between mother and daughter, +a reference to dancing _de terreiro_, _balho_, dance and song, to the +_casada_, _mas mal casada_, or _i-a_ sequence, as _Filho da Virgem +Maria_ (_Sagrada_). Other links in the popular literature throughout +the ages are the riddles (_adivinhas_) at which Gil Vicente’s shepherds +played in the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ (the example given in João de +Barros’ _Grammatica_ (1540) is: + + Ainda o pae não é nado + Já o filho anda pelo telhado (1785 ed., p. 176) + +--the father is still unborn and the son is on the roof: a fire and +its smoke; modern instances are printed in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s +_Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_, vol. i (1913), pp. 363-70); the +lullabies (cf. the modern _Ró ró, meu menino, Dorme e descansa, Tu es +meu alivio E a minha esperança_ with Gil Vicente’s _Ro, ro, ro, Nuestro +Dios y Redentor, No lloreis_, &c., i. 57); the _cantigas de Anno Bom_; +the ‘pagan _janeiras_’, as Filinto Elysio called them; the _cantigas +dos Reis_, the _alvoradas_, the _maios_. The _alva_ or _alvorada_ +should properly contain the word _alva_ in the refrain, as in C. V. +172, or Guiraut de Bornelh’s + + Qu’el jorn es apropchatz, + Qu’en Orien vey l’estela creguda + Qu’adutz lo jorn, qu’ieu l’ai ben conoguda, + Et ades sera l’alba. + +(For day is near, and high in the East appears the star that brings in +the day: I know it well, and soon it will be dawn.) The theme is the +parting of lovers at dawn: + + Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day.... + +A Catalan _alba-cossante_ is given in Milá y Fontanals’ _Romancerillo +Catalán_[720]: + + Marieta lleva’t lleva’t de mati + Que l’aygua es clara, el sol vol sortir. + Como m’en llevaré si gipo no tinch? + Marieta lleva’t, de mati lleva’t, + Que el sol vol sortir, que l’aygua es clara. + Como, &c. + +An example of a Galician _mayo_, that is, a song introducing the _Mayo_ +or May-boy (corresponding to our Queen of the May), is given in Milá’s +article in vol. vi of _Romania_. It closely resembles that of Gil +Vicente (_Este é o Mayo, o Mayo é este_) in the _Auto da Lusitania_: + + Este é o Mayo que Mahiño é, + Este é o Mayo que anda d’o pé. + O noso Mayo anque pequeniño + Da de comer á Virxen d’o Camiño. + Velay o Mayo cargado de rosas, + Velay o Mayo que las trae más hermosas. + +It then breaks into a _muiñeira_ (in Castilian): + + Ángeles somos, del cielo venimos (bajamos), + Si nos dais licencia a la Reina le pedimos (la cantamos). + +To the _janeiras_ more than one classical author alludes. Mello +(_Epan._ i) thus notices them at Evora on New Year’s Eve, 1638, before +the house in which the Conde de Linhares was lodged: _a fim de se lhe +cantarem certas Bençoens & Rogatiuas (costume de nossos anciãos que +com nome de Janeiras entoavam placidamente pelas portas dos mais caros +amigos) se congregou grande numero de pouo_.[721] Some _romances_ +(also _xacara_, _xacra_, and in the Azores _arabia_) have been printed +direct from the lips of the people by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos in +his _Romanceiro Portuguez_ (1886). The degenerate, more modern, and +subjective form of the _romance_ is the _fado_, a ballad (melancholy +as the old _solao_[722]), composed by the professional _fadistas_ of +the towns. The _fado_ is even more modern than the _modinha_ (end of +eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century). It dates from the +first third of the nineteenth century, and has not even now penetrated +to the south, being indeed largely a Lisbon product. It may be composed +in verses of four (_quadras_), five (_quintilhas_), or ten (_decimas_) +lines. + +The individual in the favourite _quadras_ expresses his personal sorrow +and his love; the immemorial lore of the Portuguese people as a whole +survives less in them than in the no less numerous proverbs--_um bosque +de muitas e varias maneiras de adagios_. There is scarcely a Portuguese +writer whose works do not furnish a goodly crop of these proverbs, +often in evidently popular form, sometimes betraying their Spanish +origin in the rhyme. They have been collected in Antonio Delicado’s +_Adagios Portugueses_ (1651), in _Adagios_ (1841), _Philosophia +Proverbial_ (1882), and elsewhere. The language is full of proverbial +phrases, and most Portuguese could at will conceal their meaning +from a foreigner in a maze of idiomatic expressions. The variety of +their names is sufficient proof of the extraordinary number of the +proverbs. They are crystallizations of some forgotten fable or event +(_adagios_)[723] or of a more personal anecdote (_anexins_), or +the refrain of a long-lost song (_rifões_).[724] Or they are moral +(_maximas_ and _sentenças_), biblical (_proverbios_), satirical +(_dictados_ or _ditados_, _ditos_). Many of them embody the wisdom of +the ages in a form admirably concise and forcible, e.g. _Quem muito +abarca pouco abraça_ (which is the very reverse of Portuguese history: +_e nulla stringe e tutto ’l mondo abbraccia_), or _Até ao lavar das +cestas é vindima._ Many of course correspond more or less closely to +those of other countries, e.g. _Muitos enfeitadores estragão a noiva_ +(Too many cooks spoil the broth), _Gato escaldado de agua fria ha medo_ +(The burnt child fears the fire); _Manhan ruiva, ou vento ou chuva_ +(= _Alba gorri, hegoa edo uri_); _Pedra movediça não cria bolor_ (= +_Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas mousse_).[725] Many of these saws as +well as the _contos_ (folk-tales) have their birth at _fiandões_ as +the women sit spinning, or as _nossas velhas_ sit at their cottage +doors and gossip in the sun (_soalheiro_), or as all gather round the +spacious _lareira_. After the day’s work on the farm, in field and +granary, to the sound of singing, legend and tradition come into their +own of an evening round the great fire of logs and scented brushwood. +The _contos_ have been collected by Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, _Portuguese +Folk Tales_ (London, 1882); F. Adolpho Coelho, _Contos Populares +Portuguezes_ (Lisboa, 1879); Dr. Theophilo Braga, _Contos Tradicionaes +do Povo Portuguez_ (2 vols., Porto, 1883); F. X. de Athaide Oliveira, +_Contos Tradicionaes do Algarve_ (2 vols., Tavira, 1900, 5). As +was to be expected, they have their equivalents in the folklore of +other nations, a fact which does not prevent them from possessing an +indigenous character, a charm and flavour of their own. The glowing +imagination of the peasants spins out fairy and allegorical tales with +marvellous facility. Thus old Mother Poverty (_Tia Miseria_) owned a +pear-tree in front of her cottage, and had obtained the privilege that +whoever went up it to steal her pears should be unable to come down. +When Death comes she asks him to fetch her one more pear. Once up the +tree all the priests and lawyers cannot bring him down, and only when +he agrees to the bargain that Poverty shall never die is she willing to +release him. + +A great part of the popular literature has been set down in cold +print during the last half-century. Much remains ungarnered. In every +province there are peculiar words, phrases, traditions, heirlooms of +times prehistoric, waiting to be gathered in, and both the Portuguese +literature and the Portuguese language of the future will owe a debt of +gratitude to their collectors, and find rich material in the pages of +the _Revista Lusitana_. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[700] The whole Bible in Portuguese was not translated until the +eighteenth century, by JOÃO FERREIRA DE ALMEIDA, _O Novo Testamento_ +(Amsterdam, 1681), _Do Velho Testamento_, 2 vols. (Batavia, 1748, +53). This is the version still commonly in use. Another translation, +entitled _Biblia Sagrada_, was made from the Vulgate at the end of the +eighteenth century by ANTONIO PEREIRA DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-97), author +of some fifty theological and historical works in Latin and Portuguese, +and a paraphrase (_Historia Evangelica_, 1777, 78, _Historia Biblica_, +1778-82) by Frei FRANCISCO DE JESUS MARIA SARMENTO (1713-90). See C. +Michaëlis de Vasconcellos et S. Berger, _Les Bibles Portugaises_ in +_Romania_, xxviii (1899), pp. 543-8: _La littérature portugaise est +en matière de traductions bibliques d’une pauvreté désespérante._ +The _Parocho Perfeito_ (1675) speaks of _os parochos que não tiverem +Biblias_ (p. 19). See also G. L. Santos Ferreira, _A Biblia em +Portugal, 1495-1850_ (L. 1906). + +[701] See _Floire et Blancheflor. Poèmes du xiiiᵉ siècle. Publiés +d’après les manuscrits ... par E. du Méril_, Paris, 1856. In the +original story Flores in a basket of roses enters the tower where +Brancaflor is imprisoned. Señor Bonilla y San Martín (_La Historia de +los dos Enamorados Flores y Blancaflor_, Madrid, 1916) attributes an +Italian origin to the Spanish prose story. The Spanish translation +probably dates from the fifteenth century. + +[702] For its popularity with the Provençal troubadours see Raynouard, +_Choix_, e. g. ii. 297, 304, 305. + +[703] _A historia de Branca Fror Outra saca a relocer_ (_Chorimas_ +(1890), p. 148). + +[704] It has been reproduced, from an earlier edition, in T. Braga, _Os +Livros Populares Portuguezes_ (_Era Nova_, vol. i, 1881). + +[705] At either side explanatory verses, the only verse in the leaflet, +tell us that ‘Magalona was the most beautiful of all contemporary +princesses, beloved daughter of the King of Naples, and her heart full +of goodness. She was a model of virtues, of pure beliefs and a loving +heart, married with Pierres, Pedro of Provence, a noble knight and +virtuous man.’ + +[706] One of the Elvas Chapter was _homem versado Na lição de Florinda +e Carlo Magno_. + +[707] This charm hangs over many anonymous lyrics of popular +inspiration, as the _Trovas da Menina Fermosa_, seventeenth or +eighteenth century variations of a sixteenth century song: _Menina +fermosa Dizei do que vem Que sejais irosa A quem vos quer bem; Porque +se concerta Rosto e condiçam Dais por galardam A pena mui certa. Sendo +tam fermosa Dizei_, &c. Even less genuinely popular are the _Trovas +do Moleiro_ (1602), written by an obscure native of Tangier, Luis +Brochado, and others. + +[708] Luis de Sousa, _Vida_, 1763 ed., i. 462. + +[709] e. g. _Em Belem vila do amor_ (i. 183). + +[710] e. g. _Que no quiero estar en casa_ (i. 73) (which is _como laa +cantaes co’ gado_, essentially a peasant’s song). + +[711] The _leixapren_ occurs in most of the songs accompanied by +dance in Gil Vicente: e. g. _Quem é a desposada_ (_chacota_, i. 147), +_Pardeus bem andou Castella_ (_em folia_) (ii. 389), _Ja não quer +minha senhora_ (ii. 439, _Esta cantiga cantarão e bailarão de terreiro +os foliões_). _Não me firaes madre_ (ii. 440, _em chacota_), _Mor +Gonçalves_ (ii. 509, _bailão ao som desta cantiga_), _Por Mayo era, por +Mayo_ (ii. 525, _a vozes bailarão e cantarão a cantiga seguinte_: i. e. +a _romance_ with _leixapren_ and refrain). They are thus a combination +of glee and dance. + +[712] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (ii. 448). + +[713] _Não nas quero ver cantar_ (Gil Vicente) is, however, probably +a misprint, for which D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos suggests +_quer’ eu_. + +[714] Cf. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Ensaios Ethnographicos_, ii. 264: +_O povo (principalmente as mulheres) canta-as_ [_cantigas soltas_] _em +qualquer occasião_. + +[715] + + _Já os campos reverdecem, Já o alecrim tem flor, + Já cantam os passarinhos A resurreição do Senhor._ + +(Now to the fields returns the green and the rosemary’s in flower, and +the little birds are singing the Lord’s Resurrection hour). + +[716] + + _Ó triste da minha vida, Ó triste da vida minha, + Quem me dera ir contigo Onde tu vaes, andorinha._ + (O how sad my life is, O how sad my plight! + Would I might go with thee, swallow, in thy flight!) + +recalls the French _Si j’étais hirondelle Que je pusse voler, Sur votre +sein, ma belle, J’irais me reposer_ (A swallow I Would be to fly And +take my rest Upon thy breast). + +[717] All green things in summer Their freshness lose: Only my heart +Its love renews. + +[718] When the light of the fire is dead The ashes its heat retain: +When love is over and fled In the heart abides the pain. + +[719] To the three kings was given A star in heaven for sign: And thy +eyes have guided My heart unto thine. + +[720] Reprinted in his article in _Romania_, vol. vi, and by Dr. Braga. +_Aygua_ in the second line is probably a corruption from _alua_ (dawn) +to _agua_ (water). + +[721] Fernam Rodriguez Lobo Soropita, speaking of the _noites +privilegiadas_--the eves of New Year and Epiphany--refers to +_os villões ruins que essas noutes vos perseguem_ and to their +_pandeirinhos, musica de agua-pé que toda a noute vos zune nos ouvidos +como bizouro, e sobre tudo isto haveis de lhe offertar os vossos quatro +vintens, e quando lh’os entregais a candeia vos descobre o feitio dos +ditos musicos: um mocho com sombreiro com mais chocas que um corredor +de folhas_. They thus resembled Christmas ‘waits’. + +[722] The Spanish translator of _Eufrosina_ apparently derived this +name from musical notes (= a sung _romance_), since he translates _un +romance de sol la_, _Eufr._ i. 3; iii. 2 (_Oríg. de la Novela_, iii. +77 and 110), but even he would not derive it from the _selah_ of the +Psalms (T. Braga, _Hist. da Litt. Port._ i (1914), p. 205). In the +Spanish _solao_ in _Obras de Dom Manoel de Portugal_ (1605), Bk. XII, +pp. 282-7, each singer takes three lines, of which the last two rhyme +together. + +[723] Formerly _verbos_ (e.g. in the _Canc. da Vat._) and _exemplos_ +(_enxempros_). + +[724] The word _rifão_ does not now mean the refrain or burden +(_estribilho_) of a song but proverb, like the Spanish _refrán_. + +[725] There is another proverb _Mentras a pedra vae e vem Deus dará de +seu bem_ (While the [mill?] stone doth come and go God his blessing +shall bestow). + + + + + § 2 + + _The Galician Revival_ + + +For over four hundred years--with the exception of a few poems by +Padres José Sanchez Feijoo and Martín Sarmiento[726] in the eighteenth +century--the Galician language held aloof from literature. It was +peculiarly fitting that at a time when Portugal was recovering for +her own literature the early Galician lyrics, which are now one of its +most precious possessions, a new company of poets should have sprung +up in the region now, as of old, _fertil de poetas_[727]--Galicia. +They were no doubt multiplied and encouraged by the discovery of the +_Cancioneiros_, but began independently of these, in the wake of that +regionalism which manifested itself so vigorously in the second half +of the nineteenth century, for instance in Provence, Catalonia, and +Valencia. Besides their general character--the mingling of irony and +sentimental melancholy--and a few conscious imitations, the new poets +and the ancient _Cancioneiros_ present several striking similarities. +It is now some three-quarters of a century since regionalism in Galicia +assumed its first literary pretensions. In 1861 the poets had become +sufficiently numerous and distinguished to warrant the holding of +_Juegos Florales_ (_xogos froraes_) at La Coruña. JUAN MANUEL PINTOS +(1811-76) had published eight years earlier a small volume of verses, +_A Gaita Gallega_ (Pontevedra, 1853), and FRANCISCO AÑON (1817-78) had +contributed poems to various local newspapers. Añon led the life of +a wandering _jogral_ of old, and his occasional verses soon won him +popularity, so that he came to be regarded as the father of modern +Galician poetry. He could express his love for his native province in +the tender and melancholy stanzas (_abbcdeec_) _A Galicia_, and in his +other poems, at once ingenuous and satirical; he is also thoroughly +Galician and foreshadowed the poetry that was to follow. A leaflet +of his verses appeared in the year after his death, _Poesías_ (Noya, +1879), and a more satisfactory collection ten years later: _Poesías +Castellanas y Gallegas_ (1889). JOSÉ MARÍA POSADA Y PEREIRA (1817-86), +born at Vigo, the son of a Vigo advocate, published his first volume +of verses in 1865 and others were collected in _Poesías Selectas_ +(1888). The second part of this collection (pp. 111-250) is written +in Spanish, but the Galician poems include a series of letters in +octosyllabic verse, the wistful humour of which is attractive. Born in +the same year as Añon, he survived Rosalía de Castro, twenty years his +junior. He survived in disillusion, for he had been one of the pioneers +and now felt himself neglected in the changed conditions. When the +first floral games were celebrated the most talented of these early +poets, ALBERTO CAMINO (1821-61), had but a few months to live. Another +generation passed before his poems were published: _Poesías Gallegas_ +(1896). Camino was not a prolific writer, and this tiny book contains +but twelve of his poems; but there is not one of them that we would +willingly miss, whether he is giving harmonious form to a poignant +theme, as in _Nai Chorosa_ and _O Desconsolo_, or in lighter verses +describing with a contagious glow and spirit some scene of village +merriment, as in _A Foliada de San Joan_ or _Repique_. + +Galician patriots, indignant at the neglect or contempt habitually +meted out to their region, might persevere in their belief that the +language which had produced the _cantigas_ of King Alfonso X, the +Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, and the poems of Macías was capable of +revival as an instrument of poetry; but it was for the most part by +scattered poems, manuscript or printed in periodicals (especially the +Coruña paper _Galicia_, 1860-6), that they justified their faith, +until in 1863 appeared _Cantares Gallegos_ by ROSALÍA DE CASTRO[728] +(1837-85). The authoress, born at Santiago, was but twenty-six when +this collection of poems gave her a wider celebrity than has been +granted to any Galician writer since Macías. Emilio Castelar wrote a +preface for her second volume, _Follas Novas_ (1880), and hailed her +as ‘a star of the first order’. Indeed, so great was her fame as a +Galician singer that until recently it obscured her Spanish poems, +_En las orillas del Sar_ (1884). It was an unsought fame. Rosalía de +Castro wrote much more than she published and destroyed much that +was worth publishing. She sank herself in Galicia; her voice is that +of the Galician _gaita_ in all its varying moods. In her preface to +_Cantares Gallegos_ she wrote: ‘I have taken much care to reproduce +the true spirit of our people.’ That she succeeded in this all critics +are agreed. A favourite method in the _Cantares Gallegos_ is to take a +popular quatrain and develop it at some length, as, for instance, in +the beautiful variations on the lines _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_, +_Airiños_ _da miña terra_, _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_, _Airiños_, +_levaime á ela_.[729] Here, as throughout the book, there is such +yearning passionate sadness that we may say, in her own words, _non +canta que chora_. The sadness is of _soedade_ and brooding over her +country’s plight. She has felt all the peasants’ sorrows, the longing +of the emigrant for his country, the fate of the women at home who +find no rest from toil but in the grave,[730] above all the neglect +and poverty in which those sorrows centre--with the result of sons +torn from their families and scattered abroad to Castile and Portugal +and across the seas in search of bread. Her themes are thus often +homely; their treatment is always plaintive and musical. The metres +used are very various. The book opens with a chain of _muiñeiras_ +singing _Galicia frorida_, and the rhythmical beat of the _muiñeira_ +constantly recurs throughout. Nothing could serve better to express, as +she so marvellously expresses, the very soul of the Galician peasantry +in its gentle, dreaming wistfulness and tearful humour. Her style is +so thin and delicate, yet so flowing and natural, that it is more +akin, almost, to music than to language. Few writers have attained +such perfection without a trace of artifice. It is Galician--_esta +fala mimosa_[731]--seen at its best, clear, soft, and pliant, rising +in protest or reproach to a silvery eloquence. In _Follas Novas_ the +melancholy note is accentuated, without becoming morbid: the new leaves +are autumnal. The music of her sad and exquisite poetry had been forged +in the crucible of her own not imaginary suffering and grief, and in +these lyrics she utters her _inmortales deseios_ (immortal longings) +as well as the woes of the peasant women of Galicia, ‘widows of the +living and widows of the dead’. New metres are introduced, the old +skill and perfection of form is maintained. A few poems in the second +half even succeed in repeating that identification between the poet and +the genius of the people which makes much of _Cantares Gallegos_ almost +anonymous and assures its immortality. + +Midway between the publication of _Cantares Gallegos_ and _Follas +Novas_ appeared the first volume of Galician verse by the blind poet +of Orense, VALENTÍN LAMAS CARVAJAL (1849-1906). This book, _Espiñas, +Follas e Frores_ (1871), has remained the most popular of his +works.[732] He is a true poet of the soil (_poeta del terruño_), the +soil of Galicia which he sings with melancholy charm, and his verse is +filled with _soedades_. He complains of the peasant’s lot, protests +against its injustice and the tyranny of the _caciques_, laments +the drain on Galicia’s best forces through emigration and military +service, and his later work especially betrays a rustic cynicism and +disillusion. But the value both of his first book and of _Saudades +Gallegas_ (1889) and _A Musa d’as Aldeas_ (1890) is that in them speak +the voices of the peasants. Only occasionally does Aesop or Macías +intrude to dispel the charm, and even sophisticated touches--as when he +speaks of ‘this century of enlightenment’, of Galicia as ‘a poetical +garden’, or of the _tamborileiro_ as ‘the inseparable companion’ of +the _gaiteiro_--are not out of keeping, since the peasant, to whom +a long word is a sign of education, will in ambitious moments use +such phrases. The Galician peasants are shown in their sadness and +superstitions, at their common tasks and _festas_. When Lamas Carvajal +is describing an _escasula_[733] or a _fiadeiro_,[734] a dance in the +beaten space before the doors (_baile de turreiro_), a _foliada_[735] +in honour of some saint, a _ruada_ or _rueiro_ (street courting), a +summer _romaxe_ or _romaria_ (pilgrimage), or autumn _magosto_ (feast +of chestnuts), his melancholy almost deserts him, and he can sing, in +his own phrase, + + Algun ledo cantar d’a sua terriña. + +The toil often becomes a _festa_, in which, he says, there is more +mirth than in all the city’s joys. In _Ey, boy, ey_ he admirably +reproduces the thoughts of the slow-footed, slow-reasoning peasant +as he trudges along to market in front of his droning and shrieking +ox-cart. And, generally, all the life of the province of Orense is +in his poems: witches, exorcisers, _beatas_, _curandeiros_ (to whom +the peasants turn in place of the doctor), pilgrims, blind singers, +_santeiros_ selling images of saints, the wailing _alalaa_, the evening +litany or _rosario_, the angelus (_Ave Maria_ or _as animas_, or tocar +_ás oraciós_). The _gaiteiro_, of course, is a prominent figure, for +without his bagpipe (the _gaita gallega_) and the accompanying drum +(_tamboril_), cymbals (_ferriñas_, _conchas_), tambourine (_pandeiro_, +_pandeireta_), and castanets (_castañolas_),[736] no village _fête_ +would be welcome or complete, and his _alborada_ or his rhythmical +dance-song, the _muiñeira_, is the emblem of all the peasant’s +pleasures. Melancholy pervades the _Rimas_ (1891) of D. JUAN BÁRCIA +CABALLERO (born in 1852), but it is no longer the melancholy of the +peasant, but of the poet. His verse is more artificial and subjective, +and expressions such as the ‘bed of Aurora’, ‘Olympic disdain’, ‘the +Nereids’, carry us far away from the peasant scenes so pleasantly +described by Lamas Carvajal. Yet in his lyrics lives a faint music +which raises them above the commonplace. He writes of moonlight, the +fall of the leaves, a flowing stream, tears, death, and admires Heine +and Leopardi; but in his slight fancies, often built into a single +brief sentence, he has a natural charm of his own. + +BENITO LOSADA (1824-91) gained great popularity in Galicia with his +_Contiños_ (1888), epigrammatic and often far from edifying stories +in verse which mostly do not exceed ten lines. He is said to have had +them printed on matchboxes _ad maiorem gloriam_, but for this he was +probably not responsible. More interesting and equally racy of the soil +are the poems of his _Soaces d’un Vello_ (1886), of which the _contiños +d’a terra_ form only Part 3. The first part consists of a long legend +in octosyllabic verse, and in the second some thirty poems give a +coloured, homely, delightful picture of peasant life in Galicia: + + En fias e espadelas, + En festas, en foliadas[737] + +--song and dance, the pot of chestnuts (_zonchos_) over the _lareira_ +fire on the night of All Saints’ Day, the ox-girl quietly singing, +the girl with spindle and distaff keeping the cows, the sorrowful, +hard-working peasant women, the priests exorcising those possessed by +the Devil. The gay notes of the _gaita_ with its plaintive undertone +sound from his pages. The language, _a garrida lengua nosa_, has rarely +been written more idiomatically or with a surer instinct for the force +and fascination of the native word used in its rightful place. To turn +from Losada to EDUARDO PONDAL (1835-1917), the poet of Ponteceso, +a small village in the district of Coruña, is to go from a village +_praça_ to a high mountain-top. He stands quite apart from the other +Galician poets.[738] Their irony and scepticism, sorrows and mirth, are +mostly of the peasant. But here we have no dance or rustic merriment. +The pipe and the drum give place to the wind blowing through an Aeolian +harp. The poet + + soña antr’as uces hirtas + Na gentil arpa apoyado + En donde o vento suspira.[739] + +He is a lonely, martial spirit, disdainful but never arrogant, hating +all servitude and looking upon a comfortable inertness as a kind of +servitude. There is no pettiness in him, although details of Nature +he may notice and love. The most learned of Galician poets, and not +sparing of classical allusions, he is yet entirely merged in the +forces of Nature and becomes a voice, a mystery. Some of his poems +are a single sentence of perhaps twenty words, a musical cry borne +slowly away on the wings of the wind. He sings of mists (the Gallegan +_brétoma_) and pregnant silences, the whispering of the pines, the +great chestnut-trees and Celtic oaks, of the swift daughter of the +mists and the ‘intrepid daughter of the noble Celts’, of old forgotten +far-off things, battles long ago. One must go to Ireland for a +parallel. It has been noticed of him that he is entirely pre-Christian; +he is almost prehistoric. His long epic on the discovery of America, in +twenty-seven cantos, _Os Eoas_, remained unpublished at his death. Nor +would it be easy to account for his popularity were it not for the poem +by which he won early fame: _A Campana d’Anllons_. It is full of music +and melancholy, a plaintive farewell addressed to his native village by +a Galician peasant imprisoned at Oran. His subsequent verses, collected +in _Rumores de los Pinos_ (1879) and _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), if +they could not increase his popularity, brought him a wide recognition +among all lovers of poetry. The undefinable fascination of many of +these poems is due to their aloofness, tenderness, and sorrowful music. +He is a genuine Celtic bard, child of the wind and the rain, with +Rosalía de Castro the truest poet produced by modern Galicia. + +The most prominent of the later Galician poets was MANUEL CURROS +ENRIQUEZ (1851-1908), whose work _Aires d’a miña terra_ (1880) was +condemned by the Bishop of Orense and republished in the following +year. Born at Celanova in the middle of the nineteenth century, he +studied law at Santiago de Compostela and became a journalist. His +advanced opinions caused him to emigrate, first to London, then to +South America. His anticlericalism was pronounced in _Aires d’a miña +terra_, and even more so in a forcible satire describing a pilgrimage +to Rome, written in _triadas_[740] and entitled _O Divino Sainete_ +(1888). He writes of dogma assassinating liberty, heaps abuse on +Ignacio de Loyola, hails the advent of the railway to Galicia as +bringing not priests but progress. All this has caused his poems to +be widely read. But the reader has the agreeable surprise to find +that many of them deal quite simply with the legends (_A Virxe d’o +Cristal_) or customs (_Unha Boda en Einibó_, _O Gueiteiro_, &c.) of +his native country, and show a true poetic power and a quiet and +accurate observation of Nature. We forget all about anticlericalism and +the Pope in reading of spring in Galicia, of the _xentis anduriñas_, +the _anemas_ ringing, and the children who come singing a _mayo_ and +asking for chestnuts. Curros Enriquez would not be a Galician were not +his work of a melancholy cast, and the charm of some of his poems is +also indigenous. The torch of Galician poetry burnt on after Curros +Enriquez had ceased to write. D. EVARISTO MARTELO PAUMAN (born c. +1853) in his _Líricas Gallegas_ (1891) showed that he possessed the +traditional charm and satire of Galician verse, but a charm and satire +that in his case had become all individual and subjective. AURELIANO +J. PEREIRA (†1906), author of _Cousas d’a Aldea_ (1891), displayed +a rustic humour in sketching with many a gay note the life of the +Galician peasantry, and, in his more subjective poems, a very real and +delicate lyrical gift. A sly humour also marks the work of ALBERTO +GARCÍA FERREIRO (1862-1902) in _Volvoretas_ (1887) and _Chorimas_ +(1890). It is sometimes marred by the bitterness of his anticlerical +and anti-Spanish feeling. In the stream’s voice he hears a murmur +against the mayor and the judge, the _cacique_ is ‘dragon, tiger and +snake’, the monks and priests are greedy and ignorant. On the other +hand, when they describe a fair (_N’a feira_) or a pilgrimage or the +woes of the Galician emigrant, his poems are moving, vivid, and full +of local colour. In a slight volume of poems, _Salayos_ (1895), MANUEL +NÚÑEZ GONZÁLEZ (1865-1917) shows true lyrical power. They are poems +in Galician rather than of Galicia, telling in a plaintive music of +night, autumn, _morriña_, _soedades_. For all the author’s love of his +smaller country, it is Galicia seen from without,[741] or sung from +memory. The ‘vintage songs and the gay din of chestnut gatherings’ are +no longer, as with Losada and Lamas, a part of life, but ‘a dream in +the ideal realm of thought’,[742] a subject of disillusion and regret. +_Folerpas_[743] (1894) by D. ELADIO RODRÍGUEZ GONZÁLEZ (born in 1864) +is also essentially not of the people. In its less elaborate poems it +often describes, attractively and with much colour, popular customs +and dances, the night of St. John, _as festas d’a miña terra_. Yet +after recording the pleasant superstition that on St. John’s Day the +sun rises dancing, the author must needs pause to say ‘away with these +fanatical beliefs, unworthy of a civilized region’, to which the answer +is that such reflections may be sincere but are unworthy of poetry, +and should be expressed in prose. But the author of these verses +can, when he wishes, identify himself with the peasants whose life +he depicts,[744] and is capable of writing poems of great delicacy. +The general impression is that he has not grown up among these scenes +but is observing them keenly as might a stranger. The edict of the +Archbishop of Santiago (June 26, 1909), which made it a deadly sin to +read _Fume de Palla_ (1909), by ‘ALFREDO NUN DE ALLARIZ’, as containing +impious, blasphemous, and heretical propositions, gave these poems +a wider publicity than they might otherwise have attained, and they +received a second edition in the same year. It certainly savours of +blasphemy and is bad criticism to call Curros Enriquez the Galician +Christ, but it is to be feared that the excommunication of the author +will only encourage him to abandon ‘simple verses written without +art’, as in his preface he describes these, for more studied poems +with a thesis to prove. It is perhaps disquieting to find that three +poets in most respects so different, agree in this, that between them +and popular poetry a gulf is fixed, owing to the sensitive aloofness +of a true poet (for Núñez González was undoubtedly the most talented +of the younger Galicians), or owing to the adoption of the superior +standpoint of the rationalist or the anticlerical. Younger poets of +remarkable promise and achievement are D. GONZALO LÓPEZ ABENTE (born +in 1878), a relative of Eduardo Pondal, whom he sometimes recalls in +the original inspiration of _Escumas da Ribeira_ (1914) and _Alento +da Raza_ (1917); D. ANTONIO NORIEGA VARELA (born in 1869), whose deep +love for his native moors and mountains gives an eternal magic to +_Montañesas_ (1904) and _D’O Ermo_ (1920); D. RAMÓN CABANILLAS, who +voices the sorrows and aspirations of Galicia in _Vento Mareiro_ and +_Da Terra Asoballada_ (1917); and D. ANTONIO REY SOTO, who, however, +writes chiefly in Castilian. D. XAVIER PRADO expresses the very soul +of the peasantry in _A Caron do Lume_ (1918). The poets of the last +half-century have unquestionably justified the literary revival of +the Galician language, and even if in the future no poetry of the +highest order be written in Galicia, it is unthinkable that so musical +an instrument should be allowed to perish. Galician poetry may be a +thin, an elfin music, a scrannel voice, as of a wind blowing through +tamarisks, but it has a natural charm, a raciness, a native atmosphere +which give it a peculiar flavour and attraction. Literary contests, +_veladas_, _certames_, _xogos froraes_, keep the flame of poetry alive +in Galicia, but in its anonymous form it is a very vigorous growth +which needs no fostering, and flourishes now as it flourished in the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as it flourished in the time of +the Romans. Hundreds of anonymous _quadras_ (_cantiga_, _cantar_, +_cantariño_, _cantilena_, _cantiguela_, _cantiguiña_, _copra_, or +_canció_) have been collected in the _Cancionero Popular Gallego_ +(Madrid, 3 vols., 1886) by JOSÉ PÉREZ BALLESTEROS (†1918). The peasant +women compose and sing their songs to-day[745] as when Fray Martín +Sarmiento (1695-1772) noticed that _en Galicia las mujeres no solo +son poetisas sino tambien músicas naturales_,[746] or the Marqués +de Montebello listened to _los tonos que a coros cantan con fugas y +repeticiones las mozuelas_, or the Archpriest of Hita watched the +cantaderas dancing (as well as singing) in neighbouring Asturias.[747] + +The ancient _muiñeira_ rhythm continues, and the parallel-strophed +songs of the early _Cancioneiros_ have their echoes in the anonymous +poetry of to-day. It is, indeed, of interest to note how the poets of +the revival fall quite naturally into the same parallelism and the same +repetition.[748] Besides these _muiñeiras_ the popular poetry consists +principally of _quadras_.[749] Traditional _romances_ are nearly +non-existent. This popular poetry (soft, musical, malicious, satirical) +connects by a thread of anonymous song the Galicia of to-day with the +whole of its past life, and the revivalists are likely to prosper in +proportion as they seek their inspiration in popular sources, as did +Rosalía de Castro. For the Galician peasants, living in a land of +mists and streams, inlet arms of sea, dark pinewoods, deep-valleyed +mountains, green maize-fields, and grey mysterious rocks, a land of +spirits and fairies and witches, of legends and ruins, have the Celt’s +instinct and love of poetry. Poetry is their natural expression. +For prose in Galician literature there is less genius, and perhaps +less incentive, since the country has been described with intimate +knowledge and charm in the Castilian novels of Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán +(1851-1921) and Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (born in 1870), and +more recently by Don Jaime Solá (born in 1877). But the value and +possibilities of Galician prose have been shown by D. AURELIO RIBALTA +(born in 1864) in _Ferruxe_ (1894) and by D. MANUEL LUGRIS Y FREIRE +(born in 1863) in _Contos de Asieumedre_ (1909). It is, indeed, in the +_conto_ that especial success has been won, and HERACLIO PÉREZ PLACER, +whose novel _Predicción_ appeared in 1887, is widely known for his +_Contos, Leendas e Tradiciós de Galicia_ (1891), _Contos da Terriña_ +(1895), and _Veira do Lar_ (1901). _Contos da Terriña_, thirty-four +stories in some two hundred brief pages, are various and unequal in +value. Most of them are sad, even the harmless St. Martin _magosto_ +ends in a death. They contain many intimate descriptions of Galicia +and the life of the villages about Orense. There is much pathos in +_Velliña, miña velliña!_, in _Rapañota de Xasmís_, and especially in +_Follas Secas_, an exquisite picture of an old peasant dying alone in +a dark room--its walls are black with smoke, yellow maize-cobs hang +from the ceiling--while through the open door come all the gay sounds +and colours of a Galician vintage. The poetess FRANCISCA HERRERA, +author of _Almas de Muller_ (1915) and _Sorrisas e Bágoas_ (1918), has +recently turned to prose with remarkable success in _Néveda_ (1920). +Few Galician poets have published volumes of prose, although many +have contributed as journalists to the local press, but it would be +difficult to find a prose-writer who is not also a poet.[750] And it +is by its poetry that Galicia has won for itself a notable place in +modern literature and added another leaf to the literary laurels of the +Peninsula. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[726] See Antolín López Peláez, _Poesías Inéditas del P. Feijoo ... +seguidas de las poesías gallegas ‘Dialogo de 24 Rusticos’ y ‘O Tio +Marcos da Portela’ por el P. Sarmiento_, Tuy, 1901. + +[727] Cf. A. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 21: +_Galicia ... muito affeita desde alta antiguidade ao exercicio de +trovas e cantares._ + +[728] Or Rosalía Castro de (or y) Murguía. Her husband, DON MANUEL +DE MURGUÍA (born in 1833), author of _Los Precursores_ (1886), +_Diccionario de Escritores Gallegos_ (1862), and other works devoted to +the study of Galicia, its ethnology and history, is still alive. + +[729] O winds of my country blowing softly together, Winds, winds, +gentle winds, O carry me thither! (1909 ed., pp. 95-8). + +[730] _Follas Novas: Duas palabras d’a autora_, 1910 ed., p. 31. + +[731] _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 254. + +[732] A sixth edition appeared in 1909, whereas most books of Galician +verse cling to the obscurity of their first edition or at best obtain a +second in the hospitable _Biblioteca Gallega_. + +[733] _Esfolhada_ or _desfolla_: gathering to husk the maize. + +[734] _Fiada_, _fiandon_: a rustic _tertulia_ (evening party) of women +to spin. + +[735] _Fuliada_, _afuliada_, _folion_. + +[736] In Tras-os-Montes potatoes are called _castanholas_, i. e. large +chestnuts, which recalls the fact that Andrea Navagero, eating potatoes +for the first time at Seville in 1526, considered them to taste like +chestnuts. In parts of Galicia they are called _castañas d’a terra_. + +[737] _Soaces_, p. 156. The _espadela_ is the task of braking flax. + +[738] Perhaps the only poem that might have been written by Pondal is +that on p. 177 (the first verse) of Rosalía de Castro’s _Follas Novas_ +(1910 ed.). + +[739] _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), p. 101. + +[740] For an earlier example of the same kind of tercets (_abacdcefe_) +see R. de Castro, _Follas Novas_, 1910 ed., p. 158. + +[741] The very word _morriña_ is more common (in the sense of +_saudade_) at Madrid than in Galicia. + +[742] _Salayos_, p. 65. + +[743] Also _flepa_, _folepa_, _folepiña_, Portuguese +_folheca_--_floco_, _froco_, _copo_ (= ‘flake’). + +[744] The passage (_Folerpas_, p. 182) in which a peasant, refusing +alms to an old woman, bids her beg of the rich, is scarcely drawn from +life. + +[745] Cf. _Cancionero_, i. 50: _Cantade, nenas, cantade_; G. Ferreiro, +_Chorimas_, p. 76, _as cantiguiñas das moças_; R. de Castro, _Cant. +Gall._, p. 102, _As meniñas cantan, cantan_. Cf. also E. Pardo Bazán, +_De mi tierra_ (1888), p. 122: _las_ [_coplas_] _gallegas de las cuales +buena parte debe ser obra de hembras_. + +[746] _Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles_ +(_Obras Postumas_, vol. i, Madrid, 1775, p. 238, § 538). + +[747] See _C. da Ajuda_, ed. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (1904), ii. +902. + +[748] Cf. R. de Castro, _Cantares Gallegos_ (1909 ed.), p. 18 +(_mantelo_, _refaixo_), p. 19 (_mar_, _río_), pp. 20-1 (_e-a_), p. 27 +(_terras_, _vilas_), p. 29 (_pousaban_, _vivían_), p. 85 (_vestira_, +_calzara_); _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 229 (_a-e_); _Aires d’a miña +terra_ (ed. 1911). p. 35 (_quería_, _pensaba_), p. 139 (_i-a_), p. 249 +(_á miles_, _á centos_); _Chorimas_, p. 36 (_estrevidos_, _ousados_); +A. Camino, _Poesías Gallegas_, p. 19: _Qué noite aquela en que eu a vin +gemindo!_ (_chorar!_). + +[749] Quatrains of which lines 2 and 4 are in rhyme or assonance, e.g. +_Ruliña que vas volando Sin facer caso á ninguen, Vai e dille á aquela +nena Que sempre a quixen ben_. _Tercetos_ are rarer (_aba_). Sometimes +the _quadra_ is really a tercet with line 1 repeated (_aaba_). + +[750] D. Aurelio Ribalta is author in verse of _Os meus votos_ (1903) +and _Libro de Konsagrazión_ (1910); D. Manuel Lugris of _Soidades_ +(1894), _Noitebras_ (1910); Snr. Pérez Placer of _Cantares Gallegos_ +(1891). D. FLORENCIO VAAMONDE (born in 1860), author of a _Resume +da Historia de Galicia_ (1898), also wrote, in verse, _Os Calaicos_ +(1894). Recently Galician literature has found a keen historian in D. +EUGENIO CARRÉ ALDAO, whose _Literatura Gallega_ (2nd ed., 1911) also +contains an anthology. + + + + + INDEX + + + A + + Aboim (D. Joan de), 46, 52. + + Abranches, Conde de, 88. + + Abreu Mousinho (Manuel de), 203. + + Academia das Sciencias de Portugal, 284. + + Academia dos Esquecidos, 261. + + Academia dos Generosos, 261. + + Academia dos Singulares, 261. + + Academia Real da Historia, 270. + + Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 14, 15, 284, 294. + + Acenheiro. _See_ Rodriguez Azinheiro. + + _Actos dos Apostolos_, 59. + + _Adagios_, 346. + + Addison (Joseph), 290. + + Aesop, 60, 350. + + Afonso I, 188, 211, 305, 307, + + Afonso III, 38, 42, 46, 52. + + Afonso IV, 38, 87. + + Afonso V, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 100, 111, 211, 261. + + Afonso VI, 260, 268, 295, 311. + + Afonso, Infante [xiii c.], 67. + + Afonso, Infante [xiv c.], 67, 70. + + Afonso, Infante [xv c.], 88, 100, 101, 103. + + Afonso, Mestre, 220. + + Afonso (Gregorio), 124. + + Afonso (Martim), Mestre, 220. + + _Aguia, A_, 333. + + Agustobrica, 234. + + Airas (Joan), 52. + + Aires (Francisco), 247. + + Alarcón (Pedro Antonio de), 297. + + Alarte (Vicente) _pseud._ _See_ Gomez de Moraes. + + Albuquerque (Afonso de), 57, 88, 99, 107, 108, 116, 127, 190, 191, + 194, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 209, 220, 228-9, 260, 312. + + Albuquerque (Bras de), 201-2. + + Albuquerque (Jeronymo de), 204. + + Albuquerque (D. Jorge de), 218. + + Alcobaça (Bernardo de), 59, 95. + + Alcoforado (Marianna), 263-4, 307. + + Aleandro, Cardinal, 126. + + _Aleixo, Vida de Santo_, 60. + + Alexandra, Queen, 340. + + Alfieri (Vittorio), 290. + + Alfonso X, 13, 26, 28, 30, 37, 40, 41-6, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 61, 69, + 91, 98, 103, 124, 126, 349. + + Alfonso XI, 38, 42, 90. + + _Alfonso Onceno, Poema de_, 73. + + Almeida (Cristovam de), 245. + + Almeida (Diogo de), 192. + + Almeida (Fortunato de), 307. + + Almeida (D. Francisco de), 92, 98. + + Almeida (D. Leonor de), 276. + + Almeida (Lopo de), 92, 128. + + Almeida (Manuel de), 205. + + Almeida (Rodrigo Antonio de), 163. + + Almeida (Theodoro de), 285. + + Almeida e Medeiros (Lourenço de), 301. + + Almeida Garrett (João Baptista da Silva Leitão), Visconde de, 21, + 33, + 74, 186, 242, 261, 277, 279, 287-92, 293, 294, 299, 300, 302, + 309, 338. + + Alorna, Marquesa de [D. Leonor de Almeida Portugal Lorena e + Lencastre, Condessa de Assumar, Condessa de Oeynhausen], 274, + 276-7, 294. + + Alvarengo Peixoto (Ignacio José de), 274. + + Alvarez (Afonso), 157. + + Alvarez (Francisco), 33, 219-20, 224. + + Alvarez (João), 89. + + Alvarez (Luis), 245. + + Alvarez de Andrade (Fernam), 239. + + Alvarez de Lousada Machado (Gaspar), 62. + + Alvarez de Villasandino (Alfonso), 77, 79, 125. + + Alvarez do Oriente (Fernam), 152, 253, 255. + + Alvarez Pereira (Nuno), 50, 62, 81, 84, 86, 92, 155, 291, 306, 307. + + _Amadis de Gaula_, 64, 65-71, 119, 225. + + Amaral (Antonio Caetano do), 292. + + Amaral (Francisco do), 245. + + _Amaro, Vida de Santo_, 60. + + Ambrogini (Angelo). _See_ Poliziano. + + Amigo (Pedro) de Sevilha, 51. + + Amorim. _See_ Gomes de Amorim. + + Andrade (Antonio de), 204. + + Andrade (Francisco de), 189, 209, 224, 239. + + Andrade (Thomé de). _See_ Jesus (Thomé de). + + Andrade Caminha (Pero de), 143, 149-50, 213. + + Andrade Corvo (João de), 295. + + Andrade e Silva (José Bonifacio de), 274. + + Anez Solaz (Pedro), 29. + + Angeles (Juan de los), 250. + + Angra, Bishop of, 287. + + Anjos (Luis dos), 247. + + Anjos (Manuel dos), 247. + + Annunzio (Gabriele d’), 321. + + Añon (Francisco), 348. + + Anrique. _See_ Henrique. + + Anriquez (Luis), 100, 102-3. + + Antonio, Mestre, 125. + + Antonio, D., Prior of Crato, 145, 195, 229, 236, 263. + + Antonio (Nicolás), 68, 93, 130, 169, 192, 197, 207, 212. + + Antunes (João), 249. + + Aquinas (Thomas). _See_ Thomas. + + Araujo (Joaquim de), 335. + + Araujo de Azevedo (Antonio de), 273. + + Arcadia, A Nova, 270. + + Arcadia Ulyssiponense, 270, 271, 272, 273. + + _Archivo Historico Portuguez_, 308. + + Argote de Molina (Gonzalo), 77. + + Arias Montano (Benito), 209. + + Ariosto (Lodovico), 139, 140, 146, 152, 164, 180, 197, 260. + + Aristotle, 85, 90, 92, 119, 163, 193. + + Arnoso, Bernardo Pinheiro Corrêa de Mello, Conde de, 324. + + _Arquivo._ See _Archivo_. + + _Arquivo Historico Português._ See _Archivo Historico + Portuguez_. + + Arraez (Jeronimo), 238. + + Arraez de Mendoça (Amador), 16, 227, 232, 235, 237-8. + + _Arte de Furtar_, 125, 264-5, 272. + + Asenjo Barbieri (Francisco), 36, 123. + + Athaide (Catherina de), 175, 179. + + Athaide Oliveira (Francisco Xavier de), 347. + + Augustine, Saint, 26, 56, 101, 115. + + Austen (Jane), 316. + + _Auto da Fome_, 162. + + _Auto da Forneira de Aljubarrota_, 163. + + _Auto da Geraçao Humana_, 156. + + _Auto das Padeiras_, 162. + + _Auto de Deus Padre_, 156-7. + + _Auto del Nascimiento de Christo_, 155. + + _Auto de Santa Genoveva_, 162. + + _Auto do Dia de Juizo_, 157. + + _Auto do Escudeiro Surdo_, 125. + + _Auto Figurado da Degolação dos Inocentes_, 162. + + Aveiro, D. João de Lencastre, Duque de, 221. + + Aveiro, Dukes of, 71. + + Aveiro (Pantaleam de), 220. + + Avellar Brotero (Felix de), 17. + + Avicenna, 85. + + Avis, Mestre de. _See_ João I. + + Ayres de Magalhães Sepulveda (Cristovam), 223, 334-5. + + Ayres Victoria (Anrique), 165. + + Azevedo (Briolanja de), 142. + + Azevedo (Guilherme de). _See_ Azevedo Chaves. + + Azevedo (João Lucio de), 307. + + Azevedo (Luis de), 100. + + Azevedo (Manuel de), 17. + + Azevedo (Maximiliano Eugenio de), 310. + + Azevedo (Pedro A. de), 13, 81, 211, 308. + + Azevedo Chaves (Guilherme Avelino de), 330. + + Azevedo Tojal (Pedro de), 274. + + Azinheiro. _See_ Rodriguez Azinheiro. + + Azorín _pseud._ [Don Jose Martínez Ruiz], 134, 326. + + Azurara. _See_ Zurara. + + + B + + Bacellar (Antonio Barbosa). _See_ Barbosa Bacellar. + + Bacon (Francis), 209. + + Bahia (Jeronimo), 256. + + Baião (Antonio), 13. + + Baist (Gottfried), 65, 70. + + Balzac (Honoré de), 299. + + Bandarra (Gonçalo Annez), 265, 268, 340-1. + + Bandello (Matteo), 231. + + Barata (Antonio Francisco), 272. + + Barbieri (Francisco Asenjo). _See_ Asenjo Barbieri. + + Barbosa (Ayres), 106. + + Barbosa (Duarte), 198, 219, 227. + + Barbosa Bacellar (Antonio), 256. + + Barbosa de Carvalho (Tristão), 247. + + Barbosa Machado (Diogo), 87, 168, 192, 197, 217, 220, 232, 236, 240, + 250, 284. + + Barcellos, Conde de. _See_ Pedro Afonso. + + Bárcia Caballero (Juan), 351. + + Baretti (Giuseppe), 270. + + _Barlaam e Josaphat, Lenda dos Santos_, 59. + + Barradas (Manuel), 205. + + Barreira (João da), 203. + + Barreiros (Caspar), 219. + + Barreiros (Lopo), 219. + + Barreto (Francisco), 177, 178, 195. + + Barreto (Pedro), 178. + + Barros (Bras de), 95. + + Barros (Guilherme Augusto de), 295. + + Barros (João de), 20, 69, 75, 86, 88, + 95, 113, 169, 180, 181, 184, 190, 192-5, 196, 197, 198, 201, 206, + 207, 208, 215, 216, 218, 220, 232, 233, 243, 344. + + Barros (João de), of Oporto, 68, 125, 253. + + Barros (João de), poet, 336. + + Barros (Lopo de), 192. + + Baudelaire (Charles), 336. + + Beatriz, Infanta, mother of King Manuel, 111. + + Beatriz, Infanta, daughter of King Manuel, 120, 133, 291. + + Beauvais (Vincent de), 44. + + Beccari (Camillo), 205. + + Beckford (William), 111, 277, 296. + + Beirão (Mario), 334. + + Beja, Bishop of. _See_ Villas-Boas. + + Belchior, Padre, 223. + + Bembo (Pietro), 39, 140, 212. + + _Bento, Regra de S._, 59. + + Berceo (Gonzalo de), 43. + + Beresford (William Carr), Viscount, 290. + + Berger (S.), 338. + + Bermudez (Geronimo), 165. + + Bernard, St., 94, 207. + + Bernardes (Manuel), 14, 16, 20, 224, 245, 249-50, 261. + + Bernardes (Maria), 249. + + Bernardez (Diogo), 14, 143, 145-7, 148, 149, 153, 181, 183, 184, + 185, + 272. + + Bezerra (Branca), 110. + + _Bible, The_, 59, 94, 95, 113, 128, 170, 246, 251, 338. + + Biester (Ernesto), 314. + + Bilac (Olavo), 335. + + Bingre (Francisco Joaquim), 270. + + Bluteau (Raphael), 284-5. + + Bocage (Manuel Maria de Barbosa du), 186, 275, 277-8, 281. + + Bocarro (Antonio), 198. + + Boccaccio (Giovanni), 132, 231, 340. + + Boccalini (Traiano), 255. + + Boileau (Nicolas), 274. + + Bonamis, 122. + + Bonaval (Bernaldo de), 28, 29. + + Bonifazio II, 41. + + Bonilla y San Martín (Adolfo), 339. + + _Boosco Delleytoso_, 93-4. + + Bordallo (Francisco Maria), 316. + + Borges (Gonçalo), 176. + + Bornelh (Guiraut de), 48, 344. + + Boron [= Borron] (Robert de), 64. + + Boscán Almogaver (Juan), 58, 136, 140, 143, 154, 160, 172, 181. + + _Bosco Deleitoso._ See _Boosco Delleytoso_. + + Bosque (Dimas), 226. + + Boswell (James), 302. + + Botelho (Abel Acacio de Almeida), 311, 321-2. + + Botelho (Afonso), 325. + + Bouterwek (Friedrich), 14, 137. + + Braamcamp Freire (Anselmo), 14, 15, 81, 84, 112, 115, 308. + + Braga (Alberto Leal Barradas Monteiro), 325-6. + + Braga (Guilherme), 330. + + Braga (Joaquim Theophilo Fernandes), 14, 15, 23, 24, 37, 65, 70, 74, + 75, 76, 90, 111, 112, 133, 137, 142, 231, 253, 304, 309, 342, + 344, 345, 347. + + Braganza, Ferdinand, Duke of, 97. + + Braganza, Isabella, Duchess of, 149. + + Braganza, James, Duke of, 103, 120. + + Braganza, John, Duke of. _See_ João IV. + + Braganza, Theodosio, Duke of, 147, 153. + + Brancuti, di Cagli, Paolo Antonio, Conte, 37. + + Brandão (Antonio), 73, 207, 208, 216. + + Brandão (Diogo), 102, 103-4. + + Brandão (Francisco), 62, 208. + + Brandão (Hilario), 241. + + Brandão (Julio), 327-8, 335. + + Brandão (Maria), 137. + + Brandão (Raul), 328. + + Braunfels (Ludwig von), 65. + + Bridges (Robert), 336. + + Brito (Bernardo de), 18, 72, 139, 206-8, 215, 216, 251. + + Brito (Duarte de), 104, 118, 124, 127. + + Brito Aranha (Pedro Wenceslau de), 308. + + Brito de Andrade (Balthasar de), 207. + + Brito Pestana (Alvaro de), 100, 101, 127. + + Brito Rebello (Jacinto Ignacio de), 112, 168. + + Brochado (Luis), 341. + + Brulé (Gace), 48. + + Bruno _pseud._ _See_ Pereira de Sampaio. + + Buchanan (George), 106. + + Bulhão Pato (Raimundo Antonio), 302-3. + + Bunyan (John), 249. + + Buonarroti (Michelangelo), 230. + + Burgos (André de), 18, 203. + + Bussinac (Peire de), 47. + + Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord, 183, 302. + + + C + + Caamoões. _See_ Camões. + + Caballero (Fernán) _pseud._ [Cecilia Böhl de Faber], 316. + + Cabanillas (Ramón), 355. + + Cabedo de Vasconcellos (José de), 109. + + Cabral (Paulo Antonio), 278. + + Cabral (Pedro Alvarez), 107. + + Cacegas (Luis de), 242. + + Caceres (Lourenço de), 191, 102. + + Caiel _pseud._ _See_ Pestana (Alice). + + Cairel (Elias), 112. + + Caldas (José de), 321. + + Caldeira (Fernando Afonso Geraldes), 310. + + Calderón de la Barca (Pedro), 129, 130, 249. + + Calvo (Pedro), 244. + + Camacho (Diogo), 256. + + Camara (D. João Gonçalves Zarco da), 311, 326, 327. + + Caminha (Antonio Lourenço), 147. + + Caminha (João), 149, 150. + + Camino (Alberto), 348-9. + + Camões (Luis de), 14, 16, 20, 77, 130, 139, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, + 153, 155, 158, 166, 167, 174-86, 193, 197, 204, 206, 216, 217, + 226, 229, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 272, 277, 278, 281, 338. + + Campancho (Airas). _See_ Carpancho. + + Campos (Agostinho de), 231. + + Campos (Claudia de), 324. + + Campos Moreno (Diogode), 204. + + _Cancioneirinho de Trovas Antigas_, 36, 37, 39. + + _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, 27, 36, 37, 38, 63, 66, 69, 70, + 140. + + _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, 36, 37, 38, 39, 56, 61. + + _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, 13, 36, 37, 38, 50, 73, 96, 98, 125, + 344. + + _Cancioneiro del Rei D. Dinis_, 36, 37. + + _Cancioneiro de Resende._ See _Cancioneiro Geral_. + + _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_, 36, 67, 76, 77. + + _Cancioneiro Geral_, 13, 33, 36, 79, 96-105, 118, 122, 123, 124, + 125, 128, 129, 140, 141, 167, 184, 225, 256. + + _Cancionero de Baena_, 36, 66, 77, 79, 96. + + _Cancionero General_, 36, 98, 104. + + _Cancionero Musical._ See _Asenjo Barbieri_. + + _Cancionero Popular Gallego_, 36, 355-6. + + Cantanhede, Conde de, 101. + + _Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti._ See _Cancioneiro + Colocci-Brancuti_. + + _Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana._ See + _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_. + + Cardim (Antonio Francisco), 217. + + Cardim (Fernam), 205. + + Cardoso (João), 245. + + Cardoso (Jorge), 71. + + _Carlos Magno, Verdadeira Historia do Imperador_, 339. + + Carneiro da Cunha (Alfredo), 336. + + Carpancho (Airas), 29. + + Carré Aldao (Eugenio), 357. + + Cartagena (Alonso de). Bishop of Burgos, 91. + + _Cartas que os Padres ... escreveram_, 205. + + Carvalho de Parada (Antonio), 266. + + Casimiro (Augusto), 334. + + Casquicio (Fernam), 77, 78. + + Castanheda (Fernam Lopez de). _See_ Lopez de Castanheda. + + Castanheira, Conde de [_or_ da], 141, 214. + + Castanhoso (Miguel de), 196, 203. + + Castelar (Emilio), 349. + + Castello Branco (Camillo), Visconde de Corrêa Botelho, 109, 134, + 187, + 243, 256, 286, 295, 297-9, 304, 325, 332. + + Castello Rodrigo, Marqueses de, 211. + + Castiglione (Baldassare), 154. + + Castilho (Antonio de), 203. + + Castilho (Antonio Feliciano), Visconde de, 292, 299-300, 302, 304, + 316. + + Castilho (João de), 203. + + Castilho (Julio), second Visconde de, 278, 304. + + Castillejo (Cristobal de), 33. + + Castro (Augusto de), 314. + + Castro (Eugenio de), 336-7. + + Castro (Inés de), 75, 84, 97, 165, 273, 282, 284, 304, 310, 312. + + Castro (D. João de), 158, 187, 190, 199, 227-8, 243, 266. + + Castro (D. João de), novelist, 321. + + Castro (João Baptista de), 248. + + Castro (Publia Hortensia de), 107. + + Castro de Murguía (Rosalía de), 348, 349-50, 352, 353, 356. + + Castro e Almeida (Virginia de), 325. + + Castro Osorio (Anna de), 324-5. + + Catherina, Queen, 120. + + Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 286. + + _Cava, Poema da_, 72. + + Caxton (William), 60. + + Ceita (João da), 17, 244-5. + + _Celestina, La_, 65, 124, 159, 167, 169, 254, 262. + + Ceo (Maria do) [Maria de Eça], 257. + + Ceo (Violante do) [Violante Montesino], 35, 235, 256-7. + + Cervantes (Miguel de), 78, 116, 130, 152, 233, 241, 262, 265, 284. + + Cerveira (Afonso), 86. + + Chagas (Antonio das), 221, 248-9, 261. + + Chamilly, Noël Bouton, Marquis de, 263, 264. + + Chariño (Pai Gomez). _See_ Gomez Chariño. + + Charles V, Emperor, 121, 212, 215, 229. + + Châtillon, Duc de, 233. + + Chiado. _See_ Ribeiro Chiado. + + Child Rolim de Moura (Francisco), 257. + + _Chrisfal, Trovas de._ _See_ Crisfal. + + Christina, Queen of Sweden, 268. + + _Chronica._ _See_ Cronica. + + Cicero, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 209, 214, 280. + + _Cid, Poema del_, 23, 46, 63. + + Claro (João), 59. + + Claudian, 277. + + Clenardus (Nicolaus), 106, 125, 215, 251. + + Cleynarts (Nicholas). _See_ Clenardus. + + Clusius. _See_ Écluse. + + Codax (Martin), 29. + + Coelho (Estevam), 30, 52. + + Coelho (Francisco Adolpho), 15, 112, 231, 308, 347. + + Coelho (Jorge), 180. + + Coelho da Cunha (José), 336. + + Coelho Rebello (Manuel), 163. + + Coimbra (Leonardo de), 20. + + Coincy (Gautier de), 43, 44. + + Colocci (Angelo), 37, 39. + + Colonna (Egidio), 66. + + Colonna (Vittoria), 140, 230. + + Conceição (Alexandre da), 330. + + Conestaggio (Girolamo Franchi di), 210. + + Congreve (William), 224. + + _Conquista de Ultramar, Gran_, 339. + + Consciencia (Manuel), 250. + + Consiglieri Pedroso (Zophimo), 307, 347. + + Cordeiro (Antonio), 138, 206. + + Cordeiro (Luciano), 307. + + Cornu (Jules), 59. + + Corpancho (Airas). _See_ Carpancho. + + Corpancho (Manuel Nicolás), 29. + + _Corpus Illustrium Poetarum Lusitanorum_, 18. + + _Coronica do Condestabre de Purtugal._ _See_ Cronica. + + Corrêa (Gaspar), 14, 20, 88, 177, 194, 198-201, 226. + + Corrêa (Jeronimo), 112. + + Corrêa (Luis Franco), 186. + + Corrêa de Oliveira (Antonio), 332, 337. + + Corrêa Garção (Pedro Antonio Joaquim), 271-2. + + Corrêa Pinto (Roberto), 85. + + Correggio (Antonio Allegri da), 134. + + Correia. _See_ Corrêa. + + _Corte Imperial_, 94, 113. + + Corte Real (Jeronimo), 181, 187-8. + + Cortesão (Jaime), 314, 342. + + Costa (Antonio da), 286. + + Costa (Bras da), 99. + + Costa (Claudio Manuel da), 274, 279. + + Costa (Diogo da), 163. + + Costa (D. Francisco da), 239, 240. + + Costa (Leonel da), 144. + + Costa (Manuel da), 180. + + Costa Lobo (Antonio de Sousa da Silva), 307, 312. + + Costa Perestrello (Pedro da), 147-8. + + Cota (Rodrigo), 23. + + Coudel Môr, O. _See_ Silveira (Fernam de). + + Coutinho (Fernando de), 99. + + Coutinho (D. Francisco), Conde de Redondo, 178, 220. + + Coutinho (D. Gonçalo), 140, 206. + + Couto (Diogo do), 138, 177, 178, 184, 190, 192, 195-8, 216, 218, + 225, + 254. + + Couto Guerreiro (Miguel de), 285. + + Craveiro (Tiburcio Antonio), 54. + + _Crisfal, Trovas de_, 136-9. + + Cristoforus, Dr., 82. + + _Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_, 60. + + _Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_, 61. + + _Cronica da Fundaçam do Mosteiro de S. Vicente_, 61. + + _Cronica da Ordem dos Frades Menores_, 60. + + _Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_, 210. + + _Cronica do Condestabre de Portugal_, 84-5. + + _Cronica dos Vicentes._ See _Cronica da Fundaçam_. + + _Cronica Troyana_, 61. + + _Cronicas Breves_, 60. + + Cruz (Agostinho da), 145, 148. + + Cruz (Bernardo da), 209. + + Cruz (Caspar da), 220. + + Cunha (João Lourenço da), 31. + + Cunha (José Anastasio da), 274. + + Cunha (Nuno da), 161, 176, 199. + + Cunha (D. Rodrigo da), 243. + + Cunha (Tristão da), 97, 116. + + Cunha Rivara (Joaquim Heliodoro da), 292. + + Curros Enriquez (Manuel), 353-4, 355. + + Curvo Semedo Torres Sequeira (Belchior Manuel), 278. + + + D + + Daniel (Samuel), 164. + + _Danse macabre_, 123. + + Dantas (Julio), 313. + + Dante Alighieri, 19, 54, 123, 139, 146, 179, 188, 197, 257. + + _Danza de la Muerte_, 123. + + _De Imitatione Christi_, 240. + + Delicado (Antonio), 346. + + _Demanda do Santo Graall_, 63, 64, 67, 71. + + Denis, King. _See_ Dinis. + + Denis (Jean Ferdinand), 19, 307. + + Deslandes (Venancio), 231. + + Desmond, Maurice, first Earl of, 289. + + _Destroyçam de Jerusalem._ See _Vespeseano, Estorea de_. + + _Destruction de Jérusalem_, 64. + + Deus (João de). _See_ Nogueira Ramos. + + Dias (Epiphanio). _See_ Silva Dias. + + Dias Gomes (Francisco), 20, 21, 269, 285. + + Diaz (Balthasar), 158-9, 289, 339. + + Diaz (Bartholomeu), 98. + + Diaz (Henrique), 218, 279. + + Diaz (D. Lopo), 51. + + Diaz (Nicolau), 215. + + Diaz (Ruy), El Cid, 92. + + Diaz de Landim (Gaspar), 88. + + Dickens (Charles), 315. + + Dinis, King, 13, 14, 28, 30, 37, 38, 39, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54-7, 58, + 59, 60, 61, 67, 69, 70, 105, 140, 208, 294, 339. + + Diniz, King. _See_ Dinis. + + Diniz (João), 335. + + Diniz (Julio) _pseud._ _See_ Gomes Coelho. + + Diniz da Cruz e Silva (Antonio), 186, 273-4, 340. + + Dioscorides, 226. + + _Ditos da Freira._ _See_ Gama (D. Joana da). + + Döllinger (Johann Joseph Ignaz von), 295. + + Dornellas (Afonso de), 307. + + Dozy (Reinhart), 22. + + Drake (Sir Francis), 150. + + Dryden (John), 209. + + Duarte, Infante [†1576], 150. + + Duarte, Infante [†1540], brother of João III, 164, 167, 215. + + Duarte, Infante, brother of João V, 307. + + Duarte, King, 13, 38, 46, 55, 59, 63, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, + 90-2, 93, 124, 211. + + Duarte (Afonso), 334. + + Duarte de Almeida (Manuel), 335. + + Dürer (Albrecht), 212. + + + E + + Eanez (Rodrigo). _See_ Yannez. + + Eanez de Vasconcellos (D. Rodrigo), 54. + + Eanez de Zurara (Gomez). _See_ Zurara. + + Eannez. _See_ Eanez. + + Eannez (Rodrigo). _See_ Yannez. + + Ébrard (Ayméric d’), 54. + + Eça (Maria de). _See_ Ceo (Maria do). + + Eça de Queiroz (José Maria de), 97, 314, 316-18, 322, 325. + + _Eccos que o Clarim da Fama dá_, 256. + + Écluse (Charles de l’), 226. + + Edward I, of England, 41. + + Egas Moniz. _See_ Moniz Coelho. + + Elizabeth, Queen of England, 209. + + _Eloy, Lenda de Santo_, 60. + + Elysio (Filinto). _See_ Nascimento. + + Encarnação (Antonio da), 242. + + Ennes (Antonio), 18, 310, 314. + + Enzina (Juan del), 19, 109, 113, 122, 123, 124. + + Erasmus (Desiderius), 130, 212, 215. + + Ericeira, Conde da. _See_ Meneses. + + Esguio (Fernando), 29. + + _Esopo, Livro de_, 60. + + _Espelho de Prefeyçam_, 95. + + _Espelho de Christina._ _See_ Pisan (Christine de). + + Esperança, Visconde de, 187. + + Esperança (Manuel da), 243. + + Espinola (Fradique), 247-8. + + Espirito Santo (Antonio do). _See_ Ribeiro Chiado. + + Esplandian. _See_ Sergas. + + Espronceda (José de), 301. + + Esquio (Fernando). _See_ Esguio. + + Estaço (Achilles), 106. + + Estaço (Balthasar), 151. + + Estaço (Gaspar), 151. + + Este (João Baptista d’), 245. + + Esteves Negrão (Manuel Nicolau), 273. + + Esteves Pereira (Francisco Maria), 14, 60, 64, 84, 90, 308. + + _Estorea de Vespeseano._ _See_ Vespeseano. + + Estrella (Antonio da), 162, 338. + + _Eufrosina, Vida de_, 59. + + + F + + Falcão (Cristovam de Sousa), 105, 137-9, 197. + + Falcão de Resende (André), 21, 150-1. + + Faria (Antonio de), 222. + + Faria (Pedro de), 222. + + Faria e Sousa (Manuel de), 18, 20, 68, 130, 140, 145, 147, 153, 176, + 180, 184, 187, 204, 209, 216, 224, 282. + + Faria Severim (Manuel de), 215. + + Feijó (Antonio Joaquim de Castro), 335. + + Feijoo (José Sanchez), 347. + + Felipe, Infante, 120. + + Fénelon (François de), 285. + + _Fenix Renascida_, 155, 256, 276. + + Feo (Antonio), 17, 156, 244. + + Ferdinand, King. _See_ Fernando. + + Fernandes Thomaz Pippa (Annibal), 308. + + Fernandez (Alvaro), 217. + + Fernandez (Antonio), 230. + + Fernandez (Diogo) [xv c.], 92. + + Fernandez (Diogo) [xv c. poet], 112. + + Fernandez (Diogo) [xvi c.], 234. + + Fernandez (Lucas), 124. + + Fernandez (Roy), 30. + + Fernandez Alemão (Valentim), 95. + + Fernandez de Lucena (Vasco), 87, 88. + + Fernandez Ferreira (Diogo), 89, 229. + + Fernandez Galvão (Francisco), 244. + + Fernandez Torneol (Nuno), 28, 31. + + Fernandez Trancoso (Gonçalo), 231-2, 338. + + Fernando, Infante [son of João I], 81, 89. + + Fernando, Infante [son of King Manuel], 230. + + Fernando, King Consort, 292, 293. + + Fernando I, of Portugal, 84, 210. + + Fernando III, of Castile, 40, 41, 51. + + Ferrandez de Gerena (Garci), 78-9. + + Ferreira (Antonio), 13, 67, 103, 145, 148-9, 165, 166, 272. + + Ferreira (Carlos), 339. + + Ferreira de Almeida (João), 338. + + Ferreira de Azevedo (Antonio Xavier), 340. + + Ferreira de Figueiroa (Diogo), 262. + + Ferreira de Lacerda (Bernarda), 18, 257. + + Ferreira de Vasconcellos (Jorge), 14, 16, 74, 101, 130, 155, 164, + 166, 167-73, 232, 251, 338, 346. + + Ferreira de Vera (Alvaro), 182. + + Ferrer (Miguel), 234. + + Ferrus (Pero), 66, 67. + + Feuillet (Octave), 299. + + Fialho de Almeida (José Valentim), 322, 326. + + Ficalho, Francisco Manuel Carlos de Mello, third Conde de, 226, 308, + 326. + + Fielding (Henry), 255. + + Figueira (Guilherme), 32. + + Figueiredo (Antero de), 323. + + Figueiredo (Antonio Candido de), 308. + + Figueiredo (Fidelino de Sousa), 16, 308. + + Figueiredo (Manuel de), 282, 290. + + Fitzmaurice-Kelly (James), 16. + + Flaubert (Gustave), 235, 319. + + _Flores e Branca Flor, Historia de_, 65, 339, 340. + + Florida. See _Relaçam Verdadeira dos trabalhos_. + + _Flos Sanctorum_, 94, 225, 259. + + Fonseca (Balthasar Luis da), 163. + + Fonseca (João da), 249. + + Fonseca Soares (Antonio da), 248. + + Fontaines, Baron de, 233. + + Forner (Juan Pablo), 281. + + Fradique, Infante, 83. + + Franco (Luis). _See_ Corrêa (Luis Franco). + + François I, 212. + + Frederick III, Emperor, 93. + + Freire (Antonio), 262. + + Freire (Francisco José), 285. + + Freire de Andrade (Jacinto), 256, 261, 266-7. + + Froissart (Jean), 81, 83. + + Fructuoso (Gaspar), 138, 206. + + Furtado de Mendoza (Diego), 22. + + + G + + _Galaaz, O Livro de_, 63. + + Galen, 226. + + Galhegos (Manuel de), 58, 74, 258. + + Galvam (Antonio), 190, 191, 202-3, 219. + + Galvam (Duarte), 88, 180, 202, 219. + + Galvam (Francisco), 147-8. + + Galvam de Andrade (Antonio), 17. + + Gama (Arnaldo de Sousa Dantas da), 295. + + Gama (D. Cristovam da), 203. + + Gama (D. Estevam da), 196. + + Gama (D. Joana da), 241. + + Gama (Jose Basilio da), 279. + + Gama (Leonarda Gil da). _See_ Gloria (Maria Magdalena Euphemia + da). + + Gama (D. Vasco da), Conde de Vidigueira, 99, 107, 175, 190, 191, + 192, 196, 200, 301, 312. + + Gama Barros (Henrique), 307. + + Gandavo. _See_ Magalhães de Gandavo. + + Garcia (Fernan), Esgaravunha, 52. + + Garcia (Pero) de Burgos, 51. + + Garcia de Castrogeriz (Johan), 66. + + Garcia de Guilhade (D. Joan), 51. + + Garcia de Mascarenhas (Bras), 259-60. + + García Ferreiro (Alberto), 340, 354. + + Garcia Peres (Domingo), 18, 151. + + Garret (B.), Chariteo, 289. + + Garrett. _See_ Almeida Garrett. + + Garrido (Luiz Guedes Coutinho), 308. + + Gautier (Judith), 335. + + Gavaudan, 40. + + Gavy de Mendonça (Agostinho de), 203. + + Gayangos y Arce (Pascual de), 65. + + Gibbs (James), 209. + + Gil (Augusto), 336. + + Gil y Carrasco (Enrique), 316. + + Ginzo (Martin de), 29. + + Giraldez (Afonso), 73. + + Giraldi (Giambattista), 231. + + Giraldo, Mestre, 17. + + Glareanus (Henricus), 212. + + Gloria (Maria Magdalena Euphemia da) [Leonarda Gil da Gama], 257. + + Godinho (Cristovam), 238. + + Godinho (Manuel), 221, 240, 254. + + Goes (Damião de), 14, 15, 39, 83, 86, 88, 92, 113, 194, 202, 209, + 211-14, 215, 265. + + Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von), 290, 300, 333. + + Goldsmith (Oliver), 277. + + Gomes (João Baptista), 273. + + Gomes Coelho (Joaquim Guilherme) [Julio Diniz], 314-16, 317, 324. + + Gomes de Amorim (Francisco), 290, 301-2, 306, 309, 310. + + Gomes de Brito (José Joaquim), 308. + + Gomes de Carvalho (Theotonio), 273. + + Gomes Leal (Antonio Duarte), 332-3. + + Gomez (Simão), 341. + + Gomez Chariño (Pai), 29-30. + + Gomez de Briteiros (Rui), 46. + + Gomez de Brito (Bernardo), 217. + + Gomez de Moraes (Silvestre), 17. + + Gonçalves Crespo (Antonio Candido), 324, 330-1. + + Gonçalves Dias (Antonio), 331. + + Gonçalves Lima (Augusto José), 300. + + Gonçalves Vianna. _See_ Gonçalvez Viana. + + Gonçalvez (Ruy), 229. + + Gonçalvez de Seabra (Fernan), 47, 48. + + Gonçalvez Lobato (Balthasar), 234. + + Gonçalvez Viana (Aniceto dos Reis), 18, 294, 308. + + Góngora (Luis de), 74, 155, 258. + + Gonta Collaço (Branca de), 336. + + Gonzaga (Thomaz Antonio), 274, 279. + + Gonzalez de Sanabria (Ferrant). _See_ Gonçalvez de Seabra. + + Gouvêa (André de), 106. + + Gouvêa (Antonio de), 106, 206. + + Gouveia. _See_ Gouvêa. + + Gower (John), 89, 90. + + Gracián (Baltasar), 19, 154, 253. + + Granada (Luis de), 243. + + Grão Para, Bishop of. _See_ S. Joseph Queiroz. + + Grave (João), 321. + + Gray (Thomas), 277. + + Gregory, St., 90. + + _Grinalda, A_, 300. + + Guarda (Stevam), 51. + + _Guarda, Foros da_, 17. + + Guedes Teixeira (Fausto), 335. + + Guerra Junqueiro (Abilio Manuel), 331-2. + + Guilhade (Joan de), 28, 51, 339. + + Guilherme (Manuel), 13. + + Guimarães (Delfim), 136. + + Gusmão (Alexandre de), 286. + + Gusmão (Alexandre de), Jesuit, 249. + + + H + + Halifax (John of), 227. + + Hallam (Henry), 294. + + Heine (Heinrich), 351. + + Henrique, Cardinal, King, 106, 150, 164, 210, 214, 219, 227, 238, + 250, 251, 311. + + Henrique, Infante, 18, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 307. + + Henriques (Guilherme J. C.), 214. + + Henry VIII, of England, 212. + + Henry the Navigator, Prince. _See_ Henrique, Infante. + + Henry, of Burgundy, Count, 210, 271. + + Henryson (Robert), 60. + + Herberay des Essarts (Nicholas), 71. + + Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo (Alexandre), 61, 87, 97, 127, 208, + 243, 277, 285, 287, 292-5, 296, 303, 305, 315. + + Herodotus, 226. + + Herrera y Garrido (Francisca), 357. + + _Historia dos Cavalleiros da Mesa Redonda._ See _Demanda do + Santo Graall_. + + _Historia Tragico-Maritima_, 196, 217-8. + + _Historia Tristani_, 63. + + _Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, 59. + + Hita, Archpriest of. _See_ Ruiz. + + Hollanda (Antonio de), 229. + + Hollanda (Francisco de), 229-30, 237. + + Homem (Pedro), 105. + + Homer, 19, 143, 174, 180, 182, 183, 233, 277, 280, 281. + + Horace, 72, 143, 148, 258, 272, 275, 277. + + Horta. _See_ Orta. + + Hugo (Victor), 293, 306, 308, 310, 331, 332, 333. + + Humboldt (Alexander von), 177. + + Hurtado (Luis), 234. + + Huysmans (J. K.), 333. + + + I + + Ichoa (Martim), 89. + + Idanha (Pedro de Alcaçova Carneiro), Conde de, 182. + + Ignacio de Loyola, San, 353. + + Isabel, Empress, 121. + + Isabel, Infanta, 121. + + Isabel, Queen Consort of Afonso V, 80, 95. + + Isabel, Queen Consort of Dinis, 54, 60, 247. + + Isabel, Queen of Spain, 127. + + _Isabel, Vida de Santa_, 60. + + Ivo (Pedro) _pseud._ _See_ Lopes (Carlos). + + + J + + Jardin (G. du). _See_ Orta. + + Jeanroy (Alfred), 29. + + Jerome, St., 85. + + Jesus (Francisco de). _See_ Sá de Meneses (F. de). + + Jesus (Raphael de), 208. + + Jesus (Thomé de), 14, 20, 189, 237, 238-40. + + Joana, Infanta, 215. + + João I, 14, 68, 81, 82, 84, 89-90, 94, 110, 211. + + João II, 88, 89, 93, 96, 100, 102, 103, 108, 125, 148, 221, 227, + 246, 305, 312. + + João III, 98, 103, 106, 107, 110, 117, 119, 132, 140, 141, 158, 167, + 175, 189, 192, 193, 195, 208, 209, 211, 215, 226. 232, 233, + 237, 296. + + João IV, 216, 242, 244, 253, 259, 265, 267, 268, 286. + + João V, 270. + + João, Infante [xvi c.], 106, 143, 150, 151, 166, 168, 169, 176, 179. + + _João de Calais, Verdadeira Historia de_, 339. + + João Manuel (D.). _See_ Manuel (D. João). + + John, Prester, 219, 225. + + Johnson (Samuel), 282. + + Jorge, D., 221. + + Jorge (Ricardo), 153. + + José I, 276, 296. + + _Josep ab Arimatia, Livro de_, 64. + + Joséphine, Empress, 281. + + Juan I, 78, 84. + + Juan de Austria, Don, 188. + + Juan Manuel, Infante Don, 91, 94. + + Juana, Infanta, 151. + + Juana, la Loca, Queen, 133. + + Juromenha, João Antonio de Lemos Pereira de Lacerda, Visconde de, + 176, 308. + + Justinianus (Laurentius), 94. + + + K + + Karr (Alphonse), 322. + + Keats (John), 138, 281. + + + L + + La Bruyère (Jean de), 91. + + Lacerda (Augusto), 314. + + Lafões, Duque de, 284. + + Lafões, third Duque de, 311. + + La Fontaine (Jean de), 117. + + Lamartine (Alphonse de), 275, 277. + + Lamas Carvajal (Valentin), 350-1. + + Lamennais (Hugues Félicité Robert de), 292. + + Lancastre (D. Lourenço de), 273. + + Lang (Henry Roseman), 23, 24, 37, 76, 79, 123. + + Lara (João Carlos de), 273. + + Lasso de la Vega (Garci), 140, 141, 143, 147, 172, 181, 260. + + Latino Coelho (José Maria), 201, 307. + + Lavanha (João Baptista), 195, 218. + + _Lazarillo de Tormes_, 115, 125, 160, 265. + + Leam (Gaspar de), 241. + + _Lear, King_, 62. + + Leitão de Andrade (Miguel), 72, 73, 263. + + Leite (Solidonio), 266. + + Leite de Vasconcellos Cardoso Pereira de Melo (José), 15, 33, 34, + 60, + 308-9, 342, 346. + + Leite Ferreira (Miguel), 67, 68, 69, 71, 148. + + Lemos (Jorge de), 203. + + Lemos (Julio de), 325. + + Lemos Seixas Castello Branco (João de), 300, 301. + + Lencastre (D. Philippa de), 80, 94. + + Leo X, 97. + + Leon (Luis de), 133, 236, 238, 239, 253, 258. + + Leonor. _See_ Lianor. + + Leonor, successively Queen of Portugal and France, 233. + + Leopardi (Giacomo), Count, 331, 351. + + _Lettres Portugaises._ _See_ Alcoforado. + + Levi (Juda), 94. + + Lianor, Empress, 93. + + Lianor, Queen Consort of Duarte, 90. + + Lianor, Queen Consort of João II, 93, 95, 111, 112, 113, 114, 119, + 120, 229. + + Lima (Alexandre Antonio de), 274. + + Lima (D. Rodrigo de), 219. + + Lima Pereira (Paulo de), 197. + + Linhares, second Conde de. _See_ Noronha (D. Francisco de). + + Linhares, Conde de [xvii c.], 252, 345. + + Linhares, Violante, Condessa de, 239. + + Lipsius (Justus), 255. + + Lisboa (Antonio de), 162. + + Lisboa (Cristovam de), 245. + + Lisboa (João de), 227. + + _Livro da Noa_, 60. + + _Livro das Aves_, 90. + + _Livro das Heras_, 60. + + _Livro de Josep ab Arimatia._ _See_ Josep. + + _Livro Velho_, 61. + + _Livro Vermelho_, 17. + + _Livros de Linhagens_, 61. + + Livy, 193, 194. + + Lobato (Gervasio), 314. + + Lobeira (Gonçalo de), 70. + + Lobeira (Joan de), 68, 69, 70, 159. + + Lobeira (Pedro de), 68, 70, 71. + + Lobeira (Vasco de), 67, 68, 69, 70. + + Lobo (Alvaro), 210. + + Lobo (D. Francisco Alexandre), Bishop of Viseu, 285. + + Lobo (Francisco Rodriguez). _See_ Rodriguez Lobo. + + Lollis (Cesare de), 45. + + Lopes (Carlos), 325. + + Lopes (David de Melo), 308. + + Lopes (Francisco), 155, 162. + + Lopes de Mendonça (Antonio Pedro), 297. + + Lopes de Mendonça (Henrique), 312-13. + + Lopes de Moura (Caetano), 37. + + Lopes Vieira (Afonso), 337. + + Lopez (Afonso), 160. + + Lopez (Anrique), 159. + + Lopez (Diogo), 84. + + Lopez (Fernam), 14, 19, 61, 62, 68, 77, 81-5, 87, 88, 89, 97, 117, + 180, 212, 255. + + Lopez (Martinho), 81. + + Lopez (Thomé), 204. + + López Abente (Gonzalo), 355. + + Lopez de Ayala (Pero), 66, 67. + + Lopez de Bayan (D. Afonso), 53. + + Lopez de Camões (Vasco), 77. + + Lopez de Castanheda (Fernam), 180, 181, 190-1, 192, 193, 194, 197, + 198, 200, 201, 206, 209. + + Lopez de Sousa (Pero), 225. + + Lopez de Ulhoa (D. Joan), 52. + + Lopo, jogral, 29. + + Losada (Benito), 352. + + Loti (Pierre) _pseud._ [Julien Viaud], 89, 323. + + Louis XI, 89. + + Lourenço, jogral, 29. + + Lucan, 99. + + Lucena (João de), 16, 75, 243. + + Lucena (Vasco Fernandez de). _See_ Fernandez Lucena. + + Lucian, 99. + + Ludolph of Saxony. _See_ Sachsen. + + Lugris y Freire (Manuel), 357. + + Luis, Infante, 106-7, 168, 170, 185, 191, 195, 209, 227, 228. + + Luis (Nicolau), 284. + + Lull (Ramón), 94. + + Luther (Martin), 126, 212. + + Luz (André da), 163. + + Luz (Philipe da), 17, 244, 245. + + Luz Soriano (Simão José da), 292. + + + M + + Macedo (Anna de). _See_ Sá e Macedo. + + Macedo (José Agostinho de), 17, 99, 182, 183, 187, 224, 237, 244, + 250, 277, 278, 279-82, 288. + + Machado (Julio Cesar), 325. + + Machado (Simão), 18, 161. + + Machado de Azevedo (Manuel), 77, 142. + + Macias, 76-77, 78, 98, 104, 132, 349, 350. + + Magalhães (Fernam de), 219. + + Magalhães (Luiz Cypriano Coelho de), 319. + + Magalhães de Gandavo (Pedro de), 193, 204, 279. + + Magalhães Lima (Jaime de), 319, 325. + + _Magalona, Verdadeira Historia da Princeza_, 65, 339, 340. + + Malheiro Dias (Carlos), 320. + + Mallarmé (Stéphane), 86. + + Malory (Sir Thomas), 85. + + Mangancha (Diogo Afonso), 90. + + Manrique (Gomez), 76, 100, 104. + + Manrique (Jorge), 76, 100, 102, 104. + + Mantua (Bento), 314. + + Manuel I, 88, 89, 96, 101, 103, 107, 110, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118, + 120, 121, 126, 129, 133, 145, 175, 192, 200, 201, 202, 208, + 209, 211, 214, 221, 228, 295, 312. + + Manuel, Infante, 116, 121. + + Manuel (D. João), 98, 101. + + _Maranhão, Jornada do_, 204. + + Marcabrun, 39. + + Marcos, Frei, 59. + + Maria, Infanta, 15, 107, 110, 121, 193, 233. + + Maria, Consort of King Manuel, 118. + + Maria da Gloria, Queen, 288. + + _Maria Egipcia, Vida de_, 59. + + Marialva, second Conde de, 241. + + Marialva, Marques de, 313. + + Mariana (Juan de), 208. + + Marie Antoinette, Queen, 277. + + Marinho de Azevedo (Luis), 18. + + Mariz (Antonio de), 206. + + Mariz (Pedro de), 206, 207. + + Marot (Clément), 233. + + Martelo Pauman (Evaristo), 354. + + Martial, 125. + + Martim Afonso, Mestre. _See_ Afonso (Martim). + + Martinez de Resende (Vasco), 13. + + Martínez Salazar (Andrés), 61. + + Martinho, de Alcobaça, 98. + + Martorell (Pedro Juan), 65. + + Martyres (Bartholomeu dos), 195, 242, 243, 342. + + Marueil (Arnaut de), 35. + + Mascarenhas (D. Fernando de), 267. + + Mascarenhas (D. João de), 187. + + Mascarenhas (D. Pedro de), 126. + + Mattos (João Xavier de), 278-9. + + Medina e Vasconcellos (Francisco de Paula), 186. + + Meendinho, 29, 52. + + Melanchthon (Philip), 212, 227. + + Mello (Carlos de). _See_ Ficalho. + + Mello (D. Francisco Manuel de), 14, 74, 108, 164, 170, 205, 252-5, + 261, 263, 267, 269, 338, 345. + + Mello (Garcia de), 101. + + Mello (Martim Afonso de), 82. + + Mello Breyner (D. Theresa de), Condessa de Vimieiro, 273. + + Mello Franco (Francisco de), 274. + + Mena (Juan de), 77, 104, 197. + + Menander, 130. + + Mendes de Vasconcellos (Luis), 263. + + Mendes dos Remedios (Joaquim), 16, 256. + + Mendes Leal (José da Silva), 301. + + Mendez (Afonso), 205. + + Mendez (Manuel), 60. + + Mendez de Sá (Gonçalo), 139. + + Mendez de Vasconcellos (Diogo), 215. + + Mendez Pinto (Fernam), 151, 203, 220, 221-5, 243. + + Mendez Silva (Rodrigo), 255. + + Mendoça (Jeronimo de), 210. + + Mendoça (Joana de), 196. + + Mendonça (Francisco de), 245. + + Mendonça (Jeronimo). _See_ Mendoça. + + Mendonça Alves (Vasco de), 314. + + Menéndez Pidal (Ramón), 73. + + Menéndez y Pelayo (Marcelino), 19, 65, 83, 112, 133, 135, 140, 151, + 168, 169, 233, 252, 278, 291, 339. + + Meneses (D. Aleixo de), 206. + + Meneses (D. Duarte de), 86. + + Meneses (D. Fernando de), 177. + + Meneses (D. Fernando de), second Conde da Ericeira, 266-7. + + Meneses (D. Francisco Xavier de), fourth Conde da Ericeira, 270-1. + + Meneses (D. Henrique de), 195. + + Meneses (D. João de), 101, 103, 104. + + Meneses (D. Luis de), third Conde da Ericeira, 69, 261, 267. + + Meneses (D. Pedro de), 86. + + Meneses (D. Sebastião Cesar de), 266. + + _Menina Fermosa, Trovas da_, 341. + + Menino (Pero), 17, 78. + + Meogo (Pero), 29. + + _Merlim_, 63. + + Mesquita (Marcellino Antonio da Silva), 311-12. + + Mesquita Perestrello (Manuel de), 217. + + Meyer (Paul), 44. + + Michaëlis (Gustav), 15. + + Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (Carolina), 14, 15, 22, 23, 29, 31, 32, + 33, + 34, 37, 39, 50, 53, 62, 65, 75, 76, 80, 104, 112, 136, 180, + 184, 308, 338, 342. + + Michelangelo. _See_ Buonarroti. + + Mickle (William Julius), 14. + + Miguel I, 280, 288. + + Milá y Fontanals (Manuel), 41, 345. + + Milton (John), 127, 184. + + Miranda (Afonso de), 226. + + Miranda (Jeronimo de), 226. + + Miranda (Martim Afonso de), 252, 262. + + _Misterio de los Reyes Magos_, 123. + + _Moleiro, Trovas do_, 341. + + Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 116, 130, 164. + + Molteni (Enrico Gasi), 38. + + Monaci (Ernesto), 13, 37. + + Moniz Barreto (Guilherme), 21. + + Moniz Coelho (Egas), 72. + + Mons (Nat de), 42. + + Monsaraz, Antonio de Macedo Papança, Conde de, 335-6. + + Montaigne (Michel de), 83, 106, 212. + + Montalvão (Justino de), 328. + + Montalvo. _See_ Rodriguez de Montalvo. + + Montebello, Marques de, 356. + + Monteiro (Diogo), 246-7. + + Montemayor (George de). _See_ Montemôr (Jorge de). + + Montemôr (Jorge de), 17, 151-2. + + Montesino (Violante). _See_ Ceo (Violante do). + + Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat), 182. + + Montoia (Luis de), 239. + + Montoro (Anton de), 23, 127. + + Moogo (Pero). _See_ Meogo. + + Moraes (Cristovam Alão de), 109, 286. + + Moraes Cabral (Francisco de), 65, 76, 152, 161, 204, 232-4. + + More (Sir Thomas), 254. + + Moreira (Julio), 308. + + Moreira Camello (Antonio), 338. + + Moreira de Carvalho (Jeronimo), 339. + + Moreno (Bento) _pseud._ _See_ Teixeira de Queiroz. + + Moura (Miguel de), 210. + + Mousinho de Quevedo (Vasco), 261. + + Murguía (Manuel de), 349. + + + N + + Napier (Sir William), 255. + + Napoleon I, 281. + + Napoleon III, 340. + + Nascimento (Francisco Manuel do), 263, 274-5, 290, 304, 338, 344. + + Navagero (Andrea), 351. + + Newton (Sir Isaac), 281. + + Niebuhr (Barthold Georg), 294. + + _No figueiral figueiredo_, 72. + + _Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_, 61. + + _Nobiliario do Conde._ _See_ Pedro Afonso, Conde de + Barcellos. + + Nobre (Antonio), 332, 334. + + Nobrega, Padre, 45. + + Nogueira Ramos (João de Deus), 249, 250, 329-30, 338. + + Noriega Varela (Antonio), 355. + + Noronha (D. Anna de), 242. + + Noronha (D. Antonio de), 175, 177, 179. + + Noronha (D. Francisco de), second Conde de Linhares, 175, 232, 239. + + Noronha (D. Lianor de), 107. + + Noronha (D. Thomas de), 256. + + Novaes (Francisco Xavier de), 112, 302. + + Nun’ Alvarez. _See_ Alvarez Pereira (Nuno). + + Nun de Allariz (Alfredo) _pseud._, 355. + + Nunes (Claudio José), 331. + + Nunes (José Joaquim), 26, 60, 308. + + Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (Antonio), 286. + + Nunez (Airas), 23, 31, 47, 52-3. + + Nunez (João), 210. + + Nunez (Pedro), 18, 107, 226-7, 251. + + Nunez (Philipe), 230. + + Nunez da Silva (Manuel), 231. + + Nunez de Leam (Duarte), 39, 55, 56, 68, 210-11, 252. + + Nuñez del Arce (Gaspar Esteban), 295. + + Nuñez González (Manuel), 354, 355. + + + O + + Oeynhausen, Count of, 276. + + Olanda (Francisco de). _See_ Hollanda. + + Olivares, Conde-Duque de, 252. + + Oliveira (Fernam de), 109, 220, 227. + + Oliveira (Francisco Xavier de), Cavalheiro de Oliveira, 74, 285-6. + + Oliveira Marreca (Antonio de), 295. + + Oliveira Martins (Pedro Joaquim de), 305-6, 322. + + Orta (Garcia da), 178, 225-6, 308. + + Orta (Jorge da), 225. + + Ortigão (Ramalho). _See_ Ramalho Ortigão. + + Osborne (Dorothy), 20. + + _Osmia._ _See_ Mello Breyner. + + Osorio (Luiz), 335. + + Osorio da Fonseca (Jeronimo), 18, 209, 224, 228, 263. + + Ossian, 301. + + Ovid, 85. + + + P + + Pacheco (João), 248. + + Pacheco Pereira (Duarte), 191, 227. + + Paez (Balthasar), 245. + + Paez (D. Maria), 22. + + Paez (Pedro), 205. + + Paganino (Rodrigo), 325. + + Paiva (Isabel de), 239. + + Paiva de Andrade (Diogo de) [xvi c.], 239, 244. + + Paiva de Andrade (Diogo de) [xvii c.], 215, 239, 253. + + Palmeirim (Luiz Augusto), 300-1. + + _Palmeirim de Inglaterra._ _See_ Moraes (F. de). + + _Palmerín de Oliva_, 234. + + Pardo Bazán (Emilia), Condesa de, 356. + + Patmore (Coventry), 336. + + Pato Moniz (Nuno Alvares). _See_ Pereira Pato Moniz. + + Patricio (Antonio), 328. + + _Paixam de Jesu Christo, A_, 94, 95. + + Paul III, Pope, 212, 219. + + Paulo (Marco). _See_ Polo. + + Payne (Robert), 90. + + Pedro I, of Portugal, 80, 84, 312. + + Pedro II, of Portugal, 268, 288. + + Pedro V, of Portugal, 293. + + Pedro Afonso, Conde de Barcellos, 38, 57, 61-2. + + Pedro, Duque de Coimbra, 71, 79, 80, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 100. + + Pedro, O Condestavel D., 38, 77, 79-80, 86, 92, 95, 100. + + Pedro, King of Aragon. _See_ Pedro, O Condestavel D. + + _Pedro, Tratado do Infante D._, 340. + + _Pelagia, Vida de Santa_, 60. + + Penha Fortuna (João de Oliveira), 330. + + Pereda (José María de), 318. + + Pereira (Antonio Nunalvarez), 141. + + Pereira (Aureliano J.), 354. + + Pereira (Nuno), 98, 102, 143. + + Pereira Brandão (Luis), 188-9. + + Pereira de Castro (Gabriel), 258-9. + + Pereira de Castro (Luis), 258. + + Pereira de Figueiredo (Antonio), 338. + + Pereira de Novaes (Manuel), 20. + + Pereira de Sampaio (José) [Bruno], 308. + + Pereira Pato Moniz (Nuno Alvarez), 187. + + Pereira Pinheiro (Bernardino), 295-6. + + Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcellos (Joaquim). _See_ Teixeira de + Pascoaes. + + Pérez Ballesteros (José), 356. + + Pérez Galdós (Benito), 298. + + Pérez Placer (Heraclio), 357. + + Perez de Camões (Vasco), 77, 78, 174. + + Perez de Oliva (Hernan), 165. + + Pestana (Alice), 324. + + Petrarca (Francesco), 139, 146, 147, 148, 152, 161, 181, 185, 186, + 197, 237, 280, 281. + + Philip II, of Spain, 146, 151, 195, 216, 223, 224, 230, 236, 237, + 238, 250, 263. + + Philip III, of Spain, 155. + + Philip IV, of Spain, 216, 243. + + Philippa, Queen Consort of João I, 84, 85, 89, 305. + + Piamonte (Nicolas), 339. + + Picaud (Aimeric), 25. + + _Pierres de Provence_, 65. + + Pimenta (Agostinho). _See_ Cruz (Agostinho da). + + Pimentel (Manuel), 228. + + Pina (Fernam de), 87. + + Pina (Ruy de), 87-9, 97, 110, 125, 180. + + Pindella (Bernardo de). _See_ Arnoso. + + Pinheiro (D. Antonio), 214, 244. + + Pinheiro (Bernardino). _See_ Pereira Pinheiro. + + Pinheiro (Bernardo). _See_ Arnoso. + + Pinheiro Chagas (Manuel), 304, 306-7. + + Pinheiro da Veiga (Thomé), 265. + + Pinto (Heitor), 14, 16, 101, 230, 236-7, 238. + + Pinto (João Lourenço), 318-19. + + Pinto (Jorge), 159. + + Pinto Ribeiro (João), 265. + + Pintos (Juan Manuel), 348. + + Pires (Antonio Thomaz), 69, 308, 342. + + Pires de Rebello (Gaspar), 262. + + Pirez Lobeira (Joan). _See_ Lobeira (Joan de). + + Pisan (Christine de), 85, 95. + + Pisano (Mattheus de), 85. + + Pius IV, Pope, 193. + + _Platir_, 234. + + Plato, 119, 237. + + Plautus, 108, 130, 164, 167. + + Pliny, 226. + + _Poema da Perda de Espanha._ _See_ Cava. + + _Poema del Cid._ _See_ Cid. + + _Poetica_, 48, 49, 58, 66. + + Poitou, Guillaume, Comte de, 39. + + Poliziano (Angelo [Ambrogini]), 103, 139, 141. + + Polo (Marco), 95. + + Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marques de, 272, 273, + 276, 291, 307. + + Ponce (Bartolomé), 151. + + Pondal y Abente (Eduardo), 352-3, 355. + + Ponte (Pero da), 28, 51. + + Pope (Alexander), 50, 209, 274, 277. + + Portela (Severo), 328. + + Porto Carreiro (Lope de), 78. + + Portugal (D. Anrique de), 103. + + Portugal (D. Francisco de) [xvi c.], 203. + + Portugal (D. Francisco de) [xvii c.], 18, 70, 129, 258. + + Portugal (D. Francisco de), Conde de Vimioso, 100, 103-4, 122, 126, + 145, 150. + + Portugal (D. João de), 241, 242. + + Portugal (D. Manuel de), 145, 180, 346. + + _Portugaliae Monumenta Historica._ _See_ Herculano + (Alexandre). + + Posada y Pereira (José María), 348. + + Potter (Maria), 315. + + Potter (Thomas), 315. + + Poyares (Pedro de), 109. + + Prado (Xavier), 355. + + Prazeres (João dos), 269. + + Presentação (Cosme da), 239. + + Prestage (Edgar), 14, 15, 214, 252, 308. + + Prestes (Antonio), 19, 160-1, 166. + + _Primlaeon_, 119, 234. + + _Primor e honra da vida soldadesca_, 262. + + Ptolemy, 193. + + Purificaçam (Antonio da), 18. + + Purser (William Edward), 233. + + + Q + + Queimado (Roy), 52. + + Quental (Anthero Tarquinio de), 304, 328-9. + + Quevedo y Villegas (Francisco Gomez de), 169, 252, 253, 255. + + Quinet (Edgar), 19. + + Quintilian, 247. + + Quita (Domingos dos Reis), 272-3. + + + R + + Rabelais (François), 321. + + Rabello (Gabriel de), 203. + + Racine (Jean), 182. + + Raleigh (Sir Walter), 228. + + Ramalho Ortigão (José Duarte), 304, 318, 321-2. + + Ramos Coelho (José), 307. + + Ramusio (Giovanni Battista), 204. + + Rebello da Silva (Luiz Augusto), 296. + + Redondo, Conde de. _See_ Coutinho (D. Francisco). + + _Regras e Cautelas_, 241. + + _Relaçam verdadeira dos trabalhos_, &c., 203. + + Renan (Ernest), 240. + + Resende (Garcia de), 75, 88, 89, 96-8, 99, 100, 110, 113, 123, 124, + 127, 140, 150, 199. + + Resende (Lucio André de), 13, 39, 130, 150, 180, 206, 215, 216. + + _Revista de Historia_, 308. + + _Revista Lusitana_, 309, 347. + + Rey Soto (Antonio), 355. + + Ribalta (Aurelio), 356-7. + + Ribeira Grande, Conde da, 311. + + Ribeiro (Bernardim), 14, 19, 105, 132-9, 141, 152, 154, 291, 300. + + Ribeiro (Jeronimo), 161. + + Ribeiro (João), 204. + + Ribeiro (João Pedro), 292. + + Ribeiro (Mattheus de), 261. + + Ribeiro Chiado (Antonio), 157-8, 161. + + Ribeiro de Macedo (Duarte), 265-6. + + Ribeiro de Sousa (Salvador), 203. + + Ribeiro dos Santos (Antonio), 285. + + Ribeiro Ferreira (Thomaz Antonio), 302. + + Ribeiro Sanches (Antonio Nunes). _See_ Nunes Ribeiro Sanches. + + Ribeiro Soarez (Jeronimo). _See_ Ribeiro (Jeronimo). + + Richardson (Samuel), 170. + + Riquier (Guiraut), 42, 55. + + _Roberto, Verdadeira Historia do Grande_, 339. + + Rocha Martins (Francisco de), 321. + + Rodrigues (José Maria), 180. + + Rodrigues Cordeiro (Antonio Xavier), 300. + + Rodriguez (Fernan), 78. + + Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of Almazan, 78. + + Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of Toro, 78, 123. + + Rodriguez (Melicia), 110. + + Rodriguez Azinheiro (Cristovam), 211. + + Rodriguez de Calheiros (Fernan), 52. + + Rodriguez de Escobar (Gonçalo), 78. + + Rodriguez de la Cámara (Juan), 63, 77, 104, 132. + + Rodriguez de Montalvo (Garci), 65, 66, 67, 69, 119. + + Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses (João), 103. + + Rodriguez de Sousa (Gonçalo), 78. + + Rodriguez del Padrón (Juan). _See_ Rodriguez de la Cámara. + + Rodriguez González (Eladio), 354-5. + + Rodriguez Leitão (Manuel), 266. + + Rodriguez Lobo (Francisco), 74, 153-5, 170, 185, 232. + + Rodriguez Lobo Soropita (Fernam), 229, 345. + + Rodriguez Silveira (Francisco), 229, 307. + + Roiz. _See_ Rodriguez. + + _Roland, Chanson de_, 53. + + Rolim de Moura. See Child Rolim. + + _Romances_, 74-6, 124, 161, 172. + + Romero (Sylvio), 17. + + Roquette (José Ignacio), 91. + + Rousseau (Jean-Jacques), 264. + + Rucellai (Giovanni), 140. + + Rudel (Jaufre), 47. + + Rueda (Lope de), 112, 130. + + Ruiz (Juan), Archpriest of Hita, 23, 38, 53, 90, 113, 124, 125, 339, + 356. + + Ruiz de Toro (Alvar), 78. + + + S + + Sá (Antonio de), 269. + + Sá (Diogo de), 228. + + Sá (Gonçalo de), 143. + + Sá (Mem de), 143. + + Sá de Meneses (Francisco de), epic poet, 260. + + Sá de Meneses (Francisco de), Conde de Mattosinhos, 13, 150, 260. + + Sá de Miranda (Francisco de), 13, 19, 39, 53, 77, 104, 105, 117, + 120, 138, 139-45, 146, 149, 164, 165, 166, 174, 176, 206, 260, + 263, 276. + + Sá e Macedo (Anna de), 174, 179. + + Sá Sottomaior (Eloi de), 153. + + Sabugal, Conde de, 256. + + Sabugosa (Antonio Maria José de Mello Silva Cesar e Meneses), Conde + de, 121, 158, 324. + + Sacchetti (Franco), 231. + + Sachsen (Ludolph von), 90, 95. + + _Sacramental._ _See_ Sanchez de Vercial. + + Sacro Bosco (Joannes de). _See_ Halifax (John of). + + Sadoletto (Jacopo), Cardinal, 212. + + Sainte-Beuve (Charles-Augustin), 91, 321. + + Saint-More (Benoît de), 61. + + Saint Victor (Adam de), 24. + + San Pedro (Diego de), 124, 132. + + Sanches de Baena Farinha Augusto Romano, Visconde, 111. + + Sanchez (D. Afonso), 30, 57. + + Sanchez (Francisco), 20. + + Sanchez de Badajoz (Garci), 104. + + Sanchez de Vercial (Clemente), 95. + + Sancho I, of Portugal, 22, 27, 34, 39, 87, 122. + + Sancho II, of Portugal, 17, 53, 296. + + Sannazzaro (Jacopo), 140, 152. + + Santa Catharina (Lucas de), 152, 242, 271. + + Santa Maria (Francisco de), 269. + + Santa Rita (Guilherme de), 335. + + Santa Rita Durão (José de), 279. + + Santa Rosa de Viterbo (Joaquim de), 285. + + Santarem (Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa de Mesquita Leitão e + Carvalhosa), Visconde de, 292. + + _Santarem, Foros de_, 17. + + Santillana, Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marqués de, 22, 32, 38, 41, 48, + 49, 77, 79, 80, 104. + + Santo Antonio (Pedro de), 247. + + Santo Antonio (Sebastião de), 280. + + Santo Estevam (Gomez de), 340. + + Santos (João dos), 220. + + Santos (Manuel dos), 208. + + Santos e Silva (Thomaz Antonio de), 187. + + S. Bernardino (Gaspar de), 221. + + S. Boaventura (Fortunato de), 285. + + S. Joseph Queiroz (D. João de), 286. + + S. Luis (D. Francisco de), Cardinal Saraiva, 285. + + Saraiva, Cardinal. _See_ S. Luis. + + Sarmento (Augusto Cesar Rodrigues), 325. + + Sarmento (Francisco de Jesus Maria), 338. + + Sarmiento (Martín), 347, 356. + + Savoy, Duke of, 120, 133. + + Schwalbach Lucci (Eduardo), 314. + + Scott (Sir Walter), 293. + + Sebastian, King, 146, 150, 168, 179, 181, 187, 188, 209, 210, 226, + 227, 239, 241, 247, 261, 263, 307, 340, 341. + + Semmedo (Alvaro), 204. + + Semmedo (Curvo). _See_ Curvo Semedo. + + Seneca, 92, 94, 161, 280. + + Senna Freitas (Joaquim de), 322. + + Sepulveda (D. Lianor de). _See_ Sousa (D. Lianor de). + + _Sergas de Esplandian, Las_, 65, 68. + + Serpa Pimentel (José Freire de), 300. + + Serrão de Castro (Antonio), 256. + + Servando (Joan), 29. + + Severim de Faria (Manuel), 107, 180, 184, 192, 193, 197, 215-16, + 245. + + Sevilha (Pedro Amigo de). _See_ Amigo. + + Shakespeare (William), 19, 108, 118, 129, 130, 160, 164. + + Sigea (Angela), 107. + + Sigea (Luisa), 107. + + Siglar (Pierres de), 43. + + Silius Italicus, 41. + + Silva (Antonio José da), 282-4. + + Silva (Innocencio Francisco da), 61, 148, 163, 192, 193, 220, 237, + 308. + + Silva (Nicolau Luis da). _See_ Luis (Nicolau). + + Silva Dias (Augusto Epiphanio da), 308. + + Silva Gayo (Manuel da), 320. + + Silva Mascarenhas (André da), 260. + + Silva Pinto (Manuel José da), 322. + + Silva Souto-Maior (Caetano José da), 306. + + Silveira (Fernam da) [†1489], 101. + + Silveira (Fernam da), O Coudel Môr, 100-1, 102. + + Silveira (Francisco Rodriguez). _See_ Rodriguez Silveira. + + Silveira (Jorge da), 102. + + Silveira da Motta (Francisco), 322. + + Simões Dias (José), 330. + + Soares de Brito (João), 52, 68, 182, 207, 224, 258. + + Soares de Passos (Antonio Augusto), 293, 301. + + Soarez (Martin), 52. + + Soarez Coelho (D. Joan), 52. + + Soarez de Paiva (D. Joan), 48, 76. + + Soarez de Sousa (Gabriel), 205. + + Soarez de Taveiroos (Pai), 22. + + Solá (Jaime), 356. + + Sophocles, 165. + + Soropita. _See_ Rodriguez Lobo Soropita. + + Soto (Hernando de), 203. + + Sotomaior (Luis de), 130. + + Sousa (D. Antonio Caetano de), 284. + + Sousa (Diogo de), 256. + + Sousa (Francisco de) [xvi c.], 98, 105. + + Sousa (Francisco de) [xvii c.], 244. + + Sousa (D. Lianor de), 188, 217. + + Sousa (Luis de), 14, 16, 203, 209, 215, 241-3, 269, 291, 298. + + Sousa (Manuel Caetano de), 280. + + Sousa (Martim Afonso de), 225, 227. + + Sousa (Philippa de), 150. + + Sousa (Rui de), 122. + + Sousa Costa (Alberto de), 328. + + Sousa Coutinho (Lopo de), 196, 203. + + Sousa Coutinho (Manuel de). _See_ Sousa (Luis de). + + Sousa de Macedo (Antonio), 56, 68, 74, 130, 209, 224, 258, 260-1. + + Sousa Falcão (Cristovam de). _See_ Falcão. + + Sousa Farinha (Bento José de), 244. + + Sousa Monteiro (José de), 311. + + Sousa Moraes (Wenceslau José de), 322-3. + + Sousa Sepulveda (Manuel de), 187, 196, 217. + + Sousa Viterbo (Francisco Marques de), 13, 307. + + Southey (Robert), 15, 19, 282. + + Souto-Maior (Caetano Jose da Silva). _See_ Silva Souto-Maior. + + Souto Maior (Eloi de Sá). _See_ Sá Sottomaior. + + Souvestre (Émile), 299. + + Spinoza (B.), 20. + + Stanley of Alderney, Lord, 315. + + Storck (Wilhelm), 174, 176, 178, 329. + + Straparola (Giovanni Francesco), 231. + + Stuart (Charles), Lord Stuart of Rothesay, 37. + + _Sylvia de Lisardo_, 139. + + + T + + Tacitus, 266. + + Tancos (Hermenegildo de), 90. + + Tasso (Bernardo), 71, 181. + + Tasso (Torquato), 146, 180, 181, 280. + + Tavares (Manuel), 110. + + Tavares Zagalo (Joana), 133. + + Teive (Diogo de), 106. + + Teixeira de Pascoaes (Joaquim), 333-4. + + Teixeira de Queiroz (Francisco), 319-20, 325. + + Teixeira Gomes (Manuel), 323. + + Tellez (Balthasar), 204-5. + + Tellez (Lianor), Queen Consort of Fernando I, 84. + + Tellez (Maria), 84. + + Tellez de Meneses (Aires), 148. + + _Tello, Vida de D._, 60. + + Tennyson (Alfred), Lord, 64, 301. + + Tenreiro (Antonio), 220. + + Terence, 130, 164. + + _Testament de Pathelin_, 123. + + Theocritus, 272. + + _Theodora, Verdadeira Historia da Donzella_, 339. + + Theotocopuli (Domenico), El Greco, 114, 282. + + Thierry (Augustin), 294. + + Thomas (Henry), 65. + + Thomas Aquinas, St., 86, 90, 92, 94. + + Thomson (James), 277. + + Tilly (John), 204. + + Timoneda (Juan de), 231. + + _Tinherabos nam tinherabos_, 72. + + _Tirant lo Blanch_, 65. + + Tolentino de Almeida (Nicolau), 272, 274, 276. + + Tolstoi (Leo), Count, 333. + + Tolomei (Lattanzio), 140, 230. + + Torcy (Claude Blosset de), 233. + + Toro, Archdeacon of. _See_ Rodriguez (Gonzalo). + + Torres (Alvaro de), 241. + + Torres (Domingos Maximiano), 278. + + Torres Naharro (Bartolomé de), 124. + + Trancoso (Gonçalo Fernandez). _See_ Fernandez Trancoso. + + Trindade (Adeodato da), 196, 197. + + Trindade Coelho (José Francisco de), 327. + + Trissino (Giangiorgio), 165. + + _Tristam, O Livro de_, 63. + + _Tristan_, 65, 69, 70. + + _Trovador, O_, 300. + + _Trovador, O Novo_, 300. + + Trueba (Antonio de), 302, 303. + + _Tundalo, Visão de_, 59. + + + U + + Usque (Abraham ben), 246. + + Usque (Samuel), 245-6. + + + V + + Vaamonde (Florencio), 357. + + Valcacer. _See_ Valcarcel. + + Valcarcel (Pedro de), 78. + + Valdés (Juan de), 65. + + Valente (Afonso), 112. + + Valera (Juan), 19. + + Valla (Lorenzo), 180. + + Valle Inclán (Ramón María del), 327, 356. + + Van Zeller (Francisco), 169. + + Vaqueiras (Raimbaut de), 41. + + Varnhagen (Francisco Adolpho de), 37, 133, 205, 206. + + Vasconcellos (Antonio de), 39, 259. + + Vasconcellos (Henrique de), 328. + + Vasconcellos (Joaquim de), 15, 214, 230. + + Vasconcellos (Jorge de), 167. + + Vasconcellos (Jorge Ferreira de). _See_ Ferreira. + + Vasconcellos (Simão de), 267. + + Vaz (Francisco), de Guimarães, 161-2. + + Vaz (Joana), 107. + + Vaz da Gama (Guiomar), 174. + + Vaz de Camões (Luis). _See_ Camões. + + Vaz de Camões (Simão), 174. + + Vaz de Carvalho (Maria Amalia), 324. + + Vazquez (Francisco), 234. + + Veer (Pero de), 29. + + Vega (Garci Lasso de la). _See_ Lasso de la Vega. + + Vega Carpio (Lope Felix de), 76, 129, 130, 147, 153, 169, 181, 183, + 258. + + Veiga (Manuel da), 340. + + Veiga (Thomas da), 17, 244, 245. + + Veiga Tagarro (Manuel da), 258. + + Velázquez (Diego), 333. + + Velez de Guevara (Luis), 284. + + Velez de Guevara (Pero), 79. + + Velho (Alvaro), 190. + + Verba (João), 92. + + Verde (José Joaquim Cesario), 330. + + Vernier (P.), 226. + + Verney (Luis Antonio), 285. + + Veronese (Paolo), 182. + + Vespasian, Emperor, 64. + + _Vespeseano, Estorea de_, 64. + + _Vespesiano, Estoria del noble_, 64. + + Vicente (Belchior), 110. + + Vicente (Gil), 13, 16, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 62, 74, 75, 97, 102, + 105, 106-31, 132, 133, 138, 139, 141, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, + 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 178, 235, 271, 291, 311, 338, 342, + 344, 345. + + Vicente (Luis), 109. + + Vicente (Luis), son of Gil Vicente, 110, 168. + + Vicente (Martim), 109. + + Vicente (Paula), 110. + + Vicente de Almeida (Gil), 162. + + _Vicentes, Cronica dos._ See _Cronica da Fundaçam_. + + Vieira (Antonio), 14, 16, 156, 190, 245, 248, 249, 261, 265, 267-9, + 307. + + Vieira (Nicolao), 59. + + Vieira da Costa (J.), 321. + + Vieira Ravasco (Cristovam), 267. + + Vilhena (D. Joana de), 145. + + Vilhena (D. Magdalena de), 241, 242. + + Vilhena (D. Philippa de), Condessa de Athouguia, 291. + + Villa-Moura, Visconde de, 328. + + Villa Nova, Condessa de, 253, 286. + + Villani (Giovanni), 83. + + Villareal, Fernando, Marques de, 107. + + Villas-Boas (D. Manuel do Cenaculo), Bishop of Beja, 285. + + Villena (D. Enrique de), 77. + + Vimieiro, Counts of, 71. + + Vimieiro, fourth Conde de, 273. + + Vimioso, first Conde de [_or_ do]. _See_ Portugal (D. + Francisco de). + + Vimioso, third Conde de, 242. + + Virgil, 174, 180, 181, 182, 183, 257, 272. + + _Visão de Tundalo._ See _Tundalo_. + + Viseu, Diogo, Duke of, 102. + + Viseu, Henry, Duke of. _See_ Henrique, Infante. + + _Visio Tundali_, 59. + + _Vita Christi._ _See_ Sachsen (Ludolph + von). + + Vives (Juan Luis), 65, 212, 340. + + Voltaire (François Arouet), 179, 182, 274. + + Vyvyães (Pero), 52. + + + W + + Wieland (Christoph Martin), 277. + + Wyche (Sir Peter), 266. + + + X + + Xavier, St. Francis, 190, 223, 225, 243. + + Xavier de Mattos. _See_ Mattos. + + Xavier de Novaes. _See_ Novaes. + + Xenophon, 85. + + Ximenez de Urrea (Geronimo), 262. + + + Y + + Yannez (Rodrigo), 73. + + Ychoa (João de), 89. + + + Z + + Zamora (Gil de), 42. + + Zola (Émile), 299. + + Zorro (Joan), 29, 31, 53. + + Zurara (Gomez Eanez de), 14, 15, 68, 69, 81, 82, 85-7, 88, 201. + + + + + PRINTED IN ENGLAND + AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75425 *** |