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PORTUGUESE
LITERATURE
Oxford University Press
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PORTUGUESE
L IT ER AT U R E
BY
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AUBREY F.'of'BELL
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AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1922
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TO THE TRUE PORTUGAL OF THE FUTURE
La letteratura, dalla quale sola potrehhe aver sodo principio
la rigenerazione della nostra patria.
GiACOMO Leopardi.
^ HIS book^ was ready in October 191 6,
-^ but the war delayed its picblication*
^ few alterations have now been ?nade in
order to bring it up to date. It is need-
less to say how welcome will be further
suggestions^ especially for the bibliography,
Ofily by such help ca7^ a book^ of this kind
become useful^ since its object is not to ex-
patiate upon schools a?id 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. joao do estoril,
Portugal.
July 1 92 1
CONTENTS
Introduction
PAGE
Portuguese literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries —
D. Carolina Rlichaelis 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. II85-I325.
[i. c. from the accession of Sancho I to the death of Dinis.]
§ I. 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
Chariiio — Airas Nunez' pastorela — The cantigas de vilaos — Songs
of women — Persistence of the cossante to modem 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 — Proven9al 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. I325-I52I.
[i. e. from the accession of Sancho IV to the death of Manuel I.]
§ I. Early Prose ...... 58
Com.paratively late development of prose — Spanish influence in the
second period of Portuguese literature — King Dinis' translation
CONTENTS
PAGE
of the Cronica Geyal — 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 ah Arimatia — Estorea de Vespeseano — Amadis de
Gaiila — 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 — Alacias — Juan Rodriguez de la Camara — Fernam Cas-
quicio — Vasco Perez de Camoes — Gonfalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon
of Toro — Garci Ferrandez de Gerena — Alfonso Alvarez de Villa-
^andino — Cantigas de escarnho — The Constable D. Pedro.
§ 3. Tlie Chroniclers ..... 81
Fernam Lopez — Cronica do Condestabre — Zurara — Ruy de Pina
— Cronica do Infante Santo. Other prose : King Joao 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 Perfeigam.
§ 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 Mar — D. Joao de Meneses — D.
Joao Manuel — Fernam da Silveira — Nuno Pereira — Diogo Bran-
dam — Luis Anriquez — Rodriguez de Sa — The Conde de Vimioso
— Duarte de Brito — Spanish influence.
III. The Sixteenth Century [1502-80].
§ I. 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
aiitos — Types sketched in his farsas — Devotional plaj-s, 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 Falcao — Sa de Miranda —
D. Manuel de Portugal — Diogo Bernardez — Frei Agostinho da Cruz
10 CONTENTS
PAGE
— Antonio Ferreira — Andrade Caminha — Sd de Meneses — Falcao
de Resende — Jorge de Montemor — Fernam Alvarez do Oriente —
— Faria e Soiisa — 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 — Simao
Machado — Francisco Vaz — Gil Vicente de Almeida — Frei
Antonio da Estrella — Classical drama : Sa de Miranda — Antonio
Ferreira — Camoes — Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos.
§ 4. Lilis de Camoes ..... 174
Familj' of Camoes — His birth and education — In North Africa
— In India — Return to Portugal — Last years and death —
Camoes as epic and lyric poet — The Lusiads — Its critics — His
greatness — Influence on the language — His Parnasso — Camoes
and Petrarca — Later epic poets — Corte Real — Pereira Brandao
— Francisco de Andrade.
§ 5. The Historians ..... 190
Historians of India — Alvaro Velho — Lopez de Castanheda — Barros
— Couto — Correa — Bras de Albuquerque — Antonio Galvam —
Special narratives — Gaspar Fructuoso — Frei Bernardo de Brito —
Francisco de Andrade — Osorio — Bernardo da Cruz — Jeronimo
de Mend09a — Miguel de Moura — Duarte Nunez de Leam —
Damiao de Goes — Andre de Resende — Manuel Severim de Faria
— Faria e Sousa.
§6 Quinhentista Prose ..... 217
Vivid prose — Historia Tragico-Maritima. Travels: Duarte Bar-
bosa — Francisco Alvarez — Gaspar da Cruz — Frei Joao dos
Santos — Tenreiro — Mestre Afonso — Frei Gaspar de S. Ber-
nardino — Manuel Godinho — Fernam Mendez Pinto — Garcia da
Orta — Pedro Nunez — Duarte Pacheco — D. Joao de Castro —
Afonso de Albuquerque — Soropita — Rodriguez Silveira — Fer-
nandez Ferreira — Francisco de Hollanda — Gon5alo Fernandez
Trancoso — Francisco de Moraes.
§ 7. Religious and Mystic Writers . . . 235
Mysticism — Frei Heitor Pinto — Arraez — Frei Thome dg Jesus —
Frei Luis de Sousa — Lucena — Preachers : Paiva de Andrade —
Fernandez Galvao — Feo — Luz — Calvo — Veiga — Ceita — Lis-
boa — Almeida — Alvarez — Samuel Usque — Frei Antonio das
Chagas — Manuel Bernardes.
CONTENTS li
IV. 1580-1706.
[i.e. from the accession of Philip II of Spain to the death of
Pedro II.]
PAGE
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 Mas-
carenhas — Sa de Meneses — Sousa de Macedo — Mousinho de
Quevedo — The Academies — Martim Afonso de Miranda — Leitao
de Andrade — The Love Letters — Arte de Ftiriar — Ribeiro de
Macedo — Freire de Andrade — Antonio Vieira.
V. 1706-1816.
[i.e. from the accession of Joao V to the death of Maria I.]
The Eighteenth Century . . . . .270
The Arcadias — Correa Gar9ao — 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 Jose da Silva — Nicolau Dias
— The Academy of Sciences — Scholars and critics — Theodore de
Almeida — Letters.
VI. 1816-1910.
[i. e. from the accession of Joao VI to the fall of the Monarchy.]
§ I. 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
— Bulhao Pato.
§ 2. The Reaction and After .... 304
The Coimbra School — History : Oliveira Martins — Pinheiro
Chagas — Research and criticism — The Drama : Ennes — Azevedo
— D. Joao da Camara — Marcellino Mesquita — Snr. Lopes de
Mendon9a — Snr. Julio Dantas — The Novel : Julio Diniz — E9a
de Queiroz — J. L. Pinto — Snr. Luiz de Magalhaes — Snr. Maga-
Ihaes Lima — -Bento Moreno — Snr. Silva Gayo — Snr. Malheiro
Dias — Abel Botelho — Ramalho Ortigao — Snr. Teixeira Gomes
— Snr. Antero de Figueiredo — D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho
— The Conde de Sabugosa — The Cotjto : Machado — The Conde
12 CONTENTS
PAGE
de Ficalho — Fialho de Almeida — D. Joao da Camara — Trindade
Coelho — Snr. Julio Brandao — Poetry : Quental — Joao de Deus
— Cxuilherme Braga — A. da Concei9ao — G. de Azevedo — Joao
Penha — Cesario Verde — Gon9alves Crespo — Snr. Guerra Jun-
queiro — Gonies Leal — Snr. Teixeira de Pascoaes — Antonio Nobre
— Colonel Christovam Ayres — Joaquim de Araujo — Antonio Feijo
— Snr. Eugenio de Castro — Snr. Correa de Oliveira — Snr. Afonso
Lopes Vieira.
APPENDIX
§ I. Literature of the People . . . 338
L'nwritten literature — Traditional themes — Floras e Branca Flor
— Bandarra — The Holy Cobbler — Primaeval elements — Con-
nexion 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 — Anon — Posada — Camino — Rosalia de
Castro — Lamas Carvajal — Sr. Barcia Caballero — Losada — Eduardo
Pondal — Curros Enriquez — Martelo Pauman — Pereira — Garcia
Ferreiro — Nunez Gonzalez — Nun de Allariz — Sr. Rodriguez Gon-
zdlez — Sr. Lopez Abente — Sr. Noriega Varela — Sr. Cabanillas —
Sr. Key Soto — Cancionero Popular Gallego — Prose — Perez
Placer — D, 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 ^
in the Vatican Library until the late Professor Ernesto Monaci
published 11 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 Gottin-
gen copy of that of 1562 ; Sa 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 ^ of
Sa de Meneses, which haunted Portuguese poetry for a century,^
then sank into oblivion till they were discovered by Dr. Sousa
Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.^ The abundant literature of popu-
lar quadras^ fados, romances, contos has only begun to be collected
in the last fifty years.
In prose, the most important Leal Conselkeiro * of King Duarte
1 A few Portuguese sixteenth-century writers in touch with Italy may
have known of their existence. But they were neglected as rusficas mitsas.
The references to King Dinis as a poet by Antonio Ferreira and once in the
Cancioneiro Geral 6.0 not of course imply that his poems were known and read.
Andre 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. MichaeUs de Vasconcellos, Randglosse XV in Ztft. fiir roni. Phil.,
XXV. 683).
^ Illud vero poeniation quod viilgo circumfertur de Lessa . . . nunc vera cum
plurimum illud appelant . . . (Soares, Theatrum). Cf. F. Rodriguez Lobo,
Primavera, ed. 1722. pp. 240, 356, 469 ; Eloy de Sa de Sottomayor, Ribeiras
do Mondego, i. 27 v., 28 v., 120-1, 186 ; Cane. Geral of A. F. Barata (1836-
1910), p. 235 ; Jeronimo Bahia, Ao Mondego (Fenix Ren., ii. 377-9)- Cf.
Brito, Mon. Lus. i. ii. 2 : 0 rio Leca celebre pelas rimas de nosso famoso poeta.
* The documents of the Torre do Tombo are now in the able keeping of
Dr. Pedro de Azevedo and Snr. Antonio Baiao.
* 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 Con-
selheiro Fiel by Frei Manuel Guilherme (1658-1734) appeared in 1727.
14 INTRODUCTION
was rediscovered in the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale and first
printed in 1842, and Zurara's Cronica da Guine, lost even in
the days of Damiao de Goes,^ similarly in 1841 ; Correa's Lendas
da India remained in manuscript till 1858 ; so notable a book
as King Joao I's Livro da Montaria appears only in the twentieth
century, in an edition by Dr. Esteves Pereira, and the first trust-
worthy 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 etcrnizar
e engrandecer 0 dos passados ', had to wait two and a half
centuries before this debt was paid by Mr. Edgar Prestage.^
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
Michaelis de Vasconcellos. Perhaps, therefore, one may be for-
given for having been tempted to render some account of this
' new ' literature which continues to be so strangely neglected
in England and other countries.^ 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
• De que nao ha noticia (Goes, Cronica de D. Joao, cap. 6).
' D. Francisco Manuel de Mello. Esbofo biographico. Coimbra, 1914,
an admirably clear and very important work, in which much light from
new documents is thrown on Mello's life.
' It would be interesting to know how many English-speaking persons
have ever heard cf the great men and writers that were King Dinis, Fernam
Lopez, Bcmardim Ribeiro, Diogo Bernardez, Heitor Pinto, Frei Thome
de Jesus, Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Frei Luis de Sousa, Antonio Vieira, Manuel
Bemardes. 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 Espanoles or the many more modern Spanish collections.
But is not even CamSes still ' an abused stranger ', as Mickle called him in 1776 ?
INTRODUCTION 15
history ^ 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 Damiao 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,^ 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 Michaelis 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 Michaelis, 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 re-
construction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese
literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assis-
tance of younger scholars are generous.^ Femina, as was said of
the Princess Maria, undequaque spectatissima et doctissima.
Most of the works of Dr. Theophilo Braga are of too pro-
visional a nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, Edade
Medieval (1909), RenasceuQa (1914), Os Seiscentistas (1916), Os
1 See F. de Figueiredo, O que e a Acadeniia das Sciencias de Lisboa (1779-
191 5) in Revista da Historia. vol. iv, 191 5.
* His valuable study on Zurara, which has not been superseded by any
later work on the subject, is dated 1896.
' She has, indeed, laid the Portuguese people under an obligation which
it vnW not easily redeem. That no formal recognition has been bestowed
in England on her work (as in another field on that of Dr. Jose Leite de
Vasconcellos, of Snr. Braamcamp Freire, and of the late Dr. Francisco Adolpho
Coelho) is a striking example of our insularity.
i6 INTRODUCTION
Arcades (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism of
the Hterature 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 Portu-
guesa (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 Coim-
bra University, Dr. Joaquim Mendes dos Remedios : Historia
da Literatura Portuguesa (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it con-
tains that rarity in Portuguese literature : an index.^ 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- follows — longo intervallo
— the lines of Professor James Fitzmaurice-Kelly's Biblio-
graphie de VHistoire de la Litterature 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 hterature in the future.
Yet with the gradually developing prosperity of Portugal and her
colonics such expectations are not unfounded. A new poet may
arise indigenous as Gil Vicente and technically proficient as
Camoes. 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
Yasconcellos, Luis de Sousa, Joao de Lucena, Heitor Pinto,
Arraez ; an immense mass of sermons [milhoes de sermonarios),
» It does not include living ^vTiters. Its dates must be received with
caution.
* It has been found necessary to pubUsh the bibliography separately.
INTRODUCTION 17
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 con-
cision to the language ; old constituigoes, ordenagdes, and foros ^ ;
technical treatises,^ folk-lore, popular phrases,^ 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 Litter atur a 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 indepen-
dent,* modern Galician is not more different from modern Portu-
guese than is the language of the Cancioneiros with which Portu-
guese literature opens. The Portuguese have always shown
a strong aptitude for acquiring foreign languages, and the indi-
vidual's gain has been the literature's loss. Jorge de Montemor,
who
con su Diana
Enriquecio 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.^ It was
* e.g. King Sancho II's Foros da Guarda, printed, from a 1305 manuscript,
in vol. V (1824) of the Collecfao de Ineditos, or the Foros de Santarem (1385).
The Livro Vermelho do Senhor D. Affonso V , printed in the CollecQcio de Livros
Ineditos, vol. iii (1793), is also full of interest.
' e. g. the fourteenth-century Livro de Cetreria of Pero Menino ; Mestre
GiRALDo's Tratado das Enfermidades das Aves de Caga and Livro d' Alveitaria ;
the Arte da Cavallaria de gineta e estardiota (1678) by Antonio Galvam de
Andrade (161 3 ?-89) ; Correcgam de abusos introduzidos contra o verdadeiro
methodo da medicina (2 pts., 1668-80) by the Carmelite Frei Manuel de
Azevedo (11672); Agricultura das Vinhas (171 1) by Vicente Alarte
(i.e. SiLVESTRE Gomez de Moraes (1643-1723)) ; Compendia de Botanica
(2 vols., 1788) by Felix de Avellar Brotero (i 744-1 828).
' Many will be found in Portugalia and the Revista Lusitana.
* 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 Sendo craro e despachado ? ; Chiado,
Auto das Regateiras: Eu ndo te falo galego.
' For ser lingua mais jeral (Vera, Lovvores), mais universal (Sousa de
2362 B
i8 INTRODUCTION
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 Illustriiim Poetarum Lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt
(Lisbonae, 1745), consists of eight volumes, and Domingo Garcia
Peres' Catdlogo 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'
0 Saltimhanco. 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. ^
The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain
love of magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,^ an
Macedo). Os grandes ingenios ndo se contentao de ter por espera de sen applauso
a hiia s6 parte do tnundo (D. Francisco de Portugal). Cf. Osorio, writing in
Latin, De Rebus, p. 4, and Pedro Nunez' reason for translating liis Libra
de Algebra into Spanish : he mais comnm, and the advice given to Luis
Marinho de Azevedo to write in Spanish or Latin as mais serai (Primeira
Parte da Funda^ao, 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 mio. Frei Antonio da Purifica^am 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. Simao 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.
' 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
Honry the Navigator's name as he wrote it : Anrique. Thus Mello (modern
Melo) ; Nunez (13th c), Nunes (19th c.) ; Bernardez (i6th c), Bernardes
(i7th-i8th c). The late Dr. Gon9alves Vianna himself adopted the form
Gon^alvez Viana. In quoting ancient Portuguese texts the only alteration
made has been occa.sionally to replace y and i< by i and v,
' Este desejo {de sempre ver e ouvir cousas nouas) he moor que nas outras
nafdes na gente Lusitana. Andre de Burgos, Ao prudente leitor {Relafam,
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
INTRODUCTION ig
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 Provencal (13th c), Spanish (14th
and 15th c), Italian (i6th c), Spanish and Italian (17th c), French
and English (i8th c), French and German (19th c.) Schools.
The question may therefore be asked, especially by those who con-
fuse 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,^ 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 Sa de Miranda,
with the works of Fernam Lopez, described by Robert Southey as
' the best chronicler of any age or nation ', nai'f, exact, touchant et
philosophe^; of Gil Vicente, almost as far above his contemporary
Juan del Enzina as^Shakespeare is above Vicente ; of Bernardim
Ribeiro, whose Menina e moga is the earliest and best of those
pastoral romances which led Don Quixote to contemplate a quieter
epic deeds rather than of ordinary life, high-flown language as opposed to
the common speech {da pra(a), &c. Antonio Prestes calls the Portuguese
estranho no natural, natural no estranjeiro.
* In Spain it has had fervent admirers, notably Gracian. More recently
Juan Valera spoke of it as riquisima, and Menendez y Pelayo explored this
wealth, * F. Denis, Resumi (1R26), p. xx.
B 2
20 INTRODUCTION
sequel to his first adventures ; of Camoes, ' not only the greatest
lyric poet of his country, but one of the greatest lyric poets of
all time ' ^ ; with Fernam Mendez Pinto's travels, ' as diverting
a book of the kind as ever I read ' ^ ; or Corrca's Lendas, Frei
Thome de Jesus' Trabalhos, or the incomparable prose of Manuel
Bernardes — know that, extraordinary as were Portugal's achieve-
ments in discovery and conquest, her literature is not unworthy
of those achievements. Unhappily the Portuguese, with a noto-
rious carelessness,^ 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.* 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,^ 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
' Wilhelm Storck, Luis de Camoens' Sammtliche Werke, Bd. I (1880).
* Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple.
* 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), Predmhulo, p. xvii. It is lamented by the editors of the Cancioneiro
Geral (15 16) and Fenix Renascida (17 16).
* Portuguese literature begins for most Portuguese with Camoes and
Barros, and its most charming and original part thus escapes them. Cf.
F. Dias Gomes, Obras Poeticas (1799), p. 143: Camoes '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 Camoes on preceding poets (echdlos todos a rodar)
was unfortunately true.
' 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 scittir, 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, 191 2).
INTRODUCTION 21
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,^ 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.- 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 Falcao de Resende's words :
Engenhos nascem bons na Lusitania
E ha copia delles.^
' Or political, or anticlerical, or anything except literary. The critics
seem to have forgotten that an auto-da-fS 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.
- C. da Vat. 979 (cf. Jorge Ferreira, Eufrosina, v. 5 : como dizia 0 Galego :
de longas vias longas mentiras).
* Poesias, Sat. 2. The remark of Garrett still holds good : Em Portugal
ha mats talento e menos cultivafao que em paiz nenhum da Europa.
ii85
1 ^
-1325
§1
The C OSS antes
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 ' } 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 sur-
vived, are so remarkable, so unlike those of any other country,
that they deserve to be studied apart from the Provencal imita-
tions by the side of which they developed. Half buried in the
Cancioneiros, themselves only recently discovered, these ex-
quisite 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 Michaelis 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, 7nia semior branca e vermelha, does not belong
to these lyrics^; 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 Marques de Santillana's father, Diego Furtado de
Mendoza(ti404), we shall have a word well suited to convey an idea
of their striking character.^ HisSpanishpoem written in parallel
' Kazwini ap. Keinhart Dozy, Spanish Islam, trans. F. G. Stokes, London,
1913, p. 663.
* C. A. 38. It is a cantiga de meestria, of two verses, each of eight octo-
syllabic lines (ahbaccde bfhaccde).
' Although neither Knglish nor Portuguese, it is a name for these poems,
of lines pariler plangtnles, less clumsy than parallelistic songs adopted by
THE COSSANTES 23
distichs, A aquel arhol; is called a cossante} In an age when all
that seemed most Spanish, the Poema del Cid, for instance, or the
Lihro 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 re-
searches of D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos.- 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 *
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 trouveres
of the North of France nor that of the Vro\ex\(;di\ troubadours
presents any parallel. The scanty Basque literature contains
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
Verkettimgslieder), Parallelstrophenlieder (D. Carolina Michaelis de Vas-
concellos), cantigas parallelisticas (D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos
and Snr. J. J. Nunes), chansons a ripSHtions (M. Alfred Jeanroy). Cantos
dualisticos, cantos de danza prima, and bailadas encadeadas have also been
proposed .
* 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 e mas virtuoso senor el senor Don Miguel Lucas [de Iramo]
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
Histdrico Espanol, torn, viii, Madrid, 1855). Rodrigo Cota, in the Didlogo
entre el Amor y un Viejo, has dangas y corsantes, and Anton de Montoro
(el Ropero) asks un portugues que vido vestido de muchos colores if he is a can-
tador de corsante (v. 1. cosante) {Cane. General, ed. Bibliof . Esp., ii. 270, no. 1018).
2 In the Grundriss (1894), Randglossen (i 896-1905), and especially vol. ii
of the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (1904).
* Or Solo ramo verde granado : the green branch in (red) flower.
24 I185-1325
nothing in this kind. But it is unnecessary to go for a parallel
to China.^ 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 ordi-
nances 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, ^ 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
' Translations of Chinese poems resembling the cossanies are given by
Dr. Theophilo Braga, C. V. B., Introd., p. ci, and Professor H. R. Lang,
C. D. L., Introd., p. cxlii. A Proven9al poem with resemblance to a cossante
is printed in Bartsch, p. 62 : Li tensz est bels, les vinnesz sont flories.
* 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 (tii77) :
Salve Verbi sacra parens,
Flos de spinis spinis carens,
Flos spineti gloria.
THE COSSANTES 25
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 Compostcla.
They came a motley company singing on the road,^ 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 pelerins 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 frances 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,^ 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 z-sound of the first distich is followed by
an a-sound in the second [ricercando ora il grave, ora Vacuto) and
this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs
of singers, treble and bass.^ It is clear at least that these alter-
' Cf. Luis Jose Veldzquez, Origenes de la Poesia Castellana (Malaga, 1754)
ap. C. M. (1889), i. 168 : las cantares y canciones devotas de los peregrinos que
iban en romeria a visitar la iglesia de Compostela mantuvieron en Galicia el
gusto de la poesia en tiempos bdrbaros. A Latin hymn composed in the twelfth
century by Aimeric Picaud is printed in Recuerdos de un Viaje a Santiago
de Galicia por el P. Fidel Fita y D. Aureliano Fernandez-Guerra (Madrid,
1880), p. 45 : Jacobi Gallecia Opem rogat piam Glebe cujus gloria Dat insignem
viani Ut precum frequentia Cantet melodiam. Herru Sanctiagu / Grot Sanc-
tiagu / Eultreja esuseja ! Deus, adjuva nos !
^ Cf. Simao de Vasconcellos, Cronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado do
Brazil (1549-62), 2nd ed. (1865), Bk. I, § 22 : chegamos a huma praga [in
Santiago de Compostela] onde vimos hum ajuntamento de mulheres Gallegas
com grande risada e galhofa ; e querendo 0 irmdo meu companheiro pedir-lhe
esmola vio que estavdo todas ouvindo a huma que feita pregadora arremedava,
como por zombaria, o sermao que eu tinha pregado.
' 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
26 I185-1325
nating sounds are echoes of music : one almost hears the clash
of the adiife in the lougana (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 ^ — 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. '^ The love-lorn maidens
danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augus-
tine 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,^ or a harcarola (boat-song) or alvorada (dawn-
efifect 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).
' Cf. Gil Vicente, Tambor em cada moinho. It is a curious coincidence
that the word citola (the jogral's fiddk ) = mill-clapper. Cf. also moinante in
Galicia = picaro.
* Cf. the Icixapren and refrain of the cantiga danced and sung at the end
of Gil Vicente's Romagem de Aggravados (Por Maio era, par 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 motkrn peasant
dances, accompanied with song, the dancers sometimes pause while the
refrain is sung.
» C. V. contains many striking pilgrimage songs, sometimes wrongly called
THE COSSANTES 27
song). A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the
cossante is its wistful sadness/ the soidade which is already men-
tioned more than once in the Cancioneiros,^ 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 morn-
ing singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a mountain-
stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away mens amores, or
gliding up the river a sahor. 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 Provencal words and learned forms ^ 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 Provengal poets
cantigas de ledino. The word probably originated in a printer's error (de
ledino for dele dino) in a line of Chrisfal : canton canto de ledino.
» Cf. the wailing refrains of C. V. 415, 417 ; and, for the form, compare
e de mi, lougana ! with ; ay de mi, Alfama ! In the sense of the two refrains lies
all the difference between the poetry of Portugal and Spain.
» C. C. B. 135 (= C. A. 389) ; C. V. 119, 181, 220, 527, 758, 964.
* Endurar, besonha, greu, gracir, cousir, escarnir, toste, entendedor, veiro
(varius, Fr. vair, CM. 213 has egua veira), genta (genser, gensor).
28 I185-1325
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 Provengal 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 oppor-
tunity of life. Trohadores 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 hen, C. C. B. 388) — a good memory — not only in
learning his patron's verses to recite at other houses but in re-
membering 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 trohadores ja
van para mal (C. V. 370), he might almost be referring to the
fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese trohadores
could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the cossante.
Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a Pro-
vengal 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-v^nttrs, belonged to an earlier period and were men of
humble birth. Of Nuno Fernandez Torneol^ (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 har-
carola (C. V. 246), and C. V. 245 with its dance rhythm are
» C. V. 242-51, 979 ; C. C. B. 159-71 (= C. A. 70-81, 402).
THE COSSANTES 29
especially beautiful. Pedr' Anez Solaz* (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 ; ^ and another jogral, Fernand' Esguio ^
(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,* Martin de Ginzo,^ Lopo and Lou-
rengo, 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 (fi. 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) ^ he evidently sought his inspiration in popular sources, as
with equal felicity a little later did Pero Meogo,' 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 Charino ®
(■|"i295). He belonged to an ancient family of Galicia, was
> c. V. 414-16, 824-s ; c. A. 281.
2 Meen di nho in the C. V. M. index. Thus he is scarcely even a name.
' Or Esquio (? = esquilo, 'squirrel ').
« Or Corpancho (Broade) or Campancho (Broadacre) ; but the word
carpancho (= basket) exists in the region of Santander {La Montana).
There is a modem Peruvian poet Manuel Nicolas Corpancho (1830-63).
* This is the most probable form of his name, although modern critics
have presented him with various others.
* M. Alfred Jeanroy (Les Origines, 2^ ed., 1904, p. 320) compares with this
bailada the fragments Tuit cil qui sunt enamouraf Vignent dangar, li autre non
and N'en nostra 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.
' Or, according to D. C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Moogo (from monachus).
Meogo (= meio) occurs in C. M. 65 and 161, moogo (= monk) in C. M. 75 and 149.
« C. V. 392-402, 424-30, 1 1 58-9; C. A. 246-56. Chariiio is buried at
Pontevedra, in the Franciscan convent which he founded.
30 I185-1325
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 Andalucia, at
Jaenini246 andSevilleini247. On the lips of his amz'g'a 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 mcus amores,
idas son as frores d'aqui ben con mcus amores,
— one can imagine it sung as a chanty ^ — 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 miii 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 con-
temporary 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 Ines (ti355), 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
Provengal song (C. V. 123) :
Quer'eu en maneira de provengal
Fazer agora un cantar d'amor.
' Cf. the modern Ai U 16 U, marinheiro vira a ri or Ai IS U U Rihamar
e S. Josi.
THE COSSANTES 31
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 givemore 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 trouveres ^
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,^ then — as if to
prove that she is a shepherdess of Arcady, not of real life —
Ay, estornino 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 :
Ilia cantat, nos tacemus : quando ver venit meum ? ^
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 harcarola
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.*
' For later reminiscences of the pastorela see C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos,
Jodo LourenQo da Ctinha, a ' Flov de Altura ' e a cantiga Ay Donas por que
em tristura ? (Separata da Revista Lusitana, vol. xix) Porto (1916), pp. 14-15.
^ See supra, p. 23.
' A modern Portuguese quatrain runs
Passarinho que cantaes
Nesse raminho de flores,
Cantae vos, chorarei eu :
Assim faz quem tern amores.
* By the margin of a river Went a maiden singing, ever Of love sang she :
32 I185-1325
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 Marques de Santillana (1398-1458) :
La nifia que amores ha
I Sola como dormira ?
Very few, if any, of the cossantes were anonymous, which only
means that modern folk-lore was unknown; it was not the fashion
to collectsongs from the lips of the people withoutulteriorpurpose.
A variety known as cantiga de vildos existed, but it was deliber-
ately composed by the trohadores and jograes} A specimen is
given in C. V. 1043 :
O pee d'hQa torre
Baila corpo piolo,^
Vedes o cos, 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 Provencal
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 vildos was no such simple popular lyric, but rather
a drinkers' song, picaresquely allusive, sung by a jogral who
non fo horn que saubes caber entre Hs 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
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. * Poetica (C. C. B., p. 3, 11. 50-1).
' It probablyjdoes not rhyme (e morre or corre) purposely. D. Carolina
Michaelis de Vasconcellos proposes ^raci'oso or friolo (A Saudade Portuguesa,
Porto, 1914, pp. 84, 140).
THE COSSANTES 33
many of them were composed, as they were sung, and sung danc-
ing, by the women. The women of Galicia have always been
noted for their poetical and musical talent. We read of the
choreas psalleritiiim mulierum, like Miriam, the sister of Moses,
at Santiago in 1116,^ and there is a cloud of similar witnesses.
But whether any of the cossantes that we have in the Cancio-
neiros 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 Provencal poetry to a colourless
insipidity, succeeded so much better with the cossantes that, while
the originals from which they copied have vanished, the imita-
tions 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 Michaelis 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,^ while Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos has
discovered whole cossantes sung by peasants at their work in the
fields in the nineteenth century.^ Dance or action always accom-
panies 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)* If it
* Espana Sa-^rada, xx. 211.
" C. A. M. V. ii. 928-36. Almeida Garrett had written in a general sense :
05 vestigios d'essa poesia indigena ainda duram (Revista Univ. Ltsbonense,
vol. V (1846), p. 843).
' At Rebordainhos, in Tras-os-Montes, e.g. Na ribeirinha ribetra Naquella
ribeira Anda Id nm peixinho vivo (bravo) Naquella ribeira. Other examples
of the i-a sequence are amigo (amado), cosido (assado), villa (praga), ermida
(oraga), linda (clara), Abril (Natal), ceitil (real). See J. Leite de Vasconcellos,
Annnario para 0 estudo das tradigoes populares portnguezas (Porto, 1882),
pp. 19-24. Cf. the modem Asturian song with its refrain ; Ay Juana cuerpo
garrido, ay Juana cuerpo galano !
* Francisco Alvarez, Verd. Inf., p. 125, speaks of cantigas de bailhos e de
terreiro (dance-songs).
2362 C
34 I185-1325
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 pinko, 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 Michaelis 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?- 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 hailada (C. V. 761), balleta (cf. C. A. 123 : Se vos eu amo mats
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 frag-
ments 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
' Cf. Barros, Dial, em lovvor da nossa ling., 1785 ed., p. 226: Pois as cantigas
composlas do povo, sent cabega, sent pees, sent nome oti verbo que se entenda,
quern cuidas que as Iraz e leva da terra ? Quern as faz serem tratadas e recebidas
do comum consintimenlo ? O tempo.
THE COSSANTES 35
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 quHeu 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.
C2
C. A. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda.
C. A. M. V. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos.
2 vols. Halle, 1904.
C. A. S.= Fragmentos de hum Cancioneiro Inedito que se acha na Livraria
do Real CoUegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Impresso a 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 Can-
cioneiro 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 Biblio-
teca 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 Konigs Denis von Portugal. Ed. Henry R.
Lang. Halle, 1894.
C.C. B. = I1 Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti. Ed. Enrico Mclteni.
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).
§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 Nohres 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 Michaelis 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.), frag-
ments 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 ; and 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 indgx 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.
38 I185-1325
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 Cayicioneiro 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
Marques 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 pos-
session of D. Mencia de Cisneros. (This may have been the
actual manuscript compiled by D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos
and Jsequeathed 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
THE CANCIONEIROS 39
musas rusticas, musas in illo tempore rudes et incultas.^ With this
disdain the Cayicioneiro 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 Sa de Miranda concerning
the echoes of Provencal song) were all that was vouchsafed in
Portugal to the Cancioneiro, although prominent Portuguese
men of letters — as Sa de Miranda, Andre de Resende, Damiao
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 (11549) 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 inter-
relations, will be found in the Grundriss (pp. 199-202) and D.
Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos' edition of the Cancioneiro
da Ajuda (vol. ii, pp. 180-288). ^
When the poetry of the troubadours flourished in Provence
Portugal was scarcely a nation. The first Provengal 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
' Antonio de Vasconcellos, Anacephalaeoses, id est Svmmn Capita Actorum
Regum Lusitaniae (Antverpiae, 162 1), p. 79.
2 See also C. V. B., pp. xcv-vi.
40 I185-1325
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 Portu-
guese had opportunity of meeting Proven9al poets. The Penin-
sula 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 Provengal 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, Provengal and Galician.
Portugal came into more direct touch with France in other
ways, but the influence might have been almost exclusively
that of the trouveres 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.' 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
' An English Crusader writing from Lisbon speaks of inter hos tot linguarum
populos {Crucesignati Anglici Epistola de ExpugnationeOlisiponis, ad. 1147).
THE CANCIONEIROS 41
fondness for novedades. Yet it was they who imposed their,
the Galician, language. As the Marques de Santillana observed
and the Cancioneiros prove, lyric poets throughout the Peninsula
used Galician.^ 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 Provengal
might note the similarity and the musical softness of Galician. -
It is not certain that the eldest of the ten children of San
Fernando, Alfonso X (i22i?-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 a toutes
* Coleccidn de Poesias Castellanas (1779), vol. i, p. Ivii. 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.
• Mild y Fontanals {De los Trobadores, p. 522) lays much stress on the resem-
blance between Galician and Proven9al.
42 I185-1325
gens} 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 HI, 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 fioems in Galician - 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 trohadores 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.
' It must be remembered that in the early thirteenth century (12 13) the
range of the Gahcian-Portuguese lyric already extended to Navarre (C. V. 937).
• Guiraut Riquier and Nat de Mons placed Proven9al poems on his lips,
which may be taken as an indication that he also wrote in Proven9al. As
proof that he wrote poems in Castilian we have a single cantiga of eight lines
(C. C. B. 363 : Senora 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).
THE CANCIONEIROS 43
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 ' ; CM. 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^ 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,^ 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 (i 177-1236) 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
* 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 stts pinturas.
* 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).
44 1185-1325
could not all be written down, says King Alfonso (C. M. no).
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 Miraculonim 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 Biblio-
theque Nationalc. 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,^ 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
1 Their popular origin is borne out by the music. See H. Collet et
L. Villalba, Contribution a I'itude dcs Cantigas (1911). Cf. also P. Meyer,
Types de quelques chansons de Gautier de Coinci {Romania, vol. xvii (iJ
pp. 429—37) : paroles pieuses d des miladies profanes.
THE CANCIONEIROS 45
of their language remain, French, English, and perhaps
Provengal. The poems are often of considerable length, some-
times twenty or thirty verses, and as a rule the last line of each
verse must rhyme with the refrain. The attention thus neces-
sarily 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),^ 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 gragas 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 ^ (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
' Padre Nobrega came upon a crowd of pobres pedintes peregrtnos at San-
tiago feasting merrily an^ 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 miiito d Senhora . . .
achei-me ao oittro dia ao romper da alva em terra de Christaos (Simao de Vascon-
cellos, Cronica, Lib. I, § 22). Cf. Jeronymo de Mendo9a, Jornada de Africa,
1904 ed., ii. 34, and Frei Luis de Sousa, Hist, de S. Domingos, i. i. 5.
2 i. e. besides the Spanish caw/Z^a (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.
46 I185-1325
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 Caniigas 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 Provencal 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.^
Princes and nobles as trohadores for their own pastime, the
segreis,^ 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
trohadores, 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 halada of Provence, the balletic 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."^
^ El Rei aia tres jograes en sa casa e non mats.
2 Riquier's segricrs per tolas 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 scguir (to follow). Possibly it was used originally to
differentiate singers of profane songs, caniigas profanas e seculares. Frei Joao
Alvarez in his Cronica do Infanle Sanlo has ' obras ecclesiasticas e segraaes ' ;
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.
^ For instances see H. R. Lang, The Relations of the Earliest Portuguese
Lyric School with the Troubadours and Trouvdres {Modern Language Notes
(April, 1895), pp. 207-31), and C. D. L., pp. xlviii etseq.
THE CANCIONEIROS 47
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 verao
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 'Is arbres sees fulhar
E 'Is 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 Portu-
guese trobadores introduced little of the true spirit of the
Provengal 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 Provengal school of
poets in Sicily). Composed for the most part in iambic deca-
syllabics 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 ^ (C. C. B. 337) — he will sing of her
' This poet, Femam Gon9alvez de Seabra or Fernant Gonzalez de Sanabria
(C. V. 338; C. C. B. 330-7 ; C. A. 210-21, 445-7), apparently obtained some
48 I185-1325
beauty, but not in such a way that the curious who non 0 poden
adeuinhar 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 {Vivern estavaa escola a aprerider) 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 :
- Proengaes soen mui ben trobar
E dizen eles que e 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 Provengal poet Gace Brule, who had spoken
. of les fans amoureus d'este. 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 [dohre], or of different tenses of .the
same verb {mordohre, 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,^ as C. V. 130,
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.
^ Poetica, 11. 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'artciro, and for
THE CANCIONEIROS 49
C. A. 205), to begin and end each verse with the same line
[cangdo 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 Provengal 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 ; eufremosa ;
trisV e fremosa ; fremosa e de mui bon prez ; 0 men hon semelhar.
Poetical shepherdesses sing these cantigas de amigo ; the fair
dona sings them as she sits spinning (C. V. 321). The old
Poetica (11. 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.^ 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
festive laughter poems : de risadelha (or refestela ?) = de riso e mote. San-
tillana's mansobre is, it seems, a misprint for ntordobre. It occurs again in
the Requesta de Ferrant Manuel contra Alfonso Alvarez (Cane, de Baena,
i860 ed., i. 253) :
Sin lai, sin deslai, sin cor, sin descor.
Sin dobre, mansobre, sensilla o menor.
Sin encadenado, dexar o prender.
' e. g. C. V. 300 : Por Deus, se ora, se era chegasse Con el mui leda seria.
2362 D
50 1185-1325
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 invec-
tive 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 Proven-
gal 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^ non sabe por elles leer, C. V. 11 16) ;
the Galician unjustifiably proud of his poetical talent [non 0
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 malniaridada, 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
' g'cot (C. V. M.), qua/ cor (C. V. B.). D. Carolina Michaelis de Vascon-
cellos proposes quifa (cf. C. V. 1006, 1. 8).
I
I
THE CANCIONEIROS 51
judgC; the parvenu villao, 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 infanQon, 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 ',^ and so no doubt continued till pa^^OdJ
fiorida or la trinite. 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 ^ (fl. 1250) we have over fifty poems. -"^ He
imitated both French and Provengal 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 (fi. 1250) shone
in the same kind with a great variety of metre as well as in
' Aqueste cantar da egoa que non andou na tregoa (C. V. 956).
' Or D. Joan Garcia de Guilhade. See C. A. M. V. ii. 407-15.
* C. V. 28-38, 343-61, 1097-1 1 10 ; C. A. 235-9 ; C. C. B. 373-6.
D 2
52 1185-1325
numerous cantigas de amigo. Martin Soarez (first half 13th c),
born at Riba dc Lima, and considered the best trohador of his
time (by those who could not appreciate the charm of the
indigenous poetry), wrote no cossante nor canliga 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 (fi. 1250), of whom we have over twenty
cantigas de amor and fifty cantigas de amigo. Contemporary
criticism apparently viewed their quantity with disfavour,^ 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 Vyvyaes
(first half 13th c.) is known chiefly for a single song : his hailada
(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,^
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 (fi. 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
' 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.
* Soares de Brito in his Theatriim mentions ' Ferdinandus Garcia Espara-
vanha, optimus poeta ' (= horn trovador).
THE CANCIONEIROS 53
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 troiiveres, and combined it with some of the most exquisite
specimens of the indigenous poetry,^ 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 Michaelis de Vasconcellos has shown that it
was written to commemorate a contemporary event, probably
in 1289.2 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 Sa de Miranda so
many perplexities.
The Cancioneiros contain poems by high and low, prince and, one
would fain say, peasant, noble trohador and hnmhXe 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 H ; or C. V. 1080, a gesta de maldizer
of fifty-six lines in three rhymes, with 'the exclamation Ef^y / 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.^ 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
* See p. 31.
^ 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.
^ Cf. the Proven9al passage in Mild y Fontanals, De los Trohadores, p. 62.
54 1185-1325
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) ^ had sat for five years on the throne of Portugal.
Plentifully educated by a Frenchman, Aymeric d'£brard,
afterwards Bishop of Coimbra, married to a foreign princess,
Isabel of Aragon (the Oueen-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 him-
self 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.^ 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 convention-
ally in the Provencal manner, but his skill in versification,
remarkable even in an age in which Portuguese poetry had
attained exceptional proficiency in technique, would have
^ ' He thus overlapped Dante's life by four years at either end.
• T. A. Craveiro, Compendio (1833), cap. 5 : D. Diniz trouxe a idade de
ouro a Portugal.
THE CANCIONEIROS 55
availed him, or at least us, little had he not also possessed an
instinct for popular themes, perhaps directly encouraged by
Alfonso X. The Dedaratio placed by Guiraut Riquier of Nar-
bonne on the lips of that king in 1275 marked the coming
asphyxia of Provengal poetry, for it showed the tendency to
take the jogral ^ 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
Provengal and indigenous poetry continued to shine in Portugal
for another half-century. The grandson of Alfonso X was the
last hope of the trohadores 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 speci-
mens of various kinds for his Livro de Trovas. But many of the
138 poems ^ 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 colour-
less cantigas de amor and others more individual in tone,
pastorelas (C. V. 102, 137, 150), cantigas de amigo (more Provengal
than Portuguese in their spirit of vigorous reproach are C. V. 186 :
Amigo fals' e desleal, and C. V, 198 : At 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
mordohre in querer (C. V. 113, Quix hen, amigos, e quef e querrei
Ua mother que me quis e quer mat E querrd), and cossantes of an
unmistakably popular flavour : Ay flares, ay flores do verde pino
(C. V. 171), two albas (C. V. 170, 172), C. V. 168, 169, with their
refrains lougana and ai madre, moiro d'amor, C. V. 173 with its
' 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 Learn translates joglar as iruao
(1606).
C. V. 80-208 (= C. D.L. 1-75,77-128, 76) and C. C. B. 406-15 (= C.D.L.
12Q-38). C. V. ii6 = C. V. 174.
56 I185-1325
quaint charm: Vede-la Jrol do pinho — Valha Deus, and the
bailada-cossante (C. V. 195 : Mia niadre velida, Vouni' 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 dukes 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 Semior 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 ^
and Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, who says that he read religious
poems by King Dinis at the Escorial.^ 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) ^ 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,* is very precise. No trace or
' Cronica del Rei D. Diniz, 1677 ed., f. 113 v.
' Mandou hum livro delles escrito por sua mdo a seu avo ... 0 qual eu vi na
livraria do Real Convento do Escurial, emfolha depapel 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. 1 12-17 » 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 Cane, da Ajuda (460 millimetres) from which a section of
sacred poems may have been torn ? If so the letters Rey Do Denis (C. A. M. V.
i. 141) would explain the attribution to King Dinis.
* The language of C. M. and the Portuguese Cancioneiros was of course the
same. Identical phrases occur.
* He twice visited Oxford, he says, in order to see the library, which he
describes — hiia 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).
THE CANCIONEIROS 57
memory of the existence of this manuscript exists, however, at
the Escorial Library, nor is. to be found in the Catdlogo de los
Manuscritos existentes antes del incendio de iGyi. The subjects
of King Dinis' ten^ satirical poems are trivial, but he had
too much force of character to descend to such vilenesses as
were common among profagadores. (His concise definition of
a bore : falou mutt' 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
deamor (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.
1 C. C. B. 406-15.
II
§1
Early Prose
With prose a new period opens, since, although there are
Portuguese documents of the late twelfth century ^ 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'^ 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 Alju-
barrota, 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,^ and uncommon
for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.^ Prose
* Portuguese is then uma lingua coherente, clara, um instrumento perfeito
para a expressdo do pensamento, cuja maior plaslicidade dependerd apenas
da cultura litteraria, F. Adolpho Coelho, A Lingua Portugiieza (1881), p. 87.
' See supra, p. 48.
» See p. 160.
* Cf. for the seventeenth century Galhegos' preface and Mon. Lusit.
EARLY PROSE 59
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 *0' of thp 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 succes-
sion of short sentences beginning with ' And ' } In the convents
brief lives of saints, portions of the Bible, prayers and regula-
tions were written in Portuguese. Thus we have thirteenth- or
fourteenth-century fragments of the rules of S, Bento, Fragmentos
de uma versdo antiga da regra de S. Bento, with its traces of a Latin
original (e. g. os desprezintes Deos = contemnentes Dewn) ; the
Ados dos Apostolos, written in the middle of the fifteenth century
by Frei Bernardo de Alcobaga and Frei Nicolao Vieira, that is,
copied by them from an older manuscript ; the eloquent prayers
[Libra de Moras) translated by another Alcobaga monk, Frei
Joao Claro (ti520.?); the Historias ahreviadas 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
Alcobaga, 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 Visao de
Tundalo, of which the Latin original, Visio Tundali, was written
by Frei Marcos not long after the date of the vision (1140),
V. xvi. 3 : achandose neste reino poncos que escrevdo versos e nao seja na lingua
estranjeira de Castilla.
' e.g. E matou a grande serpente dallagoa de lerne que auja sete cabegas.
E persegujo as pias filhas de finees que Ihe aujd odio e o querid desherdar.
E foy CO jaasson o que adusse o velloso dourado da ylha de colcos. E destroyu
troya. Sec.
6o 1325-1521
exists in two Portuguese versions, probably both of the fifteenth
century (Monastery of Alcobaga). The Vida de Santo Aleixo
also exists in two codices belonging to the middle and beginning
of the fifteenth century, and Dr. Esteves Percira, who pub-
lished 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 (i4th-i5th 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 HoJ-
bibliothek : 0 Livro de Esopo, which consists not of direct transla-
tions ^ 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 Cromcas 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.^ 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 Bibliotcca 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
' Cf . Por este enxcmplo este doutor nos mostra, or este poeia nos dd cnsinamento,
&c. The Fables of Aesop were translated into Portuguese prose by Manuel
Mendez, a schoolmaster at Lagos (Algarve) : Vida e I'abulas do Insigne
Fabulador Grego Esopo. Evora, 1603.
* e. g. of an earthquake : Era de mil e quatrocentos e quatro desoito dias do
ntez de Junho tremeo a terra ao serao muy rijamente e foi por espafo que
disserum u Pater tres vezes.
EARLY PROSE 6i
which contain more legend and less history than the Cronica
da Fiindagam do Moesteiro de S. Vicente de Lixhoa {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 [Coronica
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.-^ 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,^ go back
farther than the chronicles or religious prose, but so far asconcerns
their claim to literary form they belong like those to the four-
teenth century. Of the four that have come down to us the
Livro Velho is a jejune family register (iith-i4th c.) ; the second
is a mere fragment of the same kind. The manuscript of the
third {0 Nobiliario do Collegia dos Nohres) w^as bound up with
the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, and together with the fourth, 0 Nobi-
liario 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 (i3th-i4th), the Conde de Barcellos being but
one of them. It was in fact compiled like a modern peerage,^
and was not^ intended to be final, new entries being added as
time made them necessary, so that the passage diz 0 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
* The Cronica Troyana, edited in 1900 by the Spanish scholar and patient
investigator D. Andres Martinez Salazar, is a fourteenth-century Galician
version of Benoit de Saint-More's Roman de Troie.
^ The name Nobiliario is one of the erudite words which in the sixteenth
century, here as in so many other cases, ousted the indigenous.
' Its object was por sabereni os homens fidalgos de Portugal de qual linhagetn
vem e de quaes coutos, honras, mosteiros e igreias som naiuraes.
62 1325-1521
an historical as well as a genealogical character. His researches
{Ouue de catar, he says, por gram trahalho por muitas terras
escriptiiras que fallauam das linhagees) 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. ^ Count Pedro, by his
humanity and his generous conception of what a genealogy
should be, really made the book his own. It was naturally con-
sulted by the early chroniclers, its worth was recognized by the
ablest author of the Monarchia Liisitana,^ and recently, in the
skilful hands of D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, it has
rendered invaluable service in reconstructing the lives of the
thirteenth-century poets. ^
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 matiere de Bretagne, are to be found in early Portuguese
literature : to the lovers Tristan and Iseult, to the cantares de
Cornoalha,^ 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. 11) in 1502
' His successful wile is similar to the stratagem in Macbeth : e pots que
a nave entrou pela foz cobrio-a de panos verdes em tal guisa que cuidassem que
eram ramos, ca entonce o Douro era cuberto de hua parte e da outra darvores.
' A escritura de maior utilidade que tetnos em Espanha (Frei Francisco
Brandao, Mon. Lus. V. xvii. 5).
* i. e. the copy printed in Portug. Mon. Hist, from the only existing manu-
script (= the copy by Caspar Alvarez de Lousada Machado (i 554-1634) in
the Lisbon Torre do Tombo).
* The ' songs of Cornwall ' are mentioned in C. V. 1007. Cf. 1 140.
EARLY PROSE 63
{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/ imitations of Breton lais, with rubrics explain-
ing 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, 0 Livro de
Tristam, and 0 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 Camara.^ It is a Portuguese
version of the story of the Holy Grail, and, although not a
* See C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Cancioneiro da Ajuda, ii. 479-525.
They are called lais, layx (C. C. B. 7, 8).
^ En la grand demanda de Santo Greal Se lee. Gral is still a common Portu-
guese word {— almofariz, a mortar).
64 1325-1521
continuous translation, was evidently written with the French
original (doubtfully ascribed to Robert de Boron/ author of
a different work on the same subject) constantly in view. Traces
of French remain in its prose.- This was clearly part of a larger
work,^ 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 ah 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 (i6th 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 * refers
to the Holy Grail, but recounts vividly the event mentioned in
the Demanda ^ : the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and
Titus. It was also known formerly as Destroygam de Jerusalem.^
It is an anonymous translation, made in the middle of the
fifteenth century, not from the French Destruction de Jerusalem,
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.
* ruberte de borem is mentioned, 1887 ^d., p. 44.
' Not to speak of certas, onta, febre (= faible), a voso sciente, which may be
found in other Portuguese works of the fifteenth century, son (p. 136 ad fin.)
apparently = Fr. s'en.
* Cf. asi como o conto a ja deuisado (1887 ed., p. 7).
* 1905 ed., p. 95.
* 1887 ed., p. 43 : despots uespesiom os eyxerdou e os destruio.
* 1905 ed., pp. 17, 23, 106.
EARLY PROSE 55
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 ',1 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 Michaelis de Vas-
concellos, Marcelino Menendez 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 Valdes' Didlogo de la Lengua
[c- 1535), declared could not be a translation. ^ The argument,
conclusive in the case of the masterpiece of prose that is Palmeirim
■ De Institutione Christianae Feminae, Bk. I, cap. 5 : ' Turn et de pestiferis
libris cuiusmodi sunt in Hispania [= the whole Peninsula], Amadisius, Splan-
dianus, Florisandus, Tirantus, Tristanus, quarum ineptianim nullus est
finis ; quotidie prodeunt novae : Caelistina laena, nequitiarum parens,
career 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 ' (loannis 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 prob-
ably 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.
^ Braunfels, Versuch: 'Montalvo hatte, um ciner Uebersetzung den
Ruhm des mustergiltigen Styls und des reinsten Kastilianisch zu verscliaffen,
ein Geist ersten Rangs sein miissen, was er nicht war.' Montalvo was probably
not the real author even of the fourth book. The words (in this Prdlogo
of his Amadis), que hasta aqiii 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, Questoes (1881), p. 99, and Hist, da Litt.
Port., i (1909), p. 313, and which the priest in Don Quixote properly consigned
to the flames.
2362 E
66 1325-1521
de Inglaferra, 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 Lopez de Ayala
(1332-1407), was reading Amadis in his youth. ^ Half a century
later, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, a poem by
Pero Fcrrus 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
' 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.
EARLY PROSE 67
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 Loheira 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 thir-
teenth-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 Lopez de Ayala. In the fourteenth century most
Spaniards read, a few wrote ^ 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 Lopez 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 facili-
tated its introduction, and that, in the particular case of Amadis,
the style and subject of the work, certainly of the first three
^ For the later writers of Galician (second half 14th c.) see Professor
Lang's Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano (1902).
£2
68 1325-1521
books, are Portuguese rather than Spanish. Melancholy in-
cidents, sentimental phrases and tears occur on nearly every
page. Some critics even discern traces of Portuguese in the
language.^
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,^ written in the middle
of the fifteenth century, ascribes Amadis to Vasco de Lobeira.
In the next century Dr. Joao de Barros^ (not the historian) and
Leite Ferreira agree with Zurara.^ There was no reason why
they should say Vasco rather than Pedro or Joao. 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.^ If he was not a young but an old knight at
' 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.
■ Cap. 63 : 0 Livra d' Amadis, como quer que soomentc este fosse feito a prazer
de hum homem que se chamava Vasco Lobeira em tempo d' El Rev Dam Fernando,
sendo todalas cousas do dito Liiiro fingidas do Autor.
^ Libro das Antiguidades (1549), f. 32 v. : E daqui \do Porto] foi natural
uasco lobeira q fez os prim'"' 4 libros de amadis, obra certo muj subtil e
graciosa e aprouada de todos os gallantes, mas comos [so] estas couzas se secao
em nossas ma<>s os Castelhanos the mudarao a linguoagem e atribuirao a obra assi
[so]. This passage is, however, absent in the earliest manuscript. The
spelling cour.as implies a late date for its introduction.
* So did Faria e Sousa, but he, too, had his Lobeira doubts, and after
noting that Vasco de Lobeira was knighted by King Joao I says : ' si ya no
es que era otro del mismo nombre. Pero la Escritura do Amadis sc tiene por
del tiempo deste Rey don luan ' (Fvcnte de Aganipc (Madrid, 1646), § 10).
The obviou.s sympathj' of the author for the cscudero viejo who is knighted
in Amadis (ii. 13, 14) amidst the laughter of the Court ladies is perhaps
significant.
* Cronica de D. Fernando, cap. 177. The year of his death, given as 1403,
is quite uncertain. Scares de Brito in the Theatrum fornxs no independent
opinion : ' Vascus de Lobeyra inter Lusitanos Scriptores enumeratur a Faria.
. . . Floruit tempore Fernandi Regis.' Antonio Sousa de Macedo, in Flores
de Espaha, also follows Faria : \^asco de Lobeira /m^ el primero que con gentil
habilidad escribid libros de caballerias. Nicolds Antonio (1617-84), Bib.
Nov., 1688 ed., ii. 322, says that Vasco de Lobeira vtdgo inter cives suos
existimari solet auctor celeberrimi inter famosa scripti Historia de Amadis de
EARLY PROSE 69
Aljubarrota, it is just possible that he wrote the book thirty-five
years earher, in the same way that the historian Barros wrote
Clarimundo in his youth.
If he Hved 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.y^hich. reappears with slight
variations in Montalvo's Amadis [lAh. II, cap. xi : este villancico).
It would seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote Amadis. Joan de
Lobeira,^ 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 dis-
covered at Elvas the will of a Joao de Lobeira, mercador, who died
Gaula . . . cuius laudes nos inter Anonymos curiose collegimus. Osiendere
autem Lusitanos Amadisium hunc Lusitane loquentem, uti Castellani Castel-
lanum ostendunt, ins 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.
1 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.
70 1325-1521
there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga's latest opinion^ there
were three Portuguese versions of Amadis : that of the father, this
Joao de Lobeira, written in the time of King Dinis (a long-lived
race these Lobeiras !), that of the son," 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,^ 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 impor-
tance to nohiliarios 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 faith-
fulness of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But
especially the fact that the Portuguese Cancioneiros, familiar
with Tristan and the matiere 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 stum^bling-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
» Hist, da Litt. Port, i (1909).
* In the document the only son mentioned is named Gon9alo.
* Zurara, loc. cit., cousas fingidas; Lopez de Ayala, mentiras probadas.
According to D. Francisco de Portugal {Arte de Galanteria, p. 146) such
lies could only be written in Spanish {en la Portuguesa no se podia mentir
tanlo). Portugal was writing in Spanish.
EARLY PROSE 71
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 Portu-
guese 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,^ and Bernardo Tasso, whose Amadigi appeared in 1560,
believed {71071 e duhbio) 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 A7nadis
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.
* Agiologio Lusitano, i (1652), p. 410 : E por sen mandado [of the Infante
Pedro, son of Joao I] trasladoii de Frances em a nossa lingtia Pero Lobeiro
[so], Tabalido d'Eluas, 0 liiiro 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 Leitao de Andrada's Miscellanea
(1629) ^ • 0 rougo da Cava imprio de tal sanha, &c.
Of the four other spurious poems, two ^ were alleged to be
love letters of Egas Moniz Coelho, a cousin of the celebrated
Egas Moniz Coelho of the twelfth century ; another, pub-
lished by Bernardo de Brito,^ 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 nifias encontrara, tres ninas encontrei,
for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first
published by Brito^ at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it is
nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular tradition of a yearly
» 1867 ed., p. 333. « Ibid., pp. 304-7.
' Cronica de Cister, Bk. VI, cap. i, 1602 ed., f. 372. It has been several
times reprinted : cf. J. F. Barreto, Orlografia (1671), p. 23; Bellermann, Die
alien Liederbucher, p. 5 ; Grundriss, p. 163.
* Monarchia Lusitana, 1609 ed., ii. 296 (also in Miscellanea, 1867 ed.,
pp. 25-6 ; Bellermann, pp. 3-4).
EPIC AND LATER GALICIAN POETRV 73
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 Httle too emphatic. The impression is that its author had
been struck by the repetitions in songs heard oji the hps of the
people, perhaps crooned to him in his infancy (cf. Miscellanea,
p. 25 : sendo en miiito 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 trans-
lated 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.^ 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.^ Frei Antonio Brandao,
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 Brandao'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
' SeeGrundriss, p. 205. D. Ramon Menendez Pidal supports the suggestion
of Leonese authorship (Revista de Filologia Espanola, i. i (1914), pp. 90-2).
* See J. Fitzmau rice- Kelly, Litterature Espagnole, 1913 ed., p. 64.
74 1325-1521
language of the lyric.^ Portuguese poets, if they wrote a
romance, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known
instance is Gil Vicente's fine poem(wMy 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 dc Oliveira ', among whose papers Garrett pro-
fessed 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.^ 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.^ Dr. Theophilo
Braga, who considers Spanish influence on the romances in
• Cf. Rodriguez Lobo, Primavera (1722 ed.), p. 369 : tinhdo os nossos
guardadores por muyto diffictdtoso fazcremse em a lingoa Portugueza, porque
a tern por menos engragada para os romances. Sousa de Macedo says that
Romance he poesia propria de Hespanha, but Hespanha here means Spain
and Portugal and he instances G6ngora and Rodriguez Lobo {Eva e Ave,
1676 ed., p. 130).
^ See infra, p. 258.
' Obras, 1834 ed., ii. 27.
EPIC AND LATER GALICIAN POETRY 75
Portugal to have been ' late and insignificant '/ is obliged, in
order to support his argument, to quote not Portuguese but
Spanish romances." Nor is it a happy contention that Portuguese
romances were not printed owing to desleixo, since the publica-
tion of Spanish romances at Lisbon cannot be attributed merely
to a craze for things foreign. More persuasive is the theory,
developed by D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos,^ that
many romances in Spanish were the work of Portuguese poets,
especially those related to the Breton cycle, such as Ferido estd
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 ro?nances appear on the lips
of the people in Gil Vicente, that is, before the publication of
the romanceros, indicates how rapidly their popularity spread,*
and accounts for their numerous progeny in Portugal, collected
in the nineteenth century. True historical romances the Portu-
guese did not possess, unless we are to consider that certain lines
which occur in Vicente's parody of Yo me estaha alia en Coimbra,
in Garcia de Resende's Trovas, and elsewhere, are echoes of
a Portuguese romance on the death of Ines de Castro.^ 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
1 Hist, da Liu. Port., ii (1914), pp. 267-87. ^ Ibid., pp. 280-5.
* Estudos sobre 0 Romanceiro Peninsular. Romances velhos de Portugal,
Madrid, 1907-9.
* Lucena {Vida, Bk. Ill, cap. 3) speaks of romances velhos em que elles
[the natives of India] como nos, por ser 0 ordinario caniar da gente, guardam
0 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 Michaelis
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 centu ry .
* See Estudos sobre 0 Rom. Renins, (the lines are Polos campos do Mondego
Cavaleiros vi somar).
76 1325-1521
there are none to compare with Fonte Frida or Conde Arnaldos
(which belong to CastiHan literature, whatever the nationahty of
their authors), they nevertheless, with a total lack of concentra-
tion, 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 Flares. 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 sup-
posed 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 Michaelis 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), <? N amor ado, 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,^ 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 men
» In later Portuguese his name was often written Mansias. So Moraes
transforms Mile de Macy's name into Mansi.
EPIC AND LATER GALICIAN POETRY 77
cor tenno ta langa and Aquesta langa . . . me ferio, would appear
to have inspired the famous legend which dates from the end of
the fifteenth century. Imprisoned at Arjonilla in Andalucia 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,^ 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,^ 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
Camara, 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 lihre de Amor are in Castilian. Of the other
two fourteenth-century Galician poets mentioned by Santillana,
Fernam Casquicio and Vasco Perez de Camoes (ti386 >)^^
no poems have survived. The latter, a knight well known at
the Court of King Ferdinand and an ancestor of Luis de Camoes,
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 Caamooes) till the year 1386. In the middle of the
sixteenth century he is mentioned by Sa 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
* Nobleza de Andalvzia (1588), ii, f. 272 v.
^ 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.
^ The Cancionero de Baena contains poems addressed to Vasco Lopez de
Camoes, un cavallero de Galizia, and an answering poem by him.
78 1325-1521
to that of Perez de Camoes 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 lyiic 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,
GoNgALO Rodriguez (fl. 1385)/ 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 Undo cantar). In his farewell poem A Deus Amor, a Deus
el Ret, which Cervantes perhaps remembered, he bids good bye
to the trohadores 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 [ahhacca] of this testamento the Archdeacon
appoints his namesake Gongalo Rodriguez de Sousa and Fernan
Rodriguez to be his executors. He may have been alive in 1402,
for a Doctor Gongalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Almazan, is
mentioned as one of the witnesses to the oath taken by the city
of Burgos to the Infante Maria in that year.^ In that case he
must have been transferred to Almazan, some 150 miles farther
up the Duero. More chequered was the career of Garci Ferran-
DEZ 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 repen-
tance when he returned to Christianity and Castille at the end
• For the name of this hitherto anonymous poet sec The Modern Language
Review (July 1917), pp. 357-8.
* Gil Gonzalez Davila, Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Rev Don Henriqve
Tercero, &c. (Madrid, 1638), p. 173. The name was a common one. The
Spanish translator of Pero Menino's Livro de Cetreria, Gongalo Rodriguez de
Escobar, may have been a relation. There was also a fourteenth-century
poet called Ruiz de Toro.
EPIC AND LATER GALICIAN POETRY 79
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 accord-
ingly, en onra t 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
privanga do demo mayor) ; Pero Velez de Guevara ( 11420),
uncle of the Marques de Santillana, addresses a satiric poem to
an old ma'd, and an anonymous poet in a vigorous sirventes
attacks degenerate Castille, cativa, mezela Castela, perhaps, as
Professor Lang thinks, immediately after the Portuguese vic-
tories 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.
8o 1325-1521
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, ^ 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 Dona Isabel (1457),
a work of deep feeling and some literary merit, first published
by D. Carolina Michaelis 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
fertnosas 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 - (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.
' 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, nnn vos amo,
Mas desejo vos amar.
^ Cf. Ribeiro dos Santos, Obras (MS.), vol. xix, f. 205 : A /rente de todos os
Poetas deste Seculo apparece como hum Ds [Deusi da Poezia 0 Infante D. Pedro,
filho do Snr. Rev D. Jodo 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.-"- 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,^ entrusted him with the task of
writing the chronicles of the Kings of Portugal {poer em caronycas
as esiorias dos reys), and at the same time (March 19, 1434^)
assigned him a salary of 14,000 reis. 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 Joao I {escrivam
dos livros) and to the Infante Fernando [escrivam da puridade),
whose will exists in Lopez' handwriting.'* 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
. ' Lopez himself was probably of humble birth. It appears from a document
presented by Dr. Pedro de Azevedo at a meeting of the Sociedade Portnguesa
de Estudos Historicos in July 1916 that his wife's niece was married to a shoe-
maker.
^ Zurara, Cron. D. Joam, cap. 2.
•i.e. eighty-nine years before the first English translation of Froissart
was published. Needless to say, no English translation of Lopez exists.
' A facsimile of a page of this lengthy document is given in Snr. Braam-
camp Freire's excellent edition of the Primeira Parte da Crdnica de D. Joam I
(1915)-
2362 F
82 1325-152I
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.^
Of the chronicles of the first ten Kings of Portugal written by
Lopez 2 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 '.^ His successor, Zurara, represents him as
'anotable person', 'a manof some learning and great authority';*
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.^
He seems to have drawn largely from a Latin work of a certain
Dr. Cristoforus. Keenly alive to the dignity and responsibilities
* See A. Braamcamp Freire, ibid., pp. xl-xlii.
^ Fez todas as chronicas dos Reis td seu tempo, come^ando do Conde dom
Henrique, coma prova Damiao de Goes (Caspar Esta90. V arias Antigvidades
de Portugal (1625), cap. 21, § i) ; cf. Goes, Cron. de D. Manuel, iv. 38.
' Nosso desejo foi em esta obra escrever verdade — nuamente — a nua verdade
{Cr. D. Joam, Prologo).
* Zurara, Cr. D. Joam, cap. 2. Cf. Lopez' preface to his Cr. D. Joam :
Oo com quamto cuidado e diltgemfia vimos gramdes vollumes de livros, de desvai-
radas lingtiagees e terras ; e isso meesmo pubricas escprituras de muitos cartarios
e otitros logares nas quaaes depois de longas vegilias e gramdes trabalhos mais
(ertidom aver nom podemos da contheuda em esta obra (19 15 ed., p. 2).
* tlsually he does this ^vithout naming the offender, but he refutes the
razoes of Martim Afonso de Mello, a person well known at the Court of King
Joao 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 141 5. A work on a similar subject, Tratado da Milicia, is ascribed
to Zurara's friend and patron. King Afonso V (Barbosa Machado, i. 19).
THE CHRONICLERS 83
of history, he was anxious that his work should be well ordered
and philosophical.^ He has been called the Portuguese Froissart,
but he combines with Froissart's picturesqueness moral philo-
sophy, enthusiasm, and high principles, is in fact a Froissart
with something of Montaigne added, and easily excels Giovanni
Villani or Pero Lopez de Ayala. The latter must descend from
the pedestal given him by Menendez y Pelayo,^ 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 ^
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
* Cy. del Rei D. Fern., cap. 2 : a ordenariQa de nossa obra ; Cr. D. Joam,
191 5 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.
1 39 : gnardando a regra do philosopho [of cause and effect].
^ Antologia, iv, p. xx : Nada hay seme j ante en las liter atur as extranjeras
antes de fin del siglo xv. The words apply more accurately to Fernam Lopez.
' Leixados os compostos e afeitados razoamentos (Cr. D. Joam, Prologo).
F2
84 1325-1521
vivid scenes — King Pedro dancing through his capital by night,
the escape of Diogo Lopez, the punishment of D. Ines' mur-
derers, 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 impetuo-
sity, 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 sdamente 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 anony-
mous 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 Joao L 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 ^ written shortly
after the death of Nun' Alvarez (1431), i. e. before he concluded
the Cronica de D. Fernando^ and wrote the Cronica de D.
Joam, at which he was working in 1443.^ 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'
* The references in cap. 76 and 80 to events of 145 1 and 1461 are evidently
later additions.
' Cf. Cr. do Cond., cap. 14 and 15, with Cr. del Rei Fern., cap. 166.
' A. Braamcamp Freire, Cr. de D. Joam (191 5), Inirodufdo, p. xxi.
THE CHRONICLERS 85
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 Con-
destahre (cap. 22) with the words ' now here some say ' [ora aqui
dizem algiis), and then cites hufi outro estoriador, cujo fallamento
nosparege mats rrazoado, i.e. he now rejects the version (of algiis)
which he had adopted in his earlier work. In chapter 152
(1915 ed., p. 281) he similarly quotes what dizem aqui algiis and
then the version of huU 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 Condestahre. 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 ^ 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 v/ords of the preachers
could not be given.^ 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 ; ^
* 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).
- Ndo seja porem algum de tarn simples conhecimento que presuma que este
I o teor propria, &c. (cap. 95).
' 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.
86 1325-1521
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.^ 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 en-
thusiasm and his hero. Nun' Alvarez has faded into the back-
ground, 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. jfoam, and in his Cronica do
Descohrimento e Conquista da Guine it is still more evident.'^
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,^ 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^
* Cf . Goes, Cr. D. Manuel : escrevia com razoamentos prolixos e cheos de
tnetaforicas figuras que no estilo historico ndo tern lugar ; Cr. do Princ.
D. Joam, cap. 17 : com a superfltia 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 Mallarme could be
obscure in five words.
* 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
nam sei a qual parte acuda primeiro. This chronicle has the same plethora of
learned quotations. Chapter i quotes St. Thomas, Solomon, Tully, the Book
of Esther, and introduces Afonso V, King Duarte, the French duke Jean de
Lan^on, the Cid, Nun' Alvarez, Moses, Fabricius, Joshua, and King Kamiro.
^ He re-wrote the Cronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses twice. Joao de
Barros, who was inclined to slight earlier and contemporary historians,
acknowledges his great debt to Zurara. Damiao de Goes regards him less
favourably.
* November 22, 1467 {Coll. Liv. Ined. iii. 3-5). There is also an affection-
ate letter from King Pedro of Aragon to Zurara, dated June 11, 146O, or 1460.
THE CHRONICLERS 87
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,^ 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 Knightof theOrderof Christ, with a comendane2ir 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 verify-
ing evidence nor affects the truth of his chronicles. He had
proposed to write that of Afonso V, but the king, wisely con-
sidering that his reign was not yet over, Jrefused his consent,^
and this chronicle was reserved for the pen of Ruy de Pina
[c. 1440-1523 }).^ 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 desecrat-
ing 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
* Zurara, on the other hand, with feigned diffdence represents himself
as ' a poor scholar ', ' a man almost entirely ignorant and without any know-
ledge ', 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 Guin6 : Oo iu cellestrial padre, que com
tua poderosa maao, sent movimento de tu devynal essencia, governas toda a in-
fiinda 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 xrados (they died, but Christians). He has
a misleading trick of saying ' The author says — diz 0 autor ', meaning himself.
^ Nunca me em ello quis leixar obrar segundo meu desejo (Cr. D. Pedro,
cap. I).
* His son Fernam de Pina became Cronista Mor in 1523. The immediate
successor of Zurara as Cronista MSr 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 varoes 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).
88 1325-1521
with by Ruy de Pina, and not, for instance, by the uncritical
DuARTE Galvao {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 Mor 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. Jodo 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 Joao 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 [escrivao da nossa camara) to King Joao II,
and succeeded Lucena as Cronista Mor in 1497. Both King
Joao 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 Correa's phrase, to glorificar as coiisas de Afoiiso
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 Damiao de Goes availed himself, while his Cronica
de D. Jodo 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. ^ 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
» Much later, in the first third of the seventeenth century, Caspar Diaz
DE Landim wrote a copiosa relagao 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).
THE CHRONICLERS 89
the long exclamagao 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 straight-
forwardly, 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 Joao H, 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 Joao 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 Joao Alvarez, an eyewitness ^ 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,^ of the meaning
of which he was probably ignorant.
The founder of the dynasty of Avis, King Joao 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
' Tudo 0 contheudo no siguiente trautado eu o uy e ouuy (191 1 ed., p. 2).
^ 191 1 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 Joao de Ychoa appear among the moradores of
King Manuel's household (1518). The substantive ichd (— armadilha), derived
from ostiolum, is used by Diogo Fernandez Ferreira [Arte da Ca(a) and Garcia
de Resende (Cron. Joao II).
90 1325-1521
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 Monteria, lay un-
published 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 Orio do Sposo by Frei Herrnenegildo de Tancos, or the Livro
das Aves. But with King Joao'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),/? Eloquente,
shared the high ideals of all the sons of Joao 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 ^ 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. ^ Besides a detailed
consideration of virtues and vices which are treated with an
Aristotelian precision, and always with preference for the
. ' The extremely interesting list of liis important library has been published
in Provas Genealogicas, i. 544, in the 1842 ed. of Leal Conselheiro, and edited
byDr.T.Bragain Historiada Univ.de Coimbra,i.20g. 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.
" p. 9, Fiz tralladar em el algiius capitnllos doutros livros : the Vita Christi,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Diogo Afonso Mangancha on Prudence, Cicero, De
Officiis, St. Gregory.
THE CHRONICLERS 91
Portuguese as opposed to the latinized word, it has chapters
on the art of translation, food, chapel services, and other subjects.^
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. ^ King Duarte
wished to be read as Sainte-Beuve recommended that one should
read the Caracteres of La Bruyere : pen et souvent {pauco . . .
tornando alguas 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 horse-
manship, and his Livro da Ensinanga 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,
' It contains papers written at various times (between 1428 and 1438).
The date 1435 occurs p. 474. Cf. p. 169, King Joao I (ti433), citja alma
Deos aja.
^ His modern editor. Jose Ignacio Roquette (1801-70), comments (p. sy)
on the passage he bem de lavrar e criarem as a great grammatical discordancia
and eno, 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.
92 1325-1521
and the Dean of Santiago Aristotle. More active than King
Duarte, more Hterary 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)
— midou as sete partes do mundo — and his equally exaggerated
reputation as a poet, through confusion with his son the Con-
stable. 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, under-
taken 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 Joao Verba, who made
the necessary alterations,^ 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 refer-
ences 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,^
' Corregendo e acrecentando 0 que entendeo ser compridoiro acaboii 0 liuro
adeante scripto.
^ DamiaodeGoes(C»'. ^o Pr. D. Joam, cap. 88) says 1476. His father Diogo
Fernandez was Reposteiro Mor 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.
THE CHRONICLERS 93
accompanied D. Lianor, daughter of King Duarte, on her
marriage to the Emperor Frederick HI 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 descrip-
tion, 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,* and is
dedicated (on the verso of the frontispiece portraying the
* delightful wood ') to Queen Lianor, widow of King Joao 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 quaint-
ness, an intense and excellent style, a fervent humanity and love
of Nature. The hermit's independent and healthy life ^ is con-
trasted with that of the merchant in cities.^ 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 fre?noso
fallamento praises the solitary life and condemns those who are
puffed up with the conceit of learning, in itself ' a very fair
1 Seventy-four black-letter double column folios, unnumbered, of fifty lines
each. The colophon runs : Acaboiise do [so] emprimir este lyuro chamado
boosco delleytoso solitario p. Hertna de capos bomhardeiro del Rey nosso Sehor
CO gra^a & preuilegio de sua alteza em ha muy nobrem [so] &> sempre leal fidad
[so] de lixboa co muy grande dilligencia. A no da encarnaga de nosso ScUuador
6- Redentor jhesu xpo. De mil 6- quinientos &• quinze a vinte quatro de
Mayo (Bib. Nacional de Lisboa, Res. 176 a [lacking f. i]). Nicolas Antonio
thus refers to the work (Bib. Nova, ii. 402) : Anonymus, Lusitanus, scripsit
&■ nuncupavit Serenissimae Eleonorae Reginae loams II Portugalliae Regis
Coniiigi librum ita inscriptum. Bosco deleitoso. Olisipone 1515.
"^ He can do ho que Ihe praz ; at sunrise he goes up alguii outeiro de boo
& saaom aar far from the delleytagooes do mundo, arroydo do segre and as
aiiollimentos &• trasfegos das fidades.
' The malauefurado negociador que qr seer rico tostentete.
94 1325-1521
thing '. He tells of the lives of saintly hermits ; St. Bernard,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Dom Seneca, Dom Cicero, a mui com-
fortosa 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 Jus-
tinianus.^ The latter's De J^ita 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.^ Many of its sentences are
veritable dohres and mordobres in prose, ^ 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),* which begins ^ 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 Paxd de Jesu Christo Nosso Deos e Senhor, &c. (1551) ;
* See Grundriss, p. 249, and Divi Lavrentii Ivstiniani Protopairiarchae
Veneti opera Omnia (Coloniae, 1616), pp. 728-70 : De Vita Solitaria.
* Cf. 1910 ed., pp. I, 4. The writer claims to be only a compiler : comedo
este livro nom como autor e achador das cousas em elle contheudas mas como
simprez aiuntador dellas em huii vellume. It has been attributed to the
Infante D. Pedro and to Joao I.
' e.g. p. 85 : Ca per entender entende 0 entendedor e per entender i entendido
0 entendido e 0 entendedor entende que elle mesmo i Deos.
* The title is simply //o Flos Sctorj em lingoaje porgue\ The colophon says
that it se chama ystorea lombarda pero comuumente se chama flos sanctorum.
' Aqui se comefa ha payxam do eterno Principe christo Jhesu nosso Senhor
&' saluador segundo os sanctos quatro euangelistas.
THE CHRONICLERS 95
Tratado en que se comprende breue e deuotamente a Vida, Paixdo
e Resurreigao, &c. (1553) ; Traatado em q se conte a paixam de
xpo, &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), trans-
lated em lingoa materna e portugues linguagem from the original
of Ludolph von Sachsen by the Cistercian monk Frei Bernardo
de Alcobaga (ti478 ?), 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 {1^18), ^irom the French of Christine de Pisan : Livre
des trots vertus pour V enseignement des princesses (1497). The
Portuguese manuscript, translated from the French manuscript
nearly half a century before the latter appeared in print, ^ was
published at the bidding of Queen Lianor (wife of Joao II),
who so keenly encouraged Portuguese art, language, and litera-
ture. Her squire Valentim Fernandez' version of Marco Polo,
Marco Paulo, was published at Lisbon in 1502, The Espelho
de Prefeygam (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 Joao
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.
* The only known copy exists in the Bibhoteca Nacional, Lisbon. The
colophon (in Spanish) gives the alternative title [das tres 'virtudes) . The
French original was also called Tresor de la Cite des Dames.
' See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, Lifoes de Philologia Portuguesa, p. 137.
§4
The Cancionetro 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 Cancionetro 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 collec-
tion corresponding to the Cancionero de Baena in Spain. When
Portuguese poetry again emerges into the clear light of day Spanish
influence is infuU swing and behind it looms that of Italian poetry,
the natural continuation of one side of the Cancionetro da Vati-
cana. No Spanish poet now writes in Portuguese, many Portu-
guese 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 Joao II, he had every oppor-
tunity of observing the events which he so graphically describes
in his Vida de Dom Joao II (1545).^ 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 15 14 was chosen for the much coveted post
» The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being Lyuro das
Obras de Garcia de Resede que trata da vida e grddissimas virtudes, &c.
THE CANCIONEIRO GERAL 97
of secretary to Tristao da Cunha's mission to Rome with wonder-
ful 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, pros-
perous courtier — fidalgo da casa del Ret. 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 Joao H 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 pre-
decessors as existing mainly for purposes of plagiarism. Hercu-
lano called Resende's chronicle a poor bundle of anecdotes,^ 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 con-
crete 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 Ega de Oueiroz.
Besides various minor works in prose Resende composed, not
without misgiving,^ 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 Ines 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
' Historiadores Portugueses in Opusculos (1907), ii. 27. The author of the
Theatrum has a similar verdict : Scripsit Chronicam loannis II ut quidem
potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum niagnitudinis .
* Sent letras e sem saber, he says modestly, me fui nisto meter.
2362 G
98 1325-1521
them in one great volume which he dedicated to the Infante Joao :
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.^ 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 pro-
duce an effect of dull and endless triviality. These love poems
can indeed be as monotonous, the satiric poems as coarse, licen-
tious, and irreverent, as those of the Cancioneiro da Vaticana.
One of the poets, D. Joao 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 character-
istic 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 sani castigados.^
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,
' Or he would seek to obtain them through a friend as in the case of o Can-
cioneiro do abade frei Martinho of Alcobafa. 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 enmcndar.
" Prologo. ' Had you forgotten that irovas 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 mole. Cf. the phrase dar causa a
trov adores.
THE CANCIONEIRO GERAL 99
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 Jose 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 ^ 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 seroes was in-
adequate to any great occasion. But the trovador segundo as
trovas de aquelle tempo ^ 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.^ ' I would
not wear it at a serdo, 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)
* Or Albuquerque would be mentioned in a game of Porqtte's (why's)
common among the praguentos da India : Porque Afonso d' Albuquerque
Da parens a el rey de Fez ?
^ Zurara, Cr. de D. Joam, cap. 29.
* The Cancioneiro contains many references to Venice. The pimenta de
Veneza mentioned in one of the poems must have sounded strange to Portu-
guese readers in 15 16.
G 2
100 1325-1521
{antes leria por lugam) in the heat of the day than wear it.
' He will need a cart to bring it to the serdo,' 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 arc dis-
cussed by poet after poet {0 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} There are two poems on the death of
King Joao 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 contem-
porary 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 allitera-
tive 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.2 His friend and distant relative Fernam da Silveira,
0 Coudel Mor, is concerned with more mundane matters. A man
of noble birth and high character, he was held in great honour
by Afonso V and Joao II. The latter, a keen judge of men, had
implicit confidence in the justice of this upright magistrate, who
* e. g. Meu bent, sent vos ver Se vivo urn dia, V'iver nam queria. Caland'
e so/rendo Meu mal sem medida. Mil mortes na vida Sinto nam vos vendo,
E pois que vivendo Moiro toda via, Viver nam. queria.
' La t'arreda Satanas, Cristo Jesu a ti chamo, A ti amo, Tu Senhor me
salvards. O sinal da cruz espante Minha torpe teniafam, Com deuafam
Espero dir adianie.
THE CANCIONEIRO GERAL loi
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 Montemor 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 Evora toThomar, but he could skilfully turn a short
love poem, and for a wager of capons for Easter (with Alvaro 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. JoAO DE Meneses (ti5i4), 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 ]ife
of action, and died in the expedition against Azamor.^ Another
soldier, courtier, and poet marked out by birth and ability was
D. JoAO 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 Alvaro 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. Byanotherwriter, Fernam da Silveira (11489), we have
* One of his poems has the heading : Ontro vilanfete sett estado em Azamor
antes q se fynasse.
102 I325-I52I
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 Joao 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 Joao II,
especially before his accession, was Nuno Pereira (fl. 1485),
homem galante, cortesao e horn trovador, who married the daughter
of the Coudel Mor 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 (ti53o) of Oporto wrote an elaborate poem in
octaves on the death of King Joao II. He also used the octo-
syllabic metre with breaks of single lines [quehrados) of four
syllables, so familiar in Gil Vicente's plays, and in his Fingi-
mento de Amores[2y 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 CANCIONEIRO GERAL 103
the life of Prince Afonso in his teens. His lamentation on the
death of King Joao H is written in octaves, as that of Diogo
Brandam, which they resemble. Both poets invoke Death :
0 morte que matas quern e prosperado (Brandam) ; O 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 Joao H and thirty-
five stanzas addressed to James, Duke of Braganza, when he
left Lisbon with his fleet to attack Azamor in 15 13. 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. Joao de Meneses, Joam rroiz de saa, that is, Joam
Rodriguez de Sa e Meneses (1465 ?-i576), studied in Italy
as a disciple of Angelo Poliziano (ti594) and died a cen-
tenarian. 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 (■|'i549), although he did not live to be a centenarian,
also survived most of the poets of Joao IPs reign and died towards
the end of that of Joao HI. 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 Sentengas (1605), over one hundred of which are rhymed
quatrains, were published by his grandson D. Anrique de Portu-
gal. Some of these moral sayings have considerable subtlety,
and they reveal a fine character and insight into the character
of others.^ Most of his poems, in Spanish and Portuguese,
' e.g. A culpa de quern se ama doe mats &■ perdoase mais asinha, Nam pede
louvor quern o merece. Da fee nace a rezam da fee, &c.
104 1325-1521
preserved in the Cancioneiro are brief cantigas which prove him
to have been a skiU'ul versifier and a typical Court poet. On the
other hand, a feehng for Nature, a constant command of metre,
and a certain passionate sadness mark out an earHer poet,
DuARTE DE Brito (fl. 1490), the friend of D. Joao de Menescs,
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 Ihacontegeo com huu rrousinol & muitas outras cousas
que vio, is written after the fashion of Diogo Brandam's Fin-
gimento de Amoves and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz' Infierno de
Amor, in imitation of the Marques 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, Sa de Miranda, in
the few and short poems which he contributed to the Cancio-
neiro 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 busmess of the seroes,
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 versi-
fiers 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 Can-
cioneiro were often scarcely Portuguese.* 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 Camara,
Macias, Santillana. Unlike Macias, who is but a name, Santillana
* D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos goes so far as to call the Portu-
guese Cancioneiro Geral a mere supplement or second part of the Spanish
Cancionero General {Estudos sobre o Romanceiro, p. 303).
THE CANCIONEIRO GERAL 105
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 licenga
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 0 monies erguidos, Deixai-vos cair.
The contributions of Sa deMiranda, 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
Falcao, and the prince of all these poets, here the humblest of
Cinderellas, Gil Vicente.
Ill .
The Sixteenth Century [1503-80]
§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 wel-
comed the Renaissance and stood firm against the Reformation.
But in the reign of Joao III (1521-57) the University of Coimbra
came to be one of the best-known universities in Europe. Andre de
Gouvea (11548), whom Montaigne called ' sans comparaison le
plus grand principal de France',^ and Diogo de Teive returned
from the College de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate its studies, and
many of its chairs were offered to distinguished Portuguese and
foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (ti54o) and George
Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such as
Antonio de Gouvea and Achilles Estago (ti58i). 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.^ 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 Joao III and
especially his son, the young prince Joao (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 ^
' Essais, I. XXV.
* Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo. Antuerpiae, 1561.
• Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to hini (cf. Fenix Renascida,
iii. 252, H or as breves, and, with more reason, iii. 253,^ redeasulta corre o pensa-
mento), as was also Gil Vicente's Dom Dttardus and a manuscript Tratado
dos modos, proporfdes e medidas.
GIL VICENTE 107
and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters ; the house-
hold of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the
' home of the Muses ' i; learned Luisa Sigea (fiS^o), 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,^ Lord of the East,=^ 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 (ti5i5) stood on the threshold of his career of
conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire was advancing
from North Africa to China,* 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 con-
gratulated the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King
Joao III (born during the night of June 6), in a Spanish mono-
logue 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,
• Duarte Nunez de Leam, Descripgao, 2* ed. (1785), cap. 80 : Da habilidade
das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liber aes. Severim de Faria speaks
of her sancto desejo de saber. The author of Dos prinilegios & praerogatitias
q ho genero femenino tern (1557) says (p. 9) : se pode estranhar esta hidade
na qual as molheres ndo se aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas
Romanas e Gregas.
2 Gil Vicente, Obras (1834), ii. 414. ^ Ibid. iii. 350.
* Cf . Joao Rodriguez de Sa e Meneses in the Cancioneiro Geral : De (^eita atee
OS Chijs.
io8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Visitagam, or Monologo do Vaqueiro — to fore-
shadow the sovereign genius,^ the Plautus, the Shakespeare ^ of
Portugal that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity,
and the known existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vi-
centes makes research a risky operation. There was a page
(1475) and an escudeiro (1482) of King Joao II, an official at
Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (f 1500), there was a Gil Vicente
in India in 1512,^ and a Gil Vicente goldsmith at Lisbon. We
know that the poet spoke of himself as near death {visinho da
morte) in 153 1, although apparently in good health. This would
seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.'* 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 cer-
tainly he was not of exalted parentage.^ Indeed, he would appear
to have been slighted for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke
' M. Menendez y Pelayo, Antologia, vol. vii, p. clxiii.
* A. Herculano, Historia da Inquisif&o, 3* 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 bom 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 Inis Pereira Ines, without being a shrew,
is tamed by her husband, who says :
Se eu digo : Esto e novello
Vos aveis de confirmalo.
» In 1 5 1 3 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ' the son of Gil Vicente ' in India.
* 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 ?
* ' A gentleman of good family ' (Ticknor) ; hijo de ilustres padres (Barrera y
Leirado); na qualidade nobilissimo (Pedro de Poyares).
GIL VICENTE 109
of himself as the son of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira
(Estremadura).^ He may have been the son of Luis Vicente or
of Martim Vicente, ' said to have been a silversmith of Guimaraes '
(Minho).^ The frequent mention of the province of Beira is,
however, noticeable in his plays. If it were only that his peasants
use words such asnega, nego, which according to the grammarian
Fernam d'Oliveira were peculiar to Beira (in 1536),^ 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.* Indeed, the grammarian seems to have had
Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in another con-
nexion) since three of the six words that he notes — ahem, acajuso,
algorrem — occur in three successive lines of the Barca do Pur-
gatorio, and another, samicas, is as great a favourite with Vicente
as at first was soncas,^ derived from Enzina. But it is impossible
to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition that heirdo
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 Fundao, 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 Jose de Cabedo de Vasconcellos,
another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe, he became
* iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205.
^ The authority is Cristovam Alao de Moraes in his manuscript Pedatura
Lusitana (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto). This genealogist,
says Castello Branco, era as vezes ignorante e outras vezes mal intencionado.
He does not say that Martim Vicente exercised his alleged profession of silver-
smith at Guimaraes, or that Gil was bom there. What more probable than for
Guimaraes, 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. Jodo 0 terceiro
poeta celehre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas suas impressas.
' Grammatica, ed. 1871, p. 118.
* Ibid., p. 81 . See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, Gil Vicente e a Lingnagem Popular,
1902. Feo, Trattados Quadragesimais (i6i9),f. 10, mentions the somsonete de
pronunciafao of the ratinhos.
' 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
{Canctonero de todas las obras (Carag09a, 1516), f. Ixxviii, and again f. Ixxviii
verso and Ixxx) .
no THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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, Almcirim, 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 Joao HI, in whose reign
he complains of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that
he married his first wife, Branca Bezerra, in 15 12, 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 Paulabecame 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,^ as she helped her brother Luis in editing them in
1562. From a document concerning another brother, Belchior,
we know that Gil Vicente {sen 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 asser-
tion that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to
his old age^ we might judge him to have been very oM, 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 dc Resende, shows him in a very attractive light, for
by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in re-
straining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace,
and thus saved the ' new Christians ' from ill-treatment or
massacre.
• A. dos Reis, Entkusiasmus Poelictis {Corpus III. Poet. Lus., torn, viii, pp.
18-19): Quern iuvisse ferunt vehtt olim Polla maritum. Manuel Tavares,
Portugal illustrado pelo sexo fcminino (1734), calls her a discretissima mulher.
* Com muita pena de minha velhice. Ruy de Pina calls a man mui vclho
whose father (King Joao I) would have been but ninety-one in that year
{Cr. de Afonso V, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira, Ulysippo, iii. 3 : vclho se pode
chamar pais vai aos cincoenta anos.
GIL VICENTE iii
We know a little more about him if \vc identify him with
Gil Vicente, the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister
of King Manuel and widow of King Joao II, whose most famous
work is the beautiful Belem monstrance, wrought of the first
tribute of gold from the East (from Quiloa or Kilwa).^ 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 in-
creased 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.^ 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,^
and in its convent in 1523 staged his Farsa de Ines Pereira (who
lived at Thomar with her first husband), while at the Hospital of
All Saints was played the Barca do Purgatorio in 15 18. The gold-
smith was in the service of the widow of Joao 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.* The goldsmith was Mestre da
' See Barros, Asia, i. 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).
^ Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent in his plays.
The goldsmith in the Farsa das Almocreves uses the technical word hastiaes
which occurs in the Livro Vermelho of Afonso V : E porqiie alguns Ouriueses
tern ora feita algua prata dourada e de bastiaes. It occurs, however, in the
Cancioneiro Geral (galantes bastiaes), in Resende's Miscellania (bestides), and
other writers.
^ Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379.
* 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.
112 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Balan<;a from 1513 to 1517; the poet goes out of his way
to refer to os da Aloeda, 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* that
he can no longer afford to stage his plays as splendidly as of old
(in KingManuel's reign) produces them with increasingfrequency.
' Had Gil Vicente been a goldsmith and a goldsmith of such skill,'
said the late Marcelino Menendez 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.'^
But his work is essentially that of an artist (Menendez y Pelayo
himself well calls him an alma de artista) ^ : 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 Vare 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,* set himself to write verses, this would call for no com-
ment. 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
Yet the rubric of the Auto dos Quafro Tempos say? clearly that a sobredila
senhora is King Manuel's sister.
* Mas ja ndo auto hofi Coma os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha com que
{Auto Pastoril Portugues, i. 129).
* Antologia, 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 Menendez
y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that he can prove an alibi.
D. Carolina Michaelis 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. ' Antologia, vii, p. clxxvi.
* And later Jeronimo Correa (ti66o) at Lisbon, author of Daphne e Apollo
(Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes (1820-69) ^t Oporto,
and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville, Lope de Rueda (1510 ?-65),
whose pasos are akin to Vicente's /arsas, was fired by his example and success.
GIL VICENTE 113
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,'^ 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
Damiao 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 ^) has above
it a contemporary note Gil V'" trouador mestre da balaga 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 produc-
tion of his plays. The offerings at the end of the Visitagam seem
to have suggested to Queen Lianor the idea of its repetition on
Christmas morning, but Gil Vicente, considering its matter in-
appropriate, wrote a new play with parts for six shepherds. This
Auto Pastoril Castelhano is four times as long as the Visitagam.
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 ^ 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 re-
quest 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
^ Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem, 1785 ed., p. 222.
^ Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.) in the
Torre do Tombo, Lisbon. ' Cf. Cancionero, i. Ixxxvi v.
2362 H
114 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
another shepherd and then a hermit, whom they ply with irreve-
rent problems. To them enters a knight of Araby, and finally
the three kings, singing a vilancete. The Auto da Sihila Cas-
sandra has been assigned to the same year, but is probably a later
play (15 13 ?). Nearly twice as long as the Auto Pastoril Caste-
Ihano, it combines the ordinary scenic display — todo 0 apparato —
of a Christmas representagdo 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, Sanosa estd la nina, 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 deS. 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 :
(jCriante rocio, que te hicc yo ^
Que las hiervecitas fioreces 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 Alcagova on Christmas morning
in or after 15 11, opens with a mystic ode on the Nativity and
a vilancete [A ti dine 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 allu-
sions and David with much Latin, and they all worship together
' An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long pause
on tardus 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 ?
GIL VICENTE 115
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. Braam-
camp 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 schmer-
zenreiche !). Then, while Satan in a restless fury of disappoint-
ment makes a last effort to secure his victim, the ransomed soul
is fortified with celestial fare served by St. Augustine and other
doutores. The w'hole 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 tv^eWt farsas written from 1505 to 1531 are so
slight that only one calls for detailed notice, the Farsa de Ines
Pereira^ (1523), which in its carefully defined characters and
developed story more closely resembles a modern comedy. It
tells how the hapless Ines, 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
' Auto de Ines 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.
H 2
ii6 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
guitar, continuing to sing beneath the window of his love while
the curses of her mother fall thick as snowfiakes on his head,^
or the lady of his affections, vain and idle Isabel, or his servant
[nio^o] Apari^o who draws so cruel a picture of his master, or
that other penniless escudeiro who considers himself ' the very
palace ' and calls up his mogo Fernando at midnight to light
the lamp and hold the inkstand while he writes down his latest
verses ? - Equally well sketched is the splendid poverty-plagued
fidalgo who walks abroad accompanied by six pages, but can-
not pay his chaplain or his goldsmith; his ill-used, servile,
ambitious chaplain ^ ; the witch Genebra Pereira mixing the
hanged man's ear, the heart of a black cat, and other grim
ingredients: Algnidar, alguidar^ que feito foste ao luar'^; 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^; M. Diafoirus' lineal ancestors Mestres Anrique,
Felipe, Fernando, and Torres^; the sporting priest'^; the unfaith-
ful wife of the Portuguese who has embarked for India with
Tristao da Cunha ; the vainglorious, grandiloquent Spaniard who
takes the opportunity to pay his court to her.^ They are all
drawn from life with a master hand, even the more insignificant
figures, the girl keeping ducks, the mogos, the gipsy horse-dealers,^
the old man amorous,^" 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, tiitti quanti,^^ the wily and impudent
* Quern tem farelos ?
^ O Jtiiz da Beira, a continuation suggested by the success of the Farsa
de Inds Pereira and acted at Almeirim in 1525.
' 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. * Auto das Fadas (151 1).
s Auto da Lusitania (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince Manuel
( 1 5 3 1 ) . * Farsa dos Fisicos ( 1 5 1 2) .
' O Clerigo da Beira (1529 ?). * Auto da India (1509).
' Farsa das Ciganas (or, in the 1562 edition. Auto de huas ciganas), a very
slight sketch acted in a scram before the king at Evora (1521).
»» O Velho da Horta (1513).
" Auto da Fama (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 15 10, but internal
evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 15 16 (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).
GIL VICENTE 117
negro, the poor ratinho ^ Gongalo, 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 aiUos 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 de-
vagdo on Christmas morning or other solemn day,^ the farsas de
folgar, comedias, &c., at the evening parties — those famous
seroes of King Manuel's reign to which the courtiers thronged at
dusk, and which Sa de Miranda remembered with regret.^ All
provide us with realistic sketches since the backgrcjund 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 Joao 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, wath her indul-
gences 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 dis-
satisfied 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
' = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted (or
malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience.
* 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).
^ Os momos, os seroes de Portugal
Tam fallados no mundo, onde sao idos,
E as gra9as temperadas do seu sal ?
ii8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Christmas play, the Auto da F^, was acted in the royal chapel at
Almeirim in 15 lo, and consists of a simple conversation between
Faith and two shepherds. The Breve Summario da Historia
de Deos^ (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
mo)itanhas), 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 consolagao as she lay on her death-bed
in 15 17, 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,^ and Emperor, Bishop,
Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invoca-
tion 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
* 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.
* 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 attentat
coHio poemos as maos {Cortes de Jupiter).
GIL VICENTE 119
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 (15 14) 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 divisada cidade de Coimbra,
acted before King Joao 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 Engafios (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 ',^ and Amadis} 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.^ 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 Joao 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 * in
* 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 15 12.
^ 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.
' When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she supposes
that his ordinary fare is garlic.
* For the words quanta en caso de amores the Censorship is evidently respon-
sible.
120 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
which there was no fitting rhetoric to satisfy the dehcate 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 how-
ever 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 tragi-
comedy is a satire ' says the rubric, and it introduces us to the
inimitable Frei Pago, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves,
gilt sw^ord, and velvet cap (one of Sa de Miranda's clerigos per-
fumados), 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 Pago 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 expedi-
tion against Azamor in 15 13 he wrote the eloquent Exhortagam
da Giierra, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends
with a rousing call to war {soiga) :
Avante avante, senhores,
Pois que com grandes favores
Todo o ceo vos favorece ;
El Rey de Fez esmorece
E Marrocos da clamores.
When King Manuel's daughter, the princess Beatrice, married
the Duke of Savoy in 15 21 Vicente wrote the Cortes de Jupiter ^
in which the Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Ele-
ments, speed her on her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants
of Lisbon accompany her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the
Tagus. The Fm^cia ^^ yim(?r( 1525) was written on the occasion of
the betrothal of King Joao 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
GIL VICENTE 121
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 miiertas — 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 ohra 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
beirdo and the old woman closely resembles the velha of the tragi-
comedy Triuiifo do Invenio, 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 con-
tains some most effective scenes and a bewildering wealth of
lyrics : before one is finished another has begun, and the w^hole
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 con-
duct, 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.
122 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
breaks off into Afiiera, afuera iiublados, and resumes his song :
A riberas de aquel rio
Viera estar rosal florido,
Vengo del rosalc.
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 aiitos, 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 pro-
vided by an essentially dramatic Church and in the mummeries
and mimicking jograes that delighted the people. Bonamis and
his companion furnished some kind of extrernely 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^ were the principal in-
gredients of the momos in which Rui de Sousa excelled - and the
entremeses for which Portugal was famous : they scarcely be-
longed 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, Epi-
phany, Passion, or Easter scenes ^ gave further scope for dramatic
display, as also popular ceremonies such as that in which ' Em-
perors ' 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 hy 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 Constituigoes
are manifest in Vicente's plays — the Christmas representagoes,
the preaching of burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, pro-
fane litanies, parodies and paraphrases of the Lord's Prayer.
Like the Clercs de la Bazoche in France, he represents the drama
' Cf. Zurara, Cronica de D. Jodo I, 1899 ed., i. 116: Alii houve momos
de tao desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande prazer.
''■ Cancioneiro Geral, 1910 ed., i. 326.
' The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained these
customs. We read of Christmas autos in India and a representafam dos Rets
in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday centurios in Barros, 11. i. 5.
GIL VICENTE 123
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 ?-i529 ?) in Vicente's early pieces and the
explicit statement of Garcia de Resende in his Miscellania prove :
he speaks of the representagoes 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 Alofina Mendes was Os Mysterios da Virgem} The
introduction of Lucifer as Maioral do Inferno and Belial as his
meirinho " may have been derived from French mysteres ; 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 ^ is one of a long list of such wills (of which an example is
the mule's testament in the Cancioneiro Geral),^ 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
TuUy '. 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 Fe ends (i. 75) and the
French song (i. 92) Ay de la nohle ville de Paris ^ were no doubt
some fashionable courtier's latest acquisition, Vicente in literary
* i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the
thirteenth (?)-century El Misterio de los Reyes Magos.
^ Breve Summario da Historia de Deos (i. 309).
^ 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 '.
* Do macho rrugo de Luys Freyre estando pera niorrer. 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 (191 5).
^ 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).
124 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Bartolome de Torres Naharro probably, and without doubt
the Archpriest of Hita's Libra 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 [jiideos
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 viiii vil of King Alfonso X's
Cantigasde 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 Caji-
cioneiro,^ although the fact that it mentions some of his types
(as in the Arrenegos - 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
' For instance, the following lines and phrases of the Cancioneiro Geral :
Hirmee a tierras eslranas, Oo morte porque tardais, Vos soes 0 mesmo pafo,
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.
' They were pubhshed separately in the following century : Lisboa, 1649.
GIL VICENTE 125
writers in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). ^ The type of the
poor fidalgo or famishing escudeiro on which Vicente dwells so
fondly — we have the latter as Aires Rosado in Quem tern farelos?
and anonymous in the Farsa de Ines Pereira and 0 jfuiz da Beira ^
— is another instance of literary tradition combined with observa-
tion 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^ 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 Villasan-
dino, in the Cancioneiro Geral, and just before Vicente's death is
wittily described, as the raphanophagus purpuratus, by Clenardus, ^
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 mogo come on the scene in thoroughly Vicentian
guise : a vossafome de pam . . . meio tostdo gasto quinze dias ha ^ —
as he starves in the real life of the Peninsula to-day.^ In a sense
Gil Vicente no doubt borrowed widely ; he was no sorcerer to
make bricks without straw, and straw, like poets, is not manu-
factured : it has to be gathered in. But the homens de horn saber
who, as we know from the rubric to the Farsa de Ines Pereira,
doubted his originality must have been very superficial as well
as envious critics, for the bricks were essentially his own. Indeed,
> Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of Portugal
is chea de muitos sacerdotes says Dr. Joao de Barros in his Lihro 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, Sec, variously attributed to Ruy
de Pina and to Mestre Antonio, surgeon to King Joao 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.
2 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.
' Ep. n. $7. * Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.
* In the same play reappears Vicente's Spaniard : Castelhano muy fanfarrdo.
' According to the Arte de Fiirtar, decimas and sonnets were written on
the subject of a poor fidalgo who was in the habit of sending his mofo to two
shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each, since they would not trust him with
a pair.
126 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 mclhoro fago ben
E non 800 per aquesto ladron.
Besides the Auto da Festa we have 42 plays ^ : 12 farsas, 16 obras
de devagam, 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 (?I525) he says that he
had in hand, A Caga dos Segredos, was perhaps never finished, or
perhaps it was produced seven years later as the Auto da Lusi-
tania (1532). Others were probably lost as folhas volantes before
the edition of 1562 could collect them. Three at least, the Aiito da
Aderencia do Pago, Auto da Vida do Pago, and Jubileu de Amor or
Amores, were suppressed. ^ 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 com-
motion that, as he wrote, he ' seemed to be in mid-Saxony listen-
ing to Luther^ or in the horrors of the sack of Rome '.■* Yet in
* If theDiaiogo da Resurreifamhe counted separatelywehavcforty-fourinall.
2 Index of 1551. See C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Notas Vicentinas,
i (1912), p. 31. But here again the Auto da Vida do Pago might be the
Romagem de Aggravados.
' Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to Ropica Pnefma (May 25, 1531) : falam
tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero.
* 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).
GIL VICENTE 127
1533 impenitent, the incorrigible Vicente is pillorying the Court
priest, Frei Pago. 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,-*- a man of many gifts, with a passionate devotion to his
country. We have only to turn to the ringing Exhortagam 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, Mombaga,
Sofala, Cochim, Melinde.
Clearly the words to him are a sweet music. ^ 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 seroes. We may
instance 0 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
' 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.
^ 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 : Tern Ceita, T anger, Arzilla, &c., ordered rather for
the rhyme than for harmony.
128 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
families, the malicious catalogue raisonne of courtiers in the
Cortes de Jupiter, Branca Gil's comical litany in 0 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,^
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,^ 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 de.crees of the Church. ?Ie 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 vildos,^ bailes da Beira, chacotas, folias, alvoradas,
1 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.
' OS lavradores
Fazem os lilhos pa^aos,
Cedo nao ha de haver villaos :
Todos d' El Rei, todos d' El Rei (Farsa dos Almocreves).
* Cf. the bcUho vylam ou mourisco which cost Abul his gold chain in the
Cancioneiro Gercd, and Lopo de Almeida's third letter, from Naples : Mandaram
bailar men sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez 0 baylo mourisco e despots 0 vilao.
A century after Vicente the shepherds' dances are but a memory : as dattfas
e bailios antigamente (do tisados entre os pastores (Faria e Sousa, Europa Portu-
guesa, vol. iii, pt. 4).
GIL VICENTE 129
janeiras, lampas de S. Jodo} For he stood at the parting of the
ways. Desirous and capable of playing many parts, tinged un-
awares 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 ^ ; 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 amuse-
ment ; 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,^ 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 Calderon, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare,
' Cf. Ulysippo, iii. 6: aquellas mayas que punhao, aquellas lampas, aquellas
alvoradas, and D. Francisco de Portugal, Prisoens e Solturas de hiia Alma:
Ines [of Almada] moQa de cantaro, a gabadinha dos ganhois do Itigar, requestada
da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta nunca faltou Mayo florido em, dia de
Santiago nem ramos verdes com perinhas no de S. Joao a que os praticos daquella
noute chamao lampas.
" A morte d'El Rei D. Manoel.
' His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule contrasts favour-
ably with that of the Cancionciro Geral.
2362 I
130 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and Moliere. 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 Andre 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,^ but none can be placed on a level with those of Vicente.
One cannot say that he influenced Camoes or Ferreira de Vascon-
cellos 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, 0 Juiz da
Beira, the Comedia de Rubena among others). Lope de Vega
likewise, Calderon 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 ',^ and a Spaniard, Nicolas
Antonio, declaring that his works were written in prose and know-
ing nothing of a collected edition.^ It was with reasonable mis-
* 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.
* Flores de Espana, cap. 5.
' Bib. Nova, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as poetae comoediarum
suo tempore celehratissimi, 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
[cor%] poquisima causa (the accidental omission of the coyi led to the invention
poqiiisima 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
Scares Toscano, Parallelos de Principes (Evora, 1623), f. 159).
GIL VICENTE 131
givings that Vicente just before his death wrote : Livro men, 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.
I 2
§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 Camara's El siervo
lihre 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 languish-
ment ' the book of Saudades, which is always known (like the
first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first three words as Menina e
moga. Yet it is not really an imitative work, being, indeed, re-
markable for its unaffected sincerity, as the expression of a per-
sonal experience. Its passionate truth continues to delight many
readers,^ Almost all our information about Ribeiro's life is
derived from his writings, which are in part evidently auto-
biographical, 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 Torrao. 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 Alcntejo 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 P),^ and became secretary to King Joao III in 1524.
As a cavalleiro fidalgo he had his place at Court, as poet he con-
* Cf. H. Lopes de Mendon^a, O Salto Mortal, Act iii : Tanto gostaes d'este
livro ; £, por ser trisie ? — ti. por ser verdadeiro.
* Eclogue 5 (a qual dizem ser do mesmo aiUor), which is undoubtedly by
Ribeiro, refers to Coimbra in the lines : £ hmbrarnte os sinceiraes De Coimbra
oue me mata.
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 133
tributed to the Caiicioneiro Geral (15 16). 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.-^ 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 moga), 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. At Dens ! e u e ? 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. ^ 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
' 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 el se ha escrito son fdbulas
sin fundamento alguno, wrote Menendez y Pelayo in 1905.
* Fray Luis de Leon may have remembered this passage in De los Nombres
de Crista, Bk. 3 (1917 ed., t. i, p. 198; Bib. Aitt. Esp., t. 37, p. 182).
134 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
book while the dona unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the
history of two friends Narbindel and Bastiao. But it begins
with the love adventure of Lamentor and Bclisa. 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 ^ 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 nao se pode
contar nada ordenadamente porque desordenadamente acofitecem
ellas (cap. i). Ribeiro thus anticipates by four centuries the
theory enunciated in Spain by Azorin that a novel, like life,
should have no plot,^ 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),
* Nossos aniores contados por wm modo que os ndo entenderd ninguent,
Garrett, Urn Auto de Gil Vicente.
' La Voluntad, Barcelona., igo2. Camillo Castello Branco held similar views.
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 135
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,^ of dove
and nightingale — -which could only have been written by the
author of Part I.^ 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. Bim-
narder, 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 contem-
plation, 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 Tasbiao.
Narbindel, the second of the two knights, the two friends
de que e a nossa historia,^ 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 dofia who tells the story. ^
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
' The word cannot be translated exactly, but corresponds to the Greek
nodos, Latin desiderium, Catalan anyoranza, Galician morrina, German
Sehnsucht. Russian TOCKa (pron. taskd). It is the 'passion for which I can
find no name ' (Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft) .
" Menendez y Pelayo's strict division between the 'subjective' pt. i and
pt. 2 as externa y de aventuras is thus somewhat arbitrary.
* Pt. I, cap. 9 ; pt. 2, cap. 25.
* In pt. 2, cap. 9, this is forgotten : outras [cousas] que nao sdo escritas neste
livro, a slip which throws no light on the authorship.
136 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
continue!- 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.^ Perhaps on the whole we may con-
clude that Ribeiro, like Cervantes, by an exception wrote a valu-
able 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 ex-
press 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 estoii, filha (Pt. I, cap. 21)
and Pola ribeira de um rio (Pt. H, cap. 11).^ 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 remark-
able and cannot fail to strike the most careless reader. Before
Snr. Delfim Guimaraes began his spirited campaign in favour of
identification, the similarity had been recorded by D. Carolina
Michaelis de Vasconcellos in the Grundriss ^ : the extraordinary
1 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 moga is of 1557-8 : Primeira
&- seguda parte do liuro chantado as Saudades de Bernaldini Ribeiro com todas
suas obras. Treladado de seu propria original. Nouamenie impresso. 1557
(Euora. The date of the colophon is January 30, 1558). An introductory
note Aos lectores says : For am tantos os traduzidores deste liuro cS- os pareceres
em elle tam diuersos que nam he de marauilhar que na primeira impressam desta
historia se achassem tantas consas em contrario de como foram pello attctor delle
escriptas . . . Joy 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 ').
' Ribeiro, so far as we know, wrote no line of Spanish. Boscdn's romance
J usta fue mi perdicion Sind. the romance 6 Belerma have been wrongly ascribed
to him.
' p. 287 : . . . so ganz personlichem Stil, dass sie mit keinem andcren Dichter
vor Oder nach ihnen, wohl aber untereinander zu verwechseln wdren ; and p. 292 :
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 137
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 sandade 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 Cris-
TOVAM Falcao {c. 1512-53 }),'^ who was born at Portalegre, in
Alentejo, was made a mogo fidalgo in 1527, and is supposed to
have fallen in love with and secretly married D. Maria Brandao
(i. e. the Maria of the Trovas), whom her parents confined as
a punishment in the convent of Lorvao. At the risk of being
dubbed incorrigibly simplicista one must confess that the simul-
taneous 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 Falcao did not exist —
there were several — or did not fall in love with Maria Brandao —
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. ^ It is remark-
able that the very critics who represent Ribeiro in his novela as
hiding like a cuttle-fish in his own ink change their method when
Bernardim Ribeiro writes ganz im Stile des Falcao. 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 com-
pletely 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.'
' According to Dr. Theophilo Braga, he was born in 1 5 1 5 ; married in
1529 Maria Brandao (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 situafSo quasi similar (i. e. quasi
identica) of the two friends ; went to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1541 ;
spent the year 1 543 in Rome and returned to Portugal in the winter of 1 543-4 ;
was factor of the fortress of Arguim from 1545 to 1548 ; and died in 1577.
^ 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 illusdo de pretender identificar
em um mesmo poeta 0 apaixonado de Aonia e 0 de Maria (Obras, 191 5 ed.,
p. 10) or o intuito de converterem Christovam Falcao em um mytho (ibid., p. 42)
are beside the point.
138 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Falcao 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 Falcao, 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 Sa 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.^ 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 Falcao ; but the word Crisfal caught the
fancy, and those who learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcao
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 subj ect, yet he speaks with a quavering uncertainty :
it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam Falcao
becomes a fixed belief.^ 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^ may well be,
and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a few
' 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.
* In the 1559 ed. the words hua 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 Falcao.
* Decada 8, cap. 34 (1786 ed., p. 322).
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 139
scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, grammatici
certant and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept
asecond writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese litera-
ture 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 feehng
and power of expression they deserved their popularity ^ 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, Fran-
cisco DE Sa de Miranda [c. 1485-1558), the most famous of all
the Portuguese poets with the exception of Camoes 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 intro-
duction of the new school of poetry, the versos de medida nova, or
de arte ntaior, replacing the national trovas de medida velha (octo-
syllabic redondilhas) by the Italian hendecasyllab-ics : 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, Gongalo Mendez de Sa, 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
* The licenga of the 1632 edition says, Este livrinho . . . muitas vezes se im-
primio.
140 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 know-
ledge 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 ^ he must have realized that the metres
were not so foreign as many might think ; if he met Boscan on
his homeward journey his determination to become innovator or
restorer^ would be strengthened. King Joao III was on the throne,
and we are told in Miranda's earhest biography (i6i4)., which is
attributed with some probability to D. Gon^alo 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
» Cf. 1885 ed.. No. 109 :
Eu digo OS Proven9ais que inda se sente
O som das brandas rimas que entoaram.
Cf. Boscdn ap. Menendez y Pelayo, Antologia, torn, xiii (Juan Boscdn), p. 165:
En tiempo de Dante y tin poco antes florecieron los Proenzales, cuyas obras
por culpa de los tiempos andan en pocas manos. Menendez y Pelayo also
(ibid., p. 174) gives a reference by Faria e Sousa to King Dinis : El rey don
Dionis de Portugal nacid primero que el Dante tres 6 quatro anos y escrivid
ntucho deste propio ginero endecasilabo, coma consta de los manuscritos.
2 Cf. 1885 ed., No. 112:
I Como se perdieron
Entre nos el cantar, como el taner
Que tanto nombre a los pasados dieron ?
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 141
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 oiiavas in Portuguese, and the Fabula do Mon-
dego, 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 Sa 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 Aom^m^ de horn saber and turned the tables
on them in the Farsa de Ines 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 I532the 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 hadpreferred 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 with-
drawal, 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 Joao III developed.
142 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Andres (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 encoherto e moderado [A Egip-
ciaca, p. 3), and nearer the former than the latter date. Its
vigour and the promise of more ^ 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, disci-
plined 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
• Adcus leitor a mais ver,
Porque ainda haveis de ver mais (A Egipciaca, p. 181).
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 143
impressions. His evenings were spent with his friends at Cabe-
ceiras— true nodes 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 Boscan. Later gardening ^ 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, Montemor, Ferreira, D. Manuel
de Portugal, Bernardez. Cardinal Henrique was a steadfast
admirer of his work, and the young Prince Joao asked for a copy :
Ihas mandou pedir. This wide recognition after the first coldness ^
was some measure of comfort for the many sorrows of his last
years, the death of his eldest son Gongalo, killed in his teens
in Africa (1553), of his wife (1555), of that promising precocious
Prince Joao (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 Joao died, leaving an infant heir to a distracted king-
dom, 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 philo-
1 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 hua vinha E regar hua almoinha Em que
tenho mor prazer . . . Lavro, cavo quanta posso . . . O gingrar de meu caseiro, &c.
^ His complaint in the second elegy (1885 ed., No. 147, 1. 17) shows how far
he was in advance of his age in Portugal : Um vilancete brando ou seja
urn chiste, Letras as invengoes, motes as damas, Hua pregunta escura, esparsa
triste, Tudo bom, quern 0 nega ? Mas porque, Se alguem descobre mats, se
the resiste ?
144 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
sophy. In introducing the new measures ^ he used the Castilian
language as being the most natural and suitable until, but only
until, they should be thoroughly accHmatized. He wrote Cas-
tilian 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 Camoes,^ the founder of a school to which
Portuguese literature owes some of its chief glories. In Portu-
guese 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.' The poem on the life and conversion of
St. Mary of Egypt * (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 VEgyptienne) is stamped with the author's senten-
tious 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 wmjardim
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, techni-
cally so imperfect, 0 sol e 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
* 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 rhjmie), and ends with Petrarcan stanzas.
* Cf. the sonnet (1885 ed.. No. 126) Esprito que voastevnth Alma minhagentil.
' The autograph manuscript of this and of other poems, discovered in the
Lisbon Biblioteca Xacional by Snr. Delfim Guimaraes in 1908, has been
reproduced in facsimile by D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos in the
Boletim of the Lisbon Ac. das Sciencias, vol. v (i9i2),pp. 187-220. See infra,
p. 164.
* Leonel da Costa, the translator of Virgil and Terence, later wrote a poem
in seven cantos of redondilhas on the same subject : A Conversao miracnlosa
da felice egypcia penitente Santa Maria (1627).
I
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 145
to hail with joy the support of younger writers: Venid huenos
zagales ! Foremost in time among these poets of el verso largo was
D. Manuel de Portugal^ (1520 ?-i6o6), son of the first Condc
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), 2 who confessed that he owed everything to
Sa de Miranda and Antonio Ferreira.^ Born of a distinguished
family * at Ponte da Barca on the river Lima, he would ride
over to visit Sa de Miranda or send him letters in verse, and
he mourned his death in sonnet, letter, and eclogue with un-
affected 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 con-
vent, 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
' Faria e Sousa even makes him the first Portuguese poet to write hendeca-
syllabics, setting aside those of Sa de Miranda as unreadable : son incapaces
de ser leidos ! ( Varias Rimas, pt. ii, p. 162).
^ He was Mot^o da camara in 1566. He was appointed a knight of the
Order of Christ in 1 582. 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 pre-
mature 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 in-
dicate 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).
^ Carta 12 : Confesso dever tiido dquella rara Doutrina tua.
* 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.
2362 K
146 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
was always ready to exchange the mud of the streets and the
'bought meals' of Lisbon, with its penurious, importunate mop(75,*
for the dewy golden dawns, the hills and streams of Minho, entre
simples e huviildes 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 ^ the Portuguese expedition which ended disastrously
in aquelle funeral e turvo ^m— 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 cat {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 reis and was granted 500 cnizados (' in property and
goods ') in the same year. In 1593 his yearly pension was 40,000
reis, 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, stranas),^ and through them in the great
Italians. Dante's name does not occur in his letters, written in
tercetos,* but Tasso — 0 men Tasso — -Ariosto, Petrarca, and others
are mentioned.^ In form and sound some of his cauQoes are not
unworthy of Petrarca, but they arc more homely and bucolic,
' Bernardez' letters in verse contain many such references to everyday life,
e.g. the Lisbon negress selling fried fish in the Betcsga.
^ A confident sonnet by him in this capacity is extant : Pois armarse por
Christo nan duvida Sebastido.
^ O doce estillo teu tamo por giiia and Escrevo, lein 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.
* Carta 32 is an exception, and consists of seventy-two oitavas.
* He introduces Italian lines {Cartas 23, 27, 30) and wrote a sonnet in
Italian.
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 147
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 Vaniate 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 0 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 V arias 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 per-
fection 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 Camoes, 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 Camoes 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, 1. 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 cor-
rected, or rather, praised, and later Lope de Vega recognized
him as his master in the eclogue in preference to Garci Lasso.
Francisco Galvao {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 Lourengo Caminha, in
Poesias ineditas dos nossos insignes poetas Pedro da Costa Peres-
K 2
148 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
trello, coevo do grande Luis de Camoes, e Francisco Galvao (1791) :
0 til de puro amor Deos fonte pura. Innocencio da Silva vigor-
ously 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 Ohras 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 Joao n. 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 sandade 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 tao mal
caiitado. 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.-^ It is thus at its best
when it docs not attempt to be lyrical, for instance in his
excellent letters in tercetos. His odes are closely modelled on
those of Horace {0 men Horacio). Nor did he claim originality:
indeed, his plan of introducing certain new forms was a little too
deliberate for a great poet,^ and his best sonnet is a translation
from Petrarca. For bucolic poetry neither the grave doctor's
' Cf. Carta 4 : Foge inda 0 dia an muito diligente, although whether this is
due to his work or to the number of his friends is not clear.
* Com cujo [Miranda's] exemplo tneu pai, que entam estaua nos esttidos, pre-
tendeo com a variedade destes sens manifestar como a lingua Portugueza assi
em copia de palaiiras como em granidade de estylo a nenhuma he inferior (Miguel
Leite Ferreira, Preface to Poemas Lvsitanos, 1598).
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 149
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/ 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.^ 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 Portu-
guese. 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 hun-
dred 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. Camoes he must
have known, ^ and indeed refers to him satirically in his epi-
grams : he seems to have actively disliked so wayward a genius,
a man so unfitted to be a Court oflicial. Caminha himself was the
son of Joao Caminha, Chamberlain of the Duchess Isabel of
' 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.
^ 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 so nutica Ihe dezi em lingua alhea.
^ Thirteen times the same subject is treated by Camoes and Caminha,
sometimes exclusively by them (C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Ptro de Andrade
Caminha (1901), p. 55).
150 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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
Vigosa and died there thirteen years later. During the last ten
years of his life he held a tenga of two hundred milreis besides
other sources of income (he was Alcaide Mor of Celorico de
Basto, as his father had been of Villa Vigosa), so that his lot
compares handsomely with that of Camoes. 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 Camoes' divine
furia and had no compensating sympathy or insight or lyrical
charm. What would not Camoes have made of his chanty,
cantiga para galamear ! ^
In perfect contrast to the laboured verses of Andrade Caminha
is the spontaneous flow of the lines to the river Lega beginning
6 rio Lega, by which the Conde de Mattosinhos, Francisco
DE Sa 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 Mor of
Prince Joao, 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 Andre Falcao de Resende
(1527 ?-98), born at Evora, nephew of the antiquarian Andre
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. 0 fragil bem, 0 breve gosto humano) and
' Obras, ed. Priebsch, p. 361.
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 151
satires, Balthasar de EsxAgo (born in 1570), Canon of Viseu,
and his brother the antiquarian Caspar de EsxAgo, Canon of
Guimaraes and author of Varias Antigiiidades 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 Montemor [c. 1520-61), or hispanice Montemayor, who
was early driven by poverty from Montem6r 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 Montemor, with the exception of a few brief passages ^
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 accom-
panied the Infanta Juana as aposentador on the occasion of her
marriage with that promising patron of letters, the Infante Joao.
But even before the prince's death in 1554 Montemor 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.^ Despite his brief and restless life Montemor, 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 Joao 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 (Menendez y Pelayo calls it tersa,
suave, melodica, 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
1 All that he wrote in Portuguese is contained in two pages (389-91) of
Garcia Peres' Catdlogo (1890).
* Fray Bartolome Ponce, Primera Parte de la Clara Diana a lo divino
(1582 ?) : Me dijeron como un muy amigo suyo le habia miierto por ciertos
zelos 6 aniores (quoted by Ticknor, iii. 536, and by T. Braga (omitting
ciertos), Bernardim Ribeiro (1872), p. 80).
152 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 some-
what grudgingly given to Montemor's work as ' the first in its
kind '. In Portugal this, the eldest child of Bernardim Ribeiro's
Menina e moga, 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 Pahneirim de Inglaterra. The scene of his Lvsitania Trans-
formada (1617) is partly in Portugal (the banks of the river
Nabao and the seven hills of Thomar) and partly in India [no
nosso Oriente). Like Montemor's Diana, it is divided into prosas
and poems, and it is modelled on the Arcadia of Jacopo Sannaz-
zaro (1458-1530) — the mountains of Arcadia transformed into
Lusitania^ — which, however, each of its three books equals in
length. The prose setting, although devoid of thought, is melli-
fluous and clear, and the poems, which contain reminiscences
of Camoes, rival in the harmony and transparent fiow.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 Camoes, 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 Camoes' skill and of il soave
stilo e '/ dolce canto of Sannazzaro and Petrarca. He is, moreover,
less vague ^ than many writers of eclogues, and in singing his
own love story describes what his eyes have seen. It was, how-
ever, an aberration to favour the verso esdnixulo (Ariosto's
sdruccioli) (cf. Sannazzaro's Arcadia, Eel. i, 6, 8, 9, 12), a truly
Manueline adornment which other Portuguese poets unfortu-
nately copied as a new artifice.^
' Argumento desta obra.
* e.g. No mato o rosmaninho, a branca esteva,
No campo o lirio azul que o chao cubria.
' Que estes se chameni poetas ! rightly exclaims Frei Lucas de Santa Catha-
rina {Seram Politico (1704), p. 146) of those who revel in the use of esdruxulus.
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 153
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 nanija 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 Camoes, 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 Sa Sottomaior (or Souto Maior), the author of
Jar dim do Ceo (1607) and Riheiras 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 Prhnavera
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 Vigosa. 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
154 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and verse : A Primavera (1601) and its second and third parts
0 Pastor Peregrino (1608) and 0 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 descrip-
tions, 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 sent Jim 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 de-
scribed ; later the scene is transferred to the campos do Mondego
and the praias do Tejo. A breath of the sea is welcome in 0
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 Invenio (1619), between a fidalgo, D. Julio,
and four friends in the long winter evenings near Lisbon.
Suggested by Baldassare Castiglione's famous // Cortigiano, which
had been popularized in Spain by Boscan's excellent translation
(1534), this work, for which Gracian 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, attrac-
tive as the conversations which it records. Besides the beautiful
LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY 155
verses lavishly scattered through his prose works, Rodriguez Lobo
wrote a long epic on Nun' Alvarez in twenty cantos of oitavas :
0 Condestabre de Portugal D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira (1610)/
a volume of Eglogas (1605), in which he is a recognized master,
a volume of Romances (1596) wTitten, with two exceptions, in
Spanish,^ 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.^ This auto is followed by an Entremes do Poeta in
Portuguese. A poet, an obdurate Gongorist [Do Gongora live
sempre opinadas preferencias), recites a sonnet to a lady : Celicola
substancia procreada, which she does not understand, and a ra-
tinho, also at a loss {he para ?nim cousa grega), advises him to give
over his jargon for a more natural language :
Gerigongas no fallar,
Que amor nam he contrafeito.
But Rodriguez Lobo has no need of such attributions to justify
his great and enduring fame.
* The whole of Canto XIV is given to a vigorous account of the battle of
Aljubarrota, already described more vividly in fewer stanzas by Camoes.
Another poem in oitavas by Rodriguez Lobo, Historia da Arvore Triste, was
published in Fenix Renascida, vol. iv.
'^ 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 spon-
taneous charm as praticas humildes e os cuidados Ndo por arte fingidos e en-
feitados of the rusticos vaqiieiros, as he says in the prefatory sonnet. Many of
the words are pleasantly indigenous : milho, boroa, salgueiraes, rafeiro,
charneca, chocalho, abegoes, ovelheiros.
3 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 , Aciidame algum Cristom ou Sancristom. Laureano, the
shepherd, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, and Silvia says : Porque o que
sinto qtiisera Dizelo em bom Purtugiies. 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.^ 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 famosisswia tirada da Sancta Escrip-
tura chamada da Geragdo humana, onde se representam sentengas
muy catolicas & proueitosas pera todo christd : Feita por huu
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 (884 884)
is more monotonous than he would have used throughout.
The dramatis personae are angels, peasants,- 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 & justiga & mia [Misericordia]
' The disapproval of the popular drama is frequent in religious writers.
In the seventeenth century Antonio Vieira declared that xima 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 Jala ; livraria do
diabo (Tratt. Qvad. (1619), ff. 156, 157).
* One of them, Joao, lacrador, says : Vimos ver se he assi on nam De hua
arremedagam Que s'a ca d'arrertiedar . . . Ora nos dizei se he assi Que fazem
ho ay to cd.
THE DRAMA 157
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 miiy
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 P-gi) 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 up-
braiding 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} 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.
* e. g. Branca Janes says of her husband :
He hum grao comedor,
Destruidor da fazenda, &c.
158 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Chiado's plays and witty sayings, avisos para giiardar and
parvoices, appear to have made him extremely popular in
Lisbon, Cam5es 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 sur-
name earlier. His Pratica de Oito Figiiras (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 pagdo, 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 redon-
dilhas necessarily seem artificial because their author so often
challenges comparison with the more genuine skill of his master,
Gil Vicente. Chiado's Auto de Goiigalo Chamhao was reprinted
several times in the seventeenth century, but is now unknown.
Of his Auto da Natural Invengam {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 Joao HI, 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 tradi-
tions of chivalry and of mediaeval saints. We do not possess
his Trovas written on the death of D. Joao de Castro (1548),
and many of his plays. Auto da Paixam de Christo, Auto de El
Rei Salomdo, Auto da Feira da Ladra, have become rare or
unknown. One of the best of them, the Auto de Santo Aleixo,
THE DRAMA 159
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 admir-
able 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 0 Conselho para bem casar :
estou nesta Beira
tao 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 ^ are apparent in Anrique
Lopez' Cena Policiana or 0 Estvdante, in which a fidalgo and
a student " figure. The poor escudeiro and his fasting yno^o
are prominent in Jorge Pinto's Auto de Rodrigo e Mendo.
Spanish romances are quoted with great frequency, and Vicente's
En el mes erade Abril is parodied by the mogos.^ Indeed, their
knowledge of literature was become embarrassing since, when
his master's guest, invited to a dinner which did not exist,
1 Cf. este leo ja Celestina (Primeira Parte dos Avtos, &c. (1587),
f. 44).
^ The student's song on f. 44 v. and f . 46, Polifema mi postema Grande nial
he querer bem, parodies Lobeira's Leonoreta fin roseta.
' Ibid., f. 49.
i6o THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
recites some verses that he has made, Rodrigo has already read
them in Boscan and heard them sung in the street.^
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 alle-
gorical play in which Reason is vanquished by Sensuality ; Hera-
clitus mourns over her fall while Democritus laughs. A knight
in league with the Devil ^ 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 Irmdos, 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 mogo, who always
plays a prominent part, seems to be the only link in the plot, as
Duarte in the Autos dos Cantarinhos. These mogos, who show the
author's acquaintance with Gil Vicente ^ and Lazarillo de Tormes,^
* Primeira Parte dos Avtos, f. 57 :
Ro. Senhor, se me da licen9a,
Ja eu aquela trova li.
Os. Qual trova leste ? Ro. Essa sua,
Como a disse nua e crua.
Os. E onde a leste, vilao ?
Ro. Cuido, senor, que em Boscao,
E canta-se pela rua.
' 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.
' Duarte in the Auto dos Cantarinhos sleeps on an area (chest) like the
moQo in O Juiz da Beira. There are other echoes of Vicente, as the words
qiiem tern farelos ? (1871 ed., p. 65), the reference to Flerida e Dam Duardos
(p. 485), the line Qwe mdeousasdovilaos {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).
* 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.
THE DRAMA i6i
are quite unlike either Lazarillo or Aparigo. 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.^ 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 mogo
dresses up as a doutor to receive a simple fisherman from Alf ama
— and is generally more popular and natural than Prestes' plays.
SiMAO Machado [c. i^yo-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
Gongalo's admonition palrar como Pertigues.^ 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 0 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 Cabago and
Tome the goatherd in Alfea.
The Gospel story was dramatized by Frei Francisco Vaz
of Guimaraes in a long Auto da Paixdo. The oldest edition
we have is dated 1559, ^"^^ it has been often reprinted, with
* 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-
* 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).
2362 L
i62 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 viaior the play proceeds in redondilhas (over 2,000 lines).
Religious subjects have always been favourites with the Portu-
guese, 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 degolagdo dos Innocentes (1784) in seven scenes.^
Two plays, the Auto da Donzella da Torre and Auto de Dom
Andre, 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 Ladroes
(1603). The three shepherds, Rodrigo, Loirengo, and Sylvestre,
are awakened by an angel singing cousas de prego. They agree
that the song echoing over the hills is no earth-born music but
algum Charuhim 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
0 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),- in which the various frauds
' Composto por A . D. S. R. There is an earlier Acto Sacramental da Jornada
do Menino Deus para o Egypto (1746).
* 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
THE DRAMA 163
of the bakeresses, sardine-sellers, market-women, pastry-cooks,
and tavern-keepers of Lisbon are shown up by the devils Palur-
dam 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
Andre 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 wMth
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,^ 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 oftei. composed in a variety of metres, as the Acto
de S^" Genoveva, Princesa de Barbante (1735) by Balthasar
Luis da Fonseca, if its verse can be called metre,^ or the Comedia
famosa intitulada A Melhor Dita de Amor (1745) by Rodrigo
Antonio de Almeida,^ w^hich opens with a sonnet and proceeds
in redondilhas, hendecasyllables, and prose.
in the East, and still in vogue among the iniprovisatori of Basque villages,
between wine and water, boots and sandals, &c.
* i.e. No. 3 : De hvm almotacel borracho ; No. 5 : Dos conselhos de hvm letrado
(a ratinho figMxesin this, as a ratino figures in No. 17) ; No. 6 : Do negro mais
bem mandado (the escudeiro's mofo is here a negro who speaks in broken
Portuguese, e.g. Zesu) ; No. 11: Dous cegos cnganados; No. 13: Das padeiras
de Lisboa (besides the bakeresses there is a meleiro (honey-seller), an alheiro
with his brafos of leeks, an azeiteiro, &c.), and No. 25. The titles of these
plays sufficiently show their homely character.
* Of its author we only know that he was Ulysbonense. The play had
many editions : 1747, 1758, 1789, 1853.
' A priest of the same name wrote political and religious pamphlets in the
middle of the nineteenth century.
L2
i64 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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
Gentilkonime (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, Sa de Miranda had written
the two plays, Os Estrangeiros {c. 1528) and Os Vilhalpandos
(1538 ?),i 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- 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.^
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, a la Plautus, consists of the difficulties and differences
between father and son, and there is the aio, the vainglorious
soldier Briobris, nas armas um Rolddo, and the trudo 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
• The affronta de Dio is mentioned. It may have been written in the same
year as Ferreira de Vasconcellos' Eufrosina.
* In a letter sent with Os Vilhalpandos to the Infante Duarte he says
that ninguem que eu saiba had so written in Portuguese.
' A comedia qual he tal va, aldeaa e mal atauiada.
THE DRAMA 165
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 Sofonisha (15 15) 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 Vinganga de Agamemnon. The date of the first
edition is unknown ; the second appeared in 1555. Nor do we
know when Cleopatra was written,^ although it must have been
prior to Antonio Ferreira's classical tragedy acted at Coimbra,
Inis 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 Ines —
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
7iaceo. 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 Ines — 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 : Ines.
' Ah, woe is me ! what ill, what fearful ill dost thou announce } '
Chorus. ' It is thy death.' Ines. ' 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 pseudo-
nym Antonio da Silva eight years after Ferreira's death. This is
a slightly expanded Spanish translation, closely following the
1587 edition ^ of hies de Castro, which differs considerably from
' A passage in Aulegrafia (1555 ?) describes the dramatic death of Antony
as a new thing : parece-me que o estoii vendo (f. 129).
'■' Tragedia mvy sentida e elegante de Dona Ines de Castro . . Agora
i66 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
that of 1598. The Nise laureada which accompanied it is
perfectly insignificant. Like Miranda, Ferreira wrote, besides
one tragedy, two comedies, Bristo and 0 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 Joao he acknowledges his debt to previous plays. ^
In this comedy, written during some vacation days at Coimbra
University, the action is very primitive, but the braggart
Annibal and the charlatan Montalvao account for some farcical
scenes. His later play, 0 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 Camoes, 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 ReiSeleuco (1549 ?),
is slighter even than a Vicentian farce. It has a curious prologue
scene {V or spiel 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 Amphitrioes,
nouatnente acrescentada (31 ff. unnumbered). The one who published ^rs/ was
the most likely to be the thief. Saudade is translated soledad.
* Nesta Universidade . . . onde pouco antes se virani outras que a todas as dos
antigas ou levam ou ndo dam ventagem. Bristo was written por s6 sen desen-
fadamento em certos dias de ferias e ainda esses fiirtados ao estudo. It is
a comedia mixta, a mor parte della motoria.
THE DRAMA 167
in Portuguese and Spanish,^ is based on the Amphitruo of Plautus.
The predicaments resulting from the appearance of Jupiter as
Amphitriao'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
aiitos 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 Can-
cioneiro Geral to Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos [c. i5i5~
63.?), since the poems, alike in the new and the old style, inter-
spersed 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
Joao IH's reign - 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
firstfruit of his genius, written in his youth. ^ 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 *) 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 mogo da camara, and he
1 In El Ret Seleuco the doctor and in Filodemo the shepherd and bobo speak
Spanish.
^ Homem fidalgo w'" cortezdo cS^ discretto (Rangel Macedo, manuscript Nobi-
liario, in Lisbon Bib. Nac.) ; aquelle galante e elegante cortesao Portugnes
(licen^a of 1618 ed. of Ulysippo).
^ As primicias do men rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina, e foi
ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro.
* Eufrosina, ii. 5.
i68 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
continued as a Court official, first, perhaps, in the service of the
heir to the throne. Prince Joao, who died on January 2, 1554,
and then in that of King Sebastiao. In 1563 he was succeeded
as Secretary [escrivao do Tesouro) by Luis Vicente, probably son
of the poet Gil. The document^ which nominates his successor
by no means implies his death, since, as Menendez y Pelayo ^
observed, his name is unaccompanied by the formula que Dens
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.^
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 *
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 tourna-
ment (August 5, 1552) at Enxobregas (= Xabregas) in which the
ill-fated Prince Joao was the principal figure. Barbosa Machado
included among Ferreira de Vasconcellos' works Triunfos de
Sagramor em que se tratao os feitos dos Cavalleiros da Segunda
Tavola Redonda (Coimbra, 1554). A passage in the Memorial^
may have led to the belief that this was a second part of the
' Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and printed
in his Gil Vicente (1902), p. 114.
- Origenes de la Novela, vol. iii, p. ccxxx.
^ Sousa de Macedo, in Eva e Ave (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he lived in the
reign of King Joao and in the beginning of that of King Sebastian, which
confirms the date 1563 as that of his death.
♦ 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 Fuenterrabia. 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.
* 1867 fid., p. 21 : como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey Sagramor.
THE DRAMA 169
Memorial, of which the first known edition is that of Coimbra,
1567, but from the preface^ it appears that the Memorial is the
Triunfos. The title Triunfos de Sagramor may have been given to
an earlier edition,- 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 Joao.^ The editor of Ulysippo
in 1618 says that the Memorial had been printed at least twice
during the author's lifetime.* 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 pub-
lished 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.^ 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 mdos deuassa e falsa. As a novelty, invengam noua
fiesta 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.^ Ouevedo was loud in its praises, Lope de Vega
1 Nesta trasladafdo do iriumpho del Rey Sagramor, ibid., p. viii.
^ 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.
^ Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada, ibid., p. vii.
* A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressao emendou
0 Autor em sua vida (Aduertencia ao leitor).
5 Nicolas Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was often
far from accurate, says that there were several editions before that of 16 16,
probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page. The late Menendez
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 1 561 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.
" Joao de Barros, Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem (1540), wrote that
the Portuguese language parece nam consintir em si hiia tal obra como
Celestina (1785 ed., p. 222).
170 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
perhaps quoted it,^ 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. ^ 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 con-
struction, 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 con-
templativo ; D. Carlos, quick to anger but easily appeased ; the
' La Filoinena, 162 1 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was from the
1 56 1 edition, not that of 16 16, in which part of the sentence quoted is omitted,
as in the Spanish translation first published ten years later, in 163 1.
* They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of 1581
condemns todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam &■ torcetn as autori-
dades cS- sentettfas da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos, grafas, escarnios,
fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracfoes, stiperstifors, encantagoes cS- semelhantes
cousas. The rules were carried out most mechanically.
THE DRAMA 171
pedantic, unscrupulous Dr. Carrasco, whose conversation with
D. Carlos gives scope for a vigorous attack on the legal pro-
fession ; Silvia, who sacrifices her love and gives up to Eufrosina
her cousin's verses that she had so carefully kept ; the mogos
Andradeand 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 rnogas de Ho
and de cantaro, who fetch water or wash clothes in the Mondego
and metaphorically toss in a blanket Galindo, the rich D.
Tristao'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 ^
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 ^ — so that we have
an effective impression of her beauty. Besides Coimbra life we
obtain glimpses of that of the Court at Lisb.on 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 Constanga d'Ornellas,
the hypocritical beata,^ or, rather, that is the most original
' 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.
^ In Arraez, Dialogos (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women parecem . . .
velas de nao inchadas.
* In the first edition she had been called a heata. In that of 161 8 she
became merely a widow woman, dona viiwa, but the editor defeated the
172 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
part, since in the play as a whole there is a certain monotony
after Eiifrosina, and many of the proverbs are the same.-^
Excellent as the earlier play in its terse and idiomatic prose,^
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 iwvidades,
appears to have been conscious of this, since his third play,
Aulegrafia, written perhaps in 1555,^ 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 ',* 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 moga)
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 Constanga 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
censor's intentions by noting the change in the preface and declaring that
but for this she remained exactly the same as before.
' Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are conjurados contra 0 mundo.
■ Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love.
^ One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis (jNovem-
ber 27, 1555) still alive.
* Um largo disciirso da cortesania vulgar, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5 : pretende
mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaa. On f . 5 v. it is called esta selada
Portitguesa. 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 Boscdn and Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of
a Latin poet, &c.
I
THE DRAMA 173
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. ^
' O amor S portugues [Aulegrafia, f. 38 v.).
§4
Luis de Canioes
The plays of Luis de Camoes (1524? -8o) 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. Camoes 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 Sa 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 Renais-
sance. 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,^ and some of the intervening members of the
family had also won distinction, but Camoes' father, Simao Vaz de
Camoes, 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 Sa e Macedo, belonged to a well-known
family of Santarem.^ Whether he was born at Lisbon or Coimbra
* Seu quarto avb foi um Gallego nohre (Diogo Camacho, Jornada as Cortes
do Parnaso).
^ Dr. Wilhclm Storck, the author of the most elaborate life of Camoes in
existence, considered tliat the words quando vim da matcrna sepultiira in one
of Camoes' poems could only mean that his mother (Anna de Macedo) died
at his birth, and that he was survived by Annade Sa, 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. i, f. 2 : Como
N azianzeno diz . . . e tiimtdo prosiliens ad tumulum itertim contendo, em nacendo
saimos de hiia sepultura que foi as entranhas da mai e morrendo entramos
noutra. So Pinto, Imagem, pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 342 v. : tornar nu ao ventre
LUIS DE CAMOES 175
is still uncertain. His great-grandfather had settled at Coimbra.
That Camoes 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. I'he 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 favor es, and in this popularity he wrote
a large number of his exquisite redondilhas and also sonnets,
odes, eclogues, and the three autos. But Camoes had fallen
passionately in love with a lady-in-waiting of the queen, Catherina
de Athaide.^ 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
Camoes 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 Ret 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 mdo) 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
de sua mat, o qual 6 a sepultura da terra, and Bemardes, Nov. Flor, i. 122 :
A terra e nossa mde, de cujo tenebroso ventre que e a sepultura, &c.
' She may have been a distant relation of the poet's : the name was a com-
mon one, but Camoes was connected with the Gamas, and the wife and grand-
daughter of the first Conde deVidigueira were both named Catherina deAthaide.
I76* THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Camocs 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,^ 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 Sa 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 Joao may have encouraged him to hope for
better times, he meanwhile set himself to sample life as best
he might, associating with rowdy companions [valentdes], 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
Camoes was drawn into a quarrel with a Court official, Gon^alo
Borges, and wounded him with a sword-cut on the head. For
nearly nine months Camoes lay in prison, and then, Borges
having recovered and bearing no malice, he was pardoned ^
(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 5. 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 possidehis ossa mea,^
' According to Dr. Storck he was banished in 1 549, 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 nuist be
placed between 1546 and 1549.
' The important document containing his pardon is printed in Juromenha's
edition of his works, i. 166-7.
' This quotation is assigned to various other persons, as to Nuno da Cunha
when arranging that he should be buried at sea.
LUIS DE CAMOES 177
turned his back on the calumnies and intrigues of Lisbon. In
one of his finest elegies ^ 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 '^ — 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^ 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 Correa how difficult it was
for a private soldier to thrive there, and the position of a reinol
newly arrived from Portugal was precarious. Camoes 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 Mor 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 '.* He set sail in the
* O poeta Simonides fallando.
* Cf. Lus. i. 19, 43 ; ii. 20, 67 ; v. 19-22 ; vi. 70-9. ^ Desejei tanto.
* 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 ires annos vinte mil cruzados, suggests,
2362 M
178 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
spring of 1556, and after touching at Malacca, arrived at the
Molucca Islands, the most lawless region in India. Camoes
himself, according to Storck, was wounded about this time, but
in a fight at sea, not in one of the chronic broils at Tcrnate 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 settlors,
w^hose part was taken by the captain of the silver and silk ship
passing from Goa to China. On his authority Camoes was sent
to Goa, protesting against 0 injusto maiido, 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, Soholos rios que vam, which may owe
something to Vicente's admirable paraphrase of Psalm 1, the
cangao Com forga desusada, the oitavas Conio 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 Camoes addressed his first printed
poem, the ode in Orta's Coloquios (1563). Camoes' thoughts
must have now more than ever turned homeward. F.ortune had
danced tantalizingly before him, holding out hopes which broke
as glass in his hands whenever he attempted to seize them.-'
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.^ Sixteen
among other posts for himself, that of Provedor das Defuntos / porque com
qualquer destes ficarei mui bent remediado. To which the Desembargador
objects : he necessario que quern houver de servir esses cargos sejaleirado evisto
em umbos os Direitos.
• Vinde cd. It is advisable to give the first words of his poems without
the number until there is a definitive edition of his works.
* It is uncertain whether Camoes' ship was the Santa Clara or the Fe.
LUIS DE CAMOES 179
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
dc Athaidc had died in 1556 (although she may have continued to
receive Camoes' rapt devotion as the dead Beatrice that of Dante),
Prince Joao, 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 Camoes 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 apro-
veitou^, 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 reis'^ 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 [almoxa-
rifes). Tradition, to the indignation of reasonable historians,
loves to represent a faithful Javanese slave, who had accom-
panied Camoes to Europe, begging for his master in the streets
of Lisbon. Camoes 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,^ ended. He was
perhaps buried in a common grave with other victims of the
plague.* 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
• Barros, Decada, iii. ix. i.
2 It is about the sum (apart from any grant of pimento) which a common
soldier on active service might earn in India (see Barros, i. viii. 3 : 1,200
X 12 = 14,400) ; environ huit cents livres de notre monnoie d'aujourd'hui
(Voltaire). It would scarcely correspond to more than £s'^ of to-day.
* Lus. V. 45.
« Prophetically he had echoed (Lus. x. 23) the complaint of the historians
of India : Morrcr nos hospitaes em pobres leitos Os que ao Rei e d lei servem
de muro.
M 2
i8o THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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. Camoes
has often been called the prince of heroic poets, but it is note-
worthy 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 '.^ Os Ltisiadas rather than an epic is a great
lyrical hymn in praise of Portugal, with splendid episodes such
as the descriptions of the death of Ines, 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 Geriisalemme Liberaia 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 Geriisalemme Liberata. Camoes,
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 ^ like a bird in spring, from a Latin
treatise of the antiquarian Rescnde, from the historians Duarte
Galvao, Pina, Lopez, Barros, or Castanheda, or literally translat-
• Todos hasta oy, y principalmente en Castilla, tuvieron siempre a mi Maestre
por mayor en estes Poemas que en el Heroyco {Varias Rimas, Prologo, 2 vols.,
1685, 1689). Cf. the praise of his versos peqtienos in Severim de Faria, Vida,
p. 121.
^ See the important work by Dr. Rodrigues : As Pontes dos Lusiadas (1904-
191 3). Cf. Camoes' Vao os annos decendo (x. 9) and Leal Consclheiro (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 ^s Pontes dos Lusiadas
is also discussed the origin of the word Lusiads, as by D. Carolina Michaclis
de Vasconcellos in O Instituto, vol. Hi (1905), pp. 241-50: Lucius Andreas
Resendius Inventor da palavra Lusiadas. It was one of the Latin words
acclimatized by Camoes. It occurs in a Latin poem by Andre de Resende,
Vicentitis 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).
LUIS DE CAMOES i8i
ing lines of Virgil, as in his shorter poems he imitated Petrarca,
Garci Lasso, and Boscan. Tasso used the mot juste when in
a sonnet addressed to Camoes he called him dotto e buon Luigi?-
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 {Jd no largo oceano juivegavam, 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
Mombasa 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
' The word is undoubtedly dolio in the facsimile of the text given in Antonio
de Portugal de Faria, Torquato Tasso a Luiz de Camoes (Lcorne, 1898) although
there, as always, it has been transcribed as colto. Diogo Bernardez calls
Tasso culto, perhaps niistaking the reference in Garci Lasso, whose ciilto Taso
is not Torquato but Bernardo. Lope de Vega called Camoes diiino and
reserved docto for Corte Real.
i82 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Camoes' death,^ 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 murmiiradores maldizentes
had been silent. As early as 1641 we find a critic, Joao Soares
dc Brito (1611-64), defending Camoes against the charges of
plagiarizing Virgil and of improbabilities of time and place.^
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 ahsurde,
adds : ' Mais la poesie du style et I'imagination dans I'expres-
sion I'ont soutenu, de meme que les beautes de I'execution ont
place Paul Veronese parmi les grands peintres.'
In 1820 appeared Jose Agostinho de Macedo's Censura dos
Liisiadas, in which he noted with some asperity Camoes' erros
crassissimos. Prosaic lines, hyperbole, the use of the super-
natural, lack of proportion,^ absence of unity, and historical im-
probabilities arc the main heads of his indictment, and he quotes
Racine as to Camoes' ' icy style '. He also has much petty
detailed criticism, for he finds in Camoes a notavel falla de
grammatica. And Macedo was certainly right. Most of the
faults he attributes to Camoes do exist in the Lusiads. Macedo
himself could write more correctly. When he says that the line
Somos hum dos da ilha, Ihe tornou (i. 53) is unpoetical {nao tern
tinlura de poesia), we agree ; it is sheer prose. We can add other
instances : the line as que elle para si na cruz tomou (j. 7) is as
' His works are ja mttitas vezes impressas in 1594. In 163 1 Alvaro Ferrcira
de Vera speaks of twelve Portuguese editions (Breves Lovvores, i. 87).
^ Apologia em qvc dcfcnde, &c. (1641).
' The instance he gives is the long story of Magrifo e os Doze de Inglaterra
(vi), which he admits is in itself very fine.
LUIS DE CAMOES 183
unmusical as the rhyming of Heliogabalo, Sardanapalo (iii. 92),
or impossibil, terribil (iv. 54). Only Maccdo 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 ^ w^ho could obscure the fame of
Camoes. That could only be done by those whom Macedo calls
OS idolatras camoneanos. Lope de Vega - effusively professed to
place the Lusiads above the Aeneid and the Iliad, and Camoes'
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 Camoes 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 Ines de
Castro,^ in his eclogues and cangoes and elegies, in many of the
sonnets, and in the redoiidilhas, 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 Camoes : Camoes 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 inverse ■* — 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.
' One of the best instances of his pedantry is his comment on the
lines S^j^, nobre Lisboa, que no mundo Facilmente das ontras 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 !
^ Laurel de Apolo : Postrando Eneidas y venciendo Iliadas.
^ Even here some of the lines are a literal translation of Virgil, but if we
compare
Para o ceo crystalline alevantando
Com lagrimas os olhos piadosos,
Os olhos, porque as maos, &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.
* He is thus an exception to Macedo's axiom in the Motitn Liter ario that
Portuguese poets (most of whom, it must be admitted, are, like Byron,
children in thought) either have versos sem cousas or cousas sent versos.
i84 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 bio-
graphers, 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 '.^ An inch farther than he went in this direction, or
in that of furia grande e sonorosa, and esiilo grandiloqiw, 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.^
Couto records the theft of the Parnaso in which Camoes 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 Camoes' death, declared that he had added 200,
and, while upbraiding Diogo Bernardez for his robos, was himself
the thief. Camoes 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 (i860), 354 (1873). D. Carolina Michaelis de Vas-
concellos has already contributed much towards a critical
edition, and it is to be hoped that before long it may be possible
' Discursos politicos varios (1624), f. 117 : &- com esta obra ficou enriquccida
grandemente a lingua Portuguesa ; porque Ihe deu tnuitos termos nouos <&•
palanras bem achadas que depots ficdrao pcrfeitamcnte introdiicidas. Posto
que nesta parte ndo deixdrdo algus cscrtipulosos de o condenar, jtilgandolhe pot
defeito as palauras alatinadas que vsou no sen poema.
^ Cf. Fr. Manuel do Scpulchro, Rejlcxdo Espirilual (1669) : Nao ha duvida
que maior mudanfa 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 emluvvor (1540), says latinization had not yet begun :
se 0 nos usdratnos.
LUIS DE CAMOES 185
to read the genuine lyrics of Camoes in a complete edition by
themselves. 1 That would certainly cause him to be more widely
read abroad. It is perhaps inevitable that a comparison should
arise between Camoes and Petrarca (although it must be re-
membered 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 Camoes, he also keeps himself from the blemishes
which sometimes disfigure Camoes' work. Camoes' life was far
more varied, many-coloured as an Alentejan manta,^ 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 Camoes 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
cangdo Vinde cd are worth quoting because they triumphantly
display many of the noblest characteristics of his poetry :
No mais, cangao, no mais, que irei fallando,
Sem o sentir, mil annos ; e se acaso
Te culparem de larga e de pesada,
Nao pode ser, Ihe dize, limitada
A agoa do mar em tao pequeno vaso.
Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando
Co' gosto do louvor, mas explicando
Puras verdades ja por mi passadas :
Oxala 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
* The authorship of the fine sonnets Horas breves do meu contentamento
(attributed to Camoes, Bernardez, the Infante Luis, &c.) and Formoso Tejo
men, quarn dijferente (attributed to Camoes, Rodriguez Lobo, &c.) is still
under dispute.
* Filodemo, v. 3.
i86 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Petrarca and Camoes are representative of their countiy, 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 Camoes' friends were also lyric poets, but their
poems have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Correa,
compiled a cancioneiro of contemporary poems which still exists
in manuscript. A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already
been mentioned, but after Camoes' death the star of lyric poetry
waned and set, and the only compensation was a brilliant
noonday in the realm of prose. Camoes 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 Camoes
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 flow-ers 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 Camoes are something better than mud they never-
theless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration
which Portuguese history might have been expected to give.
Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente
Compoem grandes Iliadas,
wrote Diniz da Cruz {0 Hyssope, canto i). The epic-fever had
not abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The Madeira poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos
LUIS DE CAMOES 187
(f. 1770- 1824) alone wrote two : Zargueida (1806), Georgeida
(1819) ; and Jose 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.'^
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 Perdigam 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 Esperanga 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 Dill, or of the storm in canto 7 of the Naufragio. The former
poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. Joao de Mas-
carenhas and its relief by D. Joao 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
' Os Ratos da Inqiiisi^do, Preface, p. 97.
i88 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
included a generation beyond the nominal date of the poem
(1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578).
The hendecasyllablcs of the blank verse have an exceedingly
monotonous fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.^
The use of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an
inclination to multiply words without adding to the force of
the picture.^ 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.^ His Austriada, composed to commemorate
Don John of Austria's felicissima victoria ^ of Lcpanto, consists
of fifteen cantos in Spanish blank verse.
Luis Pereira Brandao, 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 deserprolixo — 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 descrip-
tion of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto 17) rouses the poet
from his implacable dullness. The defects of his style have
* e. g. D. Alvaro de Castro e D. Francisco Do Meneses, or hum grave Prudente
capitam.
^ e.g. valor, esfor^o c valentia; mar sereno e calmo; ahimdosa e larga vea',
a dura dcfensa rigitrosa ; afotitando e batendo. The line often consists of three
adjectives and a noun.
3 Between Corte Real's cruel mulesto 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 novis-
simo, que he o Inferno, was no doubt derived from Dante.
* These are the first words of the original title of the poem (1578).
LUTS DE CAMOES 189
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 Joao Ill's reign, Fran-
cisco DE Andrade {c. 1535-1614), brother of the great Frci
Thome dc Jesus, regarded his epic 0 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 straight-
forward 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 through-
out 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).
§5
The Historians
It was a proud saying of a Portuguese seiscentista that the
Portuguese discoveries silenced all other histories.^ 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 Mala-
bar, 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, Galvao, 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 accom-
panied 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 I4gy, filled with a primitive wonder,
which pointed the way to the historians of India. Indeed, it pro-
vided material for the first book of a writer who may perhaps be
called the first ^ historian of the discoveries ' enterprised by the
* Antonio Vieira, Historia do Futuro (171 8), p. 24: esia historia era 0
silencio de todas as historias.
''■ O primeiro Poriugues que na nossa lingoa as [fafanhas] resuscitei. Joao
de Barros, in his preface, makes a similar claim : foi 0 primeiro.
THE HISTORIANS 191
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 Descohrimento 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 sin-
cerity 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. ^ 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 Galvao, stand out the more clearly from the deliberate
absence of rhetoric.
LouRENgo 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,
' Cf. vi. 37, 38 ; vii. 77, 78 ; or vi. 100, where the ships bristling with the
enemy's arrows are likened to porcupines.
192 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
which was accordingly entrusted to his nephew Joao de Barros
(1496 ?-i57o).* But much earHer 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 Joao received a separate
establishment Barros became his page [fno^o da giiardaroiipa).
It was in this capacity, por cima das areas 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 afTecting, 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 hesita-
tion. One may also note that he regarded it merely as a parergon,
a preparation for his history, afim de apurar 0 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 sihi ut viveret he went as a fidalgo of the king's household
' 1496, the generally accepted year of his birth, is the calculation of Scverim
de Faria, followed by Barbosa Machado, Nicolas 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.
THE HISTORIANS 193
and with a pension over t\yenty-five times as large as that of
Camoes.^ 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, Under-
standing, Will, and Reason discuss their spiritual wares {merca-
doria espiritual), and incidentally the new heresies ; three short
works on the Portuguese language, a Dialogo da Vigiosa 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 excel-
lent Panegyricos (of the Infanta Maria and King Joao 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 ^ — 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.^ 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
tYiQsesta, 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
• 400,000 reis. He also obtained the privilege of trading with India free
from all taxes so as to clear a profit of 1,600,000 reis. Innocencio da Silva
adds ' yearly ' to this sum, mentioned by Severim de Faria. In any case
Barros' complaints of his poverty seem misplaced.
^ 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.
* According to Pero de Magalhaes de Gandavo [Dialogo em defensam da
lingua portvgvesa) Barros 'is in Venice preferred to Ptolemy '.
2362 N
194 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Casta-
nheda's, that is because he wrote not as an eyewitness ^ 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 com-
paring 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. 2 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 in-
artistic and monotonous.^ 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
' His account of the fleet leaving Lisbon (i.v. i) is that of an eyewitness.
' Mais trabalhamos no substancial da historia que no ampliar as tniudezas
que enfadam e nao deleitam[\. vii. 8). Cf. i. v. 10(1778 ed., p. 465) ; iii. Lx. 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 Correa
and Lopez de Castanheda : pode parecer a algua pessoa [e. g. his friend Barros]
que em historia grave nam eram necessarias estas miudezas {Cron. do Pr. D. Joam,
cap. cii).
' e.g. the following mortar of conjunctions between the stones on p. 335 of
Decada 11 (1777 ed.) opened at hazard : nas quaes . . . que . . . que . . . qual . . .
que . . . como . . . que . . . que . . . a qual . . . cujos . . . que . . . que . . . que . . .
posto que . . . como . . . porque . . . que.
I
THE HISTORIANS 195
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 Joao Baptista
Lavanha (11625) '^i 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 Geo-
graphy 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.^ Couto then went to seek his fortune in
India, andthere as soldier, trader, official (in 1571 hewas in charge
of the stores at Goa),- 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 Mor 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 ^ and had been no doubt deeply im-
' E sendo en mo^o servindo a El Rey D. Joao na guardaroupa {Dec. iv. iii. 8).
In Dec. viT. viii. i he speaks of having served Joao III for two years as mogo
da camara (1555-7). ^^ 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).
' 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.
' Cf. Dec. IV. iii. 8 (1778 ed. p. 234).
N 2
196 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pressed by the vivid account of the Scpulvcda shipwreck.* 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 madqji speech on
behalf of the City Councillors, as at the inauguration of the por-
trait 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 Am-
bassador 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. ^ 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 semjustigas,
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. ^ He can, however, write excellent prose,
and he gives more of graphic detail* and individual sayings and
anecdotes than his predecessor. Nor is he by any means an
' He himself describes with great detail and pathos the wrecks of the ships
N. Senhora da Barca (vii. viii. i), Garga (vii. viii. 12), 5. Paulo (vii. ix. 16),
Santiago (\'. vii. i), as well as that of Sepulveda (Dec. vi. ix. 21, 22). In his
account of the loss of the S. Thomd (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 Mendoga from her child is one of the
most tantalizing and touching incidents ever penned.
* Ndo particularizo ninguem {Dec. xii. i. 7).
* What he lacks in gravidade (cf. Dec. x. x. 14) — he is quite ready to admit
that he writes toscamente (vit. iii. 3), singelamente, sent 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 mats 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 (Com-
mentarios) em estilo excellente e grave, e fox 0 mclhor de todos, porqne escreveo
como testemtinha 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.
* As the fleets grew, long catalogues of the captains' names were perhaps
THE HISTORIANS 197
ignorant chronicler. A poct^ 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 inequahty 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, ^"^^ 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'sspirit 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 manu-
script 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 Camoes, Cristovam Falcao,
inevitable. They are certainly out of place in a biography, but Couto's
Vida de D. Paulo de Lima Percira (1765) is really a collection of those passages
from the Decadas which bear on the life of Couto's old friend, 3. 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.
* His biographer, Manuel Severim de Faria, says that he left (in manu-
script) ' a large volume of elegies, eclogues, songs, sonnets and glosses '
(Barbosa Machado calls them Poesias V arias), and that he wrote a commentary
on the first five books of the Lusiads. Carminibus quoque pangendis nun
infelicitcr vacavit, says N. Antonio.
198 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and Garcia de Rescnde are mentioned. Finally Decada
xi (1588-97), which, writing to King Philip HI 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 13" da
Historia da India. The manuscript of his Dialogodo Soldado Pratico
na India (written before the fourth Decada) was also stolen.
The indomitable Couto re-wrote it and both versions have sur-
vived. 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 sufter 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 Correa {c. 1495-C. 1565) claims, like Fernam Lopez de
Castanheda and Barros, to have been the first historian of the
Portuguese in the East.^ He went to India sixteen years before
Lopez de Castanheda and no doubt soon began - 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 Correa entered the
king's service as mo^o da camara,^ and six years later went to
India, where he became one of the six or seven secretaries of
Afonso de Albuquerque.* They were young men carefully
chosen by the Governor from among those who had been brought
* Lendas, iii. 7 : nom ouve cdguem que tomasse por gloria escrever e cronizar
o descohrimento da India. In an earlier passage (i. 3) he refers to narratives
of travellers such as that of Duarte Barbosa.
* He says (Lendas, ii. 5) : qtiando comecei esta ociipafdo de escrever as cousas
da India erdo ellas (do gostosas, per suas bondades, que dava muito contentamento
ouvilas recontar.
' Lenda, iii. 438.
* 1-ui hum dos sens escrivdes que com elle andei tres annos (ii. 46). Elsewhere
(i. 2) he says that he went to India mo^o de pouca idade sixteen years after
the discovery of India. 15 12 was fourteen years after the actual discovery
(1498), but might be counted the sixteenth year from 1497.
THE HISTORIANS ig^
up in the palace and to whom he felt he could entrust his secrets.*
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 wath ink and paper. Thus Correa had occasion
vividly to describe Aden in 15 13, and helped with his own hands
to build the fortress of Ormuz in 1515. After Albuquerque's
death Correa seems to have continued to fight and write. In
1526 he was appointed to the factory of Sofala,- and in the
following year the nw(o da camara has become a cavaleiro and is
employed at the customs house at Cochin.^ 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 uni men catur), went with the
Governor of India's fleet to the attack of Diu. Later he was
commissioned by the Viceroy, D, Joao de Castro, to furnish
lifesize drawings^ 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 ^ embittered his last years, and if his spoken
comments were as incisive as the indictment of the Governors
and Captains contained in the Lendas^ 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
Coronica dos Feytos da India,'^ originally completed in i55i-^
^ Homcns da criafdo d'El Rei, says Correa with some pride, de que cunfias.se
seus segredos (ii. 46).
- Lima Felner, Noticia preliminar {Lendas, i, p. xi).
* Ibid. ; but Correa says (Lendas, ii. 891) that he held this post at Cochin
{almoxarife do almazeni da Ribeira) in 1525.
* Por ter entendimento em debuxar. The portraits, drawn by Correa and
painted by ' a native painter ' so cleverly that you could recognize the
originals (iv. 597), as well as Correa's very curious drawings of Aden and other
cities, are reproduced in the 1858-66 edition of the Lendas.
* Passa de cincoenta annos [i.e. 1512-63] que ando no rodizio d'este servi(o,
aieijado de feridas com que tret d cava sem satisfagao.
« Cf. ii. 608, 752 ; iii. 437 ; iv. 338, 537-8, 567-8, 665, 669, 730-1.
' He so styles his work in the preface of Lenda iv.
* He is writing, he says, in 1561 {Lendas, i. 265) ; 1561 again (i. 995 : ndo
cessando cste trabalho ate este anno) ; 1563 (iii. 438) ; i55o(iv.25); 1551 (iv. 732).
200 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 recollec-
tions of others, of Vasco da Gama's companions, and the subse-
quent events arc drawn largely from Correa'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.^ 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.^ If Albuquerque's
words are still striking w^hen 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 Correa, and
many years afterwards some of the phrases remained in his
memory.^ 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 ^old, the
narrow dusty streets in shadow in the midday calma — must,
one thinks, be that of an eyewitness ; yet Correa was not in
India at the time. The explanation is that it was largely the
account of Albuquerque.^
Correa 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. ^ Whole pages have
scarcely an adjective, and this gives his narrative clearness and
' 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.
^ Escrcvia com die as cartas pcra El Rei (ii. 172).
* Albuquerque in one of his letters (No. 95) says that in Portugal a man is
hanged for stealing Alcntejan manias. Correa repeats this phrase twice
{Lendas, ii. 752 ; iv. 731).
* Cf. ii. 247 : Ell ouvi dizer a Afonso d' Albuquerque.
^ Nesie mcu trabalho ndo tomci scntido scnao escrever os feilos dus Portugueses
e nada das terras (iii. 66). Cf. i. 651, 815 ; ii. 222.
THE HISTORIANS 201
fapidity, yet he is careless of style. It has been called redundant
and verbose, but that is true mainly of the prefaces, which show
that Correa 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 '.^
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 ^ and an intense atmo-
sphere 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. Correa
was aware that it was dangerous to write history in India
(iii. 9) — periculosae plenuyyi opus aleae — but although he had
no intention of immediately publishing it ^ he evidently expected
some recognition of his work. The appearance of Lopez dc
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 Gover-
nor 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
Comnientarios 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
^ Latino Coelho, Fernao de Magcdhaes in Archivo Pittoresco, vi (1863), p. 170
et seq.
■ Correa 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 Alimad) and sold it for 20 xarafins (about £7), and (iii. 281) helped to dis-
pose of stolen goods in 1528 at Cochin.
* Protestando d'eni mens dias esta lenda notn mostrar a ncnhiini (i. 3).
202 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
written by Albuquerque to King Manuel.^ The author seems
to have reahzed that Albuquerque's words and deeds speak
sufficiently for themselves, but the reflection produced is some-
what pale.
The gallant and chivalrous apostle of the Moluccas, Antonio
Galvam {c. I490?-i557), 'as rich in valour and knowledge as
poor in fortune ',- printed nothing in his lifetime but his manu-
scripts were handed over after his death to Damiao de Goes as
Cronista Mor.^ 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. 13 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 mock-
ing parrots, fires made of earth ' as in Flanders '. Goes, who had
certainly handled the manuscript, may have added this com-
parison ; 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,
* 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 repre-
sented only by half a dozen sentences (1774 ed., iv. 255).
* A quelle tdo pouco venturoso como scienie &- valeroso Antonio GcUvdo (Joao
Pinto Ribeyro, Preferencia das Letras as 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.
' Tratado. Prologo [3 £f.]. Em este tractado con noue oil dez liuros das
coiisas de Maluco &• da India que me 0 Cardeal mandou dar a Damiam de Goes.
THE HISTORIANS 203
which the gratelul 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 dc
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 strik-
ing 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 Agos-
TiNHO Gavy de Mendonqa : Historia do famoso cerco qve 0
Xarife pos a 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 Joao, published a Commentario do Cerco de Goa e Chaul
no anno MDLXX (1572). Events in the Moluccas were briefly
recorded in an Informagam 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 Relagani
verdadeira (1557) of Soto's discovery of Florida was akeen observer
and related what he saw in direct language. His publisher,
Andre 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 Santarcm, who accompanied him on his
fatal expedition. This Historia (1564) was published by Joao 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 content a conquista do
204 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
reyno de Pegu, nearly a century after the original edition, Breve
Discvrso en qve se cventa, &c. (1617). The Jornada do Mara-
nhao 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 Collecgdo de Noticias para a Historia e
Geographia das Nagoes Ultramarinas.^ The second volume of
this collection contains several re- translations of Navegagoes
(by Thome 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 Descohrimento do Grdo Cathay 0 (1626) by the Jesuit
Antonio de Andrade [c. 1580-1634), or the Relagam of the
Jesuit Alvaro Semmedo (1585 ?-i658) 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 Magalhaes de Gandavo, of Braga, whose Regras
(1574) ran into three editions before the end of the century, de-
scribed Brazil and its discovery in two short works : Historia da
prouincia Sdcta^ Cruz (1576) and Tratado da terra do. Brazil first
published in 1826 in the Collecgdo de Noticias. This collection
also prints works of the following century, such as the Fatalidade
historica da Ilha de Ceildo ^ by Captain Joao Ribeiro, who had
served the king as a soldier for eighteen years in the preciosa
ilha de Ceildo. His manuscript, written in 1685, was translated
and published in French (1701) 135 years before it was printed in
Portuguese. Gandavo's Historia (48 if.), his first work (premicias),
was introduced by tercetos and a sonnet of Luis de Camocs, 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 ^ (1595-1675) won considerable
fame as, an historian and prose-writer in his Cronica da Com-
» Vol. i. No. 4. - Vol. V, No. I (1836).
' The name would seem to have been really Tillison, i.e. son of John Tilly,
who married a granddaughter of Moraes, the author of Palmcirim.
THE HISTORIANS 205
panhia de lesus (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 loam (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 Tygre 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,^ but their value for us is in this very sim-
plicity 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) —
' He speaks of their lingua alqiianto negletia e lo stile molto semplice,
naturale e piano, la qual cosa deveva ahparire un' anomalia a confronto della
lingua ptirgata 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 MENDE^ (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).
2o6 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the Tratado descriptivo do Brasil em i^Sy, which its modern
editor, F. A. de Varnhagcn, described in a moment of enthu-
siasm as ' the most admirable of all the works of the Portu-
guese 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
Cyrcne [c. 1565-1628), in three parts, describing the archbishop's
life and visits in his diocese ; and the Discvrso da Jornada de
D. Gongalo Covtinho a villa de Mazagam e sev governo nella (1629).
The writer — ^the admirer of Camoes and alleged author of the 1614
life of Sa 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 Saiidades da Terra (1873) of Caspar 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 subse-
quent 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 Joao de Barros was too vast to be executed
by one man and the European part was never written. Andre
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 ^tyle, were eclipsed by the appearance
three years later of the first part of the Monarchia Lusitana
THE HISTORIANS 207
(1597). Its author, a young Cistercian monk of Alcobaga, 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.^
In a word he failed to make good use of the incomparable
material which the library of Alcobaga afforded. His was a mis-
directed erudition, and we would willingly exchange the T<now-
ledge 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,^ 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).^ 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,
^ Nicolas Antonio dwells more than once on the invisibility of Brito's
authorities {Bib. Vet. i. 65, 453; ii. 374): Nos de invisis hactenus censere
ahstinemus. Antonio Brandao, 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. Scares {Thea-
trum) remarks epigrammatically : fama est eloquentiam minus desiderari quam
fidem.
2 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.
^ His Elogios dos Reis de Portugal appeared in 1603.
2o8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
with contemporary events in Portugal.^ It was to be followed
by two other parts, but Brito's early death at his native Almeida
on his way back to Alcobaga from Spain, a year after he had
been appointed Cronista Mor (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 Espaiia (1592) he knew and quoted, is by com-
parison 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 Brandao (1584-1637), to whose
sincerity and skill Herculano paid tribute, appeared in 1632
and carried it down to the year 1279. Brandao had spent nearly
ten years collecting and sifting documentary evidence for his
work and is a far better historian than Brito, although in style
lie is not his equal. His nephew Frei Francisco Brandao
(1601-80), vir modestus, diligens et eruditus, succeeded Frei
Antonio as Cronista Mor 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 publi-
cation 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 Brandao — 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 Joao HI should pass over
events in the East as already fully related, and in Damiao de
' ff. 248 V.-249 V. give a very curious description of Ireland : tarn remota
de nossa conversagdo 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.
THE HISTORIANS 209
Goes' Cronica do Felicissimo Rey Dom Emanvel and Francisco
de Andrade's Cronica de Dom Jodo 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
Joao Ill'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 reipuhlicae
Christianae regiones.^ Osorio, whose father, like Lopez de Casta-
nheda'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 '.- 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. Sebastido wrote the history of his life and reign and happily
• To Spanish readers they were presented later by Faria e Sousa in his Asia.
^ Flores de Espana (1631), f. 248. Arias Montano refers to him as a close
friend {Doc. inid. t. xli. p. 386).
2362 O
210 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 nihnoso e sever 0
Cardinal King Henry. It was written in 1586/ and, although
anonymous, is ascribed with some probability to the Jesuit Padre
Alvaro Lobo (1551-1608).
The Jornada de Africa (1607) by Jeronimo de Mendo^a, 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 DelV unione del regno di Portogallo alia corona di Castiglia,
but Mendoga 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
Joao Nunez, besides genealogical and legal works, Leis extrava-
gantes (1560, 1569), wrote two valuable treatises on the Portu-
guese language and an interesting Descripgao 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 Rets de Portugal (1600) contain
those from Count Henry to King Fernando, and the Cronicas
del Rey Dom loam de gloriosa memoria those of Kings
* See Cronica, p. 46.
THE HISTORIANS 211
Joao I, Duarte, and Afonso V. Shorn of the individuality
of the early chroniclers, they yet retain much of interest, and
Nunez de Learn 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 Accnheiro), 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 re-
taining all that was jejune without preserving their picturesque-
ness in his Cronicas dos Senhores Reis de Portugal.^
More interesting personally than as historian, the humanist
Damiao de Goes (1502-74 2) was one of the most accomplished
men of his time,^ 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'^
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 con-
versed with all the kings, princes, nobles and peoples of Christen-
* Ten chronicles from Afonso I to Joao III. He says (1824 ed., p. 12) :
Estam em este presente volliime recopiladas, sumadas, abreviadas, todas as
lemhrangas dos Reys de Portugal das caroniquas velhas e novas sent mudar
sustancia da verdade.
^ Dise q hee de jdade de setenta anos, has faz e este feu'" qve (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-Pyrenees.
See P. A. de Azevedo, Alguns nomes do departamento dos Baixos Pirineos que
teem correspondencia em Portugal CBoletim 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.).
* See Marques de Montebello, Vida de Manoel Machado de Azevedo (1660),
p. 3, ap. J. de Vasconcellos, Os Musicos Portugueses, i. 268.
* 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.
02
212 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
dom '.* He made the acquaintance of Montaigne's auhergistes
allemands, ' glorieux, coleres et ivrognes ', turned aside to visit
Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg,^ and was for several
months the guest of Erasmus at Freiburg. In Italy he lived with
Cardinal Sadolctto 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,^ Luis Vives ad-
dressed affectionate letters to mi Damiane, Albrecht Diirer
painted his portrait, Glarcanus in his Dodecachordon included
music of his composition.*
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 mens ille in Academiam Louva-
niensem 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.^ 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 ^ to Portugal, and three
years later was entrusted with Fernam Lopez' old post, the
» Antonio Galvam, Tratado, f. 59 v. He visited the Courts of Charles V,
Fran9ois I, Henry VHI, and Pope Paul IH. Nicolas Antonio says of him
[Bib. Nova) : niorum quippe suavitate atque elegantia, ergaque doctos liberalitate
insinuabat se in cuiusque animum qui Musarum commercio frueretur, facile
atque alte.
^ 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 quota-
tions. Next day he had dinner (jantar) with Luther and Melanchthon and
afterwards returned to Luther's house, where the latter's wife regaled theni
with a dessert of nuts and apples. Thence he went to Melanchthon's house
and found his wife spinning, shabbily dressed.
^ Venisti nimium usque et usque et usque
Expectate tuis.
* Lib. Jll, pp. 264, 265 : Aliud Aeolij Modi exemplu auihore D. Damiano
a Goes Lusitano.
6 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.
» In his trial he says that threeof them became monks : mcteo tresfilhosfrades.
THE HISTORIANS 213
Keepership of the Archives. He lived in the Pagos d'Alcagova
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
214 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
— 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 loam (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 experi-
ence. The Cronica do Principe was written some months before
that of King Manuel. The latter was a difficult undertaking,^
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
Damiao de Goes. After eight years the four parts were ready for
press,'- but the difficulties were not yet over, for certain chapters
met with strong disapproval at Court ^ 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 publi-
cation of the work as a whole was not completed before 1567.
^ Cf . Prologo : em que nmitos, conio em cousa desesperada, se nam atreveram
poer a mdo. One of these ' many ' was Goes' rival, the eloquent Bishop
Antonio Pinheiro.
^ The fourth part was approved on January 2, 1566.
^ For the grounds of this disapproval see Critica contcmporanen a 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.
THE HISTORIANS 215
Scarcely less celebrated than Goes, the archaeologist Lucio
Andre de Resende (1493 ?-i573),^ friend of Goes, Clcnardus,
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 casus 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 ^ and was held in high esteem by the Emperor Charles V
and by King Joao 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 com-
posed in Portuguese a ' brief but learned ' Historia da Antiguidade
da Cidade de Evora (1553). In his Vida do Infante Dom Duarte
(1789)^ he did not write the ' very copious history ' which Paiva
de Andrade ^ 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 inscrip-
tion. 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 suc-
ceeded his uncle as Canon (1608) and Precentor (1609) of Evora
Cathedral and resigned in favour of his nephew Manuel de Farip
Severim as Canon in 1633 and Precentor in 1642. Living in ancient
» His friend Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos (1523-99), Canon of Evora,
says that he died in 1575 aet. 80 (so the Theatrum : obiit octogenaritts A.C.
1575). Probably the 5 is an error or misprint for 3, and the 80 correct.
' Luis de Sousa (Hist. S. Dom., Pt. I, Bk. i, cap. 2) praises his juizo e curiosi-
dade 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.
3 In a similar though more elaborate work (88 ff.) Frei Nicolau Diaz (ti596)
told the life and death of Princess Joana (fMay 1490) : Vida da Serenissima
Princesa Dona Joana, Filha del Rey Dom Afonso 0 Quinto de Portugal (1585).
* Casamento Perfeyto, 2a ed. (1726), p. 61.
2i6 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Evora when the memory of Resende was still fresh, this anti-
quary of the pale face and blue eyes, ' store-house of all the
treasures of the past ',^ with his medals and statues and choice
library of rare books, soon rivalled Rescnde's fame. His most
important works are Discursos varios politicos (1624) containing
four essays and the lives of Barros, Camoes, 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 accom-
plished, 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 inde-
pendent 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 Joao 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 try-
ing to ' make ' history but is simply describing, as in his account
of the various provinces of Portugal.^ 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 mas 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 Portu-
guese consider him to belong to Spanish literature.
* Monarchia Lusitana, Pt. V, Bk. xvii, cap. 5. Bernardo de Brito also
praises him, and Frei Antonio Brandao acknowledges his debt to him. Faria
e Sousa says that he received from him cantidad de papelcs.
* 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
Ouinhentista 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, mer-
chants, 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).i The earliest
and most celebrated is the Relagam da mui notavel perda do galeao
grande S. Jodo [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 (i554), the Conceigao
(1555), the S. Paulo (1561), of D. Jorge de Albuquerque (1565),
» For a full list see Innocencio da Silva, Dice. Bihliog. 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 nine-
teenth century. Some of the original chap-books survive, with a fine woodcut
of a tossing galleon on the title-page : Historia da miii notavel perda do galeam
grande S. Joam (1554 ?) ; Relagam do lastimozo navfragio da nao Conceifani
chamada Algaravia a Nova (1555) ; Naufragio da nao Santo Alberto (1597) '•
Memoravel relafam da perda da nao Conceigam (1627). The RelaQatn da viagem
do galeao Sao Lovrenfo e sua perdigdo (1651) is by the Jesuit Antonio Francisco
Cardim (i 596-1659) ; the Relagam sumaria da viagem que fez Ferndo d' Alvarez
Cabral, by Manuel Mesquita Perestrello, is an account of the wreck of the fine
ship 5. Bento, which had taken Camoes to India.
2i8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and others, are scarcely less moving. The ships, of i,ooo 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,* ii. 4 by Joao Baptista
Lavanha ^). 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 — quehrando 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 Joao de Barros' passion for
knowledge, especially geographical knowledge, was the first cause '
of the learned and instructive Chorographia (1561) of his nephew
' In this Relafam do naufragio da nao S. Thome, written in 161 1, twenty-two
years after the event, he refers several times to his Decadas.
- Naufragio da nao S. Alberto (1593). It is a summary of a largo cartapacio
of the pilot.
' pedirme meu tio loam de Barros que Ihe screucsse miiito particularmente todos
OS lugares desie meu caminho.
QUINHENTISTA PROSE 219
Caspar Barreiros (ti574), 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 relagdo do que viu e ouviu no Oriente (15 16)
by DuARTE Barbosa of Lisbon, brother-in-law of Fernam de
Magalhaes, exists in a Portuguese manuscript in the Public
Library of Oporto, but was first published in Portuguese in
1 82 1 as a translation from the Italian Lihro 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 ?-r. 1540) set out with Duarte Galvam, first
Portuguese Ambassador to Abyssinia, in 15 15, 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 straight-
forward notes every detail of the country and its inhabitants
with minuteness and accuracy. He considered himself old ^
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 Informagam das terras do Preste Joam
(1540), it was soon translated into almost every language of
' Verd. Inf., p. i lo : nam era pera velhos.
220 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Europe.^ Frei Caspar da Cruz of Evora, missionary in China,
returned to Portugal in 1569, and in the same year began his
Tractado em que se cotam muito por esteso as cousas da China
(1570). He calls it a singella narragam, but it contains valuable
information about China, nor did the author neglect his style.
The Dominican Frei Joao dos Santos {c. 1550 -c. 1625 P)^
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
yosaes 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 wdth an
equal wealth of curious detail in the Itinerario (1565) of Mestre
Martim Afonso, surgeon to the Viceroy, Conde de Redondo,^
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
' This seems to have aroused the resentment of Barros {Asia, iii. iv. 3).
The author, he says, had no learning. In 11. iii. 4 he again refers to him
slightingly as ' a certain Francisco Alvarez '. Barros as grammarian similarly
ignored Oliveira.
^ Barbosa Machado says, ultimamente em 0 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.
^ 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 huii 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).
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 221
Franciscan, Frei Caspar 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),^ in the Relagam do novo car,iinho 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
Ba^aim. But various and arresting as are the books of Portu-
guese travellers, they are all eclipsed by the wonderful Peregrina-
gam (1614) of F'ernam Mendez Pinto (c. 1510-83). This prince
of travellers and adventurers was born at Montemor 0 Velho.
His parents were of humble station, and at the time of King
Manuel's death (1521) he w^as 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. Joao de Lencastre,^ lord of Montemor o
Velho, at Setubal, he was but just in his teens when, cross-
ing 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 reis 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
' According to Barbosa Machado he entered the Jesuit College as a novice
in 1645 ^-id died in 1712 aet. 78. Godinho also wrote a life of Frei Antonio
das Chagas,
' He was the son of D. Jorge, illegitimate son of Joao II., and was created
Duke ol Aveiro.
222 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Pao 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 frcebooting
Antonio de Faria, and they preyed on Chinese junks till their
ship was weighed down with silver and silk, damask and porce-
lain. 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 theirfortunes. 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 sur-
vived, 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 Martavao. Martavao 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 imme-
diately 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
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 223
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.^ 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 breath-
less 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 par-
ticularly vain. He does not disguise some of his less creditable
actions, and he certainly does not exaggerate his services in
* See the important works by Colonel Cristovam Ayres, Fern So Mevdes
Pinto, 1904 ; Ferndo Mendes Pinto e o Japao, 1906.
224 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Japan.^ 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 - 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.^ He may have heightened the colour occa-
sionally, 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,* 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 im-
memorial customs, as well as the magic of adventure, haunt his
pages. A hundred pictures refuse to fade from the memory,
' 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.
^ Cap. 223 : eii respondi acrecentando em mtiitas coiisas que me perguntava
por me parecer que era assim necessario a reputafdo da nafdo portuguesa.
^ 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 difficidtas ; even the truthful and exact Francisco Alvarez
fears his readers' disbelief.
* Cf. Faria e Sousa (laudari a laudato f) : Yo le tengo por muy verdadero ;
A. de Sousa Macedo, Eva e Ave, ii. 55, 1676 ed., p. 495 : El Rcy Catholico
D. Philippe II, quando veio a Portugal, gostava de ouvir a Fernao Mendes, em
ctijas peregrinafoens &■ sucessos que dellas escreveo mostrou 0 tempo com a ex-
periencia a verdade que se Ihe disputava antes que ouvesse tantas noticias
d'aquellas partes ; Soares, Theatrum : diii apud Lusitanos fidem non meruit
donee rerum qui secuti sunt eventus et aliorum scripta nihil Ferdinandum a vera
discrepasse confirmarunt ; Manuel Bernardes, Nova Floresta, i (1706), p. 124 :
as Relafoes do nosso Fernao Mendez Pinto que ndo merecem tdo pouco credito
como alguns Ihe ddo. ' Either never man had better memory or he was the
most solemn liar that ever put pen to paper ' is the verdict of Jose Agostinho
de Macedo (Motim Literario, 184.1 ed., ii. 17).
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 225
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
Martavao'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 PeregrinaQam, of atmosphere as
oriental and of interest as absorbing although more scientific, was
printed at Goa, Its author, Garcia da Orta^ [c. 1495-r. 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 Alcala, and in 1526 began to practise as a doctor
at Castello de Vide. From 1532 to 1534 he w^as Professor at the
University of Lisbon, and in March 1534 sailed with his friend and
patron, the insatiable Governor Martim Afonso de Sousa,^ 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,^
served affectionately by many slaves, and with the books of
his well-stocked library ready to his hand,* he would regale his
' 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.
* The Governor's brother, Pero Lopez de Sousa, wrote a Diario da Nave-
gafao (1530-2) first published at Lisbon in 1839. The soldier in Couto's
Dialogo says, nao vat tao mal negociado Mr por Fysico mor pais todos os que
esle cargo serviram iiraram nos sens tres annos sete ou oito mil cruzados,
^ Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Porloghese.
* 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) : 0 canto onde pousa
um livreiro — unless this is a misprint for hiveiro, 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 auios — were thrown overboard at
the bidding of the priests. For the fate of a case of Hebrew Bibles (briuias)
see Correa, Lendas da India, i. 656-7. Amadis de Gaula was apparently
in India in 15 19 (Lopez de Castanheda, v. 16). A most interesting list of
books ready to be sent to the Negus of Abyssinia in 15 15 is given in Sousa
Viterbo's A Livraria Real (1901), p. 8.
2362 P
226 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
guests with strange fruits — all the maneiras a giila 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 ^ 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,^ they were published in the author's old age, with an
introductory ode by his friend, the poet Camoes. Unhappily
they became known to Europe chiefly in a garbled Latin version
by Charles de I'ficluse (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,'^ was Cosmographer to Kings Joao HI
* Unless Correa's description (Lendas, iv. 288-9) is earlier. Other events
recorded by Correa 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 perfey^am &- partes que
sum necessarias ao bpj^ medico (1562), with the exception of the dedica-
tory 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.
2 Composto, he says {Coloquios, i. 5). Dimas Bosque (ib. i. 1 1) says comcgado.
* Thus he contributed to the fact, which he notices in the Tratado da carta
de tnarear, that the Portuguese sea enterprises were based on careful prepara-
tion. The nonius was perfected in the following century by Vernier.
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 227
and Sebastian and Professor of Mathematics at the University
of Coimbra (1544-62). Prince Luis and D. Joao 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,^ and,
in order to secure for it a wider public, translated into Portuguese
the Latin treatise {lihellus) De Sphaera by John of Halifax
(Joannes de Sacro Bosco) : Tratado da Sphera (i537),^ 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 Crepuscidis (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, ^ on his return
from India in 1505 wrote a work entitled Esmeralda de Sit7i
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) * written by the famous Viceroy
* Tratado da Sphera, Preface.
^ This volume contains also two brief treatises by Nunez in Portuguese :
Tratado . . . sabre cartas duuidas da naiiegagao, 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 1 5 38. Arraez,
in his Dialogos, 1604 ed., f. 56, says : sei algo da Sphera porque qttando Pero
Nunez a Ha a certos honiens principals eu me achava presente.
^ He himself says that he was born in the excellent city of Lisbon {Esme-
ralda, iv. 6), and he was one of the captains sent out by Joao 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.
■• Other works of a similar nature, livros das rotas or derrotas, are printed in
Libro de Marinharia. Tratado da Aguia de Marear [15 14] de Joao de Lisbaa
[11526]. Capiado e coordenada par J. I. Brito Rebello. 1903- Cf. also
G. Pereira, Roteiros Portugiiezes da viagem de Lisbaa d India nos seculos
xvi e xvii, 1898 ; H. Lopes de Mendon9a, Estudos sabre navios portuguezes
nos seculos xv e xvi, 1892, and O Padre Fernando Oliveira e a sua obra
nautica, 189S (pp. 147-221 contain O Liuro da fabrica das naos, of which,
P 2
228 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
D. JoAO DE Castro (1500-48) on his voyages (i) 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 coiisas necessarias
e nenhuas superjiuas, and they were early prized in Spain as
harto notables, muy curiosos} 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 c vossa ;
Onor, 0 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 ^ 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 w'ith a crooked stick
says the preface, ninguem escreveo ateegora) ; and Sousa Viterbo, Trabalhos
nauticos dos portuguezes nos seculos xvi e xvii {Historia e Memorias da Ac. das
Set end as, torn. V\\ (1898), nzew. 3 ; torn, viii (1900), mem. i). Diogo de Sd's De
Navigatione was published in Paris in 1549; the Arte Practica de Navegar
(1699) by the Cosmographo Mor Manuel Pimentel (1650-1719) appeared a
century and a half later and had several editions in the eighteenth centurj'.
' Fr. Antonio de San Roman, Historia General de la India Oriental, Valla-
dolid, 1603.
' De liehvs Emmanvelis (1571), p. 380: Kon erat alienus a Uteris, (~ cum
ntium erat lectione sacrarum praecipue literarum nhlertahattir.
QUINHENTISTA PROSE 229
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 Camoes, 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 enjoy-
ment. 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 Caga 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 &proerogatiuas
q ho genero femenino te par dsreito comii & ordenacoes do Reyno
mais que ho genero masculino (1557), by Ruy GoNgALVEz, 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 d cidade de Lishoa and
Da scieiicia do desoiho, showed an enthusiasm for his subject
230 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 Qiiatro dialogos, in the first three of
which he records the conversations of Vittoria Colonna, Michel-
angelo, 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 reis 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.'^ 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 chant
' Pt. 1, 1572 ed., f. 224 : ndo feyto por tndo do nosso Oldda tie do vosso Michael
Angela mas par men bayxo ingenho.
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 231
(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, Gon-
gALO Fernandez Trancoso^ {c. 1515-^, 1590) professed not to
have sufficient literary skill even for this simple calendar of mov-
able 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 grand-
son), in order to distract his mind from these sorrows,- 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 Covtos e historias de prove ito e exemplo (1575).^
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. * Trancoso did not claim originality: he
merely collected stories from what he had heard or read.^
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 11
Decamerone or Giovanni Battista Giraldi's Gli Ecatommiti or from
Matteo Bandello (fiS^s).^ But often they are traditions so wide-
spread 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 Bernabd signer di
Milano), and Dr. Braga's Contos tradicionaes do povo porluguez,
' Or Gon9alo Fernandez of Trancoso (Beira). His name has no connexion
with the phrase contar histovias a trancos (de coq a I'dne).
* Preface addressed to the Queen in Pt. i. His object was prender
a imaginagao emferros.
^ Timoneda's El Patranuelo appeared in the following year.
* See, however, Dr. Agostinho de Campos' selections (1921).
^ O que aprendi, ouui oil li (1624 ed.) ; 0 que aprendi, vi ou li (1734 ed.).
^ See Menendez y Pelayo, Origenes de la Novela, tom. ii (1907), p. Ixxxvii et
seq.
232 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
No. 71 [Frei Joani 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.^ 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 chest-
nuts (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.^ Even as late as 1589 Bishop Arracz con-
siders it necessary to say that a prince should have better
ways of spending his time than ler por Clarimundo,^ while
Rodriguez Lobo, thirty years later, brackets it with Amadis
and Palmeirim^ Many a young page and escudeiro must
have aspired not only to pore over the cronicas but to
write one of his own.^ 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),® a well-known courtier in the reign of
King Joao III, whose Treasurer he was, and' a Come/iidador of
the Order of Christ, in 1540 accompanied the Portuguese
Ambassador, D. Francisco de Noronha, to Paris as Secretary,
' 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.
' Ropica Pnefma, 1869 ed., p. 2.
' Dialogos, 1604 ed., f. 157. A third edition of Clarimundo (1601) had
appeared before the second edition of the Dialogos.
* Corte na Aldea (1619), Dialogo i (1722 ed., p. 5).
° Moraes, Dialogo i (1852 ed., p. 11).
' Barbosa Machado seems to have considered him much under seventy
at the time of his death in 1572.
OUINHENTISTA PROSE 233
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 dc 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 Due de Chatillon 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
Clement Marot had addressed one of his Etrennes 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 cen-
tral 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 remark-
able 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,^ but
few of its readers will now differ from the more modern and
moderate opinion of Menendez y Pelayo that ' it requires a real
effort ' to read the whole of it. The effort required to read
the miserable vSpanish 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 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 Joao III as Infante had been joint-author of Clarimundo.
234 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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,^ and of
Portugal. Moreover, the preference of the author of Palmcirim
for Portugal is obvious, and the passage in which ladies of the
French Court arc introduced corresponds to Moracs' Descvlpa
de hvns amoves,'^ 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. Pahneirim's predecessors, Pal-
merin de Oliva (151 1), Prinialeon (1512), and Platir (1533), were
probably all genuinely Spanish, although some doubts have
been raised as to the first of the line, Pahnerin de Oliva
attributed to a cryptic lady, a femiiia docta called Agustobrica.^
Its successors were as genuinely Portuguese : to Moraes' parts
I and 2 DioGO Fernandez added parts 3 and 4 (1587), concerned
with the deeds of Palmeirim's son, Dom Duardos,^ and Balthasar
GoNQALVEZ 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 mogo, are all clearly
and wittily presented.
> 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.
■^ The title continues : que tinha com hua dama francesa da raynha dona
Leanor per nome Torsi, sendo Portngues, pela quai, fez a historia das datnas
francesa s no sen Palmeirim.
* It is scarcely possible that the author (Francisco Vazquez?) considered
that Burgos, as his birthplace — liis mother — had a part in the work.
* 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.' ^ ' 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 Vio-
lante 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 con-
fusion, 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.
A.11 the more remarkable is the purity, the exquisite taste, the
' Dial. X. 4.
236 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
simplicity and charm of some of the later, seventeenth century,
prose. The secret of this prose lay in fact in cidteranismo 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
Jcronimos 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. -^
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 reluct-
ance— 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 ^) for his quiet cell at Bclem, ' where
he had lived many years in great content '. Perhaps too he
' The dates given by JSarbosa Machado are Rector 1565, Provincial 1571.
' 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 (Iniagem,
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 curiuso de anti-
gualhas (f. 352).
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 237
had not forgotten his defeat at Salamanca. ' King Philip ', he
now said sturdily, ' may put me into Castillo but never Castille
into mc.' Pinto wrote commentaries on various books of the
Old Testament, which were published in Latin, but his principal
work consists in the dialogues, a ynaneira dos de Platdo, of his
Imagem da Vida Christam (1563), followed by the Segunda Parte
dos Dialogos (1572). The first part has six dialogues, the sub-
jects being true philosophy, religion, justice, tribulation, the
solitary life,^ and remembrance of death. The five of the second
part treat of tranquillity of life, discreet ignorance, true friend-
ship, causes,- 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.^
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 descrip-
tions, 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 Cc.rmelite at Lisbon a year after Frei Thome
de Jesus and two years after Frei Heitor Pinto had professed in
the same city. Like the former he studied theology at Coimbra.*
* 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 Joao III, or speak of ' our ' Francisco de Hollanda we are not
told. Pinto in a later dialogue, Da Tranqnillidade da Vida, refers to Petrarca's
Vita Solitaria (Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 47 v.).
- 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 original^
in 1572.
^ Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 366 v. : eu revolvo os livros . . . com grandes trabalhos
&• vigilias.
* Cf. Dialogos, 1604 ed., f. 346 : Coimbra, onde gastei a flor de minlia
adolescencia. (This edition really has but 344 ff. since f. 29 follows f. 22.)
238 THE SIXTEENTPI CENTURY
Cardinal Henrique, when Archbishop of Evora, chose Arraez to
be his suffragan, and in 1578 appointed him to the see of TripoH.
Three years later he was made Bishop of Portalegre by Philip H.
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.^ 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 Liisitanos ; Das Condigoes 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 interest-
ing miscellany, which incidentally discusses a very large number
of subjects, 2 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 har-
monious 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 Thome de Jesus (1529 .^-82) was the
man, and the man merged in mysticism, without thought of
' 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.
* The same variety occurs in Poderes de Amor em geral e horas de conver-
saQam particular (1657), by Frei Cristovam Godinho (c. 1600-71) of Evora.
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITI^RS 239
style. He was the son of Fcrnam Alvarez dc Andrade, Treasurer
to King Joao III, and of Isabel dc Paiva. One of his brothers
was the celebrated preacher Diogo dc Paiva de Andrade
(1528-75), another the historian Francisco dc Andrade; a
third, Frei Cosme da Presentagao, 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 Graga 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.-^ 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 Thome 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. Fran-
cisco da Costa, intervened, and he was removed to Morocco.
Frei Thome 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 f ate,^ with unflagging devotion he ministered
' He wrote the life of the prior, Frei Luis de Montoia, whose Vida de Christo
he completed.
* Tendo elle sua nidi e irmdos muito ricos e a Condessa de Linhares sua irtnda,
todos offerecidos a pagar o grosso resgate que os Monros pediam, por saberem
a qualidade de sua pessoa {Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique, p. 38).
240 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 hella !
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.^ These fifty Trahalhos de Jesus
(2 pts., 1603, 9) embrace the whole life of Christ, and deserve,
more than Renan's Vie de Christ, to be called a gracious fifth
Gospel. Each t'rabalho 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.^ Frei
Thome 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 c.learly 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 com-
munion 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.*
Another celebrated treatise of a mystic character is the Voz do
• See his prefatory letter in the Trabalhos. Cf. Antonio, Bib. Nova, ii. 307.
Barbosa Machado speaks of hua horrivel masmorra.
^ Cf. p. 39 (1666 ed.) : O , 6, 6 amor ; 6, 6, 6 amor, cole a lingua e o entendi-
mento, 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.
^ He also wrote Oratorio sacra de soliloqtiios do amor divino (1628) and various
works in Latin. Manuel dodinho refers to his Estimulo das Missoes {Relagao,
1842 ed., p. 47).
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 241
Amado (1579) ^y the learned Canon D, Hilariam Brandao
(11585). 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 e?itre
dons peregrmos, hit christao e hu turco (Goa, 1573) by the first
Archbishop of Goa, D. Gaspar de Leao (fi576), 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 (fi568), 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 em-
phatically 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 .?-i632). 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. Magda-
lena de Vilhena, widow of D. Joao 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
2362 Q
242 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 con-
viction 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 Encarnagao and dramatized
two centuries later by Garrett, records that D. Joao 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 Arch-
bishop 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
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 243
latter, especially, is in matter and manner one of the master-
pieces of Portuguese literature, a livro divino, as a modern
Portuguese writer called it/ The Annaes de El Rei Dom Jodo Ter-
ceiro, 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 sum-
marize Barros. It is as a stylist, not as a historian, that Frei
Luis de Sousa will always be read, and read with delight.- The
subject of his biography, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres
(1514-go), 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
Christda (Lixboa, 1559).
The Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier (1600), by
the Jesuit Joao 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. Joao 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 Esperan^a (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
hiia multiddo notavel of books on that and kindred subjects.
Similar excellence of style marks the later work of the Jesuit
* C. Castello Branco, Estrellas propicias, 2^ ed., p. 204. Its only fault,
artistically, is the detailed description of the commemoration festivities,
which come as an anticlimax.
* 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.
Q 2
244 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Francisco de Sousa (1628 }-iyi^), 0 Oriente conqiiistado
(2 vols., 1710), in which he chronicles the history of the Company
in the East.
The most celebrated Portuguese preacher of his time,^ Frei
Thome de Jesus' brother, Diogo de Paiva de Andrade
(1528-75), represented Portugal at the Council of Trent in
1561. His eloquent Sermoes (1603, 4, 15) were published
posthumously in three parts. His mantle fell upon Francisco
Fernandez Galvao (1554-1610), the prose of whose Sermoes
(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 Sermoes
(3 pts., 1617, 18, 25) of the Augustinian Frei Philipe da
Luz (1574-1633), confessor to the Duke of Braganza (after-
wards King Joao IV), in whose palace at Villa Vigosa 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 Sermoes (1618) and Consideragoes (1619, 20, 33)
of Frei Thomas da Veiga (i578-i638),like his father a Professor
of -Coimbra University, are written in a style of great excellence,
as, although a trifle more redundant^ and latinized, is that of
his contemporary, like him a Franciscan, Frei Joao da Ceita
' Another renowned Court preacher was D. Antonio Pinheiro (f 1582 ?),
Bishop of Miranda, whose works were collected by Sousa Farinha : Colleccao
das obras portugtiesas do sahio Bispo de Miranda e de Leiria, 2 vols., 1785, 6.
* e. g. officio e dignidade, gritos e brados, boca e lingoa, cuidao e imagindo.
Macedo (O Couto, p. 82) rightly calls Ceita urn dos principaes textos em lingua
portugueza.
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 245
(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 Sermoes
(1634, 5) appeared after his death. Two slightly later writers
were Frei Cristovam de Lisboa (11652), 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 Consolagam de Ajfiictos
e Allivio de Lastimados (1742), in the preface to his Santoral
de Varios Sermoes (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.'^ His Sermoes (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 con-
sidered one of the sources from which a greater master of Portu-
guese, 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, Sermoes da Quaresma (3 pts., 1688,
94, 99), Amor Sagrado (1673), and Ceo de graga, infer?io 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 Joao Cardoso
(ti655), author of Ruth Peregrina (2 pts., 1628, 54), also wrote
a lengthy commentary on the 113th Psalm in twenty-one dis-
courses: Jornada Dalma Libertada (1626). Ten years earlier
a Jew, Joao Baptista d'Este, had published in excellent
Portuguese a translation of the Psalms : Consolagam, Christam
e Lvz para 0 Povo Hebreo (161 6). His title was suggested by
* other noted preachers were the Jesuits Francisco do Amaral (1593—
1647), who pubhshed the first (and only) volume of his Sermoes (1641) in the
year in which Vieira came to Portugal, and Francisco de MENDON9A (1573—
1626), a master of clear and vigorous prose in his two volumes of Sermoes
(1636, 9) ; and the Trinitarian Baltasar Paez (i 570-1638), whose Sermoes
de Quaresma (2 pts., 1631, 3), Sermoes da Semana Santa (1630), Mortal de
Sermoes (1649), may still be read with profit.
246 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
that of a far more remarkable book by another Jew, Samuel
Usque (fl. 1540), Co^isolagam as Tribulagoens de Israel, written
probably between 1540 and 1550^ and first printed at Ferraraby
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.^ His famous work
is an account of the sufferings of the Jewish race. In three
dialogues Jacob {Ycaho), 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 ene-
mies, 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^ under Joao 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
* Ha poucos annos que he arribado (the Inquisition in Portugal), Pt. 3, 190S
ed , f. xxxii.
^ See p. 5 of Prologo : Portuguese is a lingoa que mamei, but his passados
are from Castile.
^ The inhabitants of the Peninsula are astuios e maliciosos, Spain is ' a hypo-
critical and cruel wolf ', the Portuguese arc fortes e quasi barbaros, the English
maliciosos, the Italians, since the book was to appear in their country, merely
' warlike and ungrateful '.
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 247
second volume dealing with the divine attributes. This did not
appear in that generation : Meditagoes dos attribvtos divinos
(Roma, 1671). The Arte de Orar contains twenty-nine treatises
(604 ff.). Its subjects are various (of the virtue of magnifi-
cence ; 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. Quin-
tilian takes part in one of the six dialogues which compose
the Peregrinagam Christam (1620) by Tristao Barbosa de
Carvalho (ti632) ; 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^ style.
Frei Luis dos Anjos [c. 1570-1625) in his lardim 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 lardim 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 he'mg 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
1 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 nao
deo aos Reys para extorsoens [&■ violencias] mas para amparar [&• defender]
OS vassallos porque ate 0 propria Decs parece que tern as mdos atadas a rtgores
[(S' castigos] &' livres a cletnencias {&' niisericordias].
248 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Divertimento erudito by the Augustinian Frei Joao Pacheco
(1677-? 1747), it contains some curious matter. A similar
miscellany of anecdotes and precepts was written by Joao
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 Scares 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 ^ 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 dissipa-
tion 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 Sermdes
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
' He had been fortunate, for, says Antonio Vieira in 1640, ndo ha gnerra
no mundo onde se morra (do frequentetnenlc coniu na do Brazil.
RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC WRITERS 249
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 Joao 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), Satisfagam de Aggravos
(1700), which takes the form of dialogues between a hermit
and a soldier, and other devotional works. Another Jesuit,
Alexandre de Gusmao (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
Irmdo 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.'^
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' Lmz e Calor ^ (1696) in the
last year of his life, and t]\Q Exercicios Espirituaes (2 vols., 1686)
had appeared ten years earlier. Other works, Sermoes e Praticas
(1711),^ Nova Floresta (5 vols., 1706-28), Os Ultimos Fins do
Homem {lyzy), Varios Tratados (2 vols., 1737), were soon
forthcoming to justify the prophecy. Manuel Bernardes
(1644-1710), the son of Joao Antunes and Maria Bernardes,
was born at Lisbon, studied law and philosophy at Coimbra
' e.g. in the following passage (p. 47), in which Calderon and Joao 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.'
^ Estimulos de amor divino (1758) is an extract from this, as the Tratado
breve da ora(am mental (5th ed., 1757) is extracted from the Exercicios Es-
pirituaes. ' Pt. 2 appeared in 1733.
250 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
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 pro-
tecting the Portuguese language. His style is marked in an
equal degree by grace and concision, intensity and restraint,
smoothness and vigour.^ 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 culteratios 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 Joao de Deus. His reputa-
tion 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 Angeles (I1609). 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).
* He often deliberately links a soft and a hard word, as ca^a e cdo, candores
da celestial grafa, licita a guerra. Thus his style becomes crespo sem aspereza.
I
IV
I580-I706
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 Chur-
riguerresque 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,^ 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
* Bernardo de Brito, no lover of Spain, bears witness to 0 favor e bene-
volencia com que (rata os homens doutos.
252 I58O-I706
tempus intermittat quin semper ant animarum saluti prospiciat
aut optimos quosque auctores evolvat aut liter atorum hominnni
colloquia audiat}
No literary figure in Portugal of the seventeenth century,
few in the Peninsula,- can rank with D. Francisco Manuel de
Mello (1608-66). Born at Lisbon,^ 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,^ and it was not till
he was over forty that he published a work in Portuguese :
Carta de Guia de Casados (1651).^ 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, ^^id took part in
the campaign against revolted Catalonia {1640), which he described
in his Guerra de Cataluna ^ (1645), written e7n 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,'
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 im-
plicating his former master in a murder that he had committed
' 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 lifdo dos liuros. como tambem o risco a que se expoem os que escreuem.
* Menendez y Pelayo set Mello above all except his friend Quevedo.
' Mr. Edgar Prestage discovered his baptismal certificate and established
the date (1608) beyond doubt, though it is still often given as 161 1. On his
mother'ssideMello was great-grandson of the historian Duarte Nunez de Lcam.
* Prefatory letter to Las tres Mvsas del Melodino (1649) : el lenguaje
estrangero tan poco es favorable al que compone.
' He was writing it in January 1650.
* Historia de los mnvimientos y separacion de Cataluna y de la guerra, &c.
Lisboa, 1645.
' On his release after four months of imprisonment the Count-Duke Olivares
said to him ; Ea, caballero, ha sidu tin crro, pero erro con causa.
THE SEISCENTISTAS 253
(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 imprison-
ment, the most romantic of which — that he and the king were
rivals in the affections of the Condessa de Villa Nova, and, meet-
ing 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 ^ strict confinement, that he sailed for Brazil. Joao IV
died in 1656 and two years later Mello returned to Portugal :
he was formally pardoned^ 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 Gracian) which is hard and clear as the glitter of
steel or the silver chiming of a clock, with concmnitas quaedam
venusta et felix verhorum.^ 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. Joao de Barros' Espelho de Casados
* 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.
^ The document was discovered by Dr. Braga and published in his Os
Seiscentistas (1916), p. 339.
^ Apprubatio of Cartas, Roma, 1664.
254 1580-1706
(1540),^ 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. ^ The Epanaphoras de varia
Historia Portugueza (1660) are unequal and often excessively
detailed.^ Three of the five are, however, the accounts of an
eyewitness and as such are full of interest : the Alteragoeyis
de Evora (i), the Naiifragio da Armada Portuguesa em Franga (ii),
and the Confiito do Canal de Inglaterra (iv).^
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^ and politics,^
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' and
coins ^ and fountains.^ 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,^**
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
' A copy of this rare and curious work exists in the Lisbon BibHoteca
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 Cclestina.
^ Relagam, 1842 ed., p. 233.
^ His digressions are methodical : por este modo de historiar {que i aquelle
que eu desejo ler) pretendo escrever sempre {Epan. ii). In Epan. i he says:
Refiro, pode ser com demasia, todos os accidcntes deste negocio.
* He re-wrote this Epanaphora twice, the first two versions having been lost.
* Cf. Visita das Pontes (Ap. Dial. 3), 1900 ed., p. 89: cada qiial desde
0 logar em que estd acha uma linha muito junto de si que 6 0 caminho por onde
pode ir a Dens.
* Cf. Hospital das Lettras (Ap. Dial. 4), 1900 ed., p. 114: por falta de
cuidar cada um em se aproveitar deste mundo 0 que delle Ihe toca, 0 langam todos
a perder todos juntos do modo que vemos.
' Relogios Fallantes (Ap. Dial. i).
■ Escriptorio Avarento (Ap. Dial. 2).
* Visita das Pontes (Ap. Dial. 3).
" Cf. the backwoodsman described by Couto as algum fidalgo criado Id
na Beira que nunca vio 0 Rei (Dialogo do Sold. Prat., p. 31).
THE SEISCENTISTAS 255
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 ' } 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 Con-
destabrer 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), Ohras 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 0
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,^ 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 cen-
' Cf. Aidegrafia (1619), f. 85 v. : emendar a Natureza.
- Edgar Prestage, Esbogo, pp. 128-9.
^ 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 feniinil o nome Lede. Falmouth, where he had actually been,
becomes Valmud, the Isle of Wight Huyt. Whitehall Huythal, the Earl of
Northumberland Notaborlan (Brito has Northubria).
256 I 580-1706
turies is seen in two collections, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese :
Fenix Renascida (5 vols., 1716-28) and Eccos que 0 Clarim da
Fama da (2 vols., 1761, 2). The latter is sufficiently charac-
terized 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 over-
dressed 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 Camoes, 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 Portu-
guese 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 as Cortes do Parnaso,
the best burlesque poem of the century, in which the author did
not spare contemporary Lisbon poets. ^ 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,^ 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,^ as in her Rythmas varias (Rouen, 1646) and Parnaso
' A more personal and picaresque satirist was D. Thomas de Noronha
(11651), whose works were collected by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in his
Subsidios, vol. ii : Poesias Ineditas de D. Thomas de Noronha (Coimbra, 1899).
The satiric poem Os Ratos da Inquisifdo by Antonio Serrao de Castro
(1610-85) was first published by Castello Branco in 1883.
* Vol. iii contains a poem by Jacinto Freire de Andrade with the same title.
» Fenix Hen. ii. 406 ; iii. 225 ; v. 376.
THE SETSCENTISTAS 257
Lusitano de divinos e humanos versos (2 vols., 1733), this nun,
who spent over sixty years in the Dominican Convent© 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 deprecagoes devotas of the Meditagoes
da Missa (1689) or her Spanish villancicos. But she could also
be the most gongorical of wjiters, her very real native talent
being too often spoilt by the taste of the time.^ Bernarda
Ferreira de Lacerda (1595-1644), another femina incom-
parahilis, like Soror Violante and Dercylis considered the tenth
Muse and fourth Grace, wrote almost exclusively in Spanish,
nor can her Soledades de Biigaco (1634) or her epic Hespana
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), Orhe Celeste (1742), and Reino de
Babylonia (1749), rarely descends from the high-flown style indi-
cated in these titles. On the other hand, the Franciscan nun of
Lisbon, Soror Maria do Ceo (1658-1753), or Maria de Ega, in
A Preciosa (2 pts., 173 1, 3) and Enganos do Bosque, Desenga^ws
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. Fran-
cisco 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.-
' Hers is the deplorable pun of a superior superior :
Que se Prior sois agora
Sempre fostes suprior.
* 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 com-
forted 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 empti-
ness of these infinitos logares (iii. 48). Virgil's Facilis descensus, &c., is
translated in two lines of great badness : Onde descer he cousa tdo factivel
Quanto tornar atraz tern de impossivel (iii. 36).
2362 R
258 I580-I706
Of the life of Manuel da Veiga Tagarro wo know little or
nothing, but his volume of eclogues and odes, Lavra de Anfriso
(1637), 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 deVega, and Luis de Leon seem to have been his models.
Some measure of the lattcr's deliberate tranquillity he occa-
sionally attained. The works of the ' discreet and accomplished ',
keen-eyed and graceful D. Francisco de Portugal (1585-
1632) appeared posthumously ^ ; Divinos e hutnanos versos (1652)
and (without separate title-page) Prisoes e solturas de hiia 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 Gigantoinachia (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 Gongora 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 arc perhaps less
guilty than the critics, who should have discouraged the kind
and recognized that the Lusiads were only an accident in Portu-
guese literature, the accident of the genius of Camoes. As
a rule the epic spirit of the Portuguese expressed itself better
in prose. Gabriel Pereira de Castro (1571 ?-i632) fore-
stalled Sousa de Macedo in his choice of a subject. His Vlyssea,
ov Lyshoa Edificada, Poema heroyco (1636) was published post-
humously 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
' Nihil tamen eo vivenle exciissttm nisi Solitudines {hoc est Saudades), says
the Theatrum.
THE SEISCEXTISTAS 259
modelled on that of the Litsiads, 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 eyijambements ^ do not
compensate for the dullness of theme and treatment. If, for
instance, we compare his storm ^ 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 Avo, 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 Joao 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 monies 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,
' e. g. (x. 126) :
Hua montanha e serra inhabitada
Se erguia ao ar, em cuja corpulenta
Espalda. . . .
^ ii. 30-49 : Do undoso leito, donde repousava
O mar, &c.
R 2
26o I 580-1 706
from which he is only gently stirred when the sun is called
a solar emhaixadora. In the prevailing fashion of the time the
author works in lines of Camoes, Sa de Miranda, Garci Lasso,
Ariosto, and other poets. While the work was still in manu-
script another poet, and perhaps a relation, Andre da Silva
Mascarenhas, helped himself liberally to its stanzas (they
number 2,287) foi" his epic A Destruigao de Hespanha (1671),
He could have given no better proof of the poverty of his genius.
Francisco de Sa 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^ 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 Camoes' style ^ 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 Fran-
cisco de Jesus.
Antonio de Sousa de Macedo (1606-82), mogo fidalgo of
Philip IV and later Secretary of Embassy and Minister [Resi-
dente) in London (1642-6) and Secretary of State to the weak
and unlettered Afonso VI, wrote at the age of twenty-two Flores
de Espana, 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
* xii.79: Sou fragil lenho.
^ In the storm in canto 2 {Ets que n reo de improuiso se escurece) he seems
to have realized that Camoes' description could not be improved upon.
THE SEISCENTISTAS 261
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 Camoes, 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 W'ise Chiron prophesies
of her famosos vardes. 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 (tw^elve 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 men-
tioned. The literary academies, of which the most famous were
the Acadeynia dos Generosos (1649-68) and the Academia dos
Singular es (1663-5),^ 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.
' 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) Acadeinia dos Esquecidos — the Forgotten.
262 I58O-I706
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 dis-
appointingly dull. Mattheus de Ribeiro [c. 1620-95), in his
Alivio de Tristes e Consolagdo 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 somhras 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 interest-
ing 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),
editedby the Augustinian Frei Antonio Freire (t:. 1570-1634),
is a different work from Geronimo Ximenez de Urrea's Didlogo
de la verdadera honra militar (1566), which it resembles slightly in
title. It is divided into four parts and contains various episodes
TIIK SEISCENTISTAS 263
of the Portuguese in the East and some curious information.
Miguel Leitao 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. S" da Lvz do Pedrogdo 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 Alco-
FORADO (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^ — French
siiranne et denue d'elegance — translated into Portuguese for a
century and a half : Cartas de uma Religiosa Portugueza (1819).^
Meanwhile, even before their obscure author died in the remote
' 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.
' Seven spurious letters, and subsequently others, were added in many of
the editions. Filinto Elysio translated the twelve.
264 1580-1706
and beautiful city of Beja, they had been translated into English
and Italian and had received over fifty French editions. Colonel
(later Marshal) Noel Bouton, Comte dc Saint-Leger, afterwards
Alarquis 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
daConcei^ao at Beja. Her five letters, written between the end
of 1667 and the middle of 1668 after her desertion, in their art-
Icssness, contradictions, and disorder, vibrate with emotion.
They are a succession of intense cries like the popular quatrain :
Por te amar deixei a Deus ;
Ve la que gloria perdi !
E agora vejo-me so,
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 wxre the work of a man ^ — 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.^
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
' Jc pnrierais tout au monde que Ics Lettres portugaises ont eti ecrites par un
homme.
^ 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 ? ' (S)- ' My passion increases every instant ' (4). ' I do not
repent having adored you. I am glad that you betrayed me ' (3).
THE SEISCENTISTAS 265
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 acknowledge-
ment from Lazarillo de Tormes?- 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 blessed-
ness, 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'^
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 Thome Pinheiro daVeiga (1570.? -1656), the author of a lively
account of the festivities at the Spanish Court and description
of Valladolid in 1605, entitled Fastigwiia (it mentions Don
Quixote and Sancho (p. 119) but says nothing of Cervantes),
and to Joao 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 as Armas
(1645) ; and even less plausibly to Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo
(i6i8?-8o), statesman and diplomatist, an indifferent poet
but an excellent writer of prose and a careful although not
' Ed. H. Butler Clarke (1897), pp. 17-18 and 65-7.
* The 1652 edition speaks of coronets (p. 277) who, it has been argued, were
called mestres de campo till 1708 (Goes, however, in liis Cron. de D. Manuel,
1619 ed., f. 213, has os fez todos quatro coronets de mil homens ; cf. Gil Vicente,
i. 234 : Corregedor, coronel) ; it refers (p. 393) to Joao IV as still alive
(11656) : 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 arc as deliberately misleading as the 1652
title-page.
266 I 580-1706
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^ to be copied
almost word for word Trom the work of identical title by
D. Sebastiao Cesar de Meneses (11672), 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
^ei^gmar (1643) by P. Antonio CarvalhodeParada(i595-i655).
The Tratado Analytico (1715), by Manuel Rodriguez Leitao
{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 Joao 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. Pom-
pous and emphatic,- 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^ : it might even become excellent if judiciously pruned
of antitheses and artifice.* The second Conde da Ericeira,
' Classicos Esquecidos (Rio de Janeiro, 1915). Diiarte de Macedo in his
dedicatory letter says : ' I have taken this Summa Politica from the Latin
and Italian languages.' ' I do not ofier it as my own, because I restore it
to your Highness as yours ', so that he had armed himself against such
charges of plagiarism.
* 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 Govemours
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.'
^ Cada clausula he filha da eloquencia mats sublime, &c. (Barbosa Machado).
* e.g. 1759 cd., p. 342: cujtis riiinas seriao de sua Jama os elogtos maiores
I
i
THE SEISCENTISTAS 267
D. Fernando de Meneses (1614-99), wrote a Historia de
Tangere (1732) and the Vida e Acgoens d'El Ret D. jfodo I (1677),
which ends with an elaborate parallel betw'een 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, 9^)- ^^s 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, escrivao 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 encou-
raged the citizens of Bahia in the w'ar against the Dutch being
especially eloquent. In 1641 he was chosen with Padre Simao de
Vasconcellos to accompany D. Fernando de Mascarenhas, son of
the viceroy, to Europe in order to congratulate King Joao 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 Maranhao, and during two years roused the
bitter hostility of the settlers by his protection of the slaves
would be straightened out from Latin into Portuguese : serido os ntaiores
elogios dc sua fama.
268 1580-1706
or rather by his opposition to slavery. In 1655 he again left
Lisbon for Maranhao,^ 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 Joao, 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 ^
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
' 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.
^ Historia do Fiiluro (171 8), p. 93.
THE SEISCENTTSTAS afjQ
broken, writing letters and eager to finish his Clavis Pro-
phetical (or Prophetarum), which now lies in manuscript in the
Bibliotheque 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 vigor-
ous prose, at its best in his numerous Cartas, written in selecta
et propria dictio, misquam 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 Sermoes 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 thecultoshe, 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
JoAO DOS Prazeres (1648-1709), of whosc principal work,
0 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 0 Ceo Aberto na Terra (1697) and many sermons,
and the Jesuit preacher Antonio de Sa (1620-78), whose
Sermoes Varies appeared in 1750.
See letters from Bahia, July 22, 1695.
V
1706-18 i6
The FAghteenth 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 Joao 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, e tutto panciuto e petto-
ruto} It was the age of Arcadias : the famous Arcadia Ulyssi-
ponense'^ (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 0 Moribundo Cysne
do Vouga (1850). Atypical eighteenth-century poet is D. Fran-
cisco 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
' Lettere Familiari, No. 30.
' Or Arcadia Lusitana. For a list of its members see T. Braga, A Arcadia
Ltfiilana (1899), pp. 210-29 ; for its statutes, ibid., pp. 189-205.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 271
number of works in prose and in verse. The best known of
them is his Henriqiieida (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 fore-
doomed 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 Correa Gar^ao (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. Theatre
272 1706-1816
Novo, a skit on the drama then in vogue, and Assembled ou
Partida, in which certain Lisbon types are ridiculed and which
contains the famous and much overpraised Cantata de Dido.
Correa Gargao's days ended tragically in prison. The motive of
his arrest is not clear. Tradition wavers between a love intrigue
and political reasons/ 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 poetr^
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
Camoes is clear,^ in many passages too clear, and he had un-
doubtedly 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,^ although the sonnet written on the same
occ2ision, P or 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.
' Debt might seem a more probable cause, were it not for the apparent
rigour of his confinement.
^ A sua alma conversava com Bernardes e Ferreira, says his friend Tolentino,
who advises another cabelleireiro poet to cease writing verses, since vale mats
que cem sonetos a peior penteadura. The Arte de Furlar mentions a barber
who sank still lower, since he left his profession in order to cut purses. The
modern writer Antonio Francisco Barata (i 836-1910) likewise began life as
a poor hairdresser at Coimbra.
^ Cf. Ecloga I. Dorindo to Alcino {Alcino Mycenio was Quita's Arcadian
name) :
E tu es dos pastores mais famosos
No can tar de impro\'iso o verso brand o.
1
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 273
One of his tragedies, Ines de Castro, suggested that of Joao
Baptista Gomes (ti8o3), 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 Silv-a (1731-99) m 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
confusdo ! he exclaims in an elegy on the Lisbon earthquake,
and most of his poems are on a like plane of thought and expres-
sion. The son of a Sargento Mor,^ he was born at Lisbon, and
after studying law at Coimbra was appointed a judge at Castello
de Vide. With Manuel Nicolau Esteves Negrao (11824) arid
Theotonio Gomes de Carvalho (ti8oo) 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 gon-
gorismo, which was, indeed, on the wane in the land of its birth.
Diniz da Cruz' own poems were written in good idiomatic
Portuguese. In 0 Hyssope he satirizes with telling vigour the
use of gallicisms, and his comedy 0 Falso Heroisyno is thoroughly
Portuguese in subject and treatment. From 1764 to 1774 he
was stationed at Elvas, and here a quarrel between the bishop,
D. Lourengo de Lancastre, and the dean, D. Jose Carlos de Lara,
furnished him with the subject of his celebrated mock-heroic
poem 0 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
' i.e. the military governor of a district, with rank next to that of Capitdo
Mor.
2362 S
274 1706-1816
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 Jose de Alvarengo
Peixoto (1748-93), accused of conspiring to secure the inde-
pendence of their country. 0 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 mono-
tonous 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 0 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 (ti742) had used the same metre for his Foguetario (1729).
The burlesque poem 0 Reino da Estupidez (1819), written in
four cantos of easily-fiowing blank verse by the Brazilians
Francisco de Mello Franco (1757-1823) and Jose Bonifacio de
Andrade e Silva (1763-1838), is professedly an imitation of
aquelle activo e discreto Diniz na Hyssopa'ida, 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,
Jose Anastasio da Cunha (1744-87), artillery officer, mathe-
matician, 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,^ 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,^ he was accused of not believing
' 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.
' = fishwife ; literally ' woman of Ovar ', a small sea-town between Aveiro
and Oporto.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 275
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 con-
tinued his steady flow of Horatian odes and similar artificial
verse. He wrote for seventy years (Lamartine notes the precoces
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, 0 gran cantor, prezou meus versos
. . . Posteridade, es minha !
His influence was bad and good. It encouraged a dry and
artificial classicism, but also careful versification in pure Portu-
guese. 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 expres-
sions 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.
s 2
27^1 1706-18 1 6
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 Sa de Miranda,^ in which much of his
work is composed {0 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 inde-
pendence 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 cele-
brated 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 Jose (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 con-
' Sd do Miranda, he says, em quern das doces quintilhas Sdmente a ritna
aprendi. . . . Falta-me arte e natureza, Mas pude delle imitar A verdadeira sin-
geleza.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 277
siderablc 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 thev
are for the most part carboni spenti. His parents were a Portu-
guese 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 Damao, 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
lllusao 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 Camoes, 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
278 1706-1816
to the celebrated line of blank verse 'A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergy-
man ' will be found than that in one of Bocage's elegies : Carpido
ohjecto men, carpido ohjecto. 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 con-
temporary 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 ^ 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 balao 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,^ 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
Composigoes 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^ (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.
JoAO Xavier deMattos (11789), a fourth edition oiwhostRimas
' The sky is a estellifera morada (the starry abode), birds o phimoso aereo
bando, bees niordazes enxames voadorcs, &c.
* Menendez y Peiayo (Antologia, torn, xiii (1908), p. 377) calls him el poeta
de mas condiciones nativas que ha producido Portugal despiies de Camoens,
'the most indigenous Portuguese poet since Camoes", and elsewhere gives the
highest praise to his sonnets.
^ His modern editor, Visconde (Julio) de Castilho, has shown that the
additional surname de Vasconcellos was bestowed on him gratuitously.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY • 279
appeared in the year after his death, is now remembered chiefly
for some of his sonnets, as that beginning Poz-se 0 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' im-
prisonment 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 charac-
ter. 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. Jose Basilio da
Gama (1740-95), who spent the greater part of his life in Por-
tugal and died at Lisbon, wrote 0 Uraguay (1769) in five cantos
of prosaic blank verse — an account of the struggle between
Portuguese and , Indians. Jose de Santa Rita Durao
[e. 1720-84), Doctor in Theology (Coimbra), composed an epic
entitled Caramuru (1781) on the discovery of Bahia in the
sixteenth century by Diogo Alvarez Correa. This poem in ten
cantos of oitavas is inferior to 0 Uraguay, but it contains some
interesting notes on the country and the customs of Brazil.^
If a great poet lurked in Bocage, he had certainly never
existed in Bocage's contemporary and rival in Arcadia, Jose
Agostinho deMacedo (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 Couvade (ii. 62) is also described by Henrique Diaz, Nanfragio da
Nao S. Paulo, 1904 ed., p. 25, and Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, Historia da
Provincia Sancta Cruz (1576), cap. 10.
28o I 706-1816
The future champion of law and order provoked the displeasure
of his superiors at Lisbon, Evora, Coimbra, Braga, Torres
Vcdras, by his pranks and mutinies, his boisterous and dissi-
pated life. Methodical theft of books was one of his minor
failings. At last after fourteen years, his Order, tired of trans-
ferring 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.^ 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 '^
and splenetic priest virulent denunciation of his hterary and
political opponents had become a necessity, and he was at
work on the twenty-seventh number of his periodical 0 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 worth-
less,^ and that his own 0 Oriente was a great epic. His utilitarian
» His works in the Dice. 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 Sebastiao de Santo
Antonio: Sermoes, 2 vols. (1779. 84).
* Superficially, at least, more than Manuel Caetano de Sousa (1658-1734)
he deserves to be called a varao encyclopedico.
3 He admires Cicero — not only as jjhilosopher and orator but as a ' sublime
poet' ! (O Hnmem {181 5), p. 98) — and Seneca, calls Petrarca immortal, Tasso
incomparable, and is generous in his appreciation of English writers. At
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 281
conception of literature was inevitably fatal to his verse. He
wished to extend the boundaries of poetry,^ 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 0 Oriente (1814),^ to show how Camoes 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,
Camoes had ventured to name it 0 falso argento, 0 liquido estanho,
0 fuiido aquoso, 0 humido elemento ; with Macedo it becomes
0 himido elemento (or perhaps he adopted -the phrase from
Caramuru, in which it occurs). We can scarcely blame Bocage
for labelling him tumido versista? Among his other philosophical
poems are Contemplagao da Natureza (1801), A Meditagao (1813),
A Natureza (1846), and A Creagdo (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 Sehastianistas (1810)
or Osjesuitas (1830) : behind Ezelino and Beatriz in his tragedy
Branca de Rossi (1819) loom Napoleon and Josephine, 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
about the same time John Keats, as Petrarca five centuries earlier, was also
reading Homer in translation, but in a somewhat different spirit.
1 Newton, Proemio.
- 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
Camoes, had cost him ' nine years of assiduous application '.
^ Macedo called Bocage fanfarrdo glosador, and much abuse of the same
kind varied the monotony of elogio miihio.
282 I706-I816
(1814), 0 Homem (18 15), Demonstragdo da Existencia de Deos
(1816), Cartas filosoficas a Attico (1815), arc 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 (181 1) 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), 0 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 Igfiez
he keeps the even tenor of his dullness, and he warns the reader
in a preface that his Ines is not to be considered beautiful since
she was probably over thirty, and that her and Pedro's passion
had had time to cool.^ There is more life in the plays written
in a medley of prose and verse by Antonio Jose 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
' Such woodenness was unlikely to appreciate El Greco's pictures. In the
preface to his Agriparia {Theatro, vol. v, 1804) he speaks of a cxtravagancia
do vaidoso Domenico, herein following Faria e Sousa, who calls Theotocopuli
the Gongora of painters and adds : Pero vale mas una llaneza del Ticiano
que todas sus extravagancias juntas por mas que ingeniosas (Fuente de Aganipe
Pr6logo.%i7).
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 283
Rio dc 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 success-
fully as a lawyer. In 1726 his mother was re-arrested, and this
time Antonio Jose with her. He was released after suffering
torture and pubhcly abjuring Jewish doctrines in an auto da je.
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 je 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,^ however much it may weary the reader.
His plays with classical subjects are especially cold and dull,
A Ninfa Syrmga ou Amoves de Pan e Syringa,^ Os Encantos de
Medea,^ Esopaida,^ Amphitrido,^ As Variedades de Proteo*
Laherinto de Creta.^ 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.
' Arnaldo Gania, Um ntotim ha cent annos, 3^ ed. (1896), p. 35.
'^ Theatro Comico Portuguez, 4 vols. {1759-90), vol. iii.
^ Ibid., vol. i. ■• Ibid., vol. ii.
284 1706-1816
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 sec 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 ^ only a few, as 0 Capitdo Belisario (1781) and 0 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. Ignezde Castro (1772), an imitation of Reinar
despues 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,'^ founded
by the Duque de Lafoes, 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 cure of Santo Adriao 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 inac-
curacy which is attractive in the minute pedantry of a later age.
The scarcely less famous Vocabulario Portuguez of Raphael
' Innocencio da Silva, Dice. Bibliog. vi. 275-85; xvii. 91-3, gives 217 titles.
* 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 dc Portugal.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 285
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 Jose 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 Barbadifio', whose criti-
cisms in his Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar (2 vels., 1746) are
severe, even harsh; Francisco Dias Gomes (1745-95), whom
Herculano called 0 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 Versificagam Portugueza (1784).
. The best-known work of the learned son of a Lisbon black-
smith 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 0 Feliz Independente do Mundo e da Fortuna in
twenty-four books (3 vols., 1779), he took Fenelon's Telemaque
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. Afiickering interest enlivens the Cartas Familiares {1741, 2)
of Francisco Xavier de Oliveira (1702-83). Their subjects
286 1706-1816
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 Inquisi-
tion, He was duly burnt in effigy at Lisbon (1761), but died
quietly at Hackney twenty-two years later. The letters of
Alexandre de Gusmao (1695-1753), born at Santos in
Brazil, have not been collected; those of the remarkable Portu-
guese Jew of Penamacor, Antonio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches
(1699-1783), physician to the Empress Catherine H of Russia,
Cartas sohre a Educagao 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, JoAO de S. Joseph Oueiroz (1711-64) contain some
interesting and amusing anecdotes. He speaks of the Memorias
Genealogicas of Alao 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 Joao IV : para lisongea-la disse
que seguiria 0 partido de Castella. But without seeing the manu-
script it is impossible not to suspect that there is as much of
Camillo Castello Branco as of the Bishop of Grao-Para in the
Memorias (1868), which he was the first to publish.
VI
I8I6-19IO
The Romantic School
In Portugal the first quarter of tfie nineteenth century was
filled with violence and unrest. The French invasion and years
of fighting on Portuguese soil were followed by a series of revolu-
tions 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 rtew 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 in-
fluence, partly through love of the soil, deepened by persecution
and banishment, that hterature 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
288 1816-1910
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 0 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 0 Chronista and 0 Portugues,
which evoked Macedo's wrath and ended in Garrett's imprison-
ment. 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
charge 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 Mor (1838), elected
deputy (1837), raised to the House of Peers (1852). As journa-
list, 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,'
» His Romanceiro published in 3 vols. (1843, 51) contains poems of national
themes drawn from popular songs and traditions, written by himself (as
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 289
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. Fondof moneybutfonderof 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,^ and through
the Geraldines from Troy.- 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
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 rowawces revised
and polished by their collector. His own compositions (vol. i) often have great
charm, as Miragaia, Rosalinda, Bernal Francez.
' The name of the first Earl of Desmond (cr. 1328) was Maurice fitzThomas
(11356) not Gerald, Gerod, Gerott, Garrett, or Garrt (see Lord Walter
FitzGerald, Notes on the FitzGeralds of Ireland). The fonns 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).
-■ Amorim, Memorias, i. 28.
2362 T
290 1816-19IO
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 t\vofold 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 oppor-
tunist 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.
His early verses, many of the poems published or reprinted in
Lyrica' de Joao Minimo (1829), Flores sem Fructo (1845), and
Fahulas 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 Camoes (1825) and Dona Branca (1826),^ 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 a«id exaggerations of the ephe-
meral romanticism which is now coming to an end in Europe '.-
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 Catdo (1821)
were both written in his student days. Neither of them can be
called dramatic. In vain a glow of liberty^ and rhetoric strives
' Of 0 Magrifo, a still longer epic, only fragments remain ; it went down in
manuscript in the Amelia, sunk by the Miguelists otf the Portuguese coast.
' Preface to 4th ed. (1845) of Catao.
' The 'tyranny' of theday was that of General Beresford. Some scenes of
Catao (derived from the Cato ( 1 7 1 3) of Addison) , of which a Portuguese version by
Manuel de Figueiredo (Theairo, 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.
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 201
to melt the ice of Catdo : 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) ; ^ the patriotism
of the Condessa de Athouguia in arming her two sons on the
morning of December i, 1640, to throw ofT 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 0 Alfagetne de Santarem (1842); the fall
of Pombal in A Sobrinha do Marquez (1848); ^ 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^Menendez y Pelayo called it ' incomparable ' —
Frei Luiz de Sousa, far excels the others by reason of the concen-
tration 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.
* Published in 184 1. - Written ten years earlier.
T 2
i
2Q2 l8l6 -IQTO
Indeed, a value is given even to (iarrett's slighter pieces — Tin
Simplicio (1844), Fallar Verdade a Mentir (1845) ^ — 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 beauti-
ful episodes and graceful lyrics — in Folhas Cahidas (1853) ^i^d
vol. I (1843) of his Romanceiro — but his prose stamps with indi-
viduality works so diverse as his historical novel 0 Arco de Santa
Anna (2 vols., 1845, 51),"^ his charming miscellaneous Viagens
na minha terra (1846) with its famous episode of Joaninha of the
nightingales, his treatises Da Educagdo (1829), Portugal na balanga
da Eiiropa (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 Mor 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-aca-
demician the Canon Joao Pedro Ribeiro (11839) I Luz
Soriano (1802-99), author of aHisforia da Guerra Civil (1866-90)
in seventeen volumes ; the Visconde de Santarem (1791-1856),
whose able and persistent researches were of inestirpable 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
' These two plays were published in vol. vii of his Ohras (1847) with
/). Philippa de Vilhena.
■ A contemporary novel, Helena (1871), remained unfinished at his death.
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 293
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 occa-
sionally interfered. He edited 0 Panorama from 1837 to 1844
and joined in founding 0 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 agricul-
ture on the estate of Val de Lobos, near Santarem.^ 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),"^
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 0 Pano-
rama and published as Lendas e Narrativas (1851), as well as in
the more elaborate 0 Monasticon, consisting of two separate
parts Eurico 0 Presbytero (1844) and 0 Monge de Cister (1848), he
wrote romance based upon scrupulous historical research. A
slight leaning towards melodrama is as a rule successfully with-
stood, and his intense and pow-erful style enchains the attention.
Eurico is really a splendid prose poem,^ in which the eighth-
' It was, however, no sudden decision. As early as 185 i he wrote, in a letter
to Garrett, ' . . . me ver entre quatro serras com algumas geiras de terra proprtas,
timas botas grossas e um chapeu de Braga, bello ideal de todas as minhas am-
blades mundanas '.
- The second edition with additional poems was entitled Poesias (1850).
* Cronica, poeina, Icnda on 0 que qitcr que scja, he says.
294 1816-1910
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 0 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 pro-
ceed 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. ^ 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 Siierwour v>'hichproducedthesp\cn6idPortvgaliae Monvme?ita
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 late Dr. Gon9alvez Viana considered Herculano ' the most vernacular,
scrupulous and perfect writer of the nineteenth century ' {Paleslras I'llo-
Idjicas, 1910, p. 1 iG).
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 295
the work of his hfc, 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 Origeni e Estahelecimento da Inquisigao em Portugal
(3 vols., 1854-9), 3- 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 Dollinger and Niifiez 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 0 Panorama : Manoel Soiisa de Sepulveda (1843) and 0 Conde
Soberano de Castella (1844, 53). JoAo de Andrade Corvo (1824-
90), poet and dramatist,^ author of a novel of contemporary
politics, 6> 5^«^m^w/d;/25m(?(i87i), which contains excellent descrip-
tions 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 his-
torical episodes of the French invasion of 1809 [0 Sargento Mor
de Villar and 0 Segredo do Abbade), or of Oporto in the fifteenth
century in A Ultima Dona de S. Nicolau, or in the eighteenth in
UmMotim 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 0 Genio do Mai (4 vols., 1857). Guilhermino Augusto
DE Barros (1835-1900) is the author of a novel of the fifteenth
century, 0 Castello de Monsanto (2 vols., 1879), o^ 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) ^^ Sombras e Luz (1863) described
scenes from the reign of King Manuel, and drew a strange portrait
1 O Alliciador (1859), 0 Astrologo (i860).
296 I8I6-I9IO
of King Joao III in Amoresdeum 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 Homisio, a short novel of the time of
King Sancho II, written with the exaggeration of extreme youth,
appeared in the Revista Universal Lisbon en se (1842-3), followed by
OdioVelho ndo cansa (reign of Sancho I), with similar defects,ini848.
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 Jose I (1750-77). Four years later
Rebello da Silva published his principal novel, A Mocidade de D.
Joao 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^ (1863) may interest English readers from
the fact that its principal character is WiUiam 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 secidos
XVII eXVI II [svoh., 1860-71). In this, as in his Fastos da I grej a
(1854-5) and Vardes 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 Hercu-
lano, has value as history as w^H 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 nume-
rous 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
' The last novel to appear in Rebello da Silva's lifetime was A Casa
dos Phantasmas {1865). ^^ Noite todos os gatos sao pardos was published
posthumously.
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 297
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,^ a widower
in his teens, then a boisterous Oporto medical student, twice im-
prisoned 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 blind-
ness, he ended by suicide. He read and wrote in the same tem-
pestuous fashion. The sentimental atmosphere of his novels is
relieved systematically by outbursts ot 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
nao me mates, que son tua mde! (1848), ^ 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 Perdigao (1862) — its character
is well described by the title of the Italian version. Amor sfrenato
—or A?nor de Salvagdo (1864) and those which combine this
character with a chain of amazing coincidences, as Os Mysterios de
Lishoa (1854) a-iid 0 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 Consolagdo{i8y2).
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 Alarcon. 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
* After Camillo, as he is always called in Portugal, had been created Viscondc
de Correa Botelho in 1885, his descent was traced back to Fruela, son of
Pelayo.
^ That is, a year before the novel Memorias de um Doudo (1849) by
Antonio Pedro Lopes de Mendon9a (1826-65).
29^ 1816-I910
in his novels, and charms with a simplicity of style and description
worthy of Frei Luis dc Sousa, as in some of his Novellas do Minho
(12 vols., 1875-7), the country-house in Coragao, Cabega e Esto-
mago (1862), the Tras-os-Montes^^aZg'o's house in Os Mysterios
de Lisboa, the village priest in A Sereia (1865), Padre Joao in
Doze Casamentos Felizes (1861), the farrier in Amor de PerdiQdo,
the charcoal-burners in 0 Santo da MontanJia (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 de-
scribed 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 Homeni de Brios (1856),^ the last two being continuations of
Onde estd aFelicidade? (1856). This last work has a broader
historical setting, and many of his novels are really historical
episodes,^ some of which bear a strong resemblance to Perez
Galdos' Episodios Nacionales. Especially is this the case
with the latter part of As Tres Irmas (1862) and with A Bruxa
de Monte Cordova (1867), both written before the appearance of
the first Episodio Nacional. In Eusebio Macario and y^ Corja he
set his hand to the naturalistic novel, and in A Brazileira de
Prazins (1882) modified this method to suit his favourite phan-
tasy 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 some-
times— here, as in all else, leaving moderation to the bourgeois
' Cf. also Carlota Angela (1858), O que fazem mulheres {1858), Annas de
Prosa (1863), O SangU2 (1868). Estrellas Propicias (1863), Estrellas Funestas
(1869).
* e.g. Lagrimas Abenfoadas (1857), Carlota Angela (1858), O Santo da Mon-
tanha (1865). A Engeitada (1866), O Judeu (2 vols., 1866), O Regicida {1874),
A Filha do Regicida (1875).
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 299
Spate — allows himself to bo carried away by his immense vocabu-
lary, but often, indeed usually, his language is a flawless marble,
a rich quarry of the purest, most vernacular Portuguese, de-
rived from the Portuguese religious and mystic writers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^ 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— /4wor de Perdigdo was written in a fortnight. Their plot
may be ill constructed, the delineation of characters shallow,
Balzac manque, 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 ten-
dencies (he imitated Emile Zola in Eusehio Macario, although
he declared the realistic school to be the perversion of Nature,
£mile Souvcstre in As Tres Irmds, 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 Tamcga, 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 essen-
tial 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 '.^ 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
• That it is not impeccable such a phrase as confortar o palacio (O Livro
Negro do Padre Diniz, 1896 ed., p. 135) well shows.
- M. A. Vaz dc Carvalho, Seroes no Campo (1877), p. 171.
300 1816-I910
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. Un-
sympathetic 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 Priniavera (1822)^ and Amor e
Melancholia on a Novissima Heloisa (1828) he combined the
classical school's dearth of thought with the diffuseness of the
romantics. But his quadras {A Visdo, 0 Sao Jodo, 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) - 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 trans-
lations (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 0*Trovador
(1848)-"^ and 0 Novo Trovador (1856), were Luiz Augusto Pal-
' Part 2 is entitled A Festa de Maio (two cantos).
- Written in 1830.
^ This ' collection of contemporary poems ' contains verses of considerable
merit. Of some 200 poems by twenty-one poets twenty-eight are by Joao
de Lemos, thirty by Jose Freire de Serpa Pimentel (1814-70), second Viscondc
de Gouvea, author of Solaos (1839), thirty-four by Antonio Xavier Rodrigues
Cordeiro (1819-1900), and thirty-six by Augusto Jose Gon9alves Lima (1823-
67), who reprinted his contributions in Murmnrios (1851). AsimiUtr collection
of verse was A Grinalda (Porto, 1857).
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 301
MEiRiM (1825-93), whose Poesias appeared in 185 1, and Joao de
Lemos (1819-89), some of whose poems (one of the best known
is A Lua de Londres) in Flores e Amoves (1858), Religido e Patria
(1859), ^ricl especially Cangdes 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
Jodo de Lemos. Jose da Silva Mendes Leal (1818-86),
author of Historia da Guerra no Oriente (1855), and, like Pal-
meirim, a successful dramatist, in Os Dots Renegades (1839)
and 0 Homem da Mascara Negra (1843), and also a novelist {0 que
foram os Portugueses), as a poet is at his best in patriotic, military,
or funeral odes : 0 Pavilhdo Negro (1859), ^^^ Cesar, Gloria e
Martyrio (perhaps suggested by Tennyson's Ode on the Death of
the Duke of Wellington), Napoledo 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 /nimwwa^. Antonio Augusto
Scares 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 0 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. Lourengo de Almeida e Medeiros,
accused him of having stolen 0 Firmamento and other poems.
He had himself, he said, written the melancholy ballad 0 Noivado
do Sepulchro in February 1853, but unfortunately for his con-
tention it had appeared over Scares de Passos' signature eight
months earlier in 0 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 0 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).
302 1816-1910
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
Novaks (1822-64), who mh\sPoesias{i^$$), Novas Poesias (1858),
and Poesias Postiimas (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 strik-
ing 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 0 celico espectaculo. Subse-
quent volumes — Sons que passam (1867), which contains poems
written as early as 1854, ^ Delfina do Mai (1868), Vesperas (1880),
Dissonancias (1890), 0 Mensageiro deFez (1899) — maintained, but
did not increase, his reputation as a poet. The chief work of
Raimundo Antonio de Bulhao 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
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 303
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. Bulhao Pato
published other volumes of gentle album poetry, 2lS Poesias {t.%So),
Versos (1862), Cangoes da Tarde (1866), and Hoje: Satyras, Can-
goes e Idyllios (1888), besides sketches and recollections in prose.
Nearly fifty years before his death the romantic school in Portu-
gal had received a severe shock, and the fact that long romantic
poems continued to appear is proof how deep its roots had
penetrated.
§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' 0 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 Ouental
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.^ Snr. Julio de Castilho, subse-
quently 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 Ouental
and Ramalho Ortigao, 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
' The incomplete list in the Dice. Bibliog., vol, viii. records forty-four
published in 1865 ^.nd 1866. These include Julio dc Castilho's O Senhor An-
tonio Feliciana de Castilho e 0 Senhor Anthero de Qnental (1865, ^^ -^-i 1866),
R. OTt\gdt.o's Litter atur a 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).
\
THE REACTION AND AFTER 305
history JoAOUiM Pedro de Oliveira Martins (1845-94) always
remained more than half a romantic. His life explains the charac-
ter 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, 0 Hellenismo e a Civilisagdo Christd
(1878), and then in marvellous rapidity the //z5/ma da Civilisagdo
Iberica (1879), Historia de Portugal (1879), Elementos de Anthro-
pologia (1880), Portugal Contemporaneo (1881), and a further
succession of historical works ending with the Historia da
Republica Roniana (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. Joao I
(1891) and A Vida de Nun" Alvares (1893) are not the least
valuable part. 0 Principe Perfeito (1896), dealing with King
Joao 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 sum-
marizing a person or a period. He is capable of vulgarity (as
in the account of Queen Philippa and the frequent use of collo-
quialisms perfectly unbefitting the dignity of history) but not of
2362 u
3o6 1816-IOIO
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 apocry-
phal) 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, play-
wright, critic, novelist, historian, was even more abundant and
for the most part of a more popular character and more common-
place. 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 Cortede D. Joao V (1867) has an account
of an outeiro^ in which figures the Camoes do Rocio as the poet
Caetano Jose da Silva Souto-Maior {c. 1695-1739) was called.
The subject of the earlier novel Tristezas a beira-niar (1866) is that
which Amorim in his A Ahnegagdo derived from an English novel,
but is here more naturally treated. A Mascara Velha (continued
in 0 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
' 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.
THE REACTION AND AFTER 307
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 his-
torians 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
Jose Maria Latino Coelho (1825-91) was his Historia Politica
e Militar de Portugal desde osfins do seculo XVIII ate 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.
Jose Ramos Coelho (1832-1914) is chiefly known for his elaborate
romantic biography of the brother of King Joao V : Historia do
Infante D. Duarte (2 vols., 1889, 90). Dr. Henrique da Gama
Barros (born in 1833) in the invaluable Historia da Administragao
Publica em Portugal nos seculosXII aXV (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.^
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 0 Anjo do Piidor (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 (11913) were celebrated for their
' Historical research and compilation are carried on by Snr. Fortunato
de Almeida in his Historia da Igreja em Portugal (iQio, &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., 19 18,
21), is a Brazilian.
U 2
3o8 1816-1910
studies in folk-lore ^ ; the Visconde de Juromenha (1807-87)
for his edition of the works of Camoes ; 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 ; Jose Pereira de Sampaio
(1857-1915), who used the pseudonym Bruno, as a critic ;
Aniceto DOS Reis GoNgALVEZ 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 unmethodi-
cal bibliographer Innocencio da Silva (1810-76), his celebrated
Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez was carried on by Brito
Aranha(i833-i9I4), and the task of continuing it is nowentrusted
to Snr. Gomes de Brito. To the eminent folk-lorist Francisco
Adolpho Coelho (1847-1919) the language, literature, and folk-
lore are indebted for many works of permanent value. Notable
among living scholars, apart from D. Carolina Michaelis de Vas-
concellos and Mr. Edgar Prestage, who both write in Portuguese,
are Colonel Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira, whose editions
of early works are invaluable ; Dr. Jose Joaquim Nunes,
who has devoted his careful scholarship to the early poetry and
prose ; the Camoes scholar, Dr. Jose 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), enthu-
siastic 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. Jose
Leite de Vasconcellos (born in 1858) has a European reputa-
' For the works of these and other authors here mentioned consult the
Bibliography.
THE REACTION AND AFTER 309
tion 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 Portu-
guese 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), Visdo dos Tempos (1864), Tempes-
tades Sonoras (1864), Ondma do Lago (1866), Torrentes (1869),
Miragens Secular es (1884), which was intended to succeed where
Victor Hugo's Legende des Siecles had failed through lack of a
piano 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 Portii-
guesa 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 reputa-
tion 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 Raga (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 0 Cedro Vermelho, an exotic play in five acts and
310 1816-1910
seventy-nine scenes, which the unfamiliar dresses and hybrid
dialogue helped to make popular at Lisbon.^
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, 0 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
0 Saltimbanco (1885), the tragedy of the noble devotion of a
mountebank, Falla-S6, 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 Forfa
(1900), was the drama Ignez de Castro (1894). The scene in
which Ines, full of foreboding, takes leave of Pedro before he
goes hunting, and that at the end of Act IV, in which Pedro re-
turns to find Ines, in the words of their little son, ali a dormir,
' It was published, with the necessary explanations, in two volumes (1874).
THE REACTION AND AFTER 311
are effective. A fifth act six years later [1361] comes as an
anti-climax. 0 Auto dos Esquecidos (1898) is the work not of a
dramatist but of a poet, Jose de Sousa Monteiro (1846-1909),
whose poems were published under the title Poemas : Mysticos,
Antigos, Modernos (1883). The auto, written in the old redon-
dilhas 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. Joao da Camara (1852-1908), son of the
first Marques and eighth Conde da Ribeira Grande and grandson
of the third Duque de Lafoes. 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
AJfonso VI (1890), in which the king is treated with a sympathy
denied to Cardinal Henrique in Alcacer-Kibir (1891), slight pieces
in verse, as 0 Poeta e a Saudade or the Auto do Menino Jesus
(1903) ; and prose plays of contemporary Lisbon society : 0
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 0 Beijo do Infante (1898).
The mad Jose of 0 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. Marcelling
Mesquita (1856-1919), doctor and deputy, wrote historical
dr2.m3S>,0 Regente [1440] in prose, LeonorTelles (1889, published in
1893) in verse, 0 Sonho da India (1898) (scenes from the discoveries
312 1816-1910
of Gama and ten other famous Portuguese navigators), and
Pedro 0 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), 0 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), 0 Auto do Busto (1899), 0 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 Mendgn^a (born in
1856). His verse is more declamatory, the use of strained esdru-
xulo 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-rn'o). This no doubt helps to
increase the effect of hollow resonance. Nor is there a compensat-
ing skill in psychology. There is nothing subtle, for instance, in
the characters of 0 Duque de Vizeu (1886) : the cruel Joao H, the
timid Manuel, the high-minded Duke, and self-sacrificing Mar-
garida. A Morta (1891) deals with Pedro I's justice and saudade
for the dead Ines. Ajfonso d' Albuquerque (1898) has a tempting
subject (handled previously by Costa Lobo in his play — also in
verse — Ajfonso 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 christao se ha de mudar o cantico
De Brahma, confundindo o Indico no Atlantico.
It is perhaps a relief to turn lu the prose plays, 0 Azebre (1909,
THE REACTION AND AFTER 313
written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist FideHo,
No Cego (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to 0 Salto
Mortal, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the
admirably natural fishermen's scenes and dialogues enacted at
Ericeirain thesecond half of the nineteenth centnxy^m Amor Lou co
(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 Heranga {1913) also has the lives of fishermen for
its subject. An equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse
is Sandade (1916), while the dramatist's power of evoking past
scenes is shown in the glowing historical tales of Sangue Portugues
{1920), Gente Namorada (1921), and Langas 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 0 que morreu de amor
(1899) and Viriato Tragico (1900) ; in Spain of the seventeenth
century: Don Ramon de Capichuela (1911); contemporary Lis-
bon: Crucificados (1902), Mater Dolorosa (1908), 0 Reposteiro
Verde (1912) ; the Inquisition-clouded Portugal of the seven-
teenth century: Santa Inquisigdo (1910), or its lighter side, with
the bonbon marquis : D. Beltrdo de Figueiroa (1902) ; the gentle,
romantic Portugal of the middle of the nineteenth century :
Um Serao 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 skil-
fully used to enhance the effect,^ and some of his scenes are
exquisite, especially the simple, very charming, and tragic one-act
comedy Rosas de todo 0 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 Inquisigdo, the attractive bishop oiSoror
Mariana (1915), or the characters in A Ceia dos Cardeais (1902).
• In this most delicate upholstery, if Wedgwood and Baedeker (as well as
Maple and Mappin) are introduced, they should surely be spelt correctly.
314
i8i6-iqio
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
Helo'isa (1878), 0 Festim de Balthazar (1892), 0 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 Schwal-
BACH, whose 0 Dia de jfuizo {igi5) and Poemade Amor (igib) 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 Caminhoperdido (1906), Amor dAntiga
(1907), As nossas amantes (1912), A Culpa (1918), as in his slight,^
attractive essays Fumo do Meu Cigarro (1916), Fantoches e Mane-
quins (1917), diVid Conversar (1920); thought and character in
Snr. AuGUSTO Lacerda's 0 Vicio (1888), Casados Solteiros (1893),
Terra Mater (1904), A Duvida (1906), Os Novos Apos tolas (191 8).
In Snr. Bento Mantua's 0 Alcool (1909) and Novo Altar (191 1)
the problem maybe a little too much in evidence, but in his prose
plays Md Sina (1906) and Gente Moga (1910) the human interest
is insistent. Md 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 MENDONgA
Alves, author of Promessa (1910) and Filhos{igio). The subject
of Filhos is unpleasant if not original (it is that of Ega de Queiroz'
Os Maias and Ennes' Os Engeitados), but is treated with dignity
and in a good prose style. Snr. Jaime Cortesao, 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 de-
veloped 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 Seroes de Pro-
vincia (1870), and at the age of twenty-one, under the pseudonym
Julio Diniz, he wrote the novel which brought him immediate
THE REACTION AND AFTER 315
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 Ass Pupillas do Senhor Reitor'^ (1866), a village chronicle
suggested by Herculano's 0 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 descrip-
' The Athenaeum in 1872 announced that Lord Stanley of Alderney was
preparing a translation oi 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.
3i6 1816-1910
tions 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 Monrisca (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 con-
trast 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 Thome 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 Fernan
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 inter-
spersed 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 marilimo)
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 0 Panorama
in 1854.
Few authors arc more interesting to the critic (owing to the
THE REACTION AND AFTER 317
courageous and persistent development of his art) than Jose
Maria de EgA de Oueiroz (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 magis-
trate, 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 [0 Milhafre, 0 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, Adao
e Eva no Paraiso, and A Perfeigao, 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 agree-
ably 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 : legen-
dary and romantic, as in Frei Genebro, S. Christovam, 0 Tesoiro ;
deliberately false and artificial, as A Civilisagdo ; a macabre
fantasy, as 0 Defunto; or half -intentional caricature, as 0 Prima
Basilio and Os Maias. What more chimerical than A Reliquia or
more elusive than 0 Suave Milagre, or more fanciful than 0 Man-
darim (1879), in which without himself knowing China the author
makes his readers know it 1 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
3t8 1816-IQIO
translated French — instead of directing him to a truer reaHsm
(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 momentwhen 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 colla-
boration with Ramalho Ortigao : 0 Mysterio da Estrada de Cintra
(1870), originally published in the Diario de Noticias (July 24-
September 27, 1S70). It was, however, 0 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 0
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 Corre-
spondencia 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 (191 2) 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 Civilisagdo, is but
a fascinating succession of country scenes. All Ega de Oueiroz'
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 LouRENgo
Pinto (1842-1907) is not relieved by Ega de Queiroz' pleasant
irony and definite characterization. These ' scenes of contem-
porary life', while they display a praiseworthy restraint, give the
idea rather of exercises in imitation of a French exemplar or of
THE REACTION AND AFTER 319
one of E^a de Queiroz' early novels than of living stories. Their
style is slovenly, the development of the plot prolix and mono-
tonous. 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), 0 Senhor Deputado
(1882), EsboQOS do Natural (1882), and 0 Homem Indispensavel
(1884). Snr. Jaime de Magalhaes Lima (born in 1857) in 0
Transviado{i8ggi),NaPazdoSenhor{igo:^),03.ndReinodaSaiidade
(1904), has written novels a these 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 Magalhaes (born in 1859), author of several
volumes of verse, wrote a single novel, 0 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 a Chiiva (1916), followed by a second series :
Comedia Burgueza (7 vols.), which began with Os Xoivos
(1879). The obvious defects of his work — its laborious realism,
its insistence on medical or physical details, its vain load of
pedantry ^ — 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
' 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 Danvin, in O Conto do Gallo.
320 1816-I910
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 Divmo), the girl shepherdess, the abhade
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 Vinganga do morto and 0 Enterro de
urn Cao), 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),^ and A Cantadeira (1913),' some of which have
been collected in an attractive volume, Arvoredos (1895).
Snr. Manuel da Silva Gayo (born in i860), 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 (191 1), 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
Gastello in 1903-5) in his novels 0 Filho das Hervas (1900),
Os Telles de Albergaria (1901), and A Paixdo de Maria do Ceo
(1902). Frankly sensational in 0 Grande Cagliostro (1905), he dis-
plays his gift for the short story in A Vencida (1907), a volume
of dramatic tales, of which A Consoada is especially effective.
* Comedia do Campo, vol. vi. ^ Vol. vii.
TIIK REACTION AND AFTER 321
Snr. JoAO 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 0 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 Paixdo 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.
AbelBotelho(i856-I9I7), a colonel in the Army, and for some
years Minister of the Portuguese Republic at Buenos Aires, author
of a volume of verse, Lyra Insubniissa (1885), showed an inter-
mittent 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 : 0 Bardo
de Lavos (1891), 0 Livro de Alda (1898), Fatal Dilemma (1907),
Prospera Fortiina (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.^
Sainte-Beuve may speak of the saletes 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 shape-
less sentences, long abstract terms, French words, gallicisms,
expressions such as pathognomonico, autopsiagdo, 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
> Pathology, religious and social, crops up in the later novels of Snr. Vieira
da Costa, Irma 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. Jose de Caldas is the author of Os Humildes (1900) and Cartas de nm
Vencido {19 10), D. Joao de Castro of Os Malditos (1894) and A Deshonra, in
which a strange situation is too long drawn out.
2362 X
322 1816-I9IO
their defects might have been pilloried by an adept in ridicule
who in contemporary literature occupies a place apart. As critic
Jose Duarte Ramalho Ortigao (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 Guepes and begun in collaboration with his
friend Ega 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 suc-
ceeding 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
Ortigao 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 dc Almeida in Os Gatos (1889-94), which
achieved popularity in Lisbon. His is a more lumbering wit : the
rapier of Ramalho Ortigao 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 descrip-
tions, of places rather than of persons. A battling critic was
Manuel Jose 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) ; Ega de Queiroz showed a deeper acquaintance with Eng-
land in his Cartas de Inglaterra (1905). Snr. Wenceslau Jose de
SousA MoRAES (born in 1854), sometimes called the Portuguese
THE RP^ACTTOX AND AFTER 323
Pierre Eoti, ha^? skilfully described China and Japan in Tra^os
do Extremo Oriente (1905), Paisagens da China e do Japdo (1906),
and Cartas do Japdo (three series, 1904-7). In a letter in
French at the end of his Tragos he says : J'ai dit ce que je
pensais, naivement, an grS 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. lues (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 scrupu-
lous use of the right word, common or archaic. It is the more
disconcerting to find good Portuguese words such as esiagdo,
hospedaria, comodo, hondade ousted by gare, hotel, confortavel,
honomia. 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 Recordagoes 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.
x 2
324 1816-191O
D, Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho (1847- 1921) col-
laborated with her husband, the poet Gongalves Crespo, in
Contos para os nossos filhos, and in Seroes 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 bio-
graphy, Vida do Diique 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, sym-
pathy, and insight of Alguns homens do men tempo (1889), Figuras
de Hoje e de Hontem (1902), Cerehros e Coragoes (1903), No Meii
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 {Poeynetos, 1882) and prose is the
CoNDE DE Sabugosa (bom in 1854), skilful and delicate recon-
structor of the past in Embrechados (1908), Donas de Tempos
Idos (1912), Gente d'Algo (1915), Neves de Antariho (1919), and
A Rainha D. Leonor (1921), who collaborated with another
stylist, the Conde de Arnoso^ (1856-1911), author of Azulejos
(1886), in the volume of contos entitled De brago 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 Desgar-
rada (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 Ambigoes (1903) gives the im-
pression 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
' He wrote under the name Bernardo de Pindella or Bernardo Pinheiro.
THE REACTlOiN AND AFTER 325
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).^ They arc 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, Ega de Queiroz, Teixeira de Queiroz, Snr.
Jaime de Magalhaes Lima {Via Redemptora, 1905, Aposiolos
da Terra, 1906, Vozes do Men 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), A' 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 ex-
traneous 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 Seroes de Inverno (1880), written
by Carlos Lopes (born in 1842) under the pseudonym Pedro
Ivo ; and Contos (1894) and Azul e Negro " (1897) by Afonso
Botelho. The poet Augusto Sarmento (born in 1835) also wrote
stories of village life, Contos do Soalheiro (1876), but stories
a these, 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 0 Engeitado, are pathetic, but after
reading his Contos da minha lavra (1879), Contos de aldeia,
Contos Escolhidos (1892), Novos Contos, one has the perhaps
' In novels intimately connected with the Portuguese soil such expressions
as coloridogritante (criard),lHnchar (to partake of luncheon), endomingado (endi-
manchS) are more than ever out of place. The authoress has written other
stories : Capital Bemdito (1910), Fe (a Socialist novel), Inocente (1916), A Praga
(1917)-
* A conto written by Sur. Julio de Lemos in 1905 bears the same title.
326 i8i6-igio
somewhat unfair impression that they are mainly concerned with
viscondessas and canaries. The learned Conde de Ficalho
in Uma Eleigdo Perdida (1888) evidently relates his own expe-
riences, 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 Jose
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 0 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, coqiiettemente, 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 recalHng that of the Spanish essayist
Azorin, marks the Contos (1900) of the dramatist D. Joao da Ca-
mara. The clear etching of the bhnd man and his grandson going
through the streets on Christmas Eve in As Estrellas do Ccgo and.
THE REACTION AND AFTER 327
especially, the poignant sketch of the ruined old schoVar fidalgo in
0 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, Jose Francisco de Trin-
DADE CoELHO (i86i-igo8). His contos collected under the title Os
Mens Amoves (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 surround-
ings, 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 {Sultdo), goat (Mae), 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 A Lareira, the longest of these stories,
a rustic serdo of peasants ao horralho 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
Ramon Maria del Valle Inclan's Flor de Santidad (1904). Os
Mens 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 de-
lightful novel of the parjiim dii terroir of Portugal. Snr. Julio
328 1816-1910
Brandao (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 occasion-
ally achieves simplicity. Equally studied is the prose of Snr.
JusTiNO DE MoNTALVAo's Os DesHuos (1904), twclvc storics, of
which Conto dos Reis relates the death of a peasant child as
voices outside sing Sao chegados os tres Reis. The Visconde de
ViLLA-MouRA (born in 1877) ^^^ 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 Serao Inquieto (1910) contains two poignant contos :
0 Precoce and 0 Veiga. Os Pobres by Snr. Raul Brandao
(born in 1869) is a succession of scenes, a striking analysis of suf-
fering 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 0 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 ^ (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 litera-
ture, 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
* de Quental or do Quental. See J. Lcite de Vasconcellos, Lifdes de Philo-
logia Poritiguesa (191 1), p. 125 ad fin.
THE REACTION AND AFTER 329
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 un-
certain 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 Joao de
Deus without any thought whatever :
Ja sossega depois de tanta luta,
Ja me descansa em paz o coragam.
Quental's poems owe their strength and intensity to the fact that
they had passed through the fire of ianta luta.
Totally different from Quental's was the genius of Joao de
Deus (1830-96), the most natural Portuguese poet of the nine-
teenth century. Born at Messines in Algarve, he studied law at
Coimbra, became a journalist, but did not come to live perman-
ently 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 pub-
lished work, A Lata (Coimbra, i860), in oitavas, gives no measure
330 1816-1910
of his genius, but some of his best poems, such as A Vida, were
widely known before Flores do Campo (1868) appeared, followed
by Ranio 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 teach-
ing children to read. If ever poet was born, not made, it was
Joao 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 meta-
phors— and entirely free from rhetorical effects, has a most
spontaneous charm. Despite occasional defects, the use of luke-
warm or unpoetical words, ohjectbs, chaile, ajfavel, 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 Penin-
sulares (1870) of Jose Simoes 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 0 Bispo (1874), proved himself a talented
poet in Her as e Violetas {i86g) , although even here are to be found
words and expressions frequently out of tune. Like Alexandre
DA CoNCEigAo (1842-89), whose best-known volume of verses,
Alvoradas (r866), belongs to the romantic school, Guilherme de
AzEVEDO (1846-82) began with romantic verse in imitation of
Garrett in Apparigdes (1861), wavered in RaQodiaes da Noite
(1871), and succumbed to the new school in A Alma Nova (1874).
Joao 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. Gongalves Crespo heard
in his verse ' the plaining music of a guitar of Andalucia ', but
Penha never cared to be serious. Cesario Verde (1855-86)
was a Lisbon poet who in verse written between 1873 and
1883, 0 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
THE REACTION AND AETER 331
writers have, indeed, published less than Antonio Can dido
GoNgALVES Crespo (1846-83), a Portuguese born at Rio de
Janeiro. He studied at Coimbra University, and became a dis-
tinguished journalist and a colonial member of the Portuguese
Parliament from i879toi88i. Two tiny volumes of lyrics, Mwm-
turas (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
II Sahato 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 signifi-
cance. An earlier Brazilian poet, Antonio GoNgALVES Dias
(1823-64), author of Primeiros Cantos (1846), Segundos Cantos
e Sextilhas de Frei Antdo (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 Jose Nunes (1831-75), published Scenas Con-
temporaneas (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 Jun-
QUEiRo's work. The greatest of Portugal's living poets was born
at Freixo de Espada a Cinta in 1850 and was thus a small child
when Hugo's poems Les Contemplatioyis (1856) and La Legende des
Siecles (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
332 1816-19IO
quatorze annos (1864), and before he was twenty he had written
Mysticae Nuptiae (1866), Vozessem Echo (1867), and Baptismo do
Atnor (1868) , with a preface by Camillo Castello Branco. But it was
A Morte de Dam Jodo (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 P atria,
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 ghostli-
ness in Finis Patriae and in the doido's part in Patria is accom-
panied by a strange and impressive lilt in the rhythm^ 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 li7ida
hoeirinha guiding her great oxen, the old shepherd with his fiute
and crook on the scented hills, the cavador going to his work at
cockcrow beneath the red morning star. A Caminho, the inimi-
table 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, Orafdo ao Pao (1902) and Oragdo
a Lti2 (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
' e.g. Tive castellos, fortalezas pclo muyido. . . . Ndo tcnho casa, ndo tenho
pao. 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. Correa 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, Dortnir em
paz . . . dormir ! That is excellent ; but the word dormir is then again thrice
repeated, until the reader sleeps.
THE REACTTON AND AFTER 333
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 subse-
quent works: A Fome de Camoes (1880), A Historia de Jesus
(1883), 0 Fim de um Mundo (1900), A Mulher de Luto (1902).
His satire here, as in Satyras Modernas (1899), or the biting
sonnets of Mefistofeles em Lisboa (1907), is sincerely indignant
but too often based on ignorance. In 0 Anti-Christo (1884) it
voices the eternal revolt against false civilization and material-
ism. 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 philo-
sophers, 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 Lohos, 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 Renascenga 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
334 I(Sl6-I9IO
itself entirely in Nature, his poetry becomes a wavering symphony ^
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 Somhras (1907), is more marked
in his longer poems Mardnos (191 1), in eighteen Ccintos, and
Regresso ao Paraiso (19 12), in twenty- two cantos of mono-
tonous blank verse. But Nature is justified of her child, and
Mardnos, like a mountain-stream threading its transparent pools,
shows abundantly that the author has also the power of con-
densing a picture into a single line. To this group belong Snr.
Mario Beirao (born in 1891), whose verse in 0 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 Evoca0o
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 So (1892), a strange alter-
nation 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
' In details his ear is not faultless. Cf. the unscannable line /T que na corda
do remorso enforcoit Jtidas (unless this is deliberately onomatopoeic).
THE REACTION AND AFTER 335
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 Chizas ao Veyito (1921), he displays great technical
skill, especially in the reproduction of still scenes as in the
sonnets Paizagem, Aguarella, or Ao hiar. The Parnassian verse
of JoAQUiM DE Araujo (1858-1917) in Lyra Intima (1881)
OccideiUaes (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 Feijo (1862-1917), during sixteen years
Portuguese Minister at Stockholm, in Lyricas e Biicolicas (1884)
and Ilha dos Amoves (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 floco7is des neigeuses annees). 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 JoAo 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 Brandao,
in Saudades (1893), in which he weaves the linho luarento das
saudades, 0 Jardim da Morte (1898) and Nuvem de Oiro (1912) ;
Snr. Fausto Guedes Teixeira (born in 1872), in his remarkable
0 Melt Livro, i8g6-igo6 (1908) ; Snr. Luiz Osorio, in Neblinas
(1884), Poemas Portuguezes (1890), and Alma lyrica (1891) ;
Snr. GuiLHERME DE Santa Rita in Vacillantes (1884) and
0 Poema de um Morto (1897), and indeed of a great caterva
vatum,^ 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) wrotc some pleasant
1 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).
33^ 1816-1910
regional verse in Miisa Alemtejana (1908), in which he describes
Hfe 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 agorda 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), Somhra de Jimo (1915), Alha Plena (1916), Snr.
Jose Coelho da Cunha's Terra do Sol (1911) and Vilancetes
(1915),! and D. Branca de Gonta CoLLAgo's Cangoes do Meio
Dia (1912). A more vigorous talent, also, is that of Snr. Joao de
Barros in Algas (1899), Entre a Multiddo (1902), Dentro da Vida
(1904), Terra Florida (1909), and Anteii (1912). At the head of
the Portuguese Symbolists (their symbolism has been rather ex-
ternal than philosophic) stands Snr. Eugenic 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 iima somhra saudosa d'outras sombras.
The success achieved in Oaristos (1890) was strikingly maintained
in Sagramor (1895), 0 Rei Galaor (1897), Constanga (1900), Depois
da Ceifa (1901), A Somhra do Qiiadrante (1906), 0 Annel de
Polycrates (1907), 0 Filho Prodigo (1910), and the twenty-one
sonnets of Camafeiis 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." His debt was not wholly to French
Parnassian or Symbolist, for he had also drunk deep of Greek and
• He is the son of Snr. Alfredo Carneiro da Cunha (born in 1863),
whose Versos (1900) contains the poignant lines A utna crcanga 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.
* The word Nephelihatas {= Cloud-treaders), formerly applied to poets of
the decadent school in Portugal, is now seldom heard.
THE REACTION AND AFTER 337
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 Correa 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
Estagoes (19 11), Os Teus Sonet os (19 14), 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 0 Naufrago (1898), 0 Encoherto (1905),
Ar Livre (1906), and 0 Pao 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.
2362
APPENDIX
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 Camoes ; 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 Joao
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 aiitos to her ' ; and the
Pratica de Tres Pastores gives us a picture of an old peasant
reading out from the Bible ^ of an evening to the whole village:
Esse velhinho
Tinha hum cartapolinho
Feito de letra de mao
Em papel de pergaminho,
E chamava-se o feitinho
Do livro da creagao.
* The whole Bible in Portuguese was not translated until the eighteenth
century, by Joao 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 Evaii-
gelica, 1777, 78, Historia Biblica, 1778-82) by Frei Francisco de Jesus
Maria Sarmento (1713-90). See C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos et S. Berger,
Les Bibles Portugaises in Romania, xxviii (1899), pp. 543-8: La littiratiire
portugaise est en matiere de traductions bibliques d'une pauvretS desespirante.
The Parocho Perfeito (1675) speaks of os parochos que ndo tiverem Bihlias (p. 19).
See also G. L. Santos Ferreira, A Biblia em Portugal, 1495-1830 (L. 1906).
1
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE 339
E entao
Que sempre cada serao
A noytc depois da cca
Com oculos a candea
O lia por devogao
A toda a gentc 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 countiy in folhas
volantes at the present day, as Diaz' Historia da Imperatriz
Porcina (Porto, 1906) — a romance of some 1,500 octosyllables in
-ia — 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) Carlotnagno, printed at Seville in
1525 and at Alcala 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 Fer-
reira from the Spanish (1524) and published at Lisbon in 1735.
The Verdadeira Historia do Grande Roberto Duqne 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 Jodo de Calais,
reprinted at Oporto in 1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The
story of Flores e Branca Fror, last offshoot (a ' vile extract '
Menendez y Pelayo called it) of the charming Greek tale which
came originally from the East,i was mentioned by several poets
(King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the Archpriest of Hita) in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ^ and in the Gran Conqiiista
* See Floire et Blancheflor. Poemes du xiii'' sidcle. Publics d'apris les
manitscrits . . . par E. du Mhil, Paris, 1856. In the original story Flores
in a basket of roses enters the tower where Brancaflor is imprisoned.
Senor Bonilla y San Martin {La Historia de los dos Enamorados Flores y Blanca-
flor, Madrid, 1916) attributes an Italian origin to the Spanish prose story. The
Spanish translation probably dates from the fifteenth century.
^ For its popularity with the Provencal troubadours see Raynouard, Choix,
e.g. ii. 297, 304, 305.
Y 2
340 APPENDIX
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, sens amores e perigos que
passaram por Flores ser moiiro e Branca-Flor christa. Garcia
Ferreiro refers to a historia de Branca Fror as recited at a
Galician escasula} 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.^
The portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 cd.) represents no less a
person than Napoleon III, and the ' true likeness of the beautiful
Princess Magalona'^ (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These folhas
volantes of the literatura de cordel with m2t.r\y 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 Zangnizarra (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 mnndo, 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 0 Hyssope.'^ Nor do the
Trovas do Bandarra belong to literature, although these verses
of the cobbler prophet of Trancoso, GoNgALO Annez Bandarra
(11556.?), 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
Explicagdo of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest
was then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse,
' A historia de Branca Fror Outra saca a relocer {Chorimas (1890), p. 148).
- It has been reproduced, from an earlier edition, in T. Braga, Os Livros
Populares Portuguezes {Era Nova, vol. i, 1881).
* 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.'
* One of the Elvas Chapter was komem versado Na lifdo de Florinda e Carlo
Magna.
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE 341
Augurai gentes vindouras
Que 0 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 X 8 : 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign
(1568). A more reasonable computation would have been from
Alcacer Kcbir {de vos ha de hir) = 1818, or, if the scissors were
open: ^^X^ (10), = 1878. Many sought to connect with Bandarra's
prophecies the sayings of Simao 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 Simao Gomes, vulgarmente chamado 0 Qapateiro
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 licengas. 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 ^ 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 v/hich 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 pro-
pitiation 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.
' 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 quern vos quer bem ; Porque se concerta Rosto e condifam
Dais por galardam A pena niui certa. Sendo tarn fermosa Dizei, &c. Even
less genuinely popular are the Trovas do Moleiro (1602), written by an
obscure native of Tangier, Luis Brochado, and others.
342 APPENDIX
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 dangas e folias and with cantigas que entoavam eiitre as
voltas e saltos dos bailes,^ songs evidently similar to those in the
works of Gil \^iccntc, with leixapren and refrain [aaxbbx'^ or
abxbcx).^ The volta would correspond in action to the leixapren'^
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 for am os
perros que mataram os lobos que comeram as €abras que roeram
0 bacello que posera Jodo preto no penedo.^ The phrase ver cantar^
' to see these songs sung ', might be defended.^
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 pro-
fessional cantadeira at a rustic pilgrimage. But they are also sung
by the people generally, often by women '^ who can neither read
nor write but have a large stock of these cantigas, which, indeed,
are almest innumerable. They may be read in their thousands
in Antonio Thomaz Pires' Cantos Populares Portugueses (4 vols.,
Elvas, 1902-10), Dr. Theophilo Braga's Cancioneiro Popular
Portuguez (2 vols., Lisboa, 191 1, 1913), Snr. Jaime Cortesao's
' Luis de Sousa, Vida, 1763 ed., i. 462.
^ e.g. Em Belem vila do amor (i. 183).
* e.g. Que no quiero estar en casa (i.73) (which is como laa canines co' gado,
essentially a peasant's song).
* The leixapren occurs in most of the songs accompanied by dance in Gil
Vicente: e.g.Quem & a desposada (chacota, i. 147), Pardeus bcm andoii Castella
(em folia) (ii. 389), Ja nao quer minha senhora (ii. 439, Esta cantiga cantardo
e bailarao de terreiro os folioes). Ndo me firaes madre (ii. 440, em chacota),
Mor Gongalves (ii. 509, baildo ao som desta cantiga), Por Mayo era, por Mayo
(ii. 525, a vozes bailarao e cantardo a cantiga segninte : i.e. a romance with
leixapren and refrain). They are thus a combination of glee and dance.
5 Gil Vicente, Obras (ii. 448).
« Ndo nas qiiero ver cantar (Gil Vicente) is, however, probably a misprint,
for which D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos suggests quer' eu.
' Cf. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, Ensaios Ethnographicos, ii. 264 : O povo
{principalmente as mulheres) canta-as [cantigas soltas] em quaJquer occasido.
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE 343
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,^ The majority
are concerned with Nature, either generally or in detail. Some-
times 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,^
' 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, super-
stitions, witches, sirens ; many with dancing and various
occupations — the herdsman [ganadeiro), yokel (ganhdo), shepherd
{pastor)f harvesters {ceifeiros, ratinhos, malteses, mondadeiras).
But of course the principal subject is love, jealousy, separation,
constancy, saiidade, satire. The occasional presence of a French
word, e. g. neglige 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 Aile [aikivov, alkivov diri, to 3' ev rtKarco) or At lari lari
lole (where the fanatic of Basque can find il ( = dead) as easily
• Jd OS campos reverdecem, Jd o alecrim tent flor,
Jd cantam os passarinhos A resiirreifdo 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).
■^ O triste da minha vida, O triste da vida minha,
Quern me dera ir contigo Onde tii 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'etais hirondelle Que je pusse voter, Sur voire sein, ma belle,
J'irais me reposer (A swallow I Would be to fly And take my rest Upon thy
breast).
344 APPENDIX
as in the refrain of C. V. 415), so that they really consist of
three lines, the aile being introductory.
Some of the quatrains rise to real poetical beauty, and most
of them are charmingly spontaneous, forming in their unpre-
meditated 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 0 que e verde se seca Em vindo 0 pino do vcrao :
. So mcu amor reverdece Dentro do meu cora^ao.^
Inda que o lume se apague Na cinza fica o calor :
Inda que o amor se ausente No cora^ao fica a dor.^
Os tres reis foram guiados For uma estrella do ceu ;
Tambem teus olhos guiaram Meu coragao para o teu.^
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 mat 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 Joao de Barros' Grammatica (1540) is :
Ainda o pae nao e nado
Ja 0 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 R6 ro, men meuiiio, Dorme e descansa,
Tu es 7neu alivio E a minha esperanga 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
Ou'el jorn es apropchatz,
Qu'en Orien vey I'cstela creguda
Ou'adutz lo jorn, qu'ieu I'ai ben conoguda,
Et ades sera I'alba.
' All green things in summer Their freshness lose : Only my heart Its love
renews.
^ 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.
' To the three kings was given A star in heaven for sign : And thy eyes
have guided My heart unto thine.
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE 345
(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 alha-cossante is given in Mila y Fontanals' Romancerillo
Catalan * :
Marieta lleva't lleva't de mati
Que I'aygua es clara, el sol vol sortir.
Como m'en llevare si gipo no tinch }
Marieta lleva't, de mati lleva't,
Que el sol vol sortir, que I'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 Mila's article in vol. vi of Romania. It closely resembles
that of Gil Vicente [Este e o Mayo, o Mayo S este) in the Auto da
Lusitania :
Este e o Mayo que Mahino e,
Este e o Mayo que anda d'o pe.
O noso Mayo anque pequenino
Da de comer a Virxen d'o Camifio.
Velay o Mayo cargado de rosas,
Velay o Mayo que las trae mas hermosas.
It then breaks into a muineira (in Castilian) :
Angeles 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 Ihe cantarem certas Bengoens & Rogatiuas [costume de
nossos ancidos que com 7iome de Janeiras entoavam placidamente
pelas portas dos mais caros amigos) se congregou grande numero
de pouo.^ Some romances (also xacara, xacra, and in the Azores
arabia) have been printed direct from the lips of the people
* 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).
* Fernam Rodriguez Lobo Soropita, speaking of the noites privilegiadas —
the eves of New Year and Epiphany — refers to os villoes ruins que essaa
noutes vos perseguem and to their pandeirinhos, musica de agna-pe que toda
a noiite vos ztine nos ouvidos como hizouro, e sobre tudo isto haveis de Ihe
offertar os vossos qiiatro vintens, e quando Ih'os entregais a candeia vos descobre
o feitio dos ditos musicos ; um niocho com sombreiro com mais chocas que
urn corredor de folhas. They thus resembled Christmas ' waits '.
346
APPENDIX
by Dr. Lcite de Vasconcellos in his Romanceiro Portugiiez
(1886). The degenerate, more modern, and subjective form of
the romance is the f ado, a ballad (melancholy as the old solao'^),
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 Pro-
verbial (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) ^ or of a more personal anecdote [anexins),
or the refrain of a long-lost song [rifoes).^ Or they are moral
[maximas and senteiigas), 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 abraga (which is the very reverse of Portuguese
history : e nulla stringe e tutto 7 mondo abbraccia), or Ate ao
lavar das cestas e vindima. Many of course correspond more
or less closely to those of other countries, e. g. Muitos enfei-
tadores estragdo a noiva (Too many cooks spoil the broth), Gato
escaldado de agua fria ha medo (The burnt child fears the fire) ;
Manhan ruiva, on vento ou chuva [ = Alba gorri, hegoa edo uri) ;
' The Spanish translator of Eufrosina apparently derived this name from
musical notes (= a sung romance), since he translates itn romance de sol la,
Eufr. i. 3 ; iii. 2 (Orig. de la Novela, iii. jy and no), 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.
* Formerly verbos (e.g. in the Cane, da Vat.) and exemplos (enxem-pros) .
^ The word rifdo does not now mean the refrain or burden (estribilho)]
of a song but proverb, like the Spanish refrdn.
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE 347
Pedra movediga ndo cria holor { = Pierre qui roule n'amasse pas
mousse).'^ Many of these saws as well as the contos (folk-tales)
have their birth at fiandoes 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 Popular es Portu-
guezes (Lisboa, 1879) ; Dr. Thcophilo Braga, Contos Tradicionaes
do Povo Portuguez (2 vols., Porto, 1883) ; F. X. de Athaide Oli-
veira, Contos Tradicionaes do Algarve (2 vols., Tavira, 1900, 5).
As was to be expected, they have their equivalents in the folk-
lore 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 un-
garnered. 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.
§ 2
The Galician Revival
For over four hundred years — with the exception of a few
poems by Padres Jose Sanchez Feijoo and Martin Sarmiento^
in the eighteenth century — the Galician language held aloof
from literature. It was peculiarly fitting that at a time when
* There is another proverb Mentras a pedra vae e vem Deus dard de seu hem
(While the [mill ?] stone doth come and go God his blessing shall bestow).
2 See Antolin Lopez Pelaez, Poesias Ineditas del P. Feijoo . . . seguidas
de las poesias gallegas ' Dialogo de 24 Rusticos ' y 'O Tio Marcos da Portela '
por el P. Saryniento, Tuy, 1901.
348 APPENDIX
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 ^ — Galicia. They were no doubt multi-
plied 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 imita-
tions, 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 distin-
guished to warrant the holding of Juegos Florales [xogos froraes)
at La Corufia. Juan Manuel Pintos (1811-76) had published
eight years earlier a small volume of verses, A Gaita Gallega
(Pontevedra, 1853), and Francisco Anon (1817-78) had con-
tributed poems to various local newspapers. Anon 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 [abhcdeec)
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, Poesias (Noya, 1879), and a more satisfactory collec-
tion ten years later : Poesias Castellanas y Gallegas (1889).
Jose MarIa 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 Poesias Selectas (1888). The
second part of this collection (pp. 11 1-250) 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 Afion, he survived Rosalia 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 con-
ditions. 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 : Poesias 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
* Cf. A. Ribeiro dos Santos, Obras (MS.), vol. xix, f. 21 : Galicia . . . muito
affeita desde alia antiguidadc ao exercicio de truvas e caniares.
THE GALICIAN REVIVAL 349
willingly miss, whether he is giving harmonious form to a
poignant theme, as in Nai Chorosa and 0 Desconsolo^ or in
lighter verses deseribing 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 Cawao7i^2>05, and the poems of
Macias 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 Coruna paper Galicia,
1860-6), that they justified their faith, until in 1863 appeared
Cantares Gallegos by Rosalia de Castro ^ (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 Macias. 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. Rosalia 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 Airinos, airinos, aires, Airinos
da mina terra., Airinos, airinos, aires, Airinos, levaime a ela.~
Here, as throughout the book, there is such yearning passionate
sadness that we may say, in her own words, no?i 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,^ 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
» Or Rosalia Castro de (or y) Murguia. Her husband, Don Manuel de
Murgui'a (bom 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.
2 O winds of my country blowing softly together. Winds, winds, gentle
winds, O carry me thither ! (1909 ed., pp. 95-8).
^ Follas Novas : Duas palabras d'a aiitora, 1910 ed., p. 31.
350 APPENDIX
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 muineiras singing Galicia frorida, and the rhyth-
mical beat of the nmineira 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 with-
out a trace of artifice. It is Galician — esta fala mimosa ^ — seen
at its best, clear, soft, and pliant, rising in protest or reproach to a
silvery eloquence. In Follas Novas the melancholy note is accen-
tuated, 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 long-
ings) 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 main-
tained. A few poems in the second half even succeed in repeat-
ing that identification between the poet and the genius of the
people which makes much of Cantares Gallegos almost anony-
mous 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, Valentin Lamas Carvajal (1849-1906).
This book, Espinas, Follas e Frores (1871), has remained the
most popular of his works.^ He is a true poet of the soil {poeta
del terriino), 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 {i8go) is that in them speak the voices of the peasants.
Only occasionally does Aesop or Macias 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 '
• Follas Novas (1910 ed.), p. 254.
* 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.
THE GALICIAN REVIVAL 351
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^ or
a fiadeiro,^ a dance in the beaten space before the doors [baile
de turreiro), a foliada^ 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 terrina.
The toil often becomes a festa, in which, he says, there is more
mirth than in all the city's joys. In Ey, hoy, 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 pro-
vince of Orense is in his poems : witches, exorcisers, beatas,
ciirandeiros (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 as oracios). The gaiteiro, of course,
is a prominent figure, for without his bagpipe (the gaita gallega)
and the accompanying drum (tamboril), cymbals {ferrinas,
conchas), tambourine [pandeiro, pandeireta), and castanets
[castanolas],'^ no village fete would be welcome or complete, and
his alborada or his rhythmical dance-song, the muineira, is the
emblem of all the peasant's pleasures. Melancholy pervades
the Rimas (1891) of D. Juan Barcia 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 expres-
sions 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.
' Esfolhada or desfolla : gathering to husk the maize.
^ Fiada, fiandon : a rustic terttilia (evening party) of women to spin.
' FiUiada, afuliada, folion.
* 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 castanas d'a terra.
352 APPENDIX
Benito Losada (1824-91) gained great popularity in Galicia
with his Continos (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 arc the poems of his
Soaces (Vun Velio (1886), of which the continos 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 lias e espadelas.
En festas, en foliadas^
— 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 lengiia 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 Pontcceso, a
small village in the district of Coruna, is to go from a village
praga to a high mountain-top. He stands quite apart from the
other Galician poets. ^ 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
Sofia antr'as uces hirtas
Na gentil arpa apoyado
En donde 0 vento suspira.^
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
' Soaces, p. 156. The espadela is the task of braking flax.
* Perhaps the only poem that might have been written by Pondal is that
on p. 177 (the first verse) of Rosalia tie Castro's Follas Novas (1910 ed.).
^ Oueixjimes dos Finos (1886), p. loi.
THE GALICIAN REVIVAL 353
of the wind. He sings of mists (the Gallegan bretoma) 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 fare-
well addressed to his native village by a Galician peasant
imprisoned at Oran. His subsequent verses, collected in Riimores
de los Pinos (1879) ^-^^d 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 Rosalia 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 niina
terra (1880) was condemned by the Bishop of Orense and repub-
lished in the following year. Born at Celanova in the middle
of the nineteenth century, he studied law at Santiago de Com-
postela 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 mina terra, and
even more so in a forcible satire describing a pilgrimage to
Rome, written in triadas'^ and entitled 0 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 Einibd, 0 Gneiteiro, &c.)
of his native country, and show a true poetic power and a quiet
and accurate observation of Nature. We forget all about anti-
clericalism and the Pope in reading of spring in Galicia, of the
xentis andurinas, 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
* For an earlier example of the same kind of tercets (ahacdcefe) see R, de
Castro, Follas Novas, 1910 ed., p. 158.
2.^62 Z
354 APPENDIX
torch of Galician poetry burnt on after Curros Enriquez had
ceased to write. D. Evaristo Martelo Pauman (born c. 1853)
in his Liricas Gallegas (1891) showed that he possessed the
traditional charm and satire of Gahcian verse, but a charm
and satire that in his case had become all individual and sub-
jective. Aureliano J. Pereira (figoG), author of Cousas
(Va 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 GarcIa 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 Nunez GonzXlez (1865-1917)
shows true lyrical power. They are poems in Galician rather
than of Galicia, telling in a plaintive music of night, autumn,
morrina, soedades. For all the author's love of his smaller
country, it is Galicia seen from without,^ or sung from
memory. The ' vintage songs and the gay din of chestnut
gatherings' are no longer, as with Losada and Lamas, a part oi
life, but ' a dream in the ideal realm of thought',^ a subject of
disillusion and regret. Folerpas^ (1894) by D. Eladio Ro-
driguez GonzAlez (born in 1864) is also essentially not of the
people. In its less elaborate poems it often describes, attrac-
tively and with much colour, popular customs and dances, thai
night of St. John, as festas d'a mina 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 j
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,* and is capable of writing poems
* The very word morrifla is more common (in the sense of saudade) at Madrid
than in GaHcia.
* Salayos, p. 65. *
' Also flepa, folepa, folepina, Portuguese folheca — floco, froco, copo ( =
'flake').
* The passage (Folerpas,]}. 182) in which a peasant, refusing alms to an old
woman, bids her beg of the rich, is scarcely drawn from life.
THE GALICIAN REVIVAL 355
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 excommunica-
tion 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 Nufiez
Gonzalez 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 remark-
able promise and achievement are D. Gonzalo Lopez Abente
(born in 1878), a relative of Eduardo Pondal, whom he some-
times 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 moun-
tains gives an eternal magic to Montanesas (1904) and D'O
Ermo (1920) ; D. Ramon Cabanillas, who voices the sorrows
and aspirations of Galicia in Vento Mareiro and Da Terra Asohal-
lada (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, cantarino,
cantilena, cantiguela, cantigiiina, copra, or cancio) have been
collected in the Cancionero Popular Gallego (Madrid, 3 vols.,
z 2
356 APPENDIX
1886) by Jose Perez Ballesteros (I1918). The peasant women
compose and sing their songs to-day^ as when Fray Martin Sar-
miento (1695-1772) noticed that eii Galicia las mujeres no solo
son poetisas sino tamhien musicas naturales,^ or the Marques de
Montcbello hstcned to las tonos que a coros cantan con fitgas y
repeticiones las mozuelas, or the Archpriest of Hita w^atched the
cantaderas dancing (as well as singing) in neighbouring Asturias.^
The ancient mnineira 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.* Besides these
muineiras the popular poetry consists principally of quadras.^
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 Rosalia
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 Dona
Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921) and Don Ramon Maria del
Valle-Inclan (born in 1870), and more recently by Don Jaime Sola
(born in 1877). But the value and possibilities of Galician prose
have been shown by D. Aurelio Ribalta (born in 1864) in
' Cf. Cancionero, i. 50 : Cantade, ncnas, cantade ; G. Ferreiro, Chorimas,
p. 76, as cantigtiinas das mofas ; R. de Castro, Cant. Gall., p. 102, As
meninas cantan, cantan. Cf. also E. Pardo Bazan, De mi tierra (1888), p. 122 :
las \coplas'\ gallegas de las cuales buena parte debe ser obra de hembras.
* Memorias para la historia de la poesia y poetas espanoles (Obras Postumas,
vol. i, Madrid, 1775, p. 238, § 538).
^ See C. da Ajuda, ed. C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos (1904), ii. 902.
« Cf. R. de Castro, Cantares Gallegos (1909 ed.), p. 18 (mantelo, refaixo),
p. 19 {mar, rio), pp. 20-1 [e-a), p. 27 {terras, vilas), p. 29 {pousaban, vivian),
p. 85 {vestira, calzara) ; Follas Novas (1910 ed.), p. 229 (a-e) ; Aires d'a
miiia terra (ed. 191 1). p. 35 {queria, pensaba), p. 139 {i-a), p. 249 (a miles,
a centos) ; Chorimas, p. 36 {estrevidos, ousados) ; A. Camino, Poesias Gallegas,
p. 19 : Que noite aquela en que eu a vin gemindo ! {chorar /).
* Quatrains of which lines 2 and 4 are in rhyme or assonance, e.g. Rulina
que vas volando Sin facer case a ninguen, Vai e dille a aquela nena Que sempre
a quixen ben. Tercetos are rarer {aba). Sometimes the quadra is really
a tercet with line i repeated iaaba).
THE GALTCIAN REVIVAL 357
Fernixe (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 Perez Placer,
whose novel Frediccion appeared in 1887, is widely known for
his Contos, Leendas e TradiciSs de Galicia (1891), Contos da
Terrina (1895), and Veira do Lar (1901). Contos da Terrina,
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 in-
timate descriptions of Galicia and the life of the villages about
Orense. There is much pathos in Vellina, yniiia vellina !, in
Rapanota de Xasmis, 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 Midler (19 15) and Sorrisas e Bdgoas (1918), has
recently turned to prose with remafkable success in Neveda
(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.^ 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.
* D. Aurelio Ribalta is author in verse of Os mens votos (1903) and
Libro de Konsagrazidn (1910); D. Manuel Lugris of Soidades (1894), Noitebras
(1910) ; Snr. Perez Placer of Cantares Gallegos (1891). D. Florencio Vaa-
MONDE (bom in i860), 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. Eugenic Carr6 Aldao, whose Literatura
Gallega (2nd ed., 191 1) also contains an anthology.
INDEX
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 Lis-
boa, 14, 15, 284, 294.
Acenheiro. See Rodriguez Azinheiro.
Ados 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, III, 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, loi,
103.
Afonso, Mestre, 220.
Afonso (Gregorio), 124.
Afonso (Martim), Mestre, 220.
Aguia, A, 333.
Agustobrica, 234.
Airas (Joan), 52.
Aires (Francisco), 247.
Alarcon (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, 2og, 220,
228-9, 260, 312.
Albuquerque (Bras de), 201-2.
Albuquerque (Jeronymo de), 204.
Albuquerque (D. Jorge de), 218.
Alcobaga (Bernardo de), 59, 95.
Alcoforado (Marianna), 263-4, 3°7'
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, Poenia 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 (Lourengo de),
301.
Almeida Garrett (Joao Baptista da
Silva Leitao), 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 Al-
meida Portugal Lorena e Lencastre,
Condessa de Assumar, Condessa de
Oeynhausen], 274, 276-7, 294.
Alvarengo Peixoto (Ignacio Jose de),
274.
Alvarez (Afonso), 157.
Alvarez (Francisco), 33, 219-20, 224.
Alvarez (Joao), 89.
Alvarez (Luis), 245.
Alvarez de Andrade (Fernam), 239.
Alvarez de Lousada Machado (Gas-
par), 62.
Alvarez de Villasandino (Alfonso), 77,
79. 125.
Alvarez do Oriente (Fernam), 152,
253. 25.5-
Alvarez Pereira (Nuno), 50, 62, 8t,
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 (Thome de). See Jesus
(Thome de).
Andrade Caminha (Pero de), 143,
149-50, 213.
360
INDEX
Andrade Corvo (Joao de), 295.
Andrade e Silva (Jose 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.
Anon (Francisco), 348.
Anrique. See Henrique.
Anriquez (Luis), 100, 102-3.
Antonio, Mestre, 125.
Antonio, D., Prior of Crato, 145, 195,
229, 236, 263.
Antonio (Nicolds), 68, 93, 130, 169,
192, 197, 207, 212.
Antunes (Joao), 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 Porttiguez, 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 Corr^a
de Mello, Conde de, 324.
Arquivo. See Archivo.
Arquivo Historico Portugues. See
Archivo Historico Portugiicz.
Arraez (Jeronimo), 238.
Arraez de Mendoga (Amador), 16,
227, 232, 235, 237-S.
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, loi, 115.
Austen (Jane), 316.
Auto da Fome, 162.
Auto da Forneira de Aljubarrota, 163.
Auto da Gerafao 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 Degolafao dos
Inocentes, 162.
Aveiro, D. Joao de Lencastre, Duque
de, 221.
Aveiro, Dukes of, 71.
Aveiro (Pantaleam de), 220.
Avellar Brotero (Felix de), 17.
Avicenna, 85.
Avis, Mestre de. See Jocto 1.
Aj'res de Magalhaes Sepulveda (Cris-
tovam), 223, 334-5.
Ayres Victoria (Anrique), 165.
Azevedo (Briolanja de), 142.
Azevedo (Guilherme de). See Azevedo
Chaves.
Azevedo (Joao 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.
Azorin pseud. [Don Jose Martinez
Ruiz], 134, 326.
Azurara. See Zurara.
B
See
Bacellar (Antonio Barbosa).
Barbosa Bacellar.
Bacon (Francis), 209.
Bahia (Jeronimo), 256.
Baiao (Antonio), 13.
Baist (Gottfried), 65, 70.
Balzac (Honore de), 299.
Bandarra (Gonzalo Annez), 265, 268,
340-1.
Bandello (Matteo), 231. '
Barata (Antonio Francisco), 272.
Barbieri (Francisco Asenjo). Sec
Asenjo Barbieri.
Barbosa (Ayres), 106.
Barbosa (Duarte), 198, 219, 227.
Barbosa Bacellar (Antonio), 256.
Barbosa de Carvalho (Tristao), 247.
Barbosa Machado (Diogo), 87, 168,
192, 197, 217, 220, 232, 236, 240,
250, 284.
Barcellos, Conde de. See Pedro
Afonso.
Bdrcia Caballero (Juan), 351.
Baretti (Giuseppe), 270.
Barlaam e Josaphat, Lenda dos Santos,
59.
Barradas (Manuel), 205.
Barreira (Joao 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 (Joao de), 20, 69, 75, 86, 88,
INDEX
361
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 (Joao de), of Oporto, 68, 125,
253-
Barros (Joao de), poet, 336.
Barros (Lopo de), 192.
Baudelaire (Charles), 336.
Beatriz, Infanta, mother of King
Manuel, iii.
Beatriz, Infanta, daughter of King
Manuel, 120, 133, 291.
Beauvais (Vincent de), 44.
Beccari (Camillo), 205. %
Beckford (William), iii, 277, 296.
Beirao (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), no.
Bible, The, 59, 94, 95, 113, 128, 170,
246, 251, 338.
Blester (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), 19S.
Boccaccio (Giovanni), 132, 231, 340.
Boccalini (Traiano), 255.
Boileau (Nicolas), 274.
Bonamis, 122.
Bonaval (Bernaldo de), 28, 29.
Bonifazio II, 41.
Bonilla y San Martin (Adolfo), 339.
Boosco Delleytoso, 93-4.
Bordallo (Francisco Maria), 316.
Borges (G<)ngalo), 176.
Bomelh (Guiraut de), 48, 344.
Boron [ = Borron] (Robert de), 64.
Boscan Almogaver (Juan), 58, 136,
140, 143, 154, 160, 172, 181.
Bosco Deleitoso. See Boosco Delley-
toso.
Bosque (Dimas), 226.
Boswell (James), 302.
Botclho (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 Mon-
teiro), 325-6.
Braga (Guilherme), 330.
Braga (Joaquim Theophilo Fer-
nandes), 14, 15, 23, 24, 37, 65, 70,
74, 75, 76, 90, III, 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
Joao IV.
Braganza, Theodosio, Duke of, 147,
153-
Brancuti, di Cagli, Paolo Antonio,
Conte, 37.
Brandao (Antonio), 73, 207, 208, 216.
Brandao (Diogo), 102, 103-4.
Brandao (Francisco), 62, 208.
Brandao (Hilario), 241.
Brandao (Julio), 327-8, 335.
Brandao (Maria), 137.
Brandao (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, loi,
127.
Brito Rebello (Jacinto Ignacio de),
112, 168.
Brochado (Luis), 341.
Brule (Gace), 48.
Bruno pseud. See Pereira de Sam-
paio.
Buchanan (George), 106.
Bulhao Pato (Raimundo Antonio),
302-3.
Bunyan (John), 249.
Buonarroti (Michelangelo), 230.
Burgos (Andre de), 18, 203.
Bussinac (Peire de), 47.
Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord,
183, 302.
Caamooes. See Camoes.
; Caballero (Ferndn) pseud. [Cecilia
' Bohl de FaberJ, 316.
362
INDEX
Cabanillas (Ramon), 355.
CabedodeVasconcellos (Jos6dc), 109.
Cabral (Paulo Antonio), 278.
Cabral (Pedro Alvarez), 107.
Cacegas (Luis de), 242.
Caceres (Louren^o de), 191, 102.
Caiel pseud. See Pestana (Alice).
Cairel (Elias), 112.
Caldas (Jose de), 321.
Caldeira (Fernando Afonso Geraldes),
310.
Calderon de la Barca (Pedro), 129,
130. 249-
Calvo (Pedro), 244.
Camacho (Diogo), 256.
Camara (D. Joao Gon9alves Zarco
da), 311, 326, 327.
Caminha (Antonio Louren^o), 147.
Caminha (Joao), 149, 150.
Camino (Alberto), 348-9.
Camoes (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.
Cancioneirinko de Trovas Antigas, 36,
37. 39.
Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, 27, 35,
37. 38, 63, 66, 69, 70, 140.
Cancioneiro da Ajuda, 36, 37, 38, 39,
56. 6i-
Cancioneiro da Vaticana, 13, 36, 37,
38, 50. 73. 96. 98, 125, 344.
Cancioneiro del Rei D. Dinis, 36, 37.
Cancioneiro de Resende. See Can-
cioneiro 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 Ascnjo Bar-
bieri.
Cancionero Popular Gallego, 36, 355-6.
Cantanhede, Conde de, loi.
Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Bran-
cuti. See Cancioneiro Colocci-Bran-
cuti.
Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca
Vaticana. See Cancioneiro da
Vaticana.
Cardim (Antonio Francisco), 217.
Cardim (Fernam), 205.
Cardoso (Joao), 245.
Cardoso (Jorge), 71.
Carlos Magno, Verdadeira Historia do
Imperador, 339.
Carneiro da Cunha (Alfredo), 336.
Carpancho (Airas), 29.
Carre Aldao (Eugenio), 357.
Cartagena (Alonso de). Bishop of
Burgos, 91.
Cartas que as 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 (Camiilo), Visconde
de Correa 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 (Joao de), 203.
Castilho (Julio), second Visconde de,
278, 304.
Castillejo (Cristobal de), 33.
Castro (Augusto de), 314.
Castro (Eugenio de), 336-7.
Castro (In6s de), 75, 84, 97, 165, 273,
282, 284, 304, 310, 312.
Castro (D. Joao de), 158, 187, 190,
199, 227-8, 243, 266.
Castro (D. Joao de), novelist, 321.
Castro (Joao Baptista de), 248.
Castro (Publia Hortensia de), 107.
Castro de Murguia (Rosalia 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 (Joao da), 17, 244-5.
Celestina, La, 65, 124, 159, 167, 169,
254, 262.
Ceo (Maria do) [Maria de E9a], 257.
Ceo (Violante do) [Violante Monte-
sino], 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.
INDEX
363
Chamilly, Noel Bouton, Marquis de,
263, 264.
Charino (Pai Gomez). See Gomez
Charino.
Charles V, Emperor, 121, 212, 215,
229.
Chatillon, Due de, 233.
Cliiado. See Ribeiro Chiado.
Child Rolim de Moura (Francisco),
-.57-
Chrisfal, Trovas de. Sec 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 (Joao), 59.
Claudian, 277.
Clenardus (Nicolaus), 106, 125, 215,
251-
Cleynarts (Nicholas). See Clenardus.
Clusius. See ficluse.
Codax (Martin), 29.
Coelho (Estevam), 30, 52.
Coelho (Francisco Adolpho), 15, 112,
231, 308, 347.
Coelho (Jorge), 180.
Coelho da Cunha (Jose), 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.
Conceigao (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 Nicolas), 29.
Corpus Illustrium Poetarum Lusi-
tanorum, 18.
Coronica do Covdestahre de Purtugal.
See Cronica.
Correa (Caspar), 14, 20, 88, 177, 194,
198-201, 226.
Correa (Jeronimo), 112.
Correa (Luis Franco), 186.
Correa de OUveira (Antonio), 332,
337-
Correa Gar9ao (Pedro Antonio Joa-
quim), 271-2.
Correa Pinto (Roberto), 85.
Correggio (Antonio AUegri da), 134.
Correia. See Corrfia.
Carte Imperial, 94, 113.
Corte Real (Jeronimo), 181, 187-b.
Cortesao (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.
CoudelMor, O. See Silveira (Fernam
de).
Coutinho (Fernando de), 99.
Coutinho (D. Francisco), Conde de
Redondo, 178, 220.
Coutinho (D. Gon9alo), 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 Archive Nacional,
60.
Cronica da Conquista do Algarve,
61.
Cronica da Fundagam 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
Fundagam.
Cronica Troy ana, 61.
Cronicas Breves, 60.
Cruz (Agostinho da), 145, 148.
Cruz (Bernardo da), 209.
Cruz (Caspar da), 220.
Cunha (Joao Louren90 da), 31.
Cunha (Jose Anastasio da), 274.
Cunha (Nuno da), 161, 176, 199.
Cunha (D. Rodrigo da), 243.
Cunha (Tristao da), 97, 116.
Cunha Rivara (Joaquim Heliodoro
da), 292.
Curros Enriquez (Manuel), 353-4,
355-
Curvo Semedo Torres Sequeira
(Belchior Manuel), 278.
364
INDEX
D
Daniel (Samuel), 164.
Danse macabre, 123.
Dantas (Julio), 313.
Dante Alighieri, 19, 54, 123, 139, 146,
179, 188. 197, 237.
Danza de la Mnerte, 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.
Destroyfum de Jerusalem. See Ves-
peseano, Estorea de.
Destruction de Jerusalem, 64.
Deus (Joao 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 (Caspar), 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 (Joao), 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).
DoUinger (Johann Joseph Ignaz von),
295-
Dornellas (Afonso de), 307.
Dozy (Reinhart), 22.
Drake (Sir Francis), 150.
Dryden (John), 209.
Duarte, Infante [•|-i576], 150.
Duarte, Infante [■|-i54o], brother of
Joao III, 164, 167, 215.
Duarte, Infante, brother of Joao V,
307-
Duarte, Kmg, 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.
Dtirer (Albrecht), 212.
Eanez (Rodrigo). See Yannez.
Eanez de Vasconcellos (D. Rodrigo),
54-
Eanez de Zurara (Gomez). See
Zurara.
Eannez. See Eanez.
Eannez (Rodrigo). See Yannez.
fibrard (Aymeric d'), 54.
E9a (Maria de). See Ceo (Maria do).
E9a de Queiroz (Jose Maria de), 97,
314, 316-18, 322, 325.
Eccos que 0 Clarim da Fania dci,
256.
ficluse (Charles de 1'), 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.
Encarna9ao (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 Prefeygam, 95.
Espelho de Christina. See Pisan
(Christine de).
Esperan9a, Visconde de, 187.
Esperan9a (Manuel da), 243.
Espinola (Fradique), 247-8.
Espirito Santo (Antonio do). See
Ribeiro Chiado.
Esplandian. See Sergas.
Espronceda (Jose de), 301.
Esquio (Fernando). See Esguio.
Esta90 (Achilles), 106.
Esta90 (Balthasar), 151.
Esta90 (Caspar), 151.
Este (Joao Baptista d'), 245.
Esteves Negrao (Manuel Nicolau),
273-
Esteves Pereira (Francisco Maria), 14,
60, 64, 84, 90, 308.
Estorea de Vespeseano. See Ves-
peseano.
Estrella (Antonio da), 162, 338.
Eufrosina, Vida de, 59.
Falcao (Cristovam de Sousa), 105,
137-9. 197-
Falcao de Resende (Andr^), 21, 150-1,
Faria (Antonio de), 2^2.
Faria (Pedro de), 222.
INDEX
365
Faria e Sousa (Manuel dc), 18, 20, 68,
130, 140. 145, 147, 153, 176, 180,
184, 187, 204, 209, 216, 224, 282.
Faria Severim (Manuel de), 215.
Feijo (Antonio Joaquim de Castro),
335-
Feijoo (Jose Sanchez), 347.
Felipe, Infante, 120.
Fenelon (Fran9ois dc), 285.
Fenix Renascida, 155, 256, 276.
Feo (Antonio), 17, 156, 244.
Ferdinand, King. See Fernamlo.
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 Alemao (Valentim), 95.
Fernandez de Lucena (Vasco), 87, 88.
Fernandez Ferreira (Diogo), 89, 229.
Fernandez Galvao (Francisco), 244.
Fernandez Torneol (Nuno), 28, 31.
Fernandez Trancoso (Gon9alo), 231-2,
338-
Fernando, Infante [son of Joao 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 (Joao), 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, loi, 130, 155, 164, 166, 167-
73, 232, 251, 33S, 346.
Ferreira de Vera (Alvaro), 182.
Ferrer (Miguel), 234.
Ferrus (Pero), 66, 67.
Feuillet (Octave), 299.
Fialho de Almeida (Jose Valentim),
322, 326.
Ficalho, Francisco Manuel Carlos
de Mello, third Conde de, 226, 308,
326.
Fielding (Henry), 255.
Figueira (GuiUierme), 32.
Figueiredo (Antero de), 323.
Figueiredo (Antonio Candido de), 308.
Figueiredo (Fidelinodc 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 Relafam Verdadeira do^
trabalhos.
Flos Sanctorutn, 94, 225, 259.
Fonseca (Balthasar Luis da), 163.
Fonseca (Joao da), 249.
Fonseca Soares (Antonio da), 248.
Fontaines, Baron de, 233.
Forner (Juan Pablo), 281.
Fradique, Infante, 83.
Franco (Luis). See Correa (Luis
Franco).
Fran9ois I, 212.
Frederick III, Emperor, 93.
Freire (Antonio), 262.
Freire (Francisco Jose), 285.
Freire de Andrade (Jacinto), 256.
261, 266-7.
Froissart (Jean), 81, 83.
Fructuoso (Caspar), 138, 206.
Furtado de Mendoza (Diego), 22.
Galaaz, O Livro de, 63.
Galen, 226.
Galhegos (Manuel de), 58, 74, 258.
Galvam (Antonio), 190, igi, 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 Vidi-
gueira, 99, 107, 175, 190, 191, 192,
196, 200, 301, 312.
Gama Barros (Henrique), 307.
Gandavo. See Magalhaes deGandavo.
Garcia (Fernan), Esgaravunha, 52.
Garcia (Pero) de Burgos, 51.
Garcia de Castrogeriz (Johan), 66.
Garcia de Guilhade (D. Joan), 51.
Garcia deMascarenhas (Bras), 259-60.
Garcia Ferreiro (Alberto), 340, 354.
Garcia Peres (Domingo), 18, 151,
Garret (B.), Chariteo, 289.
Garrett. See Almeida Garrett.
Garrido (Luiz Guedes Coutinho), 308.
366
INDEX
Gautier (Judith), 335.
Gavaudan, 40.
Gavy de Mcndon9a (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 (Damiao 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 (Joao 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 (Jose Joaquim), 308.
Gomes de Carvalho (Theotonio), 273.
Gomes Leal (Antonio Duarte), 332-3.
Gomez (Simao), 341.
Gomez Charino (Pai), 29-30.
Gomez de Briteiros (Rui), 46.
Gomez de Brito (Bernardo), 217.
Gomez de Moraes (Silvestre), 17.
Gon9alves Crespo (Antonio Candido),
324, 330-1.
Gon9alves Dias (Antonio), 331.
Gon9alves Lima (Augusto Jose), 300.
Gon9alves Vianna. See Gon9alvez
Viana.
Gon9alvez (Ruj'), 229.
Gon9alvez de Seabra (Fernan), 47,
48.
Gon9alvez Lobato (Balthasar), 234.
Gon9alvez Viana (Aniceto dos Reis),
18, 294, 308.
Gongora (Luis de), 74, 155, 258.
Gonta Colla90 (Branca de), 336.
Gonzaga (Thomaz Antonio), 274,
279.
Gonzalez de Sanabria (Ferrant). See
Gon9alvez de Seabra.
Gouvea (Andre de), 106.
Gouvea (Antonio de), 106, 206.
Gouveia. See GouvSa.
Gower (John), 89, 90.
Gracian (Baltasar), 19, 154, 253.
Granada (Luis de), 243.
Grao Para, Bishop of. See S. Joseph
Queiroz.
Grave (Joao), 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.
Guimaraes (Delfim), 136.
Gusmao (Alexandre de), 286.
Gusmao (Alexandre de), Jesuit, 249.
H
Halifax (John of), 227.
Hallam (Henrj'), 294.
Heine (Heinnch), 351.
Henrique, Cardinal, King, 106, 150,
164, 210, 214, 219, 227, 238, 250,
2.51. 311-
Henrique, Infante, 18, 86, 88, 89, 90,
92, 307-
Henriques (Guilherme J. C), 214.
Henry VHL 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 Trai^ico-Maritima, 196, 217-
8.
Historia Tristani, 63.
Historias abreviadas do Testamento
Velho, 59.
Hita, Archpriest of. See Ruiz.
Hollanda (Antonio de), 229.
HoUanda (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
INDEX
367
Humboldt (Alexander von), 177.
Hurtado (Luis), 234.
Huysmans (J. K.), 333-
Ichoa (Martini)', 8g.
Idanha (Pedro de AIca90vaCarneiro),
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 Sa de
Meneses (F. de).
Jesus (Raphael de), 208.
Jesus (Thome dc), 14, 20, 189, 237,
238-40.
Joana, Infanta, 215.
Joao I, 14, 68, 81, 82, 84, 89-90, 94,
no, 211.
Joao II, 88, 89, 93, 96, 100, 102, 103,
108, 125, 148,221, 227,246,305,312.
Joao III, 98, 103, 106, 107, no, 117,
119, 132. 140, 141, 158, 167, 175,
189, 192, 193, 195, 208, 209, 211,
215, 226, 232, 233, 237, 296.
Joao IV, 216, 242, 244, 253, 259, 265,
267, 268, 286.
Joao V, 270.
Joao, Infante [xvi c], 106, 143, 150,
151, 166, 168, 169, 176, 179.
Joao de Calais, Verdadeira Historia
de, 339.
Joao Manuel (D.). See Manuel
(D. Joao).
John, Prester, 219, 225.
Johnson (Samuel), 282.
Jorge, D., 221.
Jorge (Ricardo), 153.
Jose I, 276, 296.
Josep ab Arimatia, Livro de, 64.
Josephine, Empress, 281,
Juan I, 78, 84.
Juan de Austria, Don, 1S8.
Juan Manuel, Infante Don, 91, 94.
Juana, Infanta, 151.
Juana, la Loca, Queen, 133.
Juromenha, Joao Antonio de
Lemos Pereira de Lacerda, Vis-
conde de, 176, 308.
Justinianus (Laurentius), 94.
K
Karr (Alphonse), 322.
Keats (John), 138, 281.
La Bruy^re (Jean de), 91.
Lacerda (Augusto), 314.
Lafoes, Duque de, 284.
Lafoes, third Duque de, 311.
La Fontaine (Jean de), 117.
Lamartine (Alphonse de), 275, 277.
Lamas Carvajal (Valentin), 350-1.
Lamennaia (Hugues Felicite Robert
de), 292.
Lancastre (D. Louren90 de), 273.
Lang (Henry Roseman), 23, 24, 37,
76, 79, 123.
Lara (Joao Carlos de), 273.
Lasso de la Vega (Garci), 140, 141,
143, 147, 172, 181, 260.
Latino Coelho (Jose Maria), 201, 307.
Lavanha (Joao Baptista), 195, 218.
Lazarillo de Tormes, 115, 125, 160,
265.
Leam (Caspar de), 241.
Lear, King, 62.
Leitao de Andrade (Miguel), 72, 73,
263.
Leite (Solidonio), 266.
Leite de Vasconcellos Cardoso Pereira
de Melo (Jose), 15, 33. 34, 60, 308-
9, 342, 346.
Leite Ferreira (Miguel), 67, 68, 69, 71,
148.
Lemos (Jorge de), 203.
Lemos (Juho de), 325.
Lemos Seixas Castello Branco (Joao
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 Por-
tugal and France, 233.
Leopardi (Giacomo), Count, 331, 351.
Lettres Portiigaises. See Alcoforado.
Levi (Juda), 94.
Lianor, Empress, 93.
Lianor, Queen Consort of Duarte, go.
Lianor, Queen Consort of Joao II, 93,
95, III, 112, 113, 114, 119, 120, 229.
Lima (Alexandre Antonio de), 274.
Lima (D. Rodrigo de), 219.
Lima IPereira (Paulo de), 197.
368
INDEX
Linhares, second Conde de. See
Noronha (D. Francisco dc).
Linhares, Conde de [xvii c.J, 252, 345.
Linhares, Violante, Condessa de, 239.
Lipsius (Justus), 255.
Lisboa (Antonio dc), 162.
Lisboa (Cristovam de), 245.
Lisboa (Joao dc), 227.
Livro da Noa, 60.
Livro das Aves, 00.
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 (Gon^alo 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(I). Francisco Alexandre), Bishop
of Viseu, 285.
Lobo (Francisco Rodriguez). See
Rodriguez I.-obo.
LoUis (Cesare de), 45.
Lopes (Carlos), 325.
Lopes (Davi"d de Melo), 308.
Lopes (Francisco), 155, 162.
Lopes de Mendon9a (Antonio Pedro),
297.
Lopes de Mendon^a (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, So, 97, 117, 180,
212, 255.
Lopez (Martinho), 81.
Lopez (Thome), 204.
Lopez Abente (Gonzalo), 355.
Lopez de Ayala (Pero), 66, 67.
Lopez de Bayan (D. Afonso), 53.
Lopez de Camoes (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. [Julicn Viaud],
89. 323-
Louis XI, 89.
Louren90, jogral, 29.
Lucan, 99.
Lucena (Joao de), 16, 75, 243.
Lucena (Vasco Fernandez de). See
Fernandez Lucena.
Liician, 99.
Ludolph of Saxony. See Sachsen.
Lugris y Freire (Manuel), 357.
Luis, Infante, 106-7, ^^8, 170, 185,
191. 195. 209, 227, 228.
Luis (Nicolau), 2S4.
Lull (Ramon), 94.
Luther (Martin), 126, 212.
Luz (Andre da), 163.
Luz (Philipe da), 17, 244, 245.
Luz Soriano (Simao Jose da), 292.
M
Macedo (Anna de). See Sa e Macedo.
Macedo (Jose Agostinho de), 17, 99,
182, 183, 187, 224, 237, 244, 250,
277, 278, 279-82, 288.
Machado (Julio Cesar), 325.
Machado (Simao), 18, 161.
Machado de Azevedo (Manuel), 77,
142.
Macias, 76-77, 78, 98, 104, 132, 349,
350.
Magalhaes (Fernam de), 219.
Magalhaes (Luiz Cypriano Coelho de),
319-
Magalhaes de Gandavo (Pedro de),
193, 204, 279.
Magalhaes Lima (Jaime de), 319, 325.
Magalona, Verdadeiva Historia da
Princeza, 65, 339, 340.
Malheiro Dias (Carlos); 320.
Mallarme (Stephane), 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,
no, III, 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. Joao), 98, loi.
Maranhao, Jornada do, 204.
Marcabrun, 39.
Marcos, Frei, 59.
Maria, Infanta, 15, 107, no, 121, 193,
233-
Maria, Consort of King Manuel, 118,
Maria da Gloria, Queen, 288.
Maria Egipcia, Vtda de, 59.
Marialva, second Conde de, 241.
Marialva. Marques de, 313.
INDEX
369
Mariana (Juan de), 208.
Marie Antoinette, Queen, 277.
Marinbo de Azcvcdo (Luis), 18.
Mariz (Antonio de), 206.
Mariz (Pedro de), 206, 207.
Marot (Clement), 233.
Martelo Pauman (Evaristo), 354.
Martial, 123.
Martim Afonso, Mestrc. Sec Alonso
(Martim).
Martinez de Kescnde (Vasco), 13.
Martinez Salazar (Andres), 61.
Martinlio, de Alcoba^a, 98.
Martorell (Pedro Juan), 63.
Martyres (Bartholonieudos), 195, 242,
243. 342.
Marueil (Arnaut de), 35.
Mascarenhas (D. Fernando de), 267.
Mascarenhas (D. Joao de), 187.
Mascarenhas (D. Pedro de), 126.
Mattos (Joao Xavier de), 278-9.
Medina e Vasconcellos ^Francisco de
Paula), 186.
Meendinho, 29, 52.
Mehinchthon (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), loi.
Mello (Martim Afonso de), 82.
Mello Breyner (D. Theresa de), Con-
dessa 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 (Jose da Silva), 301.
Mendez (Afonso), 205.
Mendez (Manuel), 60.
Mendez de Sa (Gon^alo), 139.
Mendez de Vasconcellos (Diogo),
213-
Mendez Pinto (Feruam), 151. 203,
220, 221-5, 243.
Mendez Silva (Rodrigo), 255.
Mendo9a (Jeronimo de), 210.
Meudo9a (Joana de), 196.
Mendon9a (Francisco de), 245.
Mendon9a (Jeronimo). 5ee Mendo9a.
Mendon9a Alves (Va.sco de), 314.
Menendez Pidal (Ramon), 73.
Menendez y Pelayo (Marcehno), 19,
65, 83, 112, 133, 135, 140, 151, 168,
169, 233, 232, 278, 291, 339.
Meneses (D. Aleixo de), 206.
Meneses (D. Duarte de), 86.
Mcncses (D. Fernando de^, 177.
Meneses (D. Fernando de), second
Conde da Ericeira, 266-7.
Mene.ses (D. Francisco Xavier de),
fourth Conde da Ericeira, 270-1.
Meneses (D. Henrique de), 195.
Meneses (D. Joao de), loi, 103, 104.
Meneses (D. Luis de), third Conde da
Ericeira, 69, 261, 267.
Meneses (D. Pedro de), 86.
Meneses (D. Scbastiao Cesar de), 266.
Menina Fcrmosa, Trova^ 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.
Michaelis (Gustav), 15.
Michaelis de Vasconcellos (Carolina),
14, 15, 22, 23, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37,
39, .50, 53. 62, 63, 75, 76, 80, 104,
112, 136, 180, 184, 308, 338, 342.
Michelangelo. See Buonarroti.
Mickle (William Julius), 14.
Miguel I, 280, 288.
Mila y Fontanals (Manuel), 41, 345.
Milton (John), 127, 184.
Miranda (Afonso de), 226.
Miranda (Jeronimo de), 226.
Miranda (Martim Afonso de), 252,
262.
Mislerio de los Reyes Magos, 123.
Moleiro, Trovas do, 341.
Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin),
T16, 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 Pa-
pan9a, Conde de, 335-6.
Montaigne (Michel de), 83, 106, 212.
Montalvao (Justino de), 328.
Montalvo. See Rodriguez de Men-
tal vo.
Montebello, Marques de, 356.
Monteiro (Diogo), 246-7.
Montemayor (George de) . See Monte-
mor (Jorge de).
Montemor (Jorge de), 17, 151-2.
Montesino (Violante). See Ceo (Vio-
lante do).
Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Se-
condat), 182.
Montoia (Luis de), 239.
Montoro (Anton de), 23, 127.
Moogo (Pero). See Meogo.
A a
370
INDEX
Moraes (Cristovam Alao de), 109,
286.
Moraes Cabral (Francisco de), 65, 76,
152, 161, 204, 232-4.
More (Sir Thomas), 254.
Moreira (Julio), 308.
Moreira Camello (Antonio), 33S.
Moreira de Carvalho (Jeronimo), 339.
Moreno (Bento) pseud. Sec Teixeira
de Qiieiroz.
Moura (Miguel de), 210.
Mousinho de Quevedo (Vasco), 261.
Murguia (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.
Nobtliario do Collegio dos Nobres, 61.
Nobiliario do Conde. See Pedro
Afonso, Conde de Barcellos.
Nobre (Antonio), 332, 334.
Nobrega, Padre, 45.
Nogueira Ramos (Joao 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 AUariz. (Alfredo) pseud., 355.
Nunes (Claudio Jose), 331.
Nunes (Jose Joaquim), 26, 60, 308.
Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (Antonio),
286.
Nunez (Airas), 23, 31, 47, 52-3.
Nunez (Joao), 210.
Nunez (Pedro), 18, 107, 226-7, 251.
Nunez (Philipe), 230.
Nunez da Silva (Manuel), 231.
Nunez de Learn (Duarte), 39, 55, 56,
68, 210-11, 252.
Nunez del Arce (Caspar Esteban),
295-
Nufiez Gonzsllez (Manuel), 354, 355.
O
Oeynhausen, Count of, 276.
Olanda (Francisco de). See HoUanda.
Olivares, Conde-Duque de, 252.
OHvcira (Fernam de), 109, 220, 227.
Oliveira (Francisco Xavier de), Cava-
Iheiro 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.
Ortigao (Ramalho). See Ramalho
Ortigao.
Osborne (Dorothy), 20.
Osmia. See Mello Breyner.
Osorio (Luiz), 335.
Osorio da Fonseca (Jeronimo), 18,
209, 224, 228, 263.
Ossian, 301.
Ovid, 85.
Pacheco (Joao), 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).
Palmerin de Oliva, 234.
Pardo Bazan (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.
J
INDEX
371
Pedro, Tratado do Infante D., 340.
Pelagia, Vida de Santa, 60.
PenhaFortuna(JoaodeOliveira), 330.
Pereda (Jose Maria de), 318.
Pereira (Antonio Nunalvarez), 141.
Pereira (Aureliano J.), 354.
Pereira (Nuno), 98, 102, 143.
Pereira Brandao (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 (Jose^ [Bruno],
308.
Pereira Pato Moniz (Nuno Alvarez),
187.
Pereira Pinheiro (Bernardino), 295-6.
Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcellos ( Joa-
quim). See Teixeira de Pascoaes.
Perez Ballesteros (Jose), 356.
Perez Galdos (Benito), 298.
Perez Placer (Heraclio), 357.
Perez de Camoes (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 Joao 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, no, 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 (Thome), 265.
Pinto (Heitor), 14, 16, loi, 230, 236-
7. 238.
Pinto (Joao Louren9o), 318-19.
Pinto (Jorge), 159.
Pinto Ribeiro (Joao), 265.
Pintos (Juan Manuel), 348.
Pires (Antonio Thomaz), 69, 308, 342.
Pires de Rebello (Caspar), 262.
Pirez Lobeira (Joan) See Lobeira
(Joan de).
Pisan (Christine do), 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, Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho
e Mello, Marques de, 272, 273, 276,
291. 307-
Ponce (Bartolome), 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. Joao de), 241, 242.
Portugal (D. Manuel de), 145, 180,
346.
Portugaliae Monumenta Historica .
See Herculano (Alexandre).
Posada y Pereira (Jose Maria), 348.
Potter (Maria), 315.
Potter (Thomas), 315.
Poyares (Pedro de), 109.
Prado (Xavier), 355.
Prazeres (Joao dos), 269.
Presenta9ao (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.
Purificagam (Antonio da), 18.
Purser (Wilham Edward), 233.
Q
Queimado (Roy), 52.
Quental (Anthero Tarquinio de), 304,
328-9.
372
INDEX
Quevedo y Villegas (Francisco Gomez
de), 169, 252, 253, 255.
Quinet (Edgar), 19.
Quintilian, 247.
Quita (Domingos dos Reis), 272-3.
R
Rabelais (Fran9ois), 321.
Rabello (Ciabriel de), 203.
Racine (Jean), 182.
Raleigh (Sir Walter), 228.
Ramalho Ortigao (Jose Duarte), 304,
318, 321-2.
Ramos Coelho (Jcse), 307.
Ramusio (Giovanni IBattista), 204.
Rebello da Silva (Luiz Augusto), 296.
Redondo, Conde de. See Coutinho
(D. Francisco).
Regras e Cautelas, 241.
Relagam verdadeira dos trabalhos, &c.,
203.
Renan (Ernest), 240.
Resende (Garcia de), 75, 88, 89, 96-8,
99, 100, no, 113, 123, 124, 127,
140, 150, 199.
Resende (Lucio Andre de), 13, 39,
130, 150, 180, 206, 215, 216.
Revista de Hisioria, 308.
Revista Lusitana, 309, 347.
Rey Soto (Antonio), 355.
Ribalta (Aurelio), 35'>-7-
Ribeira Grande, Conde da, 311.
Ribeiro (Bernardim), 14, 19, 105,
132-9, 141. 15^. 154. 291, 300.
Ribeiro (Jeronimo), 161.
Ribeiro (Joao), 204.
Ribeiro (Joao 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.
Rodrigucs (Jose Maria), 180.
Rodrigues Cordeiro (Antonio Xavier),
300.
Rodriguez (Fcrnan), 78.
Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of
Almazan, 78.
Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of
Toro, 78, 123.
Rodriguez (Melicia), no.
Rodriguez Azinheiro (Cristovam),
211.
Rodriguez de Calheiros (Fernan), 52.
Rodriguez de Escobar (Gonzalo), 78.
Rodriguez de la Camara (Juan), 63,
77, 104, 132.
Rodriguez de Montalvo (Garci), 65,
66, 67, 69, 119.
Rodriguez de Sa e Meneses (Joao),
103.
Rodriguez de Sousa (Gon9alo), 78.
Rodriguez del Padron (Juan). See
Rodriguez de la Camara.
Rodriguez Gonzalez (Eladio), 354-5.
Rodriguez Leitao (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 (Jose Ignacio), 91.
Rousseau (Jean-Jacques), 264.
Rucellai (Giovanni), 140.
Rudel (Jaufre), 47.
Rueda (Lope de), 112, 130.
Ruiz (Juan), Archpriesf of Hita, 23,
38. 53. 90, 113. 124. 125, 339. 356.
Ruiz de Toro (Alvar), 78;
Sa (Antonio de), 269.
Sa (Diogo de), 228.
Sa (Gongalo de), 143.
Sa (Mem de), 143.
Sa de Meneses (Francisco de), epic
poet, 260.
S4 de Meneses (Francisco de), Conde
de Mattosinhos, 13, 150, 260.
Sa de Miranda (Francisco de), 13, 19,
39, 53. 77. 104. 105. "7, 120, 138,
139-45, 146, 149, 164, 165, 166,
174, 176, 206, 260, 263, 276.
Sa e Macedo (Anna de), 174, 179.
Sa Sottomaior (Eloi de), 153.
Sabugal, Conde de, 256.
Sabugosa (Antonio Maria Jose de
Mello Silva Cesar e Meneses), Conde
de, 121, 158, 324.
Sacchetti (Franco), 231.
Sachsen (Ludolph von), 90, 95.
INDEX
373
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 (Benoit de), 61.
Saint Victor (Adam de), 24.
San Pedro (Diego de), 124, 132.
Sanches de Baena Farinha Augusto
Romano, Visconde, iii.
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 Durao (Jose de), 279.
Santa Rosa de Viterbo (Joaquim de),
285.
Santarem (Manuel Francisco de Barros
e Sousa de Mesquita Leitao e Car-
valhosa), Visconde de, 292.
Santarem, Foros de, 17.
Santillana, Ifiigo Lopez de Mendoza,
Marques de, 22, 32, 38, 41, 48, 49,
77. 79. 80, 104.
Santo Antonio (Pedro de), 247.
Santo Antonio (Sebastiao de), 280.
Santo Estevam (Gomez de), 340.
Santos (Joao 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. Joao de), 286.
S. Luis (D. Francisco de). Cardinal
Saraiva, 285.
Saraiva, Cardinal. See S. Luis.
Sarmento (Augusto Cesar Rodrigues),
3^5-
Sarmento (Francisco de Jesus Maria),
338-
Sarmiento (Martin), 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 Se-
mcdo.
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 (Jose Freire de), 300.
Serrao 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 Jose 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 (Andre da), 260.
Silva Pinto (Manuel Jose da), 322.
Silva Souto-Maior (Caetano Jos6 da),
306.
Silveira (Fernam da) [11489], loi.
Silveira (Fernam da), O Coudel Mor,
loo-i, 102.
Silveira (Franciso Rodriguez). See
Rodriguez Silveira.
Silveira (Jorge da), 102.
Silveira da Motta (Francisco), 322.
Simoes Dias (Jose), 330.
Soares de Brito (Joao), 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.
Sola (Jaime), 356.
Sophocles, 165.
Soropita. See Rodriguez Lobo Soro-
pita.
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], 2.14.
Sousa (D. Lianor de), 188, 217.
Sousa (Luis de), 14, 16, 203, 209, 215,
241-3, 269, 291, 298.
374
INDEX
Sousa (Manuel Caetano de), 280.
Sousa (Martini 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 Maccdo (Antonio), 56, 68,
74, 130, 209, 224, 258, 260-1.
Sousa Falcao (Cristovam de). See
Falcao.
Sousa Farinha (Bento Jose de), 244.
Sousa IMonteiro (Josexie), 311.
Sousa Moraes (Wenceslau Jose 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 Sa). See Sa
Sottomaior.
Souvestre (£mile), 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.
Tacitus, 266.
Tancos (Hermenegildo de), 90.
Tasso (Bernardo), 71, 181.
Tasso (Torquato), 146, 180, 181,
280.
Tavares (Manuel), no.
Tavares Zagalo (Joana), 133.
Teive (Diogo de), 106.
Teixeira de Pascoaes (Joaquim),
333-4-
Teixeira de Quieroz (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 Patheliv, 123.
Theocritus, 272.
Theodora, Verdadeira Historia da
Domella, 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 Is^aharro (Bartolome de), 124.
Trancoso (Gon9alo Fernandez). See
Fernandez Trancoso.
Trindade (Adeodato da), 196, 197.
Trindade Coelho (Jose Francisco de),
327-
Trissino (Giangiorgio), 165.
Tr islam, O Livro de, 63.
Tristan, 65, 69, 70.
Trovador, O, 300.
Trovador, O Novo, 300.
Trueba (Antonio de), 302, 303.
Timdalo, Visao de, 59.
U
Usque (Abraham ben), 246.
Usque (Samuel), 245-6.
Vaamonde (Florencio), 357.
Valcacer. See Valcarcel.
Valcarcel (Pedro de), 78.
Valdes (Juan de), 65.
Valente (Afonso), 112.
Valera (Juan), 19.
Valla (llorenzo), 180.
Valle Inclan (Ramon Maria 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.
INDEX
375
Vasconcellos (Jorge Ferreira de) . See
Ferreira.
Vasconcellos (Simao de), 267.
Vaz (Francisco), de Guimaraes, 161-2.
Vaz (Joana), 107.
Vaz da Gama (Guiomar), 174.
Vaz de Camoes (Luis). See Camoes.
Vaz de Camoes (Simao), 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.
Velazquez (Diego), 333.
Velez de Guevara (Luis), 284.
Velez de Guevara (Pero), 79.
Velho (Alvaro), 190.
Verba (Joao), 92.
Verde (Jose 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), no.
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,
no, 168.
Vicente (Martim), 109.
Vicente (Paula), no.
Vicente de Almeida (Gil), 162.
Vicentes, Cronica dos. See Cronica
da Ftindagam.
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 Athougnia, 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.
Visdo 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 (Fran9ois .\rouet), 179, 182,
274.
Vyvyaes (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.
Yannez (Rodrigo), 73.
Ychoa (Joao de), 89.
Zamora (Gil de), 42.
Zola (fimile), 299.
Zorro (Joan), 29, 31, 53.
Zurara (Gomez Eanez de), 14, 15, 68,
69, 81, 82, 85-7, 88, 201.
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