Note 10 — Chapter II · PERIOD OF FORMATION (1500-1750)
Reading edition
Verissimo, always a suggestive commentator, presents an interesting reason for these early national panegyrics. See the essay cited in the preceding notes, pages 50-51. He attributes the swelling chorus of eulogies to what might today be called a national “inferiority complex.” “Having no legitimate cause for glory,—great deeds accomplished or great men produced,—we pride ourselves ingenuously upon our primitive Nature, or upon the opulence,—which we exaggerate—of our soil.”