Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAP. II. HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE POETRY AND ELOQUENCE FROM THE EPOCH OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ITALIAN STYLE, TILL TOWARDS THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (continued 3)

The other two pastoral romances of Lobo are merely continuations of his Spring, which according to the plan on which it is written, might be protracted to infinity. The first continuation is entitled, O Pastor Peregrino, (the Wandering Shepherd). It is arranged in divisions, which, like the acts of the Spanish comedies, bear the name of jornadas. The second continuation, or the conclusion of the whole romance, is entitled, O Desenganado,225 (the Disenchanted), and its divisions are called discursos (discourses). Here also a rich harvest of lyric flowers charm the reader, though the romance itself becomes even less interesting. Rodriguez Lobo has endeavoured to render this last portion of his romance in a peculiar way instructive. Towards the close, as the events become more romantic, he introduces a portion of his geographical, historical, and physical knowledge. Still sound judgment and a delicate spirit of observation are here manifest.

But Rodriguez Lobo who found only within the boundary or in the vicinity of pastoral poetry the objects and impressions for the poetic representation of which he was destined by nature, was induced to take part with the Portuguese and Spanish poets of his age in the absurd competition for the prize of epopœia. He wrote a work entitled, O Condestabre de Portugal, (the Generalissimo of Portugal), which he intended should be a national epic poem. It is, however, merely a versified biography of the renowned Nuno Alvarez Pereira, whom the Portuguese of that age eulogized with an enthusiasm equal to that with which the Spaniards celebrated their favourite Cid. Rodriguez Lobo has collected with all requisite patience the most remarkable events in the life of his hero. He has arranged them chronologically, dividing the whole into twenty cantos, and the long narrative is written in neat octaves. But all the advantage which a story can impart to a poem is wanting in this tedious work. It is difficult to conceive how a man of Rodriguez Lobo’s poetic taste, could have written verses in this style without being conscious that he was only rhyming historical prose. The imagination has had but little or no share either in the cultivation of the style or the painting of the situations; and the whole work exhibits no trace of poetic invention. But it is soon evident that from beginning to end the author is resolved never to be at variance with historical truth. Thus Rodriguez Lobo purposely repressed his natural poetic feeling in order to conform with the false notions of epic composition, which were at that time firmly established in Spain and Portugal. So much, indeed, was he under the dominion of those notions that he has not had the courage to mingle even as much poetry with his narrative, as the Spaniard Ercilla introduced in his Araucana.226 The few stanzas which Camoens in his Lusiad consecrates to Nuno Alvarez,227 are worth more than the twenty cantos of Lobo’s versified biography. In a philological point of view, however, the composition deserves praise, for the simplicity, correctness and elegance of its language. A gleam of poetic beauty here and there distinguishes some of the descriptive and pathetic passages, and repays the labour of a perusal.

The predilection which Rodriguez Lobo unconsciously and almost exclusively entertained for pastoral poetry, is more than sufficiently proved by the ten eclogues which are included among the works of this poet, independently of the three pastoral romances already noticed. He wished to combine didactic with bucolic poetry. On this idea he has explained himself in a preface to his didactic eclogues. Man, he says, has abandoned the state for which nature destined him, since he has exchanged the quietude of his rural occupations and wishes, for a restless and dissatisfied life by sea and by land. Abel was a shepherd, and all the succeeding patriarchs, on whom God bestowed his favour, devoted themselves to the care of flocks and herds. Amidst rustic occupations the virtues of the ancient Romans were fostered; and there have arisen in the pastoral state many great men who have been called to fill thrones. Country life must therefore be regarded as the only natural state of existence, and consequently it is that state to which all the precepts of morality have reference. Thus poetry cannot be more suitably combined with morality than through the medium of pastoral composition. It is therefore nothing surprising that the discourse of shepherds should be the vehicle of practical philosophy. The shepherd in his smock-frock has not less correct notions of virtue and vice than the courtier and man of the world. But poetry is, generally speaking, merely the clothing of truth.228 According to these principles which may be regarded as a portion of the Portuguese art of poetry in the sixteenth century, Rodriguez Lobo chose for his didactic eclogues, a particular moral point of view. The first is directed against rudeness and ignorance; the second against hatred and envy; the third against avarice. In like manner each of the remaining eclogues censures some particular vice, and the censure is conveyed in a style of rural gentleness, while the opposite virtue is recommended by pleasing images. The simple morality which Rodriguez Lobo puts into the mouths of his shepherds is certainly not unnatural in their situation. Far removed also as the critic may be from the scholastic prejudices which formed the basis of the poetic art of the sixteenth century, and which would render poetry a mere robe for morality, still it is impossible entirely to reject the idea of this species of didactic eclogue. But such a homely morality, in union with pastoral poetry, could possess poetic interest, only at a time when the commonest remarks on moral relations, if divested of theological and monastic forms of expression, had all the charm of novelty. In the present age, however, when philosophy has long nourished poetry with more invigorating aliment, the didactic eclogues of Rodriguez Lobo cannot claim any particular favour among readers, who justly require that morality should not directly mix in the business of poetry, when it has nothing new to tell.

The works of Rodriguez Lobo, also include about a hundred romances, which, with the exception of a few, are written in Spanish. The first half contributed nothing to the advancement of Portuguese literature. It consists of fifty-six occasional poems in redondilhas, which are all pompous salutations of Philip III. who in the year 1619 visited his Portuguese dominions. Such occasional poems were at the period denominated romances. But the works of Rodriguez Lobo conclude with some real romances in the old spirit and style, which cast a new light on that part of Portuguese literature. They prove, that which more ancient data leave doubtful, namely, that the epic or heroic romance, which in Castile is as old as the Castilian language, was never completely naturalized in Portugal.229 The narrative romances in particular, the subjects of which are borrowed from the history of Moorish knights and ladies, and in which Spanish poetry is so profusely rich, seem only to have found their way into Portugal from Spain, and never to have been perfectly congenial with the national taste of the Portuguese. This kind of romance seems indeed to be essentially attached to the Castilian language. It appears that in the age of Rodriguez Lobo, the Spaniards made it a reproach to the Portuguese that they wanted the talent necessary for inventing these romances. Rodriguez Lobo, who was a zealous patriot, wrote a whole series, but only with the view of ridiculing this species of composition which appeared to him too vain-glorious. In an introductory romance he apostrophizes the romancistas (romance writers) of his native country. He conjures them, instead of continuing to plunder the Spanish language, to soar to distinction by means of originality, since where there were so many pens, wings could not be wanting. He begs them to observe, that the laurel tree on Parnassus had been completely stripped, since to every Spanish romancist a whole branch had been assigned as a garland.230 He adds, that they might roam to the Alhambra and the Alpuxarra in quest of the fair ladies Daraja and Celinda, Adalifa and Celidaxa.231 Lobo follows up this satirical address with a considerable number of Spanish romances of his own composition, apparently with the view of proving how easy it is to write such pieces. Indeed to a poet of Rodriguez Lobo’s talent it certainly could not be difficult to produce an exaggerated imitation of the style of the Spanish national romance. But such extravagant imitation will not deprive the best of those romances of the merit which they really possess. Lobo seems purposely to have introduced among these compositions, some pastoral romances in the Portuguese language; as if it were not as easy and even easier to ridicule pastoral poetry; or as if an exuberance of pastoral poetry were to be a proof that Portuguese literature could well dispense with the beautiful epic romance.

Rodriguez Lobo laid the foundation of that excessive accumulation of pastoral poetry, existing in the Portuguese language. He exerted his utmost endeavours to fix the taste of the nation in that direction. Before he appeared, the poetic genius of the Portuguese earnestly and zealously sought distinction in different ways. But after the period in which Rodriguez Lobo flourished, the Portuguese poets evinced an exclusive predilection for the pastoral style, even in other classes of poetic composition.

STATE OF PORTUGUESE ELOQUENCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Though Portuguese poetry had now attained a degree of consideration which in the following century it was unable to surpass, eloquence, or the elegant literature of prose remained far behind. That no writer of talent should have produced a work in Portuguese prose, which in a rhetorical point of view is worthy to mark an epoch, may in some respects be accounted for by peculiar circumstances, and must in others be attributed merely to the caprice of chance. The same restrictions on intellectual freedom, which in Portugal so effectually opposed the full developement of pure eloquence, had likewise held captive the thinking faculty in Spain. In Spain, however, a few, but still some men of talent, who pretended to no distinction in poetry, learned to move, even in their fetters, with rhetorical freedom and dignity, and there was nothing to prevent the occurrence of similar instances at an equally early period in Portugal. But it appears, that the Portuguese authors who had no ambition to be poets, were not endowed with the true talent for cultivating the art of rhetorical representation, and that the poets were too much engaged with their own art, to take any particular interest in the improvement of any other branch of polite literature. With the single exception of Rodriguez Lobo, whose Corte na Aldea afforded in Portugal the first example how a poet could elevate the language of common life, without confounding the boundaries of poetry and elegant prose, no Portuguese poet of the sixteenth century in any way contributed to the cultivation of eloquence; and the period when Rodriguez Lobo enjoyed his utmost celebrity was not earlier than the commencement of the seventeenth century. Now the Portuguese language was then, as the loud complaint of Lobo sufficiently proves, frequently denied, even in Portugal, any claim to the possession of that accuracy and elegance, without which poetry, deficient merely in cultivation, might indeed exist, but which is indispensably necessary to prose composition, when it is to be elevated above the formal style of ceremony, and the negligent expression of common life. Thus it seems to have happened that some Portuguese historians and moralists, who, even in the first half of the sixteenth century, had actually formed their style to a certain extent on the ancient models, still unconsciously fell into the rude manner of the chronicle and monastic prose. In Spain elegant prose was afforded the opportunity of an earlier developement, for the national pride of the Castilians had at all times powerfully protected the Castilian language; and men of learning who entertained a different opinion had not the deciding voice.232

ROMANCES AND NOVELS.

The novel style was at this period not more prejudicial to true eloquence in Portugal than in Spain. Every reader, however, unconscious of any theoretical reasoning on such subjects, regarded the romances and novels which were now profusely circulated as scions from the old stock of the national poetry. They were judged according to poetic laws; while fictitious events in forms wholly prosaic, would have been justly declared counterfeit. But the Portuguese attributed to themselves the peculiar merit of ingenious invention, and of an excellent, if not a perfect, style in the relation of romantic events. Palmerin de Oliva, which next to Amadis de Gaul, Cervantes spares in his judgment on romances of chivalry, was written by Francisco de Moràes, a Portuguese courtier and man of the world; and it has already been mentioned, that even Amadis, in its original form, is considered to have been the production of a Portuguese.233 Francisco de Moràes lived in the reign of John III. and he visited the French court in the suite of the Portuguese ambassador. This visit may have contributed to nurture his taste for romances of chivalry, which were then greatly in favour with people of rank in France.

SA SOTOMAYOR.

Many other Portuguese romances of different kinds were produced in the sixteenth century. The prize awarded to Rodriguez Lobo, as author of the most celebrated pastoral romance, had already been an object of ambition with Eloy de Sà Sotomayor, whose Ribeiras do Mondego, (Banks of the Mondego),234 was not, however, so early known as Lobo’s work. From the preface to the Ribeiras, it is quite evident that Rodriguez Lobo had, according to the fashion of the age, introduced into his pastoral romances a disguised picture of affairs of love which personally interested himself. Sà Sotomayor, who was also a bachelor of canon law, was considered one of the most successful rivals of Rodriguez Lobo, in romantic composition. But as a poet, he was in every respect far inferior. His narrative and descriptive styles are not destitute of grace.235 His verses, however, cannot bear comparison with those of Lobo: and even his most natural pictures of sentiment are deficient in novelty of idea and ingenious simplicity.236

PIRES DE REBELLO.

Among the Portuguese chivalric romances, which were so assiduously read in the sixteenth century, may be numbered A Constante Florinda, (the Constant Florinda) of Gaspar Pires de Rebello, who was likewise the author of some short didactic novels, (novelas exemplares) which were published about the period at which Cervantes enriched Spanish literature with tales of a totally different standard, though bearing the same title.237 Rebello entertained a very high opinion of the usefulness of his novels;238 but his inventions are common place; and his unceasing display of mythological learning is as affected as are many of his similies and images.239

PROGRESS OF THE HISTORICAL ART.

But the historical works which were written in the Portuguese language in the sixteenth century, are more important to the lover of literature, as well as the politician, than the other compositions in prose which have just been noticed. In Portugal, as well as in Spain, relations of real events had long been completely distinguished from romantic prose. But before the old chronicle style could become entirely obsolete, it was necessary that the old chronicle spirit should yield to the nobler spirit of historic art; and to this in that age, with all its great events, there was little inducement in Portugal. The ancient classic historians were, it is true, read and studied; but when Portuguese writers attempted to imitate them, they at most only succeeded in producing some resemblance to their force of description, and in a certain degree to their elegance of expression, but failed altogether in the arrangement of events according to the just idea of historical utility, and in the delicacy of the shades of an historical picture. Indeed the rude spirit of the chronicles seemed then to belong no less essentially to the narration of modern events, than the rhyme and the metres of romantic verse to modern poetry. He who felt himself called to be the historian of his native country, necessarily endeavoured to render himself no less intimate with the old chronicles than with classic authors; and, if, fully imbued with his subject, he took up the thread of the narrative where an earlier chronicler had dropped it, he unconsciously fell into the style of that chronicler. Had fate transplanted for several years to Italy, and placed in a sphere of political and literary activity, a Portuguese possessing the talent and energy of Diego de Mendoza, he would probably, like that distinguished Spaniard, have there learned to compose an historical work according to justly conceived ideas of historical art, independently of the influence of the chronicles.240 But in India, to which at that time all Portuguese subjects who wished to rise in the service of their country eagerly hastened, it was not to be expected that a historian could be formed. Still, however, the historical literature of the Portuguese of the sixteenth century, when considered with reference to its rhetorical character, possesses a degree of interest which the elegant compilations of later historians cannot excite. The men who at that memorable epoch, either from their own inclination, or as Cronistas in the service of the government, related the history of their native country, and more particularly of the Portuguese discoveries and conquests, were inspired with ardent national feeling, and that feeling they communicated to their works. Their narratives have character. The manner in which that character displays itself, is doubtless too prominent in cases in which the national interests come into conflict with claims of foreign powers. But an endeavour to preserve historical fidelity, is in general observable in the works of these writers. To confound them with the common chroniclers would be doing them great injustice. They earnestly endeavoured to introduce into their narratives as much of the style of the ancient classics as could be united with the style of the chronicle; and the remote traces of that historical art in which they were deficient are to be recognized in their works. It was not so much their object to string facts together, as to combine remarkable events as far as they were able, under one practical point of view.

JOAÕ DE BARROS.

The events of India formed the favourite theme of many of the Portuguese Cronistas of the sixteenth century. At the head of these industrious writers stands Joaõ de Barros, whose name is not altogether unknown in literature, beyond the boundaries of his native land. In the early part of the sixteenth century he was distinguished by his talents and acquirements among the young men of rank, who were educated at the court of Emanuel the Great. At this period he seems to have applied himself with particular delight to the study of the Roman historians, and in particular of Livy. In his twenty-first year he produced a romance of chivalry. King Emanuel, who on reading this romance thought that he perceived in the youthful author a talent for historical composition, commissioned him to draw up an account of the oriental discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese. Barros immediately prepared for the commencement of his arduous task; the execution of which was, however, delayed for some time in consequence of the death of King Emanuel. But he was speedily solicited by King John III. not to relinquish his design, and, as an encouragement, was invested with the lucrative but troublesome post of Treasurer to the Indian department (Caza da India). Without neglecting the duties of this office, Barros indefatigably collected materials for his great historical work, which he commenced and continued with unremitting activity until a short time previous to his decease. He died in the year 1570, at the age of seventy-four. The Portuguese have surnamed him their Livy. His historical labours sufficiently prove that he did not study Livy in vain, and though he cannot justly claim a place near that historian, yet are his labours well deserving of an ample notice in the history of Portuguese literature.

The celebrated work of Joaõ de Barros is entitled “Asia, or the Atchievements which the Portuguese performed in the Discovery and Conquest of the Seas and Lands of the Orient.241” The books are, like those of Livy’s works, distributed into decades. These decades are four in number, and each makes a moderately sized folio volume. In this work Barros, though he embraces only the most brilliant portion of Portuguese history, has pursued an idea similar to that which governed Livy, for he constantly endeavours to illustrate and render self-evident the greatness of the Portuguese name, as Livy does the majesty of the Roman people. Whether national pride may not sometimes have seduced him into violations of historical truth, is a question which the historian of eloquence cannot be required to investigate.242 This Portuguese Livy has to a certain degree approached the excellence of his model in the art of historical description. His language is sometimes not merely elegant; but the pictures he draws exhibit an unaffected charm of intuitive representation. These descriptions are neither disfigured by pompous phrases nor poetic excrescences; and they still possess a lively internal spirit as well when rural or urbane scenery is depicted,243 as when military events are represented.244 But passages thus distinguished for rhetorical beauty are only occasionally to be found in the works of Barros. His narrative style is, upon the whole, merely the old chronicle style, with the diction somewhat more elevated; and even his diction abounds in expressions which were beginning to grow antiquated at the period when he wrote. The practice of commencing several sentences in succession by the conjunction and, in the manner of the old chronicles, is not uncommon in the writings of Barros. But he seldom attains the real flexibility of the long, yet harmoniously articulated sentences of Livy. Barros sometimes very happily inculcates his practical views by speeches in the manner of the ancients, which under certain circumstances he introduces as delivered by the Public, in order to express in the most natural way all that can be said for and against certain enterprises; such, for example, as the continual fitting out, under the auspices of Prince Henry, so celebrated in the history of discoveries of vessels, for the further exploring of the new passage to India.245 Speeches by individuals, though seldom, are for the most part not inappropriately introduced; but the insipid style of the chronicles is then very unseasonably retained.246 Least of all did Barros understand the drawing of character; and in this respect the difference between the Roman and the Portuguese Livy is most striking. The monkish point of view in which this author, like every other of his age in Portugal and Spain, regarded the faults and excellencies of human character, rendered any thing like natural portraiture impossible. An ancient Roman observer of human nature would not, for instance, have deduced the courtesy and gentleness of Prince Henry, the encourager of navigation, from the purity of that prince’s soul, with an intimation that such a conclusion was to be drawn because he was held to be truly virginal.247 In the spirit of his age, Barros seizes every opportunity for putting forward his catholic opinions, though the result is by no means to the advantage of his historical work.

LOPEZ DE CASTANHEDA—DAMIAÕ DE GÓES—AFFONSO D’ALBOQUERQUE.

In order to form a correct estimate of the rhetorical merit of Barros, with reference to the age in which he lived, it is necessary to compare his historical works with others which were written in Portugal at the same period and on the same subjects. In this comparison Barros will be found to shine forth as a light of superior lustre. With equal patriotism and industry, and with a greater sacrifice of his own interest, Fernaõ Lopez de Castanheda composed his history of the discovery and conquest of India by the Portuguese: a narrative of events, which, though compendious in form, exhibits the most laborious accuracy in the investigation of facts.248 But whatever may be the historical merit of this work, it is, as to rhetorical character, merely a common chronicle. The diffuse chronicle of King Emanuel, which was about this period edited by Damiaõ de Góes, is also interesting only to the historian.

The life of the great Affonso d’Alboquerque, composed by his son, Affonso d’Alboquerque, the younger, is a biographical chronicle, which may be placed on a parallel with the works entitled, Histories, which have just been noticed.249 No historical work enjoys greater esteem in Portuguese literature: and that a father so celebrated, should have found so worthy a narrator of his atchievements in his son, certainly was not a thing easily to be anticipated. But in the scale of rhetorical merit, these Commentaries, as the work is usually denominated, weigh but lightly. The language may be said to be pure, but the style is monotonous; and upon the whole it is merely a repetition of the old chronicle style.250

BERNARDO DE BRITO.

Bernardo de Brito, a Portuguese historian, who lived in the latter end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, possessed a far higher degree of historical cultivation. He was educated at Rome, and was master of several modern languages. He devoted himself to the ecclesiastical profession, but in the cloister he followed his predilection for Portuguese history; and as authorized Cronista of his convent, he undertook the arduous task of writing a complete history of the Portuguese monarchy. He died in the year 1617, in the forty-seventh year of his age, without having attained the object to which he honourably aspired. But, notwithstanding his early death, he might have succeeded in completing the history of his native country, had not the plan on which he proceeded placed that object beyond his reach. The idea of a history of the Portuguese monarchy, would have been properly fulfilled by commencing with the foundation of that monarchy, and in an introduction only, referring back somewhat beyond the eleventh century. But Bernardo de Brito contemplated the execution of a work of much greater magnitude. His Monarchia Lusitana was intended to be a complete history of the country, now called Portugal, from the most remote antiquity down to the latest period.251 The ancient history of Portugal was with him a favourite part of his subject. It is probable that he wished his history to rank as a companion to the Spanish work of Florian de Ocampo, who in the reign of Charles V. commenced on a similar plan, a history of the Spanish monarchy from the time of the flood.252 Brito, however, did not think that period sufficiently remote, but chose to start from the creation of the world. Whatever particulars are furnished by ancient authors, concerning Lusitania and the Lusitanians of the earliest ages, he has collected, examined, and arranged in historical connection. But a thick folio volume, which includes the four first books, brings the history no further than the birth of Christ; and towards the end of the second volume, where the history of modern Portugal commences, the work breaks off. Had it been completed, still it would not have been an easy matter to have brought the numerous notices respecting Portuguese antiquities, which Brito has introduced, under a point of view whereby they might have formed an appropriate union with the heterogeneous events of modern history. But the work is eminently distinguished for style and descriptive talent. The ingenious author seems like many other eminent persons of his age to have derived particular advantage from his residence in Italy. Without deteriorating by laborious polish, the vigorous style which is indispensable to historical composition, he gives even dry narratives of facts in a manner totally different from the compilers of the old chronicles; and where the internal interest of the subject animates the description, Brito’s historical pictures possess an impressive effect, which marks the pupil of the ancient classic writers.253

Brito’s preface, in which he gives an account of the spirit and plan of his history of the Portuguese monarchy, merits attention. He observes that even his own countrymen advised him to write his work, if not in Latin or Italian, at least in Spanish, in order to afford it an opportunity of being read beyond the confines of Portugal, and also for the sake of avoiding the vulgarity into which his native tongue might betray him.254 Thus, even in Portugal, during the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the progress made by Portuguese literature, the detractors of the Portuguese language must have been exceedingly numerous, since their conduct is so frequently a subject of complaint with patriotic writers. Brito was one of the patriots who most loudly expressed his indignation against that anti-national party. The Portuguese language, he says, has fallen into disrepute only because Portugal cherishes “ungrateful sons, like poisonous vipers.”255 He expresses his regret, that though possessing a little better knowledge of his native language, he could not write in the most brilliant style, which is only to be done when the author bestows greater attention on elegance of expression than on the veracity of facts, which is unworthy of a true historian.256

A smaller historical work by Bernardo de Brito, from its title of Elogios dos reys de Portugal, (Eulogies on the Kings of Portugal) seems to promise to the historian of eloquence a kind of rhetorical memoires, from which not a little might be expected. But these eulogies are brief and dull notices, and scarcely afford groundwork for biographical sketches. They are merely intended to illustrate the copper-plate portraits of the kings of Portugal, which are included in the work.257

The travels of Fernaõ Mendez Pinto,258 may also be numbered among the works written in cultivated Portuguese prose, which appeared during the sixteenth century. It seems to have been the first book of travels, the author of which bestowed labour on narrative and descriptive style.

The cultivation of the other departments of prosaic composition appears to have been at this period very much neglected in Portugal. Some moral treatises, written by the historian Barros, in the dialogue form, perhaps merit to be again brought into notice.259 A Panegyrico by the same author on an Infanta Maria, has also the reputation of being eloquently written.

An art of poetry and rhetoric composed on practical principles, and calculated to convey useful instruction, was not to be expected while writers had still sufficient difficulty in the preliminary study of the grammatical rules and purity of diction. To facilitate the acquisition of both, Nunez de Liaõ wrote his book on the origin of the Portuguese language, and his introduction to Portuguese orthography.260