Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAP. III. HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE POETRY AND ELOQUENCE, FROM THE LATTER YEARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY UNTIL TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH.

Decay of the ancient national energy in Portuguese Literature.

At the end of the sixteenth century the most brilliant period of Portuguese poetry had passed away. A new epoch did not, it is true, commence; for the style of invention and composition which during that century was introduced, continued essentially unaltered. The influence which the fantastic school of the Gongorists produced, in the first half of the seventeenth century, on most of the Portuguese writers, did not entirely repress the cultivation of the better style.261 But the proper place to form a resting point in the account of the second period of the polite literature of Portugal is the present, for here genius ceased to advance, and dextrous talent merely traded on the stock which the sixteenth century had bequeathed. According to the plan of a history, in which it is intended to describe circumstantially, only the progress of poetic and rhetorical genius and taste, the account of Portuguese poetry and eloquence in the seventeenth century must therefore form merely a summary appendix to the preceding chapters.

At the commencement of the present book it was remarked, that the loss of independence experienced by the kingdom of Portugal, was attended with no immediate injury to Portuguese literature. The Spanish language could obtain no higher consideration in Portugal than it already enjoyed. The humbled national pride took pleasure in the courageous defence of the national language, and the Castilian tongue only served to remind the patriotic Portuguese of the ignominious occupation of his country. But several circumstances concurred to limit poetic genius in Portugal to a somewhat monotonous continuation of the old style in a few branches of poetic composition, while in Spain dramatic poetry, full of national boldness, rapidly advanced in the career of well merited fame. That fate had denied a Lope de Vega to the Portuguese language is not sufficient to account for this contrast, the Spanish would still have been banished from the stage in Portugal, had a Portuguese national theatre vied with that of Spain. In that case the competition of numerous poets would, perhaps, have ensured the cultivation of dramatic composition in the language of the country, which, since the death of Gil Vicente, had been neglected. But even Gil Vicente, as has been already observed, wrote his first drama in Spanish; and in his subsequent works he interspersed the Spanish with the Portuguese language, as if he felt that the latter was not of itself fitted to supply dialogue throughout the whole of a dramatic performance. The genuine Portuguese comedies of Saa de Miranda and Antonio Ferreira were by no means sufficiently national to excite the imitation of a poet who might wish to produce an effect upon the great body of the Portuguese public. Meanwhile the comedies of Lope de Vega found their way into Portugal, and since that period this class of comedy seemed to require the Spanish language to render it perfect. In the seventeenth century, many Spanish comedies were written by Portuguese authors; and the Portuguese poets who adhered to their mother tongue, sought another sphere. During the sixty years in which there was no court in Lisbon, Portuguese poetry withdrew entirely within the circle of private relations. The lyric forms of romantic love, with a supplemental supply of the favourite amatory pastoral poetry, and of versified jests of various kinds, seemed fully to satisfy the public. That the spirit of vigorous emulation should so suddenly have vanished among the Portuguese poets, would, however, be inconceivable, were it not that in Spain about the same period, every species of poetic composition, except dramatic poetry, which flowed like an impetuous torrent, remained stationary at the point at which it stood in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Both the Spaniards and the Portuguese felt the paralyzing influence of the political relations of their deeply humiliated countries; and in both nations despotism, spiritual and temporal, finally overthrew the power which had long kept it in equipoise. Even in Portugal, therefore, the restoration of the independence of the kingdom in the year 1640, though it excited new ebullitions of patriotism, could produce no new freedoms in poetry.

PORTUGUESE SONNETS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

In the history of Portuguese poetry, the seventeenth century may be called the Age of Sonnets. Lyric art in the old national syllabic metres was entirely abandoned in serious poetry. The composition of sonnets formed the particular recommendation of the man of the world in the circle of polite society; and both in spiritual and temporal affairs, sonnets were resorted to as the means of extricating their authors from difficulty. It would almost appear that at this period poetic merit in Portugal was estimated solely by the inexhaustible facility which an author displayed in the composition of these trifles. To acquire the title of a poet certainly nothing more was necessary than to write a few sonnets not absolutely contemptible. Thus, in the year 1631, when the number of printed Portuguese sonnets was increasing by thousands, Jacinto Cordeiro,262 a minute calculator of the poetic fame of his nation, added a supplement of thirty-eight names of Portuguese bards to the list of Spanish and Portuguese poets, which Lope de Vega had furnished in his celebrated Laurel de Apolo.263 Doubtless this erroneous estimate of the poetic glory of the nation contributed to check the growth of talent which might have taken a loftier flight, had not a few neatly turned sonnets been sufficient in public opinion, to confer on any individual all the fame of a poet. The limits of a general history of modern poetry are too narrow to afford room for a detailed notice of these sonneteers; a particular account can, therefore, only be given of a few of the most celebrated among them, who were also the authors of other poetical works, or who in any way assisted in improving or deteriorating the literary taste of their country.264

FARIA E SOUSA.

Manoel de Faria e Sousa who has been so repeatedly mentioned in the course of the present volume, and who has not been passed by unnoticed in the history of Spanish poetry,265 exercised an important influence on the poetry of the Portuguese sonneteers, particularly in the first half of the seventeenth century. Possessing uncommon faculties, which were early disclosed, and early perverted, he distinguished himself while yet a youth by his extraordinary talents and powers of memory. In the year 1605, he participated, in quality of secretary, in the official duties of one of his relations, under whom he received the education fitting for a statesman. But neither his talents and acquirements, nor his connection with the most distinguished families of his native country, having conducted him to an object commensurate with his diligence and ambition, he quitted Portugal and visited Madrid. Though he did not realize all his expectations in the Spanish capital, he was not entirely neglected. He obtained a post in an embassy to Rome; and on his return to Madrid he found at least a tolerable source of subsistence. Still, however, he continued dissatisfied with his income, and on that account his pen was in constant activity. He himself states that he daily wrote twelve sheets, each page containing thirty lines. He possessed so great a facility in rhetorical turns and flourishes, that in the space of a single day he could compose a hundred addresses of congratulation and condolence, all sufficiently different from each other. As an author both in verse and in prose, he continued to labour with unabated assiduity to the period of his death, which happened in the year 1649.266 A considerable portion of his numerous works will preserve his name in honourable recollection; but the value of that portion greatly depends on the subjects it embraces. They belong to the department of history and statistics, but they are all written in Spanish, and therefore cannot with propriety be farther noticed in the history of Portuguese literature. Faria e Sousa’s poems are also chiefly in Spanish; he wrote only sonnets and eclogues in Portuguese versez.267 Of the six hundred, or to use his own phrase, “the six centuries” of sonnets, which, as it appears he selected for posterity out of a still greater number, precisely two hundred are Portuguese. Some of these compositions merit the praise which Faria e Sousa’s admirers have lavished on them all;268 and the whole collection is animated by a buoyant spirit, which soars above ordinary and moderate elegance. But this spirit could not long accommodate itself to sound poetic judgment, nor to the old simplicity and natural flow of ideas and images. Without intentionally becoming an imitator of the Italian Marinists, the Spanish Gongorists, or the school of Lope de Vega, Faria e Sousa revelled in bold flights of fancy, like Lope de Vega, and indulged in eccentric extravagancies like the Marinists and Gongorists. The poetic flowers in his sonnets are overgrown by luxuriant parasitical weeds. In the first Century of the sonnets in the Portuguese language love is the only theme. The introductory sonnet announces that they are intended to celebrate the “penetrating shafts of love, which were shot from a pair of heavenly eyes, and which after inflicting immortal wounds, issued triumphant from the poet’s breast.”269 This style pervades the whole collection. In one place a tender swain, named Menalio, forbids the satyres of the wood to steep their feet in the brook which has served as a bath to the fair Albania, that “morning-star, who in the depth of the water is the first of suns, where the sun himself is dazzled.”270 On another occasion the poet complains of the “bitter taste he experiences in his mouth,” when he describes his pain to his mistress.271 Sometimes it is scarcely possible to guess the meaning of these romantic conceits. But this style of poetic composition was by the admirers of Faria e Sousa denominated the ingenious and the tender style. The principal sonnets in the second Century pursue the same theme of romantic love, but they are sometimes so charming that the beauty of the successful passages, nearly throws into shade the distortions by which even that beauty is more or less alloyed.272 Among the moral sonnets in this Century there are several which, though not abounding in ingenious ideas, are nevertheless expressive pictures of sentiment.273 The sonetos sacros (spiritual sonnets), with which the collection closes, are, however, destitute of all trace of poetic merit. Whatever deserves to be pointed out as remarkable in the twelve Portuguese eclogues of Faria e Sousa, may with propriety be included in the notice respecting the degree of merit which this industrious writer possessed as a poetic theorist.

Faria e Sousa is the author of three treatises; the first, “On the sonnet;” the second, “On the erroneous notions of the moderns concerning poetry;” and the third, “On pastoral poetry.” These works must not be overlooked in the history of the literary taste of Portugal, since theoretical prolusions of this kind by poetic writers, supplied the place of a detailed art of poetry in Portuguese literature. All these treatises are written in the Spanish language.274 The first, which is entitled Discurso de los Sonetos, is in itself insignificant. It merely contains a few scanty notices on the history of sonnet poetry, and some trifling observations hastily thrown together on the appropriateness of the sonnet metre in Spanish and Portuguese poetry. But towards the close of the treatise Faria e Sousa advances a very wide principle, which is exceedingly convenient for him in its application to his peculiar style of composition. One certainly must not, he says, grant absolution for excrescences and licences in poetry, from the notion that elegant language is of less importance than bold and beautiful ideas; but it is not to be forgotten “that a great man may sometimes do what he pleases, and that it is a great crime to call him to account for so doing, more particularly when those by whom he is called to account are pigmies in knowledge and judgment.”275 That Faria e Sousa ranked himself in the class of great men is a circumstance which admits of no doubt. In his second treatise (Contra la opinion moderna acerca lo que es poesia) he has more clearly explained the nature of the ideas which in his opinion are more to be esteemed in poetry than elegant words. In the first place he applies the just principle that language does not make a poet in so loose and perverted a manner as to imply that correct versification is but of little importance. He then reasons again on a just principle most inconsistently, concerning the essence of poetry. He first observes that the essence of poetry as little consists in fine phrases and even in grand ideas, as in deep knowledge or in polished verse, (versos muy peinados). He next makes this assertion,—“the only things required in poetry are invention, imagery, pathos, and a display of every kind of knowledge.”276 Considered in this point of view, he admits Marino to be far inferior to Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Ariosto, and similar poets. But then Torquato Tasso is scarcely a poet worth naming; for in Tasso’s poetry there is but little learning, little invention, and a common style of composition. Tasso is in his opinion a second Lucan, and nothing more; a historian indeed, but no poet. Finally, he complains that allegory, which he regards as particularly necessary to the beauty of a great poem, is totally wanting in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. Faria e Sousa seems to have picked up in Italy the opinions which form the groundwork of his vituperation of Tasso and his Jerusalem. Having ceased to rail against Tasso, he proceeds to declaim concerning poetry in a series of paragraphs, which plainly shew that he was totally deficient in clearness of ideas on the subject. Six of these paragraphs, in immediate succession, commence with such phrases as the following:—“He understands nothing of the matter;” or more briefly, “he is a fool,” (es necio); or “he is an absolute fool (es totalmente necio) who supposes,” &c. or “it is a proof of perfect ignorance,” (purissima ignorancia); or “it is a proof of a total want of knowledge of poetry to assert,” &c. And yet after all these rude sallies against a party which perhaps did no more than earnestly resist his attacks on correctness of ideas and language, he comes at last merely to this conclusion, that a writer of great genius must not be restrained by trifles, and that in his poetry he need only avoid singularity, coarseness and unintelligibility.

In a general history of literature any particular notice of these half true, but mainly trivial declamations, would be quite unnecessary, had not this author been for a considerable period revered as a critical oracle in Portugal.277 The absurd conversion of the pastoral style into a mere poetic figure was among other faults of Portuguese poetry, methodically favoured and confirmed by the fallacious theories of Faria e Sousa. The earlier Portuguese poets who availed themselves of this inappropriate freedom merely followed a custom which had accidentally arisen. After transforming all sorts of occasional poems into eclogues, they at least endeavoured to give these factitious eclogues a pastoral character. But Faria e Sousa having formed a perverted judgment on pastoral poetry, proceeded in conformity with that judgment to exhibit various kinds of completely disfigured eclogues. In his treatise on his own pastoral poems, he theoretically praises himself for never having attempted any species of poetic composition on which he did not confer some novelty. He was accordingly less scrupulous than the eclogue writers who had preceded him, in introducing into such poems characters from the great and polite world. It seems with him to be sufficient that the scene shall always be in the country. He composed, however, a few eclogues in the true spirit and style of pastoral life. He likewise endeavoured to introduce into pastoral poetry more of action and interesting incident than is usually exhibited in that species of composition, so that in this respect some of his eclogues are brought into comparison with serious comedies. According to these and similar principles, Faria e Sousa distinguished his love eclogues (eglogas amorosas,) from hunting eclogues (venatorias), sea-faring eclogues (maritimas), properly pastoral or rather rustic eclogues (rusticas), funeral eclogues (funebres), and other modifications of similar description. In pursuance of his theory he recognized even arbitrator eclogues (arbitrarias), monastic eclogues (monasticos), critical eclogues (criticas), genealogical eclogues (genealogicas), hermit eclogues (eremiticas), and finally, as a particular species, fantastical eclogues (fantasticas), the theme of which is a prophetic vision. Of all these styles he has given specimens according to his own fancy. The same confusion of ideas on which his art of poetry is founded, and the same search after the uncommon at the expense of sound judgment, pervades the whole of this collection of eclogues. The beautiful idea which pastoral poetry presents was completely lost in the way in which Faria e Sousa viewed it. He attached but little importance to the representation of a poetic rural life, and still less to ideal simplicity, his wish being to sport, after his own manner, in bucolic forms, with crude conceits, affected pathos, and extravagant images. His rustic eclogues are, it is true, sufficiently rural, but not in the style of Saa de Miranda, who with the most delicate art gave a poetic dignity to rustic manners. Faria e Sousa’s shepherds are absolute clowns; and he accordingly makes them discourse in a kind of low Portuguese, one half of which is unintelligible to foreigners unacquainted with the rudest dialect of the peasantry of Portugal.278

Faria e Sousa crowned his efforts towards the literary cultivation of his age by a diffuse commentary on the works of Camoens,—a production more calculated to obscure than to illustrate the original. This commentary is written in Spanish.279 The value of the historical portion would be greatly enhanced, were it separated from the critical, so that the latter might be rejected and only the former retained. But the historical data which Faria e Sousa has collected for the elucidation of Camoens’s poems, and particularly the Lusiad, are everywhere interwoven with the critical paraphrase of the text, and that paraphrase is so overloaded with a mass of erudition not merely superfluous, but totally unconnected with the subject, that in the present age, a reader of the works of Camoens, might be enabled to estimate the extent of his admiration of the poet by the degree of patience with which he peruses the labours of this commentator. Faria e Sousa has furnished a new example of the little profit to be derived from critical investigation, by a man who does not commence with a mind rightly cultivated for such a study. His admiration of Camoens contributes nothing to the improvement of his own poetic talent, for he always forces his own perverted views into Camoens’s poetry.

The esteem which Faria e Sousa obtained in Portuguese literature, must have contributed not a little to promote the endless rhyming of sonnets, and to impede the developement of the loftier style of poetry in Portugal. The false liberality of his critical code proved very convenient for the sonneteers, who experienced but little difficulty in exhibiting the qualities which that critic required in their compositions; and the unreasonable severity with which he treated Tasso was calculated to seduce every eccentric sonneteer into the conceit that he was himself something more than a Tasso. The pretensions of Faria e Sousa were not, however, universally recognized on the Portuguese Parnassus. Even in the composition of sonnets, some of the principal Portuguese poets of the seventeenth century followed the more pure and elevated style of Camoens. But no one thought of avoiding the faults into which Camoens had fallen. That prince of Portuguese poets was always regarded as faultless.

THOMAS DE NORONHA.

Comic sonnet poetry, in which Camoens did not distinguish himself as a master, obtained a favourable reception from the Portuguese public on Thomas de Noronha, a contemporary of Faria e Sousa becoming celebrated for that kind of composition.280 But Thomas de Noronha, though an agreeable man of the world, was but a pretender in wit. His writings probably acquired a particular interest from the convivial temper, for which he was distinguished in society, and of which the reader is reminded by his poetry. But such versified jests as this merry companion has left behind him, could only have obtained temporary popularity from personal and local circumstances. They want the sprightly extravagance of the burlesque poetry of the Italians, as well as the moral keeping and caustic delicacy of the more lofty style of satire. Burlesque, however, they certainly are. Some approach, at least in a coarse way, to the Italian jests of a similar kind;281 and in others jesting and serious feeling are blended together in a very absurd manner. Thomas de Noronha thought fit to write a burlesque sonnet in honour of Rodriguez Lobo, when that poet was drowned in the Tagus. After a comic apostrophe to heaven and earth, Noronha declares that if he can catch Æolus he will give him a flogging.282 In nearly the same manner he jests in comic canções and romances, and in redondilha stanzas, (decimas,) which may also be termed epigrams. In these verses the conceits frequently turn on a play of words. Many must be altogether unintelligible to the foreign reader, particularly in the nineteenth century.

BARBOSA BACELLAR.

As a writer of serious sonnets, and particularly of romantic love sonnets in the style of Camoens, no Portuguese poet of the seventeenth century was more successful than the elegant and ingenious Antonio Barbosa Bacellar, who was also celebrated as one of the most skilful disputants of the university of Coimbra. After filling various public offices, he died in the year 1663.283 Barbosa Bacellar’s inclination to form his taste on the model of Camoens, is proved by several excellent glosses, which he composed on some of that great poet’s sonnets. He may indeed be ranked among the most distinguished writers of poetic glosses. In all his poems, many of which are written in the Spanish language, he has disdained those excrescences which Faria e Sousa commends as a proof of unconstrained genius. Barbosa Bacellar was one of the supporters of the correct style of sonnet composition, in whom the spirit of the sixteenth century survived; but so little was he disposed to approve the jejune correctness of Ferreira and Caminha, that he preferred deviating into the opposite extreme, rather than repress the spirit of his poetry by a rigid adherence to forms. He excelled in the art of ingeniously amplifying a romantic idea without allowing the sentimental to degenerate into the fantastic. Besides some very charming sonnets,284 the most remarkable productions of this poet are the extended pictures of romantic aspiration which since his time have been distinguished in Portuguese poetry by the untranslatable name of Saudades.285 The complaints of a lovelorn heart vented in solitude, are the only materials which enter into the composition of these poems; and the peculiar character of their class, which had rapidly grown into favour, was fixed by Barbosa Bacellar. A certain degree of prolixity is essential to these compositions. They do not well afford opportunity for the display of a brilliant store of novel ideas; and to employ an inexhaustible flow of words in painting the tender longing of love was deemed a proof of the ardour of the passion. They might very properly be classed with elegies, were it not that they have usually a narrative form. There are also among the Spanish and Portuguese eclogues, many poems which present the same character as these pictures of amatory aspiration. Barbosa Bacellar seems to have conferred on these pictures the highest degree of improvement which they were capable of receiving, consistently with fidelity to the style, which was then exclusively appropriated to the poetry of love in Spain and Portugal. But the modern forms of cultivation have given, at least on this side of the Pyrenees, a direction so totally different to poetic susceptibility, that the endless complaining of lovers must soon become tedious even to the readers most disposed to indulge in such romantic sentiments. It is, however, a remarkable circumstance in the history of the human mind, that the Portuguese taste in the seventeenth century fondly dwelt on every little feature of such never-ending repetitions in the expression of the same feeling. Barbosa Bacellar devoted no small portion of labour to every line in his Saudades. He is particularly successful in imparting a graceful colouring to the romantic conversations in which the solitary lover engages with natural objects.286

TORREZAÕ COELHO.

A doctor of canon law, and a member of the Inquisitorial college of Lisbon, named Simaõ Torrezaõ Coelho, vied with Barbosa Bacellar in this new modification of romantic poetry. His pictures of passion are, however, totally different from those of Bacellar. He imitated the perverted style of the Marinists and Gongorists, and followed the precepts of Faria e Sousa. He talks of “the just sensation of unjust love;”287—of the living feeling of a dead soul;288 of “the memory that lives in the brass of the soul;”289 and such like Marinisms and Gongorisms. His verses appear, however, to have been very popular.290

FREIRE DE ANDRADA.

Jacinto Freire de Andrade or Andrada, an ecclesiastic, who performed a part in the political history of his native country, and nearly fell a sacrifice to the patriotism with which he defended the claims of the house of Braganza against the Spanish occupation of the Portuguese throne, also endeavoured to enlarge the boundaries of comic poetry. Wit so highly cultivated had never before shewn itself in Portuguese verse. In the union of bold sportiveness, sustained humour and poignant satire, with perfect correctness and elegance of language, Andrada’s burlesque narratives of the fable of Narcissus, and the fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa,291 excel all the earlier specimens of comic wit which the works of former Portuguese poets, including even the comedies, afford. The burlesque manner of Andrada is owing solely to a caricature style which he took no pains to avoid. From the introductory stanzas to his Polyphemus, it appears that he merely tried to divert himself by these plays of fancy, in the hope of forgetting the adversities of his life. He wished, he says, “to visit the region of folly, that he might thereby approach happiness.” He also observes, that “with three ounces of judgment he is more loaded than an elegy, and more solemnly sententious than a sonnet.”292 In order to cheat his sorrow, he makes “joy play with false dice.”293 Had Andrada thrown these dice more steadily, he would, without doubt, have been one of the first comic writers in narrative poetry. But his satire was chiefly directed against the affected poetry of the Gongorists. He attacked other follies merely incidentally as they happened to strike him, and while he was in the humour rather to jest than to castigate.

In his Narcissus, he begins with parodying the wild conceits and romantic imagery of the fantastic sonneteers. To explain whence the beauty of Narcissus originates, a minute detail is given of the charms of his mother, the nymph Liriope, to whom the river god Cephissus makes tender propositions. After describing how the nymph paints herself in the morning, it is said of her eyes “that for boldness and honour there are no fairer lights in heaven; that they are pirates rebelliously fallen from the sun, which now, like the Dutch, wage war against the stars.”294 Of the lips of the beauteous nymph he says, that they make “the roses wither for envy.”295 The declaration of love, put into the mouth of Cephissus in this parodying style, is still more whimsical. If, says he, the eyes of the nymph should summon him to battle, he must be immediately subdued, because he should “see the sun divided in two eyes.”296 He conjures her not to destroy the paper on which he has written his declaration of love, as in that case she will destroy “the house in which she dwells; and the altar on which she is worshipped.”297 He now begins to weep bitterly, upon which Liriope observes, that if he be a true lover, the fountain of his tears must never dry up; but that it would be better to begin by giving her a little present, and to let “the sin go first and the tears follow afterwards.”298 Andrada’s conceits, though they sometimes consist of mere plays of words, are still not of a common kind; as when he makes the covetous nymph say, that, “the demon of the flesh, flies frightened from the cross, but clings to the crossed;”299 and that of “all beautiful streams none murmur so sweetly as the Silver River (the Rio de la Plata in South America).” At length the nymph resigns herself to the river god, and he becomes the reputed father of Narcissus. The reader is next entertained with a comic biography of Narcissus, which is a satirical representation of the history of a fashionable beau. Before he quits the cradle he is destined to become a military officer, as it is discovered that he was born “in the sign of the lion, though it was really the sign of the bull.”300 The officer when grown up is characterized as one who though choleric, is never sanguine (sanguinary); who has “sinned against the fifth commandment in word but not in deed;301 and who has always displayed great gallantry in engagements with the wine flasks.302” Tired of the army, he applies himself to poetry, and writes a new Jerusalem Delivered, and some sonnets in which the sun is so frequently introduced, that the absurdity of the conceits or disparates is, as it is said, rendered quite transparent. Narcissus also becomes fond of tracing genealogies, but he considers it beneath his dignity to study law, or to endeavour to acquire any other kind of practical knowledge. Being convinced by the heralds of his distinguished extraction, he withdraws himself from the public eye; but at the same time takes a lively interest in all that occurs at court, and soon becomes a minister of state. The love of wealth being now his governing passion, he rapidly enriches himself at the expense of the nation, and at last dies of vanity.

What this satire occasionally wants in refinement, is compensated by its extraordinary features, in which Andrada’s wit shines with peculiar lustre: and though the comic effusions of the ingenious author can only rank as poetic trifles, they are nevertheless entitled to some attention in consequence of their being chiefly directed against the absurd style which then distinguished and disfigured Spanish and Portuguese literature.

Andrada’s Polyphemus is a direct ridicule of the monstrous production of Gongora which bears the same title. As an example of the kind of ridicule employed it may just be mentioned, that in this parody the Cyclops styles the conquering eyes of Galathæa, “Turks by land and Dutch by sea.” The poetic works of Andrada include some comic sonnets and romances. He is also the author of a still more remarkable prose work which will be hereafter noticed.

FURTHER DECLINE OF PORTUGUESE TASTE—RIBEIRO DE MACEDO—CORREA DE LA CERDA.

During the second half of the seventeenth century, until the period of the first imitation of the French style in Portuguese literature, the defenders and partizans of classic correctness in Portugal seem to have been constantly diminishing. After the kingdom was emancipated from Spanish dominion, the old patriotic spirit of the Portuguese again found its way into their poetry; but that poetry gained little thereby in interior cultivation; and its boundaries were not farther extended. A species of mythological tales in the romantic form, but very dull and frigid, obtained some favour. In this style did Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, who was also a prose author, and who died in the year 1682, after filling several distinguished posts, relate the fable of Adonis in serious redondilhas. Undismayed by the ridicule with which Freire Andrada had overwhelmed poems formed of such materials, he says in his verses that “Adonis has obtained privileges from Cupid, and licences from Diana, for punishing wild beasts and enchanting the fair; that lightnings flash from his eyes, and arrows are shot from his hands; that the hills and valleys at once represent lamentation and horror, because in the former the beasts groan, and in the latter the goddesses sigh.”303

Fernaõ Correa de la Cerda, an ecclesiastic, who was Bishop of Oporto, may also be numbered among the versifiers of this class. In a sonnet on a lady who died a few days after an eclipse of the sun, he thought it pathetic to say, that “at the death of Phillis, the whole celestial sphere must be afflicted with deep sorrow, bitter anguish.” And then he asks “if an eclipsed sun excites so much regret, what is to be expected from a dead sun?”304

VIOLANTE DO CEO.

A poetess whose name and rank probably contributed to raise her reputation at this period, shone conspicuously among the writers whom Freire de Andrada ridiculed. She was called Violante do Ceo, that is, if a name may be translated, “Violante of Heaven.” As a nun of the order of Dominicans, she obtained the character of a pattern of piety. Portuguese writers, moreover mention, that she was an excellent performer on the harp, and a singer. Among her writings there are some spiritual meditations in prose. She was born in 1601, and died in 1693, having consequently attained the age of ninety-two. Her miscellaneous poems were for the first time collected after her death.305 Violante do Ceo was certainly a woman of genius; but her genius had received a totally false cultivation. She delighted as much as any of the partizans of Faria e Sousa, in all the absurdities of Portuguese Gongorism and Marinism. With her no antithesis was too far-fetched, no play of words too trivial, if the idea she thereby expressed was, according to her opinion, extraordinary. When wanting a poetic image, she immediately has recourse to the sun, which constantly shines in her pages as in these of the other Portuguese Gongorists and Marinists, whose verses, on that account, were by the witty Andrada, pronounced transparent. The tenderness or warmth of feeling which in female poetry often gets the better of the judgment, is in the writings of Violante do Ceo unnaturally represented by a false overstrained wit, which, however, assumes the disguise of judgment. In a sonnet on a lady, named Marianna de Luna, Violante do Ceo apostrophizes the muses, as “the divinities, who, in the garden of the king of day, unloosing their sweet voices, arrest Zephyr;—who, admiring the thoughts, multiply the flowers which Apollo creates.” She implores the muses “to abandon the society of the sun, since a moon (that is to say, Marianna de Luna,) which is at once a sun and a prodigy, prepares for them a garden of harmony.” Whether Marianna de Luna was a musician, or whether she had really laid out a fine garden, is not clearly explained. After some unintelligible phrases, it is in conclusion declared, that “through the grace of the deity, this tuneful garden is secured by the immortal wall of eternity.”306 In this spirit and style Violante do Ceo composed both sacred and profane poetry. One of her Spanish sonnets on the death of a lady, closes with the idea, that, “if for such a sun the world is the region of setting, heaven on the other hand is for such a sun (the words are expressly repeated) the region of rising.”307 She addressed a similar sonnet to a physician, named Arraes, a word which in the Portuguese language signifies the master of a vessel; and she says, in allusion to his name, that he deserves to be captain of the ship of life, which navigates the ocean of tyrannic disease; that is to say, as the succeeding lines denote, that he ought to be the king’s physician.308 By her writings, after the revolution in the year 1640, Violante do Ceo distinguished herself as a patriot, but never as a judicious poetess.309

DIDACTIC EPISTLES OF ALVARES DA CUNHA.

Of the extent to which the perverted taste, which in the seventeenth century disfigured Portuguese, even more than Spanish poetry influenced the didactic epistolary style, a judgment may be formed by reference to the writings of Antonio Alvares da Cunha. This author, one of the most distinguished statesmen and literary characters of the reigns of John IV. and Alphonso VI. addressed epistles to Joaõ Nunez da Cunha, who was appointed viceroy of the Portuguese dominions in India. To express the trivial idea of Nunez da Cunha being about to sail from Lisbon for India, Alvares da Cunha pompously says, that the new viceroy will cut through “the crystal waves from the mouth of the Tagus, to those new regions which the world descried by the waving of the Quinas.”310 The time of the sailing of the ship is described as the time during which the viceroy’s “winged beachen trees spread their pinions, carrying with them the wind, while they pursue their silvery path.” He next regrets that the instrument with which he writes does not perfectly express his ideas, observing “that though the pen touch softly the guitar of the paper, rude thunder resounds from that guitar.”311 This epistle is one of the longest in Portuguese literature; and though totally deficient in the true epistolary character, it nevertheless contains many good ideas and sound precepts, while at the same time it exhibits a vain display of historical erudition.312

JERONYMO BAHIA.

The taste of the public was, in like manner, corrupted by Jeronymo Bahia, of whose existence in other respects no account is preserved.313 The old fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa had already been so completely exhausted, that a recurrence to it might have been expected rather to disgust than to please; and yet, as if a new relation of that wearisomely repeated story had been all that was necessary to establish a writer on a level with Gongora, Jeronymo Bahia collected a store of affected phrases, and with pompous gravity remodelled the often celebrated theme of the Cyclops and his disdainful mistress.314 Thus powerless had been all the pointed satire of the more judicious party. Divested of its original heaviness, and united with the fanciful Marinism, Gongorism now seemed to its defenders to be raised above the reach of ridicule. Bahia, too, thought it, perhaps, the less necessary to guard against the wit of the adverse party, since he was himself a master in subtle witticism. He wrote numerous comic romances, that is to say, comic tales and descriptions of travels in redondilhas. His playful loquacity flows in an inexhaustible current in these romances, which are not destitute of comic interest; but their extreme length would still have rendered them tedious, even though the author had better succeeded in catching the gay style suited to such trivial compositions.315 His great facility in rhyming is recorded in a notice affixed to one of his odes. This ode was written on a victory gained by the Portuguese during their war with Spain, and Bahia composed it in a single day, so that it was presented to the king on the evening of the day on which the account of the battle was circulated. Surely no other manufacturer of rhyme would, like him, have spun out an Idyllio panegyrico, on a chandelier, which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Queen of Portugal, to fifty octavo pages of versified prattle. From the works of this author may also be incidentally learned the direction which the prevailing spirit of religion took in Portugal, when the old national energy expired, and when the still more remarkable decline of the Spanish monarchy enabled the Portuguese to maintain an eight-and-twenty years war against Spain, in defence of their recovered independence. It was at this period that the court of Lisbon resorted to the far-famed expedient of enlisting by prayers and entreaties Saint Anthony among the Portuguese troops, and formally investing him with the military rank of generalissimo, in order to render the army invincible. The inhabitant of heaven was declared to have accepted the command, and Jeronymo Bahia wrote a song of praise in honour of King Alphonso VI. who effected this extraordinary arrangement.316

FRANCISCO VASCONCELLOS.

The dominion of bad taste and worthless subtilty was not, however, during the second half of the seventeenth century extended over the whole of the Portuguese Parnassus. The writings of some poets still evinced sound judgment and some portion of the old and nobler style of art. Francisco de Vasconcellos of the island of Madeira, inclined somewhat more to the side of reason than most of his contemporaries.317 Some of his sonnets are so free from unnatural and overstrained thoughts,318 that one might be induced to consider his other productions as parodied imitations in the style of Andrada, were it not that these outbalance the number of his correct poems, and that his works include a new dressing of the long before overdone story of Polyphemus and Galatæa.

TELLES DA SYLVA AND NUNES DA SYLVA.

Antonio Telles da Sylva was likewise distinguished among the multitude of sonneteers by a better cultivated taste.319 He also composed latin verses, though he was gentil-homem da camara (a gentleman of the chamber).

But a greater share of attention is due to the poems of Andre Nunes da Sylva, an equally unassuming and ingenious writer, who received his first education in Brazil, and who died a Theatin monk in Portugal.320 His spiritual sonnets, canções, and romances, are at least free from absurd conceits and Marinistical subtilties. It was, however, scarcely possible at any time, but more especially at the period of the most violent re-action against protestantism, not to deviate from reason, in representing poetically, and with religious fervour, the mysteries of the catholic faith, according to the opinions alone considered orthodox in Portugal and Spain. Nevertheless among the spiritual poems of Nunes da Sylva there are some, which though certainly as romantic as pious, are by no means fantastic, and which may be ranked among the best of their kind.321 Even where the pious writer appears to have fallen into the most extravagant metaphors of the Marinists, as when he styles the tomb of St. Isabella “a flower of the firmament, a star of the field;” or, shortly after, “a nightingale, an animated jewel, an Orpheus to the ear, and a flower to the eye,”322 his eccentric plays of ideas have still a poetic keeping. Among the patriotic poems, to which the war with Spain gave birth, there are several by Nunes da Sylva, which are distinguished for correct and picturesque representation, at least in single passages;323 and his sonnets and songs of love possess, with all their faults, a considerable portion of poetic tenderness.

OTHER SONNETEERS—CONTINUED INTERVENTION OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE IN PORTUGUESE POETRY.

It is not necessary to enter into particular details respecting other Portuguese sonneteers. Some who enjoyed celebrity lived until the commencement of the eighteenth century, among whom the names of Diogo de Monroy e Vasconcellos, Thomas de Sousa, and Luis Simoes de Azavedo, deserve to be mentioned. About the same period lived Diogo Camacho, who was the author of a lively poem, entitled a Journey to Parnassus; the idea of which was doubtless taken from the work of Cervantes of the same name, but which when compared with that master-piece, possesses no great merit. On comparing the Portuguese sonnets, the authors of which lived till the eighteenth century, with those of a somewhat older date, an obvious, though certainly not a striking tendency of Portuguese taste, to a more correct direction of the imagination, is, upon the whole, perceptible. But how far this change in Portuguese literature was effected by the increasing influence of French taste, which about this time commenced its universal sway; or whether it is at all attributable to the introduction of that taste, are questions not easy to be decided. This, however, is certain, that the incorrect, silly, and fantastic style of writing and judging poetry, still maintained its ground in the Portuguese literature of the eighteenth century long after the Count de Ericeira, who will soon be further noticed, had drawn from the school of Boileau those principles by which he wished to improve the literary taste of his countrymen.

Of the Portuguese sonneteers, who more or less contributed to transfuse the style of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century, there was none who did not, according to the custom of the age, pride himself in his facility of composing verses in the Spanish language. The recent separation of Portugal from the Spanish monarchy, had not, in the least, diminished this old custom of the Portuguese poets. They addressed complimentary verses in Spanish to the Queen of Portugal. Spanish comedies were still represented in Lisbon; and even the loas, or prologues, were recited in the same language. It was not until the esteem for Spanish literature had declined throughout Europe, that the literature of Portugal became entirely Portuguese.324

It is proper to observe here, that the collections of Portuguese poems of the seventeenth century, likewise contain sonnets by a Prince Don Pedro, and by several anonymous ladies.

PORTUGUESE ELOQUENCE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

All that need be said respecting the Portuguese eloquence of the seventeenth century, may be related within the compass of a few pages. The obstacles which had hitherto impeded the free cultivation of energetic and reasoning prose in Portuguese literature, operated still more fatally, when the restraints on conscience became more oppressive, and when there was no longer any feeling of political greatness to give excitement to the thinking mind.

ROMANTIC PROSE—MATHEUS RIBEYRO—CASTANHEIRA TURACEM.

Viewed in relation to the whole of Portuguese literature, romantic prose continued nearly on the same footing on which it long had stood. It maintained its ground; but it was long after the death of Rodriguez Lobo before any more distinguished writer in this class of composition arose. With regard to invention, however, some of the Portuguese romances of the seventeenth century are not without merit. This praise is due to a work written by Matheus Ribeyro, a priest, who did not scruple to publish his name on the title-page, together with an enumeration of all his ecclesiastical dignities. This romance, which is entitled, “Retirement from Care, or the Life of Carlos and Rosaura,”325 is not wanting in adventures both by sea and land. The style, however, is that of the old romance, with all its excrescences, and is particularly fantastical in the descriptive passages.

But a more elegant and far more valuable production of fancy now demands some notice. That this work was written with the view of opposing fantastic ornament in polite literature, and of assisting to restore a more natural and dignified spirit and style, would never be suspected from its affected title, which, stripped of its antiquated form, means, as far as it can be rendered intelligible, “The elegant Evening Party, or the Improvement of Bad Manners.”326 On the title-page, and at the close of the dedicatory address, the author styles himself Felix da Castanheira Turacem. No information respecting him, beyond what his work affords, seems to have been preserved; but from that it may be concluded that he was a man who moved in the more elevated and polished ranks of society. The bad custom which he particularly condemned was an improper extension of the liberty taken at the season of the carnival in Lisbon. To present a picture of a more elegant and noble style of social entertainment, he contrasts the sprightly conversation of the company, whose manners he describes, with the licentious tricks of the carnival (entrudo.) The plan of Castanheira’s work is similar to that of Rodriguez Lobo’s “Court in the Country;” but the composition possesses a higher degree of romantic interest. In the party which Castanheira assembles, beautiful women play prominent parts; and between them and the young gentlemen who most contribute to the entertainment, attachments are formed which cross and oppose each other. The characters by turns sing, play, tell stories, and converse. The composition is, upon the whole, equally graceful and natural; but the execution is in many passages less successful. Castanheira, particularly where he begins to describe, is often drawn unconsciously into the stream of Gongorism and Marinism, though it appears that he was really anxious to separate himself completely from the partisans of these styles. That this was his most serious determination, is obvious from his spirited preface, in which he acknowledges that he does not calculate on a very favourable reception in the polite world. He declares that he is not ambitious of the honour of writing verses extempore. He sought to steer clear of dulness and bombast, the Scylla and Charybdis of the wide ocean of eloquence; and in all his digressions never to lose sight of the haven of clearness, as its entrance is difficult. “But deliver us from metaphor,” he adds in latin, and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer.327 A man who, at this period, could so express himself in Portugal, deserves, were it on that account only, to be distinguished in the history of polite literature. Castanheira’s language, too, is, upon the whole, as natural according to the manner of its cultivation, as is his lively descriptive art. It is singular, however, that occasionally in the course of his work, and sometimes in those very passages, the superiority of which would otherwise be unquestionable, he falls into the very faults which he himself ridicules.328 On the novel style, which is discussed in the first evening party, Cervantes appears, by that time, to have exercised a favourable influence. The severe criticism on the Poesia Incuravel (Incurable Poetry), in the second evening’s conversation, is certainly the best theoretical disquisition on Gongorism and Marinism, to be found in the Portuguese literature of the seventeenth century. It ought, also, to be stated, that the sonnets and other poems which are scattered through the work, exhibit some very successful passages. Occasion is taken to introduce a Discurso Academico, which towards the conclusion refers to the Italian academic system, which had long been imitated in Portugal, but which proved of as little advantage to Portuguese as to Italian literature.329 Among the poems comprised in this book, there are many in the Spanish language.

HISTORICAL PROSE—FREIRE DE ANDRADA.

Of the cultivation of prose style in Portuguese literature during the seventeenth century, nothing could be said, had not a man in whom the spirit of the sixteenth century survived, successfully pursued the path which Barros and Brito traced out. This writer, who must be regarded as single in his age, was Jacinto Freire de Andrada, the same who in his comic tales already noticed, ridiculed the Gongorism and Marinism of poetry. The reader is almost inclined to doubt the evidence of his own eyes, when, among the Portuguese writings of the seventeenth century, he discovers such a prose work as “the Life of Dom Joaõ de Castro, fourth Viceroy of India, by Freire de Andrada.”330 No biographical work, deserving to be ranked on a level with this, had hitherto appeared either in Portuguese or any other modern language. Andrada is reproached with a certain degree of far-fetched elegance and refined subtlety; and certainly his historical style might often, with advantage, be more simple. But that this ingenious writer upon the whole entertained the most correct notion of the rhetorical cultivation of historical prose, and that his intention was to write an energetic style appropriate to his subject, but by no means to make an ostentatious display of elegant phrases, would be sufficiently evident from the character of the whole work, even though the author had not, in his brief preface, explained himself with sufficient clearness on this point. He observes, that he has written his book in the language of truth, and according to credible authorities. He neither followed the advice of some who recommended the extension of his work, nor adopted the opinion of others who wished him to sacrifice the truth of nature to the fashionable ornaments of affected cultivation. His object was not to flatter a corrupt taste; on the contrary he wished to merit, by the unadorned language of truth, the approbation of sensible readers, rather than to gain a name among the great mass of a mis-judging public.331 To a man of Andrada’s cultivated mind, it never could appear that the duty of a faithful historian required him to write in the chronicle style, as a means of thereby ensuring historical truth. When he took up the pen he felt that a demand was made upon him for the exercise of intellectual powers. His biography of Joaõ de Castro was to be a monument in honour of that distinguished man. Andrada, therefore, devoted no less attention to the representation than to the distribution of the materials of his narrative. To all appearance he did not form his style on that of any particular author of antiquity, but he makes nearer approaches to Sallust than to any other; and the influence which the study of the classics must have had on the literary education of Andrada, is sufficiently obvious. His turn for wit occasionally led him to express himself in antitheses of too poignant a character; but in every other respect his narrative style possesses the clearness, precision, lightness, and moreover the deep interest of the classic prose of antiquity. It is only necessary to read the commencement of this biography, to enter immediately into the spirit of the whole work.332 Andrada’s appropriate diction never resolves into merely elegant prolixity; and whatever be the degree of polish it receives, its character is generally unassuming. In the biographical arrangement of the events, little historical art is observable, but a clear practical understanding is displayed throughout the whole work. The character of Joaõ de Castro is exhibited even in the first accounts given of his childhood and education. The reader afterwards finds it developed with farther precision, but without any appearance of being again obtruded by the historian. The dark side, which, however, should never be wanting in an historical picture, is left by Andrada to the imagination of his readers. But the intuitive power displayed in the representation of the events, which is naturally and nowhere poetically adorned, leaves nothing to be wished for in this biographical work.333 Andrada also proved himself a disciple of the classic school by his predilection for the ancient custom of enlivening the narrative, and augmenting the interest of the subject, by speeches attributed to the principal personages who figure in the work. These are sometimes delivered by Joaõ de Castro himself, and more frequently by his most dangerous but interesting enemy, Coge Cofar, the general in chief of the Mussulmans in India. Some of these speeches are decidedly excellent, but others are rather artificial.334 Towards the close of the biography where documents are interpolated, the story loses some portion of its deep interest. It was by no means a happy idea to add to this work an appendix, which is intended as a summary recapitulation of the whole; and at the same time as a supplemental picture of the character of Joaõ de Castro, whose character is sufficiently portrayed in the narrative of his achievements.

Treatises in the Portuguese language, intended for the developement of the principles of poetry and rhetoric in systematic order, or for the extended application of some of these principles, seem either not to have been written, or at least not to have been much known in the seventeenth century. Practically cultivated taste and critical tact, without which the art of poetry and rhetoric degenerates into useless scholastic theory, must, to men like Freire Andrada, in a great measure have supplied the place of systematic rules.