Note 57 — CHAP. I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE POETIC AND RHETORICAL CULTIVATION OF THE PORTUGUESE DURING THE ABOVE PERIOD.

It deserves, however, to be noticed, that of all the sister languages of Roman descent, the Portuguese alone has preserved, in its grammatical structure, a remarkable fragment of the ancient latin conjugation, namely, the pluperfect of the indicative, viz. fora, foras, fora, from fueram, fueras, fuerat. But this pluperfect has also the signification of a preterite of the subjunctive; and through the ambiguity, which thus arises, the value of this grammatical relic in the Portuguese language is in a great measure lost, notwithstanding that the connection may easily mark the proper sense. But how happens it that of all the languages claiming a Roman origin, the Portuguese, though in other respects remarkable for a certain simplicity of character, is, upon the whole, distinguished by the most numerous and subtle tenses in the conjugations of its verbs?