Note 25 — INTRODUCTION

Portuguese literature begins for most Portuguese with Camões and Barros, and its most charming and original part thus escapes them. Cf. F. Dias Gomes, Obras Poeticas (1799), p. 143: Camões ‘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 Camões on preceding poets (echólos todos a rodar) was unfortunately true.