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Title: Portuguese literature
Author: Aubrey F. G. Bell
Release date: February 20, 2025 [eBook #75425]
Language: English
Original publication: Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1922
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORTUGUESE LITERATURE ***
PORTUGUESE
LITERATURE
Oxford University Press
_London_ _Edinburgh_ _Glasgow_ _Copenhagen_
_New York_ _Toronto_ _Melbourne_ _Cape Town_
_Bombay_ _Calcutta_ _Madras_ _Shanghai_
Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY
PORTUGUESE
LITERATURE
BY
AUBREY F. G. BELL
[Illustration]
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1922
[Illustration]
TO THE TRUE PORTUGAL OF THE FUTURE
_La letteratura, dalla quale sola potrebbe aver sodo principio
la rigenerazione della nostra patria._
GIACOMO LEOPARDI.
[Illustration]
_This book was ready in October 1916, but the war delayed its
publication. A few alterations have now been made in order to bring
it up to date. It is needless to say how welcome will be further
suggestions, especially for the bibliography. Only by such help can a
book of this kind become useful, since its object is not to expatiate
upon schools and theories but to give with as much accuracy as possible
the main facts concerning the work and life of each individual author._
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JOÃO DO ESTORIL,
PORTUGAL.
_July 1921_
CONTENTS
_Introduction_
PAGE
Portuguese literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--D.
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos--Dr. Theophilo Braga--Portuguese
prose--Portuguese writers in Spanish and Latin--Character of the
Portuguese--Special qualities of their literature--Splendid
achievement--Lack of criticism and proportion but not of talent 13
I. 1185-1325.
[i. e. from the accession of Sancho I to the death of Dinis.]
§ 1. _The Cossantes_ 22
Earliest poems--Their indigenous character and peculiar form--Their
origin--Galicia in the Middle Ages--The pilgrimages--Dance-poems--Themes
of the _cossantes_--Their relation to the poetry imported from
Provence--Writers of _cossantes_: Nuno Fernandez Torneol--Joan
Zorro--Pero Meogo--Pay Gomez Chariño--Airas Nunez’ _pastorela_--The
_cantigas de vilãos_--Songs of women--Persistence of the _cossante_ to
modern times--_Cossantes_ and _cantigas de amor_.
§ 2. _The Cancioneiros_ 37
_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_--_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_--_Cancioneiro
Colocci-Brancuti_--Relations of Portugal with Spain, with France,
with other countries--The Galician language--Its extension--Alfonso
X--The _Cantigas de Santa Maria_--Poetry at the Court of Afonso
III--Provençal poetry in Portugal--Monotony and technical
skill of the Portuguese poets--_Cantigas de amigo_--Satiric poems--Joan
de Guilhade--Pero Garcia de Burgos--Pero da Ponte--Joan Airas--Fernan
Garcia Esgaravunha--Airas Nunez--King Dinis.
II. 1325-1521.
[i. e. from the accession of Sancho IV to the death of Manuel I.]
§ 1. _Early Prose_ 58
Comparatively late development of prose--Spanish influence in the
second period of Portuguese literature--King Dinis’ translation
of the _Cronica Geral_--_Regra de S. Bento_--Translations from the
Bible--Sacred legends--Aesop’s Fables--Chronicles--_Livros de
Linhagens_--The Breton cycle--The Quest of the Holy Grail--_Livro de
Josep ab Arimatia_--_Estorea de Vespeseano_--_Amadis de Gaula_--Problem
of its origin--Early allusions--Vasco de Lobeira--Probable
introduction of _Amadis_ into the Peninsula through Portugal.
§ 2. _Epic and Later Galician Poets_ 72
Dearth of epics--Apocryphal poems--Afonso Giraldez--_Romances_--Their
connexion with Spain--Survival of Galician lyrics--Macias--Juan
Rodriguez de la Cámara--Fernam Casquicio--Vasco Perez de Camões--Gonçalo
Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Toro--Garci Ferrandez de Gerena--Alfonso
Alvarez de Villasandino--_Cantigas de escarnho_--The Constable D. Pedro.
§ 3. _The Chroniclers_ 81
Fernam Lopez--_Cronica do Condestabre_--Zurara--Ruy de Pina--_Cronica do
Infante Santo._ Other prose: King João I--King Duarte--Pedro, Duke of
Coimbra--Letters of Lopo de Almeida--_Boosco Delleytoso_--_Corte
Imperial_--_Flos Sanctorum_--_Vita Christi_--_Espelho de
Christina_--_Espelho de Prefeyçam_.
§ 4. _The Cancioneiro Geral_ 96
The break in Portuguese poetry--Its revival--Garcia de
Resende--_Cancioneiro Geral_--Its shallow themes--More serious
poems--Alvaro de Brito--The _Coudel Môr_--D. João de Meneses--D.
João Manuel--Fernam da Silveira--Nuno Pereira--Diogo Brandam--Luis
Anriquez--Rodriguez de Sá--The Conde de Vimioso--Duarte de
Brito--Spanish influence.
III. The Sixteenth Century [1502-80].
§ 1. _Gil Vicente_ 106
The sixteenth century--Gil Vicente’s first play (1502)--The year
and place of his birth--His life--Poet and goldsmith--His
_autos_--Types sketched in his _farsas_--Devotional plays, comedies
and tragicomedies--Origin of the drama in Portugal--Enzina’s influence
on Vicente--French influence--Other Spanish writers--Traditional
satire--Number of Vicente’s plays--Their character and that of their
author--His patriotism and serious purpose--His achievement and
influence in Spain and Portugal.
§ 2. _Lyric and Bucolic Poets_ 132
Bernardim Ribeiro--Cristovam Falcão--Sá de Miranda--D. Manuel de
Portugal--Diogo Bernardez--Frei Agostinho da Cruz--Antonio
Ferreira--Andrade Caminha--Sá de Meneses--Falcão de Resende--Jorge de
Montemôr--Fernam Alvarez do Oriente--Faria e Sousa--Francisco Rodriguez
Lobo.
§ 3. _The Drama_ 156
Gil Vicente’s successors--Anonymous plays--Afonso Alvarez--Antonio
Ribeiro Chiado--Balthasar Diaz--Anrique Lopez--Jorge Pinto--Antonio
Prestes--Jeronimo Ribeiro Soarez--Simão Machado--Francisco Vaz--Gil
Vicente de Almeida--Frei Antonio da Estrella--Classical drama: Sá de
Miranda--Antonio Ferreira--Camões--Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos.
§ 4. _Luis de Camões_ 174
Family of Camões--His birth and education--In North Africa--In
India--Return to Portugal--Last years and death--Camões as epic and
lyric poet--The _Lusiads_--Its critics--His greatness--Influence on
the language--His _Parnasso_--Camões and Petrarca--Later epic
poets--Corte Real--Pereira Brandão--Francisco de Andrade.
§ 5. _The Historians_ 190
Historians of India--Alvaro Velho --Lopez de
Castanheda--Barros--Couto--Corrêa--Bras de Albuquerque--Antonio
Galvam--Special narratives--Gaspar Fructuoso--Frei Bernardo de
Brito--Francisco de Andrade--Osorio--Bernardo da Cruz--Jeronimo
de Mendoça--Miguel de Moura--Duarte Nunez de Leam--Damião
de Goes--André de Resende--Manuel Severim de Faria--Faria e Sousa.
§ 6. _Quinhentista Prose_ 217
Vivid prose--_Historia Tragico-Maritima_. Travels: Duarte
Barbosa--Francisco Alvarez--Gaspar da Cruz--Frei João dos
Santos--Tenreiro--Mestre Afonso--Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino--Manuel
Godinho--Fernam Mendez Pinto--Garcia da Orta--Pedro Nunez--Duarte
Pacheco--D. João de Castro--Afonso de Albuquerque--Soropita--Rodriguez
Silveira--Fernandez Ferreira--Francisco de Hollanda--Gonçalo Fernandez
Trancoso--Francisco de Moraes.
§ 7. _Religious and Mystic Writers_ 235
Mysticism--Frei Heitor Pinto--Arraez--Frei Thomé de Jesus--Frei
Luis de Sousa--Lucena--Preachers: Paiva de Andrade--Fernandez
Galvão--Feo--Luz--Calvo--Veiga--Ceita--Lisboa--Almeida--Alvarez--Samuel
Usque--Frei Antonio das Chagas--Manuel Bernardes.
IV. 1580-1706.
[i. e. from the accession of Philip II of Spain to the death of
Pedro II.]
_The Seiscentistas_ 251
_Culteranismo_--D. Francisco Manuel de Mello--_Fenix Renascida_--Soror
Violante do Ceo--Child Rolim de Moura--Veiga Tagarro--Galhegos--The
epic: Pereira de Castro--Bras Garcia de Mascarenhas--Sá de
Meneses--Sousa de Macedo--Mousinho de Quevedo--The Academies--Martim
Afonso de Miranda--Leitão de Andrade--The Love Letters--_Arte de
Furtar_--Ribeiro de Macedo--Freire de Andrade--Antonio Vieira.
V. 1706-1816.
[i. e. from the accession of João V to the death of Maria I.]
_The Eighteenth Century_ 270
The Arcadias--Corrêa Garção--Quita--Diniz da Cruz e Silva--Filinto
Elysio--Tolentino--The Marquesa de Alorna--Bocage--Xavier de
Mattos--Gonzaga--Costa--Brazilian epics--Macedo--The Drama:
Figueiredo--Antonio José da Silva--Nicolau Dias--The Academy of
Sciences--Scholars and critics--Theodoro de Almeida--Letters.
VI. 1816-1910.
[i. e. from the accession of João VI to the fall of the Monarchy.]
§ 1. _The Romantic School_ 287
Portugal at the opening of the century--Almeida
Garrett--Herculano--Historical novelists--Rebello da Silva--Camillo
Castello Branco--Poetry: Castilho--Mendes Leal--Soares de Passos--Gomes
de Amorim--Xavier de Novaes--Thomaz Ribeiro--Bulhão Pato.
§ 2. _The Reaction and After_ 304
The Coimbra School--History: Oliveira Martins--Pinheiro Chagas--Research
and criticism--The Drama: Ennes--Azevedo--D. João da Camara--Marcellino
Mesquita--Snr. Lopes de Mendonça--Snr. Julio Dantas--The Novel: Julio
Diniz--Eça de Queiroz--J. L. Pinto--Snr. Luiz de Magalhães--Snr.
Magalhães Lima--Bento Moreno--Snr. Silva Gayo--Snr. Malheiro Dias--Abel
Botelho--Ramalho Ortigão--Snr. Teixeira Gomes--Snr. Antero de
Figueiredo--D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho--The Conde de Sabugosa--The
_Conto_: Machado--The Conde de Ficalho--Fialho de Almeida--D. João da
Camara--Trindade Coelho--Snr. Julio Brandão--Poetry: Quental--João de
Deus--Guilherme Braga--A. da Conceição--G. de Azevedo--João
Penha--Cesario Verde--Gonçalves Crespo--Snr. Guerra Junqueiro--Gomes
Leal--Snr. Teixeira de Pascoaes--Antonio Nobre--Colonel Christovam
Ayres--Joaquim de Araujo--Antonio Feijó--Snr. Eugenio de Castro--Snr.
Corrêa de Oliveira--Snr. Afonso Lopes Vieira.
APPENDIX
§ 1. _Literature of the People_ 338
Unwritten literature--Traditional themes--_Floras e Branca
Flor_--Bandarra--The Holy Cobbler--Primaeval elements--Connexion of song
and dance--Modern _cantigas_--Links with ancient
poetry--Cradle-songs--_Alvoradas_--_Fados_--Proverbs--Folk-tales.
§ 2. _The Galician Revival_ 347
_Xogos Froraes_ of 1861--Añon--Posada--Camino--Rosalía de Castro--Lamas
Carvajal--Sr. Bárcia Caballero--Losada--Eduardo Pondal--Curros
Enriquez--Martelo Pauman--Pereira--Garcia Ferreiro--Núñez
González--Nun de Allariz--Sr. Rodríguez González--Sr. López Abente--Sr.
Noriega Varela--Sr. Cabanillas--Sr. Rey Soto--_Cancionero Popular
Gallego_--Prose--Pérez Placer--Dª. Francisca Herrera.
INTRODUCTION
Portuguese literature may be said to belong largely to the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Europe can boast of no fresher and more
charming early lyrics than those which slept forgotten[1] in the
Vatican Library until the late Professor Ernesto Monaci published _Il
Canzoniere Portoghese_ in 1875. And, to take a few more instances
out of many, the poems of King Alfonso X, of extraordinary interest
alike to historian and literary critic, first appeared in 1889; the
plays of Gil Vicente were almost unknown before the Hamburg (1834)
edition, based on the Göttingen copy of that of 1562; Sá de Miranda
only received a definitive edition in 1885; the _Cancioneiro Geral_
became accessible in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
three volumes of the Stuttgart edition were published; the exquisite
verses[1] of Sá de Meneses, which haunted Portuguese poetry for a
century,[2] then sank into oblivion till they were discovered by Dr.
Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.[3] The abundant literature of
popular _quadras_, _fados_, _romances_, _contos_ has only begun to be
collected in the last fifty years.
In prose, the most important _Leal Conselheiro_[4] of King Duarte was
rediscovered in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and first printed in
1842, and Zurara’s _Cronica da Guiné_, lost even in the days of Damião
de Goes,[5] similarly in 1841; Corrêa’s _Lendas da India_ remained in
manuscript till 1858; so notable a book as King João I’s _Livro da
Montaria_ appears only in the twentieth century, in an edition by Dr.
Esteves Pereira, and the first trustworthy text of a part of Fernam
Lopez was published by Snr. Braamcamp Freire in 1915; D. Francisco
Manuel de Mello, who at the end of his second _Epanaphora_ wrote ‘Se
por ventura tambem despois de meus dias acontece que algum vindouro
honre ao meu nome quanto eu procuro eternizar e engrandecer o dos
passados’, had to wait two and a half centuries before this debt was
paid by Mr. Edgar Prestage.[6] Even now no really complete history of
Portuguese literature exists, but the first systematic work on the
subject was written by Friedrich Bouterwek in 1804. Other histories
have since appeared, and during the last half-century the ceaseless,
ingenious, and enthusiastic studies of Dr. Theophilo Braga have sifted
Portuguese literature, chiefly the poetry, in all directions, and
a flood of light has been thrown on it by the works of D. Carolina
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Perhaps, therefore, one may be forgiven for
having been tempted to render some account of this ‘new’ literature
which continues to be so strangely neglected in England and other
countries.[7] Yet a quarter of a century hence would perhaps offer
better conditions, and a summary written at the present time cannot
hope to be complete or definitive. Every year new studies and editions
appear, new researches and alluring theories and discoveries are
made. The Lisbon Academy of Sciences during its long and honourable
history[8] has rarely if ever rendered greater services--‘essential
services’ as Southey called them in 1803--to Portuguese literature. A
short history of that literature must, apart from unavoidable errors
and omissions, do less than justice to many writers. In appropriating
the words of Damião de Goes, ‘Haud ignari plurima esse a nobis omissa
quibus Hispania ornatur et celebrari possit,’ one may hope that MR.
EDGAR PRESTAGE, who has studied Portuguese literature for a quarter
of a century,[9] and whose ever-ready help and advice are here
gratefully acknowledged, will eventually write a mellower history in
several volumes and give their full due both to the classics and to
contemporary authors and critics.
No one can study Portuguese literature without becoming deeply indebted
to D. CAROLINA WILHELMA MICHAËLIS DE VASCONCELLOS. Her concise history,
contributed to Groeber’s _Grundriss_ (1894), necessarily forms the
basis of subsequent studies, but indeed her work is as vast as it
is scholarly and accurate, and the student finds himself constantly
relying on her guidance. Even if he occasionally disagrees, he cannot
fail to give her point of view the deepest attention and respect. Born
in 1851, the daughter of Professor Gustav Michaëlis, she has lived in
Portugal during the last forty years and is the wife of the celebrated
art critic, Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (born in 1849). Her edition
of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904) is a masterpiece of historical
reconstruction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese
literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assistance
of younger scholars are generous.[10] _Femina_, as was said of the
Princess Maria, _undequaque spectatissima et doctissima_.
Most of the works of DR. THEOPHILO BRAGA are of too provisional a
nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, _Edade Medieval_
(1909), _Renascença_ (1914), _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), _Os_
_Arcades_ (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism
of the literature of the nineteenth century is that of DR. FIDELINO
DE FIGUEIREDO, Member of the Academy of Sciences and Editor of the
_Revista de Historia: Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa_
(1913) and _Historia da Litteratura Realista_ (1914).
The only completely methodical history of Portuguese literature in
existence is the brief manual by the learned ex-Rector of Coimbra
University, DR. JOAQUIM MENDES DOS REMEDIOS: _História da Literatura
Portuguêsa_ (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it contains that rarity
in Portuguese literature: an index.[11] Dr. Figueiredo published
a short essay in its general bibliography in 1914 (_Bibliographia
portuguesa de critica litteraria_), largely increased in a new (1920)
edition, but otherwise little has been done in this respect (apart
from a few special authors). The bibliography attached to the present
book[12] follows--_longo intervallo_--the lines of PROFESSOR JAMES
FITZMAURICE-KELLY’S _Bibliographie de l’Histoire de la Littérature
Espagnole_ (Paris, 1913). After its proved excellence it would, indeed,
have been folly to adopt any other method.
It has been thought advisable to add a list of works on popular poetry,
folk-lore, &c. (since in no country are the popular and the written
literatures more intimately connected), and of those concerning the
Portuguese language. Unless energetic and persistent measures are
taken to protect this language it will be hopeless to look for a
great Portuguese literature in the future. Yet with the gradually
developing prosperity of Portugal and her colonies such expectations
are not unfounded. A new poet may arise indigenous as Gil Vicente
and technically proficient as Camões. And in prose, if it is not
allowed to sink into a mere verbiage of gallicisms, great writers may
place Portuguese on a level with and indeed above the other Romance
languages. The possibilities are so vast, the quarry ready to their
hand so rich--the works of Manuel Bernardes, Antonio Vieira, Jorge
Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Luis de Sousa, João de Lucena, Heitor Pinto,
Arraez; an immense mass of sermons (_milhões de sermonarios_), most
of them in excellent Portuguese, as those of Ceita, Veiga, Feo, Luz,
in which, as in a large number of political tracts, notably those
of Macedo, intense conviction has given a glow and concision to the
language; old _constituições_, _ordenações_, and _foros_[13]; technical
treatises,[14] folk-lore, popular phrases,[15] proverbs. But unless a
scholarly use of Portuguese be more generally imposed no masterpieces
will be produced. The same holds good of Brazilian literature, which,
although, or perhaps because, it has provided material for a history
in two portly volumes (Sylvio Romero, _Historia da Litteratura
Brazileira_, 2nd ed., 1902-3), is here, with few exceptions, omitted.
A supplementary chapter on modern Galician literature has been added,
for although the language from which Portuguese parted only after the
fourteenth century is now quite independent,[16] modern Galician is
not more different from modern Portuguese than is the language of the
_Cancioneiros_ with which Portuguese literature opens. The Portuguese
have always shown a strong aptitude for acquiring foreign languages,
and the individual’s gain has been the literature’s loss. Jorge de
Montemôr, who
con su Diana
Enriqueció la lengua castellana,
was not by any means the only Portuguese who wrote exclusively
in Spanish, and others chose Latin. The reason usually given in
either case was that Portuguese was less widely read.[17] It was
a short-sighted view, for the more works of importance that were
written in Portuguese the larger would naturally become the number
of those who read them. While Portuguese literature may be taken to
be the literature written in the Portuguese language, in a sense it
must also include the Latin and Spanish works of Portuguese authors.
Of the former, one collection alone, the _Corpus Illustrium Poetarum
Lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt_ (Lisbonae, 1745), consists of eight
volumes, and Domingo Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo Razonado_ (Madrid, 1890)
contains over 600 names of Portuguese authors who wrote in Spanish.
Portuguese names present a difficulty, for often they are as lengthy
as that which was the pride of Dona Iria in Ennes’ _O Saltimbanco_.
The course here adopted is to relegate the full name to the index and
to print in the text only the form by which the writer is generally
known.[18]
The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain love of
magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,[19] an extensive
sea-board and vague land-frontiers, naturally came under foreign
influences. Many and various causes made their country cosmopolitan
from the beginning. It is customary to divide Portuguese literature
into the Provençal (13th c.), Spanish (14th and 15th c.), Italian
(16th c.), Spanish and Italian (17th c.), French and English (18th
c.), French and German (19th c.) Schools. The question may therefore
be asked, especially by those who confuse influence with imitation, as
though it precluded originality: What has Portuguese literature of its
own? In the first place, the Celtic satire and mystic lyrism of the
Galicians is developed and always present in Portuguese literature.
Secondly, the genius for story-telling, displayed by Fernam Lopez,
grew by reason of the great Portuguese discoveries in Africa and Asia
to an epic grandeur both in verse and prose. Thirdly, the absence
of great cities, the pleasant climate, and fertile soil produced
a peculiarly realistic and natural bucolic poetry. And in prose,
besides masterpieces of history and travel--a rich and fascinating
literature of the East and of the sea--a fervent religious faith, as
in Spain, with a more constant mysticism than in Spain, led to very
high achievement. Had one to choose between the loss of the works of
Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, and that of the whole of Portuguese
literature, the whole of Portuguese literature must go, but that is
not to say that the loss would not be very grievous. Indeed, those who
despise Portuguese literature despise it in ignorance,[20] affecting
to believe, with Edgar Quinet, that it has but one poet and a single
book; those who are acquainted with it--with the early lyrics, with the
quaintly alluring eclogues of Ribeiro and Sá de Miranda, with the works
of Fernam Lopez, described by Robert Southey as ‘the best chronicler
of any age or nation’, _naïf, exact, touchant et philosophe_[21]; of
Gil Vicente, almost as far above his contemporary Juan del Enzina as
Shakespeare is above Vicente; of Bernardim Ribeiro, whose _Menina e
moça_ is the earliest and best of those pastoral romances which led
Don Quixote to contemplate a quieter sequel to his first adventures;
of Camões, ‘not only the greatest lyric poet of his country, but one
of the greatest lyric poets of all time’[22]; with Fernam Mendez
Pinto’s travels, ‘as diverting a book of the kind as ever I read’[23];
or Corrêa’s _Lendas_, Frei Thomé de Jesus’ _Trabalhos_, or the
incomparable prose of Manuel Bernardes--know that, extraordinary as
were Portugal’s achievements in discovery and conquest, her literature
is not unworthy of those achievements. Unhappily the Portuguese, with
a notorious carelessness,[24] have in the past set the example of
neglecting their literature, and even to-day scarcely seem to realize
their great possessions and still greater possibilities in the realm of
prose.[25] The excessive number of writers, the excessive production
of each individual writer, and the _desleixo_ by which innumerable
books and manuscripts of exceptional interest have perished, are all
traceable to the same source: the lack of criticism. A nation of
poets, essentially lyrical,[26] with no dramatic genius but capable
of writing charmingly and naturally without apparent effort, needed
and needs a severely classical education and stern critics, to remind
them that an epic is not rhymed history nor blank verse mangled prose,
that in bucolic poetry the half is greater than the whole, and to
bid them abandon abstractions for the concrete and particular and
crystallize the vague flow of their talent. But in Portugal, outside
the circle of writers themselves, a reading public has hitherto
hardly existed, and in the close atmosphere resulting the sense of
proportion was inevitably lost, even as a stone and a feather will
fall with equal speed in a vacuum. The criticism has been mainly
personal,[27] contesting the originality or truthfulness of a writer,
without considering the literary merits of his work. To deprecate such
criticism became a commonplace of the preface, while numerous passages
in writers of the sixteenth century show that they feared their
countrymen’s scepticism, expressed in the proverb _De longas vias mui
longas mentiras_, which occurs as early as the thirteenth century.[28]
The fear of slovenly or prolix composition was not present in the same
degree. But these are defects that may be remedied partly by individual
critics, partly by the increasing number of readers. Meanwhile this
little book may perhaps serve to corroborate the poet Falcão de
Resende’s words:
Engenhos nascem bons na Lusitania
E ha copia delles.[29]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A few Portuguese sixteenth-century writers in touch with Italy may
have known of their existence. But they were neglected as _rusticas
musas_. The references to King Dinis as a poet by Antonio Ferreira
and once in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ do not of course imply that his
poems were known and read. André de Resende seems to have been more
interested in tracing an ancestor, Vasco Martinez de Resende, than
in the poets among whom this ancestor figured (see C. Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos, _Randglosse_ XV in _Ztft. für rom. Phil._, xxv. 683).
[2] _Illud vero poemation quod vulgo circumfertur de Lessa ... nunc
vera cum plurimum illud appetant_ ... (Soares, _Theatrum_). Cf. F.
Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_, ed. 1722, pp. 240, 356, 469; Eloy de Sá
de Sottomayor, _Ribeiras do Mondego_, f. 27 v., 28 v., 120-1, 186;
_Canc. Geral_ of A. F. Barata (1836-1910), p. 235; Jeronimo Bahia, _Ao
Mondego_ (_Fenix Ren._, ii. 377-9). Cf. Brito, _Mon. Lus._ 1. ii. 2: _O
rio Leça celebre pelas rimas de nosso famoso poeta_.
[3] The documents of the Torre do Tombo are now in the able keeping of
Dr. Pedro de Azevedo and Snr. Antonio Baião.
[4] Even its title was inaccurately given, as _O Fiel Conselheiro_
(Bernardo de Brito), _De Fideli Consiliario_ (N. Antonio, _Bib.
Vetus_, ii. 241), _Del Buen Consejero_ (Faria e Sousa); correctly by
Duarte Nunez de Leam. A _Conselheiro Fiel_ by Frei Manuel Guilherme
(1658-1734) appeared in 1727.
[5] _De que não ha noticia_ (Goes, _Cronica de D. João_, cap. 6).
[6] _D. Francisco Manuel de Mello. Esboço biographico._ Coimbra, 1914,
an admirably clear and very important work, in which much light from
new documents is thrown on Mello’s life.
[7] It would be interesting to know how many English-speaking persons
have ever heard of the great men and writers that were King Dinis,
Fernam Lopez, Bernardim Ribeiro, Diogo Bernardez, Heitor Pinto, Frei
Thomé de Jesus, Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Frei Luis de Sousa, Antonio
Vieira, Manuel Bernardes. Their neglect has been largely due to the
absence of good or easily available texts; there is still nothing to
correspond to the Spanish _Biblioteca de Autores Españoles_ or the
many more modern Spanish collections. But is not even Camões still ‘an
abused stranger’, as Mickle called him in 1776?
[8] See F. de Figueiredo, _O que é a Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_
(1779-1915) in _Revista da Historia_, vol. iv, 1915.
[9] His valuable study on Zurara, which has not been superseded by any
later work on the subject, is dated 1896.
[10] She has, indeed, laid the Portuguese people under an obligation
which it will not easily redeem. That no formal recognition has been
bestowed in England on her work (as in another field on that of Dr.
José Leite de Vasconcellos, of Snr. Braamcamp Freire, and of the late
Dr. Francisco Adolpho Coelho) is a striking example of our insularity.
[11] It does not include living writers. Its dates must be received
with caution.
[12] It has been found necessary to publish the bibliography separately.
[13] e. g. King Sancho II’s _Foros da Guarda_, printed, from a 1305
manuscript, in vol. v (1824) of the _Collecção de Ineditos_, or the
_Foros de Santarem_ (1385). The _Livro Vermelho do Senhor D. Affonso
V_, printed in the _Collecção de Livros Ineditos_, vol. iii (1793), is
also full of interest.
[14] e.g. the fourteenth-century _Livro de Cetreria_ of PERO MENINO;
MESTRE GIRALDO’S _Tratado das Enfermidades das Aves de Caça_ and
_Livro d’Alveitaria_; the _Arte da Cavallaria de gineta e estardiota_
(1678) by ANTONIO GALVAM DE ANDRADE (1613?-89); _Correcçam de abusos
introduzidos contra o verdadeiro methodo da medicina_ (2 pts., 1668-80)
by the Carmelite FREI MANUEL DE AZEVEDO (†1672); _Agricultura das
Vinhas_ (1711) by Vicente Alarte (i.e. SILVESTRE GOMEZ DE MORAES
(1643-1723)); _Compendia de Botanica_ (2 vols., 1788) by FELIX DE
AVELLAR BROTERO (1744-1828).
[15] Many will be found in _Portugalia_ and the _Revista Lusitana_.
[16] In the beginning of the sixteenth century Galician is already
despised in Portugal, and became more so as Portuguese grew more
latinized. Cf. Gil Vicente, ii. 509: _Pera que he falar galego Senão
craro e despachado?_; Chiado, _Auto das Regateiras: Eu não te falo
galego_.
[17] _Por ser lingua mais jêral_ (Vera, _Lovvores_), _mais universal_
(Sousa de Macedo). _Os grandes ingenios não se contentão de ter por
espera de seu applauso a hũa só parte do mundo_ (D. Francisco de
Portugal). Cf. Osorio, writing in Latin, _De Rebus_, p. 4, and Pedro
Nunez’ reason for translating his _Libro de Algebra_ into Spanish: _he
mais comum_, and the advice given to Luis Marinho de Azevedo to write
in Spanish or Latin as _mais geral_ (_Primeira Parte da Fundação,
Antiguidades e Grandezas da mvi insigne cidade de Lisboa. Prologo_).
Faria e Sousa condemns the practice of writing Spanish _glosas_ to a
Portuguese _mote_, and declares that he himself wrote in Spanish _con
gran pesar mío_. Frei Antonio da Purificaçam considered that had he
written his _Cronica_ in Latin or Spanish _fora digno de grande nota_,
in this following Frei Bernardo de Brito, who indignantly rejected
the exhortation to use Latin or Spanish (_Mon. Lus._ i, _Prologo_),
although he wrote under Spanish rule. Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda
wrote in Spanish _por ser idioma claro y casi comun_. Simão Machado
explains why he wrote _Alfea_ in Spanish as follows (f. 72 v.): _Vendo
quam mal aceitais As obras dos naturais Fiz esta em lingoa estrangeira
Por ver se desta maneira Como a eles nos tratais._
[18] Portuguese spelling is a vexed and vexing question, complicated by
the positive dislike of the Portuguese for uniformity (the same word
may be found spelt in two ways on the same page both in modern and
ancient books; the same person will spell his name Manoel and Manuel).
In proper names their owners’ spelling has been retained, although
no one now writes Prince Henry the Navigator’s name as he wrote it:
Anrique. Thus Mello (modern Melo); Nunez (13th c.), Nunes (19th c.);
Bernardez (16th c.), Bernardes (17th-18th c.). The late Dr. Gonçalves
Vianna himself adopted the form Gonçalvez Viana. In quoting ancient
Portuguese texts the only alteration made has been occasionally to
replace _y_ and _u_ by _i_ and _v_.
[19] _Este desejo (de sempre ver e ouvir cousas nouas) he moor que
nas outras nações na gente Lusitana._ André de Burgos, _Ao prudente
leitor_ (_Relaçam_, Evora, 1557). It is displayed in their fondness for
foreign customs, for the Spanish language, for India to the neglect of
Portugal, the description of epic deeds rather than of ordinary life,
high-flown language as opposed to the common speech (_da praça_), &c.
Antonio Prestes calls the Portuguese _estranho no natural, natural no
estranjeiro_.
[20] In Spain it has had fervent admirers, notably Gracián. More
recently Juan Valera spoke of it as _riquísima_, and Menéndez y Pelayo
explored this wealth.
[21] F. Denis, _Résumé_ (1826), p. xx.
[22] Wilhelm Storck, _Luis de Camoens’ Sämmtliche Werke_, Bd. I (1880).
[23] Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple.
[24] For a good instance of this _descuido portugues_ see Manuel
Pereira de Novaes, _Anacrisis Historial_ (a history of the city of
Oporto in Spanish), vol. i (1912), _Preámbulo_, p. xvii. It is lamented
by the editors of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516) and _Fenix Renascida_
(1716).
[25] 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.
[26] Much of their finest prose is of lyrical character, personal,
fervent, mystic. As to philosophy proper the greatest if not the only
Portuguese philosopher, Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew, left Portugal as a
child, and Francisco Sanchez (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1620), although probably
born at Braga, not at _a soberba_ Tuy, lived in France and wrote in
Latin. He tells us that he in 1574 finished his celebrated treatise
_Quod nihil scitur_, published at Lyon in 1581, in which, at a time of
great intolerance, he revived and gave acute and curious expression
to the old theory that nothing can be known. To modern philosophy Dr.
Leonardo Coimbra (born in 1883) has contributed a notable but somewhat
abstruse work entitled _O Criacionismo_ (Porto, 1912).
[27] Or political, or anticlerical, or anything except literary.
The critics seem to have forgotten that an _auto-da-fé_ does not
necessarily make its victim a good poet, and that even a priest
may have literary talent. A few literary critics, as Dias in the
eighteenth, Guilherme Moniz Barreto in the nineteenth century, are
only exceptions to the rule. It has been the weakness of Portuguese
criticism, more lenient than the gods and booksellers of ancient Rome,
to suffer _mediocres_ gladly.
[28] _C. da Vat._ 979 (cf. Jorge Ferreira, _Eufrosina_, v. 5: _como
dizia o Galego: de longas vias longas mentiras_).
[29] _Poesias, Sat._ 2. The remark of Garrett still holds good: _Em
Portugal ha mais talento e menos cultivação que em paiz nenhum da
Europa_.
I
1185-1325
§ 1
_The Cossantes_
Under the Moorish dominion we know that poetry was widely cultivated in
the Iberian Peninsula, by high and low. At Silves in Algarve ‘almost
every peasant could improvise’.[30] But the early Galician-Portuguese
poetry has no relation with that of the Moors, despite certain
characteristics which may seem to point to an Oriental origin. The
indigenous poems of Galicia and Portugal, of which thirteenth-century
examples have survived, are so remarkable, so unlike those of any other
country, that they deserve to be studied apart from the Provençal
imitations by the side of which they developed. Half buried in the
_Cancioneiros_, themselves only recently discovered, these exquisite
and in some ways astonishingly modern lyrics are even now not very
widely known and escape the attention of many who go far afield in
search of true poetry. The earliest poem dated (1189) by D. Carolina
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, in which Pay Soarez de Taveiroos, a nobleman
of Galicia or North Portugal, addresses Maria Paez Ribeira, the lovely
mistress of King Sancho I, _mia sennor branca e vermelha_, does not
belong to these lyrics[31]; but the second earliest (1199), attributed
to King SANCHO I (1185-1211) himself, is one of them (C.C.B.348). This
unique form of lyric requires a distinctive name, and if we adopt that
used by the Marqués de Santillana’s father, Diego Furtado de Mendoza
(†1404), we shall have a word well suited to convey an idea of their
striking character.[32] His Spanish poem written in parallel distichs,
_A aquel arbol_, is called a _cossante_.[33] In an age when all that
seemed most Spanish, the _Poema del Cid_, for instance, or the _Libro
de Buen Amor_, has been proved to derive in part from French sources,
it is peculiarly pleasant to find a whole series of early poems which
have their roots firmly planted in the soil of the Peninsula. The
indigenous character of the _cossantes_ is now well established, thanks
chiefly to the skilful and untiring researches of D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos.[34] They are wild but deliciously scented single
flowers which now reappear in all their freshness as though they had
not lain pressed and dead for centuries in the library of the Vatican.
One of the earliest is quoted by Airas Nunez (C. V. 454) and completed
in _Grundriss_, p. 150:
1. Solo ramo verde frolido
Vodas fazen a meu amigo,
E choran olhos d’amor.
2. Solo verde frolido ramo[35]
Vodas fazen a meu amado,
E choran olhos d’amor.
What first strikes one in this is its Oriental immobility. The second
distich adds nothing to the sense of the first, merely intensifying it
by repetition. Neither the poetry of the _trouvères_ of the North of
France nor that of the Provençal _troubadours_ presents any parallel.
The scanty Basque literature contains nothing in this kind. But it is
unnecessary to go for a parallel to China.[36] None more remarkable
will be found than those contained in the books of that religion which
came from the East and imposed its forms if not its spirit on the
pagans of the Peninsula. Verses 8, 9 of Psalm 118 are very nearly a
_cossante_ but have no refrain. The resemblance in Psalm 136, verses
17, 18, is still more marked:
To him which smote great kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever,
And slew famous kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever.
The relations between Church and people were very close if not always
very friendly. The peasants maintained their ancient customs, and their
pagan jollity kept overflowing into the churches to the scandal of
the authorities. Innumerable ordinances later sought to check their
delight in witchcraft and mummeries, feasts and funerals (the delight
in the latter is still evident in Galicia as in Ireland and Wales).
Men slept, ate, drank, danced, sang profane songs, and acted plays and
parodies in the churches and pilgrimage shrines. The Church strove to
turn their midsummer and May-day celebrations into Christian festivals,
but the change was rather nominal than real. But if the priests and
bishops remained spiritually, like modern politicians, shepherds
without sheep, the religious services, the hymns,[37] the processions
evidently affected the people. Especially was this the case in Galicia,
since the great saint Santiago, who farther south (as later in India)
rode into battle on a snow-white steed before the Christians, gave
a more peaceful prosperity to the North-west. Pilgrims from all
countries in the Middle Ages came to worship at his shrine at Santiago
de Compostela. They came a motley company singing on the road,[38]
criminals taking this opportunity to escape from justice, tradesmen and
players, jugglers and poets making a livelihood out of the gathering
throngs, as well as devout pilgrims who had ‘left alle gamys’ for their
soul’s good, _des pélerins qui vont chantant et des jongleurs_. Thus
the eyes of the whole province of Galicia as the eyes of Europe were
directed towards the Church of Santiago in Jakobsland. The inhabitants
of Galicia would naturally view their heaven-sent celebrity with pride
and rejoice in the material gain. They would watch with eager interest
the pilgrims passing along the _camino francés_ or from the coast
to Santiago, and would themselves flock to see and swell the crowds
at the religious services. When we remember the frequent parodies
of religious services in the Middle Ages and that the Galicians did
not lag behind others in the art of mimicry,[39] we can well imagine
that the Latin hymns sung in church or procession might easily form
the germ of the profane _cossante_. A further characteristic of the
_cossante_ is that the _i_-sound of the first distich is followed by
an _a_-sound in the second (_ricercando ora il grave, ora l’acuto_)
and this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs
of singers, treble and bass.[40] It is clear at least that these
alternating sounds are echoes of music: one almost hears the clash
of the _adufe_ in the _louçana_ (answering to _garrida_) or _ramo_
(_pinho_). The words of these poems were, indeed, always accompanied by
the _son_ (= music). But if born in the Church, the _cossante_ suffered
a transformation when it went out into the world. The rhythm of many
of the songs in the _Cancioneiros_ is so obtrusive that they seem to
dance out of the printed page. One would like to think that in the
ears of the peasants the sound of the wheel mingled with the echo of a
hymn and its refrain as they met at what was, even then, no doubt, a
favourite gathering-place--the mill[41]--and thus a lyric poem became a
dance-song. The _cossante Solo ramo_ would thus proceed, sung by ‘the
dancers dancing in tune’:
(Verses 3 and 4) Vodas fazen a meu amigo (amado)
Porque mentiu o desmentido (perjurado)
E choran olhos d’amor,
the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the
first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second
line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding
evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens
danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine
considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre;
in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_).
The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases
as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become
a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de
romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song).
A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is
its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more
than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued
in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of
the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in
Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they
become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower
of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of
snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in
the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the
cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a
mountain-stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away _meus amores_, or
gliding up the river _a sabor_. The _amiga_ lingers at the fountain,
she goes to wash clothes or to bathe her hair in the stream, she meets
her lover and dances at the pilgrim shrine, she waits for him under
the hazel-trees, she implores the waves for news of him, she watches
for the boats _pelo mar viir_. The language is native to the soil,
far more so, at least, than in the _cantigas de amor_ and _cantigas
de amigo_ written under foreign influence. Their French or Provençal
words and learned forms[46] are replaced in the _cossante_ by forms
Galician or Spanish. Despite its striking appearance to us now among
_sirventes senes sal_ in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, it must
be confessed that the early _cossante_ of King Sancho has a somewhat
meagre, vinegar aspect, and the _genre_ could hardly have developed
so successfully in the next half-century had it not been fixed in the
country-side, ever ready to the hand of the poet in search of fresh
inspiration. It is possible to exaggerate the effect of war on the life
of the peasant. Portugal in the twelfth century was only gradually
and by constant conflict winning its territory and independence. It
had no fixed capital and Court at which the Provençal poets might
gather. But while king and nobles and the members of the religious and
military orders were engaged with the Moors to the exclusion of the
Muses, so that they had no opportunity to introduce the new measures,
the peasants in Galicia and Minho no doubt went on tilling the soil
and singing their primitive songs. In the thirteenth century Provençal
poetry flourished in Portugal, but so monotonously that it failed to
kill the older lyrics, and they reacted on the imported poetry. In the
trite conventions with which the latter became clothed the _cossante_
had a new opportunity of life. _Trobadores_ wearied by their own
monotony, _jograes_ wishing to please a patron with a _novidade_, had
recourse to the _cossante_. The _jogral_ wandering from house to house
and town to town necessarily came into close touch with the peasants.
Talented men among them, prompted by patrons of good taste, no doubt
exercised the third requisite of a good _jogral_ (_doair’ e uoz e
aprenderdes ben_, C. C. B. 388)--a good memory--not only in learning
his patron’s verses to recite at other houses but in remembering the
songs that he caught in passing from the lips of the peasants, songs of
village mirth and dance, of workers in the fields and shepherds on the
hills. These, developed and adorned according to his talent, he would
introduce to the Court among his _motz recreamens e prazers_. When
Joan de Guilhade in the middle of the thirteenth century complained
that _os trobadores ja van para mal_ (C. V. 370), he might almost be
referring to the fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese
_trobadores_ could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the
_cossante_. Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a
Provençal but, rather, like Bernaldo de Bonaval (first half 13th c.).
King Dinis in the second half of the century viewed the _cossante_
with such favour that he wrote or collected some of the most curious
and delightful that we possess. But although King Dinis set his name
to a handful of the finest _cossantes_, most of the _cossante_-writers
belonged to an earlier period and were men of humble birth. Of NUNO
FERNANDEZ TORNEOL[47] (first half 13th c.), poet and soldier, besides
conventional _cantigas de amor_ we have eight simple _cossantes_ of
which the _alvorada_ (C. V. 242), the _barcarola_ (C. V. 246), and C.
V. 245 with its dance rhythm are especially beautiful. PEDR’ ANEZ
SOLAZ[48] (early 13th c.) wrote a _cossante_ (C. V. 415) celebrated
for its refrain, _lelia doura, leli leli par deus leli_, in which some
have seen a vestige of Basque (_il_ = dead). Of MEENDINHO (first half
13th c.) we have only one poem, a _cantiga de romaria_ (C. V. 438), but
its beauty has brought him fame;[49] and another _jogral_, FERNAND’
ESGUIO[50] (second half 13th c.), is remembered in the same way chiefly
for C. V. 902: _Vayamos, irmana_. Bernaldo de Bonaval, one of the
earliest Galician poets, and the _jograes_ Pero de Veer, Joan Servando,
Airas Carpancho,[51] Martin de Ginzo,[52] Lopo and Lourenço, composed
some charming pilgrimage songs in the second third of the thirteenth
century. This was a popular theme, but the two poets who seem to have
felt most keenly the attraction of the popular poetry and to have
cultivated it most successfully are JOAN ZORRO (fl. 1250) and PERO
MEOGO (fl. 1250). The _cossantes_ of Zorro, one of the most talented
of all these singers, tell of Lisbon and the king’s ships and the sea.
In this series of _barcarolas_ (C. V. 751-60) and in his delightful
_bailada_ (C. V. 761)[53] he evidently sought his inspiration in
popular sources, as with equal felicity a little later did Pero
Meogo,[54] whose _cossantes_ (C. V. 789-97), each with its biblical
reference to the deer of the hills (_cervos do monte_), are as singular
as they are beautiful. MARTIN CODAX at about the same time was singing
graceful songs of the _ondas do mar_ of Vigo (C. V. 884-90). But the
real poet of the sea was the Admiral of Castille, PAY GOMEZ CHARIÑO[55]
(†1295). He belonged to an ancient family of Galicia, was prominent at
the Courts of Alfonso X (between whose character and the sea he draws
an elaborate parallel in C. A. 256) and of his son Sancho IV, played an
important part in the troubled history of the time, and fought by land
and sea in Andalucía, at Jaen in 1246 and Seville in 1247. On the lips
of his _amiga_ he places a touching _cantiga de amigo_ (C. V. 424: she
expresses her relief that her _amigo_ has ceased to be _almirante do
mar_; no longer will she listen in sadness to the wind, now her heart
may sleep and not tremble at the coming of a messenger) and the two sea
_cossantes_ C. V. 401, with its plaining refrain:
E van-se as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores,
idas son as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores,
--one can imagine it sung as a chanty[56]--and C. V. 429, in which she
prays Santiago to bring him safely home: ‘Now in this hour Over the
sea He is coming to me, Love is in flower.’ Beauty of expression and
a loyal sincerity are conspicuous in his poems, as well as a certain
individuality and vigour. He escaped the perils of the sea, the _mui
gran coita do mar_ (C. A. 251), but to fall by the hand of an assassin
on shore. His sea lyrics are only excelled by the enchanting melody
of the poem (C. V. 488) of his contemporary and fellow-countryman ROY
FERNANDEZ (second half 13th c.), who was apparently a professor at
Salamanca University, Canon of Santiago, and Chaplain to Alfonso the
Learned. Of the later poets ESTEVAM COELHO, perhaps father of one of
the assassins of Inés (†1355), wrote a _cossante_ of haunting beauty
(C. V. 321):
Sedia la fremosa, seu sirgo torcendo,
Sa voz manselinha fremoso dizendo
Cantigas d’amigo,
and D. AFONSO SANCHEZ (_c._ 1285-1329) in C. V. 368 (_Dizia la
fremosinha--Ay Deus val_) proved that he had inherited part of his
father King Dinis’ genius and instinct for popular poetry. King Dinis,
having thrown wide his palace doors to these thyme-scented lyrics,
would turn again to the now musty chamber of Provençal song (C. V. 123):
Quer’eu en maneira de provençal
Fazer agora un cantar d’amor.
The _cossantes_ had become so familiar that Airas Nunez, of Santiago,
could string them together, as it were, by the head, without troubling
himself to give more than the first lines, precisely as Gil Vicente
treated _romances_ three centuries later. The reader or listener would
easily complete them. His _pastorela_ (C. V. 454) would be an ordinary
imitation of a _pastourelle_ of the _trouvères_[57] were it not for the
five _cossante_ fragments inserted. Riding along a stream he hears a
solitary shepherdess singing and stays to listen. First she sang _Solo
ramo verde frolido_,[58] then--as if to prove that she is a shepherdess
of Arcady, not of real life--
Ay, estorniño do avelanedo,
Cantades vos e moir’eu e peno,
D’amores ei mal,
an impassioned cry of the heart only comparable with
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth:
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth;
or that wonderful line of a wonderful poem:
Illa cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum?[59]
Next she sang the first lines of a _cossante_ by Nuno Fernandez Torneol
(C. V. 245) with its dance refrain _E pousarei solo avelanal_. The
refrain is identical in C. V. 245 and C. V. 454, but the distich
has variations which seem to imply that Airas Nunez was not quoting
Fernandez, rather that both drew from a popular source. The fourth
_cossante_ we also have complete, a lovely _barcarola_ by Joan Zorro
(C. V. 757):
Pela ribeira do rio (alto)
Cantando ia la dona virgo (d’algo)
D’amor:
Venhan as barcas pelo rio
A sabor.[60]
Lastly she (or he), as he rides on his way, sings:
Quen amores ha
Como dormira,
Ai bela fror!
i.e. _este cantar_ which is familiar in the _villancico_ (_Por una
gentil floresta_) by the Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458):
La niña que amores ha
¿Sola cómo dormirá?
Very few, if any, of the _cossantes_ were anonymous, which only means
that modern folk-lore was unknown; it was not the fashion to collect
songs from the lips of the people without ulterior purpose. A variety
known as _cantiga de vilãos_ existed, but it was deliberately composed
by the _trobadores_ and _jograes_.[61] A specimen is given in C. V.
1043:
Ó pee d’hũa torre
Baila corpo piolo,[62]
Vedes o cós, ay cavaleiro.
No drawing-room lyric, evidently: more likely to be sung in taverns;
composed perhaps by a knight like him of C. V. 965, whose songs were
not _fremosos e rimados_. Like the Provençal poet Guilherme Figueira
who _mout se fetz grazir ... als ostes et als taverniers_, this
knight’s songs pleased ‘tailors, furriers and millers’; they had not
the good taste of the tailor’s wife in Gil Vicente who sings the
beautiful _cantiga_
Donde vindes filha
Branca e colorida?
The _cantiga de vilãos_ was no such simple popular lyric, but rather
a drinkers’ song, picaresquely allusive, sung by a _jogral_ who _non
fo hom que saubes caber entre ‘ls baros ni entre la bona gen_ but
sang _vilmen et en gens bassas, entre gens bassas per pauc d’aver_
(Riquier), _cantares de que la gente baja e de servil condicion se
alegra_ (Santillana). The _cossante_, on the contrary, came straight
from field and hill into palace and song-book. Probably many of them
were composed, as they were sung, and sung dancing, by the women.
The women of Galicia have always been noted for their poetical and
musical talent. We read of the _choreas psallentium mulierum_, like
Miriam, the sister of Moses, at Santiago in 1116,[63] and there is a
cloud of similar witnesses. But whether any of the _cossantes_ that
we have in the _Cancioneiros_ is strictly of the people or not, their
traditional indigenous character is no longer doubtful. It would
surely be a most astounding fact had the Galician-Portuguese Court
poets, who in their _cantigas de amor_ reduced Provençal poetry to a
colourless insipidity, succeeded so much better with the _cossantes_
that, while the originals from which they copied have vanished, the
imitations stand out in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ like crimson
poppies among corn. It is remarkable, too, that of the three kinds of
poem in the old _Cancioneiros_, satire, love song, and _cossante_,
the first two remain in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (1516), but the
third has totally disappeared. The explanation is that as Court and
people drew apart and the literary influence of Castille grew, the
poems based on songs of the people were no longer in favour. But they
continued, like the Guadiana, underground, and D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos has traced their occasional reappearances in poets
of popular leanings, like Gil Vicente and Cristobal de Castillejo,
from the thirteenth century to the present day,[64] while Dr. Leite
de Vasconcellos has discovered whole _cossantes_ sung by peasants at
their work in the fields in the nineteenth century.[65] Dance or action
always accompanies the _cossante_ as it does in the _danza prima_ of
Asturias (to the words _Ay un galan d’esta villa, ay un galan d’esta
casa_).[66] If it be objected that the songs printed by Dr. Leite
de Vasconcellos are rude specimens by the side of a poem like _Ay
flores, ay flores do verde pinho_, it should be remembered that the
_quadra_ (or perhaps one should say distich without refrain) has now
replaced the _cossante_ on the lips of the people, and that among
these quatrains something of the old _cossante’s_ charm and melancholy
is still found. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and others
have remarked that these _quadras_ pass from mouth to mouth and are
perfected in the process, smoothed and polished like a stone by the
sea, and this may well have been true of the earlier _cossantes_.[67]
The _jogral_ who hastened to his patron with a lovely new poem was
but reaping the inspiration of a succession of anonymous singers, an
inspiration quickened by competition in antiphonies of song at many a
pilgrimage. One singer would give a distich of a _cossante_, as to-day
a _quadra_, another would take it up and return it with variations. The
_cossante_ did not always preserve its simple form, or, rather, the
more complicated poems renewed themselves in its popularity. We find
it as a _bailada_ (C. V. 761), _balleta_ (cf. C. A. 123: _Se vos eu
amo mais que outra ren_), as _cantiga de amor_ (C. A. 360 or 361, C.
V. 657-60), _cantiga de maldizer_ (C. V. 1026-7), or satirical _alba_
(C. V. 1049). But these hybrid forms are not the true _cossante_,
which is always marked by dignity, restraint, simple grace, close
communion with Nature, delicacy of thought, and a haunting felicity of
expression. The _cossante_ written by King Sancho seems to indicate
a natural development of the indigenous poetry. In its form it owed
nothing to the poetry of Provence or North France, but its progress
was perhaps quickened, and at least its perfection preserved, by the
systematic cultivation of poetry introduced from abroad at a time when
no middle class separated Court and peasant. The tantalizing fragments
that survive in Gil Vicente’s plays show all too plainly what marvels
of popular song might flower and die unknown. In spirit the original
grave religious character of the _cossante_ may in some measure have
affected the new poetry. To this in part may be ascribed the monotony,
the absence of particular descriptions in the _cantigas de amor_.
In religious hymns obviously reverence would not permit the Virgin
to be described in greater detail than, for example, Gil Vicente’s
vague _branca e colorada_, and the reverence might be transferred
unconsciously to poems addressed to an earthly _dona_. (Only in the
extravagant devotional mannerisms (_gongorismo ao divino_) of the
seventeenth century could Soror Violante do Ceo describe Christ as a
_galan de ojos verdes_.) _Dona genser qu’ieu no sai dir_ or _la genser
que sia_ says Arnaut de Marueil at the end of the thirteenth century.
The Portuguese poet would make an end there: his lady is fairest among
women, fairer than he can say. He would never go on to describe her
grey eyes and snowy brow: _huelhs vairs_ and _fron pus blanc que lis_.
But introduced into alien and artificial forms, like mountain gentians
in a garden, the monotony can no longer please. In the _cantigas de
amor_ the iteration becomes a tedious sluggishness of thought, whereas
in the _cossantes_ it is part of the music of the poem.
C. A. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda.
C. A. M. V. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos. 2 vols. Halle, 1904.
C. A. S.= Fragmentos de hum Cancioneiro Inedito que se acha na
Livraria do Real Collegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Impresso á custa de
Carlos Stuart, Socio da Academia Real de Lisboa. Paris, 1823.
C. A. V. = Trovas e Cantares de um Codice do XIV Seculo. Ed. Francisco
Adolpho de Varnhagen. Madrid, 1849.
C. V. = Cancioneiro da Vaticana.
C. V. M. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed.
Ernesto Monaci. Halle, 1875.
C. V. B. = Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana. Ed. Theophilo Braga.
Lisboa, 1878.
C. T. A. = Cancioneirinho das Trovas Antigas colligidas de um grande
Cancioneiro da Bibliotheca do Vaticano. Ed. F. A. de Varnhagen. Vienna
(1870), 2nd ed. 1872.
C. A. P. = Cantichi Antichi Portoghesi tratti dal Codice Vaticano 4803
con traduzione e note, a cura di Ernesto Monaci. Imola, 1873.
C. L. = Cantos de Ledino tratti dal grande Canzoniere portoghese della
Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. E. Monaci. Halle, 1875.
C. D. M. = Cancioneiro d’ El Rei D. Diniz, pela primeira vez impresso
sobre o manuscripto da Vaticana. Ed. Caetano Lopes de Moura. Paris,
1847.
C. D. L. = Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal. Ed. Henry R.
Lang. Halle, 1894.
C. C. B. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti. Ed. Enrico
Molteni. Halle, 1880.
C. M. = Cantigas de Santa Maria de Don Alfonso el Sabio. 2 vols.
Madrid, 1889.
C. G. C. = Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano. Ed. H. R. Lang. Vol. i. New
York, London, 1902.
C. M. B. = Cancionero Musical de los Siglos XV y XVI. Transcrito y
comentado por Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. Madrid (1890).
C. B. = Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena. Madrid, 1851.
C. G. = Cancionero General (1511).
C. R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral).
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Kazwînî ap. Reinhart Dozy, _Spanish Islam_, trans. F. G. Stokes,
London, 1913, p. 663.
[31] C. A. 38. It is a _cantiga de meestria_, of two verses, each of
eight octosyllabic lines (_abbaccde bfbaccde_).
[32] Although neither English nor Portuguese, it is a name for these
poems, of lines _pariter plangentes_, less clumsy than _parallelistic
songs_ adopted by Professor Henry R. Lang (who also uses the words
_serranas_--but see C. D. L., p. cxxxviii, note 2; Dr. Theophilo
Braga had called them _serranilhas_--and _Verkettungslieder_),
_Parallelstrophenlieder_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos),
_cantigas parallelisticas_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos
and Snr. J. J. Nunes), _chansons à répétitions_ (M. Alfred Jeanroy).
_Cantos dualisticos_, _cantos de danza prima_, and _bailadas
encadeadas_ have also been proposed.
[33] Perhaps = rhyme (_consoante_), but more probably it is derived
from _cosso_, an enclosed place, which would be used for dancing:
cf. Cristobal de Castillejo, _Madre, un caballero Que estaba en este
cosso (bailia)_. In the _Relacion de los fechos del mui magnifico é
mas virtuoso señor el señor Don Miguel Lucas_ [_de Iranzo_] _mui digno
Condestable de Castilla_, p. 446 (A.D. 1470), occurs the following
passage: _Y despues de danzar cantaron un gran rato de cosante_
(_Memorial Histórico Español_, tom. viii, Madrid, 1855). Rodrigo Cota,
in the _Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo_, has _danças y corsantes_,
and Antón de Montoro (el Ropero) asks _un portugues que vido vestido
de muchos colores_ if he is a _cantador de corsante_ (v. l. _cosante_)
(_Canc. General_, ed. Biblióf. Esp., ii. 270, no. 1018).
[34] In the _Grundriss_ (1894), _Randglossen_ (1896-1905), and
especially vol. ii of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904).
[35] Or _Solo ramo verde granado_: the green branch in (red) flower.
[36] Translations of Chinese poems resembling the _cossantes_ are given
by Dr. Theophilo Braga, C. V. B., _Introd._, p. ci, and Professor H. R.
Lang, C. D. L., _Introd._, p. cxlii. A Provençal poem with resemblance
to a _cossante_ is printed in Bartsch, p. 62: _Li tensz est bels, les
vinnesz sont flories_.
[37] Any one who has heard peasants at a _Stabat_ singing the hymn
Stabat Mater dolorosa
_Jussa crussa larimosa
Du penebat_ Filius
realizes that the words for them have no meaning, but that they will
long remember tune and rhythm. Compare, for the form, the Latin hymn to
the Virgin by the Breton poet Adam de Saint Victor (†1177):
Salve Verbi sacra parens,
Flos de spinis spinis carens,
Flos spineti gloria.
[38] Cf. Luis José Velázquez, _Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana_
(Málaga, 1754) ap. C. M. (1889), i. 168: _las cantares y canciones
devotas de los peregrinos que iban en romería a visitar la iglesia de
Compostela mantuvieron en Galicia el gusto de la poesía en tiempos
bárbaros_. A Latin hymn composed in the twelfth century by Aimeric
Picaud is printed in _Recuerdos de un Viaje á Santiago de Galicia_ por
el P. Fidel Fita y D. Aureliano Fernández-Guerra (Madrid, 1880), p. 45:
_Jacobi Gallecia Opem rogat piam Glebe cujus gloria Dat insignem viam
Ut precum frequentia Cantet melodiam. Herru Sanctiagu! Grot Sanctiagu!
Eultreja esuseja! Deus, adjuva nos!_
[39] Cf. Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado
do Brazil_ (1549-62), 2nd ed. (1865), Bk. I, § 22: _chegamos a huma
praça_ [in Santiago de Compostela] _onde vimos hum ajuntamento de
mulheres Gallegas com grande risada e galhofa; e querendo o irmão meu
companheiro pedir-lhe esmola vio que estavão todas ouvindo a huma que
feita pregadora arremedava, como por zombaria, o sermão que eu tinha
pregado_.
[40] One has but to watch a Rogation procession passing through the
fields in the Basque country (which until recently preserved customs of
immemorial eld and still calls the Feast of Corpus Christi, introduced
by Pope Urban IV in 1262, ‘the New Feast--_Festa Berria_’) to realize
the singularly impressive effect of the singing, first the girls’
treble _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_, then the answering bass
of the men far behind, _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_ (with the
slow ringing of the church bell for a refrain like the _contemplando_
and _tan callando_ in the _Coplas de Manrique_).
[41] Cf. Gil Vicente, _Tambor em cada moinho_. It is a curious
coincidence that the word _citola_ (the _jogral’s_ fiddle) =
mill-clapper. Cf. also _moinante_ in Galicia = _pícaro_.
[42] Cf. the _leixapren_ and refrain of the _cantiga_ danced and sung
at the end of Gil Vicente’s _Romagem de Aggravados_ (_Por Maio era, por
Maio_). The parallelism and _leixapren_ are present also in religious
poems by Alfonso X: C. M. 160, 250, 260. Snr. J. J. Nunes has noted
that in modern peasant dances, accompanied with song, the dancers
sometimes pause while the refrain is sung.
[43] C. V. contains many striking pilgrimage songs, sometimes wrongly
called _cantigas de ledino_. The word probably originated in a
printer’s error (_de ledino for dele dino_) in a line of _Chrisfal:
cantou canto de ledino_.
[44] Cf. the wailing refrains of C. V. 415, 417; and, for the _form_,
compare _e de mi, louçana!_ with _¡ay de mi, Alfama!_ In the _sense_ of
the two refrains lies all the difference between the poetry of Portugal
and Spain.
[45] C. C. B. 135 (= C. A. 389); C. V. 119, 181, 220, 527, 758, 964.
[46] _Endurar_, _besonha_, _greu_, _gracir_, _cousir_, _escarnir_,
_toste_, _entendedor_, _veiro_ (_varius_, Fr. _vair_, C. M. 213 has
_egua veira_), _genta_ (_genser_, _gensor_).
[47] C. V. 242-51, 979; C. C. B. 159-71 (= C. A. 70-81, 402).
[48] C. V. 414-16, 824-5; C. A. 281.
[49] Meen di nho in the C. V. M. index. Thus he is scarcely even a name.
[50] Or Esquio (? = _esquilo_, ‘squirrel’).
[51] Or Corpancho (Broade) or Campancho (Broadacre); but the word
_carpancho_ (= basket) exists in the region of Santander (_La
Montaña_). There is a modern Peruvian poet Manuel Nicolás Corpancho
(1830-63).
[52] This is the most probable form of his name, although modern
critics have presented him with various others.
[53] M. Alfred Jeanroy (_Les Origines_, 2ᵉ ed., 1904, p. 320) compares
with this _bailada_ the fragments _Tuit cil qui sunt enamourat Vignent
dançar, li autre non_ and _N’en nostre compaignie ne soit nus S’il
n’est amans_, but even if there was direct imitation here, which
is doubtful, that would not affect the indigenous character of the
_cossantes_.
[54] Or, according to D. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Moogo (from
_monachus_). _Meogo_ (= _meio_) occurs in C. M. 65 and 161, _moogo_ (=
monk) in C. M. 75 and 149.
[55] C. V. 392-402, 424-30, 1158-9; C. A. 246-56. Chariño is buried at
Pontevedra, in the Franciscan convent which he founded.
[56] Cf. the modern _Ai lé lé lé, marinheiro vira á ré_ or _Ai lé lé lé
Ribamar e S. José_.
[57] For later reminiscences of the _pastorela_ see C. Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos, _João Lourenço da Cunha, a ‘Flor de Altura’ e a cantiga
Ay Donas por qué em tristura?_ (_Separata da Revista Lusitana_, vol.
xix) Porto (1916), pp. 14-15.
[58] See _supra_, p. 23.
[59] A modern Portuguese quatrain runs
Passarinho que cantaes
Nesse raminho de flores,
Cantae vos, chorarei eu:
Assim faz quem tem amores.
[60] By the margin of a river Went a maiden singing, ever Of love sang
she:
Up the stream the boats came gliding Gracefully. All along the
river-bent The fair maiden singing went Of love’s dream: Fair to see
the boats came gliding Up the stream.
[61] _Poetica_ (C. C. B., p. 3, ll. 50-1).
[62] It probably does not rhyme (_e morre_ or _corre_) purposely. D.
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos proposes _gracioso_ or _friolo_ (_A
Saudade Portuguesa_, Porto, 1914, pp. 84, 140).
[63] _España Sagrada_, xx. 211.
[64] C. A. M. V. ii. 928-36. Almeida Garrett had written in a general
sense: _os vestigios d’essa poesia indigena ainda duram_ (_Revista
Univ. Lisbonense_, vol. v (1846), p. 843).
[65] At Rebordainhos, in Tras-os-Montes, e.g. _Na ribeirinha ribeira
Naquella ribeira Anda lá um peixinho vivo (bravo) Naquella ribeira_.
Other examples of the _i-a_ sequence are _amigo_ (_amado_), _cosido_
(_assado_), _villa_ (_praça_), _ermida_ (_oraga_), _linda_ (_clara_),
_Abril_ (_Natal_), _ceitil_ (_real_). See J. Leite de Vasconcellos,
_Annuario para o estudo das tradições populares portuguezas_ (Porto,
1882), pp. 19-24. Cf. the modern Asturian song with its refrain _¡Ay
Juana cuerpo garrido, ay Juana cuerpo galano!_
[66] Francisco Alvarez, _Verd. Inf._, p. 125, speaks of _cantigas de
bailhos e de terreiro_ (dance-songs).
[67] Cf. Barros, _Dial. em lovvor da nossa ling._, 1785 ed., p. 226:
_Pois as cantigas compostas do povo, sem cabeça, sem pees, sem nome ou
verbo que se entenda, quem cuidas que as traz e leva da terra? Quem as
faz serem tratadas e recebidas do comum consintimento? O tempo._
§ 2.
_The Cancioneiros_
If, besides the _Cancioneiros da Vaticana_, _Colocci-Brancuti_, and _da
Ajuda_, we include King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. M.)
we have over 2,000 poems, by some 200 poets. Of these the _Cancioneiro
da Ajuda_ (C. A.) contains 310. Preserved in the Lisbon _Collegio dos
Nobres_ and later in the Royal Library of Ajuda at Lisbon, it was
first published in an edition of twenty-five copies by Charles Stuart
(afterwards Lord Stuart of Rothesay), British Minister at Lisbon
(C. A. S.). Another edition, by Varnhagen, appeared in 1849 (C. A.
V.), and the splendid definitive edition by D. Carolina Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos in 1904 (C. A. M. V.). C. A. M. V. contains 467 poems, in
part reproduced from C. V. M. and C. C. B. The third volume, of notes,
is still unpublished.
Of the _Cancioneiro_ preserved as Codex Vaticanus 4803, and now
commonly known as _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ (C. V.), fragments were
published soon after its rediscovery: viz. that portion attributed to
King Dinis, edited by Moura in 1847 (C. D. M.). This part received a
critical edition at the hands of Professor H. R. Lang in 1892; 2nd
ed., with introduction, Halle, 1894 (C. D. L.). A few more crumbs were
given to the world by Varnhagen in 1870, 2nd ed. 1872 (C. T. A.), and
in 1873 (C. A. P.) and 1875 (C. L.) by Ernesto Monaci, who printed his
diplomatic edition of the complete text (1,205 poems) in the latter
year (C. V. M.), and with it an index of a still larger _Cancioneiro_
(it has 1,675 entries) compiled by Angelo Colocci in the sixteenth
century and discovered by Monaci in the Vatican Library (codex 3217).
Dr. Theophilo Braga’s critical edition appeared in 1878 (C. V. B.).
In this very year a large _Cancioneiro_ (355 ff.), corresponding nearly
but not precisely to the Colocci index, was discovered in the library
of the Conte Paolo Antonio Brancuti (C. C. B. For convenience’ sake
C. C. B. also = the fragment published by Enrico Gasi Molteni), and
the 442 of its poems, lacking in C. V. (but nearly half of which are
in C. A.), were published in diplomatic edition by Enrico Molteni
in 1880 (C. C. B.). All these (C. A., C. V., and C. C. B.) were in
all probability derived from the _Cancioneiro_ compiled by the Conde
de Barcellos. When his father, King Dinis, died, silence fell upon
the poets. The new king, Afonso IV, showed no sign of continuing to
collect the smaller _Cancioneiros_ kept by nobles and men of humbler
position, a custom inaugurated by his grandfather, Afonso III (if
the _Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Afonso_ in King Duarte’s library was
his), continued by King Dinis (_Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Dinis_),
and perhaps revived by King Duarte a century later (_Livro de Trovas
del Rei_). It was thus a time suitable for a ‘definitive edition’, and
Count Pedro, who was the last of the _Cancioneiro_ poets and who was
more collector than poet, probably took the existing _Cancioneiros_
(of Afonso III and Dinis) and added a third part consisting of later
poems. Besides the chronological order there was a division by subject
into _cantigas de amor_, _cantigas de amigo_, and _cantigas d’escarnho
e de maldizer_ (Santillana’s _cantigas_, _serranas e dezires_, or
_cantigas serranas_, the Archpriest of Hita’s _cantares serranos e
dezires_). C. V. is divided into these three kinds; in the older
and incomplete C. A. 304 of the 310 poems are _cantigas de amor_.
Eleven years after the death of King Duarte the Marqués de Santillana
wrote (1449) to the Constable of Portugal, D. Pedro, describing the
Galician-Portuguese _Cancioneiro_--_un grant volume_--which he had
seen in his boyhood in the possession of D. Mencia de Cisneros. (This
may have been the actual manuscript compiled by D. Pedro, Conde de
Barcellos and bequeathed by him in 1350 to Alfonso XI of Castille and
Leon--a few days _after_ Alfonso XI’s death. Or it may have been a copy
of the _Cancioneiro_ of D. Pedro or the _Cancioneiro_ of Afonso III or
of Dinis.) It is significant that in this very important letter it is
a foreigner informing a Portuguese. Under the predominating influence
first of Spain then of the Renaissance, the old Portuguese poems, even
if they were known to exist, excited no interest in Portugal. They
were _musas rusticas, musas in illo tempore rudes et incultas_.[68]
With this disdain the _Cancioneiro_ became a real will-o’-the-wisp.
Even as late as the nineteenth century one disappeared mysteriously
from a sale, another emerged momentarily (see C. T. A.) from the
shelves of a Spanish grandee only to fall back into the unknown. In the
sixteenth century the evidence as to its being known is contradictory.
Duarte Nunez de Leam in 1585 says of King Dinis that _extant hodie
eius carmina_. Antonio de Vasconcellos in 1621 declares that time has
carried them away: _obliviosa praeripuit vetustas_.
A few vague allusions (as that of Sá de Miranda concerning the echoes
of Provençal song) were all that was vouchsafed in Portugal to the
_Cancioneiro_, although prominent Portuguese men of letters--as Sá de
Miranda, André de Resende, Damião de Goes--travelled in Italy and met
there Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), who had probably owned the
_Cancioneiros_ (copies by an Italian hand of a Portuguese original)
acquired by Angelo Colocci; yet at this very time Colocci (†1549) was
eagerly indexing and annotating the _Cancioneiros_ in Rome. It is
this Portuguese neglect and indifference to the things of Portugal
which explains the survival of the _cossantes_ only in Rome while the
more solemn and less indigenous poems of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_
remained in the land of their birth. A fuller account of the Portuguese
_Cancioneiros_, with the fascinating and complicated question of their
descent and interrelations, will be found in the _Grundriss_ (pp.
199-202) and D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos’ edition of the
_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (vol. ii, pp. 180-288).[69]
When the poetry of the troubadours flourished in Provence Portugal
was scarcely a nation. The first Provençal poet, Guilhaume, Comte de
Poitou (1087-1127), precedes by nearly a century Sancho I (1154-1211),
second King of Portugal, who wrote poems and married the Princess
Dulce of Aragon; and the Gascon Marcabrun, the first foreign poet to
refer to Portugal, in his poems _Al prim comens del ivernaill_ and
_Emperaire per mi mezeis_, in the middle of the twelfth century, spoke
not of her poetry but of her warrior deeds: _la valor de Portegal_.
Gavaudan similarly refers at the end of the twelfth century to the
Galicians and Portuguese among other (Castille, &c.) barriers against
the ‘black dogs’ (the Moors). It was in Spain that the Portuguese had
opportunity of meeting Provençal poets. The Peninsula in the thirteenth
century was, like Greece of old, divided into little States and
Courts, each harbouring exiles and refugees from neighbouring States.
Civil strife or the death of a king in Portugal would scatter abroad
a certain number of noblemen on the losing side, who would thus come
into contact with the troubadours as Provençal poetry spread to the
Courts of Catalonia and Aragon, Navarre, Castille and Leon. The first
King of Portugal, although a prince of the House of Burgundy, held
his kingdom in fief to Leon, and all the early kings were in close
touch with Leon and Castille. Fernando III, King of Castille and Leon
(St. Ferdinand), was a devoted lover of poetry, and his son Alfonso X
gathered at his _cort sen erguelh e sen vilania_ a galaxy of talented
troubadours, Provençal and Galician. Portugal came into more direct
touch with France in other ways, but the influence might have been
almost exclusively that of the _trouvères_ of the North had not the
more generous enthusiasm of Provence penetrated across the frontier
into Spain. Trade was fairly active in the thirteenth century between
Portugal and England, North France and Flanders. Many of the members
of the religious orders--as the Cluny Benedictines--who occupied
the territory of the Moors in Portugal were Frenchmen. With foreign
colonists the new towns were systematically peopled. The number of
French pilgrims was such that the road to Santiago became known as
the ‘French Road’. The Crusades also brought men of many languages
to Portugal.[70] The Court by descent and dynastic intermarriage
was cosmopolitan; but indeed the life of the whole Peninsula was
cosmopolitan to an extent which tallies ill with the idea of the Middle
Ages as a period of isolation and darkness. The Portuguese had already
begun to show their fondness for _novedades_. Yet it was they who
imposed their, the Galician, language. As the Marqués de Santillana
observed and the _Cancioneiros_ prove, lyric poets throughout the
Peninsula used Galician.[71] Probably the oldest surviving instance of
this language in verse by a foreigner is to be found (ten lines) in a
_descort_ (_descordo_) written by Raimbaud de Vaqueiras (1158-1217)
at the Court of Bonifazio II of Montferrat towards the end of the
twelfth century. We cannot doubt that the character and conditions
of the north-west of the Peninsula had permitted a thread of lyric
poetry to continue there ever since Silius Italicus had heard the youth
of Galicia wailing (_ululantem_) their native songs, and that both
language and literature had the opportunity to develop earlier there
than in the rest of Spain. The tide of Moorish victory only gradually
ebbed southward, and the warriors in the sterner country of Castille,
with its fiery sun and battles and epics, would look back to the green
country of Galicia as the idyllic land of song, a refuge where sons
of kings and nobles could spend their minority in comparative peace.
When from the ninth century Galicia became a second Holy Land its
attractions and central character were immeasurably increased. Pilgrims
thither from every country would return to their native land with some
words of the language, and those acquainted with Provençal might note
the similarity and the musical softness of Galician.[72] It is not
certain that the eldest of the ten children of San Fernando, ALFONSO
X (1221?-84), _el Sabio_, King of Castille and Leon, Lord of Galicia,
and brother-in-law of our Edward I, passed his boyhood in Galicia. But
when he was compiling a volume of poems referring to many parts of the
world besides Spain, to Canterbury and Rome, Paris and Alexandria,
Lisbon, Cologne, Cesarea, Constantinople, he would naturally choose
Galician not only, or indeed chiefly, because it was the more graceful
and pliant medium for lyric verse but because it was the most widely
known, and, like French, _plus commune à toutes_ _gens_.[73] He had
no delicate ear for its music and made such poor use of its pliancy
that it often becomes as hard as the hardest Castilian in his hands.
His songs of miracles offer a striking contrast to contemporary
Portuguese lyrics in the same language. Their jingles are only possible
as a _descort_ in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_. At the same time
he would be influenced in his choice of language by his knowledge
of Galicia as the traditional home of the lyric, of the encouraging
patronage extended to Galician poets by his son-in-law Afonso III, of
the Santiago school of poets, and of the promising future before the
Galician language in the hands of the conquering Portuguese. _Multas
et perpulchras composuit cantilenas_, says Gil de Zamora, and likens
him to David. But when we remember the prodigious services rendered by
Alfonso X to Castilian prose, the first question that arises is whether
he was indeed the author of the 450 poems in Galician[74] that we
possess under his name. Of these poems 426, or, cancelling repetitions,
420, are of a religious character, written, with one or two exceptions,
in honour of the Virgin: _Cantigas de Santa Maria_. Many of these poems
themselves provide an answer to the question: they record his illnesses
and enterprises and his _trobar_ in such a way that they could only
have been written by himself: he is the _entendedor_ of Santa Maria
(C. M. 130), he exhorts other _trobadores_ to sing her praises (C. M.
260), he himself is resolved to sing of no other _dona_ (C. M. 10: _dou
ao demo os otros amores_); and his attractive and ingenuous pride in
these poems accords ill with an alien authorship. When he lay sick at
Vitoria and was like to die it was only when the _Livro das Cantigas_
was placed on his body that he recovered (C. M. 209), and he directed
that they should be preserved in the church in which he was buried.
There is little reason to doubt that he was the author, in a strictly
limited sense, of the majority of the poems, although not of all.
Various phrases seem to imply a double method. C. M. 219 says: ‘I will
have that miracle placed among the others’; C. M. 295: ‘I ordered it to
be written.’ On the other hand, C. M. 47 is ‘a fair miracle of which I
made my song’; C. M. 84 ‘a great miracle of which I made a song’; of
106 ‘I know well that I will make a goodly song’; of 64 ‘I made verses
and tune’; for 188 ‘I made a good tune and verses because it caught my
fancy’; for 307 ‘according to the words I made the tune’; of 347 ‘I
made a new song with a tune that was my own and not another’s’. The
inference seems to be that, the personal poems and the _loas_ apart, if
a miracle especially attracted the king he took it in hand; otherwise
he might leave it to one of the _joglares_, and he would perhaps revise
it and be its author to the extent that the Portuguese _jograes_ were
authors of the early _cossantes_. We know that he had at his Court a
veritable factory of verse. The vignettes[75] to these _Cantigas_ show
him surrounded by scribes, pen and parchment in hand, by _joglares_ and
_joglaresas_. Poets thronged to his Court and he was in communication
with others in foreign lands. Some of the miracles might come to him
in verse, the work of a friendly poet or of a sacred _jogral_ such as
Pierres de Siglar, whom C. M. 8 shows reciting his poems from church
to church: _en todalas eigreias da Uirgen que non a par un seu lais
senpre dizia_,[76] and this would account for the variety of metre and
treatment. Of raw material for his art there was never a scarcity,
nor was the idea of turning it into verse original. In France Gautier
de Coincy (1177-1236) had already written his _Miracles de la Sainte
Vierge_ in verse, and the Spanish poet Gonzalo de Berceo (1180-1247)
had composed the _Milagros de Nuestra Sennora_. But there was no need
for direct imitation. If the starry sky were parchment and the ocean
ink, the miracles could not all be written down, says King Alfonso
(C. M. 110). Churches and rival shrines preserved an unfailing store
for collectors. Gautier de Coincy spoke of _tant miracles_, a _grant
livre_ of them, and King Alfonso chooses one from among 300 in a book
(C. M. 33), finds one written in an ancient book (265) written among
many others (258), in a book among many others (284), and refers to
a book full of them at Soissons. The miracles were recorded more
systematically in France, and the books of Soissons and Rocamadour
(_Liber Miraculorum S. Mariae de Rupe Amatoris_) provided the king with
many subjects, as did also Vincent de Beauvais’ _Speculum Historiale_,
of which he possessed a copy. But the sources in the Peninsula were
very copious, as, for instance, the Book of the Miracles of Santiago,
of which a copy, in Latin, exists in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale.
Of other miracles the king had had personal experience, or they were
recent and came to him by word of mouth. Thus he often does not profess
to invent his subject: he merely translates it into verse and sometimes
appraises it as he does so. It is ‘a marvellous great miracle’ (C.
M. 257), ‘very beautiful’ (82), ‘one in which I have great belief’
(241), ‘one almost incredible’, _mui cruu de creer_ (242), or ‘famous’
(195), ‘known throughout Spain’ (191). Many of these miracles occurred
to the peasants and unlettered: then as now the humbler the subject
the greater the miracle. Accordingly we find the king in his poems
dealing not with the conventional shepherdesses of the _pastorelas_ but
with lowly folk of real life, peasants, gleaners, sailors, fishermen,
beggars, pilgrims, nuns; and it is one of the king’s titles to be
considered a true poet that he takes an evident pleasure in these
themes and retains their graphic, artless presentment. The collection
abounds in charming glimpses of the life of the people. Indeed, in many
of the poems there is more of the people than of King Alfonso,[77]
and he sings diligently of the misdeeds of clerics and usurers, of
the incompetence of doctors, and of massacres of Jews. He seems to
have followed the originals very closely, and evident traces of their
language remain, French, English, and perhaps Provençal. The poems are
often of considerable length, sometimes twenty or thirty verses, and
as a rule the last line of each verse must rhyme with the refrain. The
attention thus necessarily bestowed upon the rhymes sometimes mars the
pathos of the subject, and the reader is reminded that he has to do
with a skilful, eager, and industrious craftsman but not with a great
original poet. In the remarkable _Ben vennas Mayo_ and in many of his
other poems materialism and poetical ecstasy go hand in hand. Yet in
several of the more beautiful legends the poet proves himself equal to
his theme. Some of these legends are still famous, that of the Virgin
taking the place of the nun (C. M. 55 and 94), of the knight and the
pitcher (155), of the stone miraculously warded from the statue of the
Virgin and Child (136 and 294), of the monk’s mystic ecstasy at the
_lais_ of the bird in the convent garden (103). Others had probably an
equal celebrity in the Middle Ages, as that of the captive miraculously
brought from Africa and awaking free in Spain at dawn (325),[78] of
the painter with whom the Devil was wroth for always painting him so
ugly (74), or of the peasant whose vineyard alone was saved from the
hail (161). Every tenth poem (the collection was intended originally
to consist of one hundred) interrupts the narratives of miracles by a
purely lyrical _cantiga de loor_, and some of these, written with the
fervour with which the king always sang _as graças muy granadas_ of
the _Madre de Deus Manuel_, are of great simplicity and beauty. The
king had not always written thus, and of his profane poems we possess
thirty[79] (since no one who has read the lively essay by Cesare de
Lollis will doubt that C. V. 61-79 and C. C. B. 359-72 (= 467-78) were
written by Alfonso X). The most important of these are historical, and
invoke curses on false or recalcitrant knights, _non ven al mayo!_ C.
V. 74 is a battle-scene description so swift and impetuous that we must
go to the _Poema del Cid_ for a parallel. And indeed some of the old
spirit peeps out from the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, as when he prays
to be delivered from false friends or praises the Virgin for giving his
enemies ‘what they deserved’.
From the return and enthronement of Afonso III imitation of French and
Provençal poetry was in full swing in Portugal. The long sojourn of
the prince in France, accompanied by several noblemen who figure in
the _Cancioneiros_ (as Rui Gomez de Briteiros and D. Joan de Aboim),
had an important bearing on the development of Portuguese poetry.
He came back determined to act the part of an enlightened patron of
letters; he encouraged the immigration of men of learning from France
and maintained three _jograes_ permanently in his palace.[80] Princes
and nobles as _trobadores_ for their own pastime, the _segreis_,[81]
knights who went from Court to Court and received payment for the
recital of their own verses, the _jograes_, belonging to a lower
station, who recited the poems of their patrons the _trobadores_, all
vied in imitation of the love songs of Provence. In general, i. e.
in the structure of their poems, the resemblance is close and clear
enough. The decasyllabic love song in three or four stanzas with an
_envoi_, the satirical _sirventes_, the _tenson_ (_jocs-partits_) in
which two poets contended in dialogue, the _descort_ in which the
discordant sounds expressed the poet’s distress and grief, the _balada_
of Provence, the _ballette_ and _pastourelle_ of North France, were all
faithfully reproduced.
If, on the other hand, we look for imitations in detail it is perhaps
natural that we should find them less frequently.[82] The conventional
character of the Portuguese poems would sufficiently account for this,
and moreover their models were probably more often heard than read, so
that reproduction of the actual thought or words would be difficult.
When Airas Nunez in a poem of striking beauty, which is almost a sonnet
(C. V. 456), wrote the lines:
Que muito m’eu pago d’este verão
Por estes ramos et por estas flores
Et polas aves que cantan d’amores,
he need not have read Peire de Bussinac’s lines:
Quan lo dous temps d’Abril
Fa ’ls arbres secs fulhar
E ’ls auzels mutz cantar
Quascun en son lati,
in order to know that birds sing and trees grow green in spring.
And generally it is not easy to say whether an apparent echo is a
direct imitation or merely a stereotyped phrase. The Portuguese
_trobadores_ introduced little of the true spirit of the Provençal
_troubadours_--that had passed to Palestine and to the Lady of Tripoli.
In their _cantigas de amor_ is no sign of action--unless it be to die
of love; no thought of Nature. Jaufre Rudel (1140-70), that prince
of lovers, had ‘gone to school to the meadows’ and might sing in his
_maint bons vers_ of _la flor aiglentina_ or of _flors d’albespis_, but
in the Portuguese _cantigas_ nothing relieves the conventional dullness
and excessive monotony (which likewise marked the Provençal school of
poets in Sicily). Composed for the most part in iambic decasyllables
they describe continually the poet’s _coita d’amor, grave d’endurar_,
his grief at parting, his loss of sleep, his pleasure in dying for his
_fremosa sennor_. She is described merely as beautiful, or, at most, as
Tan mansa e tan fremosa e de bon sen (C. C. B. 206).
Fremosa e mansa e d’outro ben comprida (C. C. B. 278).
Vocabulary and thought are spectre-thin. Indeed, it was part of the
convention to sing vaguely. _Eu ben falarei de sa fremosura_, says
one poet[83] (C. C. B. 337)--he will sing of her beauty, but not in
such a way that the curious who _non o poden adevinhar_ should guess
his secret. As to allusions to Nature, perhaps the climate, with less
marked divisions than in Provence, furnished less incentive to sing
of spring and the earth’s renewal or to imitate Guiraut de Bornelh in
going to school all the winter (_l’ivern estava a escola a aprender_)
and singing only with the return of spring. King Dinis, perhaps in
reference to that troubadour, declares that his love is independent of
the seasons and more sincere than that of the singers of Provence:
Proençaes soen mui ben trobar
E dizen eles que é con amor,
Mais os que troban no tempo da frol
E non en outro sei eu ben que non
An tan gran coita ... (C. V. 127)
and even as he wrote the words he was unconsciously imitating the
thought of the Provençal poet Gace Brulé, who had spoken of _les
faus amoureus d’esté_. The exceeding similarity of the _cantigas
de amor_ did raise doubts as to the sincerity of all this dying of
love (cf. C. V. 353 and C. V. 988) and as to whether a poem was a
_cantar novo_ or an article at second hand (C. V. 819). Yet the
poets evidently had talent and poetic feeling; indeed, their skill
in versification contrasts remarkably with their entire absence of
thought or individuality. They appear to revel in monotony of ideas
and pride themselves on the icy smoothness of their verse. All their
originality consisted in the introduction of technical devices, such as
the repetition at intervals of certain words (_dobre_), or of different
tenses of the same verb (_mordobre_, as C. V. 681), to carry on the
poem without stop from beginning to end by means of ‘for’, ‘but’, &c.,
at the beginning of each verse (_cantigas de atafiinda_,[84] as C.
V. 130, C. A. 205), to begin and end each verse with the same line
(_canção redonda_, as C. V. 685), to repeat the last line of one verse
as the first line of the next (_leixapren_), to use the same word at
the end of each line (as _vi_ in C. A. 7). The poet who addressed
_cantigas de amor_ to his lady also provided her with poems for her
to sing, _cantigas de amigo_ in complicated form, or as the simpler
_cossante_, which the _cantigas de amigo_ include. These are poems with
more life and action, often in dialogue. Perhaps the _dona_ herself,
wearied by the monotonous _cantigas de amor_, had pointed to the songs
of the peasant women, and the form of these _cantigas de amigo_ was a
compromise between the Provençal _cantiga de meestria_ and the popular
_cantiga de refran_. The peasant woman composed her own songs, and
the poet places his song on the lips of his love: thus we find her
describing herself as beautiful, _eu velida_; _eu fremosa_; _trist’ e
fremosa_; _fremosa e de mui bon prez_; _o meu bon semelhar_. Poetical
shepherdesses sing these _cantigas de amigo_; the fair _dona_ sings
them as she sits spinning (C. V. 321). The old _Poetica_ (II. 2-12)
distinguishes between the _cantigas de amor_, in which the _amigo_
speaks first, and the _cantigas de amigo_, in which the first to speak
is the _amiga_. Both were artificial forms, but the latter are clearly
more popular in theme (the _amiga_ waiting and wailing for her lover),
and in treatment sometimes convey a real intensity of feeling.[85] The
favourite subject of the _cantiga de amigo_ is that the cruel mother
prevents the lovers from meeting. The daughter is kept in the house:
_a manda muito guardar_ (C. V. 535). She reproaches and entreats her
mother, who answers her as choir to choir; she bewails her lot to her
friends, or to her sister. She is dying of love and begs her mother to
tell her lover. Her mother and lover are reconciled. Her lover is false
and fails to meet her at the trysted hour. She waits for him in vain,
and her mother comforts her in her distress. She pines and dies of
love while her _amigo_ is away serving the king in battle or _en cas’
del rei_.
The third section of the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ does not sin by
monotony. We may divide Pope’s line, since if the _cantigas de amor_
are ‘correctly cold’ many of the satiric poems are ‘regularly low’.
In these verses, containing violent invective and abuse (_cantigas de
maldizer_) or more covert sarcasm and ridicule (_cantigas d’escarnho_),
the themes are often scandalous, the language ribald and unseemly. They
were written with great zest, although without the fiery indignation
of the Provençal and Catalan _sirventeses_. They are concerned with
persons: the haughty _trobador_ may take a _jogral_ to task for writing
verses that do not rhyme or scan, but even then it is a personal matter
and he rebukes his insolence for daring to raise his thoughts to _altas
donas_ in song. Some of these poems should never have been written or
printed, but many of them give a lively idea of the society of that
time. They laugh merrily or venomously at the poverty-stricken knight
with nothing to eat; at the knight who set his dogs on those who called
near dinner-time; the _jogral_ who knows as much of poetry as an ass of
reading; the poet who pretended to have gone as a pilgrim to the Holy
Land but never went beyond Montpellier; the physician (Mestre Nicolas)
whose books were more for show than for use (_E sab’ os cadernos ben
cantar quen[86] non sabe por elles leer_, C. V. 1116); the Galician
unjustifiably proud of his poetical talent (_non o sabia ben_, C. V.
914); the _jogral_ who gave up poetry--shaved off his beard and cut
his hair short about his ears--in order to take holy orders, in hope
of a fat living, but was disappointed; the _jogral_ who played badly
and sang worse; the poet who was the cause of good poetry in others;
the gentleman who spent most of his income on clothes and wore gilt
shoes winter and summer. We read of the excellent capon, kid, and pork
provided by the king for dinner; of the fair _malmaridada_, married or
rather sold by her parents; of the impoverished lady, one of those for
whom later Nun’ Alvarez provided; of the poet pining in exile not of
love but hunger; of the lame lawyer, the unjust judge; the _parvenu
villão_, the knighted tailor, the seers and diviners (_veedeiros_,
_agoreiros_, _divinhos_). These _cantigas d’escarnho e de maldizer_
were a powerful instrument of satire from which there was no escape. A
hapless _infançon_, slovenly in his ways, drew down upon himself the
wit of D. Lopo Diaz, who in a series of eleven songs (C. V. 945-55)
ridiculed him and his creaking saddle till at Christmas he was fain to
call a truce. But the implacable D. Lopo forthwith indited a new song:
‘I won’t deny that I agreed to a truce about the saddle, but--it didn’t
include the mare’,[87] and so no doubt continued till _pascoa florida_
or _la trinité_. But the majority of these verses are not so innocently
merry. Many of the poets of the _Cancioneiros_ wrote in all three
kinds: _cantigas de amor_, _de amigo_, and _de maldizer_. Of JOAN DE
GUILHADE[88] (fl. 1250) we have over fifty poems.[89] He imitated both
French and Provençal models, and, having learnt lightness of touch from
them, would appear to have contented himself with writing _cantigas
de amigo_ (besides _cantigas de amor_ and _escarnho_) without having
recourse to the _cossante_. There is life and poetical feeling as well
as facility of technique in his poems.
PERO GARCIA DE BURGOS (fl. 1250) is, with Joan de Guilhade, one of
the more voluminous writers of the _Cancioneiros_. He shows himself
capable of deep feeling in his love songs, but speaks with two voices,
descending to sad depths in his poems of invective. His contemporary,
the _segrel_ PERO DA PONTE, is also an accomplished poet of love, in
the even flow of his verse far more accomplished than Pero Garcia,
and in his satirical poems wittier and, as a rule, more moderate.
He placed his poetical gift at the service of kings to sing their
praises for hire, and celebrated San Fernando’s conquest of Seville
in 1248; Seville, of which, he says, ‘none can adequately tell the
praises’. To satire almost exclusively the powerful courtier of King
Dinis’ reign, STEVAM GUARDA, devoted his not inconsiderable talent,
and the _segrel_ PEDR’ AMIGO DE SEVILHA (fl. 1250) shone in the same
kind with a great variety of metre as well as in numerous _cantigas
de amigo_. MARTIN SOAREZ (first half 13th c.), born at Riba de Lima,
and considered the best _trobador_ of his time (by those who could not
appreciate the charm of the indigenous poetry), wrote no _cossante_ nor
_cantiga de amigo_, and in his satirical poems displayed a contemptuous
insolence--towards those whom he regarded as his inferiors in lineage
or talent--which places him in no attractive light. A notable poet
at the Courts of Spain and Portugal was JOAN AIRAS of Santiago de
Compostela (fl. 1250), of whom we have over twenty _cantigas de amor_
and fifty _cantigas de amigo_. Contemporary criticism apparently viewed
their quantity with disfavour,[90] for he complains that _Dizen que
meus cantares non valen ren porque tan muitos son_ (C. V. 533). But if
his poems lack the variety of those of King Dinis, which they almost
rival in number, they are nevertheless marked not only by harmony but
by many a touch of real life. Of most of the other singers we have far
fewer poems. Like Meendinho and Estevam Coelho, PERO VYVYÃES (first
half 13th c.) is known chiefly for a single song: his _bailada_ (C. V.
336). By D. JOAN SOAREZ COELHO (_c._ 1210-80) there are two _cossantes_
(C. V. 291, 292) and numerous other poems. He was prominent at the
Court of Afonso III (1248-79) and in the conquest of Algarve, as was
also D. JOAN DE ABOIM (_c._ 1215-87), whose poems are less numerous
but include a dozen _cantigas de amigo_ and a _pastorela_ (C. V. 278:
_Cavalgava noutro dia per hun caminho frances_), and FERNAN GARCIA
ESGARAVUNHA,[91] whose _cantigas de amor_ show characteristic life
and vigour, and a good command of metre. There is an engaging grace
and spirit in the _cantigas de amigo_ written in dancing rhythm by
FERNAN RODRIGUEZ DE CALHEIROS (fl. in or before 1250), who preceded
those soldier poets; deep feeling and melancholy in the _cantigas de
amor_ of D. JOAN LOPEZ DE ULHOA, their contemporary. Neither of these,
however, possessed the poetical genius and versatility of the priest
of Santiago, AIRAS NUNEZ (second half 13th c.)--the name appears in a
marginal note to one of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C.
M. 223 in the manuscript j. b. 2)--whose poems show a perfect mastery
of rhythm and a true instinct for beauty. He wrote a _pastorela_ in
the manner of the _trouvères_, and combined it with some of the most
exquisite specimens of the indigenous poetry.[92] The fact that one
of these was by Joan Zorro makes it probable that Nunez’ celebrated
_bailada_ (C. V. 462) is but a development of Zorro’s (C. V. 761),
unless both drew from a common popular source. Another of his poems
(C. V. 468) reads like an anticipatory slice out of Juan Ruiz’ _Libro
de Buen Amor_. Great importance has been attached to another (C. V.
466) as a remnant of a _cantar de gesta_, but D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos has shown that it was written to commemorate a
contemporary event, probably in 1289.[93] More than any other poet of
the _Cancioneiros_, with the exception, perhaps, of King Dinis, Nunez
anticipated that _doce estylo_, the introduction of which cost Sá de
Miranda so many perplexities.
The _Cancioneiros_ contain poems by high and low, prince and, one would
fain say, peasant, noble _trobador_ and humble _jogral_, soldiers
and civilians, priests and laymen, singers of Galicia, Portugal, and
Spain, but more especially of Galicia and North Portugal. As in the
case of C. V. 466, the interest of many of the poems is historical:
C. V. 1088, for instance, written by a partisan of the dethroned King
Sancho II; or C. V. 1080, a _gesta de maldizer_ of fifty-six lines in
three rhymes, with the exclamation _Eoy!_ at the change of the rhyme,
which was written by D. AFONSO LOPEZ DE BAYAN (_c._ 1220-80), clearly
in imitation of the _Chanson de Roland_.[94] Almost equally prominent,
though not from any historical associations, is the curiously modern
C. A. 429 (= C. C. B. 314) among the _cantigas de amor_. It tells
of a girl forced against her will to enter a convent, and who says
to her lover: ‘My dress may be religious, but God shall not have my
heart.’ (For the metre, cf. C. V. 342.) Its author was the _fidalgo_
D. RODRIG’ EANEZ DE VASCONCELLOS, one of the pre-Dionysian poets. But
indeed no further proofs are needed to show that, even had King Dinis
never existed, the contents of the early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_
would have been remarkable for their variety and beauty. When Alfonso
X died his grandson DINIS (1261-1325)[95] had sat for five years on
the throne of Portugal. Plentifully educated by a Frenchman, Ayméric
d’Ébrard, afterwards Bishop of Coimbra, married to a foreign princess,
Isabel of Aragon (the Queen-Saint of Portugal), profoundly impressed,
no doubt, by the world-fame of Alfonso X, to whom he was sent on a
diplomatic mission when not yet in his teens, he became nevertheless
one of the most national of kings. If he imitated Alfonso X in his love
of literature, he showed himself a far abler and firmer sovereign,
being more like a rock than like the sea, to which the poet compared
Alfonso. Far-sighted in the conception of his plans and vigorous in
their execution, the _Rei Lavrador_, whom Dante mentions, though not
by name: _quel di Portogallo_ (_Paradiso_ xix), fostered agriculture,
increased his navy, planted pine-forests, fortified his towns, built
castles and convents and churches, and legislated for the safety of the
roads and for the general welfare and security of his people. Among his
great and abiding services to his country was the foundation of the
first Portuguese University in the year 1290, and in the same spirit
he ordered the translation of many notable books from the Spanish,
Latin, and Arabic into Portuguese prose, including the celebrated
works of the Learned King, so that it is truer of prose than of poetry
to say that he inaugurated a golden age.[96] Had he written no line
of verse his name must have been for ever honoured in Portugal as
the real founder of that imperishable glory which was fulfilled two
centuries later. But he also excelled as a poet, _d’amor trobador_. It
had no doubt been part of his education to write conventionally in the
Provençal manner, but his skill in versification, remarkable even in
an age in which Portuguese poetry had attained exceptional proficiency
in technique, would have availed him, or at least us, little had he
not also possessed an instinct for popular themes, perhaps directly
encouraged by Alfonso X. The _Declaratio_ placed by Guiraut Riquier of
Narbonne on the lips of that king in 1275 marked the coming asphyxia of
Provençal poetry, for it showed the tendency to take the _jogral_[97]
away from tavern and open air and to cut off his poetry from the life
of the people. It was owing to the personal encouragement of Dinis that
the waning star of both Provençal and indigenous poetry continued to
shine in Portugal for another half-century. The grandson of Alfonso X
was the last hope of the _trobadores_ and _jograes_ of the Peninsula.
From Leon and Castille and Aragon they came to reap an aftermath of
song and _panos_ at his Court, and after his death remained silent or
unpaid (C. V. 708). The poems of King Dinis are not only more numerous
but far more various than those of any other _trobador_, with the
exception of Alfonso X, and it may perhaps be doubted whether they are
all the work of his own hand. In poetry’s old age he might well wish to
collect specimens of various kinds for his _Livro de Trovas_. But many
of the 138 poems[98] that we possess under his name are undoubtedly
his, and display a characteristic force and sincerity as well as true
poetic delicacy and power. Among them are some colourless _cantigas
de amor_ and others more individual in tone, _pastorelas_ (C. V. 102,
137, 150), _cantigas de amigo_ (more Provençal than Portuguese in their
spirit of vigorous reproach are C. V. 186: _Amigo fals’ e desleal_,
and C. V, 198: _Ai fals’ amigo e sen lealdade_), a jingle worthy of
the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. V. 136), a poem in 8.8.4.8 metre
(C. V. 131), _atafiindas_ (e. g. C. V. 130), a _mordobre_ in _querer_
(C. V. 113, _Quix ben, amigos, e quer’ e querrei Ũa molher que me
quis e quer mal E querrá_), and _cossantes_ of an unmistakably popular
flavour: _Ay flores, ay flores do verde pino_ (C. V. 171), two _albas_
(C. V. 170, 172), C. V. 168, 169, with their refrains _louçana_ and
_ai madre, moiro d’amor_, C. V. 173 with its quaint charm: _Vede-la
frol do pinho--Valha Deus_, and the _bailada-cossante_ (C. V. 195: _Mia
madre velida, Voum’ a la bailia Do amor_). If the king wrote these
_cossantes_ he must be reckoned not only as a musical and skilful
versifier but as a great poet. And certainly, at least, his _graciosas
e dulces palavras_ well earned him the reputation of being not only the
best king but the best poet of his time in the Peninsula.
It would seem that, unlike his grandfather, who had begun with
profane and ended with religious verse, King Dinis, no doubt at his
grandfather’s bidding, who would be delighted to find a disciple
(_Dized’, ai trobadores, A Sennor das Sennores Por que a non loades?_),
began writing songs in honour of the Virgin and sent them to the
Castilian king. His book of _Louvores da Virgem Nossa Senhora_ is said
to have been seen in the Escorial Library and in the Lisbon Torre do
Tombo, and it is impossible altogether to set aside the statements
of Duarte Nunez de Leam[99] and Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, who says
that he read religious poems by King Dinis at the Escorial.[100] On
the other hand, it must be remembered that it was the common opinion
that King Dinis had been the first to write Portuguese poetry, and
the temptation to attribute ancient poems to him would be strong. The
possibility of confusion with the _Livro de Cantigas_ of Alfonso X
(to which his grandson may well have contributed poems)[101] is also
obvious. But the statement of Sousa de Macedo, who was no passing
traveller in a hurry, and who had wide experience of books and
libraries,[102] is very precise. No trace or
memory of the existence of this manuscript exists, however, at
the Escorial Library, nor is to be found in the _Catálogo de los
Manuscritos existentes antes del incendio de 1671_. The subjects of
King Dinis’ ten[103] satirical poems are trivial, but he had too much
force of character to descend to such vilenesses as were common among
_profaçadores_. (His concise definition of a bore: _falou muit’ e mal_
(C. C. B. 411) is worthy of Afonso de Albuquerque.) Of his illegitimate
sons, besides D. Afonso Sanchez, D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos, long had
a reputation as a poet almost equal to that of his father, owing to the
association of his name with the _Cancioneiro_; but of his ten poems
six (C. V. 1037-42) are satirical, and the four _cantigas de amor_ (C.
V. 210-13) are perhaps the heaviest and most prosaic in the collection.
It was as a prose-writer and editor of the _Livro de Linhagens_ that he
worthily carried on the literary tradition of King Dinis.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] Antonio de Vasconcellos, _Anacephalaeoses, id est Svmma Capita
Actorum Regum Lusitaniae_ (Antverpiae, 1621), p. 79.
[69] See also C. V. B., pp. xcv-vi.
[70] An English Crusader writing from Lisbon speaks of _inter hos tot
linguarum populos_ (_Crucesignati Anglici Epistola de Expugnatione
Olisiponis_, A.D. 1147).
[71] _Colección de Poesías Castellanas_ (1779), vol. i, p. lvii. The
important passages of Santillana’s letter have been so often quoted
that the reader may be referred to them, e.g. in the _Grundriss_, p.
168.
[72] Milá y Fontanals (_De los Trobadores_, p. 522) lays much stress on
the resemblance between Galician and Provençal.
[73] It must be remembered that in the early thirteenth century (1213)
the range of the Galician-Portuguese lyric already extended to Navarre
(C. V. 937).
[74] Guiraut Riquier and Nat de Mons placed Provençal poems on his
lips, which may be taken as an indication that he also wrote in
Provençal. As proof that he wrote poems in Castilian we have a single
_cantiga_ of eight lines (C. C. B. 363: _Señora por amor dios_). The
other poem of the _Cancioneiros_ in Castilian (with traces of Galician)
is by the victor of Salado, Alfonso XI (1312-50), King of Castille and
Leon: _En un tiempo cogi flores_ (C. V. 209).
[75] Their antiquarian interest was recognized over three centuries
ago. Cf. Argote de Molina, _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (Seuilla, 1588), f.
151 v.: _es un libro de mucha curiosidad assi por la poesia como por
los trages de aquella edad ̃q se veen en sus pinturas_.
[76] Some of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas_ were recited in the same way. C.
M. 172 implies this in the lines:
Et d’esto cantar fezemos
Que cantassen os iograres
And of this we made a song for the _joglares_ to sing.
[77] Their popular origin is borne out by the music. See H. Collet et
L. Villalba, _Contribution à l’étude des Cantigas_ (1911). Cf. also P.
Meyer, _Types de quelques chansons de Gautier de Coinci_ (_Romania_,
vol. xvii (1888), pp. 429-37): _paroles pieuses à des mélodies
profanes_.
[78] Padre Nobrega came upon a crowd of _pobres pedintes peregrinos_ at
Santiago feasting merrily and having _grandes contendas entre si_ as to
which of them was cleverest at taking people in. The trick of one of
them was to declare that, being captive in Turkey, _encommendando-me
muito á Senhora ... achei-me ao outro dia ao romper da alva em terra
de Christãos_ (Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica_, Lib. I, § 22). Cf.
Jeronymo de Mendoça, _Jornada de Africa_, 1904 ed., ii. 34, and Frei
Luis de Sousa, _Hist. de S. Domingos_, I. i. 5.
[79] i. e. besides the Spanish _cantiga_ (C. C. B. 363), C. C. B. 359,
which belongs to the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, and C. C. B. 372, which
consists of a single line.
[80] _El Rei aia tres jograes en sa casa e non mais._
[81] Riquier’s _segriers per totas cortz_ (King Alfonso X (C. M. 194)
speaks of a _jograr andando pelas cortes_). See also C. V. 556. The
word probably has no connexion with _seguir_ (to follow). Possibly
it was used originally to differentiate singers of profane songs,
_cantigas profanas e seculares_. Frei João Alvarez in his _Cronica do
Infante Santo_ has ‘obras ecclesiasticas e _segrãaes_’; King Duarte
counted among _os pecados da boca_ ‘cantar cantigas _sagraaes_’, The
_Cancioneiros_ show that the _segrel_ was far less common than the
_jogral_ in the thirteenth century. For _segre_ (= _saeculum_) see
_infra_, p. 93, n. 2.
[82] For instances see H. R. Lang, _The Relations of the Earliest
Portuguese Lyric School with the Troubadours and Trouvères_ (_Modern
Language Notes_ (April, 1895), pp. 207-31), and C. D. L., pp. xlviii et
seq.
[83] This poet, Fernam Gonçalvez de Seabra or Fernant Gonzalez de
Sanabria (C. V. 338; C. C. B. 330-7; C. A. 210-21, 445-7), apparently
obtained some fame by his mystification, unless the object of his
devotion was as high-placed as the Portuguese princess for love of
whom, according to legend, D. Joan Soarez de Paiva died in Galicia.
The latter wrote in the first years of the thirteenth century (C.
V. 937, _Randglosse_ xi). They are the only two Galician-Portuguese
poets--besides King Dinis--mentioned in Santillana’s letter.
[84] _Poetica_, ll. 126, 130. Much of the information of this _Poetica_
(printed in C. C. B.) may be gleaned from the _Cancioneiros_, but it
shows how carefully the different kinds of poem were distinguished.
There were apparently special names for poems to trick and deceive: _de
logr’ e d’arteiro_, and for festive laughter poems: _de risadelha_ (or
_refestela_?) = _de riso e mote_. Santillana’s _mansobre_ is, it seems,
a misprint for _mordobre_. It occurs again in the _Requesta de Ferrant
Manuel contra Alfonso Alvarez_ (_Canc. de Baena_, 1860 ed., i. 253):
Sin lai, sin deslai, sin cor, sin descor.
Sin dobre, mansobre, sensilla o menor.
Sin encadenado, dexar o prender.
[85] e. g. C. V. 300: _Por Deus, se ora, se ora chegasse Con el mui
leda seria._
[86] _q’coi_ (C. V. M.), _qual cór_ (C. V. B.). D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos proposes _quiça_ (cf. C. V. 1006, I. 8).
[87] _Aqueste cantar da egoa que non andou na tregoa_ (C. V. 956).
[88] Or D. Joan Garcia de Guilhade. See C. A. M. V. ii. 407-15.
[89] C. V. 28-38, 343-61, 1097-1110; C. A. 235-9; C. C. B. 373-6.
[90] A large number of _cantigas_ by the same hand would emphasize the
monotony of the kind and provide an unwelcome mirror for contemporary
bards. Of Roy Queimado (fl. 1250) other love-lorn poets said that he
was always dying of love--in verse.
[91] Soares de Brito in his _Theatrum_ mentions ‘Ferdinandus Garcia
_Esparavanha_, optimus poeta’ (= _bom trovador_).
[92] See p. 31.
[93] See _Randglosse_ xii. An incidental interest belongs to this poem
of eighteen dodecasyllabic lines from the fact that in C. V. B. it is
printed in thirty-six lines, as a proof of the early predominance of
the _redondilha_.
[94] Cf. the Provençal passage in Milá y Fontanals, _De los
Trobadores_, p. 62.
[95] He thus overlapped Dante’s life by four years at either end.
[96] T. A. Craveiro, _Compendio_ (1833), cap. 5: _D. Diniz trouxe a
idade de ouro a Portugal_.
[97] A late echo of the early (Alfonso X) legislation against the
_jogral_ is to be found in King Duarte’s _Leal Conselheiro_, cap. 70:
_Dos Pecados da Obra_. These include _dar aos jograaees_. Nunez de Leam
translates _joglar_ as _truão_ (1606).
[98] C. V. 80-208 (= C. D. L. 1-75, 77-128, 76) and C. C. B. 406-15 (=
C. D. L. 129-38). C. V. 116 = C. V. 174.
[99] _Cronica del Rei D. Diniz_, 1677 ed., f. 113 v.
[100] _Mandou hum livro delles escrito por sua mão a seu avò ... o
qual eu vi na livraria do Real Convento do Escurial, em folha de papel
grosso, de marca pequena, volume de tres ou quatro dedos de alto, de
letra grande, latina, bem legivel, e o que ly era de Louvores a Nossa
Senhora, e outras cousas ao divino_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., pp. 128-9).
This interesting passage is not included in those quoted in C. A. M.
V. ii. 112-17; it is obviously the source of no. 17. It does not imply
that the poems were exclusively religious. Can the book three or four
fingers in height have been the _Canc. da Ajuda_ (460 millimètres) from
which a section of sacred poems may have been torn? If so the letters
_Rey Dõ Denis_ (C. A. M. V. i. 141) would explain the attribution to
King Dinis.
[101] The language of C. M. and the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ was of
course the same. Identical phrases occur.
[102] He twice visited Oxford, he says, in order to see the library,
which he describes--_hũa das grandes cousas do mundo_ (_Eva e Ave_,
1676 ed., p. 156). At the Escorial he also examined an original
manuscript of St. Augustine (ibid., p. 150).
[103] C. C. B. 406-15.
II
1325-1521
§ 1
_Early Prose_
With prose a new period opens, since, although there are Portuguese
documents of the late twelfth century[104] and the Latin chrysalis
was in an advanced stage of development even earlier, prose as a
literary instrument does not begin before the fourteenth century or
the end of the thirteenth at the earliest. The fragments of an early
_Poetica_[105] clearly show how slow and awkward were still the
movements of prose at a time when poetry had attained an exceedingly
graceful expression. The next two centuries redressed the balance in
the favour of prose. The victory of Aljubarrota (1385) made it possible
to carry on the national work begun by King Dinis--the preparation
of Portugal’s resources for a high destiny. In this constructive
process literature was not forgotten, and indeed its deliberate
encouragement, as though it were an industry or a pine-forest, may
account for the fact that it consisted mainly of prose--chronicles,
numerous translations from Latin, Spanish, and other languages, works
of religious or practical import. The first kings of the dynasty
of Avis, who rendered noble service to Portuguese literature, were
not poets, and in the second half of the fifteenth century Spanish
influence, checked at Aljubarrota, succeeded by peaceful penetration
in recovering all and more than all that it had lost, till it became
common to hear lyrics of Boscan sung in the streets of Lisbon,[106] and
uncommon for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.[107]
Prose was more national. King Dinis had encouraged translation into
Portuguese, and among other works his grandfather King Alfonso the
Learned’s _Cronica General_ was translated by his order. The only
edition that we have, _Historia Geral de Hespanha_ (1863), is cut short
in the reign of King Ramiro (cap. ccii, p. 192). The first ‘O’ of the
preface in the manuscript contains the king in purple robe and crown
of gold, pen in hand, with a book before him. The style is primitive,
often a succession of short sentences beginning with ‘And’.[108] In
the convents brief lives of saints, portions of the Bible, prayers and
regulations were written in Portuguese. Thus we have thirteenth-or
fourteenth-century fragments of the rules of S. Bento, _Fragmentos de
uma versão antiga da regra de S. Bento_, with its traces of a Latin
original (e. g. _os desprezintes Deos_ = _contemnentes Deum_); the
_Actos dos Apostolos_, written in the middle of the fifteenth century
by Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça and Frei Nicolao Vieira, that is, copied
by them from an older manuscript; the eloquent prayers (_Libro de
Horas_) translated by another Alcobaça monk, Frei João Claro (†1520?);
the _Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, printed from a
manuscript of the fourteenth century, or of the thirteenth retouched in
the fourteenth. The translation is close; the style foreshadows that of
the _Leal Conselheiro_. The importance of these and other fragmentary
versions of the Bible, in which there can rarely be a doubt as to the
meaning of the words, is obvious. Extracts from the _Vida de Eufrosina_
and the _Vida de Maria Egipcia_, published in 1882 by Jules Cornu from
the manuscripts formerly in the Monastery of Alcobaça, now in the
Torre do Tombo, show that they were written in vigorous if primitive
prose (14th c.). _A Lenda dos Santos Barlaam e Josaphat_ is perhaps
a little later (end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth
century). The _Visão de Tundalo_, of which the Latin original, _Visio
Tundali_, was written by Frei Marcos not long after the date of the
vision (1140), exists in two Portuguese versions, probably both of the
fifteenth century (Monastery of Alcobaça). The _Vida de Santo Aleixo_
also exists in two codices belonging to the middle and beginning of
the fifteenth century, and Dr. Esteves Pereira, who published the
latter, considers that the variants point to an earlier manuscript
of the beginning of the fourteenth or end of the thirteenth century.
To about the same period (14th-15th c.) belong the _Lenda de Santo
Eloy_, the _Vida de Santo Amaro_, the _Vida de Santa Pelagia_, and many
similar short devout treatises and legends which concern literature
less than the development of the Portuguese language. Both literature
and philology are interested in the early fifteenth-century work
printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos from the manuscript in the Vienna
_Hofbibliothek_: _O Livro de Esopo_, which consists not of direct
translations[109] from _Exopo greguo_ of Antioch but of _estorias
ffremosas de animalias_, told in the manner of Aesop, half a century
before William Caxton and Robert Henryson, with great naturalness,
vigour, and brevity.
The earliest entry of the _Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_ is
dated 1391, and both it and the _Cronicas Breves e memorias avulsas
de Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ are laconic annals of the first kings of
Portugal, a few lines covering a whole reign. The _Livro da Noa de
Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ is an extract from the _Livro das Heras_ of
the same convent, and is, as the latter title indicates, a similar
simple chronicle of events by years.[110] It begins in Latin, then
Latin and Portuguese entries alternate till 1405. From 1406 to the
end (1444) they are exclusively Portuguese. The _Cronica da Ordem
dos Frades Menores_ (1209-85) is a fifteenth-century Portuguese
translation of a fourteenth-century Latin chronicle, and has been
carefully edited by Dr. J. J. Nunes from the manuscript in the Lisbon
Biblioteca Nacional; the _Vida de D. Tello_ (15th c.), and the _Vida
de S. Isabel_, the Queen-consort of King Dinis (earlier 15th c.), are
‘historical’ biographies which contain more legend and less history
than the _Cronica da Fundaçam do Moesteiro de S. Vicente de Lixboa_
(_Cronica dos Vicentes_), a fifteenth-century version from a Latin
original, _Indiculum_, of the eleventh century. There is far more life
if equal brevity in the _Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_ (_Cronica de
como Dom Payo Correa. .. tomou este reino de Algarve aos Moros_)--a
rapid, vivid sketch which reads almost like a chapter out of Fernam
Lopez. Here at last was some one with will and power to make the
dry bones live.[111] But meanwhile history of another kind had been
written from a very early date. As a first rough catalogue of names
the _livros de linhagens_, books of descent, as they were called by
their compilers,[112] go back farther than the chronicles or religious
prose, but so far as concerns their claim to literary form they belong
like those to the fourteenth century. Of the four that have come down
to us the _Livro Velho_ is a jejune family register (11th-14th c.);
the second is a mere fragment of the same kind. The manuscript of the
third (_O Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_) was bound up with the
_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, and together with the fourth, _O Nobiliario
do Conde D. Pedro_, represents the lost original of the _Livro de
Linhagens_ of D. PEDRO, CONDE DE BARCELLOS (1289-1354). The _Nobiliario
do Conde_ has been shown by Alexandre Herculano, who printed it from
the manuscript in the Torre do Tombo, to be the work of various
authors extending over more than a century (13th-14th), the Conde de
Barcellos being but one of them. It was in fact compiled like a modern
peerage,[113] and was not intended to be final, new entries being added
as time made them necessary, so that the passage _diz O Conde D. Pedro
em seu livro_ is as natural as the mention of Innocencio da Silva in
a later volume of his great dictionary. But it was this son of King
Dinis who with infinite diligence searched for documents far and wide,
had recourse to the writings of King Alfonso X and others, and spared
no pains to give the work an historical as well as a genealogical
character. His researches (_Ouue de catar, he says, por gram trabalho
por muitas terras escripturas que fallauam das linhagens_) set an
excellent example to Fernam Lopez. Certainly the _Livro de Linhagens_
is a vast catalogue of names, with at most a brief note after the
name, as ‘he was a good priest’ or ‘a very good poet’; but it also
gives succinct stories of the Kings of the Earth from Adam, including
Priam, Alexander, Julius Caesar, and the early kings of Portugal, and
it contains rare but charming intervals, green oases of legend and
anecdote, such as the tale of King Lear with its happy ending, or the
account of King Ramiro going to see his wife, who was a captive of the
Moors.[114] Count Pedro, by his humanity and his generous conception
of what a genealogy should be, really made the book his own. It was
naturally consulted by the early chroniclers, its worth was recognized
by the ablest author of the _Monarchia Lusitana_,[115] and recently,
in the skilful hands of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, it
has rendered invaluable service in reconstructing the lives of the
thirteenth-century poets.[116]
The _Livro de Linhagens_ refers not only to King Lear but to Merlin,
King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Isle of Avalon. Many other allusions,
both earlier and later, to the Breton cycle, the _matière de Bretagne_,
are to be found in early Portuguese literature: to the lovers Tristan
and Iseult, to the _cantares de Cornoalha_,[117] to the chivalry of the
Knights of the Round Table. In the fourteenth century many in Portugal
were baptized with the name of Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival; and
Nun’ Alvarez (1360-1431) chose Galahad for his model, and came as near
realizing his ideal as may be given to mortal man. In Gil Vicente’s
time the name Percival had already descended to the sphere of the
peasants: as Passival (i. II) in 1502 (_Auto Pastoril Castelhano_) and
Pessival (i. 117) in 1534 (_Auto de Mofina Mendes_).
The early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ contain many references to
this cycle, and the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ opens with five
celebrated songs,[118] imitations of Breton _lais_, with rubrics
explaining their subjects, and mentioning King Arthur and Tristan,
Iseult, Cornwall, Maraot of Ireland, and Lancelot. Whether they were
incorporated in the _Cancioneiro_ from a Portuguese _Tristam_ earlier
than the Spanish version (1343?), or, as is more probable, directly
from the Old-French _Historia Tristani_, their presence here is a
sufficient witness to the Portuguese fondness for such themes. It was
but natural that a Celtic people living by the sea, delighting in
vague legends and in foreign novelties, should have felt drawn towards
these misty tales of love and wandering adventure, which carried
them west as far as Cornwall and Ireland, and also East, through the
search for the Holy Grail. It was natural that they should undergo
their influence earlier and more strongly than their more direct
and more national neighbours the Castilians, whose clear, definite
descriptions in the twelfth-century _Poema del Cid_ would send those
legends drifting back to the dim regions of their birth. (Even to-day
connexion with and sympathy for Ireland is far commoner in Galicia than
in any other part of Spain.) Unhappily, most of the early Portuguese
versions of the Breton legends have been lost. King Duarte in his
library possessed _Merlim_, _O Livro de Tristam_, and _O Livro de
Galaaz_. The probability that these were written in Portuguese, not in
Spanish, is increased by the survival of _A Historia dos Cavalleiros
da Mesa Redonda e da Demanda do Santo Graall_, as yet only partially
published from the manuscript (2594) in the Vienna _Hofbibliothek_.
It was written probably in the fourteenth century, perhaps at the end
of the thirteenth, although the Vienna manuscript is more recent and
belongs to the fifteenth century, in which the work was referred to
by the poet Rodriguez de la Cámara.[119] It is a Portuguese version
of the story of the Holy Grail, and, although not a continuous
translation, was evidently written with the French original (doubtfully
ascribed to Robert de Boron,[120] author of a different work on the
same subject) constantly in view. Traces of French remain in its
prose.[121] This was clearly part of a larger work,[122] perhaps of
a whole cycle of works dealing with the search for the Holy Grail.
The only others that we have in print are the _Estorea de Vespeseano_
and the _Livro de Josep ab Arimatia_, the manuscript of which was
discovered in the nineteenth century in the Torre do Tombo. This, in
the same way as the _Demanda do Santo Graall_, is a later (16th c.)
copy of a thirteenth-fourteenth-century Portuguese translation or
adaptation from the French, and retains in its language signs of French
origin. The incunable _Estorea de Vespeseano_ (Lixboa, 1496) is a work
in twenty-nine short chapters, which only incidentally[123] refers
to the Holy Grail, but recounts vividly the event mentioned in the
_Demanda_[124]: the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus.
It was also known formerly as _Destroyçam de Jerusalem_.[125] It is an
anonymous translation, made in the middle of the fifteenth century,
not from the French _Destruction de Jérusalem_, but from the Spanish
_Estoria del noble Vespesiano_ (_c._ 1485 and 1499). Dr. Esteves
Pereira believes that the 1499 Spanish edition is a retranslation from
the Portuguese text originally translated from the Spanish.
Tennyson’s revival of the Arthurian legend in England evoked no
corresponding interest in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and
the primitive and touching story as published in 1887 has left Sir
Percival in the very middle of an adventure for over a generation. The
descent of the Amadis romances from the noble ideal of chivalry of
King Arthur’s Court is obvious, but their exact pedigree, the date and
nationality of the first ancestor of the Amadis who is still with us,
has been the subject of some little contention.
_Amadis de Gaula_ has indeed been doubly fortunate. The successor
of Lancelot, Galahad, and Tristan as a fearless and loyal knight, he
early won his way in the Peninsula; he was spared by the priest and
barber in the _Don Quixote_ scrutiny, and now when Vives’ ‘pestiferous
books’,[126] those ‘serious follies’, are no longer read widely, he has
received a new span of immortality as a corpse of Patroclus between the
contending critics. The problem of the date and authorship has become
more fascinating than the book. Champions for Spain and Portugal come
forward armed for the fight: Braunfels, Gayangos, Baist are met by
Theophilo Braga, Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Marcelino Menéndez
y Pelayo, while Dr. Henry Thomas holds the scales. The ground is thick
with their arrows. And beneath them all lies the simple ingenuous
story as retold by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in or immediately after
1492 and published in 1508, still worth reading for its freshness and
for its clear good style, which Braunfels, following up the praise in
Juan de Valdés’ _Diálogo de la Lengua_ (_c._ 1535), declared could
not be a translation.[127] The argument, conclusive in the case of
the masterpiece of prose that is _Palmeirim_ _de Inglaterra_, loses
its force here, since Montalvo himself tells us that he corrected
the work from old originals. Naturally we are curious to know what
these _antiguos originales_ were, but the question did not arise in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: readers did not then concern
themselves greatly with the origin and authorship of a book; they were
content to enjoy it. Evidently _Amadis_ was enjoyed both in Spain and
Portugal. It is mentioned in the middle of the fourteenth century in
the Spanish translation, by Johan Garcia de Castrogeriz, of Egidio
Colonna’s _De regimine principum_, at the very time, that is, when
the Spanish poet and chronicler, Pero López de Ayala (1332-1407),
was reading _Amadis_ in his youth.[128] Half a century later, in the
last quarter of the fourteenth century, a poem by Pero Ferrus in the
_Cancionero de Baena_ refers to _Amadis_ as written in three books.
This is one of the most definite early references to _Amadis_, but of
course reference to the book by a Spaniard does not necessarily imply
that it was written in Spanish, and indeed some of the vaguer allusions
may refer to a French or Anglo-French original. The most frequent
Spanish references occur in the _Cancionero de Baena_, which was
compiled in the middle of the fifteenth century, at a period, that is,
which the last Galician lyrics written in Spain connected with the time
when all eyes were turned to Portuguese as the universal language of
Peninsular lyrics. Because the Portuguese language was used throughout
Spain in lyric poetry, it is sometimes argued as if the Portuguese had
no prose, could only sing. (The more real division was not between
verse and prose but between the Portuguese lyrical love literature and
the Spanish epic battle literature, and the early romances of chivalry,
although written in prose, belong essentially to the former.) The prose
rubrics of the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ and the _Poetica_ of the
_Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ are sufficient to dispel this delusion.
Whether this _Poetica_ be contemporary (13th c.) of the lyrics or
later (14th c.), it offers a striking contrast between the clumsiness
of its prose and the smooth perfection of the poetry for which it
theorizes. Miguel Leite Ferreira’s statement (1598) that _Amadis_ is
contemporary with the lyrics is therefore remarkable. He says that the
archaic (time of King Dinis) language of the two sonnets--_Bom Vasco
de Lobeira_ and _Vinha Amor pelo campo trebelhando_--written by his
father, Antonio Ferreira (1528-69), is the same as that in which Vasco
de Lobeira wrote _Amadis of Gaul_. We know that King Dinis encouraged
not only lyric poetry but also translations into Portuguese prose, but
all the early Portuguese prose works are assigned to the fourteenth,
not the thirteenth century. One of the earliest, the _Demanda do Santo
Graall_, the language of which bears a close relation to that of the
_Cancioneiros_, still belongs to the fourteenth century. Probably
the later development of prose misled Leite Ferreira into making
fourteenth-century prose contemporary with thirteenth-century verse.
The Infante whom he here on the strength of the passage in Montalvo’s
_Amadis_ identifies with the son of King Dinis, not with the earlier
Prince Afonso (_c._ 1265-1312), may as Infante have expressed dislike
of a certain incident (the treatment of Briolanja) in the already
well-known story, and his preference would be borne in mind when the
Portuguese version was written in his reign (1325-57). If the first
Peninsular version of _Amadis_ was composed in Portuguese in the
middle of the fourteenth century, it may have been eagerly read as a
novelty by López de Ayala. In the fourteenth century most Spaniards
read, a few wrote[129] Portuguese lyrics; and there seems to be no
reason why we should rigorously confine them to the reading of verse,
to the exclusion of Portuguese prose. There is no means of deciding
with certainty whether López de Ayala and Ferrus read _Amadis_ in
Spanish or in Portuguese, but there are inherent probabilities in
favour of Portuguese. No one without a thesis to support would deny
that, generally, the cycle of the Round Table, to which _Amadis_ is
so closely related, was more congenial to the Portuguese than to
the Spanish temperament, that the geographical position of Portugal
facilitated its introduction, and that, in the particular case of
_Amadis_, the style and subject of the work, certainly of the first
three books, are Portuguese rather than Spanish. Melancholy incidents,
sentimental phrases and tears occur on nearly every page. Some critics
even discern traces of Portuguese in the language.[130]
But if we admit that _Amadis_ was written _c._ 1350, who was its
author? It is noteworthy that while in Spanish it had been attributed
to many persons, in Portugal tradition has persistently hovered round
the name of Lobeira. Unfortunately the Lobeira authorship has given
far more trouble than that of prince, Jew, or saint in Spain. Zurara,
basing his statement on an earlier fifteenth-century authority,
in a perfectly genuine passage of his _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro
de Meneses_,[131] written in the middle of the fifteenth century,
ascribes _Amadis_ to Vasco de Lobeira. In the next century Dr. João
de Barros[132] (not the historian) and Leite Ferreira agree with
Zurara.[133] There was no reason why they should say Vasco rather
than Pedro or João. According to Nunez de Leam, Vasco de Lobeira was
knighted on the field of Aljubarrota (1385), according to Fernam Lopez
he was already a knight in 1383.[134] If he was not a young but an old
knight at Aljubarrota, it is just possible that he wrote the book
thirty-five years earlier, in the same way that the historian Barros
wrote _Clarimundo_ in his youth.
If he lived on through the reigns of Pedro I (1357-67) and Fernando
(1376-83), and acquired new distinction in battle in the reign
of the latter, this might account for Zurara’s assertion that he
wrote _Amadis_ in the reign of Fernando. But the chief obstacle
to the authorship of Vasco is the existence in the _Cancioneiro
Colocci-Brancuti_ (Nos. 230 and 232 A) of a song by Joan de Lobeira,
_Leonoreta, fin roseta_, which reappears with slight variations in
Montalvo’s _Amadis_ (Lib. II, cap. xi: _este villancico_). It would
seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote _Amadis_. Joan de Lobeira,[135]
or Joan Pirez Lobeira, flourished in the second half of the thirteenth
century, and so we have _Amadis_ dating not only from the reign of King
Dinis but from the first half of his reign. But does the existence of
the poem entail that of a prose romance? The early mention of Tristan,
e.g. by Alfonso X, does not necessarily imply the existence of a
thirteenth-century Peninsular _Tristan_ in prose. May we not accept
the poem, written in the stirring metre, dear to men of action, used
by Alfonso X (C. M. 300), as merely a proof of the popularity of the
story, fondness for an episode perhaps treated in greater detail in
the Anglo-French original than in Montalvo’s version? Certainly it is
in the highest degree improbable that a Spaniard, writing at the end
of the fifteenth century, should extract a poem from the Portuguese
_Cancioneiros_ and insert it in his prose; but the improbability
disappears if in the middle of the fourteenth century a Portuguese
(Vasco de Lobeira), perhaps drawn to the story by the poem of his
ancestor, incorporated it in his romance. The late Antonio Thomaz
Pires in 1904 discovered at Elvas the will of a João de Lobeira,
_mercador_, who died there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s
latest opinion[136] there were three Portuguese versions of _Amadis_:
that of the father, this João de Lobeira, written in the time of King
Dinis (a long-lived race these Lobeiras!), that of the son,[137] Vasco,
and a third by Pedro de Lobeira in the first half of the fifteenth
century. The threefold authorship of this family heirloom is even more
_cruu de creer_ than the theory that a single Lobeira--Vasco--wrote it
in the middle of the fourteenth century. A certain note of disapproval
of _Amadis_ as fabulous, shared by Portuguese and Spanish writers,[138]
perhaps indicates a fairly late date: its irresponsible fiction would
be less excusable if it was written in an age which was beginning to
attach serious importance to _nobiliarios_ and ‘true’ chronicles.
Moreover, if the Portuguese adaptation of an Anglo-French legend had
been even remotely as developed as the form in which we now have
it, the Infante Afonso must have seen at once that the faithfulness
of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But especially the
fact that the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, familiar with Tristan and
the _matière de Bretagne_, are silent on the subject of _Amadis_ is
significant.
In Gottfried Baist’s argument, based on a rigid division between
early lyric poetry (as Portuguese) and early prose (as Spanish), the
Leonoreta lyric, far from being a stumbling-block, is actually a
sign of the Spanish origin of _Amadis_: as a fragment (14th c.) of a
prose _Tristan_ exists in Spanish, and five Portuguese Tristan _lais_
figure in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, so the Leonoreta poem
belongs to a Spanish _Amadis_ in prose. But although the priority and
relations of early Portuguese and Spanish prose works are intricate
and have not yet been thoroughly studied, it is clear that in many
cases versions have been more carefully preserved in conservative
Spain, while the Portuguese through neglect, fire, and earthquake have
perished, and also that the natural tendency and development of prose,
in view of the growing power of Castille and the greater pliancy of
the Portuguese, was from Portuguese to Spanish, not from Spanish to
Portuguese. And in one instance at least we have an early Portuguese
prose work of the first importance, the _Demanda do Santo Graall_,
which with its gallicisms can by no stretch of imagination be accounted
a version from the Spanish. It is plainly legitimate to hold that
the story of Amadis was first reduced to book form in the Peninsula
in precisely the same way as was the story of Galahad, i.e. as a
fourteenth-century Portuguese adaptation with the French text in view.
Nicholas d’Herberay des Essarts, we know, claimed to have discovered
fragments of _Amadis en langage picard_, Jorge Cardoso (1606-69)
declared that Pero Lobeira translated _Amadis_ from the French,[139]
and Bernardo Tasso, whose _Amadigi_ appeared in 1560, believed (_non
è dubbio_) _Amadis_ to be derived _da qualche istoria di Bretagna_.
Nor would the Portuguese, for all their familiarity with the story and
topography of the Breton cycle, be likely to compose original works
dealing with Vindilisora (Windsor) or Bristoya (Bristol). Unhappily,
however deep may be our conviction (a conviction which stands in no
need of antedating Hebrew versions of the 1508 _Amadis_) that the
Peninsular _Amadis_ was originally Portuguese, it has now ceased to
belong to Portuguese literature; another instance, if we may beg the
question, of the gravitation to Spain. The Portuguese text, of which
a copy, according to Leite Ferreira, existed in the library of the
Duques de Aveiro in the sixteenth century (1598), and, according to
the Conde da Ericeira, in the library of the Condes de Vimieiro in the
seventeenth (1686), is still missing, as it was in 1726.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] Portuguese is then _uma lingua coherente, clara, um instrumento
perfeito para a expressão do pensamento, cuja maior plasticidade
dependerá apenas da cultura litteraria_, F. Adolpho Coelho, _A Lingua
Portugueza_ (1881), p. 87.
[105] See _supra_, p. 48.
[106] See p. 160.
[107] Cf. for the seventeenth century Galhegos’ preface and _Mon.
Lusit._ V. xvi. 3: _achandose neste reino poucos que escrevão versos e
não seja na lingua estranjeira de Castilla_.
[108] e. g. _E matou a grande serpente dallagoa de lerne que auja sete
cabeças. E persegujo as pias filhas de finees que lhe aujã odio e o
queriã desherdar. E foy cõ jaasson o que adusse o velloso dourado da
ylha de colcos. E destroyu troya_, &c.
[109] Cf. _Por este exemplo este doutor nos mostra_, or _este poeta
nos dá ensinamento_, &c. The Fables of Aesop were translated into
Portuguese prose by Manuel Mendez, a schoolmaster at Lagos (Algarve):
_Vida e Fabulas do Insigne Fabulador Grego Esopo_. Evora, 1603.
[110] e. g. of an earthquake: _Era de mil e quatrocentos e quatro
desoito dias do mez de Junho tremeo a terra ao serão muy rijamente e
foi por espaço que disserom o Pater tres vezes._
[111] The _Cronica Troyana_, edited in 1900 by the Spanish
scholar and patient investigator D. Andrés Martínez Salazar, is a
fourteenth-century Galician version of Benoît de Saint-More’s _Roman de
Troie_.
[112] The name _Nobiliario_ is one of the erudite words which in
the sixteenth century, here as in so many other cases, ousted the
indigenous.
[113] Its object was _por saberem os homens fidalgos de Portugal de
qual linhagem vem e de quaes coutos, honras, mosteiros e igreias som
naturaes_.
[114] His successful wile is similar to the stratagem in _Macbeth_: _e
pois que a nave entrou pela foz cobrío-a de panos verdes em tal guisa
que cuidassem que eram ramos, ca entonce o Douro era cuberto de hũa
parte e da outra darvores_.
[115] _A escritura de maior utilidade que temos em Espanha_ (Frei
Francisco Brandão, _Mon. Lus._ V. xvii. 5).
[116] i. e. the copy printed in _Portug. Mon. Hist._ from the only
existing manuscript (= the copy by Gaspar Alvarez de Lousada Machado
(1554-1634) in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo).
[117] The ‘songs of Cornwall’ are mentioned in C. V. 1007. Cf. 1140.
[118] See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, ii.
479-525. They are called _lais_, _layx_ (C. C. B. 7, 8).
[119] _En la grand demanda de Santo Greal Se lee._ _Gral_ is still a
common Portuguese word (= _almofariz_, a mortar).
[120] ruberte de borem is mentioned, 1887 ed., p. 44.
[121] Not to speak of _certas_, _onta_, _febre_ (= _faible_), _a voso
sciente_, which may be found in other Portuguese works of the fifteenth
century, _san_ (p. 136 _ad fin._) apparently = Fr. _s’en_.
[122] Cf. _asi como o conto a ja deuisado_ (1887 ed., p. 7).
[123] 1905 ed., p. 95.
[124] 1887 ed., p. 43: _despois uespesiom os eyxerdou e os destruio_.
[125] 1905 ed., pp. 17, 23, 106.
[126] _De Institutione Christianae Feminae_, Bk. I, cap. 5: ‘Tum et de
pestiferis libris cuiusmodi sunt in Hispania [= the whole Peninsula],
Amadisius, Splandianus, Florisandus, Tirantus, Tristanus, quarum
ineptiarum nullus est finis; quotidie prodeunt novae: Caelistina
laena, nequitiarum parens, carcer amorum: in Gallia Lancilotus a Lacu,
Paris et Vienna, Ponthus et Sydonia, Petrus Provincialis et Magelona,
Melusina, domina inexorabilis: in hac Belgica Florius et Albus Flos,
Leonella et Cana morus, Curias et Floreta, Pyramus et Thisbe’ (_Ioannis
Ludovici Vivis Valentini Opera Omnia_, 7 vols., Valentiae Edetanorum,
1782-8, iv. 87). A Portuguese _Tristan_ may have existed, a Portuguese
original of _Tirant lo Blanch_ less probably, although Pedro Juan
Martorell, who began it in the Valencian or Lemosin _a ii de Giner de
lany 1460_, declares that he had not only translated it from English
into Portuguese but (_mas encara_) from Portuguese into Valencian. He
dedicated it to the _molt illustre Princep_ Ferdinand of Portugal. Very
probably the fame and origin of _Amadis_ accounted for this ‘English’
original, as mythical as the Hungarian origin of _Las Sergas de
Esplandian_, and for its alleged translation into Portuguese.
[127] Braunfels, _Versuch_: ‘Montalvo hatte, um einer Uebersetzung
den Ruhm des mustergiltigen Styls und des reinsten Kastilianisch zu
verschaffen, ein Geist ersten Rangs sein müssen, was er nicht war.’
Montalvo was probably not the real author even of the fourth book.
The words (in this _Prólogo_ of his _Amadis_), _que hasta aquí no es
memoria de ninguno ser visto_, refer not to the fourth book but to
Montalvo’s _Sergas de Esplandian_, which is conveniently replaced by
dots in T. Braga, _Questões_ (1881), p. 99, and _Hist. da Litt. Port._,
i (1909), p. 313, and which the priest in _Don Quixote_ properly
consigned to the flames.
[128] His connexion with Portugal was not voluntary. It was probably
when he was a prisoner after the battle of Aljubarrota (1385) that he
wrote the _Rimado de Palacio_, in which (st. 162) _Amadis_ is mentioned.
[129] For the later writers of Galician (second half 14th c.) see
Professor Lang’s _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_ (1902).
[130] _Lua_ (glove), _cedo_, &c., of course occur in early Spanish
prose. _Soledad_ certainly occurs in the first three books more
frequently than in other Spanish prose. The Portuguese atmosphere is
altogether absent in _Las Sergas_.
[131] Cap. 63: _o Livro d’Amadis, como quer que soomente este fosse
feito a prazer de hum homem que se chamava Vasco Lobeira em tempo d’El
Rey Dom Fernando, sendo todalas cousas do dito Liuro fingidas do Autor._
[132] _Libro das Antiguidades_ (1549), f. 32 v.: _E daqui_ [_do Porto_]
_foi natural uasco lobeira ̃q fez os primʳᵒˢ 4 libros de amadis, obra
certo muj subtil e graciosa e aprouada de todos os gallantes, mas
comos_ [so] _estas couzas se secão em nossas mãos os Castelhanos lhe
mudarão a linguoagem e atribuirão a obra assi_ [so]. This passage is,
however, absent in the earliest manuscript. The spelling _couzas_
implies a late date for its introduction.
[133] So did Faria e Sousa, but he, too, had his Lobeira doubts, and
after noting that Vasco de Lobeira was knighted by King João I says:
‘si ya no es que era otro del mismo nombre. Pero la Escritura de Amadis
se tiene por del tiempo deste Rey don Iuan’ (_Fvente de Aganipe_
(Madrid, 1646), § 10). The obvious sympathy of the author for the
_escudero viejo_ who is knighted in _Amadis_ (ii. 13, 14) amidst the
laughter of the Court ladies is perhaps significant.
[134] _Cronica de D. Fernando_, cap. 177. The year of his death, given
as 1403, is quite uncertain. Soares de Brito in the _Theatrum_ forms
no independent opinion: ‘Vascus de Lobeyra inter Lusitanos Scriptores
enumeratur a Faria.... Floruit tempore Fernandi Regis.’ Antonio
Sousa de Macedo, in _Flores de España_, also follows Faria: Vasco de
Lobeira _fué el primero que con gentil habilidad escribió libros de
caballerías_. Nicolás Antonio (1617-84), _Bib. Nov._, 1688 ed., ii.
322, says that Vasco de Lobeira _vulgo inter cives suos existimari
solet auctor celeberrimi inter famosa scripti_ Historia de Amadis
de Gaula ... _cuius laudes nos inter Anonymos curiose collegimus.
Ostendere autem Lusitanos Amadisium hunc Lusitane loquentem, uti
Castellani Castellanum ostendunt, ius et aequum esset in dubia re
ne verbis tantum agerent._ The challenge in the last sentence is of
interest, as coming in date between the two statements (by Leite
Ferreira and the Conde da Ericeira) asserting the existence of the
Portuguese text.
[135] There was a Canon of Santiago of this name in 1295, and he may
have come to the Portuguese Court on business concerning certain
privileges of the Chapter which King Dinis confirmed in 1324.
[136] _Hist. da Litt. Port._ i (1909).
[137] In the document the only son mentioned is named Gonçalo.
[138] Zurara, loc. cit., _cousas fingidas_; López de Ayala, _mentiras
probadas_. According to D. Francisco de Portugal (_Arte de Galantería_,
p. 146) such lies could only be written in Spanish (_en la Portuguesa
no se podía mentir tanto_). Portugal was writing in Spanish.
[139] _Agiologio Lusitano_, i (1652), p. 410: _E por seu mandado_ [of
the Infante Pedro, son of João I] _trasladou de Frances em a nossa
lingua Pero Lobeiro_ [so], _Tabalião d’Eluas, o liuro de Amadis._
§ 2
_Epic and Later Galician Poetry_
Some of the poems of the early _Cancioneiros_, as we have seen, have
an historical character, but they are all written from a personal
point of view. Portuguese history, with its heroic achievements such
as the conquest of Algarve, seems to have begun just too late to be
the subject of great anonymous epics, or rather the temperament of the
Portuguese people eschewed them. Of five poems, long believed to be the
earliest examples of Portuguese verse but no longer accepted by any
sane critic as genuine, only one belongs to epic poetry. This _Poema da
Cava_ or _da Perda de Espanha_ was an infant prodigy indeed, since it
was supposed to have been written (in _oitavas_) in the eighth century.
With a discretion passing that of Horace it kept itself from the world
not for nine but nine hundred years, and was first published in Leitão
de Andrada’s _Miscellanea_ (1629)[140]: _O rouço da Cava imprio de tal
sanha_, &c.
Of the four other spurious poems, two[141] were alleged to be love
letters of Egas Moniz Coelho, a cousin of the celebrated Egas Moniz
Coelho of the twelfth century; another, published by Bernardo de
Brito,[142] _Tinherabos nam tinherabos_, has a real charm as gibberish.
Fascination, of a different kind, attaches also to the fifth:
No figueiral figueiredo, no figueiral entrei:
Tres niñas encontrara, tres niñas encontrei,
for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first
published by Brito[143] at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it
is nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular tradition of a yearly
tribute of maidens to the Moors such as the Greeks paid to the
Minotaur, and must be the echo of some Algarvian song. Its simple
repetitions have a haunting rhythm, but they are perhaps a little
too emphatic. The impression is that its author had been struck by
the repetitions in songs heard on the lips of the people, perhaps
crooned to him in his infancy (cf. _Miscellanea_, p. 25: _sendo eu
muito menino_), and worked them up in this poem. One early epic poem
Portugal undoubtedly possessed, the _Poema da Batalha do Salado_, by
AFONSO GIRALDEZ, who himself probably took part in the battle (1340).
The subject of the poem is the same as that of the Spanish _Poema de
Alfonso Onceno_, but whether its treatment was similar we cannot say,
as only forty lines of the Galician-Portuguese poem survive. Since
the authorship of the Spanish poem is doubtful and its rhymes run
more naturally in Galician than in Spanish, the theory has arisen,
among others, that Rodrigo Yannez, whose name perhaps denotes a
connexion with Galicia, merely translated the poem of Afonso Giraldez.
But against this it is argued that Yannez or Eanez was a Galician
or wrote Galician lyrics (there are several poets of that name in
the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_), and when called upon to compose an
epic--for Spain a late epic--chose Castilian, the traditional language
of such poetry, and in executing his design found that his enthusiasm
had outrun his knowledge of Castilian.[144] It is not strange if so
brilliant a victory inspired two poets independently with its theme.
It is perhaps more extraordinary that both should have chosen a metre
(8 + 8) which has called for remark as showing the _romance_ through
the _cantar de gesta_.[145] Frei Antonio Brandão, indeed, called the
Portuguese poem a _romance_, a type of poem which did not exist in the
fourteenth century. Since the battle was fought in Spain it would be
considered in Brandão’s day a proper subject for a _romance_, but would
be noticeable as being written in Galician. Castilian was throughout
the Peninsula regarded as the fitting medium for the _romance_, as
for its father the epic, just as, a century earlier, Galician was the
universal language of the lyric.[146] Portuguese poets, if they wrote
a _romance_, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known instance
is Gil Vicente’s fine poem (_muy sentido y galan_ as the 1720 editor
says) of _D. Duardos e Flerida_, which only belongs to Portuguese
literature through the excellent ‘translation of the Cavalheiro de
Oliveira’, among whose papers Garrett professed to have found it.
Portugal possessed no epic _cantares de gesta_ of her own, had not
therefore the stuff out of which the _romances_ were formed, and the
birth of the _romance_ coincided with the predominance of Spanish
influence in Spain. It is therefore surprising to find in Portugal a
large number of _romances_ unconnected with Spain, the explanation
being that, having accepted with characteristic enthusiasm the new
thing imported from abroad, the Portuguese turned to congenial themes,
of love, religion, and adventure. Had the _romances_ been elaborated
in the same way as in Spain, we might have expected a large number of
anonymous Portuguese _romances_ dealing with the Breton cycle, and
indeed with early Portuguese history, so rich in heroic incidents.
The fact that this is not the case and the number of _romances_
collected in Tras-os-Montes alike point to their Spanish origin, while
their frequency in the Azores denotes how popular they became later
in Portugal. In the sixteenth century their Spanish character was
recognized. The poor _escudeiro_ in _Eufrosina_ is bidden go to Spain
to gloss _romances_, and in the seventeenth century, as a passage
in Mello’s _Fidalgo Aprendiz_ well shows, they were better liked if
written in Spanish. The partiality for Spanish applied to poetry of
other kinds, and Manuel de Galhegos says (1635) that it is a bold
venture to publish poetry in Portuguese.[147] But it did not as a rule
extend to popular poetry. It is therefore noteworthy that the nurse
in Gil Vicente sings _romances_ in Spanish.[148] Dr. Theophilo Braga,
who considers Spanish influence on the _romances_ in Portugal to have
been ‘late and insignificant’,[149] is obliged, in order to support
his argument, to quote not Portuguese but Spanish _romances_.[150] Nor
is it a happy contention that Portuguese _romances_ were not printed
owing to _desleixo_, since the publication of Spanish _romances_ at
Lisbon cannot be attributed merely to a craze for things foreign.
More persuasive is the theory, developed by D. Carolina Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos,[151] that many _romances_ in Spanish were the work of
Portuguese poets, especially those related to the Breton cycle, such as
_Ferido está Don Tristan_, those concerned with the sea, and those of
a soft lyrical character, as _Fonte Frida_ and _La Bella Malmaridada_.
However that may be, the fact that _romances_ appear on the lips of
the people in Gil Vicente, that is, before the publication of the
_romanceros_, indicates how rapidly their popularity spread,[152]
and accounts for their numerous progeny in Portugal, collected in
the nineteenth century. True historical _romances_ the Portuguese
did not possess, unless we are to consider that certain lines which
occur in Vicente’s parody of _Yo me estaba allá en Coimbra_, in Garcia
de Resende’s _Trovas_, and elsewhere, are echoes of a Portuguese
_romance_ on the death of Inés de Castro.[153] But that is not to
say that they did not possess _romances_, and many of these might be
almost as old as their Spanish models, although not derived directly
from _cantares de gesta_. These Portuguese _romances_ or _xacaras_ (in
the Azores _estorias_ and _aravias_) often differ from the Spanish
in a certain vagueness of outline and sentimental tone. They are
frequently of considerable length. Many of them are undoubtedly of
popular origin and have a large number of variants in different parts
of the country. If there are none to compare with _Fonte Frida_ or
_Conde Arnaldos_ (which belong to Castilian literature, whatever
the nationality of their authors), they nevertheless, with a total
lack of concentration, present many natural scenes and incidents of
affecting pathos and an attractive simplicity. One of the best and
most characteristically Portuguese is _A Nau Catharineta_, and others
almost equally famous are _Santa Iria_, _Conde Nillo_, and _Brancaflor
e Flores_. The second edition of Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Romanceiro_
runs to nearly two thousand pages. The first two volumes contain over
150 _romances_ (together with numerous variants). Of these 5 belong to
the Carolingian, 8 to the Arthurian cycle, 63 are _romances sacros_
or _ao divino_, 11 treat of the cruel husband or unfaithful wife.
In the third volume are reprinted _romances_ composed by well-known
Portuguese authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It must
be admitted that Spain generously repaid to Portugal the loan of the
Galician language for lyrical composition--although in each case it was
the lender’s literature that profited (especially if some of the most
beautiful Spanish _romances_ were the work of Galician or Portuguese
poets). But even after the birth of the _romance_ Spain continued to
cultivate the Galician lyric, until the second half of the fifteenth
century. The last instance is supposed to be a Galician poem by Gomez
Manrique (1412-91), uncle of the author of _Recuerde el alma dormida_,
No. 65 in the _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_. This collection,
published by Professor Lang at the suggestion of D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos, contains the meagre crop of Portuguese verse of the
transition period from 1350 to 1450, meagre in quality and quantity.
One name dominates the period. The love and tragic fate of MACIAS
(second half 14th c.), _o Namorado, idolo de los amantes_, gave him a
renown similar to but far exceeding that of D. Joan Soarez de Paiva
in the preceding century. As the ideal lover he is met with at every
turn in the Portuguese poetry of the fifteenth century,[154] and later
became the subject of Lope de Vega’s _Porfiar hasta morir_ (1638). Of
his story we know definitely nothing, but some lines in one of his
poems, _En meu_ _cor tenno ta lança_ and _Aquesta lança. .. me ferio_,
would appear to have inspired the famous legend which dates from the
end of the fifteenth century. Imprisoned at Arjonilla in Andalucía
for paying court to his _sennora_, he continued to address her in
song and was killed by the lance that her infuriated husband hurled
through the prison window. In an older version, that of the Constable
D. Pedro in his _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, he saved the lady
of his heart from drowning, and afterwards, as he lingered where she
had stood, was struck down by the jealous husband. According to Argote
de Molina,[155] both he and the husband served in the household of D.
Enrique de Villena (1385-1434), who was perhaps only six when Macias
died. Most of the twenty poems ascribed to Macias that survive are
written in Galician, and of many, as _Loado sejas amor_,[156] the
authorship is doubtful. Clearly his fame would act as a strong magnet
to poems of uncertain origin. The matter is of the less importance in
that these poems, however love-sick, have but little literary merit.
If the Galician JUAN RODRIGUEZ DE LA CÁMARA, a native, like Macias, of
Padron, was the real author of the _romance_ of _Conde Arnaldos_ (which
is improbable), he was a far greater poet than his friend. Both the
lyrics and the prose of his _El Sieruo libre de Amor_ are in Castilian.
Of the other two fourteenth-century Galician poets mentioned by
Santillana, FERNAM CASQUICIO and VASCO PEREZ DE CAMÕES (†1386?),[157]
no poems have survived. The latter, a knight well known at the Court
of King Ferdinand and an ancestor of Luis de Camões, played a leading
part in the troubles preceding the battle of Aljubarrota, He had come
to Portugal from Galicia, and his name appears frequently in the pages
of Fernam Lopez (where it is written Caamoões) till the year 1386. In
the middle of the sixteenth century he is mentioned by Sá de Miranda’s
brother-in-law as a Court poet corresponding to Juan de Mena in Spain.
But there were other poets whose verse was probably not inferior to
that of Perez de Camões and Casquicio. Besides Macias the _Cancioneiro
Gallego-Castelhano_ contains the names of sixteen writers whose poems
may not attain high distinction but prove that the Galician lyric
continued to be cultivated by poets in the fourteenth and first half
of the fifteenth century in Castille and Leon, Aragon and Catalonia.
The Archdeacon of Toro, GONÇALO RODRIGUEZ (fl. 1385),[158] was one of
a group of such poets; a man with a keen zest of living and capable of
vigorous verse, in which he took a characteristic delight (_a minna
boa arte de lindo cantar_). In his farewell poem _A Deus Amor, a Deus
el Rei_, which Cervantes perhaps remembered, he bids good bye to the
_trobadores con quen trobei_, and in a quaint humorous testament he
mentions a number of friends and relatives, two of whom, at least, his
cousin Pedro de Valcacer or Valcarcel and Lope de Porto Carreiro, also
wrote verse. In the last of the sixteen stanzas (_abbacca_) of this
_testamento_ the Archdeacon appoints his namesake Gonçalo Rodriguez
de Sousa and Fernan Rodriguez to be his executors. He may have been
alive in 1402, for a Doctor Gonçalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Almazan,
is mentioned as one of the witnesses to the oath taken by the city of
Burgos to the Infante María in that year.[159] In that case he must
have been transferred to Almazan, some 150 miles farther up the Duero.
More chequered was the career of GARCI FERRANDEZ DE GERENA (_c._
1340-_c._ 1400). Having married one of King Juan I’s dancing girls
(_una juglara_) in the belief that she was rich, he repented when he
found _que non tenia nada_. He next became a hermit near Gerena, and,
this not proving more congenial than married poverty, he embarked
ostensibly for the Holy Land, but in fact landed at Malaga with his
wife and children. At Granada he turned Moor, satirized the Christian
faith, and deserted his wife for her sister. After such proven
inconstancy we may perhaps doubt the sincerity of his repentance when
he returned to Christianity and Castille at the end of the fourteenth
century. But for all his weakness and folly he seems not to have sunk
utterly out of the reach of finer feelings; he sang various episodes
of his life, e.g. when he went to his hermitage (_puso se beato_), in
lyrics of some charm, and addressed the nightingale in a dialogue, as
did his contemporary, ALFONSO ALVAREZ DE VILLASANDINO (_c._ 1345-_c._
1428). This Castilian Court poet, born at Villasandino near Burgos
and possessed of property at Illescas, was of a sleeker and more
subservient mind than Garci Ferrandez and prospered accordingly, _en
onra e en ben e en alto estado_. He wrote to order and was considered
the ‘crown and king of all the _poetas e trovadores_ who had ever
existed in the whole of Spain’. This extravagant claim of his admirers
need not prevent us from recognizing that there is often real feeling
and music in his poems, of which the _Cancionero de Baena_ has
preserved over twenty. He writes in varying metres with unfailing ease
and harmony, rarely sinks into mere verbal dexterity, and well deserves
to be considered the best of these later Galician poets. Side by side
with the lyric the _cantiga d’escarnho_ continued to flourish. Alfonso
Alvarez (C. G. C. 48) upbraids Garci Ferrandez for renouncing the
Christian faith and leaguing himself with the Devil (_gannaste privança
do demo mayor_); Pero Velez de Guevara (†1420), uncle of the Marqués de
Santillana, addresses a satiric poem to an old maid, and an anonymous
poet in a vigorous _sirventes_ attacks degenerate Castille, _cativa,
mezela Castela_, perhaps, as Professor Lang thinks, immediately after
the Portuguese victories of Trancoso, Aljubarrota, and Valverde in
1385. Five fragmentary poems belong to the Infante D. PEDRO (1429-66),
Constable of Portugal. There are, besides his three short Portuguese
poems in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, only forty-one lines in all, for
while Galician, already separated from her twin sister of Portugal,
went to sleep--a sleep of nearly four centuries--in these last accents
of her muse preserved in the _Cancionero de Baena_, the Infante Pedro
turned definitely to the new forms of lyric appearing in Castille. As
a transition poet he may be mentioned here before his father D. Pedro,
Duke of Coimbra, since his prose works, which would naturally place
him with his father and with D. Duarte, his uncle, belong, together
with most of his poetry (_prosas_ and _metros_) to Spanish literature.
By stress of circumstance rather than any set purpose he inaugurated
the fashion of writing in Castilian, a fashion so eagerly taken up by
his fellow-countrymen during the next two centuries. After the tragic
death of his father at Alfarrobeira (1449) he escaped from Portugal,
of which his sister Isabel was queen,[160] spent the next seven years
as an exile in Castille, and after returning to his native land died
an exile, but now as King of Aragon (1464-6). His life of thirty-seven
years was thus as full of wandering adventure as that of any troubadour
of old. To him Santillana addressed his celebrated letter on the
development of poetry, and his own influence on Portuguese literature
was important, for he introduced not only a new style of poetry,
including _oitavas de arte maior_, but the habit of classical allusion
and allegory. His first work, _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, was
written in Portuguese before he was twenty, but re-written by himself
in Castilian, the only form in which it has survived. This firstfruit
of his studies was dedicated to his sister, Queen Isabel, whose death
(1455) he mourned in his _Tragedia de la Insigne Reyna Doña Isabel_
(1457), a work of deep feeling and some literary merit, first published
by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos 444 years after Queen Isabel’s
death. His longest and most important poem, in 125 octaves, _Coplas
del menosprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo_ (1455),
reflects the misfortunes of his life and the high philosophy they had
brought him. Under a false attribution to his father, the Duke of
Coimbra[161] (his Portuguese poems were also wrongly ascribed to King
Peter I of Portugal, through confusion with the later King Peter, of
Aragon), it was incorporated in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, which
appeared half a century after the Constable’s death.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] 1867 ed., p. 333.
[141] Ibid., pp. 304-7.
[142] _Cronica de Cister_, Bk. VI, cap. 1, 1602 ed., f. 372. It has
been several times reprinted: cf. J. F. Barreto, _Ortografia_ (1671),
p. 23; Bellermann, _Die alten Liederbücher_, p. 5; _Grundriss_, p. 163.
[143] _Monarchia Lusitana_, 1609 ed., ii. 296 (also in _Miscellanea_,
1867 ed., pp. 25-6; Bellermann, pp. 3-4).
[144] See _Grundriss_, p. 205. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal supports the
suggestion of Leonese authorship (_Revista de Filología Española_, I. i
(1914), pp. 90-2).
[145] See J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, _Littérature Espagnole_, 1913 ed., p.
64.
[146] Cf. Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_ (1722 ed.), p. 369: _tinhão
os nossos guardadores por muyto difficultoso fazeremse em a lingoa
Portugueza, porque a tem por menos engraçada para os romances_. Sousa
de Macedo says that _Romance he poesia propria de Hespanha_, but
Hespanha here means Spain and Portugal and he instances Góngora and
Rodriguez Lobo (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., p. 130).
[147] See _infra_, p. 258.
[148] _Obras_, 1834 ed., ii. 27.
[149] _Hist. da Litt. Port._, ii (1914), pp. 267-87.
[150] Ibid., pp. 280-5.
[151] _Estudos sobre o Romanceiro Peninsular. Romances velhos de
Portugal_, Madrid, 1907-9.
[152] Lucena (_Vida_, Bk. III, cap. 3) speaks of _romances velhos
em que elles_ [the natives of India] _como nos, por ser o ordinario
cantar da gente, guardam o successo das memorias e cousas antigas_.
The expression _romance velho_ in the sixteenth century may mean a
_romance_ that has gone out of fashion. Cf. Vicente, _Os Almocreves_:
_Hei os de todos grosar Ainda que sejam velhos._ _Antigo_ may similarly
mean ‘antiquated’ rather than ancient. Barros, _Grammatica_, 1785
ed., p. 163, mentions _rimances antigas_. D. Carolina Michaëlis de
Vasconcellos considers that the _romances_ came from Spain to Portugal
at the latest in the third quarter and perhaps in the first half of the
fifteenth century.
[153] See _Estudos sobre o Rom. Penins._ (the lines are _Polos campos
do Mondego Cavaleiros vi somar_).
[154] In later Portuguese his name was often written Mansias. So Moraes
transforms Mlle de Macy’s name into Mansi.
[155] _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (1588), ii, f. 272 v.
[156] This and two other Macias poems (_Ai que mal aconsellado_ and
_Crueldad e trocamento_) are in C. G. C. (Nos. 33, 38, 41) ascribed to
Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino.
[157] The _Cancionero de Baena_ contains poems addressed to Vasco
_Lopez_ de Camões, _un cavallero de Galizia_, and an answering poem by
him.
[158] For the name of this hitherto anonymous poet see _The Modern
Language Review_ (July 1917), pp. 357-8.
[159] Gil Gonzalez Davila, _Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Rey Don
Henrique Tercero_, &c. (Madrid, 1638), p. 173. The name was a common
one. The Spanish translator of Pero Menino’s _Livro de Cetreria_,
Gonçalo Rodriguez de Escobar, may have been a relation. There was also
a fourteenth-century poet called Ruiz de Toro.
[160] Another sister, D. PHILIPPA DE LENCASTRE (1437-97), lived in
retirement in the convent of Odivellas near Lisbon, and as a dedicatory
poem to her translation of the Gospels wrote the simple, impressive
lines beginning
_Non vos sirvo, non vos amo,
Mas desejo vos amar._
[161] Cf. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 205: _A
frente de todos os Poetas deste Seculo apparece como hum Ds_ [_Deus_]
_da Poezia o Infante D. Pedro, filho do Snr. Rey D. João I._ In reality
he was not gifted with greater poetical talent than his brothers.
§ 3
_The Chroniclers_
The father of Portuguese history, FERNAM LOPEZ (_c._ 1380-_c._ 1460),
had grown up with the generation that succeeded Aljubarrota, and from
his earliest years imbibed the national enthusiasm of the time. He
had himself seen Nun’ Alvarez as a young man and the heroes who had
fought in a hundred fights to free their country from a foreign yoke,
and he had listened to many a tale of Lisbon’s sufferings during the
great siege.[162] Since 1418, at latest, he was employed in the Lisbon
Torre do Tombo (the State Archives), for in that year he was appointed
keeper of the documents (_escrituras_) there. Sixteen years later,
King Duarte, who as prince encouraged him to collect materials for the
work,[163] entrusted him with the task of writing the chronicles of
the Kings of Portugal (_poer em caronycas as estorias dos reys_), and
at the same time (March 19, 1434[164]) assigned him a salary of 14,000
_réis_. His work at the Torre do Tombo covered a period of over thirty
years. He won and kept the confidence of three kings, was secretary to
João I (_escrivam dos livros_) and to the Infante Fernando (_escrivam
da puridade_), whose will exists in Lopez’ handwriting.[165] His son
Martinho accompanied the Infante to Africa as doctor, and died (1443)
in prison soon after the prince. The last document signed by Lopez as
official is dated 1451; in July 1452 he seems to have resigned his
position at least temporarily, and on June 6, 1454, he was definitely
superseded by Zurara as being ‘so old and weak that he cannot well
fulfil the duties of his post’. That he lived for at least five
years more we know from the existence of a document (July 3, 1459)
referring to the pretensions of an illegitimate son of Martinho which
Fernam Lopez rejected.[166] Of the chronicles of the first ten Kings
of Portugal written by Lopez[167] only three survive: the _Cronica
del Rei Dom Joam de boa memoria_, _Cronica del Rei Dom Fernando_,
and _Cronica del Rei Dom Pedro_. The latter is but a brief sketch,
and lacks the unity which the subject-matter gives to the other two.
His chronicles of the seven earlier kings disappeared in the revised
versions of subsequent historians. Although they no doubt incorporated
large slices of his work with little alteration, the freshness and the
style are gone, the good oak hidden beneath coats of paint. It was a
proceeding the more deplorable in that Lopez had been at great pains to
discover and record the truth, ‘the naked truth’.[168] His successor,
Zurara, represents him as ‘a notable person’, ‘a man of some learning
and great authority’;[169] he travelled through the whole of Portugal
to collect information and spent much time in visiting churches and
convents in search of papers and inscriptions, while King Duarte had
documents brought from Spain for his use. Whatever sources he utilized,
Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, he stamped his work with his own
individuality. He himself frequently refers to previous historians, and
often expresses his disapproval of their methods.[170] He seems to have
drawn largely from a Latin work of a certain Dr. Cristoforus. Keenly
alive to the dignity and responsibilities of history, he was anxious
that his work should be well ordered and philosophical.[171] He has
been called the Portuguese Froissart, but he combines with Froissart’s
picturesqueness moral philosophy, enthusiasm, and high principles,
is in fact a Froissart with something of Montaigne added, and easily
excels Giovanni Villani or Pero López de Ayala. The latter must descend
from the pedestal given him by Menéndez y Pelayo,[172] since he only
occasionally rises to the height of Fernam Lopez, as in the account of
the murder of the Infante Fradique, which Lopez copies very closely
(although abbreviating it as really foreign to his history), evidently
appreciating such dramatic touches as the sentence which describes how,
as the murdered man advanced through the palace, ever fewer went in his
company. By the side of the laborious prose and precocious wisdom of
King Duarte this child of genius seems to give free rein to his pen,
but it is his greatness and his title to rank above all contemporary
chroniclers, not only of Portugal but of Europe, that he could combine
this spontaneity with the scruples of an accurate historian, and be
at once careful and impetuous, or, as Goes calls him, copious and
discreet. He assigns speeches of considerable length to the principal
actors, but they contain not mere rhetoric[173] but arguments such
as might well have been used; and the frequent shorter sayings of
humbler persons, often anonymous and as illuminating as _graffiti_,
have the stamp of truth and bring the scenes most clearly before us.
Indeed, every sentence is living; his unfailing qualities are rapidity
and directness. Sometimes the sound of galloping horses or the loud
murmur of a throng of men is in his pages. He ever and anon rivets the
reader’s--the listener’s--attention by some captivating phrase, by his
quaintly expressed wisdom, by his personal keenness and delight in the
‘marvellous deeds of God’ (_maravilhas que Deos faz_) or in the actions
of his heroes (_Oo que fremosa cousa era de veer!_). His chronicles
are not only a succession of imperishably vivid scenes--King Pedro
dancing through his capital by night, the escape of Diogo Lopez, the
punishment of D. Inés’ murderers, the siege of Lisbon, the murder of D.
Maria Tellez--but describe fully and with skilful care the character
of the actors, pleasure-loving King Ferdinand, cunning, audacious,
and accomplished Queen Lianor Tellez, wise and noble Queen Philippa,
even morose Juan I, and principally the popular Mestre d’Avis and
his great Constable, Nun’ Alvarez Pereira. And the Portuguese people
is delineated both collectively and as individuals, in its generous
enthusiasm, unreasoning impetuosity, and atrocious anger. That Lopez
paid attention to his style is proved by his modest disclaimer bidding
the reader expect no _fremosura e afeitamento das pallavras_, but
merely the facts _breve e sãamente contados, em bom e claro estilo_.
His style is always clear and natural, the serviceable handmaid of
his subject, admirably assuming the colour and sound of the events
described, and his longest sentences are never obscure. He wrote his
history on a generous scale, for in the rapidity of his descriptions
this inimitable story-teller preserved his leisure. His last chronicle
ended with the expedition to Ceuta (1415). The kernel of that chronicle
had been the illustrious deeds and character of Nun’ Alvarez, also
described in the hitherto anonymous _Coronica do condestabre de
purtugal_, of which the earliest edition is dated 1526. Large tracts of
this chronicle are included, with alterations, in Lopez’ Chronicles of
King Fernando and King João I. Dr. Esteves Pereira and Snr. Braamcamp
Freire have now independently come to the conclusion that it is the
work of Lopez, clearly an earlier work[174] written shortly after the
death of Nun’ Alvarez (1431), i. e. before he concluded the _Cronica de
D. Fernando_[175] and wrote the _Cronica de D. Joam_, at which he was
working in 1443.[176] We are forced to accept this view, although of
course it is no argument to say that the conscientious and scrupulous
Fernam Lopez could not be a plagiarist since it was the duty of the
official chronicler of the day to incorporate the best work of other
historians. Lopez’ authorship is borne out by two passages which
at a first glance seem to refute it. In chapter 55 of the _Cronica
de D. Joam_ (1915 ed., p. 120) he introduces the version given in
the _Cronica do Condestabre_ (cap. 22) with the words ‘now here some
say’ (_ora aqui dizem algũs_), and then cites _huũ outro estoriador,
cujo fallamento nos pareçe mais rrazoado_, i. e. he now rejects the
version (of _algũs_) which he had adopted in his earlier work. In
chapter 152 (1915 ed., p. 281) he similarly quotes what _dizem aqui
algũs_ and then the version of _huũ outro compillador destes feitos,
de cujos garfos per mais largo estillo exertamos nesta obra segundo
que compre, rrecomta isto per esta maneira_, a manner which is not
that of the _Cronica do Condestabre_. But indeed the style of the two
works is conclusive. A single age does not produce two Fernam Lopez
any more than it produces two Montaignes or two Malorys. Those who
read the continuation of the _Cronica de D. Joam_ (i. e. the _Cronica
da Tomada de Ceuta_, completed in 1450) by GOMEZ EANEZ DE ZURARA
(_c._ 1410-74) find themselves in a very different atmosphere. We are
told[177] that this soldier, turned historian, acquired his learning
late in life, and he parades it like a new toy. Aristotle, Avicenna,
and all the Scriptures are in his preface; Job, Ovid, Hercules, and
Xenophon, a motley company, mourn the death of Queen Philippa (cap.
44). Sermons extend over whole chapters, although, as he is careful
to state, the exact words of the preachers could not be given.[178]
Philosophy had been graciously woven into Lopez’ narrative, but here
it stands in solid icebergs interrupting the story. And if he wishes
to say that memory often fails in old age he must quote St. Jerome; a
date occupies half a page, being calculated in nine or ten eras;[179]
and the style is sometimes similarly inflated, so that ‘next morning’
becomes ‘When Night was bringing the end of its obscurity and the Sun
began to strike the Oriental horizon’ (cap. 92). He also delights in
elaborate metaphors.[180] But it must not be thought that Zurara is all
froth and morals: in between his purple patches and erudite allusions
he tells his story directly and vividly, and, what is more, he has his
enthusiasm and his hero. Nun’ Alvarez has faded into the background,
but in his place appears the intense and fervent spirit of Prince
Henry the Navigator. His partiality for Prince Henry appears in the
_Cronica de D. Joam_, and in his _Cronica do Descobrimento e Conquista
da Guiné_ it is still more evident.[181] In this chronicle, written
at the request of King Afonso V and finished in the king’s library
in February 1453, he made use of a lost _Historia das Conquistas dos
Portugueses_ by Afonso Cerveira, and profited by much that he had heard
from the Infantes Pedro and Henrique and other makers of history. For
Zurara was a sincere and painstaking historian,[182] and when the king
bade him record the deeds of the Meneses in Africa (the _Cronica do
Conde D. Pedro de Meneses_ was completed in 1463, and the _Cronica dos
Feitos de D. Duarte de Meneses_ about five years later) he was not
content with the ‘recollections of courtiers’, but set out for Africa
(August 1467) and spent a whole year there gathering material at first
hand. An affectionate letter[183] from King Afonso to the historian in
his voluntary exile shows the pleasant relations existing between the
liberal king and his grateful librarian. He praises him as well learned
in the _arte oratoria_,[184] and for undertaking of his own free will
a journey which was imposed on others as a punishment, and promises
to look after the interests of his sister while he is away. Zurara
was a Knight of the Order of Christ, with a _comenda_ near Santarem,
owned other property, and suffered himself to be adopted by a wealthy
furrier’s widow, an unusual proceeding for a person in his station. But
if, as this indicates, he had a love of riches (satisfied by the king’s
generosity and this fortunate adoption), this in no way interfered with
his work of collecting and verifying evidence nor affects the truth
of his chronicles. He had proposed to write that of Afonso V, but the
king, wisely considering that his reign was not yet over, refused his
consent,[185] and this chronicle was reserved for the pen of RUY DE
PINA (_c._ 1440-1523?).[186] Herculano’s ‘crow in peacock’s feathers’
has been somewhat harshly treated by modern critics. Not he but the
taste and fashion of his time was to blame if he laid desecrating hands
on the invaluable chronicles of Fernam Lopez, and thus became the
‘author’ of the chronicles of the six kings, Sancho I to Afonso IV. The
mischief is irreparable, but it is well at least that these chronicles
should have been dealt with by Ruy de Pina, and not, for instance, by
the uncritical DUARTE GALVÃO (_c._ 1445-1517); the friend of Afonso de
Albuquerque, who died in the Arabian Sea when on his way as Ambassador
to Ethiopia, and who as _Cronista Môr_ revised the _Cronica de D.
Afonso Henriquez_ (1727). Ruy de Pina has further been attacked because
the people no longer figures, and the king figures too prominently, in
the chronicles for which he was more directly responsible: _Cronica
de D. Duarte_, _Cronica de D. Afonso V_, and _Cronica de D. João II_.
That is to censure him for faithfully recording the changed times and
not writing as if he were his own grandfather. Pina was no flatterer,
but the chronicle of João II inevitably centred round the king, and, in
spite of its excellence and of the moving incident of Prince Afonso’s
death, is less attractive than those which are a record of freer,
jollier times. Born at Guarda, of a family originally Aragonese, Pina
served as secretary on an embassy to Castille in 1482 and on two
subsequent occasions, and in the same capacity in a special mission to
the Vatican in 1484. He became secretary (_escrivão da nossa camara_)
to King João II, and succeeded Lucena as _Cronista Môr_ in 1497.
Both King João II and King Manuel showed their appreciation of his
services, and Barros lent authority to a foolish story that Afonso de
Albuquerque sent him rubies and diamonds from India as a reminder, in
Corrêa’s phrase, to _glorificar as cousas de Afonso de Albuquerque_.
Ruy de Pina in his chronicles of King Duarte and Afonso V used material
collected by Fernam Lopez and Zurara, and he in turn left material
for the reign of King Manuel of which Damião de Goes availed himself,
while his _Cronica de D. João II_ was laid under contribution by Garcia
de Resende. It may be doubted whether the _Cronica de D. Afonso V_
contains much that is not Ruy de Pina’s own. It was poetical justice
that the interest of the story should be transferred from the Infante
Henrique to the Infante Pedro.[187] His death and that of the Conde de
Abranches at Alfarrobeira are told with the most impressive simplicity,
which produces a far greater effect than the long _exclamação_ that
follows. Lacking Lopez’ genius, but possessed of an excellent plain
style, which only becomes flowery on occasion, and on his guard against
what he calls the _vicio e avorrecimento da proluxidade_, Pina relates
his story straightforwardly, almost in the form of annals. He does not
attempt to eke out his matter with rhetoric and has chapters of under
fifty words. The _Cronica de D. Afonso V_ effectively contrasts the
characters of the weak and chivalrous Afonso, who is praised as man but
not as king, and the vigorous practical João II, and has an inimitable
scene of the meeting of the former and Louis XI at Tours in 1476. The
glow of Fernam Lopez is absent, but Pina none the less deserves to be
accounted an able and impartial historian.
To the fifteenth century belongs the _Cronica do Infante Santo_. It
is impossible to read unmoved the clear and unaffected story of the
sufferings and death (1437-43), as a captive of Fez, of this the
most saintly of the sons of King João I and Queen Philippa. It was
written at the bidding of his brother, Prince Henry the Navigator,
with the skill born of a fervent devotion, by FREI JOÃO ALVAREZ, an
eyewitness[188] of D. Fernando’s misfortunes and one of the few of his
companions to survive (till 1470 or later). A curious indication of
the writer’s accuracy in detail is the correct spelling of a Basque
name,[189] of the meaning of which he was probably ignorant.
The founder of the dynasty of Avis, KING JOÃO I (1365-1433), found
time in his busy reign of forty-eight years to encourage literature,
ardently assisted no doubt by English Queen Philippa, and was himself
an author. His keen practical spirit turned to Portuguese prose, and
while as a poet he confined himself to a few prayers and psalms, in
prose he caused to be translated the Hours of the Virgin and the
greater part of the New Testament, as well as foreign works such as
John Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_ (_c._ 1383), and himself wrote a
long treatise on the chase. This _Livro da Montaria_, which has little
but the title in common with Alfonso XI’s _Libro de Montería_, lay
unpublished for four centuries, but is now available in a scholarly
edition by Dr. Esteves Pereira from the manuscript in the Lisbon
Biblioteca Nacional. Valuable and interesting in itself, this book is
of great significance in Portuguese literature by reason of the impulse
thus given to Portuguese prose. It is impossible as yet to estimate
the full value of the prose works that followed: many are lost, others
remain in manuscript, as the _Orto do Sposo_ by Frei Hermenegildo de
Tancos, or the _Livro das Aves_. But with King João’s son and successor
Portuguese prose came into its kingdom.
Punctilious and affectionate, gifted with many virtues and graces, the
half-English KING DUARTE (1391-1438), _o Eloquente_, shared the high
ideals of all the sons of João I. Liable to fits of melancholy, and
of less active disposition than his brothers Henrique and Pedro, he
proved himself not less gallant in action than they at the taking of
Ceuta in 1415, and had even earlier been entrusted by his father with
affairs of State. His scruples as philosopher-or rather student-king
during his unhappy reign of five years may have hampered his decisions,
but his love of truth made the saying _palavra de rei_ proverbial.
The corroding cares of State prevented him from giving all the time
he would have wished to literary studies, but he was a methodical
collector of books[190] and papers written by himself and others, and
his great work, _Leal Conselheiro_ (_c._ 1430), consisted of such
a collection on moral philosophy and practical conduct, addressed
to his wife, Queen Lianor. It contains 102 chapters, often stray
papers, sometimes translated from other authors.[191] Besides a
detailed consideration of virtues and vices which are treated with an
Aristotelian precision, and always with preference for the Portuguese
as opposed to the latinized word, it has chapters on the art of
translation, food, chapel services, and other subjects.[192] The book
reveals a character of rare charm, combining humility with a clear
instinct for what was right, humanity with common sense. His literary
genius was akin to that of his father; he scarcely possessed poetical
talent, although he translated in verse the Latin hymn _Juste Judex_,
and possessed in his library a _Livro das Trovas del Rei_, in all
probability a collection of the poems of others. Wit and originality
he also lacked. But as a prose-writer he ranks among the greatest
Portuguese authors, and in style was indeed something of an innovator,
using words with an exactness and scrupulous nicety hitherto unknown
in Portugal. He gave the matter long and serious consideration, and
the directness of his style corresponds to his sincerity of thought.
His clear, concise sentences and careful choice of words show a true
artist of unerring instinct in prose.[193] King Duarte wished to be
read as Sainte-Beuve recommended that one should read the _Caractères_
of La Bruyère: _peu et souvent_ (_pouco ... tornando algũas vezes_).
The first part of the precept has been followed, but unhappily for
Portuguese prose the second has been neglected. In his youth the king
was noted for his horsemanship, and his _Livro da Ensinança de bem
cavalgar toda sella_ is a practical treatise based on his personal
experience (_nom screvo do que ouvi_, as he says) begun when he
was prince, laid aside after his accession, and left unfinished at
his death. It is remarkable, like the _Leal Conselheiro_, for the
excellence of its style and the manly, thoughtful character of its
author. But for his premature death, King Duarte might have done for
Portuguese prose what Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel had done for
Castilian. An excellent translator himself, he encouraged translations
into Portuguese, in Portugal and Spain; the Bishop of Burgos, Don
Alonso de Cartagena, translated Cicero for him, and the Dean of
Santiago Aristotle. More active than King Duarte, more literary than
his younger brother Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), D. PEDRO
(1392-1449), created Duke of Coimbra after the capture of Ceuta in
1415, became almost a legendary figure owing to his extensive travels
(1424-8)--_andou as sete partes do mundo_--and his equally exaggerated
reputation as a poet, through confusion with his son the Constable.
Regent from 1438 to 1448, he resigned when the young king, his nephew
and son-in-law, Afonso V, came of age. His enemies succeeded in
effecting his banishment from Court. Civil strife followed, and D.
Pedro fell in a preliminary skirmish at Alfarrobeira in May 1449. Had
he been granted a peaceful old age he would probably occupy a more
important place in Portuguese literature. Apart from the historical
value of his letters, his chief claim to be remembered literarily
consists in the translations from the Latin, principally from Cicero,
undertaken under his supervision or by himself personally, as the _De
Officiis_, which was dedicated to King Duarte and is still unpublished.
The _Trauctado da Uirtuosa Benfeyturia_ was originally a translation by
the prince of Seneca’s _De Beneficiis_. Except the dedication to King
Duarte (between 1430 and 1433), the work as it stands in six books is
properly not D. Pedro’s, since he had not leisure for the corrections
and additions which he wished to make, and accordingly handed over
his translation and the original to his confessor, Frei João Verba,
who made the necessary alterations,[194] and expanded the book from a
literal translation to a paraphrase of the _De Beneficiis_. The reader
who does not bear this in mind might be startled to find references
in a work of Seneca’s to St. Thomas, Nun’ Alvarez, the noble knight
Abraham, or the virtuous knight Cid Ruy Diaz. The work lacks King
Duarte’s gift of style which set the _Leal Conselheiro_ high above
contemporary prose.
LOPO DE ALMEIDA, created first Count of Abrantes in 1472,[195]
accompanied D. Lianor, daughter of King Duarte, on her marriage to the
Emperor Frederick III in 1451. In four letters written to King Afonso V
from Italy (February to May 1452) he displays a keen eye for colour and
much directness in description, so that the Emperor bargaining miserly
over the price of damask or the two wealthy Italian dukes so sorrily
horsed (_em sima de senhos rocins magros_) remain in the memory, and
the letters are more original than most of the Portuguese prose of the
century.
One of the most important early prose works is the _Boosco Delleytoso_
(1515). It consists of 153 short chapters,[196] and is dedicated (on
the verso of the frontispiece portraying the ‘delightful wood’) to
Queen Lianor, widow of King João II. It is a homily in praise of the
hermit’s life of solitude and against worldly joys and traffics, and
is marked by a pleasant quaintness, an intense and excellent style,
a fervent humanity and love of Nature. The hermit’s independent
and healthy life[197] is contrasted with that of the merchant in
cities.[198] In chapter I the repentant sinner is introduced in ‘a
very thick wood of very fair trees in which many birds sang very
sweetly’ near ‘a very fair field full of many herbs and scented
flowers’--_frolles de boo odor_. He prays to be delivered from this
darkness of death, and a very fair youth appears ‘clothed in clothes of
gleaming fire and his face shone as the sun when it rises in the season
of great heat’. His ‘glorious guide’, _grorioso guyador_, leads him to
a _dona sabedor_ and to _dom francisco solitario_, who in a _fremoso
fallamento_ praises the solitary life and condemns those who are puffed
up with the conceit of learning, in itself ‘a very fair thing’. He
tells of the lives of saintly hermits; St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Dom Seneca, Dom Cicero, _a mui comfortosa donzella_, and others exhort
the sinner to leave the world, and he ends by relating his frequent
raptures until his soul is carried to the _terra perduravil_. In its
main subject, praise of the solitary life, the book recalls the title
of the treatise ascribed to D. Philippa de Lencastre: _Tratado da Vida
Solitaria_, a translation or adaptation from the Latin of Laurentius
Justinianus.[199] The latter’s _De Vita Solitaria_ is, however, quite
different from the _Boosco deleytoso_, which was probably composed
before the birth of D. Philippa (1437).
Another remarkable early work is the anonymous _Corte Imperial_ (14th
or early 15th c.), the language of which often bears traces of a
Latin original.[200] Many of its sentences are veritable _dobres_ and
_mordobres_ in prose,[201] and to a superficial reader will have little
meaning; but in fact this mystic treatise is closely reasoned. It
may have some connexion with similar works by Juda Levi, Ramon Lull,
and Don Juan Manuel. In a _corte_ or parliament the Church Militant,
in the person of a ‘glorious Catholic Queen’ argues with Gentile,
Moor, and Jew on the nature of God and the Trinity. The Gentiles and
Moors gradually accept her doctrines, but the Jewish rabbis prove
more contumacious. Saints and angels and all the company of heaven
discourse sweet music in the intervals of the discussion. One of the
best known of the many other important translations of this time was
the _Flos Sanctorum_ (1513),[202] which begins[203] with extracts from
the Gospels and has a savour of the Bible about its prose. There were
many later versions of the Gospel story, as _A Paxã de Jesu Christo
Nosso Deos e Senhor_, &c. (1551); _Tratado en que se comprende breue
e deuotamente a Vida, Paixão e Resurreição_, &c. (1553); _Traatado em
q̃ se contẽ a paixam de x̃po_, &c. (1589?). But the earliest and most
splendid, an incunable of which Portugal has reason to be proud on
account of its beautiful print, is the _Vita Christi_ (Lixboa, 1495),
translated _em lingoa materna e portugues linguagem_ from the original
of Ludolph von Sachsen by the Cistercian monk Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça
(†1478?), at the bidding of Queen Isabel, sister of the Constable D.
Pedro, in the middle of the fifteenth century (1445).
Another notable translation for the same queen is the _Espelho de
Christina_ (1518),[204] from the French of Christine de Pisan:
_Livre des trois vertus pour l’enseignement des princesses_ (1497).
The Portuguese manuscript, translated from the French manuscript
nearly half a century before the latter appeared in print,[205] was
published at the bidding of Queen Lianor (wife of João II), who so
keenly encouraged Portuguese art, language, and literature. Her squire
Valentim Fernandez’ version of Marco Polo, _Marco Paulo_, was published
at Lisbon in 1502. The _Espelho de Prefeyçam_ (1533) was translated
from the Latin by the Canons of Santa Cruz, Coimbra, and edited by Bras
de Barros (_c._ 1500-59), Bishop of Leiria and cousin of the historian
João de Barros. A Portuguese version of a scriptural work entitled
_Sacramental_, originally written in Spanish by Clemente Sanchez de
Vercial, was published apparently in 1488 (it would thus be one of the
earliest books printed in Portugal), and was reprinted at Lisbon in
1502.
FOOTNOTES:
[162] Lopez himself was probably of humble birth. It appears from
a document presented by Dr. Pedro de Azevedo at a meeting of the
_Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos Historicos_ in July 1916 that his
wife’s niece was married to a shoe-maker.
[163] Zurara, _Cron. D. Joam_, cap. 2.
[164] i.e. eighty-nine years before the first English translation of
Froissart was published. Needless to say, no English translation of
Lopez exists.
[165] A facsimile of a page of this lengthy document is given in Snr.
Braamcamp Freire’s excellent edition of the _Primeira Parte da Crónica
de D. Joam I_ (1915).
[166] See A. Braamcamp Freire, ibid., pp. xl-xlii.
[167] _Fez todas as chronicas dos Reis té seu tempo, começando do
Conde dom Henrique, como prova Damião de Goes_ (Gaspar Estaço, _Varias
Antigvidades de Portugal_ (1625), cap. 21, § 1); cf. Goes, _Cron. de D.
Manuel_, iv. 38.
[168] _Nosso desejo foi em esta obra escrever verdade--nuamente--a nua
verdade_ (_Cr. D. Joam_, _Prologo_).
[169] Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 2. Cf. Lopez’ preface to his _Cr.
D. Joam_: _Oo com quamto cuidado e diligemçia vimos gramdes vollumes
de livros, de desvairadas linguageẽs e terras; e isso meesmo pubricas
escprituras de muitos cartarios e outros logares nas quaaes depois de
longas vegilias e gramdes trabalhos mais çertidom aver nom podemos da
contheuda em esta obra_ (1915 ed., p. 2).
[170] Usually he does this without naming the offender, but he refutes
the _razões_ of Martim Afonso de Mello, a person well known at the
Court of King João I and author of a technical book on the art of war,
_Da Guerra_ (see Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 99). Mello refused the
governorship of captured Ceuta in 1415. A work on a similar subject,
_Tratado da Milicia_, is ascribed to Zurara’s friend and patron. King
Afonso V (Barbosa Machado, i. 19).
[171] _Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 2: _a ordenança de nossa obra_; _Cr.
D. Joam_, 1915 ed., p. 51: _Certo he que quaaesquer estorias muito
melhor se entemdem e nembram se som perfeitamente e hem hordenadas_;
_Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 139: _guardando a regra do philosopho_ [of
cause and effect].
[172] _Antología_, iv, p. xx: _Nada hay semejante en las literaturas
extranjeras antes de fin del siglo xv._ The words apply more accurately
to Fernam Lopez.
[173] _Leixados os compostos e afeitados razoamentos_ (_Cr. D. Joam_,
_Prologo_).
[174] The references in cap. 76 and 80 to events of 1451 and 1461 are
evidently later additions.
[175] Cf. _Cr. do Cond._, cap. 14 and 15, with _Cr. del Rei Fern._,
cap. 166.
[176] A. Braamcamp Freire, _Cr. de D. Joam_ (1915), _Introdução_, p.
xxi.
[177] By Matheus de Pisano (whom some have considered the son of
Christine de Pisan). He wrote in Latin: _De Bello Septensi_ (_Ined.
de Hist. Port._, vol. i, 1790), Portuguese tr. Roberto Correia Pinto:
_Livro da Guerra de Ceuta_ (1916).
[178] _Não seja porem algum de tam simples conhecimento que presuma que
este é o teor propria_, &c. (cap. 95).
[179] But he can also be picturesque in expressing time (like Lopez,
who for ‘early morning’ says, ‘at the time when people were coming from
Mass’), e.g. _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 102 _ad fin._: Ceuta had been captured
so swiftly that ‘many had left the corn of their fields stored in their
granaries and returned in time for the vintage’. The whole description
of the expedition against Ceuta and the attack and sack of the city are
extremely clear.
[180] Cf. Goes, _Cr. D. Manuel_: _escrevia com razoamentos prolixos e
cheos de metaforicas figuras que no estilo historico não tem lugar_;
_Cr. do Princ. D. Joam_, cap. 17: _com a superflua abundancia e copia
de palavras poeticas e metaforicas que usou em todalas cousas que
screveo_. His style is less involved than is often said. Some of his
sentences may contain as many as 500 words and yet be perfectly plain
and straightforward, whereas Mallarmé could be obscure in five words.
[181] Cf. cap. 2: _Oo tu principe pouco menos que devinal!_ and _Tua
gloria, teus louvores, tua fama enchem assi as minhas orelhas e ocupam
a minha vista que nom sei a qual parte acuda primeiro._ This chronicle
has the same plethora of learned quotations. Chapter 1 quotes St.
Thomas, Solomon, Tully, the Book of Esther, and introduces Afonso V,
King Duarte, the French duke Jean de Lançon, the Cid, Nun’ Alvarez,
Moses, Fabricius, Joshua, and King Ramiro.
[182] He re-wrote the _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses_ twice.
João de Barros, who was inclined to slight earlier and contemporary
historians, acknowledges his great debt to Zurara. Damião de Goes
regards him less favourably.
[183] November 22, 1467 (_Coll. Liv. Ined._ iii. 3-5). There is also an
affectionate letter from King Pedro of Aragon to Zurara, dated June 11,
1466, or 1460.
[184] Zurara, on the other hand, with feigned diffidence represents
himself as ‘a poor scholar’, ‘a man almost entirely ignorant and
without any knowledge’, and if he has any learning it is but the crumbs
from King Afonso’s table (_Cr. D. Pedro_, cap. 2). He can rise to
real eloquence, as in the beginning of cap. 25 of the _Cr. da Guiné_:
_Oo tu cellestrial padre, que com tua poderosa maão, sem movimento
de tu devynal essencia, governas toda a infiinda companhya da tua
sancta cidade_, &c., or sober down into a Tacitean phrase such as
that of cap. 26, describing the fate of natives of Africa brought to
Portugal: _morriam, empero xraãos_ (they died, but Christians). He has
a misleading trick of saying ‘The author says--_diz o autor_’, meaning
himself.
[185] _Nunca me em ello quis leixar obrar segundo meu desejo_ (_Cr. D.
Pedro_, cap. 1).
[186] His son Fernam de Pina became _Cronista Môr_ in 1523. The
immediate successor of Zurara as _Cronista Môr_ was VASCO FERNANDEZ
DE LUCENA, whose life must have coincided almost exactly with the
sixteenth century. He represented King Duarte at the Council of Basel
in 1435, and according to Barbosa Machado, who calls him _um dos varões
mais famosos da sua idade assim na profundidade da litteratura como na
eloquencia da frase_, he was still living in 1499. Unfortunately none
of his works have survived. His manuscript translation of Cicero’s _De
Senectute_ and other works were destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake
(1755).
[187] Much later, in the first third of the seventeenth century,
CASPAR DIAZ DE LANDIM wrote a _copiosa relação_ from a point of view
unfavourable to D. Pedro and dedicated it to the Duke of Braganza: _O
Infante D. Pedro, Chronica Inedita_, 3 vols. (1893-4).
[188] _Tudo o contheudo no siguiente trautado eu o uy e ouuy_ (1911
ed., p. 2).
[189] 1911 ed., p. 117: Ichoa (= Blind). The fact that no other name is
given shows that then as now Basques were known by their nicknames. The
same name figures in ‘Pierre Loti’s’ _Ramuntcho_ (1897): Itchoua. In
the sixteenth century Martim Ichoa and João de Ychoa appear among the
_moradores_ of King Manuel’s household (1518). The substantive _ichó_
(= _armadilha_), derived from _ostiolum_, is used by Diogo Fernandez
Ferreira (_Arte da Caça_) and Garcia de Resende (_Cron. João II_).
[190] The extremely interesting list of his important library has been
published in _Provas Genealogicas_, i. 544, in the 1842 ed. of _Leal
Conselheiro_, and edited by Dr. T. Braga in _Historia da Univ. de
Coimbra_, i. 209. It contained _O Acypreste de Fysa_ (= the Archpriest
of Hita) and _O Amante_, i. e. the translation by Robert Payne, Canon
of Lisbon, of Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_.
[191] p. 9, _Fiz tralladar em el alguus capitullos doutros livros_: the
_Vita Christi_, St. Thomas Aquinas, Diogo Afonso Mangancha on Prudence,
Cicero, _De Officiis_, St. Gregory.
[192] It contains papers written at various times (between 1428 and
1438). The date 1435 occurs p. 474. Cf. p. 169, King João I (†1433),
_cuja alma Deos aja_.
[193] His modern editor, José Ignacio Roquette (1801-70), comments (p.
37) on the passage _he bem de lavrar e criarem_ as a great grammatical
_discordancia_ and _erro_, but it is by no means certain that King
Duarte did not omit one of the personal infinitives deliberately, for
the sake of euphony, as the _-mente_ is omitted in the case of two or
more adverbs.
[194] _Corregendo e acrecentando o que entendeo ser compridoiro acabou
o liuro adeante scripto._
[195] Damião de Goes (_Cr. do Pr. D. Joam_, cap. 88) says 1476. His
father Diogo Fernandez was _Reposteiro Môr_ at the Court of King
Duarte, and his mother a half-sister of the Archbishop of Braga. One of
his sons was the famous and unfortunate Viceroy of India (1505-9), D.
Francisco de Almeida.
[196] Seventy-four black-letter double column folios, unnumbered, of
fifty lines each. The colophon runs: _Acabouse do_ [so] _emprimir este
lyuro chamado boosco delleytoso solitario p. Hermã de cãpos bombardeiro
del Rey nosso Sẽhor cõ graça & preuilegio de sua alteza em ha muy
nobrem_ [so] _& sempre leal çidad_ [so] _de lixboa cõ muy grande
dilligencia. Ano da encarnaçã de nosso Saluador & Redentor jhesu x̃po.
De mil & quinientos & quinze a vinte quatro de Mayo_ (_Bib. Nacional
de Lisboa_, Res. 176 A [lacking f. 1]). Nicolás Antonio thus refers
to the work (_Bib. Nova_, ii. 402): _Anonymus, Lusitanus, scripsit &
nuncupavit Serenissimae Eleonorae Reginae Ioanis II Portugalliae Regis
Coniugi librum ita inscriptum. Bosco deleitoso. Olisipone 1515._
[197] He can do _ho que lhe praz_; at sunrise he goes up _alguũ outeiro
de boo & saaom aar_ far from the _delleytaçoões do mundo_, _arroydo do
segre_ and _os auollimentos & trasfegos das çidades_.
[198] The _malauẽturado negociador que ̃qr seer rico tostemẽte_.
[199] See _Grundriss_, p. 249, and _Divi Lavrentii Ivstiniani
Protopatriarchae Veneti opera Omnia_ (Coloniae, 1616), pp. 728-70: _De
Vita Solitaria_.
[200] Cf. 1910 ed., pp. 1, 4. The writer claims to be only a compiler:
_começo este livro nom como autor e achador das cousas em elle
contheudas mas como simprez aiuntador dellas em huũ vellume_. It has
been attributed to the Infante D. Pedro and to João I.
[201] e.g. p. 85: _Ca per entender entende o entendedor e per entender
é entendido o entendido e o entendedor entende que elle mesmo é Deos._
[202] The title is simply _Ho Flos Sctõrȝ em lingoajẽ ̃porgueˢ_. The
colophon says that it _se chama ystorea lombarda pero comuũmente se
chama flos sanctorum_.
[203] _Aqui se começa ha payxam do eterno Principe christo Jhesu nosso
Senhor & saluador segundo os sanctos quatro euangelistas._
[204] The only known copy exists in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.
The colophon (in Spanish) gives the alternative title (_das tres
virtudes_). The French original was also called _Trésor de la Cité des
Dames_.
[205] See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições de Philologia Portuguesa_,
p. 137.
§ 4
_The Cancioneiro Geral_
The silence that falls on Portuguese poetry after the early
_Cancioneiros_ lasts for over a century, scarcely interrupted by the
twilight murmurings of the later Galician poets, and is only broken
for us by the publication of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ five years before
the death of King Manuel. The native _trovas_ had no doubt continued
to be written by many poets in a country where poetry is scarcely
rarer than prose, far commoner than good prose. But no one had cared
to preserve them in a collection corresponding to the _Cancionero de
Baena_ in Spain. When Portuguese poetry again emerges into the clear
light of day Spanish influence is in full swing and behind it looms
that of Italian poetry, the natural continuation of one side of the
_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_. No Spanish poet now writes in Portuguese,
many Portuguese in Spanish. Popular poetry and royal troubadours have
alike disappeared, leaving a narrow circle of Court rhymesters. It is
to one of these that we owe the collection which embraces the poetry
of the day, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the actual
year of publication, 1516. Stout, good-natured GARCIA DE RESENDE (_c._
1470-1536), a favourite alike with king and courtiers, often the butt
of the Court poets’ wit--he is a tunny, a barrel, a wineskin, a melon
in August--belonged to an old family which in the sixteenth century
distinguished itself in literature. Born at Evora and brought up in
the palace as page and then as secretary of King João II, he had every
opportunity of observing the events which he so graphically describes
in his _Vida de Dom João II_ (1545).[206] Talented and many-sided,
Resende continued in high favour during the succeeding reigns: in
1498 as secretary he accompanied King Manuel to Castille and Aragon,
and in 1514 was chosen for the much coveted post of secretary to
Tristão da Cunha’s mission to Rome with wonderful presents for Pope
Leo X. Resende not only drew and wrote verses but was a musician and
an accomplished singer: _de tudo intende_ laughed his friend Gil
Vicente. Perhaps it only required the stress of adversity to inspire
to greatness this blunted, prosperous courtier--_fidalgo da casa del
Rei_. He was not a great poet, although he excelled the Court poets of
the fifteenth century. As historian he has been unjustly condemned. If
in his Chronicle of João II he made use of Ruy de Pina’s manuscript
chronicle, first published in 1792, it must be remembered that it was
customary for the official historians to regard their predecessors as
existing mainly for purposes of plagiarism. Herculano called Resende’s
chronicle a poor bundle of anecdotes,[207] and no doubt Resende was not
a Herculano nor a Fernam Lopez but a more limited Court chronicler.
He is none the less delightful because he deals not in tendencies
and abstractions but in concrete details and persons, Court persons.
With an artist’s eye for the picturesque he makes his readers see the
event described, and his chronicle is throughout singularly vivid and
dramatic. He is certainly an attractive writer, and perhaps he is
also instructive. The incident, for instance, of the Duke of Braganza
being kept waiting while a scaffold of the latest Paris pattern is
being erected for his execution (1483), which a grander historian
might have omitted, is possibly not without its significance and
shows _francesismo_ in action four centuries before Eça de Queiroz.
Besides various minor works in prose Resende composed, not without
misgiving,[208] a long survey of the events of his day in some 300
_decimas_: _Miscellania e Variedade de Historias_, which throws curious
and valuable light on the times. His literary work was prompted by a
real desire to serve his country. His delicate appreciation of the
past appears in his remarkable and charming verses on the death of
Inés de Castro; and wishing in so far as lay in his power to remedy
the Portuguese neglect which had allowed so many poems and records and
_gentilezas_ to perish, he collected what he could of past and present
poets and published them in one great volume which he dedicated to
the Infante João: _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516), often known as the
_Cancioneiro de Resende_ to distinguish it from the Spanish _Cancionero
General_ (1511). Resende wrote to the poets of his acquaintance
requesting them in verse to send him their poems, and they sent him
answers, also in verse, accompanying their poems.[209] The receipt of
these he would acknowledge as editor, promising, still in verse, to
have them printed. Politeness no doubt induced him to include more
than his judgement warranted, for his own poems are superior to those
of most of his contemporaries. A large number of the _Cancioneiro’s_
poems--some 1,000 poems by between 100 and 200 poets--should scarcely
have been included, for, however well they might answer their purpose
as occasional verse, they were not intended as a possession for ever,
and massed together produce an effect of dull and endless triviality.
These love poems can indeed be as monotonous, the satiric poems as
coarse, licentious, and irreverent, as those of the _Cancioneiro da
Vaticana_. One of the poets, D. João Manuel, like King Alfonso X of
old, does beseech his colleagues to cease singing of Cupid and Macias
and turn to religious subjects. But it was not Garcia de Resende’s
purpose to include religious verse. Poems recording great deeds and
occasions he would gladly have printed in larger number, but, as he
(among others) complained in his preface, it was characteristic of the
Portuguese not to record their deeds in literary form. Satiric verses
he included in plenty, satire being one of the recognized functions
of the poet’s art: _per trouas sam castigados_.[210] But if we turn
to the poems of his collection we are amazed by the pettiness of the
subjects, and our amazement grows when we remember that this was the
period in the world’s whole history most calculated to awe and inspire
men’s minds with the thought of vast new horizons. While Columbus
was discovering America, Bartholomeu Diaz rounding the Cape of Good
Hope, Vasco da Gama sailing to India, or Afonso de Albuquerque making
desperate appeals for men and money to enable him to maintain his
brilliant conquests, the Court poets were versifying on an incorrectly
addressed letter, a lock of hair, a dingy head-dress, a very lean
and aged mule, the sad fate of a lady marrying away from the Court
in Beira, a quarrel between a tenor and soprano, a courtier’s velvet
cap or hat of blue silk, a button more or less on a coat, the length
of spurs, fashions in sleeves: themes, as José Agostinho de Macedo
might say, ‘prodigiously frivolous’. When news reached Lisbon of the
tragic death of D. Francisco de Almeida and of the defeat of Afonso
de Albuquerque[211] and the Marshal D. Fernando de Coutinho before
Calicut, with the death of the latter, Bras da Costa wrote to Garcia
de Resende that at this rate he would prefer to have no pepper, and
Resende answered that for his part he certainly had no intention of
embarking. But, as a rule, such events received not even so trivial a
comment, and no doubt the poets felt that the verse which served to
pass the time at the _serões_ was inadequate to any great occasion.
But the _trovador segundo as trovas de aquelle tempo_[212] had little
idea of what subjects were suitable or unsuitable to poetry. A typical
instance of the themes in which they delighted is an event which seems
to have produced a greater impression than the discovery of new worlds:
the return from Castille of a gentleman of the Portuguese Court wearing
a large velvet cap. For over 300 lines of verse this cap is bandied
to and fro by the witty poets. It must weigh four hundredweight, says
one. Another advises him to lock it up _em arcaaz_ until he can turn it
into a doublet; another bids him sell it in the Jews’ quarter. Small
wonder, chimes in a fourth, that no galleys come now with velvet from
Venice.[213] ‘I would not wear it at a _serão_, not for a million,’
says another. ‘A Samson could not wear it all one summer,’ is the
comment of a sixth. Another remarks that he would rather read Lucan
(or Lucian) (_antes leria por luçam_) in the heat of the day than
wear it. ‘He will need a cart to bring it to the _serão_,’ says yet
another. The wit, it will be seen, is not brilliant, although it may
have effectively nipped this budding Castilian fashion and enlivened an
evening. But there were duller contests. For score on score of pages
the rival merits of sighing and of loving in silence are discussed by
poet after poet (_O Cuidar e Sospirar_). Such a subject once started
tended to accumulate verses like a snowball. But the _Cancioneiro_
also contains poems on serious topics, although they are rarer, as
well as delicate, airy nothings (_sutiles nadas_) like Vimioso’s
_vilancetes_.[214] There are two poems on the death of King João II,
there is Luis Anriquez’ lamentation on the death of the Infante Afonso
(1491), that of Luis de Azevedo on the death of the Infante Pedro, Duke
of Coimbra, at Alfarrobeira, and a few poets, like Resende himself,
stand out from the rest. Besides the elaborate Spanish poem by that
noble prince the Constable D. Pedro we have several long poems dealing
with high matters of the soul or the State. The sixty-one interesting
stanzas by the querulous, satirical, intolerant ALVARO DE BRITO
PESTANA treat of the condition of the city of Lisbon and the decay of
morals. The correspondent of Gomez Manrique and contemporary of his
nephew Jorge, in the metre of whose famous _Coplas_ he wrote, he was
present at the battle of Alfarrobeira. His _trovas_ on the death of
Prince Afonso, with the recurrent _choremos perda tamanha_, are wooden
and artificial and his sixteen alliterative verses scarcely belong
to literature, but at least he chose themes which were not concerned
with passing Court fashions. The few simple lines written as he lay
dying show him at his best.[215] His friend and distant relative
FERNAM DA SILVEIRA, _o Coudel Môr_, is concerned with more mundane
matters. A man of noble birth and high character, he was held in great
honour by Afonso V and João II. The latter, a keen judge of men, had
implicit confidence in the justice of this upright magistrate, who
was also a soldier, a poet, and a finished courtier. He deals with
affairs of State, writes an account in _trovas_ of six syllables of
the _Cortes_ held by the king at Montemôr in 1477 and a short poem, on
the appointment of various bishops in 1485. Or he sends a poem to his
nephew Garcia de Mello with detailed instructions as to how he should
dress and behave at Court. His _trovas_ are thoroughly Portuguese,
vigorous, concise, and picturesque. He is less at home in the _trovas
de poesia_ (i. e. _de arte mayor_) written on a journey from Évora to
Thomar, but he could skilfully turn a short love poem, and for a wager
of capons for Easter (with Álvaro de Brito) wrote a stanza containing
as many rhymes as it has words. In fine he belonged to his age, but
his poetry bears the impress of his strong character and his love of
Portuguese ways. On the other hand, the younger brother of the Conde
de Cantanhede, D. JOÃO DE MENESES (†1514), wrote indifferently in
Portuguese or Spanish. He fought for many years in Africa, although
his slight love poems, fluent and harmonious, give no sign of a life
of action, and died in the expedition against Azamor.[216] Another
soldier, courtier, and poet marked out by birth and ability was D. JOÃO
MANUEL (_c._ 1460-99), son of the Bishop of Guarda. Legitimized in 1475
and brought up at Court with the prince Manuel, he continued to be a
favourite after the latter’s accession, became Lord High Chamberlain,
and was sent to the Court of Castille in 1499 to arrange the marriage
of the king with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. In Spanish
octaves he had written a lament on the death of Prince Afonso, which
both in feeling and technique excels the verses of Álvaro de Brito on
the same subject. Towards the end of his poem he introduces the saying
of St. Augustine that ‘our soul exists not where it lives but where
it loves’, which in the following century was quoted by two writers
so different as Ferreira de Vasconcellos and Frei Heitor Pinto and
soon became a commonplace. In other works he shows a high seriousness,
sometimes a sententious strain, combined with a very real poetical
talent. His death during his mission to Castille was a loss for the
Court and for Portuguese poetry. By another writer, FERNAM DA SILVEIRA
(†1489), we have but a few poems, the principal of which is a lament
for his own death, in the metre of Manrique, which he places on the
lips of various ladies of the Court. His death was tragic, for, having
succeeded his father as secretary to King João II, he took part in
the ill-fated conspiracy of the Duke of Viseu. After lying hidden in
the house of a friend he fled in disguise to Castille and thence to
France, but, although he thus succeeded in prolonging his life for
five years, the king’s justice relentlessly pursued and he was stabbed
to death at Avignon. A favourite of João II, especially before his
accession, was NUNO PEREIRA (fl. 1485), _homem galante, cortesão e bom
trovador_, who married the daughter of the _Coudel Môr_ and valiantly
sustained the part of _Cuidar_ against his relative Jorge da Silveira’s
_Sospirar_ in the great literary tournament of the courtiers. Later,
after serving as Governor (_Alcaide_) of the town of Portel, he retired
to live in the country, and presents a happy picture of himself in the
midst of harvesters and pruners. He finds, he says, more pleasure in
his vines, in the chase, in digging and watering his garden, than in
being a favourite at Court. He had not always thought thus, for when
the lady he was courting married a rival he could devise no worse fate
for her than to bid her go and die among the chestnut groves of Beira.
He had, indeed, made a name for himself by his courtly satire, which
he turned to good use in ridiculing those who came back from Castille
with a supercilious disdain for everything Portuguese. It is pleasant
to find him bidding them not speak their ‘insipid Castilian’ in his
presence. DIOGO BRANDAM (†1530) of Oporto wrote an elaborate poem in
octaves on the death of King João II. He also used the octosyllabic
metre with breaks of single lines (_quebrados_) of four syllables, so
familiar in Gil Vicente’s plays, and in his _Fingimento de Amores_
(27 verses of 8 octosyllabic lines), under Spanish-Italian influence,
he touches a richer, more generous vein of poetry: the poet-lover
descends into the region of Proserpine, the dominion of Pluto, and sees
the torments of Love’s followers. His _vilancete_ to the Virgin is in
the same metre with the difference that the verses have seven lines
only (_abbaacc_). The spirit of Jorge de Manrique is absent from the
stanzas written in the metre of his _Coplas_ by LUIS ANRIQUEZ on the
fatal accident which ended the life of Prince Afonso in his teens.
His lamentation on the death of King João II is written in octaves, as
that of Diogo Brandam, which they resemble. Both poets invoke Death: _Ó
morte que matas quem é prosperado_ (Brandam); _Ó morte que matas sem
tempo e sazam_ (Anriquez). Other historical poems by Anriquez in the
same metre are the verses written on the occasion of the transference
of the remains of João II and thirty-five stanzas addressed to James,
Duke of Braganza, when he left Lisbon with his fleet to attack Azamor
in 1513. If we turn from these somewhat heavy pieces to Anriquez’
other poems we find a hymn in praise of the Virgin, written more in
the manner of Alfonso X, and various love _cantigas_. The nephew of
D. João de Meneses, Joam rroiz de saa, that is, JOAM RODRIGUEZ DE
SÁ E MENESES (1465?-1576), studied in Italy as a disciple of Angelo
Poliziano (†1594) and died a centenarian. He wrote a poem in _decimas_
describing the arms of the noble families of Portugal, and translated
into _trovas_ three long letters from the Latin which by their spirit
of _saudade_ appealed to Portuguese taste: Penelope to Ulysses,
Laodamia to Protesilaus, and Dido to Aeneas. He was also versed in
the Greek language, and for his noble character and courtly ways as
well as for his learning and poetical talent was venerated by the
younger generation into which he lived: Antonio Ferreira salutes him
as the ‘ancient sire of the muses of this land’. The ‘most discreet’
D. FRANCISCO DE PORTUGAL, first Conde de Vimioso (†1549), although he
did not live to be a centenarian, also survived most of the poets of
João II’s reign and died towards the end of that of João III. Son of
the Bishop of Evora and great-grandson of the first Duke of Braganza,
he was created a count by King Manuel in 1515, and was equally renowned
as soldier, statesman, courtier, and poet, ‘wise and prudent in peace
and war’. His _Sentenças_ (1605), over one hundred of which are rhymed
quatrains, were published by his grandson D. Anrique de Portugal. Some
of these moral sayings have considerable subtlety, and they reveal a
fine character and insight into the character of others.[217] Most of
his poems, in Spanish and Portuguese, preserved in the _Cancioneiro_
are brief _cantigas_ which prove him to have been a skillful versifier
and a typical Court poet. On the other hand, a feeling for Nature, a
constant command of metre, and a certain passionate sadness mark out
an earlier poet, DUARTE DE BRITO (fl. 1490), the friend of D. João
de Meneses, from most of the other writers in Resende’s song-book.
The _redondilha_ in his hands is no wooden toy but a living, moving
instrument. His most celebrated poem, _em que conta o que a ele & a
outro lhaconteçeo com huũ rrousinol & muitas outras cousas que vio_,
is written after the fashion of Diogo Brandam’s _Fingimento de Amores_
and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz’ _Infierno de Amor_, in imitation of the
Marqués de Santillana’s _El Infierno de los Enamorados_; but there
is real feeling in these eighty verses of eleven lines (of which the
eighth and eleventh are of four, the rest of eight syllables). The
Italian influence, working through Spanish, was already present in
Portuguese poetry in the fifteenth century, although Brito writes
exclusively in _redondilhas_, as indeed does the introducer of the new
style, Sá de Miranda, in the few and short poems which he contributed
to the _Cancioneiro_ immediately before its publication. Duarte de
Brito did not condescend to those artificial devices which give us
in this _Cancioneiro_ a poem of sixty lines all ending in _dos_,
alliterative stanzas, and other verbal tricks. The real business of the
_serões_, so far as poetry was concerned, was _ouvir e glosar motes_.
These _glosas_ and the similar _cantigas_ and _esparsas_, short poems
of fixed form, often written with skill and spontaneous charm, were
merely one of the necessary accomplishments of a courtier. Such a view
of poetry could scarcely give rise to great poets, and these versifiers
indeed styled themselves _trovadores_, reserving the name of poet for
those who wrote, often but clumsily, in _versos de arte mayor, de muita
poesia_. But, worse still, the poets of the _Cancioneiro_ were often
scarcely Portuguese.[218] Many wrote in Spanish, and Spanish influence
is to be found at every turn: that of Juan de Mena, Gomez and Jorge
Manrique, Rodriguez de la Cámara, Macias, Santillana. Unlike Macias,
who is but a name, Santillana is not mentioned, but his influence is
constantly felt. On the other hand, King Dinis, unexpectedly introduced
once as a poet by Pedro Homem (fl. 1490)--_invoco el rei dom Denis
Da licença Daretusa_--is nowhere imitated. By method, subject, and
foreign imitation, this Court poetry was thus inevitably artificial and
uninspired. Perhaps in the whole _Cancioneiro_ the only poem marked by
authentic fire is that of the obscure FRANCISCO DE SOUSA--the few lines
beginning _Ó montes erguidos, Deixai-vos cair_. The contributions of Sá
de Miranda, as those of three other famous poets, give no sign of the
coming greatness of the contributor. The names of the other three are
Bernardim Ribeiro, Cristovam Falcão, and the prince of all these poets,
here the humblest of Cinderellas, Gil Vicente.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] _Historiadores Portugueses_ in _Opusculos_ (1907), ii. 27.
The author of the _Theatrum_ has a similar verdict: _Scripsit
Chronicam Ioannis II ut quidem potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum
magnitudinis._
[207] _Sem letras e sem saber_, he says modestly, _me fui nisto meter._
[208] The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being
_Lyuro das Obras de Garcia de Resẽde que trata da vida e grãdissimas
virtudes_, &c.
[209] Or he would seek to obtain them through a friend as in the case
of _o Cancioneiro do abade frei Martinho_ of Alcobaça. It is improbable
that Resende, who valued friendship above good poetry, altered the
manuscripts he received, in spite of Francisco de Sousa’s permission:
_as quaes podeys enmendar_.
[210] _Prologo._ ‘Had you forgotten that _trovas_ are still written in
Portugal?’ asks Nuno Pereira of one of his victims; and of a dress it
is said that it would be _certo de leuar Trouas de riso e mote_. Cf.
the phrase _dar causa a trovadores_.
[211] Or Albuquerque would be mentioned in a game of _Porque’s_ (why’s)
common among the _praguentos da India_: _Porque Afonso d’Albuquerque Dá
pareas a el rey de Fez?_
[212] Zurara, _Cr. de D. Joam_, cap. 29.
[213] The _Cancioneiro_ contains many references to Venice. The
_pimenta de Veneza_ mentioned in one of the poems must have sounded
strange to Portuguese readers in 1516.
[214] e. g. _Meu bem, sem vos ver Se vivo um dia, Viver nam queria.
Caland’ e sofrendo Meu mal sem medida, Mil mortes na vida Sinto nam vos
vendo, E pois que vivendo Moiro toda via, Viver nam queria._
[215] _La t’arreda Satanas, Cristo Jesu a ti chamo, A ti amo, Tu Senhor
me salvarás. O sinal da cruz espante Minha torpe tentaçam, Com devaçam
Espero dir adiante._
[216] One of his poems has the heading: _Outro vilançete seu estãdo em
Azamor antes ̃q se fynasse_.
[217] e.g. _A culpa de quem se ama doe mais & perdoase mais asinha, Nam
pede louvor quem o merece, Da fee nace a rezam da fee_, &c.
[218] D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos goes so far as to call the
Portuguese _Cancioneiro Geral_ a mere supplement or second part of the
Spanish _Cancionero General_ (_Estudos sobre o Romanceiro_, p. 303).
III
The Sixteenth Century [1502-80]
§ 1
_Gil Vicente_
In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The
discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to
science and literature, also increased religious fervour, since the
Portuguese who contended against the Moors in India were but carrying
on the work of their ancestors five centuries earlier in Portugal.
Old-fashioned Portugal thus only gradually welcomed the Renaissance
and stood firm against the Reformation. But in the reign of João III
(1521-57) the University of Coimbra came to be one of the best-known
universities in Europe. André de Gouvêa (†1548), whom Montaigne called
‘sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France’,[219] and Diogo
de Teive returned from the Collège de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate
its studies, and many of its chairs were offered to distinguished
Portuguese and foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (†1540) and
George Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such
as Antonio de Gouvêa and Achilles Estaço (†1581). Nicholas Cleynarts
or Nicolaus Clenardus (1493 or 1494-1542), Professor of Greek and
Hebrew at Louvain, came to Portugal from Salamanca as tutor to
the Infante Henrique in 1533, and from Portugal wrote some of his
wittiest letters.[220] He found Coimbra a second Athens, and few great
Portuguese writers of the century had not spent some years there or
at the University before it was transferred to Coimbra from Lisbon
in 1537. King João III and especially his son, the young prince João
(1537-54), Cardinal Henrique (1512-80), and the many-sided Infante Luis
(1506-55), _favorecedor de toda habilidad_, himself a poet of no mean
order[221] and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters; the
household of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the ‘home
of the Muses’[222]; learned Luisa Sigea (†1560), of French origin,
but born at Toledo and brought up in Portugal, wrote a Latin poem in
praise of _Syntra_; her sister Angela, Joana Vaz, and Publia Hortensia
de Castro were likewise noted for their learning, and D. Lianor de
Noronha (1488-1563), daughter of Fernando, Marques de Villareal, did
good service to Portuguese prose by her encouragement of translations.
But Portuguese literature lost something by its latinization, and it is
pleasant to turn back half a century to a time when it was humbler and
more national. The ‘very prosperous’ Manuel I, Lord of the Ocean,[223]
Lord of the East,[224] had been seven years king, Vasco da Gama had
returned triumphantly from Calicut (1497-9), Cabral had discovered
Brazil for Portugal (1500), Afonso de Albuquerque (†1515) stood on the
threshold of his career of conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire
was advancing from North Africa to China,[225] the gold and spices were
beginning to arrive in plenty from the East, and hope of honour and
riches was drawing nobleman and peasant to Lisbon, when GIL VICENTE
(_c._ 1465-1536?) introduced the drama into his
dear, dear land,
Dear for its reputation through the world.
Dressed as a herdsman on the night of June 7, 1502, he congratulated
the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King João III (born
during the night of June 6), in a Spanish monologue of 114 lines. This
speech gives promise of two qualities apparent in his later work:
extreme naturalness (the embarrassed peasant wonders open-mouthed at
the grand palace and his thoughts turn at once to his village) and
love of Nature (mountain and meadow are aflower for joy of the new
prince born). But, it may reasonably be asked, where is the drama? It
consists principally in the _vaqueiro_, who is restless as one of the
wicked in a Basque _pastorale_. He rushes into the queen’s chamber,
has a look at its luxuries, turns to address the queen, declares that
he is in a hurry and must be going, leaps in gladness, and finally
introduces some thirty courtiers in herdsman’s dress who offer gifts
of milk, eggs, cheese, and honey. There is little in this simple
piece--the _Visitaçam_, or _Monologo do Vaqueiro_--to foreshadow the
sovereign genius,[226] the Plautus, the Shakespeare[227] of Portugal
that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity, and the known
existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vicentes makes research a
risky operation. There was a page (1475) and an _escudeiro_ (1482) of
King João II, an official at Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (†1500),
there was a Gil Vicente in India in 1512,[228] and a Gil Vicente
goldsmith at Lisbon. We know that the poet spoke of himself as near
death (_visinho da morte_) in 1531, although apparently in good health.
This would seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.[229]
Unfortunately the _Auto da Festa_, in which he says that he is over
sixty, is undated. As, however, it was written before the _Templo de
Apolo_ (1526) we may place it probably about 1525. We are thus brought
back to about the same date (_c._ 1465). Almost certainly he was not of
exalted parentage.[230] Indeed, he would appear to have been slighted
for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke of himself as the son
of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira (Estremadura).[231] He may
have been the son of Luis Vicente or of Martim Vicente, ‘said to have
been a silversmith of Guimarães’ (Minho).[232] The frequent mention
of the province of Beira is, however, noticeable in his plays. If it
were only that his peasants use words such as _nega_, _nego_, which
according to the grammarian Fernam d’Oliveira were peculiar to Beira
(in 1536),[233] it might pass for a dramatic device, since Oliveira
remarks that old-fashioned words will not be out of place if we assign
them to an old man of Beira or a peasant.[234] Indeed, the grammarian
seems to have had Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in
another connexion) since three of the six words that he notes--_abem_,
_acajuso_, _algorrem_--occur in three successive lines of the _Barca
do Purgatorio_, and another, _samicas_, is as great a favourite with
Vicente as at first was _soncas_,[235] derived from Enzina. But it is
impossible to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition
that _beirão_ is equivalent to rustic and Beira to Boeotia, for Beira
and the Serra da Estrella intrude constantly and indeed pervade his
work. He shows personal knowledge of the country between Manteigas and
Fundão, and we may suspect that it was in order to connect ‘Portuguese
Fame desired of all nations’ with Beira ‘our province’ rather than with
rusticity that he makes her keep ducks as a _mocinha da Beira_. We do
not know when Vicente came to Lisbon, nor whether, as José de Cabedo
de Vasconcellos, another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe,
he became the tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) of King Manuel, then Duke
of Beja. Of his life at Lisbon our information is almost as meagre.
We know, of course, that he accompanied the Court to Evora, Coimbra,
Thomar, Almeirim, and other towns to set up and act in his plays, that
besides acting in his plays he wrote songs for them and music for the
songs. We know that he received considerable gifts in money and in kind
both from King Manuel and from João III, in whose reign he complains
of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that he married his first
wife, Branca Bezerra, in 1512, that he owned the _Quinta do Mosteiro_
near Torres Vedras (a supposition no longer tenable), that the name
of his second wife was Melicia Rodriguez, but we have no certainty
as to this, nor as to the number of his children. The accomplished
Paula became musician and lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Maria before
the death of her father, whom she helped--runs the legend--in the
composition of his plays,[236] as she helped her brother Luis in
editing them in 1562. From a document concerning another brother,
Belchior, we know that Gil Vicente (_seu pae que Deus haja_) died
before April 16, 1540. There is some reason to believe that he died in
the year of his last play (1536) or early in 1537. From his assertion
that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to his old
age[237] we might judge him to have been very old, but he may have been
worn out with labour in many fields and his health had not always been
good. He suffered from fever and plague, which brought him to death’s
door in 1525, and he had grown stout with advancing age. An incident
at Santarem on the occasion of the great earthquake of 1531, so
vividly described by Garcia de Resende, shows him in a very attractive
light, for by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in
restraining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace, and thus
saved the ‘new Christians’ from ill-treatment or massacre.
We know a little more about him if we identify him with Gil Vicente,
the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel and
widow of King João II, whose most famous work is the beautiful Belem
monstrance, wrought of the first tribute of gold from the East (from
Quiloa or Kilwa).[238] The probabilities in favour of identity are
so convincing that we are bound to assume it unless an insuperable
obstacle presents itself. Our faith in manuscript documents and
genealogies is not increased by the fact that one investigator, the
Visconde Sanches de Baena (1822-1909), emerges with the triumphant
conclusion that the two Gil Vicentes were uncle and nephew, while
another, Dr. Theophilo Braga, declares that they are cousins. Perhaps
we may be permitted to believe in neither and to restore Gil Vicente
to himself. For indeed this was a singular instance of cousinly love.
The goldsmith wrote verses; the poet takes a remarkable interest in the
goldsmith’s art.[239] The goldsmith is appointed inspector (_vedor_)
of all works in gold and silver at the convent of Thomar, the Lisbon
Hospital of All Saints, and Belem. The poet is particularly fond of
referring to Thomar,[240] and in its convent in 1523 staged his _Farsa
de Inés Pereira_ (who lived at Thomar with her first husband), while
at the Hospital of All Saints was played the _Barca do Purgatorio_ in
1518. The goldsmith was in the service of the widow of João II, Queen
Lianor, who mentions two of his chalices in her will; the poet at the
request of the same Queen Lianor wrote verses, probably in 1509, in a
poetical contest about a gold chain and was encouraged by her to write
his early plays.[241] The goldsmith was _Mestre da Balança_ from
1513 to 1517; the poet goes out of his way to refer to _os da Moeda_,
familiarly but not as one of them, in 1521. He henceforth devoted
himself more ardently to the literary side of his genius, speaks of
himself as Gil Vicente who writes _autos_ for the king, and with an
occasional sigh[242] that he can no longer afford to stage his plays
as splendidly as of old (in King Manuel’s reign) produces them with
increasing frequency. ‘Had Gil Vicente been a goldsmith and a goldsmith
of such skill,’ said the late Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912),
‘it would have been impossible for him to leave no trace of it in his
dramatic works and for all the contemporary writers who speak of him
to have kept complete silence as to his artistic talent.’[243] But
his work is essentially that of an artist (Menéndez y Pelayo himself
well calls him an _alma de artista_)[244]: involuntarily one likens
his sketches to some rough terra-cotta figure of Tanagra or sculpture
in early Gothic, and his lyrics are clear-cut gems, a thing very rare
in Portuguese literature. Intensely Portuguese in his lyrism and his
satire, he is almost un-Portuguese in the extreme plasticity of his
genius. Concrete, definite images spring from his brain in contrast to
the vaguer effusions of most Portuguese poets. And if Queen Lianor’s
goldsmith, like the troubadour _ourives_ Elias Cairel, or, to come to
the fifteenth century, like Diogo Fernandez and Afonso Valente of the
_Cancioneiro de Resende_,[245] set himself to write verses, this would
call for no comment. Every one wrote verses. Had a celebrated poet--say
the Gil Vicente of 1520--wrought the _custodia_ his contemporaries
might have recorded the fact, but Gil Vicente was not a famous poet
when the _custodia_ was begun in 1503. Stress was therefore naturally
laid on the plays of Gil Vicente the goldsmith, not on the art of Gil
Vicente the poet. The historian Barros refers in 1540 to Gil Vicente
_comico_,[246] and since 1517 he had certainly been more _comico_ than
_ourives_. But the _comico_ who was dramatist and lyric poet, musician,
actor, preacher in prose and verse, may also have been a goldsmith. His
versatility was that of Damião de Goes a little later or of his own
contemporary Garcia de Resende, with genius added. The fact that the
official document in which _Gil Vicente lavrador da Rainha Lianor_ is
appointed to his post in the Lisbon _Casa da Moeda_ (Feb. 4, 1513[247])
has above it a contemporary note _Gil Vᵗᵉ trouador mestre da balãça_
should in itself be conclusive evidence that the poet was the goldsmith
of the queen. This modest but intimate position at Court accords well
with what we know of the poet and with the production of his plays.
The offerings at the end of the _Visitaçam_ seem to have suggested
to Queen Lianor the idea of its repetition on Christmas morning, but
Gil Vicente, considering its matter inappropriate, wrote a new play
with parts for six shepherds. This _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ is four
times as long as the _Visitaçam_. The shepherds pass the time in dance
and song, games, riddles, and various conversation (the dowry of the
bride of one of them is catalogued in the manner of Enzina[248] and
the Archpriest of Hita). To them the Angels announce the birth of the
Redeemer, and they go to sing and dance before _aquel garzon_. The
principal part, that of the mystic shepherd Gil Terron, ‘inclined to
the life contemplative’, well read (_letrudo_) in the Bible, with
some knowledge of metaphysics and perhaps of the _Corte Imperial_,
devoted to Nature and the _sierras benditas_, was evidently played by
Gil Vicente himself. A fortnight later, for the Day of Kings, he had
ready the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ (1503), again at the request of Queen
Lianor, who had ‘been very pleased’ with what Vicente himself called a
_pobre cousa_. This brief interval of time limited the length of the
new play. Its action is as slight. A shepherd enters who has lost his
way to Bethlehem. He meets another shepherd and then a hermit, whom
they ply with irreverent problems. To them enters a knight of Araby,
and finally the three kings, singing a _vilancete_. The _Auto da Sibila
Cassandra_ has been assigned to the same year, but is probably a later
play (1513?). Nearly twice as long as the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_,
it combines the ordinary scenic display--_todo o apparato_--of a
Christmas _representação_ with a presentment of the early prophecies
now to be fulfilled, and introduces Solomon, Isaiah, Abraham, and
Moses, who describes the creation of the world. The play includes a
profane theme, since Cassandra in her mystic aversion from marriage
realistically portrays the sad life of married women in Portugal.
Although Cassandra appears as a shepherdess and her aunt Peresica as a
peasant, they speak a purer, more flowing Castilian than the _toscos,
rusticos pastores_ of the preceding _autos_, and the play is remarkable
for the beauty of its lyrics--_Dicen que me case yo_, _Sañosa está la
niña_, _Muy graciosa es la doncella_, and _A la guerra_. For the Corpus
Christi procession of 1504 was provided, at short notice from Queen
Lianor, the _Auto de S. Martinho_. The subject of this piece, merely
ten dodecasyllabic _oitavas_ followed by a solemn _prosa_, is that of
El Greco’s marvellous picture--St. Martin dividing his cloak with a
beggar, whom Vicente treats with characteristic sympathy and insight:
¿Criante rocío, qué te hice yo[249]
Que las hiervecitas floreces por Mayo
Y sobre mis carnes no echas un sayo?
The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, of uncertain date, acted before the Court
in the Lisbon palace of Alcaçova on Christmas morning in or after
1511, opens with a mystic ode on the Nativity and a _vilancete_ (_A
ti dino de adorar_) and proceeds rapidly with snatches of song in a
splendid rivalry between the four seasons. The praises of Spring are
sung with a delightful freshness, as are Winter’s rages, while Summer
in a straw hat appears sallow and fever-stricken. Jupiter comes with
countless classical allusions and David with much Latin, and they
all worship together the new-born King. Very different is the _Auto
da Alma_, written for Queen Lianor and acted in King Manuel’s Lisbon
palace of Ribeira on the night of Good Friday, 1518 (Snr. Braamcamp
Freire’s plausible suggestion in place of the commonly accepted 1508).
It represents the eternal strife between the soul and sin. The soul,
slowly journeying in the company of its guardian angel, is alternately
tempted by Satan with the delights of the world, with fine dresses and
jewels, and exhorted by the Angel, till it arrives at the Church, the
Innkeeper of Souls, and confesses its guilt, imploring protection (_Ach
neige, du schmerzenreiche!_). Then, while Satan in a restless fury of
disappointment makes a last effort to secure his victim, the ransomed
soul is fortified with celestial fare served by St. Augustine and
other _doutores_. The whole theme, to which the language rises fully
adequate, is treated with great delicacy and with a mystic fervour.
In 1505 King Manuel and his Court in his Lisbon palace had witnessed
the first of those _farsas_ in which Gil Vicente has sketched for all
time Portuguese life in the first third of the sixteenth century.
It rapidly became popular and went from hand to hand as a _folha
volante_, receiving from the people the name of _Quem tem farelos?_
i.e. the first three words of the play. The plots of the twelve
_farsas_ written from 1505 to 1531 are so slight that only one
calls for detailed notice, the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_[250] (1523),
which in its carefully defined characters and developed story more
closely resembles a modern comedy. It tells how the hapless Inés,
having rejected a plain suitor for a more romantic lover, a poor but
deceptive _escudeiro_ presented to her by two Jewish marriage agents,
learns by bitter experience the truth of the old proverb that ‘an
ass that carries me is better than a horse that throws me’. But the
types and persons in all these farces are etched with so much realism
and humour that they bite into the memory and rank with the living
malicious sketches of _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Who can forget the
famished escudeiro Aires Rosado with his book of songs (_cancioneiro_)
and guitar, continuing to sing beneath the window of his love while
the curses of her mother fall thick as snowflakes on his head,[251]
or the lady of his affections, vain and idle Isabel, or his servant
(_moço_) Apariço who draws so cruel a picture of his master, or that
other penniless _escudeiro_ who considers himself ‘the very palace’
and calls up his _moço_ Fernando at midnight to light the lamp and
hold the inkstand while he writes down his latest verses?[252] Equally
well sketched is the splendid poverty-plagued _fidalgo_ who walks
abroad accompanied by six pages, but cannot pay his chaplain or his
goldsmith; his ill-used, servile, ambitious chaplain[253]; the witch
Genebra Pereira mixing the hanged man’s ear, the heart of a black cat,
and other grim ingredients: _Alguidar, alguidar, que feito foste ao
luar_[254]; the household of the Jewish tailor who delights in songs
of battles-at-a-distance and is filled with pride when the _Regedor_
salutes him in the street[255]; M. Diafoirus’ lineal ancestors Mestres
Anrique, Felipe, Fernando, and Torres[256]; the sporting priest[257];
the unfaithful wife of the Portuguese who has embarked for India with
Tristão da Cunha; the vainglorious, grandiloquent Spaniard who takes
the opportunity to pay his court to her.[258] They are all drawn from
life with a master hand, even the more insignificant figures, the girl
keeping ducks, the _moços_, the gipsy horse-dealers,[259] the old man
amorous,[260] the carriers faring leisurely along with their mules,
the braggart who disables six of his fourteen imaginary opponents, the
Frenchman and Italian with their stock phrases _Par ma foi_, _la belle
France_, _tutti quanti_,[261] the wily and impudent negro, the poor
_ratinho_[262] Gonçalo, who loses his hare and capons and his clothes
as well, the page of peasant birth ambitious to become a _cavaleiro
fidalgo_, the roguish and pretentious palace pages. Side by side with
these farces Vicente continued to write religious _autos_ as well as
comedies and tragicomedies. The difference between these various pieces
is less of kind than of the occasion on which they were produced, the
_obras de devação_ on Christmas morning or other solemn day,[263]
the _farsas de folgar, comedias_, &c., at the evening parties--those
famous _serões_ of King Manuel’s reign to which the courtiers thronged
at dusk, and which Sá de Miranda remembered with regret.[264] All
provide us with realistic sketches since the background is filled with
the common people, the real hero of Gil Vicente’s plays as it is of
Fernam Lopez’ chronicles. Thus the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (Christmas,
1534), besides its heavenly _gloria_ with the Virgin, Gabriel,
Prudence, Poverty, Humility, and Faith, has a very life-like peasant
scene in which Mofina Mendes, personifying Misfortune, represents
a Portuguese version of _Pierrette et son pot au lait_. The _Auto
Pastoril Portugues_ (Christmas, 1523) is a similar scene of peasant
life, relating the cross-currents of the shepherds’ loves and the
finding of an image of the Virgin on the hills. The _Auto da Feira_,
acted before King João at Lisbon in 1527, is a more elaborate Christmas
play. Mercury, Time, Rome, and the Devil attend a fair, and this
furnishes opportunity for a vigorous attack upon the Church of Rome,
with her indulgences for others and her self-indulgence, who has not
the kings of the Earth but herself to blame if she is rushing on ruin,
ruin that will be inevitable unless she mends her ways. But to the fair
also come the peasants Denis and Amancio, as dissatisfied with their
wives as their wives are dissatisfied with them (their conversation
is most voluble and natural), and market-girls, basket on head, come
down singing from the hills. Another Christmas play, the _Auto da
Fé_, was acted in the royal chapel at Almeirim in 1510, and consists
of a simple conversation between Faith and two shepherds. The _Breve
Summario da Historia de Deos_[265] (1527) and the _Auto da Cananea_
(written for the Abbess of Odivellas in 1534) are both based on the
Bible; the former, which contains the _vilancete_ sung by Abel (_Adorae
montanhas_), outlines the story of the Fall, of Job, and of the New
Testament to the Crucifixion, sometimes in passages of great beauty.
The latter develops the episode of the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv.
21-8). The great trilogy of _Barcas_, which ranks among Vicente’s most
important works, is of earlier date. The first part, _Auto da Barca do
Inferno_, was acted before Queen Maria _pera consolação_ as she lay
on her death-bed in 1517, the second, _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_,
at Christmas of the following year in Lisbon, and the _Auto da Barca
da Gloria_ at Almeirim in 1519. The plot, again, is of the simplest:
the Devil, combining the parts of Charon and Rhadamanthus, ferry-man
and judge, invites Death’s victims to show cause why they should not
enter his boat; and the interest is in the light thus thrown upon the
earthly behaviour of nobleman, judge, advocate, usurer, fool, love-lorn
friar, the cheating market-woman, the cobbler who throve by deceiving
the people, the peasant who skimped his tithes, the little shepherdess
who had seen God ‘often and often’, of Count, King,[266] and Emperor,
Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invocation
to the knights who had died fighting in Africa, and the second begins
with the mystic jewelled _romance_: _Remando vam remadores_.
The comedies and tragicomedies vary greatly. The _Comedia de Rubena_
(1521) is, like _A Winter’s Tale_, quite without unity of time or
place (for this primitive humanist, although he might mention Plato,
did not ‘reverence the Stagirite’), but is divided into three acts
(called scenes) as in a modern play. Cismena, like Perdita born in the
first scene, is conveyed by fairies to Crete, where she is wooed and
won by the Prince of Syria. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ (1514) is much more
compact and has a delicate charm. Don Rosvel, a prince in disguise,
serves in the house of a widower at Burgos for love of his daughters.
(He is in love with both, but his brother in search of him arrives and
marries the second.) On the other hand, the _Comedia sobre a divisa da
cidade de Coimbra_, acted before King João III in his ever-loyal city
of Coimbra in 1527, is a lengthy, far-fetched explanation of the city’s
arms, and the _Floresta de Enganos_ (played before the king at Evora
in 1536) is a succession of scenes of pure farce--the deceit practised
upon a merchant, the ludicrous predicament to which love reduced the
grave old judge who had taken his degree in Paris--with a more serious
theme, a Portuguese version of the story of Psyche and Eros. Of the
‘tragicomedies’ two, _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) and _Amadis de Gaula_
(1533), dramatize romances of chivalry: _Primaleon_, that ‘_dulce &
aplacible historia_ translated from the Greek’,[267] and _Amadis_.[268]
The work is done with skill, for Vicente succeeds here as always in
being natural, and in this twilight atmosphere of garden flowers and
romance keeps his realism.[269] Both plays contain passages of great
lyrical beauty, and _Dom Duardos_ ends with the _romance_ beginning
_Pelo mes era de Abril_. Thus in his latter age he successfully adapted
himself to pastures new. In his letter dedicating _Dom Duardos_ to King
João III he wrote: ‘Since, excellent Prince and most powerful King,
the comedies, farces and moralities which I wrote for (_en servicio
de_) the Queen your Aunt were low figures[270] in which there was no
fitting rhetoric to satisfy the delicate spirit of your Highness, I
realized that I must crowd more sail on to my poor bark.’ For us the
words have a tinge of irony, and however much some readers may admire
the hushed rapture of these idyllic scenes we miss the merry author of
the _farsas_, and gladly turn to the _Romagem de Aggravados_ (1533) in
which Vicente proves that his hand had lost none of its cunning. ‘This
tragicomedy is a satire’ says the rubric, and it introduces us to the
inimitable Frei Paço, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves, gilt
sword, and velvet cap (one of Sá de Miranda’s _clerigos perfumados_),
to the discontented peasant who brings his son to be made a priest, the
talkative fish-wives, the hypocrite Frei Narciso scheming to be made a
bishop, and awkward Giralda, the peasant Aparicianes’ daughter, whom
Frei Paço instructs so competently in Court manners. This long play
was written for a special occasion, the birth of the Infante Felipe.
Gil Vicente for many years, as poet laureate, had celebrated great
events at Court. When the Duke of Braganza was about to leave with the
expedition against Azamor in 1513 he wrote the eloquent _Exhortaçam da
Guerra_, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends with a
rousing call to war (_soiça_):
Avante avante, senhores,
Pois que com grandes favores
Todo o ceo vos favorece;
El Rey de Fez esmorece
E Marrocos dá clamores.
When King Manuel’s daughter, the princess Beatrice, married the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, in which the
Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Elements, speed her on
her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants of Lisbon accompany
her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the Tagus. The _Fragoa de Amor_
(1525) was written on the occasion of the betrothal of King João and
Queen Catherina (who replaced Queen Lianor as Vicente’s protector and
patron). Into the forge, to the sound of singing, goes a negro, and
then Justice in the form of a bent old woman who is forced to disgorge
all her bribes and reappears upright and fair. A similar play, _Nao
de Amor_ (1527), in which courtiers caulk a miniature ship on the
stage, was played before their Majesties in Lisbon two years later.
The _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) was acted when another daughter of King
Manuel left Lisbon to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. The
author introduces the play and excuses its deficiencies on the plea
that he has been seriously ill with fever. He then relates the dream
of fair women--_las hermosas que son muertas_--that he had seen in his
sickness. Apollo then enters, and after declaring that he would have
made the world otherwise mounts the pulpit and preaches a mock sermon.
The world, Fame, Victory, come to his temple and bear witness to the
greatness of the Emperor Charles V. A Portuguese peasant also comes
and has more difficulty in obtaining admittance. The author called the
play an _obra doliente_, and it was propped up by a passage from the
earlier _Auto da Festa_ (1525?), edited by the Conde de Sabugosa from
the unique copy in his possession. Its figures are Truth, two gipsies,
a fool, and seven peasants. Their speech is markedly _beirão_ and the
old woman closely resembles the _velha_ of the tragicomedy _Triunfo do
Inverno_, written to celebrate the birth of Princess Isabel in 1529,
as the _Auto da Lusitania_ celebrated that of Prince Manuel in 1532
and the _Tragicomedia Pastoril da Serra da Estrella_ that of Princess
Maria in 1527. The latter is a whole-hearted play of the Serra with
a _cossante_, a _baile de terreiro_ and _chacota_, and continual
fragments of song: one of the most Portuguese of Vicente’s plays.
The _Triunfo do Inverno_ contains some most effective scenes and a
bewildering wealth of lyrics: before one is finished another has begun,
and the whole long play goes forward at a gallop. The first triumph
of Winter is on the hills, the Serra da Estrella (_serra nevada_);
the second, on the sea, affords a telling satire against the pilots
on India-bound ships. The pilot here begins by stating that the storm
will be nothing, then he says that he is not to blame for Winter’s
conduct, finally he falls to imploring the Virgin and St. George and
St. Nicholas; and but for his incompetence the ship might have been
lying safe at Cochin. The second part of the tragicomedy is the Triumph
of Spring in the Serra de Sintra. Spring enters in a lyrical profusion
singing
Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
Vengo del rosale,
breaks off into _Afuera, afuera nublados_, and resumes his song:
A riberas de aquel rio
Viera estar rosal florido,
Vengo del rosale.
Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays,
the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their
author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_,
had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and
from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in
the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic
Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the
people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely
primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were
probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and
players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients
of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_
for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature,
although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde
do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions
and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further
scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that
in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those
still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were
carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who
invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many
iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The
popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest
in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of
burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and
paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in
France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters.
It was, however, from Spain that the idea of his _autos_ first came
to him, as the direct imitations of Juan del Enzina (1469?-1529?) in
Vicente’s early pieces and the explicit statement of Garcia de Resende
in his _Miscellania_ prove: he speaks of the _representações_ of very
eloquent style and new devices invented in Portugal by Gil Vicente,
and adds the qualifying clause that credit for the invention of the
_pastoril_ belongs to Enzina. But the wine of Vicente’s genius soon
burst the old bottles, and when his plays ceased to be confined to the
_pastoril_ he naturally turned elsewhere for suggestion. He himself
towards the end of his life called his religious plays _moralidades_,
and the real name of the play popularly known as the _Farsa da Mofina
Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_.[274] The introduction of Lucifer
as _Maioral do Inferno_ and Belial as his _meirinho_[275] may have
been derived from French _mystères_; the conception of his _Barcas_
certainly owed more to the _Danse macabre_ (probably through the
Spanish fifteenth-century _Danza de la Muerte_) than to Dante. The
burlesque _testamento_ of Maria Parda[276] is one of a long list
of such wills (of which an example is the mule’s testament in the
_Cancioneiro Geral_),[277] but in some of its expressions appears
to be copied from the _Testament de Pathelin_. His knowledge of
French was perhaps more fluent than accurate, like his Latin which,
albeit copious, did not claim to be ‘pure Tully’. But there are many
references to France in his plays, as there are in the _Cancioneiro
Geral_, and, although the _enselada_ from France with which the _Auto
da Fé_ ends (i. 75) and the French song (i. 92) _Ay de la noble ville
de Paris_[278] were no doubt some fashionable courtier’s latest
acquisition, Vicente in literary matters probably shared the curiosity
of the Court as to what was going on beyond the frontiers of Portugal.
The great majority of his songs are, however, plainly indigenous. His
knowledge of Italian certainly enabled him to read Italian plays and
poems. We know that he was a great reader--he mentions ‘the written
works that I have seen, in verse and prose, rich in style and matter’.
In Spanish he did not confine himself to Enzina. He read romances of
chivalry, imitated the _romances_ with supreme success, mentions Diego
de San Pedro’s _La Carcel de Amor_, had read the _autos_ of Lucas
Fernandez, the _comedias_ of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro probably,
and without doubt the Archpriest of Hita’s _Libro de Buen Amor_,
possessed by King Duarte, and the _Celestina_. Indeed, for some time
past barriers between the two literatures had scarcely existed and
Vicente enriched both. Celestina would have spoken many proverbs had
she foreseen that he would allow two men (_judeos casamenteiros_) to
take the bread out of her mouth, but he copies her in his Brigida Vaz,
Branca Gil, the formidable Anna Diaz, and the _beata alcoviteira_ of
the _Comedia de Rubena_, although he may also have had in mind the
_moller mui vil_ of King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (No.
64), with the spirit of which--their fondness for popular types and
satire--Vicente had more in common than with the _Cancioneiro Geral_,
compiled by his friend Resende. With this collection he was naturally
familiar, and must have heard many of its songs before it was published
in 1516. A line here and there in Vicente seems to be an echo of the
_Cancioneiro_,[279] although the fact that it mentions some of his
types (as in the _Arrenegos_[280] of Gregorio Afonso) merely means that
he drew from the life around him. His satire of doctors and priests,
although essentially popular and mediaeval--both are present in the
_Cantigas de Santa Maria_--was also due to his personal observation:
that is to say, he gave realistic expression to a satire of which the
motive was literary (since satire directed against priests had long
been one of the chief resources of comic writers in France, Italy,
Spain, and Portugal).[281] The type of the poor _fidalgo_ or famishing
_escudeiro_ on which Vicente dwells so fondly--we have the latter
as Aires Rosado in _Quem tem farelos?_ and anonymous in the _Farsa
de Inés Pereira_ and _O Juiz da Beira_[282]--is another instance of
literary tradition combined with observation at first hand. Of the
priest-satire Vicente was the last free exponent in Portugal. That
of the poor gentleman was even older and survived him. It dates from
Roman times. The _amethystinatus_ of Spanish Martial[283] reappears in
the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, in the Archpriest of Hita’s Don Furon,
in the _lindos fidalgos que viven lazerados_ of Alfonso Alvarez de
Villasandino, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and just before Vicente’s
death is wittily described, as the _raphanophagus purpuratus_, by
Clenardus,[284] and less urbanely in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. With no
Inquisition to crush him he continued to starve in literature--for
instance, in the anonymous later sixteenth-century play _Auto do
Escudeiro Surdo_ he and his _moço_ come on the scene in thoroughly
Vicentian guise: _a vossa fome de pam ... meio tostão gasto quinze dias
ha_[285]--as he starves in the real life of the Peninsula to-day.[286]
In a sense Gil Vicente no doubt borrowed widely; he was no sorcerer to
make bricks without straw, and straw, like poets, is not manufactured:
it has to be gathered in. But the _homens de bom saber_ who, as we know
from the rubric to the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_, doubted his originality
must have been very superficial as well as envious critics, for the
bricks were essentially his own. Indeed, every page of his _autos_ is
hall-marked as his, _ca non alheo_, and he could say with King Alfonso
X:
Mais se o m’eu melhoro faço ben
E non sõo per aquesto ladron.
Besides the _Auto da Festa_ we have 42 plays[287]: 12 _farsas_, 16
_obras de devaçam_, 4 _comedias_, 10 _tragicomedias_. Some of them
were staged with much pomp and _grande aparato de musica_ in the
spacious times of King Manuel, but they lose little in being merely
read. They contain a few scenes of dramatic insight and power, a
few touches of real comedy, but above all we value them for their
types and characters, the insight they afford us into man and that
particular period of man’s history, and for the lyrics and lyrical
passages, fragments of heaven-born poetry thrown out tantalizingly
at random as the dramatist passes rapidly, carelessly on. We do not
possess all Vicente’s plays. A farce which in a poem to the Conde de
Vimioso (?1525) he says that he had in hand, _A Caça dos Segredos_,
was perhaps never finished, or perhaps it was produced seven years
later as the _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532). Others were probably lost as
_folhas volantes_ before the edition of 1562 could collect them. Three
at least, the _Auto da Aderencia do Paço_, _Auto da Vida do Paço_, and
_Jubileu de Amor_ or _Amores_, were suppressed.[288] The latter, in
Spanish and Portuguese, was probably the cause of the loss of the two
other plays, for, having ventured far away from the natural piety of
Portugal, it was acted in Brussels on December 21, 1531, in the house
of the Portuguese Ambassador, D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, and in the
mind of the Nuncio, Cardinal Aleandro, who was among those invited,
this ‘manifest satire against Rome’ caused such commotion that, as
he wrote, he ‘seemed to be in mid-Saxony listening to Luther[289] or
in the horrors of the sack of Rome’.[290] Yet in 1533 impenitent,
the incorrigible Vicente is pillorying the Court priest, Frei Paço.
The fact is that in Portugal no one could suspect the sheep-dog, who
had for so long and so mordantly kept watch over the Court flock,
of turning wolf and encouraging the _seitas_ and _cismas_ against
which Alvaro de Brito had already inveighed. He was himself deeply,
mystically religious and perhaps cared the less for creeds and dogmas.
His mystic philosophy appears as early as 1502. Yet they do him a
poor service who represent him as a profound theologian, a great
philosopher, an authoritative philologist. His plays show us a man
lovable and human, tolerant of opinions, intolerant of abuses,[291]
a man of many gifts, with a passionate devotion to his country. We
have only to turn to the ringing _Exhortaçam da Guerra_ or the _Auto
da Fama_. The whole of the latter is written in a glow of pride and
patriotism at Portugal’s vast, increasing empire and the victories of
Albuquerque:
Ormuz, Quiloa, Mombaça,
Sofala, Cochim, Melinde.
Clearly the words to him are a sweet music.[292] From one point of view
Gil Vicente’s position exactly tallied with Herculano’s description
of the _bobo_. He was a Court jester, expected to render the idle
courtiers _muy ledos_. To this purpose he was compelled to saddle
his plays with passages which for us have lost their savour and
significance but almost every line of which must have elicited a smile
or a shout of laughter at the _serões_. We may instance _O Clerigo
da Beira_, which ends with the signs and planets under which various
courtiers were born, the _Tragicomedia da divisa da cidade de Coimbra_,
with the origins of various noble families, the malicious _catalogue
raisonné_ of courtiers in the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Branca Gil’s
comical litany in _O Velho da Horta_, the sixty-four puzzle verses
of the _Auto das Fadas_. But Vicente frequently had a deeper purpose
than to enliven a fashionable gathering. The abuse of indulgences,
the corruption of the clergy,[293] the subjection of married women,
the danger of appointing ignorant men to the responsible position of
pilot, the mingling of the classes--it was not so, he remarks, in
Germany or Flanders, France or Venice--the increasing tendency to
shun honest labour in order to occupy a position however humble at
Court,[294] the ignorance and presumption of the peasants, the false
display and false ambitions, the thousand new lies and deceits, the
decay of piety, the growth of luxury and corresponding diminution in
gaiety--these were matters which he sought not only to portray but to
correct, with much earnestness in his _iocis levibus_. But to the end
of his life he was never able to learn that religion and virtue must
be melancholy. In the introduction to the _Triunfo do Inverno_ (1529)
he complains of the loss of the joyous dances and songs of Portugal
and the disappearance in the last twenty years of the _gaiteiro_ and
his cheerful piping. He himself drew his inspiration from the people,
from Nature, and from the Scriptures, with which he had no superficial
acquaintance. In his love of Nature and his wide curiosity he studied
children and birds, plants and flowers, astronomy and witchcraft--those
myriad forms of sorcery in Portugal, some of which have fortunately
survived in the prohibitory decrees of the Church. He included in his
plays or alluded to many of the traditions, the songs and dances of old
Portugal--the ancient _cossantes_, the _bailes de terreiro_, _bailos
vilãos_,[295] _bailes da Beira_, _chacotas_, _folias_, _alvoradas_,
_janeiras, lampas de S. João_.[296] For he stood at the parting of
the ways. Desirous and capable of playing many parts, tinged unawares
by the new spirit of the Renaissance, but at the same time keenly
national, he linked the Middle Ages with the new learning and the old
traditions of Portugal with her ever-widening dominions, for which he
showed the wise enthusiasm of a true imperialist. But behind the new
glitter and luxury of Lisbon he constantly saw the growing misery of
the people of Portugal for which all the splendour of King Manuel’s
reign had been but a terrible storm[297]; and his latter sadness was
perhaps less personal than patriotic. He had done what he could, far
more than had been required of him. He had been expected to delight a
Court audience, and had mingled warning and instruction with amusement;
and when, having lived and laughed and loved, he went his way, he
was not only spared by a crowning grace from the wrath that was to
come but left to his countrymen an heirloom more enduring than brass,
more precious than all the gold of India, with a breath of that true
Portugal in its simplicity, its mirth and jollity, the disappearance
of which he had deplored. Portuguese literature was never so national
again. A period of splendid achievement followed, but alike in subject
and language it was too often a honeyed sweetness containing in itself
the seeds of decay, and if for the time it swept away all memory of Gil
Vicente, for us it only emphasizes his qualities by the contrast. In
his directness, his close contact with the people,[298] his humanity,
his quick observation, keen satire, love of laughter and malicious
humour, in his unsurpassed lyrical gift and his natural delight in
words, to be used not at haphazard but weighed and set cunningly as
precious stones in the hands of an _ourives_, this great lyrical poet
and charmingly incorrect playwright clearly foreshadowed dramatists so
different as Calderón, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Molière. Yet we
look in vain for a Vicentian school of great dramatists in Portugal.
His fame had reached Brussels and thence Rome, and Erasmus is credited
with having wished to learn Portuguese in order to read Vicente’s
plays. Shakespeare, who was twenty-two when the second edition of
Vicente’s plays appeared and who almost certainly read Spanish, may
also have been tempted. It would have been strange if Erasmus had not
heard of Vicente through his friend André de Resende, who in his Latin
poem _Genethliacon_ declared that had not the comic poet Gil Vicente,
actor and author, written in the vulgar tongue he would have rivalled
Menander and excelled Plautus and Terence. In Portugal the number of
plays written in the sixteenth century was large,[299] but none can
be placed on a level with those of Vicente. One cannot say that he
influenced Camões or Ferreira de Vasconcellos deeply, although they had
evidently read him. In Spain Cervantes, who read everything, _aunque
sean los papeles rotos de las calles_, had read his plays (the _Farsa
dos Fisicos_, _O Juiz da Beira_, the _Comedia de Rubena_ among others),
Lope de Vega likewise, Calderón possibly. Lope de Rueda probably
derived the idea of his _paso Las Aceitunas_ from the _Auto da Mofina
Mendes_. Yet it is almost with amazement, if we forget the crowded
history of Portugal and Portuguese literature in the sixteenth century,
the introduction of the Inquisition, and the great changes in the
language, that we find a Portuguese, Sousa de Macedo, a century after
Vicente’s death, speaking of him as one ‘whose style was celebrated of
old’,[300] and a Spaniard, Nicolás Antonio, declaring that his works
were written in prose and knowing nothing of a collected edition.[301]
It was with reasonable misgivings that Vicente just before his death
wrote: _Livro meu, que esperas tu?_; ‘my book, what is in store for
you?’ We know that it remained in manuscript for a quarter of a
century, that a second edition in 1586 was so handled by the Censorship
that it contains but thirty-five mutilated plays, and that for two and
a half centuries no new edition was printed.
FOOTNOTES:
[219] _Essais_, 1. XXV.
[220] _Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo._ Antuerpiae, 1561.
[221] Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to him (cf. _Fenix
Renascida_, iii. 252, _Horas breves_, and, with more reason, iii. 253.
_Á redea solta corre o pensamento_), as was also Gil Vicente’s _Dom
Duardos_ and a manuscript _Tratado dos modos, proporções e medidas_.
[222] Duarte Nunez de Leam, _Descripção_, 2ᵃ ed. (1785), cap. 80: _Da
habilidade das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liberaes._
Severim de Faria speaks of her _sancto desejo de saber_. The author
of _Dos priuilegios & praerogatiuas q̃ ho genero femenino tem_ (1557)
says (p. 9): _se pode estranhar esta hidade na qual as molheres não se
aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas Romanas e Gregas_.
[223] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (1834), ii. 414.
[224] Ibid. iii. 350.
[225] Cf. João Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses in the _Cancioneiro Geral_:
_De Çeita atee os Chijs_.
[226] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, vol. vii, p. clxiii.
[227] A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição_, 3ᵃ ed. (1879), i. 238.
Cf. Camillo Castello Branco, _A Viuva do Enforcado_, _ad init._ No one
of course thinks of comparing Gil Vicente with Shakespeare, but one may
perhaps say that he resembles what Shakespeare might have been had he
been born in the fifteenth century. The shipwreck in the _Triunfo do
Inverno_ recalls the opening scene of _The Tempest_, as the mad friar
recalls poor Tom, and the magnificent fidalgo Falstaff. In the _Farsa
de Inés_ Pereira Inés, without being a shrew, is tamed by her husband,
who says:
Se eu digo: Esto é novello
Vos aveis de confirmalo.
[228] In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ‘the son of Gil Vicente’
in India.
[229] It is customary in Portugal to fix the date of his birth in 1470
owing to the statement of the judge in the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536)
that he--the judge--was already sixty-six. It is a method which might
lead to comical results if further pressed in the case of Vicente or
other dramatists. Was Mello seventy-three when he wrote the _Fidalgo
Aprendiz_?
[230] ‘A gentleman of good family’ (Ticknor); _hijo de ilustres padres_
(Barrera y Leirado); _na qualidade nobilissimo_ (Pedro de Poyares).
[231] iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205.
[232] The authority is Cristovam Alão de Moraes in his manuscript
_Pedatura Lusitana_ (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto).
This genealogist, says Castello Branco, _era ás vezes ignorante e
outras vezes mal intencionado_. He does not say that Martim Vicente
exercised his alleged profession of silversmith at Guimarães, or that
Gil was born there. What more probable than for Guimarães, proud
of its poetical traditions, to invent a silversmith father for the
famous poet-goldsmith? Pedro de Poyares, _Tractado em louvor da villa
de Barcellos_ (1672), says that Gil Vicente, _em tempo de D. João o
terceiro poeta celebre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas
suas impressas_.
[233] _Grammatica_, ed. 1871, p. 118.
[234] Ibid., p. 81. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Gil Vicente e a
Linguagem Popular_, 1902. Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1619), f.
10, mentions the _somsonete de pronunciação_ of the _ratinhos_.
[235] _Soncas_ occurs no less than seven times in the brief _Auto
Pastoril Castelhano_. It occurs twice in the first twenty-eight lines
of one of Enzina’s eclogues (_Cancionero de todas las obras_ (Çaragoça,
1516), f. lxxviii, and again f. lxxviii verso and lxxx).
[236] A. dos Reis, _Enthusiasmus Poeticus_ (_Corpus Ill. Poet. Lus._,
tom. viii, pp. 18-19): _Quem iuvisse ferunt velut olim Polla maritum_.
Manuel Tavares, _Portugal illustrado pelo sexo feminino_ (1734), calls
her a _discretissima mulher_.
[237] _Com muita pena de minha velhice._ Ruy de Pina calls a man _mui
velho_ whose father (King João I) would have been but ninety-one
in that year (_Cr. de Afonso V_, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira,
_Ulysippo_, iii. 3: _velho se pode chamar pois vai aos cincoenta anos_.
[238] See Barros, _Asia_, 1. vi. 7. Beckford has glowing praise for
‘this gold custodium of exquisite workmanship’: ‘Nothing could be
more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate Gothic sculpture than this
complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles’
(_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, Paris, 1834).
[239] Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent
in his plays. The goldsmith in the _Farsa das Almocreves_ uses the
technical word _bastiães_ which occurs in the _Livro Vermelho_ of
Afonso V: _E porque alguns Ouriueses tem ora feita algũa prata dourada
e de bastiães_. It occurs, however, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_
(_galantes bastiães_), in Resende’s _Miscellania_ (_bestiães_), and
other writers.
[240] Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379.
[241] An unfortunate interpolation by the 1834 editors in the rubric of
the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ was largely responsible for the belief
that his patroness was not Queen Lianor but King Manuel’s mother D.
Beatriz.
Yet the rubric of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ says clearly that _a
sobredita senhora_ is King Manuel’s sister.
[242] _Mas ja não auto bofé Como os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha
com que_ (_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, i. 129).
[243] _Antología_, vii, p. clxvi. It should be said that Dr. Theophilo
Braga, the late General Brito Rebello, and the late Dr. F. A. Coelho
agree with Menéndez y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that
he can prove an alibi. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos opposed
identity in 1894, and has not definitely expressed herself in its
favour since. On the other hand, Snr. Braamcamp Freire is a convinced
supporter of identifying poet and goldsmith.
[244] _Antología_, vii, p. clxxvi.
[245] And later Jeronimo Corrêa (†1660) at Lisbon, author of _Daphne
e Apollo_ (Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes
(1820-69) at Oporto, and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville,
Lope de Rueda (1510?-65), whose _pasos_ are akin to Vicente’s _farsas_,
was fired by his example and success.
[246] _Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem_, 1785 ed., p. 222.
[247] Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.)
in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.
[248] Cf. _Cancionero_, f. lxxxvi v.
[249] An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long
pause on _tardas_ in _Oo morte que tardas, quien te detien?_ is equally
impressive, but the 1562 ed. has _de quien_ and Vicente may have
written _Oo morte que tardas, di ¿quien te detien?_
[250] _Auto de Inés Pereira_ in the 1562 ed. So _Auto dos Almocreves_.
It will, however, be convenient to call them _farsas_, since _auto_ is
a more general term applicable to all the plays.
[251] _Quem tem farelos?_
[252] _O Juiz da Beira_, a continuation suggested by the success of the
_Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and acted at Almeirim in 1525.
[253] _Farsa dos Almocreves_ (or _do Fidalgo Pobre_) acted at Coimbra
(1525). It is curious to compare the sterner type of chaplain denounced
in _Don Quixote_.
[254] _Auto das Fadas_ (1511).
[255] _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince
Manuel (1531).
[256] _Farsa dos Fisicos_ (1512).
[257] _O Clerigo da Beira_ (1529?).
[258] _Auto da India_ (1509).
[259] _Farsa das Ciganas_ (or, in the 1562 edition. _Auto de hũas
ciganas_), a very slight sketch acted in a _seram_ before the king at
Evora (1521).
[260] _O Velho da Horta_ (1513).
[261] _Auto da Fama_ (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 1510, but
internal evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 1516
(although perhaps prior to the knowledge of Albuquerque’s death in
India (December 16, 1515) since so splendid a paean in honour of the
Portuguese victories would be out of place afterwards).
[262] = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted
(or malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience.
[263] In the palace (at Lisbon, Almeirim, Evora) or in convents
(Enxobregas, Thomar, Odivellas), once (as part of a procession) in a
church (_Auto de S. Martinho_).
[264]
Os momos, os serões de Portugal
Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos,
E as graças temperadas do seu sal?
[265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a
break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of
Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without
breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito
and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark
this metre in Vicente’s hands.
[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to
King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance
does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family:
_cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_).
[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512.
[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his
language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text
before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable
in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would
welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own.
[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she
supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic.
[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is
evidently responsible.
[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve
momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande
prazer_.
[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326.
[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained
these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a
_representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_
in Barros, II. i. 5.
[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the
thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_.
[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309).
[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches
on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could
not live without it’.
[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr.
H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of
Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J.
Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915).
[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether
they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his
song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s
_Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429).
[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro
Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos
soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_.
The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced
was probably Duarte de Brito.
[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa,
1649.
[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of
Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in
his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information
collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga,
and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de
Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre
Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was
never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to
the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the
dangerous voyages to and from India.
[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact
that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who
thronged the capital and Court.
[283] _Ep._ ii. 57.
[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.
[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy
fanfarrão_.
[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were
written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of
sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each,
since they would not trust him with a pair.
[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have
forty-four in all.
[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas
Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_
might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_.
[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531):
_falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_.
[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the
original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s
hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one
of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which
Vicente’s plays were staged).
[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531,
was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de
Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been
burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to
Queen Isabella of Spain:
Si no pariera Sanctana
hasta ser nacida vos,
de vos el hijo de Dios,
rescibiera carne humana.
[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’.
On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his
_Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_,
&c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony.
[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good
sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the
_Comedia do Viuvo_.
[294]
os lavradores
Fazem os filhos paçãos,
Cedo não ha de haver villãos:
Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_).
[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold
chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter,
from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo
mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’
dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados
entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt.
4).
[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas
lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e
Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha
dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta
nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com
perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._
[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._
[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule
contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_.
[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de
Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p.
1884, s.v. _Auto_.
[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5.
[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae
comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says:
_cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth
century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could
say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the
accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima
cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught
reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui
celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_
(Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f.
159).
§ 2
_Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_
The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it
exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth
century. Together perhaps with Diego de San Pedro’s _Carcel de Amor_,
the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s _Fiammetta_, and especially
Rodriguez de la Cámara’s _El siervo libre de Amor_ (containing the
_Estoria de los dos amadores Ardanlier e Liesa_), it must have been
in the mind of BERNARDIM RIBEIRO (1482-1552) when he wrote that
‘gentle tale of love and languishment’ the book of _Saudades_, which
is always known (like the first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first
three words as _Menina e moça_. Yet it is not really an imitative
work, being, indeed, remarkable for its unaffected sincerity, as the
expression of a personal experience. Its passionate truth continues to
delight many readers.[302] Almost all our information about Ribeiro’s
life is derived from his writings, which are in part evidently
autobiographical, and it shrinks or expands according to the degree
of the critic’s wariness or ingenuity. His birthplace is declared to
have been the quaint Alentejan village of Torrão. A passage in the
eclogue _Jano e Franco_ says that Jano fled thence at the time of the
great famine. The unhappy frequency of famines makes the date doubtful,
but if the year of Ribeiro’s birth be correctly stated in an official
document of May 6, 1642, as 1482, we may suppose--since Jano was
twenty-one--that he left his native Alentejo for Lisbon in 1503. It
is possible that he studied law and took his degree at the University
(at Lisbon) a few years later (1507-11?),[303] and became secretary
to King João III in 1524. As a _cavalleiro fidalgo_ he had his place
at Court, as poet he contributed to the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516).
A hopeless passion drove him from the Court, drove him perhaps to
Italy, and finally deprived him of his reason, so that his last years
were spent in the Lisbon Hospital de Todos os Santos.[304] Successive
generations have busied themselves over the object of his passion. The
romantic tradition that it was the Princess Beatriz, twenty-two years
his junior, the daughter of King Manuel for whose marriage to the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Gil Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, is now
definitely discarded. That it was Queen Juana la Loca of Castille no
one except Varnhagen has ever imagined. But literary critics continue
to be tempted by the transparent anagrams of Ribeiro’s novel (adopted
evidently in order to make the story unintelligible to all except the
inner circle of the Court). Dr. Theophilo Braga has an ingeniously
fabricated theory that Aonia was Ribeiro’s cousin, Joana Tavares
Zagalo. Lamentor at least can scarcely have been King Manuel, since
he sends his daughter to the king’s Court. The scenery appears to be
a combination of that of the Serra de Sintra near Lisbon with that of
Alentejo. The story opens with an introductory chapter in which a young
girl (_menina e moça_), who has taken refuge in the _serra_ far from
all human society, announces her intention of writing down what she had
seen and heard in a small book (_livrinho_), not for the happy to read
but for the sad, or rather for none at all, seeing that of him for whom
alone it is intended she has had no news since his and her misfortune
bore him away to far-distant lands. Thus we have the thirteenth-century
_amiga_ mourning for her lover. _Ai Deus! e u é?_ Presently, as she
shelters from the noonday _calma_ beneath trees that overhang a gently
flowing stream, a nightingale pours forth its song, and then dying
with its song falls with a shower of leaves and is borne away songless
by the silent stream.[305] She is still bewailing its fate when
another, older but equally sad, lady (_dona_) appears, and the _menina_
becomes an almost silent listener to the end of the book while the
_dona_ unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the history of two
friends Narbindel and Bastião. But it begins with the love adventure
of Lamentor and Belisa. It is only in the ninth chapter that the
knight Narbindel arrives and falls in love with Belisa’s sister
Aonia, adopting a shepherd’s life in order to be near her palace. It
is in fact a romance of chivalry in pastoral garb. But Ribeiro might
have introduced the pastoral romance without changing the fantastic
features. It is in his singular combination of passion and realism that
his true originality consists. His power of giving vivid expression
to tranquil scenes--the whole of the first part has something of the
quiet intensity of a background by Correggio, as well as his ‘softer
outline’, and although there is no explicit indication of colour it is
clearly felt by the reader--and his gentle love of Nature, or rather
his love of Nature in its gentler aspects, cast over the book a strange
charm. The softly flowing streams, the trees and birds and delicious
shade, beautiful dawns, the birds seeking their nests at evening, the
flowers _que a seu prazer se estendem_, the _mateiros_ going out to
cut brushwood, the shepherds asleep round their fire at night, are
described with great naturalness and truth, often with familiar words
and colloquial phrases. The reason of the extreme intricacy of the plot
was not the wish to conceal the author’s love story in a labyrinthine
maze[306] in order to exercise the ingenuity of nineteenth-century
professors, but to be true to life. In life events are not rounded and
distinct but merge into and react on one another in an endless ravelled
skein: _Das tristezas não se pode contar nada ordenadamente porque
desordenadamente acontecem ellas_ (cap. 1). Ribeiro thus anticipates
by four centuries the theory enunciated in Spain by Azorín that a
novel, like life, should have no plot,[307] and his book has a certain
modernity. We may refuse him the name of novelist, but many a novelist
might envy his lifelike portrayal of scenes and sentiments. It has been
doubted whether he wrote the second part of the story. It consists of
fifty-eight short chapters, and opens with a new episode, the love of
Avalor for Arima, daughter of Lamentor (cap. 1-24), and it is even
more bewildering in its confusion than is Part I. The scenes are less
idyllic, the tone more that of a conventional romance of chivalry, yet
the realism is maintained. It is on no hippogriff that Avalor goes to
the rescue of the distressed maiden: in fact, he had set out on his
adventure in a rowing-boat and his hands blistered. If later there
are mortal combats with wicked knights, with a bear, with giants,
there are also scenes, as in chapters 9, 12, 23--of an impassioned
_saudade_,[308] of dove and nightingale--which could only have been
written by the author of Part I.[309] His own story, still related by
the _dona_, is only resumed in chapter 26, or rather 32, since the
intervening chapters deal with events prior to those with which Part
I begins. Bimnarder, now again Narbindel--the name Bernardim was also
spelt Bernaldim--after Aonia’s marriage lives with an old hermit and
his nephew, Godivo, and passes his time in tears and contemplation,
as in Part I. But he is discovered by his faithful squire, and meets
Aonia, and the lovers are killed by the jealous husband (cap. 48). The
last chapters are concerned with the happier love story of Romabisa and
Tasbião.
Narbindel, the second of the two knights, the two friends _de que é a
nossa historia_,[310] dies: therefore Bernardim Ribeiro cannot have
written the second part. But it is rather a nice point; one may imagine
that Ribeiro’s delight in so tragic an episode would compensate him
amply for the obvious anachronism, and after all it is the _dona_ who
tells the story.[311] The inconsistencies of detail need not concern us
overmuch. That Belisa has a mother in Part I and is ‘brought up without
a mother’ in Part II, that the Castle of Lamentor exists in Part II at
a time when, according to Part I, it was not yet begun, that the name
of Aonia’s husband is in Part I Fileno, and in Part II Orphileno, are
just such contradictions as an alien continuer would most studiously
have avoided, and we all know what happened to Sancho’s ass in a far
less intricate story. Or they may be explained by the fact that Ribeiro
had not revised his tale before it was printed, or by corrections
made in copies of the original manuscript.[312] Perhaps on the whole
we may conclude that Ribeiro, like Cervantes, by an exception wrote a
valuable second part, but, unlike Cervantes, was unable to maintain it
altogether on a level with the first. The mingling of rapt passion and
colloquialisms is with Ribeiro not the inability of a poet to express
himself but a deliberate mannerism, and is present in the five eclogues
with which he introduced pastoral poetry. By his quiet resolution to
be natural he thus became doubly an innovator, in poetry and prose.
That he was a true poet is proved by the _romances_ in his novel:
_Pensando vos estou, filha_ (Pt. I, cap. 21) and _Pola ribeira de um
rio_ (Pt. II, cap. 11).[313] The eclogues may not excel those poems,
but in their directness, primitive freshness, and grace they form a
group apart, entirely distinct from their numerous eclogue progeny.
One eclogue only, the celebrated _Trovas de Crisfal_, resembles them.
The resemblance is remarkable and cannot fail to strike the most
careless reader. Before Snr. Delfim Guimarães began his spirited
campaign in favour of identification, the similarity had been recorded
by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Grundriss_[314]: the
extraordinary similarity of these _Trovas_ to the poetry of Ribeiro
and to nothing else in Portuguese literature. In this poem of some
900 lines written in octosyllabic _decimas_, like Ribeiro’s eclogues,
we have that romantic, passionate _saudade_ and sentimental grief,
the mystic visions, the simplicity, the ingenuous conceits, wistfully
humorous, the sententious reflections, the elliptical concision, the
real shepherds, the familiar language, the love of Nature which are
peculiarly Ribeiro’s. Tradition assigns the _Trovas_ to CRISTOVAM
FALCÃO (_c._ 1512-53?),[315] who was born at Portalegre, in Alentejo,
was made a _moço fidalgo_ in 1527, and is supposed to have fallen in
love with and secretly married D. Maria Brandão (i.e. the Maria of the
_Trovas_), whom her parents confined as a punishment in the convent
of Lorvão. At the risk of being dubbed incorrigibly _simplicista_ one
must confess that the simultaneous appearance of these two poets from
Alentejo, not _fertil en poetas_, taxes one’s belief to the utmost. May
not the secret marriage deduced from the _Trovas_ have been described
by Ribeiro in his keen sympathy for his friend’s position, so like his
own? The contention is not that Cristovam Falcão did not exist--there
were several--or did not fall in love with Maria Brandão--_a do
Crisfal_--or did not marry her, but that he did not write verses in
the style familiar to us as that of Ribeiro.[316] It is remarkable
that the very critics who represent Ribeiro in his _novela_ as hiding
like a cuttle-fish in his own ink change their method when they come
to the eclogues and accept every name and allusion with the greatest
literalness, as though it were a poet’s duty to wear his heart in
his verses. It is idle to adduce the fact that Cristovam Falcão
wrote ungrammatical letters (so did Keats), or to devise far-fetched
interpretations (such as _Crisma falso_) for the word Crisfal. What
more probable than that Ribeiro and Falcão, born in the same province,
became friends at Court, and that Ribeiro introduced his friend in one
of his poems as he is supposed to have introduced Sá de Miranda in
another, and as Miranda introduces Ribeiro (_Canta Ribero los males
de amor_)? If in his favourite manner he added a little mystification
in the word Crisfal, what more characteristic? The very form of the
poem, in which first the _Autor_ and then Crisfal speaks (_Falla
Crisfal_) suggests this, as does the title: _Trovas de um pastor per
nome Crisfal_, compared with the definite _Trovas de dous pastores_ ...
_Feitas por Bernaldim Ribeiro_.[317] It is not difficult to explain
the printing of the _Trovas_ together with the works of Ribeiro and
the hesitancy of the early editions in ascribing them, on hearsay, to
Cristovam Falcão; but the word Crisfal caught the fancy, and those who
learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcão would inevitably confuse
the explanation of the anagram with the authorship of the poem. One
of those who did so was Gaspar Fructuoso (or Antonio Cordeiro), and
the tradition which had begun so shakily with a _dizem ser_ gained
strength with the years. Presumably the editor of the 1559 edition knew
what was to be known on the subject, yet he speaks with a quavering
uncertainty: it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam
Falcão becomes a fixed belief.[318] The eighth _Decada_ of Diogo do
Couto was not published till 1673, i. e. over half a century after
the death of its author. The explanatory sentence _aquelle que fez
aquellas antigas e nomeadas_ (or _namoradas_) _trovas de Crisfal_[319]
may well be, and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a
few scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, _grammatici
certant_ and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept a
second writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese literature
owing to the marvellous success with which, divesting his muse of any
qualities of its own, he identified himself with a poet who is the
most characteristically Portuguese, but also the most individual of
impassioned singers: Bernardim Ribeiro.
A kind of continuation of the story of _Crisfal_ (who is now enchanted
within the fountain of his own tears) appeared at the end of the
century in a small collection of poems entitled _Sylvia de Lisardo_
(1597). It contains forty-one sonnets (of which one only is in
Spanish), three eclogues in _tercetos_ and _oitavas_, and various
_romances_ (in Spanish) and shorter poems, and has been ascribed,
without sufficient reason, to the historian Frei Bernardo de Brito.
These poems must remain anonymous, and they throw no light on the
_Crisfal_ problem, but in their true poetical feeling and power of
expression they deserved their popularity[320] in the first half of the
seventeenth century.
It is not certain but it is probable that Ribeiro went to Italy, and
his Italian travels may have coincided with those of his life-long
friend, the champion of humanism in Portugal, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE
MIRANDA (_c._ 1485-1558), the most famous of all the Portuguese poets
with the exception of Camões and Gil Vicente. As a lyric poet far
inferior to either of them, his great influence was due partly to his
character, partly to his introduction of the new school of poetry, the
_versos de medida nova_, or _de arte maior_, replacing the national
_trovas de medida velha_ (octosyllabic _redondilhas_) by the Italian
hendecasyllabics: Petrarca’s sonnets and canzoni, Dante’s _terza rima_
(_tercetos_), and the _octava rima_ of Poliziano and Ariosto. The
exact date of Miranda’s birth is still uncertain, but if he was the
eldest of five sons of the Coimbra Canon, Gonçalo Mendez de Sá, who
were legitimized in 1490, he must have been born about the year 1485.
Yet one would willingly make him younger. His life in Minho certainly
sounds too active for a man of fifty: perhaps _c._ 1490 would be nearer
the mark. He studied at the University at Lisbon and early frequented
the Court. He soon won distinction as a scholar and was a Doctor of Law
when he contributed several poems to Garcia de Resende’s _Cancioneiro_
(1516). His journey to Italy a few years later, in 1521, may have been
due merely to the natural desire of a scholar to see Rome or there may
have been other motives, a love affair of his own or his friendship
with Bernardim Ribeiro. He was distantly related to the great Italian
family of Colonna (as he was to Garci Lasso) and in Italy perhaps met
the celebrated Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Marchesa di Pescara,
besides probably most of the other distinguished Italians of the time,
Lattanzio Tolomei, Sannazzaro, Cardinal Bembo, Giovanni Rucellai,
Ariosto. During five years he saw the principal cities of Italy and
Sicily and returned to Portugal in 1526 (or earlier, possibly after
three years, in 1524) with a deep knowledge of Italian literature and
the firm resolve to acclimatize in his country the metres in which
the Italians had written things so divine. If he had seen at Rome the
_Cancioneiro_ of thirteenth-century Portuguese poets[321] he must have
realized that the metres were not so foreign as many might think; if
he met Boscán on his homeward journey his determination to become
innovator or restorer[322] would be strengthened. King João III was on
the throne, and we are told in Miranda’s earliest biography (1614),
which is attributed with some probability to D. Gonçalo Coutinho, that
he became ‘one of the most esteemed courtiers of his time’. He was an
enthusiastic believer in monarchy and in the divinity that doth hedge
a king, but was less enamoured of the growing corruption and luxury
at Court: probably he was himself more esteemed by the king than by
the courtiers, and after the poetry of Italy he could scarcely share
their taste for the trivial verses of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ nor
could they see how a compliment could be turned more neatly than in
the old _esparsas_ and _vilancetes_. During these years he wrote his
first play, _Os Estranjeiros_, the eclogue _Alexo_ with _oitavas_ in
Portuguese, and the _Fabula do Mondego_, perhaps in order to show his
superiority over Gil Vicente.
There was an obvious antagonism between the laughing and the weeping
reformer (for both protested vigorously in their different ways against
the growing materialism of the day), between the learned, philosophical
and the natural, human poet, and Vicente’s humour probably appeared
to Sá de Miranda as unintelligible and undignified as Miranda’s
hendecasyllabic poems may have appeared melancholy-thin and artificial
to Vicente: _et ce n’est point ainsi que parle la Nature_. But the line
in the introduction of the _Fabula do Mondego_ in which Miranda speaks
of the king’s condescension,
Al canto pastoril ya hecho osado,
probably refers to some previous effort of his own rather than to the
work of Vicente, and Miranda was in Italy when Gil Vicente was taunted
by certain _homems de bom saber_ and turned the tables on them in the
_Farsa de Inés Pereira_. The _Fabula do Mondego_ is a cold, stilted
production of 600 lines in Petrarcan stanzas, the subject of which was
partly derived from Angelo Ambrogini (Poliziano). In 1532 the King gave
Miranda a _commenda_ (benefice) of the Order of Christ on the banks
of the Neiva in Minho, and having acquired the neighbouring estate of
Tapada (_quinta da Tapada_) he left the Court and retired to it not
many months later. Miranda’s love of Nature was very deep, from his
boyhood at Coimbra he had preferred the country to life in cities,
and probably no other incentive was required, although it is thought
that he may have been too zealous in support of Bernardim Ribeiro and
that a passage in _Alexo_ (1532?) offended the powerful favourite, the
Conde da Castanheira. Whatever the cause of his withdrawal, literature
must call it blessed, for his new life in the country suited his
temperament; the independence of character shown in his fine letter
(one of the most famous poems in the Portuguese language) addressed
to King João III developed, and close contact with the country and
the peasants gave his poetry that indigenous flavour and peculiar
charm which have fascinated all readers of the eclogue _Basto_, that
individual stamp in which the Court poetry was infallibly lacking. He
had already written his best work--for this eclogue and the letters
show the real Miranda, pointed, original, racy of the soil--and written
it in _quintilhas_, when in 1536 he married Briolanja, the sister of
his old friend, now his neighbour at Crasto, Manuel Machado de Azevedo.
Some miles away, at the straggling little village of Cabeceiras de
Basto, he had other intimate friends, the Pereiras, and the gift, by
one of these two brothers, Antonio Nunalvarez Pereira, of a manuscript
of Garci Lasso de la Vega’s poems shortly before Miranda’s marriage
revived his enthusiasm for the alien metres. He turned again to the
hendecasyllable and wrote the eclogues _Andrés_ (1535), _Celia_, and
_Nemoroso_ (1537), the latter in memory of the tragic death of Garci
Lasso in the preceding year. He returned to the _quintilha_ later,
employing it with flowing ease in _A Egipciaca Santa Maria_ (or _Santa
Maria Egipciaca_), which was probably written between 1544 and 1554,
when he was educating his two sons with _amor encoberto e moderado_
(_A Egipciaca_, p. 3), and nearer the former than the latter date. Its
vigour and the promise of more[323] after 721 _quintilhas_ preclude
the date (1556-8) assigned to it by its first editor, even without
the statement of the 1614 biographer that Miranda wrote scarcely
anything after his wife’s death in 1555; but it may have been written
even earlier, before 1544. And still through all these various poems,
despite their undeniable value and incidental beauties, it is the
man, his life and character, that interest us. The wild yet green and
peaceful scenery of Minho accorded well with his _alma soberana_, at
once active and contemplative, disciplined and independent. At first
hunting the wolf and boar occupied his leisure--we see him out with
his dogs Hunter, Swallowfoot, &c., in crimson dawn and breathless
noonday--and gave him a hundred opportunities for quiet observation
of Nature, the streams, especially the birds, and the peasants. The
poems written soon after his arrival still retain the freshness of
these impressions. His evenings were spent with his friends at
Cabeceiras--true _noctes cenaeque deum_--or in the more formal society
at Crasto or with music--he played the viola--or his favourite authors,
Homer in Greek, or Horace, the Bible, the Italians, or Garci Lasso
and Boscán. Later gardening[324] and the education of his sons and
entertainment of visitors took the place of his favourite wolf-hunting.
As his fame and influence spread, Diogo Bernardez (whose recollections
of Miranda were recorded in the 1614 life) was not the only disciple
who came to see him in his retreat, and he corresponded in verse with
most of the poets of the time, Andrade Caminha, Montemôr, Ferreira,
D. Manuel de Portugal, Bernardez. Cardinal Henrique was a steadfast
admirer of his work, and the young Prince João asked for a copy: _lhas
mandou pedir_. This wide recognition after the first coldness[325] was
some measure of comfort for the many sorrows of his last years, the
death of his eldest son Gonçalo, killed in his teens in Africa (1553),
of his wife (1555), of that promising precocious Prince João (1537-54)
to whom he had thrice sent a collection of his poems, the departure of
his brother, Mem, to become one of the most notable Governors of Brazil
(1557). In the latter year King João died, leaving an infant heir to a
distracted kingdom, and Miranda’s death followed a few months later.
In a sense this philosopher was the most un-Portuguese of poets, for
he had no facility in verse. He went on hammering his lines, altering,
erasing, compressing in a divine discontent. He had a lofty conception
of the poet’s art--to express the noblest sentiment in the best and
fewest words--five versions of _Alexo_, twelve of _Basto_, attest his
untiring zeal and his ‘art to blot’. The elliptical abruptness of his
native _quintilhas_, by which they have something in common with those
of Ribeiro, are not their least charm, and gives an effective emphasis
to his sententious philosophy. In introducing the new measures[326]
he used the Castilian language as being the most natural and suitable
until, but only until, they should be thoroughly acclimatized. He wrote
Castilian not fluently--that was not his gift--but correctly, with
only occasional _lusitanismos_. His best work, however, was written
in Portuguese: in the new poetry with which his name is for ever
associated he is only the forerunner of the work of Diogo Bernardez and
Camões,[327] the founder of a school to which Portuguese literature
owes some of its chief glories. In Portuguese he wrote his comedies
and, about half a century before Samuel Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ (1592),
a tragedy _Cleopatra_, of which we only possess a few lines.[328] The
poem on the life and conversion of St. Mary of Egypt[329] (a favourite
theme a few centuries earlier, as in the Spanish _Vida de Santa Maria
Egipciaqua_ (13th c.?), the fourteenth-century _Vida de Maria Egipcia_,
and the French _Vie de Sainte Marie l’Égyptienne_) is stamped with the
author’s sententious wisdom and love of discipline. It contains quaint
plays on words (_Ide ao mar que por amar_, p. 169), _tours de force_
such as the three _quintilhas_ of _esdruxulos_ (pp. 179-80), and rises
to wonderful lyric beauty in the saint’s farewell to Earth (_Vou para
um jardim de flores_, pp. 166-9). He intended the poem to be ‘rare,
unique and excellent’ and to some extent he achieved his aim. In much
of his work the diction is rough and halting, but the greatness of
the man nevertheless extends to his poetry. Perhaps the best example
of this is the melancholy grandeur of the sonnet, technically so
imperfect, _O sol é grande_. Force of character made him not only
a laborious but a successful craftsman. When he died, honoured and
admired by all the best intellects in the country, the position of
the new school was assured and he had been able to hail with joy the
support of younger writers: _Venid buenos zagales!_ Foremost in time
among these poets of _el verso largo_ was D. MANUEL DE PORTUGAL[330]
(1520?-1606), son of the first Conde de Vimioso and of D. Joana de
Vilhena, cousin of King Manuel. He outlived all his fellow-poets,
welcomed the appearance of _Os Lusiadas_, and in 1580 took the side of
the Prior D. Antonio. His _Obras_ (1605) consist of seventeen books of
poems, mostly of a religious character and written in Spanish--books 9
and 15 contain some Portuguese poems, and among them the fine mystic
sonnet _Apetece minha alma_ (Bk. ix, f. 199 v.).
Among those who welcomed and acclimatized the new style none was a more
talented or truer poet than DIOGO BERNARDEZ (_c._ 1530-_c._ 1600),[331]
who confessed that he owed everything to Sá de Miranda and Antonio
Ferreira.[332] Born of a distinguished family[333] at Ponte da Barca
on the river Lima, he would ride over to visit Sá de Miranda or send
him letters in verse, and he mourned his death in sonnet, letter, and
eclogue with unaffected grief. He himself continued to sing by the
banks of his beloved Lima, endeared to him all the more by disillusion
at Lisbon and captivity in Africa. In a letter to Miranda he alludes
to an apparently unhappy love affair at Lisbon. Later the retirement
of his poet brother, Frei Agostinho, into a convent, the deaths of
Miranda and Ferreira, the great plague of 1569, and the misfortunes of
his country were all deeply felt by his affectionate nature. In 1576
he went as secretary of Embassy to Madrid, but otherwise he seems to
have been disappointed in hopes of lucrative employment, and he was
always ready to exchange the mud of the streets and the ‘bought meals’
of Lisbon, with its penurious, importunate _moços_,[334] for the dewy
golden dawns, the hills and streams of Minho, _entre simples e humildes
lavradores_ (_Carta_ 27). In 1578, however, he who had lamented that
no Maecenas encouraged those eager to sing the deeds of Portuguese
heroes was chosen to accompany as official poet[335] the Portuguese
expedition which ended disastrously in _aquelle funeral e turvo
dia_--the battle of Alcacer Kebir. It was not till 1581 that Bernardez
returned from captivity. Whether he was ransomed by King Philip, or
by the Trinitarians or Jesuits, or by himself or his friends, is not
known. After his return and his marriage he frequently laments his
poverty: not, he says, that he wishes to be the Pope in Rome, but
merely to have enough to eat (_Carta_ 31). Yet apparently he had no
cause to regret the change of dynasty so far as his personal fortunes
were concerned. Whereas he had merely held the post of _servidor de
toalha_ at the palace under King Sebastian, he was now (1582) appointed
a knight of the Order of Christ with a pension of 20,000 _réis_ and
was granted 500 _cruzados_ (‘in property and goods’) in the same year.
In 1593 his yearly pension was 40,000 _réis_, of which one-half was to
revert to his wife and children. Either these moneys remained unpaid or
the new _cavaleiro fidalgo’s_ ideas had changed greatly since he had
sung of the joys of rustic poverty and the vanity of riches. Bernardez
found his inspiration in the Portuguese and Spanish poets of the new
school (_cantigas strangeiras_, _strañas_),[336] and through them in
the great Italians. Dante’s name does not occur in his letters, written
in _tercetos_,[337] but Tasso--_o meu Tasso_---Ariosto, Petrarca, and
others are mentioned.[338] In form and sound some of his _canções_ are
not unworthy of Petrarca, but they are more homely and bucolic, have
more _saudade_ and less definite images, no concrete pictures like that
of _la stanca vecchierella pellegrina_ of the fourth _Canzone_. His
second source of inspiration was his native Minho and the transparent
waters and _fresca praia_ of the Lima. He was never happier than when
wandering _lungo l’amate rive_, and this gives a pleasant reality to
his eclogues. His muse, _a bosques dada e a fontes cristalinas_, sings
not only of the conventional ‘roses and lilies’ but of honeysuckle,
of cherries red in May, grapes heavy with dew, golden apples, nuts,
acorns, the trout so plentiful that they can be caught with the hand,
hares, partridges, doves, the thrush and the nightingale, and mentions
oak, ash, elm, poplar, beech, hazel, chestnut, and arbutus. These
eclogues, written in various metres, sometimes with _leixapren_ or
internal rhyme, are collected in _O Lima_ (1596), which also contains
his letters. His other works are sonnets, elegies, odes in _Rimas
Varias_, _Flores do Lima_ (1596), and a third small volume _Varias
Rimas ao Bom Jesus_ (1594) which includes elegies and odes to the
Virgin written during his captivity, a long _Historia de Santa Ursula_
in octaves, and other devotional verse of much fervour and his wonted
perfection of technique. If, read in the mass, his poems produce the
impression of a cloying sweetness, it must be remembered that never
before had Portuguese poetry risen to so harmonious a music. Faria e
Sousa accused him of plagiarizing Camões, but in the case of a writer
whose accepted poems, the _dulcissima carmina Limae_, are of such
excellence the accusation cannot be seriously entertained. Neither he
nor Camões was a great original poet, but in both the command of the
new style was such that their poems were often confused by collectors.
A passage in one of Bernardez’ letters (5, l. 6) seems to imply that
his poetry was not appreciated at Lisbon. It was too genuine and clear
to suit the clever Court rhymesters. But he had his followers, who
would send him their poems to be corrected, or rather, praised, and
later Lope de Vega recognized him as his master in the eclogue in
preference to Garci Lasso.
FRANCISCO GALVÃO (_c._ 1563-1635?), equerry to the Duke of Braganza,
was a true poet if he wrote the sonnet _A Nosso Senhor_ ascribed to
him by his editor, Antonio Lourenço Caminha, in _Poesias ineditas dos
nossos insignes poetas Pedro da Costa Perestrello, coevo do grande
Luis de Camões, e Francisco Galvão_ (1791): _Ó tu de puro amor Deos
fonte pura_. Innocencio da Silva vigorously doubts the authenticity of
these poems, which are mostly of a religious character or concerned
with Horace’s theme of the golden mean, as that of the _Obras ineditas
de Aires Telles de Meneses_ (1792) published by the same editor, who
professed to have faithfully copied them from the _antigos originaes_
of the time of João II. Bernardez’ brother Frei AGOSTINHO DA CRUZ
(1540-1619), born at Ponte da Barca, entered as a novice the Convent
of Santa Cruz in the Serra de Sintra in 1560, and took the vows a year
later. In 1605 he obtained permission to live as a hermit in the Serra
da Arrabida, where he cultivated _saudade_ and the muses, although his
poems were no longer profane, as when in his youth as Agostinho Pimenta
he haunted with his brother Diogo the banks of the Lima. These early
verses he burnt: _Queimei, como vergonha me pedia, Chorando par haver
tão mal cantado_. The eclogues, elegies, letters, sonnets, and odes
that survive prove that _mal_ is here a moral, not an aesthetic adverb,
and that he shared his brother’s love of Nature and in no mean degree
his power of expressing it in soft, harmonious verse.
That gift was denied to ANTONIO FERREIRA (1528-69), who combined
enthusiasm for the new style--_a lira nova_--and for classical
antiquity with a rooted antipathy against the use of a foreign language
or foreign subjects. His uneventful life as judge, courtier, and poet
was cut short by the plague of 1569. His poetry is not that of a poet
but of the Coimbra law student who had become a busy magistrate.[339]
It is thus at its best when it does not attempt to be lyrical, for
instance in his excellent letters in _tercetos_. His odes are closely
modelled on those of Horace (_o meu Horacio_). Nor did he claim
originality: indeed, his plan of introducing certain new forms was
a little too deliberate for a great poet,[340] and his best sonnet
is a translation from Petrarca. For bucolic poetry neither the grave
doctor’s style nor his inclinations were well suited. Not only is
the smooth flow of the verse which charms us in Diogo Bernardez here
absent but the metre often actually halts,[341] and throughout his work
we have sincerity, lofty aims, a stiff unbending severity, but not
poetical genius. Ferreira was a true patriot, and it was his boast and
is his enduring fame that he devoted himself to exalt the Portuguese
language.[342] It was most fortunate for Portuguese literature that at
this time of changing taste a poet of Ferreira’s great influence should
have forsworn foreign intrusions in the language with the exception
of Latin (in the introduction of which, however, his characteristic
restraint forbade excess), and left both in prose and verse abiding
monuments of pure Portuguese. This was the more remarkable in a poet
who disdained the old popular metres (_a antiga trova deixo ao povo_)
and had no thought apparently for popular customs or traditions. His
_Poemas Lusitanos_, published posthumously, contain over a hundred
sonnets, besides his odes, eclogues, elegies, epigrams (which are but
fragments of sonnets), and letters, and he also wrote a _Historia de
Santa Comba_ in fifty-seven _oitavas_.
The work of PERO DE ANDRADE CAMINHA (1520?-89), an industrious writer
of verse rather than a poet, is as cold and unmusically artificial as
Ferreira’s in its form, while it lacks Ferreira’s high thought and
ideals and his love for his native language. One may imagine that
it was through friendship with Ferreira--who scolds him for writing
in Spanish--that he became one of the set of Miranda and Bernardez.
Camões he must have known,[343] and indeed refers to him satirically
in his epigrams: he seems to have actively disliked so wayward a
genius, a man so unfitted to be a Court official. Caminha himself
was the son of João Caminha, Chamberlain of the Duchess Isabel of
Braganza, and of Philippa de Sousa of Oporto, where (or at Lisbon)
the poet may have been born. After studying at the University, either
at Lisbon, or after its transference to Coimbra in 1537, he entered
the household of the Infante Duarte. In 1576 the poet retired to the
palace of the Braganzas at Villa Viçosa and died there thirteen years
later. During the last ten years of his life he held a _tença_ of two
hundred milreis besides other sources of income (he was Alcaide Môr of
Celorico de Basto, as his father had been of Villa Viçosa), so that his
lot compares handsomely with that of Camões. He had planned an edition
of his works in nine books, but only a few occasional poems were
published during his lifetime. He wrote short poems in all the usual
kinds, but, although trusted and honoured by the princes he served, he
entirely lacked Camões’ divine _furia_ and had no compensating sympathy
or insight or lyrical charm. What would not Camões have made of his
chanty, _cantiga para çalamear_![344]
In perfect contrast to the laboured verses of Andrade Caminha is the
spontaneous flow of the lines to the river Leça beginning _Ó rio
Leça_, by which the Conde de Mattosinhos, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE MENESES
(1515?-84), is chiefly remembered. They place him at once among the
principal poets of the century. He succeeded the Conde de Vimioso as
Camareiro Môr of Prince João, held the same post in the first years
of King Sebastian’s reign, and subsequently under King Henrique, who
created him Count of Mattosinhos in return for his services as Governor
of Portugal (during the absence of King Sebastian) and on other
occasions. After the death of the Portuguese king he retired to Oporto,
and no doubt spent the remaining summers at Mattosinhos near the gentle
stream which he had immortalized.
The Portuguese poems of ANDRÉ FALCÃO DE RESENDE (1527?-98), born at
Evora, nephew of the antiquarian André and of the poet Garcia de
Resende, were first published at Coimbra in an incomplete volume
_Poesias_ [1865], and consist of the _Microcosmographia_ and some
spirited anti-Drake ballads and good sonnets (e.g. _Ó fragil bem_, _Ó
breve gosto humano_) and satires. BALTHASAR DE ESTAÇO (born in 1570),
Canon of Viseu, and his brother the antiquarian GASPAR DE ESTAÇO, Canon
of Guimarães and author of _Varias Antiguidades de Portugal_ (1625),
were both born at Evora. The former’s _Sonetos, Eglogas e ovtras rimas_
(1604), published, according to the preface, in the author’s mature age
but written in the green, contain some religious sonnets of high merit.
A far more celebrated writer than these minor poets was JORGE DE
MONTEMÔR (_c._ 1520-61), or _hispanice_ Montemayor, who was early
driven by poverty from Montemôr o Velho (where he was born between 1518
and 1528) a few years after Mendez Pinto. Fortunately the latter did
not relate his travels in Chinese, but Montemôr, with the exception of
a few brief passages[345] in his _Diana_, wrote exclusively in Spanish.
In Spain his musical talent gave him a livelihood, and as musician
and singer of the Royal Chapel he remained at the Court till 1552,
when he accompanied the Infanta Juana as _aposentador_ on the occasion
of her marriage with that promising patron of letters, the Infante
João. But even before the prince’s death in 1554 Montemôr returned to
Spain. In 1555 he may have gone in the train of Philip II to England,
and subsequently served as a soldier in Holland and Italy till a
duel, perhaps in a love affair, at Turin ended his days in 1561.[346]
Despite his brief and restless life Montemôr, who showed in _Las obras
de George de Montemayor_ (1554) that he was no mean poet, found time
to write one of the most famous books in literature. The date of its
publication--it was dedicated to Prince João and Princess Juana--is
uncertain, but it was probably an early work. In spirit, since not in
the letter, it belongs to Portugal. Its gentle, easy style (Menéndez y
Pelayo calls it _tersa, suave, melódica, expresiva_), the sentimental
love and melancholy, the introduction of bucolic scenes, the references
to Portugal--_cristalino_ applied to the Mondego is no conventional
epithet, as only those who have seen its transparent waters can fully
realize--mark the _Diana_ as the work of a Portuguese. Its fame soon
overleapt the borders of the Peninsula. In Spain it had a numerous
progeny, to which Cervantes refused the grace somewhat grudgingly given
to Montemôr’s work as ‘the first in its kind’. In Portugal this, the
eldest child of Bernardim Ribeiro’s _Menina e moça_, had to wait over
half a century before it found a worthy successor in the _Lusitania
Transformada_.
Little certain is known of the life of FERNAM ALVAREZ DO ORIENTE (_c._
1540-_c._ 1595?). Born at Goa, he served in the East, and may have
fought in the battle of Alcacer Kebir. His resemblance to Moraes in
temperament and adventures perhaps gave rise to the assertion that
he wrote the fifth and sixth parts of _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_. The
scene of his _Lvsitania Transformada_ (1617) is partly in Portugal
(the banks of the river Nabão and the seven hills of Thomar) and
partly in India (_no nosso Oriente_). Like Montemôr’s _Diana_, it is
divided into _prosas_ and poems, and it is modelled on the _Arcadia_
of Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530)--the mountains of Arcadia transformed
into Lusitania[347]--which, however, each of its three books equals in
length. The prose setting, although devoid of thought, is mellifluous
and clear, and the poems, which contain reminiscences of Camões, rival
in the harmony and transparent flow of the verse that ‘prince of the
poets of our time’, as Alvarez calls him. Some critics have even
ventured to attribute the work to Camões, as though his genius were
so poor that he must needs fall to quoting himself in whole lines, as
is here the case. But Alvarez had certainly caught some measure of
Camões’ skill and of _il soave stilo e ’l dolce canto_ of Sannazzaro
and Petrarca. He is, moreover, less vague[348] than many writers
of eclogues, and in singing his own love story describes what his
eyes have seen. It was, however, an aberration to favour the _verso
esdruxulo_ (Ariosto’s _sdruccioli_) (cf. Sannazzaro’s _Arcadia_, Ecl.
1, 6, 8, 9, 12), a truly Manueline adornment which other Portuguese
poets unfortunately copied as a new artifice.[349]
As a poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa, who was something more than a
pedant of pedants, deserves a place among the multitude of Portuguese
writers of eclogues, since of the twenty long eclogues contained in
his _Fvente de Aganipe y Rimas Varias_ (7 pts., 1624-7) the first
twelve are in his native tongue. They show no originality but have
occasional passages of quiet beauty. Nos. 7 and 8 are both entitled
‘rustic’ and purpose to represent peasants of Minho. They are so
overcharged with archaisms and rustic words and expressions (_samicas_
and _namja_ of course occur, and _grolea_ (glory), _marmolea_ (memory),
the form _suidade_, &c.) that they would probably have been Greek to
the peasants. As a critic Lope de Vega called Faria the prince of
commentators, on the strength of his learned and copious editions of
the Lusiads and lyrics of Camões, for whom he had a genuine devotion.
Time has lent an interest, if not validity, to his literary criticisms.
In poetry he was as prolific as in prose: he boasted, in the age of
Lope de Vega, that he had written more blank verse than any other poet
and that his printed sonnets exceeded those of Lope by 300.
ELOI DE SÁ SOTTOMAIOR (or Souto Maior), the author of _Jardim do Ceo_
(1607) and _Ribeiras do Mondego_ (1623), is generally perhaps more
familiar with the Saints than with the Muses, but some of his poems
are not without merit. The latter work, in prose and verse, has no
originality, although the author was careful to state that he had
composed it before the _Primavera_ of FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ LOBO (_c._
1580-1622), who in strains not less sweetly harmonious than the Lima
poems of Bernardez sang the little stream of Lis that runs so gaily
through his native Leiria. He went to study at Coimbra in 1593, took
his degree there in 1602, returned to Leiria and before 1604 was in
the service of Theodosio, Duke of Braganza, at Villa Viçosa. He was
drowned in his prime in the Tagus coming from Santarem to Lisbon. He
was alive in 1621, but, as Dr. Ricardo Jorge has shown in his able
biography, died before the end of 1622. The fact of his drowning is
well established, otherwise the tradition might have been attributed
to passages in his works in which he seems to foretell such a fate.
An extraordinarily prolific writer, his fame rests chiefly on his
three pastoral works of mingled prose and verse: _A Primavera_ (1601)
and its second and third parts _O Pastor Peregrino_ (1608) and _O
Desenganado_ (1614). Rodriguez Lobo somewhere speaks disparagingly of
books ‘long as leagues in Alentejo’, but length and monotony are not
absent from his own pastorals. Look into them where you will, beautiful
descriptions, showing deep love of Nature, will present themselves,
and delightful verse and harmonious prose, excellent in its component
parts although allowed to trail in the construction of the sentences.
But the reader who attempts more than a desultory acquaintance is soon
overcome by a feeling of satiety, for the _Primavera_ in its _brandura
sem fim_ and the complete absence of thought is like a stream choked by
water-lilies: lovely, but tiring to the swimmer.
Through all these love-lorn shepherd scenes runs a vague thread of
autobiography. The passion of Bernardim Ribeiro is replaced by a
suaver melancholy. The poet leaves the Lis for Coimbra and then goes
to Lisbon and thence to distant lands, where he wanders as a pilgrim
till he is shipwrecked at the mouth of the Lis and returns to his home
to find Lisea given to another. It is divided into _florestas_. In the
opening _florestas_ the quiet streams, the green woods and pastures,
are charmingly described; later the scene is transferred to the _campos
do Mondego_ and the _praias do Tejo_. A breath of the sea is welcome in
_O Desenganado_, but the story soon returns to shepherd life and its
series of natural but rather insipid incidents.
Had Rodriguez Lobo written not better but less, his pastoral romances
would probably be far more widely read. But his finest work is of a
different kind, a long dialogue, _Corte na Aldea e Noites de Inverno_
(1619), between a _fidalgo_, D. Julio, and four friends in the long
winter evenings near Lisbon. Suggested by Baldassare Castiglione’s
famous _Il Cortigiano_, which had been popularized in Spain by Boscán’s
excellent translation (1534), this work, for which Gracián prophesied
immortality, is full of the most varied interest. The prose, excellent
as is all that of this champion of the Portuguese language, _jardineiro
da lingua portuguesa_ (which his countrymen, he complained, patch and
patch like a beggar’s cloak), is here more vigorous and compact in its
construction without losing its harmonious rhythm, attractive as the
conversations which it records. Besides the beautiful verses lavishly
scattered through his prose works, Rodriguez Lobo wrote a long epic on
Nun’ Alvarez in twenty cantos of _oitavas_: _O Condestabre de Portugal
D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira_ (1610),[350] a volume of _Eglogas_ (1605), in
which he is a recognized master, a volume of _Romances_ (1596) written,
with two exceptions, in Spanish,[351] and, perhaps, a Christmas play
entitled _Auto del Nascimiento de Christo y Edicto del Emperador
Avgvsto Cesar_, published in 1676. It is written in _redondilhas_ in
Spanish and Portuguese.[352] This _auto_ is followed by an _Entremes do
Poeta_ in Portuguese. A poet, an obdurate Gongorist (_Do Gongora tive
sempre opinadas preferencias_), recites a sonnet to a lady: _Celicola
substancia procreada_, which she does not understand, and a _ratinho_,
also at a loss (_he para mim cousa grega_), advises him to give over
his jargon for a more natural language:
Gerigonças no fallar,
Que amor nam he contrafeito.
But Rodriguez Lobo has no need of such attributions to justify his
great and enduring fame.
FOOTNOTES:
[302] Cf. H. Lopes de Mendonça, _O Salto Mortal_, Act iii: _Tanto
gostaes d’este livro: É por ser triste?--É por ser verdadeiro._
[303] Eclogue 5 (_a qual dizem ser do mesmo autor_), which is
undoubtedly by Ribeiro, refers to Coimbra in the lines: _É lembrarme os
sinceiraes De Coimbra que me mata_.
[304] As in the case of Gil Vicente, we are vexed with homonyms--a
notary, an admiral, &c. Dr. Theophilo Braga, skilfully dovetailing
hypotheses, develops his biography fully. _Casi todo lo que de él se ha
escrito son fábulas sin fundamento alguno_, wrote Menéndez y Pelayo in
1905.
[305] Fray Luis de Leon may have remembered this passage in _De los
Nombres de Cristo_, Bk. 3 (1917 ed., t. 1, p. 198; _Bib. Aut. Esp._, t.
37, p. 182).
[306] _Nossos amores contados por um modo que os não entenderá
ninguem_, Garrett, _Um Auto de Gil Vicente_.
[307] _La Voluntad_, Barcelona, 1902. Camillo Castello Branco held
similar views.
[308] The word cannot be translated exactly, but corresponds to
the Greek πόθος, Latin _desiderium_, Catalan _anyoranza_, Galician
_morriña_, German _Sehnsucht_, Russian тоска (pron. _taská_). It is the
‘passion for which I can find no name’ (Gissing, _The Private Papers of
Henry Ryecroft_).
[309] Menéndez y Pelayo’s strict division between the ‘subjective’ pt.
1 and pt. 2 as _externa y de aventuras_ is thus somewhat arbitrary.
[310] Pt. 1, cap. 9; pt. 2, cap. 25.
[311] In pt. 2, cap. 9, this is forgotten: _outras_ [_cousas_] _que
não são escritas neste livro_, a slip which throws no light on the
authorship.
[312] It was characteristic of the hot-house air in which Portuguese
literature existed that the first publication of a book often consisted
in its circulation (_correr_) in manuscript from courtier to courtier,
a special licence being obtained for this apart from the licence to
print. Those to whom it appealed made copies. The earliest known
edition of _Menina e moça_ is of 1557-8: _Primeira & segũda parte do
liuro chamado as Saudades de Bernaldim Ribeiro com todas suas obras.
Treladado de seu propria original. Nouamente impresso._ 1557 (Euora.
The date of the colophon is January 30, 1558). An introductory note
_Aos lectores_ says: _Foram tantos os traduzidores deste liuro & os
pareceres em elle tam diuersos que nam he de marauilhar que na primeira
impressam desta historia se achassem tantas cousas em contrario de como
foram pello auctor delle escriptas ... foy causa de andar este liuro
tam vicioso ... conueo tirarse a limpo do propria original_, &c., &c.).
The edition of 1554, quoted by Brunet, was probably the first in spite
of the words _com summa diligencia emendada_ (i.e. corrections of the
manuscript). The phrase _de nouo_ tells more against than in favour of
an earlier edition (= rather ‘new’ than ‘anew’).
[313] Ribeiro, so far as we know, wrote no line of Spanish. Boscán’s
_romance Justa fué mi perdición_ and the _romance Ó Belerma_ have been
wrongly ascribed to him.
[314] p. 287: ... _so ganz persönlichem Stil, dass sie mit keinem
anderen Dichter vor oder nach ihnen, wohl aber untereinander zu
verwechseln wären_; and p. 292: Bernardim Ribeiro writes _ganz im Stile
des Falcão_. Cf. F. Bouterwek, _History of Spanish and Portuguese
Literature_, Eng. tr. 1823, ii. 39: ‘A long eclogue by this writer,
which forms an appendix to the works of Ribeyro, so completely partakes
of the character of the poems which it accompanies that were it not
for the separate title it might be mistaken for the production of
Ribeyro himself. It therefore proves that Ribeyro’s poetic fancies, his
romantic mysticism not excepted, were by no means individual.’
[315] According to Dr. Theophilo Braga, he was born in 1515; married
in 1529 Maria Brandão (aged eleven); was profoundly influenced by
Ribeiro’s _Trovas de dous pastores_ (1536) but did not plagiarize it in
the _Trovas de Crisfal_ (1536-41), similar passages being due to the
_situação quasi similar_ (i.e. _quasi identica_) of the two friends;
went to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1541; spent the year 1543 in
Rome and returned to Portugal in the winter of 1543-4; was factor of
the fortress of Arguim from 1545 to 1548; and died in 1577.
[316] The whole question at issue is whether the _de_ of _Trovas de
Crisfal_ = ‘by’ or ‘about’ (cf. _O Livro das Trovas d’ El Rei_ = rather
‘belonging to’ than ‘by’ the king), and protests against _a illusão
de pretender identificar em um mesmo poeta o apaixonado de Aonia e
o de Maria_ (_Obras_, 1915 ed., p. 10) or _o intuito de converterem
Christovam Falcão em um mytho_ (ibid., p. 42) are beside the point.
[317] That one of the figures is identical in the woodcuts of these two
_folhas volantes_ is not significant: it appears also in an anonymous
edition of the _Pranto de Maria Parda_.
[318] In the 1559 ed. the words _hũa muy nomeada e agradauel Egloga
chamada Crisfal ... que dizem ser de Cristouam Falcam, ho que parece
alludir ho nome da mesma Egloga_ may legitimately be held to imply
merely that some persons, misled by the anagram, attributed the poem to
Falcão.
[319] _Decada_ 8, cap. 34 (1786 ed., p. 322).
[320] The _licença_ of the 1632 edition says, _Este livrinho ... muitas
vezes se imprimio_.
[321] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 109:
Eu digo os Provençais que inda se sente
O som das brandas rimas que entoaram.
Cf. Boscán ap. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, tom. xiii (_Juan
Boscán_), p. 165: _En tiempo de Dante y un poco antes florecieron los
Proenzales, cuyas obras por culpa de los tiempos andan en pocas manos._
Menéndez y Pelayo also (ibid., p. 174) gives a reference by Faria e
Sousa to King Dinis: _El rey don Dionis de Portugal nació primero
que el Dante tres ó quatro años y escrivió mucho deste propio género
endecasílabo, coma consta de los manuscritos._
[322] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 112:
¿Como se perdieron
Entre nos el cantar, como el tañer
Que tanto nombre a los pasados dieron?
[323]
Adeus leitor a mais ver,
Porque ainda haveis de ver mais (_A Egipciaca_, p. 181).
[324] He must often have repeated Nuno Pereira’s lines, which may have
influenced him when he read them in the _Cancioneiro Geral: Privar em
cas da Rainha Deos vollo deixe fazer, E a mi hũa vinha E regar hũa
almoinha Em que tenho mor prazer ... Lavro, cavo quanta posso ... O
gingrar de meu caseiro_, &c.
[325] His complaint in the second elegy (1885 ed., No. 147, l. 17)
shows how far he was in advance of his age in Portugal: _Um vilancete
brando ou seja um chiste, Letras ás invenções, motes ás damas, Hũa
pregunta escura, esparsa triste, Tudo bom, quem o nega? Mas porque, Se
alguem descobre mais, se lhe resiste?_
[326] Often he combines several in the same poem. Thus the long (533
lines) eclogue on the death of Garci Lasso (_Nemoroso_) begins in
_tercetos_, proceeds with _rima encadeada_ (internal rhyme), and ends
with Petrarcan stanzas.
[327] Cf. the sonnet (1885 ed., No. 126) _Esprito que voaste_ with
_Alma minha gentil_.
[328] The autograph manuscript of this and of other poems, discovered
in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional by Snr. Delfim Guimarães in 1908, has
been reproduced in facsimile by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos
in the _Boletim_ of the Lisbon _Ac. das Sciencias_, vol. v (1912), pp.
187-220. See _infra_, p. 164.
[329] Leonel da Costa, the translator of Virgil and Terence, later
wrote a poem in seven cantos of _redondilhas_ on the same subject: _A
Conversão miraculosa da felice egypcia penitente Santa Maria_ (1627).
[330] Faria e Sousa even makes him the first Portuguese poet to write
hendecasyllabics, setting aside those of Sá de Miranda as unreadable:
_son incapaces de ser leidos!_ (_Varias Rimas_, pt. ii, p. 162).
[331] He was _Moço da camara_ in 1566. He was appointed a knight of the
Order of Christ in 1582. He married apparently after his return from
Africa in 1581. He was alive in 1596 (although in one of his poems he
refers to a premature old age) and dead in 1605. On the other hand, he
was apparently over twenty-five in 1558. It is thought that the right
of passing on his official posts to his children (_sobrevivencia_),
granted to his father in 1532, may indicate the date of the birth of
the eldest of his eleven children: Diogo Bernardez (who did not, like
some of his brothers, use his father’s second name, Pimenta).
[332] _Carta_ 12: _Confesso dever tudo áquella rara Doutrina tua_.
[333] The succeeding generation was also distinguished, one of the
poet’s nephews becoming Bishop of Angra, another Governor of Angola, a
third Professor at Coimbra University.
[334] Bernardez’ letters in verse contain many such references to
everyday life, e. g. the Lisbon negress selling fried fish in the
_Betesga_.
[335] A confident sonnet by him in this capacity is extant: _Pois
armarse por Christo não duvida Sebastião._
[336] _O doce estillo teu tomo por guia_ and _Escrevo, leio e risco_
he writes to Miranda, but his muse was far more spontaneous than
Miranda’s, and it appears from another passage (in _Elegia_ 5) that his
alterations were less of style than of matter.
[337] _Carta_ 32 is an exception, and consists of seventy-two _oitavas_.
[338] He introduces Italian lines (_Cartas_ 23, 27, 30) and wrote a
sonnet in Italian.
[339] Cf. _Carta_ 4: _Foge inda o dia ao muito diligente_, although
whether this is due to his work or to the number of his friends is not
clear.
[340] _Com cujo_ [Miranda’s] _exemplo meu pai, que entam estaua nos
estudos, pretendeo com a variedade destes sens manifestar como a lingua
Portugueza assi em copia de palauras como em grauidade de estylo
a nenhuma he inferior_ (Miguel Leite Ferreira, Preface to _Poemas
Lvsitanos_, 1598).
[341] To take an example not from the eclogues but from one of his
sonnets, the words
da guerra
Nossa livres viveis em paz e em gloria
correspond but ill to their peaceful sense.
[342] Cf. _Carta_ 2. Bernardez (in an elegy on Ferreira’s death
addressed to Andrade Caminha) records that among all Ferreira’s verses
not a line was written in a foreign tongue: _um só nunca lhe deu em
lingua alhea_.
[343] Thirteen times the same subject is treated by Camões and Caminha,
sometimes exclusively by them (C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Pero de
Andrade Caminha_ (1901), p. 55).
[344] _Obras_, ed. Priebsch, p. 361.
[345] All that he wrote in Portuguese is contained in two pages
(389-91) of Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo_ (1890).
[346] Fray Bartolomé Ponce, _Primera Parte de la Clara Diana a lo
divino_ (1582?): _Me dijeron como un muy amigo suyo le habia muerto por
ciertos zelos ó amores_ (quoted by Ticknor, iii. 536, and by T. Braga
(omitting _ciertos_), _Bernardim Ribeiro_ (1872), p. 80).
[347] _Argumento desta obra._
[348] e.g.
No mato o rosmaninho, a branca esteva,
No campo o lirio azul que o chão cubria.
[349] _Que estes se chamem poetas!_ rightly exclaims Frei Lucas de
Santa Catharina (_Seram Politico_ (1704), p. 146) of those who revel in
the use of _esdruxulos_.
[350] The whole of Canto XIV is given to a vigorous account of the
battle of Aljubarrota, already described more vividly in fewer stanzas
by Camões. Another poem in _oitavas_ by Rodriguez Lobo, _Historia da
Arvore Triste_, was published in _Fenix Renascida_, vol. iv.
[351] In Spanish also are the fifty-six _romances_ which make up the
poem _La Jornada_, &c. (1623), written on the coming of Philip III to
Portugal in 1619. In the eclogues, written chiefly in _redondilhas_, he
sings with spontaneous charm _as praticas humildes e os cuidados Não
por arte fingidos e enfeitados_ of the _rusticos vaqueiros_, as he says
in the prefatory sonnet. Many of the words are pleasantly indigenous:
_milho_, _boroa_, _salgueiraes_, _rafeiro_, _charneca_, _chocalho_,
_abegões_, _ovelheiros_.
[352] For instance, when the Angel has announced in Spanish _las
alegres nuevas_, the goatherd, _ratinho_, Mendo, says: _A din Rey,
a din Rey ay! Que estou amorrinhentado, Acudame algum Cristom ou
Sancristom._ Laureano, the shepherd, speaks Portuguese and Spanish,
and Silvia says: _Porque o que sinto quisera Dizelo em bom Portugues._
An _Auto e Colloquio do Nascimento de Christo_ (1646) attributed to
Francisco Lopes was reprinted in 1676.
§ 3
_The Drama_
After Gil Vicente’s death the _autos_ continued to flourish in number
if not in excellence, and evidently answered to a very real popular
demand. It was in vain that the Jesuits produced their Latin plays and
that serious poets of high reputation sought to wean the affections of
the people from the _auto_ to the classical drama.[353] This opposition
of the educated did, however, conduce to the swift deterioration of
the _auto_, although some of those of a religious character, chiefly
the Nativity plays, still succeeded in reflecting a part of the charm
that characterized the Vicentian drama. To Gil Vicente’s lifetime
probably belongs the _Obra famosissima tirada da Sancta Escriptura
chamada da Geração humana, onde se representam sentenças muy catolicas
& proueitosas pera todo christã: Feita por huũ famoso autor_ (1536?).
Indeed, the verse runs so easily, the peasants are so natural, that
one might almost suspect him of having had a hand in its composition.
But the metre (8 8 4 8 8 4) is more monotonous than he would have used
throughout. The _dramatis personae_ are angels, peasants,[354] Adam,
Justice, Reason, Malice, two devils, a priest, four saints and doctors
of the Church, a Levite, the Church, the Heavenly Samaritan. Adam
in a scene closely resembling that of the _Auto da Alma_ is tempted
by Malice. Justice intervenes, and finally the Samaritan leads him
to the _estalagem_ of Holy Mother Church. The _Auto de ds [Deus]
padre & justiça & mia [Misericordia]_ belongs to the same period. It
is written in octosyllabic verse and contains a similar medley of
peasants, prophets, and abstract virtues. In the first part the angels
in Portuguese announce to the Virgin the birth of Christ, and in the
second part the peasants, who speak Spanish, go to offer rustic gifts
to _el muy chiquito donzel_. Another early and anonymous play is the
_Auto do Dia do Juizo_, included in the _Index_ of 1559, which for
its subject closely follows Gil Vicente’s _Auto da Barca do Inferno_.
A peasant, a false and lying notary, a market-woman who had offered
weekly bread and wax to Santa Catharina but had ’robbed the poor
people’, a butcher, a miller who had mixed bran in his sacks of flour,
are introduced in turn and duly consigned by Lucifer to Hell.
If we only knew the quondam Franciscan monk ANTONIO RIBEIRO CHIADO
(_c._ 1520?-91) and his contemporary and rival, the mulatto servant of
the Bishop of Evora, by their mutual abuse, we could form no very high
opinion of their character or their wit. In bitter _quintilhas_ Chiado
reviles the latter for his dark complexion; AFONSO ALVAREZ answers by
upbraiding _nonno Chiado_ as the son of a cobbler and a market-woman
and for the habits which had made the cloister seem so dismal a place
to Frei Antonio do Espirito Santo. Fortunately some of the plays of
both of them survive, and we are better able to judge of their merits.
The mulatto, who was a valued member of his master’s household and
prides himself that Chiado has nothing worse to throw in his face
than the colour of his skin, was certainly Chiado’s inferior in wit
and talent. Both imitate Gil Vicente without having a vestige of his
lyrical genius or greater skill in devising a plot. Alvarez preferred
religious subjects. In his _Auto de Santo Antonio_ St. Anthony restores
to life the drowned son of two peasants, who are imitated from
Vicente’s _Auto da Feira_.[355] The only other of his plays that we
have is the _Auto de Santa Barbara_, but we know that he also wrote an
_Auto de S. Vicente Martyr_ and an _Auto de Santiago Apostolo_.
Chiado’s plays and witty sayings, _avisos para guardar_ and
_parvoices_, appear to have made him extremely popular in Lisbon,
Camões recognized his talent, and Lisbon’s most famous street still
bears his name in common speech. His boisterous life at Lisbon after
leaving his convent may have given him his name Chiado (cf. the _chiar_
of ox-carts), but it existed as a surname earlier. His _Pratica de Oito
Figuras_ (1543?), _Auto das Regateiras_ (1568 or 1569), and _Pratica
dos Compadres_ (1572), are the work of an accomplished wit who was
intimately acquainted with the farces of Gil Vicente and, in the last
two, with the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira. Many of Vicente’s types
are present, but all in a town atmosphere, in which cards take the
place of the rustic dances and lyric yields to epigram, the natural
genius of Vicente to a laboured smartness. We have the _clerigo de
vintem_, the _ratinho_ from Beira, the vain _pação_, the poor _fidalgo_
or _escudeiro_, the negro with his pidgin Portuguese, the witch, the
ill-tempered _velha_, the _trovador_ chaplain, the ambitious priest,
the corrupt judge. The scenes are even more disconnected and less
dramatic, and the ingenious _redondilhas_ necessarily seem artificial
because their author so often challenges comparison with the more
genuine skill of his master, Gil Vicente. Chiado’s _Auto de Gonçalo
Chambão_ was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century, but
is now unknown. Of his _Auto da Natural Invençam_ (_c._ 1550) a single
copy survives, in the library of the Conde de Sabugosa, whose edition
(1917) is of exceptional interest. The play, as reminiscent of Vicente
as are the other plays of Chiado, describes the acting of an _auto_
in a private house in the reign of João III, and bears witness to the
frequency of such representations at Lisbon and to their extraordinary
popularity.
BALTHASAR DIAZ, a blind poet (or _jogral_) of Madeira, in the first
half of the sixteenth century wrote plays which have retained their
popularity. He versified at great length traditions of chivalry and
of mediaeval saints. We do not possess his _Trovas_ written on the
death of D. João de Castro (1548), and many of his plays, _Auto da
Paixam de Christo_, _Auto de El Rei Salomão_, _Auto da Feira da Ladra_,
have become rare or unknown. One of the best of them, the _Auto de
Santo Aleixo_, perhaps owes its survival to its subject, akin to
the popular theme of a prince in disguise. The rich and noble Aleixo
wanders in rags to the Holy Land. The Devil, who tempts him in the
form of a wayfarer, declares that now--the eternal querulous ‘now’
of the poets--only the rich are honoured and learning is neglected.
Later the Devil becomes a courtier and again tempts St. Aleixo, who
is defended by an angel. The _Auto de Santa Catherina_ is a long
devout play of which the persons are St. Catherine, her mother, her
page, the Emperor Maxentius, a hermit, three _doutores_, Christ, the
Virgin, angels. The saint, who receives news of her mother’s death
with admirable equanimity, suffers martyrdom at the end of the play
with equal fortitude. Diaz also dramatized the story of the Marques de
Mantua. Although devoid of dramatic or lyric talent, he is sometimes
interesting. Women, whose dresses and fashions are contrasted in the
_Auto de Santo Aleixo_ with the hard toil of the men, are represented
in the _Auto da Malicia das Mulheres_ as treating their husbands ‘like
negroes’. We do not know whether Diaz spoke from experience, his life
is very obscure; but he may have spent his last years in Beira if the
passage in his _O Conselho para bem casar_:
estou nesta Beira
tão remoto de trovar (1680 ed., p. 2)
be not merely a reference to Boeotia, any place far from Lisbon.
Traces of Vicente and the _Celestina_[356] are apparent in ANRIQUE
LOPEZ’ _Cena Policiana_ or _O Estvdante_, in which a _fidalgo_ and a
student[357] figure. The poor _escudeiro_ and his fasting _moço_ are
prominent in JORGE PINTO’S _Auto de Rodrigo e Mendo_. Spanish romances
are quoted with great frequency, and Vicente’s _En el mes era de Abril_
is parodied by the _moços_.[358] Indeed, their knowledge of literature
was become embarrassing since, when his master’s guest, invited to a
dinner which did not exist, recites some verses that he has made,
Rodrigo has already read them in Boscán and heard them sung in the
street.[359]
The exact dates of ANTONIO PRESTES, of Torres Novas, are unknown, but
seven of his plays, after having been acted at Lisbon and published in
_folhas volantes_, were first collected by Afonso Lopez half a century
after Gil Vicente’s death in the _Primeira Parte dos Avtos e Comedias
Portuguesas_, &c. (1588). The _Auto da Ave Maria_, written between
1563 and 1587, is an allegorical play in which Reason is vanquished by
Sensuality; Heraclitus mourns over her fall while Democritus laughs.
A knight in league with the Devil[360] robs in turn an almoner, a
_ratinho_, and Fast, but his pious habit of saying an _Ave Maria_
causes St. Michael to rescue him from the Devil and reconcile him
with Reason. Of the profane plays, that with the most definite plot
is the _Auto dos Dous Irmãos_, in which an old man, after refusing to
see his sons who have married without his permission, divides all his
money between them and is then neglected by both: he is sent from one
to the other like King Lear. But the story is feebly worked out here
as in the other plays. Their action is mostly that of a puppet show.
Sometimes the _moço_, who always plays a prominent part, seems to be
the only link in the plot, as Duarte in the _Autos dos Cantarinhos_.
These _moços_, who show the author’s acquaintance with Gil Vicente[361]
and _Lazarillo de Tormes_,[362] are quite unlike either Lazarillo or
Apariço. They are certainly hungry, but they combine starvation with
laziness, presumption and abundant learning. The names of Petrarca and
Seneca are on their lips; they read _Palmeirim_ and quote romances
of chivalry and Spanish _romances_ glibly.[363] Indeed, the chief
interest of these artificial plays is the light thrown on the times:
the position of women, the bribery of judges and lawyers, the aping
of foreign manners, the mixed styles of architecture. They contain no
poetry, little drama, and their wit is seldom natural. Like Prestes,
JERONIMO RIBEIRO, perhaps a brother of Chiado, was born apparently
at Torres Novas. Only one of his plays was published: the _Auto do
Fisico_, written in the last third of the sixteenth century. It has
some farcical Vicentian scenes, the inevitable hits against the doctors
and lawyers--the _moço_ dresses up as a _doutor_ to receive a simple
fisherman from Alfama--and is generally more popular and natural than
Prestes’ plays.
SIMÃO MACHADO (_c._ 1570-_c._ 1640), who as a Franciscan monk--Frei
Boaventura--ended his life at Barcelona, was also born at Torres
Novas. His plays--_Comedias portvgvesas_ (1601?)--are two: _Comedia
de Dio_ and _Comedia da Pastora Alfea_. They are written in Spanish
and Portuguese indiscriminately despite Gonçalo’s admonition _palrar
como Pertigues_.[364] The author explains that, well aware of his
countrymen’s love of what is foreign, he uses Castilian to save his
plays from the neglect often bestowed in Portugal upon works written
in Portuguese. His verse is ordinarily the _redondilha_, although
Nuno da Cunha in the first part of _O Cerco de Dio_ makes a speech in
_oitavas_. He has lyrical facility and his peasant scenes are full of
life, for instance, the dialogue between the cowherd Gil Cabaço and
Tomé the goatherd in _Alfea_.
The Gospel story was dramatized by FREI FRANCISCO VAZ of Guimarães in
a long _Auto da Paixão_. The oldest edition we have is dated 1559,
and it has been often reprinted, with thirty rough woodcuts. Some of
these are very spirited, as that of the cock crowing after St. Peter’s
denial, or that of Judas hanging himself. After a long introductory
speech in _versos de arte maior_ the play proceeds in _redondilhas_
(over 2,000 lines). Religious subjects have always been favourites with
the Portuguese, especially those affording scope for lavish scenic
display, not only those of martyred saints, as the _Auto de Santa
Genoveva_, but those based on the New Testament, as the later play
_Acto figurado da degolação dos Innocentes_ (1784) in seven scenes.[365]
Two plays, the _Auto da Donzella da Torre_ and _Auto de Dom André_,
are attributed to Gil Vicente’s grandson, GIL VICENTE DE ALMEIDA. The
latter, written before 1559, in which a peasant brings his unlettered
son (_nem nunca falei Gramatica_) to Court, and a _ratinho_, on
becoming a page, promises himself to learn to sing and play on the
guitar within a month, has a Vicentian character.
To the beginning of the seventeenth century also belongs the _Pratica
de Tres Pastores_ (1626), a Christmas play by FREI ANTONIO DA ESTRELLA,
who may perhaps be identified with Frei Antonio de Lisboa, author
of the lost _Auto dos Dous Ladrões_ (1603). The three shepherds,
Rodrigo, Loirenço, and Sylvestre, are awakened by an angel singing
_cousas de preço_. They agree that the song echoing over the hills
is no earth-born music but _algum Charubim ou Anjo ou Charafim_,
and presently they go to Bethlehem to offer their rustic gifts. The
author has caught the charm and spontaneity of the earlier Christmas
_autos_. Another seventeenth-century _auto_ of the same kind is the
_Colloquio do Nascimento do Menino Jesus_ by the Lisbon bookseller,
FRANCISCO LOPEZ. The scene and conversation of the three shepherds,
Gil, Silvestre, and Paschoal, with their _assorda ou migas de alho_ in
the cold night--_mas como queima o rocio_, says Gil--are very naturally
drawn. An echo of the satirical side of Gil Vicente’s genius is to be
found in the _Auto das Padeiras chamado da Fome_ (1638),[366] in which
the various frauds of the bakeresses, sardine-sellers, market-women,
pastry-cooks, and tavern-keepers of Lisbon are shown up by the devils
Palurdam and Calcamar, as in the _Barca do Purgatorio_. There is
nothing of Vicente in the _Auto novo da Barca da Morte_ (1732) by a
Lisbon author who wrote under the name of Diogo da Costa (Innocencio
da Silva, ii. 153, believed that his real name was André da Luz). It
consists of a single scene crowded with classical allusions. Death has
deprived Midas of his gold, Alexander of his victories, Aristotle of
his learning. The actors here are a rich miser, a poor man, a youth,
an old man, and Death, whose boat Time steers. The title of the _Auto
novo e curioso da Forneira de Aljubarrota_ (1815), also attributed to
Diogo da Costa, is misleading, since it is a prose narrative of the
experiences of that _valorosa matrona_, who, dressed as an _almocreve_,
comes to Lisbon with her two _bestinhas_ laden with wine.
Of the twenty-five plays contained in the _Musa entretenida de
varios entremeses_ (1658) edited by Manuel Coelho Rebello, No. 17
(_Castigos de vn Castelhano_) is in Spanish and Portuguese, six are in
Portuguese,[367] all the rest in Spanish. Popular plays continued to be
written long after the introduction of the classical drama and in spite
of the antagonism of the priests. They were often composed in a variety
of metres, as the _Acto de Sᵗᵃ Genoveva, Princesa de Barbante_ (1735)
by Balthasar Luis da Fonseca, if its verse can be called metre,[368] or
the _Comedia famosa intitulada A Melhor Dita de Amor_ (1745) by Rodrigo
Antonio de Almeida,[369] which opens with a sonnet and proceeds in
_redondilhas_, hendecasyllables, and prose.
In the Christmas plays and peasant scenes some of Gil Vicente’s poetry
had lingered; the plays of more fashionable authors caught no gleam
of his lyrism, but sketched types and satirized manners successfully,
none more so than Mello’s _Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz_, written, it must
be remembered, before _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ (1670). Both kinds,
consciously or unconsciously, were derived from Vicente’s genius as
manifested in his plays for the Court and of the people.
During Gil Vicente’s lifetime, perhaps, Sá de Miranda had written
the two plays, _Os Estrangeiros_ (_c._ 1528) and _Os Vilhalpandos_
(1538?),[370] with which he introduced classical comedy into Portugal
(nearly a quarter of a century before its introduction into France and
England). _Os Estrangeiros_ was a novelty[371] in more ways than one,
for it was written in prose. Both plays were, as the author admitted,
imitated from Plautus and Terence and also from Ariosto, whose comedies
were composed in the first third of the century. _Os Estrangeiros_ was,
he further observed in a brief introductory letter to the Cardinal
Henrique, rustic and clumsy.[372] Its only claim to be called rustic,
in character as apart from treatment, consists in a few allusions
to popular customs. We would have had it more indigenous. The scene
is Palermo, the plot, _à la_ Plautus, consists of the difficulties
and differences between father and son, and there is the _aio_,
the vainglorious soldier Briobris, _nas armas um Roldão_, and the
_truão_ who plays the part of _gracioso_. The action advances in long
soliloquies to the final reconciliation between father and son. The
character of _Os Vilhalpandos_, which Mello called ‘a mirror of courtly
wit’, is similar, with the difference that Fame instead of Comedy
speaks the prologue and the action between son, father, and courtesan
is placed in Rome. Both the plays were acted before Cardinal Henrique
and printed by his command. As if to mark his initiative in every
field, Miranda also composed a classical tragedy entitled _Cleopatra_
(_c._ 1550), the title of which is of interest as preceding the plays
of Shakespeare and Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). The twelve octosyllabic
lines (_abcabcdefdef_) that survive (from a chorus?) give no idea
of its character, but it probably followed closely the _Sofonisba_
(1515) of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550). A Spanish version of
Sophocles’ _Electra_ by Hernan Perez de Oliva appeared in 1528, and
in 1536 Anrique Ayres Victoria had translated this into Portuguese
octosyllabic verse: _A Vingança de Agamemnon_. The date of the first
edition is unknown; the second appeared in 1555. Nor do we know when
_Cleopatra_ was written,[373] although it must have been prior to
Antonio Ferreira’s classical tragedy acted at Coimbra, _Inés de Castro_
(_c._ 1557), which has hitherto been considered the first of its kind
in Portugal. Written when the author was about thirty, that is, about
the time of Miranda’s death, it copied the form of Greek tragedies
and, the better to acclimatize this, a thoroughly national subject
was chosen--the death of Inés--whereas Miranda had gone to Rome and
Egypt. As might be expected from Ferreira’s other work the conception
was executed with the careful skill of a conscientious craftsman. The
drama has unity, the style is purest Portuguese, the chorus sometimes
soars into poetry, as in the celebrated passage _Quando amor naceo_.
That the same high language is spoken throughout, that, as has often
been observed, scenes of dramatic opportunity--a meeting between D.
Pedro and his father or Inés--are omitted, merely shows that Ferreira
had no dramatic instinct. Perhaps the only dramatic passage--and
even so it is of more psychological than dramatic interest--is that
in Act III: _Inés._ ‘Ah, woe is me! what ill, what fearful ill dost
thou announce?’ _Chorus._ ‘It is thy death.’ _Inés._ ‘_Is my lord
dead?_’ Nevertheless, the play was a remarkable achievement, carried
out without faltering and with a sustained loftiness worthy of its
subject. No one any longer believes that Ferreira copied from the
_Nise lastimosa_ by Geronimo Bermudez, published under the pseudonym
Antonio da Silva eight years after Ferreira’s death. This is a
slightly expanded Spanish translation, closely following the 1587
edition[374] of _Inés de Castro_, which differs considerably from
that of 1598. The _Nise laureada_ which accompanied it is perfectly
insignificant. Like Miranda, Ferreira wrote, besides one tragedy, two
comedies, _Bristo_ and _O Cioso_. There are indications that he had
in mind Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ as well as Miranda’s
comedies. Bristo soliloquizing is the counterpart of Philtra, and in
his dedication of _Bristo_ to Prince João he acknowledges his debt
to previous plays.[375] In this comedy, written during some vacation
days at Coimbra University, the action is very primitive, but the
braggart Annibal and the charlatan Montalvão account for some farcical
scenes. His later play, _O Cioso_ (the jealous husband is also handled
by Gil Vicente and Prestes), belongs to a higher plane, i. e. to
comedy rather than farce, although _Bristo_ is not entirely devoid of
character-drawing. _Bristo_ was ‘made public’ (_publicada_) before
1554, but neither play was published till 1622. Both are remarkable for
the correctness and concise vigour of their prose.
The three plays of Camões, written perhaps between the years 1544 and
1549 during his first stay at Lisbon, belong entirely neither to the
classical drama nor to the more ancient _autos_, but combine elements
of both. They are written in _redondilhas_, mostly _quintilhas_. The
third, _El Rei Seleuco_ (1549?), is slighter even than a Vicentian
farce. It has a curious prologue scene (_Vorspiel auf dem Theater_)
in prose. The versification is easy, but its chief interest is the
important part it may have played in its author’s life. The earliest in
date, _Filodemo_, although it lacks Vicente’s savour of the soil, has
a graceful charm and faintly recalls the _Comedia do Viuvo_. Filodemo,
orphan son of a Danish princess and a Portuguese _fidalgo_, is in love
with Dionysa, daughter of his father’s brother, whose son Venadoro
is in love with Filodemo’s sister Florimena. Their relationship is
unknown, but the discovery of their true birth smoothes the path
of love and ends the play. _Os Amphitriões_, in Portuguese and
Spanish,[376] is based on the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus. The predicaments
resulting from the appearance of Jupiter as Amphitrião’s double and
Mercury as the double of Sosia are deftly and humorously worked out in
delightfully spontaneous verse.
For those so fastidious as to be satisfied neither by the popular
_autos_ nor the staid classical plays, yet another kind was provided
in the shape of Celestina comedies in prose. Of the life of their
author we know scarcely more than that he was very well known in his
day. Judging by literary merit only, one might assign the verses
written by Jorge de Vasconcellos in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ to JORGE
FERREIRA DE VASCONCELLOS (_c._ 1515-63?), since the poems, alike in
the new and the old style, interspersed in his works do not prove
him to have possessed high poetical talent. It is as a dramatist and
still more as a writer of Portuguese prose that the distinguished
courtier of King João III’s reign[377]--deserves a higher place in
Portuguese literature than his ungrateful countrymen have habitually
accorded him. But the dates forbid the identification of the dramatist
with the earlier poet, who was also a notable courtier since he is
specially mentioned in Vicente’s _Cortes de Jupiter_ (ii. 404). One of
the few definite facts known to us concerning Jorge Ferreira is that
affirmed in the preface of his _Eufrosina_: that this play was the
first fruit of his genius, written in his youth.[378] The exact date
of _Eufrosina_ is unknown, but it was written after the University had
been finally established at Coimbra in 1537--the date of the letter
from India (December 20, 1526[379]) is clearly a misprint since mention
is made of the siege of Diu (1538). Ferreira de Vasconcellos evidently
studied law at the University. If he was born, not at Coimbra but at
Lisbon, he may have begun his studies in the capital. At the time
of Prince Duarte’s death (1540) he was in his service, as _moço da
camara_, and he continued as a Court official, first, perhaps, in the
service of the heir to the throne, Prince João, who died on January
2, 1554, and then in that of King Sebastião. In 1563 he was succeeded
as Secretary (_escrivão do Tesouro_) by Luis Vicente, probably son of
the poet Gil. The document[380] which nominates his successor by no
means implies his death, since, as Menéndez y Pelayo[381] observed,
his name is unaccompanied by the formula _que Deus perdoe_ or _aja_.
But it is strange, if he did not die till 1585, the date given by
Barbosa Machado, that nothing more is heard of him after 1563 (we are
told that his son died at the battle of Alcacer Kebir), and that his
son-in-law called _Aulegrafia_, written before the death of Prince
Luis (1555), his swan-song.[382] Apart from manuscript treatises which
were never published, Jorge Ferreira is the author of four works in
prose, the three plays, _Eufrosina_, _Ulysippo_, _Aulegrafia_, and
the _Memorial da Segunda Tavola Redonda_. The latter is an involved
romance of chivalry[383] which describes the adventures of the Knight
of the Crystal Arms, emulator of the Knights of the Round Table and
Amadis of Gaul. Each chapter commences with a brief sententious
reflection, from which the reader is plunged into mortal combats
of knights, centaurs, giants, and dragons. It begins by giving an
account of King Arthur, his disappearance, and the prosperous reign of
Sagramor. It ends with a vivid description of the tournament (August
5, 1552) at Enxobregas (= Xabregas) in which the ill-fated Prince João
was the principal figure. Barbosa Machado included among Ferreira de
Vasconcellos’ works _Triunfos de Sagramor em que se tratão os feitos
dos Cavalleiros da Segunda Tavola Redonda_ (Coimbra, 1554). A passage
in the _Memorial_[384] may have led to the belief that this was a
second part of the _Memorial_, of which the first known edition is
that of Coimbra, 1567, but from the preface[385] it appears that the
_Memorial_ _is_ the _Triunfos_. The title _Triunfos de Sagramor_ may
have been given to an earlier edition,[386] or it may have been the
title of the second half of the work. The author himself declares
that his story had been ‘presented’ to Prince João.[387] The editor
of _Ulysippo_ in 1618 says that the _Memorial_ had been printed at
least twice during the author’s lifetime.[388] Yet it is difficult
not to suspect that the date 1554 was a confusion with the year of
the death of the prince to whom the work was dedicated. The same
uncertainty, as we have seen, prevails as to the date of the first
edition of the author’s masterpiece _Eufrosina_. (He published his
plays anonymously, partly perhaps for the same reason that made him
insist that his characters represented no definite persons but types.)
The earliest edition that we have is that of Evora, 1561, that of
Coimbra, 1560, having disappeared, if it ever existed.[389] The words
on the title-page, _de nouo reuista & em partes acrecentada_, need
not imply more than that, as we know, the manuscript had circulated
among his friends: _por muitas mãos deuassa e falsa_. As a novelty,
_invençam noua nesta terra_, _Eufrosina_ with its proverbs and its
ingenious thoughts and phrases was appreciated in Portugal, whose
inhabitants were justifiably proud now to possess a _Celestina_ of
their own, a _Celestina_ with less action and rhetoric but more thought
and sentiment.[390] Quevedo was loud in its praises, Lope de Vega
perhaps quoted it,[391] its influence on the style of Mello and other
Portuguese writers is clear. It was a legitimate success and its modern
neglect is all the more deplorable because in this play the Portuguese
language, the richness, concision, and grace of which are exalted
in the preface, appears in its purest, raciest form. The author’s
vocabulary is immense, his sentences admirably vigorous and clear.
After heading the E’s in the _Index_ of 1581 (_Evphrosina_ simply,
without author) it was reprinted by the poet Rodriguez Lobo in 1616,
in a slightly modified form, shorn, that is, of some of the coarser
passages and of all reference to the Scriptures.[392] The style is not
the only merit of _Eufrosina_. Despite the lack of proportion in some
of the scenes, in which Jorge Ferreira proves himself to have been,
like Richardson, ‘a sorry pruner’ (four scenes out of the thirty-nine
constitute a quarter of the play), there is a certain unity in this
story of the love of the poor courtier Zelotipo de Abreu for Eufrosina,
proud and beautiful daughter of the rich _fidalgo_ D. Carlos, Senhor
das Povoas, in the little ancient university town above the green
waters and willows of Mondego. The numerous other persons are strictly
subordinate, and both scenes and characters are skilfully drawn. The
artificial construction, the convention by which emotion finds vent
in a string of classical allusions, scarcely mar the exceedingly
natural presentment of many of the scenes. Charming, for instance, is
that in which Eufrosina and her companion and friend Silvia de Sousa,
Zelotipo’s cousin, watch from the terrace of their house the river’s
gentle flow and along its bank the citizens and students taking the air
in the cool of the evening. The play contains as many characters as
a modern novel. There is Cariofilo, a gay good-hearted Don Juan; his
friend, the more serious Zelotipo, type of the Portuguese lover, the
_galante contemplativo_; D. Carlos, quick to anger but easily appeased;
the pedantic, unscrupulous Dr. Carrasco, whose conversation with D.
Carlos gives scope for a vigorous attack on the legal profession;
Silvia, who sacrifices her love and gives up to Eufrosina her cousin’s
verses that she had so carefully kept; the _moços_ Andrade and Cotrim,
greedy, timid, and talkative; the gentleman of Coimbra, Philotimo, a
wise and kindly man of the world. Other phases of Coimbra life are
shown in the _moças de rio_ and _de cantaro_, who fetch water or wash
clothes in the Mondego and metaphorically toss in a blanket Galindo,
the rich D. Tristão’s agent from Lisbon; in the love-lorn student with
his Latin, the morose and jealous workman Duarte, proud of his position
as _official_, the resolute goldsmith and his languid daughter Polinia,
the old servant Andresa and the merry servant girl Vitoria, and, most
prominent of all, Philtra the _alcoviteira_, deploring the wickedness
and degeneracy of the world and full of wise saws--the play contains
many hundreds. Eufrosina herself is first described by the lover--brow
of Diana, lips of Venus, limbs of Pallas, clear green eyes[393] of
Juno, quietly mirthful; then by his servant Andrade--the fairest thing
that ever he thought to see, fan in hand, the sleeves of her dress
like a ship at full sail[394]--so that we have an effective impression
of her beauty. Besides Coimbra life we obtain glimpses of that of the
Court at Lisbon and Almeirim in a letter from the courtier Crisandor,
of India in a very real and interesting letter from Silvia’s brother,
even of Cotrim’s native village. That the unity was not sacrificed to
these many by-scenes says much for the author’s skill. This praise
cannot be given to his second play written some ten years after the
first, _Ulysippo_ (1547?), for here the reader loses his way among the
many courses of true love. There are twenty-one _dramatis personae_,
but the principal interest is in the sketch of Constança d’Ornellas,
the hypocritical _beata_,[395] or, rather, that is the most original
part, since in the play as a whole there is a certain monotony after
_Eufrosina_, and many of the proverbs are the same.[396] Excellent
as the earlier play in its terse and idiomatic prose,[397] full of
interest in the insight it gives into the customs and life of the
people, its chief fault is the intricacy, or absence, of plot which
makes it difficult reading, and of course it would naturally please
less on its first appearance as being no longer a new thing. The
author, who knew how the Portuguese prized _novidades_, appears to have
been conscious of this, since his third play, _Aulegrafia_, written
perhaps in 1555,[398] and first published in 1619, was developed
on somewhat different lines. It is concerned, as its name implies,
exclusively with the Court, and the people and popular proverbs are
in abeyance. In its fifty scenes we are introduced to typical Court
ladies, noble _fidalgos_, poor gentlemen and their servants, one of
whom considers it _mais fidalgo nam saber ler_. The play is by its
author termed ‘a long treatise on Court manners’,[399] and as such it
is admirable and full of interest, however negligible it may be as
drama. Its style, moreover, even excels in atticism Ferreira’s other
works. The most remarkable character is that of the young (_menina
e moça_) and very wily aunt of Filomela. She is twice described in
detail (f. 46 and f. 153 v.), and we perceive that Philtra of the
people, the middle-class Constança d’Ornellas, and the aristocratic
Aulegrafia are really three persons and one spirit. In _Ulysippo_ one
of the lesser personages was the Spanish _Sevilhana_ (mentioned also in
_Eufrosina_), and here a boastful Spanish adventurer is introduced in
the person of Agrimonte de Guzman, who disdains to speak Portuguese.
The scene of both the later plays is Lisbon. The author drew from his
experience here, as previously at Coimbra, and often describes to
the life the persons that he had met. Scarcely any other writer gives
us so intimate an idea of the times--of this the latter heyday of
Portugal’s greatness--or of the gallant, lovesick, dreaming Portuguese,
who considers love as much a monopoly of his country as the ivory and
spices of India.[400]
FOOTNOTES:
[353] The disapproval of the popular drama is frequent in religious
writers. In the seventeenth century Antonio Vieira declared that
_uma das felicidades que se contava entre as do tempo presente era
acabarem-se as comedias em Portugal_. Feo earlier, in common with many
others, had similarly denounced the romances of chivalry _pelos quaes o
Demonio comvosco fala; livraria do diabo_ (_Tratt. Qvad._ (1619), ff.
156, 157).
[354] One of them, João, _lavrador_, says: _Vimos ver se he assi ou nam
De hũa arremedaçam Que s’a ca d’arremedar.... Ora nos dizei se he assi
Que fazem ho ayto cá._
[355] e. g. Branca Janes says of her husband:
He hum grão comedor,
Destruidor da fazenda, &c.
[356] Cf. _este leo ja Celestina_ (_Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, &c.
(1587), f. 44).
[357] The student’s song on f. 44 v. and f. 46, _Polifema mi postema
Grande mal he querer bem_, parodies Lobeira’s _Leonoreta fin roseta_.
[358] Ibid., f. 49.
[359] _Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, f. 57:
_Ro._ Senhor, se me dá licença,
Ja eu aquela trova li.
_Os._ Qual trova leste? _Ro._ Essa sua,
Como a disse nua e crua.
_Os._ E onde a leste, vilão?
_Ro._ Cuido, señor, que em Boscão,
E canta-se pela rua.
[360] The Devil speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. All the other
characters in Prestes’ plays, with the exception of an enchanted Moor,
speak Portuguese. On the other hand, there are frequent Spanish words
and quotations. The word _algorrem_ occurs twice in these plays, but
the attempt to retain the old style of peasant conversation is but
half-hearted.
[361] Duarte in the _Auto dos Cantarinhos_ sleeps on an _arca_
(chest) like the _moço_ in _O Juiz da Beira_. There are other echoes
of Vicente, as the words _quem tem farelos?_ (1871 ed., p. 65), the
reference to _Flerida e Dom Duardos_ (p. 485), the line _Que má cousa
são vilãos_ (p. 420), the peasant who, like Mofina Mendes, builds up
his future on the strength of an apple of gold, which proves to be a
coal (pp. 407-8).
[362] _Auto do Mouro Encantado_ (p. 347). Unless there was an earlier
edition of _Lazarillo de Tormes_, this play must therefore have been
written after 1554. Prestes’ _Auto do Procurador_ was written before
1557.
[363] p. 262. For a corresponding knowledge of _Amadis de Gaula_, &c.,
among English servants see Dr. Henry Thomas, _The Palmerin Romances_,
London, 1916, pp. 38-40.
[364] _Alfea_ (ed. 1631), p. 59. The wonderful spelling is due to
the printer (e.g. _sesse_ = cease) as well as to the peasants (e.g.
_monteplica_ = multiply, _pialdrade_ = piety).
[365] _Composto por A. D. S. R._ There is an earlier _Acto Sacramental
da Jornada do Menino Deus para o Egypto_ (1746).
[366] It contains a dispute between Maize and Rye, after the very
popular fashion of the contention between Winter and Spring in
Vicente’s _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, and the poetical contrasts common
in the Middle Ages and in the East, and still in vogue among the
_improvisatori_ of Basque villages, between wine and water, boots and
sandals, &c.
[367] i.e. No. 3: _De hvm almotacel borracho_; No. 5: _Dos conselhos
de hvm letrado_ (a _ratinho_ figures in this, as a _ratiño_ figures in
No. 17); No. 6: _Do negro mais bem mandado_ (the _escudeiro’s moço_
is here a negro who speaks in broken Portuguese, e.g. Zesu); No. 11:
_Dous cegos enganados_; No. 13: _Das padeiras de Lisboa_ (besides the
bakeresses there is a _meleiro_ (honey-seller), an _alheiro_ with his
_braços_ of leeks, an _azeiteiro_, &c.), and No. 25. The titles of
these plays sufficiently show their homely character.
[368] Of its author we only know that he was _Ulysbonense_. The play
had many editions: 1747, 1758, 1789, 1853.
[369] A priest of the same name wrote political and religious pamphlets
in the middle of the nineteenth century.
[370] The _affronta de Dio_ is mentioned. It may have been written in
the same year as Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_.
[371] In a letter sent with _Os Vilhalpandos_ to the Infante Duarte he
says that _ninguem que eu saiba_ had so written in Portuguese.
[372] _A comedia qual he tal va, aldeaã e mal atauiada._
[373] A passage in _Aulegrafia_ (1555?) describes the dramatic death of
Antony as a new thing: _parece-me que o estou vendo_ (f. 129).
[374] _Tragedia mvy sentida e elegante de Dona Inés de Castro ... Agora
nouamente acrescentada_ (31 ff. unnumbered). The one who published
_first_ was the most likely to be the thief. _Saudade_ is translated
_soledad_.
[375] _Nesta Universidade ... onde pouco antes se viram outras que
a todas as dos antigas ou levam ou não dam ventagem._ _Bristo_ was
written _por só seu desenfadamento em certos dias de ferias e ainda
esses furtados ao estudo_. It is a _comedia mixta, a mor parte della
motoria_.
[376] In _El Rei Seleuco_ the doctor and in _Filodemo_ the shepherd and
_bobo_ speak Spanish.
[377] _Homem fidalgo mᵗᵒ cortezão & discretto_ (Rangel Macedo,
manuscript _Nobiliario_, in Lisbon _Bib. Nac._); _aquelle galante e
elegante cortesão Portugues_ (_licença_ of 1618 ed. of _Ulysippo_).
[378] _As primicias do meu rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina,
e foi ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro._
[379] _Eufrosina_, ii. 5.
[380] Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and
printed in his _Gil Vicente_ (1902), p. 114.
[381] _Orígenes de la Novela_, vol. iii, p. ccxxx.
[382] Sousa de Macedo, in _Eva e Ave_ (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he
lived in the reign of King João and in the beginning of that of King
Sebastian, which confirms the date 1563 as that of his death.
[383] Some of its heroes have geographical names, as King Tenarife of
the Canary Islands and the Spanish Moor Juzquibel, who now survives in
the name of the mountain that falls to the sea above Fuenterrabía. The
author shows considerable knowledge of the Basque country, and we may
perhaps infer that he was at the French Court and studied the Basque
provinces on the way.
[384] 1867 ed., p. 21: _como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey
Sagramor_.
[385] _Nesta trasladação do triumpho del Rey Sagramor_, ibid., p. viii.
[386] A vague tradition placed the 1554 edition in the Lisbon Torre do
Tombo, but inquiries in 1916 proved that nothing is known of it there.
[387] _Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada_, ibid., p. vii.
[388] _A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressão
emendou o Autor em sua vida_ (_Aduertencia ao leitor_).
[389] Nicolás Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was
often far from accurate, says that there were several editions before
that of 1616, probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page.
The late Menéndez y Pelayo, who also made many slips in dealing with
Portuguese literature, declared that the 1560 edition was in the
British Museum, which, however, only possesses a (mutilated) copy of
the edition of Evora, 1561 (lacking the colophon with the date). Of the
1561 edition several copies exist, that of the Torre do Tombo, that in
the library of the late Snr. Francisco Van Zeller at Lisbon, and that
of the British Museum.
[390] João de Barros, _Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem_ (1540),
wrote that the Portuguese language _parece nam consintir em si hũa tal
obra como Celestina_ (1785 ed., p. 222).
[391] _La Filomena_, 1621 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was
from the 1561 edition, not that of 1616, in which part of the sentence
quoted is omitted, as in the Spanish translation first published ten
years later, in 1631.
[392] They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of
1581 condemns _todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam & torcem
as autoridades & sentenças da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos,
graças, escarnios, fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracções,
superstições, encantações & semelhantes cousas_. The rules were carried
out most mechanically.
[393] Green eyes are beloved by Portuguese writers for their rarity or
from an early mistaken rendering of the French _vair_ (e.g. Sylvia in
the sixteenth, Joaninha in the nineteenth century). The _glosadores_
inclined to them on account of the second person of the infinitive ‘to
see’: _verdes_.
[394] In Arraez, _Dialogos_ (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women
_parecem ... velas de nao inchadas_.
[395] In the first edition she had been called a _beata_. In that of
1618 she became merely a widow woman, _dona viuva_, but the editor
defeated the censor’s intentions by noting the change in the preface
and declaring that but for this she remained exactly the same as before.
[396] Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are _conjurados contra o
mundo_.
[397] Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love.
[398] One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis
(†November 27, 1555) still alive.
[399] _Um largo discurso da cortesania vulgar_, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5:
_pretende mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaã_. On f. 5 v.
it is called _esta selada_ _Portuguesa_. The courtiers spend all the
time they can spare from the pursuit of love in discussing the rival
merits of the _romance velho_ and new-fangled sonnet, of Boscán and
Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of a Latin poet, &c.
[400] _O amor é portugues_ (_Aulegrafia_, f. 38 v.).
§ 4
_Luis de Camões_
The plays of LUIS DE CAMÕES (1524?-80) are in a sense typical of his
genius, for they show him combining two great currents of poetry,
the old indigenous and the classic new. A generation had sprung
up accustomed to wide horizons and heroic deeds, and poets and
historians regretted that there was no Homer or Virgil to describe them
adequately. Camões was not a Homer nor a Virgil, but he was a more
universal poet than Portugal had yet produced, and by reason of his
marvellous power of expression he triumphantly completed the revolution
which Sá de Miranda had tentatively begun. In a sense he was not a
great original poet, but in his style he was excelled by no Latin
poet of the Renaissance. The eager researches of modern scholars have
succeeded in piercing the obscurity that enveloped his life, although
many gaps and doubtful points remain. Four or five generations had
gone by since his ancestor Vasco Perez had passed out of the pages of
history,[401] and some of the intervening members of the family had
also won distinction, but Camões’ father, Simão Vaz de Camões, was a
poor captain of good position (_cavaleiro fidalgo_) who was shipwrecked
near Goa and died there soon after the poet was born in 1524. Through
his grandmother, Guiomar Vaz da Gama, he was distantly related to the
celebrated Gamas of Algarve. His mother, Anna de Sá e Macedo, belonged
to a well-known family of Santarem.[402] Whether he was born at Lisbon
or Coimbra is still uncertain. His great-grandfather had settled at
Coimbra. That Camões studied there scarcely admits of doubt. He alludes
to it in his poems, and nowhere else in Portugal could he have received
his thorough classical education. In the year 1542 or 1543 he went to
Lisbon. The exact dates of events in his life during the next ten years
are difficult to determine, but the events themselves are clear enough.
His birth and talents assured him a ready welcome in the capital.
Whether he became tutor to D. Antonio de Noronha, son of the Conde de
Linhares (the Portuguese ambassador whom Moraes accompanied to Paris),
or not, he soon had many friends and was probably received at Court.
Referring later to this time he is said to have spoken of himself as
_cheo de muitos favores_, and in this popularity he wrote a large
number of his exquisite _redondilhas_ and also sonnets, odes, eclogues,
and the three _autos_. But Camões had fallen passionately in love with
a lady-in-waiting of the queen, Catherina de Athaide.[403] Tradition
has it that he first saw her in church on a Good Friday (1544?). We may
surmise that Natercia’s parents objected to the suit of the penniless
_cavaleiro fidalgo_, and that Camões pressed his suit on them with more
vehemence than discretion. He was banished from Court, and spent six
months in the Ribatejo (Santarem) and two years in military service in
North Africa (Ceuta). He admits that he had been in the wrong, but not
seriously so, and hints that envy had played its part in his downfall.
It is probable that his play _El Rei Seleuco_ had given a handle to
the enemies that his growing reputation as a poet had made. It must
be confessed that its subject was tactless, for in the play the king
gives up his bride to his son, which could easily be interpreted as
a reflection on the conduct of the late King Manuel, who had married
his son’s bride. The two years in Africa passed slowly. In a letter
(_Esta vae com a candea na mão_) he describes sadness eating away his
heart as a moth a garment, and it was with his thoughts in Lisbon that
he took part from time to time in skirmishes against the Moors, in
one of which he lost his right eye. Hard blows, scanty provisions,
and no chance of enriching oneself as in India were the features of
military service in North Africa, and when Camões returned to Lisbon
his prospects contrasted sharply with those which had been his when he
first came from the University a few years before. He was now nearly
thirty,[404] disfigured by the loss of an eye and embittered by the
turn his fortunes had taken. He no longer looked on life from the
inside, gazing contentedly at the show from the windows of privilege,
but was himself in the arena. For the school of Sá de Miranda he had
probably never felt much sympathy, considering it too severe and
artificial. He wished to live and enjoy, and although the patronage of
literary Prince João may have encouraged him to hope for better times,
he meanwhile set himself to sample life as best he might, associating
with rowdy companions (_valentões_), who brought out the Cariofilo
side of his character at the expense of the contemplative Zelotipo.
Whether he had intended to embark for India in 1550, or this be a pure
invention on the part of Faria e Sousa, it is certain that he was still
in Lisbon on June 16, 1552. On that day the Corpus Christi procession
passed through the principal streets. In the crowded Rocio Camões was
drawn into a quarrel with a Court official, Gonçalo Borges, and wounded
him with a sword-cut on the head. For nearly nine months Camões lay
in prison, and then, Borges having recovered and bearing no malice,
he was pardoned[405] (March 7, 1553) and released, but only on the
understanding that he would leave Portugal to serve the king in India.
Before the end of the month he had embarked in the ship _S. Bento_.
Hitherto he had hoped against hope for an improvement in his lot; now
he went, he says, as one who leaves this world for the next, and with
the words _Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea_,[406] turned his
back on the calumnies and intrigues of Lisbon. In one of his finest
elegies[407] he described the voyage, a storm off the Cape of Good
Hope, and the arrival at Goa in September 1553. The voyage was full of
interest to him, and he made good use of it, becoming what Humboldt
called him--a great painter of the sea[408]--but so far as comfort
was concerned he fared probably much as would a modern emigrant. His
disillusion at Goa is poignantly described in a letter[409] written
soon after his arrival. He found it ‘the stepmother of all honest men’,
money the only god and passport, and he sends a note of warning to
_aventureiros_ in Portugal eager to make their fortune in India. We
know from the bitter pages of Couto and Corrêa how difficult it was
for a private soldier to thrive there, and the position of a _reinol_
newly arrived from Portugal was precarious. Camões joined a few weeks
later (November 1553) in a punitive expedition along the coast of
Malabar against the King of Chembe, and in 1554 probably accompanied D.
Fernando de Meneses in a second expedition to Monte Felix or Guardafui
(Ras ef Fil), the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. After his three years’
service (1553-6) he continued to live at Goa. He had found time to
write poetry, and sent home a sonnet and an eclogue on the death of
his friend D. Antonio de Noronha. His play _Filodemo_ was acted,
probably in the winter of 1555, before the popular Governor Francisco
Barreto, who provided him with the post of _Provedor Môr dos Defuntos e
Ausentes_ (i. e. trustee for the property of dead or absent Portuguese)
at Macao. Whether his satiric verses had anything to do with the
appointment we do not know--some have maintained that the Portuguese
of Goa appreciated his poetical powers best at a distance--but it is
more probable that his appointment was a favour, since every post in
India was eagerly coveted, and it was a kinder action to give him a
comparatively humble one at once than the reversion to a more lucrative
office, filled thrice or even ten times over by the deplorable system
of ‘successions’.[410] He set sail in the spring of 1556, and after
touching at Malacca, arrived at the Molucca Islands, the most lawless
region in India. Camões himself, according to Storck, was wounded
about this time, but in a fight at sea, not in one of the chronic
broils at Ternate or Tidore. In 1557 or 1558 he reached Macao, but
two years later he was relieved of his post owing to a quarrel with
the settlers, whose part was taken by the captain of the silver and
silk ship passing from Goa to China. On his authority Camões was sent
to Goa, protesting against _o injusto mando_, which was a common fate
of officials in India. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Tongking,
lost all his possessions, and arrived penniless and perhaps in
debt at Goa in 1560 or 1561. To these four or five chequered years
are ascribed the wonderful _quintilhas_, the most beautiful in the
language, _Sobolos rios que vam_, which may owe something to Vicente’s
admirable paraphrase of Psalm l, the _canção Com força desusada_, the
_oitavas Como nos vossos_, and the completion of the first six books
of the _Lusiads_. Soon after his return he was probably imprisoned
for debt, but was released, probably at the instance of the Viceroy,
D. Francisco Coutinho, Conde de Redondo, to whom Camões addressed his
first printed poem, the ode in Orta’s _Coloquios_ (1563). Camões’
thoughts must have now more than ever turned homeward. Fortune had
danced tantalizingly before him, holding out hopes which broke as
glass in his hands whenever he attempted to seize them.[411] Of his
life between 1564 and 1567 we know nothing. He did not occupy the
post of factor of Chaul, the reversion to which indeed he may perhaps
only have received after his return to Portugal. He was eager to get
home. In 1567 he accompanied Pedro Barreto to Mozambique, glad to get
even so far on the return voyage. There poverty and illness delayed
him till 1569, when through the generosity and in the company of some
friends, among whom was the historian Couto, he was able to embark for
Portugal. They reached Lisbon in April, 1570.[412] Sixteen years had
passed. The popular, impulsive, talented youth returned middle-aged,
poverty-stricken, and unknown. Antonio de Noronha and many others of
his friends were dead. Catherina de Athaide had died in 1556 (although
she may have continued to receive Camões’ rapt devotion as the dead
Beatrice that of Dante), Prince João, hope and patron of poets, two
years earlier. The plague, to which nearly half the city’s population
had succumbed, had only recently abated, and Camões may have witnessed
the thanksgiving procession in Lisbon on April 20, 1570. Modern critics
have even denied him the only consolation which probably remained to
him in the _patria esquiva a quem se mal aproveitou_[413], but there
seems no reason to reject the tradition that his mother was alive; in
fact she survived him and continued to receive the pension of 15,000
_réis_[414] granted him from 1572 till his death on Friday, June 10,
1580. It was a sum barely sufficient to support life, and it was not
always regularly paid, so that he is reported to have been in the
habit of saying that he would prefer to his pension a whip for the
responsible officials (_almoxarifes_). Tradition, to the indignation of
reasonable historians, loves to represent a faithful Javanese slave,
who had accompanied Camões to Europe, begging for his master in the
streets of Lisbon. Camões did not go with King Sebastian to Africa.
He may have been already ill when the expedition set out in June
1578--the plague soon began again to ravage Lisbon, and long years
of suffering and disappointment must have sapped his strength. Two
years later his life of heroic endurance, in patience of the _juizos
incognitos de Deos_,[415] ended. He was perhaps buried in a common
grave with other victims of the plague.[416] Long absence had served
to strengthen his love for his _patria ditosa amada_, and the news
from Africa left him no heart to battle against disease, content, as
he wrote to the Captain-General of Lamego, to die with his country,
with which his name has ever since been intimately linked. Couto and
Mariz agree that he brought _Os Lusiadas_ with him virtually complete
on his return to Portugal. It was published through the influence of
the poet D. Manuel de Portugal in 1572. Camões has often been called
the prince of heroic poets, but it is noteworthy that Faria e Sousa
in 1685 says that ‘all have hitherto, especially in Spain, considered
him greater as a lyric than as an heroic poet’.[417] _Os Lusiadas_
rather than an epic is a great lyrical hymn in praise of Portugal,
with splendid episodes such as the descriptions of the death of
Inés, the battle of Aljubarrota, the storm, Adamastor, the Island of
Venus. Apart from the style, its originality consists in the skill
with which in a poem but half the length of Tasso’s _Gerusalemme
Liberata_ and a fifth of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ the poet works
in the entire history of his country. It is this which gives unity
to his ten cantos of _oitavas_, this and the wonderfully transparent
flow of the verse, which carries the reader over many weaknesses and
inequalities of detail. It is a nobler poem than the crowded garden
of flowers in a high wind that is the _Orlando Furioso_, and at once
more human and intense than the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. Camões, with a
wonderful memory and intimate knowledge of the legends of Greece and
Rome, read everything, and we find him gathering his material from
all sides[418] like a bird in spring, from a Latin treatise of the
antiquarian Resende, from the historians Duarte Galvão, Pina, Lopez,
Barros, or Castanheda, or literally translating lines of Virgil, as
in his shorter poems he imitated Petrarca, Garci Lasso, and Boscán.
Tasso used the _mot juste_ when in a sonnet addressed to Camões he
called him _dotto e buon Luigi_.[419] If, as seems probable, he had
early wished to sing the deeds of the Portuguese, the first volumes of
Castanheda and Barros must have been an incentive as powerful as the
destiny which made him personally acquainted with the scenes of Gama’s
voyage and of the Portuguese victories in the East. It seems probable
that cantos iii and iv, containing the early history of Portugal,
were already written, and that around them he wove the epic grandeur
revealed in the histories of the discovery of India. The poem opens
with an invocation to the nymphs of the Tagus and to King Sebastian,
and then, in a wonderful stanza of the sea (_Já no largo oceano
navegavam_, i. 19), Gama’s ships are shown in mid-voyage. The gods of
Olympus take sides, and Venus protects the daring adventurers in seas
never crossed before, while Mars stirs up the natives of Mozambique
and of Mombaça to treachery (i-ii). In contrast to the natives farther
south, the King of Melinde receives them with loyal friendship, and
Gama rewards him by relating the history of Portugal (iii-iv). He then
continues his voyage, and after weathering a terrible storm brewed by
Bacchus, arrives at Calicut (v-vi). After a visit to the Samori (the
King of Calicut), the Catual (the Governor) accompanies Gama on board,
and Paulo da Gama explains to him the warlike deeds of the Portuguese
embroidered on the silken banners of the ships (vii-viii). On the
return voyage they are entertained by Tethys and her nymphs in the
island of Venus, supposed to be one of the Azores (ix-x), and the poem
ends with a second invocation to King Sebastian (x. 145-56). Thus the
time of the poem occupies a little over two years (July 1497-September
1499). Into this the previous four centuries had been ingeniously
worked, but in order to include the sixteenth century fresh devices
were adopted, by which Jupiter (canto ii), Adamastor (v), and Tethys
(x) foretell the future. Almost every land and city connected with
Portuguese history finds a place in the poem. Small wonder that it was
well received by the Portuguese, combining as it did intense patriotism
with hundreds of exotic names. The extraordinary number of 12,000
copies is said to have been printed within a quarter of a century of
Camões’ death,[420] and by 1624 the sale had increased to 20,000 and
his fame had spread throughout the world. It would have been still
stranger if the _murmuradores maldizentes_ had been silent. As early as
1641 we find a critic, João Soares de Brito (1611-64), defending Camões
against the charges of plagiarizing Virgil and of improbabilities of
time and place.[421] Not every one apparently was of the opinion of the
Conde de Idanha, who considered that the only fault of the _Lusiads_
was that it was too long to learn by heart and too short to be able to
go on reading it for ever. Montesquieu found in it something of ‘the
fascination of the Odyssey and the magnificence of the Aeneid’, and
Voltaire, while objecting to its _merveilleux absurde_, adds: ‘Mais la
poésie du style et l’imagination dans l’expression l’ont soutenu, de
même que les beautés de l’exécution ont placé Paul Véronèse parmi les
grands peintres.’
In 1820 appeared José Agostinho de Macedo’s _Censura dos Lusiadas_, in
which he noted with some asperity Camões’ _erros crassissimos_. Prosaic
lines, hyperbole, the use of the supernatural, lack of proportion,[422]
absence of unity, and historical improbabilities are the main heads
of his indictment, and he quotes Racine as to Camões’ ‘icy style’.
He also has much petty detailed criticism, for he finds in Camões a
_notavel falta de grammatica_. And Macedo was certainly right. Most of
the faults he attributes to Camões do exist in the _Lusiads_. Macedo
himself could write more correctly. When he says that the line _Somos
hum dos da ilha, lhe tornou_ (i. 53) is unpoetical (_não tem tintura
de poesia_), we agree; it is sheer prose. We can add other instances:
the line _as que elle para si na cruz tomou_ (i. 7) is as unmusical as
the rhyming of _Heliogabalo_, _Sardanapalo_ (iii. 92), or _impossibil_,
_terribil_ (iv. 54). Only Macedo forgot that genius is justified of its
children, and that these details are all merged in the incomparable
style, imaginative power, and lofty theme of the poem. If a man is
unable to feel the heat of the sun for its spots, we will vainly try
to warm or enlighten him, but it is not pedantic grammarians such as
Macedo[423] who could obscure the fame of Camões. That could only
be done by those whom Macedo calls _os idolatras camoneanos_. Lope
de Vega[424] effusively professed to place the _Lusiads_ above the
_Aeneid_ and the _Iliad_, and Camões’ fellow-countrymen have eagerly
followed suit. He has also suffered much at the hands of translators.
Since the _Lusiads_ is clearly not the equal of the _Iliad_ or the
_Odyssey_, it may be worth while to consider by what reasons Camões
really is one of the world’s greatest poets. There is celestial music
in much that he wrote, in incidents of the _Lusiads_ such as the death
of Inés de Castro,[425] in his eclogues and _canções_ and elegies, in
many of the sonnets, and in the _redondilhas_, most of all perhaps in
the seventy-three heavenly _quintilhas_ beginning _Sobolos rios que
vam_. But other Portuguese poets have been musical; Diogo Bernardez in
this respect vies with Camões: Camões excels them all in the vigour
and transparent clearness that accompany his music. But his principal
excellence is that, still without losing the music of his _versos
deleitosos_, he can think in verse[426]--the thought in some of his
elegies and _oitavas_ is remarkable--and describe with scientific
precision, as in the account of the _tromba_ (_Lus._ v. 19-22). Like
Milton, he could transform an atlas into a fair harmony of names. His
influence on the Portuguese language has been very great. Whether it
was wholly for good may be open to doubt--a doubt mentioned by one of
his earliest biographers, Severim de Faria, in 1624. The _Lusiads_,
he says, ‘greatly enriched the Portuguese language by ingeniously
introducing many new words and expressions which then came into
common use, although some severe critics have censured him for this,
considering the use of latinized forms a defect in his poem’.[427]
An inch farther than he went in this direction, or in that of _furia
grande e sonorosa_, and _estilo grandiloquo_, would have been an inch
too far, and subsequent writers did not always observe his restraint,
the sobriety due to his classical education. But his poem certainly
helped to fix the language, and he cannot be blamed for the excesses of
his followers, or for a change which had begun before his time.[428]
Couto records the theft of the _Parnaso_ in which Camões was collecting
his lyrics with a view to publishing them. He must have written many
more lyrics than we possess, but even so the number existing is not
small. Successive editors have added to them from time to time, and
often clumsily. Faria e Sousa, a century after Camões’ death, declared
that he had added 200, and, while upbraiding Diogo Bernardez for
his _robos_, was himself the thief. Camões might have been somewhat
surprised to find in the first edition of his lyrics (1595) two poems
which had been in print in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ eight years
before he was born. This 1595 edition contained but 65 sonnets, but
their number grew to 108 (1598), 140 (1616), 229 (1668), 296 (1685),
352 (1860), 354 (1873). D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has
already contributed much towards a critical edition, and it is to
be hoped that before long it may be possible to read the genuine
lyrics of Camões in a complete edition by themselves.[429] That would
certainly cause him to be more widely read abroad. It is perhaps
inevitable that a comparison should arise between Camões and Petrarca
(although it must be remembered that they are separated by two
centuries), yet he would be an extremely bold or extremely ignorant
critic who should place the one of them above the other. In genius
they were equal, but a different atmosphere acted on their genius, the
artistic atmosphere of Italy and the natural atmosphere of Portugal.
Petrarca was the more scholarly writer, so that if he perhaps never
attains to the rapturous heights occasionally reached by Camões, he
also keeps himself from the blemishes which sometimes disfigure Camões’
work. Camões’ life was far more varied, many-coloured as an Alentejan
_manta_,[430] and this is reflected in his poems. Intensely human, he
is swayed by many moods, while Petrarca is merged in the narrower flame
of his love. Petrarca excels him in the sonnet, for although many of
those by Camões are beautiful, and nearly all contain some beautiful
passage, he was not really at his ease in this scanty plot of ground.
His genius required a larger canvas for its expression. The following
lines from his long and magnificent _canção Vinde cá_ are worth quoting
because they triumphantly display many of the noblest characteristics
of his poetry:
No mais, canção, no mais, que irei fallando,
Sem o sentir, mil annos; e se acaso
Te culparem de larga e de pesada,
Não pode ser, lhe dize, limitada
A agoa do mar em tão pequeno vaso.
Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando
Co’ gosto do louvor, mas explicando
Puras verdades ja por mi passadas:
Oxalá foram fabulas sonhadas!
Here we see the force and precision, the amazing ease and rapidity, the
crystalline transparency, the sad _saudade_, and above all the deep
sincerity that mark so much of his work. Both Petrarca and Camões are
representative of their country, the latter not only in his poems, in
which almost every Portuguese hero is included, but in his character
and his life. In his wit and melancholy, his love of Nature, his
passionate devotion, his persistency and endurance, his independence
and sensitive pride, in his lyrical gift and power of expression, in
his courage and ardent patriotism, he is the personification and ideal
of the Portuguese nation.
Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems
have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a
_cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript.
A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but
after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the
only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões
was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and
traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and
more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till
at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for
inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was,
having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the
eighteenth century.
Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred
honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of
Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from
the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her
forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies,
returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems
of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud
they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration
which Portuguese history might have been expected to give.
Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente
Compõem grandes Iliadas,
wrote Diniz da Cruz (_O Hyssope_, canto 1). The epic-fever had not
abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Madeira
poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos (_c._ 1770-1824) alone
wrote two: _Zargueida_ (1806), _Georgeida_ (1819); and José Agostinho
de Macedo in his _Motim Literario_ imagines himself at the mercy of a
poet with an epic in sixty cantos entitled _Napoleada_, and himself
became the mock-hero of one in nine: _Agostinheida_ (Londres, 1817),
written by his unfortunate opponent Nuno Alvares Pereira Pato Moniz
(1781-1827). The strange poet of Setubal, Thomaz Antonio de Santos e
Silva (1751-1816), published a _Braziliada_ in twelve cantos in 1815.
Of the earlier epics Camillo Castello Branco wrote sarcastically: ‘They
contain impenetrable mysteries of dullness and inspire a sacred awe,
but they are the conventional glory of our literary history, untouched
and intangible.’[431]
Of the two long epic poems of JERONIMO CORTE REAL (_c._ 1530-1590?):
_Svcesso do Segvndo Cerco de Div_ (1574) and _Naufragio, e Lastimoso
Svcesso da Perdiçam de Manoel de Sousa de Sepulveda_, &c. (1594), we
may perhaps say that they are excellent prose. He dwells more than once
upon the inconstancy of fortune, and this may be something more than a
platitude. Of his life little is known. He is by some believed to have
been born in the Azores in 1533. A document in the possession of the
Visconde de Esperança shows that he died before May 12, 1590. He may
have been a musician as well as a poet and a painter. It is probable,
but not certain, that he accompanied King Sebastian to Alcacer Kebir
and was taken prisoner. Faria e Sousa says that he was too old to go.
After varied service by land and sea he wrote these poems when living
in retirement on his estate near Evora, and his own experiences stood
him in good stead for his descriptions, which are often not without
life and vigour, as the account of the battle in canto 18 of the
_Segundo Cerco de Diu_, or of the storm in canto 7 of the _Naufragio_.
The former poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. João de
Mascarenhas and its relief by D. João de Castro (1546), in whose mouth
is placed a long and tedious speech. The last two cantos (21, 22) are
tacked on to the main theme and occupy more than a quarter of the
whole. They tell from paintings the deeds of past captains and prophesy
future events and the ‘golden reign’ of King Sebastian. The prophetic
vision, although it included a generation beyond the nominal date of
the poem (1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578).
The hendecasyllables of the blank verse have an exceedingly monotonous
fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.[432] The use
of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an inclination
to multiply words without adding to the force of the picture.[433]
The same plethora of epithets, elaborate similes, and slow awkward
development of the story mark the seventeen cantos--some 10,000 lines
of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the
_Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures
the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The
remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of
D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation
to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan
make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_
(1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is
the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of
Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen
cantos in Spanish blank verse.
LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer
Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn
mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also
suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor
de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with
the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and
ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous
adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the
excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto
17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his
style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to
that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a
poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India
(cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out
of place in an epic.
If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE
ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus,
regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a
supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did
not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent
Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows
prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same
level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry.
The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be
adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his
two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether
his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he
consoles himself, if not his reader, with the sincere conviction that
his rude verse cannot detract from the greatness of the deeds which he
describes (xx. 1-6).
FOOTNOTES:
[401] _Seu quarto avò foi um Gallego nobre_ (Diogo Camacho, _Jornada ás
Cortes do Parnaso_).
[402] Dr. Wilhelm Storck, the author of the most elaborate life of
Camões in existence, considered that the words _quando vim da materna
sepultura_ in one of Camões’ poems could only mean that his mother
(Anna de Macedo) died at his birth, and that he was survived by Anna de
Sá, his stepmother. It may have been so, but there is not a scrap of
evidence in favour of the theory nor were the words _materna sepultura_
anything more than a conventional phrase. Cf. Antonio Feo, _Trattados
Quadragesimais_ (1609), pt. 1, f. 2: _Como Nazianzeno diz ... e tumulo
prosiliens ad tumulum iterum contendo, em nacendo saimos de hũa
sepultura que foi as entranhas da mãi e morrendo entramos noutra._ So
Pinto, _Imagem_, pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 342 v.: _tornar nu ao ventre de
sua mãi, o qual é a sepultura da terra_, and Bernardes, _Nov. Flor._ i.
122: _A terra e nossa mãe, de cujo tenebroso ventre que é a sepultura_,
&c.
[403] She may have been a distant relation of the poet’s: the name was
a common one, but Camões was connected with the Gamas, and the wife
and granddaughter of the first Conde de Vidigueira were both named
Catherina de Athaide.
[404] According to Dr. Storck he was banished in 1549, and in the same
year, after the sentence of banishment had been commuted to service
in Africa, left Portugal, returning to Lisbon in the autumn of 1551.
Others believe that he was in Lisbon again in 1550 and that his two
years in Africa must be placed between 1546 and 1549.
[405] The important document containing his pardon is printed in
Juromenha’s edition of his works, i. 166-7.
[406] This quotation is assigned to various other persons, as to Nuno
da Cunha when arranging that he should be buried at sea.
[407] _O poeta Simonides fallando._
[408] Cf. _Lus._ i. 19, 43; ii. 20, 67; v. 19-22; vi. 70-9.
[409] _Desejei tanto._
[410] Couto, in the _Dialogo do Soldado Pratico_, remarks that if a
man is given a post at the age of twenty he only receives it at the
age of sixty (p. 99). The soldier, who wishes _ter logo em tres annos
vinte mil cruzados_, suggests, among other posts for himself, that of
_Provedor dos Defuntos: porque com qualquer destes ficarei mui bem
remediado_. To which the _Desembargador_ objects: _he necessario que
quem houver de servir esses cargos seja letrado e visto em ambos os
Direitos_.
[411] _Vinde cá._ It is advisable to give the first words of his poems
without the number until there is a definitive edition of his works.
[412] It is uncertain whether Camões’ ship was the _Santa Clara_ or the
_Fe_.
[413] Barros, _Decada_, III. ix. 1.
[414] It is about the sum (apart from any grant of _pimenta_) which
a common soldier on active service might earn in India (see Barros,
I. viii. 3: 1,200 × 12 = 14,400); _environ huit cents livres de notre
monnoie d’aujourd’hui_ (Voltaire). It would scarcely correspond to more
than £50 of to-day.
[415] _Lus._ V. 45.
[416] Prophetically he had echoed (_Lus._ X. 23) the complaint of the
historians of India: _Morrer nos hospitaes em pobres leitos Os que ao
Rei e á lei servem de muro_.
[417] _Todos hasta oy, y principalmente en Castilla, tuvieron siempre
a mi Maestre por mayor en estes Poemas que en el Heroyco_ (_Varias
Rimas_, Prólogo, 2 vols., 1685, 1689). Cf. the praise of his _versos
pequenos_ in Severim de Faria, _Vida_, p. 121.
[418] See the important work by Dr. Rodrigues: _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_
(1904-1913). Cf. Camões’ _Vão os annos decendo_ (x. 9) and _Leal
Conselheiro_ (cap. 1, p. 18), where the words are used in the same
connexion. With Virgil he was obviously acquainted at first hand, with
Homer perhaps in the translation of the Florentine scholar Lorenzo
Valla (1405-57). In _As Fontes dos Lusiadas_ is also discussed the
origin of the word Lusiads, as by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos
in _O Instituto_, vol. lii (1905), pp. 241-50: _Lucius Andreas
Resendius Inventor da palavra Lusiadas_. It was one of the Latin words
acclimatized by Camões. It occurs in a Latin poem by André de Resende,
_Vicentius Levita et Martyr_ (1545), and in his _Encomium Erasmi_
written, but not published, in 1531; in a Latin poem by Jorge Coelho,
perhaps written in 1526 but touched up before its publication in 1536;
and is twice used by Manuel da Costa (in and about 1537).
[419] The word is undoubtedly _dotto_ in the facsimile of the text
given in Antonio de Portugal de Faria, _Torquato Tasso a Luiz de
Camões_ (Leorne, 1898) although there, as always, it has been
transcribed as _colto_. Diogo Bernardez calls Tasso _culto_, perhaps
mistaking the reference in Garci Lasso, whose _culto Taso_ is not
Torquato but Bernardo. Lope de Vega called Camões _divino_ and reserved
_docto_ for Corte Real.
[420] His works are _ja muitas vezes impressas_ in 1594. In 1631
Alvaro Ferreira de Vera speaks of twelve Portuguese editions (_Breves
Lovvores_, f. 87).
[421] _Apologia em qve defende_, &c. (1641).
[422] The instance he gives is the long story of _Magriço e os Doze de
Inglaterra_ (vi), which he admits is in itself very fine.
[423] One of the best instances of his pedantry is his comment on
the lines _E tu, nobre Lisboa, que no mundo Facilmente das outras
es princesa_. The ordinary reader is content to understand ‘cities’
after _outras_. But no, says Macedo, you can only understand Lisbons.
Princess of all the other Lisbons!
[424] _Laurel de Apolo: Postrando Eneidas y venciendo Iliadas._
[425] Even here some of the lines are a literal translation of Virgil,
but if we compare
Para o ceo crystallino alevantando
Com lagrimas os olhos piadosos,
Os olhos, porque as mãos, &c.,
with the passage
Ad coelum tendens, &c.,
it is not at all clear that the picture of the older poet is more
beautiful than that of _il lusiade Maro_.
[426] He is thus an exception to Macedo’s axiom in the _Motim
Literario_ that Portuguese poets (most of whom, it must be admitted,
are, like Byron, children in thought) either have _versos sem cousas_
or _cousas sem versos_.
[427] _Discursos politicos varios_ (1624), f. 117: _& com esta
obra ficou enriquecida grandemente a lingua Portuguesa; porque lhe
deu muitos termos nouos & palauras bem achadas que depois ficárão
perfeitamente introducidas. Posto que nesta parte não deixárão algũs
escrupulosos de o condenar, julgandolhe por defeito as palauras
alatinadas que vsou no seu poema._
[428] Cf. Fr. Manuel do Sepulchro, _Reflexão Espiritual_ (1669): _Não
ha duvida que maior mudança fez a lingua Portuguesa nos primeiros vinte
annos do reinado de D. Manuel que em cento e cincoenta annos dahi
para ca_. Barros, however, in his _Dialogo em lovvor_ (1540), says
latinization had not yet begun: _se o nos usáramos_.
[429] The authorship of the fine sonnets _Horas breves do meu
contentamento_ (attributed to Camões, Bernardez, the Infante Luis,
&c.) and _Formoso Tejo meu, quam differente_ (attributed to Camões,
Rodriguez Lobo, &c.) is still under dispute.
[430] _Filodemo_, v. 3.
[431] _Os Ratos da Inquisição_, Preface, p. 97.
[432] e. g. _D. Alvaro de Castro e D. Francisco De Meneses_, or _hum
grave Prudente capitam_.
[433] e. g. _valor, esforço e valentia; mar sereno e calmo; abundosa
e larga vea; a dura defensa rigurosa; açoutando e batendo_. The line
often consists of three adjectives and a noun.
[434] Between Corte Real’s _cruel molesto duro mortal frio_ and Dante’s
_eterna maladetta fredda e greve_ (_Inf._ vi) is all the difference
between a heap of loose stones and a shrine. The conception of the
_Auto_, especially the third _novissimo_, _que he o Inferno_, was no
doubt derived from Dante.
[435] These are the first words of the original title of the poem
(1578).
§ 5
_The Historians_
It was a proud saying of a Portuguese _seiscentista_ that the
Portuguese discoveries silenced all other histories.[436] Certainly
this was so in the case of the history of Portugal, which was neglected
while writer after writer recorded the history of the Portuguese in
India. Nor need we quarrel with a vogue which has preserved for us so
many striking pictures in which East and West clash without meeting,
new countries are continually opening to our view, and heroism and
adventure go hand in hand. Sometimes the pages of these historians
seem all aglow with precious stones, emeralds from Peru, turquoises
from Persia, rubies, cat’s-eyes, chrysolites, amethysts, beryls, and
sapphires from Ceylon, or scented with the opium of Cairo, the saffron
of Cannanore, the camphor of Borneo, sandalwood from Timor, pepper from
Malabar, cloves from the Moluccas. Blood and sea-spray mingle with
the silks from China and ivory from Sofala, and among the crowd of
rapacious governors and unscrupulous adventurers move a few figures of
a simple austerity and devotion to duty, Albuquerque, Galvão, Castro,
St. Francis Xavier.
Little is known of ALVARO VELHO except that he was one of the immortals
(unless he was the _degredado_ (convict) from whose _caderno_ Couto
derived his account of the discovery) who accompanied Vasco da Gama
on his first voyage. To him is attributed the simple, clear narrative
contained in the log or _Roteiro da Viagem de Vasco da Gama em 1497_,
filled with a primitive wonder, which pointed the way to the historians
of India. Indeed, it provided material for the first book of a writer
who may perhaps be called the first[437] historian of the discoveries
‘enterprised by the Portingales’. FERNAM LOPEZ DE CASTANHEDA (_c._
1500-59) was born at Santarem, and in 1528 accompanied his father,
appointed Judge at Goa, to India. For the next ten years he diligently
and not without many risks and discomforts consulted documents and
inscriptions in various parts of the country with a view to writing
a history of the discovery and conquest of India, making himself
personally acquainted with the ground and with many of those who had
played a part in the half-century (1498-1548) under review. After his
return to Portugal he continued his life-work with the same devotion
for twenty years, during which poverty constrained him to accept the
post of bedel at Coimbra University. When he died, worn out by his
_continuas vigilias_, his history was complete, but only seven books
had been published: _Historia do Descobrimento e Conqvista da India_
(1551-4). He had at least the satisfaction to know that a part had
already been translated into French and Italian. The eighth book,
bringing the history down to 1538, was published by his children in
1561, but books nine and ten never appeared. This history of forty
years, which has less regard to style than to sincerity and the truth
of the facts, is written in great detail. It is a scrupulous and
trustworthy record of high interest describing not only the deeds of
the Portuguese, ‘of much greater price than gold or silver’, ‘more
valiant than those of Greek or Roman’, but the many lands in which
they occurred. The narrative can rise to great pathos, as in the
account of Afonso de Albuquerque’s death (iii. 154), and is often
extremely vivid.[438] The interest necessarily diminishes after 1515,
and the seventh book is largely concerned with dismal contentions
between Portuguese officials. But the great events and persons, the
capture of Goa or Diu, the characters of Gama or Albuquerque, Duarte
Pacheco Pereira or Antonio Galvão, stand out the more clearly from the
deliberate absence of rhetoric.
LOURENÇO DE CACERES, in his _Doutrina_ addressed to the Infante Luis
in twenty short chapters on the parts of a good prince, showed that
he could write excellent prose. His death in 1531 prevented him from
undertaking a more ambitious work, which was accordingly entrusted
to his nephew JOÃO DE BARROS (1496?-1570).[439] But much earlier and
a generation before Lopez de Castanheda’s work began to appear, the
most famous of the Portuguese historians had resolved to chronicle
the discovery of India. Born probably at Viseu, the son of Lopo de
Barros, he came of ancient Minhoto stock and was brought up in the
palace of King Manuel. When the Infante João received a separate
establishment Barros became his page (_moço da guardaroupa_). It was
in this capacity, _por cima das arcas da vossa guardaroupa_, that
with the active encouragement of the prince he wrote his first work,
_Cronica do Emperador Clarimundo_ (1520). It is a long romance of
chivalry crowded with actors and events, and contains affecting, even
passionate episodes. But the most remarkable feature of this work,
written in eight months when the author was little over twenty, is its
inexhaustible flow of clear, smooth, vigorous prose, entirely free
from awkwardness or hesitation. One may also note that he regarded it
merely as a parergon, a preparation for his history, _afim de apurar o
estilo_, that despite its length he assures his readers that he omits
all details in order to avoid prolixity, that much of its geography
is real--all his works prove the truth of Couto’s assertion that he
was _doutissimo na geografia_--and that each chapter ends with a
brief moral. King Manuel, to whom he read some chapters, encouraged
him to persevere in his intention to write the history of India, but
the king’s death in 1521 delayed the project. In the following year
Barros, who meanwhile had married Maria, daughter of Diogo de Almeida
of Leiria, is said to have gone out as Captain of the Fortress of S.
Jorge da Mina (although probably he never left Portugal) and later
became Treasurer of the _Casa da India_ (1525-8), and its Factor in
1532, a post which he retained for thirty-five years. Although he
lost a large sum of money in an unfortunate venture in Brazil, this
was partly made good by the king’s munificence, and when in 1568, the
year after his resignation, he retired to his _quinta_ near Pombal
_sibi ut viveret_ he went as a _fidalgo_ of the king’s household and
with a pension over twenty-five times as large as that of Camões.[440]
In old age he is described as of a fine presence, although thin and
not tall, with pale complexion, keen eyes, aquiline nose, long white
beard, grave, pleasant, and fluent in conversation. Before beginning
his history he wrote several brief treatises of great interest and
importance, _Ropica Pnefma_ (1532), a dialogue written at his country
house in 1531 in which Time, Understanding, Will, and Reason discuss
their spiritual wares (_mercadoria espiritual_), and incidentally the
new heresies; three short works on the Portuguese language, a _Dialogo
da Viçiosa Vergonha_ (1540), and a _Dialogo sobre preceptos moraes_
(1540) in which he reduced Aristotle’s _Ethics_ to a game for the
benefit of two of his ten children and of the Infanta Maria. He also
wrote two excellent _Panegyricos_ (of the Infanta Maria and King João
III) which were first published by Severim de Faria in his _Noticias de
Portugal_ in 1655. As a historian he chose Livy for his pattern both in
style and system. The first _Decada_ of his _Asia_ appeared in 1552,
the second in 1553, and the third ten years later (1563). Their success
was immediate, especially abroad--in Portugal, like other historians of
recent events, he was accused of partiality and unfairness[441]--copies
soon became extremely rare, the first two Decads were translated into
Italian before the third appeared, and Pope Pius IV is said to have
placed Barros’ portrait (or bust) next to the statue of Ptolemy.[442]
Barros had prepared himself very thoroughly for his task. His work
as Factor seems to have been exacting--he says that it was only by
giving up holidays and half the night and all the time spent by other
men in sleeping the _sesta_, or walking about the city, or going into
the country, playing, shooting, fishing, dining, that he was able to
attend to his literary labours. Yet he read everything, pored over
maps and chronicles and documents from the East, and even bought a
Chinese slave to translate for him. With this enthusiasm, his unfailing
sense of order and proportion, and his clear and copious style he
necessarily produced a work of permanent value. His manner is lofty,
even pompous, worthy of the great events described. If his history is
less vivid and interesting than Castanheda’s, that is because he wrote
not as an eyewitness[443] or actor in them but as Court historian. He
was a true Augustan, and the great edifice that this Portuguese Livy
planned and partly built was of eighteenth-century architecture. He was
fond of comparing his work to a building in which each stone has its
appointed place. The material to his hand must be moulded to suit the
symmetry of the whole--Albuquerque had never in his life used so many
relative sentences as are attributed to him by Barros (II. v. 9)--and
with a pedantic love of definitions and systematic subdivisions we
find him measuring out the proportions of his stately structure, while
picturesque details are deliberately omitted.[444] The merits of his
style have been exaggerated. It is never confused or slovenly, but is
for use rather than beauty; its ingredients are pure and energetic but
the construction is inartistic and monotonous.[445] It is rather in the
forcible, crisp sentences of his shorter treatises than in the _Asia_
that Barros displays his mastery of style. His great narrative of epic
deeds is interrupted by interesting special chapters or digressions
on trade, geography, Eastern cities and customs, locusts, chess, the
Mohammedan religion, sword-fish, palm-trees, and monsoons. It was
planned in four _Decadas_ and forty books, to embrace 120 years to
1539, but the fourth was not written and the third ends with the death
of D. Henrique de Meneses (1526). Probably he did not find the dispute
as to the Governorship of India a very congenial subject, especially
as the feud was resumed in Portugal. Material and notes were however
ready, and these were worked up into a lengthy fourth _Decada_ by João
Baptista Lavanha (†1625) in 1615, which covers the same ground as, but
is quite distinct from, the fourth Decad of Couto. The _Asia_ was only
a block of a vaster whole. _Europa_, _Africa_, and _Santa Cruz_ were to
treat respectively of Portugal from the Roman Conquest and Portuguese
history in North Africa and Brazil, while Geography and Commerce were
to be the subjects of separate works, the first of which (in Latin) was
partly written.
Inseparably connected with the name of Barros is that of DIOGO DO
COUTO (1542-1616), who continued his _Asia_, writing _Decadas_ 4-12.
He was born at Lisbon, and at the age of ten entered the service
(_guardaroupa_) of the Infante Luis, who sent him to study at the
College of the Jesuits and then with his son, D. Antonio, under Frei
Bartholomeu dos Martyres, afterwards Archbishop of Braga, at S.
Domingos, Bemfica. When thirteen he was present at the death of his
talented patron Prince Luis, and remained in the palace as page to
the king till the king’s death two years later.[446] Couto then went
to seek his fortune in India, and there as soldier, trader, official
(in 1571 he was in charge of the stores at Goa),[447] and historian he
spent the best part of the following half-century, his last visit to
Portugal being in 1569-71. At the bidding of Philip II (I of Portugal),
who appointed him _Cronista Môr_ of India, he undertook the completion
of Barros’ _Asia_. Probably he needed little inducement--his was the
pen of a ready writer, and the composition of his history was, he tells
us, a pleasure to him in spite of frequent discouragement. He had
received a classical education; as a boy in the palace he had listened
to stories of India[448] and had been no doubt deeply impressed by the
vivid account of the Sepulveda shipwreck.[449] In India he won general
respect. At Goa he married the sister of Frei Adeodato da Trindade
(1565-1605), who in Lisbon saw some of his _Decadas_ through the press;
he became Keeper of the Indian Archives (Torre do Tombo) and more
than once made a speech on behalf of the City Councillors, as at the
inauguration of the portrait of Vasco da Gama in the Town Hall in the
centenary year of the discovery of India, before Gama’s grandson, then
Viceroy, and a gathering of noblemen and captains. Couto knew every
one--we find him conversing with Viceroy, Archbishop, natives, Moorish
prisoners, rich merchants from Cambay or the Ambassador of the Grand
Mogul. This personal acquaintance with the scenes, events, and persons
gives a lively dramatic air to his work. The sententious generalities
of the majestic Barros are replaced by bitter protests and practical
suggestions. He is a critic of abuses rather than of persons.[450]
He writes from the point of view of the common soldier, as one who
had seen both sides of the tapestry of which Barros smoothly ignored
the snarls and thread-ends. He displays a hatred of _semjustiças_,
treachery, and ‘the insatiable greed of men’, with a fine zest in
descriptions of battles, but he has not Barros’ skill in proportion
and the grand style.[451] He can, however, write excellent prose,
and he gives more of graphic detail[452] and individual sayings and
anecdotes than his predecessor. Nor is he by any means an ignorant
chronicler. A poet[453] and the friend of poets, he read Dante and
Petrarca and Ariosto, was old-fashioned enough to admire Juan de Mena,
consulted the works of ancient and modern historians, travellers, and
geographers, and was deeply interested in the customs and religions
of the East. The inequality of his _Decadas_ is in part explained by
their history, which constitutes a curious chapter in the _fata_ of
manuscripts. He first wrote _Decada_ X, which is the longest and most
resembles those of Barros: this was only sent to Portugal in 1600 and
was not immediately published, apparently because the period, 1580-8,
was too recent. It remained in manuscript till 1788. Meanwhile Couto,
working with extraordinary speed, sent home the fourth and fifth
_Decadas_ in 1597, the sixth in 1599, and the seventh in 1601. Noting
the fact that the last two books (9 and 10) of Castanheda’s history
had been suppressed by royal order as being excessively fond of truth
(_porque fallava nelles verdades_), he remarks that, should this happen
to a volume of his, another would be forthcoming to take its place.
Friends and enemies, indeed the very elements, took up the challenge,
but fortunately Couto’s spirit and independence continued to the year
of his death. The fourth _Decada_ was at once printed, but the text
of the fifth was tampered with and its publication delayed, the sixth
was destroyed by fire when ready for publication and recast by Frei
Adeodato, the seventh was captured at sea by the English and re-written
in 1603 by Couto and sent home in the same year, the eighth and ninth,
finished in 1614, were stolen from him in manuscript during a severe
illness. This was a crushing blow, but he partially reconstructed them
_a modo de epilogo_ and, writing in old age from memory, dwelt, to our
gain, on personal recollections: his literary bent appears--his friend
Camões, Cristovam Falcão, and Garcia de Resende are mentioned. Finally
_Decada_ xi (1588-97), which, writing to King Philip III in January
1616, he says ‘survived this shipwreck’, has disappeared and _Decada_
xii is incomplete, although the first five books bring the history
to the end of the century (1599). His successor in the Goa Archives,
Antonio Bocarro, took up the history at the year 1612, in a work
which was published in 1876: _Decada 13ᵃ da Historia da India_. The
manuscript of his _Dialogo do Soldado Pratico na India_ (written before
the fourth _Decada_) was also stolen. The indomitable Couto re-wrote it
and both versions have survived. They were not published till 1790, the
title given to the earlier version being _Dialogo do soldado pratico
portugues_. With its _verdades chans_, this dialogue between an old
soldier of India, an ex-Governor, and a judge forms a most valuable and
interesting indictment of the decadence of Portuguese rule in India,
where the thief and rogue escaped scot-free, while the occasional
honest man was liable to suffer for their sins, and the sleek soldier
in velvet with gold ribbons on his hat had taken the place of the
bearded _conquistadores_ (_Dialogo_, pp. 91-2).
GASPAR CORRÊA (_c._ 1495-_c._ 1565) claims, like Fernam Lopez de
Castanheda and Barros, to have been the first historian of the
Portuguese in the East.[454] He went to India sixteen years before
Lopez de Castanheda and no doubt soon began[455] to take notes and
collect material, but he was still working at his history in 1561 and
1563, and his _Lendas da India_ were not published till the nineteenth
century. In the year 1506 Corrêa entered the king’s service as _moço
da camara_,[456] and six years later went to India, where he became
one of the six or seven secretaries of Afonso de Albuquerque.[457]
They were young men carefully chosen by the Governor from among those
who had been brought up in the palace and to whom he felt he could
entrust his secrets.[458] Theirs was no humdrum or sedentary post,
for they had to accompany the Governor on foot or on horseback, in
peace and war, ever ready with ink and paper. Thus Corrêa had occasion
vividly to describe Aden in 1513, and helped with his own hands to
build the fortress of Ormuz in 1515. After Albuquerque’s death Corrêa
seems to have continued to fight and write. In 1526 he was appointed
to the factory of Sofala,[459] and in the following year the _moço da
camara_ has become a _cavaleiro_ and is employed at the customs house
at Cochin.[460] He cannot have remained much longer at Cochin than at
Sofala, since he signed his name in the book of _moradias_ at Lisbon
in 1529, and in 1530-1, in a ship provided by himself (_em um meu
catur_), went with the Governor of India’s fleet to the attack of Diu.
Later he was commissioned by the Viceroy, D. João de Castro, to furnish
lifesize drawings[461] of all the Governors of India, so that he must
then have been living at Goa. The ever-growing abuses in India and
the scanty reward given to his fifty years of service and honourable
wounds[462] embittered his last years, and if his spoken comments were
as incisive as the indictment of the Governors and Captains contained
in the _Lendas_[463] he must have made enemies in high positions: it
seems, at least, that his murder one night at Malacca went unpunished,
as if to prove the truth of his frequent complaint that no one ever
was punished in India. At the time of his death he may still have
been at work, as in 1561 and 1563, on the revision of his _Lendas_ or
_Cronica dos Feytos da India_,[464] originally completed in 1551.[465]
The first three books relate the events from 1497 to 1538; the last
carries the history down to 1550. The account of the discovery is based
on the narrative of one, and the recollections of others, of Vasco da
Gama’s companions, and the subsequent events are drawn largely from
Corrêa’s own experience. He spared no trouble to obtain first-hand
information, from aged officials, Moors, natives, captives, a Christian
galley-slave, or a woman from Malabar, distrusting mere hearsay. He
lays frequent stress on his personal evidence.[466] Without necessarily
establishing the trustworthiness of his work on every point, this
method had the advantage of rendering it singularly vivid, and it
contains many a brilliantly coloured picture of the East. In many
respects he is the most remarkable of the historians of India. It was
not for nothing that he had written down some of Albuquerque’s letters
to King Manuel.[467] If Albuquerque’s words are still striking when
read after four centuries, we may imagine their effect on the boy still
in his teens to whom he dictated them. _Tinha grande oratoria_, says
Corrêa, and many years afterwards some of the phrases remained in his
memory.[468] He no doubt learnt from Albuquerque his direct, vigorous
style, his love of concrete details, his regard for truth. His account
of the sack of Malacca--the rifled chests of gold coins and brocades
of Mecca and cloth of gold, the narrow dusty streets in shadow in the
midday _calma_--must, one thinks, be that of an eyewitness; yet Corrêa
was not in India at the time. The explanation is that it was largely
the account of Albuquerque.[469]
Corrêa writes in even greater detail than Lopez de Castanheda. There
is no trace of literary leanings in his work; he is sparing of
descriptions as interrupting the story.[470] Whole pages have scarcely
an adjective, and this gives his narrative clearness and rapidity,
yet he is careless of style. It has been called redundant and verbose,
but that is true mainly of the prefaces, which show that Corrêa in
a library might have developed into a rhetorical Zurara of _boas
oratorias_. It is, however, no longer the fashion to sneer at this
‘simple and half barbarous chronicler’, this ‘soldier adventurer in
whose artless words appears his lack of culture’.[471] His _Lendas_
are infinitely preferable to the sleek periods of Barros and often as
reliable, being legendary in little beyond their title, as understood
by the ignorant (for the word _lenda_ meant not legend but record or
log). They have a harsh flavour of religious fervour and of lust for
gold[472] and an intense atmosphere of the East--_sangre e incenso,
cravo e escravaria_, St. James fighting for the Christians, St. Thomas
transformed into a peacock, all in a region of horror and enchantment.
Corrêa was aware that it was dangerous to write history in India
(iii. 9)--_periculosae plenum opus aleae_--but although he had no
intention of immediately publishing it[473] he evidently expected
some recognition of his work. The appearance of Lopez de Castanheda’s
_Historia_ and Barros’ _Decadas_ must have been a blow almost as cruel
as the daggers of his assassins a few years later.
The events of India from 1506-15, chronicled by Castanheda and Barros,
necessarily centred round the great figure of Afonso de Albuquerque,
and they were recorded afresh by his illegitimate son BRAS DE
ALBUQUERQUE (1500-80), whom the dying Governor recommended to the king
in his last letter. King Manuel in belated gratitude bestowed his
favour on this son and bade him assume the name of Afonso in memory of
his father. His _Commentarios de Afonso de Alboquerque_ (1557) were
revised by the author in a second edition (1576) four years before his
death. They are written in unassuming but straightforward style and
furnish a very clear and moderate account based on letters written by
Albuquerque to King Manuel.[474] The author seems to have realized that
Albuquerque’s words and deeds speak sufficiently for themselves, but
the reflection produced is somewhat pale.
The gallant and chivalrous apostle of the Moluccas, ANTONIO GALVAM
(_c._ 1490?-1557), ‘as rich in valour and knowledge as poor in
fortune’,[475] printed nothing in his lifetime but his manuscripts were
handed over after his death to Damião de Goes as _Cronista Môr_.[476]
We have only a brief treatise by him published posthumously. Copious
in matter rather than in length, for it has but eighty small folios in
spite of its lengthy title, this _Tratado_ (1563), or, if we adopt the
briefer title from the colophon, this _Lyvro dos Descobrimentos das
Antilhas & India_, is remarkable for the curious observation shown and
its vivid, concise style of a man of action. Written in the form of
annals, it begins with the Flood, and on f. 12 we are still in the age
of Merlin; but the most valuable part consists in the writer’s direct
experience--he tells of buffaloes, cows and hens ‘of flesh black as
this ink’, of mocking parrots, fires made of earth ‘as in Flanders’.
Goes, who had certainly handled the manuscript, may have added this
comparison; he evidently interpolated the account of his own travels
(ff. 58 v.-59 v.). The life of Galvam gives a further interest to this
rare book, for, a man of noble and disinterested character, himself a
prince by election, he has always been regarded as a stock instance of
the ingratitude of princes. Born in the East, the son of Albuquerque’s
old friend, the historian Duarte Galvam, he won fame by his courage and
martial qualities, both as soldier and skilful mariner. After subduing
the Molucca Islands he, as their Governor (Captain), spent his energies
and income in missionary zeal and in developing agriculture. On the
expiry of his term as Governor (1536-40) he refused the position of
Raja of Ternate, which the grateful natives besought him to accept. He
arrived penniless in Portugal and penniless died seventeen years later
in the Lisbon hospital.
Besides the general histories many briefer records of separate regions
or events were written, and these are often of great value as the
accounts of men who had seen and taken part in what they describe.
LOPO DE SOUSA COUTINHO (?1515-77), father of Frei Luis de Sousa and
one of the captains in the heroic siege of Diu (1538)--he is said to
have died by accidentally running himself through with his sword when
dismounting from his horse--wrote a striking account of the siege,
especially of its last incidents, in his _Livro Primeiro do Cerco de
Diu_ (1556). The siege of Mazagam (1562) was similarly described in
clear, vigorous prose by AGOSTINHO GAVY DE MENDONÇA: _Historia do
famoso cerco qve o Xarife pos á fortaleza de Mazagam_ (1607). JORGE
DE LEMOS, of Goa, wrote a careful _Historia dos Cercos ... de Malaca_
(1585), and ANTONIO CASTILHO, the distinguished son of the celebrated
architect João, published a _Commentario do Cerco de Goa e Chaul no
anno MDLXX_ (1572). Events in the Moluccas were briefly recorded in an
_Informaçam das cousas de Maluco_ (1569) by GABRIEL DE RABELLO, who
went out as factor of Tidore in 1566.
The anonymous gentleman of Elvas who wrote the _Relaçam verdadeira_
(1557) of Soto’s discovery of Florida was a keen observer and related
what he saw in direct language. His publisher, André de Burgos, in a
short preface washes his hands of the style as insufficiently polished
(_limado_).
The deeds of D. Cristovam da Gama, his conquest of a hundred leagues of
territory in Ethiopia, his defeat, torture, and beheadal, are recounted
with the vivid details of an eyewitness by MIGUEL DE CASTANHOSO, of
Santarem, who accompanied him on his fatal expedition. This _Historia_
(1564) was published by João da Barreira, who dedicated it to D.
Cristovam’s nephew, D. Francisco de Portugal.
MANUEL DE ABREU MOUSINHO wrote in Spanish a brief account of the
conquest of Pegu by Salvador Ribeiro de Sousa, of which a Portuguese
version appeared in the 1711 edition of Mendez Pinto’s travels: _Breve
discurso em que se contem a conquista do reyno de Pegu_, nearly a
century after the original edition, _Breve Discvrso en qve se cventa_,
&c. (1617). The _Jornada do Maranhão feita por Jeronymo de Albuquerque
em 1614_ is ascribed to DIOGO DE CAMPOS MORENO, who took part in that
_conquista_. It was published in the _Collecção de Noticias para a
Historia e Geographia das Nações Ultramarinas_.[477] The second volume
of this collection contains several re-translations of _Navegações_ (by
Thomé Lopez and anonymous Portuguese pilots) surviving in Italian in
Ramusio. It would require a separate volume to give an account of all
the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century narratives of newly conquered
countries written in Portuguese and often immediately translated
into many European languages, e.g. the _Novo Descobrimento do Grão
Cathayo_ (1626) by the Jesuit ANTONIO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1580-1634), or
the _Relaçam_ of the Jesuit ALVARO SEMMEDO (1585?-1658) written in
Portuguese but published in the Spanish translation of Faria e Sousa:
_Imperio de la China_ (1642). However unliterary, they are often so
vividly written as to be literature in the best sense.
PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES DE GANDAVO, of Braga, whose _Regras_ (1574) ran
into three editions before the end of the century, described Brazil
and its discovery in two short works: _Historia da prouincia Sãcta
Cruz_ (1576) and _Tratado da terra do Brazil_ first published in 1826
in the _Collecção de Noticias_. This collection also prints works
of the following century, such as the _Fatalidade historica da Ilha
de Ceilão_[478] by Captain JOÃO RIBEIRO, who had served the king as
a soldier for eighteen years in the _preciosa ilha de Ceilão_. His
manuscript, written in 1685, was translated and published in French
(1701) 135 years before it was printed in Portuguese. Gandavo’s
_Historia_ (48 ff.), his first work (_premicias_), was introduced by
_tercetos_ and a sonnet of Luis de Camões, who speaks of his _claro
estilo_, and _engenho curioso_. The author himself in a prefatory
letter says that he writes as an eyewitness, content with a ‘plain and
easy style’ without seeking _epithetos exquisitos_.
The Jesuit BALTHASAR TELLEZ[479] (1595-1675) won considerable fame as
an historian and prose-writer in his _Cronica da Companhia de Iesus_
(2 pts., 1645, 1647) in which he forswears what he calls the artifices
and liberties of ordinary _seiscentista_ prose. He also edited the work
of the Jesuit missionary MANUEL DE ALMEIDA (1580-1646), recasting it
in an abbreviated form: _Historia Geral da Ethiopia a Alta ov Preste
Ioam_ (1660), for which Tellez’ friend, Mello, provided a prefatory
letter. Almeida, born at Viseu, had gone to India in 1601 and in 1622
was sent to Ethiopia, where he became the head of the mission. He died
at Goa after a life of much hard work and various adventure. In writing
his history of Ethiopia he made use of the _Historia da Ethiopia_ of
an earlier (1603-19) head of the mission, PEDRO PAEZ (1564-1622), who
had started for Ethiopia in 1595 but was captured by the Turks and only
ransomed in 1602. Although a Spaniard by birth (born at Olmeda), Paez
wrote in Portuguese. A third Jesuit missionary, MANUEL BARRADAS, born
in 1572 at Monforte, who went to India in 1612, was also a prisoner of
the Turks for over a year at Aden. In 1624 he went to _Ethiope, terre
maldite_, and remained there some ten years. Of his three treatises
the most important is that entitled _Do Reyno de Tygrê e seus mandos
em Ethiopia_. The modern editor of these works, P. Camillo Beccari,
considers that their authors’ simple style caused their treatises
to be regarded rather as the material of history than in themselves
history,[480] but their value for us is in this very simplicity and in
the detailed observation which bring the country and its inhabitants
clearly before us. Scarcely less important, as material for history and
as human documents, are the _Cartas_ from Jesuits in China and Japan,
especially the collection of 82 letters (Coimbra, 1570), and that of
206 letters (Evora, 1598). The Jesuit FERNAM CARDIM at about the same
time rendered a like service to Brazil in his _Narrativa epistolar_,
edited in 1847 by F. A. de Varnhagen. A more important work on Brazil
was that of GABRIEL SOAREZ DE SOUSA (_c._ 1540-92)--the _Tratado
descriptivo do Brasil em 1587_, which its modern editor, F. A. de
Varnhagen, described in a moment of enthusiasm as ‘the most admirable
of all the works of the Portuguese _quinhentistas_’. Two other works of
interest, half history, half travels, are the _Jornada do Arcebispo de
Goa Dom Frey Aleixo de Meneses_ (1606) by ANTONIO DE GOUVEA, Bishop of
Cyrene (_c._ 1565-1628), in three parts, describing the archbishop’s
life and visits in his diocese; and the _Discvrso da Iornada de D.
Gonçalo Covtinho á villa de Mazagam e sev governo nella_ (1629). The
writer--the admirer of Camões and alleged author of the 1614 life of Sá
de Miranda--who, as he says, had grown white in the council-chamber,
lived on till 1634. He here relates with much directness his voyage and
four years’ Governorship (1623-7).
The _Saudades da Terra_ (1873) of GASPAR FRUCTUOSO (1522-91), who
was born at S. Miguel in the Azores, was written in 1590 and waited
three centuries in manuscript for an editor. Both its title and the
‘preamble’, in which Truth says that she will write of nothing but
sadness, are misleading, since the book is an account--in good,
straightforward style after the manner of Castanheda and other
historians--of the discovery and subsequent conditions of various
islands, especially of Madeira and the lives of its Governors. ANTONIO
CORDEIRO (1641-1722), Jesuit, of Angra, wrote at the age of seventy-six
an uncritical but interesting work entitled _Historia Insulana das
Ilhas a Portugal sujeitas no Oceano Occidental_ (1717), based partly on
Fructuoso’s manuscript.
It was only as it were by an afterthought that the historians turned
to consider the history of Portugal as apart from separate chronicles
of the kings or episodes of Eastern conquest. The historical scheme
of João de Barros was too vast to be executed by one man and the
European part was never written. André de Resende likewise failed to
carry out his project of a history of Portugal. PEDRO DE MARIZ (_c._
1550-1615), son of the Coimbra printer, Antonio, in the last four of
his _Dialogos de Varia Historia_ (1594) between a Portuguese and an
Italian, embraces the whole history of Portugal, but these dialogues,
although industriously written in good plain style, were eclipsed by
the appearance three years later of the first part of the _Monarchia
Lusitana_ (1597). Its author, a young Cistercian monk of Alcobaça,
FREI BERNARDO DE BRITO (1569-1617), in the world Balthasar de Brito de
Andrade, at once became known as one of the best writers of his time,
and he is still reckoned among the masters of Portuguese prose. His
style, clear, restrained, copious, proved that the mantle of Barros had
fallen upon worthy shoulders. But, despite his rich vein of humanity,
as a historian he is far inferior to Barros and even more uncritical
than Mariz. The value of evidence seems to have weighed with him little
when it was a question of exalting his language, literature, religion,
or country, and he used and incorporated documents entirely worthless.
Whether he deliberately manufactured spurious documents to serve
his purposes cannot be known, but he seems at least to have quoted
authorities which had never existed.[481]
In a word he failed to make good use of the incomparable material which
the library of Alcobaça afforded. His was a misdirected erudition,
and we would willingly exchange the knowledge of where Adam lies
buried, or on what day the world began, or how Gorgoris, King of
Lusitania, who died 1227 years after the Flood, invented honey, for
accurate details of more recent Portuguese history. Yet he had the
diligence and enthusiasm of the true historian and made use, sometimes
a skilful use,[482] of coins and inscriptions. His brief _Geographia
antiga da Lusytania_ also appeared in 1597, and in the same year the
Cistercian Order appointed him its chronicler. Thus he interrupted
his main work--the second part of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ was only
published in 1609--in order to write the _Primeira Parte da Cronica de
Cister_ (1602).[483] This, in many ways his best work, runs to nearly
a thousand pages, and treats of the saints of the Order and especially
of the life of the charming St. Bernard, with contemporary events in
Portugal.[484] It was to be followed by two other parts, but Brito’s
early death at his native Almeida on his way back to Alcobaça from
Spain, a year after he had been appointed _Cronista Môr_ (1616), left
his work unfinished. He is remembered as a fine stylist, a poet who
wrote history rather than as a great historian. Mariana, the Latin
original of whose _Historia de España_ (1592) he knew and quoted, is by
comparison almost a scientific writer--at least he is not, like Brito,
pseudo-scientific.
The two parts of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ written by Brito ended with
the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy. Parts 3 and 4, by FREI
ANTONIO BRANDÃO (1584-1637), to whose sincerity and skill Herculano
paid tribute, appeared in 1632 and carried it down to the year 1279.
Brandão had spent nearly ten years collecting and sifting documentary
evidence for his work and is a far better historian than Brito,
although in style he is not his equal. His nephew FREI FRANCISCO
BRANDÃO (1601-80), _vir modestus, diligens et eruditus_, succeeded Frei
Antonio as _Cronista Môr_ and wrote Parts 5 and 6 (1650), describing
the reign of King Dinis. The style was less well maintained in Part 7
(1633) by FREI RAPHAEL DE JESUS (1614-93). Part 8 (1727), the last to
be published, was added by FREI MANUEL DOS SANTOS (1672-1740) over a
century after the publication of the first Part, but only brought the
history to the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Santos’ Part 7 as well as
Parts 9 and 10 remained in manuscript. His prose is worthy of a work
which is a monument of the language, not of the history of Portugal.
Perhaps the truest epitaph of this history as a whole--after allowance
has been made for Brito’s style and the excellent work of Antonio
Brandão--is a severe sentence from the preface of the author of Part 7:
‘There are histories whose tomes are tombs.’
It could hardly, perhaps, be expected that the historians of the reigns
of King Manuel and King João III should pass over events in the East as
already fully related, and in Damião de Goes’ _Cronica do Felicissimo
Rey Dom Emanvel_ and Francisco de Andrade’s _Cronica de Dom João III_
(1613), although they lose much by compression, they still occupy a
disproportionate space. Andrade wrote most correct prose, even in
his poems, and the style of his history is excellent, but neither of
these works gives any adequate account of the internal history of
Portugal, any more than does that of Frei Luis de Sousa on João III’s
reign, in which there should have been more scope for originality. The
same prominence is given to India in the history of JERONIMO OSORIO
(1506-80), Bishop of Silves, _De Rebvs Emmanvelis Regis Lvsitaniae_
(1571), written in Latin in order to spread the knowledge of these
events _per omnes reipublicae Christianae regiones_.[485] Osorio, whose
father, like Lopez de Castanheda’s, had been a judge (_ouvidor_) in
India, was born at Lisbon, but studied abroad, at Salamanca, Paris,
and Bologna. After occupying the Chair of Scripture at Coimbra for a
brief space, he went to Lisbon and became secretary to the Infante
Luis. In 1560 he was made Archdeacon of Evora and four years later
Bishop of Silves. (The see was removed to Faro three years before his
death and his title is sometimes given as Bishop of Algarve.) A few
remarkable letters in Portuguese, in one of which (1567) he attempted
to convert Queen Elizabeth, show that he was skilled in the use of his
native tongue; his countrymen delighted to call him the Portuguese
Cicero. According to Sousa de Macedo ‘many people came from England,
Germany and other parts with the sole object of seeing him’.[486] In
England certainly his book was highly prized, and both Dryden and
Pope praised Gibbs’ translation, although Francis Bacon noted the
diffuseness of Osorio’s style: _luxurians et diluta_, certainly not
a just verdict on the style as a whole; we have but to think of the
concise sketches of Albuquerque (_De Rebus_, p. 380) and King Manuel
(p. 478). Osorio acknowledged his ample debt to the chronicle of
Goes, which he describes as written ‘with incredible felicity’. FREI
BERNARDO DA CRUZ, who accompanied King Sebastian to Africa in 1578 as
chaplain, in his _Cronica de El Rei D. Sebastião_ wrote the history of
his life and reign and happily describes him as ‘a young king without
experience or fear’. The _Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_ (1840)
completed the history of the house of Avis. It chronicles in fifty-four
diminutive chapters the eighteen months’ reign of the _pouco mimoso e
severo_ Cardinal King Henry. It was written in 1586,[487] and, although
anonymous, is ascribed with some probability to the Jesuit Padre ALVARO
LOBO (1551-1608).
The _Jornada de Africa_ (1607) by JERONIMO DE MENDOÇA, of Oporto, is
divided into three parts, describing the expedition and the battle
of Alcacer Kebir, the ransoms and escapes of the captives, and the
death of Christian martyrs in Africa. Its object was to refute certain
statements in Conestaggio’s recent work _Dell’unione del regno di
Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia_, but Mendoça had fought at Alcacer
Kebir and had been taken prisoner; he thus writes as an eyewitness,
and his excellent style and power of description give more than a
controversial value and interest to his book and make it matter for
regret that this short history was apparently his only work.
MIGUEL DE MOURA (1538-1600), secretary to five kings and one of the
three Governors of Portugal in 1593, set an example too rarely followed
by those who have played an important part in Portuguese history by
composing a brief autobiography: _Vida de Miguel de Moura_. It was
written on the eve of St. Peter’s Day, 1594, except a few pages which
were added in the year before the author’s death. Incidentally it has
the distinction of containing one of the longest sentences ever written
(114 lines--1840 ed., pp. 126-9).
The painstaking and talented DUARTE NUNEZ DE LEAM (_c._ 1530-1608),
born at Evora, son of the Professor of Medicine João Nunez, besides
genealogical and legal works, _Leis extravagantes_ (1560, 1569), wrote
two valuable treatises on the Portuguese language and an interesting
_Descripção do Reino de Portugal_ (1610), which he finished in 1599.
He also found time to spare from his duties as a magistrate to recast
the chronicles of the Kings of Portugal. The _Cronicas dos Reis de
Portugal_ (1600) contain those from Count Henry to King Fernando, and
the _Cronicas del Rey Dom Ioam de gloriosa memoria_ those of Kings
João I, Duarte, and Afonso V. Shorn of the individuality of the early
chroniclers, they yet retain much of interest, and Nunez de Leam
would be accorded a higher place as historian were it not for our
knowledge of the inestimable value of the originals which he edited
and ‘improved’. Two generations earlier Cristovam Rodriguez Azinheiro
(or Acenheiro), born in 1474 (he tells us that he was sixty-one in
May 1535), had treated the early chronicles in the same way, but only
succeeded in retaining all that was jejune without preserving their
picturesqueness in his _Cronicas dos Senhores Reis de Portugal_.[488]
More interesting personally than as historian, the humanist DAMIÃO
DE GOES (1502-74[489]) was one of the most accomplished men of his
time,[490] and, thanks partly to his trial before the Inquisition,
partly to the not unpleasant egotism with which he chronicled
autobiographical details, not only in his _Genealogia_[491] but
in many of his other works, we know more of his life than we know
of most contemporary writers. Traveller and diplomatist, scholar,
singer, musician, he was a man of many friends during his lifetime,
and the tragic circumstances of his last years have won him fresh
sympathizers after his death. Born at Alenquer and brought up at the
Court of King Manuel, he became page to the king in 1518, and five
years later was appointed secretary at the Portuguese Factory at
Antwerp. In 1529 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Poland, and
in this and the following years, on similar missions or for his own
pleasure, ‘saw and conversed with all the kings, princes, nobles and
peoples of Christendom’.[492] He made the acquaintance of Montaigne’s
_aubergistes allemands, ‘glorieux, colères et ivrognes’_, turned
aside to visit Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg,[493] and was for
several months the guest of Erasmus at Freiburg. In Italy he lived
with Cardinal Sadoletto at Padua (1534-8) and met Cardinal Bembo and
other celebrated men of the day. At Louvain, too, _mihi intime carum
et iucundum_, as throughout Europe, he had many devoted friends. A
senator of Antwerp welcomed him in Latin verse on his return from his
Scythian travels,[494] Luis Vives addressed affectionate letters to
_mi Damiane_, Albrecht Dürer painted his portrait, Glareanus in his
_Dodecachordon_ included music of his composition.[495]
In 1542 he was on his way to Holland with his Flemish wife when he
heard that Louvain was threatened by a French force commanded by
Longueval and _meus ille in Academiam Louvaniensem fatalis amor_
took him back to share its perils. He played a principal part in the
defence, and finally remained a prisoner in the enemy’s hands, _quasi
piacularis hostia_, as he says.[496] His imprisonment in France lasted
nine months, and after paying a ransom of 6,000 ducats he went back
to Louvain. The Emperor Charles V rewarded him for his services with
a splendid coat of arms. In 1545, after twenty-one years of European
travel, he returned with his wife and children[497] to Portugal, and
three years later was entrusted with Fernam Lopez’ old post, the
Keepership of the Archives. He lived in the Paços d’Alcaçova with a
certain magnificence, keeping open house for all foreigners, one of
whom records that already in 1565 _il se faict fort vieulx_. Six years
later, on April 4, 1571, he was arrested by the Inquisition and spent
twenty months in prison.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that he should have incurred suspicion,
nor is it necessary to explain his trial by the enmity of certain
persons at Court due to passages in his works. His life had been out
of keeping with the _gravedades de Hespanha_, and the charges against
him were numerous and varied. He had eaten and drunken with heretics,
he had read strange books, the sound of songs not understanded of the
people and organ music had issued from his house at Lisbon, he had
omitted to observe fasts, he had called the Pope a tyrant, he set no
store by papal indulgences or auricular confession. Even the testimony
of his grand-niece is recorded, to the effect that her mother had
said of Goes, her husband’s uncle, that he had no more belief in God
than in a stone wall (she seems to have had Berkeleian tendencies).
As usual it is less the proceedings of the Inquisition than the bad
faith of the witnesses that arouse disgust. The poet Andrade Caminha,
who apparently came forward of his own accord--we are not told that
he was _chamado_--admitted that certain words of Goes which he now
denounced had not seemed so serious to him before he knew that Goes
was in the prison of the Inquisition. Goes had already been denounced
to the Inquisition in 1545 and 1550, and his book _Fides, Religio
Moresque Aethiopum_ (Lovanii, 1540) had been condemned in Portugal in
1541. He was examined frequently in 1571 and 1572, was left for three
months without news of his family, and complained of being old, weak,
and ill, and that his body had become covered with a kind of leprosy
(July 14, 1572). His sentence (October 16, 1572) pronounced him to
have incurred, as a Lutheran heretic, excommunication, confiscation of
all his property, and the life-long confinement of his person. He was
transferred to the famous monastery of Batalha in December, but his
death (January 30, 1574) occurred in his own house. His return and his
death probably explain one another. He was growing very old in 1565 and
we must suppose that his recent experiences had not made him younger.
His last request--to die among his family--was apparently granted,
and the further explanations (that he fell forward into the fire,
that he died of an apoplexy, was killed by order of the Inquisition,
was beaten to death by the lackeys of the Conde da Castanheira, or
murdered and robbed by his own servants) are superfluous. His works
consist of several brief Latin treatises crowded with interesting
facts (especially his _Hispania_); and in Portuguese the _Cronica do
Principe Dom Ioam_ (1567) and _Cronica do Felicissimo Rey Dom Emanvel_,
4 pt. (1566, 1567). He also found time to translate Cicero’s _De
Senectute_: _Livro ... da Velhice_, (Veneza, 1534). He had not the
imagination of an historian, and unless events have passed before his
eyes, or happen to interest him personally, he can be bald and meagre
as an annalist. But in any matter which touches him closely, as the
expulsion and the cruel treatment of the Jews, or the massacre of new
Christians, or the account of Ethiopia, he broadens out into moving
and detailed description. The result is that this long Chronicle of
King Manuel is a number of excellent separate treatises rather than
a history with unity and a sense of proportion. It is the work of a
scholar who likes to describe directly, from his own experience. The
_Cronica do Principe_ was written some months before that of King
Manuel. The latter was a difficult undertaking,[498] for many persons
concerned were still alive, and subjects such as the expulsion of the
Jews needed delicate handling. For thirty-one years it had hung fire
in the hands of previous chroniclers when in 1558 Cardinal Henrique
entrusted it to Damião de Goes. After eight years the four parts were
ready for press,[499] but the difficulties were not yet over, for
certain chapters met with strong disapproval at Court[500] and had to
be altered, so that two editions of the first part appeared in 1566
(the first being apparently submitted as a proof and not for sale), but
the publication of the work as a whole was not completed before 1567.
Scarcely less celebrated than Goes, the archaeologist LUCIO ANDRÉ DE
RESENDE (1493?-1573),[501] friend of Goes, Clenardus, and Erasmus, left
the Dominican convent of Bemfica, in which he was a novice, in order
to study abroad, at Salamanca, Paris, and Louvain. ‘Tall, with very
large eyes, curling hair, rather dark complexion but of a cheerful,
open countenance’, living in his house (_as casas de Resende_) at
Evora among his books and coins, statues and inscriptions--his small
garden hedged with _marmores antigos_ as, according to Brito, too
often were peasants’ vine-yards--he exercised a considerable influence
on the writers of his time[502] and was held in high esteem by the
Emperor Charles V and by King João III. The principal of his own works
were written in Latin, but besides his _De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae_
(1593), which was edited by Mendez de Vasconcellos with the addition of
a fifth book from notes left by the author, he composed in Portuguese
a ‘brief but learned’ _Historia da Antiguidade da Cidade de Evora_
(1553). In his _Vida do Infante Dom Duarte_ (1789)[503] he did not
write the ‘very copious history’ which Paiva de Andrade[504] said the
subject required. He did better, for this sketch of a few pages is a
little masterpiece in which the vignettes, for instance, of the boatman
and his figs, or the meal in the mill, must ever retain their vividness
and charm. Resende had been the prince’s tutor and writes of what he
saw; he shows that he could decipher a person’s character as keenly as
a Latin inscription. Resende’s legitimate successor in archaeology,
MANUEL SEVERIM DE FARIA (1583-1655), scarcely belongs to the sixteenth
century although he wrote verses in 1598 and 1599. He succeeded his
uncle as Canon (1608) and Precentor (1609) of Evora Cathedral and
resigned in favour of his nephew Manuel de Faria Severim as Canon in
1633 and Precentor in 1642. Living in ancient Evora when the memory of
Resende was still fresh, this antiquary of the pale face and blue eyes,
‘store-house of all the treasures of the past’,[505] with his medals
and statues and choice library of rare books, soon rivalled Resende’s
fame. His most important works are _Discursos varios politicos_ (1624)
containing four essays and the lives of Barros, Camões, and Couto, and
_Noticias de Portugal_ (1655).
A less attractive personality is that of MANUEL DE FARIA E SOUSA
(1590-1649), born near Pombeiro (Minho), a most accomplished,
industrious, but untrustworthy author who wrote mainly in Spanish. His
_Epitome de las Historias Portuguesas_ was published in 1628 at Madrid,
where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he died. He
seems to have retained a real affection for his native country, but
he was not a man of independent character and bestowed his flatteries
as his interest required. After the Restoration of 1640 he stayed
on at the Spanish Court, and there appears to be some doubt whether
it was João IV, his nominal master, or Philip IV of Spain that he
served best. His long historical works, _Europa Portuguesa_, _Asia
Portuguesa_, _Africa Portuguesa_, appeared posthumously, between 1666
and 1681. He is most pleasant when he is not trying to ‘make’ history
but is simply describing, as in his account of the various provinces
of Portugal.[506] In his own not over-modest verdict in Part 4 of the
same volume, _De las primazias deste Reyno_, he was _el primero que
supo historiar con más acierto_. Faria e Sousa was enthusiastic but
unscrupulous and he has been severely handled by the critics. With
posterity he has fallen between two stools, since the Spanish are only
moderately interested in his subject, Portugal, and the Portuguese
consider him to belong to Spanish literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[436] Antonio Vieira, _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 24: _esta
historia era o silencio de todas as historias_.
[437] _O primeiro Portugues que na nossa lingoa as [façanhas]
resuscitei._ João de Barros, in his preface, makes a similar claim:
_foi o primeiro_.
[438] Cf. vi. 37, 38; vii. 77, 78; or vi. 100, where the ships
bristling with the enemy’s arrows are likened to porcupines.
[439] 1496, the generally accepted year of his birth, is the
calculation of Severim de Faria, followed by Barbosa Machado, Nicolás
Antonio, &c. As he retired at the end of 1567 it is difficult not to
suspect (from his love of method and the decimal system) that he was
born in 1497--the year of Vasco da Gama’s expedition.
[440] 400,000 _réis_. He also obtained the privilege of trading with
India free from all taxes so as to clear a profit of 1,600,000 _réis_.
Innocencio da Silva adds ‘yearly’ to this sum, mentioned by Severim de
Faria. In any case Barros’ complaints of his poverty seem misplaced.
[441] Faria e Sousa (_Varias Rimas_, pt. 2 (1689), p. 165), says that
neither Lopez de Castanheda nor Barros was widely read, one of the
reasons being the length of their histories.
[442] According to Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo (_Dialogo em defensam
da lingua portvgvesa_) Barros ‘is in Venice preferred to Ptolemy’.
[443] His account of the fleet leaving Lisbon (I. v. 1) _is_ that of an
eyewitness.
[444] _Mais trabalhamos no substancial da historia que no ampliar as
miudezas que enfadam e não deleitam_ (I. vii. 8). Cf. I. v. 10 (1778
ed., p. 465); III. ix. 9 (p. 426); III. x. 5 (p. 489). Yet the vivid
light thrown by the details recorded in other writers, such as the
‘bushel of sapphires’ sent to Albuquerque by one of the native kings,
or the open boat drifting with a few Portuguese long dead and a heap of
silver beside them, is of undeniable value. Goes inserts details, but
is too late a writer to do so without apology, like Corrêa and Lopez
de Castanheda: _pode parecer a algũa pessoa_ [e. g. his friend Barros]
_que em historia grave nam eram necessarias estas miudezas_ (_Cron. do
Pr. D. Joam_, cap. cii).
[445] e.g. the following mortar of conjunctions between the stones on
p. 335 of _Decada_ II (1777 ed.) opened at hazard: _nas quaes ... que
... que ... qual ... que ... como ... que ... que ... o qual ... cujos
... que ... que ... que ... posto que ... como ... porque ... que_.
[446] _E sendo eu moço servindo a El Rey D. João na guardaroupa_
(_Dec._ IV. iii. 8). In _Dec._ VII. viii. 1 he speaks of having served
João III for two years as _moço da camara_ (1555-7). In the same
passage he embarks for India in 1559 aged _fifteen_. In _Dec._ VII. ix.
12 (1783 ed. p. 396) he is eighteen (April 1560).
[447] According to the Governor, Francisco Barreto, he was more at home
with arms than with prices (_Dec._ IX. 20, 1786 ed., p. 160). Another
passage in the _Decadas_ proves him to have been an excellent horseman.
[448] Cf. _Dec._ IV. iii. 8 (1778 ed. p. 234).
[449] He himself describes with great detail and pathos the wrecks of
the ships _N. Senhora da Barca_ (VII. viii. 1), _Garça_ (VII. viii.
12), _S. Paulo_ (VII. ix. 16), _Santiago_ (X. vii. 1), as well as that
of Sepulveda (_Dec._ VI. ix. 21, 22). In his account of the loss of
the _S. Thomé_ (which was printed in the _Historia Tragico-Maritima_,
in the _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima_, and no doubt in the lost eleventh
_Decada_), the separation of D. Joana de Mendoça from her child is one
of the most tantalizing and touching incidents ever penned.
[450] _Não particularizo ninguem_ (_Dec._ XII. i. 7).
[451] What he lacks in _gravidade_ (cf. _Dec._ X. x. 14)--he is
quite ready to admit that he writes _toscamente_ (VII. iii. 3),
_singelamente, sem ornamento de palavras_ (VI. ii. 3), _simplesmente,
sem ornamento nem artificio de palavras_ (V. v. 6)--he makes good by
directness as an eyewitness, _de mais perto_ (IV. i. 7; cf. IV. x. 4
_ad init._). When he had not himself been present he preferred the
accounts of those who had, as Sousa Coutinho’s description of the siege
of Diu (_Commentarios_) _em estilo excellente e grave, e foi o melhor
de todos, porque escreveo como testemunha de vista_, V. iii. 2) or
Miguel de Castanhoso’s _copioso tratado_ (V. viii. 7). Among the traces
of his close touch with reality are the popular _romances_, _cantigas_,
_adagios_, which Barros would have deemed beneath the dignity of
history.
[452] As the fleets grew, long catalogues of the captains’ names were
perhaps inevitable. They are certainly out of place in a biography,
but Couto’s _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima Pereira_ (1765) is really a
collection of those passages from the _Decadas_ which bear on the life
of Couto’s old friend, a _fidalgo muito pera tudo_. As far as chapter
32 it is told in words similar to or identical with those of _Decada_
X. Chapter 32 corresponds with the beginning of the lost _Decada_ XI.
[453] His biographer, Manuel Severim de Faria, says that he left (in
manuscript) ‘a large volume of elegies, eclogues, songs, sonnets and
glosses’ (Barbosa Machado calls them _Poesias Varias_), and that
he wrote a commentary on the first five books of the _Lusiads_.
_Carminibus quoque pangendis non infeliciter vacavit_, says N. Antonio.
[454] _Lendas_, iii. 7: _nom ouve alguem que tomasse por gloria
escrever e cronizar o descobrimento da India_. In an earlier passage
(i. 3) he refers to narratives of travellers such as that of Duarte
Barbosa.
[455] He says (_Lendas_, ii. 5): _quando comecei esta ocupação de
escrever as cousas da India erão ellas tão gostosas, per suas bondades,
que dava muito contentamento ouvilas recontar_.
[456] _Lenda_, iii. 438.
[457] _Fui hum dos seus escrivães que com elle andei tres annos_ (ii.
46). Elsewhere (i. 2) he says that he went to India _moço de pouca
idade_ sixteen years after the discovery of India. 1512 was fourteen
years after the actual discovery (1498), but might be counted the
sixteenth year from 1497.
[458] _Homens da criação d’El Rei_, says Corrêa with some pride, _de
que confiasse seus segredos_ (ii. 46).
[459] Lima Felner, _Noticia preliminar_ (_Lendas_, i, p. xi).
[460] Ibid.; but Corrêa says (_Lendas_, ii. 891) that he held this post
at Cochin (_almoxarife do almazem da Ribeira_) in 1525.
[461] _Por ter entendimento em debuxar._ The portraits, drawn by Corrêa
and painted by ‘a native painter’ so cleverly that you could recognize
the originals (iv. 597), as well as Corrêa’s very curious drawings of
Aden and other cities, are reproduced in the 1858-66 edition of the
_Lendas_.
[462] _Passa de cincoenta annos_ [i.e. 1512-63] _que ando no rodizio
d’este serviço, aleijado de feridas com que irei á cova sem satisfação._
[463] Cf. ii. 608, 752; iii. 437; iv. 338, 537-8, 567-8, 665, 669,
730-1.
[464] He so styles his work in the preface of _Lenda_ iv.
[465] He is writing, he says, in 1561 (_Lendas_, i. 265); 1561 again
(i. 995: _não cessando este trabalho até este anno_); 1563 (iii. 438);
1550 (iv. 25); 1551 (iv. 732).
[466] The value of that evidence varies. For instance, he assures us
(iii. 689) that he saw with his own eyes a native 300 years old and his
son of 200; yet there is something suspicious in the roundness of the
figures.
[467] _Escrevia com elle as cartas pera El Rei_ (ii. 172).
[468] Albuquerque in one of his letters (No. 95) says that in Portugal
a man is hanged for stealing Alentejan _mantas_. Corrêa repeats this
phrase twice (_Lendas_, ii. 752; iv. 731).
[469] Cf. ii. 247: _Eu ouvi dizer a Afonso d’Albuquerque_.
[470] _Neste meu trabalho não tomei sentido senão escrever os feitos
dos Portugueses e nada das terras_ (iii. 66). Cf. i. 651, 815; ii. 222.
[471] Latino Coelho, _Fernão de Magalhães_ in _Archivo Pittoresco_, vi.
(1863), p. 170 et seq.
[472] Corrêa himself seems to have been rather unsuccessful than
scrupulous in amassing money. He tells without a hint of embarrassment
(ii. 432) how he took the white and gold scarf (_rumal_) of the
murdered Resnordim (or Rais Ahmad) and sold it for 20 _xarafins_ (about
£7), and (iii. 281) helped to dispose of stolen goods in 1528 at Cochin.
[473] _Protestando d’em meus dias esta lenda nom mostrar a nenhum_ (i.
3).
[474] _Que colligi dos proprios originaes._ The work is a history of
events in India, not a biography of Albuquerque, the first forty years
of whose life are represented only by half a dozen sentences (1774 ed.,
iv. 255).
[475] _Aquelle tão pouco venturoso como sciente & valeroso Antonio
Galvão_ (João Pinto Ribeyro, _Preferencia das Letras ás Armas_, 1645).
In his youth in India he won the regard of that keen judge of men,
Afonso de Albuquerque, who could see in him nothing to find fault with
except his excessive generosity.
[476] _Tratado. Prologo_ [3 ff.]. _Em este tractado con noue ou dez
liuros das cousas de Maluco & da India que me o Cardeal mandou dar a
Damiam de Goes._
[477] Vol. i, No. 4.
[478] Vol. v, No. 1 (1836).
[479] The name would seem to have been really Tillison, i.e. son of
John Tilly, who married a granddaughter of Moraes, the author of
_Palmeirim_.
[480] He speaks of their _lingua alquanto negletta e lo stile molto
semplice, naturale e piano, la qual cosa deveva apparire un’ anomalia
a confronto della lingua purgata con cui si scriveva allora in
Portogallo_ (_Contenuto della storia del Patriarca Alfonso Mendez_,
p. 115). This work was written in Latin in 1651 by AFONSO MENDEZ
(1579-1656), born at Moura, who became Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1623.
This splendid edition (_Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores_) also contains
three volumes of _Relationes et Epistolae Variorum_ (Romae, 1910-12).
[481] Nicolás Antonio dwells more than once on the invisibility of
Brito’s authorities (_Bib. Vet._ i. 65, 453; ii. 374): _Nos de invisis
hactenus censere abstinemus_. Antonio Brandão, Brito’s successor, he
says, _nullum horum vidit librorum quos Brittus olim historiae suae
Atlantes iactaverat; nihil autem horum librorum (quod mirum si ibi
asservabantur) vidit_. Soares (_Theatrum_) remarks epigrammatically:
_fama est eloquentiam minus desiderari quam fidem_.
[482] From a comparison of inscriptions he notes the similarity between
the Etruscan and ‘our ancient’ (Iberian?) letters. The Iberians may
have originally gone East from Tuscany.
[483] His _Elogios dos Reis de Portugal_ appeared in 1603.
[484] ff. 248 v.-249 v. give a very curious description of Ireland:
_tam remota de nossa conversação e metida debaixo do Polo Arctico_.
Brito had not inherited Barros’ knowledge of geography and confuses
Ireland with Iceland, but is far richer in fables, as these pages
delightfully prove.
[485] To Spanish readers they were presented later by Faria e Sousa in
his _Asia_.
[486] _Flores de España_ (1631), f. 248. Arias Montano refers to him as
a close friend (_Doc. inéd._ t. xli. p. 386).
[487] See _Cronica_, p. 46.
[488] Ten chronicles from Afonso I to João III. He says (1824 ed., p.
12): _Estam em este presente vollume recopiladas, sumadas, abreviadas,
todas as lembranças dos Reys de Portugal das caroniquas velhas e novas
sent mudar sustancia da verdade._
[489] _Dise ̃q hee de jdade de setenta anos, hos faz ẽ este feuʳᵒ ̃q
vẽ_ (Examination before the Inquisition, April 19, 1571). The name
appears as Goes, Gooes, Goiz, Guoes, Guoez, Guoiz, Goyos. Goes is a
small village some twenty miles north-east of Coimbra. The name also
occurs in the Basses-Pyrénées. See P. A. de Azevedo, _Alguns nomes do
departamento dos Baixos Pirineos que teem correspondencia em Portugal_
(_Boletim da Ac. das Sciencias de Lisboa_, viii (1915), pp. 280-1). It
may be one more trace of the former occupation of the whole Peninsula
by the Iberians (= high, on the height, as in Goyetche, &c.).
[490] See Marqués de Montebello, _Vida de Manoel Machado de Azevedo_
(1660), p. 3, ap. J. de Vasconcellos, _Os Musicos Portugueses_, i. 268.
[491] ff. 269 v.-71. The original manuscript disappeared, but a copy
(that of the Marqueses de Castello Rodrigo) is in the Biblioteca
Nacional at Lisbon.
[492] Antonio Galvam, _Tratado_, f. 59 v. He visited the Courts of
Charles V, François I, Henry VIII, and Pope Paul III. Nicolás Antonio
says of him (_Bib. Nova_): _morum quippe suavitate atque elegantia,
ergaque doctos liberalitate insinuabat se in cuiusque animum qui
Musarum commercio frueretur, facile atque alte_.
[493] He arrived on Palm Sunday, 1531, and learning that Luther was
preaching at once left the inn to hear him, but could only understand
the Latin quotations. Next day he had dinner (_jantar_) with Luther
and Melanchthon and afterwards returned to Luther’s house, where the
latter’s wife regaled them with a dessert of nuts and apples. Thence
he went to Melanchthon’s house and found his wife spinning, shabbily
dressed.
[494]
Venisti nimium usque et usque et usque
Expectate tuis.
[495] Lib. III, pp. 264, 265: _Aliud Aeolij Modi exemplũ authore D.
Damiano à Goes Lusitano_.
[496] He had gone with others to negotiate terms and, when barely half
an hour was allowed to refer the terms to the Senate, remained in the
enemy’s camp in order to create a delay by conversing with Longueval.
Meanwhile relief had been received and the Senate refused the terms.
[497] In his trial he says that three of them became monks: _meteo tres
filhos frades_.
[498] Cf. _Prologo_: _em que muitos, como em cousa desesperada, se
nam atreveram poer a mão_. One of these ‘many’ was Goes’ rival, the
eloquent Bishop Antonio Pinheiro.
[499] The fourth part was approved on January 2, 1566.
[500] For the grounds of this disapproval see _Crítica contemporanea
á Chronica de D. Manuel_, 1914, ed. Edgar Prestage from a manuscript
in the British Museum. Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos and Mr. G. J. C.
Henriques have dealt very ably with many interesting points of Goes’
life and works.
[501] His friend Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos (1523-99), Canon of
Evora, says that he died in 1575 _aet._ 80 (so the _Theatrum_: _obiit
octogenarius A.C._ 1575). Probably the 5 is an error or misprint for 3,
and the 80 correct.
[502] Luis de Sousa (_Hist. S. Dom._, Pt. I, Bk. i, cap. 2) praises his
_juizo e curiosidade de bom antiquario_, and there are many similar
passages in other writers. Resende furnished Barros, as Severim de
Faria later furnished Brito, with materials and advice.
[503] In a similar though more elaborate work (88 ff.) Frei Nicolau
Diaz (†1596) told the life and death of Princess Joana (†May 1490):
_Vida da Serenissima Princesa Dona Joana, Filha del Rey Dom Afonso o
Quinto de Portugal_ (1585).
[504] _Casamento Perfeyto_, 2ᵃ ed. (1726), p. 61.
[505] _Monarchia Lusitana_, Pt. V, Bk. xvii, cap. 5. Bernardo de Brito
also praises him, and Frei Antonio Brandão acknowledges his debt to
him. Faria e Sousa says that he received from him _cantidad de papeles_.
[506] _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. 3. Portugal, he says, is a
perpetual Spring, and he speaks of the women who earn their living by
selling roses and other flowers in Lisbon, of the almonds of Algarve,
the excellent honey, &c., &c. Vol. i covers the period from the Flood
to the foundation of Portugal; vol. ii goes down to 1557; vol. iii to
Philip II of Spain.
§ 6
_Quinhentista Prose_
Had latinization and the Renaissance come to Portugal in a quiet age
it is not pleasant to think what havoc they might have wrought on
Portuguese prose in the unreal atmosphere of the study. Fortunately
they found Portugal in turmoil. Stirring incidents and adventures were
continually occurring which needed no heightening of rhetoric or Latin
pomp of polysyllables. A scientific spirit of accuracy was abroad, and
the missionaries and adventurers, travellers, mariners, merchants,
officials, and soldiers who recorded their experiences wrote as men of
action, with life and directness.
Few stories are more intense and affecting than those told by the
Portuguese survivors of shipwreck in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Twelve of these appeared in the original collection edited
by BERNARDO GOMES DE BRITO (born in 1688): _Historia Tragico-Maritima_
(2 vols., 1735, 6).[507] The earliest and most celebrated is the
_Relaçam da mui notavel perda do galeão grande S. João_ [June 24,
1552], an anonymous narrative based on the account of a survivor,
Alvaro Fernandez, probably the ship’s mate, which tells of the death
of D. Lianor de Sepulveda and her husband with a simple pathos and
dramatic power unattained by the many poets who later treated the same
theme. But the accounts of the wreck of the _S. Bento_ (1554), the
_Conceição_ (1555), the _S. Paulo_ (1561), of D. Jorge de Albuquerque
(1565), and others, are scarcely less moving. The ships, of 1,000
tons, as the _Aguia_, ‘the largest vessel that had hitherto sailed
to India’ (1558), and under, often with rotten rudder, or the whole
ship rotten, _sepulturas dos homens_, with few boats, careless and
ignorant pilots, badly careened, overloaded, overcrowded, ill-supplied
with worm-eaten biscuit, ‘poisonous’ wine, and insufficient water,
seemed to invite destruction. Between 1582 and 1602 alone thirty-eight
ships were lost. The sea was not the only enemy: corsairs off the
coast of Portugal, French, Dutch, and English, Lutheran heretics
who threw overboard beads and missals, or a Turkish fleet ‘in sight
of Ericeira’, exacted their toll when all other dangers had been
successfully overcome. The story is told immediately after the event,
sometimes almost in the form of a diary or log, or years later,
by survivors or based on the account of survivors, and it varies
according as the narrator is the captain of the ship, a landsman with
a dislike of sailors, a plain soldier, a Jesuit priest, a Franciscan
monk, a distinguished Lisbon chemist (Henrique Diaz in i. 6), or a
famous historian (ii. 3 by Diogo do Couto,[508] ii. 4 by João Baptista
Lavanha[509]). All or most of their accounts are masterpieces of vivid
phraseology. We follow as in a novel their adventures as the sea
‘breaks into flower--_quebrando em frol_’, as they are stranded on a
desert island, boarded in sight of home, entrapped by savages, devoured
by wild beasts, tottering, _arrimados em paos_, exhausted by thirst and
hunger, or prostrated by heat, in comparison with which the _calmas_
of Alentejo ‘are but as Norwegian cold’: toils and perils borne with
heroic courage, told with the simplicity of heroes, without _adorno de
palavras nem linguagem floreada_.
Many books of travel were the natural consequence of the discovery of
India. The historian João de Barros’ passion for knowledge, especially
geographical knowledge, was the first cause[510] of the learned and
instructive _Chorographia_ (1561) of his nephew Gaspar Barreiros
(†1574), a description of the places through which he passed on his way
to Rome in 1545 to thank the Pope on behalf of the Infante Henrique,
_Cardinalem amplissimum_, for his cardinal’s hat. But this work (edited
by his brother, Lopo Barreiros) was an exception. Most of the travel
books were concerned with the far East.
The _Livro em que da relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente_ (1516) by
DUARTE BARBOSA of Lisbon, brother-in-law of Fernam de Magalhães, exists
in a Portuguese manuscript in the Public Library of Oporto, but was
first published in Portuguese in 1821 as a translation from the Italian
_Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese_, itself a translation from a
copy at Seville. The author had spent the greater part of his youth in
India, and his work contains vivid and accurate notes on Eastern lands
and cities, especially Malabar.
One of the causes that most moved Portugal to curiosity and acted as
an incentive to discovery were the vague rumours of the existence of
a mighty Christian prince, the half-mythical Prester John, Negus of
Abyssinia. The priest FRANCISCO ALVAREZ (_c._ 1470?-_c._ 1540) set out
with Duarte Galvam, first Portuguese Ambassador to Abyssinia, in 1515,
but Galvam’s death delayed the mission, and it was not till 1520 that
Alvarez and the new ambassador, D. Rodrigo de Lima, reached the Court
of Prester John. They remained for six years in the country, and during
this time Alvarez recorded in straightforward notes every detail of the
country and its inhabitants with minuteness and accuracy. He considered
himself old[511] in 1520; he was certainly active: he shoots hares and
pheasants, washes unsuccessfully for gold, looks after his slaves,
his nine mules, his fourteen cows, and organizes a procession against
locusts. On their return, in Alvarez’ friend Antonio Galvam’s ship, to
Lisbon, bringing ‘the length of Prester John’s foot’, he was eagerly
questioned by king, prelates, and courtiers--the whole Court trooped
out along the road from Coimbra to meet them--and when he published
his fascinating diary of travel, _Verdadeira Informaçam das terras do
Preste Joam_ (1540), it was soon translated into almost every language
of Europe.[512] FREI GASPAR DA CRUZ of Evora, missionary in China,
returned to Portugal in 1569, and in the same year began his _Tractado
em que se cõtam muito por estẽso as cousas da China_ (1570). He calls
it a _singella narraçam_, but it contains valuable information about
China, nor did the author neglect his style. The Dominican FREI JOÃO
DOS SANTOS (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1625?)[513] was born at Evora about the
middle of the sixteenth century, and went out to East Africa and India
as a missionary in 1586. He returned to Lisbon in August 1600 and nine
years later published his _Ethiopia Oriental_ (1609), an attractive,
curious account, written in a clear and easy style, of the natives,
their land and customs. It is to be feared that some of the settlers
sadly abused his credulity, as in the case of the _mercador’s_ tale
of the native sorcerer or the man 380 years old, but this does not by
any means impair the interest of his book. More individual and vivid
is the _Itinerario_ (1560) of ANTONIO TENREIRO, who in brief, staccato
sentences describes minutely what he saw (the _rosaes_ of red, white,
and yellow roses in May near Damascus, the red roses of Shiraz, the
fair, white Gurgis, complexioned like Englishmen) during his travels
from Ormuz to the Caspian Sea and in Palestine and Egypt, and his
overland journey from Ormuz to Portugal (1529) in which, alone with an
Arab guide, he spent twenty-two days in crossing the desert. A similar
land journey, a generation later, is described with an equal wealth
of curious detail in the _Itinerario_ (1565) of Mestre MARTIM AFONSO,
surgeon to the Viceroy, Conde de Redondo,[514] while the Franciscan
FREI PANTALEAM DE AVEIRO in his _Itinerario da Terra Santa_, &c. (1593)
described his journey to the Holy Land. Not less adventurous were the
travels of another Franciscan, FREI GASPAR DE S. BERNARDINO, who
related them with greater parade of erudition in a clear, elegant style
in his _Itinerario da India por terra_ (1611), the promised second
part of which was unhappily not finished or at least not published.
Half a century later the Jesuit MANUEL GODINHO (_c._ 1630-1712),[515]
in the _Relaçam do novo caminho que fez por terra e mar_ (1665), gave
a remarkable account, in a style not untouched by the _culteranismo_
of the time, of his return journey in 1663 from Baçaim. But various
and arresting as are the books of Portuguese travellers, they are all
eclipsed by the wonderful _Peregrinaçam_ (1614) of FERNAM MENDEZ PINTO
(_c._ 1510-83). This prince of travellers and adventurers was born at
Montemôr o Velho. His parents were of humble station, and at the time
of King Manuel’s death (1521) he was brought by an uncle to Lisbon in
order to earn his living. Although he remained in Portugal for sixteen
years, in the service first of a lady of Lisbon and later of D. João de
Lencastre,[516] lord of Montemôr o Velho, at Setubal, he was but just
in his teens when, crossing in a boat from Alfama, he was captured off
Cezimbra by a French corsair as a foretaste of pleasures to come. In
March 1537 he set out for India and his odyssey began in earnest. He
had no sooner reached Diu than he re-embarked on an expedition to the
Straits of Mecca. His hope was to make a rich prize and become _muito
rico em pouco tempo_. He went next with three others on a mission to
Ethiopia, and on the return voyage he was captured by the Turks, placed
in a subterranean dungeon, and then sold to a Greek renegade, whom he
describes as ‘the most inhuman and cruel dog of an enemy ever seen’.
Fortunately after three months the Greek sold him for 12,000 _réis_ to
a Jew, who brought him to Ormuz. After spending little over a fortnight
there he embarked with a cargo of horses for Goa, and later was wounded
in a fight with the Turks. He next proceeded to Malacca, and was sent
thence on a mission to the King of the Batas, by whom he was made
welcome ‘as rain to our rice crops’. After accompanying the king on a
campaign he returned to Malacca, losing his cargo of tin and benjamin
on the way. His next mission was to the King of Aaru. He returned to
Malacca a slave, as his ship was wrecked, and after fearful sufferings
he, the only survivor, was bought cheap by a poor Moorish trader. A
trading expedition to Pão and Lugor ended as disastrously: after a
fight with Moors he succeeded in swimming wounded to land, but returned
penniless to Patane. In despair he joined the freebooting Antonio de
Faria, and they preyed on Chinese junks till their ship was weighed
down with silver and silk, damask and porcelain. Faria and his men are
represented fighting, torturing, murdering, plundering, playing at dice
on deck for pieces of silk, praying a litany, and promising rich and
good spoil to Our Lady of the Hill at Malacca. After being shipwrecked
they joined a Chinese pirate and again built up their fortunes. They
weathered a storm by throwing overboard twelve cases of silver, sacked
a Chinese city, were received in honour at Liampo (Ningpo), but again
inordinate greed for gold proved their ruin, and, after a daring
attempt to plunder the rich tombs of the Emperors of China in the
island of Calemplui, they were finally stranded in China and arrested
as vagabonds. After six weeks in the crowded prison at Nanking the
Portuguese were taken to Peking and thence deported to Quansi (Kansu),
where they were freed by the timely attack of the King of Tartary. He
sent them to Cochin-China, but on the way they entered the service
of a Chinese pirate. When they reached Japan only three Portuguese
survived, the first Europeans, Mendez Pinto claims, to set foot there.
When he brought news of this land to Liampo a trading expedition was
hastily equipped and set out in defiance of times and seasons. Few of
those who embarked in the nine junks ever saw land again. Mendez Pinto
eventually reached Malacca (1544). Pedro de Faria later sent him on a
mission to the King of Martavão. Martavão was, however, sacked soon
after his arrival, and he was carried a prisoner to Pegu. He escaped
by night and after many adventures returned to Goa. He immediately set
out again ‘to challenge fortune in China and Japan’. After accompanying
the King of Sunda on a war expedition he was again wrecked and spent
thirteen days on a raft. Of the eleven survivors three were eaten
by crocodiles and the rest sold as slaves. Released by the King of
Calapa, Mendez Pinto served under the King of Siam and returned to Pegu
and thence to Malacca. Once more he set out for Japan, and this time
his voyage prospered and he came back with a fair profit. At Malacca
he was eagerly questioned by St. Francis Xavier (1506-52) as to the
conditions in Japan. He seems to have been infected with the saint’s
enthusiasm, as were most of those who met him, and after his death he
perhaps gave up a considerable fortune in order to return as missionary
and ambassador to Japan. Before leaving Goa (April 1554) with St.
Francis Xavier’s successor, Padre Belchior, he had been received into
the Company of Jesus. After many hardships they landed in China in July
1556. In the spring of 1558, a few weeks after returning to Goa, Mendez
Pinto sailed for home and arrived at Lisbon on September 22. The Lisbon
officials dallied with his pretensions to reward for his services.
During his wanderings in India, Ethiopia, China, Japan, Tartary, and
Arabia he had persevered through captivities, battles, and shipwrecks,
but four or five years of official evasions broke his spirit, and he
retired to live in poverty at Almada. Philip II, stirred to interest
in this legendary figure, granted him two bushels of wheat in January
1583, and in July of the same year he died. He had long before left
the Company of Jesus, either of his own free will or expelled, perhaps
on suspicion of Jewish descent.[517] His name was erased from the
Company’s records and letters. Of his twenty-one years of trader,
envoy, pirate, and missionary in the far East he wrote for his children
a narrative of breathless interest, and, speaking generally, it bears
the stamp of truth. We gather that he was brave and adventurous,
despite a natural timidity, of a consuming curiosity which often got
the better of his fears, pious, temperate, apt to be carried away by
fugitive enthusiasms, but persistent, gay, and optimistic in defeat
and disappointment. He appears not to have been particularly vain. He
does not disguise some of his less creditable actions, and he certainly
does not exaggerate his services in Japan.[518] He may possibly have
been one of the three Portuguese who discovered it in 1542: their
names are given by Couto (V. viii. 12) as Mota, Zeimoto and Peixoto.
Gifted with keen imagination, he could exaggerate[519] when expediency
required, but he knew that in the account of his travels exaggeration
was not expedient, and he was constantly on guard against the notorious
scepticism of his fellow-countrymen.[520] He may have heightened the
colour occasionally, but as a rule he writes with restraint, although
with delight in a good story and skill in bringing out the dramatic
side of events. It is one of the charms of his work that it is very
definite in dates and figures, but this also, through inevitable errors
and misprints, afforded a handle to the pedantry of critics. The fatal
similarity of Mendez and mendacity gave rise to the play on his name:
_Fernam, mentes? Minto_ (‘Fernam, do you lie?--I lie’), and Congreve,
in _Love for Love_, by calling him ‘a liar of the first magnitude’
clinched the matter in England. But comparatively early a reaction
set in,[521] and modern travellers have unequivocally confirmed the
more favourable verdict and corroborated his detailed descriptions of
Eastern countries. The mystery of the East, the heavy scent of its
cities, its fervent rites and immemorial customs, as well as the magic
of adventure, haunt his pages. A hundred pictures refuse to fade from
the memory, whether they are of silk-laden Chinese junks or jars of
gold dust, vivid descriptions of shipwreck (the hiss and swell of the
waves are in his rich sea-Latin) or the awful pathos of the Queen of
Martavão’s death, the sketch of a supercilious Chinese mandarin or of
St. Francis Xavier tramping through Japan.
Five years after Mendez Pinto’s return to Portugal a book scarcely
less strange than his _Peregrinaçam_, of atmosphere as oriental and of
interest as absorbing although more scientific, was printed at Goa. Its
author, GARCIA DA ORTA[522] (_c._ 1495-_c._ 1570), born at Elvas, the
son, perhaps, of Jorge da Orta, owner of a shop (_temdeiro_) in that
town, studied medicine for ten years (1515-25) at Salamanca and Alcalá,
and in 1526 began to practise as a doctor at Castello de Vide. From
1532 to 1534 he was Professor at the University of Lisbon, and in March
1534 sailed with his friend and patron, the insatiable Governor Martim
Afonso de Sousa,[523] to India as king’s physician. The East cast its
spell over his curious and inquiring mind; he remained under twelve
or more Governors and died at a good old age, probably at Goa. There,
on the veranda of his beautiful garden, in this land of _bellissimi
giardini_,[524] served affectionately by many slaves, and with the
books of his well-stocked library ready to his hand,[525] he would
regale his guests with strange fruits--all the _maneiras á gula_ of
India--and with still stranger knowledge. His knowledge was based on
personal observation, for although he respected Galen and Dioscorides
as the princes of medicine and was possessed of great erudition, he
was not disposed to bow blindly to the authority of any writer, Arab
or Greek, least of all to Scholasticism, he went to Nature and in his
_Coloquios dos Simples_ (1563) recorded what he had seen and heard,
the truth without rhetoric, setting aside the _mil fabulas_ of Pliny
and Herodotus. These fifty-nine dialogues, arranged in alphabetical
order, pay more regard to facts than to style. They are full of varied
information and give us a most pleasant insight into the writer’s
character, strong, humorous, obstinate, and into his life at Goa. From
a scientific point of view they are of great importance: not only
did they provide the first description of cholera[526] and of many
unknown plants, but after three and a half centuries they retain their
scientific interest and value. Begun many years earlier in Latin,[527]
they were published in the author’s old age, with an introductory ode
by his friend, the poet Camões. Unhappily they became known to Europe
chiefly in a garbled Latin version by Charles de l’Écluse (Clusius)--a
fifth edition appeared in 1605--from which the Italian and French
translations were made. It was not until the nineteenth century that
the skilful and eager care of the Conde de Ficalho enabled a larger
number of those who read Portuguese to appreciate Orta at his true
worth.
Born at Alcacer do Sal, the celebrated scientist PEDRO NUNEZ
(1492?-1577?), whose name lives in the instrument of his invention, the
_nonius_,[528] was Cosmographer to Kings João III and Sebastian and
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra (1544-62). Prince
Luis and D. João de Castro were his pupils. He wrote indifferently
in Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, declared that as science treats
of concrete things it can be expressed in any language however
barbarous,[529] and, in order to secure for it a wider public,
translated into Portuguese the Latin treatise (_libellus_) _De Sphaera_
by John of Halifax (Joannes de Sacro Bosco): _Tratado da Sphera_
(1537),[530] and into Spanish his own _Libro de Algebra en arithmetica
& geometria_ (1567), originally written in Portuguese and addressed
to his pupil and friend the Cardinal-King Henrique. His other works,
including the _De Crepusculis_ (1542), were written in Latin.
The Homeric hero DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA (1465?-1533?), about whose
life, apart from the hundred days at Cochin (1504) and a fight off
Finisterre (1509) with the French pirate Mondragon, singularly little
is known,[531] on his return from India in 1505 wrote a work entitled
_Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis_ [1505-6?]. This curious and important survey
of the coast of Africa, the work of one more accustomed to wield sword
than pen, but sometimes as picturesque and interesting as Duarte
Barbosa, was to have consisted of five books, but only three and a part
of the fourth were written. It remained in manuscript for nearly four
centuries.
The three _Roteiros_ (logs)[532] written by the famous Viceroy D. JOÃO
DE CASTRO (1500-48) on his voyages (1) from Lisbon to Goa in 1538,
(2) from Goa to Diu, 1538-9, (3) from Goa to the Red Sea in 1541, are
decked out with no literary graces. He wrote, he said, for seamen, not
for ladies and gallants. Yet the scientific curiosity and enthusiasm
of this keen-eyed, broad-minded observer give his descriptions force
and truth, the same practical lucidity that marks his letters, which
according to his friend Prince Luis contained _todas as cousas
necessarias e nenhũas superfluas_, and they were early prized in Spain
as _harto notables, muy curiosos_.[533] The third _Roteiro_ would seem
to have been originally written in Latin, and perhaps translated by
Castro at his beloved Sintra home. The manuscript was bought by Sir
Walter Raleigh, and it appeared in English in 1625, 208 years before it
was published in Portuguese.
Greater historical interest attaches to the letters of an earlier
Governor, AFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE (1461-1515). That grim conqueror of
the East might have smiled somewhat sardonically to be numbered among
Portugal’s writers. He merely said what he had to say, and there
was an end of it, would be his comment. But it is precisely this
directness--the powerful grasp of reality and the horror of useless
rhetoric--which gives excellence to the prose of his _Cartas_. These
incomparable reports, written to King Manuel in moments snatched from
his many occupations as Governor of India (1509-15), sometimes rise to
a biblical grandeur and eloquence, as in the splendid passage beginning
_Goa é vossa; Onor, o rei dele paga-vos pareas_. Perhaps, after all,
he was not wholly unconscious of his art, and certainly the source
of it is clear: as Osorio[534] notices, he was a devoted student of
the Bible. In more familiar mood he can give a vivid sketch in a few
emphatic words, as when he describes the judge, ‘a little man dressed
in a cloak of coarse cloth with a crooked stick under his arm’, or the
impostors who will practise ‘a thousand wiles and deceits for one ruby’.
To turn to lesser men, FERNAM RODRIGUEZ LOBO SOROPITA (born _c._ 1560),
a distinguished Lisbon advocate and the first editor of the _Rythmas_
(1595) of Camões, was a poet celebrated for his wit in his day. That
of his letters is perhaps a little forced, and the obscurity of the
allusions now interferes with our enjoyment. The interest of the
extracts from a manuscript in the British Museum written by FRANCISCO
RODRIGUEZ SILVEIRA (1558-_c._ 1635) in 1608, published under the title
_Memorias de um Soldado da India_ (1877), consists both in the record
of his thirteen years’ service in India (1585-98) and in the account
during the succeeding ten years of Portugal and especially Beira, the
condition of the roads, the land, the peasants, and the sway of the
local _caciques_--thief, Turk, Pasha, tyrant, he calls them--and his
indignation gives a pleasant vigour to his prose. The _Arte da Caça
da Altanaria_ (1616) of DIOGO FERNANDEZ FERREIRA (born _c._ 1550),
page of the Pretender D. Antonio, is a work of great interest. The
writer evidently delights in his theme and has a real love of birds,
the migratory habits of which he describes in Part 6; and he treats
‘of swallows and of the swallow-grass which restores sight’, of
the food made of sugar, saffron, and almonds for nightingales, and
other alluring topics. Among the rare and curious books of the time
we may notice that on the prerogatives of women, _Dos priuilegios &
prœrogatiuas q ho genero femenino tẽ por dereito comũ & ordenações do
Reyno mais que ho genero masculino_ (1557), by RUY GONÇALVEZ, Professor
of Law at Coimbra in 1539 and subsequently Court Advocate at Lisbon.
Two writers especially attract attention even in the feast of interest
which Portuguese prose in this century offers so abundantly. The son
of a distinguished Dutch illuminator and painter settled in Portugal,
Antonio de Hollanda, who painted Charles V at Toledo and may have
illuminated the Book of Hours of Queen Lianor, FRANCISCO DE HOLLANDA
(1518-84), born in Lisbon, painter, illuminator, and architect, in his
short treatises _Da fabrica que fallece á cidade de Lisboa_ and _Da
sciencia do desenho_, showed an enthusiasm for his subject almost
out of place in the Portugal of the second half of the sixteenth
century. Indeed, he nearly ran into trouble with the Inquisition by
seeming to make painting ‘divine’, but prudently altered the passage.
His curious and celebrated treatise _Da Pintvra Antigva_ (1548) is
written in a style which may be rather rejoiced in than imitated,
for, as he tells us, he was more at home with the brush than with
the pen, but it is full of ingenious and original remarks. The first
part deals in forty-four brief chapters with painting generally, and
opens with a fine passage describing the work of God as the greatest
of all painters. The second part contains the _Quatro dialogos_, in
the first three of which he records the conversations of Vittoria
Colonna, Michelangelo, Lattanzio Tolomei, and himself in the church of
St. Sylvester or in a garden overlooking Rome; conversations which,
despite their Portuguese dress, bear the stamp of truth and will retain
their fascination so long as interest in art endures. Francisco worked
first in the household of the Infante Fernando and then in that of the
Archbishop of Evora. In 1537 he set out on a journey to Rome by land
(Valladolid, Barcelona, Provence), and in Italy remained from 1538 to
1547. His friendship with Michelangelo continued after his return to
Portugal, as a letter from Hollanda to Michelangelo in 1553 proves. The
last part of his life he spent in the country between Lisbon and Sintra
among the Portuguese whom he had called _desmusicos_, and despite his
comfortable circumstances--he received a pension of 100,000 _réis_ from
Philip II--he must often have looked back with regret to the fullness
of those nine years in Italy. But his countrymen, thanks largely to
the scholarly researches and studies of Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos,
are now fully alive to his merits. And, indeed, even in the sixteenth
century a passage in Frei Heitor Pinto’s _Imagem da Vida Christam_
sets him side by side with the great Italian.[535] PHILIPE NUNEZ,
who professed as a Dominican in 1591, wrote on painting in the next
century: _Arte poetica e da pintura e symmetria_ (1615). A work on
music by ANTONIO FERNANDEZ of about the same date, _Arte de Mvsica de
canto dorgam e canto cham_ (1626), consists of three treatises which
do not profess to be original. MANUEL NUNEZ DA SILVA wrote on the same
subject in his _Arte Minima_ (1685).
In the preface (1570) to his _Regra Geral_, written in 1565, GONÇALO
FERNANDEZ TRANCOSO[536] (_c._ 1515-_c._ 1590) professed not to have
sufficient literary skill even for this simple calendar of movable
feasts. Yet in the previous year (1569), in which at Lisbon he lost
both wife and children in the great plague (a beloved daughter of
twenty-four, a student son, and a choir-boy grandson), in order to
distract his mind from these sorrows,[537] he wrote a remarkable work,
unique of its kind in Portuguese literature; or at least he wrote
then the first two books, which appeared under the title _Contos
e historias de proveito e exemplo_ (1575).[538] A third part was
published posthumously in 1596. The number and kind of the editions in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to its popularity, but
since the eighteenth century no new edition has been printed and the
book has fallen into a strange neglect.[539] Trancoso did not claim
originality: he merely collected stories from what he had heard or
read.[540] The stories, only thirty-eight in number, are very various.
The subjects of many of them resemble those of Franco Sacchetti’s
_Novelle_ or Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s _Le xiii Piacevoli Notti_,
and some are directly imitated from Boccaccio’s _Il Decamerone_ or
Giovanni Battista Giraldi’s _Gli Ecatommiti_ or from Matteo Bandello
(†1565).[541] But often they are traditions so widespread that they
occur in many authors and languages, as that (ii. 7) which corresponds
to Straparola’s third _Notte_ and of which Dr. F. A. Coelho recorded
twenty-one other foreign versions, besides four popular variants
in Portuguese; or i. 17, in which the cunning answers to difficult
questions are similar to those in Sacchetti, No. 4 (_Mestre Bernabò
signor di Milano_), and Dr. Braga’s _Contos tradicionaes do povo
portuguez_, No. 71 (_Frei Joam Sem Cuidados_). Others are apparently
of oriental origin, as the judge’s verdict, worthy of Sancho Panza
(i. 15), or the king and the barber (iii. 3). But the subject and
place (Lisbon, Oporto, Evora, Coimbra, &c.) of most, although not of
the longest, of these tales are Portuguese.[542] Some are trifling
anecdotes which acquire a charm and vividness through their popular
character and the author’s simple details of description, as the
picture of the peasant family near Oporto sitting round the fire after
their supper of maize-bread and chestnuts (i. 10). The author is not
content that we should draw our own moral, but this scarcely spoils the
reader’s pleasure in these malicious and ingenious tales.
Despite inroads of the exotic and all the chances and changes of
life and literature in this century, the Portuguese maintained their
interest in the romances of chivalry, in which indeed they saw a
reflection of their own prowess in the East. Dull as _Clarimundo_ may
now seem, it made a great impression in its day, and was eagerly read,
from Lisbon to the Moluccas.[543] Even as late as 1589 Bishop Arraez
considers it necessary to say that a prince should have better ways of
spending his time than _ler por Clarimundo_,[544] while Rodriguez Lobo,
thirty years later, brackets it with _Amadis_ and _Palmeirim_.[545]
Many a young page and _escudeiro_ must have aspired not only to pore
over the _cronicas_ but to write one of his own.[546] The facility of a
Barros is, however, given to few, and both Jorge Ferreira’s _Memorial_
and Moraes’ _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_ were written later in life.
FRANCISCO DE MORAES (_c._ 1500-72),[547] a well-known courtier in the
reign of King João III, whose Treasurer he was, and a _Comendador_ of
the Order of Christ, in 1540 accompanied the Portuguese Ambassador,
D. Francisco de Noronha, to Paris as Secretary, and at the French
Court he fell passionately in love with one of the ladies-in-waiting
of Queen Leonor (sister of the Emperor Charles V and widow of King
Manuel of Portugal) named Claude Blosset de Torcy. His love was not
returned: there was a great discrepancy of age between them, his
knowledge of French was very slight, and his passion robbed him of wit
and reason. If the Duc de Châtillon was favoured, or if the English
Ambassador gave Mademoiselle de Torcy his arm, Moraes would flare
up in jealousy, and when in the presence of the queen the elderly
lover went down on his knees _la belle Torcy_ (to whom Clément Marot
had addressed one of his _Étrennes_ and who eventually married the
Baron de Fontaines) prayed him not to continue to make her as well as
himself ridiculous. Moraes, after leaving France in 1543, or early
in 1544, recovered from his passion and married in Portugal. Of his
subsequent life little is known; he appears to have returned to France,
and in 1572 he was murdered at the entrance of the Rocio, the central
square of Evora. His _Cronica de Palmeirim de Inglaterra_, written in
France or Portugal or both, was probably published in 1544, but the
earliest existing Portuguese edition is that of Evora, 1567, which
contains the dedication to the Infanta Maria, written over twenty years
earlier (1544). Chiefly remarkable for the excellence of its style,
_Palmeirim_ will always retain its place in Portuguese literature
as a masterpiece of prose, musically soft, yet clear and vigorous.
Cervantes considered it worthy to be preserved in a golden casket like
the works of Homer,[548] but few of its readers will now differ from
the more modern and moderate opinion of Menéndez y Pelayo that ‘it
requires a real effort’ to read the whole of it. The effort required
to read the miserable Spanish translation of 1547-8 is infinitely
greater. The fact that this translation is of earlier date than any
surviving Portuguese edition gave rise to the theory that Moraes had
translated his work from the Spanish. No competent critic now believes
this; any doubts that may have lingered were dispelled wittily and
for ever in Mr. Purser’s able essay (1904). The Spanish version,
with its painful efforts to avoid _lusitanismos_ and its palpable
mistranslations (such as _suavidad_ or _alegria_ for _saudade_), shows
less knowledge of the sea, of Ireland,[549] and of Portugal. Moreover,
the preference of the author of _Palmeirim_ for Portugal is obvious,
and the passage in which ladies of the French Court are introduced
corresponds to Moraes’ _Descvlpa de hvns amores_,[550] first published
with the _Dialogos_ in 1624. Moraes himself would probably not have
been greatly troubled by the impudent claim set up for Luis Hurtado
and Miguel Ferrer. To have made a masterpiece out of their book would
have been an achievement as great as to have made it out of old French
and English legends in Paris. _Palmeirim’s_ predecessors, _Palmerin de
Oliva_ (1511), _Primaleon_ (1512), and _Platir_ (1533), were probably
all genuinely Spanish, although some doubts have been raised as to
the first of the line, _Palmerin de Oliva_ attributed to a cryptic
lady, a _femina docta_ called Agustobrica.[551] Its successors were as
genuinely Portuguese: to Moraes’ parts 1 and 2 DIOGO FERNANDEZ added
parts 3 and 4 (1587), concerned with the deeds of Palmeirim’s son, _Dom
Duardos_,[552] and BALTHASAR GONÇALVEZ LOBATO parts 5 and 6 (1602), in
which are told those of his grandson, _Dom Clarisol de Bretanha_. Three
brief but very lively and natural _Dialogos_ (1624) show that Moraes
was not only an excellent stylist but a keen observer. The _fidalgo_
and _escudeiro_, the lawyer and the love-lorn _moço_, are all clearly
and wittily presented.
FOOTNOTES:
[507] For a full list see Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ i.
377, and _Grundriss_, p. 339. Five volumes were announced by Barbosa
Machado as ready for press. The modern editors, besides eleven wrecks
of the sixteenth, eight of the seventeenth, and two of the eighteenth,
have included three of the nineteenth century. Some of the original
chap-books survive, with a fine woodcut of a tossing galleon on the
title-page: _Historia da mui notavel perda do galeam grande S. Joam_
(1554?); _Relaçam do lastimozo navfragio da nao Conceiçam chamada
Algaravia a Nova_ (1555); _Naufragio da nao Santo Alberto_ (1597);
_Memoravel relaçam da perda da nao Conceiçam_ (1627). The _Relaçam da
viagem do galeão São Lovrenço e sua perdição_ (1651) is by the Jesuit
Antonio Francisco Cardim (1596-1659); the _Relaçam sumaria da viagem
que fez Fernão d’Alvarez Cabral_, by Manuel Mesquita Perestrello, is
an account of the wreck of the fine ship _S. Bento_, which had taken
Camões to India.
[508] In this _Relaçam do naufragio da nao S. Thomé_, written in 1611,
twenty-two years after the event, he refers several times to his
_Decadas_.
[509] _Naufragio da nao S. Alberto_ (1593). It is a summary of a _largo
cartapacio_ of the pilot.
[510] _pedirme meu tio Ioam de Barros que lhe screuesse muito
particularmente todos os lugares deste meu caminho._
[511] _Verd. Inf._, p. 110: _nam era pera velhos_.
[512] This seems to have aroused the resentment of Barros (_Asia_, III.
iv. 3). The author, he says, had no learning. In II. iii. 4 he again
refers to him slightingly as ‘a certain Francisco Alvarez’. Barros as
grammarian similarly ignored Oliveira.
[513] Barbosa Machado says, _ultimamente em o Convento de Goa,
para onde tinha passado no anno de 1622 falleceu com saudade_, &c.
Innocencio da Silva read this with a comma after _passado_.
[514] Afonso de Albuquerque mentions another surgeon Mestre Afonso
in India in his time, i.e. half a century earlier. The value of the
_Itinerario_ consists in its having been written as a diary on the
journey, and its author, perhaps thinking of Mendez Pinto, says _hee
hũu grande descuido de homens que fazem semelhantes viagens e as nom
escreuem ... porque a memoria nom pode ser capaz de tamanha cousa e
tantas particularidades_ (p. 82).
[515] According to Barbosa Machado he entered the Jesuit College as a
novice in 1645 and died in 1712 _aet._ 78. Godinho also wrote a life of
Frei Antonio das Chagas.
[516] He was the son of D. Jorge, illegitimate son of João II., and was
created Duke of Aveiro.
[517] See the important works by Colonel Cristovam Ayres, _Fernão
Mendes Pinto_, 1904; _Fernão Mendes Pinto e o Japão_, 1906.
[518] His work did not appear till 1614 and it is uncertain to what
extent it was edited by the historian Francisco de Andrade. It is
thought that the account of his services as missionary in Japan may
have been excised owing to the hostility of the Jesuits.
[519] Cap. 223: _eu respondi acrecentando em muitas cousas que me
perguntava por me parecer que era assim necessario á reputação da nação
portuguesa_.
[520] Cf. caps. 14, 70, 88, 114, 126, 198, 204. The complaint is echoed
by almost every Portuguese traveller of the day. Bishop Osorio refers
to the _fidei faciendae difficultas_; even the truthful and exact
Francisco Alvarez fears his readers’ disbelief.
[521] Cf. Faria e Sousa (_laudari a laudato!_): _Yo le tengo por muy
verdadero_; A. de Sousa Macedo, _Eva e Ave_, ii. 55, 1676 ed., p. 495:
_El Rey Catholico D. Philippe II, quando veio a Portugal, gostava de
ouvir a Fernão Mendes, em cujas peregrinaçoens & sucessos que dellas
escreveo mostrou o tempo com a experiencia a verdade que se lhe
disputava antes que ouvesse tantas noticias d’aquellas partes_; Soares,
_Theatrum_: _diu apud Lusitanos fidem non meruit donec rerum qui secuti
sunt eventus et aliorum scripta nihil Ferdinandum a vero discrepasse
confirmarunt_; Manuel Bernardes, _Nova Floresta_, i (1706), p. 124: _as
Relações do nosso Fernão Mendez Pinto que não merecem tão pouco credito
como alguns lhe dão_. ‘Either never man had better memory or he was the
most solemn liar that ever put pen to paper’ is the verdict of José
Agostinho de Macedo (_Motim Literario_, 1841 ed., ii. 17).
[522] In France he was known as du Jardin. Familiarly this great
botanist seems to have been called Herbs. A copy of the first edition
of the _Coloquios_ has GRACIA DORTA O ERVAS on the back of the binding.
This might be an ignorant mistake for D’ELVAS.
[523] The Governor’s brother, Pero Lopez de Sousa, wrote a _Diario da
Navegação_ (1530-2) first published at Lisbon in 1839. The soldier in
Couto’s _Dialogo_ says, _não vai tão mal negociado hir por Fysico môr
pois todos os que este cargo serviram tiraram nos seus tres annos sete
ou oito mil cruzados_.
[524] _Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese._
[525] He must have spent many a half-hour in the corner bookshop in
Goa mentioned by Couto (_Dec._ VI. v. 8, 1781 ed., p. 400): _o canto
onde pousa um livreiro_--unless this is a misprint for _luveiro_,
as the neighbouring _sirgueiro_ seems to indicate. The growth of
Portuguese literature in the East would furnish matter for a curious
essay. Great folios like the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (see Lopez de
Castanheda, v. 12, and Barros, _Asia_, III. iii. 4, for the strange use
made of it in India) and the _Flos Sanctorum_ were taken out, and it
is improbable that they were brought back when every square inch was
required for pepper. Thousands of precious volumes must have gone down
in shipwrecks, others--profane books and _autos_--were thrown overboard
at the bidding of the priests. For the fate of a case of Hebrew Bibles
(_briuias_) see Corrêa, _Lendas da India_, i. 656-7. _Amadis de Gaula_
was apparently in India in 1519 (Lopez de Castanheda, v. 16). A most
interesting list of books ready to be sent to the Negus of Abyssinia in
1515 is given in Sousa Viterbo’s _A Livraria Real_ (1901), p. 8.
[526] Unless Corrêa’s description (_Lendas_, iv. 288-9) is earlier.
Other events recorded by Corrêa which must have closely affected Orta
are the fate of a bachelor of medicine strangled and burnt by the
Inquisition at Goa in 1543 (iv. 292) and the outbreak of small-pox,
from which 8,000 children died there in three months in 1545 (iv. 447).
The _Dialogo da perfeyçam & partes que sam necessarias ao bom medico_
(1562), with the exception of the dedicatory letter to King Sebastian
and the title, is written in Spanish (25 ff.). Apparently AFONSO DE
MIRANDA found it in Latin among the books of his son Jeronimo (who had
studied at Coimbra and Salamanca) and translated it.
[527] _Composto_, he says (_Coloquios_, i. 5). Dimas Bosque (ib. i. 11)
says _começado_.
[528] Thus he contributed to the fact, which he notices in the _Tratado
da carta de marear_, that the Portuguese sea enterprises were based
on careful preparation. The _nonius_ was perfected in the following
century by Vernier.
[529] _Tratado da Sphera_, Preface.
[530] This volume contains also two brief treatises by Nunez in
Portuguese: _Tratado ... sobre certas duuidas da nauegação_, answering
certain questions put to him by Martim Afonso de Sousa, and _Tratado
... em defensam da carta de marear_, addressed to the Infante Luis.
The _De Sphaera_ of Joannes de Sacro Bosco was printed with a preface
by Philip Melanchthon in 1538. Arraez, in his _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f.
56, says: _sei algo da Sphera porque quando Pero Nunez a lia a certos
homens principais eu me achava presente_.
[531] He himself says that he was born in the excellent city of Lisbon
(_Esmeraldo_, iv. 6), and he was one of the captains sent out by João
II to continue the discovery of the West Coast of Africa. In 1520-2 he
was Governor of the fortress of S. Jorge da Mina, but his last years
were spent in poverty.
[532] Other works of a similar nature, _livros das rotas_ or
_derrotas_, are printed in _Libro de Marinharia_. _Tratado da Aguia de
Marear_ [1514] _de João de Lisboa_ [†1526]. _Copiado e coordenado por
J. I. Brito Rebello_, 1903. Cf. also G. Pereira, _Roteiros Portuguezes
da viagem de Lisboa á India nos seculos xvi e xvii_, 1898; H. Lopes
de Mendonça, _Estudos sobre navios portuguezes nos seculos xv e xvi_,
1892, and _O Padre Fernando Oliveira e a sua obra nautica_, 1898 (pp.
147-221 contain _O Liuro da fabrica das naos_, of which, says the
preface, _ninguem escreveo ateegora_); and Sousa Viterbo, _Trabalhos
nauticos dos portuguezes nos seculos xvi e xvii_ (_Historia e Memorias
da Ac. das Sciencias_, tom. vii (1898), _mem._ 3; tom. viii (1900),
_mem._ 1). Diogo de Sá’s _De Navigatione_ was published in Paris in
1549; the _Arte Practica de Navegar_ (1699) by the _Cosmographo Môr_
Manuel Pimentel (1650-1719) appeared a century and a half later and had
several editions in the eighteenth century.
[533] Fr. Antonio de San Roman, _Historia General de la India
Oriental_, Valladolid, 1603.
[534] _De Rebvs Emmanvelis_ (1571), p. 380: _Non erat alienus a
literis, & cum otium erat lectione sacrarum praecipue literarum
oblectabatur._
[535] Pt. 1, 1572 ed., f. 224: _não feyto por mão do nosso Olãda nẽ do
vosso Michaël Angelo mas por meu bayxo ingenho_.
[536] Or Gonçalo Fernandez of Trancoso (Beira). His name has no
connexion with the phrase _contar historias a trancos_ (_de coq à
l’âne_).
[537] Preface addressed to the Queen in Pt. 1. His object was _prender
a imaginação em ferros_.
[538] Timoneda’s _El Patrañuelo_ appeared in the following year.
[539] See, however, Dr. Agostinho de Campos’ selections (1921).
[540] _O que aprendi, ouui ou li_ (1624 ed.); _o que aprendi, vi ou li_
(1734 ed.).
[541] See Menéndez y Pelayo, _Orígenes de la Novela_, tom. ii (1907),
p. lxxxvii et seq.
[542] The alternation of the indigenous and the exotic may be seen in
the spelling of the same name as Piro (= Pero, Pedro, Peter) and Pyrrho
(Pyrrhus) in iii. 8.
[543] _Ropica Pnefma_, 1869 ed., p. 2.
[544] _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 157. A third edition of _Clarimundo_
(1601) had appeared before the second edition of the _Dialogos_.
[545] _Corte na Aldea_ (1619), _Dialogo_ 1 (1722 ed., p. 5).
[546] Moraes, _Dialogo_ 1 (1852 ed., p. 11).
[547] Barbosa Machado seems to have considered him much under seventy
at the time of his death in 1572.
[548] The tradition, mentioned by Cervantes, that it was written by
a learned and witty king of Portugal is clearly traceable to that
other tradition that King João III as Infante had been joint-author of
_Clarimundo_.
[549] Mount Brandon, Smerwick (and The Three Sisters) of the ‘pleasant’
but ‘densely wooded’ coast of Kerry, are Greek to the Spanish
translator and become San Cebrian (Cyprian) and San Maurique.
[550] The title continues: _que tinha com hũa dama francesa da raynha
dona Leanor per nome Torsi, sendo Portugues, pela quai fez a historia
das damas francesas no seu Palmeirim_.
[551] It is scarcely possible that the author (Francisco Vazquez?)
considered that Burgos, as his birthplace--his mother--had a part in
the work.
[552] From being merely the legend above, the mounted knight on the
title-page _Dom Duardos de Bretanha_ became the title of the book.
§ 7.
_Religious and Mystic Writers_
Amador Arraez in one of his dialogues defines mysticism thus: ‘There
is a theology called mystic, as being hidden and unintelligible to
those who have no part in it. It is attained by much love and few books
and with much meditation and purity of heart, which alone suffices
for its exercise, and consists mainly in the noblest part of our will
inflamed in the love of God, its full and perfect good.’[553] ‘Our
will inflamed’: perhaps these words explain the excellence of the
style, the intensity and directness, of the writers in this mystic
theology. Style, so shy and elusive to Flaubert and his disciples,
came unsought to the religious writers of the sixteenth century,
because they wrote not with an eye on verbal artifices but out of the
fullness of the heart, ‘self-gathered for an outbreak’; and their
works can still be read with pleasure by priest and pagan. Mysticism,
inherent in the character of the Portuguese, runs through a great
part of their literature; we find it, for instance, in the merry
poetry of Gil Vicente or in the precious accents of Soror Violante do
Ceo. Strength of character, aloofness, rapt enthusiasm, singleness
of purpose: these are the qualities of mysticism at its best, and if
it also manifests itself in vagueness and confusion, this was not
so with the great mystic and religious writers of the golden age of
Portuguese literature. To them mysticism was not a cloudy goodness or
an abstract perception-dulling humanity, not a mist but a pillar of
fire, in the light of which the facts and details of reality stood out
the more clearly. But if the intensity of many of the mystics has its
natural complement in the fervour and directness of their prose, this
was not always the case, and it was not only in profane works that the
Portuguese language fell into the pitfalls of _culteranismo_. All the
more remarkable is the purity, the exquisite taste, the simplicity
and charm of some of the later, seventeenth century, prose. The secret
of this prose lay in fact in _culteranismo_ itself, the points and
conceits of which were based on a recognition of the value of words.
All the _seiscentistas_ set to playing with words as with unset stones
of price. The more critical or inspired writers joined in the game but
selected the genuine stones, leaving the rest to those who did not care
to distinguish between gems and coloured glass.
A faint vein of mysticism is to be found in the work of FREI HEITOR
PINTO (_c._ 1528-1584?), who was born at the high-lying little town
of Covilhan and professed in the famous Convento dos Jeronimos at
Belem in 1543. After taking the degree of Doctor of Theology at
Siguenza he in 1567 competed for a Chair at Salamanca University, but
came into collision with Fray Luis de Leon, and in a bitter contest
between the Hieronymite and Augustinian Orders Pinto was defeated. He
returned to Portugal, became Professor of the new Chair of Scripture
at Coimbra University in 1576, Rector of the University and Provincial
of his Order.[554] After the death of the Cardinal-King he appears
vehemently to have espoused the cause of the Prior of Crato. King
Philip accordingly invited Pinto to accompany him to Spain--he was
one of the fifty excluded from the amnesty of 1581--and scandal added
that the king had him poisoned there in 1584. Pinto was an eminent
divine, a man of wide learning, a master of Portuguese prose, and he
appears to have inspired his pupils with affection; but King Philip
could scarcely have considered him worth poisoning, especially when
removed from his sphere of influence. No doubt he went to Spain with
extreme reluctance--on other occasions of his busy life when the
affairs of his Order drove him to France and Italy he had sighed in
tears (in spite of his interest in travel, his love of Nature, and
especially his antiquarian curiosity[555]) for his quiet cell at Belem,
‘where he had lived many years in great content’. Perhaps too he had
not forgotten his defeat at Salamanca. ‘King Philip’, he now said
sturdily, ‘may put me into Castille but never Castille into me.’ Pinto
wrote commentaries on various books of the Old Testament, which were
published in Latin, but his principal work consists in the dialogues,
_a maneira dos de Platão_, of his _Imagem da Vida Christam_ (1563),
followed by the _Segunda Parte dos Dialogos_ (1572). The first part has
six dialogues, the subjects being true philosophy, religion, justice,
tribulation, the solitary life,[556] and remembrance of death. The five
of the second part treat of tranquillity of life, discreet ignorance,
true friendship, causes,[557] and true and spurious possessions. It
is impossible to read a page of these dialogues and not be struck by
the extraordinary fascination of their style. It is concise and direct
without ever losing its harmony. Perhaps its best testimonial is
that its magic survives the innumerable quotations, although one may
regret that the work was not written, like the _Trabalhos de Jesus_,
in a dungeon instead of in a well-stocked library.[558] Apart from
the proof it affords of the exceptional capacity of the Portuguese
language for combining softness and vigour, the work contains much
ingenious thought, charming descriptions, and elaborate similes. Some
twenty editions in various languages before the end of the century
show how keenly it was appreciated. It was certainly not without
influence on the _Dialogos_ (1589) of the energetic and austere Bishop
of Portalegre, AMADOR ARRAEZ (_c._ 1530-1600), who spent his boyhood at
Beja and professed as a Carmelite at Lisbon a year after Frei Thomé de
Jesus and two years after Frei Heitor Pinto had professed in the same
city. Like the former he studied theology at Coimbra.[559] Cardinal
Henrique, when Archbishop of Evora, chose Arraez to be his suffragan,
and in 1578 appointed him to the see of Tripoli. Three years later he
was made Bishop of Portalegre by Philip II. He resigned in 1596, and
spent the last four years of his life in retirement, in the college
of his Order at Coimbra. A few weeks before his death he wrote the
prefatory letter for the revised edition of his great work.[560] It
consists of ten long dialogues between the sick and dying Antiocho
and doctor, priest, lawyer, or friends. The longest, over a quarter
of the whole, is a mystic life of the Virgin, and of the others some
are purely religious, as _Da Paciencia e Fortaleza Christam_, some
historical or political (_Da Gloria e Triunfo dos Lusitanos_; _Das
Condições e Partes do Bom Principe_). That on the Jews (_Da Gente
Judaica_) is marred by a spirit of bitter intolerance; on the other
hand there is an outspoken protest against slavery. The whole of this
interesting miscellany, which incidentally discusses a very large
number of subjects,[561] is tinged with mystic philosophy, and at the
same time shows a keen sense of reality. In style as in degree of
mysticism it stands midway between Pinto’s _Imagem_ and the _Trabalhos
de Jesus_. It is evident that its composition, although less artificial
than that of the _Imagem_, has been the subject of much care, and the
author declares in his preface that while adopting a ‘common, ordinary
style’, to the exclusion of forced tricks and elegances, he has striven
after clearness and harmony (the two postulates of his contemporary,
Fray Luis de Leon). The result is a treasury of excellent prose,
in which the harmonious flow of the sentences in nowise interferes
with precision and restraint, that grave brevity which Arraez notes
as one of the principal qualities of Portuguese. It can rise to
great eloquence (as in the lament of Olympio) without ever becoming
rhetorical or turgid.
The prose of Pinto and Arraez was a very conscious art, that of the
still greater FREI THOMÉ DE JESUS (1529?-82) was the man, and the man
merged in mysticism, without thought of style. He was the son of
Fernam Alvarez de Andrade, Treasurer to King João III, and of Isabel de
Paiva. One of his brothers was the celebrated preacher Diogo de Paiva
de Andrade (1528-75), another the historian Francisco de Andrade; a
third, Frei Cosme da Presentação, distinguished himself in philosophy
and theology, but died at the age of thirty-six at Bologna, while the
work of a nephew (son of Francisco de Andrade), Diogo de Paiva de
Andrade (1576-1660), _Casamento perfeito_ (1636), is counted a classic
of Portuguese prose. His sister D. Violante married the second Conde
de Linhares. As a boy at the Augustinian Collegio de Nossa Senhora
da Graça at Coimbra he is said to have been all but drowned while
swimming in the Mondego. He professed at the Lisbon convent of the
same Order in 1544, went to Coimbra to study theology, and then became
master of novices at the Lisbon convent.[562] Here in 1574 he planned
a reform of the Order, but when all was ready for the secession of the
new _Recoletos_ an intrigue put an end to the scheme, which a kindred
spirit, Fray Luis de Leon, later carried into effect. Frei Thomé was
permitted to retire to the convent of Penafirme by the sea, near Torres
Vedras, where he might hope to indulge his love of quiet and solitude.
He was, however, appointed prior of the convent and Visitor of his
Order, and in 1578 was chosen by King Sebastian to accompany him to
Africa. At the battle of Alcacer Kebir, as he held aloft a crucifix
or tended the wounded, he was speared by a Moor and taken prisoner
to Mequinez. Here he was loaded with chains and placed in a dungeon,
and as the slave of a marabout received ‘less bread than blows’. The
Portuguese Ambassador, D. Francisco da Costa, intervened, and he was
removed to Morocco. Frei Thomé had borne all his sufferings with the
most heroic fortitude, and now, broken in health but not in spirit,
he refused to lodge at the ambassador’s and asked to be placed in the
common prison. During a captivity of nearly four years, regardless
of his own fate,[563] with unflagging devotion he ministered to the
numerous Christian prisoners, and was occupied to the last with their
needs. Costa, who shared the general respect and affection for this
saint and hero, visited him as he lay dying (April 17, 1582). _Vattene
in pace, alma beata e bella!_ It was during his captivity that he
composed the work that has given him the lasting fame earned by his
life and character, writing furtively in the scant light that filtered
through the cracks of the prison door.[564] These fifty _Trabalhos de
Jesus_ (2 pts., 1602, 9) embrace the whole life of Christ, and deserve,
more than Renan’s _Vie de Christ_, to be called a gracious fifth
Gospel. Each _trabalho_ is, moreover, followed by a spiritual exercise,
and these constitute a Portuguese _De Imitatione Christi_. Rarely, if
ever, has such glow and fervour been set in print: none but the very
dull could be left cold by these transports of passionate devotion. The
prose wrestles and throbs in an agony of grief or rapture, of mysticism
carried to the extreme limit where all power of articulate expression
ends.[565] Frei Thomé de Jesus is a master of Portuguese prose not by
any arts or graces but through the white heat of his intensity. No book
shows more clearly that style must always be a secondary consideration,
that if there be a burning conviction excellence of style follows.
It could evidently only have been written by one who had greatly
suffered, indeed by one who still suffered, one who expressed in these
fervid accents of heavenly communion an oblivion of self and an energy
habitually employed in eager earthly service of his fellow men. In a
prefatory letter (November 8, 1581) addressed to the Portuguese people
he declared his intention of publishing as it stood this masterpiece
of mystic ecstasy, which he believed to have been written by divine
inspiration.[566]
Another celebrated treatise of a mystic character is the _Voz do_
_Amado_ (1579) by the learned Canon D. HILARIAM BRANDÃO (†1585). The
religious works of this century are very numerous. We may mention the
anonymous _Regras e Cautelas de proueito espiritual_ (1542), which is
written in biblical prose and deals with the fifteen perfections or
excellences of charity and kindred subjects; the dialogues _Desengano
de Perdidos em dialogo entre dous peregrinos, hũ christão e hũ
turco_ (Goa, 1573) by the first Archbishop of Goa, D. GASPAR DE LEÃO
(†1576), and the _Dialogo espiritual: Colloquio de um religioso com um
peregrino_ (1578) by FREI ALVARO DE TORRES [Vedras] (fl. 1550), who was
drowned in the Tagus when on the way to his convent at Belem.
D. JOANA DA GAMA (†1568), a nun of noble birth who directed a small
community founded by herself at Evora, a few miles from her native
Viana, published a short collection of moral sentences in alphabetical
order, followed by a few poems (_trovas_): _Ditos da Freyra_ (1555).
She insists, perhaps a little too emphatically for conviction, on her
lack of intelligence and ability, and says that these sayings were
written down for herself alone and that she purposely avoids subtleties
(_ditos sotijs_), but her aphorisms contain some shrewd personal
observation. Fact and legend have combined to weave an atmosphere of
romance about the life of Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, better known as
FREI LUIS DE SOUSA (1555?-1632). A descendant of the second Conde de
Marialva, he early entered or was about to enter the Order of Knights
Hospitallers at Malta, but was captured by the Moors in much the same
way and at about the same time (1575) as was Cervantes. He was taken to
Algiers, and may have known Cervantes there, or the statement that he
became Cervantes’ friend may have been an inference from the latter’s
mention of him in _Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda_; they may
have met in Lisbon in 1590, or at Madrid. Sousa Coutinho returned to
Portugal in 1578, and some years later married D. Magdalena de Vilhena,
widow of D. João de Portugal, one of all the peerage that fell with
King Sebastian at Alcacer Kebir. Sousa Coutinho, at the invitation of
his brother in Panama, is said to have gone thither in the hope of
making a fortune, but the date is not clear. His unbending patriotism
was immortalized when as Governor of Almada in 1599 he burnt down his
house rather than receive as guests the Spanish Governors of Portugal.
The prospect of riches at Panama may have seemed especially alluring
after this rash act. He appears to have lived quietly in Portugal for
some years before 1613, when both he and his wife entered a convent.
Their act has been variously explained as due to melancholy disposition
or to the early death of their daughter, D. Anna de Noronha. Probably
after her death the example of their friend the Conde de Vimioso and
the conviction that the only abiding pleasure is the renunciation of
all the rest were prevalent factors in their decision. The legend,
however, related by Frei Antonio da Encarnação and dramatized two
centuries later by Garrett, records that D. João de Portugal, D.
Magdalena de Vilhena’s first husband, had been not killed but taken
prisoner in Africa, and after many years’ captivity he reappears as
an aged pilgrim and bitterly reveals his identity. In the convent of
Bemfica, where he had professed in September 1614, Frei Luis de Sousa
was consulted on various matters by the Duke of Braganza and others
who valued his fine character and clear judgement, but he did not
live to see the Restoration. He was entrusted by his Order with the
revision of works left by another Dominican, FREI LUIS DE CACEGAS (_c._
1540-1610). These he re-wrote, giving them a lasting value by virtue
of his style. The first part of the _Historia de S. Domingos_, ‘a new
kind of chronicle’ as he calls it in his preface addressed to the king,
appeared in 1623, but the second (1662) and third (1678) parts were
not published in his lifetime. A fourth part (1733) was added by FREI
LUCAS DE SANTA CATHARINA (1660-1740), who among other works wrote a
curious miscellany of verse and prose, romance and literary criticism,
entitled _Seram politico_ (1704). In the biography of the saintly
and strong-willed Archbishop of Braga, _Vida de D. Fr. Bertolomeu
dos Martyres_ (1619), the excellence of Sousa’s style is even more
apparent, for it has here no trace of rhetoric and the pictures
stand out with the more effect for the economy with which they are
drawn--the dearth of adjectives is noticeable. The archbishop’s visits
to his diocese give occasion for charming, homely glimpses of Minho.
Neither of these books is the work of a critical historian (in the
_Vida_, for instance, winds and waves obey the archbishop), but the
latter, especially, is in matter and manner one of the masterpieces of
Portuguese literature, a _livro divino_, as a modern Portuguese writer
called it.[567] The _Annaes de El Rei Dom João Terceiro_, written at
the bidding of Philip IV, was published in 1844 by Herculano, who
described the work as little more than a series of notes, except in
the Indian sections, which summarize Barros. It is as a stylist, not
as a historian, that Frei Luis de Sousa will always be read, and read
with delight.[568] The subject of his biography, FREI BARTHOLOMEU DOS
MARTYRES (1514-90), wrote in Portuguese a simple _Catecismo da Dovtrina
Christam_ (Braga, 1564), resembling the Portuguese work of his friend
Fray Luis de Granada (1504-88): _Compendio de Doctrina Christãa_
(Lixboa, 1559).
The _Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier_ (1600), by the Jesuit
JOÃO DE LUCENA (1550-1600), born at Trancoso, who made his mark as
an eloquent preacher and Professor of Philosophy in the University
of Evora, is also one of the classics of the Portuguese language. It
receives a glowing fervour from the author’s evident delight in his
subject--the life of the famous Basque missionary in whose arms D.
João de Castro died. His command of clear, fluent, vigorous prose, his
skilful use of words and abundant power of description, enable him to
convey this enthusiasm to his readers. Part of the matter of his book
was derived from Fernam Mendez Pinto, but the style is his own.
Like Frei Luis de Sousa, FREI MANUEL DA ESPERANÇA (1586-1670) became
the historian of his Order in the _Historia Seraphica da Ordem dos
Frades Menores_ (2 pts., 1656, 66). We know from remarks in the second
part that he paid the greatest attention to its composition, for which
he had prepared himself by reading _hũa multidão notavel_ of books
on that and kindred subjects. Similar excellence of style marks the
later work of the Jesuit FRANCISCO DE SOUSA (1628?-1713), _O Oriente
conquistado_ (2 vols., 1710), in which he chronicles the history of the
Company in the East.
The most celebrated Portuguese preacher of his time,[569] Frei Thomé
de Jesus’ brother, DIOGO DE PAIVA DE ANDRADE (1528-75), represented
Portugal at the Council of Trent in 1561. His eloquent _Sermões_
(1603, 4, 15) were published posthumously in three parts. His mantle
fell upon FRANCISCO FERNANDEZ GALVÃO (1554-1610), the prose of whose
_Sermões_ (3 vols., 1611, 13, 16) is admirably restrained and pure.
Less sonorous than the periods of Paiva de Andrade, the _Trattados_
[_sic_] _Quadragesimais e da Paschoa_ (1609) and _Tratados das Festas e
Vidas dos Santos_ (2 pts., 1612, 15) of the Dominican FREI ANTONIO FEO
(1573-1627) perhaps gain rather than lose by being read, not heard. In
the clearness and precision of their prose they are scarcely inferior
to the remarkable _Sermões_ (3 pts., 1617, 18, 25) of the Augustinian
FREI PHILIPE DA LUZ (1574-1633), confessor to the Duke of Braganza
(afterwards King João IV), in whose palace at Villa Viçosa he died. He,
too, writes _sem grandes eloquencias_; he is as precise as Feo in his
use of words, and his vocabulary is as extensive. Purity, concision,
clearness, and harmony give him, together with Feo, Ceita, and Veiga, a
high place in Portuguese prose.
The sermons for which the Dominican FREI PEDRO CALVO (born _c._ 1550)
was celebrated were published in _Homilias de Quaresma_ (2 pts., 1627,
9), and at the repeated request of a friend he wrote his _Defensam
das Lagrimas dos ivstos persegvidos_ (1618) to prove that ‘tears shed
in time of trouble do not lessen merit’. The _Sermões_ (1618) and
_Considerações_ (1619, 20, 33) of FREI THOMAS DA VEIGA (1578-1638),
like his father a Professor of Coimbra University, are written in a
style of great excellence, as, although a trifle more redundant[570]
and latinized, is that of his contemporary, like him a Franciscan,
FREI JOÃO DA CEITA (1578-1633), whose prose has a natural grace and
harmony, if it is less pure and indigenous than that of Luz. His best
known works are the _Quadragena de Sermoens_ (1619) and _Quadragena
Segunda_ (1625). Two more volumes of _Sermões_ (1634, 5) appeared after
his death. Two slightly later writers were FREI CRISTOVAM DE LISBOA
(†1652), brother of Manuel Severim de Faria, and FREI CRISTOVAM DE
ALMEIDA (1620-79), Bishop of Martyria. The former, author of _Jardim
da Sagrada Escriptura_ (1653) and _Consolaçam de Afflictos e Allivio
de Lastimados_ (1742), in the preface to his _Santoral de Varios
Sermões_ (1638) deplores the new fashion of certain preachers who
hide their meaning under their eloquence. He is himself sometimes
inclined to be florid. Bishop Almeida attained a reputation for great
eloquence even in the days of Antonio Vieira.[571] His _Sermões_
(1673, 80, 86) are simpler than those of Vieira, but for the reader
their prose lacks the quiet precision of Ceita, Veiga, or Luz, whose
sermons may be considered one of the sources from which a greater
master of Portuguese, Manuel Bernardes, derived his magic. The Jesuit
LUIS ALVAREZ (1615?-1709?), who was born a few years after Vieira, and
lived on into the eighteenth century, also had a great reputation as
a preacher. The fire is absent from the printed page, but his works,
_Sermões da Quaresma_ (3 pts., 1688, 94, 99), _Amor Sagrado_ (1673),
and _Ceo de graça, inferno custoso_ 1692), are notable for the purity
of their prose.
The religious works of the seventeenth, as of the sixteenth century
are very various in subject and treatment. FREI JOÃO CARDOSO (†1655),
author of _Ruth Peregrina_ (2 pts., 1628, 54), also wrote a lengthy
commentary on the 113th Psalm in twenty-one discourses: _Jornada Dalma
Libertada_ (1626). Ten years earlier a Jew, JOÃO BAPTISTA D’ESTE,
had published in excellent Portuguese a translation of the Psalms:
_Consolaçam Christam e Lvz para o Povo Hebreo_ (1616). His title was
suggested by that of a far more remarkable book by another Jew, SAMUEL
USQUE (fl. 1540), _Consolaçam ás Tribulaçoens de Israel_, written
probably between 1540 and 1550[572] and first printed at Ferrara by
Abraham ben Usque in 1553. The author was the son of Spanish Jews who
had taken refuge in Portugal, where he was born, probably at the end
of the fifteenth century.[573] His famous work is an account of the
sufferings of the Jewish race. In three dialogues Jacob (_Ycabo_),
Nahum (_Numeo_), and Zachariah (_Zicareo_) converse as shepherds.
Israel, in person, relates his sorrows down to the fall of Jerusalem,
an event which is described in detail, and so on to the persecutions in
European countries (_novas gentes_), and at the end of each dialogue
the prophets administer their comfort. The book closes with a chorus
of rapturous psalms in biblical prose, rejoicing at the coming end
of Israel’s tribulations and calling for vengeance on their enemies,
and thus finishes on a note of joyful faith and courageous hope,
without an inkling of charity. The first dialogue, which condenses Old
Testament history, has a rhythmical, luxuriant style, rich in Oriental
imagery, but later, where Roman history is the authority, or in the
tragic account of the persecution of Jews in Portugal[574] under João
II and the two succeeding kings, the style is shorn of rhetoric. Nor
is there a trace of false ornament in a long passage of wonderful
eloquence, Israel’s final complaint and invocation to sky and earth,
waters and mortal creatures. The agony and awful glow of indignation
at these recent events had a restraining influence on the style, which
loses nothing by this simplicity. Quieter descriptions are those of
the shepherd’s life and of the chase in the first, and of spring and
evening in the third part.
The Jesuit DIOGO MONTEIRO (1561-1634), when towards the end of his life
he published his _Arte de Orar_ (1631), promised, should his ‘great
occupations’ allow, to print very soon the second volume dealing
with the divine attributes. This did not appear in that generation:
_Meditações dos attribvtos divinos_ (Roma, 1671). The _Arte de Orar_
contains twenty-nine treatises (604 ff.). Its subjects are various (of
the virtue of magnificence; of the esteem in which singing is held by
God, &c.), and they are presented with fervour and clear concision, and
especially with a complete absence of oratorical effect. Quintilian
takes part in one of the six dialogues which compose the _Peregrinaçam
Christam_ (1620) by TRISTÃO BARBOSA DE CARVALHO (†1632); he is on a
pilgrimage from Lisbon to the tomb of Saint Isabel at Coimbra, but he
expresses himself in excellent Portuguese, modelled perhaps on that of
Arraez. The prose of the _Retrato de Prvdentes, Espelho de Ignorantes_
(1664) by the Jesuit FRANCISCO AIRES (1597-1664) often rises to
eloquence, notably in the fervent prayers. His _Theatro dos Trivmphos
Divinos contra os Desprimores Hvmanos_ (1658) is of a more practical
character. The Franciscan FREI MANUEL DOS ANJOS (1595-1653) laid no
claim to originality in his _Politica predicavel e doutrina moral
do bom governo do mundo_ (1693), written in a clear and correct but
slightly redundant[575] style.
FREI LUIS DOS ANJOS (_c._ 1570-1625) in his _Iardim de Portugal_ (1626)
gathered edifying anecdotes of saintly women from various writers, and
set them down in good Portuguese prose. The Franciscan FREI PEDRO DE
SANTO ANTONIO (_c._ 1570-1641) in his _Iardim Spiritual, tirado dos
Sanctos e Varoens spiritvaes_ (1632) contented himself with translation
of his authorities, adding, he modestly says, ‘some things of my own of
not much importance’. He carefully avoided interlarding his Portuguese
with Latin, his object being _fazer prato a todos_. Even more humble is
the work of the Cistercian FREI FRADIQUE ESPINOLA (_c._ 1630-1708), who
compiled in his _Escola Decurial_ (12 pts., 1696-1721) an encyclopaedia
of themes so various as the fate of King Sebastian, the duties of
women, and the habits of storks. Although it lacks the literary
pretensions of the _Divertimento erudito_ by the Augustinian FREI
JOÃO PACHECO (1677-?1747), it contains some curious matter. A similar
miscellany of anecdotes and precepts was written by João Baptista
de Castro in the eighteenth century: _Hora de Recreio nas ferias de
maiores estudos_ (2 pts., 1742, 3).
The life of the ardent FREI ANTONIO DAS CHAGAS (1631-82) abounded in
contrasts. Born at Vidigueira, of an old Alentejan family, Antonio da
Fonseca Soares began his career as a soldier in 1650; a duel (arising
out of one of his many love affairs), in which he killed his man, drove
him to Brazil, and it was only after several years of distinguished
service[576] that he returned to Portugal, perhaps in 1657. In 1661 he
attained the rank of captain, but in the following year abandoned his
military career, and in 1663 professed in the Franciscan convent at
Evora, exchanging the composition of gongoric verse for a voluminous
correspondence in prose, and his unregenerate days of dissipation
for a glowing and saintly asceticism. (_Trocando as galas em burel e
os caprichos em cilicios_ are the words with which he veils the real
sincerity of his conversion.) Preferring the humbler but strenuous
duties of missionary in Portugal and Spain to the bishopric of Lamego,
he founded the missionary convent of Varatojo, and died there twenty
years after his novitiate. During those years he built up and exercised
a powerful spiritual influence throughout Portugal, and it continued
after his death. Few of his poems survive, since he committed the
greater part of his profane verse to the flames, but some of his
_romances_ may still be read. It is, however, as a prose-writer,
especially in his _Cartas Espirituaes_ (2 pts., 1684, 7), that he holds
a foremost place in Portuguese literature. There is less affectation
in these more familiar letters than in his _Sermões genuinos_ (1690)
or his _Obras Espirituaes_ (1684). The very titles of some of his
shorter treatises, _Vozes do Ceo e Tremores da Terra, Espelho do
Espelho_, show that he had not even now altogether escaped the false
taste of the time, and artificial flowers of speech, plays on words,
laboured metaphors and antitheses appear in his prose. But if it has
not the simple severity of a Bernardes, it possesses so persuasive, so
passionate an energy, and is of so clear a fervour and harmony that its
eloquence is felt to be genuine.
The Jesuit FREI JOÃO DA FONSECA (1632-1701), in the preface to one
of his works, _Sylva Moral e Historica_ (1696), which may have given
Bernardes the idea of his _Nova Floresta_, rejects affected periods
and new phrases, and there is no false rhetoric in his _Espelho de
Penitentes_ (1687), _Satisfaçam de Aggravos_ (1700), which takes the
form of dialogues between a hermit and a soldier, and other devotional
works. Another Jesuit, ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO (1629-1724), although born
at Lisbon, spent most (eighty-five years) of his long life in Brazil.
He wrote, among other works, _Rosa de Nazareth nas Montanhas de Hebron_
(1715), compiled from various histories of the Company of Jesus, and
_Historia do Predestinado Peregrino e seu Irmão Precito_ (1682). The
latter is an allegory in six books which lacks the human interest of
Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, which it preceded. It describes the
journey of two brothers, _Predestinado_ and _Precito_, out of Egypt to
Jerusalem (Heaven) and Babylon (Hell). The style is simpler and more
direct than might be inferred from the inflated title, and often has an
effective if studied eloquence.[577]
Vieira dying is reported to have said that the Portuguese language was
safe in the keeping of Padre Manuel Bernardes. The aged Jesuit, who
maintained his interest in literature to the end, may have received
Bernardes’ _Luz e Calor_[578] (1696) in the last year of his life,
and the _Exercicios Espirituaes_ (2 vols., 1686) had appeared ten
years earlier. Other works, _Sermões e Praticas_ (1711),[579] _Nova
Floresta_ (5 vols., 1706-28), _Os Ultimos Fins do Homem_ (1727),
_Varios Tratados_ (2 vols., 1737), were soon forthcoming to justify
the prophecy. MANUEL BERNARDES (1644-1710), the son of João Antunes
and Maria Bernardes, was born at Lisbon, studied law and philosophy
at Coimbra University, and at the age of thirty entered the Lisbon
Oratory, where he spent thirty-six years. That was all his life,
yet through his books this modest, humorous, austere priest has
exercised a profound influence not only, as Barbosa Machado declares,
in guiding souls to Heaven, but in moulding and protecting the
Portuguese language. His style is marked in an equal degree by grace
and concision, intensity and restraint, smoothness and vigour.[580]
With him the florid cloak, in which many recent writers had wrapped
Portuguese, falls away, leaving the pith and kernel of the language;
the conceits of the _culteranos_ disappear, and the most striking
effects are attained without apparent artifice. In his hands the
pinchbeck and tinsel are transmuted into delicate pieces of ivory. The
charm of his style is difficult to analyse, but it may be remarked that
his vocabulary is inexhaustible, his precision unfailing, that he is
not afraid to employ the commonest words, and that the construction of
his sentences is of a transparent simplicity, as bare of rhetoric as
is the poetry of João de Deus. His reputation as a lord of language
has survived every test. His works are not merely the _deliciae_ of a
few distant scholars but an acknowledged glory of the nation, praised
by that literary iconoclast Macedo, and quoted as an authority in
the Republican Parliament of 1915. The most popular of his works are
_Luz e Calor_, and especially the _Nova Floresta_, in which moral and
familiar anecdote go quaintly hand in hand, but if one must choose
between excellence and excellence his masterpiece is the _Exercicios
Espirituaes_, in which thought and expression often rise to sublime
heights. One may perhaps compare him with Fray Juan de los Ángeles
(†1609). His simple doctrines spring from the heart and, winged by
shrewd knowledge of men, touch the heart of his readers. One of his
more immediate followers was Padre MANUEL CONSCIENCIA (_c._ 1669-1739),
author of a large number of works on moral and religious subjects, the
best known of which is _A Mocidade enganada e desenganada_ (6 vols.,
1729-38).
FOOTNOTES:
[553] _Dial._ x. 4.
[554] The dates given by Barbosa Machado are Rector 1565, Provincial
1571.
[555] He introduces himself as a theologian in his dialogues, and one
may infer several facts concerning his life, e. g. that he had been
in Rome (_Imagem_, Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 351 v.), Montserrat (f. 88),
Marseilles (f. 88), Savoy (f. 295), Madrid (f. 190), that he kept a
diary (f. 190), that he was _curioso de antigualhas_ (f. 352).
[556] Macedo, quoted by Innocencio da Silva (iii. 176), alleged this
to be a ‘faithful translation’ from Petrarca. Why Petrarca (1304-74)
should praise Belem Convent and Coimbra University, refer to the recent
death (1557) of King João III, or speak of ‘our’ Francisco de Hollanda
we are not told. Pinto in a later dialogue, _Da Tranquillidade da
Vida_, refers to Petrarca’s _Vita Solitaria_ (Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 47
v.).
[557] Since 1590 is implied as the date of this dialogue on f. 290
of the 1593 edition it must be emphasized that the _Segunda Parte_
appeared originally in 1572.
[558] Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 366 v.: _eu revolvo os livros ... com grandes
trabalhos & vigilias_.
[559] Cf. _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 346: _Coimbra, onde gastei a flor de
minha adolescencia._ (This edition really has but 344 ff. since f. 29
follows f. 22.)
[560] _Dialogos de Dom Frey Amador Arraiz_, Coimbra, 1604. The idea of
the work belonged to his brother, Jeronimo Arraez, who did not live to
complete what he had begun.
[561] The same variety occurs in _Poderes de Amor em geral e horas
de conversaçam particular_ (1657), by Frei Cristovam Godinho (_c._
1600-71) of Evora.
[562] He wrote the life of the prior, Frei Luis de Montoia, whose _Vida
de Christo_ he completed.
[563] _Tendo elle sua mãi e irmãos muito ricos e a Condessa de Linhares
sua irmãa, todos offerecidos a pagar o grosso resgate que os Mouros
pediam, por saberem a qualidade de sua pessoa_ (_Cronica do Cardeal Rei
D. Henrique_, p. 38).
[564] See his prefatory letter in the _Trabalhos_. Cf. Antonio, _Bib.
Nova_, ii. 307. Barbosa Machado speaks of _hũa horrivel masmorra_.
[565] Cf. p. 39 (1666 ed.): _Ó, ó, ó amor; ó, ó, ó amor, cale a lingua
e o entendimento, dilatai-vos vos por toda esta alma_, &c.; or p.
54: _Ah, ah, ah bondade; ah, ah amor sem lei, sem regra, sem medida,
adoro-te, louvo-te, desejo-te, por ti suspiro._
[566] He also wrote _Oratorio sacra de soliloquios do amor divino_
(1628) and various works in Latin. Manuel Godinho refers to his
_Estimulo das Missões_ (_Relação_, 1842 ed., p. 47).
[567] C. Castello Branco, _Estrellas propicias_, 2ᵃ ed., p. 204.
Its only fault, artistically, is the detailed description of the
commemoration festivities, which come as an anticlimax.
[568] Other works of the period are similarly read rather for their
style than as history, as the _Historia Ecclesiastica da Igreja de
Lisboa_ (1642) and the _Historia Ecclesiastica dos Arcebispos de Braga_
(2 pts., 1634, 1635) by D. RODRIGO DA CUNHA (1577-1643), the Archbishop
of Lisbon who had an active share in the liberation of Portugal from
the yoke of Spain in 1640.
[569] Another renowned Court preacher was D. ANTONIO PINHEIRO (†1582?),
Bishop of Miranda, whose works were collected by Sousa Farinha:
_Collecção das obras portuguesas do sabio Bispo de Miranda e de
Leiria_, 2 vols., 1785, 6.
[570] e. g. _officio e dignidade, gritos e brados, boca e lingoa,
cuidão e imaginão_. Macedo (_O Couto_, p. 82) rightly calls Ceita _um
dos principaes textos em lingua portugueza_.
[571] Other noted preachers were the Jesuits FRANCISCO DO AMARAL
(1593-1647), who published the first (and only) volume of his _Sermões_
(1641) in the year in which Vieira came to Portugal, and FRANCISCO
DE MENDONÇA (1573-1626), a master of clear and vigorous prose in his
two volumes of _Sermões_ (1636, 9); and the Trinitarian BALTASAR PAEZ
(1570-1638), whose _Sermões de Quaresma_ (2 pts., 1631, 3), _Sermões
da Semana Santa_ (1630), _Marial de Sermões_ (1649), may still be read
with profit.
[572] _Ha poucos annos que he arribado_ (the Inquisition in Portugal),
Pt. 3, 1908 ed., f. xxxii.
[573] See p. 5 of _Prologo_: Portuguese is _a lingoa que mamei_, but
his _passados_ are from Castile.
[574] The inhabitants of the Peninsula are _astutos e maliciosos_,
Spain is ‘a hypocritical and cruel wolf’, the Portuguese are _fortes e
quasi barbaros_, the English _maliciosos_, the Italians, since the book
was to appear in their country, merely ‘warlike and ungrateful’.
[575] If, for instance, the bracketed words in the following
sentence (p. 3, § 5) be omitted it gains in vigour and loses little
in the sense: _Este poder se não deo aos Reys para extorsoens_ [_&
violencias_] _mas para amparar_ [_& defender_] _os vassallos porque até
o propria Deos parece que tem as mãos atadas a rigores_ [_& castigos_]
_& livres a clemencias_ [_& misericordias_].
[576] He had been fortunate, for, says Antonio Vieira in 1640, _não ha
guerra no mundo onde se morra tão frequentemente como na do Brazil_.
[577] e. g. in the following passage (p. 47), in which Calderon and
João de Deus join hands: ‘The world and its glory is a passing comedy,
a farce that ends in laughter, a shadow that disappears, a thinning
mist, a fading flower, a blinding smoke, a dream that is not true.’
[578] _Estimulos de amor divino_ (1758) is an extract from this, as the
_Tratado breve da oraçam mental_ (5th ed., 1757) is extracted from the
_Exercicios Espirituaes_.
[579] Pt. 2 appeared in 1733.
[580] He often deliberately links a soft and a hard word, as _caça e
cão_, _candores da celestial graça_, _licita a guerra_. Thus his style
becomes _crespo sem aspereza_.
IV
1580-1706
_The Seiscentistas_
Philip II entered his new capital under triumphal arches on June 29,
1581, and the subjection of Portugal to Spain during the next sixty
years in part accounts for the fact that nowhere was the decadence of
literature in the seventeenth century more marked than at Lisbon. For
Spain in her sturdy independence and reaction from rigid classicism
had led the way in those precious affectations which invaded the
literatures of Europe, and the universal malady, gongorism with its
Lylyan conceits and cultured style, now found a ready welcome in
Portugal. The literary style which corresponded to the Churriguerresque
in architecture naturally proved congenial to the land of the _estilo
manuelino_. King Philip was glad to conciliate and provide for
Portuguese men of letters,[581] but if in the preceding centuries
many of them wrote in Spanish, that tendency was now necessarily
strengthened. Another cause of decadence was no doubt the Inquisition,
although its influence in this respect has been greatly exaggerated. It
required no immense tact on the part of an author to prevent his works
from being placed on the Index. An examination, for instance, of the
differences between the 1616 edition of _Eufrosina_ and the condemned
1561 edition shows that the parts excised were chiefly coarse passages
or unsuitable references to the Bible (this was also the charge against
the letters of Clenardus). That remarkable mathematician, Pedro Nunez,
pays a tribute to the enlightened patronage of letters by Cardinal
Henrique, the most ardent promoter of the Inquisition in Portugal:
_qui cum nullum_ _tempus intermittat quin semper aut animarum saluti
prospiciat aut optimos quosque auctores evolvat aut literatorum hominum
colloquia audiat_.[582]
No literary figure in Portugal of the seventeenth century, few in the
Peninsula,[583] can rank with D. FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELLO (1608-66).
Born at Lisbon,[584] he belonged to the highest Portuguese nobility
and began both his military and literary career in his seventeenth
year. He wrote in Spanish, although, in verse at least, he felt it to
be a hindrance,[585] and it was not till he was over forty that he
published a work in Portuguese: _Carta de Guia de Casados_ (1651).[586]
Few men have accomplished more, and towards the end of his life he
could say with pride that it would be difficult to find an idle hour
in it. He was shipwrecked near St. Jean de Luz in 1627 and fought
in the battle of the Downs in 1639. He was sent with the Conde de
Linhares to quell the Evora insurrection in 1637, and took part in
the campaign against revolted Catalonia (1640), which he described in
his _Guerra de Cataluña_[587] (1645), written _em varias fortunas_
and recognized as a classic of Spanish literature. A man frankly
outspoken like Mello must have made many enemies, enemies dangerous
in a time of natural distrust. During the Catalan campaign he was
sent under arrest to Madrid, apparently on suspicion of favouring the
cause of an independent Portugal,[588] and a little later, when he
was in the service of the King of Portugal, the suspicion as to his
loyalty recurred. On November 19, 1644, he was arrested at Lisbon on a
different charge. It appears that a servant dismissed by Mello revenged
himself by implicating his former master in a murder that he had
committed (of a man as obscure as himself). Whether he did this of his
own initiative or at the bidding of Mello’s enemies is uncertain, but
they saw to it that Mello once in prison should not be soon released.
They might, probably did, assure the king that this was the best place
for one ‘devoted to the cause of Castile’. There are other theories to
account for Mello’s long imprisonment, the most romantic of which--that
he and the king were rivals in the affections of the Condessa de Villa
Nova, and, meeting disguised and by accident at the entrance of her
house, drew their swords, the king recognizing Mello by his voice--is
now generally abandoned. Although no evidence of Mello’s participation
in the murder was forthcoming, he was condemned to be deported for
life to Africa, for which Brazil was later substituted. It was only
in 1655, after eleven years of more or less[589] strict confinement,
that he sailed for Brazil. João IV died in 1656 and two years later
Mello returned to Portugal: he was formally pardoned[590] and spent
the last years of his life in important diplomatic missions to London,
Rome, and Paris. The unfaltering courage and gaiety with which he faced
his adventures and misfortunes win our admiration, but his life can
strike no one as literary. Yet it is probable that but for his long
imprisonment he would never have found leisure to write many of his
best works, and prosperity might have dimmed his insight and dulled
his style--that style (influenced no doubt by Quevedo and Gracián)
which is hard and clear as the glitter of steel or the silver chiming
of a clock, with _concinnitas quaedam venusta et felix verborum_.[591]
Even when full of points and conceits it retains its clearness and
trenchancy, and in his more familiar works he is unrivalled, as the
_Carta de Guia de Casados_, in which, _innuptus ipse_, he brings
freshness and originality to the theme already treated in Fray Luis de
Leon’s _La Perfecta Casada_ (1583), Diogo Paiva de Andrade’s sensible
but less caustic _Casamento Perfeito_ (1631), and Dr. João de Barros’
_Espelho de Casados_ (1540),[592] or the pithy and delightful _Cartas
Familiares_, of which five centuries--a mere fragment--were published
at Rome in 1664, with a rapier-thrust of his wit and a maxim of good
sense on every page, preserving for us some vestige of what Frei Manuel
Godinho described as his ‘admirable conversation’ when he met him at
Marseilles in 1633.[593] The _Epanaphoras de varia Historia Portugueza_
(1660) are unequal and often excessively detailed.[594] Three of the
five are, however, the accounts of an eyewitness and as such are full
of interest: the _Alteraçoens de Evora_ (i), the _Naufragio da Armada
Portuguesa em França_ (ii), and the _Conflito do Canal de Inglaterra_
(iv).[595]
Mello’s knowledge of men was as wide as his knowledge of books, and
both appear to great advantage in his _Apologos Dialogaes_ (1721). An
individualist in religion[596] and politics,[597] an acute thinker and
a keen student of men and manners, he found no dullness in life even at
its worst and no solitude, for, if alone, his fancy instilled wit and
wisdom into clocks[598] and coins[599] and fountains.[600] The first
three _Apologos_ contain incisive portraits in which types and persons
are sharply etched in a few lines: the poor _escudeiro_, the _beata_,
the Lisbon market-woman, the litigious _ratinho_, the _fidalgo_ from
the provinces,[601] the ambitious priest, the shabby grammarian,, the
worldly monk, political place-hunter, _miles gloriosus_, or melancholy
author, a tinselled nobody boiling down the good sayings of past
writers. The fourth _Apologo_ entitled _Hospital das Lettras_ (1657)
is devoted more especially to literary criticism; Mello with Quevedo,
Justus Lipsius, and Traiano Boccalini (who died when Mello was five)
makes a notable scrutiny of Spanish and Portuguese literature. As a
literary critic Mello is excellent within limits. Himself an artificial
writer, although as it were naturally artificial, bred at Court, versed
in social and political affairs, he considered that the proper study of
mankind was man, and, like Henry Fielding a century later, admired ‘the
wondrous power of art in improving Nature’.[602] For him the country
and Nature, the bucolic poetry and prose of Fernam Alvarez do Oriente,
the ingenuous narratives of the early chroniclers, had no charm; he
preferred Rodrigo Mendez Silva’s _Vida y hechos del gran Condestable_
(Madrid, 1640) to the _Cronica do Condestabre_.[603] But all that was
vernacular and indigenous attracted him, as is proved in his letters,
in his lively farce _Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz_ (1676), and in the
_Feira dos Anexins_, which is a long string of popular maxims and of
those plays upon words in which Mello delighted. His poetry--_Las Tres
Musas del Melodino_ (1649), _Obras Metricas_ (1665)--is marred by the
conceits which in his prose often serve effectively to point a moral
or drive home an argument. It is far too clever. When in a poem ‘On
the death of a great lady’ we find the line _contigo o sepultara a
sepultura_ we do not know whether to laugh or weep, but we suspect the
sincerity of the author’s grief, and although he wrote some excellent
_quintilhas_, most of his poems, which are, as might be expected,
always vigorous, are too sharp and thin, stalks without flowers, the
very skeletons of poetry. It is to his prose in its wit and grace, its
shrewd thought, its revelation of a sincere and lofty but unassuming
character, its directness,[604] its _bom portugues velho e relho_, that
he owes his place among the greatest writers of the Peninsula.
The taste in poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
seen in two collections, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese: _Fenix
Renascida_ (5 vols., 1716-28) and _Eccos que o Clarim da Fama dá_
(2 vols., 1761, 2). The latter is sufficiently characterized by
its title, too long to quote in full. As to the former the Phoenix
seems to have given real pleasure to contemporary readers, but for
us the bird and song are flown and only the ashes remain, from which
a sixteenth-century poem such as the sonnet _Horas breves_ stands
out conspicuously. The subjects are often as trivial as those of the
_Cancioneiro_ published two centuries earlier and more domestic: to
a cousin sewing, to an overdressed man, to a large mouth, a sonnet
to two market-women fighting, another to the prancing horse of the
Conde de Sabugal, on a present of roses, two long _romances_ on a
goldfinch killed by a cat, verses sent with a gift of handkerchiefs or
eggs or melons, or to thank for sugar-plums--the _Fenix_ rarely soars
above such themes. The magistrate ANTONIO BARBOSA BACELLAR (1610-63)
figures largely, with glosses on poems by Camões, a _romance_ _A umas
saudades_, a satirical poem _A umas beatas_. His _romances varios_ are
mostly in Spanish, but a few of his sonnets in Portuguese have some
merit. The fifth volume opens (pp. 1-37) with a far more elaborate
satire by DIOGO CAMACHO (or Diogo de Sousa): _Jornada que Diogo Camacho
fez ás Cortes do Parnaso_, the best burlesque poem of the century,
in which the author did not spare contemporary Lisbon poets.[605]
The poems of JERONIMO BAHIA likewise cover many pages. He it is who
bewails at length the sad fate of a goldfinch. In _oitavas_ he wrote a
_Fabula de Polyfemo a Galatea_,[606] and in octosyllabic _redondilhas_
jocular accounts of journeys from Lisbon to Coimbra and from Lisbon
into Alentejo (on a very lean mule) which are sometimes amusing. His
sonnet _Fallando com Deos_ shows a deeper nature, and the collection
contains other religious verse, notably that of Violante Montesino,
better known as SOROR VIOLANTE DO CEO (1601-93). Here,[607] as in her
_Rythmas varias_ (Rouen, 1646) and _Parnaso Lusitano de divinos e
humanos versos_ (2 vols., 1733), this nun, who spent over sixty years
in the Dominican Convento da Rosa at Lisbon, and who from an early
age was known for her skill upon the harp and in poetry--admiring
contemporaries called her the tenth Muse--showed that she could write
with simple fervour, as in the Portuguese _deprecações devotas_ of the
_Meditações da Missa_ (1689) or her Spanish _villancicos_. But she
could also be the most gongorical of writers, her very real native
talent being too often spoilt by the taste of the time.[608] BERNARDA
FERREIRA DE LACERDA (1595-1644), another _femina incomparabilis_, like
Soror Violante and Dercylis considered the tenth Muse and fourth Grace,
wrote almost exclusively in Spanish, nor can her _Soledades de Buçaco_
(1634) or her epic _Hespaña Libertada_ (2 pts., 1618, 73) be considered
a heavy loss to Portuguese literature. SOROR MARIA MAGDALENA EUPHEMIA
DA GLORIA (1672-? _c._ 1760), in the world Leonarda Gil da Gama, in
_Brados do Desengano_ (1739), _Orbe Celeste_ (1742), and _Reino de
Babylonia_ (1749), rarely descends from the high-flown style indicated
in these titles. On the other hand, the Franciscan nun of Lisbon, SOROR
MARIA DO CEO (1658-1753), or Maria de Eça, in _A Preciosa_ (2 pts.,
1731, 3) and _Enganos do Bosque, Desenganos do Rio_ (1741), among much
verse of the same kind has some poems of real charm and an almost
rustic simplicity.
By reason of a certain intensity and a vigorous style D. FRANCISCO
CHILD ROLIM DE MOURA (1572-1640), Lord of the towns of Azambuja and
Montargil, although more versed in arms than in letters, wrote in _Os
Novissimos do Homem_ (1623) a poem quite as readable as the longer
epics of his contemporaries, despite its duller subject (man’s first
disobedience and all our woe). The four cantos in _oitavas_ are headed
Death, Judgement, Hell, Paradise.[609] Of the life of MANUEL DA VEIGA
TAGARRO we know little or nothing, but his volume of eclogues and
odes, _Lavra de Anfriso_ (1627), stands conspicuous in the seventeenth
century for its simplicity and true lyrical vein. There is nothing
original in these four eclogues, but the verse is of a harmonious
softness. In the odes he succeeds in combining fervent thought with a
classical restraint of expression. He aimed high; Horace, Lope de Vega,
and Luis de Leon seem to have been his models. Some measure of the
latter’s deliberate tranquillity he occasionally attained. The works of
the ‘discreet and accomplished’, keen-eyed and graceful D. FRANCISCO
DE PORTUGAL (1585-1632) appeared posthumously[610]: _Divinos e humanos
versos_ (1652) and (without separate title-page) _Prisões e solturas de
hũa alma_, consisting of mystic poems mostly in Spanish in a setting
of Portuguese prose, and, in Spanish, _Arte de Galanteria_ (1670), of
which a second edition was published in 1682. Lope de Vega praised the
‘elegant verses’ of the _Gigantomachia_ (1628) written by MANUEL DE
GALHEGOS (1597-1665). That he could write good Portuguese poetry the
author showed in the 732 verses of his _Templo da Memoria_ (1635),
in the preface of which he declares that it had become a rash act to
publish poems written in Portuguese but quotes the example of Pereira
de Castro and of Góngora as having used the language of everyday life
and plebeian words without indignity.
The later epics testified to the perseverance of their authors rather
than to their poetical talent. They are perhaps less guilty than the
critics, who should have discouraged the kind and recognized that
the _Lusiads_ were only an accident in Portuguese literature, the
accident of the genius of Camões. As a rule the epic spirit of the
Portuguese expressed itself better in prose. GABRIEL PEREIRA DE CASTRO
(1571?-1632) forestalled Sousa de Macedo in his choice of a subject.
His _Vlyssea, ov Lysboa Edificada, Poema heroyco_ (1636) was published
posthumously by his brother Luis, and perhaps the most remarkable
thing about it is that it should have run through six editions. The
structure of the poem, in ten cantos of _oitavas_, is closely modelled
on that of the _Lusiads_, and the gods of Olympus duly take a part
in the story. He sings, he says boldly, to his country, to the world
and to eternity, but his sails flap sadly for lack of inspiration and
enthusiasm, and his daring _enjambements_[611] do not compensate for
the dullness of theme and treatment. If, for instance, we compare his
storm[612] with that of the _Lusiads_ (vi. 70-91) it must be confessed
that the former has much the air of a commotion in a duckpond. Ulysses
on his way to Lisbon visits (canto 4) the infernal regions, is
astonished to meet kings there, and (canto 6) relates the siege and
fall of Troy.
The life of BRAS GARCIA DE MASCARENHAS (1596-1656) was more interesting
than his verses. He was born at Avó, near the Serra da Estrella,
and his adventures began early, for he was arrested on account of
a love affair (1616) and made a daring escape from Coimbra prison
after wounding his jailer. His careful biographer, Dr. Antonio de
Vasconcellos, has shown that there is no record of his having studied
at Coimbra University. Subsequently he travelled and fought in Brazil
(1623-32), Italy, France, Flanders, and Spain, and in 1641, as captain,
raised and commanded a body of horse known as the Company of Lions. As
Governor of Alfaiates, the ‘key of Beira’, he was wrongfully accused
of having a treasonable understanding with Spain and imprisoned at
Sabugal, some ten miles from Alfaiates (1642). He obtained a book (the
_Flos Sanctorum_), flour, and scissors and cut out a letter in verse
to King João IV, who restored him to his governorship and gave him the
habit of Avis. His long epic _Viriato Tragico_ (1699) contains some
forcible descriptions and has a pleasantly patriotic and indigenous
atmosphere--one feels that he is singing _os patrios montes_ as much
as the hero--but in style it differs little from prose. Tedious
geographical descriptions, dry catalogues of names, a whole stanza
(vii. 39) composed exclusively of nouns, another (iv. 63) of proper
names, incline the reader less to praise than sleep, from which he is
only gently stirred when the sun is called _a solar embaixadora_. In
the prevailing fashion of the time the author works in lines of Camões,
Sá de Miranda, Garci Lasso, Ariosto, and other poets. While the work
was still in manuscript another poet, and perhaps a relation, Andre da
Silva Mascarenhas, helped himself liberally to its stanzas (they number
2,287) for his epic _A Destruição de Hespanha_ (1671). He could have
given no better proof of the poverty of his genius. FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE
MENESES (_c._ 1600-1664?), although less true a poet than his cousin
and namesake the Conde de Mattosinhos, won a far wider fame by his
epic poem _Malaca Conqvistada_ (1634), in which he recounts _a heroica
historia dos feitos de Albuquerque_. The reader who accompanies his
frail bark[613] through twelve cantos of _oitavas_ feels that he has
well earned the fall of Malacca at the end. For although the author is
not incapable of vigorous and succinct description he too often decks
out the pure gold of Camões’ style[614] with periphrases and Manueline
ornaments which delay the action. The sun is ‘the lover of Clytie’ or
‘the rubicund son of Latona’. He stops to tell us that a diamond won
by Albuquerque had been ‘cut by skilled hand in Milan’, and some of
his more elaborate similes are not without charm. Canto 7 tells of the
future deeds of the Portuguese in India. The gods interfere less than
in the _Lusiads_ (Asmodeus plays a part in canto 6), but the general
effect is that of a great theme badly handled. After the death of his
wife, the author spent the last twenty years of his life (from 1641) in
the Dominican convent of Bemfica as Frei Francisco de Jesus.
ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO (1606-82), _moço fidalgo_ of Philip IV
and later Secretary of Embassy and Minister (_Residente_) in London
(1642-6) and Secretary of State to the weak and unlettered Afonso
VI, wrote at the age of twenty-two _Flores de España, Excelencias
de Portugal_ (1631). This historical work of considerable interest
and importance was written in Spanish por ser mais universal, but he
returned to Portuguese presently in a curious prose miscellany, _Eva
e Ave_ (1676), and in the epic poem _Vlyssippo_ (1640) in fourteen
cantos of _oitavas_. He seems to have felt that interest could not
easily be sustained by the subject, the foundation of Lisbon by
Ulysses. Accordingly, following the example of Camões, he inset
various episodes. Canto 6 summarizes the events of the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_, canto 10 describes a tapestry adorned with future
Portuguese victories, in canto 11 the Delphic Sibyl foretells the deeds
of Portugal’s kings, down to Sebastian, in canto 12 the wise Chiron
prophesies of her _famosos varões_. The style is correct, but the poem
as a whole is commonplace. VASCO MOUSINHO DE QUEVEDO, of Setubal,
although no records of his life remain, won high fame by his epic poem
in _oitavas_ (twelve cantos) _Afonso Africano_ (1611), in which ‘the
marvellous prowess of King Afonso V in Africa’ is described. The poem,
admired by Almeida Garrett, is particularly wearisome because it is
largely allegorical. The king conquering Arzila represents the strong
man subduing the city of his own soul, the Moors are the spirits of the
damned, and seven of their knights representing the seven deadly sins
are defeated by seven Christian knights who stand for the virtues.
The poverty of profane prose, compared with its flourishing condition
in the preceding century, is also remarkable. A few historians of
the seventeenth century have already been mentioned. The literary
academies, of which the most famous were the _Academia dos Generosos_
(1649-68) and the _Academia dos Singulares_ (1663-5),[615] existed
rather for the interchange of wit and complimentary or satiric verses
than for the encouragement of historical and scientific research. The
Conde da Ericeira’s _Portugal Restaurado_ and Freire de Andrade’s Life
bear no comparison with works of the _Quinhentistas_. Yet it was the
second golden age of Portuguese prose, as the names of Manuel Bernardes
and Vieira prove. The latter’s letters, with those of Frei Antonio
das Chagas and Mello, are in three different kinds--the political,
religious, and familiar--the most notable written in the century.
GASPAR PIRES DE REBELLO in the preface to his _Infortvnios tragicos
da Constante Florinda_ (1625) excuses himself for its publication
on the ground that ‘not spiritual and divine books only benefit
our intelligence’. The book, which records the love of Arnaldo and
Florinda, of Zaragoza, shows the modern novel growing through _Don
Quixote_ out of the _Celestina_ plays and the romances of chivalry,
but has little other interest. A second part was published in 1633,
and _Novellas Exemplares_, six stories by the same author, in 1650.
Numerous other works appeared with more or less alluring or sensational
titles but contents disappointingly dull. MATTHEUS DE RIBEIRO (_c._
1620-95), in his _Alivio de Tristes e Consolação de Queixosos_ (1672,
4), shows greater skill than Pires de Rebello in the invention of
the story, but it is marred by the diffuse and pedantic style--April
becomes an ‘academy in which Flora was opening the doors for the study
of flowers’. The pastoral novel ended in sad contortions with the
_Desmayos de Mayo em sombras de Mondego_ (1635) by DIOGO FERREIRA DE
FIGUEIROA (1604-74). Its title and the three involved sentences which
cover the first three pages (ff. 10, 11) convey an adequate idea of its
character and contents.
Of several prose works written by MARTIM AFONSO DE MIRANDA, of Lisbon,
in the first third of the century, the most important is _Tempo de
Agora_ (2 pts., 1622, 4). It contains seven dialogues dealing with
truth and falsehood, the evils of idleness, temperance, friendship,
justice, the evils of dice and cards, and precepts for princes. Much of
their matter is interesting and the comments incisive, especially as
to the prevailing luxury in food and dress. They tell of the infinite
number of curiously bound books at Lisbon, of the soldiers unpaid,
‘eating at the doors of convents’, of the delight in foreign fashions,
and the craze for ‘diabolical’ books from Italy to the exclusion of
_livros de historias_ and books in Portuguese. The anonymous _Primor
e honra da vida soldadesca no Estado da India_ (1630), edited by the
Augustinian FREI ANTONIO FREIRE (_c._ 1570-1634), is a different
work from Geronimo Ximenez de Urrea’s _Diálogo de la verdadera honra
militar_ (1566), which it resembles slightly in title. It is divided
into four parts and contains various episodes of the Portuguese in the
East and some curious information. MIGUEL LEITÃO DE ANDRADE (1555-1632)
went straight from Coimbra University to Africa with King Sebastian.
After the battle of Alcacer Kebir he succeeded in escaping from
captivity, followed the cause of the Prior of Crato, and was imprisoned
under Philip II. In his book, in twenty dialogues, _Miscellanea do
Sitio de N. Sᵃ da Lvz do Pedrogão Grande_ (1629), he disclaims any
purpose of writing history. It reveals an inquiring and observant but
uncritical mind, interested in fossils, inscriptions, astrology, the
early history of Portugal, etymology, heraldry, and the ‘infinite
wonderful secrets of Nature daily being revealed’. It contains a
graphic account of his escape from Fez, but on the whole, in spite
of attractive passages and interesting details, scarcely merits its
great reputation. _Do Sitio de Lisboa_ (1608), which Mello praises as
_aquelle elegantissimo livro_, by the author of _Arte Militar_ (1612),
LUIS MENDES DE VASCONCELLOS, is written in the form of a dialogue
between a philosopher, a soldier, and a politician, and deserves its
place among the minor classics of Portuguese literature.
The famous love letters of the Portuguese nun MARIANNA ALCOFORADO
(1640-1723), which bring a breath of life and nature into the stilted
writing of that day, only belong to Portuguese literature in the
sense that Osorio’s history belongs to it--by translation. They
first appeared in indifferent French (_Lettres Portvgaises_, Paris,
1669) and were not retranslated, or, if we accept the theory that
the nun originally wrote them in French[616]--French _suranné et
dénué d’élégance_--translated into Portuguese for a century and a
half: _Cartas de uma Religiosa Portugueza_ (1819).[617] Meanwhile,
even before their obscure author died in the remote and beautiful
city of Beja, they had been translated into English and Italian and
had received over fifty French editions. Colonel (later Marshal)
Noël Bouton, Comte de Saint-Léger, afterwards Marquis de Chamilly
(1636-1715), accompanied the French troops sent to help Portugal
against Spain, and was in Portugal from 1665 to 1667. Marianna
Alcoforado, belonging to an old Alentejan family, was a nun in the
convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceição at Beja. Her five letters,
written between the end of 1667 and the middle of 1668 after her
desertion, in their artlessness, contradictions, and disorder, vibrate
with emotion. They are a succession of intense cries like the popular
quatrain:
Por te amar deixei a Deus:
Ve lá que gloria perdi!
E agora vejo-me só,
Sem Deus, sem gloria, sem ti.
Sometimes, it is true, a trace of French reason seems to mingle with
the ingenuous Portuguese sentiment, and it is almost incredible,
although of course not impossible, since _omnia vincit amor_, that the
nun should have written certain passages. From these and not on the
amazing assumption of Rousseau that a mere woman could not write so
passionately--he was ready to wager that the letters were the work of a
man[618]--one may suspect that the lover, who did not scruple to hand
over the letters to a publisher (unless he was merely guilty of showing
them to his friends), sank a little lower and edited them, adding a
phrase here and there more peculiarly pleasing to his vanity.[619] In
that case the nun actually wrote these letters, full of passion and
despair, and perhaps in French, to her French lover; but we only read
them as they were touched up for publication by another hand.
A work which has nothing in common with these fervent love letters
except an enigmatic origin is the _Arte de Furtar_, which in part at
least probably belongs to the seventeenth century. It is a curious
and amusing treatise on the noble art of thieving in all kinds,
private and official, civil and military. Its anecdotes are racy if
not original. Two of the happiest incidents (in caps. 6 and 41) are
copied without acknowledgement from _Lazarillo de Tormes_.[620] The
author seems to have had misgivings that he had presented his subject
in too favourable a light, for he ends by assuring his reader thieves
that many tons of worldly glory are not worth an ounce of eternal
blessedness, and promises them before long another ‘more liberal
treatise on the art of acquiring true glory’. These tardy qualms did
not save his book from the Index. The first edition, purporting to
be printed at Amsterdam, bears the date 1652[621] and attributes the
work to Antonio Vieira. That attribution may be set aside. Were there
no other reasons for its rejection it would suffice to read the book
or even its title in order to be convinced that it is not from the
_veneravel penna_ of that great statesman and preacher. He might dabble
in Bandarra prophecies, but would scarcely have sunk to the picaresque
familiarities of the _Arte de Furtar_ or occupy himself with the sad
habits of innkeepers, the long stitches of tailors, or the price of
straw. It has also been attributed, without adequate ground, to Thomé
Pinheiro da Veiga (1570?-1656), the author of a lively account of the
festivities at the Spanish Court and description of Valladolid in
1605, entitled _Fastigimia_ (it mentions Don Quixote and Sancho (p.
119) but says nothing of Cervantes), and to João Pinto Ribeiro (_c._
1590-1649), the magistrate who played a notable part in the Restoration
of 1640 and wrote various short treatises such as _Preferencia das
Letras ás Armas_ (1645); and even less plausibly to DUARTE RIBEIRO
DE MACEDO (1618?-80), statesman and diplomatist, an indifferent poet
but an excellent writer of prose and a careful although not original
historian. His halting verses and his treatises were collected in his
_Obras_ (2 vols., 1743). Of the latter the _Summa Politica_ has been
shown by Snr. Solidonio Leite[622] to be copied almost word for word
from the work of identical title by D. SEBASTIÃO CESAR DE MENESES
(†1672), Bishop of Oporto and Archbishop of Braga. Both author and book
were too well known for Ribeiro de Macedo to claim it as his own. He
seems merely to have translated it from the original Latin published at
Amsterdam in 1650, a year after the first Portuguese edition. The work
is remarkable for acute thought and clear and concise expression. A
work of a similar character is the well-written _Arte de Reinar_ (1643)
by P. ANTONIO CARVALHO DE PARADA (1595-1655). The _Tratado Analytico_
(1715), by MANUEL RODRIGUEZ LEITÃO (_c._ 1620-91), a controversial
treatise written to prove the right of Portugal to appoint bishops, is
also the work of a good stylist. Some would say the same of one of the
best-known books of the seventeenth century, the _Vida de Dom João de
Castro_ (1651), by JACINTO FREIRE DE ANDRADE (1597-1657). The author,
born at Beja, was suspected at Madrid of nationalist inclinations, and
retired to his cure in the diocese of Viseu; after the Restoration
he refused the bishopric of Viseu. His book has often been regarded
as a model of Portuguese prose. Pompous and emphatic,[623] it may be
described as inflated Tacitus, or rather a mixture of Tacitean phrases,
conceits, and rhetorical affectation. But if as a whole it is more akin
to Castro’s garish triumph at Goa than to the scientific spirit of his
letters, it scarcely deserves the severe strictures which followed
excessive praise[624]: it might even become excellent if judiciously
pruned of antitheses and artifice.[625] The second Conde da Ericeira,
D. FERNANDO DE MENESES (1614-99), wrote a _Historia de Tangere_ (1732)
and the _Vida e Acçoens d’El Rei D. João I_ (1677), which ends with
an elaborate parallel between Julius Caesar and the Master of Avis.
Equally clear but far more artificial is the style of the third Count,
D. LUIS DE MENESES (1632-90), in the best-known historical work of the
century in Portuguese: _Historia de Portugal Restaurado_ (2 pts., 1679,
98). Its author ended his life by leaping from an upper window into the
garden of his palace on a May morning in a fit of melancholy.
The great prose-writer of the century, ANTONIO VIEIRA (1608-97), was
born in the same year and city as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello and
spent a life as unquiet. He was not literary in the same sense as
Mello, but he has always been considered one of the great classics
of the Portuguese language. He was the son of Cristovam Vieira
Ravasco, _escrivão das devassas_ at Lisbon, but at the age of seven
he accompanied his parents to Brazil (1615) and began his education
in the Jesuit college at Bahia. In 1623, by his own ardent wish,
long opposed by his parents, he became a Jesuit novice and professed
in the following year. Before he was thirty he was Professor of
Theology in the Bahia college and a celebrated preacher, the sermons
in which he encouraged the citizens of Bahia in the war against the
Dutch being especially eloquent. In 1641 he was chosen with Padre
Simão de Vasconcellos to accompany D. Fernando de Mascarenhas, son
of the viceroy, to Europe in order to congratulate King João IV on
his accession. Vieira preached in the Royal Chapel on New Year’s
Day, 1642. Both his sermons and his conversation greatly impressed
the king, and from 1641 to the end of the reign (1656) his influence
was great although not unchallenged. They were critical years in
Portugal’s foreign policy, and Vieira, who refused a bishopric but
was appointed Court preacher, was entrusted with several important
missions--to Paris and The Hague (February-July 1646), London, Paris,
and The Hague (1647-8), and Rome (1650). In 1652 he returned to
Brazil as a missionary in Maranhão, and during two years roused the
bitter hostility of the settlers by his protection of the slaves or
rather by his opposition to slavery. In 1655 he again left Lisbon for
Maranhão,[626] and during five arduous years showed unfailing courage
and energy in dealing with natives and settlers. The latter in 1661
attacked the mission-house and arrested and expelled the Jesuits. At
home King João, Vieira’s friend, was dead. Differences arose between
the Queen Regent supported by Vieira, and her son, and one of the first
acts of the latter on taking power into his own hands was to banish
Vieira to Oporto and later to Coimbra. Here in the spring of 1665[627]
he wrote that curious work _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), which was to
interpret Portugal’s destiny by the light of old prophecies, but of
which only the introduction (_livro anteprimeiro_) was printed. An even
stranger book, in which he had paid serious attention politically to
the prophecies of Bandarra, was denounced in 1663, and in October 1665
Vieira was consigned to the prison of the Inquisition at Coimbra. His
sentence was not read till 1667 (December 24), and it condemned him to
seclusion in a college or convent of his Order and to perpetual silence
in matters of religion. The deposition of King Afonso VI (1667) and the
accession of his brother Pedro II altered Vieira’s prospects, and his
eloquent voice was again heard in the pulpit. After preaching before
the Court in Lent 1669 he proceeded to Rome on business of the Company
and spent six years there. He preached several times in Italian, and
Queen Christina of Sweden, who had settled in Rome in 1655, offered
him the post of preacher and confessor, which he refused. In August
1675 he returned to Lisbon, where he was coldly received by the Prince
Regent, and in 1681 retired to Brazil. In the same year he was burnt
in effigy by the mob at Coimbra. A special brief given to him by the
Pope secured his person from the attacks of the Inquisition. But even
at Bahia he was not free from troubles and intrigues. His activity
continued to the end of his long life. In 1688 he preached in Bahia
Cathedral, and was Visitor of the Province of Brazil from 1688 to 1691.
Even in 1695 we find him, although feeble and broken, writing letters
and eager to finish his _Clavis Prophetica_[628] (or _Prophetarum_),
which now lies in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris and
elsewhere. Seventy years earlier he had been entrusted by the Jesuits
with the composition of the annual Latin letters of the Company.
Vieira’s vein of caustic satire no doubt made him numerous enemies and
increased the difficulties which his advocacy of the Jews and slaves
and his fearless stand against injustice and oppression were certain to
produce. Ambitious and fond of power, he could devote himself to causes
which entailed a life of toil and poverty. An energetic if unsuccessful
diplomatist, an ingenious thinker, a statesman of far-reaching views,
he was also a fantastic dreamer, but his dreams and restlessness rarely
affected the sanity of his judgement. The works of this great writer
and extraordinary man are an inexhaustible mine of pure and vigorous
prose, at its best in his numerous _Cartas_, written in _selecta et
propria dictio, nusquam verbis indulgens sed rebus inhaerens_. A
Portuguese critic, Dias Gomes, notes his ’sustained elegance’, and
we may sometimes sigh for an interval of Mello’s familiarity or Frei
Luis de Sousa’s charm. In his famous _Sermões_ he bowed intermittently
to the taste of the time for conceit and artifice. He condemned
the practice in a celebrated sermon, but indeed a certain humorous
quaintness was not foreign to his temperament, and in the obscurity, at
least, of the _cultos_ he never indulged. When inspired by patriotism
or indignation his words soar beyond cold reason and colder conceits to
a fiery eloquence. Among writers whom he influenced was the Benedictine
FREI JOÃO DOS PRAZERES (1648-1709), of whose principal work, _O
Principe dos Patriarchas S. Bento_, or _Empresas de S. Bento_, only
the first two volumes were published. Closer imitators of Vieira were
FREI FRANCISCO DE SANTA MARIA (1653-1713), author of _O Ceo Aberto na
Terra_ (1697) and many sermons, and the Jesuit preacher ANTONIO DE SÁ
(1620-78), whose _Sermões Varios_ appeared in 1750.
FOOTNOTES:
[581] Bernardo de Brito, no lover of Spain, bears witness to _o favor e
benevolencia com que trata os homens doutos_.
[582] _De Crepusculis_, Preface. Martim Afonso de Miranda later (_Tempo
de Agora_, _prologo_ to Pt. 2, 1624) writes of _a pouca curiosidade que
hoje ha acerca da lição dos liuros, como tambem o risco a que se expõem
os que escreuem_.
[583] Menéndez y Pelayo set Mello above all except his friend Quevedo.
[584] Mr. Edgar Prestage discovered his baptismal certificate and
established the date (1608) beyond doubt, though it is still often
given as 1611. On his mother’s side Mello was great-grandson of the
historian Duarte Nunez de Leam.
[585] Prefatory letter to _Las tres Mvsas del Melodino_ (1649): _el
lenguaje estrangero tan poco es favorable al que compone_.
[586] He was writing it in January 1650.
[587] _Historia de los movimientos y separacion de Cataluña y de la
guerra_, &c. Lisboa, 1645.
[588] On his release after four months of imprisonment the Count-Duke
Olivares said to him: _Ea, caballero, ha sido un erro, pero erro con
causa._
[589] The first five years were, in his own words, rigorous. In 1650
he was removed from the _Torre Velha_ to the Lisbon _Castello_, and
thenceforth enjoyed greater liberty. He had been transferred from the
Torre de Belem to the _Torre Velha_ on the left bank of the Tagus in
1646.
[590] The document was discovered by Dr. Braga and published in his _Os
Seiscentistas_ (1916), p. 339.
[591] _Approbatio of Cartas_, Roma, 1664.
[592] A copy of this rare and curious work exists in the Lisbon
Biblioteca Nacional (_Res._ 264 v.). It contains 71 ff. divided into
four parts. The author, in his apophthegms on the character of women,
quotes the classics widely, and refers to the Uthopia [so] of Sir
Thomas More and to _Celestina_.
[593] _Relaçam_, 1842 ed., p. 233.
[594] His digressions are methodical: _por este modo de historiar (que
é aquelle que eu desejo ler) pretendo escrever sempre_ (_Epan._ ii). In
_Epan._ i he says: _Refiro, pode ser com demasia, todos os accidentes
deste negocio._
[595] He re-wrote this _Epanaphora_ twice, the first two versions
having been lost.
[596] Cf. _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3), 1900 ed., p. 89: _cada
qual desde o logar em que está acha uma linha muito junto de si que é o
caminho por onde pode ir a Deus_.
[597] Cf. _Hospital das Lettras_ (_Ap. Dial._ 4), 1900 ed., p. 114:
_por falta de cuidar cada um em se aproveitar deste mundo o que delle
lhe toca, o lançam todos a perder todos juntos do modo que vemos_.
[598] _Relogios Fallantes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 1).
[599] _Escriptorio Avarento_ (_Ap. Dial._ 2).
[600] _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3).
[601] Cf. the backwoodsman described by Couto as _algum fidalgo criado
lá na Beira que nunca vio o Rei_ (_Dialogo do Sold. Prat._, p. 31).
[602] Cf. _Aulegrafia_ (1619), f. 85 v.: _emendar a Natureza_.
[603] Edgar Prestage, _Esboço_, pp. 128-9.
[604] Like another equally brilliant soldier historian, Napier, he
rarely spells a foreign word aright. Cf. _Epanaphoras_, p. 204: _A este
nome_ Milord _corresponde no estado feminil o nome_ Léde. Falmouth,
where he had actually been, becomes Valmud, the Isle of Wight Huyt,
Whitehall Huythal, the Earl of Northumberland Notaborlan (Brito has
Northũbria).
[605] A more personal and picaresque satirist was D. THOMAS DE NORONHA
(†1651), whose works were collected by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in
his _Subsidios_, vol. ii: _Poesias Ineditas de D. Thomás de Noronha_
(Coimbra, 1899). The satiric poem _Os Ratos da Inquisição_ by ANTONIO
SERRÃO DE CASTRO (1610-85) was first published by Castello Branco in
1883.
[606] Vol. iii contains a poem by Jacinto Freire de Andrade with the
same title.
[607] _Fenix Ren._ ii. 406; iii. 225; v. 376.
[608] Hers is the deplorable pun of a superior superior:
Que se Prior sois agora
Sempre fostes suprior.
[609] The real title of the first (1623) edition is _Dos Novissimos
de Dom Francisco Rolim de Moura_. Adam is conducted by his son Abel
through Hell and comforted by a vision of Paradise. As he is the first
man and only Abel has died, he must forgo Dante’s pleasure in meeting
his personal enemies there, but there is something perhaps even more
awful in the thought of the emptiness of these _infinitos logares_
(iii. 48). Virgil’s _Facilis descensus_, &c., is translated in two
lines of great badness: _Onde descer he cousa tão factivel Quanto
tornar atraz tem de impossivel_ (iii. 36).
[610] _Nihil tamen eo vivente excussum nisi Solitudines (hoc est
Saudades)_, says the _Theatrum_.
[611] e.g. (x. 126):
Hũa montanha e serra inhabitada
Se erguia ao ar, em cuja corpulenta
Espalda....
[612] ii. 30-49:
Do undoso leito, donde repousava
O mar, &c.
[613] xii. 79: _Sou fragil lenho._
[614] In the storm in canto 2 (_Eis que o ceo de improuiso se
escurece_) he seems to have realized that Camões’ description could not
be improved upon.
[615] Numerous other academies of the same kind came into being in
this and the first half of the next century. Most of their members now
belong to the (Brazilian) _Academia dos Esquecidos_--the Forgotten.
[616] The slip in the second letter by which in the French version not
the Beja Mertola Gate but Mertola itself is seen from the convent, does
not favour this theory, which recently has been sustained by the Conde
de Sabugosa. This passage is held to be a convincing proof, were such
proof needed, of the genuineness of the letters. It is rather a proof
of the reality of the love intrigue than of the nun’s authorship. If
Chamilly, for the edification of his vanity, were fabricating such a
letter, what more likely than that he should wish to add his note of
local colour and remembered vaguely the word Mertola in connexion with
the view from the convent terrace? What he could scarcely have invented
or expressed is the real depth of feeling.
[617] Seven spurious letters, and subsequently others, were added in
many of the editions. Filinto Elysio translated the twelve.
[618] _Je parierais tout au monde que les Lettres portugaises ont été
écrites par un homme._
[619] e.g. ‘You told me frankly that you were in love with a lady in
your own country’ (letter 2). ‘Were you not ever the first to leave
for the front, the last to return?’ (5). ‘My passion increases every
instant’ (4). ‘I do not repent having adored you. I am glad that you
betrayed me’ (3).
[620] Ed. H. Butler Clarke (1897), pp. 17-18 and 65-7.
[621] The 1652 edition speaks of _coroneis_ (p. 277) who, it has been
argued, were called _mestres de campo_ till 1708 (Goes, however,
in his _Cron. de D. Manuel_, 1619 ed., f. 213, has _os fez todos
quatro coroneis de mil homens_; cf. Gil Vicente, i. 234: _Corregedor,
coronel_); it refers (p. 393) to João IV as still alive (†1656): _Que
Deos guarde e prospere_. It would appear to have been written at two
periods, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unless the
passages implying the earlier date are as deliberately misleading as
the 1652 title-page.
[622] _Classicos Esquecidos_ (Rio de Janeiro, 1915). Duarte de Macedo
in his dedicatory letter says: ‘I have taken this _Summa Politica_ from
the Latin and Italian languages.’ ‘I do not offer it as my own, because
I restore it to your Highness as yours’, so that he had armed himself
against such charges of plagiarism.
[623] It loses nothing in Sir Peter Wyche’s translation. Cf. the
account of Castro’s first arrival at Goa: ‘When the entry was to be,
the two Governours were in a Faluque with gilded Oars, and an awning
of divers-coloured silks; the Castles and Ships entertain’d ’em with
the horrour of reiterated shootings, the Vivas and expectation of the
common people did without any cunning flatter the new Government, &c.’
[624] _Cada clausula he filha da eloquencia mats sublime_, &c. (Barbosa
Machado).
[625] e.g. 1759 ed., p. 342: _cujas ruinas serião de sua fama os
elogios maiores_ would be straightened out from Latin into Portuguese:
_serião os maiores elogios de sua fama_.
[626] On his homeward voyage in 1654 he had suffered from a violent
storm, and was only saved by a Dutch pirate who landed the passengers
of the Portuguese ship at the Ilha Graciosa without their belongings.
[627] _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 93.
[628] See letters from Bahia, July 22, 1695.
V
1706-1816
_The Eighteenth Century_
The eighteenth century did not kill literature in Portugal any more
than in other countries, but poetry had lost its lyrism, and under
the influence of French and English writers assumed a scientific,
philosophical, or utilitarian character. No mighty genius arose in
Portuguese literature at the bidding of João V (1706-50), but the
king’s lavish patronage gave an impulse, and he founded the _Academia
Real de Historia_ in 1720. A crop of scholars and poets followed
in the second half of the century, so that it was not without some
unfairness that Giuseppe Baretti wrote of the Portuguese in 1760 that
_di letteratura non hanno punto fama d’essere soverchio ghiotti ...
quel poco que scrivono, sia in prosa sia in verso, è tutto panciuto
e pettoruto_.[629] It was the age of Arcadias: the famous _Arcadia
Ulyssiponense_[630] (1756-74) and the _Nova Arcadia_ founded in 1790
(i. e. precisely a century after the Italian _Arcadia_). All the
poets of the century belonged to one or other of these societies or
made their mark as _dissidentes_ from them. One of the founders of
the _Nova Arcadia_, FRANCISCO JOAQUIM BINGRE (1763-1856), lived on
into the middle of the nineteenth century, and a few of his poems
were collected under the title _O Moribundo Cysne do Vouga_ (1850).
A typical eighteenth-century poet is D. FRANCISCO XAVIER DE MENESES
(1673-1743), fourth Conde da Ericeira, who in turning to literature
was but following the traditions of his family. A staunch defender of
pure Portuguese against those who, he said, disfigure and corrupt the
language by the introduction of foreign words and phrases, he wrote a
large number of works in prose and in verse. The best known of them is
his _Henriqueida_ (1741), a heroic poem on the conquest of Portugal by
Count Henry in twelve long cantos of prosaic _oitavas_. It may contain
lines more inspiring than these:
E a contramina fabricou Roberto,
Da mina conhecendo o lugar certo,
but they do not really differ greatly from the rest of the poem. The
large quantity of poetry still written at the beginning of the century
had met with severe criticism in Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina’s _Seram
Politico_. He slyly calls the _egloga campestre_ ‘_poesia ervada_’. The
objects of the _Arcadia_ of 1756 were to free Portuguese literature
from foreign influences and restore the purity of the language. If
to some extent it merely substituted French or Italian influence for
Spanish, its cry was also back to the classics and to the Portuguese
_quinhentistas_. As to the language its services were invaluable,
for at a time when French influence was great in Portugal and in the
rest of Europe it checked the use of gallicisms; as to literature the
attempt to write poetry on an ordered plan was perhaps foredoomed to
failure: it plodded along in an artificial atmosphere of Roman gods and
antiquities, and became hidebound in imitation of the Horatian ode.
PEDRO ANTONIO CORRÊA GARÇÃO (1724-72), one of the first members
and most prominent poets of the _Arcadia_, did good service in his
determined efforts to deliver his country’s literature from foreign
imitations and the false affectation of the time, and to revert to the
classics, Greek, Roman, and Portuguese. He even prophesied that Gil
Vicente’s day would come. His master was Horace, _grande Horacio_, and
his Horatian odes, if they show no remarkable lyrical gift, have a dry
native flavour in the purity of their language. He was also successful
in reviving the cultivation of blank verse. There is a fine sound in
some of the sonnets in which he sings Marilia, Lydia, Belisa, Maria,
Nise, writes to a friend to ask for a doubloon or for Spanish tobacco,
sends birthday congratulations or laughs at a bald priest: the themes
are mostly of this level. His satirical vein is marked in his two short
comedies in blank verse, _Theatro Novo_, a skit on the drama then in
vogue, and _Assemblêa ou Partida_, in which certain Lisbon types are
ridiculed and which contains the famous and much overpraised _Cantata
de Dido_. Corrêa Garção’s days ended tragically in prison. The motive
of his arrest is not clear. Tradition wavers between a love intrigue
and political reasons,[631] and declares that the Marques de Pombal,
whom he had offended, signed the order for his release on the very day
of the poet’s death after eighteen months of imprisonment.
Pombal was effusively praised by DOMINGOS DOS REIS QUITA (1728-70),
a Lisbon hairdresser who wrote bucolic poetry melodiously, but with
perhaps even less originality than we have learnt to expect in that
kind since the time when Virgil mistranslated Theocritus. The influence
of Bernardez and Camões is clear,[632] in many passages too clear,
and he had undoubtedly caught something of their skill and harmony
in technique. But his poems leave the impression that he had no real
feeling for the rustic life which they describe; no doubt he was more
at home with the scissors than with the faithful Melampus or the
nymphs and shepherd’s pipe. When he is relating an event, such as the
earthquake of 1755, which touched him nearly, his ready flow of verse
deserts him, in spite of his skill in improvisation,[633] although the
sonnet written on the same occasion, _Por castigar, Senhor_, stands out
with a certain majesty from most of his other sonnets, which are mere
slices of eclogue. If his mellifluous idylls show no individuality, his
return to the classic poets of Portugal was, as with other Arcadian
poets, a welcome change from the Spanish influence, the _mao uso_, as
he calls it, of ‘rude strangers from the Manzanares’ (Eclogue 6). His
tragedies and pastoral drama _Licore_ are not more original. One of
his tragedies, _Inés de Castro_, suggested that of João Baptista Gomes
(†1813), _Nova Castro_, which had a great vogue in its day but is now
scarcely more remembered than _Osmia_ (1788), a tragedy of which the
blank verse has vigour, although it is often scarcely distinguishable
from prose. This play, published anonymously, was long attributed to
Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo (1754-1817), but its real author was D.
Theresa de Mello Breyner, Condessa de Vimieiro, who married her cousin,
the fourth Count, in 1767.
It was a cruel kindness to edit the works of ANTONIO DINIZ DA CRUZ E
SILVA (1731-99) in six volumes, for, despite the fame of his high-flown
Pindaric odes, his three centuries of sonnets and his other lyrics
are not of conspicuous merit and are often imitative. Having nothing
to say, _Elpino Nonacriense_, like too many of the Arcadian poets,
said it at inordinate length. _Que enorme confusão!_ he exclaims in an
elegy on the Lisbon earthquake, and most of his poems are on a like
plane of thought and expression. The son of a _Sargento Môr_,[634] he
was born at Lisbon, and after studying law at Coimbra was appointed a
judge at Castello de Vide. With Manuel Nicolau Esteves Negrão (†1824)
and Theotonio Gomes de Carvalho (†1800) he founded the _Arcadia
Ulyssiponense_, of which he drew up the statutes in September 1756.
The first aim of these early Arcadians was, as we have noticed, to
break the shackles of Spanish influence and _gongorismo_, which was,
indeed, on the wane in the land of its birth. Diniz da Cruz’ own poems
were written in good idiomatic Portuguese. In _O Hyssope_ he satirizes
with telling vigour the use of gallicisms, and his comedy _O Falso
Heroismo_ is thoroughly Portuguese in subject and treatment. From
1764 to 1774 he was stationed at Elvas, and here a quarrel between
the bishop, D. Lourenço de Lancastre, and the dean, D. José Carlos de
Lara, furnished him with the subject of his celebrated mock-heroic poem
_O Hyssope_. The legend runs that he was summoned to read his satire
to the all-powerful Pombal in the presence of the infuriated bishop,
and that the poem proved too much for the gravity of the minister,
who appointed him a judge at Rio de Janeiro (1776). Thence he was
transferred to Oporto (1787), but in 1790 was again appointed to Rio de
Janeiro, and showed himself merciless in sentencing the Brazilian poets
Claudio Manuel da Costa, Gonzaga, and Ignacio José de Alvarengo Peixoto
(1748-93), accused of conspiring to secure the independence of their
country. _O Hyssope_ was first published in 1802, three years after
the author’s death. The idea of the poem was derived from Boileau’s
_Le Lutrin_. Boileau would have been horrified by its eight cantos of
slovenly and monotonous blank verse, which often scarcely rises above
prose; but as a satire on the times and in its grotesque portraiture
of prelate and lawyer and notary it is sometimes irresistibly comic.
The mock-heroic _Benteida_, written by ALEXANDRE ANTONIO DE LIMA of
Lisbon (1699-_c._ 1760?) and published fifty years before _O Hyssope_,
consisted of three cantos of _oitavas_. Two editions appeared in
1752, published at ‘Constantinople’ as written by ‘Andronio Meliante
Laxaed’. Pedro de Azevedo Tojal (†1742) had used the same metre for his
_Foguetario_ (1729). The burlesque poem _O Reino da Estupidez_ (1819),
written in four cantos of easily-flowing blank verse by the Brazilians
Francisco de Mello Franco (1757-1823) and José Bonifacio de Andrade e
Silva (1763-1838), is professedly an imitation of _aquelle activo e
discreto Diniz na Hyssopaïda_, only the butt here is not the Chapter of
Elvas but the professors of Coimbra University.
Like the less celebrated poet son of an Alentejan painter, JOSÉ
ANASTASIO DA CUNHA (1744-87), artillery officer, mathematician,
Professor of Geometry at Coimbra, who translated Pope and Voltaire and
had milk in his tea and buttered toast on a fast-day, FRANCISCO MANUEL
DO NASCIMENTO (1734-1819), better known as _Filinto Elysio_,[635]
was denounced to the Inquisition. His thrilling escape in the year
of Cunha’s condemnation for apostasy and heresy (1778) brought him
almost as much fame as his poems. The son of a Lisbon lighterman and
a humble _varina_,[636] he was accused of not believing in the Flood
and of throwing ridicule on the doctrine of original sin, and by
another witness of being simply an atheist. He succeeded in locking
up in his own rooms the official sent to arrest him early on the 4th
of July, hid for eleven days in Lisbon, and then, disguised as a poor
man carrying a load of oranges, escaped on a boat bound for Havre. Had
this persecution come earlier, the disquieting atmosphere of Paris,
into which he was now transplanted and where, except for a few years
at The Hague, he lived for the rest of his life, might have given some
originality to his talent. But his mind and poetic style were already
fixed, and through every political disturbance he continued his steady
flow of Horatian odes and similar artificial verse. He wrote for
seventy years (Lamartine notes the _précoces faveurs_ of his muse),
and at the age of sixty-four calculated that he had already composed
730,000 lines, probably too modest an estimate. He received by royal
decree an amnesty and the restoration of his property, but never
returned to Portugal. His influence on younger Portuguese poets was
nevertheless great. Bocage, when his verses were praised by the older
poet, exclaimed:
Filinto, o gran cantor, prezou meus versos
... Posteridade, és minha!
His influence was bad and good. It encouraged a dry and artificial
classicism, but also careful versification in pure Portuguese. Although
the poems of Lamartine’s _divin Manuel_ are no longer even by his
countrymen held to be divine, they may be read with satisfaction
by virtue of their indigenous expressions and a hundred and one
allusions to popular traditions. It was by these characteristics
that he expressed his revolt from the _Arcadia_. Half a long life
spent in Paris was unable to imbue Filinto with the _mimo de fallar
luso-gallico_, against which he vigorously protested to the end. This
purity of style gives excellence to the many translations which he was
obliged to write for a bare livelihood, and his native land is present
even in his closest imitations of Horace (Falernian becomes _louro
Carcavellos_). Unfortunately his contemporaries and successors were not
always so discreet.
The genial satirist NICOLAU TOLENTINO (1741-1811), son of a Lisbon
advocate, after studying law at Coimbra spent some years teaching
rhetoric to the raw youth (_bisonhos rapazes_) of Lisbon. He was
perpetually discontented with his lot or ready to profess himself so.
‘Long years have I already spent in begging,’ he says candidly, ‘and
shall perhaps pass my whole life in the same way.’ He harps on his
poverty; the kitchen, he complains, is the coolest room in his house.
In 1781 he obtained a comfortable post in the civil service, his poems
were printed for him in two volumes twenty years later, he would
receive a pheasant from one friend, a Sunday dinner of turkey from
another, he acknowledges a thousand benefits, and still begs on. Before
he had had time to grow rich the habit had become incurable. His was no
lyrical gift, but he imitated with success the _quintilhas_ of Sá de
Miranda,[637] in which much of his work is composed (_O Bilhar_ is in
_oitavas_). He writes naturally; his style is thoroughly Portuguese,
often prosaic. His satire, repressed for personal reasons rather than
from any failure of wit or talent, reducible to silence by the gift of
a pheasant, lacks independence and thought, but sheds a gentle light
on the manners of the time--on the travelled coxcomb who returns to
Portugal affecting almost to have forgotten Portuguese, or the rich
nun who knows by heart whole volumes of the _Fenix Renascida_--and one
or two of his entertaining sonnets are likely to endure. The _Obras
Poeticas_ of the MARQUESA DE ALORNA (1750-1839), in Arcadia _Alcippe_,
are now more often praised than read, but her poetry is scarcely
inferior to that of many even more celebrated writers of the time. As a
child she defied the anger of the Marques de Pombal. She was detained
with her sister Maria and her mother D. Leonor de Almeida in the
convent of Chellas from the age of eight till the death of King José
(1777). Two years later she married the Count of Oeynhausen, who became
minister at Vienna in 1780. After his death in 1793 she lived partly
in England, but spent the last twenty-five years of her life in the
neighbourhood of Lisbon, and exercised considerable influence on young
writers--not Garrett but Bocage, and especially Herculano--and thus
with Macedo formed a link between the poets of the _Arcadia_ and the
nineteenth century. Her works contain over 2,000 pages of verse. There
are sonnets and odes, eclogues, elegies, epistles, translations or
paraphrases of Homer, Horace, Claudian (_De raptu Proserpinae_), Pope
(_Essay on Criticism_), Wieland, Thomson’s _Seasons_, Goldsmith, Gray,
Lamartine, and the Psalms. There is a long poem on botany which notices
more than a hundred kinds of scented geranium, and indeed the range
of her subjects is very wide, from May fireflies to the ‘barbarous
climate’ of England, from Leibniz to the ascent of Robertson in a
balloon. Classical allusions are everywhere; she even drags in Cocytus
in a sonnet on the death of her infant son. At the same time we have a
constant sense of high ideals and love of liberty.
The compositions of the ‘pale, limber, odd-looking young man’, which
‘thrilled and agitated’ William Beckford in 1787, now scarcely move
us, vanished the fire and glow which BOCAGE (1765-1805) brought to his
improvisations. For the reader they are for the most part _carboni
spenti_. His parents were a Portuguese judge and the daughter of a
French vice-admiral in the Portuguese Navy, and he enlisted in an
infantry regiment in the town of his birth, Setubal, in 1779. Ten
years later he deserted at Damão, and after wandering in China reached
Macao and thence Goa, which he still found a stepmother to poets, and
Lisbon. Here he continued to live a dissipated life, till in 1797 his
revolutionary opinions and his poem _A Pavorosa Illusão da Eternidade_
brought him first to the Limoeiro and then for a few months to the
prison of the Inquisition. His unstable romantic spirit was influenced
as much by the French Revolution during the latter years of his life
as by the wish in his youth to become a second Camões, but he wrote an
elegy on the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette, which he described
as ‘a crime from Hell’. He supported life during his last years
principally by translation. He was himself his chief enemy, and he
was also the victim of the critics who applauded his improvisations
until he no longer distinguished between poetry and prose, sense and
absurdity. No better Portuguese pendant to the celebrated line of
blank verse ‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman’ will be found than that in
one of Bocage’s elegies: _Carpido objecto meu, carpido objecto_. The
undoubted talent of _Elmano Sadino_, as he was in Arcadia, was thus
frittered away in occasional verse in which his fecund gift of satire
found expression, and a great poet was lost to Portuguese literature.
His impromptu sallies against rival poets, such as Macedo, brought him
contemporary fame, but in some of his poems, especially the sonnets,
we have proof of a possibility of greater things. No doubt his work
is disfigured by pompous phrases[638] and hollow classical allusions.
He did not always rise above the bad taste of the period; he was
unable to concentrate his talent or separate prosaic from poetical
subjects. Thus he sang of an ascent in a _balão aerostatico_ in 1794,
and saw in the _vil mosquito_ a proof of the existence of God. But
his was nevertheless a very real and above all a very Portuguese
inspiration,[639] and some of his sonnets have force and grandeur
and hover on the fringes of beauty, especially when they voice his
unaffected enthusiasm for Portugal’s past greatness and heroes.
One of the foremost poets of the _Nova Arcadia_ was BELCHIOR MANUEL
CURVO SEMEDO (1766-1838), two volumes of whose _Composições Poeticas_
appeared in 1803. A crowd of secondary lights revolved round the great
planets of the two _Arcadias_. The poems of _Alfeno Cynthio_, DOMINGOS
MAXIMIANO TORRES (1748-1810), are not without vigour (_Versos_, 1791).
Their unfortunate author died a political prisoner at Trafaria. The gay
and lively Abbade of Jazente, PAULINO ANTONIO CABRAL[640] (1719-89),
was the son of an Oporto doctor, and was parish priest at Jazente
(near Amarante) from 1753 to 1784. His poems are still read for their
pleasant satire, but he was careless of literary fame. Some of the
sonnets of both these writers deserve not to be forgotten. JOÃO
XAVIER DE MATTOS (†1789), a fourth edition of whose _Rimas_ appeared
in the year after his death, is now remembered chiefly for some of his
sonnets, as that beginning _Poz-se o sol_, with its melancholy charm.
He was a true but not a great or original poet. Born at Oporto, the son
of a Brazilian father and a Portuguese mother, THOMAS ANTONIO GONZAGA
(1744-1807?) was a judge at Bahia when he was accused of taking part
in the Republican conspiracy of Minas Geraes (1789), and after three
years’ imprisonment was deported (1792) to Mozambique, where he died
several years after his sentence had expired. Some of his Horatian and
Anacreontic _lyras_ in many metres, addressed to Marilia and collected
under the title _A Marilia de Dirceo_ (_Dirceo_ being his Arcadian
name), are graceful lyrics of an idyllic character. Of the other poets
implicated in the conspiracy, CLAUDIO MANUEL DA COSTA (1729-69), who
was found dead in his prison cell, was an Arcadian poet of the Italian
school, and shows a gentle love of Nature in his sonnets. Of the
hundred sonnets printed in his _Obras_ (1768) some are in Italian.
The eclogues number twenty. In Brazil at this time, as earlier in
Portugal, patriotism if not poetry suggested epics. JOSÉ BASILIO DA
GAMA (1740-95), who spent the greater part of his life in Portugal and
died at Lisbon, wrote _O Uraguay_ (1769) in five cantos of prosaic
blank verse--an account of the struggle between Portuguese and Indians.
JOSÉ DE SANTA RITA DURÃO (_c._ 1720-84), Doctor in Theology (Coimbra),
composed an epic entitled _Caramurú_ (1781) on the discovery of Bahia
in the sixteenth century by Diogo Alvarez Corrêa. This poem in ten
cantos of _oitavas_ is inferior to _O Uraguay_, but it contains some
interesting notes on the country and the customs of Brazil.[641]
If a great poet lurked in Bocage, he had certainly never existed in
Bocage’s contemporary and rival in Arcadia, JOSÉ AGOSTINHO DE MACEDO
(1761-1831), who lived to be confronted by an even more formidable
adversary in his old age, Almeida Garrett. (In one of his fierce
political letters he prays that either he or Garrett may be sent to
the galleys.) Born at Beja, he took the vows as an Augustinian monk
at Lisbon in 1778. The future champion of law and order provoked the
displeasure of his superiors at Lisbon, Evora, Coimbra, Braga, Torres
Vedras, by his pranks and mutinies, his boisterous and dissipated
life. Methodical theft of books was one of his minor failings. At
last after fourteen years, his Order, tired of transferring and
imprisoning, formally expelled the delinquent in 1792. He, however,
obtained recognition as a secular priest, won fame as a preacher, and
for the next forty years wrote in verse and prose with an amazing
copiousness.[642] He is said to have composed a hundred Anacreontic
odes in three days: _Lyra Anacreontica_ (1819). During the last three
years of his life, after he had, as he said, capitulated to the
doctors, he continued to write, although in great pain. His financial
circumstances did not require this effort. His works had brought him
considerable sums, he had become Court preacher and chronicler, and had
many friends in high places, including Dom Miguel himself. His vanity
was soothed, the unfrocked Augustinian had won the regard of princes.
But to this learned[643] and splenetic priest virulent denunciation of
his literary and political opponents had become a necessity, and he was
at work on the twenty-seventh number of his periodical _O Desengano_
a fortnight before his death. He was spared the mortification of
seeing his enemies triumph in 1832. His character was not amiable,
and a large part of his life was unedifying, but there is something
fine in his unfailing energy, for by sheer energy he imposed himself,
and his self-conceit was so colossal as to be virtually innocuous,
while his real horror of revolution, a horror based on experience,
was expressed with persistency and courage. He seems to have been
quite honest in the belief that the poems of Homer, which he could
not read in the original, were worthless,[644] and that his own _O
Oriente_ was a great epic. His utilitarian conception of literature
was inevitably fatal to his verse. He wished to extend the boundaries
of poetry.[645] He wrote a long poem--four cantos of blank verse--on
_Newton_ (1813), recast and increased to 3,560 lines under the title
_Viagem Extatica ao Templo da Sabedoria_ (1830), because Newton had
conferred greater benefits on humanity than many a great conqueror (yet
so may a dentist). He composed a long poem, _Gama_ (1811), re-written
as _O Oriente_ (1814),[646] to show how Camões should have written
_Os Lusiadas_. His poem is no doubt more correct; it observes all the
rules, but unfortunately it lacks genius and is as dull and turgid
as Macedo’s other verse. A good word for the sea in Portuguese is
_mar_; the poets often call it _oceano_, Camões had ventured to name
it _o falso argento_, _o liquido estanho_, _o fundo aquoso_, _o humido
elemento_; with Macedo it becomes _o tumido elemento_ (or perhaps
he adopted the phrase from _Caramurú_, in which it occurs). We can
scarcely blame Bocage for labelling him _tumido versista_.[647] Among
his other philosophical poems are _Contemplação da Natureza_ (1801),
_A Meditação_ (1813), _A Natureza_ (1846), and _A Creação_ (1865),
now not more often read than his many odes and other verse. The most
scandalous of his satires is _Os Burros_ (1827), in blank verse, in
which he lavishly and outrageously insults nearly all the writers of
the time, and which may have been suggested by Juan Pablo Forner’s _El
Asno Erudito_ (1782). Like his poems, his dramatic works usually have
some ulterior object; their purpose is not less practical than his
pamphlets against _Os Sebastianistas_ (1810) or _Os Jesuitas_ (1830):
behind Ezelino and Beatriz in his tragedy _Branca de Rossi_ (1819) loom
Napoleon and Joséphine, and the prose comedy _A Impostura Castigada_
(1822) is an attack upon the doctors. The fact is that Macedo was
essentially not a poet or a dramatist or a philosopher, but a forcible
and eloquent pamphleteer. His philosophical letters and treatises, _A
Verdade_ (1814), _O Homem_ (1815), _Demonstração da Existencia de
Deos_ (1816), _Cartas filosoficas a Attico_ (1815), are at their best
not when he is developing a train of scientific thought but when he is
arguing _ad hominem_; and his literary criticism in _Motim Literario_
(1811) is primarily personal. As a critic militant he has his merits,
and he is pleasantly patriotic in denouncing the glamour of _missangas
estranjeiras_. But it is in his political periodicals, pamphlets, and
letters, _Cartas_ (1821), _Cartas_ (1827), _Tripa virada_ (1823),
_Tripa por uma vez_ (1823), _A Besta Esfolhada_ (1828-31), _O
Desengano_ (September 1830-September 1831), that he puts forth all his
spice and venom. Ponderous and angry like a lesser Samuel Johnson, he
bullies and crushes his opponents in the raciest vernacular. He may be
unscrupulous in argument, but his idiomatic and vigorous prose will
always be read with pleasure.
Macedo’s dramatic works were neither better nor worse than those of
other playwrights of the time. It was the professed object of MANUEL
DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-1801) to ‘write plays morally and dramatically
correct’. The effect of this didacticism in the fourteen volumes of his
_Theatro_ (1804-15) is disastrous. He wrote in prose and verse, but the
plays in ordinary prose are to be preferred, since in the others, like
M. Jourdain, he made _de la prose sans le savoir_. He wrote comedies,
and tragedies in which he is involuntarily comic. Even in _Ignez_ he
keeps the even tenor of his dullness, and he warns the reader in a
preface that his Inés is not to be considered beautiful since she was
probably over thirty, and that her and Pedro’s passion had had time
to cool.[648] There is more life in the plays written in a medley
of prose and verse by ANTONIO JOSÉ DA SILVA (1705-39), whom Southey
considered ‘the best of their dramatic writers’, but it is doubtful
whether they would have received any attention in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of their author’s
life. He was born at Rio de Janeiro, the son of Portuguese Jews,
his mother had been arrested by order of the Inquisition as early as
1712, and the whole family came to Lisbon, where the father practised
successfully as a lawyer. In 1726 his mother was re-arrested, and this
time Antonio José with her. He was released after suffering torture and
publicly abjuring Jewish doctrines in an _auto da fé_. Eleven years
later, after studying at Coimbra and following his father’s profession
in Lisbon, he was again arrested, with his wife--he had married his
cousin despite the dangerous fact that her mother had been burnt and
she herself imprisoned by the Inquisition--and on October 18, 1739, he
was first strangled and then burnt in an _auto da fé_ at Lisbon. For
some years (1733-8) before his death the people of Lisbon had admired
the plays of ‘the Jew’, as they called him, at the _Theatro do Bairro
Alto_. Of the eight plays that have survived in print it must be said
that they are for the most part very purposeless and ineffective. He
attracted his audience sometimes by wit, more often by sheer farcical
absurdity; the constant plays on words, the meaningless snatches of
verse interpolated, do not increase the interest, which flags on every
page because the author has not the slightest power of concentration.
The action at least is quick and varied; it shows Silva’s inventive
talent and explains the popularity of his _galhofeiras comedias_,[649]
however much it may weary the reader. His plays with classical
subjects are especially cold and dull, _A Ninfa Syringa ou Amores de
Pan e Syringa_,[650] _Os Encantos de Medea_,[651] _Esopaida_,[651]
_Amphitrião_,[651] _As Variedades de Proteo_,[652] _Laberinto de
Creta_.[652] His best play, _Guerras do Alecrim e Mangerona_ (1737),
contains some elements of character-drawing and describes the devices
of the starving gentlemen D. Gilvaz and D. Fuas to obtain rich wives at
the expense of miserly father and country cousin. The action consists
in a bewildering succession of disguises, the scene (Pt. ii, Sc. 5)
in which Gilvaz and Fuas doctor their stolid rival and ridicule the
medical profession has humour but shows the usual inability to end
before the reader’s patience has been long exhausted. In the _Vida do
Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha_ (1733) Silva made bold to dramatize
_Don Quixote_ in a series of scenes not over-skilfully connected. Of
his own invention there is a comical scene (Pt. i, Sc. 8), in which
Don Quixote is harassed by doubts as to whether the enchanters have
not transformed Dulcinea into Sancho Panza: he begins to see a certain
likeness; but most of the scenes are directly copied and here become
signally insipid, as that of Sancho’s judgements (ii. 4), or that of
the lion (i. 5), which is as far removed from Cervantes as the sorry
lions of the Alhambra at Granada from those in Trafalgar Square.
The drama of NICOLAU LUIS, whose life is obscure but whose name was
possibly Nicolau Luis da Silva, belongs to the _literatura de cordel_,
popular plays imitated and often directly translated from the Spanish
and Italian and acted with great applause in the eighteenth century
at Lisbon. Most of them were published without the author’s name, and
although it is believed that he wrote over one-third of the numerous
_comedias de cordel_ of the century[653] only a few, as _O Capitão
Belisario_ (1781) and _O Conde Alarcos_ (1788), can be definitely
assigned to him, a fact which incidentally bears witness to his lack of
individuality. His best-known tragedy is _D. Ignez de Castro_ (1772),
an imitation of _Reinar después de morir_ by Luis Velez de Guevara
(1579-1644).
In prose it was not an age of great writers, but of research and
learning. The Lisbon _Academia Real das Sciencias_,[654] founded by
the Duque de Lafões, met for the first time in 1780, and was not slow
in inaugurating the work which has won for it the gratitude of all who
care for the language or literature of Portugal. D. ANTONIO CAETANO
DE SOUSA (1674-1759) had published his valuable _Provas da Historia
Genealogica_ (1739-48) in seven volumes, and the learned _curé_ of
Santo Adrião de Sever, DIOGO BARBOSA MACHADO (1682-1772), had spent
a long life in bibliographical study and compiled his indispensable
and magnificent _Bibliotheca Lusitana_ (1741-59) with a generous
inaccuracy which is attractive in the minute pedantry of a later age.
The scarcely less famous _Vocabulario Portuguez_ of RAPHAEL BLUTEAU
(1638-1734), who was born of French parents in London but spent over
fifty years in Portugal, began to appear in 1712. The work of research
was now carried on, among others by FRANCISCO JOSÉ FREIRE (1719-73);
FREI JOAQUIM DE SANTA ROSA DE VITERBO (1744-1822); the librarian
ANTONIO RIBEIRO DOS SANTOS (1745-1818); D. FRANCISCO ALEXANDRE LOBO
(1763-1844), Bishop of Viseu; CARDINAL SARAIVA (1766-1845), Patriarch
of Lisbon; and FREI FORTUNATO DE S. BOAVENTURA (1778-1844). Critics of
poetry were LUIS ANTONIO VERNEY (1713-92), Archdeacon of Evora, ‘El
Barbadiño’, whose criticisms in his _Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar_ (2
vols., 1746) are severe, even harsh; FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES (1745-95),
whom Herculano called _o nosso celebre critico_, and who was indeed a
better critic than poet, as may be seen in the notes and poems of his
_Obras Poeticas_ (1799); and MIGUEL DE COUTO GUERREIRO (_c._ 1720-93),
who showed good sense in the twenty-six rhymed rules of his _Tratado da
Versificaçam Portugueza_ (1784).
The best-known work of the learned son of a Lisbon blacksmith who
became the first Bishop of Beja and Archbishop of Evora, MANUEL DO
CENACULO VILLAS-BOAS (1724-1814), is his _Cuidados Litterarios_ (1791).
THEODORO DE ALMEIDA (1722-1804), an erudite and voluminous writer, one
of the original members of the Academy of Sciences, was more ambitious.
In _O Feliz Independente do Mundo e da Fortuna_ in twenty-four books (3
vols., 1779), he took Fénelon’s _Télémaque_ for his model and sought
to combine the gall of instruction with the honey of entertainment.
He wrote it first (_uma boa parte_) in rhyme, then turned to blank
verse, but, still dissatisfied, finally adopted prose, taking care,
however, he says, that it should not degenerate into a novel. The
book had a wide vogue, but is quite unreadable. One may be thankful
that it was not written in verse like that of his _Lisboa Destruida_
(1803), an account of the earthquake of 1755, with sundry moralizings
in six cantos of _oitavas_, of which a Portuguese critic has said that
the author, in an excess of Christian humility, resolved to mortify
his pride of learning by making himself ridiculous to posterity in
verse. A flickering interest enlivens the _Cartas Familiares_ (1741,
2) of FRANCISCO XAVIER DE OLIVEIRA (1702-83). Their subjects are
various: love, literature, witchcraft, and even the relation of a man’s
character to the ribbon on his hat. The author gave up a diplomatic
career, perhaps on account of his Protestant tendencies, and went to
Holland (1740) and England (1744), where he publicly abjured Roman
Catholicism (1746). After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 he addressed
a pamphlet in French to the King of Portugal, exhorting him to mend
his ways; to become Protestant with all his subjects and abolish the
Inquisition. He was duly burnt in effigy at Lisbon (1761), but died
quietly at Hackney twenty-two years later. The letters of ALEXANDRE DE
GUSMÃO (1695-1753), born at Santos in Brazil, have not been collected;
those of the remarkable Portuguese Jew of Penamacor, ANTONIO NUNES
RIBEIRO SANCHES (1699-1783), physician to the Empress Catherine II of
Russia, _Cartas sobre a Educação da Mocidade_, appeared in 1760 at
Cologne. The _Cartas Curiosas_ (1878) of the Abbade ANTONIO DA COSTA
(1714-_c._ 1780) consist of thirteen letters written from Rome and
Vienna from 1750 to 1780, mainly on the subject of music. The century
was not rich in memoirs. The _Miscellaneas_ of D. JOÃO DE S. JOSEPH
QUEIROZ (1711-64) contain some interesting and amusing anecdotes. He
speaks of the _Memorias Genealogicas_ of Alão de Moraes and of the
general discredit of genealogists, and attributes Mello’s imprisonment
to his polite acquiescence in the suggestions of the Condessa de Villa
Nova, made at the instigation of King João IV: _para lisongea-la disse
que seguiria o partido de Castella_. But without seeing the manuscript
it is impossible not to suspect that there is as much of Camillo
Castello Branco as of the Bishop of Grão-Para in the _Memorias_ (1868),
which he was the first to publish.
FOOTNOTES:
[629] _Lettere Familiari_, No. 30.
[630] Or _Arcadia Lusitana_. For a list of its members see T. Braga,
_A Arcadia Lusitana_ (1899), pp. 210-29; for its statutes, ibid., pp.
189-205.
[631] Debt might seem a more probable cause, were it not for the
apparent rigour of his confinement.
[632] _A sua alma conversava com Bernardes e Ferreira_, says his friend
Tolentino, who advises another _cabelleireiro_ poet to cease writing
verses, since _vale mais que cem sonetos a peior penteadura_. The _Arte
de Furtar_ mentions a barber who sank still lower, since he left his
profession in order to cut purses. The modern writer Antonio Francisco
Barata (1836-1910) likewise began life as a poor hairdresser at Coimbra.
[633] Cf. _Ecloga_ 1. Dorindo to Alcino (_Alcino Mycenio_ was Quita’s
Arcadian name):
E tu és dos pastores mais famosos
No cantar de improviso o verso brando.
[634] i. e. the military governor of a district, with rank next to that
of _Capitão Môr_.
[635] This Arcadian name was given to him by the Marquesa de Alorna,
although he did not properly belong to the _Arcadia_, being, like
Tolentino, one of the _dissidentes_.
[636] = fishwife; literally ‘woman of Ovar’, a small sea-town between
Aveiro and Oporto.
[637] Sá do Miranda, he says, _em quem das doces quintilhas Sómente
a rima aprendi.... Falta-me arte e natureza, Mas pude delle imitar A
verdadeira singeleza._
[638] The sky is _a estellifera morada_ (the starry abode), birds _o
plumoso aereo bando_, bees _mordazes enxames voadores_, &c.
[639] Menéndez y Pelayo (_Antología_, tom. xiii (1908), p. 377) calls
him _el poeta de más condiciones nativas que ha producido Portugal
después de Camoens_, ‘the most indigenous Portuguese poet since
Camões’, and elsewhere gives the highest praise to his sonnets.
[640] His modern editor, Visconde (Julio) de Castilho, has shown that
the additional surname de Vasconcellos was bestowed on him gratuitously.
[641] The _Couvade_ (ii. 62) is also described by Henrique Diaz,
_Naufragio da Nao S. Paulo_, 1904 ed., p. 25, and Pero de Magalhães
Gandavo, _Historia da Provincia Sancta Cruz_ (1576), cap. 10.
[642] His works in the _Dicc. Bibliog._ go from J. 2163 to J. 2475.
Many are, however, single odes, sermons, &c. Other eighteenth-century
sermons worth reading are those of the learned Franciscan Frei
Sebastião de Santo Antonio: _Sermões_, 2 vols. (1779, 84).
[643] Superficially, at least, more than Manuel Caetano de Sousa
(1658-1734) he deserves to be called a _varão encyclopedico_.
[644] He admires Cicero--not only as philosopher and orator but as a
‘sublime poet’! (_O Homem_ (1815), p. 98)--and Seneca, calls Petrarca
immortal, Tasso incomparable, and is generous in his appreciation of
English writers. At about the same time John Keats, as Petrarca five
centuries earlier, was also reading Homer in translation, but in a
somewhat different spirit.
[645] _Newton, Proemio._
[646] In the second edition (1827) he says that this poem, in twelve
cantos and about 1,000 _oitavas_, written with ‘more fire and a purer
light’ than those of Camões, had cost him ‘nine years of assiduous
application’.
[647] Macedo called Bocage _fanfarrão glosador_, and much abuse of the
same kind varied the monotony of _elogio mutuo_.
[648] Such woodenness was unlikely to appreciate El Greco’s pictures.
In the preface to his _Agriparia_ (_Theatro_, vol. v, 1804) he speaks
of _a extravagancia do vaidoso Domenico_, herein following Faria e
Sousa, who calls Theotocopuli the Góngora of painters and adds: _Pero
vale más una llaneza del Ticiano que todas sus extravagancias juntas
por mas que ingeniosas_ (_Fuente de Aganipe Prólogo_, § 37).
[649] Arnaldo Gama, _Um motim ha cem annos_, 3ᵃ ed. (1896), p. 35.
[650] _Theatro Comico Portuguez_, 4 vols. (1759-90), vol. iii.
[651] Ibid., vol. i.
[652] Ibid., vol. ii.
[653] Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ vi. 275-85; xvii. 91-3,
gives 217 titles.
[654] Now _Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_, but it is found
convenient to retain the original title in order to distinguish it from
a more recent (private) institution, the _Academia das Sciencias de
Portugal_.
VI
1816-1910
§ 1
_The Romantic School_
In Portugal the first quarter of the nineteenth century was filled
with violence and unrest. The French invasion and years of fighting
on Portuguese soil were followed by a series of revolutions and civil
wars. It seemed as if a more general earthquake had come to complete
the ruin of 1755, against which Lisbon had so finely re-acted. The
historian who attempts to record the conflicts between Miguelists
and Constitutionalists, and the miserable political intrigues
which accompanied the ultimate victory of the latter, must waver
disconsolately between tragedy and farce. But horrible and pitiful as
were many of these events, they succeeded in awakening what had seemed
a dead nation to a new life. The introduction of the parliamentary
system called into being eloquent orators, and, more valuable than
much eloquence, the conviction sprang up, partly under foreign
influence, partly through love of the soil, deepened by persecution
and banishment, that literature might have a closer relation to earth
and life than a philological Filintian ode. Returning exiles brought
fresh ideas into the country, and the two men who dominated Portuguese
literature in the first half of the century had both learnt much from
their enforced sojourn abroad. ALMEIDA GARRETT (1799-1854), one of
the strangest and most picturesque figures in literature, was born at
Oporto, but spent his boyhood in the Azores (Ilha Terceira), where his
uncles, especially the Bishop of Angra, gave him a classical education
and destined him for the priesthood. He, however, preferred to study
law at Coimbra (1816-21). Here politics were in the air and he soon
made himself conspicuous as a Liberal. The fall of the Constitution
drove him into exile (1823) in England (near Edgbaston and in London),
and France (Havre and Paris), and for the next thirty years politics
remained one of his ruling passions. His first great opportunity for
rhetorical display was his defence in the law-courts against the
charge of impiety incurred by the publication of his poem _O Retrato
de Venus_ (1821), although even before going to Coimbra he is said to
have preached to a church full of people. He was able to return to
Portugal in 1826, and edited _O Chronista_ and _O Portuguez_, which
evoked Macedo’s wrath and ended in Garrett’s imprisonment. When Dom
Miguel returned from Brazil and, instead of ‘signing the paper’ (the
famous _Carta_ of 1826), had himself declared absolute king (1828)
Garrett again became an exile, chiefly in London, and did not return
to his country till July 1832, when he landed as a private soldier at
Mindello, one of the famous 7,500 who fought for King Pedro and his
daughter, Maria da Gloria. His zeal and outspokenness rendering him an
uncomfortable colleague at Lisbon, he fared rather badly in the ignoble
scramble for office which followed the triumph of the cause. He was
sent first on a mission to London and then as _chargé d’affaires_ to
Brussels (1834-6). The diplomatic service was in many ways congenial
to his character, but his enemies made the mistake of slighting and
neglecting him, and, refusing the post of Minister at Copenhagen,
he returned to Portugal and helped to bring about the Revolution of
September 1836. But his life is the whole history of the time: enough
to say that for the next fifteen years his activities in politics and
literature were unceasing. In a hundred ways he showed his versatility
and energy. He served on many commissions, was appointed Inspector of
Theatres (1836), _Cronista Môr_ (1838), elected deputy (1837), raised
to the House of Peers (1852). As journalist, founder and editor of
several short-lived newspapers, as a stylist and master of prose, his
country’s chief lyric poet in the first half of the nineteenth century
(coming as a fire to light the dry sticks of the eighteenth-century
poetry) and greatest dramatist since the sixteenth; as politician and
one of the most eloquent of all Portugal’s orators, an enthusiastic
if unscientific folk-lorist,[655] a novelist, critic, diplomatist,
soldier, jurist and judge, Garrett played many parts and with success.
This patriot who did not despair of his country, this marvellous dandy
who seemed to bestow as much thought on the cut of a coat as on the
fashioning of a constitution, and who refused to grow old, preferring
to incur ridicule as a _velho namorado_ (his love intrigues ended only
with his life and he wrote his most passionate lyrics when he was over
fifty), this artist in life and literature, lover of old furniture
and old traditions, this lovable, ridiculous, human Garrett, whom his
countrymen called divine, can still alternately charm and repel us as
he scandalized and fascinated his contemporaries. His motives were
often curiously mixed. His immeasurable peacock vanity as well as his
generosity prompted him to champion weak causes and assist obscure
persons. A man of high ideals and an essential honesty, he only rarely
deviated into truth in matters concerning himself. When past fifty
he was still ‘forty-six’ and he wrote an anonymous autobiography and
filled it with his own praise. He often gave his time and talent
ungrudgingly to the service of the State and then cried out that his
disinterestedness went unrewarded. Fond of money but fonder of show
and honours, he died almost poor but a viscount. Although of scarcely
more than plebeian birth he liked to believe that the name Garrett,
which he only assumed in 1818, was the Irish for Gerald and that he
was descended from Garrt, first Earl of Desmond,[656] and through
the Geraldines from Troy.[657] At the mercy of many moods, easily
angered but never vindictive, capable occasionally of half-unconscious
duplicity but never of hypocrisy, he remained to the last changing
and sensitive as a child. His faults were mostly on the surface and
injured principally himself, offering a hundred points of attack to
critics incapable of understanding his greatness. That he did not play
a more fruitfully effective part in politics was less his fault than
that of the politics of the day; but the twofold incentive of serving
his country by useful legislation and of a personal triumph in the
Chamber prevented this ingenuous victim of political intrigue from
ever devoting himself exclusively to literature. In politics he was an
opportunist in the best sense of the word and a Liberal who detested
the art of the demagogue. His few months as Minister in 1852 gave no
scope for his real power of organization and of stimulating others.
In the life and literature of his country he was a great civilizing
and renovating force. He taught his countrymen to read and what to
read, and, having freed them from the trammels of pseudo-classicism,
did his utmost to prevent them from merely exchanging pedantry for
insipidity. _Adozinda_, based on the _romance_ _Sylvaninha_ and
originally published in London in 1828 and reviewed in the _Foreign
Quarterly Review_, October 1832) or by others, e. g. Balthasar Diaz’ _O
Marques de Mantua_, or popular _romances_ revised and polished by their
collector. His own compositions (vol. i) often have great charm, as
_Miragaia_, _Rosalinda_, _Bernal Francez_.]
His early verses, many of the poems published or reprinted in _Lyrica
de João Minimo_ (1829), _Flores sem Fructo_ (1845), and _Fabulas e
Contos_ (1853), were written under the influence of Filinto Elysio
and the eighteenth century, but, fired by romanticism during his
first exile in France, he introduced it into Portugal in his epic
poems _Camões_ (1825) and _Dona Branca_ (1826),[658] in which prosaic
passages alternate with others of fervent poetic beauty and glimpses
of popular customs which in themselves spell poetry in Portugal. But
Garrett was no super-romantic, in fact he deprecated ‘the extravagances
and exaggerations of the ephemeral romanticism which is now coming to
an end in Europe’.[659] At Brussels he learnt German, and the poetry,
and especially the plays, of Goethe cast a steadying influence over
his work. Garrett had early been attracted towards the theatre. His
_Merope_, in its subject derived from Alfieri, and _Catão_ (1821)
were both written in his student days. Neither of them can be called
dramatic. In vain a glow of liberty[660] and rhetoric strives to melt
the ice of _Catão_: its parliamentary debates still leave the reader
cold. When fifteen years later, in the tercentenary year of Vicente’s
last comedy, he was able definitely to undertake his favourite scheme
of providing Portugal with a national drama, he found difficulties.
He had to provide not only theatre, actors, and audience, but also
the plays. He succeeded in instilling his keenness into some of his
more lethargic countrymen, but, not content with translating from the
French, Italian, or Spanish, himself wrote a series of plays to pave
the way. His themes, unlike those of his earlier efforts, were now
entirely national: the legendary love of the poet Bernardim Ribeiro for
the daughter of King Manuel in _Um Auto de Gil Vicente_ (1838);[661]
the patriotism of the Condessa de Athouguia in arming her two sons
on the morning of December 1, 1640, to throw off the Spanish yoke,
in _Dona Philippa de Vilhena_ (1840); an early incident in the life
of one of the most chivalrous soldiers that the world has seen, the
Constable Nun’ Alvarez, in _O Alfageme de Santarem_ (1842); the fall
of Pombal in _A Sobrinha do Marquez_ (1848);[662] two famous episodes
in the life of Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, the first of which, the
setting fire to his palace rather than entertain the Spanish Governors,
preserves the national atmosphere, in _Frei Luiz de Sousa_ (1844).
These plays, with the exception perhaps of the hastily improvised _D.
Philippa de Vilhena_, are all remarkable, although their merit is
unequal. The characters, and especially the epoch in which they are
presented, lend their chief interest to the first and third. The fifth,
overpraised by some critics but praised by all--Menéndez y Pelayo
called it ‘incomparable’--_Frei Luiz de Sousa_, far excels the others
by reason of the concentration of interest and the really dramatic
character of the plot (or at least of the anagnorisis of Act II) and
by its intensity and deliberately simple execution. The intensity may
be almost too unrelieved, but the conception of the play showed a fine
dramatic instinct. Like most of Garrett’s work it was composed in a
white heat, and the effect is enhanced by its excellently clear and
restrained style, which brings out every shade and symptom of tragedy
without distracting the attention by any extraneous ornaments. But all
these plays are written in admirable prose. Indeed, a value is given
even to Garrett’s slighter pieces--_Tio Simplicio_ (1844), _Fallar
Verdade a Mentir_ (1845)[663]--apart from their indigenous character,
by his pliant, transparent, glowing prose, to which perhaps even more
than to his poetry he owes his foremost place in Portuguese literature.
Although essentially a poet, his poems of enduring worth are a mere
handful of beautiful episodes and graceful lyrics--in _Folhas Cahidas_
(1853) and vol. 1 (1843) of his _Romanceiro_--but his prose stamps with
individuality works so diverse as his historical novel _O Arco de Santa
Anna_ (2 vols., 1845, 51),[664] his charming miscellaneous _Viagens
na minha terra_ (1846) with its famous episode of Joaninha of the
nightingales, his treatises _Da Educação_ (1829), _Portugal na balança
da Europa_ (1830), _Bosquejo da Litteratura Portuguesa_ (1826), as well
as his plays. All his work was thoroughly national, and when he died a
group of younger writers was at hand ready to continue it.
Garrett intended as _Cronista Môr_ to write the history of his own
time. More serious historians existed in the Canon of Evora, ANTONIO
CAETANO DO AMARAL (1747-1819); his fellow-academician the Canon JOÃO
PEDRO RIBEIRO (†1839); LUZ SORIANO (1802-99), author of a _Historia da
Guerra Civil_ (1866-90) in seventeen volumes; the VISCONDE DE SANTAREM
(1791-1856), whose able and persistent researches were of inestimable
service to the history and incidentally to the literature of his
country; and the patient investigator CUNHA RIVARA (1809-79).
While scientific research work was accumulating the bones of history
a creator arose in the person of ALEXANDRE HERCULANO (1810-77). He
had emigrated to France and England in 1831, lived for a time at
Rennes, and from the Azores in 1832 with Garrett accompanied the
Liberal army to Oporto as a private soldier. In the following year he
obtained work as a librarian. His _A Voz do Propheta_ (1836) (Castilho
in this year translated Lamennais’ _Paroles d’un Croyant_), written
in the impressive style of a Hebrew prophet, although it appeared
anonymously, brought its author fame, and in 1839 the King Consort D.
Fernando appointed him librarian of the Royal Library of Ajuda. The
salary was not large, under £200 a year, but the post gave him the
two necessaries of literary work, quiet and books. From that year to
1867 his life was taken up with his work, with which politics only
occasionally interfered. He edited _O Panorama_ from 1837 to 1844 and
joined in founding _O Paiz_. Although he was elected deputy to the
Cortes in 1840 he rarely attended the sittings. His friendship with
D. Fernando and King Pedro V continued unbroken till their death. In
1867 with characteristic abruptness he left Lisbon and literature and
gave his last ten years almost entirely to agriculture on the estate
of Val de Lobos, near Santarem.[665] The call of the land was combined
with disgust at the politics of the capital and probably a natural
disinclination to a sedentary mode of life. His retirement was greeted
as a betrayal, and attacks formerly directed against his historical
work were now directed against him for abandoning it. But since he had
no intention of continuing his history, his literary work was really
ended. It has three main aspects, poetry, the historical novel, and
history. From the prosaic height of forty-six he informed Soares de
Passos in a letter that he had been a poet till he was twenty-five.
Some of the poems of _A Harpa do Crente_ (1838),[666] especially _A
Tempestade_ and _A Cruz Mutilada_, rise to noble heights by reason
of a fine conviction and a rugged grandeur, as of blocks of granite.
Herculano had returned to Portugal imbued with profound admiration
for the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, ‘immortal Scott’ as he
called him, and Victor Hugo, and in his remarkable stories and sketches
contributed to _O Panorama_ and published as _Lendas e Narrativas_
(1851), as well as in the more elaborate _O Monasticon_, consisting of
two separate parts _Eurico o Presbytero_ (1844) and _O Monge de Cister_
(1848), he wrote romance based upon scrupulous historical research. A
slight leaning towards melodrama is as a rule successfully withstood,
and his intense and powerful style enchains the attention. _Eurico_
is really a splendid prose poem,[667] in which the eighth-century
priest Eurico is Herculano brooding over the degeneracy of Portugal in
the nineteenth century. His glowing patriotism unifies the action and
raises the style to an impassioned eloquence. The Middle Ages were well
suited to him in their mixture of passion and ingenuousness and their
scope for violent contrasts of evil and virtue, light and shadow. Most
of the _Lendas e Narrativas_ and _O Bobo_ belong to that period, and
his _Historia de Portugal_ (4 vols., 1846-53) ends with the year 1279.
That he should have stopped there when the character and achievements
of King Dinis must have offered him a powerful incentive to proceed
shows how deeply he had felt the controversial attacks levelled at
his work; but with the Renaissance and the subsequent history of
Portugal he was too intensely national to have great sympathy. As a
historian he has been compared with Hallam, Thierry, and Niebuhr, and
he stands any such comparison well. A passion for truth drove him to
the original sources and documents, and, since _alle Gelehrsamkeit
ist noch kein Urteil_, he brought the same patience and impartial
sincerity to their interpretation. The results obtained he imposed on
thousands of readers by his impressive and living style.[668] In his
case the style was the man. Beneath coldness or roughness he concealed
an affectionate, impetuous nature, a hatred of meanness and injustice.
In his personal relations austere and difficult, sometimes no doubt
unfair and undiscerning in the severity of his judgements, he was a
perfect contrast to Almeida Garrett, compared with whom he was as
granite to chalk or as the rock to the stream that flows past it. His
strong will was fortunately directed by the Marquesa de Alorna in his
youth to the thoroughness of German writers. Thoroughness marked all
his work. When the Academy of Sciences entrusted him with the task of
collecting documents on the early history of Portugal he threw himself
into the labour with a fervour which produced the splendid _Portvgaliae
Monvmenta Historica_, a series of historical works and documents of
the first importance which began to appear in 1856. From 1867 to 1877
he undertook agriculture not as an amateur’s pastime but as the work
of his life, with the result that he achieved another great success
scarcely inferior to his success as a writer. The same thoroughness is
evident in the Cyclopean fragment of his history and in his shorter
writings, the _Opusculos_ (1873-76). His _Da Origem e Estabelecimento
da Inquisição em Portugal_ (3 vols., 1854-9), a deeply interesting
account of the negotiations and intrigues at the Vatican, in ceasing
to be dispassionate may suffer as a purely historical work, but its
vigour brooks no denial and its literary excellence is acknowledged
even by those who dispute its fairness. Great as scholar and man, too
great to be always understood during his life, his memory received a
tribute from men so different as Döllinger and Núñez del Arce, and it
is probable that his reputation will only increase with time.
In the historical novel Herculano had many followers. ANTONIO DE
OLIVEIRA MARRECA (1805-89) wrote two laborious fragments in _O
Panorama: Manoel Sousa de Sepulveda_ (1843) and _O Conde Soberano
de Castella_ (1844, 53). JOÃO DE ANDRADE CORVO (1824-90), poet and
dramatist,[669] author of a novel of contemporary politics, _O
Sentimentalismo_ (1871), which contains excellent descriptions of
Bussaco, wrote a long historical novel, _Um Anno na Corte_ (1850), in
which interest in the actors at the Court of Afonso VI, in incidents
such as a bullfight or a boarhunt, in witchcraft or the Inquisition,
is skilfully maintained. His style in its sober restraint is superior
to that of ARNALDO DA GAMA (1828-69), whose historical episodes of the
French invasion of 1809 (_O Sargento Môr de Villar_ and _O Segredo do
Abbade_), or of Oporto in the fifteenth century in _A Ultima Dona de
S. Nicolau_, or in the eighteenth in _Um Motim ha cem annos_ (1861),
are of considerable interest despite their author’s excessive fondness
for Latin quotations. Perhaps the influence of Camillo Castello
Branco may be traced in his novel _O Genio do Mal_ (4 vols., 1857).
GUILHERMINO AUGUSTO DE BARROS (1835-1900) is the author of a novel of
the fifteenth century, _O Castello de Monsanto_ (2 vols., 1879), of
great length and dullness. Its chief interest is for the student of the
Portuguese language, owing to its large vocabulary. BERNARDINO PEREIRA
PINHEIRO (born in 1837) in _Sombras e Luz_ (1863) described scenes from
the reign of King Manuel, and drew a strange portrait of King João
III in _Amores de um Visionario_ (2 vols., 1874). But the mantle of
Herculano, as historical novelist, fell especially upon LUIZ AUGUSTO
REBELLO DA SILVA (1822-71), politician and journalist. His _Rausso por
Homizio_, a short novel of the time of King Sancho II, written with
the exaggeration of extreme youth, appeared in the _Revista Universal
Lisbonense_ (1842-3), followed by _Odio Velho não cansa_ (reign of
Sancho I), with similar defects, in 1848. In the same (the first)
volume of _A Epocha_ appeared his short _conto_ entitled _A Ultima
Corrida de Touros em Salvaterra_, which won and has retained popularity
by its skilful presentment of a stirring and pathetic episode in the
reign of José I (1750-77). Four years later Rebello da Silva published
his principal novel, _A Mocidade de D. João V_ (1852). In its somewhat
tedious descriptions the reader soon loses the thread of the story,
but is entertained by the quick dialogue and almost clownish humour of
the separate scenes. _Lagrimas e Thesouros_[670] (1863) may interest
English readers from the fact that its principal character is William
Beckford, but it has not the great merits of the preceding novel. The
author was already at work on his unfinished _Historia de Portugal nos
seculos XVII e XVIII_ (5 vols., 1860-71). In this, as in his _Fastos da
Igreja_ (1854-5) and _Varões Illustres_ (1870), his defects fall away,
while his real skill as a historian, his intensity, and his excellent
style remain; indeed, an added intensity gives his style a new vigour
and simplicity. His _Historia_, although less rigorously scientific
and far less methodically ordered than that of his master Herculano,
has value as history as well as literature. Rebello da Silva wrote too
much, but his work generally improved with the years and might have
resulted in a real masterpiece had he not died before attaining the age
of fifty.
Meanwhile the novel had entered on a new and intensely modern phase
in the hands of a slightly younger contemporary. The life of CAMILLO
CASTELLO BRANCO (1825-90), whose numerous novels have been and still
are read enthusiastically in Portugal, had about it an element of
improbability which is reflected in his works and made it possible to
combine their apparent sincerity with a peculiar unreality. Born at
Lisbon but left an orphan at the age of eight, and brought up by a
sister, wife of a doctor, in a small village of Tras-os-Montes,[671] a
widower in his teens, then a boisterous Oporto medical student, twice
imprisoned for love affairs and finally guilty of abducting an heiress
as a bride for his son, his whole life was spent in a whirlwind, actual
or imaginary, a tragicomedy which, stricken with blindness, he ended
by suicide. He read and wrote in the same tempestuous fashion. The
sentimental atmosphere of his novels is relieved systematically by
outbursts of cynicism and sarcasm. When he began to write romanticism
was in full swing, but his last twenty years were spent under what
was to him the vexing and tantalizing shadow of the new realism. His
first story, _Maria não me mates, que sou tua mãe!_ (1848),[672]
was sentimental and sensational, and something of these qualities
remained in the greater part of his work. His first more elaborate
novel _Anathema_ (1851), in which the story is interrupted by lengthy
musings and moralizings, he himself described as ‘a kind of literary
crab’, and most of his novels are somewhat lop-sided: he confessed
that his discursiveness was incurable. It is the more hysterical among
his works, such as _Amor de Perdição_ (1862)--its character is well
described by the title of the Italian version, _Amor sfrenato_--or
_Amor de Salvação_ (1864) and those which combine this character with
a chain of amazing coincidences, as _Os Mysterios de Lisboa_ (1854)
and _O Livro Negro do Padre Diniz_ (1855), which were read most avidly
in Portugal. He himself favoured the quieter _Romance de um Homem
Rico_ (1861) and _Livro de Consolação_ (1872). We may prefer the attic
flavour of the humorous sketch of a country gentleman (born in the
year of Waterloo) at Lisbon, in _A Queda d’um Anjo_ (1866), which
somehow recalls the best work of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. Castello
Branco had a true vein of comedy, and although a great part of the
work of this specialist in hysterics has an air of unreality, he is
many-sided and yields frequent surprises. The true Camillo appears
only intermittently in his novels, and charms with a simplicity of
style and description worthy of Frei Luis de Sousa, as in some of
his _Novellas do Minho_ (12 vols., 1875-7), the country-house in
_Coração, Cabeça e Estomago_ (1862), the Tras-os-Montes _fidalgo_‘s
house in _Os Mysterios de Lisboa_, the village priest in _A Sereia_
(1865), Padre João in _Doze Casamentos Felizes_ (1861), the farrier
in _Amor de Perdição_, the charcoal-burners in _O Santo da Montanha_
(1865). Then (as if with the question: what will the Chiado, what
will the Lisbon critics say?) he pulls himself up, lashes himself
with sarcasms, and plunges into his improbabilities and passions.
A poet and a learned and ingenious if unscholarly critic, he saw
and described the charm of the villages of North Portugal, but he
satirized with peculiar venom the _bourgeois_ life and the enriched
_brazileiros_ of Oporto, as in _A Filha do Arcediago_ (1855), _A Neta
do Arcediago_ (1856), _A Douda do Candal_ (1867), _Os Brilhantes do
Brazileiro_ (1869), _Memorias de Guilherme do Amaral_ (1863), and _Um
Homem de Brios_ (1856),[673] the last two being continuations of _Onde
está a Felicidade?_ (1856). This last work has a broader historical
setting, and many of his novels are really historical episodes,[674]
some of which bear a strong resemblance to Pérez Galdós’ _Episodios
Nacionales_. Especially is this the case with the latter part of _As
Tres Irmãs_ (1862) and with _A Bruxa de Monte Cordova_ (1867), both
written before the appearance of the first _Episodio Nacional_. In
_Eusebio Macario_ and _A Corja_ he set his hand to the naturalistic
novel, and in _A Brazileira de Prazins_ (1882) modified this method to
suit his favourite phantasy of extremes, in which the angel and martyr
are contrasted with the romantic Don Juan or vulgar _brazileiro_ or
narrow-minded Minho noble. Apart from their historical interest and
occasional charming glimpses of life and literature, his books are
invaluable for their style, and he is the author of many masterly
passages rather than of any masterpiece. He sometimes--here, as in all
else, leaving moderation to the _bourgeois_ _épaté_--allows himself to
be carried away by his immense vocabulary, but often, indeed usually,
his language is a flawless marble, a rich quarry of the purest, most
vernacular Portuguese, derived from the Portuguese religious and mystic
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[675] Absorbed in
his work night after night till the first songs of birds announced the
dawn, writing in or after a paroxysm of grief or excitement in his
own life, he first lived, then swiftly set on paper, the incidents
of his novels--_Amor de Perdição_ was written in a fortnight. Their
plot may be ill constructed, the delineation of characters shallow,
Balzac _manqué_, the episodes far-fetched and melodramatic, but they
corresponded, if not to life, to the life of their author and thereby
attained intensity of style and a certain unity of action. Yet he was
always greatly concerned with schools and tendencies (he imitated Émile
Zola in _Eusebio Macario_, although he declared the realistic school
to be the perversion of Nature, Émile Souvestre in _As Tres Irmãs_,
Octave Feuillet in _Romance de um Homem Rico_), sure of his genius but
not of the channels into which he should direct it, at his best perhaps
in brief essays and sketches from which his high-flown romanticism is
absent, as in the studies of the lives of criminals in _Memorias do
Carcere_ (2 vols., 1862) and his many scattered reminiscences of life
in Minho, the valley of the Tamega, and Oporto. With his sensitive
restless temperament, his imagination, his satire and sadness (of tears
rather than _saudade_, for which the action in his stories is too
rapid), his intolerant hatred of tyranny and intolerance, his essential
interest not in things nor even characters but in life and passion, and
his unfailing power of expression, he may well be called ‘the [modern]
Portuguese genius personified’.[676] His life is a strange contrast to
the almost idyllic serenity of that of ANTONIO FELICIANO DE CASTILHO
(1800-75), whose admirable persistency as poet and translator during
a period of nearly sixty years--he had been blind from the age of
six--enabled him to attain an extraordinary pre-eminence in Portuguese
poetry after Garrett and other poets had been broken like crystals
while he remained as a tile upon the housetop. A romantic with a
natural leaning to perfection of form, he always retained something
of the Arcadian school, and like the Arcadians sought his inspiration
in Bernardim Ribeiro and other bucolic _quinhentistas_. Unsympathetic
critics incapable of appreciating Castilho’s masterly style may feel
that in the twenty-one letters of the _Cartas de Echo e Narciso_
(1821), in _A Primavera_ (1822)[677] and _Amor e Melancholia ou a
Novissima Heloisa_ (1828) he combined the classical school’s dearth
of thought with the diffuseness of the romantics. But his _quadras_
(_A Visão_, _O São João_, _A Noite do Cemiterio_) and his blank verse
are alike so easy and natural, his style so harmonious and pure that,
despite the lack of observation and originality in these long poems,
they have not even to-day lost their place in Portuguese literature.
In their soft, vague melancholy and gentle grace they were even more
popular than his romantic poems, _A Noite do Castello_ (1836)[678]
and _Os Ciumes do Bardo_ (1838), and influenced many younger writers.
Like Garrett he taught them to seek the subjects of their verse in the
popular traditions of their own land. Indeed, so great was his bent
for the national in literature that his numerous translations (from
the French and English, Latin and Greek, to which, with an occasional
aftermath of poems such as _Outono_ (1862), his later years were
devoted) are often remarkable rather for their excellent Portuguese
versification than for faithfulness to the originals, and the _Faust_
of Goethe, whose powerful directness was unintelligible to his
translator, especially as he only read the poem in a French version,
became translated indeed.
The most prominent or the least insipid of the numerous group of
romantic and ultra-romantic poets, a generation younger than Garrett
and Castilho, who published their verses in _O Trovador_ (1848)[679]
and _O Novo Trovador_ (1856), were LUIZ AUGUSTO PALMEIRIM (1825-93),
whose _Poesias_ appeared in 1851, and JOÃO DE LEMOS (1819-89), some
of whose poems (one of the best known is _A Lua de Londres_) in
_Flores e Amores_ (1858), _Religião e Patria_ (1859), and especially
_Canções da Tarde_ (1875), have a delicacy of rhythm and are more
scholarly than those of most of the romantic poets. The three volumes
form the _Cancioneiro de João de Lemos_. JOSÉ DA SILVA MENDES LEAL
(1818-86), author of _Historia da Guerra no Oriente_ (1855), and, like
Palmeirim, a successful dramatist, in _Os Dois Renegados_ (1839) and
_O Homem da Mascara Negra_ (1843), and also a novelist (_O que foram
os Portugueses_), as a poet is at his best in patriotic, military,
or funeral odes: _O Pavilhão Negro_ (1859), _Ave Cesar_, _Gloria e
Martyrio_ (perhaps suggested by Tennyson’s _Ode on the Death of the
Duke of Wellington_), _Napoleão no Kremlin_ (1865), _Indiannas_, in
which his sonorous verse has a certain grandeur. His _Canticos_ (1858)
contain among others a good translation of _El Pirata_ of Espronceda,
whose influence is evident in the ode to Vasco da Gama, which forms
the first part of _Indiannas_. ANTONIO AUGUSTO SOARES DE PASSOS
(1826-60), son of an Oporto chemist, studied at Coimbra and published
a volume of sentimental romantic poems in 1856 (_Poesias_). The most
remarkable is the noble if a little too grandiloquent ode entitled
_O Firmamento_, which far excels the poems of death, pale moonlight,
autumn regrets, and vanished dreams of this excellent translator of
Ossian. After his death a fellow-student, Dr. Lourenço de Almeida e
Medeiros, accused him of having stolen _O Firmamento_ and other poems.
He had himself, he said, written the melancholy ballad _O Noivado do
Sepulchro_ in February 1853, but unfortunately for his contention it
had appeared over Soares de Passos’ signature eight months earlier in
_O Bardo_. A miscellaneous writer, like so many of his contemporaries,
FRANCISCO GOMES DE AMORIM (1827-92) achieved popularity with his plays,
published two volumes of sentimental poems, _Cantos Matutinos_ (1858)
and _Ephemeros_ (1866), of which perhaps _O Desterrado_ is now alone
remembered, and several pleasantly indigenous stories of his native
Avelomar (Minho) collected in _Fruitos de Vario Sabor_ (1876), with an
attractive sketch of the priest, Padre Manuel, _Muita parra e pouca
uva_ (1878), and _As Duas Fiandeiras_ (1881). He played the sedulous
Boswell to Almeida Garrett during the last three years of the latter’s
life, and the result was one of the few interesting biographies in the
modern literature of the Peninsula: _Garrett, Memorias Biographicas_ (3
vols., 1881-8). Among the host of pale moon-singers following in the
wake of Castilho it is a relief to find a satirist, FAUSTINO XAVIER
DE NOVAES (1822-64), who in his _Poesias_ (1855), _Novas Poesias_
(1858), and _Poesias Postumas_ (1877), preferred to take Tolentino for
his model. He ridiculed the _janota com pouco dinheiro, com fumos de
grande_ and other types of his native Oporto, where for some time he
worked as a goldsmith. Later he emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, but there
found ‘everything except literature well paid’.
Two of the romantic poets lived on into the twentieth century, one
even survived the Monarchy. THOMAZ RIBEIRO (1831-1901), born at Parada
de Gonta in the district of Tondella (Beira), advocate, journalist,
playwright, historian, politician, deputy, minister, peer of the realm,
won enduring fame with his long romantic poem _D. Jayme_ (1862), which
opens with fifteen striking stanzas addressed to Portugal. In this
introductory ode he rises on the wings of ardent patriotism and sturdy
faith in Portugal to a fine achievement in verse. Less rhetorical,
the rest of the poem (or series of poems in varying metre) would have
gained by reduction to half its length, but is sometimes not without
charm in its meanderings. Yet it is a kind of inspired rhetoric and
natural grandiloquence that best characterize Ribeiro, and when his
inspiration falters it leaves but a hollow and metallic shell of
verse. We will expect no delicate shades from a lyric poet who calls
the sky _o celico espectaculo_. Subsequent volumes--_Sons que passam_
(1867), which contains poems written as early as 1854, _A Delfina do
Mal_ (1868), _Vesperas_ (1880), _Dissonancias_ (1890), _O Mensageiro
de Fez_ (1899)--maintained, but did not increase, his reputation as a
poet. The chief work of RAIMUNDO ANTONIO DE BULHÃO PATO (1829-1912), a
Portuguese born at Bilbao, was _Paquita_, which he began to publish in
1866, and to the completion of which he devoted nearly forty years of
loving care. It is a facetious romantic poem of sixteen cantos, mostly
in verses of six lines (_ababcb_ or _ababca_), intended to be in the
manner of Byron but more akin to Antonio de Trueba, whose verses are
imitated in _Flores Agrestes_ (1870). The modern reader, after readily
agreeing with Herculano that the poem has its faults, will perhaps be
disposed to inquire further if it has any merits; but, although its
subject is often unpoetical and trivial, the versification is easy
and occasionally excellent. Bulhão Pato published other volumes of
gentle album poetry, as _Poesias_ (1850), _Versos_ (1862), _Canções da
Tarde_ (1866), and _Hoje: Satyras, Canções e Idyllios_ (1888), besides
sketches and recollections in prose. Nearly fifty years before his
death the romantic school in Portugal had received a severe shock, and
the fact that long romantic poems continued to appear is proof how deep
its roots had penetrated.
FOOTNOTES:
[655] His _Romanceiro_ published in 3 vols. (1843, 51) contains poems
of national themes drawn from popular songs and traditions, written by
himself (as
[656] The name of the first Earl of Desmond (cr. 1328) was Maurice
fitzThomas (†135) not Gerald, Gerod, Gerott, Garrett, or Garrt (see
Lord Walter FitzGerald, _Notes on the FitzGeralds of Ireland_). The
forms Garret and Gareth existed in Catalonia in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, e. g. the Catalan poet Bernardo Garret, born at
Barcelona, who wrote in Italian and became known as Chariteo (_c._
1450-_c._ 1512).
[657] Amorim, _Memorias_, i. 28.
[658] Of _O Magriço_, a still longer epic, only fragments remain; it
went down in manuscript in the _Amelia_, sunk by the Miguelists off the
Portuguese coast.
[659] Preface to 4th ed. (1845) of _Catão_.
[660] The ‘tyranny’ of the day was that of General Beresford. Some
scenes of _Catão_ (derived from the _Cato_ (1713) of Addison), of which
a Portuguese version by Manuel de Figueiredo (_Theatro_, vol. viii)
had appeared in Garrett’s boyhood, were directed against this English
despot. A few years later Garrett learned to enjoy English society, as
his Anglophobe biographer, Amorim, admits.
[661] Published in 1841.
[662] Written ten years earlier.
[663] These two plays were published in vol. vii of his _Obras_ (1847)
with _D. Philippa de Vilhena_.
[664] A contemporary novel, _Helena_ (1871), remained unfinished at his
death.
[665] It was, however, no sudden decision. As early as 1851 he wrote,
in a letter to Garrett, ‘... _me ver entre quatro serras com algumas
geiras de terra proprias, umas botas grossas e um chapeu de Braga,
bello ideal de todas as minhas ambições mundanas_’.
[666] The second edition with additional poems was entitled _Poesias_
(1850).
[667] _Cronica, poema, lenda ou o que quer que seja_, he says.
[668] The late Dr. Gonçalvez Viana considered Herculano ‘the most
vernacular, scrupulous and perfect writer of the nineteenth century’
(_Palestras Filolójicas_, 1910, p. 116).
[669] _O Alliciador_ (1859), _O Astrologo_ (1860).
[670] The last novel to appear in Rebello da Silva’s lifetime was _A
Casa dos Phantasmas_ (1865). _De Noite todos os gatos são pardos_ was
published posthumously.
[671] After Camillo, as he is always called in Portugal, had been
created Visconde de Corrêa Botelho in 1885, his descent was traced back
to Fruela, son of Pelayo.
[672] That is, a year before the novel _Memorias de um Doudo_ (1849) by
Antonio Pedro Lopes de Mendonça (1826-65).
[673] Cf. also _Carlota Angela_ (1858), _O que fazem mulheres_ (1858),
_Annos de Prosa_ (1863), _O Sangue_ (1868), _Estrellas Propicias_
(1863), _Estrellas Funestas_ (1869).
[674] e. g. _Lagrimas Abençoadas_ (1857), _Carlota Angela_ (1858), _O
Santo da Montanha_ (1865), _A Engeitada_ (1866), _O Judeu_ (2 vols.,
1866), _O Regicida_ (1874), _A Filha do Regicida_ (1875).
[675] That it is not impeccable such a phrase as _confortar o palacio_
(_O Livro Negro do Padre Diniz_, 1896 ed., p. 135) well shows.
[676] M. A. Vaz de Carvalho, _Serões no Campo_ (1877), p. 171.
[677] Part 2 is entitled _A Festa de Maio_ (two cantos).
[678] Written in 1830.
[679] This ‘collection of contemporary poems’ contains verses of
considerable merit. Of some 200 poems by twenty-one poets twenty-eight
are by João de Lemos, thirty by José Freire de Serpa Pimentel
(1814-70), second Visconde de Gouvêa, author of _Solaos_ (1839),
thirty-four by Antonio Xavier Rodrigues Cordeiro (1819-1900), and
thirty-six by Augusto José Gonçalves Lima (1823-67), who reprinted his
contributions in _Murmurios_ (1851). A similar collection of verse was
_A Grinalda_ (Porto, 1857).
§ 2
_The Reaction and After_
It was in 1865 that Castilho, the acknowledged high-priest of literary
aspirants, wrote a long letter which was published as introduction (pp.
181-243) to Pinheiro Chagas’ _O Poema da Mocidade_ (1865), in which he
deprecated the pretentious affectations of the younger poets. For while
Castilho was dispensing his patronage to the acolytes of romanticism
a new school of writers had grown up at Coimbra, who refused to know
Joseph. They turned to Germany as well as to France, professed to
replace sentiment by science, and in the name of philosophy chafed
unphilosophically at the old commonplaces and unrealities. Castilho
stood not only for romanticism but for the classical style of the
eighteenth century, and in some respects the secession from his school
may be described as the revolt of the Philistine against Filinto.
Anthero de Quental now voiced the cause against the aged Castilho’s
preface in an article entitled _Bom Senso e Bom Gosto_ (1865). For
the next few months it rained pamphlets.[680] Snr. Julio de Castilho,
subsequently second Visconde de Castilho (1840-1919), and author of
many well-known works, including the drama _D. Ignez de Castro_ (1875)
and the eight volumes of _Lisboa Antiga_ (1879-90), took up the cudgels
on behalf of his father. The high principles at stake, good sense and
good taste, were sometimes forgotten in personal bitterness; a duel was
even fought between Quental and Ramalho Ortigão, in which both the poet
and his critic were happily spared to literature.
But romanticism in Portugal has nine lives, and raised its head at
intervals during the second half of the century. In the domain of
history JOAQUIM PEDRO DE OLIVEIRA MARTINS (1845-94) always remained
more than half a romantic. His life explains the character of his
historical writings. Born at Lisbon, obliged to work for a living when
he was barely fifteen, he succeeded at the same time in educating
himself, supported his mother and her younger children, married before
he was twenty-five, had published a dozen works before he was forty,
was elected deputy for Viana do Castello in 1886, became Minister of
Finance in 1892, and died in his fiftieth year. A career so meteoric
could scarcely give scope for that scrupulous research, that careful
sifting of evidence which modern ideas associate with the work of the
historian; and Oliveira Martins as historian embraced not only the
whole of Portuguese but the whole of Iberian history, and that of
Greece and Rome to boot. But even had he had more time, the result
would only have been more subjects treated, not a different treatment.
His whole idea of history was coloured with romance, his work impetuous
and personal as that of a lyric poet. His first book, the historical
novel _Phebus Moniz_ (1867), passed almost unnoticed. After several
pamphlets, appeared his first historical work, _O Hellenismo e a
Civilisação Christã_ (1878), and then in marvellous rapidity the
_Historia da Civilisação Iberica_ (1879), _Historia de Portugal_
(1879), _Elementos de Anthropologia_ (1880), _Portugal Contemporaneo_
(1881), and a further succession of historical works ending with the
_Historia da Republica Romana_ (1885). Although politics now occupied
much of his time he continued to publish, and wisely emphasized
the biographical side of his work, of which _Os Filhos de D. João
I_ (1891) and _A Vida de Nun’ Alvares_ (1893) are not the least
valuable part. _O Principe Perfeito_ (1896), dealing with King João
II, appeared posthumously and incomplete. A master of psychology
and impressionistic character-sketching, all his work is a gallery
of pictures--and especially of portraits--from Afonso Henriquez to
Herculano, which reveal the artist as well as his subjects. His style,
nervous, coloured, insinuating, is a swift and supple implement for his
exceptional power of skilfully summarizing a person or a period. He
is capable of vulgarity (as in the account of Queen Philippa and the
frequent use of colloquialisms perfectly unbefitting the dignity of
history) but not of dullness. He uses and abuses epigram and metaphor,
and is not free from the pompous rhetorical antitheses of Victor Hugo
(e.g. _De Cid transformou-se em Wallenstein_), till the reader suspects
him of being ready at all times to sacrifice truth to a phrase. Yet it
is surprising, considering the circumstances of his life and the extent
of his work, how often he bases his history, if not on documents, on
the work of reliable earlier historians, Portuguese and foreign. If
he fills in the gaps with pure romance or an uncritical use of texts
(for instance, in _A Vida de Nun’ Alvares_ he incorporates as authentic
those charming ‘letters of Nun’ Alvarez’ which a mere glance at their
style shows to be apocryphal) these are but the poet’s arabesques,
the main structure is often sound enough. Were there no other history
of Portugal it might be necessary to consider his work not only
fascinating but dangerous, nor would _Portugal Contemporaneo_ alone
convey an impartial or complete idea of Portuguese history in the first
two-thirds of the nineteenth century. We may deny him the title of
great historian, we cannot deny him a foremost place in the literature
of the century as a writer of brilliant intellect and feverish energy
and a powerful re-constructor of characters and scenes in their
picturesqueness and their passions.
The work of MANUEL PINHEIRO CHAGAS (1842-95), poet, playwright, critic,
novelist, historian, was even more abundant and for the most part
of a more popular character and more commonplace. He is also more
Portuguese, and his works deserve to be read if only for their pure and
easily flowing style. Many of his novels are historical. _A Corte de D.
João V_ (1867) has an account of an _outeiro_[681] in which figures the
_Camões do Rocio_ as the poet Caetano José da Silva Souto-Maior (_c._
1695-1739) was called. The subject of the earlier novel _Tristezas á
beira-mar_ (1866) is that which Amorim in his _A Abnegação_ derived
from an English novel, but is here more naturally treated. _A Mascara
Velha_ (continued in _O Juramento da Duqueza_) appeared in 1873. _As
Duas Flores de Sangue_ (1875) is concerned with revolution in France
and at Naples. _A Flor Secca_ (1866) treats of more everyday scenes
and contains some amusing if rather obvious character-sketches, as
the old servant Maria do Rosario (a rustic Juliana), or the devout and
vixenish old maid D. Antonia. His _Novelas Historicas_ (1869) contains
six historical tales dealing with Afonso I, Nun’ Alvarez, Prince Henry
the Navigator, King Sebastian, Pombal, and the French Revolution. His
_Historia de Portugal_ (8 vols., 1867), begun on a plan originally laid
down by Ferdinand Denis, contains lengthy and frequent quotations from
previous historians but is coloured by later political ideas. The two
shorter works _Historia alegre de Portugal_ (1880) and _Portugueses
illustres_ (1869) are admirably suited for their purpose--to interest
the people in the history and heroes of their country.
The chief work of the able and industrious critic and historian JOSÉ
MARIA LATINO COELHO (1825-91) was his _Historia Politica e Militar de
Portugal desde os fins do seculo XVIII até 1814_ (3 vols., 1874-91).
ANTONIO COSTA LOBO (1840-1913), editor of the instructive _Memorias
de um Soldado da India_, in his _Historia da Sociedade em Portugal no
seculo XV_ (1904) began a meticulous and well thought-out study of an
earlier period of Portuguese history. JOSÉ RAMOS COELHO (1832-1914)
is chiefly known for his elaborate romantic biography of the brother
of King João V: _Historia do Infante D. Duarte_ (2 vols., 1889, 90).
Dr. HENRIQUE DA GAMA BARROS (born in 1833) in the invaluable _Historia
da Administração Publica em Portugal nos seculos XII a XV_ (3 vols.,
1885, 96, 1914) has collected an abundance of concrete, carefully
verified details, and thrown a searching light on the early history of
Portugal.[682]
In literary criticism as well as in historical research the nineteenth
century worthily continued the traditions of the eighteenth. FRANCISCO
MARQUES DE SOUSA VITERBO (1845-1910) after first appearing in print
as a poet in _O Anjo do Pudor_ (1870) rendered excellent service in
both those fields; the best-known work of LUCIANO CORDEIRO (1844-1900)
is his study _Soror Marianna_ (1890); ZOPHIMO CONSIGLIERI PEDROSO
(1851-1910) and ANTONIO THOMAZ PIRES (†1913) were celebrated for their
studies in folk-lore[683]; the VISCONDE DE JUROMENHA (1807-87) for his
edition of the works of Camões; the CONDE DE FICALHO (1837-1903) for
several remarkable studies and his edition of Garcia da Orta; ANNIBAL
FERNANDES THOMAZ (1840-1912) as a bibliographer; AUGUSTO EPIPHANIO DA
SILVA DIAS (1841-1916) as scholar and critic; JOSÉ PEREIRA DE SAMPAIO
(1857-1915), who used the pseudonym _Bruno_, as a critic; ANICETO DOS
REIS GONÇALVEZ VIANA (1840-1914) and JULIO MOREIRA (1854-1911) as
philologists; LUIZ GARRIDO (1841-82) as critic and classical scholar in
his _Ensaios historicos e criticos_ (1871) and _Estudos de historia e
litteratura_ (1879). After the death of the diligent and enthusiastic
but sadly unmethodical bibliographer INNOCENCIO DA SILVA (1810-76),
his celebrated _Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez_ was carried on
by BRITO ARANHA (1833-1914), and the task of continuing it is now
entrusted to Snr. GOMES DE BRITO. To the eminent folk-lorist FRANCISCO
ADOLPHO COELHO (1847-1919) the language, literature, and folklore
are indebted for many works of permanent value. Notable among living
scholars, apart from D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Mr.
Edgar Prestage, who both write in Portuguese, are Colonel FRANCISCO
MARIA ESTEVES PEREIRA, whose editions of early works are invaluable;
Dr. JOSÉ JOAQUIM NUNES, who has devoted his careful scholarship to the
early poetry and prose; the Camões scholar, Dr. JOSÉ MARIA RODRIGUES;
Snr. PEDRO DE AZEVEDO, archaeologist and historian; Snr. DAVID LOPES,
a scholar equally versed in literature and history; Snr. CANDIDO DE
FIGUEIREDO (born in 1846), enthusiastic student and exponent of the
Portuguese language; while Dr. FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO has a wide
and growing reputation as critic and as editor of the _Revista de
Historia_. Snr. ANSELMO BRAAMCAMP FREIRE (born in 1849), founder and
editor of the _Archivo Historico Portugues_ and a most sagacious critic
and keen investigator, is the author of attractive and important
historical studies and editions, which have become more frequent since
he has been able to spare more time from public affairs. Dr. JOSÉ
LEITE DE VASCONCELLOS (born in 1858) has a European reputation as
archaeologist, folk-lorist, philologist, and founder and editor of
the _Revista Lusitana_. Ethnology, numismatics, and poetry are among
his other subjects, and he maintains the renown of the Portuguese as
polyglots, since he writes in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Latin,
and Galician. His untiring enthusiasm for all that is popular or
genuinely Portuguese is reflected in his numerous books and pamphlets,
and he happily infects younger scholars. The gift and training of
exact scholarship were denied to Dr. THEOPHILO BRAGA (born in 1843),
but his exceptional ardour, industry, and ingenuity have been of
inestimable value to Portuguese literature, which will always venerate
his name even though his works perish. More than thirty years ago they
numbered over sixty, and that was, as it were, only a beginning. His
volumes of verse, _Folhas Verdes_ (1859), _Visão dos Tempos_ (1864),
_Tempestades Sonoras_ (1864), _Ondina do Lago_ (1866), _Torrentes_
(1869), _Miragens Seculares_ (1884), which was intended to succeed
where Victor Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_ had failed through lack of a
_plano fundamental_, have been variously judged, some regarding them as
real works of genius, others as a step removed from the sublime; his
works on the Portuguese people are always full of interesting matter.
His important _Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa_ was to have been
completed in thirty-two volumes, but his energies have been spent in
many directions, and he has further written works of history, including
that of Coimbra University in four volumes, positivist philosophy, and
sociology, as well as short stories and plays.
The Portuguese novelists in the nineteenth century showed an increasing
tendency to write plays, while authors whose reputation belonged more
exclusively to the drama rarely rose above mediocrity. The success
of Garrett’s plays was bound to fire a crowd of dramatists. Gomes de
Amorim’s _Ghigi_ (1852), on a fifteenth-century theme, was followed by
plays with a thesis, such as _A Viuva_ (1852), _Odio de Raça_ (1854),
written on the slavery question at Garrett’s request, and _Figados de
Tigre_ (1857), which entitles itself a parody of melodramas. Having
emigrated as a boy to Brazil, he was able to use his knowledge of South
America, sometimes with more zeal than discretion, as in _O Cedro
Vermelho_, an exotic play in five acts and seventy-nine scenes, which
the unfamiliar dresses and hybrid dialogue helped to make popular at
Lisbon.[684]
The notable success of more recent playwrights has perhaps developed
in proportion as the drama has ceased to be drama in order to become
a series of isolated scenes, a novel or _conto_ in green-room attire.
They are at their happiest when they abandon formal drama for the
lighter _revista_. Pathos is theirs and a deft handling of social
themes; they can reproduce the peasant or _bourgeois_ or noble as a
class in thought and action and external conditions. Some of them
possess technical skill, choose indigenous subjects and an atmosphere
of chastened romanticism. But individual psychology and dramatic
action are scarcely to be found. A reader with the patience to peruse
the hundreds of plays acted and published in Lisbon during the last
fifty years would be rewarded by many delicate half-tones, polished
and impeccable verse, excellent prose, admirable sentiments, and
poignant scenes, but could with difficulty afterwards recall a striking
character or situation. FERNANDO CALDEIRA (1841-94) was a poet,
and his plays, _O Sapatinho de Setim, A Mantilha de Renda_ (1880),
_Nadadoras, A Madrugada_ (1894), are read less for the plot than for
his carefully limned verse. His volume of poems, _Mocidades_, appeared
in 1882. ANTONIO ENNES (1848-1901), journalist, librarian, politician,
diplomatist, Minister of Marine, showed command of pathos and humour
as well as of style in his plays _O Saltimbanco_ (1885), the tragedy
of the noble devotion of a mountebank, Falla-Só, descendant of Jean
Valjean, for his daughter, who has been brought up in ignorance of
her birth, _Os Lazaristas_ (1875), and _Os Engeitados_ (1876), which
insists throughout on its thesis, the wickedness and cruelty of
exposing children, but has some good scenes and living characters,
and the notable one-act piece _Um Divorcio_ (1877). The principal
play of MAXIMILIANO DE AZEVEDO (1850-1911), author of many light and
commonplace comedies, as _Por Força_ (1900), was the drama _Ignez de
Castro_ (1894). The scene in which Inés, full of foreboding, takes
leave of Pedro before he goes hunting, and that at the end of Act IV,
in which Pedro returns to find Inés, in the words of their little son,
_ali a dormir_, are effective. A fifth act six years later [1361]
comes as an anti-climax. _O Auto dos Esquecidos_ (1898) is the work
not of a dramatist but of a poet, JOSÉ DE SOUSA MONTEIRO (1846-1909),
whose poems were published under the title _Poemas: Mysticos, Antigos,
Modernos_ (1883). The _auto_, written in the old _redondilhas_
of which another modern poet has sung the praises, necessarily
suffers by comparison with plays in which Gil Vicente touched
upon the subject--the humbler forgotten heroes of the Portuguese
discoveries--but it has its own charm and pathos.
But the most noteworthy of the dramatists of the latter part of the
century was D. JOÃO DA CAMARA (1852-1908), son of the first Marques
and eighth Conde da Ribeira Grande and grandson of the third Duque
de Lafões. He early began writing for the stage one-act pieces such
as _Nobreza_ (1873). His work is various, for it includes elaborate
historical dramas in heroic couplets, as _Affonso VI_ (1890), in
which the king is treated with a sympathy denied to Cardinal Henrique
in _Alcacer-Kibir_ (1891), slight pieces in verse, as _O Poeta e
a Saudade_ or the _Auto do Menino Jesus_ (1903); and prose plays
of contemporary Lisbon society: _O Pantano_ (a series of scenes of
madness and murder), _A Rosa Engeitada_, _A Toutinegra Real_, _A Triste
Viuvinha_, _Casamento e Mortalha_. In these he is lifelike and natural,
but many may prefer him in his more fanciful pieces, portraying the
old Canon who lives up under the roof of Lisbon Cathedral, in _Meia
Noite_ (1900), or the _prior_ and other rustic worthies of Alentejo,
in _Os Velhos_ (1893), or the ancient mariner of _O Beijo do Infante_
(1898). The mad José of _O Pantano_, the scatterbrained Clytemnestra
in _A Toutinegra Real_, the _parvenu_ Arroiolos and select Dona
Placida in _A Rosa Engeitada_ give little idea of the essential mellow
humanity of his work, enhanced by a prose style carefully chosen
and at times slightly archaic. Snr. Abel Botelho is more peculiarly
concerned with the novel, and his plays _Germano_ (1886), _Os Vencidos
da Vida_ (1892), _Jucunda_ (1895) derive their interest from the
description of certain phases of Lisbon life which could have been
presented equally well in novel form. MARCELLINO MESQUITA (1856-1919),
doctor and deputy, wrote historical dramas, _O Regente_ [1440] in
prose, _Leonor Telles_ (1889, published in 1893) in verse, _O Sonho
da India_ (1898) (scenes from the discoveries of Gama and ten other
famous Portuguese navigators), and _Pedro O Cruel_ (1916). If these
historical tragedies are somewhat ponderous, he has a lighter touch in
the _redondilhas_ of _Margarida do Monte_ (1910) and in the charming
sketch _Peraltas e Secias_, and displays psychological insight in prose
plays dealing with more modern problems: the comedy _Perola_ (1889),
_Os Castros_ (1893), _O Velho Thema_ (1896), _Sempre Noiva_ (1900),
_Almas Doentes_ (1905), which treats of hereditary madness and suicide,
and in the moving tragedy _Envelhecer_ (1909), although it is perhaps
out of keeping with the finely portrayed character of Eduardo de
Mello that he should so end who had endured so nobly. His prose style
has great merit (a few words require excision, e. g. _restaurante_,
_rewolver_, _desconforto_), and he wrote many shorter problem pieces
or episodes in prose: _Fim de Penitencia_ (1895), _O Auto do Busto_
(1899), _O Tio Pedro_ (1902), _A Noite do Calvario, A Mentira_ (in
which a wife lies to her husband by the life of their child, who
dies). The monotony of the rhymed couplets in _Leonor Telles_ is
intensified in the work of Snr. HENRIQUE LOPES DE MENDONÇA (born in
1856). His verse is more declamatory, the use of strained _esdruxulo_
endings is carried so far that it becomes a mannerism and the verse
often resembles a hurdle-race, the line running on smoothly to the
obstacle at its end (_thalamo_--_cala-m’o_; _silencio_--_recompense-o_;
_phantasma_--_faz-m’a_). This no doubt helps to increase the effect
of hollow resonance. Nor is there a compensating skill in psychology.
There is nothing subtle, for instance, in the characters of _O Duque
de Vizeu_ (1886): the cruel João II, the timid Manuel, the high-minded
Duke, and self-sacrificing Margarida. _A Morta_ (1891) deals with Pedro
I’s justice and _saudade_ for the dead Inés. _Affonso d’Albuquerque_
(1898) has a tempting subject (handled previously by Costa Lobo in
his play--also in verse--_Affonso d’Albuquerque_, 1886), but it is
embarrassing to find the most unrhetorical of heroes, will of iron
but not as here tongue of gold, solemnly haranguing in couplet after
couplet, (although here, as in the other plays, the atmosphere of
Portugal’s spacious days is well maintained):
E em psalmos de christão se ha de mudar o cantico
De Brahma, confundindo o Indico no Atlantico.
It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909,
written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio,
_Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to _O Salto
Mortal_, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the
admirably natural fishermen’s scenes and dialogues enacted at Ericeira
in the second half of the nineteenth century, in _Amor Louco_ (1899).
The author succeeds in giving a more definite picture of a whole
community here than of any of his individual heroes in high places. _A
Herança_ (1913) also has the lives of fishermen for its subject. An
equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse is _Saudade_ (1916),
while the dramatist’s power of evoking past scenes is shown in the
glowing historical tales of _Sangue Português_ (1920), _Gente Namorada_
(1921), and _Lanças n’Africa_ (1921).
The most conspicuous among slightly younger dramatists is Snr. JULIO
DANTAS (born in 1876), who published a first volume of poems, _Nada_,
in 1896. He is gifted with wit, lightness of touch, an excellent style,
and a sense of atmosphere, which enables him to bring a pleasant
archaic flavour to reconstructions of the past and observe the true
spirit of history in periods the most diverse. His malleable talent
is equally at its ease in _O que morreu de amor_ (1899) and _Viriato
Tragico_ (1900); in Spain of the seventeenth century: _Don Ramón de
Capichuela_ (1911); contemporary Lisbon: _Crucificados_ (1902), _Mater
Dolorosa_ (1908), _O Reposteiro Verde_ (1912); the Inquisition-clouded
Portugal of the seventeenth century: _Santa Inquisição_ (1910), or its
lighter side, with the _bonbon_ marquis: _D. Beltrão de Figueiroa_
(1902); the gentle, romantic Portugal of the middle of the nineteenth
century: _Um Serão nas Laranjeiras_ (1904), or the bull-fighting
Portugal of the same period: _A Severa_ (1901) with the gallant Marques
de Marialva and the beautiful and magnanimous gipsy of the Mouraria.
The filigree of his elaborate stage directions is skilfully used
to enhance the effect,[685] and some of his scenes are exquisite,
especially the simple, very charming, and tragic one-act comedy _Rosas
de todo o anno_ (1907). If the characters are usually sacrificed to
their setting, here and there a slight sketch stands out, as that of
the cynical old cardinal who delights in the mental torture of others,
in _Santa Inquisição_, the attractive bishop of _Soror Mariana_ (1915),
or the characters in _A Ceia dos Cardeais_ (1902). ERNESTO BIESTER
(1829-80) in the middle of last century wrote lively comedies of
contemporary Lisbon life. The comedies of GERVASIO LOBATO (1850-95), as
_Os Grotescos_, _A Condessa Heloïsa_ (1878), _O Festim de Balthazar_
(1892), _O Commissario de Policia_, _Sua Excellencia_, and many others,
are natural, farcical scenes of high spirits and real good humour and
good feeling. More literary and charming is the work of Snr. EDUARDO
SCHWALBACH, whose _O Dia de Juizo_ (1915) and _Poema de Amor_ (1916)
came to crown a long series of plays and _revistas_. There are touches
of real comedy in the lightly sketched scenes and characters of Snr.
AUGUSTO DE CASTRO’S _Caminho perdido_ (1906), _Amor á Antiga_ (1907),
_As nossas amantes_ (1912), _A Culpa_ (1918), as in his slight,
attractive essays _Fumo do Meu Cigarro_ (1916), _Fantoches e Manequins_
(1917), and _Conversar_ (1920); thought and character in Snr. AUGUSTO
LACERDA’S _O Vicio_ (1888), _Casados Solteiros_ (1893), _Terra Mater_
(1904), _A Duvida_ (1906), _Os Novos Apostolos_ (1918). In Snr. BENTO
MANTUA’S _O Alcool_ (1909) and _Novo Altar_ (1911) the problem may be
a little too much in evidence, but in his prose plays _Má Sina_ (1906)
and _Gente Moça_ (1910) the human interest is insistent. _Má Sina_,
apart from the author’s weakness for strained coincidences, is a story
of peasant life very naturally told. A young playwright of promise is
Snr. VASCO DE MENDONÇA ALVES, author of _Promessa_ (1910) and _Filhos_
(1910). The subject of _Filhos_ is unpleasant if not original (it is
that of Eça de Queiroz’ _Os Maias_ and Ennes’ _Os Engeitados_), but is
treated with dignity and in a good prose style. Snr. JAIME CORTESÃO,
hitherto known rather as a poet, has turned to the drama in _Egas
Moniz_ (1918).
The novelists of the second half of the century were numerous and, as
a rule, too dependent upon foreign models, chiefly French. JOAQUIM
GUILHERME GOMES COELHO (1839-71) neither by date nor inclination
belonged to one or other of the two schools between which lies his
brief ten years’ activity. His talent developed early. As a medical
student at his native Oporto he published poems and several stories,
originally printed in the _Jornal do Porto_ and later collected with
the title _Serões de Provincia_ (1870), and at the age of twenty-one,
under the pseudonym JULIO DINIZ, he wrote the novel which brought him
immediate fame and is still sometimes preferred to his later works:
_Uma Familia Ingleza_ (1868). In these scenes of the life of Oporto he
drew with the most elaborate analysis the relations between English
and Portuguese which he had had frequent opportunities of observing in
that city. Portuguese critics hint that what to superficial readers has
seemed the tediousness of his novels is due to the influence of Dickens
and other English novelists who revel in detail, and it is interesting
that Gomes Coelho’s maternal grandmother was an Englishwoman, Maria,
daughter of Thomas Potter. But it is a mistake to call his work
tedious; the deliberate dullness of his novels has an excitement of
its own, ‘’tis a good dullness’. The reader, tired with sensational
plots and strained incidents, follows not only with relief but with
growing absorption the homely daisy-chain of his stories, in which
not the tiniest link in the development of the action or thought,
especially the latter, is omitted. The interest never flags and never
disappoints, leading gently on with carefully measured steps; the
approval of virtue and disapproval of wickedness only occasionally
becomes obtrusive and insipid. Julio Diniz confessed to a preference
for _bourgeois_ types, but his real interest was in the country,
and _As Pupillas do Senhor Reitor_[686] (1866), a village chronicle
suggested by Herculano’s _O Parocho de Aldea_, is by many held to be
his best work. The characters are delineated with the same delicate
charm as that of Jenny in his earlier novel, and there is a background
of curious observation--_esfolhadas_ (husking the maize), _espadeladas_
(braking flax), _ripadas_ (dressing the flax), _fiadas_ (gatherings
of women to spin at the winter _lareira_ in the faint light of a lamp
hanging on the smoke-blackened wall), the men at cards in the tavern,
the old country doctor going his rounds on horseback, the solemn
greetings _Guarde-o Deus, Louvado seja nosso Senhor Jesu Christo_. If
he sometimes sees the peasants as he would have them be rather than as
they are, if his realism is subdued and gentle, his descriptions are
at least truer than those of the naturalistic school. In _A Morgadinha
dos Canaviaes_ (1868), another village chronicle of Minho, the winter
life of the peasantry is described, the _consoada_ preceding ‘cock-crow
mass’ on Christmas Eve, the _auto_ represented on a rough stage in the
village on the Day of Kings, together with the inevitable missionaries,
_beata_, enriched ‘Brazilian’, and electioneering intrigues. Some
critics have seen a falling off in his last novel, _Os Fidalgos da Casa
Mourisca_ (1871), written in the winter of 1869-70 at Madeira, whither
he went in vain quest of health, but it is perfectly on a level with
his previous work. There may be a slight tendency to exaggerate some of
the characters, as there was in _A Morgadinha_, the contrast between
Jorge and Mauricio may be too crude, the last scenes may be touched
with melodrama, the style may have traces of the _francesismo_ which
Castilho noticed in his first novel, the execution may be excessively
minute--these were not new defects in his works. On the other hand,
the ruined _fidalgo_ D. Luiz, his chaplain and agent Frei Januario,
who scents a Liberal doctrine leagues away, the large-hearted peasants
Anna do Vedor and Thomé da Povoa, are as interesting as Tio Vicente
the herbalist or any of his previous characters, and the charming and
accurate descriptions of the country that he loved so well show him at
his best. This demure chronicler of quiet scenes, this specialist in
the obvious, in his _romances lentos_, as he calls them--a Portuguese
blend of Jane Austen, Enrique Gil, and Fernán Caballero: his delicacy
is essentially feminine--achieved an originality which so often eludes
those who most furiously pursue it. His _Poesias_ (1873), partly
consisting of poems interspersed in his novels, have a quiet, intimate
charm. A curious originality had been attained earlier by a young naval
lieutenant, FRANCISCO MARIA BORDALLO (1821-61). When he published
_Eugenio_ (1846) at Rio de Janeiro, and a second edition at Lisbon in
1854, it was claimed that this sea novel (_romance maritimo_) was the
first of its kind to be written in Portuguese; but his use of naval
technical terms and descriptions of the sea is perhaps too deliberate.
His _Quadros maritimos_ appeared in _O Panorama_ in 1854.
Few authors are more interesting to the critic (owing to the
courageous and persistent development of his art) than JOSÉ MARIA DE
EÇA DE QUEIROZ (1843-1900), a far more robust writer than Julio Diniz
and the greatest Portuguese novelist of the realistic school. Born at
Villa do Conde, the son of a magistrate, he was duly sent to study law
at Coimbra, and after taking his degree contributed in 1866 and 1867 a
series of _feuilletons_ to the _Gazeta de Portugal_. These _folhetins_,
reprinted in _Prosas Barbaras_ (1903), are remarkable because they show
beside a love of the gruesome and fantastic (_O Milhafre_, _O Senhor
Diabo_, _Memorias de uma Forca_) at least one story (_Entre a neve_)
of a perfect simplicity, such as the author is sometimes supposed to
have attained only towards the end of his life. His partiality for
the exotic was fostered by travels in Egypt and Palestine in 1869 and
manifested itself in _A Morte de Jesus_, _Adão e Eva no Paraiso_,
and _A Perfeição_, as well as in _A Reliquia_ and in part of _A
Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_. In 1873 he went to Havana as
Portuguese Consul, and twenty-six years as Consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne
(1874-6), Bristol (1876-88), and Paris (1888-1900), where he died,
enabled him to see his own country in a new light. His prose lost
its exuberance, his taste became more severe, his extravagant fancy,
so strangely combined with realism in many of his works, was merged
in natural descriptions of his native land. He regained his own soul
without losing that peculiar mockery with which he veiled a kindly,
sensitive temperament, and which agreeably stamps the greater part of
his writings. But indeed the introducer of the naturalistic novel into
Portugal only played with materialism, which in his hands was always
unreal: legendary and romantic, as in _Frei Genebro_, _S. Christovam_,
_O Tesoiro_; deliberately false and artificial, as _A Civilisação_;
a macabre fantasy, as _O Defunto_; or half-intentional caricature,
as _O Primo Basilio_ and _Os Maias_. What more chimerical than _A
Reliquia_ or more elusive than _O Suave Milagre_, or more fanciful
than _O Mandarim_ (1879), in which without himself knowing China the
author makes his readers know it! All through his life he was as it
were groping through Manueline for a purer Gothic; the pity was that
his education from the first should have thrown him into contact
with French models--so that his very language too often reads like
translated French--instead of directing him to a truer realism (such
as that of his nearer neighbour Pereda), to which he turned in his
last works, and in which he might have written regional masterpieces
had he not died at a moment when his art apparently had lost nothing
of its vigour. More probably, however, his still unsatisfied craving
for perfection would have sought relief in mysticism. His first novel
was a sensational story written in collaboration with Ramalho Ortigão:
_O Mysterio da Estrada de Cintra_ (1870), originally published in the
_Diario de Noticias_ (July 24-September 27, 1870). It was, however,
_O Crime do Padre Amaro_ (1876), in which he grafted the naturalistic
novel on the quiet little town of Leiria, and the two notable if
unpleasant Lisbon stories _O Primo Basilio_ (1878) and _Os Maias_
(1880), that marked him out as the most powerful writer of the time in
Portugal. But he was still feeling his way. _A Reliquia_ (1887) is as
different from _Os Maias_ as it is from the remarkable and charming
letters of _A Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_ (1891) and his last
two novels, _A Illustre Casa de Ramires_ (1900), most Portuguese of
his works, and _A Cidade e as Serras_ (1901). The three fragments
in _Ultimas Paginas_ (1912) were probably written earlier. There
are samples of all his phases in his _Contos_ (1902), and the short
story gave scope for his powers of observation and insight without
calling for an elaborate plot, in which he often failed. _A Cidade e
as Serras_, after developing the earlier story _A Civilisação_, is
but a fascinating succession of country scenes. All Eça de Queiroz’
characters are caricatures, some more so, others less, but they are
nevertheless true to a certain degree, that is to say, they are good
caricatures, and living, and this is so especially in these later
novels, which show how great a regionalist writer was lost in him
through the influence of French schools. Yet no one can deny that his
works have an originality of their own as well as power and personal
charm, and all contain some striking character-sketches or delightful
descriptions that are not easily forgotten.
The dullness of the naturalistic novels of JULIO LOURENÇO PINTO
(1842-1907) is not relieved by Eça de Queiroz’ pleasant irony and
definite characterization. These ‘scenes of contemporary life’,
while they display a praiseworthy restraint, give the idea rather
of exercises in imitation of a French exemplar or of one of Eça de
Queiroz’ early novels than of living stories. Their style is slovenly,
the development of the plot prolix and monotonous. A certain interest
attaches to _Margarida_ (1879)--although even here the author is too
methodical in detailing the past lives of the four protagonists, the
nonentity Luiz, the aspiring Adelina (a Portuguese Madame Bovary),
Fernando, and Margarida, after they have been duly presented in the
opening pages--and to the descriptions of a fair, a bull-fight,
a flood, or provincial politics in _Vida Atribulada_ (1880), _O
Senhor Deputado_ (1882), _Esboços do Natural_ (1882), and _O Homem
Indispensavel_ (1884). Snr. JAIME DE MAGALHÃES LIMA (born in 1857)
in _O Transviado_ (1899), _Na Paz do Senhor_ (1903), and _O Reino
da Saudade_ (1904), has written novels _à thèse_ which are quite as
interesting as naturalistic novels and more natural, but his art,
especially in the presentation of contemporary politics, is a little
too photographic. Snr. LUIZ DE MAGALHÃES (born in 1859), author of
several volumes of verse, wrote a single novel, _O Brasileiro Soares_
(1886). It would offer little new in theme or treatment to distinguish
it from other naturalistic novels were it not for the author’s success
in drawing in Joaquim Soares a natural and attractive portrait of
the Portuguese returned rich from Brazil (the _Brasileiro_). None
of these novelists can rival the reputation of FRANCISCO TEIXEIRA
DE QUEIROZ (1848-1919). He became prominent as a novelist of the
realistic school over forty years ago when under the pseudonym of
BENTO MORENO he inaugurated the series of his _Comedia do Campo_ (8
vols.), of which the last volume is _Ao Sol e á Chuva_ (1916), followed
by a second series: _Comedia Burgueza_ (7 vols.), which began with
_Os Noivos_ (1879). The obvious defects of his work--its laborious
realism, its insistence on medical or physical details, its vain load
of pedantry[687]--need not obscure its real merits. The careful style
has occasional lapses, the psychology is thin, the conversations
commonplace. His art, like a winter sunshine, fails to penetrate.
Yet even in the _Comedia Burgueza_, where the interest must depend
on the psychology, he succeeds in _D. Agostinho_ and _A Morte de D.
Agostinho_ (1895) in giving individuality to that strange rickety
figure of the old _fidalgo_ in his ruined Lisbon _palacio_. And in the
Minho scenes of the _Comedia do Campo_ his scrupulous descriptions
obtain their full effects. In the _romaria_ (pilgrimage), the
_cantadeira_ (improvisator), the _diligencia_ with its load of priests
(in _Amor Divino_), the girl shepherdess, the _abbade_ fond of hunting
wolves and boars, the old women spinning, the lawsuit of centuries over
the fruit of an orange-tree, the sexton Coruja and his dog Coisa (in
_Vingança do morto_ and _O Enterro de um Cão_), and especially some old
familiar country-house, with Dona Maria and her preserves and _receios
infernaes_, in _Amor Divino_ and _Amores, Amores_ (1897), Minho and the
Minhotos are presented with naturalness and skill. Many of these scenes
are from the short stories of _Contos_, _Novos Contos_ (1887), _A Nossa
Gente_ (1900),[688] and _A Cantadeira_ (1913),[689] some of which have
been collected in an attractive volume, _Arvoredos_ (1895).
Snr. MANUEL DA SILVA GAYO (born in 1860), poet and novelist, wrote
in _Peccado Antigo_ (1893) a short _novela_ as it calls itself,
or rather a _conto_, remarkable for its combination of colour and
restraint. It describes country scenes and customs in a style that
may not be spontaneous but is well subservient to the matter in hand,
and has a vigour, purity, and concision too often lacking in modern
Portuguese prose. Some of his early stories were collected in _A Dama
de Ribadalva_ (1904). In his later novels this style is not maintained.
We will not quarrel with its abruptness in _Ultimos Crentes_ (1904), a
remarkable story of nineteenth-century _Sebastianistas_ in a fishing
village to the extreme north of Estremadura, but it is more slovenly
in _Os Torturados_ (1911), in which a certain originality of thought
seems to have damaged the form in which it was expressed. There is a
welcome Spanish directness in the work of the able journalist Snr.
CARLOS MALHEIRO DIAS (deputy for Vianna do Castello in 1903-5) in his
novels _O Filho das Hervas_ (1900), _Os Telles de Albergaria_ (1901),
and _A Paixão de Maria do Ceo_ (1902). Frankly sensational in _O Grande
Cagliostro_ (1905), he displays his gift for the short story in _A
Vencida_ (1907), a volume of dramatic tales, of which _A Consoada_
is especially effective. Snr. JOÃO GRAVE (born in 1872) carefully
elaborates his prose in _A Eterna Mentira_ (1904) and _Jornada
Romantica_ (1913). It turns to marble in the musings of the marble faun
in _O Ultimo Fauno_ (1906), but loses this unreality in studies of the
poor in country, _Gente Pobre_ (1912), and town, _Os Famintos_ (1903),
a tragic story of a workman’s family at Oporto. More recently he has
treated historical themes with success in _Parsifal_ (1919) and _A Vida
e Paixão da Infanta_ (1921). In the historical novel Snr. FRANCISCO DE
ROCHA MARTINS has won a special place by picturesque works such as _Os
Tavoras_ (1917). He has an eye for dramatic episodes and has composed
many a living picture of the past.
ABEL BOTELHO (1856-1917), a colonel in the Army, and for some years
Minister of the Portuguese Republic at Buenos Aires, author of a volume
of verse, _Lyra Insubmissa_ (1885), showed an intermittent power of
description in seven stories of his native Beira, collected under the
title _Mulheres da Beira_ (1898). In his series of novels published
under the heading _Pathologia Social: O Barão de Lavos_ (1891), _O
Livro de Alda_ (1898), _Fatal Dilemma_ (1907), _Prospera Fortuna_
(1910), he would seem to have laboured under a misapprehension,
believing apparently that the introduction of physiology into
literature might prove him an original writer.[690] Sainte-Beuve may
speak of the _saletés splendides_ of Rabelais, a great stylist like
Signor Gabriele d’ Annunzio, except when his art fails, may redeem
if he does not justify any theme. But Abel Botelho’s style in these
wearisome novels can only be described as worthy of their matter.
They are a welter of shapeless sentences, long abstract terms, French
words, gallicisms, expressions such as _pathognomonico_, _autopsiação_,
_neuro-arthritico_, _a etiologia dos hystero-traumatismos_. This
may be magnificent pathology, but it is not art or literature. _As
Farpas_ had come to an end some years before these novels began to
appear, otherwise their defects might have been pilloried by an adept
in ridicule who in contemporary literature occupies a place apart.
As critic JOSÉ DUARTE RAMALHO ORTIGÃO (1836-1915) took his share in
the controversy of 1865, as a traveller he wrote a vivid, witty,
and charming account of Holland, with malicious side-reflections
on Portugal: _A Hollanda_ (1883). Between these two dates a series
of papers, _As Farpas_ (1871-87), originally suggested by Alphonse
Karr’s _Les Guêpes_ and begun in collaboration with his friend Eça
de Queiroz, had made him famous. His clear and pointed style was an
excellent instrument for the barbed shafts of his satire and irony and,
having discovered how powerful a weapon he possessed, he wielded it to
right purpose. With abundant good sense he ridiculed and undermined
the foibles and follies of Lisbon life, obstinately determined to
bring health to the minds and the bodies of his fellow-countrymen and
succeeding by his wit where a more sedate reformer might have failed.
The range of subjects covered was very wide--the interest of many of
them necessarily ephemeral--and his skill in brief character-sketches
is remarkable. But although Ramalho Ortigão will always be remembered
as the author of _As Farpas_ it is perhaps _A Hollanda_ that will
be read. The former work was imitated by Fialho de Almeida in _Os
Gatos_ (1889-94), which achieved popularity in Lisbon. His is a more
lumbering wit: the rapier of Ramalho Ortigão is exchanged for bludgeon
or umbrella. But _Os Gatos_, despite much that is vulgar and much
that is dull, contains some good literary criticism and successful
descriptions, of places rather than of persons. A battling critic was
MANUEL JOSÉ DA SILVA PINTO (1848-1911) in _Combates e Criticas_ (1882),
_Frente a frente_ (1909), and _Na procella_ (1909). Equally vigorous
and pure was the style of JOAQUIM DE SENNA FREITAS (1840-1913) in _Per
agoa e terra_ (1903) and _A Voz do Semeador_ (1908), as likewise that
of FRANCISCO SILVEIRA DA MOTA in _Viagens na Galliza_ (1889). The
literature of travel is not extensive. Oliveira Martins published in
the _Jornal do Commercio_ of Rio de Janeiro in 1892 his _A Inglaterra
de hoje_ (1893); Eça de Queiroz showed a deeper acquaintance with
England in his _Cartas de Inglaterra_ (1905). Snr. WENCESLAU JOSÉ DE
SOUSA MORAES (born in 1854), sometimes called the Portuguese Pierre
Loti, has skilfully described China and Japan in _Traços do Extremo
Oriente_ (1905), _Paisagens da China e do Japão_ (1906), and _Cartas do
Japão_ (three series, 1904-7). In a letter in French at the end of his
_Traços_ he says: _J’ai dit ce que je pensais, naïvement, au gré de mes
souvenirs._
Snr. MANUEL TEIXEIRA GOMES, versatile and gifted, traveller,
diplomatist (Portuguese Minister at the Court of St. James), and
author, is essentially an artist. With a clear, coloured, liquid style
he excels in painting the blue seas, transparent air, and sun-burnt
soil of Algarve in _Agosto Azul_ (1904). His pagan and unconventional
art has the power of impressing incidents on the mind, as of giving
sharp relief to fantastic persons such as the Canon and his three
witless sisters in _Gente Singular_ (1909), the Danish literary lady
in _Inventario de Junho_ (1899), or the avaricious Dona Maria and the
inane Minister of _Sabina Freire_ (1905). This ‘comedy in three acts’
contains sufficient shrewdness, humour, and clever characterization
for a long novel instead of a short play. The tiny volumes _Tristia_
(1893) and _Alem_ (1895) by Snr. ANTERO DE FIGUEIREDO (born in 1867)
were notable for their style, and in other works, _Partindo da Terra_
(1897), the passionate letters of _Doida de Amor_ (1910), the novel
_Comicos_ (1908), and the fascinating historical studies _D. Pedro
e D. Inês_ (1913) and _Leonor Teles, Flor de Altura_ (1916), his
prose maintains a restraint and charm which place him among the best
stylists of the day. One of the noblest qualities of this prose is its
precision, the scrupulous use of the right word, common or archaic.
It is the more disconcerting to find good Portuguese words such as
_estação_, _hospedaria_, _comodo_, _bondade_ ousted by _gare_, _hôtel_,
_confortavel_, _bonomia_. But these are only occasional blemishes in
a style of rare distinction. It can paint a whole scene in a brief
sentence, as _os milheiraes amarellecem-se caladamente_. This power of
description gives excellence to his _Recordações e Viagens_ (1905),
whether the recollections be of Minho or of _uma aldeia espiritual_ in
Italy. It is really as a writer of short sketches and essays that he
excels. In _Senhora do Amparo_ (1920) and especially in the seventeen
sketches of _Jornadas de Portugal_ (1918) skill in the choice of
indigenous words gives a forcible and original poetry to glowing
descriptions redolent of the soil.
D. MARIA AMALIA VAZ DE CARVALHO (1847-1921) collaborated with her
husband, the poet Gonçalves Crespo, in _Contos para os nossos filhos_,
and in _Serões no Campo_ (1877), three stories, in one of which, _A
Engeitada_, one may perhaps see reminiscences of Julio Diniz’ _A Casa
Mourisca_, and _Contos e Phantasias_ (1880) treated slight themes with
a delicate charm. But she is less well known as writer of _contos_ or
as poet, in _Vozes do Ermo_ (1876), than as the author of a notable
historical biography, _Vida do Duque de Palmella_ (1898-1903), and
of critical essays on Portuguese and foreign literatures. In the
latter the English predominates, but French, German, and Italian,
as in _Arabescos_ (1880), are not forgotten. The sane judgement,
sympathy, and insight of _Alguns homens do meu tempo_ (1889), _Figuras
de Hoje e de Hontem_ (1902), _Cerebros e Corações_ (1903), _No Meu
Cantinho_ (1909), _Coisas de Agora_ (1913), and other volumes have been
appreciated by countless readers in Portugal and Brazil. A writer who
likewise combines literary and historical criticism with original work
in verse (_Poemetos_, 1882) and prose is the CONDE DE SABUGOSA (born in
1854), skilful and delicate reconstructor of the past in _Embrechados_
(1908), _Donas de Tempos Idos_ (1912), _Gente d’Algo_ (1915), _Neves
de Antanho_ (1919), and _A Rainha D. Leonor_ (1921), who collaborated
with another stylist, the CONDE DE ARNOSO[691] (1856-1911), author of
_Azulejos_ (1886), in the volume of _contos_ entitled _De braço dado_
(1894). His historical portraits are full of life and charm, painted in
the warm colours of knowledge and emotion.
If we except D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, the literary achievement
of women in Portugal in recent years has not been remarkable. Like D.
CLAUDIA DE CAMPOS, author of the novels _Elle_ (1898) and _A Esfinge_
and short stories, D. ALICE PESTANA (_Caiel_) has cultivated with
success both the novel, as in _Desgarrada_ (1902), and the _conto_, as
in _De Longe_ (1904), which contains stories of familiar life written
with sincerity and truth. If D. ANNA DE CASTRO OSORIO’S _Ambições_
(1903) gives the impression rather of a series of scenes than of a
long novel, in her short stories _Infelizes_ (1898)--especially _A
Terra_--and _Quatro Novelas_ (1908) she ably describes common family
life in town or country, or (in _A Sacrificada_) the lives, past and
present, of aged nuns in a dwindling convent. D. VIRGINIA DE CASTRO E
ALMEIDA has written two novels concerning the development of the soil
in Alentejo: _Terra Bemdita_ (1907) and _Trabalho Bemdito_ (1908).[692]
They are frankly novels with a thesis to prove, but contain so much
vigour and zest of living that they stand out from other more futile or
anaemic novels of contemporary Portugal.
The growing prominence of the _conto_ is felt in the work of Castello
Branco, Eça de Queiroz, Teixeira de Queiroz, Snr. Jaime de Magalhães
Lima (_Via Redemptora_, 1905, _Apostolos da Terra_, 1906, _Vozes
do Meu Lar_, 1912), and many other novelists. JULIO CESAR MACHADO
(1835-90) showed talent in _Contos ao luar_ (1861), _Scenas da minha
terra_ (1862), _Quadros do campo e da cidade_ (1868), _Á Lareira_
(1872). His skill in the description of rustic scenes would have been
more convincing had he not thought it necessary to introduce touches
of extraneous elegance and humour into his very real love of the
country, so that the patent leather boot is ever appearing among the
_tamancos_ in these light humorous sketches and romantic tales. As
slight but perhaps more natural are the _Contos do Tio Joaquim_ (1861)
by RODRIGO PAGANINO (1835-63); the pleasant stories of village life,
_Contos_ (1874) and _Serões de Inverno_ (1880), written by CARLOS LOPES
(born in 1842) under the pseudonym PEDRO IVO; and _Contos_ (1894)
and _Azul e Negro_[693] (1897) by Afonso Botelho. The poet AUGUSTO
SARMENTO (born in 1835) also wrote stories of village life, _Contos do
Soalheiro_ (1876), but stories _à thèse_, treating of emigration and
other _minhoto_ evils, among which he includes _beatas_, witches, and
_brasileiros de torna-viagem_. A writer of _contos_ as disappointing
as Machado is ALBERTO BRAGA (1851-1911). He has a sense of style
and technique, and some of his tales, especially _O Engeitado_, are
pathetic, but after reading his _Contos da minha lavra_ (1879), _Contos
de aldeia_, _Contos Escolhidos_ (1892), _Novos Contos_, one has the
perhaps somewhat unfair impression that they are mainly concerned
with _viscondessas_ and canaries. The learned Conde de Ficalho in
_Uma Eleição Perdida_ (1888) evidently relates his own experiences,
and this and the five accompanying _contos_ contain some charming
descriptions of Alentejo, of the _reisinho cacique_ Lopes, Paschoal
the _passarinheiro_, the gossips of the village _botica_, the girls
carrying _bilhas_, the scent of rosemary in morning dew. The same
province supplies the background of the work of JOSÉ VALENTIM FIALHO
DE ALMEIDA (1857-1912). Born at Villa de Frades, the son of a village
schoolmaster, he spent seven years sadly against the grain as chemist’s
assistant before he was able to turn more exclusively to literature.
No recent writer has had a greater vogue in Portugal. One must account
for this by the fact that in the somewhat nerveless literature of
the day he showed a virile and often brutal colour and energy. A few
descriptions of Alentejo gave interest to his _Contos_ (1881) and _A
Cidade do Vicio_ (1882), an interest strengthened in _O Paiz das Uvas_
(1893). This collection of naturalistic stories of great variety and
very unequal merit is, indeed, redeemed by the author’s love for his
native province. He sometimes obtains powerful effects when his subject
is the wide spaces, the night silences, or the summer drought and
midday zinc-coloured sky of Alentejo. The shepherdess with her distaff,
the village crier, the small proprietor, the harvesters with their
week’s provision of coarse bread, goat’s cheese, and olives, toiling in
a temperature of 122 degrees, appear in his stories. His art is wholly
external. One need not have complained of his lack of psychology had he
been able to express what he saw in good Portuguese prose. But if we
turn to his style we find uncouth constructions, the constant use of
French words, and worse still, French words disguised as Portuguese:
_deboche_, _coquettemente_, _crayonar_. This is the more pity because,
had he written in Portuguese, he might have left robust pictures of
the Alentejan peasant’s life in its grim reality which would have been
read with pleasure. A sober and fastidious style, sometimes recalling
that of the Spanish essayist Azorín, marks the _Contos_ (1900) of
the dramatist D. João da Camara. The clear etching of the blind man
and his grandson going through the streets on Christmas Eve in _As
Estrellas do Cego_ and, especially, the poignant sketch of the ruined
old scholar _fidalgo_ in _O Paquete_ show admirably what a skilful
craftsman can make of the slightest of themes. This is true to an even
greater degree of the best of all the Portuguese _contistas_, JOSÉ
FRANCISCO DE TRINDADE COELHO (1861-1908). His _contos_ collected under
the title _Os Meus Amores_ (1891), natural and deeply felt scenes
of peasant life, are all marked by an exceptional delicacy of style
and by a most alluring freshness and simplicity. The tinkling of the
bells of flocks, the thin blue smoke above the roofs, the evening
mists, the flight of doves are in these pages. And the peasants are
treated with the same sympathetic insight as their surroundings, the
women singing at their work in the fields, the olive-gatherers at
supper in the great farm kitchen; vintage and harvest, tragedy and
idyll. The sympathy is extended to the animals, donkey (_Sultão_),
goat (_Mãe_), and hen (_A Choca_). The _saudade_ of peasant soldiers
for the land in _Terra-Mater_ gives an opportunity for describing the
life of the peasants with its hardy toil and many simple pleasures.
In _Á Lareira_, the longest of these stories, a rustic _serão_ of
peasants _ao borralho_ is pleasantly drawn out with quatrains, riddles,
anecdotes, fairy-tales, only interrupted by the ringing of the angelus
for the saying of prayer on prayer. Two little masterpieces stand
somewhat apart from the rest: _Abyssus Abyssum_, the tragic story of
two small boys, brothers, rowing to overtake the evening star, and
_Idyllio Rustico_, which with its two ingenuous little shepherds and
their flocks of sheep in the lonely places might almost be a chapter
from Don Ramón María del Valle Inclán’s _Flor de Santidad_ (1904). _Os
Meus Amores_ shows realism at its best, that is to say, hand in hand
with idealism. The author is not so enamoured of his delightful style
that he does not make the peasants speak their natural language, and
although he realizes keenly and expresses the poetry of their life, he
never sacrifices truth to this perception any more than to the strange
and essentially false propensities of the naturalistic school, nor
refines his descriptions to a rose-colour insipidity. A good scent of
the earth and of wild flowers pervades these realistic descriptions.
On such lines, if this book influences younger writers, it might lead
the way to many a delightful novel of the _parfum du terroir_ of
Portugal. Snr. JULIO BRANDÃO (born in 1870), equally distinguished
in prose and verse, is the author of _Maria do Ceo_ (1902), mystic
love letters in a chiselled style, only with the mystic writers of
old the style flowed naturally from an inner fervour, here it has
evidently been the chief consideration. If the effort is apparent it is
sometimes very successful, and in _Perfis Suaves_ (1903) and _Figuras
de Barro_ (1910), fantastic stories and fascinating fairy-tales, he
occasionally achieves simplicity. Equally studied is the prose of
Snr. JUSTINO DE MONTALVÃO’S _Os Destinos_ (1904), twelve stories, of
which _Conto dos Reis_ relates the death of a peasant child as voices
outside sing _São chegados os tres Reis_. The VISCONDE DE VILLA-MOURA
(born in 1877) has shown in the five _contos_ of _Doentes da Belleza_
(1913), as in _Bohemios_ (1914), that his sensitive plastic style is
excellently suited to the short story. Snr. ANTONIO PATRICIO’S _Serão
Inquieto_ (1910) contains two poignant _contos_: _O Precoce_ and _O
Veiga_. _Os Pobres_ by Snr. RAUL BRANDÃO (born in 1869) is a succession
of scenes, a striking analysis of suffering as exhibited in various
strange types of the poor and of its beauty and necessity in the
philosophy of Gabiru. Snr. SEVERO PORTELA displays a tortured style
in _Os Condemnados_ (1906) and _Agua Corrente_ (1909); smoother but
equally artificial is that of Snr. HENRIQUE DE VASCONCELLOS in _Contos
Novos_ (1903) and _Circe_ (1908), the former of which contains the
slight sketch _O Caminheiro_. _Excentricos_ is the title of a volume
containing some notable stories by Snr. ALBERTO DE SOUSA COSTA. The
large number of _contos_ is a sign of the times, corresponding to the
favour shown towards the brief _revista_ in the drama and the host of
sonnets which now replace the long romantic poems of the past.
ANTHERO DE QUENTAL[694] (1842-91), the Coimbra student who waved the
banner of revolt against a too complacent romanticism in 1865, was that
rare thing in Portuguese literature, a poet who thinks. Powerfully
influenced by German philosophy and literature, his was a tortured
spirit, and when in his sincerity he attempted to translate his
philosophy into action the result was too often failure. Born at Ponta
Delgada in the Azores, he studied law at Coimbra from 1858 to 1864,
became a socialist, worked for some time as a compositor in Paris,
in spite of his independent means; then, after a visit to the United
States of America, settled at Lisbon for some years and figured as an
active socialist. Weary and ill, he retired in 1882 to the quieter town
in the north, Villa do Conde, but he could not escape from his own
turbulent thoughts and nine years later he shot himself in a square of
his native town. If his life was ineffectual in its series of broken,
noble impulses, there is nothing vague or uncertain about the splendid
sonnets of _Odes Modernas_ (1865) and _Sonetos_ (1881). They are the
effect, often perfectly tranquil, of a previous agony of thought, like
brimmed furrows reflecting clear skies after rain. His search was for
truth, not for words to express it, far less for words to describe his
own sensations. Indeed, he was far from considering poetry as an end in
itself and destroyed more of his poems than his friends published. In
his autobiographical letter addressed to Dr. Storck in 1887 he states
that his poetry was written _involuntariamente_. That is to say, after
much thought on the great problems of existence verse came to him
unrhetorical and spontaneous, as it did to João de Deus without any
thought whatever:
Já sossega depois de tanta luta,
Já me descansa em paz o coraçam.
Quental’s poems owe their strength and intensity to the fact that they
had passed through the fire of _tanta luta_.
Totally different from Quental’s was the genius of JOÃO DE DEUS
(1830-96), the most natural Portuguese poet of the nineteenth century.
Born at Messines in Algarve, he studied law at Coimbra, became a
journalist, but did not come to live permanently at Lisbon until he
was elected to represent Silves in the Chamber of Deputies in 1868. It
is significant that many of his most perfect lyrics were contributed
to provincial journals. They are written in the simple language of a
peasant composing a quatrain. He sought his inspiration not in books
or any of the rival schools of poetry but in his native soil and
popular speech, and through him Portuguese poetry was renovated. His
first published work, _A Lata_ (Coimbra, 1860), in _oitavas_, gives no
measure of his genius, but some of his best poems, such as _A Vida_,
were widely known before _Flores do Campo_ (1868) appeared, followed
by _Ramo de Flores_ (1875), _Folhas Soltas_ (1876), and finally the
collected edition, _Campo de Flores_ (1893). His last years were spent
in advertising and perfecting his special method for teaching children
to read. If ever poet was born, not made, it was João de Deus. He is at
his best when he does not attempt thought or philosophy or even give
rein to his satire. His verse, clear and light as a leaf, a cloud, a
stream--its favourite metaphors--and entirely free from rhetorical
effects, has a most spontaneous charm. Despite occasional defects, the
use of lukewarm or unpoetical words, _objectos_, _chaile_, _affavel_,
_bussola_, or such rhymes as _gotta_--_dou-t-a_, his work, which lacks
the fire that more spacious times might have elicited, abounds in
exquisite love lyrics. The popular inspiration is also evident in the
_Peninsulares_ (1870) of JOSÉ SIMÕES DIAS (1844-99), many of whose
poems are a mere string of _quadras_.
GUILHERME BRAGA (1843-76), who wrote vigorous political verse against
‘Jesuit reactionaries’ and the like in _Os Falsos Apostolos_ (1871) and
_O Bispo_ (1874), proved himself a talented poet in _Heras e Violetas_
(1869), although even here are to be found words and expressions
frequently out of tune. Like ALEXANDRE DA CONCEIÇÃO (1842-89), whose
best-known volume of verses, _Alvoradas_ (1866), belongs to the
romantic school, GUILHERME DE AZEVEDO (1846-82) began with romantic
verse in imitation of Garrett in _Apparições_ (1861), wavered in
_Raçõdiaes da Noite_ (1871), and succumbed to the new school in _A
Alma Nova_ (1874). JOÃO PENHA (1839-1919) in _Rimas_ (1882) and _Novas
Rimas_ (1905) shows a command of metre and harmony worthy of something
better than his commonplace themes. Gonçalves Crespo heard in his
verse ‘the plaining music of a guitar of Andalucía’, but Penha never
cared to be serious. CESARIO VERDE (1855-86) was a Lisbon poet who
in verse written between 1873 and 1883, _O Livro de Cesario Verde_
(1886), showed a most promising gift of presenting reality in phrases
limpidly clear without straining after effect. Another poet who died
almost as young left a far more definite achievement, although his
poems are scarcely more numerous than those of Verde. Few Portuguese
writers have, indeed, published less than ANTONIO CANDIDO GONÇALVES
CRESPO (1846-83), a Portuguese born at Rio de Janeiro. He studied
at Coimbra University, and became a distinguished journalist and a
colonial member of the Portuguese Parliament from 1879 to 1881. Two
tiny volumes of lyrics, _Miniaturas_ (1870) and _Nocturnos_ (1882),
comprise his whole work, but his restraint and his fastidiously
chiselled verse place him at the head of the Portuguese Parnassians.
Portuguese in his hands becomes a pliant medium crystallizing round an
emotion, _longes de saudade_, or, more frequently, round a concrete
image, a parting at sunset (_Mater dolorosa_) or a village in a
summer noontide (_Na Aldeia_). The latter sonnet recalls a few lines
of Leopardi’s _Il Sabato del Villaggio_, and in one respect, the
perfection of form with which he describes quite ordinary scenes, the
Portuguese poet need not fear the comparison. An old woman spinning,
children at play, a peasant’s song in the fields, an orange-grove at
dawn musical with birds--these are incidental pictures in his poems,
and by his combination of a vague dreaming temperament with a delicate,
definite artistic sense they receive a new significance. An earlier
Brazilian poet, ANTONIO GONÇALVES DIAS (1823-64), author of _Primeiros
Cantos_ (1846), _Segundos Cantos e Sextilhas de Frei Antão_ (1848), and
_Ultimos Cantos_ (1851), made a name for himself by his _sextilhas_.
It might be said of that marvellous poet Victor Hugo that he is not
for exportation: the tendency has been for those who lack his genius
to take shelter in his defects. Since one of his earliest followers,
CLAUDIO JOSÉ NUNES (1831-75), published _Scenas Contemporaneas_
(1873) his influence has been very marked in Portugal and manifests
itself in the grandiloquence, over-emphasis, and love of antithesis
of much of Snr. ABILIO MANUEL GUERRA JUNQUEIRO’S work. The greatest
of Portugal’s living poets was born at Freixo de Espada á Cinta in
1850 and was thus a small child when Hugo’s poems _Les Contemplations_
(1856) and _La Légende des Siècles_ (1859) appeared. After studying
law at Coimbra he was returned to Parliament in 1878. Enthusiastically
revolutionary until 1910, he became Portuguese Minister at Berne in the
following year, but retired from the service of the Republic in 1914.
His first verses were published at the age of fourteen, _Duas paginas
dos quatorze annos_ (1864), and before he was twenty he had written
_Mysticae Nuptiae_ (1866), _Vozes sem Echo_ (1867), and _Baptismo do
Amor_ (1868), with a preface by Camillo Castello Branco. But it was
_A Morte de Dom João_ (1874), a poem or series of poems in which Don
Juan and Jehovah are attacked impartially, that brought him resounding
success, a success followed up and increased by _A Velhice do Padre
Eterno_ (1885) and, under the influence of the political crisis of
1890, _Finis Patriae_ (1890) and the play _Patria_, in which his eager
and vigorous patriotism found vent. In all these, as in the quieter
volume _A Musa em Ferias_ (1879), there is true poetry (as well as
unfailing sincerity and passionate sympathy for the oppressed), but it
has to be looked for. A weird ghostliness in _Finis Patriae_ and in the
_doido’s_ part in _Patria_ is accompanied by a strange and impressive
lilt in the rhythm[695] which corresponds to the haunting refrains of
some of the shorter poems. But there seemed a danger that on the wings
of applause, in political invective, and turgid rhetoric the poet
might allow his genius to be totally misdirected, and it is his most
remarkable achievement that in _Os Simples_ (1892) he laid all that
aside and returned to the simpler themes of peasant life which cast
a spell over some of the lyrics in _Finis Patriae_: harvesters, the
_linda boeirinha_ guiding her great oxen, the old shepherd with his
flute and crook on the scented hills, the _cavador_ going to his work
at cockcrow beneath the red morning star. _A Caminho_, the inimitable
opening poem, has a delicate inspiration which is masterly in its
restraint and ingenuous charm. It was well to rest on such laurels. In
two subsequent odes, _Oração ao Pão_ (1902) and _Oração á Luz_ (1904),
filled with a vague music, Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s poetry merges into
a mystic philosophy which he intends to express in prose. Some early
poems appeared in _Poesias Dispersas_ (1921). A victim of Victor Hugo
to whom it is not easy for a critic to do justice, is the Lisbon poet
ANTONIO DUARTE GOMES LEAL (1849-1921). His capacity is felt to be so
much greater than his achievement. The grandiloquence and declamatory
character of the verse in his first volume, _Claridades do Sul_ (1875),
are accentuated in subsequent works: _A Fome de Camões_ (1880), _A
Historia de Jesus_ (1883), _O Fim de um Mundo_ (1900), _A Mulher de
Luto_ (1902). His satire here, as in _Satyras Modernas_ (1899), or
the biting sonnets of _Mefistófeles em Lisboa_ (1907), is sincerely
indignant but too often based on ignorance. In _O Anti-Christo_
(1884) it voices the eternal revolt against false civilization and
materialism. This, the most celebrated of his works, presents a strange
medley of persons, from Barabbas to Tolstoi and Huysmans, who have
this in common that they all declaim in hollow sonorous Alexandrines.
Science, saints, Hebrew prophets, Chinese philosophers, the eleven
thousand Virgins pass in a vision before the Anti-Christ and converse
with him. It is as if a Goethe without genius had written the second
part of _Faust_. But _Claridades do Sul_ contains poems in a totally
different kind, poems like _De Noute_ and _Os Lobos_, which seem to
have caught something of the pathos and simplicity of _Les Pauvres
Gens_, satire and _humorismo_ forgotten. In his descriptions of homely
scenes his verse becomes quiet, natural, and effective; after reading
the restrained and skilful _tercetos_ of _De Noute_ one is inclined to
wonder whether the secret of his comparative failure is that here was
an excellent Dutch genre-painter striving to be a high-flown Velazquez.
But certainly he has no lack of talent, imagination, and power of
expression in resonant verse.
The cult of _saudade_ has been deliberately revived by a group of poets
in the north who have founded the school of _Saudosismo_, and in their
monthly _A Aguia_ and the _Renascença_ press seek to foster all that
is native in Portuguese literature. Their creed is a vague pantheism,
their poetry is often equally vague and lacking in individuality,
but they have the advantage of being remote from Lisbon and of not
concerning themselves with foreign schools, and can therefore be
natural and Portuguese. At the head of these poets Snr. JOAQUIM
TEIXEIRA DE PASCOAES (born in 1877) sings musically in an enchanted
land of mists and shadows of pantheism, _saudade_, and his native
Tras-os-Montes. Merging itself entirely in Nature, his poetry becomes
a wavering symphony[696] woven of night and silence. The vagueness
present in the lyrics of _Sempre_ (1897), _Terra prohibida_ (1899),
_Jesus e Pan_ (1903), _Vida Etherea_ (1906), _As Sombras_ (1907), is
more marked in his longer poems _Marános_ (1911), in eighteen cantos,
and _Regresso ao Paraiso_ (1912), in twenty-two cantos of monotonous
blank verse. But Nature is justified of her child, and _Marános_, like
a mountain-stream threading its transparent pools, shows abundantly
that the author has also the power of condensing a picture into a
single line. To this group belong Snr. MARIO BEIRÃO (born in 1891),
whose verse in _O Ultimo Lusiada_ (1913) and _Ausente_ (1915) is strong
and concrete; Snr. AFONSO DUARTE (born in 1896), Snr. AUGUSTO CASIMIRO,
author of _Para a Vida_ (1906), _A Victoria do Homem_ (1910), and _A
Evocação da Vida_ (1912), and other young writers of promise.
Few if any of the younger poets have found in Portugal so ready a
reception for their work as ANTONIO NOBRE (1867-1900), whether this
be due to the all-pervading melancholy, _saudades de tudo_, to the
metrical skill, or to the haunting intensity of his verse. In a series
of poems written between 1884 and 1894 he combined the dreams of a
student at Coimbra, _a lendaria Coimbra_, the home-sickness of a
Portuguese in Paris, and a real sympathy for the poor and miserable.
In these poems of suffering and disillusion, published under the title
_Só_ (1892), a strange alternation of ingenuousness and satanism,
fantastic visions and serene simplicity, genuine poetry and sheer
prose, refrains of rustic gaiety and of morbid sentiment, produces
a certain measure of originality. He can fit his pliant metres to
his will, mould them like wax, and if the book contains no perfect
poems this is partly due to a deliberate intention to reflect his own
incoherent moods and to an evident pleasure in incongruous effects. A
second volume, of poems written between 1895 and 1899, _Despedidas_
(1902), appeared posthumously.
The permanent Secretary of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Colonel
CRISTOVAM AYRES (born in 1853), has won distinction in many fields.
Well known as an historian of the army (_Historia Organica e Politica
do Exercito Portuguez_, 8 vols., 1896-1908) and as a critic, he has
also written short stories and volumes of verse which have placed
him in the front rank of the living Parnassian poets of Portugal. In
_Indianas_ (1878), _Intimas_ (1884), _Anoitecer_ (1914), and _Cinzas
ao Vento_ (1921), he displays great technical skill, especially
in the reproduction of still scenes as in the sonnets _Paizagem_,
_Aguarella_, or _Ao luar_. The Parnassian verse of JOAQUIM DE ARAUJO
(1858-1917) in _Lyra Intima_ (1881), _Occidentaes_ (1888), and _Flores
da Noite_ (1894) has a narcotic spell, a slow lulling music. And there
is real opium in the pliant melodies of ANTONIO FEIJÓ (1862-1917),
during sixteen years Portuguese Minister at Stockholm, in _Lyricas e
Bucolicas_ (1884) and _Ilha dos Amores_ (1897). The words are heavy
with sleep like cistus flowers: _Astros das noites limpidas velae-vos_
or _A neve cae na terra lentamente_ (_les lourds flocons des neigeuses
années_). This perfection of metre is seen at its highest in his
_Cancioneiro Chinez_ (1890), translations from the French _Livre de
Jade_ (1867), itself a translation by Judith Gautier from various
Chinese poets. The poems of JOÃO DINIZ, in _Aquarellas_ (1889); MANUEL
DUARTE DE ALMEIDA (1844-1914), in _Estancias ao Infante Henrique_
(1889), _Ramo de Lilazes_ (1887), and _Terra e Azul_; Snr. Manuel da
Silva Gayo, in _Novos Poemas_ (1906); Snr. Julio Brandão, in _Saudades_
(1893), in which he weaves the _linho luarento das saudades_, _O
Jardim da Morte_ (1898) and _Nuvem de Oiro_ (1912); Snr. FAUSTO GUEDES
TEIXEIRA (born in 1872), in his remarkable _O Meu Livro, 1896-1906_
(1908); Snr. LUIZ OSORIO, in _Neblinas_ (1884), _Poemas Portuguezes_
(1890), and _Alma lyrica_ (1891); Snr. GUILHERME DE SANTA RITA in
_Vacillantes_ (1884) and _O Poema de um Morto_ (1897), and indeed of a
great _caterva vatum_,[697] belong to this school. The chiselling of
faultless sonnets has become a mannerism, but the critic who recalls
the vague and often slipshod diffuseness of earlier romantic poems
pauses before condemning. Perhaps it may be possible in time to combine
the cunning artifice of the verse-cutter with thought and a breath of
life and Nature.
The CONDE DE MONSARAZ (1852-1913) wrote some pleasant regional
verse in _Musa Alemtejana_ (1908), in which he describes life in the
_charnecas_ (moors) and _herdades_ (estates) of Alentejo: the sound of
the well-wheel among orange-trees, the ringing of _trindades_, the long
lines of women hoeing, the old herdsman singing melancholy _fados_,
the smoking _açorda_ of the workmen’s meals, the storks fleeing from
the July heat, the processions to pray for rain. The same out-of-door
air and fullness of treatment pervade the work of Snr. AUGUSTO GIL,
with a more popular strain, in _Musa Cerula_ (1894), _Versos_ (1901),
_Luar de Janeiro_ (1909), _Sombra de Juno_ (1915), _Alba Plena_ (1916),
Snr. JOSÉ COELHO DA CUNHA’S _Terra do Sol_ (1911) and _Vilancetes_
(1915),[698] and D. BRANCA DE GONTA COLLAÇO’S _Canções do Meio Dia_
(1912). A more vigorous talent, also, is that of Snr. JOÃO DE BARROS
in _Algas_ (1899), _Entre a Multidão_ (1902), _Dentro da Vida_ (1904),
_Terra Florida_ (1909), and _Anteu_ (1912). At the head of the
Portuguese Symbolists (their symbolism has been rather external than
philosophic) stands Snr. EUGENIO DE CASTRO (born in 1869). He wished,
while retaining perfection of form, to fill it with a new imagery and
colour, and that his verse in describing Nature through his sensations
should remain detached and impersonal: the poet is _uma sombra saudosa
d’outras sombras_. The success achieved in _Oaristos_ (1890) was
strikingly maintained in _Sagramor_ (1895), _O Rei Galaor_ (1897),
_Constança_ (1900), _Depois da Ceifa_ (1901), _A Sombra do Quadrante_
(1906), _O Annel de Polycrates_ (1907), _O Filho Prodigo_ (1910), and
the twenty-one sonnets of _Camafeus Romanos_ (1921). His versification
is not sufficiently varied (a defect naturally less apparent in the
shorter poems), his rare words and rhymes often have a cumbrous air,
but a real fire occasionally runs through the cold monotony of his
verse, lighting up its heavy jewels with a glow almost of life. If
it is sometimes an echo of Baudelaire, it is a Baudelaire thoroughly
acclimatized.[699] His debt was not wholly to French Parnassian or
Symbolist, for he had also drunk deep of Greek and German literature.
His originality in modern Portuguese poetry is a very real one. Yet
it is a pleasure to pass from verse often so perfect, always so
artificial, to the more natural poems of two younger writers. Snr.
ANTONIO CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA (born in 1880) in his _Auto do Fim do Dia_
(1900), _Raiz_ (1903), and _Auto de Junho_ (1904) shows a true lyrical
gift, an inspiration of the soil, of the quatrains of popular poetry:
Passou Maio taful, Maio magano,
E por onde passou nasceram rosas.
In his later works, _Alma Religiosa_ (1910), _Auto das Quatro Estações_
(1911), _Os Teus Sonetos_ (1914), _A Minha Terra_ (1916), the effect is
sometimes strained or marred by an almost morbid iteration. Snr. AFONSO
LOPES VIEIRA (born in 1878) displays a genuine talent in _O Naufrago_
(1898), _O Encoberto_ (1905), _Ar Livre_ (1906), and _O Pão e as Rosas_
(1908). _Ilhas de Bruma_ (1918) is filled with the rhythm of the sea
and with the traditions and native poetry of Portugal. There is a
certain strength as well as a subtle music about his verse which is of
good promise for the future. Whatever that future may be for Portuguese
literature, Portugal will join the more worthily in the great literary
age which will eventually spring from years of terrific upheaval if she
studies and utilizes her full heritage of prose and verse. There is
the less excuse now for its neglect since the devoted labour of many
Portuguese scholars is rendering it yearly more accessible.
FOOTNOTES:
[680] The incomplete list in the _Dicc. Bibliog._, vol. viii. records
forty-four published in 1865 and 1866. These include Julio de
Castilho’s _O Senhor Antonio Feliciano de Castilho e O Senhor Anthero
de Quental_ (1865, 2ᵃ ed., 1866), R. Ortigão’s _Litteratura d’Hoje_
(1866), Snr. Braga’s _As Theocracias Litterarias_ (1865), Quental’s
_A Dignidade das Lettras_ (1865), and C. Castello Branco’s _Vaidades
irritadas e irritantes_ (1866).
[681] The _outeiro_ (lit. ‘hill’) was an assembly of poets to _glosar
motes_. Often the gathering-place was outside a convent, from the
windows of which the nuns gave the _motes_ for the poets to gloss.
[682] Historical research and compilation are carried on by Snr.
Fortunato de Almeida in his _Historia da Igreja em Portugal_ (1910,
&c.), and by Snr. Afonso de Dornellas (_Historia e Genealogia_, 1913,
&c.). Snr. Lucio de Azevedo, well known for his studies of Pombal (_O
Marquez de Pombal e a sua epoca_, 1909) and Antonio Vieira (_Historia
de Antonio Vieira_, 2 vols., 1918, 21), is a Brazilian.
[683] For the works of these and other authors here mentioned consult
the Bibliography.
[684] It was published, with the necessary explanations, in two volumes
(1874).
[685] In this most delicate upholstery, if Wedgwood and Baedeker (as
well as Maple and Mappin) are introduced, they should surely be spelt
correctly.
[686] _The Athenaeum_ in 1872 announced that Lord Stanley of Alderney
was preparing a translation of _As Pupillas_. According to a letter
of Julio Diniz (March 25, 1868), ‘an Englishman, a relation of Lord
Stanley, who is here [Oporto] studying the history of the Portuguese
discoveries’, had expressed a wish to translate it. The translation was
never published. The date of the first Portuguese edition is 1867. It
was dramatized at Lisbon in 1868.
[687] e.g. a girl, Rosario, in _Amor Divino_, is
described--annihilated--with the assistance of Cybele, Goya, the Venus
of Milo, Reynolds, Shakespeare. Cf. the names, from Descartes to
Darwin, in _O Conto do Gallo_.
[688] _Comedia do Campo_, vol. vi.
[689] Vol. vii.
[690] Pathology, religious and social, crops up in the later novels
of Snr. Vieira da Costa, _Irmã Celeste_ (1904), _A Familia Maldonado_
(1908); yet his earlier work, _Entre Montanhas_ (1903), a story of
contemporary life in the high-lying vine-lands of Douro written in
1899, was more original. The modern Portuguese novelists are nearly,
although not quite, as numerous as the poets. José de Caldas is the
author of _Os Humildes_ (1900) and _Cartas de um Vencido_ (1910), D.
João de Castro of _Os Malditos_ (1894) and _A Deshonra_, in which a
strange situation is too long drawn out.
[691] He wrote under the name Bernardo de Pindella or Bernardo Pinheiro.
[692] In novels intimately connected with the Portuguese soil such
expressions as _colorido gritante_ (_criard_), _lunchar_ (to partake
of luncheon), _endomingado_ (_endimanché_) are more than ever out of
place. The authoress has written other stories: _Capital Bemdito_
(1910), _Fé_ (a Socialist novel), _Inocente_ (1916), _A Praga_ (1917).
[693] A _conto_ written by Snr. Julio de Lemos in 1905 bears the same
title.
[694] de Quental or do Quental. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições
de Philologia Portuguesa_ (1911), p. 125 _ad fin._
[695] e.g. _Tive castellos, fortalezas pelo mundo.... Não tenho casa,
não tenho pão._ The cadence here, as in many of Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s
lines, is singularly arresting. The tendency to morbid repetition is
exaggerated in _Patria_ and has influenced many younger poets, as
Snr. Corrêa de Oliveira and, especially, Antonio Nobre. The reader
is credited with no imagination and the effect is diminished. For
instance, in _Patria_: _deixa-me dormir, Dormir em paz ... dormir!_
That is excellent; but the word _dormir_ is then again thrice repeated,
until the reader sleeps.
[696] In details his ear is not faultless. Cf. the unscannable line _E
que na corda do remorso enforçou Judas_ (unless this is deliberately
onomatopoeic).
[697] Without counting those of Brazil, which had an exquisite
word-chiseller in the poet OLAVO BILAC (1865-1918), author of
_Panoplias_ and other verse published in _Poesias_ (1888, Nova ed.
1904).
[698] He is the son of Snr. ALFREDO CARNEIRO DA CUNHA (born in
1863), whose _Versos_ (1900) contains the poignant lines _A uma
creança morta_, which recall Coventry Patmore and the pathos of Dr.
Robert Bridges’ _On a Dead Child_. The earlier edition, _Endeixas e
Madrigaes_, appeared in 1891.
[699] The word _Nephelibatas_ (= Cloud-treaders), formerly applied to
poets of the decadent school in Portugal, is now seldom heard.
APPENDIX
§ 1
Literature of the People
Side by side with literature proper there has always existed in
Portugal a literature of the people. Indeed, before Portuguese poetry
was written it flourished on the lips of the people, in the songs of
the women. Sometimes this popular literature almost coalesced with
written literature, as in the case of the _cossantes_ in the thirteenth
century. Its poetry lent a glow and magic to the work of Gil Vicente
and later to some of the lyrics of Camões; its proverbial lore was
reproduced in Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ prose plays and later
by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello; in indigenous folk-tales Trancoso
found part of his material. Eighteenth-century writers neglected it,
but Filinto Elysio returned to popular sources, and in the nineteenth
century they inspired two great poets, Almeida Garrett and João de
Deus. Literature and illiteracy have often gone hand in hand. In
Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ (Act III, sc. ii) we read of
the workwoman (_lavrandeira_) who ‘sings _de solao_, composes songs,
loves to learn _trovas_ by heart, gives a schoolboy farthings to buy
cherries in return for reading _autos_ to her’; and the _Pratica de
Tres Pastores_ gives us a picture of an old peasant reading out from
the Bible[700] of an evening to the whole village:
Esse velhinho
Tinha hum cartapolinho
Feito de letra de mão
Em papel de pergaminho,
E chamava-se o feitinho
Do livro da creação.
E então
Que sempre cada serão
Á noyte depois da cea
Com oculos á candea
O lia por devoção
A toda a gente d’aldea.
The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of
saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the
literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is
reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the
present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a
_romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do
Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos
Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s
Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at
Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira
de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance
of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any
case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_
(Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from
the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524)
and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande
Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a
belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came
to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da
Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France
(14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its
popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_.
The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in
1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca
Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it)
of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701]
was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the
Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and
in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned
by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_
is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed
at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e
perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_.
García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a
Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets
are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the
1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The
portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person
than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess
Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_
of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel
Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted
at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as
_Astucias de Mengoto_, _Industrias de Malandrino_ (both Porto, 1879),
_Astucias de Zanguizarra_ (Porto, 1878), _Vida de Cacasseno_ (Porto,
1904), contain little of the real people and less of literature. More
indigenous, but still attracting by virtue of its foreign episodes, is
the _Auto_, _Livro_ (1554?), _Historia_ or _Tratado do Infante D. Pedro
que andou as quatro (sete) partidas do mundo_, which is attributed to
Gomez de Santo Estevam, one of the prince’s attendants in his long
travels, and of which the first known edition (1547) is in Spanish. It
has been constantly reprinted and, with romances of chivalry, formed
the education of the notary in _O Hyssope_.[706] Nor do the _Trovas do
Bandarra_ belong to literature, although these verses of the cobbler
prophet of Trancoso, GONÇALO ANNEZ BANDARRA (†1556?), which caused him
to figure in one of the earliest trials before the Inquisition (1541)
and were subsequently interpreted as referring to the return of King
Sebastian, exercised the fancy of the people and even the wits of the
educated for some three centuries. Forbidden in Portugal, they were
printed abroad, probably at Paris in 1603, at Nantes in 1644, Barcelona
1809, London 1810 and 1815. It was not until 1852 (Porto) that an
_Explicação_ of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest was
then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse,
Augurai gentes vindouras
Que o Rey que de vos ha de hir
Vos ha de tornar a vir
Passadas trinta tesouras,
had been thought to signify the year 1808, i.e. thirty closed scissors
= 30 × 8: 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign (1568). A more
reasonable computation would have been from Alcacer Kebir (_de vos ha
de hir_) = 1818, or, if the scissors were open: ✂ (10), = 1878. Many
sought to connect with Bandarra’s prophecies the sayings of Simão
Gomez (1516-76), the ‘Holy Cobbler’, and his biography, written by
the Jesuit MANUEL DA VEIGA (1567-1647), _Tratado da Vida, Virtudes e
Doutrina Admiravel de Simão Gomes, vulgarmente chamado o Çapateiro
Santo_ (1625), a book in more than one respect singular and charming,
was burnt by the public hangman at Lisbon in 1768 in ‘Black Horse
Square’. The 1759 edition had received the ordinary _licenças_. But
farther afield, deeper in the heart of the people and far more ancient,
exists another literature. Writers who have gone to this source have
never come away unrewarded. Their work has gained a freshness and a
charm[707] which the most successful disciples of imported learning
and latinity have in vain attempted to rival, and gives the reader
the impression that if he is not plucking the bough of gold he is not
far from the tree on which it grows. And the reason is, perhaps, that
the Portuguese people still retains an element pre-Christian, even
pre-Roman, an element which goes back to solar myths and pagan beliefs,
and about which hangs a primaeval mystery and wonder, a glamour and
enchantment born of direct contact with the forces of Nature, and the
worship, fear, and propitiation of many unseen powers and divinities. A
great part of the people still inhabits a region of fiery dragons and
apples of gold, and with ready imagination peoples streams and woods,
sea and air with spirits. December and June are connected with the
birth and supremacy of the sun’s power, and paganism, thinly disguised,
survives in several of the ceremonies of the Christian Church, and
serves to increase the Church’s hold on the minds of the people.
Both the songs and the dancing with which it was accompanied were no
doubt originally religious. The movements of the dance seem to have
influenced the song, so that its metre was divided by real feet. When
the Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres, was visiting
his diocese in the sixteenth century he was met by Minhoto peasants
with _danças e folias_ and with _cantigas que entoavam entre as voltas
e saltos dos bailes_,[708] songs evidently similar to those in the
works of Gil Vicente, with _leixapren_ and refrain (_aaxbbx_[709]
or _abxbcx_).[710] The _volta_ would correspond in action to the
_leixapren_[711] of the song, the _salto_ to the refrain. The origin of
the refrain was perhaps the pause (preceded by a final leap into the
air) made by the breathless dancers, as in the words _no penedo_ of
this version of ‘The House that Jack Built’: _Quaes foram os perros que
mataram os lobos que comeram as cabras que roeram o bacello que posera
João preto no penedo._[712] The phrase _ver cantar_, ‘to see these
songs sung’, might be defended.[713]
In modern times the refrain has not been entirely lost, it occurs
occasionally, e.g. _Valhame Deus_, or _Valhame Deus e a Virgem Maria_,
but the usual song is a refrainless quatrain rhyming in the second and
fourth lines, perhaps originally a distich broken up into four lines
like the sixteen-syllable lines of the old _romances_, and from which
the refrain has disappeared. It is essentially a love song: instead of
the song of the people, sung to the tread of dancing feet, the song of
the love-lorn individual, sung to the strumming of his guitar or of the
professional _cantadeira_ at a rustic pilgrimage. But they are also
sung by the people generally, often by women[714] who can neither read
nor write but have a large stock of these _cantigas_, which, indeed,
are almost innumerable. They may be read in their thousands in Antonio
Thomaz Pires’ _Cantos Populares Portuguezes_ (4 vols., Elvas, 1902-10),
Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_ (2 vols.,
Lisboa, 1911, 1913), Snr. Jaime Cortesão’s _Cancioneiro Popular_
(Porto, 1914), and in other collections, and hundreds of thousands die
uncollected and unknown. Although it is perhaps a pity that all the
popular poetical talent should tend to adapt itself to one mould--the
quatrain--their brevity is excellent in that it imposes concision.
Their thought has to be expressed in some twenty words, although they
are rarely epigrammatic in the sense of the modern epigram. Some are
geographical, or local, in praise of some town or village, river or
fountain. Many are religious, that is, they combine love and religion
in honour of the Lady of the Hills, the Star, the Snows, the Rosary,
the Sands, Pity, Affliction, Health, Hope, or in honour of saints,
and especially of the three popular saints of June: St. Anthony, St.
John, and St. Peter. Others are devoted to special festivals: Christmas
(_Natal_), the New Year (_Anno Bom_), the Epiphany (_Os Reis_), the
Resurrection.[715] The majority are concerned with Nature, either
generally or in detail. Sometimes they are frankly pantheistic, more
often they content themselves with singing the praises of a favourite
flower, rosemary, myrtle, the rose, and especially the carnation--the
red _cravos_ which glow in doorway or window-ledge of countless houses
and cottages in June. Among the birds the swallow,[716] ‘the bird of
the Lord’, as the peasants call it, is rare--perhaps its rhyme is
disdained as too easy--the parrot, the dove, and the nightingale are
far commoner. Numerous _cantigas_ are concerned with the sea, fewer
with the sun, the stars, superstitions, witches, sirens; many with
dancing and various occupations--the herdsman (_ganadeiro_), yokel
(_ganhão_), shepherd (_pastor_), harvesters (_ceifeiros_, _ratinhos_,
_malteses_, _mondadeiras_). But of course the principal subject
is love, jealousy, separation, constancy, _saudade_, satire. The
occasional presence of a French word, e.g. _négligé_ or _cache-nez_,
is not necessarily a proof that the _cantiga_ in question is not of
popular origin, but merely that it is urban. Of many _cantigas_ the
first line consists simply of a long-drawn _Ailé_ (αἴλινον, αἴλινον
εἰπέ, τὸ δ’ εὖ νικάτω) or _Ai lari lari lolé_ (where the fanatic of
Basque can find _il_ (= dead) as easily as in the refrain of C. V.
415), so that they really consist of three lines, the _ailé_ being
introductory.
Some of the quatrains rise to real poetical beauty, and most of
them are charmingly spontaneous, forming in their unpremeditated
art the natural song-book of a nation of poets. The number in print
already approaches fifty thousand. In the mass they perhaps produce a
monotonous effect, being mostly of the one pattern, despite the variety
of their contents:
Tudo o que é verde se seca Em vindo o pino do verão:
Só meu amor reverdece Dentro do meu coração.[717]
Inda que o lume se apague Na cinza fica o calor:
Inda que o amor se ausente No coração fica a dor.[718]
Os tres reis foram guiados Por uma estrella do ceu:
Tambem teus olhos guiaram Meu coração para o teu.[719]
A few links in these modern _cantigas_ carry us back to the songs in
Gil Vicente’s plays and beyond: a dialogue between mother and daughter,
a reference to dancing _de terreiro_, _balho_, dance and song, to the
_casada_, _mas mal casada_, or _i-a_ sequence, as _Filho da Virgem
Maria_ (_Sagrada_). Other links in the popular literature throughout
the ages are the riddles (_adivinhas_) at which Gil Vicente’s shepherds
played in the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ (the example given in João de
Barros’ _Grammatica_ (1540) is:
Ainda o pae não é nado
Já o filho anda pelo telhado (1785 ed., p. 176)
--the father is still unborn and the son is on the roof: a fire and
its smoke; modern instances are printed in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s
_Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_, vol. i (1913), pp. 363-70); the
lullabies (cf. the modern _Ró ró, meu menino, Dorme e descansa, Tu es
meu alivio E a minha esperança_ with Gil Vicente’s _Ro, ro, ro, Nuestro
Dios y Redentor, No lloreis_, &c., i. 57); the _cantigas de Anno Bom_;
the ‘pagan _janeiras_’, as Filinto Elysio called them; the _cantigas
dos Reis_, the _alvoradas_, the _maios_. The _alva_ or _alvorada_
should properly contain the word _alva_ in the refrain, as in C. V.
172, or Guiraut de Bornelh’s
Qu’el jorn es apropchatz,
Qu’en Orien vey l’estela creguda
Qu’adutz lo jorn, qu’ieu l’ai ben conoguda,
Et ades sera l’alba.
(For day is near, and high in the East appears the star that brings in
the day: I know it well, and soon it will be dawn.) The theme is the
parting of lovers at dawn:
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day....
A Catalan _alba-cossante_ is given in Milá y Fontanals’ _Romancerillo
Catalán_[720]:
Marieta lleva’t lleva’t de mati
Que l’aygua es clara, el sol vol sortir.
Como m’en llevaré si gipo no tinch?
Marieta lleva’t, de mati lleva’t,
Que el sol vol sortir, que l’aygua es clara.
Como, &c.
An example of a Galician _mayo_, that is, a song introducing the _Mayo_
or May-boy (corresponding to our Queen of the May), is given in Milá’s
article in vol. vi of _Romania_. It closely resembles that of Gil
Vicente (_Este é o Mayo, o Mayo é este_) in the _Auto da Lusitania_:
Este é o Mayo que Mahiño é,
Este é o Mayo que anda d’o pé.
O noso Mayo anque pequeniño
Da de comer á Virxen d’o Camiño.
Velay o Mayo cargado de rosas,
Velay o Mayo que las trae más hermosas.
It then breaks into a _muiñeira_ (in Castilian):
Ángeles somos, del cielo venimos (bajamos),
Si nos dais licencia a la Reina le pedimos (la cantamos).
To the _janeiras_ more than one classical author alludes. Mello
(_Epan._ i) thus notices them at Evora on New Year’s Eve, 1638, before
the house in which the Conde de Linhares was lodged: _a fim de se lhe
cantarem certas Bençoens & Rogatiuas (costume de nossos anciãos que
com nome de Janeiras entoavam placidamente pelas portas dos mais caros
amigos) se congregou grande numero de pouo_.[721] Some _romances_
(also _xacara_, _xacra_, and in the Azores _arabia_) have been printed
direct from the lips of the people by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos in
his _Romanceiro Portuguez_ (1886). The degenerate, more modern, and
subjective form of the _romance_ is the _fado_, a ballad (melancholy
as the old _solao_[722]), composed by the professional _fadistas_ of
the towns. The _fado_ is even more modern than the _modinha_ (end of
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century). It dates from the
first third of the nineteenth century, and has not even now penetrated
to the south, being indeed largely a Lisbon product. It may be composed
in verses of four (_quadras_), five (_quintilhas_), or ten (_decimas_)
lines.
The individual in the favourite _quadras_ expresses his personal sorrow
and his love; the immemorial lore of the Portuguese people as a whole
survives less in them than in the no less numerous proverbs--_um bosque
de muitas e varias maneiras de adagios_. There is scarcely a Portuguese
writer whose works do not furnish a goodly crop of these proverbs,
often in evidently popular form, sometimes betraying their Spanish
origin in the rhyme. They have been collected in Antonio Delicado’s
_Adagios Portugueses_ (1651), in _Adagios_ (1841), _Philosophia
Proverbial_ (1882), and elsewhere. The language is full of proverbial
phrases, and most Portuguese could at will conceal their meaning
from a foreigner in a maze of idiomatic expressions. The variety of
their names is sufficient proof of the extraordinary number of the
proverbs. They are crystallizations of some forgotten fable or event
(_adagios_)[723] or of a more personal anecdote (_anexins_), or
the refrain of a long-lost song (_rifões_).[724] Or they are moral
(_maximas_ and _sentenças_), biblical (_proverbios_), satirical
(_dictados_ or _ditados_, _ditos_). Many of them embody the wisdom of
the ages in a form admirably concise and forcible, e.g. _Quem muito
abarca pouco abraça_ (which is the very reverse of Portuguese history:
_e nulla stringe e tutto ’l mondo abbraccia_), or _Até ao lavar das
cestas é vindima._ Many of course correspond more or less closely to
those of other countries, e.g. _Muitos enfeitadores estragão a noiva_
(Too many cooks spoil the broth), _Gato escaldado de agua fria ha medo_
(The burnt child fears the fire); _Manhan ruiva, ou vento ou chuva_
(= _Alba gorri, hegoa edo uri_); _Pedra movediça não cria bolor_ (=
_Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas mousse_).[725] Many of these saws as
well as the _contos_ (folk-tales) have their birth at _fiandões_ as
the women sit spinning, or as _nossas velhas_ sit at their cottage
doors and gossip in the sun (_soalheiro_), or as all gather round the
spacious _lareira_. After the day’s work on the farm, in field and
granary, to the sound of singing, legend and tradition come into their
own of an evening round the great fire of logs and scented brushwood.
The _contos_ have been collected by Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, _Portuguese
Folk Tales_ (London, 1882); F. Adolpho Coelho, _Contos Populares
Portuguezes_ (Lisboa, 1879); Dr. Theophilo Braga, _Contos Tradicionaes
do Povo Portuguez_ (2 vols., Porto, 1883); F. X. de Athaide Oliveira,
_Contos Tradicionaes do Algarve_ (2 vols., Tavira, 1900, 5). As
was to be expected, they have their equivalents in the folklore of
other nations, a fact which does not prevent them from possessing an
indigenous character, a charm and flavour of their own. The glowing
imagination of the peasants spins out fairy and allegorical tales with
marvellous facility. Thus old Mother Poverty (_Tia Miseria_) owned a
pear-tree in front of her cottage, and had obtained the privilege that
whoever went up it to steal her pears should be unable to come down.
When Death comes she asks him to fetch her one more pear. Once up the
tree all the priests and lawyers cannot bring him down, and only when
he agrees to the bargain that Poverty shall never die is she willing to
release him.
A great part of the popular literature has been set down in cold
print during the last half-century. Much remains ungarnered. In every
province there are peculiar words, phrases, traditions, heirlooms of
times prehistoric, waiting to be gathered in, and both the Portuguese
literature and the Portuguese language of the future will owe a debt of
gratitude to their collectors, and find rich material in the pages of
the _Revista Lusitana_.
FOOTNOTES:
[700] The whole Bible in Portuguese was not translated until the
eighteenth century, by JOÃO FERREIRA DE ALMEIDA, _O Novo Testamento_
(Amsterdam, 1681), _Do Velho Testamento_, 2 vols. (Batavia, 1748,
53). This is the version still commonly in use. Another translation,
entitled _Biblia Sagrada_, was made from the Vulgate at the end of the
eighteenth century by ANTONIO PEREIRA DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-97), author
of some fifty theological and historical works in Latin and Portuguese,
and a paraphrase (_Historia Evangelica_, 1777, 78, _Historia Biblica_,
1778-82) by Frei FRANCISCO DE JESUS MARIA SARMENTO (1713-90). See C.
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos et S. Berger, _Les Bibles Portugaises_ in
_Romania_, xxviii (1899), pp. 543-8: _La littérature portugaise est
en matière de traductions bibliques d’une pauvreté désespérante._
The _Parocho Perfeito_ (1675) speaks of _os parochos que não tiverem
Biblias_ (p. 19). See also G. L. Santos Ferreira, _A Biblia em
Portugal, 1495-1850_ (L. 1906).
[701] See _Floire et Blancheflor. Poèmes du xiiiᵉ siècle. Publiés
d’après les manuscrits ... par E. du Méril_, Paris, 1856. In the
original story Flores in a basket of roses enters the tower where
Brancaflor is imprisoned. Señor Bonilla y San Martín (_La Historia de
los dos Enamorados Flores y Blancaflor_, Madrid, 1916) attributes an
Italian origin to the Spanish prose story. The Spanish translation
probably dates from the fifteenth century.
[702] For its popularity with the Provençal troubadours see Raynouard,
_Choix_, e. g. ii. 297, 304, 305.
[703] _A historia de Branca Fror Outra saca a relocer_ (_Chorimas_
(1890), p. 148).
[704] It has been reproduced, from an earlier edition, in T. Braga, _Os
Livros Populares Portuguezes_ (_Era Nova_, vol. i, 1881).
[705] At either side explanatory verses, the only verse in the leaflet,
tell us that ‘Magalona was the most beautiful of all contemporary
princesses, beloved daughter of the King of Naples, and her heart full
of goodness. She was a model of virtues, of pure beliefs and a loving
heart, married with Pierres, Pedro of Provence, a noble knight and
virtuous man.’
[706] One of the Elvas Chapter was _homem versado Na lição de Florinda
e Carlo Magno_.
[707] This charm hangs over many anonymous lyrics of popular
inspiration, as the _Trovas da Menina Fermosa_, seventeenth or
eighteenth century variations of a sixteenth century song: _Menina
fermosa Dizei do que vem Que sejais irosa A quem vos quer bem; Porque
se concerta Rosto e condiçam Dais por galardam A pena mui certa. Sendo
tam fermosa Dizei_, &c. Even less genuinely popular are the _Trovas
do Moleiro_ (1602), written by an obscure native of Tangier, Luis
Brochado, and others.
[708] Luis de Sousa, _Vida_, 1763 ed., i. 462.
[709] e. g. _Em Belem vila do amor_ (i. 183).
[710] e. g. _Que no quiero estar en casa_ (i. 73) (which is _como laa
cantaes co’ gado_, essentially a peasant’s song).
[711] The _leixapren_ occurs in most of the songs accompanied by
dance in Gil Vicente: e. g. _Quem é a desposada_ (_chacota_, i. 147),
_Pardeus bem andou Castella_ (_em folia_) (ii. 389), _Ja não quer
minha senhora_ (ii. 439, _Esta cantiga cantarão e bailarão de terreiro
os foliões_). _Não me firaes madre_ (ii. 440, _em chacota_), _Mor
Gonçalves_ (ii. 509, _bailão ao som desta cantiga_), _Por Mayo era, por
Mayo_ (ii. 525, _a vozes bailarão e cantarão a cantiga seguinte_: i. e.
a _romance_ with _leixapren_ and refrain). They are thus a combination
of glee and dance.
[712] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (ii. 448).
[713] _Não nas quero ver cantar_ (Gil Vicente) is, however, probably
a misprint, for which D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos suggests
_quer’ eu_.
[714] Cf. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Ensaios Ethnographicos_, ii. 264:
_O povo (principalmente as mulheres) canta-as_ [_cantigas soltas_] _em
qualquer occasião_.
[715]
_Já os campos reverdecem, Já o alecrim tem flor,
Já cantam os passarinhos A resurreição do Senhor._
(Now to the fields returns the green and the rosemary’s in flower, and
the little birds are singing the Lord’s Resurrection hour).
[716]
_Ó triste da minha vida, Ó triste da vida minha,
Quem me dera ir contigo Onde tu vaes, andorinha._
(O how sad my life is, O how sad my plight!
Would I might go with thee, swallow, in thy flight!)
recalls the French _Si j’étais hirondelle Que je pusse voler, Sur votre
sein, ma belle, J’irais me reposer_ (A swallow I Would be to fly And
take my rest Upon thy breast).
[717] All green things in summer Their freshness lose: Only my heart
Its love renews.
[718] When the light of the fire is dead The ashes its heat retain:
When love is over and fled In the heart abides the pain.
[719] To the three kings was given A star in heaven for sign: And thy
eyes have guided My heart unto thine.
[720] Reprinted in his article in _Romania_, vol. vi, and by Dr. Braga.
_Aygua_ in the second line is probably a corruption from _alua_ (dawn)
to _agua_ (water).
[721] Fernam Rodriguez Lobo Soropita, speaking of the _noites
privilegiadas_--the eves of New Year and Epiphany--refers to
_os villões ruins que essas noutes vos perseguem_ and to their
_pandeirinhos, musica de agua-pé que toda a noute vos zune nos ouvidos
como bizouro, e sobre tudo isto haveis de lhe offertar os vossos quatro
vintens, e quando lh’os entregais a candeia vos descobre o feitio dos
ditos musicos: um mocho com sombreiro com mais chocas que um corredor
de folhas_. They thus resembled Christmas ‘waits’.
[722] The Spanish translator of _Eufrosina_ apparently derived this
name from musical notes (= a sung _romance_), since he translates _un
romance de sol la_, _Eufr._ i. 3; iii. 2 (_Oríg. de la Novela_, iii.
77 and 110), but even he would not derive it from the _selah_ of the
Psalms (T. Braga, _Hist. da Litt. Port._ i (1914), p. 205). In the
Spanish _solao_ in _Obras de Dom Manoel de Portugal_ (1605), Bk. XII,
pp. 282-7, each singer takes three lines, of which the last two rhyme
together.
[723] Formerly _verbos_ (e.g. in the _Canc. da Vat._) and _exemplos_
(_enxempros_).
[724] The word _rifão_ does not now mean the refrain or burden
(_estribilho_) of a song but proverb, like the Spanish _refrán_.
[725] There is another proverb _Mentras a pedra vae e vem Deus dará de
seu bem_ (While the [mill?] stone doth come and go God his blessing
shall bestow).
§ 2
_The Galician Revival_
For over four hundred years--with the exception of a few poems by
Padres José Sanchez Feijoo and Martín Sarmiento[726] in the eighteenth
century--the Galician language held aloof from literature. It was
peculiarly fitting that at a time when Portugal was recovering for
her own literature the early Galician lyrics, which are now one of its
most precious possessions, a new company of poets should have sprung
up in the region now, as of old, _fertil de poetas_[727]--Galicia.
They were no doubt multiplied and encouraged by the discovery of the
_Cancioneiros_, but began independently of these, in the wake of that
regionalism which manifested itself so vigorously in the second half
of the nineteenth century, for instance in Provence, Catalonia, and
Valencia. Besides their general character--the mingling of irony and
sentimental melancholy--and a few conscious imitations, the new poets
and the ancient _Cancioneiros_ present several striking similarities.
It is now some three-quarters of a century since regionalism in Galicia
assumed its first literary pretensions. In 1861 the poets had become
sufficiently numerous and distinguished to warrant the holding of
_Juegos Florales_ (_xogos froraes_) at La Coruña. JUAN MANUEL PINTOS
(1811-76) had published eight years earlier a small volume of verses,
_A Gaita Gallega_ (Pontevedra, 1853), and FRANCISCO AÑON (1817-78) had
contributed poems to various local newspapers. Añon led the life of
a wandering _jogral_ of old, and his occasional verses soon won him
popularity, so that he came to be regarded as the father of modern
Galician poetry. He could express his love for his native province in
the tender and melancholy stanzas (_abbcdeec_) _A Galicia_, and in his
other poems, at once ingenuous and satirical; he is also thoroughly
Galician and foreshadowed the poetry that was to follow. A leaflet
of his verses appeared in the year after his death, _Poesías_ (Noya,
1879), and a more satisfactory collection ten years later: _Poesías
Castellanas y Gallegas_ (1889). JOSÉ MARÍA POSADA Y PEREIRA (1817-86),
born at Vigo, the son of a Vigo advocate, published his first volume
of verses in 1865 and others were collected in _Poesías Selectas_
(1888). The second part of this collection (pp. 111-250) is written
in Spanish, but the Galician poems include a series of letters in
octosyllabic verse, the wistful humour of which is attractive. Born in
the same year as Añon, he survived Rosalía de Castro, twenty years his
junior. He survived in disillusion, for he had been one of the pioneers
and now felt himself neglected in the changed conditions. When the
first floral games were celebrated the most talented of these early
poets, ALBERTO CAMINO (1821-61), had but a few months to live. Another
generation passed before his poems were published: _Poesías Gallegas_
(1896). Camino was not a prolific writer, and this tiny book contains
but twelve of his poems; but there is not one of them that we would
willingly miss, whether he is giving harmonious form to a poignant
theme, as in _Nai Chorosa_ and _O Desconsolo_, or in lighter verses
describing with a contagious glow and spirit some scene of village
merriment, as in _A Foliada de San Joan_ or _Repique_.
Galician patriots, indignant at the neglect or contempt habitually
meted out to their region, might persevere in their belief that the
language which had produced the _cantigas_ of King Alfonso X, the
Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, and the poems of Macías was capable of
revival as an instrument of poetry; but it was for the most part by
scattered poems, manuscript or printed in periodicals (especially the
Coruña paper _Galicia_, 1860-6), that they justified their faith,
until in 1863 appeared _Cantares Gallegos_ by ROSALÍA DE CASTRO[728]
(1837-85). The authoress, born at Santiago, was but twenty-six when
this collection of poems gave her a wider celebrity than has been
granted to any Galician writer since Macías. Emilio Castelar wrote a
preface for her second volume, _Follas Novas_ (1880), and hailed her
as ‘a star of the first order’. Indeed, so great was her fame as a
Galician singer that until recently it obscured her Spanish poems,
_En las orillas del Sar_ (1884). It was an unsought fame. Rosalía de
Castro wrote much more than she published and destroyed much that
was worth publishing. She sank herself in Galicia; her voice is that
of the Galician _gaita_ in all its varying moods. In her preface to
_Cantares Gallegos_ she wrote: ‘I have taken much care to reproduce
the true spirit of our people.’ That she succeeded in this all critics
are agreed. A favourite method in the _Cantares Gallegos_ is to take a
popular quatrain and develop it at some length, as, for instance, in
the beautiful variations on the lines _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_,
_Airiños_ _da miña terra_, _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_, _Airiños_,
_levaime á ela_.[729] Here, as throughout the book, there is such
yearning passionate sadness that we may say, in her own words, _non
canta que chora_. The sadness is of _soedade_ and brooding over her
country’s plight. She has felt all the peasants’ sorrows, the longing
of the emigrant for his country, the fate of the women at home who
find no rest from toil but in the grave,[730] above all the neglect
and poverty in which those sorrows centre--with the result of sons
torn from their families and scattered abroad to Castile and Portugal
and across the seas in search of bread. Her themes are thus often
homely; their treatment is always plaintive and musical. The metres
used are very various. The book opens with a chain of _muiñeiras_
singing _Galicia frorida_, and the rhythmical beat of the _muiñeira_
constantly recurs throughout. Nothing could serve better to express, as
she so marvellously expresses, the very soul of the Galician peasantry
in its gentle, dreaming wistfulness and tearful humour. Her style is
so thin and delicate, yet so flowing and natural, that it is more
akin, almost, to music than to language. Few writers have attained
such perfection without a trace of artifice. It is Galician--_esta
fala mimosa_[731]--seen at its best, clear, soft, and pliant, rising
in protest or reproach to a silvery eloquence. In _Follas Novas_ the
melancholy note is accentuated, without becoming morbid: the new leaves
are autumnal. The music of her sad and exquisite poetry had been forged
in the crucible of her own not imaginary suffering and grief, and in
these lyrics she utters her _inmortales deseios_ (immortal longings)
as well as the woes of the peasant women of Galicia, ‘widows of the
living and widows of the dead’. New metres are introduced, the old
skill and perfection of form is maintained. A few poems in the second
half even succeed in repeating that identification between the poet and
the genius of the people which makes much of _Cantares Gallegos_ almost
anonymous and assures its immortality.
Midway between the publication of _Cantares Gallegos_ and _Follas
Novas_ appeared the first volume of Galician verse by the blind poet
of Orense, VALENTÍN LAMAS CARVAJAL (1849-1906). This book, _Espiñas,
Follas e Frores_ (1871), has remained the most popular of his
works.[732] He is a true poet of the soil (_poeta del terruño_), the
soil of Galicia which he sings with melancholy charm, and his verse is
filled with _soedades_. He complains of the peasant’s lot, protests
against its injustice and the tyranny of the _caciques_, laments
the drain on Galicia’s best forces through emigration and military
service, and his later work especially betrays a rustic cynicism and
disillusion. But the value both of his first book and of _Saudades
Gallegas_ (1889) and _A Musa d’as Aldeas_ (1890) is that in them speak
the voices of the peasants. Only occasionally does Aesop or Macías
intrude to dispel the charm, and even sophisticated touches--as when he
speaks of ‘this century of enlightenment’, of Galicia as ‘a poetical
garden’, or of the _tamborileiro_ as ‘the inseparable companion’ of
the _gaiteiro_--are not out of keeping, since the peasant, to whom
a long word is a sign of education, will in ambitious moments use
such phrases. The Galician peasants are shown in their sadness and
superstitions, at their common tasks and _festas_. When Lamas Carvajal
is describing an _escasula_[733] or a _fiadeiro_,[734] a dance in the
beaten space before the doors (_baile de turreiro_), a _foliada_[735]
in honour of some saint, a _ruada_ or _rueiro_ (street courting), a
summer _romaxe_ or _romaria_ (pilgrimage), or autumn _magosto_ (feast
of chestnuts), his melancholy almost deserts him, and he can sing, in
his own phrase,
Algun ledo cantar d’a sua terriña.
The toil often becomes a _festa_, in which, he says, there is more
mirth than in all the city’s joys. In _Ey, boy, ey_ he admirably
reproduces the thoughts of the slow-footed, slow-reasoning peasant
as he trudges along to market in front of his droning and shrieking
ox-cart. And, generally, all the life of the province of Orense is
in his poems: witches, exorcisers, _beatas_, _curandeiros_ (to whom
the peasants turn in place of the doctor), pilgrims, blind singers,
_santeiros_ selling images of saints, the wailing _alalaa_, the evening
litany or _rosario_, the angelus (_Ave Maria_ or _as animas_, or tocar
_ás oraciós_). The _gaiteiro_, of course, is a prominent figure, for
without his bagpipe (the _gaita gallega_) and the accompanying drum
(_tamboril_), cymbals (_ferriñas_, _conchas_), tambourine (_pandeiro_,
_pandeireta_), and castanets (_castañolas_),[736] no village _fête_
would be welcome or complete, and his _alborada_ or his rhythmical
dance-song, the _muiñeira_, is the emblem of all the peasant’s
pleasures. Melancholy pervades the _Rimas_ (1891) of D. JUAN BÁRCIA
CABALLERO (born in 1852), but it is no longer the melancholy of the
peasant, but of the poet. His verse is more artificial and subjective,
and expressions such as the ‘bed of Aurora’, ‘Olympic disdain’, ‘the
Nereids’, carry us far away from the peasant scenes so pleasantly
described by Lamas Carvajal. Yet in his lyrics lives a faint music
which raises them above the commonplace. He writes of moonlight, the
fall of the leaves, a flowing stream, tears, death, and admires Heine
and Leopardi; but in his slight fancies, often built into a single
brief sentence, he has a natural charm of his own.
BENITO LOSADA (1824-91) gained great popularity in Galicia with his
_Contiños_ (1888), epigrammatic and often far from edifying stories
in verse which mostly do not exceed ten lines. He is said to have had
them printed on matchboxes _ad maiorem gloriam_, but for this he was
probably not responsible. More interesting and equally racy of the soil
are the poems of his _Soaces d’un Vello_ (1886), of which the _contiños
d’a terra_ form only Part 3. The first part consists of a long legend
in octosyllabic verse, and in the second some thirty poems give a
coloured, homely, delightful picture of peasant life in Galicia:
En fias e espadelas,
En festas, en foliadas[737]
--song and dance, the pot of chestnuts (_zonchos_) over the _lareira_
fire on the night of All Saints’ Day, the ox-girl quietly singing,
the girl with spindle and distaff keeping the cows, the sorrowful,
hard-working peasant women, the priests exorcising those possessed by
the Devil. The gay notes of the _gaita_ with its plaintive undertone
sound from his pages. The language, _a garrida lengua nosa_, has rarely
been written more idiomatically or with a surer instinct for the force
and fascination of the native word used in its rightful place. To turn
from Losada to EDUARDO PONDAL (1835-1917), the poet of Ponteceso,
a small village in the district of Coruña, is to go from a village
_praça_ to a high mountain-top. He stands quite apart from the other
Galician poets.[738] Their irony and scepticism, sorrows and mirth, are
mostly of the peasant. But here we have no dance or rustic merriment.
The pipe and the drum give place to the wind blowing through an Aeolian
harp. The poet
soña antr’as uces hirtas
Na gentil arpa apoyado
En donde o vento suspira.[739]
He is a lonely, martial spirit, disdainful but never arrogant, hating
all servitude and looking upon a comfortable inertness as a kind of
servitude. There is no pettiness in him, although details of Nature
he may notice and love. The most learned of Galician poets, and not
sparing of classical allusions, he is yet entirely merged in the
forces of Nature and becomes a voice, a mystery. Some of his poems
are a single sentence of perhaps twenty words, a musical cry borne
slowly away on the wings of the wind. He sings of mists (the Gallegan
_brétoma_) and pregnant silences, the whispering of the pines, the
great chestnut-trees and Celtic oaks, of the swift daughter of the
mists and the ‘intrepid daughter of the noble Celts’, of old forgotten
far-off things, battles long ago. One must go to Ireland for a
parallel. It has been noticed of him that he is entirely pre-Christian;
he is almost prehistoric. His long epic on the discovery of America, in
twenty-seven cantos, _Os Eoas_, remained unpublished at his death. Nor
would it be easy to account for his popularity were it not for the poem
by which he won early fame: _A Campana d’Anllons_. It is full of music
and melancholy, a plaintive farewell addressed to his native village by
a Galician peasant imprisoned at Oran. His subsequent verses, collected
in _Rumores de los Pinos_ (1879) and _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), if
they could not increase his popularity, brought him a wide recognition
among all lovers of poetry. The undefinable fascination of many of
these poems is due to their aloofness, tenderness, and sorrowful music.
He is a genuine Celtic bard, child of the wind and the rain, with
Rosalía de Castro the truest poet produced by modern Galicia.
The most prominent of the later Galician poets was MANUEL CURROS
ENRIQUEZ (1851-1908), whose work _Aires d’a miña terra_ (1880) was
condemned by the Bishop of Orense and republished in the following
year. Born at Celanova in the middle of the nineteenth century, he
studied law at Santiago de Compostela and became a journalist. His
advanced opinions caused him to emigrate, first to London, then to
South America. His anticlericalism was pronounced in _Aires d’a miña
terra_, and even more so in a forcible satire describing a pilgrimage
to Rome, written in _triadas_[740] and entitled _O Divino Sainete_
(1888). He writes of dogma assassinating liberty, heaps abuse on
Ignacio de Loyola, hails the advent of the railway to Galicia as
bringing not priests but progress. All this has caused his poems to
be widely read. But the reader has the agreeable surprise to find
that many of them deal quite simply with the legends (_A Virxe d’o
Cristal_) or customs (_Unha Boda en Einibó_, _O Gueiteiro_, &c.) of
his native country, and show a true poetic power and a quiet and
accurate observation of Nature. We forget all about anticlericalism and
the Pope in reading of spring in Galicia, of the _xentis anduriñas_,
the _anemas_ ringing, and the children who come singing a _mayo_ and
asking for chestnuts. Curros Enriquez would not be a Galician were not
his work of a melancholy cast, and the charm of some of his poems is
also indigenous. The torch of Galician poetry burnt on after Curros
Enriquez had ceased to write. D. EVARISTO MARTELO PAUMAN (born c.
1853) in his _Líricas Gallegas_ (1891) showed that he possessed the
traditional charm and satire of Galician verse, but a charm and satire
that in his case had become all individual and subjective. AURELIANO
J. PEREIRA (†1906), author of _Cousas d’a Aldea_ (1891), displayed
a rustic humour in sketching with many a gay note the life of the
Galician peasantry, and, in his more subjective poems, a very real and
delicate lyrical gift. A sly humour also marks the work of ALBERTO
GARCÍA FERREIRO (1862-1902) in _Volvoretas_ (1887) and _Chorimas_
(1890). It is sometimes marred by the bitterness of his anticlerical
and anti-Spanish feeling. In the stream’s voice he hears a murmur
against the mayor and the judge, the _cacique_ is ‘dragon, tiger and
snake’, the monks and priests are greedy and ignorant. On the other
hand, when they describe a fair (_N’a feira_) or a pilgrimage or the
woes of the Galician emigrant, his poems are moving, vivid, and full
of local colour. In a slight volume of poems, _Salayos_ (1895), MANUEL
NÚÑEZ GONZÁLEZ (1865-1917) shows true lyrical power. They are poems
in Galician rather than of Galicia, telling in a plaintive music of
night, autumn, _morriña_, _soedades_. For all the author’s love of his
smaller country, it is Galicia seen from without,[741] or sung from
memory. The ‘vintage songs and the gay din of chestnut gatherings’ are
no longer, as with Losada and Lamas, a part of life, but ‘a dream in
the ideal realm of thought’,[742] a subject of disillusion and regret.
_Folerpas_[743] (1894) by D. ELADIO RODRÍGUEZ GONZÁLEZ (born in 1864)
is also essentially not of the people. In its less elaborate poems it
often describes, attractively and with much colour, popular customs
and dances, the night of St. John, _as festas d’a miña terra_. Yet
after recording the pleasant superstition that on St. John’s Day the
sun rises dancing, the author must needs pause to say ‘away with these
fanatical beliefs, unworthy of a civilized region’, to which the answer
is that such reflections may be sincere but are unworthy of poetry,
and should be expressed in prose. But the author of these verses
can, when he wishes, identify himself with the peasants whose life
he depicts,[744] and is capable of writing poems of great delicacy.
The general impression is that he has not grown up among these scenes
but is observing them keenly as might a stranger. The edict of the
Archbishop of Santiago (June 26, 1909), which made it a deadly sin to
read _Fume de Palla_ (1909), by ‘ALFREDO NUN DE ALLARIZ’, as containing
impious, blasphemous, and heretical propositions, gave these poems
a wider publicity than they might otherwise have attained, and they
received a second edition in the same year. It certainly savours of
blasphemy and is bad criticism to call Curros Enriquez the Galician
Christ, but it is to be feared that the excommunication of the author
will only encourage him to abandon ‘simple verses written without
art’, as in his preface he describes these, for more studied poems
with a thesis to prove. It is perhaps disquieting to find that three
poets in most respects so different, agree in this, that between them
and popular poetry a gulf is fixed, owing to the sensitive aloofness
of a true poet (for Núñez González was undoubtedly the most talented
of the younger Galicians), or owing to the adoption of the superior
standpoint of the rationalist or the anticlerical. Younger poets of
remarkable promise and achievement are D. GONZALO LÓPEZ ABENTE (born
in 1878), a relative of Eduardo Pondal, whom he sometimes recalls in
the original inspiration of _Escumas da Ribeira_ (1914) and _Alento
da Raza_ (1917); D. ANTONIO NORIEGA VARELA (born in 1869), whose deep
love for his native moors and mountains gives an eternal magic to
_Montañesas_ (1904) and _D’O Ermo_ (1920); D. RAMÓN CABANILLAS, who
voices the sorrows and aspirations of Galicia in _Vento Mareiro_ and
_Da Terra Asoballada_ (1917); and D. ANTONIO REY SOTO, who, however,
writes chiefly in Castilian. D. XAVIER PRADO expresses the very soul
of the peasantry in _A Caron do Lume_ (1918). The poets of the last
half-century have unquestionably justified the literary revival of
the Galician language, and even if in the future no poetry of the
highest order be written in Galicia, it is unthinkable that so musical
an instrument should be allowed to perish. Galician poetry may be a
thin, an elfin music, a scrannel voice, as of a wind blowing through
tamarisks, but it has a natural charm, a raciness, a native atmosphere
which give it a peculiar flavour and attraction. Literary contests,
_veladas_, _certames_, _xogos froraes_, keep the flame of poetry alive
in Galicia, but in its anonymous form it is a very vigorous growth
which needs no fostering, and flourishes now as it flourished in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as it flourished in the time of
the Romans. Hundreds of anonymous _quadras_ (_cantiga_, _cantar_,
_cantariño_, _cantilena_, _cantiguela_, _cantiguiña_, _copra_, or
_canció_) have been collected in the _Cancionero Popular Gallego_
(Madrid, 3 vols., 1886) by JOSÉ PÉREZ BALLESTEROS (†1918). The peasant
women compose and sing their songs to-day[745] as when Fray Martín
Sarmiento (1695-1772) noticed that _en Galicia las mujeres no solo
son poetisas sino tambien músicas naturales_,[746] or the Marqués
de Montebello listened to _los tonos que a coros cantan con fugas y
repeticiones las mozuelas_, or the Archpriest of Hita watched the
cantaderas dancing (as well as singing) in neighbouring Asturias.[747]
The ancient _muiñeira_ rhythm continues, and the parallel-strophed
songs of the early _Cancioneiros_ have their echoes in the anonymous
poetry of to-day. It is, indeed, of interest to note how the poets of
the revival fall quite naturally into the same parallelism and the same
repetition.[748] Besides these _muiñeiras_ the popular poetry consists
principally of _quadras_.[749] Traditional _romances_ are nearly
non-existent. This popular poetry (soft, musical, malicious, satirical)
connects by a thread of anonymous song the Galicia of to-day with the
whole of its past life, and the revivalists are likely to prosper in
proportion as they seek their inspiration in popular sources, as did
Rosalía de Castro. For the Galician peasants, living in a land of
mists and streams, inlet arms of sea, dark pinewoods, deep-valleyed
mountains, green maize-fields, and grey mysterious rocks, a land of
spirits and fairies and witches, of legends and ruins, have the Celt’s
instinct and love of poetry. Poetry is their natural expression.
For prose in Galician literature there is less genius, and perhaps
less incentive, since the country has been described with intimate
knowledge and charm in the Castilian novels of Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán
(1851-1921) and Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (born in 1870), and
more recently by Don Jaime Solá (born in 1877). But the value and
possibilities of Galician prose have been shown by D. AURELIO RIBALTA
(born in 1864) in _Ferruxe_ (1894) and by D. MANUEL LUGRIS Y FREIRE
(born in 1863) in _Contos de Asieumedre_ (1909). It is, indeed, in the
_conto_ that especial success has been won, and HERACLIO PÉREZ PLACER,
whose novel _Predicción_ appeared in 1887, is widely known for his
_Contos, Leendas e Tradiciós de Galicia_ (1891), _Contos da Terriña_
(1895), and _Veira do Lar_ (1901). _Contos da Terriña_, thirty-four
stories in some two hundred brief pages, are various and unequal in
value. Most of them are sad, even the harmless St. Martin _magosto_
ends in a death. They contain many intimate descriptions of Galicia
and the life of the villages about Orense. There is much pathos in
_Velliña, miña velliña!_, in _Rapañota de Xasmís_, and especially in
_Follas Secas_, an exquisite picture of an old peasant dying alone in
a dark room--its walls are black with smoke, yellow maize-cobs hang
from the ceiling--while through the open door come all the gay sounds
and colours of a Galician vintage. The poetess FRANCISCA HERRERA,
author of _Almas de Muller_ (1915) and _Sorrisas e Bágoas_ (1918), has
recently turned to prose with remarkable success in _Néveda_ (1920).
Few Galician poets have published volumes of prose, although many
have contributed as journalists to the local press, but it would be
difficult to find a prose-writer who is not also a poet.[750] And it
is by its poetry that Galicia has won for itself a notable place in
modern literature and added another leaf to the literary laurels of the
Peninsula.
FOOTNOTES:
[726] See Antolín López Peláez, _Poesías Inéditas del P. Feijoo ...
seguidas de las poesías gallegas ‘Dialogo de 24 Rusticos’ y ‘O Tio
Marcos da Portela’ por el P. Sarmiento_, Tuy, 1901.
[727] Cf. A. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 21:
_Galicia ... muito affeita desde alta antiguidade ao exercicio de
trovas e cantares._
[728] Or Rosalía Castro de (or y) Murguía. Her husband, DON MANUEL
DE MURGUÍA (born in 1833), author of _Los Precursores_ (1886),
_Diccionario de Escritores Gallegos_ (1862), and other works devoted to
the study of Galicia, its ethnology and history, is still alive.
[729] O winds of my country blowing softly together, Winds, winds,
gentle winds, O carry me thither! (1909 ed., pp. 95-8).
[730] _Follas Novas: Duas palabras d’a autora_, 1910 ed., p. 31.
[731] _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 254.
[732] A sixth edition appeared in 1909, whereas most books of Galician
verse cling to the obscurity of their first edition or at best obtain a
second in the hospitable _Biblioteca Gallega_.
[733] _Esfolhada_ or _desfolla_: gathering to husk the maize.
[734] _Fiada_, _fiandon_: a rustic _tertulia_ (evening party) of women
to spin.
[735] _Fuliada_, _afuliada_, _folion_.
[736] In Tras-os-Montes potatoes are called _castanholas_, i. e. large
chestnuts, which recalls the fact that Andrea Navagero, eating potatoes
for the first time at Seville in 1526, considered them to taste like
chestnuts. In parts of Galicia they are called _castañas d’a terra_.
[737] _Soaces_, p. 156. The _espadela_ is the task of braking flax.
[738] Perhaps the only poem that might have been written by Pondal is
that on p. 177 (the first verse) of Rosalía de Castro’s _Follas Novas_
(1910 ed.).
[739] _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), p. 101.
[740] For an earlier example of the same kind of tercets (_abacdcefe_)
see R. de Castro, _Follas Novas_, 1910 ed., p. 158.
[741] The very word _morriña_ is more common (in the sense of
_saudade_) at Madrid than in Galicia.
[742] _Salayos_, p. 65.
[743] Also _flepa_, _folepa_, _folepiña_, Portuguese
_folheca_--_floco_, _froco_, _copo_ (= ‘flake’).
[744] The passage (_Folerpas_, p. 182) in which a peasant, refusing
alms to an old woman, bids her beg of the rich, is scarcely drawn from
life.
[745] Cf. _Cancionero_, i. 50: _Cantade, nenas, cantade_; G. Ferreiro,
_Chorimas_, p. 76, _as cantiguiñas das moças_; R. de Castro, _Cant.
Gall._, p. 102, _As meniñas cantan, cantan_. Cf. also E. Pardo Bazán,
_De mi tierra_ (1888), p. 122: _las_ [_coplas_] _gallegas de las cuales
buena parte debe ser obra de hembras_.
[746] _Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles_
(_Obras Postumas_, vol. i, Madrid, 1775, p. 238, § 538).
[747] See _C. da Ajuda_, ed. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (1904), ii.
902.
[748] Cf. R. de Castro, _Cantares Gallegos_ (1909 ed.), p. 18
(_mantelo_, _refaixo_), p. 19 (_mar_, _río_), pp. 20-1 (_e-a_), p. 27
(_terras_, _vilas_), p. 29 (_pousaban_, _vivían_), p. 85 (_vestira_,
_calzara_); _Follas Novas_ (1910 ed.), p. 229 (_a-e_); _Aires d’a miña
terra_ (ed. 1911). p. 35 (_quería_, _pensaba_), p. 139 (_i-a_), p. 249
(_á miles_, _á centos_); _Chorimas_, p. 36 (_estrevidos_, _ousados_);
A. Camino, _Poesías Gallegas_, p. 19: _Qué noite aquela en que eu a vin
gemindo!_ (_chorar!_).
[749] Quatrains of which lines 2 and 4 are in rhyme or assonance, e.g.
_Ruliña que vas volando Sin facer caso á ninguen, Vai e dille á aquela
nena Que sempre a quixen ben_. _Tercetos_ are rarer (_aba_). Sometimes
the _quadra_ is really a tercet with line 1 repeated (_aaba_).
[750] D. Aurelio Ribalta is author in verse of _Os meus votos_ (1903)
and _Libro de Konsagrazión_ (1910); D. Manuel Lugris of _Soidades_
(1894), _Noitebras_ (1910); Snr. Pérez Placer of _Cantares Gallegos_
(1891). D. FLORENCIO VAAMONDE (born in 1860), author of a _Resume
da Historia de Galicia_ (1898), also wrote, in verse, _Os Calaicos_
(1894). Recently Galician literature has found a keen historian in D.
EUGENIO CARRÉ ALDAO, whose _Literatura Gallega_ (2nd ed., 1911) also
contains an anthology.
INDEX
A
Aboim (D. Joan de), 46, 52.
Abranches, Conde de, 88.
Abreu Mousinho (Manuel de), 203.
Academia das Sciencias de Portugal, 284.
Academia dos Esquecidos, 261.
Academia dos Generosos, 261.
Academia dos Singulares, 261.
Academia Real da Historia, 270.
Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 14, 15, 284, 294.
Acenheiro. _See_ Rodriguez Azinheiro.
_Actos dos Apostolos_, 59.
_Adagios_, 346.
Addison (Joseph), 290.
Aesop, 60, 350.
Afonso I, 188, 211, 305, 307,
Afonso III, 38, 42, 46, 52.
Afonso IV, 38, 87.
Afonso V, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 100, 111, 211, 261.
Afonso VI, 260, 268, 295, 311.
Afonso, Infante [xiii c.], 67.
Afonso, Infante [xiv c.], 67, 70.
Afonso, Infante [xv c.], 88, 100, 101, 103.
Afonso, Mestre, 220.
Afonso (Gregorio), 124.
Afonso (Martim), Mestre, 220.
_Aguia, A_, 333.
Agustobrica, 234.
Airas (Joan), 52.
Aires (Francisco), 247.
Alarcón (Pedro Antonio de), 297.
Alarte (Vicente) _pseud._ _See_ Gomez de Moraes.
Albuquerque (Afonso de), 57, 88, 99, 107, 108, 116, 127, 190, 191,
194, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 209, 220, 228-9, 260, 312.
Albuquerque (Bras de), 201-2.
Albuquerque (Jeronymo de), 204.
Albuquerque (D. Jorge de), 218.
Alcobaça (Bernardo de), 59, 95.
Alcoforado (Marianna), 263-4, 307.
Aleandro, Cardinal, 126.
_Aleixo, Vida de Santo_, 60.
Alexandra, Queen, 340.
Alfieri (Vittorio), 290.
Alfonso X, 13, 26, 28, 30, 37, 40, 41-6, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 61, 69,
91, 98, 103, 124, 126, 349.
Alfonso XI, 38, 42, 90.
_Alfonso Onceno, Poema de_, 73.
Almeida (Cristovam de), 245.
Almeida (Diogo de), 192.
Almeida (Fortunato de), 307.
Almeida (D. Francisco de), 92, 98.
Almeida (D. Leonor de), 276.
Almeida (Lopo de), 92, 128.
Almeida (Manuel de), 205.
Almeida (Rodrigo Antonio de), 163.
Almeida (Theodoro de), 285.
Almeida e Medeiros (Lourenço de), 301.
Almeida Garrett (João Baptista da Silva Leitão), Visconde de, 21,
33,
74, 186, 242, 261, 277, 279, 287-92, 293, 294, 299, 300, 302,
309, 338.
Alorna, Marquesa de [D. Leonor de Almeida Portugal Lorena e
Lencastre, Condessa de Assumar, Condessa de Oeynhausen], 274,
276-7, 294.
Alvarengo Peixoto (Ignacio José de), 274.
Alvarez (Afonso), 157.
Alvarez (Francisco), 33, 219-20, 224.
Alvarez (João), 89.
Alvarez (Luis), 245.
Alvarez de Andrade (Fernam), 239.
Alvarez de Lousada Machado (Gaspar), 62.
Alvarez de Villasandino (Alfonso), 77, 79, 125.
Alvarez do Oriente (Fernam), 152, 253, 255.
Alvarez Pereira (Nuno), 50, 62, 81, 84, 86, 92, 155, 291, 306, 307.
_Amadis de Gaula_, 64, 65-71, 119, 225.
Amaral (Antonio Caetano do), 292.
Amaral (Francisco do), 245.
_Amaro, Vida de Santo_, 60.
Ambrogini (Angelo). _See_ Poliziano.
Amigo (Pedro) de Sevilha, 51.
Amorim. _See_ Gomes de Amorim.
Andrade (Antonio de), 204.
Andrade (Francisco de), 189, 209, 224, 239.
Andrade (Thomé de). _See_ Jesus (Thomé de).
Andrade Caminha (Pero de), 143, 149-50, 213.
Andrade Corvo (João de), 295.
Andrade e Silva (José Bonifacio de), 274.
Anez Solaz (Pedro), 29.
Angeles (Juan de los), 250.
Angra, Bishop of, 287.
Anjos (Luis dos), 247.
Anjos (Manuel dos), 247.
Annunzio (Gabriele d’), 321.
Añon (Francisco), 348.
Anrique. _See_ Henrique.
Anriquez (Luis), 100, 102-3.
Antonio, Mestre, 125.
Antonio, D., Prior of Crato, 145, 195, 229, 236, 263.
Antonio (Nicolás), 68, 93, 130, 169, 192, 197, 207, 212.
Antunes (João), 249.
Aquinas (Thomas). _See_ Thomas.
Araujo (Joaquim de), 335.
Araujo de Azevedo (Antonio de), 273.
Arcadia, A Nova, 270.
Arcadia Ulyssiponense, 270, 271, 272, 273.
_Archivo Historico Portuguez_, 308.
Argote de Molina (Gonzalo), 77.
Arias Montano (Benito), 209.
Ariosto (Lodovico), 139, 140, 146, 152, 164, 180, 197, 260.
Aristotle, 85, 90, 92, 119, 163, 193.
Arnoso, Bernardo Pinheiro Corrêa de Mello, Conde de, 324.
_Arquivo._ See _Archivo_.
_Arquivo Historico Português._ See _Archivo Historico
Portuguez_.
Arraez (Jeronimo), 238.
Arraez de Mendoça (Amador), 16, 227, 232, 235, 237-8.
_Arte de Furtar_, 125, 264-5, 272.
Asenjo Barbieri (Francisco), 36, 123.
Athaide (Catherina de), 175, 179.
Athaide Oliveira (Francisco Xavier de), 347.
Augustine, Saint, 26, 56, 101, 115.
Austen (Jane), 316.
_Auto da Fome_, 162.
_Auto da Forneira de Aljubarrota_, 163.
_Auto da Geraçao Humana_, 156.
_Auto das Padeiras_, 162.
_Auto de Deus Padre_, 156-7.
_Auto del Nascimiento de Christo_, 155.
_Auto de Santa Genoveva_, 162.
_Auto do Dia de Juizo_, 157.
_Auto do Escudeiro Surdo_, 125.
_Auto Figurado da Degolação dos Inocentes_, 162.
Aveiro, D. João de Lencastre, Duque de, 221.
Aveiro, Dukes of, 71.
Aveiro (Pantaleam de), 220.
Avellar Brotero (Felix de), 17.
Avicenna, 85.
Avis, Mestre de. _See_ João I.
Ayres de Magalhães Sepulveda (Cristovam), 223, 334-5.
Ayres Victoria (Anrique), 165.
Azevedo (Briolanja de), 142.
Azevedo (Guilherme de). _See_ Azevedo Chaves.
Azevedo (João Lucio de), 307.
Azevedo (Luis de), 100.
Azevedo (Manuel de), 17.
Azevedo (Maximiliano Eugenio de), 310.
Azevedo (Pedro A. de), 13, 81, 211, 308.
Azevedo Chaves (Guilherme Avelino de), 330.
Azevedo Tojal (Pedro de), 274.
Azinheiro. _See_ Rodriguez Azinheiro.
Azorín _pseud._ [Don Jose Martínez Ruiz], 134, 326.
Azurara. _See_ Zurara.
B
Bacellar (Antonio Barbosa). _See_ Barbosa Bacellar.
Bacon (Francis), 209.
Bahia (Jeronimo), 256.
Baião (Antonio), 13.
Baist (Gottfried), 65, 70.
Balzac (Honoré de), 299.
Bandarra (Gonçalo Annez), 265, 268, 340-1.
Bandello (Matteo), 231.
Barata (Antonio Francisco), 272.
Barbieri (Francisco Asenjo). _See_ Asenjo Barbieri.
Barbosa (Ayres), 106.
Barbosa (Duarte), 198, 219, 227.
Barbosa Bacellar (Antonio), 256.
Barbosa de Carvalho (Tristão), 247.
Barbosa Machado (Diogo), 87, 168, 192, 197, 217, 220, 232, 236, 240,
250, 284.
Barcellos, Conde de. _See_ Pedro Afonso.
Bárcia Caballero (Juan), 351.
Baretti (Giuseppe), 270.
_Barlaam e Josaphat, Lenda dos Santos_, 59.
Barradas (Manuel), 205.
Barreira (João da), 203.
Barreiros (Caspar), 219.
Barreiros (Lopo), 219.
Barreto (Francisco), 177, 178, 195.
Barreto (Pedro), 178.
Barros (Bras de), 95.
Barros (Guilherme Augusto de), 295.
Barros (João de), 20, 69, 75, 86, 88,
95, 113, 169, 180, 181, 184, 190, 192-5, 196, 197, 198, 201, 206,
207, 208, 215, 216, 218, 220, 232, 233, 243, 344.
Barros (João de), of Oporto, 68, 125, 253.
Barros (João de), poet, 336.
Barros (Lopo de), 192.
Baudelaire (Charles), 336.
Beatriz, Infanta, mother of King Manuel, 111.
Beatriz, Infanta, daughter of King Manuel, 120, 133, 291.
Beauvais (Vincent de), 44.
Beccari (Camillo), 205.
Beckford (William), 111, 277, 296.
Beirão (Mario), 334.
Beja, Bishop of. _See_ Villas-Boas.
Belchior, Padre, 223.
Bembo (Pietro), 39, 140, 212.
_Bento, Regra de S._, 59.
Berceo (Gonzalo de), 43.
Beresford (William Carr), Viscount, 290.
Berger (S.), 338.
Bermudez (Geronimo), 165.
Bernard, St., 94, 207.
Bernardes (Manuel), 14, 16, 20, 224, 245, 249-50, 261.
Bernardes (Maria), 249.
Bernardez (Diogo), 14, 143, 145-7, 148, 149, 153, 181, 183, 184,
185,
272.
Bezerra (Branca), 110.
_Bible, The_, 59, 94, 95, 113, 128, 170, 246, 251, 338.
Biester (Ernesto), 314.
Bilac (Olavo), 335.
Bingre (Francisco Joaquim), 270.
Bluteau (Raphael), 284-5.
Bocage (Manuel Maria de Barbosa du), 186, 275, 277-8, 281.
Bocarro (Antonio), 198.
Boccaccio (Giovanni), 132, 231, 340.
Boccalini (Traiano), 255.
Boileau (Nicolas), 274.
Bonamis, 122.
Bonaval (Bernaldo de), 28, 29.
Bonifazio II, 41.
Bonilla y San Martín (Adolfo), 339.
_Boosco Delleytoso_, 93-4.
Bordallo (Francisco Maria), 316.
Borges (Gonçalo), 176.
Bornelh (Guiraut de), 48, 344.
Boron [= Borron] (Robert de), 64.
Boscán Almogaver (Juan), 58, 136, 140, 143, 154, 160, 172, 181.
_Bosco Deleitoso._ See _Boosco Delleytoso_.
Bosque (Dimas), 226.
Boswell (James), 302.
Botelho (Abel Acacio de Almeida), 311, 321-2.
Botelho (Afonso), 325.
Bouterwek (Friedrich), 14, 137.
Braamcamp Freire (Anselmo), 14, 15, 81, 84, 112, 115, 308.
Braga (Alberto Leal Barradas Monteiro), 325-6.
Braga (Guilherme), 330.
Braga (Joaquim Theophilo Fernandes), 14, 15, 23, 24, 37, 65, 70, 74,
75, 76, 90, 111, 112, 133, 137, 142, 231, 253, 304, 309, 342,
344, 345, 347.
Braganza, Ferdinand, Duke of, 97.
Braganza, Isabella, Duchess of, 149.
Braganza, James, Duke of, 103, 120.
Braganza, John, Duke of. _See_ João IV.
Braganza, Theodosio, Duke of, 147, 153.
Brancuti, di Cagli, Paolo Antonio, Conte, 37.
Brandão (Antonio), 73, 207, 208, 216.
Brandão (Diogo), 102, 103-4.
Brandão (Francisco), 62, 208.
Brandão (Hilario), 241.
Brandão (Julio), 327-8, 335.
Brandão (Maria), 137.
Brandão (Raul), 328.
Braunfels (Ludwig von), 65.
Bridges (Robert), 336.
Brito (Bernardo de), 18, 72, 139, 206-8, 215, 216, 251.
Brito (Duarte de), 104, 118, 124, 127.
Brito Aranha (Pedro Wenceslau de), 308.
Brito de Andrade (Balthasar de), 207.
Brito Pestana (Alvaro de), 100, 101, 127.
Brito Rebello (Jacinto Ignacio de), 112, 168.
Brochado (Luis), 341.
Brulé (Gace), 48.
Bruno _pseud._ _See_ Pereira de Sampaio.
Buchanan (George), 106.
Bulhão Pato (Raimundo Antonio), 302-3.
Bunyan (John), 249.
Buonarroti (Michelangelo), 230.
Burgos (André de), 18, 203.
Bussinac (Peire de), 47.
Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord, 183, 302.
C
Caamoões. _See_ Camões.
Caballero (Fernán) _pseud._ [Cecilia Böhl de Faber], 316.
Cabanillas (Ramón), 355.
Cabedo de Vasconcellos (José de), 109.
Cabral (Paulo Antonio), 278.
Cabral (Pedro Alvarez), 107.
Cacegas (Luis de), 242.
Caceres (Lourenço de), 191, 102.
Caiel _pseud._ _See_ Pestana (Alice).
Cairel (Elias), 112.
Caldas (José de), 321.
Caldeira (Fernando Afonso Geraldes), 310.
Calderón de la Barca (Pedro), 129, 130, 249.
Calvo (Pedro), 244.
Camacho (Diogo), 256.
Camara (D. João Gonçalves Zarco da), 311, 326, 327.
Caminha (Antonio Lourenço), 147.
Caminha (João), 149, 150.
Camino (Alberto), 348-9.
Camões (Luis de), 14, 16, 20, 77, 130, 139, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152,
153, 155, 158, 166, 167, 174-86, 193, 197, 204, 206, 216, 217,
226, 229, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 272, 277, 278, 281, 338.
Campancho (Airas). _See_ Carpancho.
Campos (Agostinho de), 231.
Campos (Claudia de), 324.
Campos Moreno (Diogode), 204.
_Cancioneirinho de Trovas Antigas_, 36, 37, 39.
_Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, 27, 36, 37, 38, 63, 66, 69, 70,
140.
_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, 36, 37, 38, 39, 56, 61.
_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, 13, 36, 37, 38, 50, 73, 96, 98, 125,
344.
_Cancioneiro del Rei D. Dinis_, 36, 37.
_Cancioneiro de Resende._ See _Cancioneiro Geral_.
_Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_, 36, 67, 76, 77.
_Cancioneiro Geral_, 13, 33, 36, 79, 96-105, 118, 122, 123, 124,
125, 128, 129, 140, 141, 167, 184, 225, 256.
_Cancionero de Baena_, 36, 66, 77, 79, 96.
_Cancionero General_, 36, 98, 104.
_Cancionero Musical._ See _Asenjo Barbieri_.
_Cancionero Popular Gallego_, 36, 355-6.
Cantanhede, Conde de, 101.
_Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti._ See _Cancioneiro
Colocci-Brancuti_.
_Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana._ See
_Cancioneiro da Vaticana_.
Cardim (Antonio Francisco), 217.
Cardim (Fernam), 205.
Cardoso (João), 245.
Cardoso (Jorge), 71.
_Carlos Magno, Verdadeira Historia do Imperador_, 339.
Carneiro da Cunha (Alfredo), 336.
Carpancho (Airas), 29.
Carré Aldao (Eugenio), 357.
Cartagena (Alonso de). Bishop of Burgos, 91.
_Cartas que os Padres ... escreveram_, 205.
Carvalho de Parada (Antonio), 266.
Casimiro (Augusto), 334.
Casquicio (Fernam), 77, 78.
Castanheda (Fernam Lopez de). _See_ Lopez de Castanheda.
Castanheira, Conde de [_or_ da], 141, 214.
Castanhoso (Miguel de), 196, 203.
Castelar (Emilio), 349.
Castello Branco (Camillo), Visconde de Corrêa Botelho, 109, 134,
187,
243, 256, 286, 295, 297-9, 304, 325, 332.
Castello Rodrigo, Marqueses de, 211.
Castiglione (Baldassare), 154.
Castilho (Antonio de), 203.
Castilho (Antonio Feliciano), Visconde de, 292, 299-300, 302, 304,
316.
Castilho (João de), 203.
Castilho (Julio), second Visconde de, 278, 304.
Castillejo (Cristobal de), 33.
Castro (Augusto de), 314.
Castro (Eugenio de), 336-7.
Castro (Inés de), 75, 84, 97, 165, 273, 282, 284, 304, 310, 312.
Castro (D. João de), 158, 187, 190, 199, 227-8, 243, 266.
Castro (D. João de), novelist, 321.
Castro (João Baptista de), 248.
Castro (Publia Hortensia de), 107.
Castro de Murguía (Rosalía de), 348, 349-50, 352, 353, 356.
Castro e Almeida (Virginia de), 325.
Castro Osorio (Anna de), 324-5.
Catherina, Queen, 120.
Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 286.
_Cava, Poema da_, 72.
Caxton (William), 60.
Ceita (João da), 17, 244-5.
_Celestina, La_, 65, 124, 159, 167, 169, 254, 262.
Ceo (Maria do) [Maria de Eça], 257.
Ceo (Violante do) [Violante Montesino], 35, 235, 256-7.
Cervantes (Miguel de), 78, 116, 130, 152, 233, 241, 262, 265, 284.
Cerveira (Afonso), 86.
Chagas (Antonio das), 221, 248-9, 261.
Chamilly, Noël Bouton, Marquis de, 263, 264.
Chariño (Pai Gomez). _See_ Gomez Chariño.
Charles V, Emperor, 121, 212, 215, 229.
Châtillon, Duc de, 233.
Chiado. _See_ Ribeiro Chiado.
Child Rolim de Moura (Francisco), 257.
_Chrisfal, Trovas de._ _See_ Crisfal.
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 268.
_Chronica._ _See_ Cronica.
Cicero, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 209, 214, 280.
_Cid, Poema del_, 23, 46, 63.
Claro (João), 59.
Claudian, 277.
Clenardus (Nicolaus), 106, 125, 215, 251.
Cleynarts (Nicholas). _See_ Clenardus.
Clusius. _See_ Écluse.
Codax (Martin), 29.
Coelho (Estevam), 30, 52.
Coelho (Francisco Adolpho), 15, 112, 231, 308, 347.
Coelho (Jorge), 180.
Coelho da Cunha (José), 336.
Coelho Rebello (Manuel), 163.
Coimbra (Leonardo de), 20.
Coincy (Gautier de), 43, 44.
Colocci (Angelo), 37, 39.
Colonna (Egidio), 66.
Colonna (Vittoria), 140, 230.
Conceição (Alexandre da), 330.
Conestaggio (Girolamo Franchi di), 210.
Congreve (William), 224.
_Conquista de Ultramar, Gran_, 339.
Consciencia (Manuel), 250.
Consiglieri Pedroso (Zophimo), 307, 347.
Cordeiro (Antonio), 138, 206.
Cordeiro (Luciano), 307.
Cornu (Jules), 59.
Corpancho (Airas). _See_ Carpancho.
Corpancho (Manuel Nicolás), 29.
_Corpus Illustrium Poetarum Lusitanorum_, 18.
_Coronica do Condestabre de Purtugal._ _See_ Cronica.
Corrêa (Gaspar), 14, 20, 88, 177, 194, 198-201, 226.
Corrêa (Jeronimo), 112.
Corrêa (Luis Franco), 186.
Corrêa de Oliveira (Antonio), 332, 337.
Corrêa Garção (Pedro Antonio Joaquim), 271-2.
Corrêa Pinto (Roberto), 85.
Correggio (Antonio Allegri da), 134.
Correia. _See_ Corrêa.
_Corte Imperial_, 94, 113.
Corte Real (Jeronimo), 181, 187-8.
Cortesão (Jaime), 314, 342.
Costa (Antonio da), 286.
Costa (Bras da), 99.
Costa (Claudio Manuel da), 274, 279.
Costa (Diogo da), 163.
Costa (D. Francisco da), 239, 240.
Costa (Leonel da), 144.
Costa (Manuel da), 180.
Costa Lobo (Antonio de Sousa da Silva), 307, 312.
Costa Perestrello (Pedro da), 147-8.
Cota (Rodrigo), 23.
Coudel Môr, O. _See_ Silveira (Fernam de).
Coutinho (Fernando de), 99.
Coutinho (D. Francisco), Conde de Redondo, 178, 220.
Coutinho (D. Gonçalo), 140, 206.
Couto (Diogo do), 138, 177, 178, 184, 190, 192, 195-8, 216, 218,
225,
254.
Couto Guerreiro (Miguel de), 285.
Craveiro (Tiburcio Antonio), 54.
_Crisfal, Trovas de_, 136-9.
Cristoforus, Dr., 82.
_Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_, 60.
_Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_, 61.
_Cronica da Fundaçam do Mosteiro de S. Vicente_, 61.
_Cronica da Ordem dos Frades Menores_, 60.
_Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_, 210.
_Cronica do Condestabre de Portugal_, 84-5.
_Cronica dos Vicentes._ See _Cronica da Fundaçam_.
_Cronica Troyana_, 61.
_Cronicas Breves_, 60.
Cruz (Agostinho da), 145, 148.
Cruz (Bernardo da), 209.
Cruz (Caspar da), 220.
Cunha (João Lourenço da), 31.
Cunha (José Anastasio da), 274.
Cunha (Nuno da), 161, 176, 199.
Cunha (D. Rodrigo da), 243.
Cunha (Tristão da), 97, 116.
Cunha Rivara (Joaquim Heliodoro da), 292.
Curros Enriquez (Manuel), 353-4, 355.
Curvo Semedo Torres Sequeira (Belchior Manuel), 278.
D
Daniel (Samuel), 164.
_Danse macabre_, 123.
Dantas (Julio), 313.
Dante Alighieri, 19, 54, 123, 139, 146, 179, 188, 197, 257.
_Danza de la Muerte_, 123.
_De Imitatione Christi_, 240.
Delicado (Antonio), 346.
_Demanda do Santo Graall_, 63, 64, 67, 71.
Denis, King. _See_ Dinis.
Denis (Jean Ferdinand), 19, 307.
Deslandes (Venancio), 231.
Desmond, Maurice, first Earl of, 289.
_Destroyçam de Jerusalem._ See _Vespeseano, Estorea de_.
_Destruction de Jérusalem_, 64.
Deus (João de). _See_ Nogueira Ramos.
Dias (Epiphanio). _See_ Silva Dias.
Dias Gomes (Francisco), 20, 21, 269, 285.
Diaz (Balthasar), 158-9, 289, 339.
Diaz (Bartholomeu), 98.
Diaz (Henrique), 218, 279.
Diaz (D. Lopo), 51.
Diaz (Nicolau), 215.
Diaz (Ruy), El Cid, 92.
Diaz de Landim (Gaspar), 88.
Dickens (Charles), 315.
Dinis, King, 13, 14, 28, 30, 37, 38, 39, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54-7, 58,
59, 60, 61, 67, 69, 70, 105, 140, 208, 294, 339.
Diniz, King. _See_ Dinis.
Diniz (João), 335.
Diniz (Julio) _pseud._ _See_ Gomes Coelho.
Diniz da Cruz e Silva (Antonio), 186, 273-4, 340.
Dioscorides, 226.
_Ditos da Freira._ _See_ Gama (D. Joana da).
Döllinger (Johann Joseph Ignaz von), 295.
Dornellas (Afonso de), 307.
Dozy (Reinhart), 22.
Drake (Sir Francis), 150.
Dryden (John), 209.
Duarte, Infante [†1576], 150.
Duarte, Infante [†1540], brother of João III, 164, 167, 215.
Duarte, Infante, brother of João V, 307.
Duarte, King, 13, 38, 46, 55, 59, 63, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88,
90-2, 93, 124, 211.
Duarte (Afonso), 334.
Duarte de Almeida (Manuel), 335.
Dürer (Albrecht), 212.
E
Eanez (Rodrigo). _See_ Yannez.
Eanez de Vasconcellos (D. Rodrigo), 54.
Eanez de Zurara (Gomez). _See_ Zurara.
Eannez. _See_ Eanez.
Eannez (Rodrigo). _See_ Yannez.
Ébrard (Ayméric d’), 54.
Eça (Maria de). _See_ Ceo (Maria do).
Eça de Queiroz (José Maria de), 97, 314, 316-18, 322, 325.
_Eccos que o Clarim da Fama dá_, 256.
Écluse (Charles de l’), 226.
Edward I, of England, 41.
Egas Moniz. _See_ Moniz Coelho.
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 209.
_Eloy, Lenda de Santo_, 60.
Elysio (Filinto). _See_ Nascimento.
Encarnação (Antonio da), 242.
Ennes (Antonio), 18, 310, 314.
Enzina (Juan del), 19, 109, 113, 122, 123, 124.
Erasmus (Desiderius), 130, 212, 215.
Ericeira, Conde da. _See_ Meneses.
Esguio (Fernando), 29.
_Esopo, Livro de_, 60.
_Espelho de Prefeyçam_, 95.
_Espelho de Christina._ _See_ Pisan (Christine de).
Esperança, Visconde de, 187.
Esperança (Manuel da), 243.
Espinola (Fradique), 247-8.
Espirito Santo (Antonio do). _See_ Ribeiro Chiado.
Esplandian. _See_ Sergas.
Espronceda (José de), 301.
Esquio (Fernando). _See_ Esguio.
Estaço (Achilles), 106.
Estaço (Balthasar), 151.
Estaço (Gaspar), 151.
Este (João Baptista d’), 245.
Esteves Negrão (Manuel Nicolau), 273.
Esteves Pereira (Francisco Maria), 14, 60, 64, 84, 90, 308.
_Estorea de Vespeseano._ _See_ Vespeseano.
Estrella (Antonio da), 162, 338.
_Eufrosina, Vida de_, 59.
F
Falcão (Cristovam de Sousa), 105, 137-9, 197.
Falcão de Resende (André), 21, 150-1.
Faria (Antonio de), 222.
Faria (Pedro de), 222.
Faria e Sousa (Manuel de), 18, 20, 68, 130, 140, 145, 147, 153, 176,
180, 184, 187, 204, 209, 216, 224, 282.
Faria Severim (Manuel de), 215.
Feijó (Antonio Joaquim de Castro), 335.
Feijoo (José Sanchez), 347.
Felipe, Infante, 120.
Fénelon (François de), 285.
_Fenix Renascida_, 155, 256, 276.
Feo (Antonio), 17, 156, 244.
Ferdinand, King. _See_ Fernando.
Fernandes Thomaz Pippa (Annibal), 308.
Fernandez (Alvaro), 217.
Fernandez (Antonio), 230.
Fernandez (Diogo) [xv c.], 92.
Fernandez (Diogo) [xv c. poet], 112.
Fernandez (Diogo) [xvi c.], 234.
Fernandez (Lucas), 124.
Fernandez (Roy), 30.
Fernandez Alemão (Valentim), 95.
Fernandez de Lucena (Vasco), 87, 88.
Fernandez Ferreira (Diogo), 89, 229.
Fernandez Galvão (Francisco), 244.
Fernandez Torneol (Nuno), 28, 31.
Fernandez Trancoso (Gonçalo), 231-2, 338.
Fernando, Infante [son of João I], 81, 89.
Fernando, Infante [son of King Manuel], 230.
Fernando, King Consort, 292, 293.
Fernando I, of Portugal, 84, 210.
Fernando III, of Castile, 40, 41, 51.
Ferrandez de Gerena (Garci), 78-9.
Ferreira (Antonio), 13, 67, 103, 145, 148-9, 165, 166, 272.
Ferreira (Carlos), 339.
Ferreira de Almeida (João), 338.
Ferreira de Azevedo (Antonio Xavier), 340.
Ferreira de Figueiroa (Diogo), 262.
Ferreira de Lacerda (Bernarda), 18, 257.
Ferreira de Vasconcellos (Jorge), 14, 16, 74, 101, 130, 155, 164,
166, 167-73, 232, 251, 338, 346.
Ferreira de Vera (Alvaro), 182.
Ferrer (Miguel), 234.
Ferrus (Pero), 66, 67.
Feuillet (Octave), 299.
Fialho de Almeida (José Valentim), 322, 326.
Ficalho, Francisco Manuel Carlos de Mello, third Conde de, 226, 308,
326.
Fielding (Henry), 255.
Figueira (Guilherme), 32.
Figueiredo (Antero de), 323.
Figueiredo (Antonio Candido de), 308.
Figueiredo (Fidelino de Sousa), 16, 308.
Figueiredo (Manuel de), 282, 290.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly (James), 16.
Flaubert (Gustave), 235, 319.
_Flores e Branca Flor, Historia de_, 65, 339, 340.
Florida. See _Relaçam Verdadeira dos trabalhos_.
_Flos Sanctorum_, 94, 225, 259.
Fonseca (Balthasar Luis da), 163.
Fonseca (João da), 249.
Fonseca Soares (Antonio da), 248.
Fontaines, Baron de, 233.
Forner (Juan Pablo), 281.
Fradique, Infante, 83.
Franco (Luis). _See_ Corrêa (Luis Franco).
François I, 212.
Frederick III, Emperor, 93.
Freire (Antonio), 262.
Freire (Francisco José), 285.
Freire de Andrade (Jacinto), 256, 261, 266-7.
Froissart (Jean), 81, 83.
Fructuoso (Gaspar), 138, 206.
Furtado de Mendoza (Diego), 22.
G
_Galaaz, O Livro de_, 63.
Galen, 226.
Galhegos (Manuel de), 58, 74, 258.
Galvam (Antonio), 190, 191, 202-3, 219.
Galvam (Duarte), 88, 180, 202, 219.
Galvam (Francisco), 147-8.
Galvam de Andrade (Antonio), 17.
Gama (Arnaldo de Sousa Dantas da), 295.
Gama (D. Cristovam da), 203.
Gama (D. Estevam da), 196.
Gama (D. Joana da), 241.
Gama (Jose Basilio da), 279.
Gama (Leonarda Gil da). _See_ Gloria (Maria Magdalena Euphemia
da).
Gama (D. Vasco da), Conde de Vidigueira, 99, 107, 175, 190, 191,
192, 196, 200, 301, 312.
Gama Barros (Henrique), 307.
Gandavo. _See_ Magalhães de Gandavo.
Garcia (Fernan), Esgaravunha, 52.
Garcia (Pero) de Burgos, 51.
Garcia de Castrogeriz (Johan), 66.
Garcia de Guilhade (D. Joan), 51.
Garcia de Mascarenhas (Bras), 259-60.
García Ferreiro (Alberto), 340, 354.
Garcia Peres (Domingo), 18, 151.
Garret (B.), Chariteo, 289.
Garrett. _See_ Almeida Garrett.
Garrido (Luiz Guedes Coutinho), 308.
Gautier (Judith), 335.
Gavaudan, 40.
Gavy de Mendonça (Agostinho de), 203.
Gayangos y Arce (Pascual de), 65.
Gibbs (James), 209.
Gil (Augusto), 336.
Gil y Carrasco (Enrique), 316.
Ginzo (Martin de), 29.
Giraldez (Afonso), 73.
Giraldi (Giambattista), 231.
Giraldo, Mestre, 17.
Glareanus (Henricus), 212.
Gloria (Maria Magdalena Euphemia da) [Leonarda Gil da Gama], 257.
Godinho (Cristovam), 238.
Godinho (Manuel), 221, 240, 254.
Goes (Damião de), 14, 15, 39, 83, 86, 88, 92, 113, 194, 202, 209,
211-14, 215, 265.
Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von), 290, 300, 333.
Goldsmith (Oliver), 277.
Gomes (João Baptista), 273.
Gomes Coelho (Joaquim Guilherme) [Julio Diniz], 314-16, 317, 324.
Gomes de Amorim (Francisco), 290, 301-2, 306, 309, 310.
Gomes de Brito (José Joaquim), 308.
Gomes de Carvalho (Theotonio), 273.
Gomes Leal (Antonio Duarte), 332-3.
Gomez (Simão), 341.
Gomez Chariño (Pai), 29-30.
Gomez de Briteiros (Rui), 46.
Gomez de Brito (Bernardo), 217.
Gomez de Moraes (Silvestre), 17.
Gonçalves Crespo (Antonio Candido), 324, 330-1.
Gonçalves Dias (Antonio), 331.
Gonçalves Lima (Augusto José), 300.
Gonçalves Vianna. _See_ Gonçalvez Viana.
Gonçalvez (Ruy), 229.
Gonçalvez de Seabra (Fernan), 47, 48.
Gonçalvez Lobato (Balthasar), 234.
Gonçalvez Viana (Aniceto dos Reis), 18, 294, 308.
Góngora (Luis de), 74, 155, 258.
Gonta Collaço (Branca de), 336.
Gonzaga (Thomaz Antonio), 274, 279.
Gonzalez de Sanabria (Ferrant). _See_ Gonçalvez de Seabra.
Gouvêa (André de), 106.
Gouvêa (Antonio de), 106, 206.
Gouveia. _See_ Gouvêa.
Gower (John), 89, 90.
Gracián (Baltasar), 19, 154, 253.
Granada (Luis de), 243.
Grão Para, Bishop of. _See_ S. Joseph Queiroz.
Grave (João), 321.
Gray (Thomas), 277.
Gregory, St., 90.
_Grinalda, A_, 300.
Guarda (Stevam), 51.
_Guarda, Foros da_, 17.
Guedes Teixeira (Fausto), 335.
Guerra Junqueiro (Abilio Manuel), 331-2.
Guilhade (Joan de), 28, 51, 339.
Guilherme (Manuel), 13.
Guimarães (Delfim), 136.
Gusmão (Alexandre de), 286.
Gusmão (Alexandre de), Jesuit, 249.
H
Halifax (John of), 227.
Hallam (Henry), 294.
Heine (Heinrich), 351.
Henrique, Cardinal, King, 106, 150, 164, 210, 214, 219, 227, 238,
250, 251, 311.
Henrique, Infante, 18, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 307.
Henriques (Guilherme J. C.), 214.
Henry VIII, of England, 212.
Henry the Navigator, Prince. _See_ Henrique, Infante.
Henry, of Burgundy, Count, 210, 271.
Henryson (Robert), 60.
Herberay des Essarts (Nicholas), 71.
Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo (Alexandre), 61, 87, 97, 127, 208,
243, 277, 285, 287, 292-5, 296, 303, 305, 315.
Herodotus, 226.
Herrera y Garrido (Francisca), 357.
_Historia dos Cavalleiros da Mesa Redonda._ See _Demanda do
Santo Graall_.
_Historia Tragico-Maritima_, 196, 217-8.
_Historia Tristani_, 63.
_Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, 59.
Hita, Archpriest of. _See_ Ruiz.
Hollanda (Antonio de), 229.
Hollanda (Francisco de), 229-30, 237.
Homem (Pedro), 105.
Homer, 19, 143, 174, 180, 182, 183, 233, 277, 280, 281.
Horace, 72, 143, 148, 258, 272, 275, 277.
Horta. _See_ Orta.
Hugo (Victor), 293, 306, 308, 310, 331, 332, 333.
Humboldt (Alexander von), 177.
Hurtado (Luis), 234.
Huysmans (J. K.), 333.
I
Ichoa (Martim), 89.
Idanha (Pedro de Alcaçova Carneiro), Conde de, 182.
Ignacio de Loyola, San, 353.
Isabel, Empress, 121.
Isabel, Infanta, 121.
Isabel, Queen Consort of Afonso V, 80, 95.
Isabel, Queen Consort of Dinis, 54, 60, 247.
Isabel, Queen of Spain, 127.
_Isabel, Vida de Santa_, 60.
Ivo (Pedro) _pseud._ _See_ Lopes (Carlos).
J
Jardin (G. du). _See_ Orta.
Jeanroy (Alfred), 29.
Jerome, St., 85.
Jesus (Francisco de). _See_ Sá de Meneses (F. de).
Jesus (Raphael de), 208.
Jesus (Thomé de), 14, 20, 189, 237, 238-40.
Joana, Infanta, 215.
João I, 14, 68, 81, 82, 84, 89-90, 94, 110, 211.
João II, 88, 89, 93, 96, 100, 102, 103, 108, 125, 148, 221, 227,
246, 305, 312.
João III, 98, 103, 106, 107, 110, 117, 119, 132, 140, 141, 158, 167,
175, 189, 192, 193, 195, 208, 209, 211, 215, 226. 232, 233,
237, 296.
João IV, 216, 242, 244, 253, 259, 265, 267, 268, 286.
João V, 270.
João, Infante [xvi c.], 106, 143, 150, 151, 166, 168, 169, 176, 179.
_João de Calais, Verdadeira Historia de_, 339.
João Manuel (D.). _See_ Manuel (D. João).
John, Prester, 219, 225.
Johnson (Samuel), 282.
Jorge, D., 221.
Jorge (Ricardo), 153.
José I, 276, 296.
_Josep ab Arimatia, Livro de_, 64.
Joséphine, Empress, 281.
Juan I, 78, 84.
Juan de Austria, Don, 188.
Juan Manuel, Infante Don, 91, 94.
Juana, Infanta, 151.
Juana, la Loca, Queen, 133.
Juromenha, João Antonio de Lemos Pereira de Lacerda, Visconde de,
176, 308.
Justinianus (Laurentius), 94.
K
Karr (Alphonse), 322.
Keats (John), 138, 281.
L
La Bruyère (Jean de), 91.
Lacerda (Augusto), 314.
Lafões, Duque de, 284.
Lafões, third Duque de, 311.
La Fontaine (Jean de), 117.
Lamartine (Alphonse de), 275, 277.
Lamas Carvajal (Valentin), 350-1.
Lamennais (Hugues Félicité Robert de), 292.
Lancastre (D. Lourenço de), 273.
Lang (Henry Roseman), 23, 24, 37, 76, 79, 123.
Lara (João Carlos de), 273.
Lasso de la Vega (Garci), 140, 141, 143, 147, 172, 181, 260.
Latino Coelho (José Maria), 201, 307.
Lavanha (João Baptista), 195, 218.
_Lazarillo de Tormes_, 115, 125, 160, 265.
Leam (Gaspar de), 241.
_Lear, King_, 62.
Leitão de Andrade (Miguel), 72, 73, 263.
Leite (Solidonio), 266.
Leite de Vasconcellos Cardoso Pereira de Melo (José), 15, 33, 34,
60,
308-9, 342, 346.
Leite Ferreira (Miguel), 67, 68, 69, 71, 148.
Lemos (Jorge de), 203.
Lemos (Julio de), 325.
Lemos Seixas Castello Branco (João de), 300, 301.
Lencastre (D. Philippa de), 80, 94.
Leo X, 97.
Leon (Luis de), 133, 236, 238, 239, 253, 258.
Leonor. _See_ Lianor.
Leonor, successively Queen of Portugal and France, 233.
Leopardi (Giacomo), Count, 331, 351.
_Lettres Portugaises._ _See_ Alcoforado.
Levi (Juda), 94.
Lianor, Empress, 93.
Lianor, Queen Consort of Duarte, 90.
Lianor, Queen Consort of João II, 93, 95, 111, 112, 113, 114, 119,
120, 229.
Lima (Alexandre Antonio de), 274.
Lima (D. Rodrigo de), 219.
Lima Pereira (Paulo de), 197.
Linhares, second Conde de. _See_ Noronha (D. Francisco de).
Linhares, Conde de [xvii c.], 252, 345.
Linhares, Violante, Condessa de, 239.
Lipsius (Justus), 255.
Lisboa (Antonio de), 162.
Lisboa (Cristovam de), 245.
Lisboa (João de), 227.
_Livro da Noa_, 60.
_Livro das Aves_, 90.
_Livro das Heras_, 60.
_Livro de Josep ab Arimatia._ _See_ Josep.
_Livro Velho_, 61.
_Livro Vermelho_, 17.
_Livros de Linhagens_, 61.
Livy, 193, 194.
Lobato (Gervasio), 314.
Lobeira (Gonçalo de), 70.
Lobeira (Joan de), 68, 69, 70, 159.
Lobeira (Pedro de), 68, 70, 71.
Lobeira (Vasco de), 67, 68, 69, 70.
Lobo (Alvaro), 210.
Lobo (D. Francisco Alexandre), Bishop of Viseu, 285.
Lobo (Francisco Rodriguez). _See_ Rodriguez Lobo.
Lollis (Cesare de), 45.
Lopes (Carlos), 325.
Lopes (David de Melo), 308.
Lopes (Francisco), 155, 162.
Lopes de Mendonça (Antonio Pedro), 297.
Lopes de Mendonça (Henrique), 312-13.
Lopes de Moura (Caetano), 37.
Lopes Vieira (Afonso), 337.
Lopez (Afonso), 160.
Lopez (Anrique), 159.
Lopez (Diogo), 84.
Lopez (Fernam), 14, 19, 61, 62, 68, 77, 81-5, 87, 88, 89, 97, 117,
180, 212, 255.
Lopez (Martinho), 81.
Lopez (Thomé), 204.
López Abente (Gonzalo), 355.
Lopez de Ayala (Pero), 66, 67.
Lopez de Bayan (D. Afonso), 53.
Lopez de Camões (Vasco), 77.
Lopez de Castanheda (Fernam), 180, 181, 190-1, 192, 193, 194, 197,
198, 200, 201, 206, 209.
Lopez de Sousa (Pero), 225.
Lopez de Ulhoa (D. Joan), 52.
Lopo, jogral, 29.
Losada (Benito), 352.
Loti (Pierre) _pseud._ [Julien Viaud], 89, 323.
Louis XI, 89.
Lourenço, jogral, 29.
Lucan, 99.
Lucena (João de), 16, 75, 243.
Lucena (Vasco Fernandez de). _See_ Fernandez Lucena.
Lucian, 99.
Ludolph of Saxony. _See_ Sachsen.
Lugris y Freire (Manuel), 357.
Luis, Infante, 106-7, 168, 170, 185, 191, 195, 209, 227, 228.
Luis (Nicolau), 284.
Lull (Ramón), 94.
Luther (Martin), 126, 212.
Luz (André da), 163.
Luz (Philipe da), 17, 244, 245.
Luz Soriano (Simão José da), 292.
M
Macedo (Anna de). _See_ Sá e Macedo.
Macedo (José Agostinho de), 17, 99, 182, 183, 187, 224, 237, 244,
250, 277, 278, 279-82, 288.
Machado (Julio Cesar), 325.
Machado (Simão), 18, 161.
Machado de Azevedo (Manuel), 77, 142.
Macias, 76-77, 78, 98, 104, 132, 349, 350.
Magalhães (Fernam de), 219.
Magalhães (Luiz Cypriano Coelho de), 319.
Magalhães de Gandavo (Pedro de), 193, 204, 279.
Magalhães Lima (Jaime de), 319, 325.
_Magalona, Verdadeira Historia da Princeza_, 65, 339, 340.
Malheiro Dias (Carlos), 320.
Mallarmé (Stéphane), 86.
Malory (Sir Thomas), 85.
Mangancha (Diogo Afonso), 90.
Manrique (Gomez), 76, 100, 104.
Manrique (Jorge), 76, 100, 102, 104.
Mantua (Bento), 314.
Manuel I, 88, 89, 96, 101, 103, 107, 110, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118,
120, 121, 126, 129, 133, 145, 175, 192, 200, 201, 202, 208,
209, 211, 214, 221, 228, 295, 312.
Manuel, Infante, 116, 121.
Manuel (D. João), 98, 101.
_Maranhão, Jornada do_, 204.
Marcabrun, 39.
Marcos, Frei, 59.
Maria, Infanta, 15, 107, 110, 121, 193, 233.
Maria, Consort of King Manuel, 118.
Maria da Gloria, Queen, 288.
_Maria Egipcia, Vida de_, 59.
Marialva, second Conde de, 241.
Marialva, Marques de, 313.
Mariana (Juan de), 208.
Marie Antoinette, Queen, 277.
Marinho de Azevedo (Luis), 18.
Mariz (Antonio de), 206.
Mariz (Pedro de), 206, 207.
Marot (Clément), 233.
Martelo Pauman (Evaristo), 354.
Martial, 125.
Martim Afonso, Mestre. _See_ Afonso (Martim).
Martinez de Resende (Vasco), 13.
Martínez Salazar (Andrés), 61.
Martinho, de Alcobaça, 98.
Martorell (Pedro Juan), 65.
Martyres (Bartholomeu dos), 195, 242, 243, 342.
Marueil (Arnaut de), 35.
Mascarenhas (D. Fernando de), 267.
Mascarenhas (D. João de), 187.
Mascarenhas (D. Pedro de), 126.
Mattos (João Xavier de), 278-9.
Medina e Vasconcellos (Francisco de Paula), 186.
Meendinho, 29, 52.
Melanchthon (Philip), 212, 227.
Mello (Carlos de). _See_ Ficalho.
Mello (D. Francisco Manuel de), 14, 74, 108, 164, 170, 205, 252-5,
261, 263, 267, 269, 338, 345.
Mello (Garcia de), 101.
Mello (Martim Afonso de), 82.
Mello Breyner (D. Theresa de), Condessa de Vimieiro, 273.
Mello Franco (Francisco de), 274.
Mena (Juan de), 77, 104, 197.
Menander, 130.
Mendes de Vasconcellos (Luis), 263.
Mendes dos Remedios (Joaquim), 16, 256.
Mendes Leal (José da Silva), 301.
Mendez (Afonso), 205.
Mendez (Manuel), 60.
Mendez de Sá (Gonçalo), 139.
Mendez de Vasconcellos (Diogo), 215.
Mendez Pinto (Fernam), 151, 203, 220, 221-5, 243.
Mendez Silva (Rodrigo), 255.
Mendoça (Jeronimo de), 210.
Mendoça (Joana de), 196.
Mendonça (Francisco de), 245.
Mendonça (Jeronimo). _See_ Mendoça.
Mendonça Alves (Vasco de), 314.
Menéndez Pidal (Ramón), 73.
Menéndez y Pelayo (Marcelino), 19, 65, 83, 112, 133, 135, 140, 151,
168, 169, 233, 252, 278, 291, 339.
Meneses (D. Aleixo de), 206.
Meneses (D. Duarte de), 86.
Meneses (D. Fernando de), 177.
Meneses (D. Fernando de), second Conde da Ericeira, 266-7.
Meneses (D. Francisco Xavier de), fourth Conde da Ericeira, 270-1.
Meneses (D. Henrique de), 195.
Meneses (D. João de), 101, 103, 104.
Meneses (D. Luis de), third Conde da Ericeira, 69, 261, 267.
Meneses (D. Pedro de), 86.
Meneses (D. Sebastião Cesar de), 266.
_Menina Fermosa, Trovas da_, 341.
Menino (Pero), 17, 78.
Meogo (Pero), 29.
_Merlim_, 63.
Mesquita (Marcellino Antonio da Silva), 311-12.
Mesquita Perestrello (Manuel de), 217.
Meyer (Paul), 44.
Michaëlis (Gustav), 15.
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (Carolina), 14, 15, 22, 23, 29, 31, 32,
33,
34, 37, 39, 50, 53, 62, 65, 75, 76, 80, 104, 112, 136, 180,
184, 308, 338, 342.
Michelangelo. _See_ Buonarroti.
Mickle (William Julius), 14.
Miguel I, 280, 288.
Milá y Fontanals (Manuel), 41, 345.
Milton (John), 127, 184.
Miranda (Afonso de), 226.
Miranda (Jeronimo de), 226.
Miranda (Martim Afonso de), 252, 262.
_Misterio de los Reyes Magos_, 123.
_Moleiro, Trovas do_, 341.
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 116, 130, 164.
Molteni (Enrico Gasi), 38.
Monaci (Ernesto), 13, 37.
Moniz Barreto (Guilherme), 21.
Moniz Coelho (Egas), 72.
Mons (Nat de), 42.
Monsaraz, Antonio de Macedo Papança, Conde de, 335-6.
Montaigne (Michel de), 83, 106, 212.
Montalvão (Justino de), 328.
Montalvo. _See_ Rodriguez de Montalvo.
Montebello, Marques de, 356.
Monteiro (Diogo), 246-7.
Montemayor (George de). _See_ Montemôr (Jorge de).
Montemôr (Jorge de), 17, 151-2.
Montesino (Violante). _See_ Ceo (Violante do).
Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat), 182.
Montoia (Luis de), 239.
Montoro (Anton de), 23, 127.
Moogo (Pero). _See_ Meogo.
Moraes (Cristovam Alão de), 109, 286.
Moraes Cabral (Francisco de), 65, 76, 152, 161, 204, 232-4.
More (Sir Thomas), 254.
Moreira (Julio), 308.
Moreira Camello (Antonio), 338.
Moreira de Carvalho (Jeronimo), 339.
Moreno (Bento) _pseud._ _See_ Teixeira de Queiroz.
Moura (Miguel de), 210.
Mousinho de Quevedo (Vasco), 261.
Murguía (Manuel de), 349.
N
Napier (Sir William), 255.
Napoleon I, 281.
Napoleon III, 340.
Nascimento (Francisco Manuel do), 263, 274-5, 290, 304, 338, 344.
Navagero (Andrea), 351.
Newton (Sir Isaac), 281.
Niebuhr (Barthold Georg), 294.
_No figueiral figueiredo_, 72.
_Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_, 61.
_Nobiliario do Conde._ _See_ Pedro Afonso, Conde de
Barcellos.
Nobre (Antonio), 332, 334.
Nobrega, Padre, 45.
Nogueira Ramos (João de Deus), 249, 250, 329-30, 338.
Noriega Varela (Antonio), 355.
Noronha (D. Anna de), 242.
Noronha (D. Antonio de), 175, 177, 179.
Noronha (D. Francisco de), second Conde de Linhares, 175, 232, 239.
Noronha (D. Lianor de), 107.
Noronha (D. Thomas de), 256.
Novaes (Francisco Xavier de), 112, 302.
Nun’ Alvarez. _See_ Alvarez Pereira (Nuno).
Nun de Allariz (Alfredo) _pseud._, 355.
Nunes (Claudio José), 331.
Nunes (José Joaquim), 26, 60, 308.
Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (Antonio), 286.
Nunez (Airas), 23, 31, 47, 52-3.
Nunez (João), 210.
Nunez (Pedro), 18, 107, 226-7, 251.
Nunez (Philipe), 230.
Nunez da Silva (Manuel), 231.
Nunez de Leam (Duarte), 39, 55, 56, 68, 210-11, 252.
Nuñez del Arce (Gaspar Esteban), 295.
Nuñez González (Manuel), 354, 355.
O
Oeynhausen, Count of, 276.
Olanda (Francisco de). _See_ Hollanda.
Olivares, Conde-Duque de, 252.
Oliveira (Fernam de), 109, 220, 227.
Oliveira (Francisco Xavier de), Cavalheiro de Oliveira, 74, 285-6.
Oliveira Marreca (Antonio de), 295.
Oliveira Martins (Pedro Joaquim de), 305-6, 322.
Orta (Garcia da), 178, 225-6, 308.
Orta (Jorge da), 225.
Ortigão (Ramalho). _See_ Ramalho Ortigão.
Osborne (Dorothy), 20.
_Osmia._ _See_ Mello Breyner.
Osorio (Luiz), 335.
Osorio da Fonseca (Jeronimo), 18, 209, 224, 228, 263.
Ossian, 301.
Ovid, 85.
P
Pacheco (João), 248.
Pacheco Pereira (Duarte), 191, 227.
Paez (Balthasar), 245.
Paez (D. Maria), 22.
Paez (Pedro), 205.
Paganino (Rodrigo), 325.
Paiva (Isabel de), 239.
Paiva de Andrade (Diogo de) [xvi c.], 239, 244.
Paiva de Andrade (Diogo de) [xvii c.], 215, 239, 253.
Palmeirim (Luiz Augusto), 300-1.
_Palmeirim de Inglaterra._ _See_ Moraes (F. de).
_Palmerín de Oliva_, 234.
Pardo Bazán (Emilia), Condesa de, 356.
Patmore (Coventry), 336.
Pato Moniz (Nuno Alvares). _See_ Pereira Pato Moniz.
Patricio (Antonio), 328.
_Paixam de Jesu Christo, A_, 94, 95.
Paul III, Pope, 212, 219.
Paulo (Marco). _See_ Polo.
Payne (Robert), 90.
Pedro I, of Portugal, 80, 84, 312.
Pedro II, of Portugal, 268, 288.
Pedro V, of Portugal, 293.
Pedro Afonso, Conde de Barcellos, 38, 57, 61-2.
Pedro, Duque de Coimbra, 71, 79, 80, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 100.
Pedro, O Condestavel D., 38, 77, 79-80, 86, 92, 95, 100.
Pedro, King of Aragon. _See_ Pedro, O Condestavel D.
_Pedro, Tratado do Infante D._, 340.
_Pelagia, Vida de Santa_, 60.
Penha Fortuna (João de Oliveira), 330.
Pereda (José María de), 318.
Pereira (Antonio Nunalvarez), 141.
Pereira (Aureliano J.), 354.
Pereira (Nuno), 98, 102, 143.
Pereira Brandão (Luis), 188-9.
Pereira de Castro (Gabriel), 258-9.
Pereira de Castro (Luis), 258.
Pereira de Figueiredo (Antonio), 338.
Pereira de Novaes (Manuel), 20.
Pereira de Sampaio (José) [Bruno], 308.
Pereira Pato Moniz (Nuno Alvarez), 187.
Pereira Pinheiro (Bernardino), 295-6.
Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcellos (Joaquim). _See_ Teixeira de
Pascoaes.
Pérez Ballesteros (José), 356.
Pérez Galdós (Benito), 298.
Pérez Placer (Heraclio), 357.
Perez de Camões (Vasco), 77, 78, 174.
Perez de Oliva (Hernan), 165.
Pestana (Alice), 324.
Petrarca (Francesco), 139, 146, 147, 148, 152, 161, 181, 185, 186,
197, 237, 280, 281.
Philip II, of Spain, 146, 151, 195, 216, 223, 224, 230, 236, 237,
238, 250, 263.
Philip III, of Spain, 155.
Philip IV, of Spain, 216, 243.
Philippa, Queen Consort of João I, 84, 85, 89, 305.
Piamonte (Nicolas), 339.
Picaud (Aimeric), 25.
_Pierres de Provence_, 65.
Pimenta (Agostinho). _See_ Cruz (Agostinho da).
Pimentel (Manuel), 228.
Pina (Fernam de), 87.
Pina (Ruy de), 87-9, 97, 110, 125, 180.
Pindella (Bernardo de). _See_ Arnoso.
Pinheiro (D. Antonio), 214, 244.
Pinheiro (Bernardino). _See_ Pereira Pinheiro.
Pinheiro (Bernardo). _See_ Arnoso.
Pinheiro Chagas (Manuel), 304, 306-7.
Pinheiro da Veiga (Thomé), 265.
Pinto (Heitor), 14, 16, 101, 230, 236-7, 238.
Pinto (João Lourenço), 318-19.
Pinto (Jorge), 159.
Pinto Ribeiro (João), 265.
Pintos (Juan Manuel), 348.
Pires (Antonio Thomaz), 69, 308, 342.
Pires de Rebello (Gaspar), 262.
Pirez Lobeira (Joan). _See_ Lobeira (Joan de).
Pisan (Christine de), 85, 95.
Pisano (Mattheus de), 85.
Pius IV, Pope, 193.
_Platir_, 234.
Plato, 119, 237.
Plautus, 108, 130, 164, 167.
Pliny, 226.
_Poema da Perda de Espanha._ _See_ Cava.
_Poema del Cid._ _See_ Cid.
_Poetica_, 48, 49, 58, 66.
Poitou, Guillaume, Comte de, 39.
Poliziano (Angelo [Ambrogini]), 103, 139, 141.
Polo (Marco), 95.
Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marques de, 272, 273,
276, 291, 307.
Ponce (Bartolomé), 151.
Pondal y Abente (Eduardo), 352-3, 355.
Ponte (Pero da), 28, 51.
Pope (Alexander), 50, 209, 274, 277.
Portela (Severo), 328.
Porto Carreiro (Lope de), 78.
Portugal (D. Anrique de), 103.
Portugal (D. Francisco de) [xvi c.], 203.
Portugal (D. Francisco de) [xvii c.], 18, 70, 129, 258.
Portugal (D. Francisco de), Conde de Vimioso, 100, 103-4, 122, 126,
145, 150.
Portugal (D. João de), 241, 242.
Portugal (D. Manuel de), 145, 180, 346.
_Portugaliae Monumenta Historica._ _See_ Herculano
(Alexandre).
Posada y Pereira (José María), 348.
Potter (Maria), 315.
Potter (Thomas), 315.
Poyares (Pedro de), 109.
Prado (Xavier), 355.
Prazeres (João dos), 269.
Presentação (Cosme da), 239.
Prestage (Edgar), 14, 15, 214, 252, 308.
Prestes (Antonio), 19, 160-1, 166.
_Primlaeon_, 119, 234.
_Primor e honra da vida soldadesca_, 262.
Ptolemy, 193.
Purificaçam (Antonio da), 18.
Purser (William Edward), 233.
Q
Queimado (Roy), 52.
Quental (Anthero Tarquinio de), 304, 328-9.
Quevedo y Villegas (Francisco Gomez de), 169, 252, 253, 255.
Quinet (Edgar), 19.
Quintilian, 247.
Quita (Domingos dos Reis), 272-3.
R
Rabelais (François), 321.
Rabello (Gabriel de), 203.
Racine (Jean), 182.
Raleigh (Sir Walter), 228.
Ramalho Ortigão (José Duarte), 304, 318, 321-2.
Ramos Coelho (José), 307.
Ramusio (Giovanni Battista), 204.
Rebello da Silva (Luiz Augusto), 296.
Redondo, Conde de. _See_ Coutinho (D. Francisco).
_Regras e Cautelas_, 241.
_Relaçam verdadeira dos trabalhos_, &c., 203.
Renan (Ernest), 240.
Resende (Garcia de), 75, 88, 89, 96-8, 99, 100, 110, 113, 123, 124,
127, 140, 150, 199.
Resende (Lucio André de), 13, 39, 130, 150, 180, 206, 215, 216.
_Revista de Historia_, 308.
_Revista Lusitana_, 309, 347.
Rey Soto (Antonio), 355.
Ribalta (Aurelio), 356-7.
Ribeira Grande, Conde da, 311.
Ribeiro (Bernardim), 14, 19, 105, 132-9, 141, 152, 154, 291, 300.
Ribeiro (Jeronimo), 161.
Ribeiro (João), 204.
Ribeiro (João Pedro), 292.
Ribeiro (Mattheus de), 261.
Ribeiro Chiado (Antonio), 157-8, 161.
Ribeiro de Macedo (Duarte), 265-6.
Ribeiro de Sousa (Salvador), 203.
Ribeiro dos Santos (Antonio), 285.
Ribeiro Ferreira (Thomaz Antonio), 302.
Ribeiro Sanches (Antonio Nunes). _See_ Nunes Ribeiro Sanches.
Ribeiro Soarez (Jeronimo). _See_ Ribeiro (Jeronimo).
Richardson (Samuel), 170.
Riquier (Guiraut), 42, 55.
_Roberto, Verdadeira Historia do Grande_, 339.
Rocha Martins (Francisco de), 321.
Rodrigues (José Maria), 180.
Rodrigues Cordeiro (Antonio Xavier), 300.
Rodriguez (Fernan), 78.
Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of Almazan, 78.
Rodriguez (Gonzalo), Archdeacon of Toro, 78, 123.
Rodriguez (Melicia), 110.
Rodriguez Azinheiro (Cristovam), 211.
Rodriguez de Calheiros (Fernan), 52.
Rodriguez de Escobar (Gonçalo), 78.
Rodriguez de la Cámara (Juan), 63, 77, 104, 132.
Rodriguez de Montalvo (Garci), 65, 66, 67, 69, 119.
Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses (João), 103.
Rodriguez de Sousa (Gonçalo), 78.
Rodriguez del Padrón (Juan). _See_ Rodriguez de la Cámara.
Rodriguez González (Eladio), 354-5.
Rodriguez Leitão (Manuel), 266.
Rodriguez Lobo (Francisco), 74, 153-5, 170, 185, 232.
Rodriguez Lobo Soropita (Fernam), 229, 345.
Rodriguez Silveira (Francisco), 229, 307.
Roiz. _See_ Rodriguez.
_Roland, Chanson de_, 53.
Rolim de Moura. See Child Rolim.
_Romances_, 74-6, 124, 161, 172.
Romero (Sylvio), 17.
Roquette (José Ignacio), 91.
Rousseau (Jean-Jacques), 264.
Rucellai (Giovanni), 140.
Rudel (Jaufre), 47.
Rueda (Lope de), 112, 130.
Ruiz (Juan), Archpriest of Hita, 23, 38, 53, 90, 113, 124, 125, 339,
356.
Ruiz de Toro (Alvar), 78.
S
Sá (Antonio de), 269.
Sá (Diogo de), 228.
Sá (Gonçalo de), 143.
Sá (Mem de), 143.
Sá de Meneses (Francisco de), epic poet, 260.
Sá de Meneses (Francisco de), Conde de Mattosinhos, 13, 150, 260.
Sá de Miranda (Francisco de), 13, 19, 39, 53, 77, 104, 105, 117,
120, 138, 139-45, 146, 149, 164, 165, 166, 174, 176, 206, 260,
263, 276.
Sá e Macedo (Anna de), 174, 179.
Sá Sottomaior (Eloi de), 153.
Sabugal, Conde de, 256.
Sabugosa (Antonio Maria José de Mello Silva Cesar e Meneses), Conde
de, 121, 158, 324.
Sacchetti (Franco), 231.
Sachsen (Ludolph von), 90, 95.
_Sacramental._ _See_ Sanchez de Vercial.
Sacro Bosco (Joannes de). _See_ Halifax (John of).
Sadoletto (Jacopo), Cardinal, 212.
Sainte-Beuve (Charles-Augustin), 91, 321.
Saint-More (Benoît de), 61.
Saint Victor (Adam de), 24.
San Pedro (Diego de), 124, 132.
Sanches de Baena Farinha Augusto Romano, Visconde, 111.
Sanchez (D. Afonso), 30, 57.
Sanchez (Francisco), 20.
Sanchez de Badajoz (Garci), 104.
Sanchez de Vercial (Clemente), 95.
Sancho I, of Portugal, 22, 27, 34, 39, 87, 122.
Sancho II, of Portugal, 17, 53, 296.
Sannazzaro (Jacopo), 140, 152.
Santa Catharina (Lucas de), 152, 242, 271.
Santa Maria (Francisco de), 269.
Santa Rita (Guilherme de), 335.
Santa Rita Durão (José de), 279.
Santa Rosa de Viterbo (Joaquim de), 285.
Santarem (Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa de Mesquita Leitão e
Carvalhosa), Visconde de, 292.
_Santarem, Foros de_, 17.
Santillana, Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marqués de, 22, 32, 38, 41, 48,
49, 77, 79, 80, 104.
Santo Antonio (Pedro de), 247.
Santo Antonio (Sebastião de), 280.
Santo Estevam (Gomez de), 340.
Santos (João dos), 220.
Santos (Manuel dos), 208.
Santos e Silva (Thomaz Antonio de), 187.
S. Bernardino (Gaspar de), 221.
S. Boaventura (Fortunato de), 285.
S. Joseph Queiroz (D. João de), 286.
S. Luis (D. Francisco de), Cardinal Saraiva, 285.
Saraiva, Cardinal. _See_ S. Luis.
Sarmento (Augusto Cesar Rodrigues), 325.
Sarmento (Francisco de Jesus Maria), 338.
Sarmiento (Martín), 347, 356.
Savoy, Duke of, 120, 133.
Schwalbach Lucci (Eduardo), 314.
Scott (Sir Walter), 293.
Sebastian, King, 146, 150, 168, 179, 181, 187, 188, 209, 210, 226,
227, 239, 241, 247, 261, 263, 307, 340, 341.
Semmedo (Alvaro), 204.
Semmedo (Curvo). _See_ Curvo Semedo.
Seneca, 92, 94, 161, 280.
Senna Freitas (Joaquim de), 322.
Sepulveda (D. Lianor de). _See_ Sousa (D. Lianor de).
_Sergas de Esplandian, Las_, 65, 68.
Serpa Pimentel (José Freire de), 300.
Serrão de Castro (Antonio), 256.
Servando (Joan), 29.
Severim de Faria (Manuel), 107, 180, 184, 192, 193, 197, 215-16,
245.
Sevilha (Pedro Amigo de). _See_ Amigo.
Shakespeare (William), 19, 108, 118, 129, 130, 160, 164.
Sigea (Angela), 107.
Sigea (Luisa), 107.
Siglar (Pierres de), 43.
Silius Italicus, 41.
Silva (Antonio José da), 282-4.
Silva (Innocencio Francisco da), 61, 148, 163, 192, 193, 220, 237,
308.
Silva (Nicolau Luis da). _See_ Luis (Nicolau).
Silva Dias (Augusto Epiphanio da), 308.
Silva Gayo (Manuel da), 320.
Silva Mascarenhas (André da), 260.
Silva Pinto (Manuel José da), 322.
Silva Souto-Maior (Caetano José da), 306.
Silveira (Fernam da) [†1489], 101.
Silveira (Fernam da), O Coudel Môr, 100-1, 102.
Silveira (Francisco Rodriguez). _See_ Rodriguez Silveira.
Silveira (Jorge da), 102.
Silveira da Motta (Francisco), 322.
Simões Dias (José), 330.
Soares de Brito (João), 52, 68, 182, 207, 224, 258.
Soares de Passos (Antonio Augusto), 293, 301.
Soarez (Martin), 52.
Soarez Coelho (D. Joan), 52.
Soarez de Paiva (D. Joan), 48, 76.
Soarez de Sousa (Gabriel), 205.
Soarez de Taveiroos (Pai), 22.
Solá (Jaime), 356.
Sophocles, 165.
Soropita. _See_ Rodriguez Lobo Soropita.
Soto (Hernando de), 203.
Sotomaior (Luis de), 130.
Sousa (D. Antonio Caetano de), 284.
Sousa (Diogo de), 256.
Sousa (Francisco de) [xvi c.], 98, 105.
Sousa (Francisco de) [xvii c.], 244.
Sousa (D. Lianor de), 188, 217.
Sousa (Luis de), 14, 16, 203, 209, 215, 241-3, 269, 291, 298.
Sousa (Manuel Caetano de), 280.
Sousa (Martim Afonso de), 225, 227.
Sousa (Philippa de), 150.
Sousa (Rui de), 122.
Sousa Costa (Alberto de), 328.
Sousa Coutinho (Lopo de), 196, 203.
Sousa Coutinho (Manuel de). _See_ Sousa (Luis de).
Sousa de Macedo (Antonio), 56, 68, 74, 130, 209, 224, 258, 260-1.
Sousa Falcão (Cristovam de). _See_ Falcão.
Sousa Farinha (Bento José de), 244.
Sousa Monteiro (José de), 311.
Sousa Moraes (Wenceslau José de), 322-3.
Sousa Sepulveda (Manuel de), 187, 196, 217.
Sousa Viterbo (Francisco Marques de), 13, 307.
Southey (Robert), 15, 19, 282.
Souto-Maior (Caetano Jose da Silva). _See_ Silva Souto-Maior.
Souto Maior (Eloi de Sá). _See_ Sá Sottomaior.
Souvestre (Émile), 299.
Spinoza (B.), 20.
Stanley of Alderney, Lord, 315.
Storck (Wilhelm), 174, 176, 178, 329.
Straparola (Giovanni Francesco), 231.
Stuart (Charles), Lord Stuart of Rothesay, 37.
_Sylvia de Lisardo_, 139.
T
Tacitus, 266.
Tancos (Hermenegildo de), 90.
Tasso (Bernardo), 71, 181.
Tasso (Torquato), 146, 180, 181, 280.
Tavares (Manuel), 110.
Tavares Zagalo (Joana), 133.
Teive (Diogo de), 106.
Teixeira de Pascoaes (Joaquim), 333-4.
Teixeira de Queiroz (Francisco), 319-20, 325.
Teixeira Gomes (Manuel), 323.
Tellez (Balthasar), 204-5.
Tellez (Lianor), Queen Consort of Fernando I, 84.
Tellez (Maria), 84.
Tellez de Meneses (Aires), 148.
_Tello, Vida de D._, 60.
Tennyson (Alfred), Lord, 64, 301.
Tenreiro (Antonio), 220.
Terence, 130, 164.
_Testament de Pathelin_, 123.
Theocritus, 272.
_Theodora, Verdadeira Historia da Donzella_, 339.
Theotocopuli (Domenico), El Greco, 114, 282.
Thierry (Augustin), 294.
Thomas (Henry), 65.
Thomas Aquinas, St., 86, 90, 92, 94.
Thomson (James), 277.
Tilly (John), 204.
Timoneda (Juan de), 231.
_Tinherabos nam tinherabos_, 72.
_Tirant lo Blanch_, 65.
Tolentino de Almeida (Nicolau), 272, 274, 276.
Tolstoi (Leo), Count, 333.
Tolomei (Lattanzio), 140, 230.
Torcy (Claude Blosset de), 233.
Toro, Archdeacon of. _See_ Rodriguez (Gonzalo).
Torres (Alvaro de), 241.
Torres (Domingos Maximiano), 278.
Torres Naharro (Bartolomé de), 124.
Trancoso (Gonçalo Fernandez). _See_ Fernandez Trancoso.
Trindade (Adeodato da), 196, 197.
Trindade Coelho (José Francisco de), 327.
Trissino (Giangiorgio), 165.
_Tristam, O Livro de_, 63.
_Tristan_, 65, 69, 70.
_Trovador, O_, 300.
_Trovador, O Novo_, 300.
Trueba (Antonio de), 302, 303.
_Tundalo, Visão de_, 59.
U
Usque (Abraham ben), 246.
Usque (Samuel), 245-6.
V
Vaamonde (Florencio), 357.
Valcacer. _See_ Valcarcel.
Valcarcel (Pedro de), 78.
Valdés (Juan de), 65.
Valente (Afonso), 112.
Valera (Juan), 19.
Valla (Lorenzo), 180.
Valle Inclán (Ramón María del), 327, 356.
Van Zeller (Francisco), 169.
Vaqueiras (Raimbaut de), 41.
Varnhagen (Francisco Adolpho de), 37, 133, 205, 206.
Vasconcellos (Antonio de), 39, 259.
Vasconcellos (Henrique de), 328.
Vasconcellos (Joaquim de), 15, 214, 230.
Vasconcellos (Jorge de), 167.
Vasconcellos (Jorge Ferreira de). _See_ Ferreira.
Vasconcellos (Simão de), 267.
Vaz (Francisco), de Guimarães, 161-2.
Vaz (Joana), 107.
Vaz da Gama (Guiomar), 174.
Vaz de Camões (Luis). _See_ Camões.
Vaz de Camões (Simão), 174.
Vaz de Carvalho (Maria Amalia), 324.
Vazquez (Francisco), 234.
Veer (Pero de), 29.
Vega (Garci Lasso de la). _See_ Lasso de la Vega.
Vega Carpio (Lope Felix de), 76, 129, 130, 147, 153, 169, 181, 183,
258.
Veiga (Manuel da), 340.
Veiga (Thomas da), 17, 244, 245.
Veiga Tagarro (Manuel da), 258.
Velázquez (Diego), 333.
Velez de Guevara (Luis), 284.
Velez de Guevara (Pero), 79.
Velho (Alvaro), 190.
Verba (João), 92.
Verde (José Joaquim Cesario), 330.
Vernier (P.), 226.
Verney (Luis Antonio), 285.
Veronese (Paolo), 182.
Vespasian, Emperor, 64.
_Vespeseano, Estorea de_, 64.
_Vespesiano, Estoria del noble_, 64.
Vicente (Belchior), 110.
Vicente (Gil), 13, 16, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 62, 74, 75, 97, 102,
105, 106-31, 132, 133, 138, 139, 141, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160,
162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 178, 235, 271, 291, 311, 338, 342,
344, 345.
Vicente (Luis), 109.
Vicente (Luis), son of Gil Vicente, 110, 168.
Vicente (Martim), 109.
Vicente (Paula), 110.
Vicente de Almeida (Gil), 162.
_Vicentes, Cronica dos._ See _Cronica da Fundaçam_.
Vieira (Antonio), 14, 16, 156, 190, 245, 248, 249, 261, 265, 267-9,
307.
Vieira (Nicolao), 59.
Vieira da Costa (J.), 321.
Vieira Ravasco (Cristovam), 267.
Vilhena (D. Joana de), 145.
Vilhena (D. Magdalena de), 241, 242.
Vilhena (D. Philippa de), Condessa de Athouguia, 291.
Villa-Moura, Visconde de, 328.
Villa Nova, Condessa de, 253, 286.
Villani (Giovanni), 83.
Villareal, Fernando, Marques de, 107.
Villas-Boas (D. Manuel do Cenaculo), Bishop of Beja, 285.
Villena (D. Enrique de), 77.
Vimieiro, Counts of, 71.
Vimieiro, fourth Conde de, 273.
Vimioso, first Conde de [_or_ do]. _See_ Portugal (D.
Francisco de).
Vimioso, third Conde de, 242.
Virgil, 174, 180, 181, 182, 183, 257, 272.
_Visão de Tundalo._ See _Tundalo_.
Viseu, Diogo, Duke of, 102.
Viseu, Henry, Duke of. _See_ Henrique, Infante.
_Visio Tundali_, 59.
_Vita Christi._ _See_ Sachsen (Ludolph
von).
Vives (Juan Luis), 65, 212, 340.
Voltaire (François Arouet), 179, 182, 274.
Vyvyães (Pero), 52.
W
Wieland (Christoph Martin), 277.
Wyche (Sir Peter), 266.
X
Xavier, St. Francis, 190, 223, 225, 243.
Xavier de Mattos. _See_ Mattos.
Xavier de Novaes. _See_ Novaes.
Xenophon, 85.
Ximenez de Urrea (Geronimo), 262.
Y
Yannez (Rodrigo), 73.
Ychoa (João de), 89.
Z
Zamora (Gil de), 42.
Zola (Émile), 299.
Zorro (Joan), 29, 31, 53.
Zurara (Gomez Eanez de), 14, 15, 68, 69, 81, 82, 85-7, 88, 201.
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