Chapter D: JOANA DA GAMA (†1568), a nun of noble birth who directed a small (4)

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.