Chapter C: R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral) (6)

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.