Portuguese literature
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