Portuguese literature
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