Portuguese literature
[592] A copy of this rare and curious work exists in the Lisbon
Biblioteca Nacional (_Res._ 264 v.). It contains 71 ff. divided into
four parts. The author, in his apophthegms on the character of women,
quotes the classics widely, and refers to the Uthopia [so] of Sir
Thomas More and to _Celestina_.
[593] _Relaçam_, 1842 ed., p. 233.
[594] His digressions are methodical: _por este modo de historiar (que
é aquelle que eu desejo ler) pretendo escrever sempre_ (_Epan._ ii). In
_Epan._ i he says: _Refiro, pode ser com demasia, todos os accidentes
deste negocio._
[595] He re-wrote this _Epanaphora_ twice, the first two versions
having been lost.
[596] Cf. _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3), 1900 ed., p. 89: _cada
qual desde o logar em que está acha uma linha muito junto de si que é o
caminho por onde pode ir a Deus_.
[597] Cf. _Hospital das Lettras_ (_Ap. Dial._ 4), 1900 ed., p. 114:
_por falta de cuidar cada um em se aproveitar deste mundo o que delle
lhe toca, o lançam todos a perder todos juntos do modo que vemos_.
[598] _Relogios Fallantes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 1).
[599] _Escriptorio Avarento_ (_Ap. Dial._ 2).
[600] _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3).
[601] Cf. the backwoodsman described by Couto as _algum fidalgo criado
lá na Beira que nunca vio o Rei_ (_Dialogo do Sold. Prat._, p. 31).
[602] Cf. _Aulegrafia_ (1619), f. 85 v.: _emendar a Natureza_.
[603] Edgar Prestage, _Esboço_, pp. 128-9.
[604] Like another equally brilliant soldier historian, Napier, he
rarely spells a foreign word aright. Cf. _Epanaphoras_, p. 204: _A este
nome_ Milord _corresponde no estado feminil o nome_ Léde. Falmouth,
where he had actually been, becomes Valmud, the Isle of Wight Huyt,
Whitehall Huythal, the Earl of Northumberland Notaborlan (Brito has
Northũbria).
[605] A more personal and picaresque satirist was D. THOMAS DE NORONHA
(†1651), whose works were collected by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in
his _Subsidios_, vol. ii: _Poesias Ineditas de D. Thomás de Noronha_
(Coimbra, 1899). The satiric poem _Os Ratos da Inquisição_ by ANTONIO
SERRÃO DE CASTRO (1610-85) was first published by Castello Branco in
1883.
[606] Vol. iii contains a poem by Jacinto Freire de Andrade with the
same title.
[607] _Fenix Ren._ ii. 406; iii. 225; v. 376.
[608] Hers is the deplorable pun of a superior superior:
Que se Prior sois agora
Sempre fostes suprior.
[609] The real title of the first (1623) edition is _Dos Novissimos
de Dom Francisco Rolim de Moura_. Adam is conducted by his son Abel
through Hell and comforted by a vision of Paradise. As he is the first
man and only Abel has died, he must forgo Dante’s pleasure in meeting
his personal enemies there, but there is something perhaps even more
awful in the thought of the emptiness of these _infinitos logares_
(iii. 48). Virgil’s _Facilis descensus_, &c., is translated in two
lines of great badness: _Onde descer he cousa tão factivel Quanto
tornar atraz tem de impossivel_ (iii. 36).
[610] _Nihil tamen eo vivente excussum nisi Solitudines (hoc est
Saudades)_, says the _Theatrum_.
[611] e.g. (x. 126):
Hũa montanha e serra inhabitada
Se erguia ao ar, em cuja corpulenta
Espalda....
[612] ii. 30-49:
Do undoso leito, donde repousava
O mar, &c.
[613] xii. 79: _Sou fragil lenho._
[614] In the storm in canto 2 (_Eis que o ceo de improuiso se
escurece_) he seems to have realized that Camões’ description could not
be improved upon.
[615] Numerous other academies of the same kind came into being in
this and the first half of the next century. Most of their members now
belong to the (Brazilian) _Academia dos Esquecidos_--the Forgotten.
[616] The slip in the second letter by which in the French version not
the Beja Mertola Gate but Mertola itself is seen from the convent, does
not favour this theory, which recently has been sustained by the Conde
de Sabugosa. This passage is held to be a convincing proof, were such
proof needed, of the genuineness of the letters. It is rather a proof
of the reality of the love intrigue than of the nun’s authorship. If
Chamilly, for the edification of his vanity, were fabricating such a
letter, what more likely than that he should wish to add his note of
local colour and remembered vaguely the word Mertola in connexion with
the view from the convent terrace? What he could scarcely have invented
or expressed is the real depth of feeling.
[617] Seven spurious letters, and subsequently others, were added in
many of the editions. Filinto Elysio translated the twelve.
[618] _Je parierais tout au monde que les Lettres portugaises ont été
écrites par un homme._
[619] e.g. ‘You told me frankly that you were in love with a lady in
your own country’ (letter 2). ‘Were you not ever the first to leave
for the front, the last to return?’ (5). ‘My passion increases every
instant’ (4). ‘I do not repent having adored you. I am glad that you
betrayed me’ (3).
[620] Ed. H. Butler Clarke (1897), pp. 17-18 and 65-7.
[621] The 1652 edition speaks of _coroneis_ (p. 277) who, it has been
argued, were called _mestres de campo_ till 1708 (Goes, however,
in his _Cron. de D. Manuel_, 1619 ed., f. 213, has _os fez todos
quatro coroneis de mil homens_; cf. Gil Vicente, i. 234: _Corregedor,
coronel_); it refers (p. 393) to João IV as still alive (†1656): _Que
Deos guarde e prospere_. It would appear to have been written at two
periods, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unless the
passages implying the earlier date are as deliberately misleading as
the 1652 title-page.
[622] _Classicos Esquecidos_ (Rio de Janeiro, 1915). Duarte de Macedo
in his dedicatory letter says: ‘I have taken this _Summa Politica_ from
the Latin and Italian languages.’ ‘I do not offer it as my own, because
I restore it to your Highness as yours’, so that he had armed himself
against such charges of plagiarism.
[623] It loses nothing in Sir Peter Wyche’s translation. Cf. the
account of Castro’s first arrival at Goa: ‘When the entry was to be,
the two Governours were in a Faluque with gilded Oars, and an awning
of divers-coloured silks; the Castles and Ships entertain’d ’em with
the horrour of reiterated shootings, the Vivas and expectation of the
common people did without any cunning flatter the new Government, &c.’
[624] _Cada clausula he filha da eloquencia mats sublime_, &c. (Barbosa
Machado).
[625] e.g. 1759 ed., p. 342: _cujas ruinas serião de sua fama os
elogios maiores_ would be straightened out from Latin into Portuguese:
_serião os maiores elogios de sua fama_.
[626] On his homeward voyage in 1654 he had suffered from a violent
storm, and was only saved by a Dutch pirate who landed the passengers
of the Portuguese ship at the Ilha Graciosa without their belongings.
[627] _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 93.
[628] See letters from Bahia, July 22, 1695.
V
1706-1816
_The Eighteenth Century_
The eighteenth century did not kill literature in Portugal any more
than in other countries, but poetry had lost its lyrism, and under
the influence of French and English writers assumed a scientific,
philosophical, or utilitarian character. No mighty genius arose in
Portuguese literature at the bidding of João V (1706-50), but the
king’s lavish patronage gave an impulse, and he founded the _Academia
Real de Historia_ in 1720. A crop of scholars and poets followed
in the second half of the century, so that it was not without some
unfairness that Giuseppe Baretti wrote of the Portuguese in 1760 that
_di letteratura non hanno punto fama d’essere soverchio ghiotti ...
quel poco que scrivono, sia in prosa sia in verso, è tutto panciuto
e pettoruto_.[629] It was the age of Arcadias: the famous _Arcadia
Ulyssiponense_[630] (1756-74) and the _Nova Arcadia_ founded in 1790
(i. e. precisely a century after the Italian _Arcadia_). All the
poets of the century belonged to one or other of these societies or
made their mark as _dissidentes_ from them. One of the founders of
the _Nova Arcadia_, FRANCISCO JOAQUIM BINGRE (1763-1856), lived on
into the middle of the nineteenth century, and a few of his poems
were collected under the title _O Moribundo Cysne do Vouga_ (1850).
A typical eighteenth-century poet is D. FRANCISCO XAVIER DE MENESES
(1673-1743), fourth Conde da Ericeira, who in turning to literature
was but following the traditions of his family. A staunch defender of
pure Portuguese against those who, he said, disfigure and corrupt the
language by the introduction of foreign words and phrases, he wrote a
large number of works in prose and in verse. The best known of them is
his _Henriqueida_ (1741), a heroic poem on the conquest of Portugal by
Count Henry in twelve long cantos of prosaic _oitavas_. It may contain
lines more inspiring than these:
E a contramina fabricou Roberto,
Da mina conhecendo o lugar certo,
but they do not really differ greatly from the rest of the poem. The
large quantity of poetry still written at the beginning of the century
had met with severe criticism in Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina’s _Seram
Politico_. He slyly calls the _egloga campestre_ ‘_poesia ervada_’. The
objects of the _Arcadia_ of 1756 were to free Portuguese literature
from foreign influences and restore the purity of the language. If
to some extent it merely substituted French or Italian influence for
Spanish, its cry was also back to the classics and to the Portuguese
_quinhentistas_. As to the language its services were invaluable,
for at a time when French influence was great in Portugal and in the
rest of Europe it checked the use of gallicisms; as to literature the
attempt to write poetry on an ordered plan was perhaps foredoomed to
failure: it plodded along in an artificial atmosphere of Roman gods and
antiquities, and became hidebound in imitation of the Horatian ode.
PEDRO ANTONIO CORRÊA GARÇÃO (1724-72), one of the first members
and most prominent poets of the _Arcadia_, did good service in his
determined efforts to deliver his country’s literature from foreign
imitations and the false affectation of the time, and to revert to the
classics, Greek, Roman, and Portuguese. He even prophesied that Gil
Vicente’s day would come. His master was Horace, _grande Horacio_, and
his Horatian odes, if they show no remarkable lyrical gift, have a dry
native flavour in the purity of their language. He was also successful
in reviving the cultivation of blank verse. There is a fine sound in
some of the sonnets in which he sings Marilia, Lydia, Belisa, Maria,
Nise, writes to a friend to ask for a doubloon or for Spanish tobacco,
sends birthday congratulations or laughs at a bald priest: the themes
are mostly of this level. His satirical vein is marked in his two short
comedies in blank verse, _Theatro Novo_, a skit on the drama then in
vogue, and _Assemblêa ou Partida_, in which certain Lisbon types are
ridiculed and which contains the famous and much overpraised _Cantata
de Dido_. Corrêa Garção’s days ended tragically in prison. The motive
of his arrest is not clear. Tradition wavers between a love intrigue
and political reasons,[631] and declares that the Marques de Pombal,
whom he had offended, signed the order for his release on the very day
of the poet’s death after eighteen months of imprisonment.
Pombal was effusively praised by DOMINGOS DOS REIS QUITA (1728-70),
a Lisbon hairdresser who wrote bucolic poetry melodiously, but with
perhaps even less originality than we have learnt to expect in that
kind since the time when Virgil mistranslated Theocritus. The influence
of Bernardez and Camões is clear,[632] in many passages too clear,
and he had undoubtedly caught something of their skill and harmony