Portuguese literature
Pan e Syringa_,[650] _Os Encantos de Medea_,[651] _Esopaida_,[651]
_Amphitrião_,[651] _As Variedades de Proteo_,[652] _Laberinto de
Creta_.[652] His best play, _Guerras do Alecrim e Mangerona_ (1737),
contains some elements of character-drawing and describes the devices
of the starving gentlemen D. Gilvaz and D. Fuas to obtain rich wives at
the expense of miserly father and country cousin. The action consists
in a bewildering succession of disguises, the scene (Pt. ii, Sc. 5)
in which Gilvaz and Fuas doctor their stolid rival and ridicule the
medical profession has humour but shows the usual inability to end
before the reader’s patience has been long exhausted. In the _Vida do
Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha_ (1733) Silva made bold to dramatize
_Don Quixote_ in a series of scenes not over-skilfully connected. Of
his own invention there is a comical scene (Pt. i, Sc. 8), in which
Don Quixote is harassed by doubts as to whether the enchanters have
not transformed Dulcinea into Sancho Panza: he begins to see a certain
likeness; but most of the scenes are directly copied and here become
signally insipid, as that of Sancho’s judgements (ii. 4), or that of
the lion (i. 5), which is as far removed from Cervantes as the sorry
lions of the Alhambra at Granada from those in Trafalgar Square.
The drama of NICOLAU LUIS, whose life is obscure but whose name was
possibly Nicolau Luis da Silva, belongs to the _literatura de cordel_,
popular plays imitated and often directly translated from the Spanish
and Italian and acted with great applause in the eighteenth century
at Lisbon. Most of them were published without the author’s name, and
although it is believed that he wrote over one-third of the numerous
_comedias de cordel_ of the century[653] only a few, as _O Capitão
Belisario_ (1781) and _O Conde Alarcos_ (1788), can be definitely
assigned to him, a fact which incidentally bears witness to his lack of
individuality. His best-known tragedy is _D. Ignez de Castro_ (1772),
an imitation of _Reinar después de morir_ by Luis Velez de Guevara
(1579-1644).
In prose it was not an age of great writers, but of research and
learning. The Lisbon _Academia Real das Sciencias_,[654] founded by
the Duque de Lafões, met for the first time in 1780, and was not slow
in inaugurating the work which has won for it the gratitude of all who
care for the language or literature of Portugal. D. ANTONIO CAETANO
DE SOUSA (1674-1759) had published his valuable _Provas da Historia
Genealogica_ (1739-48) in seven volumes, and the learned _curé_ of
Santo Adrião de Sever, DIOGO BARBOSA MACHADO (1682-1772), had spent
a long life in bibliographical study and compiled his indispensable
and magnificent _Bibliotheca Lusitana_ (1741-59) with a generous
inaccuracy which is attractive in the minute pedantry of a later age.
The scarcely less famous _Vocabulario Portuguez_ of RAPHAEL BLUTEAU
(1638-1734), who was born of French parents in London but spent over
fifty years in Portugal, began to appear in 1712. The work of research
was now carried on, among others by FRANCISCO JOSÉ FREIRE (1719-73);
FREI JOAQUIM DE SANTA ROSA DE VITERBO (1744-1822); the librarian
ANTONIO RIBEIRO DOS SANTOS (1745-1818); D. FRANCISCO ALEXANDRE LOBO
(1763-1844), Bishop of Viseu; CARDINAL SARAIVA (1766-1845), Patriarch
of Lisbon; and FREI FORTUNATO DE S. BOAVENTURA (1778-1844). Critics of
poetry were LUIS ANTONIO VERNEY (1713-92), Archdeacon of Evora, ‘El
Barbadiño’, whose criticisms in his _Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar_ (2
vols., 1746) are severe, even harsh; FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES (1745-95),
whom Herculano called _o nosso celebre critico_, and who was indeed a
better critic than poet, as may be seen in the notes and poems of his
_Obras Poeticas_ (1799); and MIGUEL DE COUTO GUERREIRO (_c._ 1720-93),
who showed good sense in the twenty-six rhymed rules of his _Tratado da
Versificaçam Portugueza_ (1784).
The best-known work of the learned son of a Lisbon blacksmith who
became the first Bishop of Beja and Archbishop of Evora, MANUEL DO
CENACULO VILLAS-BOAS (1724-1814), is his _Cuidados Litterarios_ (1791).
THEODORO DE ALMEIDA (1722-1804), an erudite and voluminous writer, one
of the original members of the Academy of Sciences, was more ambitious.
In _O Feliz Independente do Mundo e da Fortuna_ in twenty-four books (3
vols., 1779), he took Fénelon’s _Télémaque_ for his model and sought
to combine the gall of instruction with the honey of entertainment.
He wrote it first (_uma boa parte_) in rhyme, then turned to blank
verse, but, still dissatisfied, finally adopted prose, taking care,
however, he says, that it should not degenerate into a novel. The
book had a wide vogue, but is quite unreadable. One may be thankful
that it was not written in verse like that of his _Lisboa Destruida_
(1803), an account of the earthquake of 1755, with sundry moralizings
in six cantos of _oitavas_, of which a Portuguese critic has said that
the author, in an excess of Christian humility, resolved to mortify
his pride of learning by making himself ridiculous to posterity in
verse. A flickering interest enlivens the _Cartas Familiares_ (1741,
2) of FRANCISCO XAVIER DE OLIVEIRA (1702-83). Their subjects are
various: love, literature, witchcraft, and even the relation of a man’s
character to the ribbon on his hat. The author gave up a diplomatic
career, perhaps on account of his Protestant tendencies, and went to
Holland (1740) and England (1744), where he publicly abjured Roman
Catholicism (1746). After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 he addressed
a pamphlet in French to the King of Portugal, exhorting him to mend
his ways; to become Protestant with all his subjects and abolish the
Inquisition. He was duly burnt in effigy at Lisbon (1761), but died
quietly at Hackney twenty-two years later. The letters of ALEXANDRE DE
GUSMÃO (1695-1753), born at Santos in Brazil, have not been collected;
those of the remarkable Portuguese Jew of Penamacor, ANTONIO NUNES
RIBEIRO SANCHES (1699-1783), physician to the Empress Catherine II of
Russia, _Cartas sobre a Educação da Mocidade_, appeared in 1760 at
Cologne. The _Cartas Curiosas_ (1878) of the Abbade ANTONIO DA COSTA
(1714-_c._ 1780) consist of thirteen letters written from Rome and
Vienna from 1750 to 1780, mainly on the subject of music. The century
was not rich in memoirs. The _Miscellaneas_ of D. JOÃO DE S. JOSEPH
QUEIROZ (1711-64) contain some interesting and amusing anecdotes. He
speaks of the _Memorias Genealogicas_ of Alão de Moraes and of the
general discredit of genealogists, and attributes Mello’s imprisonment
to his polite acquiescence in the suggestions of the Condessa de Villa
Nova, made at the instigation of King João IV: _para lisongea-la disse
que seguiria o partido de Castella_. But without seeing the manuscript
it is impossible not to suspect that there is as much of Camillo
Castello Branco as of the Bishop of Grão-Para in the _Memorias_ (1868),
which he was the first to publish.
FOOTNOTES:
[629] _Lettere Familiari_, No. 30.
[630] Or _Arcadia Lusitana_. For a list of its members see T. Braga,
_A Arcadia Lusitana_ (1899), pp. 210-29; for its statutes, ibid., pp.
189-205.
[631] Debt might seem a more probable cause, were it not for the
apparent rigour of his confinement.
[632] _A sua alma conversava com Bernardes e Ferreira_, says his friend
Tolentino, who advises another _cabelleireiro_ poet to cease writing
verses, since _vale mais que cem sonetos a peior penteadura_. The _Arte
de Furtar_ mentions a barber who sank still lower, since he left his
profession in order to cut purses. The modern writer Antonio Francisco
Barata (1836-1910) likewise began life as a poor hairdresser at Coimbra.
[633] Cf. _Ecloga_ 1. Dorindo to Alcino (_Alcino Mycenio_ was Quita’s
Arcadian name):
E tu és dos pastores mais famosos
No cantar de improviso o verso brando.
[634] i. e. the military governor of a district, with rank next to that
of _Capitão Môr_.
[635] This Arcadian name was given to him by the Marquesa de Alorna,
although he did not properly belong to the _Arcadia_, being, like
Tolentino, one of the _dissidentes_.
[636] = fishwife; literally ‘woman of Ovar’, a small sea-town between
Aveiro and Oporto.
[637] Sá do Miranda, he says, _em quem das doces quintilhas Sómente
a rima aprendi.... Falta-me arte e natureza, Mas pude delle imitar A
verdadeira singeleza._
[638] The sky is _a estellifera morada_ (the starry abode), birds _o
plumoso aereo bando_, bees _mordazes enxames voadores_, &c.
[639] Menéndez y Pelayo (_Antología_, tom. xiii (1908), p. 377) calls
him _el poeta de más condiciones nativas que ha producido Portugal
después de Camoens_, ‘the most indigenous Portuguese poet since
Camões’, and elsewhere gives the highest praise to his sonnets.
[640] His modern editor, Visconde (Julio) de Castilho, has shown that
the additional surname de Vasconcellos was bestowed on him gratuitously.
[641] The _Couvade_ (ii. 62) is also described by Henrique Diaz,
_Naufragio da Nao S. Paulo_, 1904 ed., p. 25, and Pero de Magalhães
Gandavo, _Historia da Provincia Sancta Cruz_ (1576), cap. 10.
[642] His works in the _Dicc. Bibliog._ go from J. 2163 to J. 2475.
Many are, however, single odes, sermons, &c. Other eighteenth-century
sermons worth reading are those of the learned Franciscan Frei
Sebastião de Santo Antonio: _Sermões_, 2 vols. (1779, 84).
[643] Superficially, at least, more than Manuel Caetano de Sousa
(1658-1734) he deserves to be called a _varão encyclopedico_.
[644] He admires Cicero--not only as philosopher and orator but as a
‘sublime poet’! (_O Homem_ (1815), p. 98)--and Seneca, calls Petrarca
immortal, Tasso incomparable, and is generous in his appreciation of
English writers. At about the same time John Keats, as Petrarca five
centuries earlier, was also reading Homer in translation, but in a
somewhat different spirit.
[645] _Newton, Proemio._
[646] In the second edition (1827) he says that this poem, in twelve
cantos and about 1,000 _oitavas_, written with ‘more fire and a purer
light’ than those of Camões, had cost him ‘nine years of assiduous
application’.
[647] Macedo called Bocage _fanfarrão glosador_, and much abuse of the
same kind varied the monotony of _elogio mutuo_.
[648] Such woodenness was unlikely to appreciate El Greco’s pictures.
In the preface to his _Agriparia_ (_Theatro_, vol. v, 1804) he speaks
of _a extravagancia do vaidoso Domenico_, herein following Faria e
Sousa, who calls Theotocopuli the Góngora of painters and adds: _Pero
vale más una llaneza del Ticiano que todas sus extravagancias juntas
por mas que ingeniosas_ (_Fuente de Aganipe Prólogo_, § 37).
[649] Arnaldo Gama, _Um motim ha cem annos_, 3ᵃ ed. (1896), p. 35.
[650] _Theatro Comico Portuguez_, 4 vols. (1759-90), vol. iii.
[651] Ibid., vol. i.
[652] Ibid., vol. ii.
[653] Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ vi. 275-85; xvii. 91-3,
gives 217 titles.
[654] Now _Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_, but it is found
convenient to retain the original title in order to distinguish it from
a more recent (private) institution, the _Academia das Sciencias de
Portugal_.
VI
1816-1910
§ 1
_The Romantic School_
In Portugal the first quarter of the nineteenth century was filled
with violence and unrest. The French invasion and years of fighting
on Portuguese soil were followed by a series of revolutions and civil
wars. It seemed as if a more general earthquake had come to complete
the ruin of 1755, against which Lisbon had so finely re-acted. The
historian who attempts to record the conflicts between Miguelists