174 FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES. esse dor myr nam poderdes socorre vos ho coentro. Fim. "Boas sam getyl sobrinho as manhas nam douydes e vos me nomeares se levaes este caminho. E poys estas as melhores sam seas podes cobrar podem vos todos chamar huu rrevolvelhas damores. blasted in the bud. He did not, indeed, lose ground, but he never advanced. His understanding was chained down to a common, and low, and worthless pursuit. In the unwholesomeness of this shade, the tree might, indeed, exist, but could not possibly flourish. His talents were like a hale-constitutioned child pining upon the scanty food of poverty. The young man felt his situation and struggled against it. He read assiduously; poetry was his favourite pursuit ; it was his passion. He acquired taste, extensive knowledge of the subject; but he lost originality, his head was crowded with the ideas of "Dezia o sobre escryto destao porque hyam others, and it is always easier to remember than cerradas em forma de cesta. "O que vos vay na presente sobrinho vos apresento cuua vontade contente porque de vos me contento. O podre lhe lançay fora guard ae pera vos o saão e de sy beyjac a mão ho senhor e a senhora." RESENDE. Cancionero, fol. 19.1 Francisco Dias Gomes. Was born at Lisbon in 1745, the son of a petty tradesman. His parents were good people, careful of their children's moral education. Francisco was designed for the law. He passed through the previous studies in the schools da Congregação do Oratorio. Rhetoric and Poetry he studied under the royal professor Pedro Jose da Fonseca, selecting with uncommon judgment for his age, the best-esteemed masters. He had hardly commenced his legal studies at Coimbra, when the uncle, whose name he bore, and whose opinion swayed the family, altered his destination. This man was really desirous to promote the welfare of his relations, and thought the quiet profits of trade a better establishment for young Francisco than the practice of an uncertain profession, honourable, but often profiting the fortune little, and the moral character still less. Fructuoso Dias, the father, who was as ignorant as his brother, except in the world's common wisdom, was persuaded, and the young student was ordered immediately to quit the University. The thread of his studies was thus broken for ever. The uncle had accompanied his advice with an offer to assist his nephew in opening a shop in his father's trade, and Francisco found himself settled in a huckster's business, where his talents were to be exercised through life in the lowest branches of calculation! where, unless they possessed an unusual resisting force, a strong vital principle, they must perish, or vegetate in miserable barrenness, like the ill-planted tree which in a better soil would have been beautiful with blossoms and rich with fruit. Thus was the genius of Francisco Dias 1 In the MS. some portions of this are marked "inked over,"-others "blotted,"-so that it is probably incorrect. J. W. W. to invent. "I have constantly observed, in the course of my life and studies," says his biographer, "that men of much learning are rarely men of originality." Imitation is the universal talent of the human race, or rather a constant disposition with which nature has endowed us in place of the instinct which she has implanted in animals. It may, with some propriety, be called the instinet of rational beings. Accustomed as we are from the first moments of existence to obey this law of nature, and every day more habituated to obedience, now willingly, now compelled by some unskilful instructor, only strong and gifted minds can swerve from the track in which they are perpetually impelled. This perpetual contrast between his inclination and his mode of life, prevented him from rising either in talents or in fortune. Francisco could never attain in his circumstances even to decent mediocrity. But what other fate could be expected? Trading in a mean and petty business from necessity, and writing poetry from inclination, without leisure to improve his talents, without applause to stimulate them, it was impossible that he could ever be a rich merchant or an original poet. But he was just in his dealings, and unwearied in polishing what he wrote; and has left the character of a pure and correct writer, and of an honest man. The obscurity of his situation, and his natural modesty and reserve, hid him from the knowledge of his contemporary men of letters; some few, however, were among his friends. In all his difficulties he preserved the most complete independence, his cares and disquietudes were hidden in his own breast, so that it was difficult for his friends to discover his distresses, and still more. to prevail on him to accept their assistance in alleviation. His death may in some measure be ascribed to this excess of austerity, "which I dare not" (says Stockler) "call virtue." An epidemie fever attacked all his family in the spring of 1795. Francisco Dias would not beg assistance, and he was the nurse and the physician of his wife and children. The disease infected himself, he persisted in accepting no advice, and no attendance but that of his half-recovered family. The fever, therefore, destroyed him. On the thirtieth of September he died, dying with that resignation and constancy which he had ever manifested through a life of unceasing distress. FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES. 175 The Royal Academy came forward on this | till the end of D. Joao II.'s reign, remained conoccasion, to perform an act of charity to individ-fused, and lawless, and poor. uals and of duty to the public. The present edition of his poems is published at their expense, for the benefit of his widow and three children, to whom the produce of his labour and watch-it to the infinite combinations of harmony, and fulness rightly belongs. This was its state when Sa de Miranda arose. Without models, save the example of the Italian metres, he subdued the savage language, tamed Analyse e combinações filosoficas sobre a elocuçao, e estylo de Sa de Miranda, Ferreira, Bernardes, Caminha, e Camões. por Francisco Dias Gomes. fixed the pronunciation. The octonary verse was the common one; he adopted the hendecasyllable, and the seven syllable which with the former is the best lyric mixture, because of the concordant pauses. the greatest man of the Portuguese nation, was perfected by Sa de Miranda and brought to the state in which it has since continued. He taught his countrymen the structure of the Cançaò, of the octave and the triad stanzas. The simple superlative, a mode so far more poetical than the compound, was the invention of this poet. The sonnet which had been introduced by the Infant D. Pedro de Alfarroubeira, a celebrated THE Italians first recultivated poetry and per-poet, the most enlightened prince of his time, and fected the metres which the Provencals and Sicilians had invented. Dante fixed the accents of the hendecasyllable line, the most essential metre in the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese languages. Poetry entered Spain with the Moors; the long wars of the peninsula kept the languages rude and barbarous; they were both at the same time attended to and perfected. Joao de Barros proved by his work that the Por- Antonio Ferreira,-the Gower of the Portutuguese was the nearest descendant of the Latin.guese Chaucer,-only not inferior in genius, secThe Portuguese is sweet and sonorous, and onded Sa de Miranda. He perfected the Elegy ever was so, not effeminated like the Italian by and the Horatian Epistle which his friend and too abundant vowels, not harsh and unpronounce- predecessor had used, and introduced the Epiable with clotted consonants like the northern gram, the Ode, the Epithalamium and the Traglanguages; this is a predisposing cause of poet-edy. Trissino's Sofonisba was the first regular ry; but the early poems, those anterior to the fifteenth century, existing in the old libraries, those of King D. Diniz in the Convent of the Order of Christ at Thomar and in the valuable Cancioneiro of Resende, these will throw most light on the history of the country poetry. The Por-nesses. tuguese nation till the end of D. Fernando's reign Diogo Bernardes, less correct than Ferreira, lay in ignorance, solely employed in the cultiva- is more harmonious. His Bucolics are reputed tion of their lands as much as was necessary for the best of the Spanish Pastorals. Lope de Vega the internal consumption, and to keep up a mere expressly owns that from him he learnt to write shadow of external commerce, continually in- Eclogues. terrupted by the Moors who eternally infested their seas, living like exiles in the solitude of their fields, without police or communication; they spoke a rude and unshaped language, full of harsh sounds with which the barbarous language had infected them, of difficult diphthongs, Sa de Miranda writes with the simplicity charof awkward terminations, without syntax, with-acteristic of his governed and correct (moderate) out order, without harmony. The great revolution under D. Joao I. awakened the nation, their barbarous Latin ceased to be the language of the forum. The conquest of Ceuta gave birth to great projects, and Portugal appeared suddenly a nation of heroes, unexcelled by fore or after ages. The language grew with the power of the state. The poetry of King Diniz and the first Pedro are in a jargon difficultly understandable; in half a century the Chronicles of Fernao Lopez appeared, the most ancient and venerable historian of the country, written in a language so perspicuous and so different from his predecessors that it might be imagined another idiom. Still the language, Tragedy. Ferreira's Castro the second, and it still remains the best in the language, notwithstanding its sin against the unity of place. He devoted himself to useful poetry, and is the only poet of his nation who has left no baby pretti Pedro de Andrade Caminha did nothing but flatter his contemporaries and write worse than all of them. Camões perfected the poetry. His Lusiada' is the first epic which was written in the octave stanza. genius; a richer expression appears in Ferreira. Bernardes is still more copious. Camões full and perfect. In the two elder the frequent fault occurs of ending one line with an adjective and beginning the next with its substantive, a poor and prosaic feature. ** Gomes-2. Essay. SA DE MIRANDA never kindles, never dazzles, never agitates; but he enlightens, he enlivens, he pleases, he adapts himself to the dim sight of the little knowing reader. Conciseness and perspicuity characterize his style, he endeavours simply to express his conceptions in ready, not studied, language. The spirit of his thoughts This must be mistaken. 176 FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES. embodied itself in the first shape that presented. | steel workman who could only point needles. Caminha was a bad scholar.1 To the shame of these four poets be it spoken, that while they commended each other, and lavished praise upon every rhymer of rank, they never mention Camões. Noble and opulent themselves, they only praised the noble and the opulent. Camões though well born, was far superior in and poverty! ever ever the object of envy and of contempt. They would not degrade their wealthiness by condescending to notice genius in misery, and genius in misery did not deign to notice them. It was indifferent to him whether he poured his wine into a golden goblet or an earthen cruise— the contents were the value, not the vessel-but the vessel was ever well sized and pure. He addressed the judgment, not the eye-willing rather to instruct the one, than to amuse the other. Of Antonio Ferreira, Horace was the favour-talents, and he was miserably poor. Talents ite author. He devoted himself to useful poetry -the same severity of taste made him concise, and he ever attended less to harmony than to the brief expression of his meaning. His pictures are graves and somewhat rudely finished. Strong rather than sweet he is animated and full of that fire which elevates the spirit and moves the heart. Except Camões Ferreira most enriched the language. His imitations of the classics are numerous-the frequent conjunction he first used, Suspire, e chora, e canca, e geme, e sua," -more correct, more flowing, more elegant, than Sa de Miranda, he gave that atticism to the language to which Camões gave the last finish. Ferreira introduced the verso solto into the language, a metre which only Trissino in Italy had used before him. Some of his chorusses are in sapphics, these innovations manifested taste conducted by courageous genius. Gomes-3. Essay. DIOGO BERNARDES is easy, natural, more harmonious, more fluent than Ferreira, whom yet he imitated and called his master-but less correct and often negligent-yet gracefully. The success of Camões led him to imitate that better style, and this he did successfully. But Diogo Bernardes not content with imitating the fashion of Camões-sometimes stole his cloaths. His language is fuller than that of his predecessors -the stream flowed freer for its copiousness. D. Francisco Manoel says he is a poet of the land of promise—all honey and butter. Sa de Miranda painted strongly with few and poor colours. Ferreira flavoured with the spice of the ancients. Bernardes was more free, more bold, more abundant in images, more fanciful, more original; but like the English Schakepeer, he produces the most monstrous extravagancies by the side of the greatest beauties. [Poverty of Provençal Poetry.] "LA Poesia Provenzal, la Gallega, la Portuguesa, ocupadas siempre en amoretos, o en devociones, sin sublimidad, sin calor, enoueltas entre conceptos pueriles y questiones impertinentes, podian prestar poco al entusiasmo de la Castellana, que en sus principios se formo de todas ellas."-Preface to the ROMANCERO. Metre. THE Couplet is used by certain modern writers in imitation of the French. Antonio das Neves Pereira (Ensaio sobre a filologia Portugueza por meio do Exame e comparação da locucao e estilo dos nossos mais insignes poetas qui florecêrao no seculo 16. Memorias de Litteratura Portugueza. Tom. 5) blames this, as a mere affectation of Frenchification, but he allows that the stanza often occasions languid and useless epithets, vain circumlocutions, and redundancies. Like Falstaff on the stage, a paunch of a certain size cannot be always naturally full. Antonio das Neves says the ottava rima is the worst possible metre for epic narrative. pause and more variety. The ottava and terza rima, he says, are sand without lime, as Caligula said of Virgil. Pedro de Andrade Caminha has the rust of ruder times with a few spots of polish where he had rubbed against his contemporaries; his four Eclogues are valueless in thought, and cold and feeble in style, the soul of a driveller in the body Frano. Dias approves the couplet as easier, of a paralytic. His epistles are better, and con- and as not compelling the sense to stop at certain occasional passages of strong and bold mo-tain periods, so that it allows more liberty of rality and manly freedom; his funereal elegies are inartificial-not quite worthless; that to Sa de M. on the death of Prince de Joao is not bad -to Antonio Ferreira on his wife's death is sufferable on the death of Ferreira himself the best; but they produce no effect, so clumsy the expression, so dead the style. Caminka struck the lyre with frost-bitten fingers; his amatory elegies are dull and dry whinings, without fancy, without feeling, their sole merit is their shortness. His odes are his best production, either because not written in triads, or because they may have been touched by his abler friends, Sa de Miranda and Ferreira. His epigrams are seldom faulty, his talents were only equal to an epigram-a Vicente de Espinel introduced the Decima, it was formerly called Esparsas, and of twelve lines, he altered it to its present state; a delighful measure, says D. Fr. Manoa, in which we have an advantage over the Italians and French. Fernao Alvares used the trisyllable rhyme unhappily, this was in imitation of Sannazarius; but the Portuguese does not abound enough in these 1 He often contracts three or four vowels, and even as many consonants. To read such lines is to set one foot in a quagmire, and hurt the other against a stumbling-stone. This Dactylic three-legged rhyme exists in G. Montemayor's Diana, p. 15. GONCALO ANNES BANDARRA-PAREIRA-ANTONIO DINIZ. 177 words to make them possible in poetry, the poet | Castro also edited them; but the Inquisition true has therefore been obliged to eke them out with to its own infallibility, prohibited them 1581 and an annexed pronoun. The Moorish metre used by Garcilaso and Sir P. Sidney, is to be found in the old French poet Guillaume Cretin. A similar middle rhyme is in the poem of K. Pedro. The Sylva admits rhymelin lines at the will of the writer; some writers have used more blank than rhymed verses in a stanza. The Asonantes were not known by Garcilaso, Mendoza, and Acuna; other poets despised them, they were left for Letrillas and Romances, for popular poetry. T. Burguillos calls the Decimas, Espinelas, from their Inventor. Stephen Hawes has the Moorish metre of Garcilaso, and the Welsh with even more gingle. The first epoch of P. Poetry said the Desembargador, is semi-Arabesque, for rhyme is of oriental family, and the constant subjects are also oriental-morals—or love fantastically metaphored, and metaphysically refined-never dramatic, never narrative. Rhyme came not with the Goths. They have not their language, much less its fashion; moreover, if the Scandinavian origin of Odin be true, the stirps would remain the same; but the subjects rather characterise all nations in a semibarbarous state, than any one: yet it may be doubted whether all pieces of this dull moral and low class are not of Provençal family. 1665. Paciecidos, Libra 12. Authore, P. Bartholomæo Pareira, Soc. Jesu. Coimbra, 1640. P. 25. An odd personification of Amorvitæ. It is a dull poem upon the execution of a Jesuit in Japan, with no allusion to any rite or custom of the country, save the names of the idols and the Bonzes. The hero and the poet were related, and they were both Jesuits. There are some good parts, or rather some seeds, which had they fallen upon good ground would have produced good fruit, here they are poor plants, and the thorns choke them. I read the volume on my Algarve journey, 'twas like the food we found, welcome for want of better. A Preciosa. WAS written by Sor Maria do Ceo, a Franciscan nun, in the Esperança convent; its false name was a lie of modesty. She was one of twins, so alike that they were undistinguishable but by voice. Of illustrious family, she at eighteen sacrificed her liberty upon the altar of obedience; to what age she lived I know not, but her birth was 1658; in 1741 she published, and Barbosa in 1752 does not mention her death. The catalogue of her works it were useless to transcribe, only there is a life of Saint Catherine of the cat and wheel, and a second part of the Preciosa. GASTAM DE FOX, Bishop of Evora, whom Aff. Henriques sent ambassador to Rome, and who was killed by robbers on the way; wrote a treatise upon God and the immortality of the soul, on the concordance between the Sibylline oracles Hisopaida, by the Dezembargador, Antonio Diniz. and the prophets, on eternal happiness, purgatory and hell; it was written in Arabic, the language then most prevalent in Spain.-Barbosa. Gonçalo Annes Bandarra. THE Prophetic Shoemaker of Trancoso. He mistook the power of rhyming for the gift of prophecy. The mob who loved his coarse, rude, jingling jokes, persuaded him to this belief; but the Inquisition undeceived him, and he made his appearance in an auto da fe at Lisbon, 1541. In 1556 he died. At the Braganza revolution, the old prophecies of Bandarra rose again; that restoration of the royal family was found to be there predicted; the governor of Beyra made him a magnificent tomb with this inscriptionAqui gaz Gonçalo Anes Bandarra, que em seu tempo profetizon a Restauraçaõ deste reyno, e D. Alvaro de Abranches lha mandon fazer sendo General da Beyra, anno de mil seiscentos e quarenta a hum. The Marquis of Niza D. Vasco Luiz de Gama, printed them at Nantes, 1644, when he was ambassador in France, the1 of D. Joao de 1 The blank is in the MS. and I am unable to fill it up. J. W. W. M MSS. JOZE CARLOS DE LARA, Dead of the Cathedral of Elvas, to ingratiate himself with the Bishop D. Lourenco de Lencastre, used to attend him with the sprinkling hyssop whenever he went to do duty. Afterward, from some disgust, he ceased this act of supererogation, which however the bishop and his friends of the chapter commanded him to continue. He appealed to the metropolitan, but sentence was pronounced a second time against him. This is the action of the poem. The Dead's successor and nephew, after his death, tried the cause again, and obtained a reversal of the decree. This is given as a prophetic hope to the unsuccessful hero of the piece. Eight cantos in verso suelto. Permission never could be obtained to publish this poem. Indeed it is surprising that it ever should have been ask. ed, the general satire is so undisguised. It wants all the merit of parody. I discover no learning, no allusions that excite a smile; but of the costume of Portugal there is much. Donna Bernarda Ferreira De Lacerda. BORN in Porto, 1595. She had every advant 178 BERNARDA FERREIRA DE LACERDA—GOMEZ-PIMENTAL, ETC. She spoke Latin, age of birth and beauty. Italian and Spanish as with native fluency. She was charitable, daily bestowing liberal and regular alms; pious, for daily she recited the service of the Virgin, weekly communicated, and every six months made a full and general confession; and her confessor affirmed that she had never sullied her soul with one mortal sin. On the Trinity she once delivered an hour-long speech before the most learned theologians, and they declared that she had enlightened their weaker comprehensions. Her fame was such, that Philip III. wished her to become the preceptress of his sons; a task which she modestly and with wisdom declined, not that Bernarda wanted the due knowledge. I have yet to mention her proficiency in the philosophy of the times, of which she penetrated the mysteries; her skill in music, and on every instrument; and her knowledge of the deepest mathematics. Her life was happy, but not extended: at the age of forty-nine she died, having survived, and suffered with due resignation, the death of a dear husband and of part of her children. Her epitaph is not inelegant. Sanson Nazareno, por Antonio Henriquez Gomez. Ruan, 1656. A VERY abominable poem, eternally full of such classical allusions as a school boy can make from his History of the Heathen Gods. Gongora and Silveyra have been his models. The vile and ununderstandable Machabeo he ranks with Homer and Virgil and Tasso! To read this trash requires great patience and a great mouth -exempli gratiâ-Basilinto, Dragolinto, Torbalonte, Dalifagonte, Balibalonte, Tigaronte, Philibonte, Tagarino, Palestino, Malaquino, Dragontino, a pretty nomenclature! despliega al viento Un Torrente de voz." P. 174. One of his giants he calls a mountain of Babylonian members. The broken lances shivered up so high, that they never came down again. There would be no end of picking weeds here. The author was an enormous scribbler. He says in his preface, that though he had no education, he has taken no small pains with himself, and is in no small degree indebted to nature; and he refers you to separate works to see his proficiency in poetry, the drama, politics, theology, and philosophy. All semibarbarous people have their Samson, Hercules, The Cid, Guy of Warwick, Roland; they are all of a family. Sor Maria Mesquita Pimental. ESPOUSED herself to the Holy Lamb in a Cisterian convent at Evora, and every day recited the Psalter, for the good of the souls in Purgatory. She wrote the Infancia de Christo, ten cantos in the octave rhyme. The second and third parts, which include the life and passion, exist in MS. at Alcobaca. [Menasses Ben Israel.] BARBOSA Contends that Menasses Ben Israel was a Portuguese, not a Spaniard. Thus are they proud of a man whom they would have burnt: the Jew has left some verses of a tolerant creed, somewhat free in metre as in principle. "Cunctorum est coluisse Deum : non unius ævi Non populi unius credimus esse piùm. Si sapimus diversa Deo vivamus amici, Doctaque mens pretio constet ubique suo. Hæc fidei vox summa meæ est, hæc crede Menasses, Sic ego Christiades, sic eris Abramides." |