HIERONYMO CORTE-REAL. JOAM II. one night after he had got into bed, asked Garcia de Resende if he could say the Trovas of JORGE MANRIQUE, beginning "Recorde el alma dormida." Resende repeated them to the king's great pleasure, who said it was as necessary for a man to know those Trovas as to know the Pater noster. Ballads. "HEMOS dicho que estas composiciones eran la Poesia del vulgo, y no con intencion de menospreciarlas. Desnudos verdaderamente del artificio y violencia a que precisaba la imitacion, cuidandose poco sus autores de que se pareciesen a odas de Horacio, o canciones de Petrarca, componiendose mas bien por instinto mas que por arte, los Romances no podian tener el aparato y la elevacion de las odas de Leon, Herrera y Rioja. Pero, ellos fueron propiamente nuestra poesia lirica en ellos empleaba la musica sus acentos: ellos eran los que se oian en los estrados, y por las calles en el silencio de la noche, al son del harpa o la vihuela ellos servian de incentivo a los amores, y tal vez de flechas a la satira, y la venganza: pintaban felizmente las costumbres Moriscas o las Pastoriles; y conservaban tambien la memoria del Cid y otros heroes señalados. En fin mas flexibles que 233 los otros generos se plegaban a toda chase de asuntos, se ataviaban de un lenguage rico y natural, se pintaban de una media tinta amable y suave, y presentaban por todas partes aquella facilidad, aquella frescura, propias solamente de un carácter original, sin violencia y sin estudio."-Preface to the Romancero. Successo de Segundo Cerco de Diu, por THIS writer has used the verso solto here and in his Naufragio de Sepulveda. Nor is it in metre only that he has imitated Trissino, tediously minute like the Italian, he drawls over needless descriptions, even more impertinently. I never elsewhere saw epithets strung together with such profuse tautology. That he wrote badly was his own want of genius. Antonio Ferrara and Diogo Bernardez praised his poetry. These writers knew better, and must be stigmatized for meanness of adulation: they never praised Camoens. But in the description of Don Joao de Castros' cruelties, of men, women and children butchered along the whole coast, of prisoners hacked in pieces in cool blood, (pp. 220, 237, 245, 251) we discover a national barbarity worthy of all abhorrence. CORTE-REAL wrote according to the feeling of his cotemporaries, and he butchers whole towns as coolly and circumstantially as he puts the Vice Roy to sleep. P. 324 contains a passage of incomparable personification. Don Joao is in bed, and Sleep thinks it a good opportunity to put him to sleep. 341, an odd exploit of Portuguese gallantry. 358, a story of a Moor rescuing his mistress. He has a simile of a swarm of fire-flies, 273, the first I have seen. There is an appearance of the Virgin, 299, which in the hands of a man of genius might have been very striking. 143, 289, afford me a good quotation for Madoc. 234 D. FILIPO DE LENCASTRE. The poem is a mere history of the siege, with a vision at the beginning and another at the end. The Royal Professor Bent. Jose de Sousa Farinha, who re-edited this, seems to have had a passion for all bad poetry. Without note or preface he contents himself with printing this trash: there is no unnecessary elegance of typography, no superfluity of paper or fineness: all is coarse and crowded; that others should read these books is very strange. I have an object sufficient. I have a piece of ground on Parnassus, and appropriate the dunghills in its vicinity for manure. He was of high birth, and distinguished himself when Capiteo Mor of the fleet, 1571. His Quinta was near Evora, the Morgado de Palma: there, on a rock summit commanding the country, was his Parnassus where he composed his Lepanti poem, which he dedicated to Philip II. who returned an honorary letter of lying compliments or rather courtly and inevitable equivocation, "you have displayed in it the genius and judgment and other good parts with which God has gifted you." In music and in painting he was eminent. He wrote a poem upon the fate of Sebastian, which was never printed, nor is any intimation given of the existence of the MSS. D. Filipo de Lencastre. BORN 1435, daughter of the great Infante D. Pedro. She fixed her abode in the Cistercian convent at Odivellas, where though she did not profess, she so educated her niece Joanna as to make her a saint. She performed the pilgrimage to Santiago on foot, all the way liberal in alms. With religious fortitude she bore the battle of Alfarrobeira. She died at the age of fiftysix. Of her works two were printed. "Nove Estaçoens, ou Meditaçoens da Paixao, muy devotas para os que vizitaõ as 66 Igrejas quinta feira de Endoenças." This was printed during Sebastian's minority. Concelho e voto da Senhora Dona Filippa, filha do Infante D. Pedro sobre as Tercarias e Guerras de Castella. 1643." This was published by Brandam, with a biographical sketch. Of the following MSS. there is only the title, "Practica feita ao Senado de Lisboa em tempo que receava algum tumulto." From the Latin he translated "Tratado da vida solitaria composto por S. Lourenço Justiniano." From the French, "Evangelhos e Homilias de todo o anno." This in her own writing is preserved at the convent of Odivellas. At the end are these her verses:— "Non vos sirvo, non vos amo, Infinito Bem e inteiro, m El Alphonso-de Franc. Botelho de Moraes y Vasconcelos. The foundation of Portugal. THE obscure and conceited poem of a man of genius,-puzzled in plan, difficult in construction, extravagant in metaphoryet its monstrous combinations could have been the work of no common talents. Perhaps this poem exhibits the most degrading proof of servility that the annals of literature can record. The author had written another poem-its title El Nuevo Mundo-its hero Osiris, and subject the Atlantis of Plato. It was told him that John V. had expressed a wish to see the two poems moulded into one ;-the obse BOTELHO DE MORAES Y VASCONCELLOS. quious subject obeyed-and thus it went through four pirate editions. He found out that it had not been the king's wish, and separated the poems again. Another proof of the loose plan is, that the two editions of Paris (a false date, for it is manifestly Italian printing) and of Salamanca differ completely in arrangement; what begins the first being in the middle of the corrected and avowed edition: but such parts may as well be last as first-they are like the ten cats-the three legs of the Mank's heraldry, quocunque jaceris stabit; his episodes are the heterogenous materials of a squab pie, but unhappily not so good in themselves. 235 Of the Alphonso I have two editions, the Italian, and the first Salamancan. The Portuguese version was never published. At Luca, 1716, a double-columned quarto edition was published, in a mutilated state, contained sixteen cantos, and part of another. Fr. Francisco de Santo Agostinho Macedo. BORN in Coimbra, 1596. At eleven, he could repeat the Eneid, and composed verses, which not only imitated, but exceeded Virgil-to the astonishment of all, that before he knew the quantities of syllables, or the precepts of poetry, he could One incident it contains beautifully fan- so perfectly compose both in his own lanciful. Cydipe is with her looking-glass-guage and in Latin. After having made Cupid steals the mirror and fixes upon it the perfect picture, book 7, st. 20 (Salamanca Ed.) With far less propriety is the portrait of Aquimo stolen from a fountain. The dwelling of Sleep is represented as all ice-philosophical-but the blanketfeeling of Sancho is nearer nature. Among the many execrable miracles of the poem in the last action is one supereminently ridiculous: the Moorish weapons when in the air are turned into birds, beasts and serpents that all recoil upon the infidels-and some are half and half! Fran. Botelho de Moraes y Vasconcellos. HIS "El Nuevo Mundo" was published 1701, Barcelona, in ten cantos, then incomplete, the Author of twenty-six years, and the completion promised. Its subject was Columbus; in 1716, it was printed at Madrid, also unfinished. At the end of the Italian edition of his Alphonso, which bears the impress of Paris, a complete edition of the first poem is announced as forthcoming, in ten books also, but with great alterations, which, as lord and master of his own works, the poet was authorized to make. Its subject now is "The Triumph of Osiris at the court of Atlantis." the fourth vow among the Jesuits, he quitted the order to exculpate himself from some alleged crime, in which," says BARBOSA, credulity was more concerned than malice." He then entered the reformed Province of S. Antony, but was called by John IV. to political labours, visiting with the several embassadors, Rome, France, and England. At Rome he was nominated Mestre da Controversia in the college de Propagandâ Fide. Here he forfeited the high favour of the Pope, by refusing to expunge a word in an epitaph written for one of his holiness's favourites. At Venice he disputed de omni scibili for three days. Bold of this, another Atlas, but without Herculean aid, he sustained the weight, for eight days, of the celebrated dispute (conclusoes,) called Leonis Sancti Marci rugitus litterarii. They commenced Sept. 26, 1667, in this order :-1. Doctrines, versions and interpretations of the holy scriptures, old and new. 2. Series, succession and authority of the popes and councils. 3. Ecclesiastical history, from Adam to Christ, from Christ to the then day. 4. Doctrines and history of the fathers, Greek and Latin, and more particularly Augustin. 5. Moral and speculative philosophy and theology, according to the three schools of S. Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Sacres of Granada. 6. Ca 236 FR. FRANCISCO DE SANTO AGOSTINHO MACEDO. non and civil law, and Greek, Latin, and Italian history, chiefly of Venice. 7. Rhetoric. 8. Poetry, and the modes of versification among Greeks, Latins, Italians, Spaniards, and French. To all his opponents he replied readily and without embarrassment, correcting their misquotations, and confounding their argument, and crowned the labour by reciting a thousand extempore verses, and an epigram in praise of the city of Venice, which the republic ordered to be written under his picture, and placed in S. Mark's library. This living encyclopædia could repeat the whole of S. Augustin's works, and with such accuracy, that whenever any forged passage was repeated to him, however accurate in imitation, his memory instantly detected it. He died 1681, aged eighty-five. He disputed upon some Grace point with Cardinal Henrique de Noris, and as they were both forbidden to publish more upon the subject, Macedo challenged him to a verbal controversy. By what unpardonable ignorance this has been construed into a challenge at arms I know not, for the cartel is thus : "Libellus provocationis ad certamen litterarium in causa Gratiæ et Augustini missus a P. Fr. Francisco S. Augustini Macedo Observante ad P. Fratrem Henricum Noris Eremitam Augustinianum. Causa Duelli. "STUDIUM defendendæ doctrinæ Gratia Christianæ, et Augustinianæ ab erroribus et calumniis, quod est antiquissimum:Macedo. Occasio. "Dictum Noris de Macedo in Vindic. August. cap. 3, vers. 2, pag. 26. Pater Macedo mihi autor fuit, ut tum Historiam Pelagianam, tum hasce vindicias evulgarem. Non potuit Macedo suasor esse operis in quo cum plurima sunt a veritate aliena, tum nonulla adversa Gratiæ et Augustino. Jus. I SHALL be well excused from transcribing the titles of one hundred and six printed, and thirty-one MS. works. Biography, and martyrology, and theology, and genealogy, deifications, and orations, and disputations. A Latin version of Camoens is of the most important of his MSS., the work of nine months. Neither abortive nor mishap, but a timely and perfect birth. Besides the printed and catalogue MS. works, he recited fifty-three panegyrics, sixty Latin orations, thirty-two funereal poems, and fortyeight epic poems; and he wrote one hundred and twenty-three elegies, one hundred and fifteen epitaphs, two hundred and twelve dedicatory epistles, seven hundred familiar epistles, two thousand six hundred Quando non licet per Superiores quid- heroic poems, one hundred and ten odes, CRISTOVAL DE VIRUES-LUYS PEREYRA. three thousand epigrams, four Latin comedies, and one Spanish satire. “Onde pois tem a estoria ja acabada Bem he que torne a minha comecada." Cant. xi. p. 237 214. Nor are the remaining books of the eighteen all employed in the action of the poem. The El Monserrate del Capitan Cristoval de siege of Mazagam-the accession of SebasVirues. 1609. 3rd impression. tian to the throne-a plague and a famine THIS is one of the poems which Cervantes-and the destruction of the fleet-these mentions with praise. There is no want of eke out the volume-and the devil also has power-but it is wretchedly directed. some part, and Proteus, the favourite of the Portuguese. The story of Garin, whom the Devil tempted to commit rape and murder, and how he became a brute beast in penitence and was miraculously pardoned. A battle with the Moors, clumsily introduced by driving the ship in which he embarks for Rome to the African coast. To find one characteristic merit would be impossible; but lines like these that follow, are, I believe rarely to be found elsewhere. "Dua cisterna so bebia a gente, Mas quanto mais gastava e mais bebia, Mais se acrecenta a agoa melagrosa, Cousa (se foy assi) maravilhosa.” P. 39. I have three extracts from this poem, one a well-imagined discovery of a death in battle by the sight of the armour. One resembling my own tempest in Madoc, the other short, but the most masterly picture "Ne qual-segundo entao se verifica." possible. Elegiada of Luys Pereyra. A POEM altogether worthless, made of materials more heterogeneous than the statue in Daniel, and yet all rubbish! No eye for painting-no ear for music-bare, bald, beggarly narrative, hobbling upon crutches. In the first book, Sebastian loses himself in a wood, and finds a hermit, who tells him the history of Portugal. In the sixth, somebody tells him of the shipwreck of Manoel de Sousa; miserable man so to die, and so to be commemorated by Pereyra and Corte-Real! The tenth is upon the actions of the Portuguese in Monomotapa. In the twelfth is a description of Africa -not quite so entertaining as that in the Geographical Grammar. The thirteenth is the history of the siege of Goa. The fifteenth, the siege of Chaul; and at the conclusion of one of these very important and pertinent episodes-Pereyra says-and now that he has finished his story, it is proper that I should go on with mine P. 42. "Cavallo que o pae de Italia e a mãe d' Espanha (Como era comum voz da gente) teve." P. 104. "Outros a nado a terra indo saindo." Observe his modesty "As vergonhosas partes encobrindo." P. 118. Sepulveda and his wife were stripped of every thing by the negroes-gold, amber, jewels. "vestido que traziam, Que inda cem mil cruzados valeriam." "outro militante Esta não menos duro e esforçado Que todos, que le Mendoça e João chamado." P. 297. Nor was there braver man the host among, |