“ Diniz possessed a poetic temperament, but his love of imitating the classics, whose spirit he failed to understand, fettered his muse, and he seems never to have perceived that mythological comparisons and pastoral allegories were poor substitutes for the expression of natural feeling. ”

“ CRUZ E SILVA, ANTONIO DINIZ DA (1731–1799) , Portuguese heroic-comic poet, was the son of a Lisbon carpenter who emigrated to Brazil shortly before the poet’s birth, leaving his wife to support and educate her young family by the earnings of her needle. Diniz studied Latin and philosophy with the Oratorians, and in 1747 matriculated at Coimbra University, where he wrote his first versus about 1750. In 1753 he took his degree in law, and returning to the capital, devoted much of the next six years to literary work. ”

“ In this year he was sent again to Brazil to assist in trying the leaders of the Republican conspiracy in Minas, in which Gonzaga (q.v.) and the other men of letters were involved, and in December 1792 he became chancellor of the Relação in Rio. Six years later he was named councillor of the Conselho Ultramarino, but did not live to return home, dying in Rio on the 5th of October 1799. ”