Edgar Prestage

“ From being a land of promise, India had become for him, as for Camoens, “the mother of villains, the stepmother of men of honour”; and though the wealth of the East poured into Lisbon, Portugal remained poor because agriculture was neglected and corn had to be imported from abroad. Miranda protested in vigorous terms against the fever of adventure and lust of gold, but few gave ear to his moralizing or had leisure to read poetry, and in 1534 he left the court. ”

“ He had observed with regret the modest intellectual position of his country, for all her wealth and epic achievements, the latter of which had found no echo in poetry; and if he were to learn and be able to introduce new forms of art fed by fresh ideals, as he desired, he felt he must go abroad. The Cancioneiro de Resende, which represented the poetical efforts of courtiers for almost a century and contained Miranda's early verses, showed the extent of the national poverty by its artificiality, and lack of ideas, of sincerity and of good taste. ”

“ Exile and suffering had enlarged his ideas and given him a sense of reality, making his best poems those he wrote between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, and when he passed away, it was recognized that Portugal had lost her foremost contemporary poet.
Garrett declared that Nascimento was worth an academy in himself by his knowledge of the language, adding that no poet since Camoens had rendered it such valuable services; but his truest title to fame is that he brought literature once more into touch with the life of the nation. ”

“ Sá de Miranda could only deplore in private the misfortunes of his country and 'devote himself to polishing his verses and educating his children. His life’s work was done, for the year 1550 saw Camoens writing his admirable sonnets, canzons and elegies, and the Italian school had definitely triumphed. The last eight years of Sá de Miranda’s life produced a cycle of beautiful poems evoked by the personality of Prince John, the heir-apparent, who loved letters and especially poetry, and whose precocity of talent made him the hope of all patriots. ”

“ At least two of his books, this latter and The Crime of Father Amaro, are chroniques scandaleuses in their plots and episodes; these volumes, however, mark not only the high-water line of the Realist-Naturalist school in Portugal, but are in themselves, leaving aside all accidentals, creative achievements of a high order. ”

“ NASCIMENTO, FRANCISCO MANUEL DE (1734–1819) , Portuguese poet, better known by the literary name of Filinto Elysio, bestowed on him by the Marqueza de Alorna, was the reputed son of a Lisbon boat-owner. In his early years he acquired a love of national customs and traditions which his humanist education never obliterated, while, in addition, he learnt to know the whole range of popular literature (litteratura de cardel) —songs, comedies, knightly stories and fairy tales, which were then printed in loose sheets (folhas volantes) and sold by the blind in the streets of the capital. ”

“ He soon began to distinguish himself as an orator, and the three patriotic sermons he delivered at Bahia (1638–40) are remarkable for their imaginative power and dignity of language. The sermon for the success of the arms of Portugal against Holland was considered by the Abbé Raynal to be “perhaps the most extraordinary discourse ever heard from a Christian pulpit.” When the revolution of 1640 placed John IV. on the throne of Portugal, Brazil gave him its allegiance, and Vieira was chosen to accompany the viceroy's son to Lisbon to congratulate the new king. ”

“ After a time, however, the colonists, attributing the shortage of slaves and the consequent diminution in their profits to the Jesuits, began actively to oppose Vieira, and they were joined by members of the secular clergy and the other Orders who were jealous of the monopoly enjoyed by the Company in the government of the Indians. Vieira was accused of want of patriotism and usurpation of jurisdiction, and in 1661, after a popular revolt, the authorities sent him with thirty-one other Jesuit missionaries back to Portugal. ”

“ Though Queiroz was a keen satirist of the ills of society, his pages show hardly a trace of pessimism. The City and the Mountains, and in part The Relic also, reveal the apostle of Realism as an idealist and dreamer, a true representative of that Celtic tradition which survives in the race and has permeated the whole literature of Portugal. ”

“ Portugal had been too busy building up a world-empire to imbibe much of the mental culture of the Renaissance, and even the classics were for the most part only known through Spanish translations. Direct intercourse between Portugal and Italy partook of a commercial rather than a literary or artistic character, and, previously to Miranda's journey, Italian poetry was practically unknown. ”

“ He founded the Portuguese Realist-Naturalist school, of which he remained for the rest of his life the chief exponent, by a powerful romance, The Crime of Father Amaro, written in 1871 at Leiria but only issued in 1875. Its appearance then led to a baseless charge that he had plagiarized La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, and ill-informed critics began to name Queiroz the Portuguese Zola, though he clearly occupied an altogether different plane in the domain of art. ”

“ Poetry with him was never a mere pastime, and, after a short period of repose, the gift of a MS. of the verses of Garcilasso and Boscan, founders of the Italian school in Castile, encouraged him to resume the work of reform commenced at Coimbra; between 1535 and 1538 he composed five eclogues in endecasyllables, four in Spanish and one in Portuguese, which show evident traces of their influence. ”

“ In conjunction with Anthero de Quental and Jayme Batalha Reis, Queiroz invented under that name a smart man of the world who had something of himself and something of Eduardo Prado, and made him correspond on all sorts of subjects with imaginary friends and relatives to the delight of the public, many of whom saw in him a mysterious new writer whose identity they were eager to discover. ”

“ These circumstances variously explain the richness of his vocabulary, and joined to an ardent patriotism they fitted him to become the herald of the literary revival known as Romanticism, which was inaugurated by his distinguished follower Almeida Garrett. ”

“ During his stay in England he produced two masterpieces, Cousin Basil and The Maias, but they show no traces of English influence, nor again are they French in tone, for, living near to France, his disillusionment progressed and was completed when he went to Paris and had to live under the régime of the Third Republic. Settling at Neuilly, the novelist became chronicler, critic, and letter-writer as well, and in all these capacities Queiroz displayed a spontaneity, power and artistic finish unequalled in the literature of his country since the death of Garrett. ”

“ He spent the rest of his life in retirement at the Quinta da Tapada, which became a centre from which the reform of Portuguese poetry spread; for he developed great poetical activity in his retreat, and while he read and annotated Homer in the original Greek, he did not disdain domestic pleasures and country sports. His evenings were occupied by music and the performance of comedies and mimes, and by readings of Bembo and Ariosto with cultivated neighbours ”

“ It is probable that the chronicles of the early kings of Portugal from Sancho I. to Alphonso IV. which were published under Pina's name in the 18th century were written by Fernao Lopes and edited by Pina, while that of King Duarte seems to have been the joint production of Lopes and Azurara, with Pina again as the editor only. Pina was a favourite of fortune dur1ng his life, for, apart from royal benefactions, he received presents from public men who wished to figure well in his books, and after his death he obtained the credit for work that was not his. ”

“ He received the news of the confiscation of his property by the Inquisition; and though he strove to support himself by teaching and writing he could hardly make both ends meet. In 1792 his admirer Antonio de Araujo, afterwards Conde de Barca, then Portuguese minister to Holland, offered the poet the hospitality of his house at the Hague, but neither the country, the people, nor the language were congenial, and when his host went to Paris on a diplomatic mission in 1797 Nascimento accompanied him, and spent the rest of his life in and near the French capital. ”

“ Moreover, he did not spare his own estate, for in his Sexagesima sermon he boldly attacked the current style of preaching, its subtleties, affectation, obscurity and abuse of metaphor, and declared the ideal of a sermon to be one which sent men away “not contented with the preacher, but discontented with themselves.” ”

“ Ribeiro had early. conceived a violent passion for his cousin, D. Ioanna Zagalo, the daughter of his protectress, D. Ignez; but, though she seems to have returned it, her family opposed her marriage to a singer and dreamer with small means and prospects, and finally compelled her to wed a rich man, one Pero Gato. When the latter met a violent death shortly afterwards, D. Ioanna retired to a house in the country, and it is alleged that Ribeiro visited her, and that their amour resulted in the birth of a child. ”

“ In January 1554 Mendes Pinto was in Goa, vuaiting for a ship to take him to Portugal, when he took a sudden resolution to enter the company of Jesus and devote a large part of the capital he had accumulated to the evangelization of Japan. ”

“ It is further alleged that Ribeiro's conduct had caused a scandal which led the king to deprive him of his office and exile him. But the loss of position and income can have added very little to the poignant grief of such a true lover and profound idealist as Bernardim Ribeiro. He had poured out his heart in five beautiful eclogues, the earliest in Portuguese, written in the popular octosyllabic Verse ”

“ He had now established his reputation as a playwright, and for the next thirty years he entertained the courts of Kings Manoel and John III., accompanying them as they moved from place to place, and providing by his autos a distraction in times of calamity, and in times of rejoicing giving expression to the feelings of the people. ”

“ Sá de Miranda's works were first published in 1595, but the admirable critical edition of Madame Michäelis de Vasconcellos (Halle, 1885) , containing life, notes and glossary, supersedes all others so far as the poems are concerned. His plays can best be read in the 1784 edition of the collected works. No modern or critical edition is available. See also Oswald Crawford, Portugal Old and New (London, 1880) ”

“ In September 1495 he attested the Will of John II. in his capacity as a notary public, and on the 2 5th of October of the same year he was present at his master's death at Alvor and opened and read his testament. ”

“ During his stay of a twelvemonth there, the latter left the company, being dispensed from his vows for want of vocation at his own request, though a modern authority states that he was expelled because he was found to be a marrano, i.e. to possess Jewish blood. ”

“ All we know positively, however, is that in 1521 the lady Went into seclusion in the convent of St Clare at Estremoz, where she fell a victim to a violent form of insanity, and that she died there some years later. ”

“ Some of his sonnets are, however, admirable, and display a grave tenderness of feeling, a refinement of thought, and a simplicity' of expression which give them a high value. As examples it is only necessary to mention the one beginning “O sol he grande . ”