CASTILHO, ANTONIO FELICIANO DE Portuguese man of letters, was born at Lisbon. He lost his sight at the age of six, but the devotion of his brother Augusto, aided by a retentive memory, enabled him to go through his school and university course with success; and he acquired an almost com plete mastery of the Latin language and literature. His first work of importance, the Cartas de Echo e Narciso (1821), belongs to the pseudo-classical school, but his romantic leanings became ap parent in the Primavera (182 2) and in Amor e Melancholia (1823), two volumes of honeyed and prolix bucolic poetry. In the poetic legends A noite de Castello and Cuimes do bardo (1838) Castilho appeared as a full-blown Romanticist. A fulsome epic on the succession of King John VI. brought him an office of profit at Coimbra. Going to Brazil in 1854, he there wrote his famous "Letter to the Empress." Though Castilho's lack of strong individuality and his over-great respect for authority pre vented him from achieving original work of real merit, yet his translations of Anacreon, Ovid and Virgil, and the Chave do Enigma, explaining the romantic incidents that led to his first marriage with D. Maria de Baena, a niece of the satirical poet, Tolentino, and a descendant of Antonio Ferreira, reveal him as a master of form and a purist in language.
See Memorias de Castilho, ed. Julio de Castilho (1881-1903) ; In nocencio da Silva in Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, i. 130 and viii. 532 ; Latino Coelho's study in the Revista contemporanea de Portugal e Brazil vols. i. and ii. ; Theophilo Braga, Historia do Roman tismo (188o) ; and F. de Figueiredo, Historia da litteratura romantica portuguesa 1825-70 (1913) .