CORREA GARCAO, PEDRO ANTONIO JOAQUIM (1724-1772), Portuguese lyric poet, was the son of a foreign office official; his mother was of French descent. The poet studied law at Coimbra. He took his degree in 1748, and two years later was created a knight of the Order of Christ. In 1751 his marriage with D. Maria Salema brought him a rich dower, but in later years a law-suit reduced him to poverty. From 176o to 1762 he edited the Lisbon Gazette. In 1756, in conjunction with Cruz e Silva and others, he founded the Arcadia Lusitana to rid Portu guese literature of the affectations of Seicentismo, which delighted in conceits, windy words and rhetorical phrases. He was the chief contributor to its proceedings, bearing the name of "Cory don Erimantheo." He is supposed to have conceived a passion for an English married lady which completely absorbed him and contributed to his ruin. He was arrested on the night of April 9, 1771, and committed to prison by Pombal, whose displeasure he had incurred. The immediate cause seems to have been his con nection with a love intrigue, but he was never brought to trial. He was released on Nov. io, 1772, but died that very day.
Taking Horace as his model, and aided by sound judgment, scholarship and wide reading, Correa Garcao adopted a classical simplicity of form and expression. His sonnets ad sodales show a charming personality; his odes and epistles are sententious in tone and reveal an inspired poet and a man chastened by suffering. His two comedies in hendecasyllables, the Theatro Novo (played in Jan. 1766) and the Assemblea, are excellent satires on the social life of the capital; and in the Cantata de Dido, included in the latter piece, the spirit of Greek art is allied to perfection of form, making this composition perhaps the gem of Portuguese i8th century poetry.
His works were published posthumously in 1778, and the most complete and accessible edition is that of J. A. de Azevedo Castro (Rome, 1888). An English version of the Cantata de Dido appeared in the Academy (Jan. 19,1895). See Innocencio da Silva, Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, vol. vi. pp. 386-393, and vol. xvii. pp. 182— '84; also Dr. Theophilo Braga, A Arcadia Lusitana (Oporto, 1899).