(1908). (E. A. J.; X.) MACEDO, JOSE AGOSTINHO DE 17_1 ( 6 guese ,-1_31, , _ guese poet and prose writer, was born at Beja of plebeian family, and became professed as an Augustinian in 1778, but owing to his turbulent character he spent a great part of his time in prison, and was constantly being transferred from one convent to an other. In 1792 he was unfrocked, but by the aid of powerful friends he obtained a papal brief which gave him the status of a secular priest. In a short time he was recognized as the leading pulpit orator of the day, and in 1802 he became one of the royal preachers. Macedo was the first Portuguese writer of didactic and descriptive poetry, the best example of which is his notable tran scendental poem Meditation (1813). In 1814 he produced Oriente, an insipid epic dealing with the same subject as the Lusiads Gama's discovery of the sea route to India. Macedo founded and wrote for a large number of journals, and the tone and temper of these and his political pamphlets induced his leading biographer to name him the "chief libeller" of Portugal. His overweening am
bition led to his famous conflict with Bocage (q.v.), whose poem Pena de Talido was perhaps the hardest blow Macedo ever re ceived. His malignity reached its height in a satirical poem in six cantos, Os Burros (1812-14), in which he pilloried by name men and women of all grades of society, living and dead, with the utmost licence of expression. The odes on Wellington and the emperor Alexander show true inspiration, and the poems in his Lyra anacreontica, addressed to his mistress, have merit.
See Memorias pare la vida intima de Jose Agostinho de Macedo (ed. Th. Braga, 1899) ; Cartas e opusculos (1900) ; Censures a diversas obras (19oI).