Portuguese Literature

SA de Miranda and his followers protested against

the name auto, restored that of comedy, and substituted prose for verse. They generally chose the plays of Terence as models, yet their life is conventional and their types are not Portuguese but Roman Italian. The revived classical comedy was artificial both in subject and style. Though it secured the favour of the humanists and the nobility, and banished the old popular plays from both court and university soon after Gil Vicente's death, its victory was short lived. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, who produced in Eufrosina the first prose play, really belongs to the Spanish school, yet, though he wrote under the influence of the Celestina, which had a great vogue in Portugal, his types, language and general character istics are deeply national. This and his other plays, Ulisipo and Aulegraphia, are novels in dialogue containing a treasury of popu lar lore and wise and witty sayings with a moral object. So de cisive was the success of Jorge Ferreira's new invention, notwith standing its anonymity, that it decided SA de Miranda to attempt the prose comedy. He modelled himself on the Roman theatre as reflected by the plays of Ariosto, and he avowedly wrote the Estrangeiros to combat the school of Gil Vicente ; in it, as in Os Vilhalpandos, the action takes place in Italy. Antonio Ferreira, the chief dramatist of the classical school, attempted both comedy and tragedy, and his success in the latter is due to the fact that he was not content to seek inspiration from Seneca, as were most of the tragedians of the 16th century, but went straight to the f oun tain heads, Sophocles and Euripides. His Bristo is but a youthful essay, but his second piece, 0 Cioso, is almost a comedy of char acter, though both are Italian even in the names of the personages. Ferreira's real claim to distinction, however, rests on Ines de Castro. (See FERREIRA.) Sixteenth-century History.—A pleiad of distinguished writers arose to narrate the discoveries and conquests in Asia, Africa and the ocean. Many of them saw the achievements they relate and were inspired by patriotism to record them, so that their writings gain in picturesqueness what they may lose in scien tific value. In the four decades of his Asia, Joao de Barros, the Livy of his country, tells in simple vigorous language the "deeds achieved by the Portuguese." His first decade undoubtedly in fluenced Camoens, and together the two men fixed the Portuguese written tongue, the one by his prose, the other by his verse. The decades, which were continued by Diogo do Couto, a more critical writer and a clear and correct stylist, must be considered the noblest historical monument of the century. (See BARROS.) Couto is also responsible for some acute observations on the causes of Portuguese decadence in the East, entitled Soldado practico.

The word encyclopaedist fits Damiao de Goes, a diplomatist, traveller, humanist and bosom friend of Erasmus. One of the most critical spirits of the age, his chronicle of King Manoel, the Fortunate Monarch, which he introduced by one of Prince John, afterwards King John II., is worthy of the subject. Goes (q.v.) wrote a number of other historical and descriptive works in Portu guese and Latin, some of which were printed during his residence in the Low Countries. After 20 years of investigation at Goa, Fernao Lopes de Castanheda issued his Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India (1552-54 and 1561), a book that ranks be side those of Barros and Couto. Antonio Galvdo, who, of ter gov erning the Moluccas with rare success and integrity, had been offered the native throne of Ternate, went home in 1540, and died a pauper in a hospital. His brief Tratado, which appeared posthu

mously in 1563, is of unique historical value. Like the preceding writers, Gaspar Correa lived long years in India and embodied his intimate knowledge of its manners and customs in the picturesque prose of the Lendas da India, which embraces the events of the years 1497 to 1550. Among other historical works dealing with the East are the Commentarios de Affonso d'Albuquerque, an ac count of the life of the great captain and administrator, by his natural son, and the Tratado das cousas da China e de Ormuz, by Frei Gaspar da Cruz.

Coming back to strictly Portuguese history, we have the un critical Chronica de D. Joao III. by Francisco de Andrade, and the Chronica de D. Sebastido by Frei Bernardo da Cruz, who was with the king at Al Kasr al Kebir, while Miguel Leitao de An drade, who was taken prisoner in that battle, related his expe riences and preserved many popular traditions and customs in his Miscellanea. The bishop Osorio, a scholar of European repu tation, wrote chiefly in Latin, and his Chronicle of King Manoel, based on that of Goes, is in that tongue.

The books of travel of this century are unusually important, because their authors were often the first Europeans to visit or at least to study the countries they refer to. They include, to quote the more noteworthy, the Descobrimento de Frolida, the Itine rario of Antonio Tenreiro, the V erdadeirainformactio das terras do Preste *foam by Francisco Alvares, and the Ethiopia oriental by Frei Joao dos Santos, both dealing with Abyssinia, the Itinerario da terra santa by Frei Pantaledo de Aveiro, and that much-trans lated classic, the Historia da vida do padre Francisco Xavier by Padre Joao de Lucena. Fernao Cardim, in his Narrativa epistolar, records a journey through Brazil, and Pedro Teixeira relates his experiences in Persia. But the work that holds the palm in its class is the Peregrinacclo which Ferndo Mendes Pinto (q.v.), the famous adventurer, composed in his old age for his children's reading. The Historic tragico-Inaritima, a collection of 12 stories of notable wrecks which befell Portuguese ships between 1552 and 1604, contains that of the galleon "St. John" on the Natal coast, an event which inspired Corte-Real's epic poem as well as some poignant stanzas in The Lusiads, and the tales form a model of simple spontaneous popular writing.

Sixteenth-century Romances, etc.

The Menina e mop of Bernardim Ribeiro, a tender pastoral story inspired by saudade, probably moved Montemor or Montemayor (q.v.) to write his Diana. To name the Palmeirim de Inglaterra of Moraes (q.v.) is to mention a famous book from which, we are told, Burke quoted in the House of Commons, while Cervantes declared that it ought to be guarded as carefully as the works of Homer. Its sequels, D. Duardos by Diogo Fernandes, and D. Clarisel de Bretanha by Goncalves Lobato, are inferior. The historian Barros tried his youthful pen in a romance of chivalry, the Chronica do Imperador Clarimundo, while in the Arthurian cycle the dramatist Ferreira.

de Vasconcellos wrote Sagramor or Memorial das proesas da se gunda Tavola Redonda. A book of quite a different order is the Contos de proveito e exemplo by Fernandes Trancoso, containing a series of 29 tales derived from tradition or imitated from Boc caccio and others, which enjoyed favour for over a century.