With Camoens and his contemporary, Gil Vicente, the language and poetry of Por tugal reached the culminating point of their development. During the dominion of Spain. the Portuguese so far lost all feeling of national independence and patriotism, that they at length renounced their native tongue. and adopted the language of their foreign rulers. With the restoration of political independence, under the sway of the Portuguese house of Braganza, a reaction took place; but-the 17th and 18th c. produced few Portuguese writers who attained more than an ephemeral and purely local replan tion—bombast, or slavish imitation of Spanish and Italian writers, being the predomi nant characteristics of the Portuguese school of light literature. Some good historical writers belong, however, to this period, as Jacinto Freire de Andrade, whose life of Joao de Castro, viceroy of India, still holds its place as the most perfect monument of classical prose; the great Indian missionary, the Jesuit father Antonio Vierra, who died in 1699, and whose sermons and letters—of which a collection was published at Lisbon in 1748, and at Paris in 1838—are regarded by his countrymen as models of style and diction; F. X. da 3Ieneses, the author of 0 Portugal Rodaurado (1741), etc. In the beginning of the present century, Portuguese poetry was partially redeemed from its previous low grade by two men, who, although they professed to observe a strictly classical style, possessed a delicacy of taste, and a genial creative power, which saved them from falling into the absurdities that had generally characterized the school in Portugal. The elder of these, F, M. do Naseimento, who died in exile at Paris in 1819, although specially noted as an elegant lyrist, deserves notice for his gracefully written miscellaneous papers; while Mandel de Bocage, his less cultivated rival and contempo rary, must undoubtedly be regarded as the most original and truly national of the mod ern poets of Portugal. His sonnets rank as the finest in the language, and these, with
his numerous idylls, epigrams, and occasional poems, composed in various styles and modes of versification, have had a host of imitators, among the best of whom are the .dramatist J. B. Gomes, J. M. da Costaa Silva; the satirist, '1'. da Almeida; and the Bra zilian, Antonio Callas, distinguished for his sacred epics, and various imitations of Mil ton and Klopstock. The best of the recent Portuguese poets are 31. de Albuquerque, A. de Castilho, and A. de Carv:dho, and J. B. d'Ahneida Garrett. The last-named, whose collected poetic and prose works appeared at Lisbon in 1840, was at once the most versatile and popular writer of his time in Portugal. In the departments of trav els, geography, and history, Portugal has produced good writers from the earliest periods of its literary history; and in recent times, the works of B. Machado, I. Ferreira, and A. de Cajo, have well maintained the national reputation,—Portuguese literature is also cultivated in Brazil, and, of late years, with more success than in the parent country. The principal names in Brazilian poetry are Gonsalves Diaz, Macedo Abreo, and 3Iagal haens; in history, Varnhagen, author of the Historia General de Brazil (1834), and P. da Silva, author of the Brazilian Plutarch; besides some divines, philosophers, and trans lators from the classics.