The Portuguese language, like the Spanish, is derived front the Latin, which indeed at one period was the lan guage of the whole Peninsula, but it is also composed of many Greek and Arabic words ; and in the southern pro vinces traces may be found of the ancient dialect of the Moors. As the royal line of Portugal was of French ori gin, there is, as may be supposed, an admixture of vari ous terms of the language of France. It is a grave, so lemn, and melodious speech ; the use of vowels is pre dominant, and it is possessed of no guttural sounds; but when a tongue, like the Portuguese, is composed of a va riety of dialects, introduced at different periods, and bear ing little or no resemblance to each other, a wide difference of style may be expected to obtain between the writers of the different ages. This is the case in a remarkable de gree, and constitutes one of the greatest difficulties in ob taining a knowledge of the language ; philology is little stu died, and no cultivated nation of Europe has produced fewer or more defective lexicons than Portugal.
But the Portuguese language, whatever be its defects or its beauties, has not been rendered venerable or classi cal by many works of genius. Literature in Portugal has never indeed been carried to any great eminence; and even though of late efforts have been made to remove that de plorable ignorance in which the nation has been so long sunk, it is yet decidedly inferior to most of the countries of Europe. Yet it has not been entirely barren in men of ta lents and genius. It has produced many historians of ex tensive celebrity ; Joao de Barros, Diogo de Couto, Fr. Bernardo de Brito, and others. In poetry it can boast of Camoens, a name that would throw a lustre over any coun try : of Diogo Bernardes, Bacelar, Pereria. It has also produced several dramatic writers; a few mathematicians of eminence; and the department of natural philosophy is now beginning to be assiduously cultivated. But notwith standing those names, literature and intelligence are not diffused among the great body of the people. Though the university of Coimbra, which has always been a celebrat ed seminary, was founded so early as the fourteenth cen tury, and though other colleges were instituted, which have been suppressed during the last century, yet the communi ty were always ignorant and uneducated ; newspapers and literary journals, those great vehicles of information and knowledge, are even at this day little known ; and schools for the general instruction of the people have not yet been established to the extent necessary. Thirty thousand, it has been computed, are the number at present attending the various schools and seminaries in the kingdom. It has now, however, been ascertained that in every well educat ed country one-ninth or one-tenth of the whole population should be receiving education at one time; and as the po pulation of Portugal amounts to 3,600,000, and as 30,000 only are undergoing instruction, consequently no fewer than eleven-twelfths of the people are totally deprived of the means of education. The late revolution, and the va
rious political events of the last fifteen years, have had a very favourable effect on literature and education ; the Lancasterian system has been introduced, and very gene rally adopted, with great success; the number of new pub lications has increased ; literary societies have become more spirited and ambitious ; and newspapers and periodi cal works have become more common, and arc beginning to circulate widely among the body of the people. Free dom of the press is not yet established ; but the censorship of it has been taken from the clergy, and is now entrusted to a committee of the privy council. This is an important change, and freedom of discussion is allowed in the vari ous departments of literature and science ; politics and theology being the only subjects on which restrictions are imposed.
But Portugal, though for the last three centuries she has not been remarkable for intellectual eminence, was, during the century previous to this time, probably the most dis tinguished nation in Europe in one department of science, and in the branches subservient to it. In the annals of navigation and discovery, Portugal will always occupy a bright page, and it will even be recorded to her honour, that she had the merit of removing one of the most formi dable barriers by which Europeans had been so long shut out from a knowledge of a most important portion of the globe. Portuguese scholars at this period studied with as siduity, geometry, astronomy, and geography, the sciences on which navigation i:, founded ; and, under the patronage of Henry, Duke of Viseo (a prince who cultivated the arts and sciences, then unknown, or despised by persons of his rank) and of various members of the royal family, they discovered not only the Madeira Islands, the Cape Verd Islands, and the Azores, and explored the western coast of Africa, but opened a way to the East by the Cape of Good Hope, and discovered Brazil, in South America, which last two events, so honourable to the Portuguese character, and so important in the history of the world, took place within seven years after the discovery of Ame rica by the illustrious Columbus. A farther account of the naval achievements of the Portuguese will be given in a subsequent part of this article ; and it need only be men tioned at present, that if to the enterprise of her own sub jects in the pursuit of discovery, Portugal had added that of Columbus, who applied to her for protection and pa tronage, she would have earned to herself, in the depart ment which we are considering, a glory and a distinction to which no other nation in the world could produce a pa rallel.