FERREIRA, ANTONIO, the reformer of the national poetry of Portugal, and surnamed the Portuguese Horace, was born at Lisbon, 1523. While studying law at Coimbra, be devoted his time more particularly to classical and Italian literature, but, unlike the then prevalent custom, determined to write only in his native tongue.
Ha wrote at this time many sonnets and his drama of '0 Bristo ' (which is the name of the principal character), to which he gave sub sequently a much higher polish. He obtained a professorship at Coimbra, but growing tired of a university life, he went to court, where be obtained a dignified situation; and while entertaining still higher expectations, he was carried of iu the prime of life by the plague in 1560.
Although not a first-rate poet in imagination and originality, Ferreira possessed taste, correctness, and deep thought. He often succeeded moreover in elevating the mind and warming the heart.
His sonnets, without displaying any affected imitation of Petmrca's, remind us of the Italian poet and his Laura. His odes aud his bucolic. have great merit in the expression, but the former want the genuine lyrio spirit, and the latter the simplicity of the idyl ; qualities perhapa irreconcileablo with Ferreira's philosophical turn of mind and didactic seriousness. Among his elegies, that on May
is a classic masterpiece. Ma epistles, written evidently when he was in his maturity, are the first productions of the kind in Portuguese literature. His tragedy of Ines de Castro,' written about the same time that the Dominican Bermudez wrote the similar and superior one in Spanish of Nile Lastimosa; abounds with beautiful passages, but is deficient in truo pathos, and displays a forced imitation of the Greek manner and style. As it was preceded only by Triasino's Sophocisba,' it has been considered as the second regular tragedy produced after the revival of letters in Europe. The Poemas Lusi• tanos' of Ferreira appeared at Lisbon first in 1593, 4to ; and all his works were printed under the title, Todas las Obras de Ferreira,' Lisbon, 1771, 2 vols. Ovo, which contains Ferreira's biography, a valuable authority for the reader, in addition to that of Bouterwek and Sismondi.