out price. This observation seems the crowning - point of theology to be brought out, and the drama closes with a hymn in honour of the Virgin.

The comedies of Gil Vicente are his most indifferent pieces: a kind of dramatic novel similar to those of Spain, but destitute of plot and development. The tragi-comedies are rude outlines of that kind of drama which afterwards formed a variety of the heroic comedies of Spain. They are not wanting in pathetic scenes, but none of them are historical. Decidedly the best productions of this author are his farces, which approach much nearer to the style of true comedy than the plays published under that name. However rude and imperfect were these first attempts, no nation ever commenced a dramatic course with greater advantages than the Portuguese. In the time of Gil Vicente there existed no dramatic works in any language exhibiting more striking powers of invention, more brilliancy of colouring, or greater truthfulness to nature. But the Portuguese attached themselves with remarkable pertinacity to pastoral poetry, and nothing could be more contrary to dramatic life than the languor, sentimentality, and monotony peculiar to the eclogue.

Saa de Miranda trod in a very different path from Gil Vicente. He was desirous of conferring on his country a classical theatre similar to that of the Romans, and to that patronised by Leo X. in Italy. Among other pieces he produced two erudite comedies, which were the first of the kind that had appeared in Portugal. The king was so pleased with them, that they were represented at his court, and printed by his command. But Miranda was born a pastoral poet, and made himself a dramatist only by imitation.

Ferreira belonged to the same school. He wrote a tragedy and two comedies. The subject of the former is the well-known story of Iñez de Castro, and it is very similar, but confessedly inferior, to the contemporaneous one on the same theme by Bermudez the Spanish dominican.

The public favour conferred by the court on the dramas of Saa de Miranda and Ferreira may be considered as one great obstacle which arose to prevent the formation of a national drama in Portugal. It was now much more difficult to raise a popular party that would, as in Spain, rouse some talented poet to advance in the path opened by Vicente. Thus the dramatic art wavered amidst heterogeneous forms till the few pieces which appeared in the vernacular became mere imitations of the Spanish, and the name of Ferreira was remembered only by the learned.

ROMANTIC AND HISTORICAL PROSE.

RODRIGUEZ LOBO.

After Camoens, Saa de Miranda, and Ferreira, the language and literature of Portugal are indebted to no other writer so much as to Rodriguez Lobo. The history of Portuguese eloquence may be said to commence with him, for he laid so good a foundation for the cultivation of a pure prose style, that in every effort to attain classic perfection subsequent writers have merely followed in his steps. His verse is noway inferior to his prose, and he is considered as entitled to rank in every respect next to Camoens and Saa de Miranda.

Little is known of the life of Lobo, except that he was born in the town of Leiria, in Portuguese Estramadura, about the middle of the sixteenth century; that he distinguished himself by his talents and industry at the university; that he afterwards lived chiefly in the country; and that he was drowned in crossing the Tagus, which he had so often celebrated in his poems. His remains were buried in the church of a convent near the spot where they were washed on shore.

The writings of Lobo are susceptible of three divisions approximating each other. First, his prose work entitled 'The Court in the Country,' into which no verses are introduced; then three pastoral romances, where passages in prose are the connecting links by which a whole is completed; the third entirely of miscellaneous poems. In The Court in the Country,' or 'Evenings in Winter,' Lobo collects around him a party of friends in a rural mansion, and they converse together upon the most suitable education for an elegant man of the world. Their first topic is literature, embracing, among other things, the selection of a gentleman's library, and the cultivation of elegant letter-writing; afterwards etiquette and manners, social eloquence, wit, and gallantry, are successively discussed; the dialogue and didactic passages being interspersed with tales and anecdotes. In our day the merest novice in politeness may smile at the grave discussion of principles perfectly familiar to him; but we must judge of a work of this kind in connection with the age in which it was written, and not expect anything new on the subject of

education and manners from a Portuguese of the sixteenth century.

Thus was a poet the first to make his countrymen acquainted with the spirit of genuine and cultivated prose, and to elevate the language of common life without confounding the boundaries of poetic and prose composition. The work by which he thus enlarged the sphere of his country's literature deserves to hold no mean place in its history.

Among the poetic works of Lobo appears a whole series of heroic and historic romances, which were written by way of ridiculing that species of composition. Our author treats them as exotics from Spain, and thus establishes, what otherwise would have remained doubtful, that this kind of romance was never naturalised in Portugal.

CASTANHEIRA TURACEM.

Lobo stood alone in the sixteenth century in his efforts to improve the prose of his country. Gongorism, meanwhile, had introduced bombast and metaphorical obscurity, and no writer of eminence arose to attempt a more natural and dignified style till the end of the seventeenth century. No information respecting Felix da Castanheira Turacem has been preserved, except that which is afforded by his book entitled 'The Elegant Evening Party,' or 'The Improvement of Bad Manners.' The plan is similar to that of 'The Court in the Country,' but the composition possesses a much higher degree of interest. In the party of Castanheira beautiful women are introduced, and between them and the principal young gentlemen there are attachments formed, which cross and oppose each other. These elegant ladies and gentlemen sing, play, tell stories, and converse by turns. The composition is, upon the whole, both graceful and natural; and that it was the serious determination of the writer to steer clear of Gongorism, is obvious from his spirited preface, in which he prays, in the Latin of his paternoster, 'But deliver us from metaphor.' A man who could so express himself in this age of fantastic ornament, deserves, were it on that account alone, to be distinguished in the history of polite literature.

BARROS-BRITO.

The historical works composed in the sixteenth century had risen little above the rudeness of the chronicle, and no Diego de Mendoza had been translated into a sphere where he might have learned to conceive justly of the historic art. Yet the men who, either of their own accord, or as the salaried chroniclers of the court, undertook to relate the history of their country, and especially of her Oriental discoveries and conquests, were inspired with ardent patriotic feeling, and freely communicated it to their records. Foremost among them stands Joao de Barros, whose name is not altogether unknown in literature beyond the precincts of his native country. In the early part of the sixteenth century, his talents and acquirements were pre-eminent among the young men who were brought up about the court of Emmanuel the Great. A chivalric romance, the production of his twentyfirst year, came under the eye of the monarch, who discerned in it the youthful author's talent for historical composition, and commissioned him to prepare a narrative of the conquests and discoveries of the Portuguese in India. This work he immediately commenced, and continued it in the reign of John III., who bestowed on him the lucrative appointment of treasurer to the Indian department. Barros took Livy for his model, and though he cannot claim a rank even near that historian, yet are his labours worthy of honourable notice in this place.

India was the favourite topic of Portuguese historians, and several similar, but inferior works to that of Barros, appeared in the same age.

Bernardine de Brito, who flourished early in the seventeenth century, possessed a much higher degree of historical cultivation. He was educated at Rome, and had acquired several of the modern languages. He devoted himself to the cloister, but, following his predilection for Portuguese history, he undertook the task of compiling one, in the capacity of authorised chronicler of his convent. He died in the year 1617, without having completed the object of his fond ambition. His 'Monarchia Lusitana' was intended to be a complete history of the country now called Portugal, from the most remote antiquity till the author's own time; and it is probable that he desired it to rank as a companion to the Spanish work of Florian de Ocampo. But whereas Ocampo's narration began from the Deluge, Brito did not consider that sufficiently remote, and started from the Creation of the World. The first volume, a thick folio, brings the history down to the birth of Christ; and the second and last breaks off

the work where the history of modern Portugal commences. It is eminently distinguished for style and descriptive talent; the historical pictures are striking, and indicate the pupil of the ancient classic writers.

The cultivation of other departments of prose composition appears to have been almost totally neglected. A few moral and critical treatises appeared, but they were written chiefly in the Castilian language, which was generally chosen by Portuguese writers for their more serious works, while the Portuguese was employed in the lighter branches of literature.

DECLINE OF PORTUGUESE LITERATURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the most brilliant period of Portuguese poetry had passed away, and no new era commenced. Genius advanced no more, and the most dexterous talent merely traded on the stock inherited from the preceding age. As the loss of political independence which Portugal experienced in 1580 was not attended with any immediate injury to her literature-for the Spanish language could scarcely attain to greater consideration than it had already enjoyed-so neither did the restoration of that independence in 1640 produce any new excitement of intellect. The flame of patriotism glowed no longer. The Portuguese could indulge no hope of reconquering their Indian territories from the Dutch, and Brazil was the only colony that now remained. The spirit of national enterprise was no more; a general lethargy seemed to overspread the nation; labour was reckoned a disgrace; commerce a degradation; and agriculture too fatiguing even for the lowest classes of the community. Both Spain and Portugal felt the paralysing influence of their humbled position in the scale of nations; and civil and religious despotism had at length overthrown, in both countries, the intellectual power which had so long withstood its degrading influence.

Thousands of sonnets, chiefly of an amorous nature, filled up the seventeenth century in Portugal, whilst Spain was exhausting its expiring energy in dramas. We think the reader will scarcely covet much farther acquaintance with them, when he is informed that Faria e Sousa, the most eminent of these sonneteers, alone produced six hundred; and that the first announces the collection