[219] _Essais_, 1. XXV.
[220] _Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo._ Antuerpiae, 1561.
[221] Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to him (cf. _Fenix
Renascida_, iii. 252, _Horas breves_, and, with more reason, iii. 253.
_Á redea solta corre o pensamento_), as was also Gil Vicente’s _Dom
Duardos_ and a manuscript _Tratado dos modos, proporções e medidas_.
[222] Duarte Nunez de Leam, _Descripção_, 2ᵃ ed. (1785), cap. 80: _Da
habilidade das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liberaes._
Severim de Faria speaks of her _sancto desejo de saber_. The author
of _Dos priuilegios & praerogatiuas q̃ ho genero femenino tem_ (1557)
says (p. 9): _se pode estranhar esta hidade na qual as molheres não se
aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas Romanas e Gregas_.
[223] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (1834), ii. 414.
[224] Ibid. iii. 350.
[225] Cf. João Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses in the _Cancioneiro Geral_:
_De Çeita atee os Chijs_.
[226] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, vol. vii, p. clxiii.
[227] A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição_, 3ᵃ ed. (1879), i. 238.
Cf. Camillo Castello Branco, _A Viuva do Enforcado_, _ad init._ No one
of course thinks of comparing Gil Vicente with Shakespeare, but one may
perhaps say that he resembles what Shakespeare might have been had he
been born in the fifteenth century. The shipwreck in the _Triunfo do
Inverno_ recalls the opening scene of _The Tempest_, as the mad friar
recalls poor Tom, and the magnificent fidalgo Falstaff. In the _Farsa
de Inés_ Pereira Inés, without being a shrew, is tamed by her husband,
who says:
Se eu digo: Esto é novello
Vos aveis de confirmalo.
[228] In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ‘the son of Gil Vicente’
in India.
[229] It is customary in Portugal to fix the date of his birth in 1470
owing to the statement of the judge in the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536)
that he--the judge--was already sixty-six. It is a method which might
lead to comical results if further pressed in the case of Vicente or
other dramatists. Was Mello seventy-three when he wrote the _Fidalgo
Aprendiz_?
[230] ‘A gentleman of good family’ (Ticknor); _hijo de ilustres padres_
(Barrera y Leirado); _na qualidade nobilissimo_ (Pedro de Poyares).
[231] iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205.
[232] The authority is Cristovam Alão de Moraes in his manuscript
_Pedatura Lusitana_ (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto).
This genealogist, says Castello Branco, _era ás vezes ignorante e
outras vezes mal intencionado_. He does not say that Martim Vicente
exercised his alleged profession of silversmith at Guimarães, or that
Gil was born there. What more probable than for Guimarães, proud
of its poetical traditions, to invent a silversmith father for the
famous poet-goldsmith? Pedro de Poyares, _Tractado em louvor da villa
de Barcellos_ (1672), says that Gil Vicente, _em tempo de D. João o
terceiro poeta celebre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas
suas impressas_.
[233] _Grammatica_, ed. 1871, p. 118.
[234] Ibid., p. 81. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Gil Vicente e a
Linguagem Popular_, 1902. Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1619), f.
10, mentions the _somsonete de pronunciação_ of the _ratinhos_.
[235] _Soncas_ occurs no less than seven times in the brief _Auto
Pastoril Castelhano_. It occurs twice in the first twenty-eight lines
of one of Enzina’s eclogues (_Cancionero de todas las obras_ (Çaragoça,
1516), f. lxxviii, and again f. lxxviii verso and lxxx).
[236] A. dos Reis, _Enthusiasmus Poeticus_ (_Corpus Ill. Poet. Lus._,
tom. viii, pp. 18-19): _Quem iuvisse ferunt velut olim Polla maritum_.
Manuel Tavares, _Portugal illustrado pelo sexo feminino_ (1734), calls
her a _discretissima mulher_.
[237] _Com muita pena de minha velhice._ Ruy de Pina calls a man _mui
velho_ whose father (King João I) would have been but ninety-one
in that year (_Cr. de Afonso V_, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira,
_Ulysippo_, iii. 3: _velho se pode chamar pois vai aos cincoenta anos_.
[238] See Barros, _Asia_, 1. vi. 7. Beckford has glowing praise for
‘this gold custodium of exquisite workmanship’: ‘Nothing could be
more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate Gothic sculpture than this
complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles’
(_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, Paris, 1834).
[239] Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent
in his plays. The goldsmith in the _Farsa das Almocreves_ uses the
technical word _bastiães_ which occurs in the _Livro Vermelho_ of
Afonso V: _E porque alguns Ouriueses tem ora feita algũa prata dourada
e de bastiães_. It occurs, however, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_
(_galantes bastiães_), in Resende’s _Miscellania_ (_bestiães_), and
other writers.
[240] Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379.
[241] An unfortunate interpolation by the 1834 editors in the rubric of
the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ was largely responsible for the belief
that his patroness was not Queen Lianor but King Manuel’s mother D.
Beatriz.
Yet the rubric of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ says clearly that _a
sobredita senhora_ is King Manuel’s sister.
[242] _Mas ja não auto bofé Como os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha
com que_ (_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, i. 129).
[243] _Antología_, vii, p. clxvi. It should be said that Dr. Theophilo
Braga, the late General Brito Rebello, and the late Dr. F. A. Coelho
agree with Menéndez y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that
he can prove an alibi. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos opposed
identity in 1894, and has not definitely expressed herself in its
favour since. On the other hand, Snr. Braamcamp Freire is a convinced
supporter of identifying poet and goldsmith.
[244] _Antología_, vii, p. clxxvi.
[245] And later Jeronimo Corrêa (†1660) at Lisbon, author of _Daphne
e Apollo_ (Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes
(1820-69) at Oporto, and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville,
Lope de Rueda (1510?-65), whose _pasos_ are akin to Vicente’s _farsas_,
was fired by his example and success.
[246] _Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem_, 1785 ed., p. 222.
[247] Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.)
in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.
[248] Cf. _Cancionero_, f. lxxxvi v.
[249] An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long
pause on _tardas_ in _Oo morte que tardas, quien te detien?_ is equally
impressive, but the 1562 ed. has _de quien_ and Vicente may have
written _Oo morte que tardas, di ¿quien te detien?_
[250] _Auto de Inés Pereira_ in the 1562 ed. So _Auto dos Almocreves_.
It will, however, be convenient to call them _farsas_, since _auto_ is
a more general term applicable to all the plays.
[251] _Quem tem farelos?_
[252] _O Juiz da Beira_, a continuation suggested by the success of the
_Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and acted at Almeirim in 1525.
[253] _Farsa dos Almocreves_ (or _do Fidalgo Pobre_) acted at Coimbra
(1525). It is curious to compare the sterner type of chaplain denounced
in _Don Quixote_.
[254] _Auto das Fadas_ (1511).
[255] _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince
Manuel (1531).
[256] _Farsa dos Fisicos_ (1512).
[257] _O Clerigo da Beira_ (1529?).
[258] _Auto da India_ (1509).
[259] _Farsa das Ciganas_ (or, in the 1562 edition. _Auto de hũas
ciganas_), a very slight sketch acted in a _seram_ before the king at
Evora (1521).
[260] _O Velho da Horta_ (1513).
[261] _Auto da Fama_ (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 1510, but
internal evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 1516
(although perhaps prior to the knowledge of Albuquerque’s death in
India (December 16, 1515) since so splendid a paean in honour of the
Portuguese victories would be out of place afterwards).
[262] = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted
(or malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience.
[263] In the palace (at Lisbon, Almeirim, Evora) or in convents
(Enxobregas, Thomar, Odivellas), once (as part of a procession) in a
church (_Auto de S. Martinho_).
[264]
Os momos, os serões de Portugal
Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos,
E as graças temperadas do seu sal?
[265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a
break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of
Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without
breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito
and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark
this metre in Vicente’s hands.
[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to
King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance
does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family:
_cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_).
[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512.
[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his
language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text
before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable
in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would
welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own.
[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she
supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic.
[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is
evidently responsible.
[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve
momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande
prazer_.
[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326.
[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained
these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a
_representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_
in Barros, II. i. 5.
[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the
thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_.
[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309).
[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches
on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could
not live without it’.
[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr.
H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of
Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J.
Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915).
[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether
they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his
song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s
_Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429).
[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro
Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos
soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_.
The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced
was probably Duarte de Brito.
[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa,
1649.
[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of
Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in
his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information
collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga,
and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de
Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre
Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was
never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to
the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the
dangerous voyages to and from India.
[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact
that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who
thronged the capital and Court.
[283] _Ep._ ii. 57.
[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.
[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy
fanfarrão_.
[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were
written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of
sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each,
since they would not trust him with a pair.
[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have
forty-four in all.
[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas
Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_
might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_.
[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531):
_falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_.
[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the
original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s
hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one
of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which
Vicente’s plays were staged).
[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531,
was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de
Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been
burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to
Queen Isabella of Spain:
Si no pariera Sanctana
hasta ser nacida vos,
de vos el hijo de Dios,
rescibiera carne humana.
[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’.
On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his
_Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_,
&c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony.
[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good
sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the
_Comedia do Viuvo_.
[294]
os lavradores
Fazem os filhos paçãos,
Cedo não ha de haver villãos:
Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_).
[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold
chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter,
from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo
mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’
dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados
entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt.
4).
[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas
lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e
Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha
dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta
nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com
perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._
[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._
[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule
contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_.
[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de
Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p.
1884, s.v. _Auto_.
[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5.
[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae
comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says:
_cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth
century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could
say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the
accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima
cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught
reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui
celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_
(Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f.
159).
§ 2
_Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_
The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it
exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth
century. Together perhaps with Diego de San Pedro’s _Carcel de Amor_,
the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s _Fiammetta_, and especially
Rodriguez de la Cámara’s _El siervo libre de Amor_ (containing the
_Estoria de los dos amadores Ardanlier e Liesa_), it must have been
in the mind of BERNARDIM RIBEIRO (1482-1552) when he wrote that
‘gentle tale of love and languishment’ the book of _Saudades_, which
is always known (like the first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first
three words as _Menina e moça_. Yet it is not really an imitative
work, being, indeed, remarkable for its unaffected sincerity, as the
expression of a personal experience. Its passionate truth continues to
delight many readers.[302] Almost all our information about Ribeiro’s
life is derived from his writings, which are in part evidently
autobiographical, and it shrinks or expands according to the degree
of the critic’s wariness or ingenuity. His birthplace is declared to
have been the quaint Alentejan village of Torrão. A passage in the
eclogue _Jano e Franco_ says that Jano fled thence at the time of the
great famine. The unhappy frequency of famines makes the date doubtful,
but if the year of Ribeiro’s birth be correctly stated in an official
document of May 6, 1642, as 1482, we may suppose--since Jano was
twenty-one--that he left his native Alentejo for Lisbon in 1503. It
is possible that he studied law and took his degree at the University
(at Lisbon) a few years later (1507-11?),[303] and became secretary
to King João III in 1524. As a _cavalleiro fidalgo_ he had his place
at Court, as poet he contributed to the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516).
A hopeless passion drove him from the Court, drove him perhaps to
Italy, and finally deprived him of his reason, so that his last years
were spent in the Lisbon Hospital de Todos os Santos.[304] Successive
generations have busied themselves over the object of his passion. The
romantic tradition that it was the Princess Beatriz, twenty-two years
his junior, the daughter of King Manuel for whose marriage to the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Gil Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, is now
definitely discarded. That it was Queen Juana la Loca of Castille no
one except Varnhagen has ever imagined. But literary critics continue
to be tempted by the transparent anagrams of Ribeiro’s novel (adopted
evidently in order to make the story unintelligible to all except the
inner circle of the Court). Dr. Theophilo Braga has an ingeniously
fabricated theory that Aonia was Ribeiro’s cousin, Joana Tavares
Zagalo. Lamentor at least can scarcely have been King Manuel, since
he sends his daughter to the king’s Court. The scenery appears to be
a combination of that of the Serra de Sintra near Lisbon with that of
Alentejo. The story opens with an introductory chapter in which a young
girl (_menina e moça_), who has taken refuge in the _serra_ far from
all human society, announces her intention of writing down what she had
seen and heard in a small book (_livrinho_), not for the happy to read
but for the sad, or rather for none at all, seeing that of him for whom
alone it is intended she has had no news since his and her misfortune
bore him away to far-distant lands. Thus we have the thirteenth-century
_amiga_ mourning for her lover. _Ai Deus! e u é?_ Presently, as she
shelters from the noonday _calma_ beneath trees that overhang a gently
flowing stream, a nightingale pours forth its song, and then dying
with its song falls with a shower of leaves and is borne away songless
by the silent stream.[305] She is still bewailing its fate when
another, older but equally sad, lady (_dona_) appears, and the _menina_
becomes an almost silent listener to the end of the book while the
_dona_ unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the history of two
friends Narbindel and Bastião. But it begins with the love adventure
of Lamentor and Belisa. It is only in the ninth chapter that the
knight Narbindel arrives and falls in love with Belisa’s sister
Aonia, adopting a shepherd’s life in order to be near her palace. It
is in fact a romance of chivalry in pastoral garb. But Ribeiro might
have introduced the pastoral romance without changing the fantastic
features. It is in his singular combination of passion and realism that
his true originality consists. His power of giving vivid expression
to tranquil scenes--the whole of the first part has something of the
quiet intensity of a background by Correggio, as well as his ‘softer
outline’, and although there is no explicit indication of colour it is
clearly felt by the reader--and his gentle love of Nature, or rather
his love of Nature in its gentler aspects, cast over the book a strange
charm. The softly flowing streams, the trees and birds and delicious
shade, beautiful dawns, the birds seeking their nests at evening, the
flowers _que a seu prazer se estendem_, the _mateiros_ going out to
cut brushwood, the shepherds asleep round their fire at night, are
described with great naturalness and truth, often with familiar words
and colloquial phrases. The reason of the extreme intricacy of the plot
was not the wish to conceal the author’s love story in a labyrinthine
maze[306] in order to exercise the ingenuity of nineteenth-century
professors, but to be true to life. In life events are not rounded and
distinct but merge into and react on one another in an endless ravelled
skein: _Das tristezas não se pode contar nada ordenadamente porque
desordenadamente acontecem ellas_ (cap. 1). Ribeiro thus anticipates
by four centuries the theory enunciated in Spain by Azorín that a
novel, like life, should have no plot,[307] and his book has a certain
modernity. We may refuse him the name of novelist, but many a novelist
might envy his lifelike portrayal of scenes and sentiments. It has been
doubted whether he wrote the second part of the story. It consists of
fifty-eight short chapters, and opens with a new episode, the love of
Avalor for Arima, daughter of Lamentor (cap. 1-24), and it is even
more bewildering in its confusion than is Part I. The scenes are less
idyllic, the tone more that of a conventional romance of chivalry, yet
the realism is maintained. It is on no hippogriff that Avalor goes to
the rescue of the distressed maiden: in fact, he had set out on his
adventure in a rowing-boat and his hands blistered. If later there
are mortal combats with wicked knights, with a bear, with giants,
there are also scenes, as in chapters 9, 12, 23--of an impassioned
_saudade_,[308] of dove and nightingale--which could only have been
written by the author of Part I.[309] His own story, still related by
the _dona_, is only resumed in chapter 26, or rather 32, since the
intervening chapters deal with events prior to those with which Part
I begins. Bimnarder, now again Narbindel--the name Bernardim was also
spelt Bernaldim--after Aonia’s marriage lives with an old hermit and
his nephew, Godivo, and passes his time in tears and contemplation,
as in Part I. But he is discovered by his faithful squire, and meets
Aonia, and the lovers are killed by the jealous husband (cap. 48). The
last chapters are concerned with the happier love story of Romabisa and
Tasbião.
Narbindel, the second of the two knights, the two friends _de que é a
nossa historia_,[310] dies: therefore Bernardim Ribeiro cannot have
written the second part. But it is rather a nice point; one may imagine
that Ribeiro’s delight in so tragic an episode would compensate him
amply for the obvious anachronism, and after all it is the _dona_ who
tells the story.[311] The inconsistencies of detail need not concern us
overmuch. That Belisa has a mother in Part I and is ‘brought up without
a mother’ in Part II, that the Castle of Lamentor exists in Part II at
a time when, according to Part I, it was not yet begun, that the name
of Aonia’s husband is in Part I Fileno, and in Part II Orphileno, are
just such contradictions as an alien continuer would most studiously
have avoided, and we all know what happened to Sancho’s ass in a far
less intricate story. Or they may be explained by the fact that Ribeiro
had not revised his tale before it was printed, or by corrections
made in copies of the original manuscript.[312] Perhaps on the whole
we may conclude that Ribeiro, like Cervantes, by an exception wrote a
valuable second part, but, unlike Cervantes, was unable to maintain it
altogether on a level with the first. The mingling of rapt passion and
colloquialisms is with Ribeiro not the inability of a poet to express
himself but a deliberate mannerism, and is present in the five eclogues
with which he introduced pastoral poetry. By his quiet resolution to
be natural he thus became doubly an innovator, in poetry and prose.
That he was a true poet is proved by the _romances_ in his novel:
_Pensando vos estou, filha_ (Pt. I, cap. 21) and _Pola ribeira de um
rio_ (Pt. II, cap. 11).[313] The eclogues may not excel those poems,
but in their directness, primitive freshness, and grace they form a
group apart, entirely distinct from their numerous eclogue progeny.
One eclogue only, the celebrated _Trovas de Crisfal_, resembles them.
The resemblance is remarkable and cannot fail to strike the most
careless reader. Before Snr. Delfim Guimarães began his spirited
campaign in favour of identification, the similarity had been recorded
by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Grundriss_[314]: the
extraordinary similarity of these _Trovas_ to the poetry of Ribeiro
and to nothing else in Portuguese literature. In this poem of some
900 lines written in octosyllabic _decimas_, like Ribeiro’s eclogues,
we have that romantic, passionate _saudade_ and sentimental grief,
the mystic visions, the simplicity, the ingenuous conceits, wistfully
humorous, the sententious reflections, the elliptical concision, the
real shepherds, the familiar language, the love of Nature which are
peculiarly Ribeiro’s. Tradition assigns the _Trovas_ to CRISTOVAM
FALCÃO (_c._ 1512-53?),[315] who was born at Portalegre, in Alentejo,
was made a _moço fidalgo_ in 1527, and is supposed to have fallen in
love with and secretly married D. Maria Brandão (i.e. the Maria of the
_Trovas_), whom her parents confined as a punishment in the convent
of Lorvão. At the risk of being dubbed incorrigibly _simplicista_ one
must confess that the simultaneous appearance of these two poets from
Alentejo, not _fertil en poetas_, taxes one’s belief to the utmost. May
not the secret marriage deduced from the _Trovas_ have been described
by Ribeiro in his keen sympathy for his friend’s position, so like his
own? The contention is not that Cristovam Falcão did not exist--there
were several--or did not fall in love with Maria Brandão--_a do
Crisfal_--or did not marry her, but that he did not write verses in
the style familiar to us as that of Ribeiro.[316] It is remarkable
that the very critics who represent Ribeiro in his _novela_ as hiding
like a cuttle-fish in his own ink change their method when they come
to the eclogues and accept every name and allusion with the greatest
literalness, as though it were a poet’s duty to wear his heart in
his verses. It is idle to adduce the fact that Cristovam Falcão
wrote ungrammatical letters (so did Keats), or to devise far-fetched
interpretations (such as _Crisma falso_) for the word Crisfal. What
more probable than that Ribeiro and Falcão, born in the same province,
became friends at Court, and that Ribeiro introduced his friend in one
of his poems as he is supposed to have introduced Sá de Miranda in
another, and as Miranda introduces Ribeiro (_Canta Ribero los males
de amor_)? If in his favourite manner he added a little mystification
in the word Crisfal, what more characteristic? The very form of the
poem, in which first the _Autor_ and then Crisfal speaks (_Falla
Crisfal_) suggests this, as does the title: _Trovas de um pastor per
nome Crisfal_, compared with the definite _Trovas de dous pastores_ ...
_Feitas por Bernaldim Ribeiro_.[317] It is not difficult to explain
the printing of the _Trovas_ together with the works of Ribeiro and
the hesitancy of the early editions in ascribing them, on hearsay, to
Cristovam Falcão; but the word Crisfal caught the fancy, and those who
learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcão would inevitably confuse
the explanation of the anagram with the authorship of the poem. One
of those who did so was Gaspar Fructuoso (or Antonio Cordeiro), and
the tradition which had begun so shakily with a _dizem ser_ gained
strength with the years. Presumably the editor of the 1559 edition knew
what was to be known on the subject, yet he speaks with a quavering
uncertainty: it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam
Falcão becomes a fixed belief.[318] The eighth _Decada_ of Diogo do
Couto was not published till 1673, i. e. over half a century after
the death of its author. The explanatory sentence _aquelle que fez
aquellas antigas e nomeadas_ (or _namoradas_) _trovas de Crisfal_[319]
may well be, and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a
few scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, _grammatici
certant_ and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept a
second writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese literature
owing to the marvellous success with which, divesting his muse of any
qualities of its own, he identified himself with a poet who is the
most characteristically Portuguese, but also the most individual of
impassioned singers: Bernardim Ribeiro.
A kind of continuation of the story of _Crisfal_ (who is now enchanted
within the fountain of his own tears) appeared at the end of the
century in a small collection of poems entitled _Sylvia de Lisardo_
(1597). It contains forty-one sonnets (of which one only is in
Spanish), three eclogues in _tercetos_ and _oitavas_, and various
_romances_ (in Spanish) and shorter poems, and has been ascribed,
without sufficient reason, to the historian Frei Bernardo de Brito.
These poems must remain anonymous, and they throw no light on the
_Crisfal_ problem, but in their true poetical feeling and power of
expression they deserved their popularity[320] in the first half of the
seventeenth century.
It is not certain but it is probable that Ribeiro went to Italy, and
his Italian travels may have coincided with those of his life-long
friend, the champion of humanism in Portugal, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE
MIRANDA (_c._ 1485-1558), the most famous of all the Portuguese poets
with the exception of Camões and Gil Vicente. As a lyric poet far
inferior to either of them, his great influence was due partly to his
character, partly to his introduction of the new school of poetry, the
_versos de medida nova_, or _de arte maior_, replacing the national
_trovas de medida velha_ (octosyllabic _redondilhas_) by the Italian
hendecasyllabics: Petrarca’s sonnets and canzoni, Dante’s _terza rima_
(_tercetos_), and the _octava rima_ of Poliziano and Ariosto. The
exact date of Miranda’s birth is still uncertain, but if he was the
eldest of five sons of the Coimbra Canon, Gonçalo Mendez de Sá, who
were legitimized in 1490, he must have been born about the year 1485.
Yet one would willingly make him younger. His life in Minho certainly
sounds too active for a man of fifty: perhaps _c._ 1490 would be nearer
the mark. He studied at the University at Lisbon and early frequented
the Court. He soon won distinction as a scholar and was a Doctor of Law
when he contributed several poems to Garcia de Resende’s _Cancioneiro_
(1516). His journey to Italy a few years later, in 1521, may have been
due merely to the natural desire of a scholar to see Rome or there may
have been other motives, a love affair of his own or his friendship
with Bernardim Ribeiro. He was distantly related to the great Italian
family of Colonna (as he was to Garci Lasso) and in Italy perhaps met
the celebrated Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Marchesa di Pescara,
besides probably most of the other distinguished Italians of the time,
Lattanzio Tolomei, Sannazzaro, Cardinal Bembo, Giovanni Rucellai,
Ariosto. During five years he saw the principal cities of Italy and
Sicily and returned to Portugal in 1526 (or earlier, possibly after
three years, in 1524) with a deep knowledge of Italian literature and
the firm resolve to acclimatize in his country the metres in which
the Italians had written things so divine. If he had seen at Rome the
_Cancioneiro_ of thirteenth-century Portuguese poets[321] he must have
realized that the metres were not so foreign as many might think; if
he met Boscán on his homeward journey his determination to become
innovator or restorer[322] would be strengthened. King João III was on
the throne, and we are told in Miranda’s earliest biography (1614),
which is attributed with some probability to D. Gonçalo Coutinho, that
he became ‘one of the most esteemed courtiers of his time’. He was an
enthusiastic believer in monarchy and in the divinity that doth hedge
a king, but was less enamoured of the growing corruption and luxury
at Court: probably he was himself more esteemed by the king than by
the courtiers, and after the poetry of Italy he could scarcely share
their taste for the trivial verses of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ nor
could they see how a compliment could be turned more neatly than in
the old _esparsas_ and _vilancetes_. During these years he wrote his
first play, _Os Estranjeiros_, the eclogue _Alexo_ with _oitavas_ in
Portuguese, and the _Fabula do Mondego_, perhaps in order to show his
superiority over Gil Vicente.
There was an obvious antagonism between the laughing and the weeping
reformer (for both protested vigorously in their different ways against
the growing materialism of the day), between the learned, philosophical
and the natural, human poet, and Vicente’s humour probably appeared
to Sá de Miranda as unintelligible and undignified as Miranda’s
hendecasyllabic poems may have appeared melancholy-thin and artificial
to Vicente: _et ce n’est point ainsi que parle la Nature_. But the line
in the introduction of the _Fabula do Mondego_ in which Miranda speaks
of the king’s condescension,
Al canto pastoril ya hecho osado,
probably refers to some previous effort of his own rather than to the
work of Vicente, and Miranda was in Italy when Gil Vicente was taunted
by certain _homems de bom saber_ and turned the tables on them in the
_Farsa de Inés Pereira_. The _Fabula do Mondego_ is a cold, stilted
production of 600 lines in Petrarcan stanzas, the subject of which was
partly derived from Angelo Ambrogini (Poliziano). In 1532 the King gave
Miranda a _commenda_ (benefice) of the Order of Christ on the banks
of the Neiva in Minho, and having acquired the neighbouring estate of
Tapada (_quinta da Tapada_) he left the Court and retired to it not
many months later. Miranda’s love of Nature was very deep, from his
boyhood at Coimbra he had preferred the country to life in cities,
and probably no other incentive was required, although it is thought
that he may have been too zealous in support of Bernardim Ribeiro and
that a passage in _Alexo_ (1532?) offended the powerful favourite, the
Conde da Castanheira. Whatever the cause of his withdrawal, literature
must call it blessed, for his new life in the country suited his
temperament; the independence of character shown in his fine letter
(one of the most famous poems in the Portuguese language) addressed
to King João III developed, and close contact with the country and
the peasants gave his poetry that indigenous flavour and peculiar
charm which have fascinated all readers of the eclogue _Basto_, that
individual stamp in which the Court poetry was infallibly lacking. He
had already written his best work--for this eclogue and the letters
show the real Miranda, pointed, original, racy of the soil--and written
it in _quintilhas_, when in 1536 he married Briolanja, the sister of
his old friend, now his neighbour at Crasto, Manuel Machado de Azevedo.
Some miles away, at the straggling little village of Cabeceiras de
Basto, he had other intimate friends, the Pereiras, and the gift, by
one of these two brothers, Antonio Nunalvarez Pereira, of a manuscript
of Garci Lasso de la Vega’s poems shortly before Miranda’s marriage
revived his enthusiasm for the alien metres. He turned again to the
hendecasyllable and wrote the eclogues _Andrés_ (1535), _Celia_, and
_Nemoroso_ (1537), the latter in memory of the tragic death of Garci
Lasso in the preceding year. He returned to the _quintilha_ later,
employing it with flowing ease in _A Egipciaca Santa Maria_ (or _Santa
Maria Egipciaca_), which was probably written between 1544 and 1554,
when he was educating his two sons with _amor encoberto e moderado_
(_A Egipciaca_, p. 3), and nearer the former than the latter date. Its
vigour and the promise of more[323] after 721 _quintilhas_ preclude
the date (1556-8) assigned to it by its first editor, even without
the statement of the 1614 biographer that Miranda wrote scarcely
anything after his wife’s death in 1555; but it may have been written
even earlier, before 1544. And still through all these various poems,
despite their undeniable value and incidental beauties, it is the
man, his life and character, that interest us. The wild yet green and
peaceful scenery of Minho accorded well with his _alma soberana_, at
once active and contemplative, disciplined and independent. At first
hunting the wolf and boar occupied his leisure--we see him out with
his dogs Hunter, Swallowfoot, &c., in crimson dawn and breathless
noonday--and gave him a hundred opportunities for quiet observation
of Nature, the streams, especially the birds, and the peasants. The
poems written soon after his arrival still retain the freshness of
these impressions. His evenings were spent with his friends at
Cabeceiras--true _noctes cenaeque deum_--or in the more formal society
at Crasto or with music--he played the viola--or his favourite authors,
Homer in Greek, or Horace, the Bible, the Italians, or Garci Lasso
and Boscán. Later gardening[324] and the education of his sons and
entertainment of visitors took the place of his favourite wolf-hunting.
As his fame and influence spread, Diogo Bernardez (whose recollections
of Miranda were recorded in the 1614 life) was not the only disciple
who came to see him in his retreat, and he corresponded in verse with
most of the poets of the time, Andrade Caminha, Montemôr, Ferreira,
D. Manuel de Portugal, Bernardez. Cardinal Henrique was a steadfast
admirer of his work, and the young Prince João asked for a copy: _lhas
mandou pedir_. This wide recognition after the first coldness[325] was
some measure of comfort for the many sorrows of his last years, the
death of his eldest son Gonçalo, killed in his teens in Africa (1553),
of his wife (1555), of that promising precocious Prince João (1537-54)
to whom he had thrice sent a collection of his poems, the departure of
his brother, Mem, to become one of the most notable Governors of Brazil
(1557). In the latter year King João died, leaving an infant heir to a
distracted kingdom, and Miranda’s death followed a few months later.
In a sense this philosopher was the most un-Portuguese of poets, for
he had no facility in verse. He went on hammering his lines, altering,
erasing, compressing in a divine discontent. He had a lofty conception
of the poet’s art--to express the noblest sentiment in the best and
fewest words--five versions of _Alexo_, twelve of _Basto_, attest his
untiring zeal and his ‘art to blot’. The elliptical abruptness of his
native _quintilhas_, by which they have something in common with those
of Ribeiro, are not their least charm, and gives an effective emphasis
to his sententious philosophy. In introducing the new measures[326]
he used the Castilian language as being the most natural and suitable
until, but only until, they should be thoroughly acclimatized. He wrote
Castilian not fluently--that was not his gift--but correctly, with
only occasional _lusitanismos_. His best work, however, was written
in Portuguese: in the new poetry with which his name is for ever
associated he is only the forerunner of the work of Diogo Bernardez and
Camões,[327] the founder of a school to which Portuguese literature
owes some of its chief glories. In Portuguese he wrote his comedies
and, about half a century before Samuel Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ (1592),
a tragedy _Cleopatra_, of which we only possess a few lines.[328] The
poem on the life and conversion of St. Mary of Egypt[329] (a favourite
theme a few centuries earlier, as in the Spanish _Vida de Santa Maria
Egipciaqua_ (13th c.?), the fourteenth-century _Vida de Maria Egipcia_,
and the French _Vie de Sainte Marie l’Égyptienne_) is stamped with the
author’s sententious wisdom and love of discipline. It contains quaint
plays on words (_Ide ao mar que por amar_, p. 169), _tours de force_
such as the three _quintilhas_ of _esdruxulos_ (pp. 179-80), and rises
to wonderful lyric beauty in the saint’s farewell to Earth (_Vou para
um jardim de flores_, pp. 166-9). He intended the poem to be ‘rare,
unique and excellent’ and to some extent he achieved his aim. In much
of his work the diction is rough and halting, but the greatness of
the man nevertheless extends to his poetry. Perhaps the best example
of this is the melancholy grandeur of the sonnet, technically so
imperfect, _O sol é grande_. Force of character made him not only
a laborious but a successful craftsman. When he died, honoured and
admired by all the best intellects in the country, the position of
the new school was assured and he had been able to hail with joy the
support of younger writers: _Venid buenos zagales!_ Foremost in time
among these poets of _el verso largo_ was D. MANUEL DE PORTUGAL[330]
(1520?-1606), son of the first Conde de Vimioso and of D. Joana de
Vilhena, cousin of King Manuel. He outlived all his fellow-poets,
welcomed the appearance of _Os Lusiadas_, and in 1580 took the side of
the Prior D. Antonio. His _Obras_ (1605) consist of seventeen books of
poems, mostly of a religious character and written in Spanish--books 9
and 15 contain some Portuguese poems, and among them the fine mystic
sonnet _Apetece minha alma_ (Bk. ix, f. 199 v.).
Among those who welcomed and acclimatized the new style none was a more
talented or truer poet than DIOGO BERNARDEZ (_c._ 1530-_c._ 1600),[331]
who confessed that he owed everything to Sá de Miranda and Antonio
Ferreira.[332] Born of a distinguished family[333] at Ponte da Barca
on the river Lima, he would ride over to visit Sá de Miranda or send
him letters in verse, and he mourned his death in sonnet, letter, and
eclogue with unaffected grief. He himself continued to sing by the
banks of his beloved Lima, endeared to him all the more by disillusion
at Lisbon and captivity in Africa. In a letter to Miranda he alludes
to an apparently unhappy love affair at Lisbon. Later the retirement
of his poet brother, Frei Agostinho, into a convent, the deaths of
Miranda and Ferreira, the great plague of 1569, and the misfortunes of
his country were all deeply felt by his affectionate nature. In 1576
he went as secretary of Embassy to Madrid, but otherwise he seems to
have been disappointed in hopes of lucrative employment, and he was
always ready to exchange the mud of the streets and the ‘bought meals’
of Lisbon, with its penurious, importunate _moços_,[334] for the dewy
golden dawns, the hills and streams of Minho, _entre simples e humildes
lavradores_ (_Carta_ 27). In 1578, however, he who had lamented that
no Maecenas encouraged those eager to sing the deeds of Portuguese
heroes was chosen to accompany as official poet[335] the Portuguese
expedition which ended disastrously in _aquelle funeral e turvo
dia_--the battle of Alcacer Kebir. It was not till 1581 that Bernardez
returned from captivity. Whether he was ransomed by King Philip, or
by the Trinitarians or Jesuits, or by himself or his friends, is not
known. After his return and his marriage he frequently laments his
poverty: not, he says, that he wishes to be the Pope in Rome, but
merely to have enough to eat (_Carta_ 31). Yet apparently he had no
cause to regret the change of dynasty so far as his personal fortunes
were concerned. Whereas he had merely held the post of _servidor de
toalha_ at the palace under King Sebastian, he was now (1582) appointed
a knight of the Order of Christ with a pension of 20,000 _réis_ and
was granted 500 _cruzados_ (‘in property and goods’) in the same year.
In 1593 his yearly pension was 40,000 _réis_, of which one-half was to
revert to his wife and children. Either these moneys remained unpaid or
the new _cavaleiro fidalgo’s_ ideas had changed greatly since he had
sung of the joys of rustic poverty and the vanity of riches. Bernardez
found his inspiration in the Portuguese and Spanish poets of the new
school (_cantigas strangeiras_, _strañas_),[336] and through them in
the great Italians. Dante’s name does not occur in his letters, written
in _tercetos_,[337] but Tasso--_o meu Tasso_---Ariosto, Petrarca, and
others are mentioned.[338] In form and sound some of his _canções_ are
not unworthy of Petrarca, but they are more homely and bucolic, have
more _saudade_ and less definite images, no concrete pictures like that
of _la stanca vecchierella pellegrina_ of the fourth _Canzone_. His
second source of inspiration was his native Minho and the transparent
waters and _fresca praia_ of the Lima. He was never happier than when
wandering _lungo l’amate rive_, and this gives a pleasant reality to
his eclogues. His muse, _a bosques dada e a fontes cristalinas_, sings
not only of the conventional ‘roses and lilies’ but of honeysuckle,
of cherries red in May, grapes heavy with dew, golden apples, nuts,
acorns, the trout so plentiful that they can be caught with the hand,
hares, partridges, doves, the thrush and the nightingale, and mentions
oak, ash, elm, poplar, beech, hazel, chestnut, and arbutus. These
eclogues, written in various metres, sometimes with _leixapren_ or
internal rhyme, are collected in _O Lima_ (1596), which also contains
his letters. His other works are sonnets, elegies, odes in _Rimas
Varias_, _Flores do Lima_ (1596), and a third small volume _Varias
Rimas ao Bom Jesus_ (1594) which includes elegies and odes to the
Virgin written during his captivity, a long _Historia de Santa Ursula_
in octaves, and other devotional verse of much fervour and his wonted
perfection of technique. If, read in the mass, his poems produce the
impression of a cloying sweetness, it must be remembered that never
before had Portuguese poetry risen to so harmonious a music. Faria e
Sousa accused him of plagiarizing Camões, but in the case of a writer
whose accepted poems, the _dulcissima carmina Limae_, are of such
excellence the accusation cannot be seriously entertained. Neither he
nor Camões was a great original poet, but in both the command of the
new style was such that their poems were often confused by collectors.
A passage in one of Bernardez’ letters (5, l. 6) seems to imply that
his poetry was not appreciated at Lisbon. It was too genuine and clear
to suit the clever Court rhymesters. But he had his followers, who
would send him their poems to be corrected, or rather, praised, and
later Lope de Vega recognized him as his master in the eclogue in
preference to Garci Lasso.
FRANCISCO GALVÃO (_c._ 1563-1635?), equerry to the Duke of Braganza,
was a true poet if he wrote the sonnet _A Nosso Senhor_ ascribed to
him by his editor, Antonio Lourenço Caminha, in _Poesias ineditas dos
nossos insignes poetas Pedro da Costa Perestrello, coevo do grande
Luis de Camões, e Francisco Galvão_ (1791): _Ó tu de puro amor Deos
fonte pura_. Innocencio da Silva vigorously doubts the authenticity of
these poems, which are mostly of a religious character or concerned
with Horace’s theme of the golden mean, as that of the _Obras ineditas
de Aires Telles de Meneses_ (1792) published by the same editor, who
professed to have faithfully copied them from the _antigos originaes_
of the time of João II. Bernardez’ brother Frei AGOSTINHO DA CRUZ
(1540-1619), born at Ponte da Barca, entered as a novice the Convent
of Santa Cruz in the Serra de Sintra in 1560, and took the vows a year
later. In 1605 he obtained permission to live as a hermit in the Serra
da Arrabida, where he cultivated _saudade_ and the muses, although his
poems were no longer profane, as when in his youth as Agostinho Pimenta
he haunted with his brother Diogo the banks of the Lima. These early
verses he burnt: _Queimei, como vergonha me pedia, Chorando par haver
tão mal cantado_. The eclogues, elegies, letters, sonnets, and odes
that survive prove that _mal_ is here a moral, not an aesthetic adverb,
and that he shared his brother’s love of Nature and in no mean degree
his power of expressing it in soft, harmonious verse.
That gift was denied to ANTONIO FERREIRA (1528-69), who combined
enthusiasm for the new style--_a lira nova_--and for classical
antiquity with a rooted antipathy against the use of a foreign language
or foreign subjects. His uneventful life as judge, courtier, and poet
was cut short by the plague of 1569. His poetry is not that of a poet
but of the Coimbra law student who had become a busy magistrate.[339]
It is thus at its best when it does not attempt to be lyrical, for
instance in his excellent letters in _tercetos_. His odes are closely
modelled on those of Horace (_o meu Horacio_). Nor did he claim
originality: indeed, his plan of introducing certain new forms was
a little too deliberate for a great poet,[340] and his best sonnet
is a translation from Petrarca. For bucolic poetry neither the grave
doctor’s style nor his inclinations were well suited. Not only is
the smooth flow of the verse which charms us in Diogo Bernardez here
absent but the metre often actually halts,[341] and throughout his work
we have sincerity, lofty aims, a stiff unbending severity, but not
poetical genius. Ferreira was a true patriot, and it was his boast and
is his enduring fame that he devoted himself to exalt the Portuguese
language.[342] It was most fortunate for Portuguese literature that at
this time of changing taste a poet of Ferreira’s great influence should
have forsworn foreign intrusions in the language with the exception
of Latin (in the introduction of which, however, his characteristic
restraint forbade excess), and left both in prose and verse abiding
monuments of pure Portuguese. This was the more remarkable in a poet
who disdained the old popular metres (_a antiga trova deixo ao povo_)
and had no thought apparently for popular customs or traditions. His
_Poemas Lusitanos_, published posthumously, contain over a hundred
sonnets, besides his odes, eclogues, elegies, epigrams (which are but
fragments of sonnets), and letters, and he also wrote a _Historia de
Santa Comba_ in fifty-seven _oitavas_.
The work of PERO DE ANDRADE CAMINHA (1520?-89), an industrious writer
of verse rather than a poet, is as cold and unmusically artificial as
Ferreira’s in its form, while it lacks Ferreira’s high thought and
ideals and his love for his native language. One may imagine that
it was through friendship with Ferreira--who scolds him for writing
in Spanish--that he became one of the set of Miranda and Bernardez.
Camões he must have known,[343] and indeed refers to him satirically
in his epigrams: he seems to have actively disliked so wayward a
genius, a man so unfitted to be a Court official. Caminha himself
was the son of João Caminha, Chamberlain of the Duchess Isabel of
Braganza, and of Philippa de Sousa of Oporto, where (or at Lisbon)
the poet may have been born. After studying at the University, either
at Lisbon, or after its transference to Coimbra in 1537, he entered
the household of the Infante Duarte. In 1576 the poet retired to the
palace of the Braganzas at Villa Viçosa and died there thirteen years
later. During the last ten years of his life he held a _tença_ of two
hundred milreis besides other sources of income (he was Alcaide Môr of
Celorico de Basto, as his father had been of Villa Viçosa), so that his
lot compares handsomely with that of Camões. He had planned an edition
of his works in nine books, but only a few occasional poems were
published during his lifetime. He wrote short poems in all the usual
kinds, but, although trusted and honoured by the princes he served, he
entirely lacked Camões’ divine _furia_ and had no compensating sympathy
or insight or lyrical charm. What would not Camões have made of his
chanty, _cantiga para çalamear_![344]
In perfect contrast to the laboured verses of Andrade Caminha is the
spontaneous flow of the lines to the river Leça beginning _Ó rio
Leça_, by which the Conde de Mattosinhos, FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE MENESES
(1515?-84), is chiefly remembered. They place him at once among the
principal poets of the century. He succeeded the Conde de Vimioso as
Camareiro Môr of Prince João, held the same post in the first years
of King Sebastian’s reign, and subsequently under King Henrique, who
created him Count of Mattosinhos in return for his services as Governor
of Portugal (during the absence of King Sebastian) and on other
occasions. After the death of the Portuguese king he retired to Oporto,
and no doubt spent the remaining summers at Mattosinhos near the gentle
stream which he had immortalized.
The Portuguese poems of ANDRÉ FALCÃO DE RESENDE (1527?-98), born at
Evora, nephew of the antiquarian André and of the poet Garcia de
Resende, were first published at Coimbra in an incomplete volume
_Poesias_ [1865], and consist of the _Microcosmographia_ and some
spirited anti-Drake ballads and good sonnets (e.g. _Ó fragil bem_, _Ó
breve gosto humano_) and satires. BALTHASAR DE ESTAÇO (born in 1570),
Canon of Viseu, and his brother the antiquarian GASPAR DE ESTAÇO, Canon
of Guimarães and author of _Varias Antiguidades de Portugal_ (1625),
were both born at Evora. The former’s _Sonetos, Eglogas e ovtras rimas_
(1604), published, according to the preface, in the author’s mature age
but written in the green, contain some religious sonnets of high merit.
A far more celebrated writer than these minor poets was JORGE DE
MONTEMÔR (_c._ 1520-61), or _hispanice_ Montemayor, who was early
driven by poverty from Montemôr o Velho (where he was born between 1518
and 1528) a few years after Mendez Pinto. Fortunately the latter did
not relate his travels in Chinese, but Montemôr, with the exception of
a few brief passages[345] in his _Diana_, wrote exclusively in Spanish.
In Spain his musical talent gave him a livelihood, and as musician
and singer of the Royal Chapel he remained at the Court till 1552,
when he accompanied the Infanta Juana as _aposentador_ on the occasion
of her marriage with that promising patron of letters, the Infante
João. But even before the prince’s death in 1554 Montemôr returned to
Spain. In 1555 he may have gone in the train of Philip II to England,
and subsequently served as a soldier in Holland and Italy till a
duel, perhaps in a love affair, at Turin ended his days in 1561.[346]
Despite his brief and restless life Montemôr, who showed in _Las obras
de George de Montemayor_ (1554) that he was no mean poet, found time
to write one of the most famous books in literature. The date of its
publication--it was dedicated to Prince João and Princess Juana--is
uncertain, but it was probably an early work. In spirit, since not in
the letter, it belongs to Portugal. Its gentle, easy style (Menéndez y
Pelayo calls it _tersa, suave, melódica, expresiva_), the sentimental
love and melancholy, the introduction of bucolic scenes, the references
to Portugal--_cristalino_ applied to the Mondego is no conventional
epithet, as only those who have seen its transparent waters can fully
realize--mark the _Diana_ as the work of a Portuguese. Its fame soon
overleapt the borders of the Peninsula. In Spain it had a numerous
progeny, to which Cervantes refused the grace somewhat grudgingly given
to Montemôr’s work as ‘the first in its kind’. In Portugal this, the
eldest child of Bernardim Ribeiro’s _Menina e moça_, had to wait over
half a century before it found a worthy successor in the _Lusitania
Transformada_.
Little certain is known of the life of FERNAM ALVAREZ DO ORIENTE (_c._
1540-_c._ 1595?). Born at Goa, he served in the East, and may have
fought in the battle of Alcacer Kebir. His resemblance to Moraes in
temperament and adventures perhaps gave rise to the assertion that
he wrote the fifth and sixth parts of _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_. The
scene of his _Lvsitania Transformada_ (1617) is partly in Portugal
(the banks of the river Nabão and the seven hills of Thomar) and
partly in India (_no nosso Oriente_). Like Montemôr’s _Diana_, it is
divided into _prosas_ and poems, and it is modelled on the _Arcadia_
of Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530)--the mountains of Arcadia transformed
into Lusitania[347]--which, however, each of its three books equals in
length. The prose setting, although devoid of thought, is mellifluous
and clear, and the poems, which contain reminiscences of Camões, rival
in the harmony and transparent flow of the verse that ‘prince of the
poets of our time’, as Alvarez calls him. Some critics have even
ventured to attribute the work to Camões, as though his genius were
so poor that he must needs fall to quoting himself in whole lines, as
is here the case. But Alvarez had certainly caught some measure of
Camões’ skill and of _il soave stilo e ’l dolce canto_ of Sannazzaro
and Petrarca. He is, moreover, less vague[348] than many writers
of eclogues, and in singing his own love story describes what his
eyes have seen. It was, however, an aberration to favour the _verso
esdruxulo_ (Ariosto’s _sdruccioli_) (cf. Sannazzaro’s _Arcadia_, Ecl.
1, 6, 8, 9, 12), a truly Manueline adornment which other Portuguese
poets unfortunately copied as a new artifice.[349]
As a poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa, who was something more than a
pedant of pedants, deserves a place among the multitude of Portuguese
writers of eclogues, since of the twenty long eclogues contained in
his _Fvente de Aganipe y Rimas Varias_ (7 pts., 1624-7) the first
twelve are in his native tongue. They show no originality but have
occasional passages of quiet beauty. Nos. 7 and 8 are both entitled
‘rustic’ and purpose to represent peasants of Minho. They are so
overcharged with archaisms and rustic words and expressions (_samicas_
and _namja_ of course occur, and _grolea_ (glory), _marmolea_ (memory),
the form _suidade_, &c.) that they would probably have been Greek to
the peasants. As a critic Lope de Vega called Faria the prince of
commentators, on the strength of his learned and copious editions of
the Lusiads and lyrics of Camões, for whom he had a genuine devotion.
Time has lent an interest, if not validity, to his literary criticisms.
In poetry he was as prolific as in prose: he boasted, in the age of
Lope de Vega, that he had written more blank verse than any other poet
and that his printed sonnets exceeded those of Lope by 300.
ELOI DE SÁ SOTTOMAIOR (or Souto Maior), the author of _Jardim do Ceo_
(1607) and _Ribeiras do Mondego_ (1623), is generally perhaps more
familiar with the Saints than with the Muses, but some of his poems
are not without merit. The latter work, in prose and verse, has no
originality, although the author was careful to state that he had
composed it before the _Primavera_ of FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ LOBO (_c._
1580-1622), who in strains not less sweetly harmonious than the Lima
poems of Bernardez sang the little stream of Lis that runs so gaily
through his native Leiria. He went to study at Coimbra in 1593, took
his degree there in 1602, returned to Leiria and before 1604 was in
the service of Theodosio, Duke of Braganza, at Villa Viçosa. He was
drowned in his prime in the Tagus coming from Santarem to Lisbon. He
was alive in 1621, but, as Dr. Ricardo Jorge has shown in his able
biography, died before the end of 1622. The fact of his drowning is
well established, otherwise the tradition might have been attributed
to passages in his works in which he seems to foretell such a fate.
An extraordinarily prolific writer, his fame rests chiefly on his
three pastoral works of mingled prose and verse: _A Primavera_ (1601)
and its second and third parts _O Pastor Peregrino_ (1608) and _O
Desenganado_ (1614). Rodriguez Lobo somewhere speaks disparagingly of
books ‘long as leagues in Alentejo’, but length and monotony are not
absent from his own pastorals. Look into them where you will, beautiful
descriptions, showing deep love of Nature, will present themselves,
and delightful verse and harmonious prose, excellent in its component
parts although allowed to trail in the construction of the sentences.
But the reader who attempts more than a desultory acquaintance is soon
overcome by a feeling of satiety, for the _Primavera_ in its _brandura
sem fim_ and the complete absence of thought is like a stream choked by
water-lilies: lovely, but tiring to the swimmer.
Through all these love-lorn shepherd scenes runs a vague thread of
autobiography. The passion of Bernardim Ribeiro is replaced by a
suaver melancholy. The poet leaves the Lis for Coimbra and then goes
to Lisbon and thence to distant lands, where he wanders as a pilgrim
till he is shipwrecked at the mouth of the Lis and returns to his home
to find Lisea given to another. It is divided into _florestas_. In the
opening _florestas_ the quiet streams, the green woods and pastures,
are charmingly described; later the scene is transferred to the _campos
do Mondego_ and the _praias do Tejo_. A breath of the sea is welcome in
_O Desenganado_, but the story soon returns to shepherd life and its
series of natural but rather insipid incidents.
Had Rodriguez Lobo written not better but less, his pastoral romances
would probably be far more widely read. But his finest work is of a
different kind, a long dialogue, _Corte na Aldea e Noites de Inverno_
(1619), between a _fidalgo_, D. Julio, and four friends in the long
winter evenings near Lisbon. Suggested by Baldassare Castiglione’s
famous _Il Cortigiano_, which had been popularized in Spain by Boscán’s
excellent translation (1534), this work, for which Gracián prophesied
immortality, is full of the most varied interest. The prose, excellent
as is all that of this champion of the Portuguese language, _jardineiro
da lingua portuguesa_ (which his countrymen, he complained, patch and
patch like a beggar’s cloak), is here more vigorous and compact in its
construction without losing its harmonious rhythm, attractive as the
conversations which it records. Besides the beautiful verses lavishly
scattered through his prose works, Rodriguez Lobo wrote a long epic on
Nun’ Alvarez in twenty cantos of _oitavas_: _O Condestabre de Portugal
D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira_ (1610),[350] a volume of _Eglogas_ (1605), in
which he is a recognized master, a volume of _Romances_ (1596) written,
with two exceptions, in Spanish,[351] and, perhaps, a Christmas play
entitled _Auto del Nascimiento de Christo y Edicto del Emperador
Avgvsto Cesar_, published in 1676. It is written in _redondilhas_ in
Spanish and Portuguese.[352] This _auto_ is followed by an _Entremes do
Poeta_ in Portuguese. A poet, an obdurate Gongorist (_Do Gongora tive
sempre opinadas preferencias_), recites a sonnet to a lady: _Celicola
substancia procreada_, which she does not understand, and a _ratinho_,
also at a loss (_he para mim cousa grega_), advises him to give over
his jargon for a more natural language:
Gerigonças no fallar,
Que amor nam he contrafeito.
But Rodriguez Lobo has no need of such attributions to justify his
great and enduring fame.