Volume I. With reference to the Jew and comic opera, rumours of Sir

Arthur Sullivan’s partial Jewish origin still persist.

[25] Diminutive of _moda_, and signifying, literally, a new song. The _modinha_ is the most characteristic of Brazilian popular forms, a transformation of the troubadors’ _jácara_ and the Portuguese _fado_. It is generally replete with love and the allied feelings.

[26] The chief works of Antonio José da Silva are _Vida do Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança_ (1733); _Ezopaida_ ou _Vida de Ezopo_ (1734); _Os Encantos de Medea_ (1735); _Amphytrião_ ou _Jupiter e Alcmena_ (1736); _Labyrintho de Creta_ (1736); _Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona_ (1737); a highly amusing Molièresque farce, considered by many his best; _As Variedades de Proteu_ (1737); _Precipicio de Faetonte_ (posthumous).

The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’s _Portuguese Literature_, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case against _O Judeu_, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.