Part 17

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[302] Cf. H. Lopes de Mendonça, _O Salto Mortal_, Act iii: _Tanto gostaes d’este livro: É por ser triste?--É por ser verdadeiro._

[303] Eclogue 5 (_a qual dizem ser do mesmo autor_), which is undoubtedly by Ribeiro, refers to Coimbra in the lines: _É lembrarme os sinceiraes De Coimbra que me mata_.

[304] As in the case of Gil Vicente, we are vexed with homonyms--a notary, an admiral, &c. Dr. Theophilo Braga, skilfully dovetailing hypotheses, develops his biography fully. _Casi todo lo que de él se ha escrito son fábulas sin fundamento alguno_, wrote Menéndez y Pelayo in 1905.

[305] Fray Luis de Leon may have remembered this passage in _De los Nombres de Cristo_, Bk. 3 (1917 ed., t. 1, p. 198; _Bib. Aut. Esp._, t. 37, p. 182).

[306] _Nossos amores contados por um modo que os não entenderá ninguem_, Garrett, _Um Auto de Gil Vicente_.

[307] _La Voluntad_, Barcelona, 1902. Camillo Castello Branco held similar views.

[308] The word cannot be translated exactly, but corresponds to the Greek πόθος, Latin _desiderium_, Catalan _anyoranza_, Galician _morriña_, German _Sehnsucht_, Russian тоска (pron. _taská_). It is the ‘passion for which I can find no name’ (Gissing, _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_).

[309] Menéndez y Pelayo’s strict division between the ‘subjective’ pt. 1 and pt. 2 as _externa y de aventuras_ is thus somewhat arbitrary.

[310] Pt. 1, cap. 9; pt. 2, cap. 25.

[311] In pt. 2, cap. 9, this is forgotten: _outras_ [_cousas_] _que não são escritas neste livro_, a slip which throws no light on the authorship.

[312] It was characteristic of the hot-house air in which Portuguese literature existed that the first publication of a book often consisted in its circulation (_correr_) in manuscript from courtier to courtier, a special licence being obtained for this apart from the licence to print. Those to whom it appealed made copies. The earliest known edition of _Menina e moça_ is of 1557-8: _Primeira & segũda parte do liuro chamado as Saudades de Bernaldim Ribeiro com todas suas obras. Treladado de seu propria original. Nouamente impresso._ 1557 (Euora. The date of the colophon is January 30, 1558). An introductory note _Aos lectores_ says: _Foram tantos os traduzidores deste liuro & os pareceres em elle tam diuersos que nam he de marauilhar que na primeira impressam desta historia se achassem tantas cousas em contrario de como foram pello auctor delle escriptas ... foy causa de andar este liuro tam vicioso ... conueo tirarse a limpo do propria original_, &c., &c.). The edition of 1554, quoted by Brunet, was probably the first in spite of the words _com summa diligencia emendada_ (i.e. corrections of the manuscript). The phrase _de nouo_ tells more against than in favour of an earlier edition (= rather ‘new’ than ‘anew’).

[313] Ribeiro, so far as we know, wrote no line of Spanish. Boscán’s _romance Justa fué mi perdición_ and the _romance Ó Belerma_ have been wrongly ascribed to him.

[314] p. 287: ... _so ganz persönlichem Stil, dass sie mit keinem anderen Dichter vor oder nach ihnen, wohl aber untereinander zu verwechseln wären_; and p. 292: Bernardim Ribeiro writes _ganz im Stile des Falcão_. Cf. F. Bouterwek, _History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature_, Eng. tr. 1823, ii. 39: ‘A long eclogue by this writer, which forms an appendix to the works of Ribeyro, so completely partakes of the character of the poems which it accompanies that were it not for the separate title it might be mistaken for the production of Ribeyro himself. It therefore proves that Ribeyro’s poetic fancies, his romantic mysticism not excepted, were by no means individual.’

[315] According to Dr. Theophilo Braga, he was born in 1515; married in 1529 Maria Brandão (aged eleven); was profoundly influenced by Ribeiro’s _Trovas de dous pastores_ (1536) but did not plagiarize it in the _Trovas de Crisfal_ (1536-41), similar passages being due to the _situação quasi similar_ (i.e. _quasi identica_) of the two friends; went to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1541; spent the year 1543 in Rome and returned to Portugal in the winter of 1543-4; was factor of the fortress of Arguim from 1545 to 1548; and died in 1577.

[316] The whole question at issue is whether the _de_ of _Trovas de Crisfal_ = ‘by’ or ‘about’ (cf. _O Livro das Trovas d’ El Rei_ = rather ‘belonging to’ than ‘by’ the king), and protests against _a illusão de pretender identificar em um mesmo poeta o apaixonado de Aonia e o de Maria_ (_Obras_, 1915 ed., p. 10) or _o intuito de converterem Christovam Falcão em um mytho_ (ibid., p. 42) are beside the point.

[317] That one of the figures is identical in the woodcuts of these two _folhas volantes_ is not significant: it appears also in an anonymous edition of the _Pranto de Maria Parda_.

[318] In the 1559 ed. the words _hũa muy nomeada e agradauel Egloga chamada Crisfal ... que dizem ser de Cristouam Falcam, ho que parece alludir ho nome da mesma Egloga_ may legitimately be held to imply merely that some persons, misled by the anagram, attributed the poem to Falcão.

[319] _Decada_ 8, cap. 34 (1786 ed., p. 322).

[320] The _licença_ of the 1632 edition says, _Este livrinho ... muitas vezes se imprimio_.

[321] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 109:

Eu digo os Provençais que inda se sente O som das brandas rimas que entoaram.

Cf. Boscán ap. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, tom. xiii (_Juan Boscán_), p. 165: _En tiempo de Dante y un poco antes florecieron los Proenzales, cuyas obras por culpa de los tiempos andan en pocas manos._ Menéndez y Pelayo also (ibid., p. 174) gives a reference by Faria e Sousa to King Dinis: _El rey don Dionis de Portugal nació primero que el Dante tres ó quatro años y escrivió mucho deste propio género endecasílabo, coma consta de los manuscritos._

[322] Cf. 1885 ed., No. 112:

¿Como se perdieron Entre nos el cantar, como el tañer Que tanto nombre a los pasados dieron?

[323]

Adeus leitor a mais ver, Porque ainda haveis de ver mais (_A Egipciaca_, p. 181).

[324] He must often have repeated Nuno Pereira’s lines, which may have influenced him when he read them in the _Cancioneiro Geral: Privar em cas da Rainha Deos vollo deixe fazer, E a mi hũa vinha E regar hũa almoinha Em que tenho mor prazer ... Lavro, cavo quanta posso ... O gingrar de meu caseiro_, &c.

[325] His complaint in the second elegy (1885 ed., No. 147, l. 17) shows how far he was in advance of his age in Portugal: _Um vilancete brando ou seja um chiste, Letras ás invenções, motes ás damas, Hũa pregunta escura, esparsa triste, Tudo bom, quem o nega? Mas porque, Se alguem descobre mais, se lhe resiste?_

[326] Often he combines several in the same poem. Thus the long (533 lines) eclogue on the death of Garci Lasso (_Nemoroso_) begins in _tercetos_, proceeds with _rima encadeada_ (internal rhyme), and ends with Petrarcan stanzas.

[327] Cf. the sonnet (1885 ed., No. 126) _Esprito que voaste_ with _Alma minha gentil_.

[328] The autograph manuscript of this and of other poems, discovered in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional by Snr. Delfim Guimarães in 1908, has been reproduced in facsimile by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Boletim_ of the Lisbon _Ac. das Sciencias_, vol. v (1912), pp. 187-220. See _infra_, p. 164.

[329] Leonel da Costa, the translator of Virgil and Terence, later wrote a poem in seven cantos of _redondilhas_ on the same subject: _A Conversão miraculosa da felice egypcia penitente Santa Maria_ (1627).

[330] Faria e Sousa even makes him the first Portuguese poet to write hendecasyllabics, setting aside those of Sá de Miranda as unreadable: _son incapaces de ser leidos!_ (_Varias Rimas_, pt. ii, p. 162).

[331] He was _Moço da camara_ in 1566. He was appointed a knight of the Order of Christ in 1582. He married apparently after his return from Africa in 1581. He was alive in 1596 (although in one of his poems he refers to a premature old age) and dead in 1605. On the other hand, he was apparently over twenty-five in 1558. It is thought that the right of passing on his official posts to his children (_sobrevivencia_), granted to his father in 1532, may indicate the date of the birth of the eldest of his eleven children: Diogo Bernardez (who did not, like some of his brothers, use his father’s second name, Pimenta).

[332] _Carta_ 12: _Confesso dever tudo áquella rara Doutrina tua_.

[333] The succeeding generation was also distinguished, one of the poet’s nephews becoming Bishop of Angra, another Governor of Angola, a third Professor at Coimbra University.

[334] Bernardez’ letters in verse contain many such references to everyday life, e. g. the Lisbon negress selling fried fish in the _Betesga_.

[335] A confident sonnet by him in this capacity is extant: _Pois armarse por Christo não duvida Sebastião._

[336] _O doce estillo teu tomo por guia_ and _Escrevo, leio e risco_ he writes to Miranda, but his muse was far more spontaneous than Miranda’s, and it appears from another passage (in _Elegia_ 5) that his alterations were less of style than of matter.

[337] _Carta_ 32 is an exception, and consists of seventy-two _oitavas_.

[338] He introduces Italian lines (_Cartas_ 23, 27, 30) and wrote a sonnet in Italian.

[339] Cf. _Carta_ 4: _Foge inda o dia ao muito diligente_, although whether this is due to his work or to the number of his friends is not clear.

[340] _Com cujo_ [Miranda’s] _exemplo meu pai, que entam estaua nos estudos, pretendeo com a variedade destes sens manifestar como a lingua Portugueza assi em copia de palauras como em grauidade de estylo a nenhuma he inferior_ (Miguel Leite Ferreira, Preface to _Poemas Lvsitanos_, 1598).

[341] To take an example not from the eclogues but from one of his sonnets, the words

da guerra Nossa livres viveis em paz e em gloria

correspond but ill to their peaceful sense.

[342] Cf. _Carta_ 2. Bernardez (in an elegy on Ferreira’s death addressed to Andrade Caminha) records that among all Ferreira’s verses not a line was written in a foreign tongue: _um só nunca lhe deu em lingua alhea_.

[343] Thirteen times the same subject is treated by Camões and Caminha, sometimes exclusively by them (C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Pero de Andrade Caminha_ (1901), p. 55).

[344] _Obras_, ed. Priebsch, p. 361.

[345] All that he wrote in Portuguese is contained in two pages (389-91) of Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo_ (1890).

[346] Fray Bartolomé Ponce, _Primera Parte de la Clara Diana a lo divino_ (1582?): _Me dijeron como un muy amigo suyo le habia muerto por ciertos zelos ó amores_ (quoted by Ticknor, iii. 536, and by T. Braga (omitting _ciertos_), _Bernardim Ribeiro_ (1872), p. 80).

[347] _Argumento desta obra._

[348] e.g.

No mato o rosmaninho, a branca esteva, No campo o lirio azul que o chão cubria.

[349] _Que estes se chamem poetas!_ rightly exclaims Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina (_Seram Politico_ (1704), p. 146) of those who revel in the use of _esdruxulos_.

[350] The whole of Canto XIV is given to a vigorous account of the battle of Aljubarrota, already described more vividly in fewer stanzas by Camões. Another poem in _oitavas_ by Rodriguez Lobo, _Historia da Arvore Triste_, was published in _Fenix Renascida_, vol. iv.

[351] In Spanish also are the fifty-six _romances_ which make up the poem _La Jornada_, &c. (1623), written on the coming of Philip III to Portugal in 1619. In the eclogues, written chiefly in _redondilhas_, he sings with spontaneous charm _as praticas humildes e os cuidados Não por arte fingidos e enfeitados_ of the _rusticos vaqueiros_, as he says in the prefatory sonnet. Many of the words are pleasantly indigenous: _milho_, _boroa_, _salgueiraes_, _rafeiro_, _charneca_, _chocalho_, _abegões_, _ovelheiros_.

[352] For instance, when the Angel has announced in Spanish _las alegres nuevas_, the goatherd, _ratinho_, Mendo, says: _A din Rey, a din Rey ay! Que estou amorrinhentado, Acudame algum Cristom ou Sancristom._ Laureano, the shepherd, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, and Silvia says: _Porque o que sinto quisera Dizelo em bom Portugues._ An _Auto e Colloquio do Nascimento de Christo_ (1646) attributed to Francisco Lopes was reprinted in 1676.

§ 3

_The Drama_

After Gil Vicente’s death the _autos_ continued to flourish in number if not in excellence, and evidently answered to a very real popular demand. It was in vain that the Jesuits produced their Latin plays and that serious poets of high reputation sought to wean the affections of the people from the _auto_ to the classical drama.[353] This opposition of the educated did, however, conduce to the swift deterioration of the _auto_, although some of those of a religious character, chiefly the Nativity plays, still succeeded in reflecting a part of the charm that characterized the Vicentian drama. To Gil Vicente’s lifetime probably belongs the _Obra famosissima tirada da Sancta Escriptura chamada da Geração humana, onde se representam sentenças muy catolicas & proueitosas pera todo christã: Feita por huũ famoso autor_ (1536?). Indeed, the verse runs so easily, the peasants are so natural, that one might almost suspect him of having had a hand in its composition. But the metre (8 8 4 8 8 4) is more monotonous than he would have used throughout. The _dramatis personae_ are angels, peasants,[354] Adam, Justice, Reason, Malice, two devils, a priest, four saints and doctors of the Church, a Levite, the Church, the Heavenly Samaritan. Adam in a scene closely resembling that of the _Auto da Alma_ is tempted by Malice. Justice intervenes, and finally the Samaritan leads him to the _estalagem_ of Holy Mother Church. The _Auto de ds [Deus] padre & justiça & mia [Misericordia]_ belongs to the same period. It is written in octosyllabic verse and contains a similar medley of peasants, prophets, and abstract virtues. In the first part the angels in Portuguese announce to the Virgin the birth of Christ, and in the second part the peasants, who speak Spanish, go to offer rustic gifts to _el muy chiquito donzel_. Another early and anonymous play is the _Auto do Dia do Juizo_, included in the _Index_ of 1559, which for its subject closely follows Gil Vicente’s _Auto da Barca do Inferno_. A peasant, a false and lying notary, a market-woman who had offered weekly bread and wax to Santa Catharina but had ’robbed the poor people’, a butcher, a miller who had mixed bran in his sacks of flour, are introduced in turn and duly consigned by Lucifer to Hell.

If we only knew the quondam Franciscan monk ANTONIO RIBEIRO CHIADO (_c._ 1520?-91) and his contemporary and rival, the mulatto servant of the Bishop of Evora, by their mutual abuse, we could form no very high opinion of their character or their wit. In bitter _quintilhas_ Chiado reviles the latter for his dark complexion; AFONSO ALVAREZ answers by upbraiding _nonno Chiado_ as the son of a cobbler and a market-woman and for the habits which had made the cloister seem so dismal a place to Frei Antonio do Espirito Santo. Fortunately some of the plays of both of them survive, and we are better able to judge of their merits. The mulatto, who was a valued member of his master’s household and prides himself that Chiado has nothing worse to throw in his face than the colour of his skin, was certainly Chiado’s inferior in wit and talent. Both imitate Gil Vicente without having a vestige of his lyrical genius or greater skill in devising a plot. Alvarez preferred religious subjects. In his _Auto de Santo Antonio_ St. Anthony restores to life the drowned son of two peasants, who are imitated from Vicente’s _Auto da Feira_.[355] The only other of his plays that we have is the _Auto de Santa Barbara_, but we know that he also wrote an _Auto de S. Vicente Martyr_ and an _Auto de Santiago Apostolo_.

Chiado’s plays and witty sayings, _avisos para guardar_ and _parvoices_, appear to have made him extremely popular in Lisbon, Camões recognized his talent, and Lisbon’s most famous street still bears his name in common speech. His boisterous life at Lisbon after leaving his convent may have given him his name Chiado (cf. the _chiar_ of ox-carts), but it existed as a surname earlier. His _Pratica de Oito Figuras_ (1543?), _Auto das Regateiras_ (1568 or 1569), and _Pratica dos Compadres_ (1572), are the work of an accomplished wit who was intimately acquainted with the farces of Gil Vicente and, in the last two, with the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira. Many of Vicente’s types are present, but all in a town atmosphere, in which cards take the place of the rustic dances and lyric yields to epigram, the natural genius of Vicente to a laboured smartness. We have the _clerigo de vintem_, the _ratinho_ from Beira, the vain _pação_, the poor _fidalgo_ or _escudeiro_, the negro with his pidgin Portuguese, the witch, the ill-tempered _velha_, the _trovador_ chaplain, the ambitious priest, the corrupt judge. The scenes are even more disconnected and less dramatic, and the ingenious _redondilhas_ necessarily seem artificial because their author so often challenges comparison with the more genuine skill of his master, Gil Vicente. Chiado’s _Auto de Gonçalo Chambão_ was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century, but is now unknown. Of his _Auto da Natural Invençam_ (_c._ 1550) a single copy survives, in the library of the Conde de Sabugosa, whose edition (1917) is of exceptional interest. The play, as reminiscent of Vicente as are the other plays of Chiado, describes the acting of an _auto_ in a private house in the reign of João III, and bears witness to the frequency of such representations at Lisbon and to their extraordinary popularity.