Part 28

FREI LUIS DOS ANJOS (_c._ 1570-1625) in his _Iardim de Portugal_ (1626) gathered edifying anecdotes of saintly women from various writers, and set them down in good Portuguese prose. The Franciscan FREI PEDRO DE SANTO ANTONIO (_c._ 1570-1641) in his _Iardim Spiritual, tirado dos Sanctos e Varoens spiritvaes_ (1632) contented himself with translation of his authorities, adding, he modestly says, ‘some things of my own of not much importance’. He carefully avoided interlarding his Portuguese with Latin, his object being _fazer prato a todos_. Even more humble is the work of the Cistercian FREI FRADIQUE ESPINOLA (_c._ 1630-1708), who compiled in his _Escola Decurial_ (12 pts., 1696-1721) an encyclopaedia of themes so various as the fate of King Sebastian, the duties of women, and the habits of storks. Although it lacks the literary pretensions of the _Divertimento erudito_ by the Augustinian FREI JOÃO PACHECO (1677-?1747), it contains some curious matter. A similar miscellany of anecdotes and precepts was written by João Baptista de Castro in the eighteenth century: _Hora de Recreio nas ferias de maiores estudos_ (2 pts., 1742, 3).

The life of the ardent FREI ANTONIO DAS CHAGAS (1631-82) abounded in contrasts. Born at Vidigueira, of an old Alentejan family, Antonio da Fonseca Soares began his career as a soldier in 1650; a duel (arising out of one of his many love affairs), in which he killed his man, drove him to Brazil, and it was only after several years of distinguished service[576] that he returned to Portugal, perhaps in 1657. In 1661 he attained the rank of captain, but in the following year abandoned his military career, and in 1663 professed in the Franciscan convent at Evora, exchanging the composition of gongoric verse for a voluminous correspondence in prose, and his unregenerate days of dissipation for a glowing and saintly asceticism. (_Trocando as galas em burel e os caprichos em cilicios_ are the words with which he veils the real sincerity of his conversion.) Preferring the humbler but strenuous duties of missionary in Portugal and Spain to the bishopric of Lamego, he founded the missionary convent of Varatojo, and died there twenty years after his novitiate. During those years he built up and exercised a powerful spiritual influence throughout Portugal, and it continued after his death. Few of his poems survive, since he committed the greater part of his profane verse to the flames, but some of his _romances_ may still be read. It is, however, as a prose-writer, especially in his _Cartas Espirituaes_ (2 pts., 1684, 7), that he holds a foremost place in Portuguese literature. There is less affectation in these more familiar letters than in his _Sermões genuinos_ (1690) or his _Obras Espirituaes_ (1684). The very titles of some of his shorter treatises, _Vozes do Ceo e Tremores da Terra, Espelho do Espelho_, show that he had not even now altogether escaped the false taste of the time, and artificial flowers of speech, plays on words, laboured metaphors and antitheses appear in his prose. But if it has not the simple severity of a Bernardes, it possesses so persuasive, so passionate an energy, and is of so clear a fervour and harmony that its eloquence is felt to be genuine.

The Jesuit FREI JOÃO DA FONSECA (1632-1701), in the preface to one of his works, _Sylva Moral e Historica_ (1696), which may have given Bernardes the idea of his _Nova Floresta_, rejects affected periods and new phrases, and there is no false rhetoric in his _Espelho de Penitentes_ (1687), _Satisfaçam de Aggravos_ (1700), which takes the form of dialogues between a hermit and a soldier, and other devotional works. Another Jesuit, ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO (1629-1724), although born at Lisbon, spent most (eighty-five years) of his long life in Brazil. He wrote, among other works, _Rosa de Nazareth nas Montanhas de Hebron_ (1715), compiled from various histories of the Company of Jesus, and _Historia do Predestinado Peregrino e seu Irmão Precito_ (1682). The latter is an allegory in six books which lacks the human interest of Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, which it preceded. It describes the journey of two brothers, _Predestinado_ and _Precito_, out of Egypt to Jerusalem (Heaven) and Babylon (Hell). The style is simpler and more direct than might be inferred from the inflated title, and often has an effective if studied eloquence.[577]

Vieira dying is reported to have said that the Portuguese language was safe in the keeping of Padre Manuel Bernardes. The aged Jesuit, who maintained his interest in literature to the end, may have received Bernardes’ _Luz e Calor_[578] (1696) in the last year of his life, and the _Exercicios Espirituaes_ (2 vols., 1686) had appeared ten years earlier. Other works, _Sermões e Praticas_ (1711),[579] _Nova Floresta_ (5 vols., 1706-28), _Os Ultimos Fins do Homem_ (1727), _Varios Tratados_ (2 vols., 1737), were soon forthcoming to justify the prophecy. MANUEL BERNARDES (1644-1710), the son of João Antunes and Maria Bernardes, was born at Lisbon, studied law and philosophy at Coimbra University, and at the age of thirty entered the Lisbon Oratory, where he spent thirty-six years. That was all his life, yet through his books this modest, humorous, austere priest has exercised a profound influence not only, as Barbosa Machado declares, in guiding souls to Heaven, but in moulding and protecting the Portuguese language. His style is marked in an equal degree by grace and concision, intensity and restraint, smoothness and vigour.[580] With him the florid cloak, in which many recent writers had wrapped Portuguese, falls away, leaving the pith and kernel of the language; the conceits of the _culteranos_ disappear, and the most striking effects are attained without apparent artifice. In his hands the pinchbeck and tinsel are transmuted into delicate pieces of ivory. The charm of his style is difficult to analyse, but it may be remarked that his vocabulary is inexhaustible, his precision unfailing, that he is not afraid to employ the commonest words, and that the construction of his sentences is of a transparent simplicity, as bare of rhetoric as is the poetry of João de Deus. His reputation as a lord of language has survived every test. His works are not merely the _deliciae_ of a few distant scholars but an acknowledged glory of the nation, praised by that literary iconoclast Macedo, and quoted as an authority in the Republican Parliament of 1915. The most popular of his works are _Luz e Calor_, and especially the _Nova Floresta_, in which moral and familiar anecdote go quaintly hand in hand, but if one must choose between excellence and excellence his masterpiece is the _Exercicios Espirituaes_, in which thought and expression often rise to sublime heights. One may perhaps compare him with Fray Juan de los Ángeles (†1609). His simple doctrines spring from the heart and, winged by shrewd knowledge of men, touch the heart of his readers. One of his more immediate followers was Padre MANUEL CONSCIENCIA (_c._ 1669-1739), author of a large number of works on moral and religious subjects, the best known of which is _A Mocidade enganada e desenganada_ (6 vols., 1729-38).

FOOTNOTES:

[553] _Dial._ x. 4.

[554] The dates given by Barbosa Machado are Rector 1565, Provincial 1571.

[555] He introduces himself as a theologian in his dialogues, and one may infer several facts concerning his life, e. g. that he had been in Rome (_Imagem_, Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 351 v.), Montserrat (f. 88), Marseilles (f. 88), Savoy (f. 295), Madrid (f. 190), that he kept a diary (f. 190), that he was _curioso de antigualhas_ (f. 352).

[556] Macedo, quoted by Innocencio da Silva (iii. 176), alleged this to be a ‘faithful translation’ from Petrarca. Why Petrarca (1304-74) should praise Belem Convent and Coimbra University, refer to the recent death (1557) of King João III, or speak of ‘our’ Francisco de Hollanda we are not told. Pinto in a later dialogue, _Da Tranquillidade da Vida_, refers to Petrarca’s _Vita Solitaria_ (Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 47 v.).

[557] Since 1590 is implied as the date of this dialogue on f. 290 of the 1593 edition it must be emphasized that the _Segunda Parte_ appeared originally in 1572.

[558] Pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 366 v.: _eu revolvo os livros ... com grandes trabalhos & vigilias_.

[559] Cf. _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 346: _Coimbra, onde gastei a flor de minha adolescencia._ (This edition really has but 344 ff. since f. 29 follows f. 22.)

[560] _Dialogos de Dom Frey Amador Arraiz_, Coimbra, 1604. The idea of the work belonged to his brother, Jeronimo Arraez, who did not live to complete what he had begun.

[561] The same variety occurs in _Poderes de Amor em geral e horas de conversaçam particular_ (1657), by Frei Cristovam Godinho (_c._ 1600-71) of Evora.

[562] He wrote the life of the prior, Frei Luis de Montoia, whose _Vida de Christo_ he completed.

[563] _Tendo elle sua mãi e irmãos muito ricos e a Condessa de Linhares sua irmãa, todos offerecidos a pagar o grosso resgate que os Mouros pediam, por saberem a qualidade de sua pessoa_ (_Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_, p. 38).

[564] See his prefatory letter in the _Trabalhos_. Cf. Antonio, _Bib. Nova_, ii. 307. Barbosa Machado speaks of _hũa horrivel masmorra_.

[565] Cf. p. 39 (1666 ed.): _Ó, ó, ó amor; ó, ó, ó amor, cale a lingua e o entendimento, dilatai-vos vos por toda esta alma_, &c.; or p. 54: _Ah, ah, ah bondade; ah, ah amor sem lei, sem regra, sem medida, adoro-te, louvo-te, desejo-te, por ti suspiro._

[566] He also wrote _Oratorio sacra de soliloquios do amor divino_ (1628) and various works in Latin. Manuel Godinho refers to his _Estimulo das Missões_ (_Relação_, 1842 ed., p. 47).

[567] C. Castello Branco, _Estrellas propicias_, 2ᵃ ed., p. 204. Its only fault, artistically, is the detailed description of the commemoration festivities, which come as an anticlimax.

[568] Other works of the period are similarly read rather for their style than as history, as the _Historia Ecclesiastica da Igreja de Lisboa_ (1642) and the _Historia Ecclesiastica dos Arcebispos de Braga_ (2 pts., 1634, 1635) by D. RODRIGO DA CUNHA (1577-1643), the Archbishop of Lisbon who had an active share in the liberation of Portugal from the yoke of Spain in 1640.

[569] Another renowned Court preacher was D. ANTONIO PINHEIRO (†1582?), Bishop of Miranda, whose works were collected by Sousa Farinha: _Collecção das obras portuguesas do sabio Bispo de Miranda e de Leiria_, 2 vols., 1785, 6.

[570] e. g. _officio e dignidade, gritos e brados, boca e lingoa, cuidão e imaginão_. Macedo (_O Couto_, p. 82) rightly calls Ceita _um dos principaes textos em lingua portugueza_.

[571] Other noted preachers were the Jesuits FRANCISCO DO AMARAL (1593-1647), who published the first (and only) volume of his _Sermões_ (1641) in the year in which Vieira came to Portugal, and FRANCISCO DE MENDONÇA (1573-1626), a master of clear and vigorous prose in his two volumes of _Sermões_ (1636, 9); and the Trinitarian BALTASAR PAEZ (1570-1638), whose _Sermões de Quaresma_ (2 pts., 1631, 3), _Sermões da Semana Santa_ (1630), _Marial de Sermões_ (1649), may still be read with profit.

[572] _Ha poucos annos que he arribado_ (the Inquisition in Portugal), Pt. 3, 1908 ed., f. xxxii.

[573] See p. 5 of _Prologo_: Portuguese is _a lingoa que mamei_, but his _passados_ are from Castile.

[574] The inhabitants of the Peninsula are _astutos e maliciosos_, Spain is ‘a hypocritical and cruel wolf’, the Portuguese are _fortes e quasi barbaros_, the English _maliciosos_, the Italians, since the book was to appear in their country, merely ‘warlike and ungrateful’.

[575] If, for instance, the bracketed words in the following sentence (p. 3, § 5) be omitted it gains in vigour and loses little in the sense: _Este poder se não deo aos Reys para extorsoens_ [_& violencias_] _mas para amparar_ [_& defender_] _os vassallos porque até o propria Deos parece que tem as mãos atadas a rigores_ [_& castigos_] _& livres a clemencias_ [_& misericordias_].

[576] He had been fortunate, for, says Antonio Vieira in 1640, _não ha guerra no mundo onde se morra tão frequentemente como na do Brazil_.

[577] e. g. in the following passage (p. 47), in which Calderon and João de Deus join hands: ‘The world and its glory is a passing comedy, a farce that ends in laughter, a shadow that disappears, a thinning mist, a fading flower, a blinding smoke, a dream that is not true.’

[578] _Estimulos de amor divino_ (1758) is an extract from this, as the _Tratado breve da oraçam mental_ (5th ed., 1757) is extracted from the _Exercicios Espirituaes_.

[579] Pt. 2 appeared in 1733.

[580] He often deliberately links a soft and a hard word, as _caça e cão_, _candores da celestial graça_, _licita a guerra_. Thus his style becomes _crespo sem aspereza_.

IV

1580-1706

_The Seiscentistas_

Philip II entered his new capital under triumphal arches on June 29, 1581, and the subjection of Portugal to Spain during the next sixty years in part accounts for the fact that nowhere was the decadence of literature in the seventeenth century more marked than at Lisbon. For Spain in her sturdy independence and reaction from rigid classicism had led the way in those precious affectations which invaded the literatures of Europe, and the universal malady, gongorism with its Lylyan conceits and cultured style, now found a ready welcome in Portugal. The literary style which corresponded to the Churriguerresque in architecture naturally proved congenial to the land of the _estilo manuelino_. King Philip was glad to conciliate and provide for Portuguese men of letters,[581] but if in the preceding centuries many of them wrote in Spanish, that tendency was now necessarily strengthened. Another cause of decadence was no doubt the Inquisition, although its influence in this respect has been greatly exaggerated. It required no immense tact on the part of an author to prevent his works from being placed on the Index. An examination, for instance, of the differences between the 1616 edition of _Eufrosina_ and the condemned 1561 edition shows that the parts excised were chiefly coarse passages or unsuitable references to the Bible (this was also the charge against the letters of Clenardus). That remarkable mathematician, Pedro Nunez, pays a tribute to the enlightened patronage of letters by Cardinal Henrique, the most ardent promoter of the Inquisition in Portugal: _qui cum nullum_ _tempus intermittat quin semper aut animarum saluti prospiciat aut optimos quosque auctores evolvat aut literatorum hominum colloquia audiat_.[582]

No literary figure in Portugal of the seventeenth century, few in the Peninsula,[583] can rank with D. FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELLO (1608-66). Born at Lisbon,[584] he belonged to the highest Portuguese nobility and began both his military and literary career in his seventeenth year. He wrote in Spanish, although, in verse at least, he felt it to be a hindrance,[585] and it was not till he was over forty that he published a work in Portuguese: _Carta de Guia de Casados_ (1651).[586] Few men have accomplished more, and towards the end of his life he could say with pride that it would be difficult to find an idle hour in it. He was shipwrecked near St. Jean de Luz in 1627 and fought in the battle of the Downs in 1639. He was sent with the Conde de Linhares to quell the Evora insurrection in 1637, and took part in the campaign against revolted Catalonia (1640), which he described in his _Guerra de Cataluña_[587] (1645), written _em varias fortunas_ and recognized as a classic of Spanish literature. A man frankly outspoken like Mello must have made many enemies, enemies dangerous in a time of natural distrust. During the Catalan campaign he was sent under arrest to Madrid, apparently on suspicion of favouring the cause of an independent Portugal,[588] and a little later, when he was in the service of the King of Portugal, the suspicion as to his loyalty recurred. On November 19, 1644, he was arrested at Lisbon on a different charge. It appears that a servant dismissed by Mello revenged himself by implicating his former master in a murder that he had committed (of a man as obscure as himself). Whether he did this of his own initiative or at the bidding of Mello’s enemies is uncertain, but they saw to it that Mello once in prison should not be soon released. They might, probably did, assure the king that this was the best place for one ‘devoted to the cause of Castile’. There are other theories to account for Mello’s long imprisonment, the most romantic of which--that he and the king were rivals in the affections of the Condessa de Villa Nova, and, meeting disguised and by accident at the entrance of her house, drew their swords, the king recognizing Mello by his voice--is now generally abandoned. Although no evidence of Mello’s participation in the murder was forthcoming, he was condemned to be deported for life to Africa, for which Brazil was later substituted. It was only in 1655, after eleven years of more or less[589] strict confinement, that he sailed for Brazil. João IV died in 1656 and two years later Mello returned to Portugal: he was formally pardoned[590] and spent the last years of his life in important diplomatic missions to London, Rome, and Paris. The unfaltering courage and gaiety with which he faced his adventures and misfortunes win our admiration, but his life can strike no one as literary. Yet it is probable that but for his long imprisonment he would never have found leisure to write many of his best works, and prosperity might have dimmed his insight and dulled his style--that style (influenced no doubt by Quevedo and Gracián) which is hard and clear as the glitter of steel or the silver chiming of a clock, with _concinnitas quaedam venusta et felix verborum_.[591] Even when full of points and conceits it retains its clearness and trenchancy, and in his more familiar works he is unrivalled, as the _Carta de Guia de Casados_, in which, _innuptus ipse_, he brings freshness and originality to the theme already treated in Fray Luis de Leon’s _La Perfecta Casada_ (1583), Diogo Paiva de Andrade’s sensible but less caustic _Casamento Perfeito_ (1631), and Dr. João de Barros’ _Espelho de Casados_ (1540),[592] or the pithy and delightful _Cartas Familiares_, of which five centuries--a mere fragment--were published at Rome in 1664, with a rapier-thrust of his wit and a maxim of good sense on every page, preserving for us some vestige of what Frei Manuel Godinho described as his ‘admirable conversation’ when he met him at Marseilles in 1633.[593] The _Epanaphoras de varia Historia Portugueza_ (1660) are unequal and often excessively detailed.[594] Three of the five are, however, the accounts of an eyewitness and as such are full of interest: the _Alteraçoens de Evora_ (i), the _Naufragio da Armada Portuguesa em França_ (ii), and the _Conflito do Canal de Inglaterra_ (iv).[595]

Mello’s knowledge of men was as wide as his knowledge of books, and both appear to great advantage in his _Apologos Dialogaes_ (1721). An individualist in religion[596] and politics,[597] an acute thinker and a keen student of men and manners, he found no dullness in life even at its worst and no solitude, for, if alone, his fancy instilled wit and wisdom into clocks[598] and coins[599] and fountains.[600] The first three _Apologos_ contain incisive portraits in which types and persons are sharply etched in a few lines: the poor _escudeiro_, the _beata_, the Lisbon market-woman, the litigious _ratinho_, the _fidalgo_ from the provinces,[601] the ambitious priest, the shabby grammarian,, the worldly monk, political place-hunter, _miles gloriosus_, or melancholy author, a tinselled nobody boiling down the good sayings of past writers. The fourth _Apologo_ entitled _Hospital das Lettras_ (1657) is devoted more especially to literary criticism; Mello with Quevedo, Justus Lipsius, and Traiano Boccalini (who died when Mello was five) makes a notable scrutiny of Spanish and Portuguese literature. As a literary critic Mello is excellent within limits. Himself an artificial writer, although as it were naturally artificial, bred at Court, versed in social and political affairs, he considered that the proper study of mankind was man, and, like Henry Fielding a century later, admired ‘the wondrous power of art in improving Nature’.[602] For him the country and Nature, the bucolic poetry and prose of Fernam Alvarez do Oriente, the ingenuous narratives of the early chroniclers, had no charm; he preferred Rodrigo Mendez Silva’s _Vida y hechos del gran Condestable_ (Madrid, 1640) to the _Cronica do Condestabre_.[603] But all that was vernacular and indigenous attracted him, as is proved in his letters, in his lively farce _Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz_ (1676), and in the _Feira dos Anexins_, which is a long string of popular maxims and of those plays upon words in which Mello delighted. His poetry--_Las Tres Musas del Melodino_ (1649), _Obras Metricas_ (1665)--is marred by the conceits which in his prose often serve effectively to point a moral or drive home an argument. It is far too clever. When in a poem ‘On the death of a great lady’ we find the line _contigo o sepultara a sepultura_ we do not know whether to laugh or weep, but we suspect the sincerity of the author’s grief, and although he wrote some excellent _quintilhas_, most of his poems, which are, as might be expected, always vigorous, are too sharp and thin, stalks without flowers, the very skeletons of poetry. It is to his prose in its wit and grace, its shrewd thought, its revelation of a sincere and lofty but unassuming character, its directness,[604] its _bom portugues velho e relho_, that he owes his place among the greatest writers of the Peninsula.