Part 30

The great prose-writer of the century, ANTONIO VIEIRA (1608-97), was born in the same year and city as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello and spent a life as unquiet. He was not literary in the same sense as Mello, but he has always been considered one of the great classics of the Portuguese language. He was the son of Cristovam Vieira Ravasco, _escrivão das devassas_ at Lisbon, but at the age of seven he accompanied his parents to Brazil (1615) and began his education in the Jesuit college at Bahia. In 1623, by his own ardent wish, long opposed by his parents, he became a Jesuit novice and professed in the following year. Before he was thirty he was Professor of Theology in the Bahia college and a celebrated preacher, the sermons in which he encouraged the citizens of Bahia in the war against the Dutch being especially eloquent. In 1641 he was chosen with Padre Simão de Vasconcellos to accompany D. Fernando de Mascarenhas, son of the viceroy, to Europe in order to congratulate King João IV on his accession. Vieira preached in the Royal Chapel on New Year’s Day, 1642. Both his sermons and his conversation greatly impressed the king, and from 1641 to the end of the reign (1656) his influence was great although not unchallenged. They were critical years in Portugal’s foreign policy, and Vieira, who refused a bishopric but was appointed Court preacher, was entrusted with several important missions--to Paris and The Hague (February-July 1646), London, Paris, and The Hague (1647-8), and Rome (1650). In 1652 he returned to Brazil as a missionary in Maranhão, and during two years roused the bitter hostility of the settlers by his protection of the slaves or rather by his opposition to slavery. In 1655 he again left Lisbon for Maranhão,[626] and during five arduous years showed unfailing courage and energy in dealing with natives and settlers. The latter in 1661 attacked the mission-house and arrested and expelled the Jesuits. At home King João, Vieira’s friend, was dead. Differences arose between the Queen Regent supported by Vieira, and her son, and one of the first acts of the latter on taking power into his own hands was to banish Vieira to Oporto and later to Coimbra. Here in the spring of 1665[627] he wrote that curious work _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), which was to interpret Portugal’s destiny by the light of old prophecies, but of which only the introduction (_livro anteprimeiro_) was printed. An even stranger book, in which he had paid serious attention politically to the prophecies of Bandarra, was denounced in 1663, and in October 1665 Vieira was consigned to the prison of the Inquisition at Coimbra. His sentence was not read till 1667 (December 24), and it condemned him to seclusion in a college or convent of his Order and to perpetual silence in matters of religion. The deposition of King Afonso VI (1667) and the accession of his brother Pedro II altered Vieira’s prospects, and his eloquent voice was again heard in the pulpit. After preaching before the Court in Lent 1669 he proceeded to Rome on business of the Company and spent six years there. He preached several times in Italian, and Queen Christina of Sweden, who had settled in Rome in 1655, offered him the post of preacher and confessor, which he refused. In August 1675 he returned to Lisbon, where he was coldly received by the Prince Regent, and in 1681 retired to Brazil. In the same year he was burnt in effigy by the mob at Coimbra. A special brief given to him by the Pope secured his person from the attacks of the Inquisition. But even at Bahia he was not free from troubles and intrigues. His activity continued to the end of his long life. In 1688 he preached in Bahia Cathedral, and was Visitor of the Province of Brazil from 1688 to 1691. Even in 1695 we find him, although feeble and broken, writing letters and eager to finish his _Clavis Prophetica_[628] (or _Prophetarum_), which now lies in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris and elsewhere. Seventy years earlier he had been entrusted by the Jesuits with the composition of the annual Latin letters of the Company. Vieira’s vein of caustic satire no doubt made him numerous enemies and increased the difficulties which his advocacy of the Jews and slaves and his fearless stand against injustice and oppression were certain to produce. Ambitious and fond of power, he could devote himself to causes which entailed a life of toil and poverty. An energetic if unsuccessful diplomatist, an ingenious thinker, a statesman of far-reaching views, he was also a fantastic dreamer, but his dreams and restlessness rarely affected the sanity of his judgement. The works of this great writer and extraordinary man are an inexhaustible mine of pure and vigorous prose, at its best in his numerous _Cartas_, written in _selecta et propria dictio, nusquam verbis indulgens sed rebus inhaerens_. A Portuguese critic, Dias Gomes, notes his ’sustained elegance’, and we may sometimes sigh for an interval of Mello’s familiarity or Frei Luis de Sousa’s charm. In his famous _Sermões_ he bowed intermittently to the taste of the time for conceit and artifice. He condemned the practice in a celebrated sermon, but indeed a certain humorous quaintness was not foreign to his temperament, and in the obscurity, at least, of the _cultos_ he never indulged. When inspired by patriotism or indignation his words soar beyond cold reason and colder conceits to a fiery eloquence. Among writers whom he influenced was the Benedictine FREI JOÃO DOS PRAZERES (1648-1709), of whose principal work, _O Principe dos Patriarchas S. Bento_, or _Empresas de S. Bento_, only the first two volumes were published. Closer imitators of Vieira were FREI FRANCISCO DE SANTA MARIA (1653-1713), author of _O Ceo Aberto na Terra_ (1697) and many sermons, and the Jesuit preacher ANTONIO DE SÁ (1620-78), whose _Sermões Varios_ appeared in 1750.

FOOTNOTES:

[581] Bernardo de Brito, no lover of Spain, bears witness to _o favor e benevolencia com que trata os homens doutos_.

[582] _De Crepusculis_, Preface. Martim Afonso de Miranda later (_Tempo de Agora_, _prologo_ to Pt. 2, 1624) writes of _a pouca curiosidade que hoje ha acerca da lição dos liuros, como tambem o risco a que se expõem os que escreuem_.

[583] Menéndez y Pelayo set Mello above all except his friend Quevedo.

[584] Mr. Edgar Prestage discovered his baptismal certificate and established the date (1608) beyond doubt, though it is still often given as 1611. On his mother’s side Mello was great-grandson of the historian Duarte Nunez de Leam.

[585] Prefatory letter to _Las tres Mvsas del Melodino_ (1649): _el lenguaje estrangero tan poco es favorable al que compone_.

[586] He was writing it in January 1650.

[587] _Historia de los movimientos y separacion de Cataluña y de la guerra_, &c. Lisboa, 1645.

[588] On his release after four months of imprisonment the Count-Duke Olivares said to him: _Ea, caballero, ha sido un erro, pero erro con causa._

[589] The first five years were, in his own words, rigorous. In 1650 he was removed from the _Torre Velha_ to the Lisbon _Castello_, and thenceforth enjoyed greater liberty. He had been transferred from the Torre de Belem to the _Torre Velha_ on the left bank of the Tagus in 1646.

[590] The document was discovered by Dr. Braga and published in his _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), p. 339.

[591] _Approbatio of Cartas_, Roma, 1664.

[592] A copy of this rare and curious work exists in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional (_Res._ 264 v.). It contains 71 ff. divided into four parts. The author, in his apophthegms on the character of women, quotes the classics widely, and refers to the Uthopia [so] of Sir Thomas More and to _Celestina_.

[593] _Relaçam_, 1842 ed., p. 233.

[594] His digressions are methodical: _por este modo de historiar (que é aquelle que eu desejo ler) pretendo escrever sempre_ (_Epan._ ii). In _Epan._ i he says: _Refiro, pode ser com demasia, todos os accidentes deste negocio._

[595] He re-wrote this _Epanaphora_ twice, the first two versions having been lost.

[596] Cf. _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3), 1900 ed., p. 89: _cada qual desde o logar em que está acha uma linha muito junto de si que é o caminho por onde pode ir a Deus_.

[597] Cf. _Hospital das Lettras_ (_Ap. Dial._ 4), 1900 ed., p. 114: _por falta de cuidar cada um em se aproveitar deste mundo o que delle lhe toca, o lançam todos a perder todos juntos do modo que vemos_.

[598] _Relogios Fallantes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 1).

[599] _Escriptorio Avarento_ (_Ap. Dial._ 2).

[600] _Visita das Fontes_ (_Ap. Dial._ 3).

[601] Cf. the backwoodsman described by Couto as _algum fidalgo criado lá na Beira que nunca vio o Rei_ (_Dialogo do Sold. Prat._, p. 31).

[602] Cf. _Aulegrafia_ (1619), f. 85 v.: _emendar a Natureza_.

[603] Edgar Prestage, _Esboço_, pp. 128-9.

[604] Like another equally brilliant soldier historian, Napier, he rarely spells a foreign word aright. Cf. _Epanaphoras_, p. 204: _A este nome_ Milord _corresponde no estado feminil o nome_ Léde. Falmouth, where he had actually been, becomes Valmud, the Isle of Wight Huyt, Whitehall Huythal, the Earl of Northumberland Notaborlan (Brito has Northũbria).

[605] A more personal and picaresque satirist was D. THOMAS DE NORONHA (†1651), whose works were collected by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in his _Subsidios_, vol. ii: _Poesias Ineditas de D. Thomás de Noronha_ (Coimbra, 1899). The satiric poem _Os Ratos da Inquisição_ by ANTONIO SERRÃO DE CASTRO (1610-85) was first published by Castello Branco in 1883.

[606] Vol. iii contains a poem by Jacinto Freire de Andrade with the same title.

[607] _Fenix Ren._ ii. 406; iii. 225; v. 376.

[608] Hers is the deplorable pun of a superior superior:

Que se Prior sois agora Sempre fostes suprior.

[609] The real title of the first (1623) edition is _Dos Novissimos de Dom Francisco Rolim de Moura_. Adam is conducted by his son Abel through Hell and comforted by a vision of Paradise. As he is the first man and only Abel has died, he must forgo Dante’s pleasure in meeting his personal enemies there, but there is something perhaps even more awful in the thought of the emptiness of these _infinitos logares_ (iii. 48). Virgil’s _Facilis descensus_, &c., is translated in two lines of great badness: _Onde descer he cousa tão factivel Quanto tornar atraz tem de impossivel_ (iii. 36).

[610] _Nihil tamen eo vivente excussum nisi Solitudines (hoc est Saudades)_, says the _Theatrum_.

[611] e.g. (x. 126):

Hũa montanha e serra inhabitada Se erguia ao ar, em cuja corpulenta Espalda....

[612] ii. 30-49:

Do undoso leito, donde repousava O mar, &c.

[613] xii. 79: _Sou fragil lenho._

[614] In the storm in canto 2 (_Eis que o ceo de improuiso se escurece_) he seems to have realized that Camões’ description could not be improved upon.

[615] Numerous other academies of the same kind came into being in this and the first half of the next century. Most of their members now belong to the (Brazilian) _Academia dos Esquecidos_--the Forgotten.

[616] The slip in the second letter by which in the French version not the Beja Mertola Gate but Mertola itself is seen from the convent, does not favour this theory, which recently has been sustained by the Conde de Sabugosa. This passage is held to be a convincing proof, were such proof needed, of the genuineness of the letters. It is rather a proof of the reality of the love intrigue than of the nun’s authorship. If Chamilly, for the edification of his vanity, were fabricating such a letter, what more likely than that he should wish to add his note of local colour and remembered vaguely the word Mertola in connexion with the view from the convent terrace? What he could scarcely have invented or expressed is the real depth of feeling.

[617] Seven spurious letters, and subsequently others, were added in many of the editions. Filinto Elysio translated the twelve.

[618] _Je parierais tout au monde que les Lettres portugaises ont été écrites par un homme._

[619] e.g. ‘You told me frankly that you were in love with a lady in your own country’ (letter 2). ‘Were you not ever the first to leave for the front, the last to return?’ (5). ‘My passion increases every instant’ (4). ‘I do not repent having adored you. I am glad that you betrayed me’ (3).

[620] Ed. H. Butler Clarke (1897), pp. 17-18 and 65-7.

[621] The 1652 edition speaks of _coroneis_ (p. 277) who, it has been argued, were called _mestres de campo_ till 1708 (Goes, however, in his _Cron. de D. Manuel_, 1619 ed., f. 213, has _os fez todos quatro coroneis de mil homens_; cf. Gil Vicente, i. 234: _Corregedor, coronel_); it refers (p. 393) to João IV as still alive (†1656): _Que Deos guarde e prospere_. It would appear to have been written at two periods, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unless the passages implying the earlier date are as deliberately misleading as the 1652 title-page.

[622] _Classicos Esquecidos_ (Rio de Janeiro, 1915). Duarte de Macedo in his dedicatory letter says: ‘I have taken this _Summa Politica_ from the Latin and Italian languages.’ ‘I do not offer it as my own, because I restore it to your Highness as yours’, so that he had armed himself against such charges of plagiarism.

[623] It loses nothing in Sir Peter Wyche’s translation. Cf. the account of Castro’s first arrival at Goa: ‘When the entry was to be, the two Governours were in a Faluque with gilded Oars, and an awning of divers-coloured silks; the Castles and Ships entertain’d ’em with the horrour of reiterated shootings, the Vivas and expectation of the common people did without any cunning flatter the new Government, &c.’

[624] _Cada clausula he filha da eloquencia mats sublime_, &c. (Barbosa Machado).

[625] e.g. 1759 ed., p. 342: _cujas ruinas serião de sua fama os elogios maiores_ would be straightened out from Latin into Portuguese: _serião os maiores elogios de sua fama_.

[626] On his homeward voyage in 1654 he had suffered from a violent storm, and was only saved by a Dutch pirate who landed the passengers of the Portuguese ship at the Ilha Graciosa without their belongings.

[627] _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 93.

[628] See letters from Bahia, July 22, 1695.

V

1706-1816

_The Eighteenth Century_

The eighteenth century did not kill literature in Portugal any more than in other countries, but poetry had lost its lyrism, and under the influence of French and English writers assumed a scientific, philosophical, or utilitarian character. No mighty genius arose in Portuguese literature at the bidding of João V (1706-50), but the king’s lavish patronage gave an impulse, and he founded the _Academia Real de Historia_ in 1720. A crop of scholars and poets followed in the second half of the century, so that it was not without some unfairness that Giuseppe Baretti wrote of the Portuguese in 1760 that _di letteratura non hanno punto fama d’essere soverchio ghiotti ... quel poco que scrivono, sia in prosa sia in verso, è tutto panciuto e pettoruto_.[629] It was the age of Arcadias: the famous _Arcadia Ulyssiponense_[630] (1756-74) and the _Nova Arcadia_ founded in 1790 (i. e. precisely a century after the Italian _Arcadia_). All the poets of the century belonged to one or other of these societies or made their mark as _dissidentes_ from them. One of the founders of the _Nova Arcadia_, FRANCISCO JOAQUIM BINGRE (1763-1856), lived on into the middle of the nineteenth century, and a few of his poems were collected under the title _O Moribundo Cysne do Vouga_ (1850). A typical eighteenth-century poet is D. FRANCISCO XAVIER DE MENESES (1673-1743), fourth Conde da Ericeira, who in turning to literature was but following the traditions of his family. A staunch defender of pure Portuguese against those who, he said, disfigure and corrupt the language by the introduction of foreign words and phrases, he wrote a large number of works in prose and in verse. The best known of them is his _Henriqueida_ (1741), a heroic poem on the conquest of Portugal by Count Henry in twelve long cantos of prosaic _oitavas_. It may contain lines more inspiring than these:

E a contramina fabricou Roberto, Da mina conhecendo o lugar certo,

but they do not really differ greatly from the rest of the poem. The large quantity of poetry still written at the beginning of the century had met with severe criticism in Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina’s _Seram Politico_. He slyly calls the _egloga campestre_ ‘_poesia ervada_’. The objects of the _Arcadia_ of 1756 were to free Portuguese literature from foreign influences and restore the purity of the language. If to some extent it merely substituted French or Italian influence for Spanish, its cry was also back to the classics and to the Portuguese _quinhentistas_. As to the language its services were invaluable, for at a time when French influence was great in Portugal and in the rest of Europe it checked the use of gallicisms; as to literature the attempt to write poetry on an ordered plan was perhaps foredoomed to failure: it plodded along in an artificial atmosphere of Roman gods and antiquities, and became hidebound in imitation of the Horatian ode.

PEDRO ANTONIO CORRÊA GARÇÃO (1724-72), one of the first members and most prominent poets of the _Arcadia_, did good service in his determined efforts to deliver his country’s literature from foreign imitations and the false affectation of the time, and to revert to the classics, Greek, Roman, and Portuguese. He even prophesied that Gil Vicente’s day would come. His master was Horace, _grande Horacio_, and his Horatian odes, if they show no remarkable lyrical gift, have a dry native flavour in the purity of their language. He was also successful in reviving the cultivation of blank verse. There is a fine sound in some of the sonnets in which he sings Marilia, Lydia, Belisa, Maria, Nise, writes to a friend to ask for a doubloon or for Spanish tobacco, sends birthday congratulations or laughs at a bald priest: the themes are mostly of this level. His satirical vein is marked in his two short comedies in blank verse, _Theatro Novo_, a skit on the drama then in vogue, and _Assemblêa ou Partida_, in which certain Lisbon types are ridiculed and which contains the famous and much overpraised _Cantata de Dido_. Corrêa Garção’s days ended tragically in prison. The motive of his arrest is not clear. Tradition wavers between a love intrigue and political reasons,[631] and declares that the Marques de Pombal, whom he had offended, signed the order for his release on the very day of the poet’s death after eighteen months of imprisonment.

Pombal was effusively praised by DOMINGOS DOS REIS QUITA (1728-70), a Lisbon hairdresser who wrote bucolic poetry melodiously, but with perhaps even less originality than we have learnt to expect in that kind since the time when Virgil mistranslated Theocritus. The influence of Bernardez and Camões is clear,[632] in many passages too clear, and he had undoubtedly caught something of their skill and harmony in technique. But his poems leave the impression that he had no real feeling for the rustic life which they describe; no doubt he was more at home with the scissors than with the faithful Melampus or the nymphs and shepherd’s pipe. When he is relating an event, such as the earthquake of 1755, which touched him nearly, his ready flow of verse deserts him, in spite of his skill in improvisation,[633] although the sonnet written on the same occasion, _Por castigar, Senhor_, stands out with a certain majesty from most of his other sonnets, which are mere slices of eclogue. If his mellifluous idylls show no individuality, his return to the classic poets of Portugal was, as with other Arcadian poets, a welcome change from the Spanish influence, the _mao uso_, as he calls it, of ‘rude strangers from the Manzanares’ (Eclogue 6). His tragedies and pastoral drama _Licore_ are not more original. One of his tragedies, _Inés de Castro_, suggested that of João Baptista Gomes (†1813), _Nova Castro_, which had a great vogue in its day but is now scarcely more remembered than _Osmia_ (1788), a tragedy of which the blank verse has vigour, although it is often scarcely distinguishable from prose. This play, published anonymously, was long attributed to Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo (1754-1817), but its real author was D. Theresa de Mello Breyner, Condessa de Vimieiro, who married her cousin, the fourth Count, in 1767.

It was a cruel kindness to edit the works of ANTONIO DINIZ DA CRUZ E SILVA (1731-99) in six volumes, for, despite the fame of his high-flown Pindaric odes, his three centuries of sonnets and his other lyrics are not of conspicuous merit and are often imitative. Having nothing to say, _Elpino Nonacriense_, like too many of the Arcadian poets, said it at inordinate length. _Que enorme confusão!_ he exclaims in an elegy on the Lisbon earthquake, and most of his poems are on a like plane of thought and expression. The son of a _Sargento Môr_,[634] he was born at Lisbon, and after studying law at Coimbra was appointed a judge at Castello de Vide. With Manuel Nicolau Esteves Negrão (†1824) and Theotonio Gomes de Carvalho (†1800) he founded the _Arcadia Ulyssiponense_, of which he drew up the statutes in September 1756. The first aim of these early Arcadians was, as we have noticed, to break the shackles of Spanish influence and _gongorismo_, which was, indeed, on the wane in the land of its birth. Diniz da Cruz’ own poems were written in good idiomatic Portuguese. In _O Hyssope_ he satirizes with telling vigour the use of gallicisms, and his comedy _O Falso Heroismo_ is thoroughly Portuguese in subject and treatment. From 1764 to 1774 he was stationed at Elvas, and here a quarrel between the bishop, D. Lourenço de Lancastre, and the dean, D. José Carlos de Lara, furnished him with the subject of his celebrated mock-heroic poem _O Hyssope_. The legend runs that he was summoned to read his satire to the all-powerful Pombal in the presence of the infuriated bishop, and that the poem proved too much for the gravity of the minister, who appointed him a judge at Rio de Janeiro (1776). Thence he was transferred to Oporto (1787), but in 1790 was again appointed to Rio de Janeiro, and showed himself merciless in sentencing the Brazilian poets Claudio Manuel da Costa, Gonzaga, and Ignacio José de Alvarengo Peixoto (1748-93), accused of conspiring to secure the independence of their country. _O Hyssope_ was first published in 1802, three years after the author’s death. The idea of the poem was derived from Boileau’s _Le Lutrin_. Boileau would have been horrified by its eight cantos of slovenly and monotonous blank verse, which often scarcely rises above prose; but as a satire on the times and in its grotesque portraiture of prelate and lawyer and notary it is sometimes irresistibly comic. The mock-heroic _Benteida_, written by ALEXANDRE ANTONIO DE LIMA of Lisbon (1699-_c._ 1760?) and published fifty years before _O Hyssope_, consisted of three cantos of _oitavas_. Two editions appeared in 1752, published at ‘Constantinople’ as written by ‘Andronio Meliante Laxaed’. Pedro de Azevedo Tojal (†1742) had used the same metre for his _Foguetario_ (1729). The burlesque poem _O Reino da Estupidez_ (1819), written in four cantos of easily-flowing blank verse by the Brazilians Francisco de Mello Franco (1757-1823) and José Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva (1763-1838), is professedly an imitation of _aquelle activo e discreto Diniz na Hyssopaïda_, only the butt here is not the Chapter of Elvas but the professors of Coimbra University.