CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF SAA DE MIRANDA AND ANTONIO FERREIRA.
The comparatively correct style of poetry introduced into Portuguese literature by Saa de Miranda, and the still more coldly correct style of Antonio de Ferreira, though favoured by that portion of the polite world which valued a reputation for learning, were but little esteemed by the great bulk of the public. The poets of this sect may fairly be said to constitute a classical school, without thereby admitting them to an equal rank with the incorrect men of genius whose irregular effusions could scarcely fail to possess more poetic character, than other works which are now to be noticed; such, for example, as the poems of Andrade Caminha, who formed himself entirely on the model of Ferreira. The efforts made by the poets of this classic school to attain the correctness of the ancients seem to have checked their powers of fancy, and it may be presumed that imaginations which were so easily repressed, could not be very creative and energetic. Those who, like some modern German writers would, in defiance of every rule of language, render genius the measure of classic excellence, must find a new term to designate that poetry, the greatest merit of which is the elegant perfection and pure rounding of poetic forms after the example of the ancients. This, which is in other respects an inferior style of poetry, is nevertheless held in consideration by all cultivated nations. To reject it as altogether worthless would indeed be very unjust, since it serves to shew how judgment, talent, and taste, can by the study of ancient models, produce, even without the aid of genius, a certain kind of poetic beauty, which is not unmeritorious, though it frequently presents scarcely a shadow of that pure and sublime beauty which is the offspring of real genius. Poetry of this kind is therefore styled classical, merely in reference to a certain degree of affinity which its forms bear to the classical forms of Greek and Roman art.