CORTEREAL.
In the same school of correct poetry with Andrade Caminha and Bernardes, arose the ingenious Jeronymo Cortereal, another of those chivalrous spirits of the sixteenth century, for whom every ordinary sphere of life was too limited. Ambitious of doing honour to his country and his distinguished family, he served in the Portuguese army against the infidels in Asia and Africa. He afterwards settled on his estate near Evora. In his residence, which was situated on a hill, and surrounded by rude precipices, and which commanded an extensive view of the surrounding country, he devoted himself to poetic composition; and sometimes, for the sake of variety, turned his attention to music and painting. This romantic abode of the muses charmed even the cold-hearted Philip II. of Spain, when he visited his kingdom of Portugal. Cortereal, who on that occasion, rendered homage to the new sovereign in verse, had previously often been unfaithful to his native tongue. He is included in the number of those Spanish poets, who indefatigably but vainly vied with each other to convert historical art into epic art, and to produce a Spanish national epopee.[207]—He related in Spanish verse and in a poem of fifteen cantos, the history of the battle of Lepanto, which has given occasion to so much Spanish poetry of every description. In the Portuguese language, he wrote two poems of a similar kind, which, at the time of their production were very much esteemed. The subject of one is the siege of the Portuguese garrison of Diu in India, which was valiantly defended by the Governor, Mascarenhas. In the other of these works Cortereal relates in the same style, the hapless story of Manoel de Souza and his wife, who on their return from India were shipwrecked on the coast of Africa, and who after wandering about for a considerable time, perished among the savages. To impart poetic decoration to prosaic events of this kind, borrowed from the history of the period, was the prevailing fashion of the day in Spain and Portugal; and to banish such narrations from the region of poetry, was an idea that never suggested itself to any poet, still less to the public.[208]
OTHER PORTUGUESE POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—FERREIRA DE VASCONCELLOS; RODRIGUEZ DE CASTRO; LOBO DE SOROPITA; &c.
Unconnected with this classical school, which became extinct about the close of the sixteenth century, several Portuguese poets pursued their own course, nearly in the same manner as Camoens, though not with the same success. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, for example, a man of considerable acquirements, who held a distinguished post in Lisbon, rendered himself celebrated as the writer of several comedies which were much esteemed. He was also the author of a new romance of the Round Table.[209]
At a somewhat later period lived Estevam Rodriguez de Castro, a poet, and at the same time a learned physician, who was invited to Italy by the grand duke of Tuscany. He is the author of various sonnets, odes and eclogues.
Fernando Rodriguez Lobo de Soropita, the publisher of the miscellaneous poems of Camoens, likewise belongs to this age. Besides his juridical works, he was the author of various pieces of humour in verse.
The present opportunity may be taken to mention the latin verses, which were at this period still current in Portugal, and by the composition of which, men of education, and even men in office of the first rank, endeavoured to obtain a place near the ancient classics, without interfering with the poets who adhered to their vernacular tongue. The learned statesman Miguel de Cabedo de Vasconcellos, who resided for several years in France, was particularly distinguished as a writer of latin verse. Ancient literature seems, at this time, to have had a powerful influence on the education of the Portuguese nobility; and as, at this period, all the most celebrated Portuguese poets belonged to noble families, it cannot be doubted that, the invisible link between the Portuguese and latin poetry, was then much stronger than the visible one, which never can be mistaken in the works of these poets.
To enumerate the remaining names of the Portuguese poets of the age of Camoens, is a task which must be resigned to the writer, whose object it may be to pursue more minutely the details of this particular department of literature. Another Portuguese classic of the sixteenth century, must, however, be included among the number of those poets, who, in a general history of modern poetry and eloquence, are the more worthy to be placed in a conspicuous light, in proportion as they are little celebrated beyond the confines of their native land.