DEFICIENCY WITH REGARD TO HISTORICAL ROMANCES—LITTLE INFLUENCE OF THE CULTIVATION OF LATIN VERSE ON PORTUGUESE LYRIC POETRY.
Narrative and particularly historical romances seem never to have been so highly esteemed by the Portuguese as by the Spaniards. It is probable that in this class of composition the Portuguese merely imitated the Spaniards, whom they instructed, on the other hand, in bucolic poetry.[25]
The enthusiasm with which the Portuguese devoted themselves to the cultivation of lyric poetry in their native tongue, was not abated by the passion for latin poetry, which towards the close of the fifteenth century prevailed in Portugal as well as in Italy. This literary coincidence was probably occasioned by the commercial intercourse which then subsisted between Portugal and Italy. The fame of Angelo Poliziano attracted one of his most ardent admirers, the ingenious Henrique Cayado, better known by the name of Ermigius, from Portugal to Italy, where he entered the ranks of the revivers of latin poetry. Cayado was imitated by a considerable number of Portuguese writers who became celebrated for the composition of latin verse.[26] But it does not appear that the national poetry, in the vernacular language, was in any way neglected or despised by the Portuguese nobility; and the favour of the great exercised a more powerful influence over the poetic spirit of the nation, than the example of the learned. There is also very little ground for supposing that the Portuguese writers endeavoured to form the romantic poetry of their country on the model of the antique. A correct notion of the essential distinction between romantic and classic composition secured at this period the Portuguese as well as the Italians against the introduction of incongruous and spurious forms in their poetry; and taste was not yet sufficiently cultivated to admit of a judicious union of the classic and the romantic styles.