PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
The third period of Portuguese poetry and eloquence arises so imperceptibly out of the second, that no particular date, or remarkable event in Portuguese literature can be said to form a dividing point between them. The influence of the French taste on the Portuguese is the characteristic mark of the commencement of this last period. But even that influence never produced any thing like a revolution in the state of polite learning in Portugal. French taste worked its way into the language and the literature of the Portuguese, as tranquilly as into their manners. It therefore neither forcibly supplanted the old taste, nor caused any conflict of literary factions at all resembling that warfare, which arose between the Gallicists and the adherents of the old style in Spain. Thus the literature of Portugal, for the second time, asserted its peaceful character. As in the sixteenth century no Portuguese Boscan had to contend with an old romantic party, so in the eighteenth century there arose no Portuguese Luzan to uphold the French taste by methodical rules of art. There occurred, therefore, no violent reaction of old patriotism against Gallicism, like that experienced in Spanish literature. Under these circumstances an opportunity was at last afforded for the English taste also to operate quietly and imperceptibly on that of the Portuguese. The historian, however, who finds it necessary to fix on some particular point for the commencement of this last principal division of the history of Portuguese poetry and eloquence, is constrained to take his departure from the change of political relations, which has been the main cause of Portuguese cultivation and literature becoming, in the struggle between French and English tendencies, what they now are. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, those conflicting tendencies which have threatened the very existence of the kingdom of Portugal, first began to manifest themselves.
CHAP. I.
GENERAL HISTORY OF POETICAL AND RHETORICAL CULTIVATION IN PORTUGAL DURING THIS PERIOD.
Total decay of Portuguese Literature towards the end of the Seventeenth Century.
In the year 1668, when the Spanish government again recognized the independence of the Portuguese monarchy, the difference between what that monarchy had been, and what it then was, became palpable. It appeared that even its new existence was not altogether assured by the peace with Spain. The flame of patriotism no longer glowed with its wonted ardour in Portuguese breasts; and the hope of re-conquering those territories in India of which the Dutch had obtained possession was extinguished. The gold and diamond mines, discovered in Brazil, offered, it is true, a compensation for the lost sources of oriental wealth. But the old spirit of national enterprise was no more, and the people, as well as the government, wanted energy and talent for the useful employment of treasures, from which the commercial policy of England well knew how to derive advantage. A general lethargy seemed to overspread the nation; and towards the close of the seventeenth century the effects of that lethargy became no less manifest in the depression of literature than in the decay of military and maritime power, of the finances, and of all the branches of national industry. On the breaking out of the war of the Spanish succession, the court of Lisbon inclined sometimes to the French, and sometimes to the English party; but while the government thus wavered, and was at a loss what to do, the nation seemed perfectly disposed to adopt the manners introduced from France, and French literature soon gained the same ascendancy in Portugal as in the rest of Europe. But the Portuguese were not, at that period, prepared to estimate the merits of French literature. Those who moved in the polite world learned to speak and read French, and to mutilate their mother tongue.[335] But only a few individuals of uncommon acquirements took pleasure in cultivating their literary taste after French models. The majority of the poets, or versifiers of Portugal were, properly speaking, entirely destitute of taste.
In taking a comprehensive view of the state of poetry and eloquence in Portugal, during the eighteenth century, it will be proper to follow the thread of the national annals; for the general history of this portion of Portuguese literature resolves into about as many sections as the number of the reigns into which the political history of the country is divided. The period was indeed now gone by in which the nation formed itself, rather than suffered itself to be formed by the government.