ROMANTIC PROSE—TRANSLATIONS.
A new era of romantic prose might also have been commenced in Portugal, had the poetic spirit of the old Portuguese pastoral romances been modified, instead of being enfeebled by the introduction of the cultivated forms of modern prose. Translations of foreign novels seem to have too readily satisfied that portion of the Portuguese public, whose cultivation was, through this species of reading, gradually approximating to the taste of the other nations of Europe. A translation from the French of Le Sage’s popular Gil Blas was supplied by the poet Barbosa Du Boccage, who is probably descended from a French family. This was soon followed by translations of the Moral Tales of D’Arnaud, and of various works of a similar description.