TELLES DA SYLVA AND NUNES DA SYLVA.
Antonio Telles da Sylva was likewise distinguished among the multitude of sonneteers by a better cultivated taste.[319] He also composed latin verses, though he was gentil-homem da camara (a gentleman of the chamber).
But a greater share of attention is due to the poems of Andre Nunes da Sylva, an equally unassuming and ingenious writer, who received his first education in Brazil, and who died a Theatin monk in Portugal.[320] His spiritual sonnets, canções, and romances, are at least free from absurd conceits and Marinistical subtilties. It was, however, scarcely possible at any time, but more especially at the period of the most violent re-action against protestantism, not to deviate from reason, in representing poetically, and with religious fervour, the mysteries of the catholic faith, according to the opinions alone considered orthodox in Portugal and Spain. Nevertheless among the spiritual poems of Nunes da Sylva there are some, which though certainly as romantic as pious, are by no means fantastic, and which may be ranked among the best of their kind.[321] Even where the pious writer appears to have fallen into the most extravagant metaphors of the Marinists, as when he styles the tomb of St. Isabella “a flower of the firmament, a star of the field;” or, shortly after, “a nightingale, an animated jewel, an Orpheus to the ear, and a flower to the eye,”[322] his eccentric plays of ideas have still a poetic keeping. Among the patriotic poems, to which the war with Spain gave birth, there are several by Nunes da Sylva, which are distinguished for correct and picturesque representation, at least in single passages;[323] and his sonnets and songs of love possess, with all their faults, a considerable portion of poetic tenderness.