About the lives of the two poets of Saudade, Bernardim Ribeiro and Christovam Falcão, little is known, but their eclogues are notable for their perfection of form and that passionate melancholy peculiar to Portuguese literature. Elaborate efforts have been made to construct their biographies out of their poems, a risky proceeding with poets who so evidently delighted in dismal incidents for their own sake.
THE CATHEDRAL, BRAGA
Camões.
Luis de Camões, the greatest of all these poets, was a few years younger than most of them. To him at least grief and disappointment came in flowing measure, and he lived to die with his country in 1580, probably at the age of 56. Out of his sorrows he built a fairy edifice of verse, which has delighted and sustained his countrymen ever since. With him Portuguese poetry reached a level only dimly heralded by his predecessors: to judge from their poetry only, it would be difficult to believe that the lives of Vicente, Miranda and Camões overlapped.
Dom Francisco Manuel.
The most notable literary figure of the seventeenth century in Portugal is Dom Francisco Manuel de Mello (1608-66). Those who read of his manifold adventures in Mr. Prestage’s biography will perhaps wonder that he should have found time or temper to write at all, and his works are many and various, from the “History of the War in Catalonia” to the Carta de Guia de Casados and Cartas Familiares, admirably clear and direct in style.
Seventeenth-Century Prose.
Most of his contemporaries were infected with gongorismo from Spain, and their writings defaced by conceits and hyperbole. Jacyntho Freire d’Andrade (1597-1657) wrote the biography of Dom João de Castro in an artificial style closely modelled on that of Tacitus. Frei Bernardo de Brito (1569-1617) composed A Monarchia Lusitana (parts 1 and 2), of which it has been said that it ends where it should have begun—with the history of Portugal,[37] but which was written in good Portuguese prose. Frei Luis de Sousa (1555-1632) wrote among other works the life of Bartholomeu dos Martyres, Archbishop of Braga. As Manoel de Sousa Coutinho, he returned from the disastrous Alcacer Kebir expedition after a year’s captivity, and married the widow of Dom João de Portugal, who was killed at Alcacer Kebir. He retired to a convent, as did also his wife, after their daughter’s death. The legend of the return of Dona Magdalena’s first husband inspired Garrett with his celebrated play, Frei Luis de Sousa. There were a considerable number of miscellaneous prose works of merit, as the Discursos varios of Manoel Severim de Faria (1583-1655) and the Itinerario da India por terra até a ilha de Chipre by Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino. The works of the Jesuit Antonio Vieira (1608-1697) fill twenty-six volumes (with 200 sermons, 500 letters), those of Manoel Bernardes (1644-1710) nineteen volumes (sermons and moral treatises). In both Portuguese prose is seen at its best.