FRANCIS DE ROJAS; CASTRO; DIAMANTE.—Francis de Rojas, who must not be confused with Ferdinand de Rojas, author of Celestine, though possessing less spirit than his predecessors, is nevertheless a distinguished dramatic poet. The French of the seventeenth century freely pilfered from him. Thomas Corneille borrowed a goodly portion of his Bertrand de Cigarral, Scarron a large part of his Jodelet, Le Sage an episode in Gil Blas. If only for their connection with the French drama, William de Castro and Diamante must be noticed. William de Castro wrote a play, The Exploits of the Cid in Youth, which Corneille knew and which he imitated in his celebrated tragedy, adding incomparable beauty. Diamante in his turn imitated Corneille very closely in The Son who Avenges his Father. Voltaire, mistaken in dates, believed Corneille had imitated Diamante.
PORTUGUESE WRITERS.—In Portugal the sixteenth century was the golden age. Poets, dramatists, historians, and moralists were extremely numerous; several possessed genius and many displayed great talent. Among lyrical poets were Bernardin Ribeiro, Christoval Falcam, Diogo Bernardes, Andrade Caminha, Alvarez do Oriente, Rodriguez Lobo. Ribeiro wrote eclogues half in narrative or dialogue, half lyrical. He also produced a romance intersected with tales (Le Sage in his Gil Blas thus wrote, as is known, and in this only imitated the Spaniards), entitled The Innocent Girl, which often evinces great refinement.
Christoval Falcam was also bucolic, but his eclogues often ran to nine hundred verses. He also wrote Voltas, which are lyric poems suitable for setting to music. Diogo Bernardes also wrote eclogues and letters collected under the title of the Lyma. The Lyma is a river. To Bernardes the Lyma was what the Lignon was to D'Urfé in his Astrea.
Caminha, a court poet decidedly analogous to the French Saint-Gelais, possessed dexterity and happy phraseology. Eclogues, elegiacs, epitaphs, and epistles were the ordinary occupations of his muse.
Alvarez do Oriente has left a great romanesque work, a medley of prose and verse entitled Portugal Transformed (Lusitania transformanda), which is extremely picturesque apart from its idylls and lyrical poems.
Lobo was highly prolific. He was author of pastoral romances, medleys of verse and prose (The Strange Shepherd, The Spring, Disenchantment), a great epic poem (The Court at the Village), in prose conversations on moral and literary questions which have remained classic in Portugal, as well as romances and eclogues.
EPIC POETS.—The most notable epic poets were Corte-Real, Manzinho, Pereira de Castro, Francisco de Saa e Menezès, Doña de la Lacerda, and, finally, the great Camoens. Corte-Real, a writer of the highest talent, was author of an epic which we would style a romance in verse, although founded on fact, upon The Shipwreck of Sepulveda and her husband Lianor. The varied and picturesque narrative is often pathetic. It would be more so, to us at least, were it not for the incessant intervention of pagan deities.
Francisco de Saa e Menezès sang of the great Albuquerque and of Malaca Conquered. He mingled amorous and romantic tales with narratives and descriptions of battles. He possessed the sense of local colour and brilliant imagination; he has been accused of undue negligence with regard to correction.
Doña de la Lacerda, professor of Latin literature to the children of Philip III, although born at Porto, wrote nearly always in Spanish. The Spain Delivered (from the Moors), an epic poem, is her chief work; she also composed comedies and various poems in Spanish. On rare occasions she wrote in Portuguese prose.
CAMOËNS.—The glory of these sound poets is effaced by that of Camoëns. Exiled in early youth for a reason analogous to the one which occasioned the banishment of Ovid, a soldier who lost an eye at Ceuta, wandering in India, shipwrecked and, according to tradition, only saving his poem which he held in one hand whilst swimming with the other, he returned to Portugal after sixteen years of exile, assisting at the struggles, decline, and subjection of his country, dying (1579) at the moment when for a time Portugal ceased to have a political existence. He wrote The Lusiad (that is the Portuguese), which was the history of Vasco da Gama and of his expedition to India. The description of Africa, the Cape of Tempests (the Cape of Good Hope), with the giant Adamaston opposing the passage, and the description of India were the foundation of the narrative. Episodes narrated by individuals, as in Virgil and as in the Spanish romance, formed an internal supplement, and thus was narrated almost all the history of Portugal, and so it came to pass that the love of Inez de Castro and of Don Pedro formed part of the story of Vasco da Gama. Camoëns was a powerful narrator, a magnificent orator in verse, and, above all, a very great painter. He evinced curious taste, even as compared with his contemporaries, such as the continual commingling of mythological divinities with Christian truths: for instance, a prayer addressed by Vasco to Jesus Christ was granted by Venus. It may also be observed that the poem lacked unity and was only a succession of poems. But, as Voltaire said, "The art of relating details, by the pleasure it affords, can make up for all the rest; and that proves the work to be full of great beauties, since for two hundred years it has formed the delight of a clever race who must be well aware of its faults."