CHAP. III.
HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE POETRY AND ELOQUENCE, FROM THE LATTER YEARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY UNTIL TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH.
Decay of the ancient national energy in Portuguese Literature.
At the end of the sixteenth century the most brilliant period of Portuguese poetry had passed away. A new epoch did not, it is true, commence; for the style of invention and composition which during that century was introduced, continued essentially unaltered. The influence which the fantastic school of the Gongorists produced, in the first half of the seventeenth century, on most of the Portuguese writers, did not entirely repress the cultivation of the better style.[261] But the proper place to form a resting point in the account of the second period of the polite literature of Portugal is the present, for here genius ceased to advance, and dextrous talent merely traded on the stock which the sixteenth century had bequeathed. According to the plan of a history, in which it is intended to describe circumstantially, only the progress of poetic and rhetorical genius and taste, the account of Portuguese poetry and eloquence in the seventeenth century must therefore form merely a summary appendix to the preceding chapters.
At the commencement of the present book it was remarked, that the loss of independence experienced by the kingdom of Portugal, was attended with no immediate injury to Portuguese literature. The Spanish language could obtain no higher consideration in Portugal than it already enjoyed. The humbled national pride took pleasure in the courageous defence of the national language, and the Castilian tongue only served to remind the patriotic Portuguese of the ignominious occupation of his country. But several circumstances concurred to limit poetic genius in Portugal to a somewhat monotonous continuation of the old style in a few branches of poetic composition, while in Spain dramatic poetry, full of national boldness, rapidly advanced in the career of well merited fame. That fate had denied a Lope de Vega to the Portuguese language is not sufficient to account for this contrast, the Spanish would still have been banished from the stage in Portugal, had a Portuguese national theatre vied with that of Spain. In that case the competition of numerous poets would, perhaps, have ensured the cultivation of dramatic composition in the language of the country, which, since the death of Gil Vicente, had been neglected. But even Gil Vicente, as has been already observed, wrote his first drama in Spanish; and in his subsequent works he interspersed the Spanish with the Portuguese language, as if he felt that the latter was not of itself fitted to supply dialogue throughout the whole of a dramatic performance. The genuine Portuguese comedies of Saa de Miranda and Antonio Ferreira were by no means sufficiently national to excite the imitation of a poet who might wish to produce an effect upon the great body of the Portuguese public. Meanwhile the comedies of Lope de Vega found their way into Portugal, and since that period this class of comedy seemed to require the Spanish language to render it perfect. In the seventeenth century, many Spanish comedies were written by Portuguese authors; and the Portuguese poets who adhered to their mother tongue, sought another sphere. During the sixty years in which there was no court in Lisbon, Portuguese poetry withdrew entirely within the circle of private relations. The lyric forms of romantic love, with a supplemental supply of the favourite amatory pastoral poetry, and of versified jests of various kinds, seemed fully to satisfy the public. That the spirit of vigorous emulation should so suddenly have vanished among the Portuguese poets, would, however, be inconceivable, were it not that in Spain about the same period, every species of poetic composition, except dramatic poetry, which flowed like an impetuous torrent, remained stationary at the point at which it stood in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Both the Spaniards and the Portuguese felt the paralyzing influence of the political relations of their deeply humiliated countries; and in both nations despotism, spiritual and temporal, finally overthrew the power which had long kept it in equipoise. Even in Portugal, therefore, the restoration of the independence of the kingdom in the year 1640, though it excited new ebullitions of patriotism, could produce no new freedoms in poetry.
PORTUGUESE SONNETS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
In the history of Portuguese poetry, the seventeenth century may be called the Age of Sonnets. Lyric art in the old national syllabic metres was entirely abandoned in serious poetry. The composition of sonnets formed the particular recommendation of the man of the world in the circle of polite society; and both in spiritual and temporal affairs, sonnets were resorted to as the means of extricating their authors from difficulty. It would almost appear that at this period poetic merit in Portugal was estimated solely by the inexhaustible facility which an author displayed in the composition of these trifles. To acquire the title of a poet certainly nothing more was necessary than to write a few sonnets not absolutely contemptible. Thus, in the year 1631, when the number of printed Portuguese sonnets was increasing by thousands, Jacinto Cordeiro,[262] a minute calculator of the poetic fame of his nation, added a supplement of thirty-eight names of Portuguese bards to the list of Spanish and Portuguese poets, which Lope de Vega had furnished in his celebrated Laurel de Apolo.[263] Doubtless this erroneous estimate of the poetic glory of the nation contributed to check the growth of talent which might have taken a loftier flight, had not a few neatly turned sonnets been sufficient in public opinion, to confer on any individual all the fame of a poet. The limits of a general history of modern poetry are too narrow to afford room for a detailed notice of these sonneteers; a particular account can, therefore, only be given of a few of the most celebrated among them, who were also the authors of other poetical works, or who in any way assisted in improving or deteriorating the literary taste of their country.[264]
FARIA E SOUSA.
Manoel de Faria e Sousa who has been so repeatedly mentioned in the course of the present volume, and who has not been passed by unnoticed in the history of Spanish poetry,[265] exercised an important influence on the poetry of the Portuguese sonneteers, particularly in the first half of the seventeenth century. Possessing uncommon faculties, which were early disclosed, and early perverted, he distinguished himself while yet a youth by his extraordinary talents and powers of memory. In the year 1605, he participated, in quality of secretary, in the official duties of one of his relations, under whom he received the education fitting for a statesman. But neither his talents and acquirements, nor his connection with the most distinguished families of his native country, having conducted him to an object commensurate with his diligence and ambition, he quitted Portugal and visited Madrid. Though he did not realize all his expectations in the Spanish capital, he was not entirely neglected. He obtained a post in an embassy to Rome; and on his return to Madrid he found at least a tolerable source of subsistence. Still, however, he continued dissatisfied with his income, and on that account his pen was in constant activity. He himself states that he daily wrote twelve sheets, each page containing thirty lines. He possessed so great a facility in rhetorical turns and flourishes, that in the space of a single day he could compose a hundred addresses of congratulation and condolence, all sufficiently different from each other. As an author both in verse and in prose, he continued to labour with unabated assiduity to the period of his death, which happened in the year 1649.[266] A considerable portion of his numerous works will preserve his name in honourable recollection; but the value of that portion greatly depends on the subjects it embraces. They belong to the department of history and statistics, but they are all written in Spanish, and therefore cannot with propriety be farther noticed in the history of Portuguese literature. Faria e Sousa’s poems are also chiefly in Spanish; he wrote only sonnets and eclogues in Portuguese versez.[267] Of the six hundred, or to use his own phrase, “the six centuries” of sonnets, which, as it appears he selected for posterity out of a still greater number, precisely two hundred are Portuguese. Some of these compositions merit the praise which Faria e Sousa’s admirers have lavished on them all;[268] and the whole collection is animated by a buoyant spirit, which soars above ordinary and moderate elegance. But this spirit could not long accommodate itself to sound poetic judgment, nor to the old simplicity and natural flow of ideas and images. Without intentionally becoming an imitator of the Italian Marinists, the Spanish Gongorists, or the school of Lope de Vega, Faria e Sousa revelled in bold flights of fancy, like Lope de Vega, and indulged in eccentric extravagancies like the Marinists and Gongorists. The poetic flowers in his sonnets are overgrown by luxuriant parasitical weeds. In the first Century of the sonnets in the Portuguese language love is the only theme. The introductory sonnet announces that they are intended to celebrate the “penetrating shafts of love, which were shot from a pair of heavenly eyes, and which after inflicting immortal wounds, issued triumphant from the poet’s breast.”[269] This style pervades the whole collection. In one place a tender swain, named Menalio, forbids the satyres of the wood to steep their feet in the brook which has served as a bath to the fair Albania, that “morning-star, who in the depth of the water is the first of suns, where the sun himself is dazzled.”[270] On another occasion the poet complains of the “bitter taste he experiences in his mouth,” when he describes his pain to his mistress.[271] Sometimes it is scarcely possible to guess the meaning of these romantic conceits. But this style of poetic composition was by the admirers of Faria e Sousa denominated the ingenious and the tender style. The principal sonnets in the second Century pursue the same theme of romantic love, but they are sometimes so charming that the beauty of the successful passages, nearly throws into shade the distortions by which even that beauty is more or less alloyed.[272] Among the moral sonnets in this Century there are several which, though not abounding in ingenious ideas, are nevertheless expressive pictures of sentiment.[273] The sonetos sacros (spiritual sonnets), with which the collection closes, are, however, destitute of all trace of poetic merit. Whatever deserves to be pointed out as remarkable in the twelve Portuguese eclogues of Faria e Sousa, may with propriety be included in the notice respecting the degree of merit which this industrious writer possessed as a poetic theorist.
Faria e Sousa is the author of three treatises; the first, “On the sonnet;” the second, “On the erroneous notions of the moderns concerning poetry;” and the third, “On pastoral poetry.” These works must not be overlooked in the history of the literary taste of Portugal, since theoretical prolusions of this kind by poetic writers, supplied the place of a detailed art of poetry in Portuguese literature. All these treatises are written in the Spanish language.[274] The first, which is entitled Discurso de los Sonetos, is in itself insignificant. It merely contains a few scanty notices on the history of sonnet poetry, and some trifling observations hastily thrown together on the appropriateness of the sonnet metre in Spanish and Portuguese poetry. But towards the close of the treatise Faria e Sousa advances a very wide principle, which is exceedingly convenient for him in its application to his peculiar style of composition. One certainly must not, he says, grant absolution for excrescences and licences in poetry, from the notion that elegant language is of less importance than bold and beautiful ideas; but it is not to be forgotten “that a great man may sometimes do what he pleases, and that it is a great crime to call him to account for so doing, more particularly when those by whom he is called to account are pigmies in knowledge and judgment.”[275] That Faria e Sousa ranked himself in the class of great men is a circumstance which admits of no doubt. In his second treatise (Contra la opinion moderna acerca lo que es poesia) he has more clearly explained the nature of the ideas which in his opinion are more to be esteemed in poetry than elegant words. In the first place he applies the just principle that language does not make a poet in so loose and perverted a manner as to imply that correct versification is but of little importance. He then reasons again on a just principle most inconsistently, concerning the essence of poetry. He first observes that the essence of poetry as little consists in fine phrases and even in grand ideas, as in deep knowledge or in polished verse, (versos muy peinados). He next makes this assertion,—“the only things required in poetry are invention, imagery, pathos, and a display of every kind of knowledge.”[276] Considered in this point of view, he admits Marino to be far inferior to Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Ariosto, and similar poets. But then Torquato Tasso is scarcely a poet worth naming; for in Tasso’s poetry there is but little learning, little invention, and a common style of composition. Tasso is in his opinion a second Lucan, and nothing more; a historian indeed, but no poet. Finally, he complains that allegory, which he regards as particularly necessary to the beauty of a great poem, is totally wanting in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. Faria e Sousa seems to have picked up in Italy the opinions which form the groundwork of his vituperation of Tasso and his Jerusalem. Having ceased to rail against Tasso, he proceeds to declaim concerning poetry in a series of paragraphs, which plainly shew that he was totally deficient in clearness of ideas on the subject. Six of these paragraphs, in immediate succession, commence with such phrases as the following:—“He understands nothing of the matter;” or more briefly, “he is a fool,” (es necio); or “he is an absolute fool (es totalmente necio) who supposes,” &c. or “it is a proof of perfect ignorance,” (purissima ignorancia); or “it is a proof of a total want of knowledge of poetry to assert,” &c. And yet after all these rude sallies against a party which perhaps did no more than earnestly resist his attacks on correctness of ideas and language, he comes at last merely to this conclusion, that a writer of great genius must not be restrained by trifles, and that in his poetry he need only avoid singularity, coarseness and unintelligibility.