Of the extent to which the perverted taste, which in the seventeenth century disfigured Portuguese, even more than Spanish poetry influenced the didactic epistolary style, a judgment may be formed by reference to the writings of Antonio Alvares da Cunha. This author, one of the most distinguished statesmen and literary characters of the reigns of John IV. and Alphonso VI. addressed epistles to Joaõ Nunez da Cunha, who was appointed viceroy of the Portuguese dominions in India. To express the trivial idea of Nunez da Cunha being about to sail from Lisbon for India, Alvares da Cunha pompously says, that the new viceroy will cut through “the crystal waves from the mouth of the Tagus, to those new regions which the world descried by the waving of the Quinas.”[310] The time of the sailing of the ship is described as the time during which the viceroy’s “winged beachen trees spread their pinions, carrying with them the wind, while they pursue their silvery path.” He next regrets that the instrument with which he writes does not perfectly express his ideas, observing “that though the pen touch softly the guitar of the paper, rude thunder resounds from that guitar.”[311] This epistle is one of the longest in Portuguese literature; and though totally deficient in the true epistolary character, it nevertheless contains many good ideas and sound precepts, while at the same time it exhibits a vain display of historical erudition.[312]
JERONYMO BAHIA.
The taste of the public was, in like manner, corrupted by Jeronymo Bahia, of whose existence in other respects no account is preserved.[313] The old fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa had already been so completely exhausted, that a recurrence to it might have been expected rather to disgust than to please; and yet, as if a new relation of that wearisomely repeated story had been all that was necessary to establish a writer on a level with Gongora, Jeronymo Bahia collected a store of affected phrases, and with pompous gravity remodelled the often celebrated theme of the Cyclops and his disdainful mistress.[314] Thus powerless had been all the pointed satire of the more judicious party. Divested of its original heaviness, and united with the fanciful Marinism, Gongorism now seemed to its defenders to be raised above the reach of ridicule. Bahia, too, thought it, perhaps, the less necessary to guard against the wit of the adverse party, since he was himself a master in subtle witticism. He wrote numerous comic romances, that is to say, comic tales and descriptions of travels in redondilhas. His playful loquacity flows in an inexhaustible current in these romances, which are not destitute of comic interest; but their extreme length would still have rendered them tedious, even though the author had better succeeded in catching the gay style suited to such trivial compositions.[315] His great facility in rhyming is recorded in a notice affixed to one of his odes. This ode was written on a victory gained by the Portuguese during their war with Spain, and Bahia composed it in a single day, so that it was presented to the king on the evening of the day on which the account of the battle was circulated. Surely no other manufacturer of rhyme would, like him, have spun out an Idyllio panegyrico, on a chandelier, which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Queen of Portugal, to fifty octavo pages of versified prattle. From the works of this author may also be incidentally learned the direction which the prevailing spirit of religion took in Portugal, when the old national energy expired, and when the still more remarkable decline of the Spanish monarchy enabled the Portuguese to maintain an eight-and-twenty years war against Spain, in defence of their recovered independence. It was at this period that the court of Lisbon resorted to the far-famed expedient of enlisting by prayers and entreaties Saint Anthony among the Portuguese troops, and formally investing him with the military rank of generalissimo, in order to render the army invincible. The inhabitant of heaven was declared to have accepted the command, and Jeronymo Bahia wrote a song of praise in honour of King Alphonso VI. who effected this extraordinary arrangement.[316]
FRANCISCO VASCONCELLOS.
The dominion of bad taste and worthless subtilty was not, however, during the second half of the seventeenth century extended over the whole of the Portuguese Parnassus. The writings of some poets still evinced sound judgment and some portion of the old and nobler style of art. Francisco de Vasconcellos of the island of Madeira, inclined somewhat more to the side of reason than most of his contemporaries.[317] Some of his sonnets are so free from unnatural and overstrained thoughts,[318] that one might be induced to consider his other productions as parodied imitations in the style of Andrada, were it not that these outbalance the number of his correct poems, and that his works include a new dressing of the long before overdone story of Polyphemus and Galatæa.
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.
OTHER SONNETEERS—CONTINUED INTERVENTION OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE IN PORTUGUESE POETRY.
It is not necessary to enter into particular details respecting other Portuguese sonneteers. Some who enjoyed celebrity lived until the commencement of the eighteenth century, among whom the names of Diogo de Monroy e Vasconcellos, Thomas de Sousa, and Luis Simoes de Azavedo, deserve to be mentioned. About the same period lived Diogo Camacho, who was the author of a lively poem, entitled a Journey to Parnassus; the idea of which was doubtless taken from the work of Cervantes of the same name, but which when compared with that master-piece, possesses no great merit. On comparing the Portuguese sonnets, the authors of which lived till the eighteenth century, with those of a somewhat older date, an obvious, though certainly not a striking tendency of Portuguese taste, to a more correct direction of the imagination, is, upon the whole, perceptible. But how far this change in Portuguese literature was effected by the increasing influence of French taste, which about this time commenced its universal sway; or whether it is at all attributable to the introduction of that taste, are questions not easy to be decided. This, however, is certain, that the incorrect, silly, and fantastic style of writing and judging poetry, still maintained its ground in the Portuguese literature of the eighteenth century long after the Count de Ericeira, who will soon be further noticed, had drawn from the school of Boileau those principles by which he wished to improve the literary taste of his countrymen.