CHAP. II.
HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE POETRY AND ELOQUENCE FROM THE EPOCH OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ITALIAN STYLE, TILL TOWARDS THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Tranquil Adoption of the Italian Style.
The introduction of the Italian style into Portuguese poetry was unaccompanied by any remarkable struggle or sensation. No mention is made by writers on general literature, of the existence of a party strenuously opposed to that style in Portugal; and even the works of the Portuguese poets present few or no traces of any literary conflict on the subject. That a change which excited so violent a storm in Spain passed tranquilly in Portugal, was certainly not owing to indifference on the part of the Portuguese in matters of taste. But the Portuguese most distinguished for cultivation, were not attached to the old romance poetry by so decided a predilection as the Castilians. Besides, as has already been stated, that class had become, at an early period, acquainted with Italian poetry. Some of the Italian syllabic metres might already be regarded as vernacular in Portugal, and the spirit of Italian poetry was certainly not unknown to the Portuguese, since they had, from an early period possessed translations of some of Petrarch’s sonnets. Thus the way was already traced out for the thorough reform of the old taste, and the natural flexibility of the Portuguese character was more easily reconciled than Castilian stubbornness to that reform. When, therefore, even Spanish poets had set the judicious example of improving their national poetry, an opposition which would have appeared the mere imitation of an unreasonable party spirit was not to be expected in Portugal. Finally, the poet with whose works the new epoch in Portuguese poetry commences, so successfully seized the delicate tone by which the union of the Italian and the old Portuguese styles was to be accomplished, that the national taste found in him precisely what it required, and the innovation was accommodated to the Portuguese character under the most pleasing forms.
SAA DE MIRANDA.
The romantic Theocritus, Saa de Miranda, one of the most distinguished poets of the sixteenth century, has already been noticed in the History of Spanish Poetry.[60] He shines indeed more conspicuously among the Spanish than the Portuguese poets; but in his native country he stands at the head of a poetic school. The present is, therefore, the fit place to relate the necessary particulars of his biography.[61]
Saa de Miranda, the descendant of a noble family, was born at Coimbra, in the year 1495. His parents destined him for the study of the law, and wished, if possible, that he might become professor of jurisprudence in his native city. To occupy the chair of a teacher of law was at that period considered an object worthy of the ambition of persons of rank; and to take an interest in the prosperity of the university of Coimbra was found to be a strong recommendation to the favour of the sovereign. Saa de Miranda had but little taste for jurisprudence, yet, for the sake of pleasing his parents, he pursued his study of legal science until he obtained the degree of doctor. He was afterwards appointed to a professorship, and is said to have distinguished himself by his lectures. But on the death of his father, Saa de Miranda immediately bade farewell to jurisprudence, and resolved to live after his own taste. We are not informed what age he had attained at this period. That his character was, however, truly poetic, is sufficiently obvious, not only from his writings, but from several anecdotes which are related of him. In mixed companies he often sat in a state of silent abstraction, without observing or being aware that he was himself observed. Tears would sometimes flow from his eyes, without any apparent cause, and he himself was so little conscious of their presence, or cared so little to conceal them, that if any one happened to address him, he would, while he suffered himself to be quietly drawn into conversation, frequently forget to dry his moistened cheeks. He cherished a particular desire to travel; and this inclination he gratified when filial duty no longer bound him to the professor’s chair. He declined the offers of King John III. who, in order to detain him would have provided for him in another way, and proceeded to Spain, where he probably acquired a more intimate knowledge of the Castilian language than he had before possessed. He next travelled to Italy, and visited the cities of Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples, and Milan, where he found sufficient opportunities for rendering himself intimately acquainted with the Italian poetry. On his return to his native country he was appointed to a place at court, and enjoyed the favour of the king. He was now accounted one of the most accomplished courtiers in Lisbon, notwithstanding the cast of melancholy which still distinguished him. His pastoral poetry, however, peaceful as its character was, involved him in a dispute with a Portuguese nobleman, who discovered in an eclogue some allusions which he applied to himself. The quarrel having become warm, the poet found it necessary to quit the court. He retired to his estate of Tapada near Ponte de Lima, in the province of Entre Minho e Douro, where he devoted himself wholly to his literary studies, and to the cultivation of rural and domestic happiness. Next to poetry, he took most interest in practical philosophy. His acquaintance with ancient literature was sufficient to enable him to enrich his books with passages from Homer, in the form of marginal notes. He also understood music, and was a performer on the violin. Notwithstanding the gentleness of his temperament, he was fond of chivalrous exercises, and took particular delight in hunting the wolf. He lived happily with his wife, though she was not handsome nor even young at the period when he married her. During his life, his poetic fame was widely spread. Several poets, who reflect honour on their native country, particularly Antonio Ferreira and Andrade Caminha, formed themselves chiefly on the model of Saa de Miranda. His two comedies so highly pleased the Infante Cardinal Henry, that they were performed in the palace of that prince, before a company of prelates, and other persons of rank. After the poet’s decease these comedies were printed by order of the cardinal. Having reached the sixty-third year of his age, he died universally admired and beloved, at Tapada, in the year 1558.
No trace of resemblance to a style produced by imitation, distinguishes the works of Saa de Miranda from the more ancient Portuguese poetry. What he learnt from the Italians was a genuine though not perfect refinement of the old Portuguese style, under more beautiful forms. He was indeed, and ever continued to be, too true a Portuguese to aim at the highest degree of Italian correctness, though it appears, from what he has himself stated, that he was most industrious in the revisal of his works.[62] According to his own declaration, it also appears that he did not rely with much more confidence on systematic criticism, than on the fickle approbation of the public. That feeling under the dominion of which he always lived and moved, was, in the dernier resort, his critical rule and guide. The Italian models only directed him to the course which he himself would naturally have adopted. To use his own expression, he culled flowers with the muses, the loves, and the graces.[63]
Had Saa de Miranda been in a greater degree an imitator than a self-dependent poet, his sonnets would, doubtless, have been more numerous; for he was peculiarly fitted, from his knowledge of the delicacies of the Italian style, to shine in that form of composition. But his Portuguese as well as his Spanish sonnets are few in number; and those of the tender cast, like the sonnets of Boscan, and most of the Spanish writers, entirely harmonize with the old national tone. Besides indulging himself in the use of masculine rhymes, he represented the complaints of love in the old strain of despair, and contributed his share in pourtraying the endless conflict between passion and reason.[64] But he particularly excelled in painting the soft enthusiasm of love,[65] and his sonnets acquire a peculiar colouring from the mixture of pastoral simplicity, which he could never entirely exclude from his style of poetic representation. The reiterated allusion to the joys and sorrows of human existence, and the transitoriness of all things, is a grecian trait in the compositions of this poet.[66]
The romantic pastoral world was the native sphere of Saa de Miranda’s muse. The greater number and by far the most beautiful of his eight eclogues are, however, in the Spanish language, for he wrote only two in Portuguese. It can scarcely be doubted, therefore, that Saa de Miranda considered the Spanish language to be more expressive or more elegant than the Portuguese, or that for some other reason he preferred it to his mother tongue; and yet as far as a foreigner may presume to judge between the two languages, his choice ought to have been reversed, for the Portuguese seems expressly formed for romantic pastoral poetry. Perhaps Saa de Miranda thought, without being himself clearly conscious of entertaining such an idea, that it was more poetic to give dignity to the soft pastoral style, by the help of the sonorous Castilian tongue, than to suffer it to be altogether naturally expressed through the medium of the Portuguese idiom. For the character of his pastoral style was to be romantic and wholly national, to resemble the idyllic style of Theocritus only in the simplicity of rural expression, but by no means to be popular, in a prosaic sense. Whether Saa de Miranda’s shepherds and shepherdesses converse in Spanish or in Portuguese, the rural scene is always laid in Portugal. On this account the first of the two Portuguese eclogues of this modern Theocritus, is partly unintelligible to the foreigner, who possesses only a literary knowledge of the peculiarities of the rural idiom of Portugal. The poet himself observes, at the conclusion of his dedicatory stanzas to the Infante Dom Manoel, that he discourses in a new language.[67] The new language here alluded to is produced by a delicate blending of the turns most remarkable for graceful simplicity in the Portuguese vernacular dialect, with a set of dignified words and phrases approximating more nearly to the latin. But the effect of the union is very imperfectly appreciated by a foreigner; and the finest charm of the expression is lost in the labour of studying a poetic language of this kind. Besides the simplicity of the composition does not exclude from Saa de Miranda’s eclogues, those mysterious allusions to the romantic manners of the age, which are so common in the writings of the old Portuguese poets. The first eclogue which he wrote in his native language, abounds in such allusions, though it is in other respects one of the least artificial of the poet’s productions in the class to which it belongs. It is a pastoral dialogue in tercets concerning love and indifference, happiness and unhappiness. Three cantigas, the first in octaves, the second in redondillas and in the Spanish language, and the third in the syllabic measure of an Italian canzone, form the poetic essence of this, simple composition. The disposition to prefer the Spanish language for imagery, and the Portuguese for reasoning, which is a striking feature in Saa de Miranda’s poetry, plainly betrays itself in this eclogue. The romantic conversation which forms the frame work to the cantigas in this eclogue, consists chiefly of general observations, which in the simple pastoral language in which they are expressed, have a very piquant character, but which are rendered scarcely intelligible to a foreigner, by the occurrence of broken popular phrases in a half ironical, half serious tone.[68] To the philological obscurity of several passages is added the enigmatical expression of suppressed pain, which, however, is natural enough in the mouths of the persons to whom it is assigned. In a word this eclogue is entirely national. None but a Portuguese can justly estimate its poetic merits and demerits. To a foreigner the cantigas are decidedly the best portion.[69]
The second Portuguese eclogue, included in the works of Saa de Miranda, has essentially the same tone and character as the first; with this difference, that it is versified throughout in national stanzas of ten lines (decimas). Descriptions of the general instability and transitory nature of earthly things are particularly conspicuous in this as well as in several of Miranda’s other poems.[70] But it would be in vain to look in these Portuguese eclogues for passages of such exquisite beauty as those which occur in the Spanish eclogues of the same author. It was only on the Castilian Parnassus that Saa de Miranda established his fame as one of the most distinguished of bucolic poets. With the exception of elegant language and versification, his Portuguese eclogues are not much superior to the cordial effusions of Ribeyro.