[14] An important monthly published at São Paulo, then under the editorship of Srs. Afranio Peixoto and Monteiro Lobato.
[15] Note, for example, the various spellings of the word literature here used as in the originals.
[16] The famous Portuguese seat of learning at Coimbra.
[17] João Ribeiro. A Lingua Nacional. São Paulo. 1921.
[18] Varnhagen, in his Introduction to the Florilegio da Poesia Brazileira (Vol. I of the two volumes that appeared in Lisbon in 1850, pages 19-20), has some interesting remarks upon the early hispanization of Portuguese in Brazil. Among such effects of Spanish upon Brazilian Portuguese he notes the transposition of the possessive pronouns; the opening of all vowels, thus avoiding the elision of final e or converting final o into u; the pronunciation of s at the end of a syllable as s instead of as sh, which is the Portuguese rule.
[19] The wise Goethe once said to Eckermann: “The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native land; but the native land of his poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble and beautiful, which is confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he finds it. Therein is he like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in Saxony.… And then, what is meant by love of one’s country? What is meant by patriotic deeds? If the poet has employed a life in battling with pernicious prejudice, in setting aside narrow views, in enlightening the minds, purifying the tastes, ennobling the feelings and thoughts of his countrymen, what better could he have done? how could he have acted more patriotically?”
[20] New York, 1917. P. X.
[21] Op. cit. P. 48.
[22] Julio Cejador y Frauca. Historia de la Lengua y Literatura Castellana, Madrid, 1915 to the present.
[23] In their Compendio de Historia da Literatura Brasileira (1909, Rio, 2a edição refundida) Sylvio Romero and João Ribeiro point out the existence of a certain Germanism from 1870 to 1889, due chiefly to the constant labours of Tobias Barreto. Italian influence is very strong in law, and that of the United States in political organization. As will be seen in a later chapter, the United States had, through Cooper, a share in the “Indianism” of the Brazilian Romanticists. Our Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whitman and Poe are well known, the latter pair through French rather than the original channels.