[21] The sun is born and lasts but a single day; dark night follows upon the light; beauty dies amidst the gloomy shadows and joy amid continued grief. Why, then, if the sun must die, was it born? Why, if light be beautiful, does it not endure? How is beauty thus transfigured? How does pleasure thus trust pain? But let firmness be lacking in sun and light, let permanence flee beauty, and in joy, let there be a note of sadness. Let the world begin, at length, in ignorance; for, whatever the boon, it is by nature constant only in its inconstancy.
[22] “The story of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand is but a child’s tale compared with the fearless adventure of our colonial brothers.” Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 127.
[23] Oliveira Lima. Aspectos da Litteratura Colonial Brazileira. Leipzig, 1896. This youthful work of the eminent cosmopolite furnishes valuable as well as entertaining collateral reading upon the entire colonial period in Brazil. The standpoint is often historical rather than literary, yet the proportions are fairly well observed.
[24] See, for just such inclusion, B. Gorin’s Die Geshichte vun Yiddishen Theater, New York, 1918, 2 vols. (In Yiddish.) Page 33, Volume I. With reference to the Jew and comic opera, rumours of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s partial Jewish origin still persist.
[25] Diminutive of moda, and signifying, literally, a new song. The modinha is the most characteristic of Brazilian popular forms, a transformation of the troubadors’ jácara and the Portuguese fado. It is generally replete with love and the allied feelings.
[26] The chief works of Antonio José da Silva are Vida do Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança (1733); Ezopaida ou Vida de Ezopo (1734); Os Encantos de Medea (1735); Amphytrião ou Jupiter e Alcmena (1736); Labyrintho de Creta (1736); Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona (1737); a highly amusing Molièresque farce, considered by many his best; As Variedades de Proteu (1737); Precipicio de Faetonte (posthumous).
The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’s Portuguese Literature, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case against O Judeu, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.