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CHAPTER III.

THE POETRY OF THE PORTUGUESE RENAISSANCE.

THE Portuguese subjects of King Affonso Henriquez spoke a language which may be termed pure Portuguese in the same sense that the language into which our King Alfred translated the works of Bæda and of Orosius is sometimes called pure English. The Portuguese written in the reign of King 'Affonso Henriquez is nevertheless hardly more intelligible to a modern Portuguese than the King's English of Ælfred's time is to Englishmen of the present day.

As our own language is the direct outcome of the historical events which made us Englishmen, so also the Portuguese kingdom and language both had their birth in the same era. In other words, the dialect of the Portuguese portion of the Peninsula began to detach itself more entirely from the other TeutonoLatin forms of speech around it, at the period when, as I have already mentioned, the King of Leon and Castile conferred upon Count Henry of Burgundy the governorship of Northern Portugal. The language spoken in the dominions of Count Henry was, it is nearly certain, identical with, or at least similar to, that spoken in Galicia. Whether the Galician tongue crossed the Minho with the invading arms of Count Henry's suzerain, or whether it already prevailed in the district south of that river, is not now very easy to determine. Certain it is that, at this period, the Galician was, of all the dialects which the corrupted forms of the Latin were assuming in the Peninsula,

the most cultivated and the most perfect. As the Portuguese nation became more isolated from its neighbours, the language would acquire a character of its own in its progress towards full development; and the influence of a Burgundian ruler and his Burgundian courtiers, soldiers, and adherents, would, no doubt, add certain elements of refinement and variety to the language of his subjects. The province of the Minho, the most northern of Portugal, was, at the outset of the kingdom, at once the seat of government and the cradle of the language; and we may presume that, as the districts to the south were successively wrested from the Moors, the original Galician or quasi-Galician dialect of the Minhotes, would advance southwards with the arms of the Christians, and finally become the language of the whole of Portugal.

At this stage of Portuguese history men's minds would seem to have been too much engrossed with the great continuous war which the nation was waging with the Moors, and with the Leonese and Castilians, to be able to give much attention to any sort of poetry, except short lyrical pieces touching upon war or love. Hardly any others have come There is no great early Portuguese epic, like the 'Cid';' though the struggle with the infidels was as fierce, and the triumph of the Chris

down to us.

1 Some fragments of a rhymed chronicle relating to the Moorish wars have indeed come down to us. It is doubtfully ascribed to the earliest period of Portuguese history. It has no poetical merit whatever, nor any claim to notice beyond its antiquity. The Portuguese fragment—we have only a few stanzas left-is certainly of much earlier date than the Cid ballads, as to which magnificent epic nothing is more certain than that it is the work of a writer who lived long after the events he celebrates.

tians as great, in Portugal as in Spain. In all probability the poetry of the country was in the hands of the wandering troubadours from Provence, and the native bards would not have cared to be heard in the presence of such masters of song as these. It is noticeable that the earlier remains we have of

native verse are mostly sacred poetry- precisely such a class of effusion as the professional minstrels would be the least apt to produce. It is quite certain, however, that neither poets nor poetry were despised at this early period, either in Portugal or the neighbouring kingdom; and if no other record of their good repute existed, proof might be found in the fact that, of all the Portuguese poets whose name or fame has come down to us, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all were courtiers, knights of high birth, princes of the blood, or kings.

Among a warlike people like the Portuguese, called upon at this period continually to maintain their existence by arms, we may imagine that the Court and the camp were the centres of such literary activity as existed. The earliest remains we have of the language are fragments of the poets Herminguez and Egaz Moniz, who are generally held to have written in the reign of King Affonso Henriquez. These verses are, it is true, scarcely recognisable as Portuguese: they are uncouth and rugged to a most singular degree, and yet they are ascribed to two courtiers, who presumably wrote and spoke the language in its fullest purity

During the generations which intervene between this period and the birth of Sá de Miranda, the great poet who takes the place that Chaucer holds with us, all such Portuguese poetry as existed was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Provençal verse. The trou

badours and the jongleurs, the composers and the singers of Provençal song, found, as we know, congenial audiences at the northern Courts of the Peninsula. The Catalan, the Castilian, and the Galician,' or Portuguese, were so like their own tongue that these minstrels would be understood almost as well where these languages were current as at Avignon or Toulouse. As the Portuguese gradually extended their kingdom, and thus isolated themselves more and more from their neighbours, as the nation grew in strength and importance, and, perhaps, as the native taste began to rise superior to the monotonous frivolity of Provençal minstrelsy, so the language began to assume the characteristics of modern Portuguese. Cristovão Falcão, and the more famous Bernardim Ribeyro, are the first native poets who attained any kind of lasting celebrity in Portugal. Both poets wrote in the generation preceding that in which Sá de Miranda lived and flourished. The language was now true modern Portuguese; but while their eclogues and lyrics have some national characteristics of earnestness and truth of feeling, the verses of these writers are still redolent of the tedious conceits and affectations of Provençal poetry, and yet have little of the flow, melody, and artistic finish of the best troubadour lyrics.

In noting the changes which, throughout the Peninsula, were transforming the narrow spirit of Provençal verse into the higher and better poetry which prevailed during the sixteenth century, the unquestionably great influence of the Moors must not be overlooked. It has been over hastily concluded by some native chroniclers and historians that the relations between the conquered and the conquerors who were, during so many centuries, masters of nearly the whole

Peninsula―were entirely hostile and antagonistic. The rule of the Saracens was, however, as is now well established, on the whole tolerant; and an immense Christian population, the Mozarabs, came strongly under their influence, and adopted not only the Arab dress, the Arab language, the domestic habits, the arts and intellectual culture of their masters, but in some cases carried imitation so far as to practise the most characteristic rite of the Moslems.

It was impossible but that the high literary culture of the Saracens, so intimately brought to bear on a less cultivated people, should have a strong influence on their poetry. It most certainly did have its effect; but, on the other hand, it must be recollected that the ultimate deliverers of Peninsular soil from Moorish occupation were men who, in the retreats and fastnesses of the northern parts of their country-from whence they issued for its re-conquest-had been, least of any of their countrymen, subject to Saracenic influences; and that it was chiefly, as I have already shown, among the camps and in the various Courts of the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors that the national poetry was produced and fostered..

The Castilians had, in the fifteenth century, while preserving much of the Provençal spirit in their poetry, incorporated with it a certain national strength and gravity; and their compositions are far in advance of those of their Portuguese contemporaries. Though Portugal began her literary career earlier than Castile, and her poets undoubtedly wrote much more, I have found absolutely nothing in the poetry of the smaller kingdom during the whole of this century to compare with the beautiful coplas of José Manrique, or even the verses of Juan de Mena or the Marquis de Santillana.