it affords, can make up for all the rest; and that proves the work to be
full of great beauties, since for two hundred years it has formed the
delight of a clever race who must be well aware of its faults."

DRAMATISTS.--The principal Portuguese dramatists were Saa de Miranda,
Antonio Ferreira, Gil Vicente. Saa de Miranda was a philosophical poet
or, to express it more correctly, a poet with ideas; he broke with
the eternal idylls, eclogues, bucolics, and pastorals of his predecessors
without declining to furnish excellent examples, but more often aiming
elsewhere and higher. He also reformed the versification, introducing
metres employed in other languages, but hitherto unused in his tongue. He
wrote odes, epistles after the manner of Horace, sonnets, lyric poems in
Latin, and epic compositions. In all this portion of his work he may be
compared to Ronsard. Finally, he wrote two comedies in prose--_The
Strangers_ and _The Villalpandios_ (the _Villalpandios_ are Spanish
soldiers, who have a recognised position in comedy). His mind was one of
the most elevated and best stored with classic literature that Portugal
ever produced.

FERREIRA.--Ferreira, who wrote lyric poems, elegiac poems, and especially
epistles, by which he gained for himself the name of the Portuguese
Horace, was more particularly a dramatist. He created _Farcas_, which
must not be regarded as farces, but as dramatic poems in which the
profane and religious are interwoven; he wrote _The Bristo_, a popular
comedy; _The Jealous One_, which was perhaps the earliest comedy of
character ever produced in Europe, and finally, a tragedy, _Inez de
Castro_, the national tragedy, a tragedy so orthodox and regular in form
that the author felt bound to introduce a chorus in the classic manner;
it is charged with pathos and handled with much art.