NOTES
Sancho I (p. 1) to whom this poem is plausibly ascribed, was the second king of Portugal. It is probably the second earliest Portuguese poem we possess and is of great importance less for its literary merit than as being so early (c. 1199) an example of the indigenous poetry. See D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos’s edition of the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (1904), vol. ii, pp. 593-595.
Joan Zorro (p. 1) was one of the early jograes. Of his life we know little or nothing, but he wrote cossantes of great charm. He is a poet of the sea, or rather of the Tagus. His poems, as those of most of these thirteenth-century singers, are contained in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana, printed in 1875 and 1878. The great codex Canzoniere Colocci-Brancuti is now (since 1924) in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional. A critical text of some of the poems is given in Dr. J. J. Nunes’s Chrestomathia Archaica (1906).
Of Meendinho (p. 6) nothing is known: not even his full name. He was evidently an early jogral who sang songs in the houses of the great, and is famous for this pilgrimage song, the only poem of his that we have. Its theme is popular, and a parallel exists in modern Galician poetry (Cancionero Popular Gallego, vol. i, p. 196).
Nuno Fernandez (p. 6), named Torneol, was a knight, perhaps a segrel, of whose poems the song-books have preserved over twenty. His beautiful dawn-song has parallels in other lands but is clearly of popular indigenous inspiration.
Martin de Ginzo (p. 9) is very likely the correct form of this jogral’s name. The Cancioneiro da Vaticana has Gijzo (cf. fijda-finda); but the index has dne brizo. Grijo and Frayson are other forms proposed; Ginzo de Limia is a village in Galicia.
Pero Vivianez (p. 10), or Vyvyãez (Vivianson), wrote satiric poems and cantigas de amor as well as cantigas de amigo, but is chiefly known for this pilgrimage dance-song.
Pero Gonçalvez de Portocarreiro (p. 10) may have belonged to the nobility, but like the humble jograes wrote cantigas de amigo.
Pedr’ Anez Solaz (p. 12), a jogral (Peter Johnson, called Solace) is the author of several remarkable refrain songs. The refrain of no. 18 (C. V. 415) might be considered merely a form of the jingle or wail refrains of so many French songs and of the modern Galician ailalila ailalala, were it not for the cry Leli leli, par Deus, leli, which at once recalls the Basque Lelo song, in which il means ‘dead’: He is dead, ah God, he is dead!
Martin Codax (p. 13), or possibly Codaz, was a jogral who evidently delighted in the songs sung by the people, by the love-lorn women of Galicia. His seven fascinating cossantes refer to Vigo and the sea. A new manuscript of these poems was discovered at Madrid by Don Pedro Vindel and published by him in 1915. A critical text appeared in the Boletín de la Real Academia Gallega (1916), English versions in The Modern Language Review (April, 1923).
D. Joan Soarez Coelho (p. 17) was a nobleman of the court of Afonso III (1248-1279).
Fernando Esquio (p. 18), or Esguio, was an obscure jogral, seven of whose poems survive.
Pero Meogo (p. 19) may have been a jogral monk, if, that is, his name be spelt Moogo (monachus). His charming cossantes have this peculiarity, that they all refer to the deer of the hills, a reminiscence perhaps of the Bible.
Roy Fernandez (p. 24) was, like his more illustrious contemporary Gomez Charinho, a Galician poet. He is said to have been a Canon of Santiago and Chaplain to Alfonso X. He is the author of many poems and their value would be better appreciated were they not eclipsed by this passionate sea-melody, which, even as it upbraids the sea, is filled with the sea’s music and rhythm.
Of Nuno Perez Sandeu (p. 25) we possess six cantigas de amigo.
Of Pero de Veer (p. 26) nothing is known. Eight of his poems survive.
Bernal de Bonaval (p. 26) one of the oldest and more prolific of the thirteenth-century poets, wrote cantigas de amor and cantigas de amigo, some of which mention his native Bonaval.
Juian Bolseiro (p. 27) is the author of many delightful cantigas de amigo, several of which are in dialogue.
Paio Calvo (p. 29), no doubt a jogral, contributes two poems to the Cancioneiro da Vaticana.
Lourenço (p. 29) is one of the jograes by whom most poems survive. Some of them show him in active rivalry with the trovadores, who affected to disdain the jogral’s more popular art.
Joan de Guilhade (p. 30), or perhaps Joan Garcia of Guilhade, in Galicia, was one of the most talented of the early Galician-Portuguese poets. The song-books have preserved for us the unusual number of fifty-five poems under his name.
Joan Airas (p. 31) belonged to a group of poets of Santiago de Compostela who flourished in the reign of Afonso III. We have no less than eighty-five of his poems. Like Rosalía de Castro, he sings of the Sar, a small river of Galicia. To read mar for the ssar of the original text would make the sun rise in the West.
Airas Nunez (p. 32), priest of Santiago, is with King Dinis the most talented of all these early poets. He not only possesses a perfect command of metre but has a rich lyrical vein which foreshadows the dolce stil which did not come from Italy to Portugal for another two or three centuries. His poems, although not numerous, deserve a separate edition.
Pai Gomez Charinho (p. 35), a Galician of noble birth, Admiral of Castille in the reigns of Alfonso X and his son (to whose party he belonged) in the simplicity and sincerity of his poems takes high rank among the early poets; their plaintive music haunts the memory. He died by the hand of an assassin in the year after King Sancho IV’s death.
Joan de Lobeira (p. 37) lived as a Canon at Santiago in the first half of the reign (1278-1325) of King Dinis. The fact that his surname is that of the traditional author of the Portuguese text of Amadis de Gaula and that the poem here printed is interpolated in the Spanish Amadis has led to great argument about it and about. The text given is that of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos: Etwas Neues zur Amadis Frage in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, vol. iv (1880), pp. 347-351.
Alfonso X (p. 39), the learned king, whom Admiral Gomez Charinho in a remarkable poem compares with the sea, was prouder almost of his sacred poems than of being King of Castilla. These Cantigas de Santa Maria, over 400 in number, many of which he himself wrote and some probably only collected and revised, have continued to be but little read in the too magnificent edition of the Spanish Academy (2 vols., Madrid, 1889). Yet they provide historical interest and quaint charm on every page, with some true, even enchanting poetry. What could be more hauntingly sad and musical than the poem of the meninna garrida, more mystically fervent than the hymn to the Rosa das rosas et fror das frores? And the collection contains many such poems.
King Dinis (p. 63), the most energetic, talented, and national of the early kings of Portugal, was grandson of Alfonso X of Castille and grandnephew of Queen Eleanor of England. He laid the foundations of Portugal’s greatness and at the same time closed with a golden key the period of Provençal-Portuguese poetry and by his active encouragement of translations paved the way for Portuguese prose. We have no less than 138 poems under his name; they are in many kinds, the most fascinating being the indigenous cossantes. His poems are separately edited in Professor H. R. Lang’s Cancioneiro d’ El Rei D. Denis (Halle, 1894).
D. Afonso Sanchez (p. 71), illegitimate son of King Dinis, imitated his father in going to popular sources for his poems, if we may judge by this cossante; but most of the poems of his that we have belong to the more conventional cantigas de amor.
Estevam Coelho (p. 72) was perhaps the father of one of the murderers of Inés de Castro (†1355) and is one of the last of the Dionysian school of poets. Besides this beautiful spinning-song, we have by him only a short cossante of the sea (C. V. 322).
Macias (p. 72) was celebrated as the ideal of the constant lover, o Namorado, by a crowd of Portuguese poets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His fame is greater than the merit of his verses that survive and was due to his tragic fate, the legend of which modern criticism suspects, unkindest cut of all, of having arisen from a passage in his poetry. His poems have been edited by H. A. Rennert, Macias o Namorado, Philadelphia, 1902.
In romances (p. 73) Portugal followed in the wake of Spain and has not any that can compare with the best in Castilian. Less vigorous in spirit and concentrated in style, they nevertheless, by virtue of their ingenuous simplicity and naturalness, deserve a better anthology than they have hitherto received. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has studied the Portuguese romances with consummate skill in Groeber’s Grundriss (1894), pp. 154-160; Estudos sobre o romanceiro peninsular in Revista Lusitana, vol. ii (1891), Romanzenstudien in Zeit. für rom. Phil., vol. xvi (1892), and Estudos sobre o romanceiro peninsular, Madrid, 1907-1909. The best collection is Dr. Theophilo Braga’s Romanceiro Geral, 2nd ed., 3 vols., 1906-1909. Manhaninha de S. João is from Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos’s Romanceiro Portuguez (1886).
D. Philipa de Lencastre (p. 79), princess of the Houses of Avis and Lancaster, lived at the convent of Odivellas near Lisbon, and combined piety with a strong literary bent.
Of Francisco de Sousa (p. 80) scarcely anything is known. Barbosa Machado, never at a loss to veil ignorance with a phrase, merely says that he was equally illustrious by birth and genius. His trovas are printed in the Cancioneiro Geral (1516).
Garcia de Resende (p. 81), the many-sided, poet, prose-writer, historian, musician, draughtsman, probably actor, public official, courtier, diplomatist, collected and edited the vast Cancioneiro Geral, among the best poems in which are the ‘Trouas q̃ Garçia de rresende fez a morte de dõa ynes de castro que Afonso o quarto de Portugal matou ẽ coimbra por o prinçipe dom Pedro seu filho a ter como mulher & polo bem q̃ lhe queria nam queria casar, endereçadas has damas’. There is an introductory stanza:
and six supplementary stanzas headed ‘Garçia de rresende has damas’.
Gil Vicente (p. 88), born probably in the heart of Portugal (Beira or Minho), is a conspicuous proof of the greatness of the national literatures that might have flourished in the sixteenth century had not extraneous influences intervened. The plays of this keen observer and exquisite poet are very various, but they have this in common that nearly all contain lyrics of exceptional fascination. Many of these are in Castilian. In Castilian he wrote the romance of Dom Duardos, the Portuguese version being perhaps by Almeida Garrett.
Bernardim Ribeiro (p. 93), of Torrão in Alentejo, lost his reason under the stress of love; his biography has to be reconstructed from passages of his exquisite and passionate verse and prose, which are very variously interpreted. With him the eclogue is a living and individual thing. The two romances, which in themselves prove him a great poet, are from his novel entitled Menina e Moça. For his Complete Works see Bernardim Ribeiro e Cristovão Falcão. Obras. Nova edição ... prefaciada por D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, 2 vols., Coimbra, 1923.
Cristovam Falcam (p. 113), of Alentejo, friend and inspired imitator of Ribeiro, is the traditional author of the celebrated Trovas de Crisfal. For the evidence as to this and for his poems see the 1923 edition, cited above. An earlier edition of his poems is that of Snr. Epiphanio da Silva Dias: Obras (Porto, 1893).
Francisco de Sá de Miranda (p. 117), one of the most famous poets of the Peninsula, was born at Coimbra, travelled in Italy, and on his return introduced the new metres to his countrymen. He retired from the Portuguese Court a few years later (c. 1530) and spent the last third of his life in the pleasant province of Minho. He was saddened by the growth of luxury and decay of morals which followed the world upheaval at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and, like Luis de Leon and other poets, did not cease to protest against them. He himself had no natural facility for writing verse, but he succeeded in expressing his high philosophy and his love of Nature in poems full of strength and character and charm. Apart from one or two fine sonnets, he is at his best in his poems (such as his eclogue Basto and his famous letter to the king) written in the short metre prevailing before his innovations had revolutionized Portuguese poetry. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos published his poems in a critical edition: Poesias (1885).
Francisco de Moraes (p. 133) the author of Palmeirim de Inglaterra, from which this poem is taken, met with a violent death at Evora in 1572. The best known episode in his life is his romantic stay in Paris, where he fell madly in love with one of the Queen’s ladies.
Francisco de Sá de Meneses (p. 134), Conde de Mattosinhos, a truer though less celebrated poet than his namesake and relative, the author of Malacca Conquistada, was born at Oporto and held high office under King Sebastian and the Cardinal King. His verses to the river Leça, famous in the seventeenth century, were neglected in the eighteenth and rediscovered by Dr. Sousa Viterbo (1845-1910) in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon.
D. Manuel de Portugal (p. 137), born at Evora, son of the poet Count of Vimioso, was one of the earliest followers of Sá de Miranda. His poems were collected in the year before his death: Obras (1605). This mystic sonnet is printed on f. 199 v.
Luis de Camões (p. 137), one of the most inspired lyrical poets of all time, was born at Lisbon or Coimbra and belonged to an ancient family of Spanish-Galician origin. His whole life was a tragedy of love and sorrows. After studying at Coimbra he came to Lisbon, perhaps in 1545; fell in love, possibly with Caterina de Ataide (Natercia), was banished from Court, and after serving in North Africa returned penniless to Lisbon. An affray in the Rocio caused his imprisonment in 1553 and he was released on the understanding that he would serve the king in India. He did not return to Portugal until 1569, and after living at Lisbon in poverty died there, perhaps of the plague, on June 10, 1580. The year of his birth is commonly considered 1524, but February 5 as the day of his birth is arbitrary. His Os Lusiadas appeared eight years before his death, his Rimas only in 1595. Snr. Epiphanio da Silva Dias published a critical edition of The Lusiads (2 vols., 1910), but the difficult task of editing his lyrics remains.
Antonio Ferreira (p. 202) was born, lived, and died at Lisbon, where he fell victim to the great plague of 1569. He was proud of never having written a line in any other language but Latin and his native tongue. Although not a great poet, he could rise to considerable heights, and in fact maintains a high level both in his short poems and in his classical play Inés de Castro. His Poemas Lusitanos (1598) have been frequently reprinted.
Diogo Bernardez (p. 207), the most gifted of Miranda’s disciples, the most musical of the singers in the new style, became a personal friend of Miranda and mused and wrote on the banks of the Lima (on which, at Ponte da Barca, he was born) in the intervals of a busier life at Lisbon. He may have owed his release from African slavery in 1581 to Philip II of Spain, from whom he received various benefits. The beauty of his sonnets, eclogues, and letters in verse inevitably led to accusations of plagiarism from Camões, which need not be seriously considered. It is curious that Shakespeare’s line ‘With what I most enjoy contented least’ is a literal translation of ‘Do que deseja mais mais duvidoso’. For variations of text in the sonnets see C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Investigações sobre sonetos, etc. (1910), pp. 45-54 and Zeitschrift für rom. Phil., vol. ix, pp. 372, 373.
Frei Agostinho da Cruz (p. 123), younger brother of Diogo Bernardez, became a Franciscan monk in 1561, on which occasion Diogo addressed to him a fine letter in verse. His poems were not collected till 1771, but recently they have received an edition at the hands of Dr. Mendes dos Remedios as vol. xxi (1918) of the collection Subsidios.
Fernam Alvarez do Oriente (p. 214), was born at Goa some thirty years after its conquest by Afonso de Albuquerque. His Lusitania Transformada was written in prose and verse in direct imitation of Sannazaro’s Arcadia.
Francisco Galvam (p. 215), born at Villa Viçosa, was equerry to the Duke of Braganza. The authorship of the poems published by Antonio Lourenço Caminha in 1791, and therefore of this remarkable sonnet, appears doubtful.
Anonymous (p. 215). The celebrated historian Frei Bernardo de Brito, born at Almeida (Beira) is by many considered the author of the small collection of poems entitled Sylvia de Lysardo, of which the sonnet Ponho-me a contemplar is no. 20.
Francisco Rodriguez Lobo (p. 216), born at Leiria on the Lis, was mellifluous and prolific both in prose and verse and struck an individual note in his vilancetes. Both his Corte na Aldea and a selection of his poems deserve to be edited with the same loving care as Dr. Ricardo Jorge brought to his biography. He was drowned in his prime in the Tagus in 1522. The sonnet Formoso Tejo meu is by many critics ascribed to him.
Soror Violante do Ceo (p. 221), born at Lisbon, early won fame as a poetess and musician. At Lisbon she spent over sixty years as a Dominican nun. The chief collection of her poems appeared at Rouen: Rythmas Varias (1646).
D. Francisco Manuel de Mello (p. 222) found time in his troubled and adventurous life to write a considerable quantity of verse (Las Tres Musas del Melusino: Lisboa, 1649; Obras Metricas, Lyon, 1665) some of which is excellent. For his life and works see Professor Edgar Prestage’s Esboço biographico (Coimbra, 1914).
Soror Maria do Ceo (p. 223), for nearly eighty years a Franciscan nun at Lisbon, published, among other volumes of verse, only occasionally marked by unaffected simplicity, A Preciosa, 2 pts. 1731, 33, and Enganos do Bosque, Desenganos do Rio, 1741. Selections from her poetry and from that of Soror Violante have been published by Dr. Mendes dos Remedios in his Subsidios (vol. xvi).
Domingos dos Reis Quita (p. 224), a Lisbon barber, wrote verse of remarkable suavity. A second edition of his Obras Poeticas appeared in 1781. His tragedy Inés de Castro was translated into English by Benjamin Thompson in 1800.
Antonio Diniz da Cruz e Silva (p. 225) was born at Lisbon. His lyric poems, Poesias, were published in six volumes in 1807-1817. His O Hyssope still has many readers and is not infrequently reprinted.
João Xavier de Mattos (p. 226) is now unknown to fame and his life is obscure, but one or two of his poems are attractive. The last edition of his Rimas is of 1827.
Pedro Antonio Corrêa Garção (p. 226), born at Lisbon and the leading spirit of Arcadia, had a poetic gift which did not often find adequate subjects or expression. The Cantata de Dido from his Assemblea ou Partida has fervent admirers.
Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida (p. 229), of Lisbon, wrote gently satirical poems, chiefly in quintilhas, which may be read in his Obras Completas (1861). It was he who, when asked to choose between two sonnets, read the first only and chose the second. Some doubts have been expressed as to the authorship of the sonnet on the toucados altos.
Manuel Maria de Barbosa du Bocage (p. 230) wasted his genius and died at the age of forty without having approached the achievement of his great prototype Camões, who was constantly in his thoughts. His improvisations deeply impressed his contemporaries, and some of his sonnets only just fall short of a real magnificence. His popularity has never quite waned in Portugal. A new edition of his poems appeared in eight volumes in 1875-76.
Almeida Garrett (p. 232) was born at Oporto, but his youth was not spent in that city and later his Liberal principles sent him into exile. With Herculano he was one of the Liberal army of 7,500 who landed near Mindello in 1832. For the next twenty years he played a prominent part as diplomatist, orator, judge, and politician. He renovated Portuguese literature, freeing it from the trammels of pseudo-classicism and introducing romanticism from England and France. He was the best poet, the best dramatist, and the best prose-writer of Portugal in the first half of the nineteenth century. His best lyrics are contained in the slight volume entitled Folhas Cahidas.
Antonio Feliciano de Castilho (p. 239), blind from the age of six, wrote a mass of poems and translations in a style of classical purity, and after Garrett’s death stood at the head of contemporary Portuguese poetry until the Coimbra school unceremoniously dethroned him in 1865. He was a native of Lisbon. His Obras Completas occupy eighty small volumes (Lisboa, 1903-10).
Alexandre Herculano e Araujo (p. 240), born at Lisbon, Portugal’s greatest modern historian, declared that he was a poet till he was twenty-five. His Poesias will never lack readers, because they have that biblical fervour and sincerity which inspired Herrera in his odes and Luis de Leon in some of his translations.
Antonio Augusto Soares de Passos (p. 252), a romantic poet of Oporto, wrote nothing finer than the celebrated ode O Firmamento. The text here given is that of the sixth (1875) edition of his Poesias.
João de Deus Ramos Nogueira (p. 257), the most spontaneous and inspired Portuguese poet of the second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Messines in Algarve. A complete collection of his poems, entitled Campo de Flores, appeared in 1893. An excellent selection is that of Snr. Affonso Lopes Vieira: Livro de Amor (1921).
Thomaz Ribeiro (p. 263) was born at Parada de Gonta in the province of Beira and belonged to the romantic school of poets. His reputation had been made half a century before his death when he published his long romantic poem in many metres D. Jayme (1862), and it is by the fifteen introductory stanzas (oitavas) that he is best remembered.
Julio Diniz (p. 267) is the pseudonym of Joaquim Guilherme Gomes Coelho, who was born at Oporto. His novels met with immediate and deserved success. His poems, some of which were inserted in his novels, appeared posthumously in 1873 (Poesias).
Anthero de Quental (p. 269) born at Ponta Delgada in the Azores, was philosopher first, poet afterwards. His famous sonnets, constantly republished, are filled with a serene light, that light towards which Quental was ever groping his way. Many of them have been rendered into English by Professor Edgar Prestage: Sixty-four Sonnets (1894) and Professor Griswold Morley: Sonnets and Poems of Anthero de Quental (1922).
Antonio Candido Gonçalves Crespo (p. 273) was born at Rio de Janeiro, was sent to study at Coimbra and became the chief of the Portuguese Parnassians. A second edition of his Obras Completas appeared in 1913.
Antonio Duarte Gomes Leal (p. 275) was born, lived, and died at Lisbon. Much of his poetry was satirical, but he also displayed delicate feeling and command of rhythm. His two best known works were Claridades do Sul (1875) and O Anti-Cristo (1884).
Abilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro (p. 276) was born at Freixo de Espada á Cinta. In 1892 Os Simples closed a series of brilliant works with a key of gold, but he wrote comparatively little poetry of recent years. In its political aspect his work was revolutionary and anticlerical, but he was reconciled to the Church before his death. Appointed Portuguese Minister in Switzerland in 1911, he soon retired from public life. This disciple of Victor Hugo is not without originality, and a small part of his poetry will be immortal.
Antonio Nobre (p. 282) showed individuality and a haunting sense of rhythm in Só (1892), a collection of pliant verse which made a profound impression in Portugal. The sonnet Podessem suas mãos is from the posthumous volume Despedidas (1902).
Snr. Eugenio de Castro (p. 283), Professor at Coimbra University and Portugal’s foremost living poet, is the founder of the Portuguese Symbolist school. In his more recent volumes he seems rather to emulate the gnomic manner of Sá de Miranda, with conspicuous success. He is also a master of those paper carnations, the popular quatrains.
Snr. Joaquim Teixeira de Pascoaes (p. 287) gives the anthologist little opportunity of doing justice to his talent, which reveals itself rather in long poems such as Marános (1911), filled with love of Nature and musical expression. His best known works are Sempre (1897), Terra Prohibida (1899), and As Sombras (1907).
Snr. Affonso Lopes Vieira (p. 288) can write delicately musical lyrics light as feathers in the wind and poems of a fine breadth and fulness of sound. In the history of Portugal, in the sea and in the poets of Portugal’s golden age he finds an unfailing inspiration, very marked in Ilhas de Bruma (1917).
Snr. Antonio Corrêa de Oliveira (p. 290) is one of the most widely read and deeply appreciated of living Portuguese poets, in the Auto do Fim do Dia (1900) and numerous other volumes. He uses the short indigenous metre as a master.
Eduardo Pondal y Abente (p. 291), born at Ponteceso in the province of Coruña, where he lived in a charming house ‘ó pé dos pinos escurecida’, won fame with his poem A Campana d’ Anllons. Some of the poems of his Rumores de los Pinos (1879) and Queixumes dos Pinos (1886) have an even more haunting fascination.
Rosalía de Castro (p. 294), or Rosalía Castro de Murguía, stands with Pondal at the head of modern Galician poetry, which is intimately linked across six centuries with the poetry of the Galician-Portuguese Cancioneiros. Her fame has grown with the years and her Galician poems, on which that fame must always chiefly rest, contained in the volumes Cantares Gallegos (1863) and Follas Novas (1880), have recently been reprinted in a complete edition of her works at Madrid.