He expatiates much on the moral utility of a perfect tragedy, through which the theatre might, in his opinion, be easily converted into an excellent school of morals. To this effect the opinions of the French critics Le Bossu and Dacier, are industriously cited in concert with those of Aristotle. Both lectures were given in the year 1757. The main object of a third lecture which Garçaõ delivered to the same society in the same year, is to demonstrate that the imitation of the classic poets of antiquity is one of the most essential requisites of modern poetry. He observes that the judicious and the servile imitator must not be confounded together, for that the latter is in fact merely a plagiarist. Garçaõ himself seems, however, to have been somewhat puzzled to make out this distinction; for he asserts that Camoens has in his pastoral poems imitated Virgil in the same manner as Virgil has Theocritus. A skilful imitator, he says, may excel the poet whom he imitates, as Horace has in many passages excelled Pindar. At the same time it must be allowed, that these and the following lectures of Garçaõ possess the merit of pure, natural, and dignified language; and that in several passages they display true eloquence.* Garçao, who

* For example, in the following passage, in which Garçaõ justifies himself to the members of the Arcadian academy against the charge of arrogance :

Nao creio, ó Arcades, que em vossos corações se pervertesse a antiga sinceridade de costumes com taõ violenta metamorfose, que para reconciliar-me comvosco me seja preciso cantar a Palinodia. Vós estais offendidos? Eu ultrajei-vos? Havera entre Nós algum espirito tao escravo da vangloria, que naõ possa, nem se atreva a

felt a patriotic interest in the improvement of the polite literature of his country, expected that the academy of the Portuguese Arcadians would by its exertions revive the good taste of the sixteenth century. Only such a society, zealously competing for the welfare and honour of the country, can, he says, become "the Alexander who will cut this gordian knot of bad taste, the Achilles who will conquer this Troy.* But it appears that he appealed to his Arcadians in vain. Their literary patriotism was of a very passive character; soffrer a verdade? Chamar-me heis atrevido, porque sou zeloso da honra, e do credito da Arcadia? Porque naõ sei lisonjear-vos com fantasticas esperanças; porque vos naõ attribuo, se possivel he, maior merecimento do que o vosso? Ou finalmente porque nao me atrevo a divulgar com soberba jactancia, que restauramos a boa Poesia, e a verdadeira Eloquencia? Que peleijámos, e que vencemos? Nao, Arcades, nao sou tao ingrato, que vos julgue destituidos de piedade, e de benevolencia.

* This passage may likewise be transcribed, as a specimen of the Portuguese prose of the middle of the eighteenth century :

Corre o tempo ateia-se a epidemia; desprezaõ-se os bons Authores; naõ vale o exemplo da Antiguidade; apaga-se a memoria da Arte; e finalmente se transforma o genio da Naçao. Se no fim desta Epoca apparecesse huma Alma capaz de atalhar o damno, acha já com tantas forças o Inimigo, que ainda que adquira a honra de atacallo, raras vezes cólhe os louros do triunfo. Saõ tao frequentes, e talvez tao domesticos os exemplos, que nao devo respeitallos. Prouvera Deos, ó Arcades, que ainda hoje em Portugal naõ avultassem mais as ruinas deste geral destroço, do que as miseraveis reliquias da restuida Lisboa. Só huma Academia, huma Sociedade de homens sabios, zelosos do bem, e da honra da sua Patria, he o Alexandre que póde cortar este Nó Gordiano, he o Achilles de que pende a expugnaçaõ de Troia.

and the advantages which Garçaõ hoped this society would procure, were destined to be obtained through another.

PHILOLOGICAL AND CRITICAL TREATISES OF THE ACADEMICIANS JOAQUIM DE FOYOS-FRANCISCO DIAS-ANTONIO DAS NAVES, &c.

Among the literary treatises (Memorias de Litteratura) published by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon,* are to be found the latest contributions to Portuguese criticism and eloquence; and that society may justly boast of the well directed efforts of its members to promote the literary cultivation of the nation. At the head of these literary treatises, there appeared in the year 1792 a remarkable essay on Portuguese pastoral poetry by Joaquim de Foyos.† This treatise served at once to record the unconquerable predilection with which the Portuguese adhered to their pastoral poetry, and the new freedom of opinion which ventured to shew itself in opposition to the oracles of French criticism. Joaquim de Foyos asserts, that pastoral poetry must be the oldest, and consequently the most natural and original style of poetry. In the history of human nature, he observes, the shepherd's life is in the natural course of the transition from barbarism to social cultivation. It is, he adds, precisely in this

+ Sobre a Poesia bucolica dos Poetas Portugueses. Memoria I. The continuation does not appear to have been published.

stage of the developement of human wants and energies, that the mind is particularly awakened to poetic activity and as in pastoral life man is surrounded by the sweetest tranquillity of nature, so must pastoral poetry be the true poetry of nature. Joaquim de Foyos has indeed related consistently with his own notions, the history of mankind and poetry in a way which is well calculated to set forth the particular merits of bucolic composition: otherwise history might soon have convinced him that pastoral life has scarcely ever been the passage from the savage state to civilization: that the kind of pastoral state which favours the ground work of bucolic poetry, has only arisen under particular circumstances in a few places; and has, even there been of little advantage to poetry: that Greek poetry no more originated in Arcadia, than German in Switzerland: that the oldest Greek poetry exhibits no trace of the pastoral character: that Theocritus first devoted himself to this style of composition at the voluptuous court of the Ptolemies in Alexandria: and that its revival in the romantic age, like its birth in Alexandria, presupposes a degree of social cultivation, whence the human mind longingly reverts to a more natural existence, on which it at last bestows ideal beauties. Joaquim de Foyos judges of the French critics by more just principles. He observes, that these critics, of whom Le Bossu may be placed at the head, deduce numerous chimerical rules from what they term the morality of a poem. Dacier, he says, has also misunderstood Aristotle in wishing to render the story of a poem a sort of

Æsopic fable. The ingenious and elegant Marmontel has fallen into the same error.

A philological treatise in the form of a dictionary, by Antonio Pereita do Figueiredo, on the genius of the Portuguese language, according to the Decades of Barros,* though not immediately connected with poetry and rhetoric, is nevertheless worthy of honourable notice, since it is calculated to direct Portuguese writers to the study of Barros, and the spirit of their mother tongue. Another treatise by the same writer, has for its object to recommend Barros as a model for Portuguese eloquence.†

The analysis of the poetic language and style of Saa de Miranda, Ferreira, Bernardes, Caminha and Camoens, by Francisco Dias, is more useful than most of the treatises of the same kind previously written in Portuguese. The investigations of this intelligent writer are philological rather than critical; but the critical observations which he introduces are dictated by a clear judgment and just feeling. The improvements which Saa de Miranda effected in the poetic language

* Espirito da lingoa Portugueza, extrahido das Decadas do insigno escritos Joaõ de Barros, in the third volume of the Memorias de Litt. Port.

† Joao de Barros, exemplar de mais solida eloquencia Portuguesa; in the fourth volume of the Memorias de Litt. Port.

Analyse e combinações philosophicas sobre o elucaçaõ e estilo de Sà de Miranda, &c. in the fourth volume of the Mem. de Litt. Port.