“Since the XVIIth century we reckon in our midst poets and prosers. This would prove that the necessity of reporting oneself, of defining oneself,--which creates literature,--already existed amongst us, no sooner than we were born. The work of Gabriel Soares may, and I believe should, be excluded from a history of Brazilian literature, because such a history can be only that of literature published and known in its day,--literature that could have influenced its time and those who came after. But it comprises part of a history of the civilization, thought and spiritual progress of Brazil, showing how already in that century a native of the country, sequestered upon his plantation in the sertão, not only possessed sufficient culture to write of matters pertaining to his country, but felt also the necessity of writing it down. It is certain that he was inspired likewise by interest and that his work is a memorial to the Sovereign, seeking personal concessions. But, on account of the thoroughness and the breadth with which it is done, and, above all, because of the general, disinterested spirit in which it is accomplished,--the variety of its aspects and the national breath that animates it, it far exceeds the nature of a simple memorial. In the same position are the _Dialogues upon the Grandeurs of Brazil_ and their author, whoever he may be. Preoccupation with history is the surest token of a reflective national consciousness. This preoccupation awoke early in Brazil, and not only as a means of information with which the religious orders tried to instruct themselves concerning the lay of the land and to glorify themselves by publishing their own deeds, but also in this same more general, more disinterested spirit. Frei Vicente do Salvador is thus early a national historian and not a simple religious chronicler. “Two things occur to produce this development in Brazilian literary expression, at the very beginning of civilization in this country: the vigor of literary expression in Portugal and the Jesuit _collegios_. Whatever be the value of Portuguese literature, it is beyond dispute that no literature of the smaller peoples rivals it in wealth and variety. When Brazil was discovered, only a small part of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal possessed a literary life. England was scarcely emerging into it, with the predecessors of Shakespeare, who had not yet been born and whose first works date from the end of the century. Germany, from the literary standpoint, did not exist.