Netto is the Anselmo Ribas of his early books, wherein already appears the voluptuary, the creature of extravagant language and unbridled imagination, the weaver of tangled imagery, the wielder of a copious vocabulary that has been estimated at as high as 20,000 words. And that voluptuary appears everywhere, in the images, the narrative, the thoughts. “Amber-hued wine that seems to sing in its glasses a dithyramb of gold,--impatient wine that seethes and foams,--wine that rages like the mighty ocean,--ambrosia of a new era,--live, intelligent wine,--wine with a soul.” Such is the wine that is drunk by Ribas and his friend Gomes, who has his scents for each colour, sound and feeling. When the silks of a lady rustle, the noise is comparable to the sounds “made by the flocks of wild pigeons when they raise their flight on the riverbanks of my native province.” In his work, as in this simile, his sensuousness is mingled with the primitivity of mother earth. He has written much of the city life, and has traveled with his pen through all the forms, but he is strongest when closest to that primitive urge. I prefer him, for short tales, in such an early work as _Sertão_; for the novel, in such a concise miniature masterpiece as _Rei Negro_. Henrique Maximiano Coelho Netto was born on February 21, 1864, in the city of Caxias, department of Maranhão, of a Portuguese father and an Indian mother. In 1870 the family moved to Rio de Janeiro. From his slave attendant Eva he imbibed a wealth of Brazilian folk lore; from Maria, the Portuguese housekeeper, he drank in (and with what avidity his later work reveals) the common heritage of Oriental tales. Another powerful influence (and this, too, is duly chronicled in _A Capital Federal_) was his uncle Rezende, a book-keeper with a taste for the Portuguese and Latin classics. For the fundamental traits of Netto as a creative spirit one need hardly go farther than these childhood impressions. Here we have his mixed blood, his predilection for the native lore and exotic artistry, his preference for the ancient writers and a fondness for the Portuguese classics that reveals itself in his not infrequently archaic language. Some of his pages, Verissimo has shown, would be better understood in Portugal than in Brazil.