Though his early education lacked method, already at the age of eight he read Cicero; he pursued his studies at various institutions, never remaining through the complete number of years. Like most Brazilians, he began with a sonnet, followed by a number of poems which fortunately, he never issued; his newspaper experience commenced in the _Gazeta da Tarde_, 1887. Unlike most Brazilians he wrested a living from the nation by his pen, and 1892 found him teaching the history of the arts. His restlessness, however, seems to keep him flitting from place to place and from interest to interest. In 1900 he is found in Campinas teaching literature, remaining for three years. In 1909 he is back in Rio at the Gymnasio Nacional, lecturing upon letters. From that year until 1917 he represents the state of Maranhão in the national assembly. Today finds him busily at work revising the long list of his labours and issuing them with as keen an interest as if they were the first fruits of his imagination. “Even to this day,” he confessed to an interviewer a few years ago, “I feel the influence of the first period of my life in the sertão. It was the histories, the legends, the tales heard in my childhood,--Negro stories filled with fear, legends of _caboclos_ palpitant with sorcery, tales of white men, the phantasy of the sun, the perfume of the forest, the dream of civilized folk.… Never did the mixture of ideas and race cease to predominate, and even now it makes itself felt in my eclecticism.… My imagination is the resultant of the soul of Negro, _caboclo_ and white.” The criticism is born out by a study of his many books, most of which, as the author himself would be the first to agree, will be speedily forgotten in the excellence of the salient few. Neo-romantic though he be, Netto is no believer in the false Indianism that for a time held sway in the native letters. His affection for the Portuguese tongue, which he considers the most plastic of languages, does not preclude a belief in a Brazilian literature. Asked whether he was religious--and here again reading of his representative books bears witness to his self-knowledge--he replied, “Very. I don’t know whether I believe in Lord Christ, or in Lord Nature, but I believe in the immanent principle of divinity. And perhaps, for this reason, I am one of the rare men who hope.”