The same commentator suggests, as a possible reason for her acute auditive sense, the short-sightedness from which she suffered. Her poetry, indeed, is a hearing poetry, but a seeing one as well. The few superior pieces she has left are among the rare productions of Brazilian verse; they are, in that province, unsurpassed for their blend of the proportion that we usually call classic with that harmonious sensitivity which is supposedly the trait of refined modernity. If in art it is the individual rather than the literature that counts, and if in that individual’s labour it is only what we consider best that really matters, I should venture the seemingly rash statement that Francisca Julia da Silva is the equal, as a personality in verse, of Machado de Assis. He, too, was a cold poet, even as a Romantic, yet never attained the ecstasy of her salient pieces. He, too, was withdrawn, aloof, and might have signed such a poem as Francisca Julia’s _O Ribeirinho_ (The Streamlet), without any one being the wiser. Yet his aloofness--speaking solely of his work in verse--was on the whole lack of emotion, while hers is suppression, domination, transmutation of it. She can be as banal as Wordsworth, and has written in her _Inverno_ (Winter) probably two of the most prosaic lines of verse that Brazilian poetry knows: Das quatro estaçoes de todas, O inverno é a peor, de certo. Of all the four seasons Winter’s certainly the worst. She committed her childhood indiscretions, as do we all, though in less abundance. At her best, however, (and neither is this too abundant) she should rank with the few Brazilian creators who have produced a charm that is sister to Keats’s eternal joy. She has no landscapes labelled native; her longing is no mere conventional _saudade_; she formed no preconceived notion of Brazilianism; she simply wrote, amidst her labours, some two or more score lines that cannot be omitted from any consideration of Brazilian poetry, because they enriched it with a rare, sincere artistry that may find appreciation wherever the language of men and women is beauty. FOOTNOTES: [1] These Tenth Muses are relatively common. In Portuguese letters, among others, there are Soror Violante do Ceo (1601-93) and Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda (1595-1644). [2] Mr. Havelock Ellis, with his customary lucidity and serenity, discusses _The Mind of Woman_ (See _The Philosophy of Conflict_) in a manner to suggest fruitful pursuit of the problem that Verissimo poses. Had the Brazilian critic been more conversant with the newer poetry by women--I refer to increasing frankness rather than to increasing worth--he might have changed his mind as to the prohibitive influences of social custom. The next fifty years will probably witness some startling changes; among them some salutary ones. [3] At least one Academician in Brazil has argued sensibly in favor of woman’s admission to that body.