While the _bandeirantes_ were carrying on the tradition of Portuguese bravery--evidence of a restlessness which Carvalho would find mirrored even today in the “intellectual nomadism” of his countrymen, as well as in their political and cultural instability--the literary folk of the civilized centers were following the tradition of Portuguese imitation. At Bahia and Rio de Janeiro Academies were formed, evidencing some sort of attempt at unifying taste and aping, at a distance, the favourite diversion that the Renaissance had itself copied from the academies of antiquity. The first of these, founded in 1724 by the Viceroy Vasco Fernandez Cezar de Menezes, was christened _Academia Brazilica dos Esqueçidos_,--that is, the Brazilian Academy of those Forgotten or Overlooked by the _Academia de Historia_ established, 1720, at Lisbon. A sort of “spite” academy, then, this first Brazilian body, but constituting at the same time, in a way, a new-world affirmation. Among the other academies were that of the _Felizes_ 1736 (i. e., happy), the _Selectos_, 1752, and the _Renascidos_, 1759, (reborn) none of which continued for long. Although the influence of Góngora was receding, Rocha Pitta’s _Historia da America Portugueza_ is replete with pompous passages, exaggerated estimates and national “boostings” that read betimes like the gorgeous pamphlets issued by a tourist company. Pride in the national literature is already evident. The itch to write epics is rife; it bites João de Brito Lima, who indites a work (_Cezaria_) in 1300 octaves praising the Viceroy. Gonzalo Soares de França exceeds this record in his _Brazilia_, adding 500 octaves to the score. Manoel de Santa Maria Itaparica composes a sacred epic, _Eustachidos_, on the life of St. Eustace, in six cantos, each preceded by an octave summary; the fifth canto contains a quasiprophetic vision in which posterity, in the guise of an old man, requests the author to celebrate his native isle. This section, the _Ilha da Itaparica_, has rescued the poem from total oblivion. But the passage possesses hardly any transmissive fervor and the native scene is viewed through the glasses of Greek mythology. Some wrote in Latin altogether upon Brazilian topics, as witness Prudencio do Amaral’s poem on sugar-manufacture (no less!) entitled _De opifichio sacchario_; the cultivation of manioc and tobacco were equally represented in these pseudo-Virgilian efforts. It is a barren half century for literature. Outside of the author of the _Eustachidos_ and the two important figures to which we soon come only the brothers Bartholomeu Lourenço and Alexandre de Gusmão are remembered, and they do not come properly within the range of literary history. The one was a physicist and mathematician; the other, a statesman. The latter in his _Marido Confundido_, 1737, wrote a comedy in reply to Molière’s _Georges Dandin_, much to the delight of the Lisbonese audiences.