* * * * * The first phase of Brazilian letters is, then, a tentative groping, reflecting the numerous influences across the ocean and the instability of a nascent civilization at war on the one hand with covetous foreigners and on the other with fractious, indigenous tribes. The chroniclers are in the main picturesque, informative, rambling rather than artistic; the poets are either vacuous or swollen with the pomp of old-world rhetoric. Even so virile a spirit as Gregorio de Mattos conducts his native satire with the stylistic weapons forged in Europe, and the dawn of a valid nativism is shot through with gleams of spiritual adherence to Portugal and intellectual subjection to the old continent. Yet, as the child is father to the man, so even in these faltering voices may be detected the dominant notes of the later literature,--its imagination, its fondness for rotund expression, its pride of milieu, its Oriental exuberance, its wistful moodiness, its sensual ardor. FOOTNOTES: [1] Op. Cit. P. 51. [2] See his _Cantos Populares do Brasil_, _Contos Populares do Brasil_, _Estudos sobre a Poesia Popular Brasileira_. These works he summarizes in Chapter VII, Volume I, of his _Historia da Litteratura Brasileira, 2a Edição melhorada pelo auctor_. Rio de Janeiro, 1902. [3] The frank, practical song, minus the African refrain, runs thus: “You like me and I like you. If pa consents, oh my darling, I’ll marry you.… If you’ll give me my clothes and furnish my food, if you pay all the household expenses, oh, my darling, I’ll come to live with you.” [4] Op. Cit. P. 58. [5] _Résumé de l’histoire Littéraire du Portugal suivi du Résumé de l’histoire littéraire du Brésil._ Ferdinand Denis. Paris, 1826. The Brazilian section occupies pages 513-601. [6] For an enlightening exposition of the Portuguese popular refrain known as _cossantes_, see A. F. G. Bell’s _Portuguese Literature_, London, 1922, pages 22-35. Their salient trait, like that of their Brazilian relative, is a certain wistful sadness. [7] Oliveira Lima. _Formación Historica de la Nacionalidad Brasileña._ Madrid, 1918. This Spanish version, by Carlos Pereyra, is much easier to procure than the original. Pp. 35-38. [8] See, however, on the matter of priority, José Verissimo’s _Estudos de Literatura Brazileira, Quarta Serie_. Pp. 25-64. [9] Ibid. P. 54. Also pp. 63-64. “To be the first, the most ancient, the oldest in any pursuit, is a merit.… This is the only merit that Bento Teixeira can boast.”