Souza Caldas (1762-1814) and São Carlos (1763-1829) represent, together with José Eloy Ottoni (1764-1851), the religious strains of the Brazilian lyre. The first, influenced by Rousseau, is avowedly Christian in purpose but the inner struggle that produced his verses makes of him a significant figure in a generally sterile era, and his _Ode ao homen selvagem_ contains lines of appeal to our own contemporary dubiety. São Carlos’s mystic poem _A Assumpção da Santissima Virgem_ possesses, today, merely the importance of its nativistic naïveté; for the third Canto, describing Paradise, he makes extensive use of the Brazilian flora. There is, too, a long description of Rio de Janeiro which describes very little. José Eloy Ottoni, more estimable for his piety and his patriotism than for his poetry, translated the Book of Job as Souza Caldas did the Psalms, and with great success. Though these religious poets are of secondary importance to letters, they provided one of the necessary ingredients of the impending Romantic triumph; their Christian outlook, added to nationalism, tended to produce, as Wolf has indicated, a genuinely Brazilian romanticism. Head and shoulders above these figures stands the patriarchal form of José Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva, (1763-1838) one of the most versatile and able men of his day. His scientific accomplishments have found ample chronicling in the proper places; quickly he won a reputation throughout Europe. “The name of José Bonifacio,” wrote Varnhagen, “ … is so interwoven with all that happened in the domains of politics, literature and the sciences that his life encompasses the history of a great period.…” His poems, in all truth but a small part of his labours, were published in 1825 under the Arcadian name of Americo Elysio. They are, like himself, a thing of violent passions. In _Aos Bahianos_ he exclaims: Amei a liberdade e a independencia Da doce cara patria, a quem o Luso Opprimia sem dó, com risa e mofa: Eis o meu crime todo![11] Yet this is but half the story, for the savant’s political life traced a by no means unwavering line. Two years before the publication of his poems he who so much loved to command fell from power with the dissolution of the Constituinte and he reacted in characteristic violence. Brazilians no longer loved liberty: Mas de tudo acabou da patria gloria! Da liberdade o brado, que troava Pelo inteiro Brasil, hoje enmudece, Entre grilhoes e mortes. Sobre sus ruinas gemem, choram, Longe da patria os filhos foragidos: Accusa-os de traição, porque o amavam, Servil infame bando.[12]