Verissimo would call Gonçalves Dias the greatest Brazilian poet, though the noted critic discovers more genius in Basilio da Gama and in Alvares de Azevedo and even Laurindo Rabello,--more philosophical emotion in Junqueira Freire. And before the national criticism had awarded Gonçalves Dias that place of honour, the people had granted it. “The history of our Romanticism will recognize that the strength of this spiritual movement came not alone from the talent of its chief authors, but from their communion with the milieu, from the sympathy which they found there. Our literature was then for the first time, and perhaps the last, social.” Gonçalves Dias, in his _Canção de Exilio_, captured the soul of his people with a simple lyrism that the slightest exaggeration might have betrayed into sentimental doggerel. Minha terra tem palmeiras, Onde canta o sabiá; As aves que aqui gorgeam, Não gorgeião como lá.[4] These stanzas, set to music, became the property of the nation. “If, like the Hebrews, we were to lose our fatherland, our song of exile would be already to hand in the _Canção_ of Gonçalves Dias. With it he reached and conquered the people and our women, who are--in all respects--the chief element in the fame and success of poets. And not only the people, but Brazilian literature and poetry. Since that time the poet is rare who does not sing his land. “‘All chant their fatherland,’ runs a verse by Casimiro de Abreu, whose nostalgia proceeds directly from the _Canção_ of Gonçalves Dias. Nor does he hide this, calling part of his verses, _Canções do Exilio_. And to the name of Casimiro de Abreu we can add, following in the wake of the poet of Maranhão, Magalhaes, Porto Alegre, Alvares de Azevedo, Laurindo Rabello, Junqueira Freire and almost all his contemporaries. In all you will find that song, expressed as conscious or disguised imitation. Dominated by the emotion of the Song of Exile, Brazil made of Gonçalves Dias her favorite poet, the elect of her feelings. The nativist instinct, so characteristic of peoples in their infancy, found also a sympathetic echo in his _Poesias Americanas_, and received as a generous reparation the idealization of our primitive inhabitants and their deeds, without inquiring into what there was in common between them and us, into the fidelity of those pictures and how far they served the cause of a Brazilian literature. His lyrism, of an intensity which then could be compared in our language only to that of Garrett,[5] whose influence is evident in it, found similarly a response in the national feeling.”