When the fault rests rather with the agents of the government than with the government itself, he seems to attack only the former. In order that the just cause of the Moriscos might be, for once, powerfully vindicated, he puts, after the manner of the ancients, a speech into the mouth of one of the chiefs of the conspirators.[188] This is the only speech in the work which seems sufficient to shew that at least it was not inserted from a spirit of servile imitation; but he occasionally ventures, contrary to the practice of modern languages, to approximate his narrative style to that of the writers of antiquity; as for example, where he employs a succession of verbs in the infinitive mood.[189] The Spaniards, however, seem to have regarded the grammatical freedom used by Mendoza as perfectly conformable to the genius of their language. During the gloomy and suspicious government of Philip II. this excellent work was only to be read in manuscript. It was first published at Madrid, in the year 1610, five-and-thirty years after the death of the author, and was reprinted at Lisbon in 1617; but both editions were purposely mutilated.[190] The text was at last given complete in the edition of the work, which appeared in 1776. SAA DE MIRANDA. The fame of the great reform of the Castilian poetry having penetrated into Portugal, a similar reform took place in the poetry of that nation. At this time the Castilian language was held in such high consideration in Portugal, that even Portuguese poets, without undervaluing their national tongue, thought themselves bound occasionally to write verses in Castilian, to entitle them to be regarded as perfect masters of the poetic art. In the first half of the sixteenth century, two of the most celebrated of these Portuguese poets laboured with such success to extend the dominion of Castilian pastoral poetry, that the thread of the history of Spanish literature would be broken, were a notice of the poetic merits of these two celebrated men confined solely to the history of the literature of Portugal. One of them, Francisco de Saa de Miranda, who was born in 1494, and died in 1558, belongs, however, in so eminent a degree, to his own nation, and the circumstances of his life are so closely connected with the history of Portuguese poetry, that it would be an injustice to Portuguese literature to rank him exclusively among the poets of Spain. Besides, most of his poetic works, with the exception of his pastoral poems, are written in the Portuguese language.[191] The other Portuguese poet, who claims attention in the history of Spanish poetry, is Jorge de Montemayor. He, through his residence in Spain, became wholly a Spaniard:--the work to which he chiefly owes his celebrity is written in Spanish; and he had so decided an influence on Spanish literature, that this would be the proper place for introducing an account of his short life and of his poetry, did not Saa de Miranda’s Castilian