But Rodriguez Lobo who found only within the boundary or in the vicinity of pastoral poetry the objects and impressions for the poetic representation of which he was destined by nature, was induced to take part with the Portuguese and Spanish poets of his age in the absurd competition for the prize of epopœia. He wrote a work entitled, _O Condestabre de Portugal_, (the Generalissimo of Portugal), which he intended should be a national epic poem. It is, however, merely a versified biography of the renowned Nuno Alvarez Pereira, whom the Portuguese of that age eulogized with an enthusiasm equal to that with which the Spaniards celebrated their favourite Cid. Rodriguez Lobo has collected with all requisite patience the most remarkable events in the life of his hero. He has arranged them chronologically, dividing the whole into twenty cantos, and the long narrative is written in neat octaves. But all the advantage which a story can impart to a poem is wanting in this tedious work. It is difficult to conceive how a man of Rodriguez Lobo’s poetic taste, could have written verses in this style without being conscious that he was only rhyming historical prose. The imagination has had but little or no share either in the cultivation of the style or the painting of the situations; and the whole work exhibits no trace of poetic invention. But it is soon evident that from beginning to end the author is resolved never to be at variance with historical truth. Thus Rodriguez Lobo purposely repressed his natural poetic feeling in order to conform with the false notions of epic composition, which were at that time firmly established in Spain and Portugal. So much, indeed, was he under the dominion of those notions that he has not had the courage to mingle even as much poetry with his narrative, as the Spaniard Ercilla introduced in his Araucana.[226] The few stanzas which Camoens in his Lusiad consecrates to Nuno Alvarez,[227] are worth more than the twenty cantos of Lobo’s versified biography. In a philological point of view, however, the composition deserves praise, for the simplicity, correctness and elegance of its language. A gleam of poetic beauty here and there distinguishes some of the descriptive and pathetic passages, and repays the labour of a perusal.