The fourteenth century is not much richer than the thirteenth in names, which shed a lustre on the history of Portuguese poetry. Scarcely any writers of verse are recorded, except those who were members of the royal family, as if they were considered the representatives of all the contemporary poets of their nation. Alphonso IV. who reigned from 1325 to 1357, pursued with regard to poetry the same course as his father, King Diniz. Affonso Sanchez, a natural son of Diniz, appears to have been gifted with a similar poetic talent.[10] But the writings of Affonso Sanchez are not now to be found even in manuscript; and those of King Alphonso IV. have never been printed. Pedro I., who was the son of this last mentioned sovereign, and whose unfortunate connection with the beautiful Inez de Castro, has given him a romantic celebrity, seems to have found the Castilian language, which then vied with the Portuguese in cultivation, as well adapted as his native tongue to the poetic expression of his feelings. A Castilian poem by Pedro I., which begins in short verses, like a cancion, and proceeds in the measure of the Italian canzone, has been preserved, in addition to some compositions in Portuguese, which are also attributed to that monarch.[11] If Dom[12] Pedro’s poem be authentic, it proves that the Italian poetry had an influence on the Portuguese, even at a period when the Castilian had not yet fully developed itself in the old national forms. But this early influence of Italian poetry is also proved by some Portuguese sonnets of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. An old sonnet, in praise of Vasco de Lobeira, the author of Amadis de Gaul,[13] is by some writers ascribed to Alphonso IV., King of Portugal, and by others to the Infante Dom Pedro, the son of John I., who was born in the year 1392.[14] It is scarcely worth while to enter into minute investigation merely for the purpose of settling this dispute. Admitting the problematic sonnet to be really the production of the Infante Dom Pedro, and therefore written, at the earliest in the commencement of the fifteenth century, it is certain that at that period no imitation of the Italian style was thought of in Castile. In Portugal, however, the metrical form of the sonnet was not only known, as it also was in Castile; but the Italian style was likewise imitated in sonnets. The Infante Dom Pedro translated some of Petrarch’s sonnets into Portuguese.[15] It may therefore without hesitation be inferred that Dom Pedro, who has never been mentioned as having struck out a new path on the Portuguese Parnassus, merely followed the example of some of his countrymen who lived before him. It is probable, that the mercantile intercourse between Lisbon and the ports of Italy, made the Portuguese early acquainted with Italian literature. But at the period now under consideration, the imitation of the Italian style appears to have been very limited in Portugal; for the old lyric poetry in