Among the Portuguese chivalric romances, which were so assiduously read in the sixteenth century, may be numbered _A Constante Florinda_, (the Constant Florinda) of Gaspar Pires de Rebello, who was likewise the author of some short didactic novels, (_novelas exemplares_) which were published about the period at which Cervantes enriched Spanish literature with tales of a totally different standard, though bearing the same title.[237] Rebello entertained a very high opinion of the usefulness of his novels;[238] but his inventions are common place; and his unceasing display of mythological learning is as affected as are many of his similies and images.[239] PROGRESS OF THE HISTORICAL ART. But the historical works which were written in the Portuguese language in the sixteenth century, are more important to the lover of literature, as well as the politician, than the other compositions in prose which have just been noticed. In Portugal, as well as in Spain, relations of real events had long been completely distinguished from romantic prose. But before the old chronicle style could become entirely obsolete, it was necessary that the old chronicle spirit should yield to the nobler spirit of historic art; and to this in that age, with all its great events, there was little inducement in Portugal. The ancient classic historians were, it is true, read and studied; but when Portuguese writers attempted to imitate them, they at most only succeeded in producing some resemblance to their force of description, and in a certain degree to their elegance of expression, but failed altogether in the arrangement of events according to the just idea of historical utility, and in the delicacy of the shades of an historical picture. Indeed the rude spirit of the chronicles seemed then to belong no less essentially to the narration of modern events, than the rhyme and the metres of romantic verse to modern poetry. He who felt himself called to be the historian of his native country, necessarily endeavoured to render himself no less intimate with the old chronicles than with classic authors; and, if, fully imbued with his subject, he took up the thread of the narrative where an earlier chronicler had dropped it, he unconsciously fell into the style of that chronicler. Had fate transplanted for several years to Italy, and placed in a sphere of political and literary activity, a Portuguese possessing the talent and energy of Diego de Mendoza, he would probably, like that distinguished Spaniard, have there learned to compose an historical work according to justly conceived ideas of historical art, independently of the influence of the chronicles.[240] But in India, to which at that time all Portuguese subjects who wished to rise in the service of their country eagerly hastened, it was not to be expected that a historian could be formed. Still, however, the historical literature of the Portuguese of the sixteenth century, when