Meanwhile the comedies of Lope de Vega found their way into Portugal, and since that period this class of comedy seemed to require the Spanish language to render it perfect. In the seventeenth century, many Spanish comedies were written by Portuguese authors; and the Portuguese poets who adhered to their mother tongue, sought another sphere. During the sixty years in which there was no court in Lisbon, Portuguese poetry withdrew entirely within the circle of private relations. The lyric forms of romantic love, with a supplemental supply of the favourite amatory pastoral poetry, and of versified jests of various kinds, seemed fully to satisfy the public. That the spirit of vigorous emulation should so suddenly have vanished among the Portuguese poets, would, however, be inconceivable, were it not that in Spain about the same period, every species of poetic composition, except dramatic poetry, which flowed like an impetuous torrent, remained stationary at the point at which it stood in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Both the Spaniards and the Portuguese felt the paralyzing influence of the political relations of their deeply humiliated countries; and in both nations despotism, spiritual and temporal, finally overthrew the power which had long kept it in equipoise. Even in Portugal, therefore, the restoration of the independence of the kingdom in the year 1640, though it excited new ebullitions of patriotism, could produce no new freedoms in poetry. PORTUGUESE SONNETS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.