The esteem which Faria e Sousa obtained in Portuguese literature, must have contributed not a little to promote the endless rhyming of sonnets, and to impede the developement of the loftier style of poetry in Portugal. The false liberality of his critical code proved very convenient for the sonneteers, who experienced but little difficulty in exhibiting the qualities which that critic required in their compositions; and the unreasonable severity with which he treated Tasso was calculated to seduce every eccentric sonneteer into the conceit that he was himself something more than a Tasso. The pretensions of Faria e Sousa were not, however, universally recognized on the Portuguese Parnassus. Even in the composition of sonnets, some of the principal Portuguese poets of the seventeenth century followed the more pure and elevated style of Camoens. But no one thought of avoiding the faults into which Camoens had fallen. That prince of Portuguese poets was always regarded as faultless. THOMAS DE NORONHA. Comic sonnet poetry, in which Camoens did not distinguish himself as a master, obtained a favourable reception from the Portuguese public on Thomas de Noronha, a contemporary of Faria e Sousa becoming celebrated for that kind of composition.[280] But Thomas de Noronha, though an agreeable man of the world, was but a pretender in wit. His writings probably acquired a particular interest from the convivial temper, for which he was distinguished in society, and of which the reader is reminded by his poetry. But such versified jests as this merry companion has left behind him, could only have obtained temporary popularity from personal and local circumstances. They want the sprightly extravagance of the burlesque poetry of the Italians, as well as the moral keeping and caustic delicacy of the more lofty style of satire. Burlesque, however, they certainly are. Some approach, at least in a coarse way, to the Italian jests of a similar kind;[281] and in others jesting and serious feeling are blended together in a very absurd manner. Thomas de Noronha thought fit to write a burlesque sonnet in honour of Rodriguez Lobo, when that poet was drowned in the Tagus. After a comic apostrophe to heaven and earth, Noronha declares that if he can catch Æolus he will give him a flogging.[282] In nearly the same manner he jests in comic canções and romances, and in redondilha stanzas, (_decimas_,) which may also be termed epigrams. In these verses the conceits frequently turn on a play of words. Many must be altogether unintelligible to the foreign reader, particularly in the nineteenth century. BARBOSA BACELLAR.