century fondly dwelt on every little feature of such never-ending repetitions in the expression of the same feeling. Barbosa Bacellar devoted no small portion of labour to every line in his _Saudades_. He is particularly successful in imparting a graceful colouring to the romantic conversations in which the solitary lover engages with natural objects.[286] TORREZAÕ COELHO. A doctor of canon law, and a member of the Inquisitorial college of Lisbon, named Simaõ Torrezaõ Coelho, vied with Barbosa Bacellar in this new modification of romantic poetry. His pictures of passion are, however, totally different from those of Bacellar. He imitated the perverted style of the Marinists and Gongorists, and followed the precepts of Faria e Sousa. He talks of “the just sensation of unjust love;”[287]--of the living feeling of a dead soul;[288] of “the memory that lives in the brass of the soul;”[289] and such like Marinisms and Gongorisms. His verses appear, however, to have been very popular.[290] FREIRE DE ANDRADA. Jacinto Freire de Andrade or Andrada, an ecclesiastic, who performed a part in the political history of his native country, and nearly fell a sacrifice to the patriotism with which he defended the claims of the house of Braganza against the Spanish occupation of the Portuguese throne, also endeavoured to enlarge the boundaries of comic poetry. Wit so highly cultivated had never before shewn itself in Portuguese verse. In the union of bold sportiveness, sustained humour and poignant satire, with perfect correctness and elegance of language, Andrada’s burlesque narratives of the fable of Narcissus, and the fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa,[291] excel all the earlier specimens of comic wit which the works of former Portuguese poets, including even the comedies, afford. The burlesque manner of Andrada is owing solely to a caricature style which he took no pains to avoid. From the introductory stanzas to his Polyphemus, it appears that he merely tried to divert himself by these plays of fancy, in the hope of forgetting the adversities of his life. He wished, he says, “to visit the region of folly, that he might thereby approach happiness.” He also observes, that “with three ounces of judgment he is more loaded than an elegy, and more solemnly sententious than a sonnet.”[292] In order to cheat his sorrow, he makes “joy play with false dice.”[293] Had Andrada thrown these dice more steadily, he would, without doubt, have been one of the first comic writers in narrative poetry. But his satire was chiefly directed against the affected poetry of the Gongorists. He attacked other follies merely incidentally as they happened to strike him, and while he was in the humour rather to jest than to castigate.