the public eye; but at the same time takes a lively interest in all that occurs at court, and soon becomes a minister of state. The love of wealth being now his governing passion, he rapidly enriches himself at the expense of the nation, and at last dies of vanity. What this satire occasionally wants in refinement, is compensated by its extraordinary features, in which Andrada’s wit shines with peculiar lustre: and though the comic effusions of the ingenious author can only rank as poetic trifles, they are nevertheless entitled to some attention in consequence of their being chiefly directed against the absurd style which then distinguished and disfigured Spanish and Portuguese literature. Andrada’s Polyphemus is a direct ridicule of the monstrous production of Gongora which bears the same title. As an example of the kind of ridicule employed it may just be mentioned, that in this parody the Cyclops styles the conquering eyes of Galathæa, “Turks by land and Dutch by sea.” The poetic works of Andrada include some comic sonnets and romances. He is also the author of a still more remarkable prose work which will be hereafter noticed. FURTHER DECLINE OF PORTUGUESE TASTE--RIBEIRO DE MACEDO--CORREA DE LA CERDA. During the second half of the seventeenth century, until the period of the first imitation of the French style in Portuguese literature, the defenders and partizans of classic correctness in Portugal seem to have been constantly diminishing. After the kingdom was emancipated from Spanish dominion, the old patriotic spirit of the Portuguese again found its way into their poetry; but that poetry gained little thereby in interior cultivation; and its boundaries were not farther extended. A species of mythological tales in the romantic form, but very dull and frigid, obtained some favour. In this style did Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, who was also a prose author, and who died in the year 1682, after filling several distinguished posts, relate the fable of Adonis in serious redondilhas. Undismayed by the ridicule with which Freire Andrada had overwhelmed poems formed of such materials, he says in his verses that “Adonis has obtained privileges from Cupid, and licences from Diana, for punishing wild beasts and enchanting the fair; that lightnings flash from his eyes, and arrows are shot from his hands; that the hills and valleys at once represent lamentation and horror, because in the former the beasts groan, and in the latter the goddesses sigh.”[303] Fernaõ Correa de la Cerda, an ecclesiastic, who was Bishop of Oporto, may also be numbered among the versifiers of this class. In a sonnet on a lady who died a few days after an eclipse of the sun, he thought it pathetic to say, that “at the death of Phillis, the whole celestial sphere must be afflicted with deep sorrow, bitter anguish.” And then he asks “if _an eclipsed_ sun excites so much regret, what is to be expected from _a dead_ sun?”[304] VIOLANTE DO CEO.