The taste of the public was, in like manner, corrupted by Jeronymo Bahia, of whose existence in other respects no account is preserved.[313] The old fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa had already been so completely exhausted, that a recurrence to it might have been expected rather to disgust than to please; and yet, as if a new relation of that wearisomely repeated story had been all that was necessary to establish a writer on a level with Gongora, Jeronymo Bahia collected a store of affected phrases, and with pompous gravity remodelled the often celebrated theme of the Cyclops and his disdainful mistress.[314] Thus powerless had been all the pointed satire of the more judicious party. Divested of its original heaviness, and united with the fanciful Marinism, Gongorism now seemed to its defenders to be raised above the reach of ridicule. Bahia, too, thought it, perhaps, the less necessary to guard against the wit of the adverse party, since he was himself a master in subtle witticism. He wrote numerous comic romances, that is to say, comic tales and descriptions of travels in redondilhas. His playful loquacity flows in an inexhaustible current in these romances, which are not destitute of comic interest; but their extreme length would still have rendered them tedious, even though the author had better succeeded in catching the gay style suited to such trivial compositions.[315] His great facility in rhyming is recorded in a notice affixed to one of his odes. This ode was written on a victory gained by the Portuguese during their war with Spain, and Bahia composed it in a single day, so that it was presented to the king on the evening of the day on which the account of the battle was circulated. Surely no other manufacturer of rhyme would, like him, have spun out an _Idyllio panegyrico_, on a chandelier, which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Queen of Portugal, to fifty octavo pages of versified prattle. From the works of this author may also be incidentally learned the direction which the prevailing spirit of religion took in Portugal, when the old national energy expired, and when the still more remarkable decline of the Spanish monarchy enabled the Portuguese to maintain an eight-and-twenty years war against Spain, in defence of their recovered independence. It was at this period that the court of Lisbon resorted to the far-famed expedient of enlisting by prayers and entreaties Saint Anthony among the Portuguese troops, and formally investing him with the military rank of generalissimo, in order to render the army invincible. The inhabitant of heaven was declared to have accepted the command, and Jeronymo Bahia wrote a song of praise in honour of King Alphonso VI. who effected this extraordinary arrangement.[316] FRANCISCO VASCONCELLOS.