Of the cultivation of prose style in Portuguese literature during the seventeenth century, nothing could be said, had not a man in whom the spirit of the sixteenth century survived, successfully pursued the path which Barros and Brito traced out. This writer, who must be regarded as single in his age, was Jacinto Freire de Andrada, the same who in his comic tales already noticed, ridiculed the Gongorism and Marinism of poetry. The reader is almost inclined to doubt the evidence of his own eyes, when, among the Portuguese writings of the seventeenth century, he discovers such a prose work as “the Life of Dom Joaõ de Castro, fourth Viceroy of India, by Freire de Andrada.”[330] No biographical work, deserving to be ranked on a level with this, had hitherto appeared either in Portuguese or any other modern language. Andrada is reproached with a certain degree of far-fetched elegance and refined subtlety; and certainly his historical style might often, with advantage, be more simple. But that this ingenious writer upon the whole entertained the most correct notion of the rhetorical cultivation of historical prose, and that his intention was to write an energetic style appropriate to his subject, but by no means to make an ostentatious display of elegant phrases, would be sufficiently evident from the character of the whole work, even though the author had not, in his brief preface, explained himself with sufficient clearness on this point. He observes, that he has written his book in the language of truth, and according to credible authorities. He neither followed the advice of some who recommended the extension of his work, nor adopted the opinion of others who wished him to sacrifice the truth of nature to the fashionable ornaments of affected cultivation. His object was not to flatter a corrupt taste; on the contrary he wished to merit, by the unadorned language of truth, the approbation of sensible readers, rather than to gain a name among the great mass of a mis-judging public.[331] To a man of Andrada’s cultivated mind, it never could appear that the duty of a faithful historian required him to write in the chronicle style, as a means of thereby ensuring historical truth. When he took up the pen he felt that a demand was made upon him for the exercise of intellectual powers. His biography of Joaõ de Castro was to be a monument in honour of that distinguished man. Andrada, therefore, devoted no less attention to the representation than to the distribution of the materials of his narrative. To all appearance he did not form his style on that of any particular author of antiquity, but he makes nearer approaches to Sallust than to any other; and the influence which the study of the classics must have had on the literary education of Andrada, is sufficiently obvious. His turn for wit occasionally led him to express himself in antitheses of too poignant a character; but in every other respect his narrative style possesses the clearness,