precision, lightness, and moreover the deep interest of the classic prose of antiquity. It is only necessary to read the commencement of this biography, to enter immediately into the spirit of the whole work.[332] Andrada’s appropriate diction never resolves into merely elegant prolixity; and whatever be the degree of polish it receives, its character is generally unassuming. In the biographical arrangement of the events, little historical art is observable, but a clear practical understanding is displayed throughout the whole work. The character of Joaõ de Castro is exhibited even in the first accounts given of his childhood and education. The reader afterwards finds it developed with farther precision, but without any appearance of being again obtruded by the historian. The dark side, which, however, should never be wanting in an historical picture, is left by Andrada to the imagination of his readers. But the intuitive power displayed in the representation of the events, which is naturally and nowhere poetically adorned, leaves nothing to be wished for in this biographical work.[333] Andrada also proved himself a disciple of the classic school by his predilection for the ancient custom of enlivening the narrative, and augmenting the interest of the subject, by speeches attributed to the principal personages who figure in the work. These are sometimes delivered by Joaõ de Castro himself, and more frequently by his most dangerous but interesting enemy, Coge Cofar, the general in chief of the Mussulmans in India. Some of these speeches are decidedly excellent, but others are rather artificial.[334] Towards the close of the biography where documents are interpolated, the story loses some portion of its deep interest. It was by no means a happy idea to add to this work an appendix, which is intended as a summary recapitulation of the whole; and at the same time as a supplemental picture of the character of Joaõ de Castro, whose character is sufficiently portrayed in the narrative of his achievements. * * * * * Treatises in the Portuguese language, intended for the developement of the principles of poetry and rhetoric in systematic order, or for the extended application of some of these principles, seem either not to have been written, or at least not to have been much known in the seventeenth century. Practically cultivated taste and critical tact, without which the art of poetry and rhetoric degenerates into useless scholastic theory, must, to men like Freire Andrada, in a great measure have supplied the place of systematic rules. BOOK III. FROM THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.