Nevertheless, Da Costa’s style, alike free from exaggeration and fantastic ornaments, exhibits the truth of nature and of poetry so happily united with Petrarchic intensity of feeling, and expressed in language so elegant and unostentatious, that his sonnets may justly be numbered among the very best in Portuguese literature.[359] While perusing them, the reader cannot fail sometimes to fancy that he recognizes the simple tone of the old Portuguese lyric poetry, reflected by an Italian echo.[360] Though the influence of French taste was far less powerful than the Italian with Da Costa, it still had some effect on his poetry. It appears to have guided him in the choice of a metre for his _epicedios_, or elegies. These poems, however, are not composed in Alexandrines, but in iambics of five feet, without any complexity in the rhymes. This is a kind of verse which is frequently used by English writers; and yet Da Costa seems never to have turned his attention to English poetry. But though such verse was quite uncommon, similar measures had long before been known in Portugal, and perhaps Da Costa was not the first Portuguese poet who in this way attempted to approximate to the French style, as far as the diversity of the languages would, with propriety, permit the experiment to be carried. This dull style of rhyming, appears, however, always somewhat foreign and inharmonious in Portuguese poetry. In other respects, these _epicedios_ possess the merit of noble, inartificial, and pleasing expression; but they want the high charm of the author’s sonnets, and some of his other poetic compositions.[361] He himself appears to have attached most value to his twenty eclogues. They are indeed written with peculiar care, and are not destitute of beauty in some of their parts; but, like most Portuguese eclogues, they are either occasional poems in a bucolic dress, or partly lyric compositions, which, with the exception of pastoral names, exhibit no trace of bucolic character. The extraordinary predilection of the more ancient Portuguese for this species of pastoral poetry, had therefore descended from one generation to another, down to these latter times. One of Da Costa’s eclogues is dedicated to the prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal, or as he was then still called, the Count of Oeyras, with a warmth of feeling which seems to have been the genuine effusion of the poet’s heart. From an emphatic eulogy pronounced on that minister, it may be concluded that the Portuguese poets immediately and sensibly felt the beneficial effects of his administration, for the general encouragement of mental freedom was a part of Pombal’s system. The poet says of the statesman, that he reconciled innocence with genius, and recalled justice to the world.[362] Among Da Costa’s other poems, the most remarkable are his masterly imitations of canzonettas, cantatas, and other modern Italian poems for music, to which the opera has given birth. Nothing finer in this style of poetry