is to be found even in the similar minor works of Metastasio. His _A’ Lyra Desprezo_ (Farewell to Poetry), and the _Palinodia_, which accompanies it, are alone sufficient to prove the perfect accordance of the Italian and Portuguese language with respect to the laws of musical poetry.[363] But still finer is another Farewell, entitled, _Fileno ä Nize, despedida_, which was probably composed by Da Costa on his return to America. Here the old romantic inexhaustibility in the poetic amplification of a favourite idea, sustained by a constantly recurring burthen, is united with all the magic of Metastasio’s versification.[364] In some poems of the same class which Da Costa composed in the Italian language, a certain degree of constraint is observable. But his Portuguese cantatas, spiritual as well as temporal, are not only free from that fault, but often bear the stamp of excellence. PROGRESS OF PORTUGUESE POETRY IN THE LATTER PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[365] To make a detailed report of Portuguese poetry during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, is a task which must be consigned to other writers. In this general history it is sufficient briefly to describe how the new spirit of Portuguese literature acquired, even on its poetic side, a marked influence, though it did not unfold itself with that energy which was necessary to reproduce the poetry of the sixteenth century under somewhat varied features. This period must not yet be extolled as the commencement of a second golden age of Portuguese poetry; but the poetic talent of the Portuguese has opened for itself a wider field; and fantastic rhyming no longer finds admirers among the educated class of readers. The Portuguese zealously endeavour to rival, in polite literature, as well as in science, those nations who have, or who seem to have outstripped them. But this rivalry is happily combined with a revived veneration for the poetry of the sixteenth century. Thus have the old national forms of Portuguese poetry been preserved for modern times; and the Portuguese drama alone seems doomed to be governed by French laws. TRANSLATIONS.