Among the treatises of criticism by which it was hoped, about the middle of the eighteenth century to reform the taste of the Portuguese, some consideration is due to those written by Garçaõ, the imitator of Horace.[401] They are in the form of lectures, and were delivered in an assembly called the academy of the Portuguese Arcadians. On this account they are also entitled to rank among works of oratory. In two of these lectures, Garçaõ zealously defends the Aristotelian theory of tragedy in its application to the modern drama. He insists on obedience to the rule of not shedding blood on the stage. Accordingly he commends the French drama; and notices Addison’s Cato with approbation. His opinion, on this point, he conceives is sufficiently supported by these two remarks--1st. That to fulfil the object of tragic art it is not necessary to shed blood on the stage--and 2dly. That it is improper, because at an intellectual entertainment disgusting objects should not be presented to the eye. Garçaõ appears also to have understood in the usual way the condition of Aristotle, that tragedy should refine the passions of the spectator. He expatiates much on the moral utility of a perfect tragedy, through which the theatre might, in his opinion, be easily converted into an excellent school of morals. To this effect the opinions of the French critics Le Bossu and Dacier, are industriously cited in concert with those of Aristotle. Both lectures were given in the year 1757. The main object of a third lecture which Garçaõ delivered to the same society in the same year, is to demonstrate that the imitation of the classic poets of antiquity is one of the most essential requisites of modern poetry. He observes that the judicious and the servile imitator must not be confounded together, for that the latter is in fact merely a plagiarist. Garçaõ himself seems, however, to have been somewhat puzzled to make out this distinction; for he asserts that Camoens has in his pastoral poems imitated Virgil in the same manner as Virgil has Theocritus. A skilful imitator, he says, may excel the poet whom he imitates, as Horace has in many passages excelled Pindar. At the same time it must be allowed, that these and the following lectures of Garçaõ possess the merit of pure, natural, and dignified language; and that in several passages they display true eloquence.[402] Garçaõ, who felt a patriotic interest in the improvement of the polite literature of his country, expected that the academy of the Portuguese Arcadians would by its exertions revive the good taste of the sixteenth century. Only such a society, zealously competing for the welfare and honour of the country, can, he says, become “the Alexander who will cut this gordian knot of bad taste, the Achilles who will conquer this Troy.”[403] But it appears that he appealed to his Arcadians in vain. Their literary patriotism was of a very passive character; and the advantages which Garçaõ hoped this