Portuguese poetry is no less national than the Spanish. The tendency to orientalism, with which the Spaniards have been so frequently reproached, was, in like manner, a characteristic of the poetic genius of the Portuguese, until the general influence of French taste produced a remarkable change in manners and in literature. To form a just estimate of the works of Saa de Miranda, Camoens, Rodriguez Lobo, and the other principal Portuguese poets, it is not the Greek or Latin, and by no means the French rule of criticism, which ought to be made the measure of poetic excellence. From a right understanding of what really constitutes natural and ideal poetry, is derived the only true principle whereby the judgment ought here to be guided in forming its decision. Keeping this principle in view, attention must be paid to local circumstances, which, whenever ancient or modern poetry has arisen out of the poetic perception of nature and human life, rather than out of reading, or philosophic and critical abstractions, give to the poetic creations of the mind the true impress of reality;--and, amidst realities, the poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lived. These poets sufficiently satisfied their contemporaries and their age, but they had no wish to recommend themselves to posterity by a theoretically cultivated and universal style of poetry. Their poetic world is, accordingly, something more than a mere imaginary world; and what they only wrote to please themselves and their contemporaries, must increase in value with every succeeding century; because the circumstances under which such a style of poetry could arise, are gradually becoming more and more rare. END OF VOL. II. AND OF THE HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE LITERATURE. E. Justins, Printer, 41, Brick Lane, Whitechapel. ERRATA VOLUME II. Page 103, l. 2 from the top, for _farcas_ read _farças_. 110, l. 3 from the top, for _rareshow_ read _rareeshow_. 115, l. 3 from the top, for _prediliction_ read _predilection_. 120, l. 1 first note, for _a ode_ read _an ode_. 134, l. 7 from the top, for _opening Ferreira’s tragedy_, read _opening of Ferreira’s tragedy_. 164, l. 2 of the note, for _hrone_ read _throne_. 165, l. 7 from the top, for _the poetic survey_ read _this poetic survey_. 199, l. 11 from the top, for _redondillas_ read _redondilhas_. 211, l. 7 from the top, for _espistles_ read _epistles_. 233, l. 10 from the top, for _exercisesd_ read _exercised_. 252, l. 6 from the top, for _remaind_ read _remained_. 302, l. 14 from the top, for _stile_ read _style_. 313, l. 2 from the bottom of the second note, for _he_ read _the_. 318, l. 6 from the bottom, for _a more natural dignified_ read _a more natural and dignified_. 324, l. 10 from the bottom, for _antithesis_ read _antitheses_. SPANISH BOOKS, PUBLISHED BY BOOSEY AND SONS,