This phenomenon, which seems to be at variance with Portuguese patriotism, may, however, be explained by the peculiar relations which the Castilian and Portuguese languages bear to each other. The Castilian language has an imposing character which is wanting in the Portuguese; and though the stateliness of the Spanish diction might seem formal and affected to the Portuguese in general, it was likely to make a forcible impression on their poets. The pleasing fluency of the Portuguese tongue, could not, however, operate so favourably on the poets of Spain, for to a Spanish ear the most elegant Portuguese has merely the effect of broken Castilian.[56] The Portuguese were indemnified for the Castilian guttural, which so much displeased them, by the sonorous accentuation of the Castilian words; but the Spaniards found much of this accentuation lost in Portuguese by abbreviations of the very words in which it occurs in Spanish. The Castilian too was regarded as the more dignified tongue, because its unabbreviated words, for which it is indebted to the latin, excited more precise recollections of the language of ancient Rome.[57] It is probable also, that Castilian pride after the union of the Castilian and Arragonian provinces contributed its share in rendering the Spaniards insensible to the peculiar beauties of the Portuguese language. On the contrary, the flexibility of the Portuguese character more readily accommodated itself to foreign forms. Finally, the dependence of the whole government of Portugal on the court of Madrid, during the space of half a century, rendered the knowledge of the Castilian language indispensable to those Portuguese who were destined to fill the first ministerial departments in their native country; but the Spaniards had no such inducement to learn Portuguese, as they were not permitted to hold any public office in Portugal. Thus did the Spanish language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, acquire that degree of consideration in Portuguese literature which it afterwards maintained. It should besides be recollected, that during the period in which Portugal continued under the dominion of Spain, a great portion of the bookselling trade had been transferred to Lisbon, the first commercial city in the two united kingdoms; and trifling as this circumstance may at first sight appear, it cannot be doubted that it co-operated to the diffusion of the Spanish language in Portuguese literature. RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE PORTUGUESE DURING THIS PERIOD.