Antonio Ferreira, surnamed the Portuguese Horace, was born at Lisbon in the year 1528. His parents, who belonged to the first class of nobility, destined him for a statesman or public functionary. He obtained the degree of Doctor at the University of Coimbra, where he studied the civil law. He took however less interest in his jurisprudential studies than in the lectures of a professor of ancient literature, named Diogo de Tieve, who at that time possessed great celebrity, and for whom after quitting the university he continued to entertain a strong affection and regard. While Ferreira was pursuing his studies at Coimbra, the works of Horace, and other poets of antiquity, produced on him an impression totally different from that which was experienced by the other students, who directed their attention to ancient literature. Among the latter it was a fashion to write verses in latin, and to look with disdain on the Portuguese language; but Ferreira, while yet a youth, proved himself an enthusiastic lover of his mother tongue. He resolved not to write a line in any foreign language, not even in Spanish; and he faithfully kept his determination. In his beautiful introductory or dedicatory stanza, to readers after his own taste (_a os bons engenhos_) he intimates that his poems shall belong “to those readers to whose pure bosoms he may commit them. For himself he will be content with the glory of having it said that he loved his native land and his countrymen.”[104] But the patriotic spirit which thus glowed in the soul of Ferreira was combined, in a manner then altogether uncommon, with a similar enthusiasm for the ancient classics, and particularly for the poetry of Horace. The example of Saa de Miranda had also its influence in forming his taste; and he closely studied the Italian poets from whom he learned to combine classic correctness of ideas and language, on the model of the ancients, with a natural poetic style, suited to the age in which he lived. The beautiful structure of Italian verse so charmed him, that he thought no other metres possessed sufficient dignity to entitle them to be introduced into Portuguese poetry. He accordingly never composed in redondilhas, and, generally speaking, in no verse in the old national style. The whole object of his ambition was to be a classical poet, and in that character to give to Portuguese poetry a new, and according to his taste, a more noble diction. Inspired with the hope of accomplishing this purpose, he laboured with so much assiduity, that before he left the university he had composed the greater portion of the hundred and thirteen sonnets which are contained in the collection of his poems. Whether the “Lady of his Thoughts,” who supplies in these sonnets the place of Petrarch’s Laura, was no imaginary character, is uncertain. It cannot, however, be doubted, that in his fifth elegy the poet alludes to a real and beloved Manila, who had been snatched from him by death. Ferreira was