necessary to distinguish it from the high road of moralizing prose. Patriotism and zeal for the national greatness of Portugal give a peculiar colouring to these epistles. In the spirit of this feeling Ferreira extols the union of Portuguese military glory, with the improvement of manners and the cultivation of the understanding; and with regard to cultivation, according to models, he says--one should seek to “excel others in what is best, and only in other respects to imitate.”[121] He zealously exhorts his friend Andrade Caminha not to make the muses in Portugal speak any thing but Portuguese.[122] He expresses his dissatisfaction at the little encouragement which in his opinion was extended to genius at that period in Portugal. He also inveighs against the perverted appreciation of good and bad, right and wrong.[123] Within the limits of his faith, he himself discourses exquisitely on the beauty of reason.[124] But the soft language of feeling more particularly glows in those epistles in which he speaks of the joys of friendship and the pleasures of rural life.[125] Occasionally Ferreira’s didactic style takes an ironic jocular turn, and then only does it present true Horatian facility.[126] Upon the whole if the poetry of reason and sentiment be not more lightly esteemed than the poetry of luxuriant fancy, Ferreira’s epistles must be numbered among the best in modern literature. Ferreira endeavoured to introduce epigrams, composed after the manner of the ancients, into the poetry of his native country. But he did not succeed in seizing the spirit of the ancient epigram. Ausonius was his model; and the _epigrammas_ and _epitaphios_ which appear among the works of Ferreira are not distinguished either by the tenderness or the energy of the esteemed Greek poems of the same class. Their chief merit is an elegant precision of language conveyed in the metrical form of the Italian octaves; but it is only in a few instances that this elegant precision is in any degree poignant and pleasing.[127] The epitaphs are in general dedicated to the memory of men distinguished in Portuguese history.