The most amusing work of Moraes is a prose satire, printed in 1734, called “The Caves of Salamanca,” where, in certain grottos, which a popular tradition supposed to exist, sealed up by magic, within the banks of the Tórmes, he finds Amadis of Gaul, Oriana, and Celestina, and discourses with them and other fanciful personages on such subjects as his humor happens to suggest. Parts of it are very wild; parts of it are both amusing and wise, especially what is said about the Spanish language and academies, and about the “Telemachus” of Fénelon, then at the height of its fame. The whole shows few of the affectations of style that still deformed and degraded whatever there was of literature in the country, and which, though ridiculed in “The Caves of Salamanca,” are abundant in the other works of the same author.[288] [288] There is an edition of the “Nuevo Mundo,” printed at Barcelona, 1701, 4to, containing many blanks, which the author announces his intention to fill up. Of the “Alfonso, ó la Fundacion del Reyno de Portugal,” there are editions of 1712, 1716, 1731, and 1737. There is a notice of the author--Francisco Botelho Moraes e Vasconcellos--in Barbosa, (Tom. II. p. 119,) and at the end of the edition of the Alfonso, Salamanca, 1731, 4to, is a defence of a few peculiarities in its orthography. “Las Cuevas de Salamanca” (s. l. 1734) is a small volume, divided into seven books, written, perhaps, at Salamanca itself, which Moraes loved, and where he retired in his old age. He published one or two works in Spanish, besides those already mentioned, and one or two in Latin, but no others of consequence. A long heroic poem, in two parts, in honor of the conquest of Peru by the Pizarros, was printed at Lima in 1732. It is founded principally on the prose History of the Inca Garcilasso, but is rarely so interesting as the gossip out of which it was constructed. The author, Pedro de Barnuevo, was an officer of the Spanish government in South America; and he gives in the Preface a long list of his works, published and unpublished. He was, undoubtedly, a man of learning, but not a poet. Like Moraes, he has arranged a mystical interpretation to his story; some parts of which, such as that where America comes before God, and prays to be conquered that she may be converted, are really allegorical; while, in general, the interpretation he gives is merely an after-thought, forced and unnatural. But his work is dull and in bad taste, and the octave stanzas in which it is written are managed with less skill than usual.[289] [289] “Lima Fundada, Poema Heróico de Don Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo,” Lima, 1732, 4to, about 700 pages; but so ill paged that it is not easy to determine.