poem, in which first the _Autor_ and then Crisfal speaks (_Falla Crisfal_) suggests this, as does the title: _Trovas de um pastor per nome Crisfal_, compared with the definite _Trovas de dous pastores_ ... _Feitas por Bernaldim Ribeiro_.[317] It is not difficult to explain the printing of the _Trovas_ together with the works of Ribeiro and the hesitancy of the early editions in ascribing them, on hearsay, to Cristovam Falcão; but the word Crisfal caught the fancy, and those who learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcão would inevitably confuse the explanation of the anagram with the authorship of the poem. One of those who did so was Gaspar Fructuoso (or Antonio Cordeiro), and the tradition which had begun so shakily with a _dizem ser_ gained strength with the years. Presumably the editor of the 1559 edition knew what was to be known on the subject, yet he speaks with a quavering uncertainty: it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam Falcão becomes a fixed belief.[318] The eighth _Decada_ of Diogo do Couto was not published till 1673, i. e. over half a century after the death of its author. The explanatory sentence _aquelle que fez aquellas antigas e nomeadas_ (or _namoradas_) _trovas de Crisfal_[319] may well be, and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a few scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, _grammatici certant_ and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept a second writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese literature owing to the marvellous success with which, divesting his muse of any qualities of its own, he identified himself with a poet who is the most characteristically Portuguese, but also the most individual of impassioned singers: Bernardim Ribeiro. A kind of continuation of the story of _Crisfal_ (who is now enchanted within the fountain of his own tears) appeared at the end of the century in a small collection of poems entitled _Sylvia de Lisardo_ (1597). It contains forty-one sonnets (of which one only is in Spanish), three eclogues in _tercetos_ and _oitavas_, and various _romances_ (in Spanish) and shorter poems, and has been ascribed, without sufficient reason, to the historian Frei Bernardo de Brito. These poems must remain anonymous, and they throw no light on the _Crisfal_ problem, but in their true poetical feeling and power of expression they deserved their popularity[320] in the first half of the seventeenth century.