Little certain is known of the life of FERNAM ALVAREZ DO ORIENTE (_c._ 1540-_c._ 1595?). Born at Goa, he served in the East, and may have fought in the battle of Alcacer Kebir. His resemblance to Moraes in temperament and adventures perhaps gave rise to the assertion that he wrote the fifth and sixth parts of _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_. The scene of his _Lvsitania Transformada_ (1617) is partly in Portugal (the banks of the river Nabão and the seven hills of Thomar) and partly in India (_no nosso Oriente_). Like Montemôr’s _Diana_, it is divided into _prosas_ and poems, and it is modelled on the _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530)--the mountains of Arcadia transformed into Lusitania[347]--which, however, each of its three books equals in length. The prose setting, although devoid of thought, is mellifluous and clear, and the poems, which contain reminiscences of Camões, rival in the harmony and transparent flow of the verse that ‘prince of the poets of our time’, as Alvarez calls him. Some critics have even ventured to attribute the work to Camões, as though his genius were so poor that he must needs fall to quoting himself in whole lines, as is here the case. But Alvarez had certainly caught some measure of Camões’ skill and of _il soave stilo e ’l dolce canto_ of Sannazzaro and Petrarca. He is, moreover, less vague[348] than many writers of eclogues, and in singing his own love story describes what his eyes have seen. It was, however, an aberration to favour the _verso esdruxulo_ (Ariosto’s _sdruccioli_) (cf. Sannazzaro’s _Arcadia_, Ecl. 1, 6, 8, 9, 12), a truly Manueline adornment which other Portuguese poets unfortunately copied as a new artifice.[349] As a poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa, who was something more than a pedant of pedants, deserves a place among the multitude of Portuguese writers of eclogues, since of the twenty long eclogues contained in his _Fvente de Aganipe y Rimas Varias_ (7 pts., 1624-7) the first twelve are in his native tongue. They show no originality but have occasional passages of quiet beauty. Nos. 7 and 8 are both entitled ‘rustic’ and purpose to represent peasants of Minho. They are so overcharged with archaisms and rustic words and expressions (_samicas_ and _namja_ of course occur, and _grolea_ (glory), _marmolea_ (memory), the form _suidade_, &c.) that they would probably have been Greek to the peasants. As a critic Lope de Vega called Faria the prince of commentators, on the strength of his learned and copious editions of the Lusiads and lyrics of Camões, for whom he had a genuine devotion. Time has lent an interest, if not validity, to his literary criticisms. In poetry he was as prolific as in prose: he boasted, in the age of Lope de Vega, that he had written more blank verse than any other poet and that his printed sonnets exceeded those of Lope by 300.