ELOI DE SÁ SOTTOMAIOR (or Souto Maior), the author of _Jardim do Ceo_ (1607) and _Ribeiras do Mondego_ (1623), is generally perhaps more familiar with the Saints than with the Muses, but some of his poems are not without merit. The latter work, in prose and verse, has no originality, although the author was careful to state that he had composed it before the _Primavera_ of FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ LOBO (_c._ 1580-1622), who in strains not less sweetly harmonious than the Lima poems of Bernardez sang the little stream of Lis that runs so gaily through his native Leiria. He went to study at Coimbra in 1593, took his degree there in 1602, returned to Leiria and before 1604 was in the service of Theodosio, Duke of Braganza, at Villa Viçosa. He was drowned in his prime in the Tagus coming from Santarem to Lisbon. He was alive in 1621, but, as Dr. Ricardo Jorge has shown in his able biography, died before the end of 1622. The fact of his drowning is well established, otherwise the tradition might have been attributed to passages in his works in which he seems to foretell such a fate. An extraordinarily prolific writer, his fame rests chiefly on his three pastoral works of mingled prose and verse: _A Primavera_ (1601) and its second and third parts _O Pastor Peregrino_ (1608) and _O Desenganado_ (1614). Rodriguez Lobo somewhere speaks disparagingly of books ‘long as leagues in Alentejo’, but length and monotony are not absent from his own pastorals. Look into them where you will, beautiful descriptions, showing deep love of Nature, will present themselves, and delightful verse and harmonious prose, excellent in its component parts although allowed to trail in the construction of the sentences. But the reader who attempts more than a desultory acquaintance is soon overcome by a feeling of satiety, for the _Primavera_ in its _brandura sem fim_ and the complete absence of thought is like a stream choked by water-lilies: lovely, but tiring to the swimmer. Through all these love-lorn shepherd scenes runs a vague thread of autobiography. The passion of Bernardim Ribeiro is replaced by a suaver melancholy. The poet leaves the Lis for Coimbra and then goes to Lisbon and thence to distant lands, where he wanders as a pilgrim till he is shipwrecked at the mouth of the Lis and returns to his home to find Lisea given to another. It is divided into _florestas_. In the opening _florestas_ the quiet streams, the green woods and pastures, are charmingly described; later the scene is transferred to the _campos do Mondego_ and the _praias do Tejo_. A breath of the sea is welcome in _O Desenganado_, but the story soon returns to shepherd life and its series of natural but rather insipid incidents.