[325] His complaint in the second elegy (1885 ed., No. 147, l. 17) shows how far he was in advance of his age in Portugal: _Um vilancete brando ou seja um chiste, Letras ás invenções, motes ás damas, Hũa pregunta escura, esparsa triste, Tudo bom, quem o nega? Mas porque, Se alguem descobre mais, se lhe resiste?_ [326] Often he combines several in the same poem. Thus the long (533 lines) eclogue on the death of Garci Lasso (_Nemoroso_) begins in _tercetos_, proceeds with _rima encadeada_ (internal rhyme), and ends with Petrarcan stanzas. [327] Cf. the sonnet (1885 ed., No. 126) _Esprito que voaste_ with _Alma minha gentil_. [328] The autograph manuscript of this and of other poems, discovered in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional by Snr. Delfim Guimarães in 1908, has been reproduced in facsimile by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Boletim_ of the Lisbon _Ac. das Sciencias_, vol. v (1912), pp. 187-220. See _infra_, p. 164. [329] Leonel da Costa, the translator of Virgil and Terence, later wrote a poem in seven cantos of _redondilhas_ on the same subject: _A Conversão miraculosa da felice egypcia penitente Santa Maria_ (1627). [330] Faria e Sousa even makes him the first Portuguese poet to write hendecasyllabics, setting aside those of Sá de Miranda as unreadable: _son incapaces de ser leidos!_ (_Varias Rimas_, pt. ii, p. 162). [331] He was _Moço da camara_ in 1566. He was appointed a knight of the Order of Christ in 1582. He married apparently after his return from Africa in 1581. He was alive in 1596 (although in one of his poems he refers to a premature old age) and dead in 1605. On the other hand, he was apparently over twenty-five in 1558. It is thought that the right of passing on his official posts to his children (_sobrevivencia_), granted to his father in 1532, may indicate the date of the birth of the eldest of his eleven children: Diogo Bernardez (who did not, like some of his brothers, use his father’s second name, Pimenta). [332] _Carta_ 12: _Confesso dever tudo áquella rara Doutrina tua_. [333] The succeeding generation was also distinguished, one of the poet’s nephews becoming Bishop of Angra, another Governor of Angola, a third Professor at Coimbra University. [334] Bernardez’ letters in verse contain many such references to everyday life, e. g. the Lisbon negress selling fried fish in the _Betesga_. [335] A confident sonnet by him in this capacity is extant: _Pois armarse por Christo não duvida Sebastião._ [336] _O doce estillo teu tomo por guia_ and _Escrevo, leio e risco_ he writes to Miranda, but his muse was far more spontaneous than Miranda’s, and it appears from another passage (in _Elegia_ 5) that his alterations were less of style than of matter. [337] _Carta_ 32 is an exception, and consists of seventy-two _oitavas_. [338] He introduces Italian lines (_Cartas_ 23, 27, 30) and wrote a sonnet in Italian.