of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the _Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_ (1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen cantos in Spanish blank verse. LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto 17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India (cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out of place in an epic. If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus, regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry. The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he consoles himself, if not his reader, with the sincere conviction that his rude verse cannot detract from the greatness of the deeds which he describes (xx. 1-6). FOOTNOTES: [401] _Seu quarto avò foi um Gallego nobre_ (Diogo Camacho, _Jornada ás Cortes do Parnaso_).