and these constitute a Portuguese _De Imitatione Christi_. Rarely, if ever, has such glow and fervour been set in print: none but the very dull could be left cold by these transports of passionate devotion. The prose wrestles and throbs in an agony of grief or rapture, of mysticism carried to the extreme limit where all power of articulate expression ends.[565] Frei Thomé de Jesus is a master of Portuguese prose not by any arts or graces but through the white heat of his intensity. No book shows more clearly that style must always be a secondary consideration, that if there be a burning conviction excellence of style follows. It could evidently only have been written by one who had greatly suffered, indeed by one who still suffered, one who expressed in these fervid accents of heavenly communion an oblivion of self and an energy habitually employed in eager earthly service of his fellow men. In a prefatory letter (November 8, 1581) addressed to the Portuguese people he declared his intention of publishing as it stood this masterpiece of mystic ecstasy, which he believed to have been written by divine inspiration.[566] Another celebrated treatise of a mystic character is the _Voz do_ _Amado_ (1579) by the learned Canon D. HILARIAM BRANDÃO (†1585). The religious works of this century are very numerous. We may mention the anonymous _Regras e Cautelas de proueito espiritual_ (1542), which is written in biblical prose and deals with the fifteen perfections or excellences of charity and kindred subjects; the dialogues _Desengano de Perdidos em dialogo entre dous peregrinos, hũ christão e hũ turco_ (Goa, 1573) by the first Archbishop of Goa, D. GASPAR DE LEÃO (†1576), and the _Dialogo espiritual: Colloquio de um religioso com um peregrino_ (1578) by FREI ALVARO DE TORRES [Vedras] (fl. 1550), who was drowned in the Tagus when on the way to his convent at Belem.