The poverty of profane prose, compared with its flourishing condition in the preceding century, is also remarkable. A few historians of the seventeenth century have already been mentioned. The literary academies, of which the most famous were the _Academia dos Generosos_ (1649-68) and the _Academia dos Singulares_ (1663-5),[615] existed rather for the interchange of wit and complimentary or satiric verses than for the encouragement of historical and scientific research. The Conde da Ericeira’s _Portugal Restaurado_ and Freire de Andrade’s Life bear no comparison with works of the _Quinhentistas_. Yet it was the second golden age of Portuguese prose, as the names of Manuel Bernardes and Vieira prove. The latter’s letters, with those of Frei Antonio das Chagas and Mello, are in three different kinds--the political, religious, and familiar--the most notable written in the century. GASPAR PIRES DE REBELLO in the preface to his _Infortvnios tragicos da Constante Florinda_ (1625) excuses himself for its publication on the ground that ‘not spiritual and divine books only benefit our intelligence’. The book, which records the love of Arnaldo and Florinda, of Zaragoza, shows the modern novel growing through _Don Quixote_ out of the _Celestina_ plays and the romances of chivalry, but has little other interest. A second part was published in 1633, and _Novellas Exemplares_, six stories by the same author, in 1650. Numerous other works appeared with more or less alluring or sensational titles but contents disappointingly dull. MATTHEUS DE RIBEIRO (_c._ 1620-95), in his _Alivio de Tristes e Consolação de Queixosos_ (1672, 4), shows greater skill than Pires de Rebello in the invention of the story, but it is marred by the diffuse and pedantic style--April becomes an ‘academy in which Flora was opening the doors for the study of flowers’. The pastoral novel ended in sad contortions with the _Desmayos de Mayo em sombras de Mondego_ (1635) by DIOGO FERREIRA DE FIGUEIROA (1604-74). Its title and the three involved sentences which cover the first three pages (ff. 10, 11) convey an adequate idea of its character and contents.