treatise written to prove the right of Portugal to appoint bishops, is also the work of a good stylist. Some would say the same of one of the best-known books of the seventeenth century, the _Vida de Dom João de Castro_ (1651), by JACINTO FREIRE DE ANDRADE (1597-1657). The author, born at Beja, was suspected at Madrid of nationalist inclinations, and retired to his cure in the diocese of Viseu; after the Restoration he refused the bishopric of Viseu. His book has often been regarded as a model of Portuguese prose. Pompous and emphatic,[623] it may be described as inflated Tacitus, or rather a mixture of Tacitean phrases, conceits, and rhetorical affectation. But if as a whole it is more akin to Castro’s garish triumph at Goa than to the scientific spirit of his letters, it scarcely deserves the severe strictures which followed excessive praise[624]: it might even become excellent if judiciously pruned of antitheses and artifice.[625] The second Conde da Ericeira, D. FERNANDO DE MENESES (1614-99), wrote a _Historia de Tangere_ (1732) and the _Vida e Acçoens d’El Rei D. João I_ (1677), which ends with an elaborate parallel between Julius Caesar and the Master of Avis. Equally clear but far more artificial is the style of the third Count, D. LUIS DE MENESES (1632-90), in the best-known historical work of the century in Portuguese: _Historia de Portugal Restaurado_ (2 pts., 1679, 98). Its author ended his life by leaping from an upper window into the garden of his palace on a May morning in a fit of melancholy.