[644] He admires Cicero--not only as philosopher and orator but as a ‘sublime poet’! (_O Homem_ (1815), p. 98)--and Seneca, calls Petrarca immortal, Tasso incomparable, and is generous in his appreciation of English writers. At about the same time John Keats, as Petrarca five centuries earlier, was also reading Homer in translation, but in a somewhat different spirit. [645] _Newton, Proemio._ [646] In the second edition (1827) he says that this poem, in twelve cantos and about 1,000 _oitavas_, written with ‘more fire and a purer light’ than those of Camões, had cost him ‘nine years of assiduous application’. [647] Macedo called Bocage _fanfarrão glosador_, and much abuse of the same kind varied the monotony of _elogio mutuo_. [648] Such woodenness was unlikely to appreciate El Greco’s pictures. In the preface to his _Agriparia_ (_Theatro_, vol. v, 1804) he speaks of _a extravagancia do vaidoso Domenico_, herein following Faria e Sousa, who calls Theotocopuli the Góngora of painters and adds: _Pero vale más una llaneza del Ticiano que todas sus extravagancias juntas por mas que ingeniosas_ (_Fuente de Aganipe Prólogo_, § 37). [649] Arnaldo Gama, _Um motim ha cem annos_, 3ᵃ ed. (1896), p. 35. [650] _Theatro Comico Portuguez_, 4 vols. (1759-90), vol. iii. [651] Ibid., vol. i. [652] Ibid., vol. ii. [653] Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ vi. 275-85; xvii. 91-3, gives 217 titles. [654] Now _Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_, but it is found convenient to retain the original title in order to distinguish it from a more recent (private) institution, the _Academia das Sciencias de Portugal_. VI 1816-1910 § 1 _The Romantic School_