Garrett intended as _Cronista Môr_ to write the history of his own time. More serious historians existed in the Canon of Evora, ANTONIO CAETANO DO AMARAL (1747-1819); his fellow-academician the Canon JOÃO PEDRO RIBEIRO (†1839); LUZ SORIANO (1802-99), author of a _Historia da Guerra Civil_ (1866-90) in seventeen volumes; the VISCONDE DE SANTAREM (1791-1856), whose able and persistent researches were of inestimable service to the history and incidentally to the literature of his country; and the patient investigator CUNHA RIVARA (1809-79). While scientific research work was accumulating the bones of history a creator arose in the person of ALEXANDRE HERCULANO (1810-77). He had emigrated to France and England in 1831, lived for a time at Rennes, and from the Azores in 1832 with Garrett accompanied the Liberal army to Oporto as a private soldier. In the following year he obtained work as a librarian. His _A Voz do Propheta_ (1836) (Castilho in this year translated Lamennais’ _Paroles d’un Croyant_), written in the impressive style of a Hebrew prophet, although it appeared anonymously, brought its author fame, and in 1839 the King Consort D. Fernando appointed him librarian of the Royal Library of Ajuda. The salary was not large, under £200 a year, but the post gave him the two necessaries of literary work, quiet and books. From that year to 1867 his life was taken up with his work, with which politics only occasionally interfered. He edited _O Panorama_ from 1837 to 1844 and joined in founding _O Paiz_. Although he was elected deputy to the Cortes in 1840 he rarely attended the sittings. His friendship with D. Fernando and King Pedro V continued unbroken till their death. In 1867 with characteristic abruptness he left Lisbon and literature and gave his last ten years almost entirely to agriculture on the estate of Val de Lobos, near Santarem.[665] The call of the land was combined with disgust at the politics of the capital and probably a natural disinclination to a sedentary mode of life. His retirement was greeted as a betrayal, and attacks formerly directed against his historical work were now directed against him for abandoning it. But since he had no intention of continuing his history, his literary work was really ended. It has three main aspects, poetry, the historical novel, and history. From the prosaic height of forty-six he informed Soares de Passos in a letter that he had been a poet till he was twenty-five. Some of the poems of _A Harpa do Crente_ (1838),[666] especially _A Tempestade_ and _A Cruz Mutilada_, rise to noble heights by reason of a fine conviction and a rugged grandeur, as of blocks of granite. Herculano had returned to Portugal imbued with profound admiration for the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, ‘immortal Scott’ as he called him, and Victor Hugo, and in his remarkable stories and sketches contributed to _O Panorama_ and published as _Lendas e Narrativas_