In this very year a large _Cancioneiro_ (355 ff.), corresponding nearly but not precisely to the Colocci index, was discovered in the library of the Conte Paolo Antonio Brancuti (C. C. B. For convenience’ sake C. C. B. also = the fragment published by Enrico Gasi Molteni), and the 442 of its poems, lacking in C. V. (but nearly half of which are in C. A.), were published in diplomatic edition by Enrico Molteni in 1880 (C. C. B.). All these (C. A., C. V., and C. C. B.) were in all probability derived from the _Cancioneiro_ compiled by the Conde de Barcellos. When his father, King Dinis, died, silence fell upon the poets. The new king, Afonso IV, showed no sign of continuing to collect the smaller _Cancioneiros_ kept by nobles and men of humbler position, a custom inaugurated by his grandfather, Afonso III (if the _Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Afonso_ in King Duarte’s library was his), continued by King Dinis (_Livro de Trovas del Rei D. Dinis_), and perhaps revived by King Duarte a century later (_Livro de Trovas del Rei_). It was thus a time suitable for a ‘definitive edition’, and Count Pedro, who was the last of the _Cancioneiro_ poets and who was more collector than poet, probably took the existing _Cancioneiros_ (of Afonso III and Dinis) and added a third part consisting of later poems. Besides the chronological order there was a division by subject into _cantigas de amor_, _cantigas de amigo_, and _cantigas d’escarnho e de maldizer_ (Santillana’s _cantigas_, _serranas e dezires_, or _cantigas serranas_, the Archpriest of Hita’s _cantares serranos e dezires_). C. V. is divided into these three kinds; in the older and incomplete C. A. 304 of the 310 poems are _cantigas de amor_. Eleven years after the death of King Duarte the Marqués de Santillana wrote (1449) to the Constable of Portugal, D. Pedro, describing the Galician-Portuguese _Cancioneiro_--_un grant volume_--which he had seen in his boyhood in the possession of D. Mencia de Cisneros. (This may have been the actual manuscript compiled by D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos and bequeathed by him in 1350 to Alfonso XI of Castille and Leon--a few days _after_ Alfonso XI’s death. Or it may have been a copy of the _Cancioneiro_ of D. Pedro or the _Cancioneiro_ of Afonso III or of Dinis.) It is significant that in this very important letter it is a foreigner informing a Portuguese. Under the predominating influence first of Spain then of the Renaissance, the old Portuguese poems, even if they were known to exist, excited no interest in Portugal. They were _musas rusticas, musas in illo tempore rudes et incultas_.[68] With this disdain the _Cancioneiro_ became a real will-o’-the-wisp. Even as late as the nineteenth century one disappeared mysteriously from a sale, another emerged momentarily (see C. T. A.) from the shelves of a Spanish grandee only to fall back into the unknown. In the sixteenth century the evidence as to its being known is contradictory.