ABEL BOTELHO (1856-1917), a colonel in the Army, and for some years Minister of the Portuguese Republic at Buenos Aires, author of a volume of verse, _Lyra Insubmissa_ (1885), showed an intermittent power of description in seven stories of his native Beira, collected under the title _Mulheres da Beira_ (1898). In his series of novels published under the heading _Pathologia Social: O Barão de Lavos_ (1891), _O Livro de Alda_ (1898), _Fatal Dilemma_ (1907), _Prospera Fortuna_ (1910), he would seem to have laboured under a misapprehension, believing apparently that the introduction of physiology into literature might prove him an original writer.[690] Sainte-Beuve may speak of the _saletés splendides_ of Rabelais, a great stylist like Signor Gabriele d’ Annunzio, except when his art fails, may redeem if he does not justify any theme. But Abel Botelho’s style in these wearisome novels can only be described as worthy of their matter. They are a welter of shapeless sentences, long abstract terms, French words, gallicisms, expressions such as _pathognomonico_, _autopsiação_, _neuro-arthritico_, _a etiologia dos hystero-traumatismos_. This may be magnificent pathology, but it is not art or literature. _As Farpas_ had come to an end some years before these novels began to appear, otherwise their defects might have been pilloried by an adept in ridicule who in contemporary literature occupies a place apart. As critic JOSÉ DUARTE RAMALHO ORTIGÃO (1836-1915) took his share in the controversy of 1865, as a traveller he wrote a vivid, witty, and charming account of Holland, with malicious side-reflections on Portugal: _A Hollanda_ (1883). Between these two dates a series of papers, _As Farpas_ (1871-87), originally suggested by Alphonse Karr’s _Les Guêpes_ and begun in collaboration with his friend Eça de Queiroz, had made him famous. His clear and pointed style was an excellent instrument for the barbed shafts of his satire and irony and, having discovered how powerful a weapon he possessed, he wielded it to right purpose. With abundant good sense he ridiculed and undermined the foibles and follies of Lisbon life, obstinately determined to bring health to the minds and the bodies of his fellow-countrymen and succeeding by his wit where a more sedate reformer might have failed. The range of subjects covered was very wide--the interest of many of them necessarily ephemeral--and his skill in brief character-sketches is remarkable. But although Ramalho Ortigão will always be remembered as the author of _As Farpas_ it is perhaps _A Hollanda_ that will be read. The former work was imitated by Fialho de Almeida in _Os Gatos_ (1889-94), which achieved popularity in Lisbon. His is a more lumbering wit: the rapier of Ramalho Ortigão is exchanged for bludgeon or umbrella. But _Os Gatos_, despite much that is vulgar and much that is dull, contains some good literary criticism and successful descriptions, of places rather than of persons. A battling critic was