It would seem that, unlike his grandfather, who had begun with profane and ended with religious verse, King Dinis, no doubt at his grandfather’s bidding, who would be delighted to find a disciple (_Dized’, ai trobadores, A Sennor das Sennores Por que a non loades?_), began writing songs in honour of the Virgin and sent them to the Castilian king. His book of _Louvores da Virgem Nossa Senhora_ is said to have been seen in the Escorial Library and in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo, and it is impossible altogether to set aside the statements of Duarte Nunez de Leam[99] and Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, who says that he read religious poems by King Dinis at the Escorial.[100] On the other hand, it must be remembered that it was the common opinion that King Dinis had been the first to write Portuguese poetry, and the temptation to attribute ancient poems to him would be strong. The possibility of confusion with the _Livro de Cantigas_ of Alfonso X (to which his grandson may well have contributed poems)[101] is also obvious. But the statement of Sousa de Macedo, who was no passing traveller in a hurry, and who had wide experience of books and libraries,[102] is very precise. No trace or memory of the existence of this manuscript exists, however, at the Escorial Library, nor is to be found in the _Catálogo de los Manuscritos existentes antes del incendio de 1671_. The subjects of King Dinis’ ten[103] satirical poems are trivial, but he had too much force of character to descend to such vilenesses as were common among _profaçadores_. (His concise definition of a bore: _falou muit’ e mal_ (C. C. B. 411) is worthy of Afonso de Albuquerque.) Of his illegitimate sons, besides D. Afonso Sanchez, D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos, long had a reputation as a poet almost equal to that of his father, owing to the association of his name with the _Cancioneiro_; but of his ten poems six (C. V. 1037-42) are satirical, and the four _cantigas de amor_ (C. V. 210-13) are perhaps the heaviest and most prosaic in the collection. It was as a prose-writer and editor of the _Livro de Linhagens_ that he worthily carried on the literary tradition of King Dinis. FOOTNOTES: [68] Antonio de Vasconcellos, _Anacephalaeoses, id est Svmma Capita Actorum Regum Lusitaniae_ (Antverpiae, 1621), p. 79. [69] See also C. V. B., pp. xcv-vi. [70] An English Crusader writing from Lisbon speaks of _inter hos tot linguarum populos_ (_Crucesignati Anglici Epistola de Expugnatione Olisiponis_, A.D. 1147). [71] _Colección de Poesías Castellanas_ (1779), vol. i, p. lvii. The important passages of Santillana’s letter have been so often quoted that the reader may be referred to them, e.g. in the _Grundriss_, p. 168. [72] Milá y Fontanals (_De los Trobadores_, p. 522) lays much stress on the resemblance between Galician and Provençal. [73] It must be remembered that in the early thirteenth century (1213) the range of the Galician-Portuguese lyric already extended to Navarre (C. V. 937).