[100] _Mandou hum livro delles escrito por sua mão a seu avò ... o qual eu vi na livraria do Real Convento do Escurial, em folha de papel grosso, de marca pequena, volume de tres ou quatro dedos de alto, de letra grande, latina, bem legivel, e o que ly era de Louvores a Nossa Senhora, e outras cousas ao divino_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., pp. 128-9). This interesting passage is not included in those quoted in C. A. M. V. ii. 112-17; it is obviously the source of no. 17. It does not imply that the poems were exclusively religious. Can the book three or four fingers in height have been the _Canc. da Ajuda_ (460 millimètres) from which a section of sacred poems may have been torn? If so the letters _Rey Dõ Denis_ (C. A. M. V. i. 141) would explain the attribution to King Dinis. [101] The language of C. M. and the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ was of course the same. Identical phrases occur. [102] He twice visited Oxford, he says, in order to see the library, which he describes--_hũa das grandes cousas do mundo_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., p. 156). At the Escorial he also examined an original manuscript of St. Augustine (ibid., p. 150). [103] C. C. B. 406-15. II 1325-1521 § 1 _Early Prose_ With prose a new period opens, since, although there are Portuguese documents of the late twelfth century[104] and the Latin chrysalis was in an advanced stage of development even earlier, prose as a literary instrument does not begin before the fourteenth century or the end of the thirteenth at the earliest. The fragments of an early _Poetica_[105] clearly show how slow and awkward were still the movements of prose at a time when poetry had attained an exceedingly graceful expression. The next two centuries redressed the balance in the favour of prose. The victory of Aljubarrota (1385) made it possible to carry on the national work begun by King Dinis--the preparation of Portugal’s resources for a high destiny. In this constructive process literature was not forgotten, and indeed its deliberate encouragement, as though it were an industry or a pine-forest, may account for the fact that it consisted mainly of prose--chronicles, numerous translations from Latin, Spanish, and other languages, works of religious or practical import. The first kings of the dynasty of Avis, who rendered noble service to Portuguese literature, were not poets, and in the second half of the fifteenth century Spanish influence, checked at Aljubarrota, succeeded by peaceful penetration in recovering all and more than all that it had lost, till it became common to hear lyrics of Boscan sung in the streets of Lisbon,[106] and uncommon for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.[107] Prose was more national. King Dinis had encouraged translation into Portuguese, and among other works his grandfather King Alfonso the