had outrun his knowledge of Castilian.[144] It is not strange if so brilliant a victory inspired two poets independently with its theme. It is perhaps more extraordinary that both should have chosen a metre (8 + 8) which has called for remark as showing the _romance_ through the _cantar de gesta_.[145] Frei Antonio Brandão, indeed, called the Portuguese poem a _romance_, a type of poem which did not exist in the fourteenth century. Since the battle was fought in Spain it would be considered in Brandão’s day a proper subject for a _romance_, but would be noticeable as being written in Galician. Castilian was throughout the Peninsula regarded as the fitting medium for the _romance_, as for its father the epic, just as, a century earlier, Galician was the universal language of the lyric.[146] Portuguese poets, if they wrote a _romance_, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known instance is Gil Vicente’s fine poem (_muy sentido y galan_ as the 1720 editor says) of _D. Duardos e Flerida_, which only belongs to Portuguese literature through the excellent ‘translation of the Cavalheiro de Oliveira’, among whose papers Garrett professed to have found it. Portugal possessed no epic _cantares de gesta_ of her own, had not therefore the stuff out of which the _romances_ were formed, and the birth of the _romance_ coincided with the predominance of Spanish influence in Spain. It is therefore surprising to find in Portugal a large number of _romances_ unconnected with Spain, the explanation being that, having accepted with characteristic enthusiasm the new thing imported from abroad, the Portuguese turned to congenial themes, of love, religion, and adventure. Had the _romances_ been elaborated in the same way as in Spain, we might have expected a large number of anonymous Portuguese _romances_ dealing with the Breton cycle, and indeed with early Portuguese history, so rich in heroic incidents. The fact that this is not the case and the number of _romances_ collected in Tras-os-Montes alike point to their Spanish origin, while their frequency in the Azores denotes how popular they became later in Portugal. In the sixteenth century their Spanish character was recognized. The poor _escudeiro_ in _Eufrosina_ is bidden go to Spain to gloss _romances_, and in the seventeenth century, as a passage in Mello’s _Fidalgo Aprendiz_ well shows, they were better liked if written in Spanish. The partiality for Spanish applied to poetry of other kinds, and Manuel de Galhegos says (1635) that it is a bold venture to publish poetry in Portuguese.[147] But it did not as a rule extend to popular poetry. It is therefore noteworthy that the nurse in Gil Vicente sings _romances_ in Spanish.[148] Dr. Theophilo Braga, who considers Spanish influence on the _romances_ in Portugal to have been ‘late and insignificant’,[149] is obliged, in order to support his argument, to quote not Portuguese but Spanish _romances_.[150] Nor