period in the world’s whole history most calculated to awe and inspire men’s minds with the thought of vast new horizons. While Columbus was discovering America, Bartholomeu Diaz rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama sailing to India, or Afonso de Albuquerque making desperate appeals for men and money to enable him to maintain his brilliant conquests, the Court poets were versifying on an incorrectly addressed letter, a lock of hair, a dingy head-dress, a very lean and aged mule, the sad fate of a lady marrying away from the Court in Beira, a quarrel between a tenor and soprano, a courtier’s velvet cap or hat of blue silk, a button more or less on a coat, the length of spurs, fashions in sleeves: themes, as José Agostinho de Macedo might say, ‘prodigiously frivolous’. When news reached Lisbon of the tragic death of D. Francisco de Almeida and of the defeat of Afonso de Albuquerque[211] and the Marshal D. Fernando de Coutinho before Calicut, with the death of the latter, Bras da Costa wrote to Garcia de Resende that at this rate he would prefer to have no pepper, and Resende answered that for his part he certainly had no intention of embarking. But, as a rule, such events received not even so trivial a comment, and no doubt the poets felt that the verse which served to pass the time at the _serões_ was inadequate to any great occasion. But the _trovador segundo as trovas de aquelle tempo_[212] had little idea of what subjects were suitable or unsuitable to poetry. A typical instance of the themes in which they delighted is an event which seems to have produced a greater impression than the discovery of new worlds: the return from Castille of a gentleman of the Portuguese Court wearing a large velvet cap. For over 300 lines of verse this cap is bandied to and fro by the witty poets. It must weigh four hundredweight, says one. Another advises him to lock it up _em arcaaz_ until he can turn it into a doublet; another bids him sell it in the Jews’ quarter. Small wonder, chimes in a fourth, that no galleys come now with velvet from Venice.[213] ‘I would not wear it at a _serão_, not for a million,’ says another. ‘A Samson could not wear it all one summer,’ is the comment of a sixth. Another remarks that he would rather read Lucan (or Lucian) (_antes leria por luçam_) in the heat of the day than wear it. ‘He will need a cart to bring it to the _serão_,’ says yet another. The wit, it will be seen, is not brilliant, although it may have effectively nipped this budding Castilian fashion and enlivened an evening. But there were duller contests. For score on score of pages the rival merits of sighing and of loving in silence are discussed by poet after poet (_O Cuidar e Sospirar_). Such a subject once started tended to accumulate verses like a snowball. But the _Cancioneiro_ also contains poems on serious topics, although they are rarer, as well as delicate, airy nothings (_sutiles nadas_) like Vimioso’s