outro lhaconteçeo com huũ rrousinol & muitas outras cousas que vio_, is written after the fashion of Diogo Brandam’s _Fingimento de Amores_ and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz’ _Infierno de Amor_, in imitation of the Marqués de Santillana’s _El Infierno de los Enamorados_; but there is real feeling in these eighty verses of eleven lines (of which the eighth and eleventh are of four, the rest of eight syllables). The Italian influence, working through Spanish, was already present in Portuguese poetry in the fifteenth century, although Brito writes exclusively in _redondilhas_, as indeed does the introducer of the new style, Sá de Miranda, in the few and short poems which he contributed to the _Cancioneiro_ immediately before its publication. Duarte de Brito did not condescend to those artificial devices which give us in this _Cancioneiro_ a poem of sixty lines all ending in _dos_, alliterative stanzas, and other verbal tricks. The real business of the _serões_, so far as poetry was concerned, was _ouvir e glosar motes_. These _glosas_ and the similar _cantigas_ and _esparsas_, short poems of fixed form, often written with skill and spontaneous charm, were merely one of the necessary accomplishments of a courtier. Such a view of poetry could scarcely give rise to great poets, and these versifiers indeed styled themselves _trovadores_, reserving the name of poet for those who wrote, often but clumsily, in _versos de arte mayor, de muita poesia_. But, worse still, the poets of the _Cancioneiro_ were often scarcely Portuguese.[218] Many wrote in Spanish, and Spanish influence is to be found at every turn: that of Juan de Mena, Gomez and Jorge Manrique, Rodriguez de la Cámara, Macias, Santillana. Unlike Macias, who is but a name, Santillana is not mentioned, but his influence is constantly felt. On the other hand, King Dinis, unexpectedly introduced once as a poet by Pedro Homem (fl. 1490)--_invoco el rei dom Denis Da licença Daretusa_--is nowhere imitated. By method, subject, and foreign imitation, this Court poetry was thus inevitably artificial and uninspired. Perhaps in the whole _Cancioneiro_ the only poem marked by authentic fire is that of the obscure FRANCISCO DE SOUSA--the few lines beginning _Ó montes erguidos, Deixai-vos cair_. The contributions of Sá de Miranda, as those of three other famous poets, give no sign of the coming greatness of the contributor. The names of the other three are Bernardim Ribeiro, Cristovam Falcão, and the prince of all these poets, here the humblest of Cinderellas, Gil Vicente. FOOTNOTES: [206] _Historiadores Portugueses_ in _Opusculos_ (1907), ii. 27. The author of the _Theatrum_ has a similar verdict: _Scripsit Chronicam Ioannis II ut quidem potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum magnitudinis._ [207] _Sem letras e sem saber_, he says modestly, _me fui nisto meter._ [208] The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being _Lyuro das Obras de Garcia de Resẽde que trata da vida e grãdissimas virtudes_, &c.