Leaving our own country, it may be noted that Portugal has some claim to be proud of her royal authors, for Diniz was a poet of exquisite taste, “and in the number, beauty, and variety of his songs he proved himself the greatest poet of his Court,” having inherited, it is said, the poetic feeling and power of expression from his father, Alfonso III., who was no mean poet. Indeed, the effects of the influence of Diniz “pervade the whole of Portuguese poetry; for not only was he in his ‘pastorellas’ the forerunner of the greatest pastoral school, but, by sanctifying to literary use the national storehouse of song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the present day, lyric forms of greatest beauty.”[154] It is also said that immense service was rendered by Diniz and his poetic courtiers in developing the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible literary language; and with the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the national octosyllabic metre.[155] John I., surnamed “the Great,” encouraged literature, and the “Book of the Chase,” one of the best specimens of early Portuguese prose, was written for him under his own superintendence. Of his sons, Dom Pedro wrote poems, and Dom Edward was the author of two capital prose works entitled “Instructions in Horsemanship” and the “Faithful Councillor.” Alfonso V., one of the exploring sovereigns, the subduer of Tangiers, wrote much and ably on various subjects, forming an extensive library at Evora; and the sagacious John II. patronised literature, and encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the Portuguese chroniclers. And another sovereign who did all he could to promote the welfare of literature was John V., who founded the Academy of History in Lisbon, in 1720. James I. of Aragon, who was born at Montpellier on Candlemas Day, in his “Chronicle,” written by himself--and forming one of the most remarkable literary works of an eventful age--gives a curious as well as an interesting account of his being named, and relates how his mother, Doña Maria, “made twelve candles, all of one size and weight, and had them all lighted together, and gave each the name of an apostle, and vowed to our Lord that I should be christened by the name of that which lasted longest. And so it happened that the candle which went by the name of St. James lasted a good finger’s breadth more than all the others. And owing to that circumstance, and to the grace of God, I was christened El Jerome.”