Gomes and Portuguese Poetry [pp. 655-665]

658 GoMES AWD PO~TUGUESE PoETRY. [Aug.,
dered impossible by the Moors, whose pirates haunted all the
neighboring seas. Living thus like exiles in the solitude of their
fields, they had no system of police or communication. Harsh
sounds were often introduced into their naturally sweet tongue
by the continual contact of the inhabitants with the outside barbarians. As a general rule the whole language was as yet rude
and unshaped, full of difficult diphthongs and awkward terminations, without syntax, without order, without harmony.
The origin of all Iberian poetry was semi-Arabic. From this
source came rhyme, which is recognized as of oriental family;
the invariable choice of subject in the early poems is intensely
oriental. Morals in the shape of maxims, and love treated with
fantastic metaphors and subtly refined, form the staple of early
Portuguese, as of Arabic, poetry. It is never narrative, never
dramatic. Other influences were undoubtedly at work upon it.
In their blunted morality and broad allusion many of these early
poems too plainly indicate that they are to be classed in the Proven~al family. But towards the end of the first epoch a new
and a better influence began to move the Portuguese language
and imagination.
The Italians were the first who in modern times recultivated
poetry and raised it to a higher level. They took the metres
which the Proven~als and $icilians had invented, and perfected
thoir form and finish. Not only did Dante give poetry nobler,
and broader aims, and exalt the tongue he sang in, but he also
introduced many important changes and improvements in the
mechanism of verse. To dwell upon only one, to him we owe
the accents of the hendecasyllable line, the most essential metre
in the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages. This was the
new influence that began to work on Spanish and Portuguese
poetry. In the latter especially-and Portuguese can only be
called a dialect of the genuine Castilian, scarcely separated from
it more than the Catalonian tongue-concurrent with the Dantesque influence, may be placed the study of the Latin language.
From this latter many terminations were derived and conferred
on Gothic roots; the words thus formed, while maintaining a
due amount of vigor, took on a smoother and more liquid sound.
~Ve shall presently see' how too great a drawing upon this source
contributed towards the degradation of the Portuguese language
in the third epoch.
The revolution under Joao I. and the conquest of Ceuta gave
birth to great projects, and Portugal suddenly appeared a nation of heroes, unexcelled by fore or after' ages. With the