STYLIST AND SOLDIER.* Dom FRANCISCO DE MELLO was the most
remarkable figure in seventeenth-century Portugal, and his writings, especially his letters and dialogues, still delight by their wit and wisdom all who read Portuguese. Of noble, indeed princely, descent, he was born, as Mr. Prestage has proved, in 1608, and at the age of seventeen began his career both as soldier and writer. Before he was twenty he had served as a soldier in the Spanish Fleet and had been shipwrecked at St. Jean de Luz. Before be was thirty he had made the acquaintance of Quevedo, "my Quevedo," as he calls him in a subsequent letter, and had helped to quell a revolt in Alemtejo. In 1639 he assisted in the defence of Coruna against a French fleet commanded by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and in the same year was present at the battle of the Downs, in which Tromp totally defeated the Spanish. In the following year he took a prominent part in the war in Catalonia, his description of which is one of the classics of Spanish literature. (It has recently received a new edition at the hands of the well-known writer Don Jacinto Octavio Pic6n.) For the next few years he continued to serve his King and country in many capacities, till in 1644 occurred that mysterious arrest by which he was doomed to eight years of prison, and only to leave it for banishment to Brazil. The legend has it that he suffered for daring to fasten his affections upon the same lady
• D. Francisco Manuel de Maio: Esboco biographico. For Edgar Preatage. Caudal'. [1,00i r6is.1 as the King, but the whole matter remains obscure. If his sword was now forced to rust, his pen was amazingly active. Some ten letters a day (he says he wrote two thousand six hundred in the first six years of his imprisonment) were a mere hors d'oeuvre, and book after book, in prose and verse, bore witness to his untiring zest and courage, yes, and gaiety, in misfortune. He returned to Portugal at the age of fifty, and in the following years was entrusted with diplomatic missions in London, Rome, and Paris. When he died in 1666 his life, so various and crowded with glorious hours, might well have tempted many biographers. He left the memory of a noble-minded, high-spirited man, but he continued to live only in his writings, and, indeed, nothing could be more living than many of these. Mr. Prestage has now, by his researches extending over many years, and here represented by one hundred and twenty-one documents, cleared up many points and produced an admirable Life. So interesting is the subject that Englishmen should be inclined to murmur at the author for writing in Portuguese or to demand an English translation. Portugal, at least, is the gainer, and has received this work of a foreigner with keen appreciation.
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