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The renown of the new plan of studies which was followed in Sancta Cruz de Coimbra soon spread throughout the land, and drew many students, and this induced the erection of other colleges outside the monastery walls—a foundation which, it appears, was actually stimulated by the King himself.

In the opinion of the author of "Noticias Chronologicas da Universidade," this conjecture coincides with the foundation of the colleges, because the chronicler of the Regular Canons says that the King 'himself ordered two colleges to be erected close to the monastery of Sancta Cruz, one under the title of Sancto Agostinho, and the other of S. João Baptista, the first with five halls, in which were read philosophy, theology, and canons; and the second college to contain the same number of halls, in which should be taught laws, medicine, and mathematics, while grammar, rhetoric, and the study of languages were followed in the college called Todos-os-Sanctos.

A diverse account is found in other authors, but these divergences are of little moment, since in everyone we find the foundations proved of the Colleges which by their renown influenced the King D. João III. to transfer anew the University to Coimbra in 1537, after an absence of 160 years.

And in effect, although some authors state the last transfer of the University of Lisbon to Coimbra to have taken place in the year 1534, it is certain that this change was effected only at the end of March, 1537, the University commencing its courses in Coimbra at the beginning of April of the same year, as can be proved by existing documents.

With this change commenced a new and memorable epoch in the history of the University. The general studies of Lisbon came to an end, losing the goodwill of the Protector, more through errors of administration than from any deficiency of favourable conditions or of eminent men, because we could mention the names of many individuals of much enlightenment and high culture who were its professors during the last terms of the existence of this academy.

In bringing to a conclusion the first of the three periods in the history of our University, I cannot refrain from mentioning some of the Professors who distinguished themselves by their writings, and who thus saved. their names from utter oblivion. In theology stands preeminent Fr. Balthasar Limpo, who later on became Bishop of Oporto and Archbishop of Braga, and who succeeded the great master João Claro in the chair of Divinity in 1521, which he filled with distinction until 1530. He was in turn succeeded by Pedro Margalho, Doctor of Arts and Theology in the University of Paris and Bachelor of Canon Law in the University of Salamanca. He left many excellent writings, and was considered a man of vast attainments. Lastly, Francisco de Maçon, who also filled the chair of Theology, and proceeded afterwards to Coimbra to occupy that of Sacred Scriptures. He was Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity in Alcalá, better known in England as the great Complutensian University, where he became one of its professors.

In regard to the study of the sciences, it is sufficient to mention the names of the celebrated naturalist, Garcia da Horta, who was Professor of Natural Philosophy in our University until 1534, when he proceeded to India, and there acquired universal fame by his extensive writing in the classical work entitled Colloquios dos simplices e drogas da India; and of Thomas de Torres, an eminent astronomer, who taught astronomy

until 1535; and last, not least, the great and deservedly renowned mathematician, Pedro Nunes, Doctor in Medicine of the University of Lisbon, where he taught logic and metaphysics, and where he also exercised the responsible functions of Rector, passing later on to the University of Coimbra to fill the chair of Mathematics until 1562.

Although much has been written about this eminent man, and therefore it is unnecessary for me to try to prove the many signal deeds which he performed, and which entitled him to the renown he acquired, and the many claims he has to an immortal name, yet I cannot refrain from quoting a few words concerning this great genius, which are found in the able work of Senhor J. Silvestre, Historia dos Estabelecimentos Scientificos:

"In speaking of Pedro Nunes, it is difficult to choose from among the many eulogiums which different writers have vouchsafed to him. However, I will select two authors who are both renowned for their impartiality and learning. The first states that Pedro Nunes was the greatest geometrician that Spain produced, and most undoubtedly one of the greatest who flourished in the sixteenth century. He was appointed First Cosmographer of the Kingdom of Portugal by D. João III. in the year 1529.

"The second author holds that Pedro Nunes was the first mathematician of the sixteenth century in the whole of Spain and Portugal. A person of original genius, deeply learned in the exact and sublime sciences; an illustrious mathematician at a time when mathematics were commencing to burst asunder the fetters which had subjected them for so many centuries; a great cosmographer at the precise moment when the science of navigation began to open to the truth that it must be subject and subservient to the empire of mathematics and of wise theories; and a mind whose vast powers were dedicated to the study of true astronomy in lieu of judicial astrology.

"Great and eminent disciples issued from his school, such as Fr. Nicolau Coelho do Amaral, Manuel de Figueiredo, the Infante D. Luiz, the Infante Cardinal D. Henrique, and D. João de Castro."

In my next letter I will commence the second period in the history of our University, on its installation in Coimbra in 1537 down to the year

1772.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

New Poems. By Edmund W. Gosse. C. Kegan Paul and Co.

1879.

Mr. Gosse from the first stood forward prominently among our younger poets as one who combined perfection of workmanship with delicacy of fancy and elevation of thought. Both in his "On Viol and Flute" and his tragedy "King Erik," these qualities were well emphasised, while among writers of prose, by his mellifluous language and subtle penetration of criticism, he holds an eminent place. A new volume of poems from his pen, published moreover so shortly after a new volume of prose ("Studies in Northern Literature "), is sure to excite attention. We took up the volume with some little hesitation, lest Mr. Gosse's three years' occupation with prose might have clipped the wings of his Muse and brushed the bloom off her plumage. But this is far from being the case. The volume shows shows a distinct advance both in poetic depth and grasp and in ripeness of thought. Mr. Gosse, perhaps by reason of his very occupation with prose, has from the first honourably distinguished himself above his brethren of the æsthetic school with whom sound is everything, and where sense is too often handled in right stepmotherly fashion. He, too, has dallied with daffodils and jonquils, and has been infected with a love for dust, ashes, death, and other ugly things. But he has risen above all this and

touched human nature and human feelings, recognising that these are after all the only real themes of poetic interest and insight. Nature as a background is good, beautiful, and fitting, with men in the foreground; but nature, and above all decaying nature, absorbing all, with man merely used as a staffage in the landscape, is corrupt poetry, the fancy of a fashion that will and must die before a healthy breath. In the present poems Mr. Gosse still sinks at times into a minor key, but he has drunk at the strong fountain of Greek poetry and imbibed its intrinsic health. But what distinguishes Mr. Gosse from the brethren of his school and lifts him above them, is his spirituality. He does not worship Death for the sake of corporeal decay. He loves it because it enables man to shuffle off the clogging flesh and to rise to the best heights of his spiritual nature. Never before has Mr. Gosse so strongly spoken out his belief in immortality and his further belief that not only we shall exist again, but that we have existed before.

This is exquisitely brought out in a poem to his baby daughter, whose spirit he deems has not yet fully taken up its abode in this little body, but still wanders "in high mysterious lands." The poems on classical themes, though correct, leave us a little cold. From this censure we would, however, exempt a long poem in fifteen-syllable trochaics, "The Waking of Eurydice," which is rather of our century

than of ancient days in its tense and passionate pleading. The conception is original. Eurydice has become so much an inmate of the land of shadows that the earth joys sung of by Orpheus do not reawaken any responsive echo in her breast. She entreats:

O, forbear and leave me painless, as in time gone past I was,

When my face found no reflection in the water's sheeny glass!

Hot and wild this tide returning, sore the shock wherewith it strains

This poor fount of life that murmurs in its coil of swelling veins !

Shades that hover round the circles of the

nine rings of the river,

Come and free me, come in legions, crowd around me and deliver.

Ah! have pity, love, and leave me, turn away that longing face,

Or unclose your arms and fold me in an infinite embrace.

As might be expected from Mr. Gosse, who has pleaded so eloquently in favour of various forms of exotic verse, many of these appear in his volume. We have triolets, rondels, vilanelles, sestinas, rondeaus, dizains, and so forth, all perfect in form and fastidiously dainty in language. But exotic forms seem to demand hothouse thoughts. For ourselves, though we acknowledge the refined delicacy of these poems, we prefer Mr. Gosse when he strikes a more human or more naturalistic note. In "The Return of the Swallows" the rural sights and sounds of England are opposed to the gorgeous colour-suffused scenery of Algiers, the whole penetrated by a subtle insight into the harmonious affinity that subsists throughout nature. It is too long for us to quote, but, before quitting a book that contains much that is beautiful, we will give two short specimens of Mr. Gosse's muse. venture to hazard the guess that the first of these poems may owe its inspiring origin to one of Mr. Alma-Tadema's refined, beautiful,

We

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Of draperies curtaining her shrine of rest.

Soft beauty, like her kindred petals strewed

Along the crystal coolness, there she lies.

What vision gratifies those gentle eyes ?

She dreams she stands where yesterday she stood,

Where, while the whole arena shrieks for blood,

Hot in the sand a gladiator dies.

Is this not as Roman in conception and execution as the works of our master painter ?

In the next poem, with which space demands we should close our brief and inadequate notice, we catch an echo from the sweet singers of the seventeenth century:

LEAVE-TAKING.

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Farewell! farewell! ah! had we only

known

How hard it is to rend one life in twain,

We might have wandered through the world alone,

And never felt so sharp a thrill of pain; Go hence in silence, or thy last reply Will haunt my weary memory till I die.

Court-Hand Restored. By Andrew Wright. Corrected and enlarged by Charles Trice Martin, B.A., F.S.A., of H.M. Public Record Office. London Reeves and Turner. 1879.

The appearance of the ninth edition of this work vouches for its use. But when we think that the first edition appeared so long ago as 1773, and that in the old, forgotten court-hand are to be found the original records of the greater portion of our history, the mind is turned in another direction. And the wonder is, not that there are nine editions of a work which is the only guide to the handwriting familiar to our forefathers, but that there are not a score of editions. A clergyman called upon for a certified copy of an entry in his parochial register of the sixteenth century might find himself at a loss to decipher it without the aid of such a manual as the present one. A landowner, interested in reading back his deeds to the origin of his tenure, may learn his letters here. To a solicitor who has to determine some knotty point of ancient privilege, the work is simply invaluable, in enabling him to make himself acquainted with the ancient records which are the sole legal evidence in such a matter. A student seeking new materials for history will find himself amongst familiar names and places, but face to face with a dead language (the barbarous ecclesiastical Latin) and a departed alphabet, to the mystery of which this volume affords the clue.

From the preface to the first edition we extract the following passages from a return made in 1800 by the Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London, as forming an excellent introduction to the work :

The

"The Characters which were introduced into this country by King William I. were at that time called Lombardic, but soon afterwards they acquired the appellation of Norman Characters, which were generally used in Grants, Charters, Public Instruments, and Law Proceedings, with very little alteration from that period until the Reign of King Edward III. In that of King Richard II. variations took place in Hand-writings of Records and Law Proceedings; the Characters used from that Time to the Reign of King Henry VIII. are composed partly of Characters called Set Chancery and Common Chancery, and of some of the Letters called Court-Hand. Chancery Letters were used for all Records which passed the Great Seal; the Court-Hand in the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, for Fines, Placita, Adjudicata, &c. These latter Characters came into general use about the middle of the 16th century, and were continued until the beginning of the late reign, when they were entirely disused. They were originally the Lombardic or Norman, but corrupted and deformed to so great a degree that they bore very little resemblance to their prototypes. In the 16th century the English Lawyers engrossed their Conveyances and Legal Instruments in Characters called Secretary, which are still in use.

"Many Grants and Charters, especially those written by the Monks, were in Letters called Modern Gothic, which took place in England in the 12th century.

"From the latter end of the 13th

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