158 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



supply Brazil, the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, 

 in particular, are read with so much avidity, that 

 several patriotic writers * have found reason to de- 

 claim against the Gallomania. This circumstance 

 is the more remarkable, because political and mer- 

 cantile interest unite the Portuguese with the 

 English, and we might therefore naturally expect 

 a greater inclination to the literature of England, t 

 Even translations from the English into the Portu- 

 guese are by no means so numerous as those from 

 the French. The language and poetry of the 

 Germans are entirely unknown to the Brazilians ; 

 sometimes, but very rarely, we meet with an ad- 

 mirer of the muse of Gessner or Klopstock, with 



* Thus, for example, the energetic and learned Joze Agos- 

 tinho Macedo, author of the epic poem O Oriente, in his 

 Journal Enciclopedico, one of the best periodical publications 

 at Lisbon. 



f It was from a conviction of the superiority of English lite- 

 rature, that a learned Portuguese nobleman, the Viscount de 

 St. Louren^o, undertook, a few years ago, to translate into 

 Portuguese Pope's Essay on Man, to which he has annexed a 

 vast mass of notes, selected from English, French, German, 

 Portuguese, Spanish, and other writers on the same or similar 

 subjects. The extent of these notes may be judged of when 

 we say that the work makes three quarto volumes. This must 

 naturally render it less useful by limiting the number of the 

 readers, on account of the expence, for besides its bulk, it is 

 one of the most splendid specimens of typography of which the 

 English press can boast, and adorned with fine plates, the first 

 of which is an exquisite whole length portrait of Pope, from 

 an original painting by his friend Jervas, in the possession of 

 G.Watson Taylor, Esq. It was published in London in 1819. 

 Trans-. 



