a poet, was to win the applause of the good, and, in the preface to his poems, he says, "I am content with this glory, that I have loved my land and my people." He was intimate with the aged Sá de Miranda, the founder of the classical school of which Ferreira became the foremost representative. Horace was his favorite poet, erudition his muse, and his admiration of the classics made him disdain the popular poetry of the Old School (Escola Velha) represented by Gil Vicente. His national feeling would not allow him to write in Latin or Spanish, like most of his contemporaries, but his Portuguese is as Latinised as he could make it, and he even calls his poetical works, Poemas Lusitanos. Sá de Miranda had philosophized in the familiar redondilha, introduced the epistle and founded the comedy of learning. It was the beginning of a revolution, which Ferreira completed by abandoning the traditional peninsular verse forms for the Italian hendecasyllable, and by composing the noble and austere Roman poetry of his letters, odes and elegies. It was all done of set purpose, for he was a reformer conscious of his mission and resolved to carry it out. The gross realism of the popular poetry, its lack of culture and its carelessness of form, offended his educated taste, and its picturesqueness and ingenuity made no appeal to him. Notes References António Ferreira: Poemas lusitanos. Edição crítica, Introdução e Comentário de T. F. Earle, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000 Tom F. Earle: The Muse Reborn. The Poetry of António Ferreira, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988 External links Catholic Encyclopedia article Castro. Tragedia, in Obras Completas (Full Ouvre), Volume 2, 1865 edition, in Google Books The tragedy of Ines de Castro, English translation of A Castro, in Google Books Historia de S.ta Comba dos Valles (sic), on a 1771 edition of the "Poemas Lusitanos, Volume 1", in Google Books 1528 births 1569 deaths 16th-century Portuguese poets 16th-century male writers Portuguese male poets Portuguese Renaissance writers Portuguese Renaissance humanists People from Lisbon University of Coimbra alumni 16th-century Portuguese people