António Diniz da Cruz e Silva (4 July 1731 in Lisbon5 October 1799 in Rio de Janeiro) was a Portuguese magistrate and heroic-comic poet, son of a Lisbon carpenter who emigrated to the Portuguese colony of Brazil shortly before the poet's birth, leaving his wife to support and educate her young family by the earnings of her needle. Education Diniz studied Latin and philosophy with the Oratorians, and in 1747 matriculated at Coimbra University, where he wrote his first verses about 1750. In 1753 he took his degree in law, and returning to the capital, devoted much of the next six years to literary work. Career In 1756 he became one of the founders and drew up the statutes of the Arcádia Lusitânia, a literary society whose aims were the instruction of its members, the cultivation of the art of poetry, and the restoration of good taste. The fault was not his if these ends were not attained, for, taking contemporary French authors as his models, he contributed much, both in prose and verse, to its proceedings, until he left in February 1760 to take up the position of juiz de fora at Castelo de Vide. On returning to Lisbon for a short visit, he found the Arcádia a prey to the internal dissensions that caused its dissolution in 1774, but succeeded in composing them, and in 1764 he went to Elvas to act as auditor of one of the regiments stationed there. During a ten years residence, his wide reading and witty conversation gained him the friendship of the governor of that fortress and the admiration of a circle comprising all that was cultivated in Elvas. As inmost cathedral and garrison towns, the clerical and military elements dominated society, and here were mutually antagonistic, because of the enmity between their respective leaders, the bishop and, the governor. Moreover, Elvas, being a remote provincial centre, abounded in curious and grotesque types. Diniz, who was a keen observer, noted these, and, treasuring them in his memory, reproduced them, with their vanities, intrigues and ignorance, in his masterpiece, Hyssope. In 1768 a quarrel arose between the bishop, a proud, pretentious prelate, and the dean, as to the right of the former to receive holy water from the latter at a private side door of the cathedral, instead of at the principal entrance. The matter being one of principle, neither party would yield