Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

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BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
Lisbon for the first quarter of the century, with eyes
turned to India ; in the colony the entire unwieldy ap-
paratus of old-world civilization is to be set up, races are
to be exterminated or reconciled in fusion, mines lure with
the glitter of gold and diamonds; a nationality, however
gradually and unwittingly, is to be formed. For, though
the majority of Portuguese in Brazil, as was natural,
were spiritually inhabitants of their mother country,
already there had arisen among some a fondness for a
land of so many enchantments.
Jose de Anchieta (1530— 1597)
is now generally re-
garded as the earliest of the Brazilian writers. He is,
to Romero, the pivot of his century's letters. For more
than fifty years he was the instructor of the population;
for his beloved natives he wrote grammars, lexicons,
plays, hymns; a gifted polyglot, he employed Portuguese,
Spanish, Latin, Tupy; he penned the first autos and mys-
teries produced in Brazil. His influence, on the whole,
however, was more practical than literary; he was not, in
the esthetic sense a writer, but rather an admirable Jesuit
who performed, amidst the greatest difficulties, a work
of elementary civilization. The homage paid to his
name during the commemoration of the tercentenary of
his death was not only a personal tribute but in part, too,
a rectification of the national attitude toward the Jesuit
company which he distinguished. It was the Jesuits who
early established schools in the nation (in 1543 they
opened at Bahia the first institution of "higher educa-
tion") ; it was they who sought to protect the Indians
from the cruelty of the over-eager exploiters; Senhor
Oliveira Lima has even suggested that it was owing to
a grateful recollection of the services rendered to the