parents, for a prosodic dictionary and for many other publications of no literary value. A copy of verses in Antonio Vieira’s Grinalda de Maria (1877), the Loas á Virgem (1878) and the Proverbios de Salomão are evidence of a complete return to orthodoxy during the poet’s last years. By a lamentable error of judgment some worthless pornographic verses entitled Cryptinas have been inserted in the completest edition of João de Deus’s poems—Campo de Flores (Lisbon, 1893). He died at Lisbon on the 11th of January 1896, was accorded a public funeral and was buried in the National Pantheon, the Jeronymite church at Belem, where repose the remains of Camoens, Herculano and Garrett. His scattered minor prose writings and correspondence have been posthumously published by Dr Theophilo Braga (Lisbon, 1898).
Next to Camoens and perhaps Garrett, no Portuguese poet has been more widely read, more profoundly admired than João de Deus; yet no poet in any country has been more indifferent to public opinion and more deliberately careless of personal fame. He is not responsible for any single edition of his poems, which were put together by pious but ill-informed enthusiasts, who ascribed to him verses that he had not written; he kept no copies of his compositions, seldom troubled to write them himself, and was content for the most part to dictate them to others. He has no great intellectual force, no philosophic doctrine, is limited in theme as in outlook, is curiously uncertain in his touch, often marring a fine poem with a slovenly rhyme or with a misplaced accent; and, on the only occasion when he was induced to revise a set of proofs, his alterations were nearly all for the worse. And yet, though he never appealed to the patriotic spirit, though he wrote nothing at all comparable in force or majesty to the restrained splendour of Os Lusiadas, the popular instinct which links his name with that of his great predecessor is eminently just. For Camoens was his model; not the Camoens of the epic, but the Camoens of the lyrics and the sonnets, where the passion of tenderness finds its supreme utterance. Braga has noted five stages of development in João de Deus’s artistic life—the imitative, the idyllic, the lyric, the pessimistic and the devout phases. Under each of these divisions is included much that is of extreme interest, especially to contemporaries who have passed through the same succession of emotional experience, and it is highly probable that Caturras and Gaspar, pieces as witty as anything in Bocage but free from Bocage’s coarse impiety, will always interest literary students. But it is as the singer of love that João de Deus will delight posterity as he delighted his own generation. The elegiac music of Rachel and of Marina, the melancholy of Adeus and of Remoinho, the tenderness and sincerity of Meu casta lirio, of Lagrima celeste, of Descalça and a score more songs are distinguished by the large, vital simplicity which withstands time. It is precisely in the quality of unstudied simplicity that João de Deus is incomparably strong. The temptations to a display of virtuosity are almost irresistible for a Portuguese poet; he has the tradition of virtuosity in his blood, he has before him the example of all contemporaries, and he has at hand an instrument of wonderful sonority and compass. Yet not once is João de Deus clamorous or rhetorical, not once does he indulge in idle ornament. His prevailing note is that of exquisite sweetness and of reverent purity; yet with all his caressing softness he is never sentimental, and, though he has not the strength for a long fight, emotion has seldom been set to more delicate music. Had he included among his other gifts the gift of selection, had he continued the poetic discipline of his youth instead of dedicating his powers to a task which, well as he performed it, might have been done no less well by a much lesser man, there is scarcely any height to which he might not have risen.
See also Maxime Formont, Le Mouvement poétique contemporain en Portugal (Lyon, 1892). (J. F.-K.)
DEUTERONOMY, the name of one of the books of the Old Testament. This book was long the storm-centre of Pentateuchal criticism, orthodox scholars boldly asserting that any who questioned its Mosaic authorship reduced it to the level of a pious fraud. But Biblical facts have at last triumphed over tradition, and the non-Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy is now a commonplace of criticism. It is still instructive, however, to note the successive phases through which scholarly opinion regarding the composition and date of his book has passed.
In the 17th century the characteristics which so clearly mark off Deuteronomy from the other four books of the Pentateuch were frankly recognized, but the most advanced critics of that age were inclined to pronounce it the earliest and most authentic of the five. In the beginning of the 19th century de Wette startled the religious world by declaring that Deuteronomy, so far from being Mosaic, was not known till the time of Josiah. This theory he founded on 2 Kings xxii.; and ever since, this chapter has been one of the recognized foci of Biblical criticism. The only other single chapter of the Bible which is responsible for having brought about a somewhat similar revolution in critical opinion is Ezek. xliv. From this chapter, some seventy years after de Wette’s discovery, Wellhausen with equal acumen inferred that Leviticus was not known to Ezekiel, the priest, and therefore could not have been in existence in his day; for had Leviticus been the recognized Law-book of his nation Ezekiel could not have represented as a degradation the very position which that Law-book described as a special honour conferred on the Levites by Yahweh himself. Hence Leviticus, so far from belonging to an earlier stratum of the Pentateuch than Deuteronomy, as de Wette thought, must belong to a much later stratum, and be at least exilic, if not post-exilic.
The title “Deuteronomy” is due to a mistranslation by the Septuagint of the clause in chap. xvii. 18, rendered “and he shall write out for himself this Deuteronomy.” The Hebrew really means “and he [the king] shall write out for himself a copy of this law,” where there is not the slightest suggestion that the author intended to describe “this law” delivered on the plains of Moab as a second code in contradistinction to the first code given on Sinai thirty-eight years earlier. Moreover the phrase “this law” is so ambiguous as to raise a much greater difficulty than that caused by the Greek mistranslation of the Hebrew word for “copy.” How much does “this law” include? It was long supposed to mean the whole of our present Deuteronomy; indeed, it is on that supposition that the traditional view of the Mosaic authorship is based. But the context alone can determine the question; and that is often so ambiguous that a sure inference is impossible. We may safely assert, however, that nowhere need “this law” mean the whole book. In fact, it invariably means very much less, and sometimes, as in xxvii. 3, 8, so little that it could all be engraved in large letters on a few plastered stones set up beside an altar.
Deuteronomy is not the work of any single writer but the result of a long process of development. The fact that it is legislative as well as hortatory is enough to prove this, for most of the laws it contains are found elsewhere in the Pentateuch, sometimes in less developed, sometimes in more developed forms, a fact which is conclusive proof of prolonged historical development. According to the all-pervading law of evolution, the less complex form must have preceded the more complex. Still, the book does bear the stamp of one master-mind. Its style is as easily recognized as that of Deutero-Isaiah, being as remarkable for its copious diction as for its depths of moral and religious feeling.
The original Deuteronomy, D, read to King Josiah, cannot have been so large as our present book, for not only could it be read at a single sitting, but it could be easily read twice in one day. On the day it was found, Shaphan first read it himself, and then went to the king and read it aloud to him. But perhaps the most conclusive proof of its brevity is that it was read publicly to the assembled people immediately before they, as well as their king, pledged themselves to obey it; and not a word is said as to the task of reading it aloud, so as to be heard by such a great multitude, being long or difficult.
The legislative part of D consists of fifteen chapters (xii.–xxvi.), which, however, contain many later insertions. But the impression made upon Josiah by what he heard was far too deep to have been produced by the legislative part alone. The king must have listened to the curses as well as the blessings in chap, xxviii., and
