José Agostinho de Macedo
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José Agostinho de Macedo | |
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Beja, Kingdom of Portugal | |
Died | 2 October 1831 | (aged 70)
Occupation | Writer |
José Agostinho de Macedo (11 September 1761 – 2 October 1831) was a Portuguese poet and prose writer.
Early life
He was born in
In 1792 he was unfrocked, but by the aid of powerful friends he obtained a papal brief which secularised him and permitted him to retain his ecclesiastical status. Taking to journalism and preaching, he made a substantial living and a unique position for himself. In a short time he was recognised as the leading pulpit orator of the day, and in 1802 he became one of the royal preachers.
Career
Macedo was the first to introduce from abroad and to cultivate
Macedo founded and wrote for a large number of journals, and the tone and temper of these and his political pamphlets induced his leading biographer to name him the chief libeller of Portugal, though at the time his jocular and
When he died in 1831 he left behind him many friends, a host of admirers, and a great but ephemeral literary reputation. His ambition to rank as the king of letters led to his famous conflict with Bocage, whose poem Pena de Taliao was perhaps the hardest blow Macedo ever received. His malignity reached its height in a satirical poem in six cantos, Os Burros (1812–1814), in which he pilloried by name men and women of all grades of society, living and dead, with the utmost licence of expression. His translation of the Odes of Horace, and his dramatic attempts, are only of value as evidence of the extraordinary versatility of the man, but his treatise, if his it be, A Demonstration of the Existence of God, at least proves his possession of very high mental powers. As a poet, his odes on Wellington and the emperor Alexander show true inspiration, and the poems of the same nature in his Lyra anacreontica, addressed to his mistress, have considerable merit.
References
- public domain: Prestage, Edgar (1911). "Macedo, José Agostinho de". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 216. This work in turn cites:
- Memorias para la vida intima de José Agostinho de Macedo (ed. Th. Braga, 1899)
- Cartas e opusculos (1900)
- Censuras á diversas obras (1901)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the