explain the richness of his vocabulary, and joined to an ardent patriotism they fitted him to become the herald of the literary revival known as Romanticism, which was inaugurated by his distinguished follower Almeida Garrett. Nascimento began to write verses at the age of fourteen. He was ordained a priest in 1754, and shortly afterwards became treasurer of the Chagas church in Lisbon. He led a retired life, and devoted his time to the study of the Latin classics, especially Horace, and to the society of literary friends, among whom were numbered some cultivated foreign merchants. These men nourished the common ambition to restore Camoens, then half forgotten, to his rightful place as the king of the Portuguese Parnassus, and they proclaimed the cult of the Quinhentistas, regarding them as the best poetical models, while in philosophy they accepted the teaching of the French Encyclopaedists.
Nascimento’s first publication was a version of one of Metastasio’s operas, and his early work consisted mainly of translations. Though of small volume and merit, it sufficed to arouse the jealousy of his brother bards. At this time the Arcadia was working to restore good taste and purify the language of Gallicisms, but the members of this society forgot the traditions of their own land in their desire to imitate the classics. Nascimento and other writers who did not belong to the Arcadia, formed themselves into a rival group, which met at the Ribeira das Náos, and the two bodies attacked one another in rhyme without restraint, until the “war of the poets,” as it was called, ended with the collapse of the Arcadia. Nascimento now conceived a strong but platonic affection for D. Maria de Almeida, afterwards Condessa da Ribeira, sister of the famous poetess the Marqueza de Alorna. This lady sang the chansonnettes he wrote for her, and their poetical intercourse drew from him some lyrics of profound emotion. This was the happiest epoch of his life, but it did not last long. The accession of D. Maria I. inaugurated an era of reaction against the spirit and reforms of Pombal, and religious succeeded to political intolerance. In June 1778 Nascimento was denounced to the Inquisition on the charge of having given vent to heterodox opinions and read “the works of modern philosophers who follow natural reason.” The tribunal held a secret inquiry, and without giving him an opportunity of defence issued an order for his arrest, which was to take place early in the morning of the 14th of July. He had received a warning, and succeeded in escaping to the house of a French merchant, Verdier, where he lay hid for eleven days, at the end of which his friend the Marquez de Marialva put him on board a French ship which carried him to Havre. Nascimento took up his residence in Paris, and his first years there passed pleasantly enough. Soon, however, his circumstances changed for the worse. He received the news of the confiscation of his property by the Inquisition; and though he strove to support himself by teaching and writing he could hardly make both ends meet. In 1792 his admirer Antonio de Araujo, afterwards Conde de Barca, then Portuguese minister to Holland, offered the poet the hospitality of his house at the Hague, but neither the country, the people, nor the language were congenial, and when his host went to Paris on a diplomatic mission in 1797 Nascimento accompanied him, and spent the rest of his life in and near the French capital. He retained to the end an intense love of country, which made him wish to die in Portugal, and in 1796 a royal decree permitting his return there and ordering the restoration of his goods was issued, but delays occurred in its execution, and the flight of the court to the Brazils as a result of the French invasion finally dashed his hopes. Before this the Conde de Barca had obtained him a commission from the Portuguese government to translate the De Rebus Emanuelis of Osorio; the assistance of some fellow-countrymen in Paris carried him through his last years, which were cheered by the friendship of his biographer and translator Alexandre Sané and of the Lusophil Ferdinand Dénis. Lamartine addressed an ode to him; he enjoyed the esteem of Chateaubriand; and his admirers at home, who imitated him extensively, were called after him Os Filintistas. Exile and suffering had enlarged his ideas and given him a sense of reality, making his best poems those he wrote between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, and when he passed away, it was recognized that Portugal had lost her foremost contemporary poet.
Garrett declared that Nascimento was worth an academy in himself by his knowledge of the language, adding that no poet since Camoens had rendered it such valuable services; but his truest title to fame is that he brought literature once more into touch with the life of the nation. By his life, as by his works, Nascimento links the 18th and 19th centuries, the Neo-Classical period with Romanticism. Wieland’s Oberon and Chateaubriand’s Martyrs opened a new world to him, and his contos or scenes of Portuguese life have a real romantic flavour; they are the most natural of his compositions, though his noble patriotic odes—those “To Neptune speaking to the Portuguese” and “To the liberty and independence of the United States”—are the most quoted and admired. On leaving Portugal, he abandoned the use of rhyme as cramping freedom of thought and expression; nevertheless his highly polished verses are generally robust to hardness and overdone with archaisms. His translations from Latin, French and Italian, are accurate though harsh, and his renderings of Racine and the Fables of Lafontaine entirely lack the simplicity and grace of the originals. But Nascimento’s blank verse translation of the Martyrs is in many ways superior to Chateaubriand’s prose.
Bibliography.—The most useful edition of his collected works is that in 22 vols., Lisbon, 1836-1840. See Innocencio da Silva, Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, ii. 446-457 and ix. 332-336; also Filinto Elysio e a sua Epoca, by Pereira da Silva (Rio, 1891); and Filinto Elysio, by Dr Theophilo Braga (Oporto, 1891). (E. Pr.)
NASEBY, a village of Northamptonshire, England, 7 m.
S.S.W. of Market Harborough, famous as the scene of the battle of
June 14, 1645, which decided the issue of the first Civil War (see
Great Rebellion). The army of King Charles I. was less than
10,000 strong, while the “New Model” army of the parliament,
commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, numbered some 13,000,
yet it was not without considerable hopes of victory that the
Royalists drew up for battle, for although Lieutenant-General
Cromwell had made the New Model cavalry formidable indeed,
the Royalist foot had become professionalized in several years
of war, whereas the Parliamentarian foot was newly organized,
and in part at least but half-trained. Fairfax and Cromwell,
however, were still more confident, and with better reason.
The battlefield lies between Naseby and Sibbertoft (3 m. N.
of Naseby) and is an undulating ridge which, near the centre
of England, forms the “divide” between the Avon and the
Welland rivers. Across this ridge the two armies were drawn
up, the New Model facing north and the king’s army south,
the horse on the flanks and the foot in the centre in each army.
At the first shock the Royal foot asserted its superiority over the opposing infantry, four out of five regiments in the first line were broken, and Skippon, the major-general of the foot, was wounded. But Fairfax’s regiment held its ground, until the second line of infantry advanced and re-established the front. Meantime the Royalist right wing of horse, led by Prince Rupert, had completely routed the horse of Colonel Ireton which opposed them. But the victors as usual indulged in a disorderly pursuit, and attempted to overpower the baggage guard of the enemy near Naseby village. Their incoherent attack was repulsed, and when Rupert, gathering as many of his men as he could, returned to the battlefield, the decisive stroke, had been delivered by Cromwell and the right wing of Parliamentary horse. In front of him, in somewhat broken ground, was Sir Marmaduke Langdale’s cavalry, which the lieutenant-general with his own well-trained regiments scattered after a short, fierce encounter. Cromwell’s “godly” troopers did not scatter in pursuit. A few squadrons were ordered to keep the fugitives on the run, and with the rest, and such of Ireton’s broken troops as he could gather, Cromwell attacked the Royalist centre in rear while Fairfax and his foot pressed it in front. Gradually the Royalist infantry, inferior in numbers, was disintegrated into small groups, which surrendered one after the other. But one brigade, called
