FRANCISCO JOSE

FREIRE (1719-1773)  , Portuguese historian and philologist, was born at Lisbon on the 3rd of January 1719 . He belonged to the monastic society of St Philip Neri, and was a zealous member of the literary association known as the Academy of Arcadians, in connexion with which he adopted the pseudonym of Candido Lusitano . He contributed much to the improvement of the style of Portuguese prose literature, but his endeavour to effect a reformation in the national poetry by a translation of Horace's Ars poelica was less successful . The work in which he set forth his opinions regarding the vicious taste pervading the current Portuguese prose literature is entitled Maximas sabre a Arte Oratoria (1745) and is preceded by a chronological table forming almost a social and physical history of Portugal . His best known work, however, is his Vida do Infante D . Henrique (1758), which has given him a place in the first rank of Portuguese historians, and has been translated into French (Paris, 1781) . He also wrote a poetical dictionary (Diccionario poetico) and a translation of Racine's Athalie (1762), and his Reflexions sur la langue portugaise was published in 1842 by the Lisbon society for the promotion of useful knowledge . He died at . Mafra on the 5th of July 1773 .