students. But it is as the singer of love that Joao 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 _Descalca_ 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 Joao 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 Joao 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 poetique 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 be