Francisco José Freire () (3 January 1719 – 5 July 1773),

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

and

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, was born in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

. He belonged to the monastic society of

St Philip Neri Philip Romolo Neri ( ; it, italics=no, Filippo Romolo Neri, ; 22 July 151526 May 1595), known as the "Second Apostle of Rome", after Saint Peter, was an Italian priest noted for founding a society of secular clergy called the Congregation of th ...

, and was a zealous member of the literary association known as the Academy of Arcadians, in connexion with which he adopted the pseudonym of Cândido 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 Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

's ''Ars poetica'' 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 Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...

's ''Athalie'' (1762), and his ''Reflexions sur la langue portugaise'' was published in 1842 by the Lisbon society for the promotion of useful knowledge. Freire died at

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on July 5, 1773.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Freire, Francisco 1719 births 1773 deaths 18th-century Portuguese historians Portuguese philologists People from Lisbon