Francisco Manuel Gomes da Silveira Malhão

Lawyer, Arcadian poet, and fabulist. He undertook private studies in Latin and Music across the towns of Óbidos, Pombal, and Torres Vedras, and in Rhetoric and Philosophy at a college in Mafra. In 1782, he entered the University of Coimbra, completing his degree in Jurisprudence in 1789, after which he began practicing law. It was, however, less as a student than as a composer, singer, and player of modinhas and songs, often improvised, that he revealed himself from his youth. His was a poetry between the sentimental and the satirical, with references at times to student life, at times to love life. He is also the author of critical dialogues and translations, notably of the Odes de Anacreonte. He was the brother of António Gomes da Silveira Malhão, whose poems he published alongside the edition of his own Vida e Feitos – an autobiographical work and anthology of his texts in prose and verse, which also reveals a Quixotic vision of love. He sometimes used the pseudonym António Castanha Neto Rua, while the poem A Vaidade Ridícula is signed as José Rafael da Silveira Pequenito.