(If we wish to determine whether he was indeed thus, we have to see whether, towards the end of his life, there is not a growth of abruption in practical things.) He began with two long narrative poems — highly imperfect as narrative wholes, and that is the beginning of his, written when he had yet an instinct to write greater than the intellectual impulse for it. With broadening consciousness, he lost his rapidity (...) Grandes como são as suas tragédias, nenhuma delas supera a tragédia da sua própria vida.