In his early years he acquired a love of national customs and traditions which his humanist education never obliterated. In addition, he learnt to know the whole range of popular literature ("litteratura de cordel") songs, comedies, knightly stories and fairy tales, which were then printed in loose sheets ("folhas volantes") and sold by the blind in the streets of the capital. These circumstances explain the richness of his vocabulary, and joined to an ardent patriotism they fitted him to become the herald of the literary revival known as Romanticism, which was inaugurated by his distinguished follower Almeida Garrett.