Nascimento began to write verses at the age of fourteen. He was ordained a priest in 1754, and shortly afterwards became treasurer of the Chagas church in Lisbon. He led a retired life, and devoted his time to the study of the Latin classics, especially Horace, and to the society of literary friends, among whom were numbered some cultivated foreign merchants. These men nourished the common ambition to restore Camões, then half forgotten, to his rightful place as the king of the Portuguese Parnassus, and they proclaimed the cult of the Quinhentistas, regarding them as the best poetical models, while in philosophy they accepted the teaching of the French Encyclopaedists.