A sentidissima morte do Serenissimo Senhor D. José Principe do Brazil. Epiçedio.

Lisbon, Na Officina dos Herdeiros de Domingos Goncalves, 1788.. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 4°, disbound. Woodcut ornament with putto's head on title page. Woodcut tailpiece on p. 13. Small brownstain on first 2 leaves. Overall in good to very good condition. 13 pp. *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION of this poem in 29 stanzas plus a Latin epitaphium on the death of D. José, Prince of Brazil.As the eldest son of D. Maria I and D. Pedro III, D. José (b. 1761) was the heir to the throne of Portugal, and his death at a young age radically changed the course of the country over the following decades. In 1777, at age 15, D. José married his aunt, the thirty-year-old Infanta Benedita, youngest daughter of D. José I and D. Mariana Victoria of Spain. The marriage was favored by D. José I, but it was rumored that it was particularly desired by the powerful Marquês de Pombal, who perhaps hoped to establish Salic law so that the succession to the throne would have passed from D. José I directly to his grandson D. José, bypassing D. Maria - who was known to dislike Pombal. Three days after his grandson’s wedding D. José I died. D. Maria succeeded to the throne as Portugal's first queen regnant, and D. José became Prince of Brazil and Duke of Bragança. One of D. Maria's first acts was to remove Pombal from office and choose advisors from among his enemies. Still, many Portuguese hoped that when D. José succeeded to the throne, he would be influenced by the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment.Alas, in 1788 the 27-year-old D. José died of smallpox, without issue. (His mother had refused to allow him to receive the recently discovered inoculation.) The new heir to the throne was D. José's brother D. João, who was known to be very religious and to favor absolutism. He acted as prince regent from 1799 and ruled as D. João VI from 1816 to 1826.A number of works on the death of D. José were published together under the series title Collecçaõ funebre das obras impressas por ocasião da morte do serenissimo senhor D. Joseph Principe do Brasil, Lisbon, 1788. Miguel Mauricio Ramalho, a native of Lisbon, taught elementary school there. His poems included Lisboa reedificada, Lisbon, 1780, an epic on the rebuilding of Lisbon after the earthquake: Innocêncio considers that "não transcende as raias da mediocridade."*** On the author, see Innocêncio VI, 244 and XVII, 62, 251; this work is not listed, cited is Epicedio á morte do Sermº Sr. D. José, Principe do Brasil, issued by the same publisher in the same year. Porbase locates three copies, all in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Not located in Jisc. KVK (51 databases searched) locates only the copies cited by Porbase.