Portugal is Home to this poet

PORTUGAL, by Roy Campbell (Reinhardt, 21s.).
SOME months before Roy Campbell's sudden death, a friend of mine was talking at a literary soiree with a Portuguese savant who knew the poet well. " Campbell, of course, is a very fine poet," declared the distinguished visitor, " but you must not take too seriously what he says about my country." Now strange as it may seem, 1 quote this remark as a recommendation for the present book. It suggests, I think. some of the things which we can and cannot expect from it. " I have not tried to write a travel-book, or a guide-book, or a text-book about Portugal," states the poet in his Introduction, " This is a personal book, about a country which I love and admire, and about a people among whom I can number countless friends in all walks of life."
His land of plenty
CAMPBELL closely identified himself with the country, its culture and character; and his Portuguese testimony has many points in common with Mr. Hugh Macdiarmid's writings on Scotland. Both authors invent for their subject a racial origin, a history and civilisation a good deal more ideal than real. Campbell's Portugal is a land pre-eminently favoured and bursting with plenty; its earth stocked with fruit and its waters with fish.
Certainly the existence which the poet led there appeared to possess an idyllic note. Campbell had a farm on the River of Apples, and gives us the following thumb-nail picture of one of its bucolic advantages: "Even as I write here at my desk on the balcony, I have been beckoned three times from my seat by the wagging of my rod, clamped under a stone to land a fine long silvery eel."
The Man of Action
THE life of the soil, its cultivation, fishing, riding, horse breaking and -trading-these are the points about Portugal which interest the poet most.
As to its towns, its architecture, its laws, its politics, he tells us little. His concerns are those of the man of action, in which category he includes the makers of music, verse, and prose; and his chapter on Portuguese poetry with its many fine translations-is a document of value.
For its many hilarious anecdotes alone (can we possibly believe them?), Campbell's " Portugal " is a hook to buy.