OSORIUS, Jerome, a Portuguese ecclesiastic, was descended of a noble family, and born at Lisbon in the year 1500. He was educated at the University of Salamanca, and afterwards studied at Paris and Bologna. On his return to Portugal he gradually rose till he obtained the bishopric of Sylves, to which he was appointed by Catharine of Austria, regent of the kingdom in the minority of Dom Sebastian. At the request of Cardinal Henry of Portugal, he wrote his history of King Emanuel, and the expedition of Gama, which his great contemporary Camaens made the subject of his Lusiad. It is remarkable that the history of Osorius and the epic poem of Camaens were published in the same year, 1572. But the fate of these two great authors was very different. The poet was suffered to perish in poverty, under the reign of that same Henry who patronised the historian; yet, allowing for the difference of their professions, they possessed a certain similarity of mind. Even in the priest Osorius there appear many traces of that high and heroic spirit which animated the soldier Camaens, particularly in the pleasure with which he seems to describe the martial manners of his countrymen under the reign of Emanuel. “In that age,” says he, “poverty and sadness were banished from Portugal. Complaints were never heard; but every place, from the court to the cottage, resounded with mirth and music. Illicit love was unknown; nor would the ladies listen to the most honourable addresses of such youths as had not signalized themselves in war. No young man about court, however noble by birth, was permitted to wear the dress of manhood till he had passed over into Africa, and thence brought back with him some animal esteemed for its rarity; and such was the hardy education of the nobility in that age, that many of them travelled everywhere in quest of adventures.” This is a striking picture of the manners of chivalry, to which Portugal owed much of its glory in that splendid period. There is one particular in the character of Osorius, which, considering his age and country, deserves the highest encomium; and that is his tolerant spirit. In the first book of his history he speaks of Emanuel’s cruel persecution of the Jews in the following ge-. nerous and exalted language: “This,” says he, “was authorized neither by law nor by religion. Can men be compelled to believe what they reject with abhorrence? Do you take upon you to restrain the liberty of the will, or to fetter the understanding? Such an attempt must be unsuccessful; and is not acceptable to Christ, who expects from man devotion of the heart, and not that formal worship which is the offspring of pains and penalties. He wishes them to study his religion, and accept it from conviction, not from terror; for who does not see that forced belief is mere hypocrisy ?” Osorius is said to have used many arguments to dissuade Dorn Sebastian from undertaking his unfortunate expedition into Africa, and to have felt so deeply the miseries which befell the Portuguese after that fatal event, that his grief was supposed to have accelerated his death. He died in the year 1580, happy, says De Thou, who celebrates him as a model of Christian virtue, that he died just before the Spanish army entered Portugal, and thus escaped being a witness to the desolation of his country. His various works were published at Rome in 1592, by his nephew Osorius, in four volumes folio, with a life of their author. Amongst these there are two remarkable productions; the first, an Admonition to Queen Elizabeth, exhorting her to return into the bosom of the Church of Rome; and the second, an Essay on Glory, written with such classical purity, as to give birth to a report that it was not the composition of Osorius, but the last work of Cicero on that subject.