Nóbrega (Januário Justiniano de)

He was born in this city on 25 February 1824 and died on 29 July 1866. He was the nephew of the distinguished poet Francisco Álvares de Nóbrega, known by the sobriquet of ‘Camões Pequeno’ (the Little Camões), with whom we have already dealt in this Elucidário (vol. 1, p. 53).

Januário de Nóbrega was appointed copying clerk of the Municipal Administration (Administração do Concelho, the government’s local civil office) on 30 June 1837 and 3rd clerk (escrivão) of the same Administration on 8 January 1857. In his day he enjoyed a great reputation as a journalist and showed a great aptitude for letters, in both prose and verse. On his literary work, we transcribe what the annotator of the Saudades says: ‘He contributed to the same periodicals as Dr António da Luz Pitta, as well as to O Funchalense and Campo Neutro, and in these, in O Estudo and in others he published many poems. He had the collection of his unpublished and published poems ready for the press, but destroyed it a few days before his death. He wrote a historical and statistical work on the archipelago of Madeira, of whose draft we possess fragments, given by his family, who assure us that the fair autograph copy is in the possession of Mr José Silvestre Ribeiro. The following work of his appeared posthumously: Visita de Sua Magestade a Imperatriz do Brasil, viúva, Duqueza de Bragança, á ilha da Madeira, e fundação do Hospício da Serenissima Princesa D. Maria Amelia (Madeira, 1867). He was endowed with uncommon talent and poetic gift, so much so that, with no more schooling than primary instruction, he was one of the best journalists of his time and an esteemed poet. In the last period of his life his natural clarity of mind became clouded; and, suspected of suicide, he died from a fall from a cliff by the sea on 28 July 1866.’

In 1860 the first part of a book entitled Flores Agrestes, Poesias de João F. de Oliveira e Januario J. de Nobrega was published in Funchal. The second part of this work never appeared; it certainly consisted of the collection of poems to which Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo refers, and which its author destroyed when he was seized by an attack of mental derangement that led him to suicide.