Gregorio de Matos's poems circulated hand in hand as manuscripts, and Bahia's governor, Don Joao de Alencastro, who greatly admired "the boldnesses of this muse," collected Gregorio de Matos's verses and had them transcribed in special books. Besides, there were copies of his admirers, amongst whom we find the licensee Manuel Pereira Rabelo, who also bequeathed to posterity the Poet's best biography. Gregorio did not compile his poetry himself and, because of this, once we lack chronology, the critical study of the life and works of the Poet results in being difficult. Thus Gregorio's poems were collected in apocryphal writings and codices afterwards. They also had poems alien to the Gregorian muse and were attributed to him. Amongst the best and most complete codices, it is worth mentioning the ones by the National Library, by Varnhagen in Itamaraty's Palace and the Asensio-Cunha codex, which served as a basis to Gregorio de Matos's poetry edition carried out by James Amado in 1968, perhaps the best codex on Gregorio. The Brazilian Academy [of Letters] decided to undertake the publication of the Poet's complete works and, by compiling the apocryphal writings that are extant in these collections, distributed Gregorio's poetical production in five volumes: I. Sacral [Poetry], released in 1929; II. Lyrical [Poetry], in 1923; III. Gracious [Poetry]; IV. Satirical [Poetry]; V. Satirical [Poetry], these three latter in 1930. Shortly after, Dr. Afrânio Peixoto, in an auction in Lisbon, purchased two magnificent codices that he destined to the National Library. The 2nd codex, with 819 pages, is the richest with the Poet's compositions. It is surprising that other codices are still extant. Afrânio Peixoto published in 1933, on the occasion of the Poet's centenary, the 6th volume of the Gregorian works, with the title of Last [Poetry], a compilation of poems that he found in the aforementioned purchased codex and that were not included in the previously known collections. [...]
In Sao Paulo's City Library, there is one typewritten copy of Gregorio's pornographic verses with the title Gregorio de Matos' Sotadical Satires (869.9711, G1). From the Erotic [Poetry], there are two typewritten codices, one in the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the other in the National Library, both of which were organized by Afrânio Peixoto. [...] Eugênio Gomes (in the Correio de Manhã, December 17th 1955, later republished in Visões and Revisões, Rio de Janeiro, INL, 1958, pp.18-28) added, to Gregorio de Matos's works, three sonnets, of known authorship, in the Reborn Phoenix, making evident the copyists' responsibility, be them contemporary or not, out of unscrupulousness, inattention or of ill-directed zeal, for including many poems of diverse origin thar circulated orally amongst the people in the codices.15
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