Brazilian modinhas, short rhyming poems sung accompanied by a guitar at family parties, were very popular at the time, and Bocage added to his fame by writing a number of these, by his skill in extemporizing verses on a given theme, and by allegorical idyllic pieces, the subjects of which are similar to those of Watteau's and Boucher's pictures.

According to a contemporary tradition, much of "Os Lusíadas" had been written there, and Bocage probably travelled to China following in the footsteps of another classic Portuguese poet, Luís de Camões, to whose life and misfortunes he loved to compare his own.

The age was one of reaction against the Marquis of Pombal's reforms, and his superintendent of police, Pina Manique, in his determination to keep out French revolutionary and atheistic propaganda, forbade the importation of foreign classics and the discussion of all liberal ideas.

In 1797 enemies of Bocage belonging to New Arcadia denounced him to Manique, who on the pretext afforded by some anti-religious verses, the Epistola a Marilia, along with accusations of immorality, arrested him when he was about to flee the country and flung him in the Limoeiro jail, where he spent his thirty-second birthday.

His sufferings induced him to a speedy recantation, and after much importuning of friends, he obtained his transfer in November from the state prison to that of the Portuguese Inquisition, by then a lenient institution, and shortly afterwards recovered his liberty.

He returned to his bohemian life and subsisted by writing empty Elogios Dramáticos for the theatres, printing volumes of verses and translating the didactic poems of Delille, Castel and others, along with some second-rate French plays.

These resources and the help of brother Freemasons enabled him to survive, and a purifying influence came into his life in the shape of a real affection for the two beautiful daughters of D. António Bersane Leite, which drew from him verses of true feeling mixed with regrets for the past.

In 1801 his poetical rivalry with Macedo became more acute and personal, and ended by drawing from Bocage a stinging extempore poem, Pena de Talião, which remains a monument to his powers of invective.

His roundels are good, his epigrams witty, his satires rigorous and searching, his odes often full of nobility, but his fame must rest on his sonnets, which almost rival those of Camões in power, elevation of thought and tender melancholy, though they lack the latter's scholarly refinement of phrasing.