Erasmus said of Ghent at the end of the fifteenth century that there
was no city in Europe that could compare with it in greatness, power,
and the cultivation of its people. The lays of the minstrels and the
chivalric romances of other nations were translated into Dutch. In the
middle of the thirteenth century Reynard the Fox was rendered into the
same language, while this era also saw a translation of the Bible made
into Flemish rhyme.
The close of the fourteenth century saw the rise of some wandering
poets called Sprekers, who visited the courts of Kings and Princes and
became so popular that in the fifteenth century they were federated
into different societies that became known as "Chambers of Rhetoric,"
somewhat similar to the German Guilds of the Meistersingers. These
societies spread rapidly through the country, and from rhyme the
members passed to the mystery plays, and to the beginnings of the drama.
The Court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century brought a strong French
element into the literature of the Dutch nation, and the poets and
chroniclers of that age are chiefly Flemish.
The taste for Greek and Latin was introduced into Holland in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Erasmus and Grotius, the two most
learned men among the Dutch literati of their age.
Hooft in the seventeenth century made an extensive study of Italian
poetry, and succeeded in imparting to his tragic and lyric verse a
certain quality of sweetness and volume which it has since retained.
His style, which also embraces tragedy, has been extensively imitated
by his own countrymen.
Nearly the whole of the eighteenth century passed without any
advancement in Dutch literature. The country experienced the French
influence, in common with the rest of Europe; and French works and
translations abounded. Toward the close of this century German taste
began to predominate, and a young Dutchman, Van Effen, founded a
magazine in French, called the "Spectator," which was in imitation of,
and on the same lines as the English magazine of the same name. Many
native writers arose at this time and gained distinction in poetry,
prose and the drama; but the overthrow of the Dutch Republic, and the
confusion attending it, for a time extinguished the national
literature, and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw the country
flooded with poor translations of foreign books, and all the noble
national literature was forgotten. This evil was partly remedied in the
latter part of the nineteenth century; but as a whole, the Dutch
literature, while it has been influenced by foreign taste, has had
little or no weight outside of its own nation, and has not in any way
shaped the literature of other peoples.