LETTERS, SCIENCE AND ART
The epithet "glorious"--_roemrijke_--has been frequently applied by
Dutch historians to the period of Frederick Henry--and deservedly. The
preceding chapter has told that it was a time of wonderful maritime and
colonial expansion, of commercial supremacy and material prosperity. But
the spirit of the Holland, which reached its culminating point of
national greatness in the middle of the 17th century, was far from being
wholly occupied with voyages of adventure and conquest on far distant
seas, or engrossed in sordid commercialism at home. The rapid
acquisition of wealth by successful trade is dangerous to the moral
health and stability alike of individuals and of societies; and the
vices which follow in its train had, as we have already pointed out,
infected to a certain extent the official and commercial classes in the
Dutch republic at this epoch. There is, however, another side of the
picture. The people of the United Provinces in their long struggle for
existence, as a free and independent state, had had all the dormant
energies and qualities of which their race was capable called into
intense and many-sided activity, with the result that the quickening
impulse, which had been sent thrilling through the veins, and which had
made the pulses to throb with the stress of effort and the eagerness of
hope, penetrated into every department of thought and life. When the
treaty of Münster was signed, Holland had taken her place in the very
front rank in the civilised world, as the home of letters, science and
art, and was undoubtedly the most learned state in Europe.
In an age when Latin was the universal language of learning, it was this
last fact which loomed largest in the eyes of contemporaries. The wars
and persecutions which followed the Reformation made Holland the place
of refuge of many of the most adventurous spirits, the choicest
intellects and the most independent thinkers of the time. Flemings and
Walloons, who fled from Alva and the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese
Jews driven out by the fanaticism of Philip II, French Huguenots and
German Calvinists, found within the borders of the United Provinces a
country of adoption, where freedom of the press and freedom of opinion
existed to a degree unknown elsewhere until quite modern times. The
social condition of the country, the disappearance of a feudal nobility,
and the growth of a large and well-to-do burgher aristocracy in whose
hands the government of the republic really lay, had led to a
widespread diffusion of education and culture. All travellers in 17th
century Holland were struck by the evidences which met their eyes, in
all places that they visited, of a general prosperity combined with
great simplicity of life and quiet domesticity. Homely comfort was to be
seen everywhere, but not even in the mansions of the merchant princes of
Amsterdam was there any ostentatious display of wealth and luxury.
Probably of no other people could it have been said that "amongst the
Dutch it was unfashionable not to be a man of business[6]." And yet, in
spite of this, there was none of that narrowness of outlook, which is
generally associated with burgher-society immersed in trade. These men,
be it remembered, were necessarily acquainted with many languages, for
they had commercial relations with all parts of the world. The number
too of those who had actually voyaged and travelled in far distant
oceans, in every variety of climate, amidst every diversity of race, was
very large; and their presence in their home circles and in social
gatherings and all they had to tell of their experiences opened men's
minds, stirred their imaginations, and aroused an interest and a
curiosity, which made even the stay-at-home Hollanders alert, receptive
and eager for knowledge.
The act of William the Silent in founding the University of Leyden, as a
memorial of the great deliverance of 1574, was prophetic of the future
that was about to dawn upon the land, which, at the moment of its lowest
fortunes, the successful defence of Leyden had done so much to save from
utter disaster. For the reasons which have been already stated, scholars
of renown driven by intolerance from their own countries found in the
newly-founded Academy in Holland a home where they could pursue their
literary work undisturbed, and gave to it a fame and celebrity which
speedily attracted thousands of students not only from the Netherlands,
but also from foreign lands. This was especially the case during the
terrible time when Germany was devastated by the Thirty Years' War.
Among the scholars and philologists, who held chairs at Leyden during
the first century of its existence, are included a long list of names of
European renown. Justus Lipsius and Josephus Justus Scaliger may be
justly reckoned among the founders of the science of critical
scholarship. These were of foreign extraction, as was Salmasius, one of
their successors, famous for his controversy with John Milton. But only
less illustrious in the domain of philology and classical learning were
the Netherlanders Gerardus Johannes Vossius (1577-1649) and his five
sons, one of whom Isaac (1618-89) may be even said to have surpassed his
father; Daniel Heinsius (1580-1665) and his son Nicolas (1620-1681), men
of immense erudition and critical insight; and the brilliant Latinist
Caspar Barlaeus (1584-1648). Of theologians and their bitter disputes
posterity retains a less grateful remembrance. Gomarus and Arminius by
their controversies were the authors of party strife and civil
dissensions which led to the death of Oldenbarneveldt on the scaffold;
and with them may be mentioned Episcopius, Voetius, Coecaeus, Bogerman
and Uyttenbogaert. Not all these men had a direct connection with
Leyden, for the success which attended the creation of the academy in
that town quickly led to the erection of similar institutions elsewhere.
Universities were founded at Franeker, 1584; Groningen, 1614; Amsterdam,
1632; Utrecht, 1636; and Harderwijk, 1646. These had not the same
attraction as Leyden for foreigners, but they quickly became, one and
all, centres for the diffusion of that high level of general culture
which was the distinguishing mark of the 17th century Netherlands.
All the writers, whose names have just been mentioned, used Latin almost
exclusively as their instrument of expression. But one name, the most
renowned of them all, has been omitted, because through political
circumstances he was compelled to spend the greater part of his life in
banishment from his native land. Hugo Grotius (Huig van Groot), after
his escape from the castle of Loevestein in 1621, though he remained
through life a true patriot, never could be induced to accept a pardon,
which implied an admission of guilt in himself or in Oldenbarneveldt. So
the man, who was known to have been the actual writer of the Advocate's
_Justification_, continued to live in straitened circumstances at Paris,
until Oxenstierna appointed him Swedish ambassador at the French
court. This post he held for eleven years. Of his extraordinary ability,
and of the variety and range of his knowledge, it is not possible to
speak without seeming exaggeration. Grotius was in his own time styled
"the wonder of the world"; he certainly stands intellectually as one of
the very foremost men the Dutch race has produced. Scholar, jurist,
theologian, philosopher, historian, poet, diplomatist, letter-writer, he
excelled in almost every branch of knowledge and made himself a master
of whatever subject he took in hand. For the student of International
Law the treatise of Grotius, _De Jure belli et pacis_, still remains the
text-book on which the later superstructure has been reared. His _Mare
liberum_, written expressly to controvert the Portuguese claim of an
exclusive right to trade and navigate in the Indian Ocean, excited much
attention in Europe, and was taken by James I to be an attack on the
oft-asserted _dominium maris_ of the English crown in the narrow seas.
It led the king to issue a proclamation forbidding foreigners to fish in
British waters (May, 1609). Selden's _Mare clausum_ was a reply, written
by the king's command, to the _Mare liberum_. Of his strictly historical
works the _Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis_, for its impartiality
and general accuracy no less than for its finished and lucid style,
stands out as the best of all contemporary accounts from the Dutch side
of the Revolt of the Netherlands. As a theologian Grotius occupied a
high rank. His _De Veritate Religionis Christianae_ and his
_Annotationes in Vetus et in Novum Testamentum_ are now out of date; but
the _De Veritate_ was in its day a most valuable piece of Christian
apologetic and was quickly translated into many languages. The
_Annotationes_ have, ever since they were penned, been helpful to
commentators on the Scriptures for their brilliancy and suggestiveness
on many points of criticism and interpretation. His voluminous
correspondence, diplomatic, literary, confidential, is rich in
information bearing on the history and the life of his time. Several
thousands of these letters have been collected and published.
But if the smouldering embers of bitter sectarian and party strife
compelled the most brilliant of Holland's own sons to spend the last
twenty-three years of his life in a foreign capital and to enter the
service of a foreign state, Holland was at the same time, as we have
seen, gaining distinction by the presence within her hospitable
boundaries of men of foreign extraction famous for their learning.
It was thus that both the Cartesian and Spinozan systems of philosophy
had their birth-place on Dutch soil. Réné Descartes sought refuge from
France at Amsterdam in 1629, and he resided at different places in the
United Provinces, among them at the university towns of Utrecht,
Franeker and Leyden, for twenty years. During this time he published
most of his best known works, including the famous _Discours de la
méthode_. His influence was great. He made many disciples, who openly or
secretly became "Cartesians." Among his pupils was Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677) the apostle of pantheism. A Portuguese Jew by descent,
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam and was a resident in his native city
throughout life.
The fame of Holland in 17th century Europe as the chosen home of
learning had thus been established by scholars and thinkers whose
literary language was ordinarily Latin. It is now time to speak of the
brilliant band of poets, dramatists and stylists, who cultivated the
resources of their native tongue with such success as to make this great
era truly the Golden Age of Dutch Literature properly so-called. The
growth of a genuine national literature in the Netherlands, which had
produced during the latter part of the 13th century a Maerlandt and a
Melis Stoke, was for some considerable time checked and retarded by the
influence of the Burgundian _régime_, where French, as the court
language, was generally adopted by the upper classes. The Netherland or
Low-German tongue thus became gradually debased and corrupted by the
introduction of bastard words and foreign modes of expression.
Nevertheless this period of linguistic degradation witnessed the uprise
of a most remarkable institution for popularising "the Art of Poesy." I
refer to the literary gilds, bearing the name of "Chambers of Rhetoric,"
which, though of French origin, became rapidly acclimatised in the
Netherlands. In well-nigh every town one or more of these "gilds" were
established, delighting the people with their quaint pageantry and
elaborate ritual, and forming centres of light and culture throughout
the land. Rhyming, versifying, acting, became through their means the
recreation of many thousands of shop-keepers, artisans and even
peasants. And with all their faults of style and taste, their endless
effusion of bad poetry, their feeble plays and rude farces, the mummery
and buffoonery which were mingled even with their gravest efforts, the
"Rhetoricians" effectually achieved the great and important work of
attracting an entire people in an age of ignorance and of darkness
towards a love of letters, and thereby broke the ground for the great
revival of the 17th century. Amsterdam at one time possessed several
of these Chambers of Rhetoric, but towards the end of the 16th century
they had all disappeared, with one brilliant exception, that of the
"Blossoming Eglantine," otherwise known as the "Old Chamber." Founded in
1518 under the special patronage of Charles V, the "Eglantine" weathered
safely the perils and troubles of the Revolt, and passed in 1581 under
the joint direction of a certain notable triumvirate, Coornheert,
Spiegel and Visscher. These men banded themselves together "to raise,
restore and enrich" their mother-tongue. But they were not merely
literary purists and reformers; the "Eglantine" became in their hands
and through their efforts the focus of new literary life and energy, and
Amsterdam replaced fallen Antwerp as the home of Netherland culture.
The senior member of the triumvirate, Dirk Volkertz Coornheert, led a
stormy and adventurous life. He was a devoted adherent of William the
Silent and for a series of years, through good and ill-fortune, devoted
himself with pen and person to the cause of his patron. As a poet he did
not attain any very high flight, but he was a great pamphleteer, and,
taking an active part in religious controversy, by his publications he
drew upon himself a storm of opposition and in the end of persecution.
He was, like his patron, a man of moderate and tolerant views, which in
an age of religious bigotry brought upon him the hatred of all parties
and the accusation of being a free-thinker. His stormy life ended in
1590. Hendrik Laurensz Spiegel (1549-1612) was a member of an old
Amsterdam family. In every way a contrast to Coornheert, Spiegel was a
Catholic. A prosperous citizen, simple, unostentatious and charitable,
he spent the whole of his life in his native town, and being
disqualified by his religion from holding public office he gave all his
leisure to the cultivation of his mind and to literary pursuits. The
work on which his fame chiefly rests was a didactic poem entitled the
_Hert-Spiegel_. In his pleasant country house upon the banks of the
Amstel, beneath a wide and spreading tree, which he was wont to call the
"Temple of the Muses" he loved to gather a circle of literary friends,
irrespective of differences of opinion or of faith, and with them to
spend the afternoon in bright congenial converse on books and men and
things. Roemer Visscher, the youngest member of the triumvirate, was
like Spiegel an Amsterdammer, a Catholic and a well-to-do merchant. His
poetical efforts did not attain a high standard, though his epigrams,
which were both witty and quaint, won for him from his contemporaries
the name of the "Second Martial." Roemer Visscher's fame does not,
however, rest chiefly upon his writings. A man of great affability,
learned, shrewd and humorous, he was exceedingly hospitable, and he was
fortunate in having a wife of like tastes and daughters more gifted than
himself. During the twenty years which preceded his death in 1620 his
home was the chosen rendezvous of the best intelligence of the day. To
the young he was ever ready to give encouragement and help; and
struggling talent always found in him a kindly critic and a sympathising
friend. He lived to see and to make the acquaintance of Brederôo,
Vondel, Cats and Huyghens, the men whose names were to make the period
of Frederick Henry the most illustrious in the annals of Dutch
literature.
Gerbrand Adriansz Brederôo, strictly speaking, did not belong to that
period. He died prematurely in 1618, a victim while still young to a
wayward life of dissipation and disappointment. His comedies, written in
the rude dialect of the fish-market and the street, are full of native
humour and originality and give genuine glimpses of low life in old
Amsterdam. His songs show that Brederôo had a real poetic gift. They
reveal, beneath the rough and at times coarse and licentious exterior, a
nature of fine susceptibilities and almost womanly tenderness. Joost van
den Vondel was born in the same year as Brederôo, 1587, but his career
was very different. Vondel survived till 1679, and during the whole of
his long life his pen was never idle. His dramas and poems (in the
edition of Van Lennep) fill twelve volumes. Such a vast production, as
is inevitable, contains material of very unequal merit; but it is not
too much to say that the highest flights of Vondel's lyric poetry, alike
in power of expression and imagery, in the variety of metre and the
harmonious cadence of the verse, deserve a far wider appreciation than
they have ever received, through the misfortune of having been written
in a language little known and read. Vondel was the son of an Antwerp
citizen compelled as a Protestant to fly from his native town after its
capture by Parma. He took refuge at Cologne, where the poet was born,
and afterwards settled at Amsterdam. In that town Vondel spent all his
life, first as a shopkeeper, then as a clerk in the City Savings' Bank.
He was always a poor man; he never sought for the patronage of the
great, but rather repelled it. His scathing attacks on those who had
compassed the death of Oldenbarneveldt, and his adhesion to the
Remonstrant cause brought him in early life into disfavour with the
party in power, while later his conversion to Catholicism--in 1641--and
his eager and zealous advocacy of its doctrines, were a perpetual bar to
that public recognition of his talents which was his due. Vondel never
at any time sacrificed his convictions to his interest, and he wrote
poetry not from the desire of wealth or fame, but because he was a born
poet and his mind found in verse the natural expression of its thought
and emotions.
But, though Vondel was a poor man, he was not unlearned. On the contrary
he was a diligent student of Greek and Latin literature, and translated
many of the poetical masterpieces in those languages into Dutch verse.
Indeed so close was his study that it marred much of his own work.
Vondel wrote a great number of dramas, but his close imitation of the
Greek model with its chorus, and his strict adherence to the unities,
render them artificial in form and lacking in movement and life. This is
emphasised by the fact that many of them are based on Scriptural themes,
and by the monotony of the Alexandrine metre in which all the dialogues
are written. It is in the choruses that the poetical genius of Vondel is
specially displayed. Lyrical gems in every variety of metre are to be
found in the Vondelian dramas, alike in his youthful efforts and in
those of extreme old age. Of the dramas, the finest and the most famous
is the _Lucifer_, 1654, which treats of the expulsion of Lucifer and his
rebel host of angels from Heaven. We are here in the presence of a
magnificent effort to deal grandiosely with a stupendous theme. The
conception of the personality of Lucifer is of heroic proportions; and a
comparison of dates renders it at least probable that this Dutch drama
passed into John Milton's hands, and that distinct traces of the
impression it made upon him are to be found in certain passages of the
_Paradise Lost_. Vondel also produced hundreds of occasional pieces,
besides several lengthy religious and didactic poems. He even essayed an
epic poem on Constantine the Great, but it was never completed. Of the
occasional poems the finest are perhaps the triumph songs over the
victories of Frederick Henry, and of the great admirals Tromp and De
Ruyter.
Jacob Cats (1577-1660) lived, like Vondel, to a great age, but in very
different circumstances. He was a native of Dordrecht and became
pensionary of that town, and, though not distinguished as a statesman or
politician, he was so much respected for his prudence and moderation
that for twenty-two years he filled the important office of
Council-Pensionary of Holland and was twice sent as an Envoy
Extraordinary to England. He was a prolific writer and was undoubtedly
the most popular and widely-read of the poets of his time. His works
were to be found in every Dutch homestead, and he was familiarly known
as "Father Cats." His gifts were, however, of a very different order
from those of Vondel. His long poems dealt chiefly with the events of
domestic, every-day existence; and the language, simple, unpretentious
and at times commonplace, was nevertheless not devoid of a certain
restful charm. There are no high flights of imagination or of passion,
but there are many passages as rich in quaint fancy as in wise maxims.
With Constantine Huyghens (1596-1687) the writing of verse was but one
of the many ways in which one of the most cultured, versatile, and busy
men of his time found pleasant recreation in his leisure hours. The
trusted secretary, friend and counsellor of three successive Princes of
Orange, Huyghens in these capacities was enabled for many years to
render great service to Frederick Henry, William II and William III,
more especially perhaps to the last-named during the difficult and
troubled period of his minority. Nevertheless all these cares and
labours of the diplomatist, administrator, courtier and man of the world
did not prevent him from following his natural bent for intellectual
pursuits. He was a man of brilliant parts and of refined and artistic
tastes. Acquainted with many languages and literatures, an accomplished
musician and musical composer, a generous patron of letters and of art,
his poetical efforts are eminently characteristic of the personality of
the man. His volumes of short poems--_Hofwijck, Cluijswerck, Voorhout_
and _Zeestraet_--contain exquisite and witty pictures of life at the
Hague--"the village of villages"--and are at once fastidious in form and
pithy in expression.
It remains to speak of the man who may truly be described as the central
figure among his literary contemporaries. Pieter Cornelisz Hooft
(1583-1647) was indisputably the first man of letters of his time. He
sprang from one of the first families of the burgher-aristocracy of
Amsterdam, in which city his father, Cornelis Pietersz Hooft, filled the
office of burgomaster no less than thirteen times. He began even as a
boy to write poetry, and his strong bent to literature was deepened by a
prolonged tour of more than three years in France, Germany and Italy,
almost two years of which were spent at Florence and Venice. After his
return he studied jurisprudence at Leyden, but when he was only
twenty-six years old he received an appointment which was to mould and
fix the whole of his future career. In 1609 Prince Maurice, in
recognition of his father's great services, nominated Hooft to the
coveted post of Drost, or Governor, of Muiden and bailiff of Gooiland.
This post involved magisterial and administrative duties of a
by-no-means onerous kind; and the official residence of the Drost, the
"High House of Muiden," an embattled feudal castle with pleasant
gardens, lying at the point where at no great distance from Amsterdam
the river Vecht sleepily empties itself into the Zuyder Zee, became
henceforth for thirty years a veritable home of letters.
Hooft's literary life may be divided into two portions. In the decade
after his settlement at Muiden, he was known as a dramatist and a writer
of pretty love songs. His dramas--_Geerard van Velzen, Warenar_ and
_Baeto_--caught the popular taste and were frequently acted, but are not
of high merit. His songs and sonnets are distinguished for their musical
rhythm and airy lightness of touch, but they were mostly penned, as he
himself tells us, for his own pleasure and that of his friends, not for
general publication. There are, nevertheless, charming pieces in the
collected edition of Hooft's poems, and he was certainly an adept in the
technicalities of metrical craft. But Hooft himself was ambitious of
being remembered by posterity as a national historian. He aimed at
giving such a narrative of the struggle against Spain as would entitle
him to the name of "the Tacitus of the Netherlands." He wished to
produce no mere chronicle like those of Bor or Van Meteren, but a
literary history in the Dutch tongue, whose style should be modelled on
that of the great Roman writer, whose works Hooft is said to have read
through fifty-two times. He first, to try his hand, wrote a life of
Henry IV of France, which attained great success. Louis XIII was so
pleased with it that he sent the author a gold chain and made him a
Knight of St Michael. Thus encouraged, on August 19, 1628, Hooft began
his _Netherland Histories_, and from this date until his death in 1647
he worked ceaselessly at the _magnum opus_, which, beginning with the
abdication of Charles V, he intended to carry on until the conclusion of
the Twelve Years' Truce. He did not live to bring the narrative further
than the end of the Leicester régime. In a small tower in the orchard at
Muiden he kept his papers; and here, undisturbed, he spent all his
leisure hours for nineteen years engaged on the great task, on which he
concentrated all his energies. He himself tells us of the enormous pains
that he took to get full and accurate information, collecting records,
consulting archives and submitting every portion as it was written to
the criticism of living authorities, more especially to Constantine
Huyghens and through him to the Prince of Orange himself. Above all
Hooft strove, to use his own words, "never to conceal the truth, even
were it to the injury of the fatherland"; and the carrying-out of this
principle has given to the great prose-epic that he wrote a permanent
value apart altogether from its merits as a remarkable literary
achievement. And yet perhaps the most valuable legacy that Hooft has
left to posterity is his collection of letters. Of these a recent
writer[7] has declared "that, though it could not be asserted that they
[Hooft's letters] threw into the shade the whole of the rest of
Netherland literature, still the assertion would not be far beyond the
mark." They deal with every variety of subject, grave and gay; and they
give us an insight into the literary, social and domestic life of the
Holland of his time, which is of more value than any history.
In these letters we find life-like portraits of the scholars, poets,
dramatists, musicians, singers, courtiers and travellers, who formed
that brilliant society which received from their contemporaries the name
of the "Muiden Circle"--_Muidener Kring_. The genial and hospitable
Drost loved to see around him those "five or six couple of friends,"
whom he delighted to invite to Muiden. Hooft was twice married; and both
his wives, Christina van Erp and Heleonore Hellemans, were charming and
accomplished women, endowed with those social qualities which gave an
added attractiveness to the Muiden gatherings. Brandt, Hooft's
biographer, describes Christina as "of surpassing capacity and
intelligence, as beautiful, pleasing, affable, discreet, gentle and
gracious, as such a man could desire to have"; while, of Heleonore,
Hooft himself writes: "Within this house one ever finds sunshine, even
when it rains without."
This reference to the two hostesses of Muiden calls attention to one of
the noteworthy features of social life in the Holland of this
period--namely, the high level of education among women belonging to
the upper burgher-class. Anna and Maria Tesselschade Visscher, and Anna
Maria Schuurman may be taken as examples. Anna, the elder of the two
daughters of Roemer Visscher (1584-1651), was brought up amidst cultured
surroundings. For some years after her mother's death she took her place
as mistress of the house which until 1620 had been the hospitable
rendezvous of the literary society of Amsterdam. She was herself a woman
of wide erudition, and her fame as a poet was such as to win for her,
according to the fashion of the day, the title of "the Dutch Sappho."
Tesselschade, ten years younger than her sister and educated under her
fostering care, was however destined to eclipse her, alike by her
personal charms and her varied accomplishments. If one could believe all
that is said in her praise by Hooft, Huyghens, Barlaeus, Brederôo,
Vondel and Cats, she must indeed have been a very marvel of perfect
womanhood. As a singer she was regarded as being without a rival; and
her skill in painting, carving, etching on glass and tapestry work was
much praised by her numerous admirers. Her poetical works, including her
translation into Dutch verse of Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, have
almost all unfortunately perished, but a single ode that survives--"the
Ode to a Nightingale"--is an effort not unworthy of Shelley and shows
her possession of a true lyrical gift. At Muiden the presence of the
"beautiful" Tesselschade was almost indispensable. "What feast would be
complete," wrote Hooft to her, "at which you were not present? Favour us
then with your company if it be possible"; and again: "that you will
come is my most earnest desire. If you will but be our guest, then, I
hope, you will cure all our ills." He speaks of her to Barlaeus as "the
priestess"; and it is clear that at her shrine all the frequenters of
Muiden were ready to burn the incense of adulation. Both Anna and
Tesselschade, like their father, were devout Catholics.
Anna Maria van Schuurman (1607-84) was a woman of a different type. She
does not seem to have loved or to have shone in society, but she was a
very phenomenon of learning. She is credited with proficiency in
painting, carving and other arts; but it is not on these, so to speak,
accessory accomplishments that her fame rests, but on the extraordinary
range and variety of her solid erudition. She was at once linguist,
scholar, theologian, philosopher, scientist and astronomer. She was a
remarkable linguist and had a thorough literary and scholarly knowledge
of French, English, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac,
Chaldee, Arabic and Ethiopic. Her reputation became widespread; and, in
the latter part of her long life, many strangers went to Utrecht, where
she resided, to try to get a glimpse of so great a celebrity, which was
not easy owing to her aversion to such visits.
Turning to the domain of mathematical and physical science and of
scientific research and discovery, we find that here also the 17th
century Netherlanders attained the highest distinction. As
mathematicians Simon Stevin, the friend and instructor of Maurice of
Orange, and Francis van Schooten, the Leyden Professor, who numbered
among his pupils Christian Huyghens and John de Witt, did much excellent
work in the earlier years of the century. The published writings of De
Witt on "the properties of curves" and on "the theory of probabilities"
show that the greatest of Dutch statesmen might have become famous as a
mathematician had the cares of administration permitted him to pursue
the abstract studies that he loved. Of the scientific achievements of
Christian Huyghens (1629-95), the brilliant son of a brilliant father,
it is difficult to speak in adequate terms. There is scarcely any name
in the annals of science that stands higher than his. His abilities, as
a pure mathematician, place him in the front rank among mathematicians
of all time; and yet the services that he rendered to mathematical
science were surpassed by his extraordinary capacity for the combination
of theory with practice. His powers of invention, of broad
generalisation, of originality of thought were almost unbounded. Among
the mathematical problems with which he dealt successfully were the
theory of numbers, the squaring of the circle and the calculation of
chances. To him we owe the conception of the law of the conservation of
energy, of the motion of the centre of gravity, and of the undulatory
theory of light. He expounded the laws of the motion of the pendulum,
increased the power of the telescope, invented the micrometer,
discovered the rings and satellites of Saturn, constructed the first
pendulum clock, and a machine, called the gunpowder machine, in
principle the precursor of the steam engine. For sheer brain power and
inventive genius Christian Huyghens was a giant. He spent the later
years of his life in Paris, where he was one of the founders and
original members of the _Académie des Sciences_. Two other names of
scientists, who gained a European reputation for original research and
permanent additions to knowledge, must be mentioned; those of Antoni van
Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), and of Jan Swammerdam (1637-80). Leeuwenhoek
was a life-long observer of minute life. The microscope (the invention
of which was due to a Dutchman, Cornelius Drebbel) was the favourite
instrument of his patient investigations, and he was able greatly to
improve its mechanism and powers. Among the results of his labours was
the discovery of the infusoria, and the collection of a valuable mass of
information concerning the circulation of the blood and the structure of
the eye and brain. Swammerdam was a naturalist who devoted himself to
the study of the habits and the metamorphoses of insects, and he may be
regarded as the founder of this most important branch of scientific
enquiry. His work forms the basis on which all subsequent knowledge on
this subject has been built up.
To say that the school of Dutch painting attained its zenith in the
period of Frederick Henry and the decades which preceded and followed
it, is scarcely necessary. It was the age of Rembrandt. The works of
that great master and of his contemporaries, most of whom were
influenced and many dominated by his genius, are well known to every
lover of art, and are to be seen in every collection of pictures in
Europe. One has, however, to visit the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam and the
Mauritshuis at the Hague to appreciate what an extraordinary outburst of
artistic skill and talent had at this time its birth within the narrow
limits of the northern Netherlands. To the student of Dutch history
these two galleries are a revelation, for there we see 17th century
Holland portrayed before us in every phase of its busy and prosperous
public, social and domestic life. Particularly is this the case with the
portraits of individuals and of civic and gild groups by Rembrandt,
Frans Hals, Van der Helst and their followers, which form an inimitable
series that has rarely been equalled. To realise to what an extent in
the midst of war the fine arts flourished in Holland, a mere list of the
best-known painters of the period will suffice, it tells its own tale.
They are given in the order of their dates: Frans Hals (1584-1666),
Gerard Honthorst (1592-1662), Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan Wyvants
(1600-87), Albert Cuyp (1606-72), Jan Lievens (1607-63), Rembrandt van
Rhyn (1608-69), Gerard Terburg (1608-81), Adrian Brouwer (1608-41),
Ferdinand Bol (1609-81), Salomon Koning (1609-74), Andreas Both
(1609-60), Jan Both (1610-62), Adrian van Ostade (1610-85), Bartolomaus
van der Helst (1613-70), Gerard Douw (1613-80), Gabriel Metzu (1615-58),
Govaert Flinck (1615-60), Isaac van Ostade (1617-71), Aart van der Neer
(1619-83), Pieter de Koningh (1619-89), Philip Wouvermans (1620-68),
Pieter van der Hoogh (?), Nicolas Berchem (1624-83), Paul Potter
(1625-54), Jacob Ruysdael (1625-81), Meindert Hobbema (?), Jan Steen
(1626-79), Samuel van Hoogstraeten (1627-78), Ludolf Backhuizen
(1631-1709), Jan van der Meer of Delft (1632-?), Nicholas Maes
(1632-93), William van der Velde (1633-1707), Frans van Mieris
(1635-81), Caspar Netscher (1639-84), Adrian van der Velde (1639-72).
It is strange that little is known of the lives of the great majority of
these men; they are scarcely more than names, but their memory survives
in their works. No better proof could be brought of the general
abundance of money and at the same time of the widespread culture of the
land than the fact that art found among all classes so many patrons. The
aristocratic burgher-magistrates and the rich merchants loved to adorn
their houses with portraits and a choice selection of pictures; it was a
favourite investment of capital, and there was a certain amount of
rivalry among the principal families in a town like Amsterdam in being
possessed of a fine collection. The "Six" collection still remains as an
example upon the walls of the 17th century house of Burgomaster Six,
where it was originally placed. The governing bodies of gilds and
boards, members of corporations, the officers of the town _schutterij_
or of archer companies delighted to have their portraits hung around
their council chambers or halls of assembly. In the well-to-do
farmer-homesteads and even in the dwellings of the poorer classes
pictures were to be found, as one may see in a large number of the
"interiors" which were the favourite subject of the _genre_ painters of
the day. But with all this demand the artists themselves do not seem to
have in any case been highly paid. The prices were low. Even Rembrandt
himself, whose gains were probably much larger than those of any of
his contemporaries, and whose first wife, Saskia Uilenburg, was a woman
of means, became bankrupt in 1656, and this at a time when he was still
in his prime, and his powers at their height. Some of his most famous
pictures were produced at a later date.
During the Thirty Years' War Holland became the centre of the publishing
and book-selling trade; and Leyden and Amsterdam were famed as the
foremost seats of printing in Europe. The devastation of Germany and
the freedom of the press in the United Provinces combined to bring about
this result. The books produced by the Elseviers at Leyden and by Van
Waesberg and Cloppenburch at Amsterdam are justly regarded as fine
specimens of the printer's art, while the maps of Willem Jansz Blaeu and
his Dutch contemporaries were quite unrivalled, and marked a great step
forward in cartography.
This chapter must not conclude without a reference to the part taken by
the Netherlanders in the development of modern music and the modern
stage. The love of music was widespread; and the musicians of the
Netherlands were famed alike as composers and executants. It was from
its earlier home in the Low Countries that the art of modern music
spread into Italy and Germany and indeed into all Europe. Similarly in
the late Middle Ages the people of the Netherlands were noted for their
delight in scenic representations and for the picturesque splendour with
which they were carried out. The literary gilds, named Chambers of
Rhetoric, never took such deep root elsewhere; and in the performance of
Mystery Plays and Moralities and of lighter comic pieces (_chuttementen_
and _cluyten_) many thousands of tradespeople and artisans took part. In
the 17th century all the Chambers of Rhetoric had disappeared with the
single exception of the famous "Old Chamber" at Amsterdam, known as _The
Blossoming Eglantine_, to which the leading spirits of the Golden Age of
Dutch Literature belonged and which presided over the birth of the Dutch
Stage. From the first the stage was popular and well-supported; and the
new theatre of Amsterdam, the Schouburg (completed in 1637), became
speedily renowned for the completeness of its arrangements and the
ability of its actors. Such indeed was their reputation that travelling
companies of Dutch players visited the chief cities of Germany, Austria
and Denmark, finding everywhere a ready welcome and reaping a rich
reward, whilst at Stockholm for a time a permanent Dutch theatre was
established.
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