[1] i.e. "Within a few years our language has been gradually skimmed
of bastard words and non-Dutch elements."
DUTCH LITERATURE. The languages now known as Dutch and Flemish did not
begin to take distinct shape till about the end of the 11th century.
From a few existing fragments--two incantations from the 8th century, a
version of the Psalms from the 9th century, and several charters--a
supposed Old Dutch language has been recognized; but Dutch literature
actually commences in the 13th century, as Middle Dutch, the creation of
the first national movement in Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zealand.
Willem the Minstrel.
From the wreck of Frankish anarchy no genuine folk-tales of Dutch
antiquity have come down to us, and scarcely any echoes of German myth.
On the other hand, the sagas of Charlemagne and Arthur appear
immediately in Middle Dutch forms. These were evidently introduced by
wandering minstrels and jongleurs, and translated to gratify the
curiosity of the noble women. It is rarely that the name of such a
translator has reached us, but we happen to know that the fragments we
possess of the French romance of _William of Orange_ were written in
Dutch by a certain Klaas van Haarlem, between 1191 and 1217. The
_Chanson de Roland_ was translated about the same time, and considerably
later _Parthenopeus de Blois_. The Flemish minstrel Diederic van
Assenede completed his version of _Floris et Blanchefleur_ about 1250.
The Arthurian legends appear to have been brought to Flanders by some
Flemish colonists in Wales, on their return to their mother-country.
About 1250 a Brabantine minstrel translated Walter Map's _Lancelot du
lac_ at the command of his liege, Lodewijk van Velthem. The _Gauvain_
was translated by Penninc and Vostaert before 1260, while the first
original Dutch writer, the famous Jakob van Maerlant, occupied himself
about 1260 with several romances dealing with Merlin and the Holy Grail.
The earliest existing fragments of the epic of _Reynard the Fox_ were
written in Latin by Flemish priests, and about 1250 the first part of a
very important version in Dutch was made by Willem the Minstrel, of whom
it is unfortunate that we know no more save that he was the translator
of a lost romance, _Madoc_. In his existing work the author follows
Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but not slavishly; and he is the first really
admirable writer that we meet with in Dutch literature. The second part
was added by another hand at the end of the 14th century.
John I., duke of Brabant.
It is not necessary to dwell at any length on the monkish legends and
the hymns to the Virgin Mary which were abundantly produced during the
13th century, and which, though destitute of all literary merit, were of
use as exercises in the infancy of the language. The first lyrical
writer of Holland was John I., duke of Brabant, who practised the
_minnelied_ with success, but whose songs are only known to us through a
Swabian version of a few of them. In 1544 the earliest collection of
Dutch folk-songs saw the light, and in this volume one or two romances
of the 14th century are preserved, of which _Het Daghet in den Oosten_
is the best known. Almost the earliest fragment of Dutch popular poetry,
but of later time, is an historical ballad describing the murder of
Count Floris V. in 1296. A very curious collection of mystical medieval
hymns by Sister Hadewych, a nun of Brabant, was first printed in 1875 by
Heremans and Ledeganck.
Maerlant.
Boendale.
Weert.
Stoke.
Hitherto, as we have seen, the Middle Dutch language had placed itself
at the service of the aristocratic and monastic orders, flattering the
traditions of chivalry and of religion, but scarcely finding anything to
say to the bulk of the population. With the close of the 13th century a
change came over the face of Dutch literature. The Flemish towns began
to prosper and to assert their commercial supremacy over the North Sea.
Under such mild rulers as William II. and Floris V., Dort, Amsterdam,
and other cities contrived to win such privileges as amounted almost to
political independence, and with this liberty there arose a new sort of
literary expression. The founder and creator of this original Dutch
literature was Jacob van Maerlant (q.v.). His _Naturen Bloeme_, written
about 1263, forms an epoch in Dutch literature; it is a collection of
moral and satirical addresses to all classes of society. With his
_Rijmbijbel_ (Rhyming Bible) he foreshadowed the courage and
free-thought of the Reformation. It was not until 1284 that he began his
masterpiece, _De Spieghel Historiael_ (The Mirror of History), at the
command of Count Floris V. Of his disciples, the most considerable in
South Holland was Jan van Boendale (1280-1365), known as Jan de Klerk.
He was born in Brabant, and became clerk to the justices at Antwerp in
1310. He was entrusted with various important missions. His works are
historical and moral in character. In him the last trace of the old
chivalric and romantic element has disappeared. He completed his famous
rhyme chronicle, the _Brabantsche Yeesten_, in 1350; it contains the
history of Brabant down to that date, and was brought down to 1440 by an
anonymous later writer. For English readers it is disappointing that
Boendale's other great historical work (_Van den derden Edewaert, coninc
van Ingelant ..._, ed. J.F. Willems, Ghent, 1840), an account of Edward
III. and his expedition to Flanders in 1338, has survived only in some
fragments. The remainder of Boendale's works are didactic poems,
pursuing still further the moral thread first taken up by Maerlant, and
founded on medieval scholastic literature. In Ypres the school of
Maerlant was represented by Jan de Weert, a surgeon, who died in 1362,
and who was the author of two remarkable works of moral satire and
exhortation, the _Nieuwe Doctrinael of Spieghel der Sonden_, and a
_Disputacie van Rogier end van Janne_. In the beginning of the 13th
century Gielijs van Molhem wrote a Dutch version of part of the
_Miserere_ of the Picard poet who concealed his identity under the name
of the recluse of Moiliens. The poem consisted of meditations on the
origin and destiny of man, and on the sins of pride, envy, &c. The
translation, completed later by an author calling himself Heinrec, was
critically edited (Groningen, 1893) by P. Leendertz. In North Holland a
greater talent than that of Weert or of Boendale was exhibited by Melis
Stoke, a monk of Egmond, who wrote the history of the state of Holland
to the year 1305; this work, the _Rijmkronik_, was printed in 1591, and
edited in 1885 for the Utrecht Historical Society; and for its
exactitude and minute detail it has proved of inestimable service to
later historians.
Heelu.
Aken.
Dirk Potter.
With the middle of the 14th century the chivalric spirit came once more
into fashion. A certain revival of the forms of feudal life made its
appearance under William III. and his successors. Knightly romances came
once more into vogue, but the newborn didactic poetry contended
vigorously against the supremacy of what was lyrical and epical. It will
be seen that from the very first the literary spirit in Holland began to
assert itself in a homely and utilitarian spirit. Jan van Heelu, a
Brabanter, was the author of an epic poem[1] on the battle of Woeronc
(1288), dedicated to Princess Margaret of England, and to him has been
attributed the still finer romance of the _War of Grimbergen_.[2] Still
more thoroughly aristocratic in feeling was Hein van Aken, a priest of
Louvain, who lived about 1255-1330, and who combined to a very curious
extent the romantic and didactic elements. As early as 1280 he had
completed his translation[3] of the _Roman de la rose_, which he must
have commenced in the lifetime of Jean de Meung. More remarkable than
any of his translated works, however, is his original romance, completed
in 1318, _Heinric en Margriete van Limborch_,[4] upon which he was at
work for twenty-seven years. During the Bavarian period (1349-1433) very
little original writing of much value was produced in Holland. Buodewijn
van der Loren wrote one excellent piece on the Maid of Ghent, in 1389.
Augustijnken van Dordt was a peripatetic minstrel of North Holland, who
composed for the sheriff Aelbrecht and for the count of Blois from 1350
to 1370. Such of his verses as have been handed down to us are
allegorical and moral. Willem van Hildegaersberch (1350-1408) was
another northern poet, of a more strictly political cast. Many of his
writings exist still unpublished, and are very rough in style and
wanting in form. Towards the end of the 14th century an erotic poet of
considerable power arose in the person of the lord of Waddinxsveen and
Hubrechtsambacht, Dirk Potter van der Loo (c. 1365-1428), who was
secretary at the court of the counts of Holland. During an embassy in
Rome (1411-1412) this eminent diplomatist made himself acquainted with
the writings of Boccaccio, and commenced a vast poem on the course of
love, _Der Minnen Loep_,[5] which is a wonderful mixture of classical
and Biblical instances of amorous adventures set in a framework of
didactic philosophy. In Dirk Potter the last traces of the chivalric
element died out of Dutch literature, and left poetry entirely in the
hands of the school of Maerlant. Many early songs, with some of later
date, are preserved in a _Liedekens-Boeck_ printed by Jan Roulans
(Antwerp, 1544). The unique copy in the Wolfenbuttel library was edited
by Hoffmann von Fallersleben in _Horae Belgicae_ (vol. xi., 1855).
Religious drama.
It is now time to consider the growth of prose literature in the Low
Countries. The oldest pieces of Dutch prose now in existence are
charters of the towns of Flanders and Zealand, dated 1249, 1251 and
1254. A prose translation of the Old Testament was made about 1300, and
there exists a _Life of Jesus_ about the same date. Of the mystical
preachers whose religious writings have reached us, the Brussels friar,
Jan van Ruysbroec (1294-1381), is the most important. But the most
interesting relics of medieval Dutch prose, as far as the formation of
the language is concerned, are the popular romances in which the
romantic stories of the _trouveres_ and minstrels were translated for
the benefit of the unlettered public into simple language. As in most
European nations, the religious drama takes a prominent place in every
survey of medieval literature in Holland. Unfortunately the text of all
the earliest mysteries, the language of which would have an
extraordinary interest for us, has been lost. We possess records of
dramas having been played at various places--_Our Lord's Resurrection_,
at the Hague, in 1400; _Our Lady the Virgin_, at Arnheim, in 1452; and
_The Three Kings_, at Delft, in 1498. The earliest existing fragment,
however, is part of a _Limburg-Maastricht Passover Play_[6] of about
1360. The latest Dutch miracle play was the _Mystery of the Holy
Sacrament_, composed by a certain Smeken, at Breda, and performed on St
John's day, 1500. This play was printed in 1867. With these purely
theological dramas there were acted mundane farces, performed outside
the churches by semi-religious companies; these curious moralities were
known as "Abelespelen" and "Sotternieen." In these pieces we discover
the first traces of that genius for low comedy which was afterwards to
take perfect form in the dramas of Brederoo and the paintings of
Teniers.
Chambers of Rhetoric.
The theatrical companies just alluded to, "Gesellen van den Spele,"
formed the germ out of which developed the famous "Chambers of
Rhetoric"[7] which united within themselves all the literary movements
that occupied the Low Countries during the 15th and 16th centuries. The
poets of Holland had already discovered in late medieval times the value
of gilds in promoting the arts and industrial handicrafts. The term
"colleges de rhetorique" is supposed to have been introduced about 1440
to the courtiers of the Burgundian dynasty, but the institutions
themselves existed long before. These literary gilds lasted till the end
of the 16th century, and during the greater part of that time preserved
a completely medieval character, even when the influences of the
Renaissance and the Reformation obliged them to modify in some degree
their outward forms. They were in almost all cases absolutely
middle-class in tone, and opposed to aristocratic ideas and tendencies
in thought. Of these remarkable bodies the earliest were almost entirely
engaged in preparing mysteries and miracle-plays for the populace. Each
chamber, and in process of time every town in the Low Countries,
possessed one, and took as its title some fanciful or heraldic sign. At
Diest "The Eyes of Christ," dated from 1302, and an earlier one, the
"Lily," is mentioned. "The Alpha and Omega," at Ypres, was founded about
1398; that of the "Violet," at Antwerp, followed in 1400; the "Book," at
Brussels, in 1401; the "Berberry," at Courtrai, in 1427; the "Holy
Ghost," at Bruges, in 1428; the "Floweret Jesse," at Middelburg, in
1430; the "Oak Tree," at Vlaardingen, in 1433; and the "Marigold," at
Gouda, in 1437. The most celebrated of all the chambers, that of the
"Eglantine" at Amsterdam, with its motto _In Liefde Bloeyende_
(Blossoming in Love), was not instituted until 1496. Among the most
influential chambers not above mentioned should be included the
"Fountain" at Dort, the "Corn Flower" at the Hague, the "White
Columbine" at Leiden, the "Blue Columbine" at Rotterdam, the "Red Rose"
at Schiedam, the "Thistle" at Zierikzee, "Jesus with the Balsam" at
Ghent, and the "Garland of Mary" at Brussels. And not in these important
places only, but in almost every little town, the rhetoricians exerted
their influence, mainly in what we may call a social direction. Their
wealth was in most cases considerable, and it very soon became evident
that no festival or procession could take place in a town unless the
"Kamer" patronized it. Towards the end of the 15th century the Ghent
chamber of "Jesus with the Balsam" began to exercise a sovereign power
over the other Flemish chambers, which was emulated later on in Holland
by the "Eglantine" at Amsterdam. But this official recognition proved of
no consequence in literature, and it was not in Ghent, but in Antwerp,
that intellectual life first began to stir. In Holland the burghers only
formed the chambers, while in Flanders the representatives of the noble
families were honorary members, and assisted with their money at the
arrangement of ecclesiastical or political pageants. Their pompous
_landjuweelen_, or tournaments of rhetoric, at which rich prizes were
contended for, were the great occasions upon which the members of the
chambers distinguished themselves. Between 1426 and 1620 at least 66 of
these festivals were held. There was a specially splendid _landjuweel_
at Antwerp in 1496, in which 28 chambers took part, but the gayest of
all was that celebrated at Antwerp on the 3rd of August 1561. To this
the "Book" at Brussels sent 340 members, all on horseback, and clad in
crimson mantles. The town of Antwerp gave a ton of gold to be given in
prizes, which were shared among 1893 rhetoricians. This was the zenith
of the splendour of the "Kamers van Rhetorica," and after this time they
soon fell into disfavour. We can trace the progress of literary
composition under the chambers, although none of their official
productions has descended to us. Their dramatic pieces were certainly of
a didactic cast, with a strong farcical flavour, and continued the
tradition of Maerlant and his school. They very rarely dealt with
historical or even Biblical personages, but entirely with allegorical
and moral abstractions, until the age of humanism introduced upon the
stage the names without much of the spirit of mythology. Of the pure
farces of the rhetorical chambers we can speak with still more
confidence, for some of them have come down to us, and among the authors
famed for their skill in this sort of writing are named Cornelis
Everaert of Bruges and Laurens Janssen of Haarlem. The material of these
farces is extremely raw, consisting of rough jests at the expense of
priests and foolish husbands, silly old men and their light wives.
Laurens Janssen is also deserving of remembrance for a satire against
the clergy, written in 1583. The chambers also encouraged the
composition of songs, but with very little success; they produced no
lyrical genius more considerable than Matthijs de Casteleyn (1488-1550),
the founder of the Flemish chamber of "Pax Vobiscum" at Oudenarde, and
author of _De Conste van Rhetorijcken_ (Ghent, 1573), a personage whose
influence as a fashioner of language would have been more healthy if his
astounding metrical feats and harlequin _tours de force_ had not been
performed in a dialect debased with all the worst bastard phrases of the
Burgundian period.
Houwaert.
In the middle of the 16th century a group of rhetoricians in Brabant and
Flanders attempted to put a little new life into the stereotyped forms
of the preceding age by introducing in original composition the
new-found branches of Latin and Greek poetry. The leader of these men
was Jean Baptista Houwaert[8] (1533-1599), a personage of considerable
political influence in his generation. Houwaert held the title of
"Counsellor and Master in Ordinary of the Exchequer to the Dukedom of
Brabant"; he played a prominent part in the revolution of the Low
Countries against Spain; and when the prince of Orange entered Brussels
victoriously (Sept. 23rd, 1577), Houwaert met him in pomp at the head of
the two chambers of rhetoric--the "Book" and the "Garland of Mary." He
did not remain faithful to his convictions, for he composed in 1593 a
poem in honour of the cardinal-archduke Ernest of Austria, the governor
of the Spanish Netherlands. He considered himself a devout disciple of
Matthijs de Casteleyn, but his great characteristic was his unbounded
love of classical and mythological fancy. His didactic poems are
composed in a wonderfully rococo style, and swarm with misplaced
Latinities. In his bastard Burgundian tongue he boasted of having
"poetelijck geinventeert ende rhetorijckelijck ghecomponeert" for the
Brussels chamber such dramas as _Aeneas and Dido_, _Mars and Venus_,
_Narcissus and Echo_, or _Leander and Hero_--named together the
_Commerce of Amorosity_ (1583). But of all his writings, _Pegasides
Pleyn_ (Antwerp, 1582-1583), or the Palace of Maidens, is the most
remarkable; this is a didactic poem in sixteen books, dedicated to a
discussion of the variety of earthly love. Houwaert's contemporaries
nicknamed him "the Homer of Brabant"; later criticism has preferred to
see in him an important link in that chain of homely didactic Dutch
which ends in Cats. His writings are composed in a Burgundian so base
that they hardly belong to Flemish literature at all. Into the same
miserable dialect Cornelis van Ghistele of Antwerp translated, between
1555 and 1583, parts of Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, while the
painter Karel van Mander (1547-1609) put a French version of the _Iliad_
and of the _Eclogues_ of Virgil into an equally ill-fitting Flemish
dress. In no country of Europe did the humanism of the 16th century at
first affect the national literature so slightly or to so little
purpose.
Psalms and hymns.
Battle-songs.
The stir and revival of intellectual life that arrived with the
Reformation found its first expression in the composition of Psalms.
The earliest printed collection appeared at Antwerp in 1540, under the
title of _Souter-Liedekens_, and was dedicated to a Dutch nobleman,
Willem van Zuylen van Nieuvelt, by whose name it is usually known. This
collection, however, was made before the Reformation in Holland really
set in. For the Protestant congregations Jan Utenhove printed a volume
of Psalms in London in 1566; Lucas de Heere (1534-1585), and immediately
after him, with much greater success, Petrus Datheen (1531-1590),
translated the hymns of Clement Marot. For printing this last volume, in
1567, Herman Schinkel of Delft was burned to death in 1568. Datheen was
not a rhetorician, but a person of humble origin, who wrote in the
vulgar tongue, and his hymns spread far and wide among the people. Until
1773 they were in constant use in the state church of Holland. But the
great events of the period of reformation are not marked by psalms only
in Dutch literature. Two collections of hymns and lyrical pieces,
printed in 1562 and 1569, perpetuate the fervour and despair of the
martyrs of the Mennonite Church. Similar utterances of the persecuted
Protestants were published at Haarlem and Leeuwarden, at Ghent and at
Bruges. Very different in tone were the battle-songs of liberty and
triumph sung a generation later by the victorious Reformers, the
"Geuzen" or "Gueux" (q.v.). The famous song-book of 1588, the _Geusen
Lieden Boecxken_, was full of ardent and heroic sentiment, expressed
often in marvellously brilliant phrases. In this collection appeared for
the first time such classical snatches of Dutch song as the Ballad of
Heiligerlee, the Ballad of Egmond and Horn, and the song of the Storm of
Leiden. The political ballads, with their ridicule of the Spanish
leaders, form a section of the _Boecxken_ which has proved of
inestimable value to historians. All these lyrics, however, whether of
victory or of martyrdom, are still very rough in form and language.
Anna Bijns.
The first writer who used the Dutch tongue with grace and precision of
style was a woman and a professed opponent of Lutheranism and reformed
thought. Modern Dutch literature practically begins with Anna Bijns (c.
1494-1575). Against the crowd of rhetoricians and psalm-makers of the
early part of the 16th century she stands out in relief as the one poet
of real genius. The language, oscillating before her time between French
and German, formless, corrupt and invertebrate, took shape and
comeliness, which none of the male pedants could give it, from the
impassioned hands of a woman. Anna Bijns, who is believed to have been
born at Antwerp in 1494, was a schoolmistress at that city in her middle
life, and in old age she still "instructed youth in the Catholic
religion." She died on the 10th of April 1575. Hendrik Peppinck, a
Franciscan, who edited her third volume of poems when she was an old
woman in 1567, speaks of her as "a maiden small of descent, but great of
understanding, and godly of life." Her first known volume bears the date
1528, and displays her as already deeply versed in the mysteries of
religion. We gather from all this that she was a lay nun, and she
certainly occupied a position of great honour and influence at Antwerp.
She was named "the Sappho of Brabant" and the "Princess of all
Rhetoricians." She bent the powerful weapon of her verse against the
faith and character of Luther. In her volume of 1528 the Lutherans are
scarcely mentioned; in that of 1538 every page is occupied with
invectives against them; while the third volume of 1567 is the voice of
one from whom her age has passed. All the poems of Anna Bijns which we
possess are called _refereinen_ or refrains.[9] Her mastery over
verse-form was extremely remarkable, and these refrains are really
modified chants-royal. The writings of Anna Bijns offer many points of
interest to the philologist. In her the period of Middle Dutch closes,
and the modern Dutch begins. In a few grammatical peculiarities--such as
the formation of the genitive by some verbs which now govern the
accusative, and the use of _ghe_ before the infinitive--her language
still belongs to Middle Dutch; but these exceptions are rare, and she
really initiated that modern speech which Filips van Marnix adopted and
made classical in the next generation.
Marnix.
In Filips van Marnix, lord of St Aldegonde (1538-1598), a much greater
personage came forward in the ranks of liberty and reform. He was born
at Brussels in 1538, and began life as a disciple of Calvin and Beza in
the schools of Geneva. It was as a defender of the Dutch iconoclasts
that he first appeared in print, with his tract on _The Images thrown
down in Holland in August 1566_. He soon became one of the leading
spirits in the war of Dutch independence, the intimate friend of the
prince of Orange, and the author of the glorious _Wilhelmuslied_. It was
in the autumn of 1568 that Marnix composed this, the national hymn of
Dutch liberty and Protestantism. In 1569 he completed a no less
important and celebrated prose work, the _Biencorf_ or Beehive of the
Romish Church. In this satire he was inspired in a great measure by
Rabelais, of whom he was an intelligent disciple. It is written in prose
that may be said to mark an epoch in the language and literature of
Holland. Overwhelmed with the press of public business, Marnix wrote
little more until in 1580 he published his _Psalms of David newly
translated out of the Hebrew Tongue_. He occupied the last years of his
life in preparing a Dutch version of the Bible, translated direct from
the original. At his death only Genesis was found completely revised;
but in 1619 the synod of Dort placed the unfinished work in the hands of
four divines, who completed it.
Coornhert.
In Dirck Volckertsen Coornhert[10] (1522-1590) Holland for the first
time produced a writer at once eager to compose in his native tongue and
to employ the weapons of humanism. Coornhert was a typical burgher of
North Holland, equally interested in the progress of national
emancipation and in the development of national literature. He was a
native of Amsterdam, but he did not take part in the labours of the old
chamber of the Eglantine, but quite early in life proceeded to Haarlem,
and was notary, secretary and finally pensionary of the town. In 1566 he
was imprisoned for his support of the Reformers, and in 1572 he became
secretary to the states of Holland. He practised the art of etching, and
spent all his spare time in the pursuit of classical learning. He was
nearly forty years of age before he made any practical use of his
attainments. In 1561 he printed his translation of the _De officiis_ of
Cicero, and in 1562 of the _De beneficiis_ of Seneca. In these volumes
he opposed with no less zeal than Marnix had done the bastard forms
still employed in prose by the rhetoricians of Flanders and Brabant.
During the next decade he occupied himself chiefly with plays and poems,
conceived and expressed with far less freedom than his prose, and more
in the approved conventional fashion of the rhetoricians; he collected
his poems in 1575. The next ten years he occupied in polemical writing,
from the evangelical point of view, against the Calvinists. In 1585 he
translated Boethius, and then gave his full attention to his original
masterpiece, the _Zedekunst_ (1586), or Art of Ethics, a philosophical
treatise in prose, in which he studied to adapt the Dutch tongue to the
grace and simplicity of Montaigne's French. His humanism unites the
Bible, Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius in one grand system of ethics, and
is expressed in a style remarkable for brightness and purity. He died at
Gouda on the 29th of October 1590; his works, in three enormous folio
volumes, were first collected in 1630.
Amsterdam the centre of letters.
Towards the end of the period of transition, Amsterdam became the centre
of all literary enterprise in Holland. In 1585 two of the most important
chambers of rhetoric in Flanders, the "White Lavender" and the "Fig
Tree," took flight from the south, and settled themselves in Amsterdam
by the side of the "Eglantine." The last-named institution had already
observed the new tendency of the age, and was prepared to encourage
intellectual reform of every kind, and its influence spread through
Holland and Zealand. In Flanders, meanwhile, crushed under the yoke of
Parma, literature and native thought absolutely expired. From this time
forward, and until the emancipation of the southern provinces, the
domain of our inquiry is confined to the district north of the Scheldt.
Spieghel.
Roemer Visscher.
In the chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam two men took a very
prominent place, more by their intelligence and modern spirit than by
their original genius. Hendrick Laurenssen Spieghel (1549-1612) was a
humanist of a type more advanced and less polemical than Coornhert. He
wrote a charming poem in praise of dancing; but his chief contributions
to literature were his _Tweespraeck van de nederduytsche letterkunst_, a
philological exhortation, in the manner of Joachim du Bellay's famous
tract, urging the Dutch nation to purify and enrich its tongue at the
fountains of antiquity, and a didactic epic, entitled _Hertspieghel_
(1614),[11] which has been greatly praised, but which is now much more
antiquated in style and more difficult to enjoy than Coornhert's prose
of a similar tendency. That Spieghel was a Catholic prevented him
perhaps from exercising as much public influence as he exercised
privately among his younger friends. The same may be said of the man
who, in 1614, first collected Spieghel's writings, and published them in
a volume with his own verses. Roemer Pieterssen Visscher[12] (1547-1620)
proceeded a step further than Spieghel in the cultivation of polite
letters. He was deeply tinged with a spirit of classical learning that
was much more genuine and nearer to the true antique than any that had
previously been known in Holland. His own disciples called him the Dutch
Martial, but he was at best little more than an amateur in poetry,
although an amateur whose function it was to perceive and encourage the
genius of professional writers. Roemer Visscher stands at the threshold
of the new Renaissance literature, himself practising the faded arts of
the rhetoricians, but pointing by his counsel and his conversation to
the naturalism of the great period.
The Renaissance.
It was in the salon at Amsterdam which the beautiful daughters of Roemer
Visscher formed around their father and themselves that the new school
began to take form. The republic of the United Provinces, with Amsterdam
at its head, had suddenly risen to the first rank among the nations of
Europe, and it was under the influence of so much new emotion and
brilliant ambition that the country no less suddenly asserted itself in
a great school of painting and poetry. The intellect of the whole Low
Countries was concentrated in Holland and Zealand, while the six great
universities, Leiden, Groningen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Harderwijk and
Franeker, were enriched by a flock of learned exiles from Flanders and
Brabant. It had occurred, however, to Roemer Visscher only that the path
of literary honour lay, not along the utilitarian road cut out by
Maerlant and Boendale, but in the study of beauty and antiquity. In this
he was curiously aided by the school of ripe and enthusiastic scholars
who began to flourish at Leiden, such as Drusius, Vossius and Hugo
Grotius, who themselves wrote little in Dutch, but who chastened the
style of the rising generation by insisting on a pure and liberal
Latinity. Out of that generation arose the greatest names in the
literature of Holland--Vondel, Hooft, Cats, Huygens--in whose hands the
language, so long left barbarous and neglected, took at once its highest
finish and melody. By the side of this serious and aesthetic growth
there is to be noticed a quickening of the broad and farcical humour
which had been characteristic of the Dutch nation from its commencement.
For fifty years, and these the most glorious in the annals of Holland,
these two streams of influence, one towards beauty and melody, the other
towards lively comedy, ran side by side, often in the same channel, and
producing a rich harvest of great works. It was in the house of the
daughters of Roemer Visscher that the tragedies of Vondel and the
comedies of Bredero, the farces of Coster and the odes of Huygens, alike
found their first admirers and their best critics.
Roemer Visscher's daughters.
Of the famous daughters of Roemer, two cultivated literature with marked
success. Anna (1584-1651) was the author of a descriptive and didactic
poem, _De Roemster van den Aemstel_ (The Glory of the Aemstel), and of
various miscellaneous writings; Tesselschade (1594-1649) wrote some
lyrics which still place her at the head of the female poets of Holland,
and she translated the great poem of Tasso. They were women of universal
accomplishment, graceful manners and singular beauty; and their company
attracted to the house of Roemer Visscher all the most gifted youths of
the time, several of whom were suitors, but in vain, for the hand of
Anna or of Tesselschade.
Hooft.
Of this Amsterdam school, the first to emerge into public notice was
Pieter Cornelissen Hooft (1581-1647). His _Achilles and Polyxena_ (1598)
displayed a precocious ease in the use of rhetorical artifices of style.
In his pastoral drama of _Granida_ (1605) he proved himself a pupil of
Guarini. In tragedy he produced _Baeto_ and _Geraad van Velsen_; in
history he published in 1626 his _Life of Henry the Great_, while from
1628 to 1642 he was engaged upon his master-work, the _History of
Holland_. Hooft desired to be a severe purist in style, and to a great
extent he succeeded, but, like most of the writers of his age, he
permitted himself too many Latinisms. In his poetry, especially in the
lyrical and pastoral verse of his youth, he is full of Italian
reminiscences both of style and matter; in his noble prose work he has
set himself to be a disciple of Tacitus. Motley has spoken of Hooft as
one of the greatest historians, not merely of Holland, but of Europe.
His influence in purifying the language of his country, and in enlarging
its sphere of experience, can hardly be overrated.
Bredero.
Very different from the long and prosperous career of Hooft was the
brief, painful life of the greatest comic dramatist that Holland has
produced. Gerbrand Adriaanssen Bredero[13] (1585-1618), the son of an
Amsterdam shoemaker, was born on the 16th of March 1585. He knew no
Latin; he had no taste for humanism; he was a simple growth of the rich
humour of the people. He entered the workshop of the painter Francisco
Badens, but accomplished little in art. His life was embittered by a
hopeless love for Tesselschade, to whom he dedicated his dramas, and
whose beauty he celebrated in a whole cycle of love songs. His ideas on
the subject of drama were at first a mere development of the medieval
"Abelespelen." The "Oude Kammer," one of the chambers of rhetoric,
furnished an opening for his dramatic powers. He commenced by
dramatizing the romance of _Roderick and Alphonsus_, in 1611, and
_Griane_ in 1612, but in the latter year he struck out a new and more
characteristic path in his _Farce of the Cow_. From this time until his
death he continued to pour out comedies, farces and romantic dramas, in
all of which he displayed a coarse, rough genius not unlike that of Ben
Jonson, whose immediate contemporary he was. His last and best piece was
_Jerolimo, the Spanish Brabanter_, a satire upon the exiles from the
south who filled the halls of the Amsterdam chambers of rhetoric with
their pompous speeches and preposterous Burgundian phraseology. The
piece was based on a Dutch version (Delft, 1609) of an early Spanish
picaresque romance, _La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes_ (Burgos, 1554).
Bredero was closely allied in genius to the dramatists of the
Shakespearian age, but he founded no school, and stands almost as a
solitary figure in the literature of Holland. He died on the 23rd of
August 1618. Theodore Rodenburg (d. 1644), ridiculed by Bredero for his
pretentiousness, had a wider knowledge of contemporary foreign
literature than the other dramatists. He adapted some of the dramas of
Lope de Vega, which he had witnessed at Madrid, into Dutch, and in 1618
he adapted Cyril Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_.
Coster.
The only individual at all clearly connected with Bredero in talent was
Dr Samuel Coster,[14] who was born at Amsterdam on the 16th of September
1579. He studied medicine at Leiden, and practised at Amsterdam. He is
chiefly remembered for having been the first to take advantage of the
growing dissension in the body of the old chamber of the Eglantine to
form a new institution. In 1617 Coster founded what he called the "First
Dutch Academy." This was in fact a theatre, where, for the first time,
dramas could be publicly acted under the patronage of no chamber of
rhetoric. Coster himself had come before the world in 1612 with his
farce of _Teuwis the Boor_, based on a folk-song in Jan Roulans's
_Liedekens Boeckh_, and he continued this order of composition in direct
emulation of Bredero, but with less talent. In 1615 he began a series of
"blood-and-thunder" tragedies with his horrible _Itys_, and he continued
this coarse style of tragic writing for several years. He survived at
least until after 1648 as a supreme authority in Amsterdam upon all
dramatic matters.
Vondel.
The first work of the greatest of all Dutch writers, Joost van den
Vondel (1587-1679), was _Het Pascha_ (1612), a tragedy or tragi-comedy
on the exodus of the children of Israel, written, like all his
succeeding dramas, on the recognized Dutch plan, in alexandrines, in
five acts, and with choral interludes between the acts. There is
comparatively little promise in _Het Pascha_. It was much inferior
dramatically to the plays just being produced by Bredero, and metrically
to the clear and eloquent tragedies and pastorals of Hooft; but it
secured the young poet a position inferior only to theirs. Yet for a
number of years he made no attempt to emphasize the impression he had
produced on the public, but contented himself during the years that are
the most fertile in a poet's life with translating and imitating
portions of du Bartas's popular epic. The short and brilliant life of
Bredero, his immediate contemporary and greatest rival, burned itself
out in a succession of dramatic victories, and it was not until two
years after the death of that great poet that Vondel appeared before the
public with a second tragedy, the _Jerusalem laid Desolate_. Five years
later, in 1625, he published what seemed an innocent study from the
antique, his tragedy of _Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence_. All
Amsterdam discovered, with smothered delight, that under the name of the
hero was thinly concealed the figure of Barneveldt, whose execution in
1618 had been a triumph of the hated Calvinists. Thus, at the age of
forty-one, the obscure Vondel became in a week the most famous writer in
Holland. For the next twelve years, and till the accession of Prince
Frederick Henry, Vondel had to maintain a hand-to-hand combat with the
"Saints of Dort." This was the period of his most resolute and stinging
satires; Cats took up the cudgels on behalf of the counter-Remonstrants,
and there raged a war of pamphlets in verse. A purely fortuitous
circumstance led to the next great triumph in Vondel's slowly developing
career. The Dutch Academy, founded in 1617 almost wholly as a dramatic
gild, had become so inadequately provided with stage accommodation that
in 1638, having coalesced with the two chambers of the "Eglantine" and
the "White Lavender," it ventured on the erection of a large public
theatre, the first in Amsterdam. Vondel, as the greatest poet of the
day, was invited to write a piece for the first night; on the 3rd of
January 1638 the theatre was opened with the performance of a new
tragedy out of early Dutch history, the famous _Gysbreght van Aemstel_.
The next ten years were rich in dramatic work from Vondel's hand; he
supplied the theatre with heroic Scriptural pieces, of which the general
reader will obtain the best idea if we point to the _Athalie_ of Racine.
In 1654, having already attained an age at which poetical production is
usually discontinued by the most energetic of poets, he brought out the
most exalted and sublime of all his works, the tragedy of _Lucifer_.
Very late in life, through no fault of his own, financial ruin fell on
the aged poet, and from 1658 to 1668--that is, from his seventieth to
his eightieth year--this venerable and illustrious person, the main
literary glory of Holland through her whole history, was forced to earn
his bread as a common clerk in a bank, miserably paid, and accused of
wasting his masters' time by the writing of verses. The city released
him at last from this wretched bondage by a pension, and the wonderful
old man went on writing odes and tragedies almost to his ninetieth year.
He died at last in 1679, of no disease, having outlived all his
contemporaries and almost all his friends, but calm, sane and
good-humoured to the last, serenely conscious of the legacy he left to a
not too grateful country. Vondel is the typical example of Dutch
intelligence and imagination at their highest development. Not merely is
he to Holland all that Camoens is to Portugal and Mickiewicz to Poland,
but he stands on a level with these men in the positive value of his
writings.
Starter.
Lyrical art was represented on its more spontaneous side by the songs
and ballads of Jan Janssen Starter (b. 1594), an Englishman by birth,
who was brought to Amsterdam in his thirteenth year. Very early in life
he was made a member of the "Eglantine," and he worked beside Bredero
for two years; but in 1614 he wandered away to Leeuwarden, in Friesland,
where he founded a literary gild, and brought out, in 1618, his plays
_Timbre de Cardone_, _Fenicie van Messine_, the subject of which is
identical with that of Shakespeare's _Much Ado about Nothing_, and
_Daraida_. But his great contribution to literature was his exquisite
collection of lyrics, entitled the _Friesche Lusthof_, or Frisian
Pleasance (1621). He returned to Amsterdam, but after 1625 we hear no
more of him, and he is believed to have died as a soldier in Germany.
The songs of Starter are in close relation to the lyrics of the English
Elizabethans, and have the same exquisite simplicity and audacity of
style.
Cats.
While the genius of Holland clustered around the circle of Amsterdam, a
school of scarcely less brilliance arose in Middelburg, the capital of
Zealand. The ruling spirit of this school was the famous Jakob Cats
(1577-1660). In this voluminous writer, to whom modern criticism almost
denies the name of poet, the genuine Dutch habit of thought, the
utilitarian and didactic spirit which we have already observed in
Houwaert and in Boendale, reached its zenith of fluency and popularity.
During early middle life he produced the most important of his writings,
his pastoral of _Galathea_, and his didactic poems, the _Maechdenplicht_
and the _Sinne- en Minne-Beelden._ In 1624 he removed from Middelburg to
Dort, where he soon after published his tedious ethical work called
_Houwelick_, or Marriage; and this was followed from time to time by one
after another of his monotonous moral pieces. Cats is an exceedingly
dull and prosaic writer, whose alexandrines roll smoothly on without any
power of riveting the attention or delighting the fancy. Yet his
popularity with the middle classes in Holland has always been immense,
and his influence extremely hurtful to the growth of all branches of
literary art. Among the disciples of Cats, Jakob Westerbaen (1599-1670)
was the most successful. His works included translations from Virgil,
Ovid, Seneca, Terence and Juvenal, besides original poems. The Jesuit
Adriaen Poirters (1606-1675) closely followed Cats in his remarkable
_Masquer of the World_. A poet of Amsterdam, Jan Hermansz Krul
(1602-1644), preferred to follow the southern fashion, and wrote
didactic pieces in the Catsian manner.
Huygens.
A poet of dignified imagination and versatile form was Sir Constantijn
Huygens (1596-1687), the diplomatist. He threw in his lot with the great
school of Amsterdam, and became the intimate friend and companion of
Vondel, Hooft and the daughters of Roemer Visscher. His famous poem in
praise of the Hague, _Batava Tempe_, appeared in 1622, and was, from a
technical point of view, the most accomplished and elegant poem till
that time produced in Holland. His collected poems, _Otiorum libri sex_,
were printed in 1625. _Oogentroost_, or Eye Consolation, was the
fantastic title of a remarkable poem dedicated in 1647 to his blind
friend, Lucretia van Trello. He printed in 1654 a topographical piece
describing his own mansion, _Hofwijck_. Huygens represents the direction
in which it would have been desirable that Dutch literature, now
completely founded by Hooft and Vondel, should forthwith proceed, while
Cats represents the tame and mundane spirit which was actually adopted
by the nation. Huygens had little of the sweetness of Hooft or of the
sublimity of Vondel, but his genius was eminently bright and vivacious,
and he was a consummate artist in metrical form. The Dutch language has
never proved so light and supple in any hands as in his, and he
attempted no class of writing, whether in prose or verse, that he did
not adorn by his delicate taste and sound judgment. A blind admiration
for John Donne, whose poems he translated, was the greatest fault of
Huygens, who, in spite of his conceits, remains one of the most pleasing
of Dutch writers. In addition to all this he comes down to us with the
personal recommendation of having been "one of the most lovable men that
ever lived."
Bekker.
Three Dutchmen of the 17th century distinguished themselves very
prominently in the movement of learning and philosophic thought, but the
illustrious names of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and of Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677) can scarcely be said to belong to Dutch literature.
Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698), on the contrary, a Reformed preacher of
Amsterdam, was a disciple of Descartes, who deserves to be remembered as
the greatest philosophical writer who has used the Dutch language. His
masterpiece, _Betoverde Wereld_, or the World Bewitched, appeared in
1691-1693. Bekker is popularly remembered most honourably by his
determined attacks upon the system of a penal code for witchcraft.
Vos.
Brandt.
Goes.
Anslo.
Oudaen.
Luiken.
From 1600 to 1650 was the blossoming time in Dutch literature. During
this period the names of greatest genius were first made known to the
public, and the vigour and grace of literary expression reached their
highest development. It happened, however, that three men of
particularly commanding talent survived to an extreme old age, and under
the shadow of Vondel, Cats and Huygens there sprang up a new generation
which sustained the great tradition until about 1680, when the final
decline set in. Jan Vos (d. 1667) gained one illustrious success with
his tragedy of _Aaron and Titus_ in 1641, and lost still more in 1642 by
his obscene farce of _Oene_. His second tragedy of _Medea_, in 1665, and
his collected poems in 1662, supported his position as the foremost
pupil of Vondel. Geeraerdt Brandt (1626-1685), the author of a _History
of the Reformation_ (4 vols., 1671-1704), deserves remembrance less as a
tragic dramatist than as a consummate biographer, whose lives of Vondel
and of De Ruyter are among the masterpieces of Dutch prose. Johan
Antonides van der Goes (1647-1684) followed Vos as a skilful imitator of
Vondel's tragical manner. His Chinese tragedies, _Trazil_ (1665) and
_Zungchin_ (1666), scarcely gave promise of the brilliant force and
fancy of his _Yslroom_, a poem in praise of Amsterdam, 1671. He died
suddenly, in early life, leaving unfinished an epic poem on the life of
St. Paul. Reyer Anslo (1626-1669) marks the decline of taste and vigour;
his once famous descriptive epic, _The Plague at Naples_, is singularly
tame and rococo in style. Joachim Oudaen (1628-1692) wrote in his youth
two promising tragedies, _Johanna Gray_ (1648) and _Konradyn_ (1649).
The Amsterdam section of the school of Cats produced Jeremias de Decker
(1609-1666), author of _The Praise of Avarice_, a satirical poem in
imitation of Erasmus, and Joannes Vollenhove (1631-1708), voluminous
writers of didactic verse. The engraver Jan Luiken (1649-1708) published
in 1671 a very remarkable volume of poems. In lyrical poetry Starter had
a single disciple, Daniel Jonctijs (1600-1652), who published a volume
of love songs in 1639 under the affected and untranslatable title of
_Rooselijns oochjens ontleed_. None of these poets, except in some
slight degree Luiken, set before himself any more ambitious task than to
repeat with skill the effects of his predecessors.
Heemskerk.
Heinsius.
Meanwhile the romantic and voluminous romances of the French school of
Scudery and Honore d'Urfe had invaded Holland and become fashionable.
Johan van Heemskerk (1597-1656), a councillor of the Hague, set himself
to reproduce this product in native form, and published in 1637 his
_Batavian Arcadia_, the first original Dutch romance, in which a party
of romantic youths journey from the Hague to Katwijk, and undergo all
sorts of romantic adventures. This book was extremely popular, and was
imitated by Hendrik Zoeteboom in his _Zaanlandsche Arcadia_ (1658), and
by Lambertus Bos in his _Dordtsche Arcadia_ (1662). A far more spirited
and original romance is the _Mirandor_ (1675) of Nikolaes Heinsius the
younger (b. 1655), a book which resembles _Gil Blas_, and precedes it.
Gallican dramatists.
The drama fell into Gallicized hands at the death of Vondel and his
immediate disciples. Lodewijck Meijer translated Corneille, and brought
out his plays on the stage at Amsterdam, where he was manager of the
national theatre or Schouwburg after Jan Vos. In connexion with Andries
Pels (d. 1681), author of the tragedy of _Dido's Death_, Meijer
constructed a dramatic club, entitled "Nil Volentibus Arduum," the great
object of which was to inflict the French taste upon the public. Pels
furthermore came forward as the censor of letters and satirist of
barbarism in _Horace's Art of Poetry expounded_, in 1677, and in his
_Use and Misuse of the Stage_, in 1681. Willem van Focquenbroch
(1640-1679) was the most voluminous comic writer of this period. The
close of the century saw the rise of two thoroughly Gallican dramatists,
Jan van Paffenrode (d. 1673) and Pieter Bernagie (1656-1699), who may
not unfairly be compared respectively to the Englishmen Farquhar and
Shadwell. Thomas Asselijn (1630-1695) was a writer of more considerable
talent and more homely instincts. He attempted to resist the
dictatorship of Pels, and to follow the national tradition of Bredero.
He is the creator of the characteristic Dutch type, the comic lover, Jan
Klaaszen, whom he presented on the stage in a series of ridiculous
situations. Abraham Alewijn (b. 1664), author of _Jan Los_ (1721),
possessed a coarse vein of dramatic humour; he lived in Java, and his
plays were produced in Batavia. Finally Pieter Langendijk, the author of
a farce borrowed from _Don Quixote_, claims notice among the dramatists
of this period, although he lived from 1683 to 1756, and properly
belongs to the next century. With him the tradition of native comedy
expired.
Decline of poetry.
The Augustan period of poetry in Holland was even more blank and dull
than in the other countries of northern Europe. Of the name preserved in
the history of literature there are but very few that call for
repetition here. Arnold Hoogvliet (1687-1763) wrote a passable poem in
honour of the town of Vlaardingen, and a terrible Biblical epic, in the
manner of Blackmore, on the history of Abraham. Hubert Cornelissen Poot
(1680-1733) showed an unusual love of nature and freshness of
observation in his descriptive pieces. Sybrand Feitama (1694-1758), who
translated Voltaire's _Henriade_ (1743), and wrote much dreary verse of
the same class himself, is less worthy of notice than Dirk Smits
(1702-1752), the mild and elegiac singer of Rotterdam. Tragic drama was
more or less capably represented by Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken
(1722-1789), wife of the very dreary dramatist Nicholaas Simon van
Winter (1718-1795).
Van Effen.
In the midst of this complete dissolution of poetical style, a writer
arose who revived an interest in literature, and gave to Dutch prose the
classical grace of the 18th century. Justus van Effen[15] (1684-1735)
was born at Utrecht, fell into poverty early in life, and was thrown
very much among the company of French emigres, in connexion with whom he
began literary life in 1713 by editing a French journal. Coming to
London just when the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ were in their first vogue,
Van Effen studied Addison deeply, translated Swift and Defoe into
French, and finally determined to transfer the beauties of English prose
into his native language. It was not, however, until 1731, after having
wasted the greater part of his life in writing French, that he began to
publish his _Hollandsche Spectator_, which his death in 1735 soon
brought to a close. Still, what he composed during the last four years
of his life, in all its freshness, manliness and versatility,
constitutes the most valuable legacy to Dutch literature that the middle
of the 18th century left behind it.
The brothers Van Haren.
Baroness de Lannoy.
Bellamy.
The supremacy of the poetical clubs in every town produced a very
weakening and Della-Cruscan effect upon literature, from which the first
revolt was made by the famous brothers Van Haren,[16] so honourably
known as diplomatists in the history of the Netherlands. Willem van
Haren (1710-1768) wrote verses from his earliest youth, while Onno Zwier
van Haren (1713-1779), strangely enough, did not begin to do so until he
had passed middle life. They were friends of Voltaire, and they were
both ambitious of success in epic writing, as understood in France at
that period. Willem published in 1741 his _Gevallen van Friso_, a
historical epos, and a long series of odes and solemn lyrical pieces.
Onno, in a somewhat lighter strain, wrote _Piet and Agnietje, or
Pandora's Box_, and a long series of tragedies in the manner of
Voltaire. The baroness Juliana Cornelia de Lannoy (1738-1782) was a
writer of considerable talent, also of the school of Voltaire; her poems
were highly esteemed by Bilderdijk, and she has a neatness of touch and
clearness of penetration that give vivacity to her studies of social
life. Jakobus Bellamy (1757-1786) was the son of a Swiss baker at
Flushing; his pompous odes (_Gezangen myner Jeugd_, 1782; _Vaderlandsche
Gezangen_, 1782) struck the final note of the false taste and Gallic
pedantry that had deformed Dutch literature now for a century, and were
for a short time excessively admired.
The ladies Wolff and Deken.
The year 1777 has been mentioned as the turning-point in the history of
letters in the Netherlands. It was in that year that Elizabeth (Betjen)
Wolff[17] (1738-1804), a widow lady in Amsterdam, persuaded her friend
Agatha (Aagjen) Deken (1741-1804), a poor but extremely intelligent
governess, to throw up her situation and live with her. For nearly
thirty years these women continued together, writing in combination, and
when the elder friend died on the 5th of November 1804, her companion
survived her only nine days. Madam Wolff had appeared as a poetess so
early as 1762, and again in 1769 and 1772, but her talent in verse was
by no means very remarkable. But when the friends, in the third year of
their association, published their _Letters on Divers Subjects_, it was
plainly seen that in prose their talent was very remarkable indeed.
Since the appearance of Heinsius's _Mirandor_ more than a century had
passed without any fresh start in novel-writing being made in Holland.
In 1782 the ladies Wolff and Deken, inspired partly by contemporary
English writers, and partly by Goethe, published their first novel,
_Sara Burgerhar_. In spite of the close and obvious following of
Richardson, this was a masterly production, and it was enthusiastically
received. Another novel, _Willem Leevend_, followed in 1785, and
_Cornelia Wildschut_ in 1792. The ladies were residing in France at the
breaking out of the Revolution, and they escaped the guillotine with
difficulty. After this they wrote no more, having secured for themselves
by their three unrivalled romances a place among the foremost writers of
their country.
Nieuwland.
The last years of the 18th century were marked in Holland by a general
revival of intellectual force. The romantic movement in Germany made
itself deeply felt in all branches of Dutch literature, and German
lyricism took the place hitherto held by French classicism. Pieter
Nieuwland (1764-1794) was a feeble forerunner of the revival, but his
short life and indifferent powers gave him no chance of directing the
transition that he saw to be inevitable. One volume of poems appeared in
1788, and a second, posthumously, in 1797.
Bilderdijk.
The real precursor and creator of a new epoch in letters was the famous
Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831) (q.v.). This remarkable man, whose force
of character was even greater than his genius, impressed his personality
on his generation so indelibly that to think of a Dutchman of the
beginning of the 19th century is to think of Bilderdijk. In poetry his
taste was strictly national and didactic; he began as a disciple of
Cats, nor could he to the end of his life tolerate what he called "the
puerilities of Shakespeare." His early love-songs, collected in 1781 and
1785, gave little promise of talent, but in his epic of _Elias_ in 1786,
he showed himself superior to all the Dutch poets since Huygens in
mastery of form. For twenty years he lived a busy, eventful life,
writing great quantities of verse, and then commenced his most
productive period with his didactic poem of _The Disease of the
Learned_, in 1807; in 1808 he imitated Pope's _Essay on Man_, and
published the tragedy of _Floris V._, and in 1809 commenced the work
which he designed to be his masterpiece, the epic of _De Ondergang der
eerste Wereld_ (The Destruction of the First World), which he never
finished, and which appeared as a fragment in 1820. To the foreign
student Bilderdijk is a singularly uninviting and unpleasing figure. He
unites in himself all the unlovely and provincial features which deform
the worst of his countrymen. He was violent, ignorant and dull; his view
of art was confined to its declamatory and least beautiful side, and
perhaps no writer of equal talent has shown so complete an absence of
taste and tact. Ten Brink has summed up the character of Bilderdijk's
writings in an excellent passage:--"As an artist," he says, "he can
perhaps be best described in short as the cleverest versemaker of the
18th century. His admirable erudition, his power over language, more
extended and more colossal than that of any of his predecessors, enabled
him to write pithy and thoroughly original verses, although the general
tone of his thought and expression never rose above the ceremonious,
stagy and theatrical character of the 18th century." But in spite of his
outrageous faults, and partly because these faults were the exaggeration
of a marked national failing, Bilderdijk long enjoyed an unbroken and
unbounded popularity in Holland. Fortunately, however, a sounder spirit
has arisen in criticism, and the prestige of Bilderdijk is no longer
preserved so religiously.
Bilderdijk's scorn for the dramas of Shakespeare was almost rivalled by
that he felt for the new German poetry. Notwithstanding his opposition,
however, the romantic fervour found its way into Holland, and first of
all in the persons of Hieronymus van Alphen (1746-1803) and Pieter
Leonard van de Kastiele (1748-1810), who amused themselves by composing
funeral poems of the school of Gessner and Blair. Van Alphen at one time
was extolled as a writer of verses for children, but neither in this nor
in the elegiac line did he possess nearly so much talent as Rhijnvis
Feith (1753-1824), burgomaster of Zwolle, the very type of a prosperous
and sentimental Dutchman. In his _Julia_ (1783), a prose romance, Feith
proved himself as completely the disciple of Goethe in _Werther_ as
Wolff and Deken had been of Richardson in _Sara Burgerhart_. In Johannes
Kinker (1764-1845) a comic poet arose who, at the instigation of
Bilderdijk, dedicated himself to the ridicule of Feith's
sentimentalities. The same office was performed with more dignity and
less vivacity by Baron W.E. van Perponcher (1741-1819), but Feith
continued to hold the popular ear, and achieved an immense success with
his poem _The Grave_ in 1792. He then produced tragedies for a while,
and in 1803 published _Antiquity_, a didactic epic. But his popularity
waned before his death, and he was troubled by the mirth of such witty
scoffers as Arend Fokke Simons (1755-1812), the disciple of Klopstock,
and as P. de Wacker van Zon (1758-1818), who, in a series of very
readable novels issued under the pseudonym of Bruno Daalberg, sharply
ridiculed the sentimental and funereal school.
Van der Palm.
Loots.
Helmers.
Under the Batavian republic a historian of great genius arose in the
person of Johannes Henricus van der Palm (1763-1840), whose brilliant
and patriotic _Gedenkschrift van Nederlands Herstelling_ (1816) has
somewhat obscured his great fame as a politician and an Orientalist. The
work commenced by Van der Palm in prose was continued in verse by
Cornelis Loots (1765-1834) and Jan Frederik Helmers (1767-1813). Loots,
in his _Batavians of the Time of Caesar_ (1805), read his countrymen a
lesson in patriotism, which Helmers far exceeded in originality and
force by his _Dutch Nation_ in 1812. Neither of these poets, however,
had sufficient art to render their pieces classical, or, indeed, enough
to protect them during their lifetime from the sneers of Bilderdijk.
Other political writers, whose lyrical energies were stimulated by the
struggle with France, were Maurits Cornelis van Hall (1768-1858), Samuel
Iperuszoon Wiselius (1769-1845) and Jan ten Brink (1771-1839), the
second of whom immortalized himself and won the favour of Bilderdijk by
ridiculing the pretensions of such frivolous tragedians as Shakespeare
and Schiller.
Loosjes.
The healthy and national spirit in which the ladies Wolff and Deken had
written was adopted with great spirit by a novelist in the next
generation, Adriaan Loosjes (1761-1818), a bookseller at Haarlem. His
romantic stories of medieval life, especially his _Charlotte van
Bourbon_, are curiously like shadows cast forward by the Waverley
Novels, but he has little of Sir Walter Scott's historical truth of
vision. His production was incessant and his popularity great for many
years, but he was conscious all through that he was at best but a
disciple of the authoresses of _Sara Burgerhart_. Another disciple whose
name should not be passed over is Maria Jacoba de Neufville (1775-1856),
author of _Little Duties_, an excellent story somewhat in the manner of
Mrs Opie.
Tollens.
Messchert.
Bogaers.
Staring.
A remarkable poet whose romantic genius strove to combine the power of
Bilderdijk with the sweetness of Feith was Hendrik Tollens (1780-1856),
whose verses have shown more vitality than those of most of his
contemporaries. He struck out the admirable notion of celebrating the
great deeds of Dutch history in a series of lyrical romances, many of
which possess a lasting charm. Besides his folk-songs and popular
ballads, he succeeded in a long descriptive poem, _A Winter in Nova
Zembla_, 1819. He lacks the full accomplishment of a literary artist,
but his inspiration was natural and abundant, and he thoroughly deserved
the popularity with which his patriotic ballads were rewarded. Willem
Messchert (1790-1844), a friend and follower of Tollens, pushed the
domestic and familiar tone of the latter to a still further point,
especially in his genre poem of the _Golden Wedding_, 1825. Both these
writers were natives and residents of Rotterdam, which also claims the
honour of being the birthplace of Adrianus Bogaers (1795-1870), the most
considerable poetical figure of the time. Without the force and
profusion of Bilderdijk, Bogaers has more truth to nature, more
sweetness of imagination, and a more genuine gift of poetry than that
clamorous writer, and is slowly taking a higher position in Dutch
literature as Bilderdijk comes to take a lower one. Bogaers printed his
famous poem _Jochebed_ in 1835, but it had then been in existence more
than thirteen years, so that it belongs to the second period of
imaginative revival in Europe, and connects the name of its author with
those of Byron and Heine. Still more beautiful was his _Voyage of
Heemskerk to Gibraltar_ (1836), in which he rose to the highest level of
his genius. In 1846 he privately printed his _Romances and Ballads_.
Bogaers had a great objection to publicity, and his reputation was long
delayed by the secrecy with which he circulated his writings among a few
intimate friends. A poet of considerable talent, whose powers were
awakened by personal intercourse with Bogaers and Tollens, was Antoni
Christiaan Winand Staring (1767-1840), who first at the age of
fifty-three came before the world with a volume of _Poems_, but who
continued to write till past his seventieth year. His amorous and
humorous lyrics recall the best period of Dutch song, and are worthy to
be named beside those of Starter and Vondel.
19th century influences.
After 1830 Holland took a more prominent position in European thought
than she could claim since the end of the 17th century. In scientific
and religious literature her men of letters showed themselves cognizant
of the newest shades of opinion, and freely ventilated their ideas. The
language resisted the pressure of German from the outside, and from
within broke through its long stagnation and enriched itself, as a
medium for literary expression, with a multitude of fresh and colloquial
forms. At the same time, no very great genius arose in Holland in any
branch of literature. The vast labours of Jakobus van Lennep (1802-1868)
consist of innumerable translations, historical novels and national
romances, which have gained for him the title of the leader of the Dutch
romantic school.
The novels of Sir Walter Scott had a great influence on Dutch
literature, and the period was rich in historical novels. J. van der
Hage (1806-1854), who wrote under the pseudonym of Jan Frederick
Oltmans, was the author of the famous novels, _Castle Loevenstein in
1570_ (1834), and _The Shepherd_ (1838), both dealing with the national
history. Other popular works were the antique romance _Charikles and
Euphorion_ (1831) of Petrus van Limburg-Brouwer (1795-1847), author of a
history of Greek mythology; the _Mejuffrouw Leclerc_ (1849), and the
_Portretten van Joost van den Vondel_ (1876) of the literary historian
and critic J.A.A. Alberdingk Thijm (1820-1899); the _Jan Faessen_
(1856) of Lodewijk Mulder (b. 1822); and the _Lucretia d'Este_ of W.P.
Walters (1827-1891). Johannes Kneppelhout (1814-1885) sketched
university life at Leiden in two amusing volumes of _Studententypen_
(1841) and _Studentenleven_ (1844). Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den
Brink (1810-1865) was the chief critic of the romantic movement, and
Everhard Johannes Potgieter (1808-1875) its mystical philosopher and
esoteric lyrical poet. The genius and influence of Potgieter were very
considerable, but they were exceeded by the gifts of Nicolaes Beets
(q.v.), author of the famous _Camera Obscura_ (1836), a masterpiece of
humour and character. Johannes Pieter Hasebroek (1812-1896), who has
been called the Dutch Charles Lamb, wrote in 1840 an admirable
collection of essays entitled _Truth and Dreams_. Willem Hofdijk
(1816-1888) wrote a collection of ballads, _Kennemerland_ (1849-1852),
and a series of epic and dramatic poems in the romantic style. Bernard
ter Haar (1806-1881), an Amsterdam pastor and, in the last year of his
life, a professor at Utrecht, made a reputation as a poet by his
_Johannes and Theagenes, a legend of apostolic times_ (1838). His poems
were collected in 1866 and 1879. A poet of unusual power and promise was
lost in the early death of Pieter Augustus de Genestet (1803-1861). His
_Eve of Saint Nicholas_ appeared in 1849, and was followed by two
volumes of verse in 1851 and 1861, the second of which contains some
poems that have attained great popularity. Among the poets should not be
forgotten two writers of verse for children, Jan Pieter Heije
(1809-1876) and J.J.A. Gouverneur (1809-1889). Criticism was
represented by W.J.A. Jonckbloet (1817-1885), author of an excellent
_History of Dutch Literature_ (1868-1870), C. Busken Huet, and Jan ten
Brink (1834-1901), author of a great number of valuable works on
literary history, notably of a history of Dutch literature (1897), and a
series of biographies of 19th century Dutch writers (new edition, 1902).
His novels were collected in 13 volumes in 1885. With Isaak da Costa
(q.v.), W.J. van Zeggelen (1811-1879), and J.J.L. Ten Kate (q.v.),
the domestic tendency of Cats and Bilderdijk overpowered the influence
of romanticism. The romantic drama found its best exponent in H.J.
Schiminel (q.v.), who found a disciple in D.F. van Heyst (b. 1831),
whose _George van Lalaing_ was produced in 1873. Hugo Beijerman (ps.
Glanor) produced a good play in his _Uitgaan_ (1873), which was followed
by other successes. Rosier Faessen (b. 1833) published his dramatic
works in 1883.
Recent developments.
The recent literature of Holland presents the interesting phenomenon of
an aesthetic revolution, carefully and cleverly planned, crowned with
unanticipated success, and dying away in a languor encouraged by the
complete absence of organized resistance. It would perhaps be difficult
to point to another European example so well defined of the vicissitudes
which keep the history of literature varied and fresh. For the thirty or
forty years preceding 1880 the course of _belles-lettres_ in Holland was
smooth and even sluggish. The Dutch writers had slipped into a
conventionality of treatment and a strict limitation of form from which
even the most striking talents among them could scarcely escape. In 1880
the most eminent authors of this early period were ready to pass away,
and they appeared to be preparing no successors to take their place. The
greatest humorist of Holland, Nicolaas Beets, had drawn his works
together. The most interesting novelist, Mrs Gertrude Bosboom-Toussaint,
had in her last psychological stories shown an unexpected sympathy with
new ideas. M.G.L. van Loghem (b. 1849), known under the pseudonym of
"Fiore delle Neve," made a great success by his _Een liefde in het
Zuiden_ (1881), followed in 1882 by _Liana_, and in 1884 by _Van eene
Sultane_. Among the novelists were Gerard Keller (b. 1829), author of
_From Home_ (1867); Johan Gram (b. 1833), of whose novels _De Familie
Schaffels_ (1870) is the best known; Hendrik de Veer (1829-1890), author
of _Frans Holster_ (1871); Justus van Maurik (b. 1846), who wrote plays
and short sketches of Amsterdam life (_Uit het Volk_, 1879), and Arnold
Buning (b. 1846), whose _Marine Sketches_ (1880) won great popularity.
The colonial novels of N. Marie C. Sloot, born in Java in 1853, are
widely read in Holland and Belgium, and many of them have been
translated into German. A number of them were collected (Schiedam,
1900-1902) as _Romantische Werken_. Adele Opzoomer (b. 1856; pseud. A.
C.S. Wallis) made her first success in 1877 with _In Days of Strife_.
The two leading Dutch men of letters, however, besides Beets and Douwes
Dekker, were critics, Conrad Busken-Huet (q.v.) and Carel Vosmaer
(q.v.). In Huet the principles of the 1840-1880 period were summed up;
he had been during all those years the fearless and trusty watch-dog of
Dutch letters, as he understood them. He lived just long enough to
become aware that a revolution was approaching, not to comprehend its
character; but his accomplished fidelity to literary principle and his
wide knowledge have been honoured even by the most bitter of the younger
school. Vosmaer, although in certain directions more sympathetic than
Huet, and himself an innovator, has not escaped so easily, because he
has been charged with want of courage in accepting what he knew to be
inevitable.
In November 1881 there died a youth named Jacques Perk (1860-1881), who
had done no more than publish a few sonnets in the _Spectator_, a
journal published by Vosmaer. He was no sooner dead, however, than his
posthumous poems, and in particular a cycle of sonnets called
_Mathilde_, were published (1882), and awakened extraordinary emotion.
Perk had rejected all the formulas of rhetorical poetry, and had broken
up the conventional rhythms. There had been heard no music like his in
Holland for two hundred years. A group of young men, united in a sort of
esoteric adoration of the memory of Perk, collected around his name.
They joined to their band a man somewhat older than themselves,
Marcellus Emants (born 1848), poet, novelist and dramatist, who had come
forward in 1879 with a symbolical poem called _Lilith_, which had been
stigmatized as audacious and meaningless; encouraged by the admiration
of his juniors, Emants published in 1881 a treatise on _Young Holland_,
in the form of a novel in which the first open attack was made on the
old school. The next appearance was that of Willem Kloos (born 1857),
who had been the editor and intimate friend of Perk, and who now
undertook to lead the army of rebellion. His violent attacks on
recognized authority in aesthetics began in 1882, and created a
considerable scandal. For some time, however, the new poets and critics
found a great difficulty in being heard, since all the channels of
periodical literature were closed to them. But in 1883 Emants expressed
his intellectual aspirations in his poem _The Twilight of the Gods_, and
in 1884 the young school founded a review, _De Nieuwe Gids_, which was
able to offer a direct challenge to _De Gids_, the ultra-respectable
Dutch quarterly. In this year a new element was introduced: hitherto the
influences of the young Dutch poetry had chiefly come from England; they
were those of Shelley, Mrs Browning, the Rossettis. In 1884 Frans
Netscher began to imitate with avidity the French naturalists. For some
time, then, the new Dutch literature became a sort of mixture of Shelley
and Zola, very violent, heady and bewildering. In 1885 the _Persephone
and other Poems_ of Albert Verwey (b. 1865) introduced a lyrical poet of
real merit to Holland; Emants published his novel _Goudakker's
Illusions_. This was the great flowering moment of the new school. It
was at this juncture that the principal recent writer of Holland, Louis
Couperus (b. 1863), made his first definite appearance. Born in the
Hague, the opening years of his boyhood were spent in Java, and he had
preserved in all his nature a certain tropical magnificence. In 1884 a
little volume of lyrics, and in 1886 the more important _Orchids_,
showed in Couperus a poet whose sympathies were at first entirely with
the new school. But he was destined to be a novelist, and his earliest
story, _Eline Vere_ (1889), already took him out of the ranks of his
contemporaries. In 1890 he published _Destiny_ (known as _Footsteps of
Fate_ in the English version), and in 1892 _Ecstasy_. This was followed
in 1894 by _Majesty_, in 1896 by _World-wide Peace_, in 1898 by
_Metamorphosis_, a delicate study of character, in 1899 by Fidessa, in
1901 by _Quiet Force_, and in 1902 by the first volume of a tetralogy
called _The Books of Small Souls_. Of all these later books, some of
which have been translated into English, by Couperus, it is perhaps
_Ecstasy_ in which the peculiar quality of his work is seen at present
to the greatest advantage. This is an extreme sensitiveness to
psychological phenomena, expressed in terms of singular delicacy and
beauty. The talent of Couperus is like a rich but simple tropical flower
laden with colour and odour. He separated himself, as he developed, from
the more fanatical members of the group, and addressed himself to the
wider public. Another writer, of a totally different class, resembling
Couperus only in his defiance of the ruling system of aesthetics, is the
prominent Ultramontane politician and bishop, E.J.A.M. Schaepmann (born
1844), whose poem of _Aja Sofia_ originally appeared in 1886. Recent
novelists of some polemical vigour are H. Borel and van Hulzen. A very
delightful talent was revealed by Frederick van Eeden in _Little Johnny_
(1887), a prose fairy-tale; in _Ellen_ (1891), a cycle of mysterious and
musical elegies; and in _From the Cold Pools of Death_ (1901), a very
melancholy novel. Another poet of less refinement of spirit, but even
greater sumptuousness of form, appeared in Helene Swarth-Lapidoth (born
1859), whose _Pictures and Voices_ belongs to 1887. In that year also,
in which Dutch literature reached its height of fecundity, was published
the powerful and scandalous naturalistic novel, _A Love_, by L. van
Deyssel (K.J.L. Alberdingk Thijm) who had hitherto been known chiefly
as a most uncompromising critic. After 1887 the condition of modern
Dutch literature remained comparatively stationary, and within the last
decade of the 19th century was definitely declining. In 1889, it is
true, a new poet Herman Gorter, made his appearance with a volume of
strange verses called _May_, eccentric both in prosody and in treatment.
He held his own without any marked advance towards lucidity or variety.
Since the recognition of Gorter, however, no really remarkable talent
has made itself prominent in Dutch poetry, unless we except P.C.
Boutens, whose _Verses_ in 1898 were received with great respect. Willem
Kloos, still the acute and somewhat turbulent leader of the school,
collected his poems in 1894 and his critical essays in 1896. L. van
Deyssel, though an effective reviewer, continued to lack the erudition
which years should have brought to him. Gorter remained tenebrous,
Helene Swarth-Lapidoth still gorgeous; the others, with the exception of
Couperus, showed symptoms of sinking into silence. The entire school,
now that the struggle for recognition is over, and its members are
accepted as little classics and the tyrants of taste, rests on its
triumphs and seems to limit itself to a repetition of its old
experiments. The leading dramatist of the close of the century was
Hermann Heijermans (b. 1864), a Jew of strong realistic and socialistic
tendencies, and the author of innumerable gloomy plays. His _Ghetto_
(1898) and _Ora et Labora_ (1901) particularly display his peculiar
talent. Other notable products of drama are those of de Koo, whose
_Tobias Bolderman_ (1900) and _Vier Ton_ (1901) are effective comedies.
Dutch literature presented features of remarkable interest between 1882
and 1888, but since that time the general heightening of the average of
merit, the abandonment of the old dry conventions, and a recognition of
the artistic value of words and forms, are more evident to a foreign
observer than any very important single expression of the national
genius in literary art. An exception should be made in favour of the
powerful peasant-stories of Steijn Streuvels (Frank Lateur), a young
baker by trade, whose _Summer Land_ (1901) was a most promising
production.
AUTHORITIES.--Dr W.J.A. Jonckbloet, _Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche
Letterkunde_ (4th ed., 1889-1892); Dr J. ten Brink, _Kleine
Geschiedenis der Nederlandschen Letteren_ (Haarlem, 1877); and the
same author's _Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde_ (1897),
with elaborate illustrations, facsimiles of MSS. and title pages, &c.;
Dr J. van Vloten, _Schets van de Geschiedenis der Nederlandschen
Letteren_ (1879); L. Schneider, _Geschichte der niederlandischen
Literatur_ (Leipzig, 1887); G. Kalff, _Literatuur en tooneel te
Amsterdam in de zeventiende Eeuw_ (Haarlem, 1895).
Interesting observations on the development of the new school in Dutch
literature will be found in Willem Kloos, _Veertien Jaar
Literatuur-Geschiedenis_ (2 vols., 1880-1896), and in L. van Deyssel,
_Verzamelde Opstelen_ (4 vols., 1890-1897), and in the series of
monographs and bibliographies by Prof. J. ten Brink, _Geschiedenis der
Noord-Nederlandsche Letteren in de XIX^e Eeuw_ (Rotterdam, new ed.
1902, &c.). (E. G.)