The First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Front matter

THE FIRST HALF OF THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

BY

Preface

PREFACE.

A word by way of preface is requisite, if only to explain to the reader, who may take up this volume without recalling its place in a series, why there is no chapter on Spain in a history of European literature during the first half of the seventeenth century. The present writer undertook his task on the understanding that the Spanish literature of the epoch was covered by Mr Hannay's chapters in The Later Renaissance. It was explained there that the principle of overlapping, which must be admitted in any attempt to divide European literature into epochs, is specially applicable to the case of Spain; and the six chapters devoted to the literature of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in that volume preclude the necessity of treatment in this.

The same principle has been applied, to a certain extent, in the chapters on Dutch literature, with which this volume opens. Some passing references there have been to the literature of the Low Countries in previous volumes, but it has been thought well to give something of a connected sketch of the earlier literature at this point, when that literature forms an important and independent ganglion in the general European system. The mediæval literature of the Low Countries is doubtless sufficiently interesting to deserve fuller treatment; but it is, in the main, a literature of translation and imitation from the French, with some notable exceptions. This fact may serve as an excuse for the slight sketch of the subject given here—a sketch which, to be intelligible, should be read in close connection with what has been written about mediæval and fifteenth-century literature in earlier volumes of the series. I have reserved the larger portion of the space at my disposal for the period in which the Dutch, having shaken off the Spanish yoke, created for themselves a national literature and a national art.

My work in these chapters, as in those on other foreign literatures, is based on the researches of native scholars, whose results I have endeavoured to present in the light which seemed to me likely to prove most useful and interesting to the reader for whom this series is principally intended—the English student of comparative literature. I had begun my work before I realised that Dutch literature deserved a fuller treatment than had been given to it in other volumes, and it was perhaps rash to venture on the task. I felt tempted to undertake it from an interest in the Dutch people dating back to earliest years, when the harbour of my native town was crowded with Dutch fishing-boats every summer, and its narrow streets thronged with their pictur costumes. If my chapters fail to satisfy a specialist, perhaps a less critical and exacting reader may derive interest from what, in its preparation, has given myself great pleasure. Holland has no Dante or Shakespeare or Goethe, for the sake of whom alone it would be worth while to study the language in which he wrote, but to the lover of lyrical poetry the work of Hooft and Vondel will give some fresh and intense experiences.

I have indicated in the bibliographical notes the authors on whose work mine is based. But I have received in addition personal encouragement and advice. On the occasion of two short calls, Professor Te Winkel of Amsterdam spoke to me regarding books that would be useful. But my chief debt is to Professor Kalff of Leyden. During two visits to Leyden—one of a fortnight's and one of a month's duration—he introduced me to the University library, in which are stored the books of the Maatschaapij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde, gave me the benefit of his advice on any point regarding which I consulted him, and every possible assistance. He has added to his kindness by reading my pages when in proof, and correcting some errors into which I had fallen. Imperfect as my chapters are, they would have been much more so without his advice and correction. My debt to his written work is clear from the notes. I only regret that the first volume of his new Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde did not reach me until my work was in type.

At the same time, Professor Kalff is not to be held in any way responsible either for the manner in which I have treated the subject, for my generalisations, or for my criticisms of individual authors and works, with which he would not always be in agreement. These, be they right or wrong, are the fruit of my own reading, at any rate in the case of the principal authors dealt with. When I have not had time or opportunity to make an independent study of lesser authors, I have tried to indicate in the text the source of any criticism passed upon them. As regards quotation, my plan has been to keep to the original when metre was what I wished to draw attention to. When the sentiment is of importance, I have ventured to translate, believing it would be merely pedantic to assume any such general knowledge of the Dutch language as of French and German, or even Italian. The translations are as close as I could make them, while endeavouring to retain something of the spirit and movement of the original.

As to other literatures, I have indicated in the notes my guides and authorities, and need here only mention some personal aiders. My debt to my teacher, the late Professor Minto, is not covered by the references to his printed work. I have known no one with saner views of the aim and methods of literary history. In him the æsthetic, the historical, and the philosophical critic were happily blended, no one usurping upon the other. In studying the Italian literature of the period, I received much assistance, and advice as to recent work on the subject, from Professor John Purves of the Technical Institute, Johannesburg, formerly English Assistant in the University of Aberdeen, who came to Aberdeen straight from Italy, where he had studied for two years, in Rome and Siena, as Carnegie Scholar. To him, and to others who helped me by reading the proofs, I would express my gratitude. If I do not name them all, it is for fear of making them appear in any way responsible for my errors and oversights. From the outset I have been indebted to the unwearied patience and invaluable criticisms of the general editor. My former pupil, Mr George Herbert Mair, Scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, has supplied the index.

In the last chapter I have endeavoured to indicate some of the forces at work in the period. But I have not felt able to open with a general view, for the epoch does not seem to admit of any such clear general description as does, say, that which follows. All the literatures touched on here have a common debt to Italy and the Classics. In the development, however, which followed the stimulating influence of the Renaissance, each is, in the earlier seventeenth century, at a very different stage. Italy herself is falling into the background, though the superficial influence of Marino is so widespread that a reader might do well to turn to the chapter on Italy among the first. In France, the influence of the Renaissance is practically exhausted, and, despite a taste for Italian and Spanish fashions, the distinctively national movement towards clear thought and symmetrical form proceeds apace. During the first ten years of the century, English literature is still in the full flush of the late Elizabethan efflorescence, but passes, as the century goes on, through a period of very independent and complex changes, determined in great measure by the religious and political history of the time, which it seems to me impossible to describe by any single term, be it disintegration with Mr Barrett Wendell, or decadence with Mr Gosse. Elizabethan literature was never integral, notwithstanding Spenser's effort at reconciliation; and decadence seems a term hardly applicable to a period which opens with Shakespeare and Bacon, and closes with Locke and Milton. For Holland, the period is that of the rapid ripening—to be followed by a too rapid decay—of a literature inspired, as English had been earlier, by admiration of Italy and France as well as the Classics, but thoroughly national in all its essential features. In Germany, a similar movement is too early checked by "inauspicious stars." I have tried to outline these different movements, but to bring them under any single expression of real value is beyond my philosophic capacity.

P.S.—The dates in brackets appended to the names of works are those of first publication, except in the case of Corneille's plays, when they are those of performance as given by Marty-Laveaux. Bacon's Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church, though written probably in 1589, when the Martin-Marprelate controversy was at its height, was first issued, as a pamphlet, in 1640, when the quarrel was renewed.

Aberdeen, May 10, 1906.

Chapter 1: Holland—Verse and Prose

HOLLAND—VERSE AND PROSE

introductory—mediæval romance and lyric—the fourteenth century—maerlant and other didactic poets—dirk potter—fifteenth century—the chambers of rhetoric—anna bijns—renaissance—marnix and coornhert—spieghel and roemer visscher—the "eglantine" or "oude kamer"—hooft—song-books—brederoo and starter—vondel—life and work—criticism—literature outside amsterdam—the hague: huyghens—zeeland: jacob cats—camphuyzen—stalpert van der wiele—followers of vondel and hooft—latin prose and verse—heinsius and grotius—dutch prose—hooft—brandt.

On no country in Europe did the two main influences of the sixteenth century—the Renaissance and the Reformation—set a deeper mark than on the Netherlands. The country which produced Erasmus is not the least important contributor to the revival of learning, while the revolt of the Netherlands was, in Motley's words, "the longest, the darkest, the bloodiest, the most important episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe." Of the greatness of the people which emerged victorious from this struggle, of the high level of culture and learning to which they had attained, of the range and magnificence of their achievement in the art of painting, there has never been any question. But of the Dutch literature of the seventeenth century little is known outside Holland except by a few scholars, and it has not been unusual to speak of Dutch literature as an entirely negligible quantity, because the Netherlands produced no creative genius of that highest class to which Shakespeare and Cervantes belong. But geniuses of such world-wide recognition are the exception. The degree to which a country's literature is studied abroad depends not on intrinsic merit alone, but on the country's political importance and familiarity with its language. The student of Dutch literature in the seventeenth century will not find a drama comparable, strictly as drama, with that of England or France or Spain, nor an epic and narrative poetry comparable to that of Italy, and of England as represented by Milton. But he will find and enjoy a lyrical poetry of singular depth and richness, characterised by that feeling for nature which is such a striking feature of Dutch painting, by what the Dutch critic J. A. Alberdingk Thijm justly entitles "le naturel, la naïveté, la franchise, et le sentiment de la couleur qui paraissent être inhérents au caractère néerlandais." In naturalness, in the sense attached to the word when we speak of the "return to nature," feeling for external nature, interest in the life of the people, the inclination to discard convention and make poetry the simple, direct, and vibrating utterance of the poet's own emotions, Dutch poetry, taken as a whole, partly because it is a bourgeois or middle-class product, seems to me in advance of the poetry of any country with which this volume deals. For this simplicity and directness is not characteristic of Renaissance lyric poetry in Italy or the countries which caught their inspiration from Italy. Even in the case of Shakespeare's sonnets it is notoriously difficult to say how far the feeling is sincere, how far conventional. In English poetry one might say that lyrical poetry, as we have come to understand the phrase since Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley wrote, begins with Lycidas—in the personal digressions—and Milton's sonnets. But poetry of this self-revealing outspoken character abounds in the literature with which this chapter deals, and although of course in form and style Dutch poetry is not unaffected by the conventions of the century, yet only one poet, Hooft, really mastered the courtly style, and caught the tone of the Italian Petrarchians and the Pléiade. Vondel and Brederoo and Huyghens are most effective when most natural and direct, not least so when they express themselves in dialect. The natural runs easily into the commonplace, and of the commonplace there is not a little in Dutch poetry. Its apostle is Jacob Cats; yet even in Cats there is a vein of racy narrative, while in ardour and elevation there are few lyrical poets superior to Vondel.

The space at our disposal to deal even with this greatest period in Dutch literature is so limited that it is impossible to say more than a word concerning the earlier poetry. Mediæval literature is represented in the Low Countries by all the usual forms—romances, Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Oriental (Alexander and Troy), versified saints' legends, shorter tales or sproken, lyrics, and a considerable body of didactic literature. Of the drama something will be said in the following chapter. The Dutch romances of the thirteenth century are mainly, if not entirely, translated from the French. Moriaen is probably an exception, and Professor Kalff defends the originality of Karel ende Elegast and the fine Roman van Walewein. Most interesting of all is the popular Reinaert, based on a French work, but much superior to the original, and admittedly the finest version of the Keynard stories.

It was, naturally, the nobility and their followers who were the principal readers of the romances, as it was the "religious" who composed and studied poems such as Vanden Leven ons Heeren, Beatrijs, and other saints' legends. The taste of the middle classes, which began to assert itself as the thirteenth century drew to a close, is represented by the didactic writers, at the head of whom stands the prolific Jacob van Maerlant, author of versions of the Alexander, Merlin, and Troy stories, and of various didactic works such as the Rijmbijbel and Spieghel Historiael (Mirror of History). He was followed by a number of verse chroniclers and didactic writers, as Melis Stoke and Jan van Boendale or de Clerk, author of a Lekenspieghel (Mirror for Laymen), whom it is impossible to enumerate here. The Roman de la Rose, the tone of the second part of which is that of this cultured middle class, was translated in the fourteenth century by Hein van Aken.

The same century produced abundance of short tales or sproken, a few courtly, very many didactic, and some in the humorous popular vein of the French fabliau. They were recited in banqueting halls by the Sprekers or Zeggers, and many of the more humorous and coarse of them have probably been lost. A collection of stories, serious and humorous, very much in the style of Gower's Confessio Amantis, from which indeed the Dutch poet borrows, was made by Dirk Potter (1370-1428) under the title Minnenloop. Potter, like Chaucer, visited Italy, but he learnt nothing from Italian poetry, and stands much closer to Gower and Cats than to the author of the Canterbury Tales. To the fourteenth century belong also the oldest extant Dutch songs, ballads, and love-poems, such as the famous Het daget in den Oosten, Halewijn, Graaf Floris, Een liedeken vanden Mey, De Leeuwerik, and others. The lyrics of Zuster Hadewijch—in which the language of the Minnesingers is employed to express a mystical passion for Christ—belong to the thirteenth century. Other religious songs are the charming Kerstliederen or Christmas songs, the Maria-liederen, and the Liederen der Minnende Ziele. No part of Mediæval Dutch or Flemish literature is more entirely delightful than the songs.

The centres or nuclei of literature in the Low Countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen were the Chambers of Rhetoric. Indeed to the end of the seventeenth century the conditions of dramatic production were determined by the old customs of these celebrated institutions. The name, and possibly to some extent the institution, of "Rederijkers-kamers" came from France, where these secular and literary developments of the religious guilds were known as "Chambres de Rhétorique," "Puys," "Cours d'amour"; but in no country did they thrive more vigorously than in Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland, and Holland. Every town, and almost every village, had its chamber. They combined the functions and attractions of a dramatic company, a literary society, and a convivial club. "Rederijker, Kannekijker" became a proverb, and Jan Steen's picture in Brussels is characteristic of at any rate their later developments. They instituted competitions—Landjuweelen or smaller Haagspelen—at which prizes were offered for the most magnificent procession into town and the most elaborate decoration of the hostel where a chamber lodged, as well as for the best dramatic or poetic work. This work was not, however, of a high order. The dramatic Zinnespelen (Moralities) and Kluchten (Farces)—of which we shall have something to say in the next chapter—and the lyrical Refereinen and Liedekens of the chambers, were the last colourless products of the Middle Ages touched with the pedantry of the revival of learning, and composed in a style corrupted by bastard French words. The loosely rhythmical metre easily passes into doggerel. The best lyrics of the sixteenth century are not those of the "rederijkers," but the people's songs or "volksliederen," which handled the old courtly themes in a more free and homely spirit. In the second half of the sixteenth century these songs became, as in the famous "Geuzenliederen," the most potent expression of religious and political sentiment. The war-songs of the English Puritans a century later were the Psalms of David. The Dutch Calvinists expressed their feelings more directly in simple and moving descriptions of the sufferings of martyrs to the cause, and in fierce onslaughts upon Philip and the Pope. It was the spirit of an unconquerable people which breathed in their rude verses:—

"Help now yourself and you shall see God from the tyrant set you free, Oppressèd Netherland! The rope that's round your neck must be Torn by your own right hand."

The national anthem of Holland is still the grave and resolute—

"Wilhelmus van Nassouwen ben ik van duytschen bloed: Het vaterland getrouwe blijf ik tot in den dood."

It is impossible, and hardly necessary, to mention individual "Rederijkers," even the fairly important Matthijs de Casteleyn (1488?-1550), author of a Const van Rhetoriken, in which, using the common device of a dream, he gives rules for the art of rhetoric or poetry. Above all, the poet must use "aureate" terms or "schuim," for as the sun illumines the day and the moon the night, "alsoo verlicht schuym eene schoone oratie." He must begin with easier compositions, as "balladen" and "rondeelen," before attempting what is most difificult—namely, the Morality. Only one poet, whose work is definitely "Rederijkers" poetry, succeeded in impressing upon it a distinct individuality, and that was the Antwerp poetess Anna Biins, who lived about the same time as De Casteleyn. Of her life we know only what can be gathered from her "refereinen,"—that she had known the pleasures and gaieties of the world, had loved and had been disappointed, and, like others of her sex, found consolation in religion, becoming a fiery champion of the Catholic Church against the new heresies of Luther. Of her early life she writes with the hyperbole to which the language of religious remorse has always tended. The tone of her poetry is that of the burgher class, far removed from the refined and mystical style of Zuster Hadewijch and the mediæval religious poets. She is a woman of her class and of her people, looking out on the world of everyday life with shrewd gaze, and describing it with vigour and even coarseness in images drawn from familiar objects and experiences. What exalts and distinguishes her "refereinen" is the intense feeling with which they glow, whether religious or erotic, lyrical or didactic.

The poetry of the chambers was not of a kind which could long satisfy those who had once tasted of the sweets of classical and Italian poetry, and as the sixteenth century drew to a close men of culture made strenuous efforts to reproduce in their own language what they admired in Virgil and Horace, Seneca and Cicero, Petrarch and Marot and Ronsard. One of the first and best results of these efforts was the purification of the language; and the second was the gradual substitution of a more regular metre for the loose, often doggerel, rhythm of the zinnespelen and refereinen. The first translations of the classics were in the style and verse still in vogue; but in 1597 Karel van Mander, a Flemish poet and painter, produced a version of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics which Professor Kalff describes as fairly faithful, pure in language, and written in metrical, at times even flowing, verse. Jan van der Noot (1538?-1595?), a native of Antwerp, but driven for a time to wander in other lands, and familiar with the works of Dante, Petrarch, and the Pléiade, wrote odes, sonnets, and epigrams, as well as an elaborate allegory in more than one metre. Their poetic merit is not great, but they show a significant striving after form, and some dignity of style. But the most important predecessors of the "bloeitijd" in the literature of Holland were Philip van Marnix van St Aldegond, the fiery Calvinistic statesman and friend of William the Silent, Dirck Volckertz. Coornhert (1522-1590), Henrick Laurensz. Spieghel (1549-1612), and Roemer Visscher.

Of these Marnix was the greatest. He was a man of culture, ardent faith, and ardent patriotism, and at the same time stood outside the circle of the chambers. The Wilhelmuslied, the most famous of the "Geuzenliederen," is probably by him, and his metrical version of the Psalms marks the highest level reached by Dutch poetry in the sixteenth century. The rhythm and stanza-structure is in each adapted to the feeling of the psalm in a manner which is characteristic of Dutch lyrical poetry in the following century:—

"Straf doch niet in ongenaden Mijn misdaden, Heer! maer heb met mij gedult! Wil niet zynd in toom ontsteken, Aen my wreken Mijne sonde en sware schuldt."

De Byenkorf der Heiligh Roomsche Kerk (1569), a savage satire on the Church of Rome, is the first work in which Dutch prose showed itself an instrument of sufficient power and pliability to do the work hitherto assigned to Latin. In Holland, as in France and England, it is to the Reformation's requirement of a polemic, addressed not only to scholars but to "the man in the street," that we owe the evolution of modern prose.

Coornhert, Visscher, and Spieghelwere men of more culture than genius. They differ from Marnix also in their attitude towards religion. All of them represent the growth in cultured circles, towards the close of the century, of a more liberal sentiment and a distaste of Calvinistic tyranny. Coornhert's life was spent in controversy, and his own independent position (he was dubbed a "libertine") was the outcome of the study of the Bible and the Fathers on the one hand, and the ancient philosophers on the other. He translated Boethius and Cicero's De Officiis, and composed an eclectic treatise on ethics, Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunst (1586), in which Stoic morality is illumined by Christian faith, and which, as a piece of pure, clear, and often striking prose, stands next to Marnix's Byenkorf. Spieghel and Visscher were more entirely men of letters than Marnix and Coornhert. As Catholics—though liberal Catholics—they held aloof from public life, but they were both members of the Amsterdam Chamber of Rhetoric, known from its blazon as the "Eglantine." Since 1578 the Eglantine, known also as "De Oude Kamer," had been one of the most important of the chambers, and as the century drew to a close, was much concerned about the purification of the language and the advance of rhetoric. Spieghel and Visscher were leading members, and their houses centres of literary culture. To Visscher's house an additional charm was given by his cultured daughters, Anna and Tesselschade, themselves much admired, if not really distinguished, poetesses, and the friends of Hooft and Huyghens, Brederoo and Vondel. Neither Visscher nor Spieghel was a great poet. Visscher's Brabbelingh (1614) and Sinne-en-Minnepoppen (1614) consist mainly of epigrams and poems of a half-humorous, half-didactic caste. Spieghel wrote some sonnets and songs which have a little of the grace of their Italian originals, but in later life he grew serious and composed moral and religious lyrics, as well as an elaborate ethical poem in Alexandrines—Hert-spieghel—didactic, even prosaic, in spirit, harsh and obscure in style.

Thus by the close of the sixteenth century the study of classical and Italian literature had done much for the purification of the language, and had quickened a desire for improvement in style and verse. But poetry was still didactic and heavy: no artist had yet appeared to do for Dutch poetry what Spenser by The Shepheardes Kalender did for English in 1579,—no poet capable of transplanting the flower of Renaissance poetry from Italian or French soil and naturalising it in Holland. But the seventeenth century had not long to wait before such a poet appeared in Pieter Cornelisz Hooft, not certainly a poet of the creative genius of Spenser, but a true poet, an artist to the finger-tips, and a man of no less vigour and independence of mind than varied and complete culture.

The oldest son of a wealthy Amsterdam burgher, Hooft was at sixteen a member of the "Oude Kamer," and author of a classical play—Achilles en Polyxena—in "rederijkers" style. From June 1598 to May 1601 he was abroad visiting Germany, France, and Italy, studying especially the classical historians, but also doubtless the poets of Italy and France, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Ronsard. His first play that shows Italian influence—Granida—appeared in 1605. Meantime he was studying letters and law at Leyden preparatory to official work. In 1609 he was appointed Drost of Muiden and Bailiff of Gooiland, with an official residence, the Muider Slot on the Zuyder Zee, which he occupied in summer, and which he made the centre of a brilliant literary and learned circle known as the "Muiderkring." Here he wrote love-poems in the style which he had begun to cultivate at Leyden, where he celebrated his first love, Brechtje Spieghel, and mourned her early death. His later verses are addressed to his first and second wives, Christina van Erp and Eleonora Hellemans, or to Susanna van Baerle, who married Huyghens, or to Anna and Tesselschade Visscher. Here he composed his best plays, and in the last years of his life, having prepared himself for the task by a careful study of Tacitus, his historical works, including the great Nederlandsche Historien, begun in 1628 and published, but not completed, in 1642. Hooft died in 1648.

Hooft's love-poetry is the most complete representative in Holland of the love-poetry of the Renaissance, with all its conventions—Petrarchian, mythological, and pastoral. He gathered the flower in Italy and France, but he grafted it on a healthy native or naturalised stock of popular airs and rhythms, and coloured it with his own full-blooded Epicurean temperament. He wrote sonnets and wrote them well, whether purely complimentary and conventional, or passionate,—as once at any rate, in "Mijn lief, mijn lief, mijn lief"—or best of all, when the thought is weighty and dignified, as that to Hugo Grotius, which Mr Gosse has translated, or the following sonnet to a newly-born child, his nephew:—

"O fresh young fruit, that from the quiet night Of slumber in the womb awaked, must go— Time that lets nothing rest hath willed it so— Forth to the whirl of sense, the realms of light! Lo! birth hath given thee o'er to Fortune's might. Her school is change. She mingles joy with woe, And woe with joy, exalts and hurls below, Till dazed with hope and fear we darkling fight. May He Who giveth all things grant thee a heart Undaunted to withstand the fiercest dart Fate in her anger at thy life may speed: Her gifts too when in milder mood she pours Riches and joys and honour from full stores, Be it thine to use grateful and with good heed."

But it is in lyrical measures of all kinds, especially light and tripping, that Hooft excels, and they are the best expression of his seldom passionate but Epicurean and often playful moods. He can use a stately iambic to express a luxurious melancholy, as in the delightful memories of early love, which Goethe might have written—

"'T gemoedt herwenscht verlooren vrolijckheden, En wentelt in den schijn des tijts voorleden, Wanneer 't de stappen siet die 't heeft getreden.

Hoor jck haer naem, of comt me Min mij tegen, Het bloedt comt, uit mijn teen, nae 't hooft gestegen. U hartje, Lief, en voelt het geen bewegen?"—

but more commonly a tripping trochaic, dactylic, or anapæstic measure is employed, as in the delightful pastoral—

"Vluchtige nymph waer heen soo snel? Galathea wacht n wel, Dat u vlechten Niet en hechten, Met haer opgesnoerde goudt Onder de tacken van dit hout";

or—

"Amaril, had ick hair uit iiw tuitjen, 'K wed ick vleughelde' het goodtjen, het guitjen, Dat met sijn brandt, met sijn boogh, met sijn flitsen, Landt tegen landt over einde kan hitsen, En beroofde den listighen stoocker, Van sijn toorts, sijn geschut en sijn koocker";

or—

"Rosemont, hoordij speelen noch singen? Siet den daegheraedt op koomen dringen";

or, one of his favourite stanzas, used by Constable—

"Op's winters endt, Wanneer de lent, Dat puick en pit der tijen, Elck aengenaem Voortdoet de kraem Van haer kleenooderijen";

and many other rhythms impossible to describe here. No poet in Holland caught so much of the grace and elegance of Renaissance song. And yet Hooft is still a Dutchman. There are no "metaphysics" in his love-poetry, no super-refined idealism. Nature is never far away, and he is capable occasionally of deviating into the prosaic. Nor was he only an Epicurean lover of good verses and beautiful women, but also a scholar and thinker, the disciple of Seneca and Montaigne as well as Petrarch and Ronsard. In one of his epithalamia he turns aside to write an appreciation of Montaigne, which contains the gist of Pascal's famous disquisition on that writer and Epictetus. His Stichtrijmen en Zededichten, epigrams, inscriptions, and addresses, are condensed in style and weighty in thought. He was a staunch patriot, though more stoical in his outlook than the sensitive and sympathetic Vondel, and his patriotism finds expression in some noble occasional poems, such as the Lykklacht van Pieter Dirckz. Hasselaer, as well as in his tragedies. Vondel is a greater poet than Hooft, but not a more finished artist; and in virtue of his deeper culture and varied achievements—lyric poet, tragedian, comic poet, and historian, the greatest prose-writer of the century—Hooft was regarded as the more eminent man of letters.