Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/107

95 LITERATURE.] Brederoo for two years; but in 1614 he wandered away to Leeuwarden, in Friesland, where he founded a literary guild, and brought out, in 1618, his tragi-comedies of Timbre de Cardone and Daraida. But his great contri bution to literature was his exquisite collection of lyrics, entitled the Friesche Luslhof, or Frisian Pleasance. 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. 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 Houwaertand in Boendale, reached its zenith of fluency and popularity. Cats was a man of large property and high position iu the state, and his ideas never rose above the horizon of wealth and easy domestic satis faction. Between 1609 and 1621, that is, during early middle life, he produced the most important of his writings, his pastoral of Galathea, and his didactic poems, the Maechdenplicht and the Sinnc- 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. The Jesuit Adriaen Foirters (1606-1675) closely followed Cats in his remarkable Masquer of the World. A poet of Amsterdam, Jan Hermansz Krul, preferred to follow 7 the southern fashion, and wrote didactic pieces in the Catsian manner. A poet of dignified imagination and versatile form was Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), the diplomatist. Though born and educated at the Hague, 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 1621, 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 desir able 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 sweet ness of Hooft or of the sublimity of Vondel, but his genius was eminently bright and vivacious, and he was a con summate 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 our own John Donne, whose poems he translated, was the greatest fault of Huygeus, who, in spite of his conceits, remains one of the 95 most pleasing of Dutch writers. In addition to all this he comes down to us with the personal recommendation of having been &quot;one of the most lovable men that ever lived.&quot; 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. Bekker (1634-1698), on the contrary, a Reformed preacher of Amsterdam, was a disciple of Descartes, who deserves to j be remembered as the greatest philosophical writer who i has used the Dutch language. His masterpiece, Betoverde Wereld, or the World Bewitched, appeared in 1691-1693. determined attacks upon the system of a penal code for witchcraft. 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 develop ment. 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 Vos. tragedy of Aaron and Titus in 1641, and lost still more in the same year by his obscene farce of Oene. His second tragedy of Medea, in 1665, and his collected poems in 1662, supported hi.s position as the foremost pupil of Vondel. Geeraerdt Brandt (1626-1685) deserves remem- Brandt, brance less as a tragic dramatist than as a consummate biographer, whose lives of Vondel and of De Ruyter are j among the masterpieces of Dutch prose. Johan Antonides Goes. van der Goes (1647-1684) followed Vos as a skilful imitator of VondePs tragical manner. His Chinese trage dies, Trazil (1665) and Zungchin (1666), scarcely gave promise of the brilliant force and fancy of his Jjstroom, a poem in praise of Amsterdam, 1671. He died suddenly, of St Paul. Ileyer Anslo (1626-1669) marks the decline Auslo. of taste and vigour ; his once famous descriptive epic, The Plague at Xaples, is singularly tame and rococo in style. Joachim Oudaen (1628-1692) wrote in his youth two Oudaen. promising tragedies, Johanna Gray (1648) and Konradyn (1649). The Amsterdam section of the school of Cats produced Jeremias de Decker (1609-1646) and Joannes Vollenhove (1631-1708), voluminous writers of didactic verse. The engraver Jan Luiken (1649-1708) published Luiken. 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 Roosciijns oocltjens ontleed. None of these poets, except in some slight degree Luiken, set before themselves any more ambitious task than to repeat with skill the effects of their predecessors. Meanwhile the romantic and voluminous romances of the French school of Scudery and Honore d Urfe had invaded Holland and become fashionable. Johan van Hecmskerk Ileems- (1597-1656), a councillor of the Hague, set himself to kcrk - 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 excessively popular, and was imitated by Hendrik Zoeteboorn in his Zaanlandsche Arcadia (1658), and by Lambertus Bos in his Dordtsche Arcadia (1662). A far more spirited and original romance is the Mirandor of Nikolaes Heinsius, the younger (b. Ileinsius
 * Bekker is popularly remembered most honourably by his
 * in early life, leaving unfinished an epic poem on the life
 * 1655), a book which resembles Gil Bias, and precedes it