Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/34

14 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