Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/38

18 prose-writer of the century—Hooft was regarded as the more eminent man of letters.

The seventeenth century in Holland was prolific of song-books,—collections, generally, of songs by different "hands," the members of some chamber of rhetoric. Den Nieuwen Lusthof (1602) and Den Bloemhof van de Nederlandsche Jeught were the work principally of members of the Eglantine, Den Nederduytsche Helicon (1610) of exiles from the southern Netherlands. The poems in these collections are mainly "refereinen," and their poetic worth is slight. The first collection in which a newer and finer vein appeared, both courtly Italianate love-poetry, and poetry of a more popular character but written with fresh art and vigour, was the Apollo of ghesang der Muzen wiens lieflijcke stemmen meerendeels in vrolijcke en eerlycke ghescelschappen werden ghesongen (1615). The best of the courtly songs in this collection were the work of Hooft; the best of the popular songs, the comic or "boertige liedjes," were by the editor of the collection—the young romantic and comic dramatist, Gerbrand Adriaensz Brederoo (1585-1618). Like Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker but a man of substance, the young Brederoo was educated, not without success, as a painter, but his poetic genius