Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/46

26 books, suggested by the Strage degli Innocenti, which, like Paradise Regained, is in part didactic, the narrative being interrupted by long discourses.

Of the innumerable lyrical poems which he wrote, ranging in length from over thirteen hundred to a couple of lines, Groote Lofdichten, Zegezangen, Bruiloftdichten, &c., the great majority were, like the satires or Hekeldichten, occasional poems, written to celebrate the sea-power of Holland, the birth of a prince of the House of Orange, the victories of Frederick Henry by land or van Tromp and Ruiter by sea, the building of a new Stadhuis, or the visit of Henrietta Maria, the marriages and deaths of his friends. The poetry of the Chambers of Rhetoric had been of this occasional character, and Vondel's poetry, more than Hooft's, represents the final flower of the Rederijkers' poetry, enriched by the culture of the Renaissance and the strong air of freedom and commercial prosperity. He was the Laureate of Amsterdam, when that city was the heart of the Netherlands, and the Netherlands stood at the very centre of the movements of Western Europe, responsive to all that took place from Sweden to Spain, from Turkey to England, and looking out over the seas, of which her control was just beginning to be disputed, to the Indies, East and West. To Vondel's ardent patriotism, humanity, and piety these themes were far more congenial than the refinements of love which Hooft sang in courtly and Italianate style. Early and happily married, Vondel hardly touched on love except in the Epithalamia he