Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/56

36 dimeters, catalectic and acatalectic, and rhyming alternately; Dagh-Werck, an unfinished description of a day in his life, in the same metre, but one of the most affected and obscure in style of his poems; Euphrasia of Ooghen-Troost (1647); Hofwyck (1652); and Zeestraet (1672),—all moralising, chatty poems, called forth by incidents in his life, as a lady friend's losing her eye, the building of a "Buitenplaats" or country-house, the construction of the road from The Hague to Schevening. A poem in the same key, a survey of his life written in the evening of his days, Cluyswerck, was printed by Jonckbloet in 1841, and did much to revive interest in Huyghens, Potgieter, the poet and critic, making it the occasion of an enthusiastic appreciation.

Huyghens has neither the ardour and tenderness of Vondel nor the artistic instinct of Hooft. He could only be called the first metrist among his contemporaries if Praed were allowed the same distinction among his. Huyghens' more playful verses are exceedingly clever:—

"Tessel-schaetge       Cameraedtge       Die dit praedtge            Uit mijn hert       En van binnen       Uit het spinnen       Van mijn sinnen            Hebt ontwert."

But Vondel does the same thing with more feeling in Kinderlyck beginning—