Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/91

Rh to idolatry of the old king under the influence of his Phenician wife, Sidonia. The hero is too weak and unimpressive for a tragedy, but Sidonia has greater power, the best scenes are dramatic, and the workmanship in every respect—invention, arrangement, verse—is admirable.

Still finer and greater is Lucifer (1654), which has been described as the shining summit of Dutch poetry of the seventeenth century. Vondel was not fettered here by having to follow too closely a story narrated in Scripture. The references to the fall of Lucifer, on which this and other works on the subject rest, are few, short, and not a little obscure. The poet was free to invent his own incidents and motives. In doing so, he drew upon his memory and observation of events which had moved him passionately. That he intended to write a political allegory—like Palamedes, or even De Leeuwendaelers—is, apart from other considerations, incompatible with the poet's reverential attitude towards sacred and Scriptural subjects. But in describing a great mutiny in heaven, a rising of the angels to vindicate their "rights," and the leaders who use it to further personal ambition, he recalled the use Prince Maurice had made of popular feeling against Oldenbarneveldt, and the progress of the contemporary rebellion in England with the rise of Cromwell. The result was a play more dramatic and moving, in action