Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/567

Rh ; and Michael bids Uriel undertake the duty, that in "Paradise Lost" he undertakes himself, of driving the guilty pair out of Eden with the two-edged flaming sword. Michael then charges other archangels with the final punishment of the rebel and now intriguing angels, and with this doom of endless pain the drama closes.

When we consider to how great an extent an English writer was about to borrow from this poem, it is singular to find its Dutch author acknowledging a debt to a now forgotten English writer. In the learned and interesting preface to his play, Vondel notes, while citing earlier writers on the same subject, "among English Protestants, too, the learned pen of Richard Baker has discussed very broadly in prose the fate of Lucifer and all the matter of the rebellious spirits." This was Sir Richard Baker whose 'Chronicle' Sir Roger de Coverley was so fond of; a wealthy but imprudent gentleman, who ended his days in the Fleet Prison. No doubt the passage referred to by the Dutch poet is to he found in Baker's "Meditations and Disquisitions," a somewhat uncommon theological work, to which the present writer has had no opportunity of referring.

The "Lucifer" was not received very favorably in Holland. It was true that the violent and internecine strife of the two great religious parties, the burning and parching zeal to which the noble Barneveld had fallen a victim thirty years before, had in a great measure cooled down. But still fanatic rage ran very high in the United Provinces, and one attack after another was made upon "the false imaginations," "hellish fancies," and "irregular and unscriptural devices" of Vondel's beautiful drama. An effort was made in February 1654 to prevent the representation of "the tragedy made by Joost van den Vondel, named 'Lutsevar,' treating in a fleshly manner the high theme of God's mysteries." When this fell through, and the piece had been acted, a still more strenuous effort was made to prevent the printing and to prohibit the sale; but at last, through a perfect sea of invective and obloquy, the poem sailed safe in the haven of recognized literature. Its political significance, real or imagined, gave it no doubt an interest that counterbalanced its supposed sins against theology. It was considered — and the idea has received the support of most modern Dutch critics — that in "Lucifer" Vondel desired to give an allegorical account of the rising of the Netherlands against Philip II. According to this theory, God was represented by the king of Spain, Michael by the Duke of Alva, Adam by the cardinal Granvella, and Lucifer by the first stadholder, William the Silent, who was murdered in 1584. There are several difficulties in the way of consenting to this belief: in the first place, the incidents occurred more than seventy years before the writing of the poem; and secondly, the event of the one rebellion was diametrically opposed to that of the other. William of Orange, indeed, was murdered by a hired assassin, but not until he had secured the independent existence of the new State; and there would be a curious inappropriateness in describing the popular hero as a fallen and defeated angel thrust into hell. There is, however, another theory of the political signification of the "Lucifer," which seems to me much more plausible. It is that which sees in the figure of the rebel archangel the still dominant prince of the English Commonwealth, Cromwell, the enemy of Holland, and in the God and the Michael of Vondel's drama, Charles I. and Laud still surviving in their respective successors. Considered as a prophecy of the approaching downfall of the still flourishing English republic, the allegory has a force and a spirited coherence that are entirely lacking in the generally received version.