Vondel’s Lucifer

His Life and Times

“Vondel! thousand thousand voices
Echo answer—grandly sing
Praises to our greatest poet,
Hailing him the poets’ king.”

Dr. Schaepman.

The Dutch Renaissance

“Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate voice—that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means.”

Profounder truth, that keen aphorist, the Sage of Chelsea, never cast into heroic mould.

The consciousness of a great literature is a grander basis for national exaltation than the possession of victorious fleets and invincible battalions. The nation whose highest aspiration and most glorious impulse, whose noblest action and deepest thought, have been crystallized into fadeless beauty by the soul of native genius, has surely more lasting cause for pride than she whose proudest boast is a superiority in mere material achievement.

The everlasting shall always have precedence over the momentary; the time-serving heroics of to-day are the laughter-compelling travesties of to-morrow; the golden colossus of one age is the brazen pigmy of the next. Beauty alone is unfading; art alone is eternal.

“All passes: art alone
Enduring—stays to us;
The bust outlasts the throne;
The coin, Tiberius.

“Even the gods must go;
Only the lofty rime,
Not countless years o’erflow,
Not long array of time.”

Happy the country blest with a heritage of noble deeds! Thrice happy she whose glory is a treasury of noble words! Only from great actions can gigantic thoughts be born.

Nowhere was the Revival of Learning more joyfully received than in the Netherlands. At the bidding of the Renaissance, the monasteries, those storehouses of the knowledge of the past, unlocked their precious lore. The classics were now for the first time conscientiously studied; not so much for themselves, as to shed the light of the past upon the present, to furnish suggestions for new discoveries.

Erasmus was but the pioneer of a host of scholars and philosophers. Thomas-à-Kempis was but the forerunner of a race of distinguished literati. The following generation also studied the moderns; and the wonderful genius of Italy, as well as the brilliant talent of France, now lighted up the dark recesses of the Cathedral of Gothic art.

The Reformation, like a tiny acorn, first pierced the rich mould of civil life. Then bursting into the sunshine, it towered into the sky of religious life an imperious oak. The dormant energies of the Low Germans were now kindled into a blaze of creative activity. As in Italy, this first revealed itself in the increased power of the cities, the Tradesmen’s Guilds, the Chambers of Rhetoric, and the growing privileges of the citizens; for example, the burghers of Utrecht and of Amsterdam. It next manifested itself in the Universities and in the Church.

Hand in hand with this extraordinary intellectual development went the sturdy manliness of a vigorous national life. It was the era of enterprise and adventure; of invention and discovery. Daring was the spirit, attainment the achievement, of this age—this age that dared all.

Proud in the philosophy wrested from experience, the race sought to extend its intellectual empire even in the domain of transcendentalism. Knowledge, like Prometheus, bound for centuries to the gloomy cliff of superstition, suddenly rent its bonds and stood forth in all of its tremendous strength, gigantic and unshackled; a god, flaming to conquer the benighted realms of ignorance! Imagination, like a fire-plumed steed, preened for revelries, soared to the stars, and roamed unbridled through the boundless deep of space.

The world ran riot for truth. In England, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as in Holland, arose a race of explorers that gave to the earth another hemisphere, and discovered another solar system in the universe of thought.

The world called loud for blood. Truth was not to be attained without sacrifice; freedom was not to be won without battle. Universal struggle was to precede universal achievement. A whirlwind of death now swept over the earth, leaving in its wake carnage and disaster. The passions of men burst asunder the chains of duty and religion, and swooped on the nations with desolating rage.

The world was in travail. Hope was born, error vanquished, tyranny dethroned. The dawn of a new life had come. The night was over. The sparks of war became the seeds of art. The Netherland imagination was suddenly quickened into creative rapture by the contemplation of the heroism of the great Orange and the founders of the Republic.

A generation of fighters is always the precursor of an epoch of singers. The panegyrist and the historian ever follow in the train of the soldier and the statesman; the epic and the eulogy as surely in the path of great deeds as the polemic and the satire in the track of wickedness and folly.

The sculptor and the painter are evoked from obscurity only by the call of heroes. The musician and the poet—the voice of the ideal—stand ever ready to blazon forth the glory of the real. Unworthy actions alone are unsung.

The foundations of the Dutch Republic had been laid by a race of Cyclops, in whose battle-scarred forehead glowed the single eye of freedom. A race of Titans followed, and built upon this firm foundation a magnificent temple of art and science, above whose four golden portals were emblazoned, chiselled in “deathless diamond,” the names, Vondel, Rembrandt, Grotius, and Spinoza, the high-priests of its worship.

It is of Vondel, the one articulate voice of Holland, whose heart ever kept time with the larger pulse of his nation, that we would now speak.

Childhood and Youth

Justus van den Vondel was the son of Dutch parents, and was born at Cologne, November 17, 1587. It is curious to note that above the door of the house where the greatest bard of the Low Germans first saw the light hung the sign of a viol, a maker of that instrument having at one time lived there. The poet used to point to this fact as having been prophetic of his poetic future; and it was, surely, not an uninspiring coincidence.

The elder Vondel was a hatter, and had fled to Cologne from his native city, Antwerp, to escape the persecution then raging against the Anabaptists, of which church he was a zealous and devout member.

In Cologne he had courted and married Sarah Kranen, whose father, Peter Kranen, also an Anabaptist, had likewise been driven from Antwerp by the fury of the Romanists. Peter Kranen was not without reputation in his native city as a poet, and had won some distinction in the public contests of the literary guilds, of one of which he was a shining ornament. So it seems that our poet drank in the divine afflatus, as it were, with his mother’s milk.

It is related that Kranen’s wife, being pregnant, was unable to accompany her husband in his hurried flight; and, being left behind, was confined in the city prison, where her severe fright prematurely brought on the crisis. Being strongly importuned by a cousin of the young woman, who was required to furnish security for her re-appearance, the magistrates finally permitted her to complete her travail at her home.

After the birth of her child, when her cousin again delivered her, sorrowful and heavy at heart, into the custody of the jailer, he whispered comfortingly in her ear, “With this hand I have brought you here; but with the other I shall take you away again.”

The time of her execution drew nigh. It was intended that she should be burnt at the stake with a certain preacher of her sect. When this became known, the cousin went to the dignitaries of the Church and asked if, in case one of her children be baptized by a Catholic priest, the mother would have a chance for her life. The clergy, ever anxious to welcome an addition to the fold, and more desirous to save a soul than to burn a body, replied that it might be so arranged.

One of the children, a daughter, who was already with the father at Cologne, was then hastily summoned. Upon her arrival, accordingly, she was baptized after the manner of the Catholic ritual, and received into the Church.

The mother, now free, hastened to the arms of her joyful spouse, and the daughter who thus saved her mother’s life afterwards became the mother of Vondel.

So even Vondel’s Romanism, of which much will be said farther on, might thus be considered as foreshadowed and inherited.

The year of Vondel’s birth was also the year of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, whose tragic end he was destined to celebrate. Shakespeare, the most illustrious poet of the hereditary enemies of Vondel’s countrymen, was just twenty-three years old, and had already been married four years to Anne Hathaway. William the Silent, “the Father of his Country,” had only three years before, in the flower of his age, been cut off by the red hand of the assassin.

The early childhood of the poet was spent at Cologne. He never forgot the town of his birth, and, after the manner of the poets of antiquity, sang its glories in many an eloquent rime.

After the storm of persecution had spent its fury, the Vondels slowly returned by way of Bremen and Frankfort to the Netherlands. They rode in a rustic wagon, across which were fastened two strong sticks. From these was suspended a cradle, in which lay their youngest child. This simplicity and their modest demeanor and unaffected piety so impressed the wagoner that he was heard to say: “It is just as if I were journeying with Joseph and Mary.”

The family first stopped at Utrecht, where the young “Joost” went to school. His early education, however, was very meagre, ending with his tenth year; so that he whose attainments were afterwards the admiration of his scholarly contemporaries, and the wonder of posterity, commenced life with the most threadbare equipment of learning.

Surely the plastic imagination of the boy must have been wonderfully impressed by the grandeur of that gigantic Gothic pile, the Utrecht Cathedral, and its tremendous campanile, pointing like a huge index finger unerringly to God, and towering so sublimely above the beautiful old town and the fertile meadows all around!

In 1597 we find the family in Amsterdam, of which flourishing city the elder Vondel had recently become a citizen, and where he had opened a hosiery shop.

This business must have proved remunerative, as one of his younger children, his son William, afterwards studied law at Orleans, and then travelled to Rome, where he applied himself to theology and letters, a course of study which in that age, even more than to-day, must have been beyond the means of even the ordinary well-to-do citizen.

Though the subject of our sketch was not so fortunate in this respect as his younger brother, yet he made good use of his opportunities; and it is recorded that, even before he had reached his teens, his rimes attracted considerable attention among the friends of the family.

When only thirteen years old, we find his verses complimented as showing unusual promise. It was Peter Cornelius Hooft, the talented young poet, son of the burgomaster of the city, who was at that time pursuing a course of study in Italy, who incidentally made this passing reference in an interesting rimed epistle to the Chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam.

This Chamber was one of the literary guilds founded in imitation of the French Collèges de Rhétorique; and it played so important a part in the literary history of the city and in the life of our poet that we ask indulgence if an account of it cause what may seem a little digression.

Under the rule of the House of Burgundy, the French feeling for dramatic poetry had been introduced into the Netherlands. This was fostered, not only by the exhibitions of the travelling minstrels, but also by the impressive and often gorgeous Miracle and Mystery Plays of the clergy. In the wake of these followed the more artistic Morality Plays. These allegorical representations did much to create a purer taste and to waken a greater demand for the drama.

The people suddenly began to take unusual interest in declamation and in dramatic exhibitions; and Chambers of Rhetoric, for the indulgence of this new taste, were soon established in all of the prominent cities of the country.

These societies also began sedulously to cultivate rhetorica, or literature, and soon became nothing less than an association of literary guilds, bound together in a sort of social Hanseatic league, designed for their own defence and for the fostering of their beloved art.

Each was distinguished by some device, and usually bore the name of some flower. They were wont also to compete against each other in rhetorical contests called “land-jewels,” to which they would march, costumed in glorious masquerade, and to the sound of pealing trumpets and of shrill, melodious airs.

As was natural, the follies of the Church were too tempting a subject for these Chambers to resist; and many of them, long before the thundering polemics of Luther were heard, had dramatized a stinging satire on the clergy, revealing their vices in all of their hideous coarseness, and making their follies the butt of their unsparing mockery.

When the Reformation, therefore, trumped her battle-cry, there throbbed a responsive echo in the hearts of the Netherlanders, long disgusted, as they were, with the excesses of a dissolute priesthood.

These societies, therefore, exerted no little influence on the social, religious, and intellectual life of the country, and became a powerful aid to the awakening of a national consciousness and to the up-building of the language and the literature.

Among them all, no other attained the distinction of the Chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam. This Chamber, whose device was “Blossoming in Love,” was founded by Charles V., and to it belonged many of the most prominent citizens of that opulent city. All religious discussions were forbidden within its walls; and there, in that age of religious discord and rabid intolerance, both Catholic and Protestant met together in the worship of Apollo. It was to this honored body that the name of the young Vondel was introduced, and upon him, therefore, its members kept an attentive eye.

We next hear of Vondel as a youth of seventeen. He had, it seems, all the while been assisting his father in the cares of the little hosiery shop; but his mind was with his books, and he employed every spare moment in reading or in study.

About this period a friend of the family was married, and the young poet must needs try his wings. Accordingly, he wrote an epithalamium, which, unfortunately for the poet, still survives. As might have been expected, the too-aspiring youth soared on Icarian wings. However, he was not conscious of this at the time; and lame and faulty as these first efforts are, it may yet be surmised that he felt the thrill of inspiration and the rapture of creating no less than when, in later life, he forged those Olympian thunderbolts that fulmined over Holland, causing tyrants to shake and multitudes to tremble.

Soon after the wedding-verses, Vondel wrote a threnody on the assassination of Henry IV. of France, which was but little better than his former effort.

We hear no more of our young poet till, like the deer-stealing youth, Shakespeare, he stands, in his young and vigorous manhood, blushing at the altar. Maria de Wolff was the name of the bride that the twenty-three-year-old husband had won to share his destiny.

History does not record the circumstances nor the incidents of his wooing; but from what we know of his character, we will venture to say that it was ardently done.

Of the sonnets and the love-verses that this passion must have inspired in the soul of the young poet nothing, unfortunately, seems to be known. He who had, as a boy, written tolerable verses at the marriage of another must surely, as a man, have done something better at his own.

“All the world loves a lover,” be he ever so humble. But the loves of the poets are of especial interest.

We therefore confess our disappointment that no record exists wherein we could see the poet in the sweet throes of that heart-consuming passion. But, for all that, we feel that he loved like a poet, and we know that his marriage proved to be a most happy one.

His wife was in full sympathy with his every thought and aspiration, and wisely left her star-gazing husband to write verses while she stayed behind the counter and sold stockings. She was the daughter of a prosperous linen-merchant of Cologne, and was fortunately of a practical turn of mind.

Thus, when Vondel succeeded to the business of his father, she took upon herself not only the management of the shop, but attended to the house-keeping as well.

Aspiration

In 1612 appeared Vondel’s first drama, “The Passover.” It was the first of that splendid series of Bible tragedies to which, in the field of the sacred drama, neither ancient nor modern times furnish a parallel. This play, which covertly celebrated the recent escape of the Hollanders from the yoke of Spain, was played in the Brabantian Chamber of the Lavender, to which Vondel, whose family came from Brabant, naturally belonged.

This poem showed the results of his years of study, and was far superior to his earlier efforts, indeed, it gave such promise that Vondel was immediately invited to become a member of the Chamber of the Eglantine, and thus at once stood on an equality with the most distinguished literati of the day.

Among these was Roemer Visscher, “the round Roemer,” as he was known among his intimates. Visscher was celebrated for his epigrams, and was called “the Dutch Martial.” He was a good type of the Dutch merchant of his time, and on account of his wit and jollity was very popular with the other members of the society.

With his friends Coornhert and Spieghel he had taken upon himself the serious task of purifying and enriching his native tongue.

And it is in the works of these three men, who at this time were all well advanced in years, that we first see the promise of a literature and the consciousness of a national destiny.

The stilted and artificial phraseology of the Rhetoricians was soon succeeded by a natural, flowing style. Originality once more asserted its right to a hearing. Nature was studied with enthusiastic contemplation. Art was once more set on her high pedestal and worshipped.

Visscher looked with a philosophic eye on the follies of the day, and his keenest epigrams were pointed with a honied humor that deprived them of their sharpest sting.

But it was more as a patron of letters than as a poet that he deserves to be remembered. At his house all of the young Bohemians of the day were wont to gather, and many the contests of wit and many the battles in verse that took place in this, the first literary salon of the Netherlands.

But there was another attraction at the house of this worthy burgher. The jovial Roemer had two daughters, the blooming but sober Anna and the beautiful and vivacious Tesselschade.

These young women, on account of their many personal charms and numerous accomplishments, furnished a glowing theme to a generation of poets. It is related that they could each play sweetly on several instruments, sing, paint, engrave on glass, cut emblems, embroider, and converse brilliantly.

They were by no means prigs, however, for they also excelled in healthful bodily exercise, as swimming, rowing, and skating; and they were no less discreet and modest than accomplished and refined. Nor must it be forgotten that they themselves also wrote verses full of sweetness and tenderness; verses, too, not without lofty and noble sentiment, that are yet treasured among the brightest gems in Holland’s diadem of song.

It was into this charming patrician circle that our middle-class poet was now introduced, and he manfully continued his attempts to remedy the defects in his education, that he might meet the many talented and learned men who came there, on an equal footing.

Vondel was now twenty-six years old, and began to apply himself assiduously to the study of the languages. He took lessons in Latin from an Englishman, and through his great industry he was soon able to read Virgil and Ovid. He also began the study of French, and translated “The Glory of Solomon” of Du Bartas, which he considered a most admirable poem. About the same time he wrote his second tragedy, the “Jerusalem Desolate,” which, on account of its severe simplicity and elevated style, was the theme of much favorable comment.

At the house of the Visschers, Vondel was wont to meet, on terms of easy comradery, among other rising young men of the day, the erratic but brilliant Gerard Brederoo, the greatest writer of comedies that Holland has ever produced.

Brederoo was the son of a poor shoemaker of Amsterdam, and on account of his extraordinary talents was eagerly welcomed into the most select circles.

Quite a contrast was the young aristocrat, Peter Cornelius Hooft, of whom we have already spoken. Hooft was a patrician of the patricians, and was the most accomplished and elegant man of his day, the first gentleman of his age.

He had already distinguished himself by several remarkable poems, a superb pastoral, and one or two powerful tragedies.

It was in the field of history and biography, however, that he was to win his greenest laurels. His history of the Netherlands and his biography of Henry IV. of France, written in a terse, forcible, epigrammatic style, have gained for him the appellation of the “Dutch Tacitus.” Motley calls him one of the great historians of the world.

Then there was Jan Starter, the son of an English Brownist, who was destined to be one of the sweetest lyrists of his adopted country; and Laurens Reael, another scion of aristocracy, a handsome young man of some poetic power and considerable learning, fated to become the friend of the great Oldenbarneveldt, and, after a splendid career as a soldier, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.

Another visitor to this hospitable house was Dr. Samuel Coster, a dramatist of no mean ability, who is now chiefly remembered as the founder of Coster’s Academy, an institution founded in imitation of the Accademia della Crusca of Florence.

Anna and Tesselschade were, of course, the centre of this constellation of literary stars, and few of the young men who met at their home left it with heart unscorched by the fierce blaze of love. Vondel was already married; but to the passion that these two beautiful women excited in most of the others, Dutch literature owes its most exquisite love lyrics.

The ardent Hooft wooed the staid Anna only to be rejected. However, the young knight sought and soon obtained consolation elsewhere. Brederoo, with all the fervor of his romantic nature, poured out his soul in a cycle of burning love poems at the feet of the golden-haired and dark-eyed Tesselschade. To her, too, he dedicated his tragedy “Lucelle,” calling the object of his adoration “the honor of our city, the glory of our age.”

Few women in any epoch have exerted such wonderful influence upon the literature of their time. Not a poet of the day who was not inspired by their beauty and character; not one, furthermore, who did not dedicate to them some production of his genius. And yet they do not seem to have been the least spoiled by such excessive notice. Their good sense and modesty only heightened the excellent impression excited by their beauty and their talents.

How incomplete a sketch of Vondel’s life and age would be without a more than passing reference to these accomplished sisters will be better appreciated when we see the poet himself paying court to one of them, charmed not only into a passion of the heart, but also into taking a step which exerted a powerful influence on his life and works.

At the Visschers’, in the circle of his friends, the aspiring poet was wont to read the latest effusions of his pen; that he was much benefited by the criticism to which his verses were there subjected cannot be doubted.

His friendship with the most noted men of the day warmed his ambition into a fever of aspiration, and, like Milton, he early determined to devote his whole life to the cultivation of his beloved art.

With the aid of Hooft and Reael he translated the “Troades” of Seneca, which he then sublimated into a tragedy of his own, the “Hecuba of Amsterdam.” This evoked considerable praise from the critics of the day. At this time, also, he showed his advancement in technique and his improvement in style by several lyrics of extraordinary merit.

It was thus in the midst of an admiring circle of distinguished friends that we find Vondel cultivating his art. There, in the bosom of that Catholic family, the Visschers, the poets of that age found rest from the storm of religious discord that raged without.

Arminian and Gomarist, Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, were waging that fierce battle of the creeds that is yet the foulest blot upon the fair name of the heroic and tolerant Republic.

Thus the Visscher mansion was the temple of the Muses, where beauty alone was worshipped. Religion was left by the visitor at the threshold. Art alone was the garment that gave admittance to this wedding-feast of poetry and philosophy.

“Storm and Stress.”

Whether through the contemplation of the fierce dissensions that then raged in the little Republic, or through a natural melancholy of temperament, Vondel now became subject to the most distressing depression.

Occasionally he would flash from his gloom into one of those firebrands of invective that, thrown into the ranks of his enemies, created a blaze of discord from one end of the country to the other; occasionally, also, he was inspired for loftier themes, as his “Ode to St. Agnes,” which first showed his tendency towards Catholicism.

Then he would relapse into his melancholy. He lost his appetite and became afflicted with various bodily ills. He seemed hastening into a decline. This lasted several years, during which several important changes had taken place, not only among his friends, but also in the ruling powers of the state.

On the 13th of May, 1618, John van Oldenbarneveldt, the aged Advocate of the States-General, the greatest statesman of his time, and the fiery patriot upon whom had fallen the sacred mantle of William the Silent, was beheaded. He had watched the destinies of the infant Republic with the tender solicitude of a loving shepherd; he was now devoured by the wolves who, in the guise of religion and of patriotism, had crept into the fold. He had given eighty years of devotion to the up-building of his country; he was now to seal that devotion with his blood. He had made his native land a theme of glory among the nations of the earth; he was now accused of selling that glory for the gold which he had always despised.

A thankless generation had, under the cloak of virtue, committed one of the most infamous and revolting crimes in human annals. Where shall we find a parallel? The gray hairs of the man, his learning, his ability, his unsullied life, his splendid achievements in behalf of his native land, his grand renown, his unselfish devotion, his patriotism—all this must be considered when we compare his sad end with the fate of the other political martyrs of history, too many of whom have been unduly exalted by the manner of their death.

Is it to be wondered at that such an important event caused the deep-thinking poet the revulsion that only comes to high-born souls?

Is it surprising, furthermore, that that revulsion found its expression in what is perhaps the finest satirical drama of modern times?

This period was the crisis in our poet’s life. The Contra-Remonstrants, or Gomarists, as the extreme Calvinists were called, having disposed of their hated enemy Oldenbarneveldt, had now begun to play havoc with the liberties of the people. Art and literature next suffered through the blasting censorship of their fanatical clergy.

The religious tolerance that had formed the glory of the country only a decade before was now succeeded by a rabid bigotry that with insensate fury cut at the vitals of all that was healthful and inspiring. Life, property, and freedom were in peril. Nothing was safe.

Grotius, “the father of international law,” and also so distinguished as a scholar that he was called the “wonder of the age,” was imprisoned, with the fate of his friend the great Advocate staring him in the face. From this fate, moreover, he was only saved by the diplomatic ingenuity of his devoted wife, who aided him to escape from his prison at Loevestein, ensconced in an empty book-chest which the unsuspecting warden of the castle thought full of books. Others of note were in hiding or in exile.

The boasted freedom of the freed Netherlands had turned to the direst form of oppression—the tyranny of a religious oligarchy.

And yet it was not an easy victory for the Contra-Remonstrants. Every inch was bitterly contested by their foes in Christ, the moderate Calvinists, or Remonstrants.

This struggle, like the conflicts of the Florentine factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, divided the country into two hostile camps. Even those of other religions allied themselves with the one or other of these sects; for sect had now come to mean party. Vondel, with whom religion and patriotism were fused into one white heat, was not long in choosing the party of the Remonstrants—the side of freedom.

We shall hereafter view this remarkable man as the poet militant. For having once taken the sword in hand, he did not let it fall until his arm was palsied by death.

Much as he loved peace, his enemies hereafter took good care that he should never want occasion to defend himself. It must be added, however, that the poet was even more renowned for attack than for defence. He was ever at the head of the onset, ever in the thickest of the fray.

The sword of this crusader for the liberties of his country—the most formidable and dreaded weapon of the age—was a pen; and the production that fell like a bombshell into the Gomarist camp was the allegorical tragedy of “Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence.”

Under cover of the ancient legend of Palamedes, which lent itself most readily to such analogy, he had portrayed the murder of the old Advocate, and painted his judges in such strong colors and with such accurate delineation that each was recognized, and forever invested with the shame and infamy he so richly merited.

The greatest excitement prevailed, and the first edition of the poem was sold in a few days. The Goliath of error, slain by the pebble of satire, lay on the ground, gasping in agony. The David who had with one swift arm-swing of thought accomplished this wonderful feat, suddenly found himself the most famous man in both camps.

In the meantime the party in power sought to repress the book; and as the poet was thought to be in danger of imprisonment, or of even a more tragic fate, he was advised by his friends to go into hiding, which he did.

Threats were made against the man who had so rashly dared the fury of those relentless iconoclasts—the reigning Gomarists. It was muttered that he ought to be taken to The Hague to be tried, even as Oldenbarneveldt.

Meanwhile Vondel was concealed at the house of Hans de Wolff, a brother of his wife, who was also married to his sister Clementia. They were, however, afraid to harbor him any longer; and his sister, it is said, upbraided him for his itch for writing, saying that no good could come of it, and that it would be better for him to attend more strictly to his business.

Vondel’s only reply was, “I shall yet tell them sharper truths;” and he straightway sat down and wrote some cutting pasquinades. These, however, upon his sister’s advice, he threw into the fire, which he afterwards regretted.

He next found shelter in the house of a friend, Laurens Baake, who received him gladly. Here he was hidden several days; and the sons and daughters of his host, being highly cultivated and exceedingly fond of poetry, were much pleased with the society of so distinguished a poet, and for him made things as comfortable as possible. Vondel ever proved grateful for the many favors received at their hands in the hour of his need.

His hiding-place was at last discovered, and he was brought before the court. The plea made by his lawyer in his behalf was that the play “was poet’s work and could be otherwise interpreted than was commonly done.”

Some of the judges expressed themselves very severely; and if their counsel had prevailed there is no doubt but that the poet’s career would have ended with the “Palamedes.” However, the old Batavian spirit also asserted itself, others saying that civil liberty was but a mockery when a man was no longer allowed the freedom of speech. The result of the trial was that Vondel was fined three hundred guldens, which was paid by a friend—indeed, by one of the judges themselves—who was secretly favorable to Vondel and his party, and had encouraged the poet to write this very drama. We are here reminded of the fate of the great Florentine. Dante, a patriot, yet an exile, accused of treason, and under sentence of death; Vondel, forced to flee from an oligarchy of unctuous hypocrites, in fear of his life, and arraigned as a fomenter of discord. The ideas of the great Hollander on government, and on politics also, were not unlike the ideal Ghibellinism of the illustrious Tuscan.

Of course, the very nature of the play made it popular, and the various attempts at its suppression only made it more so. Two other editions shortly followed. Within a few years thirty editions were sold. “Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata.”

Prince Maurice, the Stadholder, whose powerful personality on account of his share in the death of the Advocate was also severely handled by the poet, died while Vondel was giving the finishing touches to his drama. Long years afterwards, when the poet was an old man, he was wont to relate how on the very morning that the news came to Amsterdam from The Hague that the Stadholder was on his death-bed, his wife came to the foot of the stairs that led to the room where he was writing, and cried, “Husband, the Prince is dying!”

To which he replied:

“Let him die! I am already tolling his knell.”

Frederic Henry, who was the next Stadholder, was known to be at heart in favor of the Remonstrants.

It was reported that the whole tragedy was read to him in his palace, and that he was exceedingly pleased with it, finding much of interest in the various episodes. Strange to say, upon the walls of the room where he heard the drama hung a piece of tapestry upon which the history of the Greek Palamedes was artistically pictured. Pointing to this, the Prince said mockingly, “This tapestry should be taken away, otherwise they might suppose that I also favor the cause of Palamedes.”

Apart from its influence on the time, and the interest of its allegorical allusions, the “Palamedes” is a splendid tragedy, and its intrinsic worth alone would make it immortal. One of the choruses, especially, is justly celebrated for its idyllic beauty. It has often been compared to the “L’Allegro” of Milton, and, indeed it bears, in many particulars, much resemblance to that exquisite lyric.

Tesselschade

Soon after the completion of the “Palamedes,” Vondel was again for a long time in a state of hopeless melancholy. He did not yield to its depressing influence, however, and at the age of forty began the study of Greek, in which he made rapid progress.

He still associated with his fellow-Academicians, though no longer at the home of Roemer Visscher.

This patron of learning had now been dead for several years. Other changes also had taken place. Starter, after the publication of his “Frisian Bower,” seized with the spirit of adventure, had enlisted as a private soldier, and died, a few years afterwards, in one of the battles of the Thirty Years’ War. Laurens Reael had gone to the Indies, and, after winning the highest honors as soldier and statesman, had come back again to his native land, which he continued to serve in a diplomatic capacity for many years.

Hooft had been honored by Prince Maurice with one of the highest dignities in the state. He had been appointed Judge of Muiden; and here, in his castle, in the society of his lovely wife and beautiful children, he gave himself up to his books. It was here in his “little tower,” one of the four turrets of this castle, that he wrote his splendid history. Here he composed many of those charming lyrics that combine the lusciousness of the Italian after which they were modelled, with the domestic sweetness of the Dutch. Here, too, he wrote his great tragedies, “Baeto, or the Origin of the Hollanders,” and “Gerardt van Velsen.” Hooft was essentially a student and a scholar; a thinker rather than a fighter. He did not, therefore, like Vondel, the burgher, plunge with flaming soul into the conflict. The patrician was too fond of studious contemplation and of elegant ease to allow the discord of the outside world to mar the serene harmony of his retirement.

Brederoo had burnt himself out with the intensity of his passion for his adored, but not adoring, Tesselschade. Poor fellow! after all his poetic wooing and flattering dedications, he had met with the bitter disappointment of a refusal; and, after a meteoric career, died, at the age of thirty-six, a heart-broken man. The delicate lyre-strings on that Æolian harp had been snapped by the rude blast of unrequited love, and from the broken chords now surged the mournful music of the grave. His dazzling genius—eclipsed in its noon-tide splendor by the swift night of death—was quenched forever. Such was the sad but romantic ending of the most brilliant man of his age, the greatest humorist that Holland has yet produced.

And Tesselschade, the beautiful inspirer of this passion? To her, too, time had brought its changes.

Neptune’s trident, it seems, had more attraction for her than the lyre of Apollo, whose strings she had so often set into melodious vibration. After being wooed for a whole decade by all the younger poets, she had at last been won by a gallant sea-captain, Allart Krombalgh, and was now living happily in blissful quiet with her husband at Alkmaar.

Tesselschade was now thirty years of age, and had lost none of the extraordinary beauty of early youth. Deep golden hair, of which each tiny thread seemed just the string for Cupid’s bow; large dark eyes, darting rays of love, and deep with infinitudes of tenderness; a low but broad, smooth forehead of marble whiteness; an exquisite mouth; a decided chin that spoke of a will reserved; a chiselled nose with delicate, sensuous nostrils—these were the most striking features of a face that was as remarkable for its earnest and captivating expression as for its great beauty and radiant intelligence. Add to this a glowing complexion of wonderful purity, and a slender but symmetrically-shaped figure, and you have a picture of the most beautiful and talented woman of her generation.

All the poets honored the bride with their choicest verses. Elevated as was Vondel’s epithalamium, sweet and graceful as was Hooft’s, agreeable as were the many other poems that the occasion inspired, the young Constantine Huyghens wrote a eulogy in a tender and delicious strain that surpassed them all.

At Alkmaar the happy couple had an ideal home, exquisitely furnished with pictures and embroidery done by the skilful hands of Tesselschade herself. Here, with art and music, in the midst of the amenities of domestic life, she lived many happy years.

Tesselschade, however, did not give up her passion for poetry. She continued her relations with the charming circle of her admirers, and corresponded with Hooft in Italian.

Even before her marriage she had begun translating the “Gerusalemme Liberata” of Tasso; and now, with the aid of Hooft, the best Italian scholar in the Netherlands, she continued this absorbing work. This version was never printed, and has, unfortunately, been lost.

In 1622 her sister Anna, the friend and correspondent of Rubens, visited Middelburg, the capital of Zealand, where she met the shining lights of the School of Dort, as the didactic writers of the day were called. At the head of these was the celebrated Father Cats—the poet of the commonplace—the most popular, though by no means the greatest, poet of the Netherlands. Simon van Beaumont, the governor, a lyrist of some talent; Joanna Coomans, called the “Pearl of Zealand;” and Jacob Westerbaen also gave her sweet welcome.

Attentions were showered on the honored guest, and her visit gave occasion to that well-known collection of lyrics entitled “The Zealand Nightingale,” which was dedicated to her. Upon her return from Zealand, Anna was also married, and from this time forth she slowly ceased her literary relations with the School of Amsterdam, and now gave herself entirely up to domestic duties.

Not so Tesselschade. Her imagination was too intense, her conceptions too vivid, to find any attraction in the realistic didacticism of the Catsian circle. Her muse was not to be restrained by household cares. Her friendship with Hooft and Vondel remained unbroken; and we shall have occasion to meet her again.

Since his “Palamedes,” Vondel, overwhelmed with his strange depression, had written but little. In 1630 he burst into a blaze of satire that swept the country like a whirlwind of flame. His poems of this year were entitled Haec Libertatis Ergo, and were of unsparing severity. “The evils of the time,” said the poet, “are too deep-seated to be eradicated by a poultice of honey.” Like Juvenal and Persius, he did not spare the knife, although he knew that every thrust only made his enemies more bitter and his own position more uncomfortable. His absolute fearlessness was the theme of admiration, not only among his friends, but even among his enemies. The higher the person, the stronger his invective; the more powerful the object of his dislike, the more cutting the edge of his sarcasm.

Never was satire so crushing and at the same time so keen; never mockery so unanswerable, polemic so overwhelming.

A Titan had thrown mountains of irony upon the heads of a thick-skulled generation of vipers. Their discomfiture was so complete that not even a hiss broke from the silence of their annihilation. The whited sepulchres of the sovereign hypocrites of the Republic now stood black as night in the face of noon.

Though a fiery patriot and an enthusiastic adherent of the House of Orange, Vondel received but little favor at the hands of Frederic Henry. This was probably due to the poet’s unpopularity with the clergy, and to the hatred that he had excited among the Church party in power—the uncompromising Contra-Remonstrants, whose enmity the Stadholder would doubtless have incurred by an open friendship with aman whose avowed determination it was to accomplish their downfall.

About this time occurred the death of William van den Vondel, a younger brother of the poet, whom he loved most tenderly. This youth had been educated in France and Italy, and possessed extraordinary gifts and many accomplishments. He had also written some poems of great promise, but was now cut off in the flower of his youth by an insidious malady that he had brought with him from Italy, a sickness thought by many to have been due to poison.

The poet never ceased to mourn this idolized brother, and almost half a century later he was heard to say: “I could cry when I think of my brother. He was much my superior.”

In the same year Vondel made a journey to Denmark in the interest of his business. Upon his return journey he was the guest of Sir Jacob van Dÿk, the minister from the Court of Sweden to The Hague.

At Van Dÿk’s country seat in Gottenburg he wrote a poem in honor of Gustavus Adolphus. This production is chiefly remarkable as foreshadowing several important political events. He prophesied that the great Swede would attack the Emperor of Rome, tread upon the neck of Austria, and bring the Eternal City itself into a panic of fright—all of which happened within four years. He was, however, silent as to the fate of the King, and said nothing about his tragic death in the hour of victory.

So we here, also, see Vondel in the capacity of the classic vates and of the Hebrew seer. Before his piercing ken even the time to come delivered up its hoarded secrets. The past, the present, and the future were the provinces of the grand empire reigned over by his kingly spirit.

The “Muider Kring.”

The old Chamber of the Eglantine had now fallen into a decline. Many of its choicest spirits had gone over to Coster’s Academy; the others, Vondel and his friends, as has already been related, were accustomed to meet for mutual help and criticism at the hospitable home of the Visschers.

After this charming home was broken up, the literary centre of the Amsterdam School was changed to the Castle of Muiden, a few miles from the metropolis.

At the Visschers’ the budding talent of the country had been carefully nurtured and placed in the warm sunlight of a mutual and invigorating sympathy; at Muiden, however, it was seen in its full flower.

It was here that the literary genius of the Netherlands reached its highest efflorescence; nor has it ever again reached the sublime standard of those golden days.

Soon after being appointed Judge of Muiden, Hooft had rebuilt the old castle; and now it stood, a romantic structure, crowned with turrets and towers. It was picturesquely situated on an island in the centre of a small lake. A feudal drawbridge connected it with the outside world, and it was embowered in lofty trees and surrounded by gardens and orchards.

There is no more charming picture in literature than that of the aristocratic host of Muiden, with his handsome, intelligent face and his elegant manners, in the midst of his guests, the genius and the flower of the Netherlands—a scene rendered still more interesting by the presence of talented and beautiful women.

Here, beneath the shade of the spreading lindens and the noble beeches, they would lighten the heavy summer hours by games and conversation, and by the discussion of affairs of state.

Or, perhaps, too, they would listen to the classic muse of the learned Barlæus, or to the dramatic recitations of Daniel Mostert; or, occasionally,—O! inestimable privilege!—they would be thrilled by the powerful verses of the sublime Vondel, destined to become the greatest poet of his country. Here, also, they were often enchanted by the tender songs of the beautiful Tesselschade, the Dutch Nightingale, richly warbling her own deep notes, while her nimble fingers swept the guitar; or, perhaps, singing to the accompaniment of the celebrated Zweling, the first great composer of the Netherlands. Or it may be that another sweet singer, Francesca Duarte, would sometimes add her mellow tones to those delightful strains, while the distinguished company applauded with eloquent silence.

Here, too, before her apostasy to the Dort School, came the gentle Anna Visscher to read her noble rimes; while often, also, Vossius, the first Latinist of his age, and Laurens Reael, the renowned statesman, soldier, and erotic poet, would lend the dignity of their presence. Here, furthermore, came the young Huyghens, the most versatile of a versatile race, and one of the most celebrated wits and poets of his day.

The “Muider Kring” (“the Muiden circle”), as this salon is known in the literary history of the Netherlands, is yet the proudest boast and the perennial glory of Holland; for this was the Elizabethan era of Dutch literature. Hooft, as the social centre of a literary constellation, exerted, perhaps, even more influence upon his age by his magnetic personality than by his remarkable writings.

Struggle and Achievement

It was amid such congenial surroundings that the genius of Vondel grew to maturity.

Soon after the satires of 1630, he translated Seneca’s “Hippolytus,” which he dedicated to Grotius. Grotius was still in exile, and the publisher of this translation, fearing the displeasure of the authorities, tore the dedication leaf out of every copy.

Vondel’s next effort was the “Farmer’s Catechism,” which was full of a rollicking humor that, at the same time, was not without its sting. Vossius, in his professional study at Leiden, laughed heartily upon reading it, and it occasioned much mirth among the Arminians, or Remonstrants, everywhere.

Some satirical poems of the same period were much keener, and unmercifully ridiculed the blunders of the government, the general extravagance, and the increase of avarice and ostentation among the citizens.

Shortly after this came his “Decretum Horribile,” a powerful polemic against the Calvinistic doctrine of election and predestination as interpreted by the Gomarists. This savage attack on their belief filled the Ultra-Calvinists with rage, and caused the name of the poet to be execrated as the personification of infamy.

Hear his fierce outburst against the great Calvin himself:

“That monster dread that from a poison-chalice
Pours out the drug of hell in unctuous malice;
And makes the gracious God a very fiend.”

No wonder that in the eyes of these stern followers of Calvin he was himself a very devil, nor is it extravagant to say that he was hardly less feared by them than his Satanic majesty himself.

From every pulpit the Contra-Remonstrants hurled anathemas at the offending poet.

Not one of their gatherings from which his name did not rise to the throne of divine grace in clouds of execration. Not a preacher of the sect that did not call down the wrath of Jehovah upon the head of the blasphemer who had dared to mock the arrogant tenets of his exclusive faith.

Vondel, however, did not pause in his path one instant, answering their maledictions with stinging satire, and their abuse with overwhelming invective.

Yet it must not be thought that our poet was forever forging thunderbolts of satire at the blaze of his wrath. He also found time for the amenities of life; and thus we often find him in the companionship of those distinguished friends who contributed so much to his pleasure and his growth.

About this period the moribund Chamber of the Eglantine was merged into Coster’s Academy, which now became the theatre of the city.

Shortly afterwards Vondel wrote his verses of welcome to Hugo Grotius upon his return from exile—verses full of severe condemnation of the party that had banished him. Then followed a song of triumph for the naval victories over the Spaniards, and several satires against the clergy, who were again fomenting restrictive measures against the freedom of conscience. All of these productions glowed with the fierce jealousy for personal liberty which had become the poet’s ruling passion; for his verse ever gave utterance to his dominant emotion. In his own words: “I needs must sing the song that fills my heart.”

His “Funeral Sacrifice of Magdeburg” alone was free from this contentious spirit. This was a heroic poem in praise of Gustavus Adolphus, the bulwark of Protestantism, and his splendid victory over Tilly and Pappenheim at Leipsic—that terrible vengeance for the fearful sacking of Magdeburg!

In the beginning of 1632 the illustrious Atheneum of Amsterdam was opened with imposing ceremonies, to which occasion Vondel contributed an excellent poem.

Not long afterwards, Grotius, on account of his too open opposition to his old enemies, was again banished from his fatherland. A price of two thousand guldens was set on his head, which gave Vondel cause for another trenchant pasquinade. He did not, however, dare to publish this, for fear of calling upon himself the same violence that his friend had escaped. Grotius himself wrote Vondel a letter of thanks for his interest in his behalf, adding that it could do no possible good to publish the poem, and that it would therefore be unwise for him to put himself into danger.

An elegy on the death of Count Ernest Casimir and an ode on the triumph of Maastricht saw the light, however, and were much admired by all parties of his countrymen.

Vondel now began his great epic, “Constantine.” This poem had for its subject the journey of Constantine to Rome, and was intended to be complete in twelve books, after the model of Virgil’s “Æneid.” The poet had for several years been preparing himself for this immense undertaking by a thorough study, not only of the great epics of antiquity, but also of those of Tasso and Ariosto.

Besides reading the various Church Fathers and the historians who had written on this period, he also entered into a correspondence concerning the subject with Grotius, who was much pleased to hear of his plan and who also gave him considerable information.

While Vondel was busy with his epic, his wife bore him a son, whom, in honor of his hero, he named Constantine. The child died, however, and not long afterwards the mother also. This terrible affliction cast a gloom over the life of the poet from which he never entirely emerged. Full of pathos is his letter to Grotius stating his loneliness, and adding that all his interest in his epic had departed: “Since the death of my sainted wife, I have lost heart; so that I shall have to give up my great ‘Constantine’ for the present.”

The poet was never able to resume this stupendous work. It was too suggestive of memories of a happiness forever lost. After keeping the manuscript by him for several years, with the vain hope that his interest might be reanimated, he at last destroyed it. It was thus that Dutch literature lost its greatest epic, a poem which would doubtless have added to the renown of the author, and reflected lustre upon his country.

In 1635, Grotius, who was now the Swedish Ambassador to France, published his Latin tragedy, “Sophompaneas,” of which Joseph was the hero. Vondel, who was still in his shop in the Warmoesstraat, having laid the “Constantine” aside, and wishing to employ his leisure time, made a Dutch rendering of this play, of which the author wrote Vossius as follows:

“I understand that Vondel hath done me the honor to put my ‘Sophompaneas’ with his own hand, that is to say, in his artistic manner, into our Holland tongue. I am under great obligations to him, because he, who is capable of so much better things than I, hath now, in his translation of my play, given his labor as a proof of his friendship.”

Vondel, in translating, often sought the advice of his friends, saying, “Each judgment views the matter in a different light; and the judgment of one is poor beside the opinions of many.” He also said that he found the work of translating serviceable to gain a knowledge of the technique, diction, thought, and peculiarity of an author. Moreover, he discovered that it not only kindled his imagination, but that it also suggested new thought, and was conducive to his own improvement in language and in form. For this reason he translated so many of the classics, of which more will be said at the proper time.

The Academy having become too small for the public that now thronged to the theatre, Dr. Coster sold the building to the regents of the City’s Orphan Asylum and of the Old Men’s Home. The managers of these charitable institutions, then, as an investment, built a new theatre in its place. Here, twice a week, plays were presented, with great profit to the management.

The new theatre was completed in 1637, and the first drama played on its stage was Vondel’s fine tragedy, “Gysbrecht van Amstel.” This play had as its subject the defeat of the old hero, Sir Gysbrecht, and his banishment from his native city, Amsterdam, soon after the death of Floris V.

This historical event was supposed to have occurred about Christmastide, and the drama was accordingly presented on New Year’s Eve. The “Gysbrecht” is the most popular of all of Vondel’s plays, and it is interesting to note that, from the night of its first presentation, two hundred and fifty years ago, until the present time, it has been presented every New Year’s Eve on the stage of the theatre of Amsterdam.

Some of the situations in this drama are based upon various episodes in Virgil’s “Æneid.” One of the characters, also, is made to prophesy the future glory of the city; which, moreover, may easily be interpreted as prophetic of the grandeur of the greater “New Amsterdam” beyond the sea, a circumstance that should give it additional interest to Americans. The “Gysbrecht” was dedicated to Grotius, who acknowledged the honor as follows:

“Sir: I hold myself much beholden to you for your courtesy and your great kindness to me; for you, almost alone—at least there are but few besides you—in the Netherlands, seek to relieve my gloom and to reward my unrewarded services. I have always held your talents and your works in the highest esteem.”

He then goes on to speak of the charming proportions of the play, and of the “verses, pithy, tender, heart-melting, and flowing.” Then he continues: “The ‘Œdipus Coloneus’ of Sophocles and the ‘Supplicants’ of Euripides have not honored Athens more than thou hast Amsterdam.”

To Vossius, at Leiden, Grotius also wrote in a no less complimentary strain concerning this production.

We had the privilege of seeing this drama on the stage in Amsterdam one New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago, and we confess that it was not until we heard the magnificent recitative of the superb Bouwmeester, the great tragedian of Holland, in this beautiful play, that we fully appreciated the grandeur and the sublimity of Vondel, and the power and the sweetness of the Dutch language.

Part of the Roman ceremonial, with its splendid ritual, is introduced into one of the scenes of the “Gysbrecht;” and this has been taken as foreshadowing Vondel’s conversion to Catholicism. Naturally this gave offence to many of the bigots among the Calvinists, who saw in it only the glorification of popery.

Vondel then wrote a tragedy, “Messalina,” which, however, he destroyed because some of the actors, while rehearsing their parts, through some adventitious remark of the poet, had inferred that the play possessed a certain political significance, and that it was an allegory picturing forth some of the notables of the day, after the manner of the “Palamedes.”

The poet fearing that it might breed mischief, and seeing that it was impossible to rectify the matter, since it had already become a subject of conversation among the actors, begged the parts of the three leading rôles, pretending that he wished to make some important corrections. Having obtained possession of these parts, he took good care to burn them, thus preventing the presentation of the play, and putting a stop to the silly chatter of the players.

Rome!

His next undertaking was the translation of the “Electra” of Sophocles, being aided in the work by Isaac Vossius, a son of the celebrated Leyden professor, who was himself also a profound scholar. As was usual with this poet, the translation of this tragedy was followed by one of his own, the drama of “The Virgins; or, Saint Ursula.” This he dedicated to the city of his birth, Cologne; where, the legend says, a British princess, with eleven thousand other maidens, at the command of Attila, the ferocious Hun, suffered a martyr’s death. This tragedy also received the praises of Grotius; and it may safely be said that no man of his time, with the possible exception of John Milton, was so capable of judging according to the rigid rules of the antique as Grotius. For besides being the most learned man of his age, an accomplished Grecian, and an unsurpassed Latinist, he was himself a poet of no mean order.

“The Virgins,” notwithstanding its beauty and tenderness, was the cause of much sorrow to the friends of Vondel, in that it unmistakably showed the poet’s inclination towards Romanism.

True, as has been narrated, this had for some years been suspected from the tone of several other productions that preceded it; but then it was only a suspicion, now there was no longer a doubt.

Vondel was plainly on the high road to Rome, and it was whispered that he, having become tired of his loneliness, had been attracted by a certain Catholic widow, whose seductive charms were largely responsible for his wavering faith.

The widow here referred to is supposed to have been the fair Tesselschade, the friend of his youth, who, after ten years of wedded bliss, had at one stroke been deprived of both her eldest child and her husband, and was now living with her one remaining child, a daughter, in resigned widowhood at Alkmaar. We are now again to see this remarkable woman as the inspirer of the muse of Holland.

Barlæus in his “Tessalica” wooed her in elegant Latin; and Vondel dedicated to her his translation of the “Electra” of Sophocles, and also his next Biblical tragedy, “Peter and Paul,” which was even more decided in its Romanism than its predecessor.

Tesselschade, however, preferred her black widow’s weeds to the white raiment of a bride, and continued in her retirement, alone with the memory of her happy past. Her spirit shone only the brighter in its progress through the valley of tribulation to the heights of resignation. She had been chastened by affliction and saddened by sorrow, yet she did not lose heart, but still enjoyed the society of her friends. She still took an admirable part in the drama of life.

In 1639, the French Queen Dowager, Maria de’ Medici, paid a short visit to Amsterdam. Tesselschade not only sang a song before her, but also presented her with an Italian poem of her own composition. She had finished her version of the “Gerusalemme,” and was now busy translating the “Adonis” of Marini.

The young poets Vos and Brandt, the poetess Alida Bruno, and others of the rising literati, sought her friendship. Tesselschade was still the Queen when the Muses went a-maying, and her sovereignty remained undisputed until the day of her death.

In 1640 appeared Vondel’s Biblical tragedy, the “Brothers,” which was thought by the critics to surpass all that had preceded it. It was dedicated to Vossius, whose comment upon reading it was, Scribis æternitati. Grotius wrote the poet a letter, and was also loud in his praises, comparing it with the most famous tragedies of antiquity, adding significantly, “and do not forget your great epic, ‘Constantine.’” By others this drama was thought to combine the tenderness of Euripides with the sublimity of Sophocles.

In the same year, also, followed two more Biblical tragedies, “Joseph in Dothan” and “Joseph in Egypt,” which also occasioned much remark, and were not inferior to the best plays that had gone before.

Vondel was now universally acknowledged to be the greatest poet of the time. The ascent of Parnassus, however, is not as easy as the decensus Averni. By years of study, constant watchfulness, and perpetual striving for self-improvement, and a prayerful devotion to his art—thus alone did he attain the summit of such achievement.

In him was seen purity of diction, clearness and terseness of expression, power of logic, richness and agreeableness of invention, and a style that was at once mellifluous and sublime.

The tragedy, “Peter and Paul,” to whose open Romanism reference has already been made, was his next effort, and was soon followed by the “Epistles of the Holy Virgin Martyrs,” which were twelve in number, and were dedicated to the Holy Virgin Mary, whom he called “the Queen of Heaven,” and named as Mediator with her divine Son. This was a sufficient acknowledgment of his conversion to the Catholic faith to alienate many of his warmest friends. This, however, though it must have brought much grief to his sensitive heart, did not cause him to regret having made a step that he had so long been meditating.

Before beginning these “Epistles,” Vondel had translated many of the epistles of Ovid that he might absorb the grace and the spirit of Ovid’s epistolary style. His own effort was deemed not less graceful and spirited. Their literary merit, however, did not, in the estimation of his Protestant friends, compensate for their justification of popery.

Even Hooft, Vondel’s life-long friend and brother in art, grew cold; and we find the following reference to this in one of the poet’s letters to the Judge of Muiden. Vondel writes: “I wish Cornelius Tacitus a happy and a blessed New Year; and although he forbids me a harmless Ave Maria at his heretical table, yet I shall nevertheless occasionally read another Ave Maria for him that he may die as devout a Catholic as he now shows himself an ardent partisan.” Their friendship was yet further broken by other circumstances which had their origin in the first cause of separation.

In 1645, Vondel wrote a lyric poem on a miracle which the Catholics taught had occurred at Amsterdam about the middle of the fourteenth century. This was too much for his Protestant friends, and he became the subject of innumerable lame lampoons and petty pasquinades, in which his espousal of the Catholic legend was coarsely ridiculed.

Hooft, in a letter to Professor Barlæus, also expressed his opinion in the following words: “Vondel seems to grow tired of nothing sooner than of rest. It seems he must have saved up three hundred guldens more, which are causing him a good deal of embarrassment. And I do not know but that it might cost him even much dearer than this; for some hot-head might be tempted prematurely to lay violent hands upon him, thinking that not even a cock would crow his regret.”

These productions, however, were only the prelude to a greater work that was to follow—his “Mysteries of the Altar,” which was published in the autumn of 1645.

This poem was a glorification of the Mass, and was divided into three books. Vondel, in writing this able work, was assisted by the counsel of the most learned and the most profound men in the Catholic Church. The doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and other celebrated schoolmen, and the teachings of the best modern authorities were here poetically combined, and the poet was hailed on every side as the ablest defender of the tenets of the Church of Rome.

This poem provoked a celebrated reply by Jacob Westerbaen, one of the most noted of the School of Dort, who, while praising the art of the new champion of Catholicism, at the same time attacked his doctrinal position with such piercing analysis and with so great display of theological dogma, that, in the opinion of the Protestants, Vondel was ingloriously vanquished. The Catholics, of course, thought differently.

Jacob, Archbishop of Mechlin, to whom Vondel’s poem was dedicated, sent the author a painting with which Vondel was at first greatly pleased. Learning, however, that it was only a bad copy, he gave it away to his sister, no longer wishing to have such a poor reward for so great an undertaking before his eyes.

A prose translation of the works of Virgil was the next thing that this indefatigable worker essayed. This version received the commendation of most of his contemporaries. Barlæus, indeed, found fault with it, saying that it was without life and marrow; adding, cynically, that Augustus would surely not have withheld this Maro from the flames. But, then, Barlæus was such a thorough Latinist that his own language seemed foreign to him. He would have had the translator preserve the peculiarities of the Latin at the expense of his native tongue. And, then, was he not also Vondel’s rival for the hand of Tesselschade? Praise from him surely was not to be expected. The universal opinion was that it was a difficult work excellently done. This translation was also the forerunner of a drama. “Maria Stuart” was the name of the tragedy which the bard now offered for the perusal of his countrymen.

The poet represented the unhappy Queen of Scots as perfect and without stain, while her victorious rival Elizabeth was painted in infernal black.

This subject naturally gave the proselyte occasion to display his burning zeal for Rome; and upon the publication of the play a great outcry was raised against both drama and author. Some of Vondel’s enemies, indeed, were so incensed, and raised such a commotion, that the poet was brought before the city tribunal, and fined one hundred and eighty guldens; “which,” says Brandt, Vondel’s biographer, “seemed indeed strange to many, seeing what freedom in writing was allowed at this time, and because, also, even to the poets of antiquity more was permitted than to most others.” Abraham de Wees, Vondel’s publisher, however, paid the fine, being unwilling that the poet should suffer by that which brought him profit.

Hugo Grotius was now dead, but shortly before his decease he had written several pamphlets whose object it was to effect some reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant. Vondel now translated those portions of these favorable to the papacy, combining them in a polemic called “Grotius’ Testament.” Whereupon many said that he had now gone too far in his zeal for his adopted church; for it was claimed that upon the statements of Grotius he often put a construction not favored by the context. It was even insinuated by some that he had not acted in good faith.

Brandt himself made this intimation in a preface written by him to an edition of Vondel’s collected works which was published in the year 1647. Brandt was then yet a mere youth, and was rankling with the memory of a severe and unjust reprimand that the older poet some time before had given him. He therefore acknowledges in his naïve biography that he eagerly welcomed this opportunity to be revenged upon the distinguished offender, and accordingly made this dose of his gall as bitter as possible. The poet felt the insinuation keenly, and for a long time suspected Peter de Groot, the son of the great lawyer, as the perpetrator of the offending paragraph. Many years afterwards, however, the smart of the wound having departed, the real culprit confessed his sin to the then aged poet, and obtained the asked for absolution.

It was in 1641 that Vondel openly embraced the Catholic faith, though his tendency in that direction had been apparent in his poems many years before. We have already referred to the report that his love for a beautiful and wealthy widow, Tesselschade, had been the main instrument in drawing him from his Protestant moorings, and this was doubtless to some extent true. And yet it is almost certain that Vondel would have embraced the cause of Rome even without the alluring wiles of this fair enchantress.

Many of his relatives, including his brother William, belonged to that faith. Many of his dearest friends also were of that denomination. His daughter Anna, furthermore, had not only entered that church, but had also taken the veil. Moreover, he had long been drifting away from the creed of his early childhood, the Anabaptism of his parents. The severe pietism of that belief had never strongly appealed to him. True, he had espoused the cause of the Arminians, as against their enemies the Gomarists; but it was only because they were the under side, and because their cause was also the cause of civil liberty, that he had entered the lists with them.

The perpetual discord, the disunion, the bickerings, the bitterness, and the persecutions among the different Protestant sects of the period were exceedingly repulsive to him. He did not forget that under the banner of Protestantism his country had triumphed over the common foe. He did not forget that Calvin had been the herald of science and the apostle of liberty. He did not fail to remember the glories of the past. But the contemplation of that proud past only increased his abhorrence of the petty present.

Calvinism had indeed done much for Holland; but the inevitable reaction had come, and its excesses could not be justified. Calvinism had come to mean dogma; and dogma had no attraction for his poetic mind. Calvinism had become the foe of freedom; and freedom was the very breath of this flaming patriot. Calvinism had shown itself an enemy of the arts, of poetry, and of the drama; and these were as the very soul of Vondel.

How could he know that this was only a fleeting gloom, from which the sun of Calvinism would again emerge, radiant with all of its original glory? He was weary—weary of the discord, and longed for peace.

Is it to be wondered at that the poet gradually drifted, even as Cardinal Newman, into a haven that promised such longed-for rest? Is it surprising that he who had so long been chilled by the cold formalism and the frigid austerity of the dogma of the North should now find it agreeable to thaw out his soul in the glow of the religion of the South? Then, too, the beauty of the Catholic ritual, the pomp, the grand processional, the holy days, the glorious music, the noble symmetry of the Roman architecture, the awe-inspiring antiquity of the Church, the magnificence of its domain, the splendor of its organization, allured the imagination of the poet with irresistible power; and his reason followed, a not unwilling captive.

Nor was it the hasty choice of a regretted impulse. Everything tends to show—we have traced the gradual growth in his poems—that it was a long-contemplated step from which, once taken, nothing should ever be able to remove him. It is, therefore, in Vondel that we find one of the most able and ardent champions the Church of Rome has ever had. No saint ever more truly deserved canonization than this high priest of Apollo, flaming with zeal for his adopted faith.

Vondel was a crusader born five hundred years too late—a crusader, too, a lion-hearted defender of the Cross, most of whose battles were fought beneath the brow of Mount Zion and within the very gates of Jerusalem.

Few crusaders, indeed, had fought so long and so well; few had won so many victories, had slain so many enemies, as this indomitable hero of Amsterdam.

Though bitterly opposed to the Contra-Remonstrants, he, however, helped them in decrying the growing spirit of ostentation and the vices of the day. And although he openly sided with the Remonstrants, he never joined them. But as a flower turns its head to the sun, so he, too, gradually turned towards the old belief.

At this period, when Protestants were in turn persecuting heretics and, reveling in their sudden freedom, were indulging in all sorts of fanatical excesses, Catholicism, purified, began to live again. Furthermore, to the poetic temperament of the poet and his stern sense of justice, the bigotry of the Gomarists seemed no less odious than the more open persecutions of the Catholics of the preceding age.

It was thus that Vondel, long tossed upon a sea of doubt, sought anchorage in a harbor where winds were calm. It was thus that this great man was led to take a step which called down upon him for many years hate, aversion, and ridicule.

But in spite of all this he remained true to his new faith, and became a fervid Catholic; one ever consistent and true to his adopted church. Here he could remain undisturbed in his reverence for antiquity, in his worship of beauty, and in his love for poetry and art. Here there was ever a labyrinth of mystery for his aspiring soul to explore. Here the plan of salvation was not reduced to the bare expression of a logical formula.

Upward and Onward

But we must again make brief reference to the friends of our poet, who one by one preceded him to the grave. First Reael died. Then Hooft and Barlæus soon followed, and were both buried in the New Church at Amsterdam. Above the tomb of each Vondel wrote a short epitaph. But the keenest loss was yet to come. In 1649 Holland lost the brightest jewel in the crown of her womanhood, and Vondel, his dearest friend. Tesselschade, after many sorrows, entered peacefully into rest.

A few years before she had had the misfortune to lose her left eye from a spark that flew out of a smithy as she passed. She bore this sad accident with cheerfulness; but a greater calamity yet awaited her. The pride of her heart, her one remaining child, her beautiful daughter Tesselschade, was suddenly cut off in the bloom of maidenhood. The disconsolate mother struggled in vain against this terrible sorrow. A year later she followed her loved ones to the tomb. She, also, was laid away in the New Church, by the side of the dead Titans of her generation who had so often made her the theme of their inspired song; where, too, Vondel himself, the greatest of them all, was eventually to lie.

For Vondel’s beautiful threnody we have unfortunately no space, but shall content ourselves with quoting the first strophe of Huyghens’ touching elegy:

“Here Tesselschade lies.
Let no one rashly dare
To give the measure of her worth beyond compare;
Her glory, like the sun’s, the poet’s pen defies.”

Shortly after the death of his dear friend, Vondel gave up his hosiery shop in the Warmoesstraat to his son, while he himself went to live with his daughter Anna on the Cingel, on the outskirts of the city. The poet was now sixty-two years of age, and he doubtless thought to end his days in peace and studious retirement. But the battle of life for him had only just begun. He was never to know the meaning of rest.

About this time Vondel again had occasion for his tremendous invective. We refer to his remarkable series of satires against the anti-royalists of Great Britain.

His odes on “The Regicides of England,” “Charles Stuart’s Murdered Majesty,” “Protector Werewolf” (Cromwell), “The Flag of Scotland,” and many other poems on the same subject, breathe the very spirit of war, and glow with the same intense indignation and righteous wrath that characterize the productions of John Milton on the other side. These fierce polemics, winged with rime, were very popular in Holland, where the cause of the royalists was favored.

But it was the Catholic, no less than the royalist, who spoke in these seething satires. That Vondel the republican should assume such a fierce attitude against the would-be republicans of England can only be explained by his fear that in England, even as in Holland, canting bigotry would now usurp the altars of religion, and there, with unholy zeal, sacrifice the soul of art and the spirit of liberty.

Or was it an intuitive dread of a republican and Puritan England that made the Hollander seize these firebrands from his kindling wrath? It may be, for the Commonwealth was not at all friendly towards her sister republic, and ere long the Protector dealt the naval supremacy of the Dutch a blow from which they never recovered.

In 1648 Vondel celebrated the Treaty of Munster by his “Leeuwendalers,” a pastoral drama in the style of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido;” and more charming pastoral surely never was written, with not one note of strife, not one strident trumpet blast, to jar upon its harmony.

The “Leeuwendalers” is a fitting monument to the heroism of the patriots whose magnificent struggle of eighty-four years against the overwhelming tyranny of Spain had at last been rewarded by this glorious peace.

Not long afterwards, he wrote his excellent epitaph on that brave old sea-dog, Martin Tromp. Save among the clergy, Vondel’s Romanism seemed now no longer to cause much comment.

The tragedy of “Solomon,” Vondel’s following drama, was remarkable for its opulence. At this time, also, his fiery denunciation of the Stadtholder William II. and his party for their attack upon, and their unsuccessful attempt against, the ancient privileges of Amsterdam did much to reestablish him in the good graces of his fellow citizens.

The Summit

On October 20, 1653, one hundred leading painters, poets, architects, and sculptors of the city of Amsterdam, known as the Guild of St. Luke, assembled in the hall of the Order for their anniversary celebration. This was the historic Feast of St. Luke, and Vondel was the honored guest of the occasion.

The poet was placed at one end of the table, on a high chair, which was to represent a throne. Here he was crowned with laurel as the “Symposiarch,” or “King of the Feast,” it is said, by the great painter Bartholomew van der Helst. Thus Apollo and Apelles were happily united in the bond of a common sympathy, and all petty dissensions were forgotten in the triumph of art. Poems were read, toasts were made; the ceremonies, as is usual at all the feasts of the Hollanders, closing with their national anthem—“the grand Wilhelmus”—the most affecting and sublime of all national odes, calling up, as it does, memories of a hundred years of martyrdom and of the heroic founder of the Republic.

It was the proudest moment of the poet’s life; and we can imagine the depth of his emotion as the glorious laurel graced his battle-furrowed brow. Perhaps, too, the romantic face of Rembrandt was near by, drinking in with his thirsty eyes the picturesque beauty of the scene, unconscious of the crown which fickle destiny had reserved for him. Or it may be that the thoughtful youth Spinoza, silent and abstemious, found there some theme for his revolutionary philosophy.

Yet Vondel was king of them all; crowned with a kingship won by prodigies of valor on the battle-field of life. Every leaf in that laurel wreath was purchased by a thorn. But who thinks of the sharpness of the thorn when caressed by the velvet of the leaf?

So Vondel, in that moment of triumph, forgot his sorrows in his cup of joy, as he drained the sweet present to the dregs.

In return for the honor it had done him, Vondel dedicated his prose translation of the Odes of Horace to the hospitable Guild. He was now sixty-six years old, and was yet in the possession of every bodily and mental power. He was now to give forth his masterpiece—a work for which his whole life had been a constant preparation. We come to the “Lucifer.”

This tragedy appeared in 1654 and was the monumental creation of this combatant poet, the crystallization of the Titanic passions of the age. It has, therefore, a significance that can never fade.

On account of the character of the play, which naturally treats of holy subject matter, the clergy at once gave it the benefit of their most strenuous opposition, saying that it was full of “unholy, unchaste, idolatrous, false, and utterly depraved things.”

Through their meddlesome interference, the “Lucifer,” after it had twice been presented on the stage, was interdicted.

As a matter of course this caused it to be the subject of much comment, and the first edition of one thousand was sold in a week. Petrus Wittewrongel, a native of Zealand, was the most conspicuous among the opponents of this play. His opposition, however, extended to the drama in general, making it the theme of every sermon. According to this Dutch Puritan, the theatre was “a school of idleness, a mount of idolatry, a relic of paganism, leading to sin, godlessness, impurity, and frivolity; a mere waste of time.” This bitter attack on his beloved art gave the occasion for Vondel’s famous vindication of the drama in his proem to the “Lucifer.”

He also wrote two biting satirical poems, “The Passing of Orpheus,” and the “Rivalry of Apollo and Pan,” both of which were full of humorous raillery and of sarcastic allusions to the round-heads in general and to Wittewrongel in particular.

The force of the “Lucifer” as a picture of the age, of the nation, and of the world, was instantly felt. It was a classic from the day of its birth; and from that time to this it has easily maintained its position as the grandest poem of the language.

The costly and artistic scenic heavens especially prepared for the “Lucifer” were, now that the play was forbidden, stored away as useless—a great loss to the managers of the theatre. Vondel accordingly wrote his excellent tragedy “Salmoneus,” founded upon the classic story of the Jove-defying King of Elis, in which this scene, as an imitated heaven, could also be used.

His “Psalms of David,” in various metres, was his next venture. These he dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, who, like the poet himself, was a proselyte to the Catholic faith, lie also honored her with a panegyric, in return for which the queen sent him a golden locket and chain.

In 1657 we find the poet making another journey to Denmark, where he went to fulfil the unpleasant duty of paying his son’s debts. In Denmark he was the recipient of considerable attention, and while there his portrait was painted by the celebrated Dutch artist Karl van Mander, who was painter to the Danish court.

The Shadows

Soon after his return to Amsterdam, the great poet who had celebrated so many distinguished personages, and who had become the pride of his nation, was, by the bankruptcy of his profligate son, brought to the very verge of poverty.

Besides the little Constantine, whose early death we have elsewhere recorded, the poet had three children: one son, Justus, and two daughters, Sarah and Anna. Sarah died in childhood, and Anna, who was said to resemble her father both in intellect and in appearance, lived with him, and was ever a loving and devoted daughter. The son, “Joost,” was both stupid and dissolute. His ignorance was so great that, when some one spoke of his father’s tragedy, “Joseph in Egypt,” he inquired if Joseph was not also a Catholic. During the life of his first wife, a woman of some force, this unworthy son of a distinguished sire kept within due bounds. Shortly after her death, however, he was united to a shallow spendthrift with whom he wasted his substance in riotous living, while the shop, of course, was neglected; and the business, in consequence, soon ruined.

At this the old man was so grieved that, with his daughter, who was yet with him, he moved away to another part of the city.

Here he was many times heard to say, “Had I not the comfort and the quickening of the Psalms”—of which at that time he was making his version—“I should die in my misery.” He often also said to his friends, “Name no child by your own name; for if he should not turn out well it is forever branded.”

In the meantime the son went from bad to worse. He squandered not only all of his own property, but also much that had been intrusted into his hands by others.

He stood on the point of bankruptcy, with the penalty of imprisonment staring him in the face, when his father, with a keen sense of honor and of family pride, satisfied all creditors by the sacrifice of his own snug little fortune of forty thousand guldens, the savings of half a century.

Friends of the family advised the erring son to go to the Dutch Colonies in the East Indies, there to begin life anew. But he obstinately refused even to listen to such a proposition, and continued his wild career unchecked. The unhappy father was finally compelled to ask the Burgomaster of the city to use the gentle compulsion of the law, which was done.

There are few sadder pictures in the history of letters than that of the old gray-haired poet, bowed down with this greatest of all griefs, the heart-crushing realization of being the parent of ungrateful and criminal offspring, standing on the quay, and bidding, with bitter agony, his unfeeling child a last farewell. We imagine the tear-bedimmed eyes of the heart-broken father straining for one more glimpse of the unworthy but yet beloved son, who, in the far horizon, was perhaps even then carelessly walking the deck of the departing ship, meditating some new and disgraceful profligacy upon his arrival in India. Fortunately he died on the journey, and the poet was doubtless spared much suffering. Too bitterly had Vondel learned, even as Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

Of Vondel’s fortune nothing remained save the portion that his daughter Anna had inherited from her mother, which was, however, by no means sufficient to support them both. What was to be done? All that the old man could do was to write verses—an art which as an income-producer was well characterized by Ovid’s father: “Sæpe pater dixit: Studium quid inutile tentas? Mæonides millas ipse reliquit opes.”

Although the poet, in his pride, did not let his want become known, some of his friends who knew the state of affairs secured him a position as clerk in the Bank of Loan at a salary of six hundred and fifty guldens a year. Thus the greatest Dutchman of the age and the most illustrious poet of his country was compelled, after a life of comparative leisure and comfort, at the age of seventy, to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, forced to engage in a labor which to him must have been peculiarly irksome.

The pen, which had been accustomed to the soaring style of tragedy was now chained to the dreary monotony of the ledger; the quill that had so often stung a nation to the quick was now tamely employed in the prosaic balance of debit and credit.

It is said that the poet, however, found it impossible to restrain his muse entirely, and that he sometimes mounted his Pegasus even in the dull interior of the counting-room; for he employed his leisure moments—let us hope there were many—in writing verses.

It has been said, too, that he was reprimanded for this by his employers; but of this there is no proof whatever.

Indeed, Brandt goes out of his way to say that this was overlooked on account of his age, and because he was a poet, and could therefore not be expected to pay such strict attention to business.

It would be easy enough to indulge in a little sympathetic bathos here. The poet’s fate was indeed a hard one. Yet his salary, small enough, it is true, when we consider the man and his career, was not the beggarly pittance that the same amount would be now. Six hundred and fifty guldens in the Holland of that day would be equivalent to at least three thousand guldens in the nineteenth-century Amsterdam, or a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars in New York.

Furthermore, this was the only hard mercantile work that the poet ever did. The ten years of drudgery in his old age compensated for a life-time of leisure and literary retirement; for after his marriage at twenty-six, the poet hosier wisely left his business affairs in the hands of his energetic and trustworthy wife. Soon after her death the business devolved on “Joost” the younger, with the disastrous results already narrated.

At the age of eighty the old bard was given an honorable discharge, with full pay, the circumstances of which were not without pathos. When told that he was discharged, and that another had been found to take his place, the poet was dumbfounded and became very sad. But when he learned that his discharge was an honorable one, with a pension, the heaviness left him, and he seemed greatly pleased.

Never, however, was Vondel so near the brow of Parnassus as during these ten bitter years. For this is the period of his greatest literary activity. It was then that his genius ripened into its full maturity.

Among other works produced during this decade were his “Jephtha,” a tragedy, with which he himself was much pleased, as fulfilling every requirement of the classic drama; his metrical translations of the “Œdipus Rex,” “Iphigenia in Tauris,” and the “Trachiniæ;” of Sophocles; the tragedies, “David in Exile” and “David Restored,” allegories in which the exile and the restoration of Charles II. were clearly set forth; “Adonis,” “Batavian Brothers,” “Faeton,” and “Zungchin, or, the Fall of the Chinese Empire.” Of special interest also, and of unusual literary merit, is his tragedy, “Samson,” which, even as Milton’s “Samson Agonistes,” was perhaps more largely biographical than any other of his poems. The points of similarity between this drama and Milton’s tragedy also are many and remarkable.

But the two most important tragedies of this period were his “Adam in Exile” and the “Noah,” which together with the “Lucifer” form a grand trilogy. The “Adam,” especially, only less sublime than the latter, has more of idyllic beauty, and as a whole is scarcely inferior in power. Here, too, the choruses blend with the action, and are unsurpassed for melody, sweetness, and tenderness, proclaiming their author as the foremost lyrist of his nation.

The Valley

Vondel was the author of no less than thirty-three tragedies. Only eighteen of these, however, were presented on the stage. Some were deemed objectionable on account of their Biblical subject matter; others because of their leaning towards Catholicism.

The dramatist also suffered from the jealousy of his rivals. One of these, Jan Vos, was one of the managers of the theatre, and attempted to make Vondel’s plays unpopular by assigning the most important rôles to inferior players, and also by using old and worn-out costumes. No wonder, then, that the sweeping tragedies of this master spirit began to lose favor with the masses, and that the translations of the French and Spanish plays that now flooded the country, with their extravagant scenery and their flashy innovations, usurped their place.

A few years before his death, Vondel paid a visit to the town of his birth, Cologne, and there saw the very house where he was born. With a poet’s whim he climbed into the old wall bedstead in which he was brought into the world, which, of course, also furnished inspiration for a poem.

Brief mention must also be made of Vondel’s last religious poems. His sublime “Reflections on God and Religion,” which was written in opposition to the Epicurean and Lucretian philosophy of Descartes; his “John, the Messenger of Repentance,” which glows with all the fervor and the grandeur of the Apocalypse; his “Glory of the Church,” a work as learned as it was elevated, which shows the rise and progress of the Mother Church, would alone be sufficient to entitle Vondel to be considered as one of the great religious poets of the world, and perhaps the most powerful champion of Catholicism that ever entered the lists of controversy.

At the age of eighty-four, Vondel translated Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and also wrote a great number of poems of all kinds—epigrams, lyrics, letters, lampoons, dedications, eulogies, threnodies, hymns, epithalamiums, riddles, and epitaphs—in all of which his pen, sharpened by the practice of nearly three-fourths of a century, excelled.

To the last the aged poet preserved his intense satiric vein. The fire of his spirit burned as fiercely now as in the days of his youth. One of the last poems written by those aged fingers was his noble elegy on the distinguished brothers De Witt, who, in 1672, were assassinated in The Hague by a frenzied mob.

His last production was an epithalamium on the marriage of his favorite niece, Agnes Blok. He was then eighty-seven years old. His physician having cautioned him to rest his brain, he now bade the Muses, whom he had known so long, and whom he had found so sweet a comfort in his hours of sorrow, an eternal farewell.

His health, however, remained good until a few days before his death. His legs first showed signs of weakness, and refused longer to support him. His memory also failed him, and he would often stop still in the midst of a sentence. When he was made aware of this, he was somewhat distressed, for his judgment remained unimpaired to the last, saying, “I am no longer capable of carrying on a conversation with my friends.”

Brandt, to whom we are indebted for most of these interesting particulars concerning Vondel, and other friends cheered his last days with their visits. The poet, who now spent most of his waking hours by the cheerful blaze of his hearth, seemed to appreciate this very highly, and whenever they were about to leave, would tell them good-by with a hearty pressure of the hand. Here, too, came Antonides, that brilliant young poet, so untimely cut off, and the painter, Philip de Koning, both of whom the old bard admired greatly.

When in his ninetieth year he had himself taken to the houses of the two Burgomasters of the city, whom with broken words he begged to provide for his grandson Justus, who bore his name, and whose prospects, on account of his father’s profligacy and his grandfather’s poverty, were anything but promising. The city fathers comforted the poor old man with good words, and he returned to his corner by the hearth, never again to leave it alive.

“Old age,” says Brandt, “was now his illness; the oil was lacking; the fire must go out.” His limbs became cold and refused to be warmed. Referring to this a few days before his death, he remarked to Brandt, with a humorous twinkle in his large brown eyes: “You might give me this epitaph:

“Here in peace lies Vondel old;
He died because he was so cold.”

This was the old poet’s last rhyme, surely an humble one for him whose lofty imagery and sublime conceptions are the wonder of his countrymen. He also said to his niece, Agnes Blok, “I do not long for death.” She asked, “Do you not long for eternal life?” He replied: “Aye, I do long for that; but, like Elijah, I would fain fly thither.” Though now he also began to say: “Pray for me that God will take me out of this life.” And when those standing around his bedside asked: “Are you ready now for the terrible messenger to come?” he replied, “Aye, let him come; for, even though I wait longer, Elijah’s chariot will not descend. I shall have to go in at the common gate.”

After an illness of only eight days, on February 5, 1679, about half-past four in the morning, the old bard fell asleep. He seemed to be wholly free from pain, and died so softly that the friends who stood around his bedside scarcely observed it.

Vondel was aged ninety-one years, two months, and nineteen days. He was nearly double the age of the world’s greatest dramatist, was seventeen years older than Euripides, and just as old as Sophocles.

Three days after his death he was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk—the Church of St. Catherine—at Amsterdam, not far from the choir. Fourteen poets were the pall-bearers who carried the great master to his last resting-place. Around his grave were the tombs of most of his literary friends of former years. Here lay Hooft and Barlæus and Tesselschade. Here, too, was the tomb of the noble de Ruyter, his country’s most illustrious naval hero. Here, among this company of distinguished dead, among these sculptured busts and mediæval effigies, these monumental tombs and glorious cenotaphs, this greatest of all Hollanders was buried in a simple grave, unmarked by even an epitaph. Three years afterwards Joan Six, one of the Aldermen of the city, had the following time-verse (which gives the year of his death) engraved upon the stone:

TO THE OLDEST AND GREATEST POET.
VIR PHŒBO ET MVSIS GRATVS VONDELIVS HIC EST
VI MV I V V D LIV IC
6 1005 1 5 5 500 5015 1100
——
1679

Shortly after his decease, Antonides, Vollenhove, and others of the younger poets also honored him with eulogies as the first poet of his age. To the pall-bearers a medallion was given, on one side of which was the image of the poet; on the other, a singing swan, with the year of Vondel’s birth and death, and the inscription: “The oldest and greatest poet.”

His Person and Character

Vondel was of medium height, with a figure well made and compact. His countenance was one of remarkable intelligence, and was characterized by an expression at once earnest and exalted.

In early life his face was pale and thin, but later, after the disappearance of his strange malady, it became broad and full, and of a healthful color, with glowing red cheeks. His forehead, not too high, was broad and commanding, a fit arsenal for those thunderbolts of invective that he knew so well how to employ. One of his eyebrows was slightly higher than the other. Beneath them glowed two deep brown eyes, large and penetrating—eagle eyes, full of fire, as if, naïvely says his biographer, “he had satires in his head.” His nose was sensitive and somewhat large; his mouth of medium size, with rather thin lips. He usually wore his hair short, his ears only half covered. On his chin grew a small pointed beard, in early manhood a dark brown, later white with age. Altogether a figure striking and noble, if not grand and imposing—one that long acquaintance would only render the more impressive, for it was stamped with character. Thus the outward man! Would you learn the stature of his soul? Read his magnificent works.

Strange to say, he who was so full of thought and spirit in his writings was still and silent in the presence of others. Once when dining with Grotius, Vossius, and Barlæus—the three most learned men of the age—it is related that during the course of the whole meal the poet said not one word. He was usually grave and taciturn. When he did speak, however, he was intense and pointed.

He was ever modest in his deportment and temperate in his habits. Though living in an age of good fellowship and of royal tippling, when post-prandial drunkenness was the rule rather than the exception, he was never known to have indulged to excess. Like Dante, Milton, and Petrarch, furthermore, his private life was pure. Not one accuser ever threw mud at its whiteness.

His clothes, though in the fashion and in good taste, were always plain and unassuming. He enjoyed the society of artists and men of letters, learning, and judgment. He was extremely popular among his relatives, which speaks well for his heart, and is surely a good index to his true character.

Vondel was a true friend, and was ever ready to prove his devotion, if need be, by the sacrifice of blood and treasure. Such a romantic attachment as that of Dante for Beatrice was doubtless unknown to our poet. His was the more natural ardor of a deep-seated affection. Yet he had the capacity for suffering so characteristic of genius. We know that, like William III., he was profoundly affected by the death of his wife. For several years, indeed, he was in such a melancholy that his thoughts fell still-born from his pen. He wrote little, and destroyed all that he wrote. Life had lost all charms for him. He was, however, awakened from this reverie of sorrow by the bugle blast of war; and only in the roar of the conflict did he forget the sting of grief.

Vondel was in no sense a theologian, and had no patience with hair-splitting distinctions. Though a fervid Catholic, his toleration is shown by his remark that he would not “sit in the Inquisition as a judge of anyone’s life.”

“There were some hot-headed Papists,” he said, “who persecuted the pious of other creeds. It is also true that the Papists of all time have sought to rule the consciences of men. However, some reformers are lately following in their footsteps.” In regard to the wonderful legends of the early Church, he remarked that they were “monkish fables written in the dark ages for the ignorant people.” That his Catholicism had not lessened his love for freedom or for his country his later poems bear excellent witness.

Though by his bitter lampoons and severe invective he had made many enemies during the course of his long career, yet his popularity is seen in the fact that his memory was honored by men of all creeds and parties. The Jesuits of Antwerp placed his portrait in their cloister among the most illustrious men of ancient and modern times.

He had gathered no riches with his poetry. On the contrary, his losses were far greater than his gains. The most costly gift ever given him was the golden locket and chain from her majesty Queen Christina of Sweden. This present was worth about two hundred dollars. Amelia von Solms, the widow of Frederic Henry, also honored him with a gold medal for a poem on the marriage of her daughter, the Princess Henrietta. For his ode on the dedication of the new Stadthuis, the authorities of Amsterdam honored him with a silver cup. The visiting Elector of one of the German States gave him, for some verses in his honor, “a small sixteen guldens.” For his eulogy in honor of the Archbishop of Cologne, the city fathers allowed him thirty guldens.

His daughter Anna, dying before him, willed him her portion, which, with his pension, proved amply sufficient for his maintenance.

A few months before his death he had willed all of his books to a certain priest. Thinking that if they remained with him he might injure his feeble health by reading, he allowed them to be taken away. Afterwards, however, he bitterly regretted this, and, with tears in his eyes, complained to one of his friends that all of his treasures had been stolen, and that now nothing was left him.

In his youth his motto was: “Love conquers all things.” Later he signed his productions with the word “Zeal,” or “Justice”—the last a play on his name; sometimes, also, with the letters P.L., meaning pro libertate, or with the initials P.V.K.—“Palamedes of Kologne.” In some of his works was to be seen a picture of David playing a harp, with the device “Justus fide vivit,” to which, of course, could be given a double meaning: “The just man lives by faith,” or “Justus lives by his lyre.”

Vondel’s diligence was phenomenal. Once he remarked in a letter to a friend that the height of Parnassus can only be attained by much panting and sweat, and that attention and exercise sharpen the intellect. The multitude and the excellence of his works prove the worth of his philosophy.

His thirst for knowledge was extraordinary, and he left few corners of that vast field unfilled. To learn the best expressions for each trade and profession he was wont to question all kinds and conditions of men in regard to the words that they used in their trade or calling. Farmers, carpenters, masons, artists, men of every business and profession added to his vocabulary. He thus built up the language, and himself attained a thorough mastery over his native tongue; one never equalled by any of his countrymen, with the possible exception of the poet Bilderdÿk.

He was, moreover, always ready to receive suggestions in regard to his own productions, and often read them to his friends to obtain the benefit of their criticism. This, however, was more true of his translations than of his originals. He took much pleasure, also, in praising the work of others, especially that of the younger poets.

That he was an excellent critic is shown by his prose essays, though he was too impressionable to beauty to be very severe. He was exceedingly modest in regard to his own powers. He considered Hooft the foremost among the Dutch writers of his age, not only on account of his sweet lyrics and stately tragedies, but also because of his historical works.

Constantine Huyghens he praised for his liveliness and fancy, his subtlety, and his wonderful versatility. He also thought highly of Anslo and de Dekker, and particularly of those two young giants, Vollenhove and Antonides. In “The Y Stream” of the latter he saw extraordinary promise, and he thenceforth called the younger poet his son, and was always most tender and fatherly towards him, taking much delight in his company. Of Vollenhove’s “Triumph of Christ,” he said: “There is a great light in that man, but it is a pity that he is a clergyman.” Brandt he called “a good epigrammatist.”

His Feeling for Art

Art to Vondel was a revelation of the divine in man, and therefore the best promoter of virtue. Hence his passion for poetry, and his admiration for painting, music, and architecture. How fitting that he who sang the union of the arts:

“Blithe Poesy and Painting fair,
Two sisters debonair,”

should be crowned “king of the feast” by a company of fellow artists!

Vondel was the painter’s poet. He wrote numerous inscriptions for paintings. He praises Raphael, Veronese, Titian, Bassano, Giulo Romano, Lastman, Sandrart, Goltzius (the etcher), and Rubens. He apparently preferred the idealists of the Italian school, for he says but little about the realists of the day, Steen, Ostade, Brouwer, and Teniers; nor even concerning those who copied nature like Douw, De Hoogh, and Mutsu. The great Rembrandt he names but twice. In one place he speaks of the portrait of Cornelis Anslo, of which he tamely says, “The visible part is the least of him, and who would see Anslo must hear him.” He seems to have been more impressed by the fine portrait of Anna Wymers, for he says: “Anna seems to be alive.” Elsewhere, however, he speaks of “the night-owl, who hides himself from the day in his shadows of cobweb;” which is thought to be a covert reference to that magnificent study in chiaroscuro, Rembrandt’s “Night Patrol.” It is certain, however, that he did not realize the powerful genius of Holland’s greatest artist.

Vondel, the admirer of the Italian classics, with their delicacy and regularity, probably could not appreciate the revolutionary splendors of this great magician. Nor is there any evidence to show that any friendship existed between these two men, each the undying glory of his country. And yet in some respects the poet and the painter were strikingly alike. Both were masters of style, and grandly daring and original. Both were in the highest sense creative, and dealt in tremendous effects, soaring from mountain-top of grandeur into the heaven of the sublime. Each was comprehensive and universal; each was a personified mood of his nation and the maker of an epoch. Each suffered poverty in old age.

Yet in one respect the painter had the advantage over the poet. He spoke the universal language of the eye, and thus his message has reached millions who were deaf to his tongue. The political obscurity, on the other hand, into which little Holland was plunged so soon after the meteoric blaze of her brief ascendancy, confined her language to her narrow territory; and Vondel, equally worthy with Rembrandt of the admiration of the world, became a sealed book save to his countrymen. The former, however, was the very life of his time, its recognized voice; the latter was in his life neglected, to become after his death the most illustrious of his race, a name to conjure an age out of obscurity.

Rubens, on the other hand, the poet fully appreciated. In the dedication of his drama, “The Brothers,” 1639, he calls the great Fleming “the glory among the pencils of our age.”

Music, we know, had a powerful fascination for our poet. He himself played the lute, while his poetry throbs with the very heart of melody. How lovingly he speaks of the divine art of song, that “charms the soul out of the body, filling it with rare delight—a foretaste of the bliss of the angels”!

How keen must have been his enjoyment when at Muiden he heard the lovely singers of that age—the gifted Tesselschade on her guitar, or the talented harpist, Christina van Erp; or when in his home in the Warmoesstraat he heard the patriotic chimes of his beloved city pealing the lingering hours into oblivion! How profoundly, too, must his deep, earnest soul have been stirred by the grandeur of the Psalms, rising on the wings of Zweling’s noble melodies to the vaulted arches of the old cathedral where he was wont to worship!

His Feeling for Nature

The attitude of a poet toward nature is always of peculiar and absorbing interest. Is it because she is the perpetual fount of ideals, because of her voiceless sympathy with his ever-changing mood, or because her grandeur and loveliness have power to move the deeps of his soul? However it be, the poets have almost without exception found her the source of their inspiration.

Into her rude confessional they pour the unreserved tale of sorrows that no man can understand; and she gently whispers peace. At her feet they lay the guilty story of a soul; the love, the passions of a heart; the joys, the pains, the riotous thoughts of life; and she gently whispers peace. And here, too, Vondel opened his heart, and here he also obtained comfort for the vexing ills of life.

It has been said that man’s appreciation of the beauties of nature is proportioned to the degree of his cultivation. In the ruder ages in Holland, as in Germany, the mysterious forces of the physical world and their various manifestations became personified in the good and bad genii of the Teutonic mythology. In proportion as the worship of these genii ceased, nature became appreciated for its own sake. It had first to be divested of the fear-inspiring supernatural. To this Christianity and the accumulating discoveries in science largely contributed.

Karel van Mander first introduced this feeling into painting; and Hendrik Spieghel, into literature. And then came Hooft and Vondel, who in this respect, as in all else, stood far above their contemporaries.

Vondel’s enjoyment of nature is not so keen as that of Hooft, but it is far deeper and stronger, and grew steadily to the end of his life. Now and then his descriptions remind one of the brooding landscapes of the “melancholy Ruysdael;” at other times of the creations of Lingelbach and Pynacker, in those striking scenes where Dutch realism and Italian fancy are oddly combined.

Under the influence of Seneca and Du Bartas, according to the artificial fashion of the day, he at first employed high-sounding mythological names as symbols for the things themselves; but he soon outgrew this classical affectation. Already in his “Palamedes,” especially in the chorus of “Eubeers,” is this feeling for nature apparent. This charming bucolic is the picture of a Dutch landscape. Elsewhere we have mentioned its resemblance to the “L’Allegro” of Milton.

Like the bard of Avon, our poet saw but little of the world. Twice he made a business trip to Denmark, and shortly before his death he paid a visit to Cologne. In addition to this, he made several inland journeys—one to the Gooi:

“Where the grand oak so thickly grows
Beyond rich fields, where buckwheat glows.”

To Vondel truly “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” All of his poems, particularly the “Lucifer,” are studded with figures of the stars.

The poet drew many of his figures, too, from animal life, as the beasts and the birds in the sustained Virgilian similes in the “Lucifer.” What can be more exquisite, also, than his verses on the tame sparrow of the lovely Susanne Bartelot, in the style of the “Passer, deliciæ suæ puellæ” of Catullus?

The north wind he calls “a winter-bird, so cold and rough.” The spring is his delight. He is glad when he sees men busy fishing, planting, and hunting, and engaged in all manner of bucolic occupations. In the Norway pines unloaded on the River Y, he sees a forest of masts from which the tricolor of his dear country will be unfurled in every clime.

Would you know his capacity for aesthetic symbolism? Read his superb ode to the Rhine.

Flowers were to him the beautiful symbols of equally beautiful moral truths. What a world of pathos in his voice where he says of Mary Queen of Scots:

“O! Roman Rose, cut from her bleeding stem!”

And where he speaks of the mournful rosemary in the death-wreath of his little daughter Saartje! For little Maria, his darling grand-child, he wishes “a winding sheet of flowers—of violets white and red and purple, blue and yellow.” In the garlands of his fancy he ever weaves the blooms of his delight, lilies, violets, roses—white and red—and his national flower, the glorious tulip.

He loved the open heaven and the airy freedom of solitude. “The welkin wide is mine,” he says, and like a wild bird adds, “and mine the open sky.” He loved the woods, where his ears were caressed by “the blithe echoes of the careless birds.”

Long before Shelley he sang of the lark, “wiens keeltje steiltjes steigert” (“whose throat so steeply soars”). Long before Keats he was thrilled by the deep-toned nightingale.

“The shrill-voiced nightingale,
Who at thy casement bower
Pours out his breathless tale,”

reminds him of the questioning soul at the window of eternity,” peering through panes on darkness unconfined.” Then, again, he likens himself to a nightingale, caged for days in the mournful cold, that bursts into a rapturous melody to see the warm sun melt away the gloom.

His soul communed with nature in her deepest and quietest moods. The peaceful meadow, the calm beauty of the woods, the forest-crowned mountains, the tumultuous sea were all the themes of his song.

Though his feeling for nature was not so fine nor so intense as that of some of the later poets, yet it was deeper and truer. In the world around him he saw but a reflection of the grander world beyond.

Nor was the pantheistic conception strange to him. See the first chorus of the “Lucifer,” where he calls God “the soul of all we can conceive;” and the second act, where he speaks of:

“——the farthest rounds
And endless circles of eternity,
That, from the bounds of time and space set free,
Revolve unceasingly around one God,
Who is their centre and circumference.

How like the pantheism of Spinoza, first proclaimed some years later!

His Patriotism

Would you know him as a patriot? Hear his splendid tones of jubilation over the victory of his countrymen—a victory where truth and freedom triumphed. Hear his fine odes celebrating the commerce and the progress of the growing commonwealth. Listen to his bursts of patriotism in his “Orange May Song,” and where he calls the ancient Greek sea-galleys, “child’s play beside ours.”

Vondel was a representative Dutchman, and there was a strong national stamp on all that he did. He was a grand type of the burgher of the great Dutch middle class, which has ever been the glory of the Netherlands, and which has given to the world such an illustrious array of soldiers, painters, scholars, poets, and statesmen. In reading him we are continually reminded that we are in the land of dykes and windmills. Thus all of his heroes are invested with Holland dignities. We hear of burghers, burgomasters, and stadtholders; of the dunes, the sea, the dams, the strand, and the green, fertile meadows. Wherever the scene of the play, we always recognize the streets, the canals, the houses, the palaces, and the environs of Amsterdam. This was not due to a lack of historical information, as was the case with Shakespeare, but because the poet desired to bring the truth closer to the hearts of his hearers. The fact, too, that this made the scenic requirements of a play considerably less, thus reducing the expense of presentation, might also have had some influence.

Vondel, furthermore, when representing the past, never forgot the present. It was ever before his eyes. Hence many of his plays were political allegories, and were significant for their bearing upon the time.

The one universal characterization of all of his work, one that glows in every poem, is his love of freedom—the ruling passion of his countrymen. Already in the “Passover “—his first tragedy, written at the age of twenty-six—we hear his cry, “O! sweetest freedom.” Soon afterwards, in his lyrics and in “Palamedes,” he showed his strong sympathy with Oldenbarneveldt; and during the bitter persecution that followed, when he was forced to fly like a hunted beast from house to house, this spirit grew by the opposition that it fed upon into a fierce blaze, only quenched by death.

Like the Father of Tuscan literature, his thoughts were ever attuned to the spirit of his age. Like Dante, too, he was ever in the heart of the battle. Like him, also, he was not worldly wise, and was naturally of a rebellious temperament. He was himself in perpetual revolt. This was due, however, not to a saturnine disposition, but to a keen sense of justice, and to the idealism of a lofty, cultivated mind. To compel the age to conform to the measure of his own conceptions he often found procrustean methods necessary. Hence his stern aggressiveness against wrong.

He fain would have sat apart in silent contemplation, but he was destined to know neither the Olympic calm of Goethe, nor the sublime serenity of Shakespeare. “The life of the day, like an octopus, grasped him and would not let him go.” He drank in the wine of freedom, and his soul was filled with the hunger of strife. His cry now became a battle-cry. Wherever he saw wrong and injustice—and his eyes were ever open—he donned his armor and dealt crushing blows for the cause of the oppressed. Earnest, still, and passionate, great of soul and impressionable of heart, the poet was a born fighter. His whole life was a polemic against tyranny.

His dear fatherland was the alpha and omega of his inspiration, and he was, perhaps, the first Dutchman who deeply felt the consciousness of national power. The next object of his soul’s affection was his city, Amsterdam, whose glories he never grew tired of singing. His characterization:

“The town of commerce, Amsterdam,
Known round the circle of the globe,”

might not improperly be reflected upon its new and yet more powerful namesake in the New World, of whose grandeur he might well be deemed the prophet, when, in his “Gysbrecht,” with patriotic eloquence he pictures the Amsterdam of the coming centuries. What though the ruling trident has departed from the “Venice of the North,” her peerless daughter, far across the seas, yet holds triumphant sway!

In his fiery patriotism Vondel much reminds us of Milton. He also was at heart a zealous republican, though he had a Christian’s unshaken reverence for the anointed kings of earth, and for what he thought a God-constituted authority. Hence the “Lucifer,” and his relentless opposition to the regicides of England and to Cromwell, “that murderer without God and shame, who dared to desecrate and to assault the Lord’s anointed,” as he says bitterly in one of his polemics.

Like the great Englishman, the Hollander was also a good hater; and he never spared what he hated. Though charitable, he was uncompromising, and forgave not easily; always, however, deprecating the excesses of the “root and branch” zealots of his own party. Just as Milton, after having joined the Presbyterians, forsook them when they in turn began to persecute the followers of other creeds, so, too, Vondel left the Remonstrants when they crossed the jealous line of freedom.

We are indeed inclined to believe that his strongest trait was his love of justice, which caused him to oppose tyranny under every guise, and to stigmatize the faults of his own church and party with expletives as crushing as those that he hurled against his enemies.

Thus his hatred of the Catholic Spaniards and of the Dutch Gomarists. The bloody persecution of the one was in his eyes no worse than the oppressive hypocrisy of the other. Even his beloved House of Orange drew from him the bitterest opposition when, in Prince Maurice and in William II., it threatened the liberty of his country and the privileges of his beloved Amsterdam. Of him it may truly be said that his eyes were never blinded by party prejudice.

Milton, in an immortal sonnet, blew a trumpet-blast of vengeance for the slaughtered Piedmontese. Why was that trumpet silent w hen his own party perpetrated a similar massacre at Drogheda? Vondel was, indeed, far more magnanimous than his great English contemporary. He had more of “the milk of human kindness.”

How strong is our poet’s admiration for the founders of the Republic, the fathers of the “golden age,” and for that grand race of intrepid discoverers, pioneers, and explorers that pierced every corner of the globe! How, too, flames his soul with pride, when he recounts the brave deeds of those old sea-lions, Tromp and de Ruyter, and their fearless companions, in the fierce battle against the growing English supremacy! Not one of those heroes whom he did not crown with the wreath of an immortal eulogy!

Yet Vondel, even as Dante, was at heart a man of peace. Like his countrymen, he never sought the fray; but when battle was forced upon him, it meant a fight to the death. All his fighting was for peace. In one of his poems he speaks of peace as:

“A treasure—Ah! its worth unknown,
Surpassing far a triumph in renown.”

Elsewhere he says, “The olive more than laurel pleases me.” He never forgot the high seriousness of his mission. He never lost sight of the dignity of Christian manhood.

Vondel was in a large sense also the poet of Christendom; a crusader, with his face ever towards the New Jerusalem, throned in ethereal splendors. He felt himself a member of that large Christian alliance that Henry IV. wished to found as a barrier against the encroachments of the Turk, the arch-foe of Christendom.

“He comes—the Turk! We stand with winged arms,”

he shouts in one of his poems. Yet he never forgot to pray, also, that the erring ones, both Jew and Gentile, might be brought into the fold of the “true Church.”

His Views on Life

Of particular interest are the views of so old and so profound a seer on life; for every poet has his scheme of life. What men call genius is, indeed, only the faculty of seeing life through the prism of a temperament, and the poets are preëminently the men of temperament. Vondel, with his earnest, sincere nature, out of the bewildering chaos of his environment soon evolved his own philosophy of existence. “Life, that sad tragedy,” the youthful poet calls it in his “Passover.” To him already life was a passing pageant, and man, an exile. His epitome of the world’s history, moreover, is not unlike the celebrated epigram of Rhÿnvis Feith, another Dutch poet:

“Man, like a withered leaf, falls in oblivion’s wave.
We are, and fade away—the cradle and the grave;
Between them flits a dream, a drama of the heart;
Smart yields his place to Joy, and Joy again to Smart;
The monarch mounts his throne; the slave bows to the floor;
Death breathes upon the scene—the players are no more.”

His gaze, like Milton’s, was ever upward, through the prison-bars of time, into the unconfined vast of eternity. His tone, too, was most glorious when singing “celestial things.”

How like the voice of a Hebrew prophet his note of warning, where he cries:

“Batavians, repent;
Think of Tyre and Sidon.
Repent as the Ninevites!
O! mourn your sins!”

And after all this painful revelry of life, this lust of action, and the battle’s roar, it is a “haven sweet and still” that his earth-tormented soul longs for. How softly he whispers after his fiery trumpet tones are done:

“O! help me, O my God, to give my life to thee,
My fragile self, my will, my little all. Let me,
O thou beyond compare! O source of everything!
In praises rich and deep thy matchless glory sing!”

In the pensive twilight of old age, he grew more and more conscious of the true everlasting, and his patriotism became the all-embracing one of the “fatherland above.” He now began to look forward with child-like faith to the revelations of the resurrection, though not forgetting that:

“The infant of eternity
Must first be cradled in the tomb;”

but believing that from the cerements of mystery shall break a light to lead the soul to heaven.

His Place and Art

Vondel, to an extraordinary degree, possessed that keen insight into human nature which is the first requisite of the great satirist. He was the Juvenal of his time. Though his wit is never delicate nor keen, it is, however, sweeping and irresistible. His was no gentle zephyr of irony to tickle the tender cuticle of a supersensitive age, but a very cyclone of mockery to laugh a thick-skinned generation out of folly.

His poetry is ever the instrument of exaltation; and though in its condemnation of evil it often by its directness and frankness gives some offense to the delicate edge of our modern refinement, it is never indecently coarse; it is never a pander to vice.

Indignation more intense, scorn more contemptuous, satire more powerful, invective more tremendous than that glowing in the polemics of this great satirist have never struck fear into the hardened hearts of the wicked. Few men have been so hated; few have been so loved.

Yet the sublime is the true field of this poet, and sublimer thoughts than his were surely never spoken. The grandeur of Job, the glory of the Psalms, and the splendor of the Apocalypse are all to be found in his magnificent Biblical tragedies, that noble series commencing with the “Jerusalem Desolate” of his untried youth, and ending with the “Noah” of his octogenarian ripeness.

The influence of the Bible on his art was prodigious. The Holy Writ was the inexhaustible quarry from which he hewed his master, pieces; throughout whose development may be traced the growth of a human soul. See his paraphrase of the Psalms, if you would know his enjoyment of the serene beauty of holiness.

The artistic truth of all his creations is seen in their elemental objectivity—the portrayal by vivid flashes of feeling and by artful representation of the ever-during and imperishable. In most of his dramas is the sublimity of Æschylus with the fine proportion and the directness of Sophocles. In others, as in the “Leeuwendalers,” where he sings the triumph of peace, is the sweetness and the feminine strength of Euripides.

Of Vondel it has truly been said: “Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit;” for to beauty—

“God’s handmaid, Beauty,
Whose touch rounds
A dew-drop or a world”—

he ever paid the incense of a passionate devotion.

“Æschylus does right without knowing it,” said Sophocles; even so Vondel possessed an unerring instinct for the true; ever stringing the jewelled beads of fancy on the golden thread of truth.

Like Æschylus, too, he was at heart a lyric poet; yet who shall say that in his character delineation, in the sweeping energy of his action, and in the management of his plot, he was not almost equally as admirable?

Like Dryden, Vondel rose very slowly to the stature of his full power. All of his dramas preceding the “Lucifer” show this gradual development; all of those that come later maintain the same standard of excellence.

Like Goethe, the Dutch poet exerted an ennobling influence on the theatre of his country. Like Dante, he was fond of a strong, bold outline, and always chose a direct rather than a circuitous route. Like Shakespeare, he was a keen observer of affairs, a student of life. His works are the rimed chronicles of his age. His was a transcendent genius, not oppressed by excessive culture, and with the creative ever the ruling instinct. To him poetry was the divinest of the arts. It became the ritual of his soul’s worship; duty, beauty, and religion were the three strings on his melodious lyre.

His works abound in little scholasticism. Pedantry and affectation were his abomination; pith and vigor, directness and comprehensiveness, the radical elements of his strength. In his works we find a harvest of such glorious themes as store the granary of poet minds; we see everywhere evidences of power. We are ever startled by:

“The lightning flash of an immortal thought,
The rolling thunder of a mighty line.”

Vondel’s similes are more striking than his metaphors; there is a sustained glow in his imagery. In this respect, also, he shows the Oriental bent of his genius. This is furthermore seen in his personification of the elements of nature and of the stars and constellations, as in the “Lucifer,” which gives a barbaric splendor to the play. Few poets, indeed, in any literature, contain such splendid and elevated images.

He, too, could woo discordant sounds to harmony, and wove the consonantal Dutch into mellow meshes of ensnaring sound. A nobleness not devoid of grace, a sublimity not austere, but warm with human sympathy; a manner more remarkable for chaste strength and a rugged symmetry of form than for delicacy or elegance—these are some of the characteristics of his style.

Not for him the sweet felicities of the mincing phraser or the dreamy languors of the riming troubadour. Not for him the gaysome zephyr or the dim, romantic moon. He is ever on the serene altitude of lofty contemplation, or in the valley, battling like a god. He is always deeply serious. He is everywhere sincere. His is the whirlwind and the storm; the noonday glare and the midnight gloom. His is the eagle’s bold, epic flight and the lark’s wild, lyric soar. No nightingale of sentiment trills her dulcet serenade amid the forest of his song. And yet who can be more tender and affecting, who more truly, softly sweet? All is virile; nothing is effeminate. All is manly, healthful, pure. There is no morbid fever of a brain diseased and foul. There is no pale, misleading will-o’-the-wisp of a heart decayed and bad. There is freshness, there is beauty, there is truth. “Magnificent” is the one word for his manner, “the grand style” of the Netherlands.

His was the sombre Occidental imagination fired with the splendor of the Orient. His poetry is a Gothic cathedral, grand, towering, and impressive, typical at once of the massive ruggedness of the oak and the severe sublimity of the Alp; a Teutonic temple, in whose cloistered corridors we hear the majestic sweep of unseen angels’ wings, while the glorious symphony of harps and psalteries, played by countless cherubim, mingling with the rich bass of the organ and the ethereal tenor of invisible choristers, rolls like a flood of celestial harmony through all the deep diapason from heaven to hell.

The word “vondel” in the Brabantian dialect means a “little bridge,” which suggests a not inapt analogy; for it was Vondel who bridged the chasm between the crude Mystery and Miracle Plays of the Chambers of Rhetoric, and the “Lucifer,” a drama unequalled in the history of Dutch literature. Between the dead abstractions of the Chambers and the warm, concrete life of the sublime Vondelian drama, even as between “Gorboduc” and “Hamlet,” lay the experience of one soul.

Hooft, like Heiberg in Denmark and Lessing in Germany, instituted a revolution in the world of taste. But Vondel, even more than Hooft, developed the latent powers of the tongue, enlarged its resources, and fixed its form. His is still the noblest of Dutch diction, possessing that strange virility that defies time.

At the beginning of the century the language was hardly fit for literary use. The school of Vondel in one generation—the first half of the seventeenth century—did for Holland what the thirteenth century had done for Italy and the sixteenth for England. Vondel, no less than Shakespeare, was the creator of an epoch. His influence on his own language was equally as wonderful, his impress on his country’s literature almost as great.

To him the poets of the following generations, even the great Bilderdÿk, looked for inspiration. To him also they have ever paid homage.

Like Homer, he also found his Zoilus, but the greatest intellects of his country and his age—and surely few epochs have seen greater—Grotius, Hooft, Vossius, Huyghens, and scores of others of almost equal fame thought him not inferior to the noblest poets of antiquity.

Vondel lived in a memorable epoch and was its personification. It was the Augustan Era of Holland, the Dutch Age of Pericles. Amsterdam, like another Athens, had become the centre of the world’s civilization. Nowhere in that age were the arts so sedulously cultivated; nowhere had their cultivation been rewarded by such high attainment.

Science, the world puzzler, opened his toy-box, the universe, and showed its countless wonders. Philosophy, with guessive hand, played at the riddle Destiny, and mild Religion, at the game of War. Literature, the sum of all the arts and all the sciences, shone like the dazzling Arctic sun in its brief midnight noon—one hour of glory in a day of gloom. When the poet died, the epoch died with him. A night of mediocrity now brooded over the marshy fens of Holland. A swarm of poetasters succeeded the race of poets. Originality was banished. Affectation, with his sycophantic wiles, had won the heart of a degenerate generation. Art, like a flower suddenly deprived of the warm kisses of day, pined away in the sterile cold. Genius was dead.

Vondel is preëminently the poet of freedom. The principles sanctified by the blood of his countrymen, and won by nearly a century of the most noble daring and heroic endurance, he, as the voice of his nation, glorified in his beautiful pastoral, the “Leeuwendalers.” These same principles also became the rallying shout of the English Revolution of 1688. That same war-cry, reechoing at Lexington and Alamance, swept the American Colonies from Bunker Hill to Guilford Court House like a whirlwind of flame; and tyranny, with shuddering dread, fled to its native lair.

The shibboleth of liberty, first blown with stirring trumpet tones across the watery moors of Holland by the patriot-poet Vondel, was now repeated in deathless prose at Mecklenburg and Philadelphia. A new United States arose like a glorious phoenix from the ashes of the old.

For the American Constitution was but the grand conclusion of that lingering bloody syllogism of freedom, of which the Treaty of Munster was the major premise. And Vondel, inspired logician of the true, unravelling the tangled skein of his country’s destiny, also uncoiled the golden thread of our great fate.

Of his magnificent works, the natural heritage of the American people, we here present this choice fragment, the “Lucifer,” aglow with the eternal spirit of revolt.

And now we leave our poet. A spotless name, the record of a noble, sacrificing life, a message of beauty, and a treasury of immortal truths—this was Vondel’s legacy to his countrymen.

L.C.v.N.