Chapter XVII: Front Matter (17)

The labials are _b_, _f_, _v_, _p_.

At the beginning and in the body of a word _b_ has the same sound as
in English. At the end of a word, when shortened from _bb_, followed
by a vowel, it became _p_ in the pronunciation, so older _krabbe_
became _krabb_, _krab_ (the present spelling), which is now pronounced
_krap_.

_F_ has the same pronunciation as English _f_. In many cases older
initial _f_ passed into _v_, hence most words which have _f_ in
English have initial _v_ in Dutch, for instance _vader_, _vol_,
_vechten_.

This _v_, initial and between vowels, has the pronunciation of English
_v_ in lover. Dutch _p_ is the same as English _p_, also the liquids
and nasals.

The _w_ in Dutch is mostly labiodental; in the eastern parts before
vowels bilabial pronunciation is heard.

_Vowels._--_A_ has in open syllables the sound of English _a_ in
father, in closed syllables that of English _a_ in ass, but more open;
when there is a clear sound in closed syllables the spelling is _aa_
(_jaar_), in open syllables _a_ (_maken_), pronounced as _a_ in ask;
in _bad_, _nat_, _a=a_. An original short _a_ and a long _a_ in open
syllables are even in Middle Dutch pronounced alike, and may be rhymed
with each other (_dagen_, _lagen_, a rhyme which was not permitted in
Middle High German). In the Saxon dialects _a_ was expressed by _ao_,
_a_ or _a_ in the Frisio-Saxon districts passes into _e_ before _r_,
as _jer_ (_jaar_). Middle Dutch preserved _a_ in several words where
in Modern Dutch it passes into _e_ before _r_ (_arg_, _erg_; _sarc_,
_zerk_; _warf_, _werf_); in others, as _aarde_, _staart_, _zwaard_,
the Middle Dutch had _e_ and _a_ (_erde_, _stert_, _swert_, _swart_,
_start_; Modern Dutch _zwaard_, _staart_). In foreign words, likewise,
_e_ before _r_ has become _a_; _paars_, _perse_; _lantaarn_,
_lanterne_ (in the dialects _e_ is still frequently retained).

_E._ The sound of the _e_ derived from _a_ does not differ from that
of an original _e_, or of an _e_ derived from _i_, as they appear in
open syllables (_steden_, _vele_, pronounced as _a_ in English name).
If the _e_ derived from _a_ or _i_ or the original _e_ occurs in
closed syllables, it has a short sound, as in English men, end, Modern
Dutch _stem_. The _e_ in closed syllables with a full sound (as
English _a_; Sweet, _ei_) is spelled _ee_: _veel_, _week_ (_e_ from
_i_), _beek_. The sharp, clear _ee_ is indicated by the same letters
in both open and closed syllables: _eer_, _sneeuw_, _zee_.

In some dialects this _ee_ is pronounced like English _ee_, not only
in the present dialects, but also in the 17th century.

The pronunciation of _ei_ (from _ai_, or _eg_: _ag_, French _ai_,
_ei_, _ee_) is that of English _i_, for instance, Dutch _ei_, English
egg, is pronounced like English _I_.

_I_ is pronounced short (somewhat like _i_ of English pit), for
instance in _pit_, _binden_, _sikkel_; it has a clear sound in
_fabrikant_, though it has no stress.

_Ie_ is pronounced like English _ee_ in see, but somewhat shorter; so,
_fabriek_, _fabrieken_, _Pieter_; also in _bieden_, _stierf_, &c. For
original long _i_, Middle Dutch _ii_ and _ij_, afterwards _y_, was
used. This vowel, though still written _y_, is pronounced like English
_i_ in I, like; so in _sysje_ (English siskin), _lyken_, &c.

The letter _o_ represents three sounds:--(1) the short sharp _o_ and
(2) the short soft _o_, the former like the _o_ in English not and
French _soldat_ (Dutch _bod_, _belofte_, _tocht_, _kolf_), the latter
like the English _o_ in don, the French _o_ in _ballon_ (Dutch _dof_,
_ploffen_, _ochtend_, _vol_), and (3) the full, clear _o_ as in
English note, French _noter_ (Dutch _kolen_, _sloten_, _verloren_).
The sharp clear _oo_, in _stroom_, _dood_, has almost the same sound
as the full _o_, in some dialects (among others the Saxon) it is
pronounced as _o_ with a glide _o_, in others (Flemish and Hollandsch)
somewhat like _au_. In Middle Dutch, the lengthening of the vowels was
frequently indicated by _e_ (before _r_ sometimes by _i_, as in
_oir_); hence _ae_ for _a_, _oe_ for _o_. Where _oe_ occurs in the
modern language, it has the sound of _u_ (pronounced like the _u_ in
High German, and answering to the Gothic _o_), which in Middle Dutch
was frequently represented by _ou_. _oe_ is pronounced _ou_ (_au_;
Sweet, p. 6) in West Flemish and the Groningen dialects. Before
labials and gutturals _oe_ in Middle Dutch was expressed by _ue_ and
_oe_ (_bouc_, _souken_, and also _guet_, but usually _goet_, _soeken_,
_boec_). The Saxon dialects still preserve an _o_ sound which agrees
with the Dutch _oe_ (_bok_, _moder_); in two words--_romer_ (_roemer_,
however, is also used) and _spook_--_o_ has passed from these dialects
into Dutch. As the _u_ (Old German _u_), which in the Dutch tongue has
passed into _ui_ except before _r_ and _w_, retains the _u_-sound in
the Saxon districts, some words have come into Dutch from these
dialects, being written with _oe_ from the similar sound of _oe_
(from _o_) in Dutch and _u_ in Saxon (_snoet_, _boer_, _soezen_), by
the side of which are Frankish words (_snuit_, _suizen_, &c.).

In the language of the people _oe_ before _m_ is often pronounced as
_o_, for instance _bloem_ and _blom_.

_Eu_ is not a diphthong, but the modification (_Umlaut_) of the clear
_o_; it has the same sound as German _o_ in _schon_; so in _vleugel_,
_leugen_, _keuken_.

_U_ before a double consonant or before a consonant in monosyllables
has about the same pronunciation as in English stuff, rug; so in
_kunnen_, _snurken_, _put_. When used in open syllables it has the
same sound as in French _nature_.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Middle Dutch _u_ passed over through
_oi_ into _ui_ by the influence of the Holland dialect. In the Saxon
districts _u_ kept the old pronunciation, but only in the language of
the peasants. The common language has everywhere _ui_, pronounced
nearly as German _eu_, English _oy_; so in _duizend_, _vuil_,
_buigen_, &c.

_Ou_ and _au_ in _vrouw_ and _blauw_ are nearly pronounced in the same
way, very much like English _ow_ in crowd.

AUTHORITIES.--For a full survey of a history of the Dutch language the
reader is referred to Jan te Winkel, "Geschichte der niederlandischen
Sprache," _Grundriss der germ. Philologie_, 2, p. 704 (Strassburg, K.
Grubner). Here an elaborate account may be found on p. 704 of the
different works on the grammar and phonology of the various periods of
the Dutch language. For explanation and history of words of the
current language see the _Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal_, by De
Vries and Te Winkel, continued by A. Kluyver, A. Beets, for a time by
J.W. Muller and De Vreese, who left at their nomination as professors
at Utrecht and Ghent. The Middle Dutch language may be known from the
_Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek_, first by E. Verwys and J. Verdam,
after the death of Verwys by Verdam alone. For the dialects the
different grammars and glossaries issued at Martinus Nyhoff (The
Hague) and Kemink & Son (Utrecht) are of great importance. The Flemish
dialect may be found in De Bo, _Westvlaamsch Idioticon_; other Belgian
dialects are recorded in the publications of the _Vlaamsche Academie_
(Ghent). Phonetic explanations are given in Roorda's or in ten
Bruggencate's _Phonetic Works_, and a survey of the pronunciation in
Branco van Dantzig's _Dutch Pronunciation_ and Dykstra's _Dutch
Grammar_. (J. H. G.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] i.e. "Within a few years our language has been gradually skimmed
of bastard words and non-Dutch elements."

DUTCH LITERATURE. The languages now known as Dutch and Flemish did not begin to take distinct shape till about the end of the 11th century. From a few existing fragments--two incantations from the 8th century, a version of the Psalms from the 9th century, and several charters--a supposed Old Dutch language has been recognized; but Dutch literature actually commences in the 13th century, as Middle Dutch, the creation of the first national movement in Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zealand.

Willem the Minstrel.

From the wreck of Frankish anarchy no genuine folk-tales of Dutch antiquity have come down to us, and scarcely any echoes of German myth. On the other hand, the sagas of Charlemagne and Arthur appear immediately in Middle Dutch forms. These were evidently introduced by wandering minstrels and jongleurs, and translated to gratify the curiosity of the noble women. It is rarely that the name of such a translator has reached us, but we happen to know that the fragments we possess of the French romance of _William of Orange_ were written in Dutch by a certain Klaas van Haarlem, between 1191 and 1217. The _Chanson de Roland_ was translated about the same time, and considerably later _Parthenopeus de Blois_. The Flemish minstrel Diederic van Assenede completed his version of _Floris et Blanchefleur_ about 1250. The Arthurian legends appear to have been brought to Flanders by some Flemish colonists in Wales, on their return to their mother-country. About 1250 a Brabantine minstrel translated Walter Map's _Lancelot du lac_ at the command of his liege, Lodewijk van Velthem. The _Gauvain_ was translated by Penninc and Vostaert before 1260, while the first original Dutch writer, the famous Jakob van Maerlant, occupied himself about 1260 with several romances dealing with Merlin and the Holy Grail. The earliest existing fragments of the epic of _Reynard the Fox_ were written in Latin by Flemish priests, and about 1250 the first part of a very important version in Dutch was made by Willem the Minstrel, of whom it is unfortunate that we know no more save that he was the translator of a lost romance, _Madoc_. In his existing work the author follows Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but not slavishly; and he is the first really admirable writer that we meet with in Dutch literature. The second part was added by another hand at the end of the 14th century.

John I., duke of Brabant.

It is not necessary to dwell at any length on the monkish legends and the hymns to the Virgin Mary which were abundantly produced during the 13th century, and which, though destitute of all literary merit, were of use as exercises in the infancy of the language. The first lyrical writer of Holland was John I., duke of Brabant, who practised the _minnelied_ with success, but whose songs are only known to us through a Swabian version of a few of them. In 1544 the earliest collection of Dutch folk-songs saw the light, and in this volume one or two romances of the 14th century are preserved, of which _Het Daghet in den Oosten_ is the best known. Almost the earliest fragment of Dutch popular poetry, but of later time, is an historical ballad describing the murder of Count Floris V. in 1296. A very curious collection of mystical medieval hymns by Sister Hadewych, a nun of Brabant, was first printed in 1875 by Heremans and Ledeganck.

Maerlant.

Boendale.

Weert.

Stoke.

Hitherto, as we have seen, the Middle Dutch language had placed itself at the service of the aristocratic and monastic orders, flattering the traditions of chivalry and of religion, but scarcely finding anything to say to the bulk of the population. With the close of the 13th century a change came over the face of Dutch literature. The Flemish towns began to prosper and to assert their commercial supremacy over the North Sea. Under such mild rulers as William II. and Floris V., Dort, Amsterdam, and other cities contrived to win such privileges as amounted almost to political independence, and with this liberty there arose a new sort of literary expression. The founder and creator of this original Dutch literature was Jacob van Maerlant (q.v.). His _Naturen Bloeme_, written about 1263, forms an epoch in Dutch literature; it is a collection of moral and satirical addresses to all classes of society. With his _Rijmbijbel_ (Rhyming Bible) he foreshadowed the courage and free-thought of the Reformation. It was not until 1284 that he began his masterpiece, _De Spieghel Historiael_ (The Mirror of History), at the command of Count Floris V. Of his disciples, the most considerable in South Holland was Jan van Boendale (1280-1365), known as Jan de Klerk. He was born in Brabant, and became clerk to the justices at Antwerp in 1310. He was entrusted with various important missions. His works are historical and moral in character. In him the last trace of the old chivalric and romantic element has disappeared. He completed his famous rhyme chronicle, the _Brabantsche Yeesten_, in 1350; it contains the history of Brabant down to that date, and was brought down to 1440 by an anonymous later writer. For English readers it is disappointing that Boendale's other great historical work (_Van den derden Edewaert, coninc van Ingelant ..._, ed. J.F. Willems, Ghent, 1840), an account of Edward III. and his expedition to Flanders in 1338, has survived only in some fragments. The remainder of Boendale's works are didactic poems, pursuing still further the moral thread first taken up by Maerlant, and founded on medieval scholastic literature. In Ypres the school of Maerlant was represented by Jan de Weert, a surgeon, who died in 1362, and who was the author of two remarkable works of moral satire and exhortation, the _Nieuwe Doctrinael of Spieghel der Sonden_, and a _Disputacie van Rogier end van Janne_. In the beginning of the 13th century Gielijs van Molhem wrote a Dutch version of part of the _Miserere_ of the Picard poet who concealed his identity under the name of the recluse of Moiliens. The poem consisted of meditations on the origin and destiny of man, and on the sins of pride, envy, &c. The translation, completed later by an author calling himself Heinrec, was critically edited (Groningen, 1893) by P. Leendertz. In North Holland a greater talent than that of Weert or of Boendale was exhibited by Melis Stoke, a monk of Egmond, who wrote the history of the state of Holland to the year 1305; this work, the _Rijmkronik_, was printed in 1591, and edited in 1885 for the Utrecht Historical Society; and for its exactitude and minute detail it has proved of inestimable service to later historians.

Heelu.

Aken.

Dirk Potter.

With the middle of the 14th century the chivalric spirit came once more into fashion. A certain revival of the forms of feudal life made its appearance under William III. and his successors. Knightly romances came once more into vogue, but the newborn didactic poetry contended vigorously against the supremacy of what was lyrical and epical. It will be seen that from the very first the literary spirit in Holland began to assert itself in a homely and utilitarian spirit. Jan van Heelu, a Brabanter, was the author of an epic poem[1] on the battle of Woeronc (1288), dedicated to Princess Margaret of England, and to him has been attributed the still finer romance of the _War of Grimbergen_.[2] Still more thoroughly aristocratic in feeling was Hein van Aken, a priest of Louvain, who lived about 1255-1330, and who combined to a very curious extent the romantic and didactic elements. As early as 1280 he had completed his translation[3] of the _Roman de la rose_, which he must have commenced in the lifetime of Jean de Meung. More remarkable than any of his translated works, however, is his original romance, completed in 1318, _Heinric en Margriete van Limborch_,[4] upon which he was at work for twenty-seven years. During the Bavarian period (1349-1433) very little original writing of much value was produced in Holland. Buodewijn van der Loren wrote one excellent piece on the Maid of Ghent, in 1389. Augustijnken van Dordt was a peripatetic minstrel of North Holland, who composed for the sheriff Aelbrecht and for the count of Blois from 1350 to 1370. Such of his verses as have been handed down to us are allegorical and moral. Willem van Hildegaersberch (1350-1408) was another northern poet, of a more strictly political cast. Many of his writings exist still unpublished, and are very rough in style and wanting in form. Towards the end of the 14th century an erotic poet of considerable power arose in the person of the lord of Waddinxsveen and Hubrechtsambacht, Dirk Potter van der Loo (c. 1365-1428), who was secretary at the court of the counts of Holland. During an embassy in Rome (1411-1412) this eminent diplomatist made himself acquainted with the writings of Boccaccio, and commenced a vast poem on the course of love, _Der Minnen Loep_,[5] which is a wonderful mixture of classical and Biblical instances of amorous adventures set in a framework of didactic philosophy. In Dirk Potter the last traces of the chivalric element died out of Dutch literature, and left poetry entirely in the hands of the school of Maerlant. Many early songs, with some of later date, are preserved in a _Liedekens-Boeck_ printed by Jan Roulans (Antwerp, 1544). The unique copy in the Wolfenbuttel library was edited by Hoffmann von Fallersleben in _Horae Belgicae_ (vol. xi., 1855).

Religious drama.

It is now time to consider the growth of prose literature in the Low Countries. The oldest pieces of Dutch prose now in existence are charters of the towns of Flanders and Zealand, dated 1249, 1251 and 1254. A prose translation of the Old Testament was made about 1300, and there exists a _Life of Jesus_ about the same date. Of the mystical preachers whose religious writings have reached us, the Brussels friar, Jan van Ruysbroec (1294-1381), is the most important. But the most interesting relics of medieval Dutch prose, as far as the formation of the language is concerned, are the popular romances in which the romantic stories of the _trouveres_ and minstrels were translated for the benefit of the unlettered public into simple language. As in most European nations, the religious drama takes a prominent place in every survey of medieval literature in Holland. Unfortunately the text of all the earliest mysteries, the language of which would have an extraordinary interest for us, has been lost. We possess records of dramas having been played at various places--_Our Lord's Resurrection_, at the Hague, in 1400; _Our Lady the Virgin_, at Arnheim, in 1452; and _The Three Kings_, at Delft, in 1498. The earliest existing fragment, however, is part of a _Limburg-Maastricht Passover Play_[6] of about 1360. The latest Dutch miracle play was the _Mystery of the Holy Sacrament_, composed by a certain Smeken, at Breda, and performed on St John's day, 1500. This play was printed in 1867. With these purely theological dramas there were acted mundane farces, performed outside the churches by semi-religious companies; these curious moralities were known as "Abelespelen" and "Sotternieen." In these pieces we discover the first traces of that genius for low comedy which was afterwards to take perfect form in the dramas of Brederoo and the paintings of Teniers.

Chambers of Rhetoric.

The theatrical companies just alluded to, "Gesellen van den Spele," formed the germ out of which developed the famous "Chambers of Rhetoric"[7] which united within themselves all the literary movements that occupied the Low Countries during the 15th and 16th centuries. The poets of Holland had already discovered in late medieval times the value of gilds in promoting the arts and industrial handicrafts. The term "colleges de rhetorique" is supposed to have been introduced about 1440 to the courtiers of the Burgundian dynasty, but the institutions themselves existed long before. These literary gilds lasted till the end of the 16th century, and during the greater part of that time preserved a completely medieval character, even when the influences of the Renaissance and the Reformation obliged them to modify in some degree their outward forms. They were in almost all cases absolutely middle-class in tone, and opposed to aristocratic ideas and tendencies in thought. Of these remarkable bodies the earliest were almost entirely engaged in preparing mysteries and miracle-plays for the populace. Each chamber, and in process of time every town in the Low Countries, possessed one, and took as its title some fanciful or heraldic sign. At Diest "The Eyes of Christ," dated from 1302, and an earlier one, the "Lily," is mentioned. "The Alpha and Omega," at Ypres, was founded about 1398; that of the "Violet," at Antwerp, followed in 1400; the "Book," at Brussels, in 1401; the "Berberry," at Courtrai, in 1427; the "Holy Ghost," at Bruges, in 1428; the "Floweret Jesse," at Middelburg, in 1430; the "Oak Tree," at Vlaardingen, in 1433; and the "Marigold," at Gouda, in 1437. The most celebrated of all the chambers, that of the "Eglantine" at Amsterdam, with its motto _In Liefde Bloeyende_ (Blossoming in Love), was not instituted until 1496. Among the most influential chambers not above mentioned should be included the "Fountain" at Dort, the "Corn Flower" at the Hague, the "White Columbine" at Leiden, the "Blue Columbine" at Rotterdam, the "Red Rose" at Schiedam, the "Thistle" at Zierikzee, "Jesus with the Balsam" at Ghent, and the "Garland of Mary" at Brussels. And not in these important places only, but in almost every little town, the rhetoricians exerted their influence, mainly in what we may call a social direction. Their wealth was in most cases considerable, and it very soon became evident that no festival or procession could take place in a town unless the "Kamer" patronized it. Towards the end of the 15th century the Ghent chamber of "Jesus with the Balsam" began to exercise a sovereign power over the other Flemish chambers, which was emulated later on in Holland by the "Eglantine" at Amsterdam. But this official recognition proved of no consequence in literature, and it was not in Ghent, but in Antwerp, that intellectual life first began to stir. In Holland the burghers only formed the chambers, while in Flanders the representatives of the noble families were honorary members, and assisted with their money at the arrangement of ecclesiastical or political pageants. Their pompous _landjuweelen_, or tournaments of rhetoric, at which rich prizes were contended for, were the great occasions upon which the members of the chambers distinguished themselves. Between 1426 and 1620 at least 66 of these festivals were held. There was a specially splendid _landjuweel_ at Antwerp in 1496, in which 28 chambers took part, but the gayest of all was that celebrated at Antwerp on the 3rd of August 1561. To this the "Book" at Brussels sent 340 members, all on horseback, and clad in crimson mantles. The town of Antwerp gave a ton of gold to be given in prizes, which were shared among 1893 rhetoricians. This was the zenith of the splendour of the "Kamers van Rhetorica," and after this time they soon fell into disfavour. We can trace the progress of literary composition under the chambers, although none of their official productions has descended to us. Their dramatic pieces were certainly of a didactic cast, with a strong farcical flavour, and continued the tradition of Maerlant and his school. They very rarely dealt with historical or even Biblical personages, but entirely with allegorical and moral abstractions, until the age of humanism introduced upon the stage the names without much of the spirit of mythology. Of the pure farces of the rhetorical chambers we can speak with still more confidence, for some of them have come down to us, and among the authors famed for their skill in this sort of writing are named Cornelis Everaert of Bruges and Laurens Janssen of Haarlem. The material of these farces is extremely raw, consisting of rough jests at the expense of priests and foolish husbands, silly old men and their light wives. Laurens Janssen is also deserving of remembrance for a satire against the clergy, written in 1583. The chambers also encouraged the composition of songs, but with very little success; they produced no lyrical genius more considerable than Matthijs de Casteleyn (1488-1550), the founder of the Flemish chamber of "Pax Vobiscum" at Oudenarde, and author of _De Conste van Rhetorijcken_ (Ghent, 1573), a personage whose influence as a fashioner of language would have been more healthy if his astounding metrical feats and harlequin _tours de force_ had not been performed in a dialect debased with all the worst bastard phrases of the Burgundian period.

Houwaert.

In the middle of the 16th century a group of rhetoricians in Brabant and Flanders attempted to put a little new life into the stereotyped forms of the preceding age by introducing in original composition the new-found branches of Latin and Greek poetry. The leader of these men was Jean Baptista Houwaert[8] (1533-1599), a personage of considerable political influence in his generation. Houwaert held the title of "Counsellor and Master in Ordinary of the Exchequer to the Dukedom of Brabant"; he played a prominent part in the revolution of the Low Countries against Spain; and when the prince of Orange entered Brussels victoriously (Sept. 23rd, 1577), Houwaert met him in pomp at the head of the two chambers of rhetoric--the "Book" and the "Garland of Mary." He did not remain faithful to his convictions, for he composed in 1593 a poem in honour of the cardinal-archduke Ernest of Austria, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands. He considered himself a devout disciple of Matthijs de Casteleyn, but his great characteristic was his unbounded love of classical and mythological fancy. His didactic poems are composed in a wonderfully rococo style, and swarm with misplaced Latinities. In his bastard Burgundian tongue he boasted of having "poetelijck geinventeert ende rhetorijckelijck ghecomponeert" for the Brussels chamber such dramas as _Aeneas and Dido_, _Mars and Venus_, _Narcissus and Echo_, or _Leander and Hero_--named together the _Commerce of Amorosity_ (1583). But of all his writings, _Pegasides Pleyn_ (Antwerp, 1582-1583), or the Palace of Maidens, is the most remarkable; this is a didactic poem in sixteen books, dedicated to a discussion of the variety of earthly love. Houwaert's contemporaries nicknamed him "the Homer of Brabant"; later criticism has preferred to see in him an important link in that chain of homely didactic Dutch which ends in Cats. His writings are composed in a Burgundian so base that they hardly belong to Flemish literature at all. Into the same miserable dialect Cornelis van Ghistele of Antwerp translated, between 1555 and 1583, parts of Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, while the painter Karel van Mander (1547-1609) put a French version of the _Iliad_ and of the _Eclogues_ of Virgil into an equally ill-fitting Flemish dress. In no country of Europe did the humanism of the 16th century at first affect the national literature so slightly or to so little purpose.

Psalms and hymns.

Battle-songs.

The stir and revival of intellectual life that arrived with the Reformation found its first expression in the composition of Psalms. The earliest printed collection appeared at Antwerp in 1540, under the title of _Souter-Liedekens_, and was dedicated to a Dutch nobleman, Willem van Zuylen van Nieuvelt, by whose name it is usually known. This collection, however, was made before the Reformation in Holland really set in. For the Protestant congregations Jan Utenhove printed a volume of Psalms in London in 1566; Lucas de Heere (1534-1585), and immediately after him, with much greater success, Petrus Datheen (1531-1590), translated the hymns of Clement Marot. For printing this last volume, in 1567, Herman Schinkel of Delft was burned to death in 1568. Datheen was not a rhetorician, but a person of humble origin, who wrote in the vulgar tongue, and his hymns spread far and wide among the people. Until 1773 they were in constant use in the state church of Holland. But the great events of the period of reformation are not marked by psalms only in Dutch literature. Two collections of hymns and lyrical pieces, printed in 1562 and 1569, perpetuate the fervour and despair of the martyrs of the Mennonite Church. Similar utterances of the persecuted Protestants were published at Haarlem and Leeuwarden, at Ghent and at Bruges. Very different in tone were the battle-songs of liberty and triumph sung a generation later by the victorious Reformers, the "Geuzen" or "Gueux" (q.v.). The famous song-book of 1588, the _Geusen Lieden Boecxken_, was full of ardent and heroic sentiment, expressed often in marvellously brilliant phrases. In this collection appeared for the first time such classical snatches of Dutch song as the Ballad of Heiligerlee, the Ballad of Egmond and Horn, and the song of the Storm of Leiden. The political ballads, with their ridicule of the Spanish leaders, form a section of the _Boecxken_ which has proved of inestimable value to historians. All these lyrics, however, whether of victory or of martyrdom, are still very rough in form and language.

Anna Bijns.

The first writer who used the Dutch tongue with grace and precision of style was a woman and a professed opponent of Lutheranism and reformed thought. Modern Dutch literature practically begins with Anna Bijns (c. 1494-1575). Against the crowd of rhetoricians and psalm-makers of the early part of the 16th century she stands out in relief as the one poet of real genius. The language, oscillating before her time between French and German, formless, corrupt and invertebrate, took shape and comeliness, which none of the male pedants could give it, from the impassioned hands of a woman. Anna Bijns, who is believed to have been born at Antwerp in 1494, was a schoolmistress at that city in her middle life, and in old age she still "instructed youth in the Catholic religion." She died on the 10th of April 1575. Hendrik Peppinck, a Franciscan, who edited her third volume of poems when she was an old woman in 1567, speaks of her as "a maiden small of descent, but great of understanding, and godly of life." Her first known volume bears the date 1528, and displays her as already deeply versed in the mysteries of religion. We gather from all this that she was a lay nun, and she certainly occupied a position of great honour and influence at Antwerp. She was named "the Sappho of Brabant" and the "Princess of all Rhetoricians." She bent the powerful weapon of her verse against the faith and character of Luther. In her volume of 1528 the Lutherans are scarcely mentioned; in that of 1538 every page is occupied with invectives against them; while the third volume of 1567 is the voice of one from whom her age has passed. All the poems of Anna Bijns which we possess are called _refereinen_ or refrains.[9] Her mastery over verse-form was extremely remarkable, and these refrains are really modified chants-royal. The writings of Anna Bijns offer many points of interest to the philologist. In her the period of Middle Dutch closes, and the modern Dutch begins. In a few grammatical peculiarities--such as the formation of the genitive by some verbs which now govern the accusative, and the use of _ghe_ before the infinitive--her language still belongs to Middle Dutch; but these exceptions are rare, and she really initiated that modern speech which Filips van Marnix adopted and made classical in the next generation.

Marnix.

In Filips van Marnix, lord of St Aldegonde (1538-1598), a much greater personage came forward in the ranks of liberty and reform. He was born at Brussels in 1538, and began life as a disciple of Calvin and Beza in the schools of Geneva. It was as a defender of the Dutch iconoclasts that he first appeared in print, with his tract on _The Images thrown down in Holland in August 1566_. He soon became one of the leading spirits in the war of Dutch independence, the intimate friend of the prince of Orange, and the author of the glorious _Wilhelmuslied_. It was in the autumn of 1568 that Marnix composed this, the national hymn of Dutch liberty and Protestantism. In 1569 he completed a no less important and celebrated prose work, the _Biencorf_ or Beehive of the Romish Church. In this satire he was inspired in a great measure by Rabelais, of whom he was an intelligent disciple. It is written in prose that may be said to mark an epoch in the language and literature of Holland. Overwhelmed with the press of public business, Marnix wrote little more until in 1580 he published his _Psalms of David newly translated out of the Hebrew Tongue_. He occupied the last years of his life in preparing a Dutch version of the Bible, translated direct from the original. At his death only Genesis was found completely revised; but in 1619 the synod of Dort placed the unfinished work in the hands of four divines, who completed it.

Coornhert.

In Dirck Volckertsen Coornhert[10] (1522-1590) Holland for the first time produced a writer at once eager to compose in his native tongue and to employ the weapons of humanism. Coornhert was a typical burgher of North Holland, equally interested in the progress of national emancipation and in the development of national literature. He was a native of Amsterdam, but he did not take part in the labours of the old chamber of the Eglantine, but quite early in life proceeded to Haarlem, and was notary, secretary and finally pensionary of the town. In 1566 he was imprisoned for his support of the Reformers, and in 1572 he became secretary to the states of Holland. He practised the art of etching, and spent all his spare time in the pursuit of classical learning. He was nearly forty years of age before he made any practical use of his attainments. In 1561 he printed his translation of the _De officiis_ of Cicero, and in 1562 of the _De beneficiis_ of Seneca. In these volumes he opposed with no less zeal than Marnix had done the bastard forms still employed in prose by the rhetoricians of Flanders and Brabant. During the next decade he occupied himself chiefly with plays and poems, conceived and expressed with far less freedom than his prose, and more in the approved conventional fashion of the rhetoricians; he collected his poems in 1575. The next ten years he occupied in polemical writing, from the evangelical point of view, against the Calvinists. In 1585 he translated Boethius, and then gave his full attention to his original masterpiece, the _Zedekunst_ (1586), or Art of Ethics, a philosophical treatise in prose, in which he studied to adapt the Dutch tongue to the grace and simplicity of Montaigne's French. His humanism unites the Bible, Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius in one grand system of ethics, and is expressed in a style remarkable for brightness and purity. He died at Gouda on the 29th of October 1590; his works, in three enormous folio volumes, were first collected in 1630.

Amsterdam the centre of letters.

Towards the end of the period of transition, Amsterdam became the centre of all literary enterprise in Holland. In 1585 two of the most important chambers of rhetoric in Flanders, the "White Lavender" and the "Fig Tree," took flight from the south, and settled themselves in Amsterdam by the side of the "Eglantine." The last-named institution had already observed the new tendency of the age, and was prepared to encourage intellectual reform of every kind, and its influence spread through Holland and Zealand. In Flanders, meanwhile, crushed under the yoke of Parma, literature and native thought absolutely expired. From this time forward, and until the emancipation of the southern provinces, the domain of our inquiry is confined to the district north of the Scheldt.

Spieghel.

Roemer Visscher.

In the chamber of the Eglantine at Amsterdam two men took a very prominent place, more by their intelligence and modern spirit than by their original genius. Hendrick Laurenssen Spieghel (1549-1612) was a humanist of a type more advanced and less polemical than Coornhert. He wrote a charming poem in praise of dancing; but his chief contributions to literature were his _Tweespraeck van de nederduytsche letterkunst_, a philological exhortation, in the manner of Joachim du Bellay's famous tract, urging the Dutch nation to purify and enrich its tongue at the fountains of antiquity, and a didactic epic, entitled _Hertspieghel_ (1614),[11] which has been greatly praised, but which is now much more antiquated in style and more difficult to enjoy than Coornhert's prose of a similar tendency. That Spieghel was a Catholic prevented him perhaps from exercising as much public influence as he exercised privately among his younger friends. The same may be said of the man who, in 1614, first collected Spieghel's writings, and published them in a volume with his own verses. Roemer Pieterssen Visscher[12] (1547-1620) proceeded a step further than Spieghel in the cultivation of polite letters. He was deeply tinged with a spirit of classical learning that was much more genuine and nearer to the true antique than any that had previously been known in Holland. His own disciples called him the Dutch Martial, but he was at best little more than an amateur in poetry, although an amateur whose function it was to perceive and encourage the genius of professional writers. Roemer Visscher stands at the threshold of the new Renaissance literature, himself practising the faded arts of the rhetoricians, but pointing by his counsel and his conversation to the naturalism of the great period.

The Renaissance.

It was in the salon at Amsterdam which the beautiful daughters of Roemer Visscher formed around their father and themselves that the new school began to take form. The republic of the United Provinces, with Amsterdam at its head, had suddenly risen to the first rank among the nations of Europe, and it was under the influence of so much new emotion and brilliant ambition that the country no less suddenly asserted itself in a great school of painting and poetry. The intellect of the whole Low Countries was concentrated in Holland and Zealand, while the six great universities, Leiden, Groningen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Harderwijk and Franeker, were enriched by a flock of learned exiles from Flanders and Brabant. It had occurred, however, to Roemer Visscher only that the path of literary honour lay, not along the utilitarian road cut out by Maerlant and Boendale, but in the study of beauty and antiquity. In this he was curiously aided by the school of ripe and enthusiastic scholars who began to flourish at Leiden, such as Drusius, Vossius and Hugo Grotius, who themselves wrote little in Dutch, but who chastened the style of the rising generation by insisting on a pure and liberal Latinity. Out of that generation arose the greatest names in the literature of Holland--Vondel, Hooft, Cats, Huygens--in whose hands the language, so long left barbarous and neglected, took at once its highest finish and melody. By the side of this serious and aesthetic growth there is to be noticed a quickening of the broad and farcical humour which had been characteristic of the Dutch nation from its commencement. For fifty years, and these the most glorious in the annals of Holland, these two streams of influence, one towards beauty and melody, the other towards lively comedy, ran side by side, often in the same channel, and producing a rich harvest of great works. It was in the house of the daughters of Roemer Visscher that the tragedies of Vondel and the comedies of Bredero, the farces of Coster and the odes of Huygens, alike found their first admirers and their best critics.

Roemer Visscher's daughters.

Of the famous daughters of Roemer, two cultivated literature with marked success. Anna (1584-1651) was the author of a descriptive and didactic poem, _De Roemster van den Aemstel_ (The Glory of the Aemstel), and of various miscellaneous writings; Tesselschade (1594-1649) wrote some lyrics which still place her at the head of the female poets of Holland, and she translated the great poem of Tasso. They were women of universal accomplishment, graceful manners and singular beauty; and their company attracted to the house of Roemer Visscher all the most gifted youths of the time, several of whom were suitors, but in vain, for the hand of Anna or of Tesselschade.

Hooft.

Of this Amsterdam school, the first to emerge into public notice was Pieter Cornelissen Hooft (1581-1647). His _Achilles and Polyxena_ (1598) displayed a precocious ease in the use of rhetorical artifices of style. In his pastoral drama of _Granida_ (1605) he proved himself a pupil of Guarini. In tragedy he produced _Baeto_ and _Geraad van Velsen_; in history he published in 1626 his _Life of Henry the Great_, while from 1628 to 1642 he was engaged upon his master-work, the _History of Holland_. Hooft desired to be a severe purist in style, and to a great extent he succeeded, but, like most of the writers of his age, he permitted himself too many Latinisms. In his poetry, especially in the lyrical and pastoral verse of his youth, he is full of Italian reminiscences both of style and matter; in his noble prose work he has set himself to be a disciple of Tacitus. Motley has spoken of Hooft as one of the greatest historians, not merely of Holland, but of Europe. His influence in purifying the language of his country, and in enlarging its sphere of experience, can hardly be overrated.

Bredero.

Very different from the long and prosperous career of Hooft was the brief, painful life of the greatest comic dramatist that Holland has produced. Gerbrand Adriaanssen Bredero[13] (1585-1618), the son of an Amsterdam shoemaker, was born on the 16th of March 1585. He knew no Latin; he had no taste for humanism; he was a simple growth of the rich humour of the people. He entered the workshop of the painter Francisco Badens, but accomplished little in art. His life was embittered by a hopeless love for Tesselschade, to whom he dedicated his dramas, and whose beauty he celebrated in a whole cycle of love songs. His ideas on the subject of drama were at first a mere development of the medieval "Abelespelen." The "Oude Kammer," one of the chambers of rhetoric, furnished an opening for his dramatic powers. He commenced by dramatizing the romance of _Roderick and Alphonsus_, in 1611, and _Griane_ in 1612, but in the latter year he struck out a new and more characteristic path in his _Farce of the Cow_. From this time until his death he continued to pour out comedies, farces and romantic dramas, in all of which he displayed a coarse, rough genius not unlike that of Ben Jonson, whose immediate contemporary he was. His last and best piece was _Jerolimo, the Spanish Brabanter_, a satire upon the exiles from the south who filled the halls of the Amsterdam chambers of rhetoric with their pompous speeches and preposterous Burgundian phraseology. The piece was based on a Dutch version (Delft, 1609) of an early Spanish picaresque romance, _La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes_ (Burgos, 1554). Bredero was closely allied in genius to the dramatists of the Shakespearian age, but he founded no school, and stands almost as a solitary figure in the literature of Holland. He died on the 23rd of August 1618. Theodore Rodenburg (d. 1644), ridiculed by Bredero for his pretentiousness, had a wider knowledge of contemporary foreign literature than the other dramatists. He adapted some of the dramas of Lope de Vega, which he had witnessed at Madrid, into Dutch, and in 1618 he adapted Cyril Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_.

Coster.

The only individual at all clearly connected with Bredero in talent was Dr Samuel Coster,[14] who was born at Amsterdam on the 16th of September 1579. He studied medicine at Leiden, and practised at Amsterdam. He is chiefly remembered for having been the first to take advantage of the growing dissension in the body of the old chamber of the Eglantine to form a new institution. In 1617 Coster founded what he called the "First Dutch Academy." This was in fact a theatre, where, for the first time, dramas could be publicly acted under the patronage of no chamber of rhetoric. Coster himself had come before the world in 1612 with his farce of _Teuwis the Boor_, based on a folk-song in Jan Roulans's _Liedekens Boeckh_, and he continued this order of composition in direct emulation of Bredero, but with less talent. In 1615 he began a series of "blood-and-thunder" tragedies with his horrible _Itys_, and he continued this coarse style of tragic writing for several years. He survived at least until after 1648 as a supreme authority in Amsterdam upon all dramatic matters.

Vondel.

The first work of the greatest of all Dutch writers, Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), was _Het Pascha_ (1612), a tragedy or tragi-comedy on the exodus of the children of Israel, written, like all his succeeding dramas, on the recognized Dutch plan, in alexandrines, in five acts, and with choral interludes between the acts. There is comparatively little promise in _Het Pascha_. It was much inferior dramatically to the plays just being produced by Bredero, and metrically to the clear and eloquent tragedies and pastorals of Hooft; but it secured the young poet a position inferior only to theirs. Yet for a number of years he made no attempt to emphasize the impression he had produced on the public, but contented himself during the years that are the most fertile in a poet's life with translating and imitating portions of du Bartas's popular epic. The short and brilliant life of Bredero, his immediate contemporary and greatest rival, burned itself out in a succession of dramatic victories, and it was not until two years after the death of that great poet that Vondel appeared before the public with a second tragedy, the _Jerusalem laid Desolate_. Five years later, in 1625, he published what seemed an innocent study from the antique, his tragedy of _Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence_. All Amsterdam discovered, with smothered delight, that under the name of the hero was thinly concealed the figure of Barneveldt, whose execution in 1618 had been a triumph of the hated Calvinists. Thus, at the age of forty-one, the obscure Vondel became in a week the most famous writer in Holland. For the next twelve years, and till the accession of Prince Frederick Henry, Vondel had to maintain a hand-to-hand combat with the "Saints of Dort." This was the period of his most resolute and stinging satires; Cats took up the cudgels on behalf of the counter-Remonstrants, and there raged a war of pamphlets in verse. A purely fortuitous circumstance led to the next great triumph in Vondel's slowly developing career. The Dutch Academy, founded in 1617 almost wholly as a dramatic gild, had become so inadequately provided with stage accommodation that in 1638, having coalesced with the two chambers of the "Eglantine" and the "White Lavender," it ventured on the erection of a large public theatre, the first in Amsterdam. Vondel, as the greatest poet of the day, was invited to write a piece for the first night; on the 3rd of January 1638 the theatre was opened with the performance of a new tragedy out of early Dutch history, the famous _Gysbreght van Aemstel_. The next ten years were rich in dramatic work from Vondel's hand; he supplied the theatre with heroic Scriptural pieces, of which the general reader will obtain the best idea if we point to the _Athalie_ of Racine. In 1654, having already attained an age at which poetical production is usually discontinued by the most energetic of poets, he brought out the most exalted and sublime of all his works, the tragedy of _Lucifer_. Very late in life, through no fault of his own, financial ruin fell on the aged poet, and from 1658 to 1668--that is, from his seventieth to his eightieth year--this venerable and illustrious person, the main literary glory of Holland through her whole history, was forced to earn his bread as a common clerk in a bank, miserably paid, and accused of wasting his masters' time by the writing of verses. The city released him at last from this wretched bondage by a pension, and the wonderful old man went on writing odes and tragedies almost to his ninetieth year. He died at last in 1679, of no disease, having outlived all his contemporaries and almost all his friends, but calm, sane and good-humoured to the last, serenely conscious of the legacy he left to a not too grateful country. Vondel is the typical example of Dutch intelligence and imagination at their highest development. Not merely is he to Holland all that Camoens is to Portugal and Mickiewicz to Poland, but he stands on a level with these men in the positive value of his writings.

Starter.

Lyrical art was represented on its more spontaneous side by the songs and ballads of Jan Janssen Starter (b. 1594), an Englishman by birth, who was brought to Amsterdam in his thirteenth year. Very early in life he was made a member of the "Eglantine," and he worked beside Bredero for two years; but in 1614 he wandered away to Leeuwarden, in Friesland, where he founded a literary gild, and brought out, in 1618, his plays _Timbre de Cardone_, _Fenicie van Messine_, the subject of which is identical with that of Shakespeare's _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _Daraida_. But his great contribution to literature was his exquisite collection of lyrics, entitled the _Friesche Lusthof_, or Frisian Pleasance (1621). He returned to Amsterdam, but after 1625 we hear no more of him, and he is believed to have died as a soldier in Germany. The songs of Starter are in close relation to the lyrics of the English Elizabethans, and have the same exquisite simplicity and audacity of style.

Cats.

While the genius of Holland clustered around the circle of Amsterdam, a school of scarcely less brilliance arose in Middelburg, the capital of Zealand. The ruling spirit of this school was the famous Jakob Cats (1577-1660). In this voluminous writer, to whom modern criticism almost denies the name of poet, the genuine Dutch habit of thought, the utilitarian and didactic spirit which we have already observed in Houwaert and in Boendale, reached its zenith of fluency and popularity. During early middle life he produced the most important of his writings, his pastoral of _Galathea_, and his didactic poems, the _Maechdenplicht_ and the _Sinne- en Minne-Beelden._ In 1624 he removed from Middelburg to Dort, where he soon after published his tedious ethical work called _Houwelick_, or Marriage; and this was followed from time to time by one after another of his monotonous moral pieces. Cats is an exceedingly dull and prosaic writer, whose alexandrines roll smoothly on without any power of riveting the attention or delighting the fancy. Yet his popularity with the middle classes in Holland has always been immense, and his influence extremely hurtful to the growth of all branches of literary art. Among the disciples of Cats, Jakob Westerbaen (1599-1670) was the most successful. His works included translations from Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Terence and Juvenal, besides original poems. The Jesuit Adriaen Poirters (1606-1675) closely followed Cats in his remarkable _Masquer of the World_. A poet of Amsterdam, Jan Hermansz Krul (1602-1644), preferred to follow the southern fashion, and wrote didactic pieces in the Catsian manner.

Huygens.

A poet of dignified imagination and versatile form was Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), the diplomatist. He threw in his lot with the great school of Amsterdam, and became the intimate friend and companion of Vondel, Hooft and the daughters of Roemer Visscher. His famous poem in praise of the Hague, _Batava Tempe_, appeared in 1622, and was, from a technical point of view, the most accomplished and elegant poem till that time produced in Holland. His collected poems, _Otiorum libri sex_, were printed in 1625. _Oogentroost_, or Eye Consolation, was the fantastic title of a remarkable poem dedicated in 1647 to his blind friend, Lucretia van Trello. He printed in 1654 a topographical piece describing his own mansion, _Hofwijck_. Huygens represents the direction in which it would have been desirable that Dutch literature, now completely founded by Hooft and Vondel, should forthwith proceed, while Cats represents the tame and mundane spirit which was actually adopted by the nation. Huygens had little of the sweetness of Hooft or of the sublimity of Vondel, but his genius was eminently bright and vivacious, and he was a consummate artist in metrical form. The Dutch language has never proved so light and supple in any hands as in his, and he attempted no class of writing, whether in prose or verse, that he did not adorn by his delicate taste and sound judgment. A blind admiration for John Donne, whose poems he translated, was the greatest fault of Huygens, who, in spite of his conceits, remains one of the most pleasing of Dutch writers. In addition to all this he comes down to us with the personal recommendation of having been "one of the most lovable men that ever lived."

Bekker.

Three Dutchmen of the 17th century distinguished themselves very prominently in the movement of learning and philosophic thought, but the illustrious names of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) can scarcely be said to belong to Dutch literature. Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698), on the contrary, a Reformed preacher of Amsterdam, was a disciple of Descartes, who deserves to be remembered as the greatest philosophical writer who has used the Dutch language. His masterpiece, _Betoverde Wereld_, or the World Bewitched, appeared in 1691-1693. Bekker is popularly remembered most honourably by his determined attacks upon the system of a penal code for witchcraft.

Vos.

Brandt.

Goes.

Anslo.

Oudaen.

Luiken.