Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

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, he 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 5005015 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."