Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L.C.v.N.

The "Lucifer."

"Away, away, into the shadow-land,
Where Myth and Mystery walk hand in hand;
Where Legend cons her half-forgotten lore,
And Sphinx and Gorgon throng the silent shore."

THE PARADISE HISTORY.

The Paradise history, as solving the problem of the origin of man and the origin of evil, and as foreshadowing the goal of human destiny, has always been a subject of universal concern; one full of fascination for the imagination of the poet. Few subjects, indeed, have aroused such widely diffused and long sustained interest.

Beginning with the "Creation" of the Spanish monk Dracontius, the Biblical paraphrases of the old English poet Cædmon, and the Latin poem of Avitus, Bishop of Vienna, we see, at different periods, various studies of this absorbing theme, especially in Italy, where a score or more poets and essayists made it the source of their inspiration.

Perhaps the most noted of these was Andrieni (1578-1652), who wrote the "Adamo," a tragedy in five acts, whose subject is the fall of man. This drama, however, is a rather crude affair, such allegorical abstractions as Death, Sin, and Despair being the chief characters.

About the same period, strange to say, the Netherland imagination, not long awakened from its medieval torpor, also became fired with this theme. The youthful Grotius was the first to attempt it in his "Adamus Exul," a Latin drama of considerable merit. This was in 1601, several years before the "Adamo" of Andrieni. Two other Dutchmen of the same generation, both far greater poets than Grotius, were also attracted by this subject. One was the distinguished Father Cats in his idyll, "The First Marriage;" the other was Justus van den Vondel in his "Lucifer."

We would, in passing, call attention to the curious coincidence that so many poets of so many different nations, most of them doubtless without knowledge of the others, should about the same time have chosen this subject of such historical and symbolical importance. For besides the poets mentioned were many others: the Scotchman Ramsay, the Spaniard de Azevedo, the Portuguese Camoens, the Frenchman Du Bartas, and two Englishmen, Phineas Fletcher and John Milton. A more remarkable instance of telepathy is not, we believe, on record.

Of all of the works of the many authors who have treated this theme, only two, however, have withstood the critical test of time; only two have been awarded the palm of immortality. These two are Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Vondel's "Lucifer": the former, the grandest of English epics; the latter, the noblest of Dutch dramas. It is the "Lucifer" that we have been asked to discuss.

DID MILTON BORROW FROM VONDEL?

The "Lucifer" was published thirteen years before "Paradise Lost." The scheme of the English poem had, however, already been crystallized in the mind of its author for fifteen years. This scheme originally contemplated a drama, which the poet's powerful imagination gradually developed into an epic.

To whom Vondel was indebted for the foundation of his tremendous drama is easily ascertained. He himself mentions his authorities in his admirable and learned preface. Among these were, besides the Holy Writ, the various Church Fathers, the "Adamus Exul" of Grotius, the work of Du Bartas, and a treatise on the fallen angels, by the English Protestant, Richard Baker. His own imagination, however, soared far above the fundamental hints that he received from any of these works on the subject, so that the "Lucifer" is rightly considered one of the most original and comprehensive poems in literature.

To whom Milton was indebted for the idea of his great epic is, on the other hand, not so easy to discover, although generation after generation of critics have thrown upon this problem the searchlight of innumerable essays.

That the "Paradise Lost" is scintillant with many of the brightest gems in the crown of the Greek and Latin classics is apparent even at a cursory reading. That it is also studded with poetic paraphrases of many modern authors has often been asserted.

However, the opportunity for originality was colossal, and Milton's imagination proved equal to the task. The conception of "Paradise Lost" alone makes it the grandest work of the imagination of modern times.

That the English poet occasionally borrowed a thought or a sentence can not be doubted. Besides, he had a wonderful memory, long and tenacious, which involuntarily emptied its gatherings into the flow of his thought and into the stream of his discourse. That this was not always done unconsciously is known from Milton's own confession, where he says: "To borrow and to better in the borrowing is no plagiarie." And that he bettered in the borrowing who can doubt? All that he touched turned to gold; all that he thought came out transfigured. In the alembic of his genius truth became beauty; the mortal, the immortal.

As the "Lucifer" and the "Paradise Lost" are both concerning the same subject, and as they are both founded upon the Biblical account of the creation, it is but natural that they should have much in common. A comparison of the two poems, therefore, we feel sure would bring to light some striking and curious resemblances and many equally strong and remarkable contrasts.

As such comparison would expand this article beyond the prescribed limits, we must leave it to the reader himself. Nor should he, for one instant, forget the fundamental difference between the drama and the epic.

The epic may wander through the dales of Arcady, along description's slow, meandering way, to pluck the roses of beauty and the lilies of sentiment there growing in so sweet abundance. The drama, with vigorous step and bold, unerring eye, pursues a straight path to the mountain-top of its climax, whence, with increasing momentum, it plunges down to its awful catastrophe. It is the difference between narration and action.

We shall have to content ourselves, therefore, by a brief reference to those who have already given this matter their attention.

That Milton was under great obligations to Vondel's drama has been maintained by Dutch men of letters for generations. It has also become the contention of several distinguished English critics. Even as far back as 1825 the poet Beddoes, in a review of "Hayley's Life and Letters" (_Quarterly Review_, vol. xxxi.), says: "An effect which has hitherto not been noticed was then produced by the Dutch poets. In their school Joshua Sylvester (who lived amongst them) learnt some of the peculiarities of his versification; and if Milton was incited by the perusal of any poem upon the same subject to compose his 'Paradise Lost,' it was by studying the 'Lucifer' and 'Adam in Ballingschap' of Vondel, for he tried his strength with the same great poet in the 'Samson Agonistes;' Vondel being, indeed, the only contemporary with whom he would not have felt it a degradation to vie."

Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, in a brilliant essay entitled "Milton and Vondel," was, we believe, the first Englishman who gave the subject conscientious study.

For this, on account of his knowledge of the difficult Dutch language, he was peculiarly fitted. Mr. Gosse, in his own interesting manner, tells how, during the seventeenth century, the Dutch, then one of the most vigorous languages of Europe, was much more studied than it is to-day; how the patriot Puritan, Roger Williams, having learned the language in Holland during his exile there, taught it to John Milton, then Cromwell's Latin secretary; how Milton also must have heard of the great fame of the "Lucifer," and of the storm of fanatical opposition that greeted its publication, from some of the Dutch diplomats whom it was his place to entertain; how, too, he could hardly have been ignorant of the name of the distinguished author of the drama, since it is known that he was well acquainted with Hugo Grotius, who was a warm admirer and the bosom friend of Vondel.

In addition to these and other reasons, Mr. Gosse then brings forward a plausible array of internal evidence, showing many points of similarity in the construction and in the treatment of the two poems, summing up with the conclusion that Milton was undoubtedly under considerable obligation to his great Dutch contemporary.

Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., of Middlesex, England, a graduate of Oxford, in a scholarly and painstaking work of two hundred pages, entitled "Milton and Vondel--a Literary Curiosity," next took up the subject, carrying the comparison not only into these two poems, but into all the works of Milton and into several others of Vondel.

Mr. Edmundson also discovered many wonderful coincidences and innumerable parallelisms in phrase and in imagery. Inspired with the motto, _Suum cuique honorem_, he has woven a tissue of most ingenious arguments to prove that Milton borrowed assiduously from the "Lucifer," the "Adam," the "Samson," and other works of Vondel.

Mr. Vance Thompson, in the New York _Musical Courier_ of December 15, 1897, has also added some interesting data to the subject.

With all the conclusions of these gentlemen we are not yet, however, prepared to agree. It is true we have not given the matter the comparative study that they have given it. We would wait, therefore, until we had thought more deeply about it before expressing our final opinion. However, we believe that a critical and impartial comparison of the two masterpieces will neither detract from the glory of Milton nor dim the grandeur of Vondel.

THE SCENE OF THE PLAY.

"Lucifer" is not the story "of man's first disobedience," though this is the outcome of the catastrophe. It is the drama of the fall of the angels. Yet man is the one subject of contention. Our first parents are, therefore, kept in the logical background of cause and effect. The creation of Adam, his bliss and his growing eminence, were the prime cause of the angelic conspiracy. The two-fold effect of the revolt was to the rebellious angels loss of Heaven, and to Adam loss of Eden.

Vondel, moreover, follows the doctrines of certain theologians that Christ would have become man even had Adam not sinned. Like Milton, he measures the scene of his heroic action with "the endless radius of infinitude," and by the artful use of terrestrial analogies conveys to the reader that idea of incomprehensible vastness that the transcendent nature of the subject demands. Vondel is, indeed, even more vague; the drama not giving opportunity for detailed description. Both are a wonderful contrast to the minute visual exactness of Dante.

The attempt to reconcile the spiritual qualities of the divine world with the physical properties of this, necessarily introduces some unavoidable incongruities. How can a material conception of the immaterial be given save through the symbols of the real! How else can the unknown be ascertained save through the equation of the known! How else, save by visual and sensuous images, express such impalpable thought!

"Thus measuring things in Heaven by things on earth,"

the poet gives us a finite picture of the infinite; a picture which yet, by means of shadowy outlines and an artistic vagueness, impresses us with the awful sublimity of the illimitable and eternal. The physical immensity of the poem is unsurpassed.

Humanized gods and Titanic passions shadowed by fate upon the immaculate canvas of sacred legend--this is the play. The personality of the author is never seen; yet when we know the man and his life, we cannot but see therein the reflex of his own experience. The scene is in Heaven and never leaves it. When actions occur elsewhere, they are described.

Infinities above the scene of contention, far beyond "Heaven's blazing archipelagoes," where no imagination dares to soar, reigns He

"Before whose face
The universe with its eternity
Is but a mote, a moment poised in space."

There

"Stand the hidden springs of life revealed,
The wondrous mechanism from earth concealed.
There Nature's primal premises appear
In simple grandeur, deep and crystal clear,
Flowing from out the heart of boundless ocean
Of the eternal Now. With rapt devotion
A myriad ministering forces there await
The summons of His awful eyes of fate,
The mandates of His all-compelling voice."

Far, far below those empyrean vaults is Earth, with its pristine inhabitants. God and man--the Creator and the thing created, the First Cause and the last effect--are both judiciously only introduced into the drama by hearsay.

Deep in the vague immensity lies Chaos, the uninhabited, through which the vanquished rebels are to be hurled to their endless doom.

But the poet also takes us

"Where meteors glare and stormy glooms invest;"

as, leaving Elysium's fields of light, he views

"Hell's punishments and horrors dire,
Its gulfs of woe and lakes of rayless fire,
Where demons laugh and fiends and furies rage
Round writhing victims whose parched tongues assuage
No cooling drops of hope."

Such is the grand perspective from the scene of this stupendous drama.

THE PEACEFUL JOYS OF PARADISE.

The play opens as softly as the opening strains of some grand oratorio. The first act is largely descriptive, a picture of the beautiful serenity of Heaven and of the joys of Paradise.

Belzebub, the second devil, first comes on the scene, and, as he stands upon those "heights flushed in creation's morn," by means of a few words, vibrant with suggestion and of far-reaching import, he at once gives us the key to the opening situation, indicating the relative positions of the two chief personages of the drama--the antithesis of Lucifer and Adam.

Apollion has been sent below to gain some tidings of the new race of earth. With speedy wings he soars back through the blue crystalline and past the wondering spheres, bearing a golden bough laden with choice fruit, that apple sweet whose juice is wine of destiny. He is brimming with enthusiasm over the wonders that he has just witnessed.

Belzebub, who has been anxiously awaiting his return, listens intently to his glowing description of the beauty of Eden and its primal innocence, occasionally interrupting with exclamations of wonder. Question after question suggests itself to his excited imagination. At first he is aflame with curiosity, then jealousy begins to tincture his ardor, and his admiration soon changes into mockery.

Apollion then describes the primeval pair and their unalloyed bliss, and confesses that in the delightful blaze of Eve's charms his snowy wings were singed. Indeed, to curb his increasing desire, he covered his eyes with both hands and wings. Even when godlike resolution had impelled him to return on high, he thrice turned back a lingering gaze towards the more than seraphic beauty of the first woman. Far sweeter than even the music of the spheres, those nightingales of space, is this most beautiful note in the song of creation!

Indescribably delicate is his account of the joys of that first marriage:

"And then he kissed
His bride and she her bridegroom--thus on joy
Their nuptials fed, on feasts of fiery love,
Better imagined far than told--a bliss
Divine beyond all angel ken;"

adding, with exquisite pathos,

"How poor
Our loneliness; for us no union sweet
Of two-fold sex--of maiden and of man--
Alas! how much of good we miss; we know
No mate or happy marriage in a Heaven
Devoid of woman."

With Belzebub, that mighty spirit severely masculine, it is the growing power of the new race that furnishes food for thought and ground for an ulterior motive. The prospect of human rivalry impresses him far more than the description of a happiness to which the sexless angels must ever be strangers. His soul is keyed in a grander, more passionless mood. Apollion, however, cannot forget this charming vision of idyllic joy. He repeats the same enchanting strain again and again. He even forgets to answer his chief's questions, and returns to the same fascinating theme in:

"Their life consists
Alone in loving and in being loved--
One sweet, one mutual joy, by them indulged
Perpetually, yet e'er unquenchable."

In this masterly manner the two controlling motives of the play, the envy of man's power, and the jealousy of human happiness, are seen to originate. The latter, however, is soon merged into the former, for Apollion, failing to elicit sympathy with his tenderer emotions, begins to sympathize with the more heroic mood of Belzebub, and even attempts to inflame it by artful suggestion.

The Archangel Gabriel, "The Herald from the towering Throne of Thrones," now approaches, with all the choristers of Heaven, to unfold the last divine decree.

From the mouth of his golden trumpet fall the silvery tones of peace. With jubilant tongue he praises the glorious attributes of the Deity and the boundless beneficence of the Godhead. In yet grander strain he prophesies the ascent of man,

"Who shall mount up by the stairway of the world,
The firmament of beatific light
Within, into the ne'er-created glow:"

and foretells the future incarnation of the Son of God, who, "on his high seat in his unshadowed Realm," shall judge both men and angels.

Here the chorus, after the manner of the antique drama, bursts into a line of pious affirmation. Gabriel then continues his address in a sterner tone. Obedience to the divine command, and honor to the new race is henceforth the bounden duty of the angelic hosts. Then follows a description of the three hierarchies of Heaven, founded upon the doctrine of the Church Fathers, ending with an eloquent iteration of the divine command. As yet all is serene. Even those spirits who soon shall unfurl the black banner of rebellion in that "virgin realm of peace" are yet unaware that within their breasts slumbers a passion that, awaking, will fill those holy courts with the tumultuous discord of revolt.

The ringing echoes of Gabriel's clarion trumpet have scarcely died away, when, throughout the clear hyaline, millions of angelic choristers burst into that sublime hymn of praise--that "anthem sung to harps of gold "--the grandest ever penned:

"Who is it on His Throne, high-seated?"

Triumphant songs and glad hosannahs now float down those "arching voids of empyrean stair." "All that pleaseth God is well" is the devout conclusion of this splendid outburst of celestial praise. Harmony re-echoes harmony; and with this glorious ode of jubilation the act comes to an end.

THE CLOUD OF CONSPIRACY.

In the second act, the protagonist first comes on the scene, like a god,

"With thunder shod,
Crowned with the stars, and with the morning stoled."

He has until now been artfully kept in the background. Drawn by fire-winged cherubim, he sweeps into view, and voices, in no uncertain tone, his dissatisfaction with the divine decree.

Gabriel, the angel of revelation, is with admirable art now placed over against the Stadtholder. Lucifer would argue--would know the exact nature of Heaven's last decree. Gabriel, however, merely replies to his eager questioning with a dignified affirmation of God's command, and departs, leaving the divine injunction behind.

Belzebub, with untiring malignity, now prods the wounded pride of the fiery Stadtholder, and Lucifer again and again blazes into the most intense and bitter defiance. Listen to this speech, seething with the soul of rebellion:

"Now swear I by my crown upon this chance
To venture all, to raise my seat amid
The firmament, the spheres, the splendor of
The stars above. The Heaven of Heavens shall then
My palace be; the rainbow be my throne;
The starry vast, my court; while down beneath,
The Earth shall be my foot-stool and support;
I shall, then swiftly drawn through air and light,
High-seated on a chariot of cloud,
With lightning-stroke and thunder grind to dust
Whate'er above, around, below doth us
Oppose, were it God's Marshal grand himself;
Yea, e'er we yield, these empyrean vaults,
Proud in their towering masonry, shall burst,
With all their airy arches, and dissolve
Before our eyes; this huge and joint-racked earth
Like a misshapen monster lifeless lie;
This wondrous universe to chaos fall,
And to its primal desolation change.
Who dares, who dares defy great Lucifer?"

Surely the spirit of revolt never found fiercer and more poetical expression! Surely more eloquent and stupendous daring was never uttered than the blasting fulminations of this celestial rebel, who now stands, like a colossus of evil in the realm of good!

The leaders of the conspiracy then meet together and hatch their deep, nefarious plot. Lucifer towers magnificent, the controlling spirit in every plan, full of impelling thought and of tremendous action. Apollion, that "master wit with craftiness the spirits to seduce," and Belial, whose "countenance, smooth-varnished with dissimulation's hue," knows no superior in deception, at Lucifer's command now sow the seeds of dissension broadcast throughout the Heavens. The dialogue between these two celestial rogues shows great dramatic skill, and abounds in subtleties worthy of the chief himself. Their whole plan seems to be:

"Through something specious, 'neath some seeming guised,"

to win first the various chiefs and then the bravest warriors to the standard of the Morning-star; and then with these

"For all eternity
Mankind to lock without the gate of Heaven."

A high-sounding resolve,

"That tinkles well in the angelic ear,
And flashes like a flame from choir to choir."

The chorus of good angels again comes on the stage, and with antiphonal harmonies reveals the growing discontent. How eloquently it pictures the serene beauties of Heaven, now tarnished with "mournful mists from darkness driven!" A beautiful and poetic synthesis of the preceding act!

THE GATHERING GLOOM.

In the third act, the Heavens are in a blaze of uproar. The rebellion is now widespread; and revolution is imminent. The whole act is one grand antithesis of the loyal and the seditious angels, or Luciferians, as the latter are called. It is strophe and anti-strophe nearly all the way through. It is argument and counter-argument from beginning to end.

With wonderful art, our sympathy for the rank and file of the rebellious spirits is first awakened. One is made to feel that their disaffection is genuine and that their sorrow is unaffected. They represent the dissatisfied people, brought to the verge of frenzy by the wily arts of the demagogue; the howling mob, wanting only the kindling spark to flash into the flame of revolt; the maddened rabble, waiting for the master-spirit to spur them into open revolution.

And the master-spirit appears. Belzebub, by his colossal hypocrisy and diabolical cunning, succeeds in drawing them into an incriminating attitude. Michael, austere and magnificent, approaches at this crisis, and these two chiefs are then thrown into admirable juxtaposition. Michael's grandeur has already been foreshadowed, and his character in every way equals the conception of him that we were led to form.

Like Lucifer, he is preëminently the incarnation of action. He will not argue. He does not appeal. He is a god of battle; not a divinity of words. He is stern and powerful. He is terse and terribly severe; and after a few words full of scathing scorn and ominous with threat, he commands the virtuous angels to part at once from the rebellious horde. He then leaves to learn the will of the Most High.

The disappearance of Michael is the signal for the advent of the head of the rebellion himself. Lucifer now comes opportunely to the front. With great art the meeting of the Field-marshal and the Stadtholder has been avoided. Such a meeting would have brought about a premature crisis. The Luciferians, in a splendid burst of appeal, beg the Stadtholder's protection. To this appeal Lucifer replies in a speech that is sublime in its hypocrisy. He professes blind attachment to God, and proceeds to test their sincerity by skillfully opposing questions of prudence and arguments of peace, while at the same time he admits, apparently with great reluctance, that their grievances are well founded. He hopes, too, that their displeasure will not be accounted as a stain on high, and that God will forgive their righteous resentment.

When, however, he discovers that they are firm in their determination to obtain their rights by force of arms, that they sincerely desire him as their chief, and that at least one-third of all the spirits are already numbered among the rebels, he throws off his mask, and quickly changes front:

"Then shall we venture all, our favor lost
To the oppressors of your lawful right."

He now again appears as the imperious prince of revolt, and at Belzebub's solicitation mounts the throne which the latter has meanwhile prepared for him. Belzebub enjoins the hosts to swear allegiance to Lucifer and to his morning-star, which oath is given with a will, and the act is at an end.

The chorus of Luciferians then extol their leader in an ode breathing defiance and blazing with the flame of rebellion. The clanging tread of a mailed warrior resounds in every line. The note of triumph rings out boldly; and with professions of fealty to their chief, and kindling with adoration for his morning-star, they march off the stage. This ode is a curious medley of antique metres, trochees, dactyls, and spondees, attuned to tumultuous emotion. Boldly regular in its classic irregularity, it echoes and re-echoes with the clamor of battle and the shout of revelry. It is a pæan keyed in the strident chord of Hell.

Scarcely have these fiercely jubilant tones died away, when the good angels follow with a plaintive ode of sorrow that is a striking antithesis to the passionate outburst of hate with which the air is yet reverberating.

Strophe and antistrophe proceed in the same mournful iambic measure, in verses sweetly musical with curious rimes, when suddenly in the epode they break into a livelier strain, and in tripping trochaics give voice to an entirely different mood--a fiery indignation mingled with a deep sense of the grave crisis that threatens the autonomy of Heaven.

Here, too, is a foreshadowing of the transcendent power that shall quell this treason. Nothing can be more original and artistic than these lyrics themselves. Nothing can be more harmonious than their blending with the action. Vondel is never more admirable than here.

THE SEETHING SEAS OF SEDITION.

In the fourth act the rebellion has become a conflagration:

"The whole of Heaven glows with the fierce blaze
Of tumult and of treachery."

Gabriel, winged with command, comes on the scene, and orders Michael, in the name of God,

"To burn out with a glow of fire and zeal
These dark, polluting stains."

Michael is astounded to learn of the treachery of Lucifer, and, in reply to his inquiries, Gabriel gives a beautiful and pathetic account of the progress of the revolt, and tells how the radiant joy of God became overshadowed with mournfulness. Michael now summons Uriel, his armor-bearer, to his side, and at once proceeds to put on his armor, at the same time shouting his orders to his myriad legions around him. In the twinkling of an eye the celestial host stands in marching array and is rapidly hurried forward.

We are now transported into the hostile camp, where Lucifer is seen questioning his generals as to the number and the disposition of his forces. Belzebub replies with a lucid and highly colored report, saying that the deserters sweep onward with

"A rush and roar from every firmament,
Like a vast sea aglow with radiant lights."

Lucifer is much pleased to learn this, and from his throne addresses his flaming squadrons in a speech bristling with warlike reason and full of indomitable courage.

He fully apprehends the enormity of his offense, and cunningly makes his hearers equal sharers in his guilt. Retreat is now impossible. The celestial Rubicon is crossed. They have already burnt all bridges behind them. "Necessity, therefore," he says, "must be our law." If defeated, God himself cannot wholly annihilate them; while if they chance to win, "the hated tyranny of Heaven" shall then be changed into a state of freedom; nor shall the angels then be forced

"To pant beneath the yoke of servitude forever."

Once more he demands the oath of allegiance, and is about to give the command, "Forward!" when Belzebub espies the beautiful figure of Rafael winging his golden way trough the crystal empyrean on a mission of mercy.

Even Belzebub is touched at this unlooked-for sign of angelic affection, and his tone, usually so sarcastic and so severely deliberate, as he announces his advent, is softened to a transient tenderness. For once he has forgotten his usual mocking air, and this exquisite touch does much to relieve the sombre impression of his tremendous malignity.

Rafael, a celestial St. John, melting with love for the Stadtholder, falls in a paroxysm of grief and tenderness upon his neck. We intuitively feel that some secret bond of sympathy must bind these two angels, so dissimilar in spirit and in character, together.

Lucifer, overwhelming in passion, gigantic in intellect, resistless in will--magnificent in his whole personality; Rafael, sublime in devotion, infinite in pity, immaculate in holiness--the apotheosis of all that is beautiful! Lucifer, whose eyes flash ambition and whose heart flames hate; Rafael, whose gaze is aspiration and whose soul is love! The genius of evil and the spirit of virtue; the proudly wicked and the meekly good! The infernal masculine stands confronted by the heavenly feminine; harsh violence is caressed by loving gentleness, and pride and humility embrace! Truly a masterly antithesis!

In a strain of glorious appeal, Rafael begs Lucifer to desist, and first aims at the weakest point in his armor--his pride. How splendid his description of Lucifer's glory! His former pomp is here artistically pictured to heighten the contrast with his fall.

He next proceeds to threaten, and gives an equally vivid picture of the horrible punishments--"the worm, endless remorse, and ever-during pain"--reserved for him. He then offers his olive branch as a token of divine mercy, and urges immediate acceptance before it is forever too late. Truth offers hope to error on the high-road to despair; peace pours her golden offering at the iron feet of war!

Lucifer, proud in his consciousness of strength, as the chosen head of millions of angelic warriors, one-third of the entire spirit world, is, however, unmoved. He asseverates that he merely wishes to uphold the ancient charter. The standard of revolt is also the banner of right. Duty has called; justice commanded; friendship inspired him to take this step for the protection of the celestial Fatherland. He, too, then,

"With necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds."

Hear his own words:

"I shall maintain the holy right, compelled
By high necessity, thus urged at length,
Though much against my will, by the complaints
And mournful groans of myriad tongues."

Rafael stands aghast at the picture of such hardened wickedness. His hairs rise with fear to hear the Archangel's shameless confession, and he promptly accuses him of ambition and of gross deceit.

Lucifer, however, indignantly denies this, and proudly asserts that he has always done his full duty. Rafael then reads aloud his evil purpose as it is written in lurid letters on his heart. The astonished chief no longer denies his lust for power, but claims the prerogative of his position as the Stadtholder of God. At last he is brought to the acknowledgment that the ascent of man is the stone upon which his "battle-axe shall whet its edge."

Rafael, like an angel of light, then pleads with this spirit of darkness in tones of sweetest tenderness. He stands here like a personified conscience. He would be the guardian angel of the great Stadtholder. Not a harsh word escapes the stern lips of the flaming Archangel. His own vast knowledge and his deep heart testify how good are the intentions of his friend. What visions are here called up of the happy days of their friendship, when they basked in the untarnished splendors of Heaven, before a thought of evil had tolled the funeral knell of peace!

Argument after argument, in cumulative progression, falls from the pleader's mellifluous tongue. Lucifer is stern and unyielding. Still Rafael pleads on. For an instant Lucifer falters. Rafael sees his advantage; and not only again offers him his olive branch, but appoints himself as Lucifer's hostage with God--so sure is he of obtaining mercy.

Lucifer is almost overcome; but the thought of his morning-star setting in shame and darkness, and a vision of his enemies defiant on the throne, still steels his heart in its obstinate resolve.

Rafael next pictures for him, in lurid colors, the lake of brimstone down below, whose mouth yawns for his destruction. Once more, for the third time, he offers the Archrebel the branch of peace, and promises full grace.

Lucifer then gives voice to that grand soliloquy, beginning:

"What creature else so wretched is as I?
On the one side flicker feeble rays of hope,
While on the other yawns a flaming horror."

Here he reveals for the first time his inmost heart. This is the crisis of his career--the climax of the whole play. Nowhere is the suspense so keen. One wonders how the Archangel will decide in this critical moment:

"This brevity twixt bliss and endless doom."

His pride of will has in one stroke become a chaos of indecision. We are made to sympathize with his terrible anguish, as the logic of his remorse-throbbing conscience leads him to the bitter adversative:

"But 'tis too late--all hope is past."

The ominous sound of Michael's battle trumpet rudely awakes him from his revery, and forces him to the stern realization of the impending strife. Just at this moment, also, Apollion soars into his presence with the news of the near approach of God's Field-marshal.

Lucifer, however, is as yet too agitated, so soon after his sudden apprehension of the enormity of his crime and of the terrible punishment reserved for him in the probable event of his defeat, to respond with alacrity to the summons. It is with great difficulty that he rouses himself from his soliloquizing mood. He must think; but although he feels far more than his followers that

"The heavy bolt of war should not be weighed
Too lightly,"

and although he well knows that the odds are against him, he has, by the time that his other chieftains approach, quite recovered himself, and at once gives the quick, sharp command of the soldier. The time for action has come. Behind their towering leader, amid the blare of bugles and the trumpet's stirring tones, his serried battalions march with waving banners off the stage.

Of this busy scene Rafael, meanwhile, has been a silent but interested spectator. Now alone in his sorrow, he melts into a compassionate monologue; and, joined by the chorus, gives utterance to that beautiful lyric of grief, that tender prayer so full of the sweet melody of appeal, at the end of the fourth act. Amid the jarring clamor and the frenzied shout of the departing squadrons, this anthem of mercy rises to God like a benediction. Over the passion waves of the tumultuous hell of rebellion around them, their voices tremble like the echoes of a heaven forever lost.

Surely, the emotion of forgiving compassion was never combined with a more musical sorrow. Here, as in all of Vondel's lyrics, there is a perfect harmony between the form and the thought.

FLOOD AND FLAME.

At the opening of the last act, Rafael is discovered on the battlements of Heaven. He is in a fever of anxiety to learn the result of the contest, and peers into the empyrean for some sign of a messenger from the field,

"Where armies reel on slopes with lightning crowned."

The glad sounds of approaching triumph fall on his ear. Across the pure hyaline now dart meteoric flashes of light. Each shield of the victorious legions dazzles like a sun:

"Each shield-sun streams a day of triumph forth."

Far in advance of the returning battalions speeds Uriel, "Angel with swiftest wing," bearing the message of victory. With incredible velocity--for he is winged with good news--he flashes through the air, in his "aery wheels" exultingly waving his "flaming, keen, two-edged sword." He has reached the serene altitude of Heaven. He has gained the farthest wall. He is at hand.

Rafael is full of eagerness to hear the details of the fight, the particulars of "this the first campaign in Heaven." Uriel then, "with sequence just," gives a vivid account of the preparations for battle, beginning with the moment when Gabriel first informed Michael of the defection of the Stadtholder.

He tells how the countless loyal legions, at their chief's command, deploy themselves in battle line until they form in serried rank

"One firm
Trilateral host that like a triangle
Thrust out its edges sharp upon the eye."

Michael, the Field-marshal, stands in the heart of this triangle, towering high above his fellows, the personification of judgment,

"With the glow
Of lurid lightnings in his lifted hand."

Splendid is the picture of the infernal host; their squadrons,

"Battalion on battalion, riders pale
On dim mysterious chargers,"

advance in the form of a crescent moon. Belzebub and Belial command the two horns of this formidable array,

"Both standing there in shining panoply,
Vying in splendors grand."

Lucifer himself holds the centre, "the point strategic" of his army, while Apollion behind him bears on high the lofty standard with its streaming morning-star.

Rafael, in his excitement, occasionally interrupts this graphic description with exclamations of wonder, and, as the story of the terrible conflict progresses, also with occasional cries of horror and of pity. Great art is shown in the introduction of these exclamatory pauses into the long account of the battle scene. It not only gives the narrator time to get breath, but voices the feelings of the listener, and intensifies his suspense.

Then follows a brilliant account of the Stadtholder. As the rebel chief is the protagonist, and as the seditious angels furnish the subject matter for the drama, the poet has artistically described them at great length. At last the two armies confront each other. We are now made to see how they

"Panted for strife and for destruction flamed."

Then follows the famous battle scene, which must be read in the poet's own thrilling words. Here is action in every line, a battle stroke in each word.

After the first onset, the celestial legions begin by circling wheels to soar aloft, whence, like a falcon, they shall soon precipitate themselves upon their enemies, who, having also risen, but with heavier sail, are likened to a flock of drowsing herons, thrown into sudden consternation by the sight of their dreaded foe.

Uriel now gives a striking picture of the grand perspective above--the celestial legions, high in the empyrean, arrayed like a shining triangle, the symbol of the Trinity; far beneath, the infernal phalanx, gleaming like a crescent on the turbaned brow of night, the sign of the Turk, whose ferocious hordes, even in Vondel's time, were yet thundering at the gate of Christendom. Thus each army hangs:

"Suspended like a silent cloud,
Full weighted 'gainst the balanced air."

Again the celestial triangle, with terrific force, crashes into the infernal half-moon, and flames of brimstone, red and blue, flash far out into the sky. Thunderbolt on thunderbolt, unchained, leap with angry roar into the surging horde, leaving havoc, ruin, and desolation in their lurid wake. The centre of the half-moon begins to break; and its pointed horns nearly meet together behind the resistless triangle.

Lucifer performs wonderful feats of valor. High on his blazing chariot, he is a conspicuous figure. His fierce team, "the lion and the dragon blue," symbolic of pride and envy, enraged by the battle-strokes rained upon their starry backs, fly forward with fearful strides--the lion, with dreadful bellows, biting and rending; while his terrible mate shoots pest-provoking poisons from his frothy tongue, and,

"... Raving, fills the air
With smoke blown from his nostrils far and wide."

On every side the infernal chief is surrounded by his enemies. They try to overpower him with mere numbers. He parries every stroke, or breaks their force upon his shield. He then waves his battle-axe aloft to fell God's glowing banner, when Michael, clad in glittering armor, "like a god amid a ring of suns," suddenly confronts him.

The Archangel sternly calls upon the rebel Prince to surrender. But Lucifer, unmoved, three times with his war-axe strives to cleave the diamond shield of Michael, wherein blazed God's most holy name. The axe rebounds and shivers into fragments; and we cannot but sympathize with the Archrebel, who is now in a bad plight indeed. The grand catastrophe to which the swift current of his wickedness has been bearing him is at last at hand, reserved with consummate art until the middle of this act.

Michael lifts his terrible right hand, and through the helmet and head of his disarmed but yet unconquered foe he smites his lightnings, cleaving unto his very eyes. The force of this blow is such that Lucifer is hurled from his chariot, which follows him downward, whirling round and round in its descent:

"Thus lion, dragon, driver, all plunge down."

In vain the fierce swarms of warring rebels attempt to stay their chief. Uriel engages Apollion, and succeeds in wresting from him the rebel banner with its morning-star. Belzebub and Belial still fight on; but their legions are all confused. The crescent has now become a disorganized mob,

"And o'er them fell destruction rolls its flood."

In vain Apollion comes back into the field, reinforced by the monsters from the firmament of Heaven, which may be supposed to typify, as Vondel says in his preface, the abuse of the forces of nature by the Devil to effect his evil designs.

Orion, shrieking until the very air grows faint, strives to crush the head of the assault, that

"... Heedless of
Orion or his club, moves grandly on."

The Northern Bears stand upon their haunches to oppose their brutish strength. The Hydra gapes with poison-breathing throats. But, unmindful of all these, the triangle still advances. Numerous other episodes, in the meanwhile, are happening along the line of battle; but the suspense is at last over. The victory of the celestial angels is a glorious fact.

Rafael now gives utterance to exclamations of praise, and asks Uriel concerning the effect of his defeat on the fallen Archangel. Uriel then recounts his terrible punishment, and relates how his splendid beauty was now become, in falling, a complication of seven dreadful monsters, typifying the seven deadly sins. That beast, says the narrator,

"Doth shrink to view its own deformity,
And veils with darkling mists its Gorgon face."

The fate of the protagonist being known, Rafael next wishes to learn what became of the rest of the rebel host. Then follows the account of the tumultuous rout, wherein the fleeing hordes, in their descent to Hell, also undergo a metamorphosis into the forms of strange and uncouth monsters.

At this point the triumphant Michael himself approaches with his victorious legions, laden with glorious plunder. The celestial choristers, strewing their laurel leaves, accompanied by the sound of cymbal, pipe, and drum, now greet him with a song of jubilation which, even more than most of Vondel's lyrics, is peculiar for the intricacy of its rimes.

"Hail to the hero, hail," they cry. The spirit and liveliness of this pæan are eminently suited to voice the long pent-up plaudits of the angels. The regularity of this ode, with its rapid melodious swing, is a marked contrast to the strident enthusiasm and the discordant harmony of the chorus of Luciferians at the end of Act III.

As soon as the joyful reverberations of the battle-hymn have ceased to roll through the interminable arches on high, Michael addresses his legions and the assembled hosts in a speech of great dignity, ascribing the glory of the victory to God alone. He speaks proudly of the spoils of battle, which have already been hung on the bright axis of Heaven.

"No more shall we," says he,

"Behold the glow of Majesty supreme
Dimmed by the damp of base ingratitude."

He next pictures the defeated rebels as:

"...All blind and overcast
With shrouding mists, and horribly deformed."

Then he concludes with stern sententiousness:

"Thus is his fate who would assail God's Throne,"

which the choristers as gravely repeat.

The expected catastrophe has occurred, and the terrible conclusion has been described. In the stormy wake of the sad fall of the angels follows the no less sad fall of man--the loss of

"The primal innocence 'mid Eden's bowers."

The heaving, seething seas of rebellion, "swollen to the skies," have, it is true, subsided; but again they gather momentum for one more wave of disaster, which now breaks upon the shore of Earth, spreading death and desolation throughout the sinless groves of Paradise; for Gabriel now approaches and hurls into the joyful camp a thunderbolt of sad surprise. "Alas! alas!" he cries, breaking into lamentation, "our triumph is in vain;" and he announces the fall of Adam.

Michael is astounded, and shudders as he hears the news. With infinite distress he listens to Gabriel's interesting account of how the overthrow was effected. Gabriel first describes the "dim, infernal consistory" far, far below. Here Lucifer called together all his chieftains, who now

"Unto each other turned abhorring gaze."

Then,

"High-seated 'mid his councillors of state,"

the Archfiend, whose character is now shown in its full development, addressed his followers in words full of bitter rage against God--a striking contrast to the dignity of Michael's address.

His heart is now a hell of hate, boiling with passion for revenge. The Heavens must be persecuted and circumvented, and this must be done by the ruin of man. With prophetic eye he pictures his future dominion on earth, and the myriad miseries into which the fall shall plunge mankind. He then promises his fellow-conspirators the future adoration of the human race, when as heathen gods and pagan deities they shall receive the praise of countless multitudes of men.

At this point Michael breaks into fierce execrations, making a vow of summary and condign punishment. Gabriel then continues to relate how Lucifer selected Belial as the most worthy instrument to seduce the happy pair. Belial, taking upon himself the form of the Serpent, succeeds most fiendishly in his unholy mission, first, as in the Biblical account, alluring Eve, who in turn tempts Adam. Their fall and shame and misery are pathetically told. In the midst of this sad story the chorus interjects its wail of sympathy, while Gabriel continues by narrating the colloquy of the hapless twain with God.

Gabriel then gives the woeful details of their penalty, and presents a dismal picture of future wretchedness, against the blackness of which, however, is one bright star--the promise of the Strong One, the Hero who shall crush the Serpent's head.

Gabriel now commands Michael to place all things in their wonted place lest the malicious spirits should "further mischief brew." Michael, the spirit of eternal order, then proceeds to reduce this chaos of evil to final subjection.

He first sends Uriel down,

"To drive the pair from Eden who have dared
Transgress, so rash and blind, the primal law."

His duty it is, also, to force mankind

"To labor, sweat, and arduous slavery."