"Secentismo." Marino-La Lira-L'Adone. Followers. Chia- brera-The Italian canzone and the classical ode-Bernardo Tasso-Chiabrera's Pindarics and canzonette. Testi. Tassoni THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. HOLLAND-VERSE AND PROSE. INTRODUCTORY-MEDIEVAL ROMANCE AND LYRIC-THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY-MAERLANT AND OTHER DIDACTIC POETS-DIRK POTTER THE CHAMBERS OF RHETORIC- - ANNA BIJNS-RENAISSANCE-MARNIX AND COORNHERT-SPIEGHEL AND -FIFTEENTH CENTURY VISSCHER-THE EGLANTINE" OR OUDE KAMER ROEMER LIFE CAMPHUYZEN STALPERT VAN DER WIELE-FOLLOWERS OF VONDEL AND HOOFT— ON no country in Europe did the two main influences of the sixteenth century-the Renaissance and the Reformation-set a deeper mark than on Introductory. the Netherlands. The country which produced Erasmus is not the least important contributor to the revival of learning, while the revolt of the Netherlands was, in Motley's words, "the longest, the A darkest, the bloodiest, the most important episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe." Of the greatness of the people which emerged victorious from this struggle, of the high level of culture and learning to which they had attained, of the range and magnificence of their achievement in the art of painting, there has never been any question. But of the Dutch literature of the seventeenth century little is known outside Holland except by a few scholars,1 1 Jonckbloet's Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (4th ed., 1889, C. Honigh), an epoch-making work, is still the fullest history of Dutch literature. The arrangement is at times confusing, and much work has been done since. Penon's Nederlandsche Dicht-enProza-werken, 1886, forms a companion set of volumes to Jonckbloet's Geschiedenis, and contains carefully edited texts, but not always of the works one would most wish to have. A popular sketch is Jan ten Brink's Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, 1897. A very interesting sketch, from a Catholic point of view, is the late J. A. Alberdingk Thijm's De la Littérature néerlandaise à ses Différentes Epoques, 1854. Of the earlier literature a condensed and learned sketch by Professor Te Winkel is contained in Paul's Grundriss der Deutschen Philologie, 1900. Delightfully written and indispensable works by Professor Kalff are Nederlandsche Letterkunde in de XVIde Eeuw, Brill, n.d.; Literatuur en Tooneel te Amsterdam in de Zeventiende Eeuw, Haarlem, 1895,-biographical and critical sketches of Hooft, Vondel, Cats, Huyghens, &c. The first volume of a history of Dutch literature in eight volumes by the same writer has appeared, Groningen, 1905. Busken - Huet's brilliant Het Land van Rembrandt and Litterarische Fantasien are well worth reading. The work of many scholars is contained in De Gids, the great literary periodical founded in 1837. Excellently annotated seventeenth-century texts-and the language presents difficulties which require elucidation-have been issued in the Nederlandsche Klassieken, general editor Dr Eelco Verwys, Versluys, Amsterdam, and the Klassiek Letterkundig Pantheon, W. J. Thieme & Co., Zutphen. An interesting and representative though small Anthology is Professor Kalff's Dichters van den Ouden Tijd, Amsterdam, n.d. English works are some essays in Gosse's Studies in the Literature of and it has not been unusual to speak of Dutch literature as an entirely negligible quantity, because the Netherlands produced no creative genius of that highest class to which Shakespeare and Cervantes belong. But geniuses of such world-wide recognition are the exception. The degree to which a country's literature is studied abroad depends not on intrinsic merit alone, but on the country's political importance and familiarity with its language. The student of Dutch literature in the seventeenth century will not find a drama comparable, strictly as drama, with that of England or France or Spain, nor an epic and narrative poetry comparable to that of Italy, and of England as represented by Milton. But he will find and enjoy a lyrical poetry of singular depth and richness, characterised by that feeling for nature which is such a striking feature of Dutch painting, by what the Dutch critic J. A. Alberdingk Thijm justly entitles "le naturel, la naïveté, la franchise, et le sentiment de la couleur qui paraissent être inhérents au caractère néerlandais." In naturalness, in the sense attached to the word when we speak of the "return to nature," feeling for external nature, interest in the life of the people, the inclination to discard convention and make poetry the simple, direct, and vibrating utterance of the poet's own emotions, Dutch poetry, taken as a whole, partly because it is Northern Europe, Lond., 1879, and the same writer's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica; Bowring and Van Dyk's Batavian Anthology, Lond., 1824; Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe, Philadelphia, 1849; an article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, 1829. a bourgeois or middle-class product, seems to me in advance of the poetry of any country with which this volume deals. For this simplicity and directness is not characteristic of Renaissance lyric poetry in Italy or the countries which caught their inspiration from Italy. Even in the case of Shakespeare's sonnets it is notoriously difficult to say how far the feeling is sincere, how far conventional. In English poetry one might say that lyrical poetry, as we have come to understand the phrase since Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley wrote, begins with Lycidas-in the personal digressions and Milton's sonnets. But poetry of this self- revealing outspoken character abounds in the literature with which this chapter deals, and although of course in form and style Dutch poetry is not unaffected by the conventions of the century, yet only one poet, Hooft, really mastered the courtly style, and caught the tone of the Italian Petrarchians and the Pléiade. Vondel and Brederoo and Huyghens are most effective when most natural and direct, not least so when they express themselves in dialect. The natural runs easily into the commonplace, and of the commonplace there is not a little in Dutch poetry. Its apostle is Jacob Cats; yet even in Cats there is a vein of racy narrative, while in ardour and elevation there are few lyrical poets superior to Vondel. The space at our disposal to deal even with this greatest period in Dutch literature is so limited that it is impossible to say more than a word concerning the earlier poetry. Mediæval literature is represented in the Low Countries by all Mediaval |