pressive narrative. It is impossible to read any of the greater episodes without recognising and admiring the vigour, the compression, the loftiness, and the fire with which Hooft tells his moving story. His deep interest in the events he narrates recalls Clarendon, but he is not so constantly the advocate of one side; and the condensation of his style and his frequent felicitous figures are more in the manner of Bacon in the Henry VII., although he has not the same detached interest in Macchiavelian kingcraft. A figure like that which follows is quite in Bacon's style: "But these considerations weighed little with that oppressor who had already set his heart upon the desolating of cities, the stamping out of liberty, and the confiscation of property. 'I have ere this,' said he, 'tamed a people of iron, and shall I not now be able to tame a people of butter?' For he did not bethink him that hard metal may be hammered, but not soft curd, which he that would handle must deal gently withal." And the following might have come out of the essay Of Dissimulation: "Sparing of words indeed was this Prince, and wont to say that no craft of concealment can cover his steps that lets himself be taken a-prattling."

Brandt.

Of other prose work in the period there is not much to say. Attempts to imitate the French pastoral and heroic romance were unsuccessful. Hooft's dignified historical prose was most successfully cultivated by Gheeraert Brandt, whose poetry has been mentioned. The son of a watchmaker in Amsterdam, whose family, like Vondel's, came from

Antwerp, Brandt was at seventeen the author of a tragedy, and at twenty he composed a funeral oration on the death of Hooft, which was recited by an actor in the theatre and received with immense applause. As a fact, the speech was simply a translation of Du Perron's Oraison Funèbre for Ronsard. Later, when he had left watchmaking and become a Predikant, he composed his Historie van de Reformatie (1668-74), the second part of which, dealing with the Arminian controversy, provoked the bitter hostility of the Calvinists. He composed short and sympathetic biographies of Hooft and Vondel for editions of their works, and a Leven van de Ruiter (1687), which is the finest example of his prose.

Brandt's model is quite clearly the dignified prose of Hooft with its elaborate periods. "The perception of this," he begins his Life of Van Ruiter, "and the utility for the state involved, has moved me to devote some of my hours to the description of his praiseworthy life and valiant achievements, with the firm purpose in this work, which may God bless, of confining myself strictly within the bounds prescribed by the supreme law for historians, and, in the service of truth alone, of narrating as well the errors of friends as the praise of enemies; ever bearing in mind that I write not of olden times whose memory has grown dim, but of things that happened but yesterday, and, as it were, under the eyes of many who took part in them, assisting or being present, friends and strangers, who without doubt should I, in this wide sea of manifold events, wander

from the course of truth, misled by favour or hatred, would punish me and expose me to shame." Brandt's diction, however, is simpler than Hooft's, his style generally clearer, and at its best not less vivid and impressive. A lighter and more conversational prose was developed by Van Effen under French and English influence.

CHAPTER II.

HOLLAND-DRAMA.

66

INTRODUCTORY-MEDIEVAL DRAMA-PROBLEM CONNECTED THEREWITH -THE MORALITIES, HISTORIES, AND FARCES OF THE CHAMBERSRENAISSANCE SECULAR DRAMA - THE EGLANTINE -COSTER AND RODENBURG-BREDEROO-HOOFT-"QUARREL OF THE PLAYERS"— COSTER'S ACADEMY THE AMSTERDAMSCHE KAMER AND NEW THEATRE VONDEL DEVELOPMENT OF HIS DRAMA INDIVIDUAL TRAGEDIES-CHARACTERISATION AND CRITICISM-FAILURE OF THE ROMANTIC AND CLASSICAL DRAMA-JAN VOS's 'ARAN EN TITUS'— LATER PLAYS.

Introductory.

THE history of the drama in Holland in the seventeenth century is the history of an effort which was not fully successful. The same elements. were present as in England and France. The Morality gave way to the tragicomedy or dramatised story-play, romantic and historical. The classical drama, represented especially by Seneca, Plautus, and Terence, was studied, admired, and imitated by a band of young men eager to elevate and refine the literature of their country. But the elements never succeeded in combining to produce a living and great drama, on either the English

D

romantic or the French classical model. Vondel and Hooft put some of their best poetry into dramatic form, but neither of them ever clearly grasped the fact that the essence of drama is neither the incident of the popular plays nor the sentiment, style, and morality of the scholarly, but the vivid presentation of the agitations and conflicts of the human soul, revealed in a motived and naturally evolved action. The history of the experiment is, however, not without interest and significance, and in comedy some humorous and realistic work was produced not unworthy of the countrymen of Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade.

Mediaeval Plays.

The oldest Medieval plays in Dutch which have survived are of a purely secular character, four serious, so-called abele Spelen, and six farces -kluchten or sotternien-belonging to the later fourteenth century.1 Of the serious plays, three -Esmoreit, Gloriant, Lanseloet van Denemarken-are romances dramatised in simple and naïve manner, but by no means ineffectively. In Esmoreit a prince is sold by his ambitious cousin to the Turks, but returns at the right moment to rescue his mother,

1 They were edited for the first time by Hoffmann von Fallersleben from the single manuscript in which they are all preserved (the Hulthemsche MS. of the early fifteenth century, the répertoire of some guild or company) in that scholar's Hora Belgica, and were later included by Professor H. E. Moltzer in his Bibliotheek van Middelnederlandsche Letterkunde (Groningen, 1868-75), of which a new edition is in course of publication. For the questions raised see Jonckbloet's Geschiedenis, ii. 6. 1, and works cited there; also Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, Fünftes Buch (Halle,