HOLLAND'S INFLUENCE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AND LITERATURE

T. de VRIES, J. D.

CHICAGO

C. GRENTZEBACH
1916

BY
C. GRKNTZEBACH

HAMMOND PRESS
W. B. CONKEY COMPA
CHICAGO

PREFACE ,

IN the following pages an endeavor is made to
contribute to the knowledge of English language
and literature by telling the part which Holland played
in their development during several centuries. This
contribution to English language and literature I make
with especial delight, since the English language is
that of the American people, and consequently the
literature, written in that language, is of the greatest
educational importance to the United States. In doing
this, I have tried to reconcile my allegiance and faith-
fulness to the "stars and stripes" with my imperishable
love for the country of my ancestors. My endeavor
has been to portray so much of Dutch national life
and activity as has been useful and is still useful for
our present American life. The life of every American
citizen is rooted in the life of one or the other Euro-
pean nation and there is none living that does not feel
some hidden love in the bottom of his heart for that
country from which either he himself or his ancestors
came. He that would deny it would give a poor com-
pliment to his own character, education and feelings.
We are always standing between the future and the
past; and the love for our ancestors, for the country
of their activities, for the places where they are
resting after their labors, is as natural as our love for
our children and grandchildren. So the problem of
the twofold sympathy must present itself more or less
to every American, and the way I have tried to solve
it, as I hope to the honor of both my old country and

6 . PREFACE

our new world, may possibly give a hint to those who
apparently were not able to find the right equilibrium
in their love as divided between the country of their
ancestors and that of their offspring in the future.
Those who are too much attached to the old country
will never become really faithful to the new, and will
themselves remain strangers in this country. Those
that boast of their indifference about the land of their
ancestors are depriving their own character of one of
the noblest and most charming qualities: love and
honor for their ancestors. The solution is in finding,
honoring and remembering the best of what the old
country has produced in civilization, in learning, in art
and literature, in heroism and martyrdom, and in
offering that as a contribution to the national life of
the new world, giving honor to the past and blessing
to the future. Not in preferring the old world to the
new, but in making the best results of European life
useful for the American nation, in combining what is
beautiful and useful in both of them, lies the solution
that alone can satisfy our noblest feelings in this ten-
der question. That is what, as far as Holland's in-
fluence on English and American language and litera-
ture is concerned, I have tried to do.

It is only an endeavor, and as such I hope that it
may find appreciation.

Finally, I may not omit here the expression of my
cordial thanks to Dr. W. Lichtenstein, librarian of
Northwestern University, for the kindness and help-
fulness with which he and his staff have assisted me
in getting the books which I needed, and for the
special freedom which he has given me in the use of
the library.

T. DE VRIES.

Evanston, 111., May, 1916.

CONTENTS ,

PAGE

PREFACE 5

INTRODUCTION 13

PART I HOLLAND'S INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOP-
MENT OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

CHAPTER

I The English language and comparative
philology 23

II The great results of comparative philology.. 25

III Holland's share in the starting of compara-
tive philology 27

IV The Dutch school of Lambert ten Kate and
Balthazar Huydecoper 42

V Holland's share in the revival of mediaeval
literature during the nineteenth century, as a
natural consequence of the study of com-
parative philology 45

VI Results of the study of comparative philology
and of mediaeval literature, for the study of
English language and literature 51

PART II HOLLAND'S INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE.

VII The close relationship between the Dutch and

the English languages 55

VIII Why the influence of England on Dutch
language and literature is only of recent
date, while that of Holland on English lan-
guage and literature began much earlier and
continued during several centuries 61

IX The influence exerted on the English lan-
guage is entirely different from that on Eng-
lish literature 69

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

X How it happened that Holland exerted an
influence on the English language 73

XI What influence Holland exerted on the

English language 97

PART III THE INFLUENCE OF HOLLAND ON
ENGLISH LITERATURE.

XII On Caedmon 143

XIII On the stories of King Arthur and the
French romances in England 145

XIV On William Caxton and the first book print-
ing in England 149

XV On Prognostications or prophetic almanacs.. 153

XVI Thomas a Kempis 155

XVII "Elckerlic" and "Everyman" 160

XVIII Desiderius Erasmus 164

XIX The first English book on America is a

translation from the Dutch 173

XX Dutch legends in England 176

XXI Jestbooks and anecdotes. Fool literature.

Howleglass. Ulenspiegel 178

XXII Hadrianus Junius 182

XXIII The first complete English bible printed at
Antwerp (1527-1535) as a missionary work
of the Dutch. Miles Coverdale in the serv-
ice of Jacob van Meteren 187

XXIV The emblem-books. Van der Noot. Eras-
mus. Hadrianus Junius. Whitney. Plantijn.
Jacob Cats 191

XXV George Gascoigne. His abode in the Neth-
erlands and his works. His Glasse of Gov-
ernment and the Latin school dramas in
Holland. Macropedius and Gnapheus 198

XXVI Thomas Churchyard 213

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

XXVII Sir John Van der Noot and Edmund Spenser,
(a) Van der Noot's theatre, (b) Its author.

(d) Spenser and Van der Noot 224

XXVIII The "Bee Hive of the Romish Church" by

Marnix of St. Aldegonde 249

XXIX Descriptions of voyages. Lucas Jansz. Wag-
henser. Bernhard Langhenes. Jan Huyghen
van Linschoten. Willem Cornells Schouten.
Gerrit de Veer 253

XXX Religious Literature. Brownists, Separatists
or Independents. Baptists. Congregation-
alists. Quakers. Methodists. Presbyterians. 261

XXXI Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Jacobus
Struyck. The morality-plays in the Nether-
lands 275

XXXII Philip Sidney 278

XXXIII Tracts relating to execution of John of
Oldenbarnevelt in 1619. The tragedy of Sir
John of Oldenbarnevelt. A play called The
Jeweller of Amsterdam 282

XXXIV John Milton. His life und his Paradise Lost.
Milton and Grotius. Milton and Vondel.
Milton and Junius. Milton and Salmasius.
Milton and Alexander Morus. Bibliography.
Hugo Grotius and John Selden. Selden and
Graswinckel 288

XXXV The time of the Anglo-Dutch wars. John
Dryden. Andrew Marvell and Edmund
Waller 303

XXXVI Holland's influence during the time of Will-
iam III, King of England, and Stadtholder
of Holland. Daniel Defoe. Matthew Prior.
Gilbert Burnet and John Locke 321

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
XXXVII

PAGE

Holland's decline in the eighteenth century.
Fielding. Smollett. Goldsmith. Southey and
Henry Taylor under the influence of Bil-
derdyk 347

XXXVIII Holland's glory of the past remains inspiring.
Motley. Macaulay. Walter Scott. Wash-
ington Irving and Paulding. Longfellow.
Charles Reade and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Caroline Atwater Mason. Inspiration from
Dutch art. Walter Cranston Larnet's novel :
"Rembrandt, a romance of Holland." Eng-
lish translations of Dutch novels. French
and German novels inspired by Dutch history
and translated into English. George Ebers.

Alexander Dumas 374

1 INDEX OF NAMES 393

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Portrait of Franciscus Junius by Anton van Dyck

Frontispiece

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus by Albrecht Durer 168

Portrait of Hadrianus Junius 182

Portrait of Jacob Cats by P. Dubordieu 192

Portrait of Jonkheer Jan van der Noot 236

Title page of the "Bee-hive" with portrait of Marnix of

St. Aldegonde 250

Portrait of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten 254

Portrait of Jacobus Arminius 264

Portrait of Dirk Volkertz Coornhert by H. Golzius... 270

Portrait of Joost van den Vondel by Joachim Sandrard. 292

Portrait of Hugo Grotius by M. Mierevelt 296

Portrait of Willem Bilderdyk by Hodges 360

INTRODUCTION

AT first sight the subject treated in this little book
must look strange to most American readers,
who are educated in the innocent belief that dikes and
windmills, some pictures of Rembrandt and some
poor fisher people of Marken and Volendam are all
that is worth knowing about Holland. And if, during
their college years, they follow the advice of some
professor and read some book of Motley, then, of
course, they feel themselves thoroughly well-posted
on Holland ; the only thing to be done then is to make
a trip to Europe, taking four days for Holland, one to
see the Hague, one for Amsterdam, one for the isle of
Marken, and one for Haarlem and Leyden. The pur-
chase of a pair of wooden shoes and some postal cards
sets the crown on their investigations, and after their
return to America these "experts on Holland" feel in-
clined to give "a lecture with lantern slides," or to
write a "nice book" on "picturesque Holland." Such
has been for the last half century the method of
English landlords and of London parvenus; why
should not Americans follow in their footsteps, since
Washington Irving taught them never to think of
Holland and of the Dutch people but with a smile?

Why not ? Let me give the answer : Because on
the pages of American history are written the names
of Motley and Douglas Campbell, of Ruth Putnam
and of Griffis ; because the wonderful chorus of their
different voices has made us listen to another song
about Holland, sublime like the ideals which the

14 ' INTRODUCTION

i'iigrim fathers brought with them from Leyden, pure
and simple like the life of the first settlers on Man-
hattan, sacred and full of charm like the voice of
William Penn's mother when educating her son in
the city on the Meuse. The world's history and
Holland played some part in it when its statesmen, as
in the case of William the Silent and William the
Third, held in their hands the balance of power of
Europe, and the fate of Protestantism, and in deadly
struggle a faithful nation stood by them to conquer
freedom of conscience for all generations to come
the world's history contains a great many jokes, just
as a picture of Rembrandt contains a great deal of
vain darkness, and just as God's world-plan in Milton's
Paradise Lost contains a good many devils, but the
world's history is not a joke. Is there anything more
sublime, more grand for the contemplation of the
human soul, than the proceedings of the world's
history; that panorama of the leading nations in
which generation after generation roll to their graves,
leaving their deeds to the admiration of the grateful,
and to the mockery of the ungrateful ; that tremendous
progress of the human race in grandeur inferior only
to the Almighty Hand of the Unseen One, whose
providential leadership is worshipped by all Creation,
whose praise is sung by every creature? In that
greatest of all proceedings, outside of which disap-
pears even the very idea of time, every one of the
leading nations has its own period to play its part,
and to make its history grand for a while, and nobody
can change the fact that the great period of Holland
precedes that of England, and nothing is more natural
than that the political and commercial history of Hol-
land, its industry, its art and literature, its whole
standard of civilization was destined to be a great

INTRODUCTION 15

school of learning for its successor on the British
Isles. And however scornfully a successor in power
and leadership may look down upon the defeated and
declining predecessor, there has been exerted an in-
fluence far reaching and covering nearly every part of
life, in industry, in commerce, in social and domestic
life, in literature and in art, and that influence has
found its most natural reflection in the literature of
the rising nation which is going to succeed its declin-
ing rival.

To give an outline of this influence of Holland on
English literature and language is the endeavor made
in the following pages. Only an outline, as there could
be made no claim whatever of completeness, since
researches on the influence of Holland are, as yet,
still in their first period; but an outline that gives at
least an idea of the point in view.

The endeavor is to contribute to the knowledge and
history of English language and literature ; an en-
deavor attractive and interesting because the English
language is the language of our American country,
and consequently English literature will be of the
greatest importance in the education of our own chil-
dren and grandchildren. This last fact I mention with
delight, considering it as one of the greatest blessings
which God's Providence has given to the American
people, because in literature England unquestionably
stands first among all the nations of the earth.

The subject treated in this little volume was sug-
gested to me several times during the two years I was
lecturing on Dutch History, Art, and Literature in
the University of Chicago. When I talked to one of
my colleagues about the question "Spencer- Van der
Noot" to another about "Vondel-Milton" and to a
third about "Elckerlick-Everyman," repeatedly the

16 INTRODUCTION

suggestion was made that I give an outline of all the
topics in English Literature in which the influence of
Holland was traceable, and I could hardly deny that
the subject really lay in my way. Besides that, in
fact, I gave the students at the beginning of every
course an outline of this subject amongst the reasons
why an American should study Dutch History, Art
and Literature. It may interest students of the present
subject to know how far it comes into contact as a
special study with the more general field of historical
information about Holland: to know the reasons why
Americans should be interested in it. I give them
here as I found them in my note-book :

1. Because the glorious history of the Dutch
Republic is a part of the World's history. From
the year 1500 till the year 1700 the headquarters
of the World's history are to be found in the
Netherlands. See in the English language the
works of J. Ellis Barker, J. A. Froude, Macau-
lay, Griffis, Alexander Young and others.

2. Because the Dutch laid the foundations
of four of the great central colonies in America,
viz., New York, New Jersey, Delaware and
Pennsylvania. See the works of Broadhead,
O'Calleghan and Griffis.

3. Because Holland exerted a remarkable
influence on the first English, French and Ger-
man settlers in America during the seventeenth
century. See Douglas Campbell's work: "The
Puritans" ; and my lecture on the subject in
"Dutch History, Art and Literature for Ameri-
cans."

4. Because the Dutch Republic in its beau-
tiful history is the only mighty Republic in
modern times of which we can study the rise, the
glory, the decline, the downfall and the revival
as a constitutional monarchy; a history full of
lessons for the Republic of the United States.

INTRODUCTION 17

See especially J. Ellis Barker's "The Rise and
Decline of the Dutch Republic."

5. Because the history of the Netherlands
bears such a remarkable resemblance to the his-
tory of the United States that a comparison is
most interesting. See the works of John Adams,
and my lecture on this subject in "Dutch His-
tory, Art and Literature for Americans."

6. Because Holland was the cradle of modern
Democracy. The rise of the Flemish cities
Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and later Leyden,
Dordrecht, Amsterdam, etc., have been the start-
ing points in the great struggle against mediaeval
feudalism and hierarchy, in behalf of all modern
Democracy, of which the headquarters now are
in the United States. See the works of Gui-
ciardini, Motley, Thorold Rogers, etc.

7. Because the Dutch settlers from the first
beginning of the American commonwealth have
been, and their descendants are still today, an
important element of the American people. They
are spread over all the States to the number of
several millions, and their character and
influence and traditions can be known only by
studying Dutch history. See Henry van Dyke,
"The Spirit of America," Douglas Campbell,
"The Puritans," etc.

8. Because hardly any branch of science or
knowledge in its history can be well understood
without studying the history of Holland. For
instance: In divinity, Gomarus, Arminius, Mac-
covius, Gysbert Voet, Rivet, Maresius ; in philos-
ophy, Spinoza ; in law, Hugo Grotius, Johannes
Voet, Paul Voet, Salmasius; in philology, Eras-
mus, Junius Lipsius, Vossius, etc. ; in botany,
Linnaeus ; in medicine, Boerhaave, etc., etc. See
any book giving the history of one or the other
of these branches of learning.

9. Because nobody can study Dutch art with-
out some knowledge of Dutch history and of
the character of the Dutch nation. The schools
of Rubens and Rembrandt are most closely con-

18 INTRODUCTION

nected with prevailing ideas and circumstances
in the Netherlands.

10. Because nobody can understand Dutch
literature without studying Dutch history. And
yet, everybody for instance, knows Vondel's
Lucifer, and ought to know the national litera-
ture to which it belongs. The Japanese profes-
sor Kanura called the Lucifer one of the most
splendid products of the human mind. Such a
piece of work stands not alone. The highest
mountains are not to be found on the prairies, but
always in the midst of many other mountains.
A nation for centuries prominent in history for
learning and civilization must have a literature
which no scholar, who has self-respect, can
neglect. See L. C. Van Noppen, Vondel's Luci-
fer, translated into English, and the works on
universal literature, also the works on Dutch
literature, by Jonckbloet, Ten Brink, Te Winkel,
Kalff and thousands of monographs.

11. Because Dutch politics cannot be under-
stood without a knowledge of Dutch history, and
yet the policy of William the Silent and William
III (1650-1702) contains beautiful principles for
the guidance of a republic, just as the policy of
Oldenbarnevelt, John de Witt and the Olichargs,
was and is destructive and ruinous to any repub-
lic. See on the policy of William the Silent:
Harrison, Ruth Putnam, Motley ; on that of
William III : Macaulay ; on that of Oldenbarne-
velt, De Witt, and the Olichargs : Ellis Barker.

Twice all Protestantism was maintained and
saved from being crushed, at first under the
leadership of William the Silent against the
Roman Catholic world-empire of Spain, and sec-
ondly under the leadership of William III against
the world-empire of France under Louis XIV.
These two great Princes of Orange had only one
fault, viz., they were not ambitious enough to
make a strong central government into a per-
manent one by changing the constitution. On the
contrary, the policy of Barnevelt and DeWitt by

INTRODUCTION 19

their antagonism against the House of Orange,
by their neglect of army and navy, by their
weakening and nearly dissolving the union and
the central national government, by their appeal
to foreign powers to sustain their party-policy,
laid the foundations for the decjine and downfall
of the country, just as happened in so many
republics of ancient times. These are indeed
great lessons for every republic including the
United States.

12. Because the real spirit of America is so
much like, and so rooted in, the spirit of the
Dutch Republic. See Henry van Dyke, Miinster-
berg, and Butler.

13. Because Holland was the cradle of the
Reformation, which inspired the beginnings of
modern Democracy. Equality before God, the
priesthood of all believers, and personal respon-
sibility towards God, became the fundamental
ideas of modern Democracy, in sharp contrast
with the Democracy of the later French Revolu-
tion with its "Ni Dieu ni Maitre." The Ameri-
can Democracy was from the beginning rooted
in the ideas, not of the French Revolution, but
in those of the Reformation, and remained so in
the time of John Adams, notwithstanding the
influence of Jefferson and Paine.

14. Because Holland even till our present
time has occupied a central position among
European nations and is still important for the
high standing of its universities and for its
colonial power. The Peace Palace is at the
Hague. The world's school for international
law will be there, where its founder, Hugo
Grotius, lived. In gaining Nobel prizes the
Dutch nation ranks first. The Dutch colonies
cover an area nearly half as large as the United
States, with nearly forty millions of inhabitants.
If ranked according to the amount of imports
from them into the United States, Holland with
its colonies is always the third or the fourth
nation : England is first, Germany second, and
either France or Holland is third or fourth.

20 INTRODUCTION

15. Because there has always been a close
sympathy between Holland and America. The
Pilgrims came from Holland. Most of the first
French and German settlers found a refuge in
Holland, before they came to America. Four of
the colonies were founded by Holland. The
victory of the American colonies over France,
ending in the conquest of Quebec in 1750, was
a consequence of the struggle of Prince William
III of Orange against Louis XIV. During the
war of Independence John Adams found sym-
pathy and money in Holland, and at least three
medals were at that time made in the Nether-
lands, showing the sympathy of Holland for the
sister republic of the United States.

1 6. Because many American institutions of
State and church and school, in their historical
development, are rooted in Dutch institutions.
See Douglass Campbell's "The Puritans," Ruth
Putnam's lecture on "The Influence of Holland
on America."

17. Because Holland has exerted an impor-
tant influence on the English language and Eng-
lish literature. See W. W. Skeat's Principles of
Etymology, Vol. I, and his Dictionary of English
Etymology. For the influence of Holland on
English literature there are many monographs
for instance, on the influence of Van der Noot
on Edmund Spenser, or that of Hugo Grotius
and Vondel on Milton, but a general outline of
the whole field has not yet been made.

Every scholar in history and literature sees at a
glance that each one of these seventeen arguments
could, without much trouble, be worked out in a
volume. That I have begun with the last point is
because it is the most inquired about, and the least
known.

Finally, a few remarks about the division of the
present volume.

INTRODUCTION 21

According to the title one might expect that it
should be divided in two parts : ( I ) The influence of
Holland on English language, and (2) on English
literature. And yet, in order that the whole field of
the subject might really be covered by this research, a
third part had to be added, or rather, prefixed before
the two others.

For not only on the English language and English
literature, but even on the development of the whole
field of comparative philology, by which we know
today so much more than in earlier times about all
the elements of the English language and about its
relation to other languages, Holland had an influence
which can hardly be overestimated.

This development of comparative philology is
therefore so closely connected with our knowledge of
the English language and at the same time has been so
much under the influence of Holland, that it seems
reasonable to treat Holland's influence on the develop-
ment of comparative philology, first of all even before
treating its influence on English language and
literature.

The task to be performed in the following pages
is therefore naturally divided into three parts :
I. Holland's influence on the development of com-
parative philology.

II. Holland's influence on the English language.
III. Holland's influence on English literature.

PART I

Holland's Influence on the Development
of Comparative Philology

CHAPTER I

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY

More than any other the English language is a"
mixture of many languages 1 . Consequently there is
no language for which a knowledge of the develop-
ment of comparative philology is so important. Every-
body who knows what is meant by the term compara-
tive philology must see this immediately. Comparative
philology, as the first part of this term indicates, is the
study which emphasizes the comparison of different
languages, makes a research for their relationship,
tries to find out what they have in common and in
which points they differ, along which lines and accord-
ing to which laws these languages changed their
words, their grammar, and their syntax; how under
the influence of climate, soil, way of living, and other
circumstances from dialects they became languages;
how in their roots, in their sound system, in their
etymology, in their grammar and syntax they can be
traced so as to discover their relationship and their

1 "Certainly no language was ever composed of sucrf numerous and
such diverse elements." Walter W. Skeat. Principles of English
Etymology, First Series, Second edition, Oxford, 1892, p. 3.

24 LANGUAGE AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

differences, and consequently how every one of them
has to be looked at in its historical development. A
more beautiful way to get a thorough knowledge of a
language than along these lines certainly never could
be chosen. For every language this comparative, this
genealogical, this historical, this etymological method
is exceedingly interesting. But especially for the Eng-
lish language, the study of which brings the philologist
into a veritable labyrinth of so many different parts of
numerous languages, that a thorough knowledge of
the whole mixture in all its constituent elements can
hardly be considered possible without those historical,
genealogical and etymological studies, which we call
comparative philology.

England, which was first inhabited by the -Celts
with their own language, and then conquered by the
Romans, who during four centuries employed there
their soldier's Latin, was after that time conquered by
the Saxons, Jutes and Angles who brought their own
languages or dialects. Later on England was con-
quered by the Danes, and finally by the Normans under
William the Conqueror. These latter were Northmen
who had acquired the language of France. England
under the subsequent and abiding influences of all
these conquests, and in later time by its own prevail-
ing trade in permanent contact with many nations
of Europe, and of the whole world, finally developed
a language in which so many different elements had
secured a permanent place, that for the full and thor-
ough knowledge of the present English language the
study of comparative philology must be of more im-
portance than for any other language in the world, be-
cause no other language contains such a variety of
different Clements.

CHAPTER II
THE GREAT RESULTS OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

The study of comparative philology is especially
important for the English language, because wonder-
ful and surprising results have been obtained in this
field. It is by this study that nowadays we know that
all the European languages together with some Asiatic,
languages form one great family, commonly called the
Indo-Germanic, Indo-European, or Aryan group, and
that all the languages of this whole group may be sup-
posed to have sprung from one original language,
which probably first divided itself into three different
dialects or branches :

1. The Asiatic, consisting in later times of the
Sanskrit (in India), the Zend (in old Persia) and the
Armenian (in old Armenia).

2. The Southern European branch, which in the
course of history was divided into Greek, Celtic and
Latin which last was the parent of Italian, Spanish
and French.

3. The Northern European branch, containing the
Germanic group and the Slavo-Lettic languages.

The Slavo-Lettic is that group of languages which
includes in its south-eastern branches the Russian,
Bulgarian, Servian, Croatian and Slavonian, and in its
western branch the Czechish or Bohemian and Polish,
and further the Lettic which includes Lithuanian and
Lettish.

The Germanic group, later appears in two groups,
viz., the eastern with the Scandinavian and the Gothic,

26 RESULTS OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

and the western including High German (the present
German), and Low German including English, Dutch
and Frisian.

Since the study of comparative philology has dis-
covered this genealogical coherency of all the Euro-
pean languages with some of the Asiatic, a most beau-
tiful field for the study of every one of these languages
has been opened for research. Every language can be
traced in its own particular growth. The lines along
which it changed and deviated from the original can
be indicated by comparison with other languages of
the same family. A new light has shone on the study
of the etymology, grammar, and syntax of every
language, and even on the entire history of the nations
and the civilization of Europe. Since that time every
piece of ancient and mediaeval literature, no matter in
what language it was written, has become a source for
the study of languages and of history in general.

That this progress of comparative philology was
important especially for the knowledge of the English
language with its so many different elements, is evi-
dent enough, and beautiful results show this. Every-
body who knows, for instance, the works of W. W.
Skeat, 1 and especially his Etymological Dictionary of
the English Language, must admire the researches, by
which nearly every word is traced in its history, and
by which is determined to which of the different ele-
ments of the present English language it originally be-
longed. And the comparative grammars, constructed
since the first great endeavor of Bopp 2 give such an
insight into the structure of several languages as never
could have been gained before.

1 W. W. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth edition. Other works of Skeat are for instance his Principles
of English Etymology, 2 vols., and The Science of Etymology.

2 F. Bopp, A Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek,
Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Scandinavian Languages.
Translated by E. B. Eastwick, Fourth edition. London, 1885.

CHAPTER III

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF
COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

That such a movement as the development of com-
parative philology did not reach its present impor-
tance in one moment, or even in a few years, every-
body can easily understand. Extremely difficult for
every movement of this kind is its beginning", when it
has to go along quite new lines. As long as it remains
groping in the dark, as long as nobody knows in which
direction to go, there is no advance and no progress.
But as soon as a presumption arises that a solution is
to be found in a certain direction, then the most won-
derful success in advancing to the solution becomes a
mere affair of labor and time. Now the great event
in the starting of a more serious study of languages
by comparative philology no doubt was the discovery
and the study of what was left of the Gothic language,
that "guiding star of the Germanic languages" as
Bopp 1 calls it. For of all the Germanic languages,
including English and Dutch, the Gothic is according
to Bopp "the mother tongue in her oldest and most
perfect form," that language "so perfect in its gram-
mar." 2 I should rather call it, however, the oldest
sister than the mother. What the Gothic is for the
Germanic languages, that the old Asiatic language of
India, the Sanskrit is for all the Indo-Germanic lan-
guages together, viz., the oldest and best preserved of
all, "the groundwork and connecting bond of the

1 F. Bopp, Comparative Grammar, Preface, p. XV.

2 Ibidem, p. VII.

28 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

comparison." 1 "The close relationship between the
Classical (Greek and Latin) and the Germanic lan-
guages has, with the exception of mere comparative
lists of words, copious indeed, but destitute of princi-
ple and critical judgment, remained, down to the
period of the appearance of the Asiatic intermediary
(the Sanskrit), almost entirely unobserved, although
the acquaintance with the Gothic dates now from a
century and a half," 2 and that language (viz., the
Gothic) is so perfect in its grammar, and so clear in
its affinities, that, had "it been earlier submitted to a
rigorous and systematic process of comparison and
anatomical investigation, the pervading relation of
itself, and with it, of the entire Germanic stock, to
the Greek and Roman, would necessarily have long
since been unveiled, tracked through all its variations,
and by this time been understood and recognized by
every philologist." 3 So it is clear that in the study of
the Gothic and the Sanskrit lay the key for the
progress of comparative philology, and for every more
serious study of any one of the Indo-Germanic lan-
guages. This key lay in Sanskrit because it was the
best preserved, the oldest and most fundamental of all
Indo-Germanic languages, and in Gothic because it
was, if not the mother tongue in the peculiar sense of
the word, at least the oldest and best preserved sister
language of the Western European family.

Centuries after centuries passed away during which
the whole civilized world of Europe did not know any-
thing about either Gothic or Sanskrit.

ilbid., p. III.

2 This is now nearly two centuries and a half.

3 F. Bopp, Comparative Grammar, I, Preface, p. VI. The study
of Sanskrit in modern European philology dates from the founda-
tion of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, in 1784. Skeat, Principles of
English Etymology, p. too. Skeat calls both the Sanskrit and the
Gothic, sister languages of all the other Indo-European, and not
mother languages, as at the start of comparative philology often <vas
done.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 29

That there should come a time, when the scholars
of Europe would make themselves acquainted with
the enormous Sanskrit literature and language, was
unavoidable. A language with a literature more ex-
pensive than the whole classic literature of Greece and
Rome together, could not in our modern time, re-
main a secret to the scholars of the modern civilized
world.

But with Gothic the case was otherwise. In the
greatest possible contrast to Sanskrit literature, which
is probably the most voluminous in the world, the
existing literature of Gothic is probably the smallest
of any civilized nation on the globe. All there is left
of the Gothic language is, besides a few short frag-
ments, a Gothic translation of the bible by Bishop
Ulfilas or Vulphilas, which comprises not the whole
bible but only the greatest part of the New Testament,
and some chapters of the Old Testament. And even
these parts of the Gothic bible are not incorrupt. More
than half of what is left of this Gothic bible of Ulfilas
is contained in a single manuscript, which is called
the silver-codex, or codex argenteus, because it is
written for the greater part in silver letters on parch-
ment.

Now it is to Holland that the world owes the
early appreciation, the preservation during many cen-
turies, and at last the publishing more than one and
a half century earlier than any other part of this
small literature was published of this most precious
codex, containing the treasures of the Gothic lan-
guage. 1 By the Dutchman Ludger, the monastery of
Werden was founded at the time of Charlemagne, the
monastery whither the silver-codex was brought from

1 "Niederlander haben das Verdienst zuerst auf die ReSte des
Gothischen hingewiesen zu haben." Hermann Paul, Grundriss der
Germanischen Philologie, I, p. 16.

30 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

Italy probably by Ludger himself. After having been
preserved there for many centuries, it was again by a
Dutchman that it was discovered, who was the first to
call attention to the Gothic language.

It was a Dutchman by the name of De Busbeck
who in the years 1554-1564 found the only place on
earth where still lived some remnant of the Gothic
people, viz., in a remote corner of the Crimea in
Southern Russia, and from these he collected some
specimens of the old Gothic language.

Later it was again a Dutchman, Isaac Vossius,
who brought the silver-codex from the library of
Queen Christina of Sweden to the Netherlands to
make it the subject of research for the best scholars
of his time, and again another Dutchman, Franciscus
Junius, who studied, and then published the silver-
codex, and devoted part of his life to studying the
Gothic language and to beginning the more serious
movement of comparative philology.

After Junius, in the eighteenth century, it was the
Dutch school of Ten Kate and Huydecoper, who, a
hundred years before the brothers Grimm, carried on
researches in Gothic and in comparative philology
and who consequently began the study of mediaeval
literature.

And even after the great work of the German
school of the brothers Grimm, when, in consequence
of all these researches, the attention of all Europe was
called to mediaeval literature because of its significance
for the further progress of the movement, it was again
the Dutch school of philologists, which produced,
among others, a Dr. Jonckbloet, whose elaborate work
on mediaeval literature is still in our days one of the
best books of reference. .

It is not difficult to explain these statements a

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 31

little more elaborately, as every part of them, al-
though scattered in many books, has been told many
times before, and all there is to do is to bring them
together under their common source, that is under the
auspices of the Dutch nation.

Ulfilas or Vulfula (310-380 A. D.) the author of
the Gothic version of the bible was bishop of the
East-Goths, living at that time in what was called
Moesia, being the * present Bulgaria and Servia. In
the turmoil of the enormous migrations in Europe
shortly after the death of Ulfilas, the Goths were
driven from Moesia, and the West-Goths were spread
over Italy, Spain and part of France, but they soon
lost their own language by adopting that of their new
fatherland. By the West-Goths the Gothic transla-
tion of the bible was brought to Italy, and it is in that
country that the most precious part of it, the silver-
codex and some minor fragments were preserved.
From Italy the silver-codex was brought to the mon-
astery of Werden on the Rhur, about ten miles north
of Cologne, near the borderline of Germany and the
Netherlands, and there it was preserved till the six-
teenth century. The question is, who brought the
precious manuscript from Italy to the monastery at
Werden? Felix Dahn 1 supposes that one of the
Merovingian kings of France, who often brought
treasures from their conquests to monasteries of the
Frankish empire, might have carried this Gothic codex
to Northern shores. This is a possibility but not the
most probable one, or rather it is not a possibility at
all. A Frankish king would not have brought it to
Werden, a pure Frisian and Saxonian institution, but
rather to one of the monasteries in the center of the

1 Felix Dahn, Urgeschichte der Germanischen und Romanischen
Volker, I, 423.

32 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

Prankish empire. Moreover it is impossible that a
Merovingian king could have brought a codex to the
monastery of Werden, which did not yet exist in the
time of the Merovingian kings. "Some people," says
Massmann," 1 "have thought of Ludger, the famous
founder of the Werden monastery, who lived for
three years and a half in Italy." And this supposition
looks much more probable indeed. Ludger was a
man of great learning and ability. He was the son of
a Frisian noble family. His grandfather Wurfing
lived near Dokkum in Friesland and was closely con-
nected with the court of King Radboud. Afraid of
the treacherous and heathen king Radboud, Wurfing
fled to the court of the Prankish prince Grimoald, who
had married Theosinde, the daughter of Radboud.
There, at the court of Grimoald was born Theadgrin
the father of Ludger, and this Theadgrin settled later
with his family at Zuylen near Utrecht, where in the
year 744 Ludger was born. Ludger' s abilities were
great from his earliest boyhood, and his education was
splendid. 2 After he had finished his courses in the
trivium and the quadrivium at the episcopal school at
Utrecht, and had learned his Greek and his Latin, he
studied four years at York under the famous Alcuin,
the intimate friend of Charlemagne. Ludger studied
till his thirty-first year and then resolved to devote his
life to missionary work among the Frisians and
Saxons. He worked at first at Deventer, afterwards

1 H. F. Massman,- Ulfilas. F,inleitung, p. L/VI. The same opinion
in W. de Hoog, Studien, etc., I, 14.

2 On the life of Ludg-er see: i. Alfridi vita Ludgeri. 2. Paris
disquisitio de Ludgero, Frisionum Saxonumquc Apostolo. Amstelodami
T 8S9. 3. Uffingi monachi carmen de s. Ludgero. 4. Augustin Kusing.
Der Heilige Ludger. Munster, 1878. 5. The best work is Dr. L. Th.
W. Pingsmann. Der Heilige Ludgerus. Apostel der Friesen und
Sachsen. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1879. Ludger was one of the most
typical Dutchmen that can be thought of. A Frisian by birth, educated
among the Franks, and living his whole further life among the Saxons,
he imbibed from his youth until his death the spirit of the three tribes
which formed the three great elements of the later Dutch nation.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 33

in the Northern part of the Netherlands, especially the
province of Groningen, later among the Saxons all
along the borderline between the Netherlands and
Germany, from the North to the South, became the
first bishop of Munster, and founded at last his famous
institution, the monastery of Werden on the Rhur, an
important center of learning for maintaining and con-
tinuing his great work of civilization. He fully de-
serves the title of apostle of the Frisians, and of the
Saxons. Ludger was a man of great learning, and
he must have known thoroughly the Anglo-Saxon,
the old Saxon, the Frisian, the Greek and the Latin
languages. Not without reason one oi his biographers
brings his name in contact with the authorship of the
great Saxon Christian epos the Heliand. 1 Either by
himself or by one of his pupils, under his inspiration
and suggestion, the Heliand may have been written.
That this man, who stayed for three years and a half
in Italy should have brought from Italy some manu-
scripts and books to his beloved new monastery at
Werden is not improbable, and when in later years in
that monastery is found a manuscript which at the
time of Ludger was some centuries old, then the pre-
sumption certainly is not quite without foundation that
it was probably Ludger who brought it from Ifaly.
Anyhow the monastery of Werden was a thoroughly
Dutch institution, and its founder was one of the most
learned men of his age, and was a Dutchman by birth
and by education. It was in his monastery whither it
was probably brought by his personal action, that the

\ "Dieses so hoch gefeierte Werk ist auf sachsischen Boden in
sachsischer Mundart und urn die Zeit des hi. Ludgerus geschaffen
worden. War es die liebliche Frucht des von den heiligen Apostel der
Sachsen ausgestreuten Samen? oder steht es in noch inniger Beziehung
zum hi. Ludgerus? Schmeller, der Treffliche Herausgeber des Heliand,
nimmt kein Anstand dem Heiliger selber oder doch seinen Schiillern
in Werden oder Munster einen bedeutenden Antheil an der Abfassung
desselben zuzuschreiben." Pingsmann. Der heilige Ludger, p. 170.

34 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

famous Gothic silver-codex was preserved and it was
discovered there in the sixteenth century. 1

The first discovery of the Gothic codex in the last
years of the sixteenth century, and the later more
serious study of it, ending in its being published in
the year 1665 at Dordrecht, was almost entirely the
work of Dutch scholars. Several of them before the
year 1600 speak of Gothic, and show that they know
the existence of the silver-codex at Werden. 2 The
only book that deserves to be mentioned here is that
of the Dutchman Bonaventura Volcanius, who was
born at Bruges, and was later rector at Antwerp, and
finally professor in the University of Leyden. It is
entitled : On the literature and language of the Goths.
It is written in Latin and published at Leyden in the
year 1597.

It was at about the time of the publishing of this
little book that the silver-codex was carried from
Werden to Prague, 3 whence in the year 1648, just
before the peace of Westphalia, it was transported by
the Swedish army to Stockholm, and presented to the
Swedish queen Christina. 4 In the same remarkable
year, 1648, the Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius (1618-
1689), son of the well known Gerardus Vossius
(15^7-1649), came to Sweden to be the tutor of the
young queen Christina in the Greek language. Now
Isaac Vossius was a man who loved old books and
manuscripts ; he had travelled all over Europe, and at

1 When some years ago I visited Werden in order to see what was
left of the great work of Ludger, I found that the old buildings of the
monastery are still there, but are now used for a prison. The situation
of the monastery dominating the beautiful natural scenery along the
Rhur is wonderful. A statue on the bridge connecting the two sides of
the Rhur attracted my attention. It was not a statue of Ludger but of
the modern general Von Moltke, whose birthplace was Werden. Sic
transit gloria mundi!

2 Massmann. Ulfilas. Einleitung, p. LJI.

3 Ibid, p. UH.

4 Massmann. Ulfilas. Einleitung, p. 1,111.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 35

the time of his death in 1689 he left such a remarkable
collection of books and manuscripts that Leyden
University bought it for the sum of thirty thousand
guilders, at that time an enormous price. Isaac Vos-
sius stayed at Stockholm from 1648 till 1654 and when
he came back to the Netherlands he brought with him
the silver-codex of the Gothic language.

In no country could this codex at that time have
met with a better reception than in the Netherlands.
"The Netherlands," says Herman. Paul, "became in
the second half of the sixteenth century, since the
founding of the University of Leyden, the central
fosterplace of sciences, and especially of philology, for
all Europe." 1

It seems that the silver-codex did not become the
property of Isaac Vossius, but that the great liberality
and friendship of the queen Christina, allowed him to
borrow it for as long as he liked. This is probable
because after ten years, during which time it remained
at the home of Vossius and Junius, who lived together,
it was returned to the chancellor of Sweden, Count de
la Gardie, and probably by his order was given to the
University library at Upsala, where it has been kept
till the present time.

In nearly every book in which is given a story of
the codex it is said that Count de la Gardie "presented"
it to the library of Upsala, and this gives the impres-
sion that at that time the codex was his personal prop-
erty, and consequently also had been the personal
property of Vossius and Junius. If that had been
the case Junius and Vossius certainly never would
have given or sold it to de la Gardie, and there would
have been no special reason for Junius to dedicate the
volume, in which he published the codex, to de la

i Hermann Paul. Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie. I, p. 15.

36 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

Gardie. But if, on the contrary, as I suppose, Count
de la Gardie as chancellor of the Swedish govern-
ment, with great liberality, left the codex in the hands
of Dutch scholars for not less than ten years, then
there was a real reason for Junius to dedicate the
volume, in which at last the codex was published, to
Count de la Gardie. Even in that case the statement
the de la Gardie "presented" it to the Upsala library
may be maintained, but in the sense, that he did it in
his quality as chancellor, and in the name of the
Government.

Now Isaac Vossius himself, although he had
studied many languages, and for instance had made
a special study of Arabic, seems to have realized that
he was not the right man to study the language of the
silver-codex. But he had an uncle by the name of
Franciscus Junius, with whom, after his return from
Sweden, he lived at the same house, and in him he
found a man who, because he had for several years
been absorbed in the study of those languages which
stood the nearest to the Gothic, was exactly qualified
for this task. So Isaac Vossius entrusted the silver-
codex to the hands of Franciscus Junius. And this
famous son of a famous father made the precious
manuscript a subject of a research, for the results of
which all philologists in the world in all times to come
will give him credit, and by which he opened a new
era in the comparative study of languages.

Junius' father, whose name was also Franciscus
Junius, a nobleman by birth, by intellect, by scholar-
ship and by virtue, as the historian Brandt describes
him, was born in 1545 at Bourges in France, studied
theology at Geneva during the last years of John Cal-
vin's life, and went from there as a young Reformed
preacher to Antwerp in the Southern Netherlands.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 37

After having endured many dangers from persecution,
he fled with William of Orange and with thousands
of other Protestants to Germany in the year 1567,
when the duke of Alva came to the Netherlands.
There he stayed in several places, was for a while a
preacher to William the Silent, was professor at Hei-
delberg and finally came back to the Netherlands in
the year 1592, to be professor at Ley den University
for the last ten years of his life, till he died in the
year 1602. He had been married four times, and all
his four wives were Dutch women.

His son, who in later years became so famous for
his study of the Gothic and other languages, was a
child of only three years when his father became pro-
fessor at Leyden. He was born in the year 1589 at
Heidelberg, where his father had married a Dutch
woman from Antwerp, Johanne 1' Hermite, his third
wife. So the young Franciscus from his earliest
childhood was educated as a Dutch boy among the
brave citizens of Leyden, who had suffered so much
during the famous siege and among whom also Rem-
brandt (1609-1669) found such an inspiring educa-
tion. Only thirteen years of age when his father died,
he came under the guardianship of his brother-in-law,
his senior by twelve years, and rector of the Latin
school at Dordrecht. There he took his first courses
in languages, and later he went to the University of
Leyden to study theology so that in the year 1618 we
find him a young minister in the Reformed church at
Hilligersberg near Rotterdam. So we see that Junius
by his university examinations really was not labelled
as a philologist but as a theologian. But in the world's
history the question is not how a real scholar is
labelled by the school courses in his youth, but rather
what he proves to be able to do. And so in later years

38 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

by his splendid work in the field of philology, Junius
was graduated as a real doctor of philology, not by
any school examination, but by the more important
examination which posterity confers upon every man
after it can be recognized what he has done in behalf
of the human race. The course of events in the con-
temporaneous history of a nation sometimes has such
an influence on the life of a man as to lead him along
other lines than those which at first he seemed des-
tined to follow. So it was with Junius. In the year
1619 in consequence of the resolutions taken at the
synod of Dordrecht, Junius for being a Remonstrant
was dismissed from his office as a minister. He left
the Netherlands and went at first to France, but soon
afterwards to England, where he spent many years in
the service of Arundel, duke of Norfolk, later in the
service of the noble family De Vere at Oxford as the
tutor of the young count Albericus de Vere, whom
during the years 16421646 he accompanied to the
Netherlands, where he lived most of the time at the
Hague. About this period of his life, probably from
the year 1646 until 1648 Junius went for two years to
Freisland to study the Frisic language. After the
death of his brother-in-law, Gerardus Vossius, who
had been his guardian, he went to Amsterdam and
stayed there with his sister, the widow of Gerardus
Vossius. After the year 1655, when Isaac Vossius
came back from Sweden, bringing with him the Gothic
silver-codex, Junius with his sister and her son Isaac
Vossius settled at the Hague, where they remained
together for several years till Junius and Vossius both
went to England, Vossius in the year 1670 to live
there till he died at London in 1689, and Junius in
1675 to live there till he died at the home of Vossius
at Windsor in the year 1677.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 39

During his earlier years in England Junius had
made a thorough study of the Anglo-Saxon and Eng-
lish language and literature, and one of the results was
his publication of the Paraphrase of Csedmon printed
at Amsterdam in 1655. Besides this he had made
transcripts of many old English manuscripts. 1 As a
result of his study of the Frisic language he published
four works: i. Leges Frisionum to which he added
a Frisic poem of four pages entitled : Hoe dae Friesen
Roem wonner ; 2. Liber legum et consuetudinum frisi-
carum, frisice; 3. Leges Frisionum antique edita per
Sibrand Siccama; and 4. Dictionarium Frisic o-Latinum
to which he added : Carmina Frisica cum notis Junii
ex chartis laceris.

From all this we may draw the conclusion that
Junius knew thoroughly the English, the Anglo-Saxon,
the Frisic and the Dutch languages and that he was
well acquainted with German, French, Latin, Greek
and Hebrew, as being a theologian from Leyden Uni-
versity, and it certainly was a fortunate event in the
history of philology that to the able hands of this man
came the main codex of the Gothic language. I fear
no contradiction when I say that in all Europe hardly
could have been found a man to whom the silver-codex
could better have been entrusted than to Franciscus
Junius.

After this survey of Junius' life we return to those
ten years from 1655 to 1665 during which Junius
studied the Gothic language from the silver-codex,
living together with his sister, the widow of Gerardus
Vossius and her son Isaac Vossius. How interesting
it is to see those two great Dutch scholars, Isaac
Vossius and his uncle Junius, living for some years

1 See Logeman. Junius' transcripts of old English Texts, in the
Academy of 1890; quoted by De Hoog. Studies, etc., I, p. 10.

40 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING

together a quiet life, devoted to their much beloved
literary and linguistic researches in the rustic town
of the Hague of that time with its beautiful environs ;
to see these two European scholars, who were during
so many years before, nearly all the time abroad,
either in France with Hugo Grotius, or in England in
the company of British lords, or in Sweden at the
court of Queen Christina, studying and making their
researches in all libraries, leading with only a few
others the development of European learning, to see
those two remarkable men living together in quiet
devotion enjoying the company and the delightful con-
versation of each other, both in their daily life under
the maternal care of the widow, who was the older
sister of one, and the mother of the other. Here
they met with one of the great problems in the history
of philology, the study and the investigation of the
contents of that famous Gothic manuscript that re-
quired for several years the industrious toil of the
man who more than anyone was qualified for this
work. During ten years Junius occupied himself with
this great and difficult task, and at the end of those
ten years he gave to the world and to all posterity the
results of his labor by publishing in the year 1665 at
Dordrecht the four gospels contained in the Gothic
codex, together with an Anglo-Saxon version 1 of the
same part of the bible. To this comparative edition
of the four gospels in Anglo-Saxon and in Gothic, he
added a little dictionary, or glossarium, as a first step
for the further study of the new field. That Junius
in this great effort did not immediately bring the new
field of learning to its highest development, and that
he made some mistakes, is no wonder indeed. The

1 This Anglo-Saxon version had been published before, viz., in the
year 1571 by John Fox. De Hoog. Studies, I, p. 14. Junius however
made a revised edition.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE STARTING 41

best philologist of our days may look at Junius as our
present engineers look at the inventor of the first
steam engine. But like the work of Watts, so Junius'
work was an event in history, and it began a great
movement. A movement not the least in England,
where Junius had lived for so many years, where he
had given so much care to the old Anglo-Saxon lan-
guage of the country and where he personally had
gained such fame in the literary world. Scholars of
good ability followed in the footsteps of Junius, and
soon George Hickes, 1 although a theologian by pro-
fession like Junius himself, studied successfully the
Anglo-Saxon and the Gothic languages, and after him,
during the eighteenth century Edward Lye wrote his
famous Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon and the Gothic
languages, published after the death of the author in
the year 1772. It was also Lye who ameliorated the
Etymologicum Anglicanum, which Junius had left to
the Bodleian library, and which was published after
the death of Lye, viz., in the year 1773 ; a work which
Samuel Johnson used for the latest editions of his
Dictionary of the English Language. 2

1 Hickes published at least two important works: i. Institutiones
grammaticae Anglo-Saxonica et Moeso-Gothiccr, 1669. 2. Linguarum
veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus, 1705. See De Hoog, Studies,
I, 16.

2 Ibid., p. 17.

CHAPTER IV

THE DUTCH SCHOOL OF LAMBERT TEN KATE AND
BALTHAZAR HUYDECOPER

In Holland not less than in England, after the
example of Junius, a school of scholars arose, who
studied the languages in their historical development
and in comparison with each other. Arnold Moonen
(1664-1711), William Sewel (1654-1720), Lambert
ten Kate (1674-1731) and Balthazar Huydecoper
(1695-1778) were the most prominent men of this
school. 1

Arnold Moonen and William Sewel studied espe-
cially the grammar of the Dutch and the English lan-
guages ; Lambert ten Kate studied the relationship be-
tween the Gothic, the Dutch, the Anglo-Saxon, the
German and the Icelandic languages ; and Balthazar
Huydecoper devoted a great part of his life to the
study of mediaeval literature, which came to the fore-
ground as a natural consequence of the study and the
importance of Gothic, and consequently of all the
literary remains of past centuries.

Moonen published his Dutch grammar in the year
1706, which remained the textbook during a great part
of the eighteenth century; Sewel, whose grandfather
Jan Willem Sewel was born in the Netherlands and
married a Dutch woman Judith Tinspenning, kept up
his traditional love for the English language his

1 Herman Paul. Grundriss der Germanischen Philologic. 2 vols.,
I. P- 35- W. J. A. Jonckbloet. Geschiedenis der Ned. Letterkunde. V,
566. Jan te Winkel. De Ontwikkelingsgag der Ned, Letterkunde, III,
354-362. Van der Aa. Biographisch Woordenboek on the names of
these authors.

THE DUTCH SCHOOL 43

grandfather came with the Brownists from England
about the year 1600 the mother tongue of his ances-
tors, and studied, besides English and Dutch, several
other languages: French, Latin and Greek. He
published in 1712 a Dutch grammar, in 1740 a com-
pendious guide for the Low Dutch language, in 1727
his famous dictionary of the English and Dutch lan-
guages, and in 1718 an ameliorated edition of the
Flemish grammar of La Grace.

But the master of this school was no doubt Lam-
bert ten Kate. He was a man of great abilities and of
fine taste. He studied not only philosophy, literature
and languages, but he was as well a great lover of art,
and collected a beautiful library of books about art
and literature. His favorite study was, however, com-
parative philology. In the year 1710 he published a
book on the relationship of the Dutch and the Gothic
languages. But his best work was his Introduction to
the higher knowledge of the Dutch language, 2 vols.,
Amst. 1723, in which he compared the Dutch with the
Gothic, the Frankish, the German, the Anglo-Saxon
and the Icelandic. After his death he left several un-
published writings, now in the University library at
Amsterdam, among which is a work in two volumes
on the sound system. 1 Herman Paul says that Ten
Kate followed in the footsteps of Junius and Hickes.
but that in his historical researches into languages he
excelled them by far, and that among all the scholars
of the older school Ten Kate came the nearest to the
point of view of Jacob Grimm. 2 For etymology, says
Paul, Ten Kate was the first in Europe who had a real
scientific foundation for his researches. 3

1 See Van de Aa. Biographic Dictionary under the name Ten
Kate.

2 Herman Paul. Grundriss I, 35.

3 Ibid., p. % 36.

44 THE DUTCH SCHOOL

And last but not least, Balthazar Huydecoper was
the man who saw even at the early period in which
he lived the importance of all mediaeval literature, as
a consequence of the historical method of studying
languages which had grown up since Junius. To that
historical research of languages he devoted himself
almost entirely. He published Vondel's translation
of Ovid's Metamorphoses, with manifold linguistic
notes in 1730. But his best work was his edition of
Melis Stoke's Rhyme chronicle of Holland, with many
historical, archaeological and linguistic notes, in three
volumes, 1772. This was the first edition of a medi-
aeval Dutch work with critical notes. "By these two
works," says Dr. Jonckbloet, "Huydecoper has estab-
lished an unperishable monument of his merit." 4

4 W. J. A. Jonckbloet. History of Dutch Literature, II, 309.

CHAPTER V ;

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL
LITERATURE DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,
AS THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE STUDY OF
COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

The great movement for comparative philology,
started by Junius and continued by the school of Ten
Kate and Huydecoper, did not remain without in-
fluence on the important results in the field, obtained
by the famous school of the brothers Jacob and Wil-
helm Grimm during the first half of the nineteenth
century. The relationship of all the Germanic lan-
guages was now brought under the dominion of as-
sured rules ; the laws were discovered according to
which the vowels and the consonants had been chang-
ing in the different languages, since in the course of
history they departed from the original, and went
their own way from dialects to separate languages.
The study of comparative philology became more
scientific and more systematic than ever before, and
the interest in the literature of mediaeval time became
greater than ever, because the comparison of the
modern with the mediaeval languages was the most
beautiful field for the application and further affirma-
tion of the newly discovered laws of etymology, and
for the thorough knowledge of nearly every one of our
modern languages. Huydecoper saw this consequence,
and he published the mediaeval Chronicle of Melis
Stoke; the German school followed his example with

46 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL

many publications of the kind ; and a new Dutch move-
ment during the nineteenth century brought to light
an abundance of mediaeval literature to which at first
in our days full attention has begun to be paid.

At the same time this study of mediaeval literature
showed more than anything before how central and
important was the position of the Netherlands, even
in the earliest centuries of the middle ages.

As far as Germany and its early mediaeval litera-
ture is concerned, these studies showed that the great
hero of the "Nibelungenlied, so often called the Iliad
of the Germans, was Siegfried, a Dutch prince from
Santen in the Southern Netherlands, although it may
be quite true as Dr. Jonckbloet says that the essential
part of the story is probably much older than the set-
tlement of the Franks in this country. 1

The same study of mediaeval literature shows that
the princess Kudrun of the Kudrun-story, that Odyssey
of Germany, was probably as Dr. Jonckbloet proves,
although others may try to deny it, a Dutch princess
from the neighborhood of Antwerp ; that her lover
Herwig was a prince from the Dutch province of
Zealand, that Moorland is Holland, and that in no
way can a clearer explanation be given of the story
than by this supposition, as many names in the story
show. The scenery of Lohengrin, the famous story
of Wagner's grand opera, was near Antwerp, on the
bank of the Scheldt ; Elsa was princess of Brabant
and the horrible Ortrud was a daughter of the
Frisian king Radboud. The same studies show that
the author of the Heliand, the great Christian epos of
Germany, probably was, according to the best scholars,
either the Dutch missionary Ludger or one of his
pupils who wrote at his suggestion. From these

1 W. J. A. Jonckbloet. History of Dutch Literature, I, 19.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL 47

studies we know that the Dutch nobleman Henric van
Veldekc, who was born and educated in the province
of Limburg in the Netherlands was the founder and
the leading star of German lyric poetry, whom the
great German poets of the thirteenth century were
anxious to follow.

As far as France is concerned with its many
mediaeval romances of chivalry, grouping around the
Prankish kings, the study of mediaeval literature
brought to light that the scenery of many of those
romances is to be found in the Southern Netherlands,
and that several of the authors of these romances even
lived in the Southern Netherlands. The houses of the
old Prankish kings were most closely connected with
this country. Peppin of Herstal came from Herstal,
a place in the Southern Netherlands. Charlemagne
had one of his residences at Nimwegen. The beauti-
ful "Ludwigs lied" sings the victory of Ludwig the
third in 1881 near Sancourt in the Southern Nether-
lands gained over the Northmen, and was probably
written by Huebald from the monastery of St. Amand
near Valenchijn in the Southern Netherlands. In
several of those French romances we find true descrip-
tions of nature and life as they were in the Southern
Netherlands ; so in the romance of de Raoul de Cam-
brai ; so in that of Renaud of Montalban ; in that of
Ogier of Ardennes, in the romances of De Garin de
Loharain as Dr. Te Winkel shows abundantly, 1 while
the romance of Auberi de Bourgoing describes a fight
between the Flemings and the Frisians. 2 Some of the
best authors of those French romances lived in the
Southern Netherlands. So for instance Chretien de
Troyes lived for a time at the court of Flanders. 3

1 Dr. J. te Winkel, Jacob ran Maerlaht, p. 7.

2 Prof. G. Kalff, History of Dutch Literature, I, p. 95.

3 Ibid., p. 85.

48 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL

Adam de la Halle and Jean Boclel lived at Atrecht. 1
Of some other French romances there are quite inde-
pendent conceptions in mediaeval Dutch, as for instance
the Dutch version of Karel and Elegast, while the
Dutch version of the Aiol has more than four hundred
lines not to be found in the French original; the
Dutch version of the famous animal epos Reinard is
generally recognized as a quite independent concep-
tion, and on account of this beautiful conception, as
the best animal epos in the world, while in the romance
of the Swan, the main idea is that the dukes of
Brabant were of a miraculous, heavenly descent. 2

The literature of England during the three first
centuries, after the Norman conquest in 1066, was
nearly the same as that of France. From the conquest
in 1066 till the recognition of the remodelled English
language with its many French elements in the law
courts in 1362, and in the schools in 1386, the
predominant language in England was French ; the
romances, even those on old Celtic subjects, as the
Arthur romances, were written and read in the French
language, and composed for a considerable part in the
Southern Netherlands, as for instance the first French
Arthur romance, Le conte del GraaL, was written by
Chretien de Troyes, who was living at the Flemish
court about the year 1175.

Of such a kind were the connections of the Neth-
erlands with the early mediaeval literature of Germany,
France and England.

Was it remarkable that Dutch scholars of the
nineteenth century felt themselves attracted to the
study of mediaeval literature, with which their own
country was so closely connected, and the study of

ilbid.'

2 Jonckbloet, I, 21.

HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL 49

which was to such a large extent prepared for by
their own compatriots from the time of Junius till
their own?

The great work of Junius, and of the school of
Ten Kate and Huydecoper, kept alive the movement
in the Netherlands all the time. Soon after the pub-
lishing of Melis Stoke's Rhyme chronicle by Huyde-
coper in 1772, the works of Jacob van Maerlant, the
great master of mediaeval Dutch language and litera-
ture, attracted the attention of the best scholars. Now
everybody can easily understand why the publishing
of Maerlant's works was not completed in one year,
or even in a few years, as they contain not less than
one hundred and twenty-eight thousand lines, a quan-
tity of which one hardly gets an idea by comparison
for instance with Milton's Paradise Lost, which cer-
tainly is a long poem but nevertheless contains not
more than- eleven thousand lines. Only twelve years
after Huydecoper published Melis Stoke's Rhyme
chronicle, the first volume of Maerlant's Spieghel His-
toricel, his great work on the world's history, was
printed in the year 1784 by the care of Dr. J. A.
Clignett. 1 Since that year 1784, when the first work
of Maerlant was printed, the studies on Maerlant,
the printing of his works, the discovery and collection
of all his manuscripts was in progress for more than a
century, till in the year 1891 the last volume was pub-
lished, and his complete works were put at the dis-
posal of every student of mediaeval literature. Of the
Spieghel Historical, in the meantime, a second and
beautiful edition was published during the years 1857-
1863 by the care of Prof. M. de Vries and his oldest
pupil E. Verwijs. A great number of Dutch scholars
had cooperated during these hundred years, not only

1 J. te Winkel, Jacob van Maerlant, p. 518.
4

50 HOLLAND'S SHARE IN THE REVIVAL

in publishing the works of Maerlant, but in studying
the history of mediaeval literature in connection with
the comparative philology. Willem Bilderdijk (1756-
1831), the great Dutch poet and scnolar, Dr. J. H.
Halbertsma, Dr. Hendrik van Wijn, the father of the
History of Dutch literature, W. C. Ackersdijk, A. C.
W. Staring, M. Siegenbeek, C. J. Meyer, L. Ph. van
den Bergh and J. Clarisse, assisted by some German
philologists as Hoffman von Fallersleben, F. J. Monen,
E. Kansler and L. Tross, followed in the footsteps of
Huydencoper and Clignett in close connection with,
and profiting by, the beautiful results of the school of
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. 1 To describe the services
rendered by all these men would make this chapter
too elaborate, but the work of at least one man may be
especially mentioned here, viz., that of Dr. J. A. Jonck-
bloet. His work on the history of Dutch literature
assures him forever of a prominent place among
Dutch philologists, but it was his famous work on the
History of Mediaeval Literature that especially gave
him an European fame, and made his name immortal
for all students of mediaeval literature. This history
is still considered one of the great works of reference
on the subject. 2

1 J. te Winkel, Jacob ran Maerlant, p. 498-526.

2 W. J. A. Jonckbloet, Geschiedenis der Middelnederlandsche Dicht-
kunst, 1854.

CHAPTER VI

RESULTS OF THE STUDY OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY
AND OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE FOR THE STUDY
OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

After having mentioned the importance of the study
of comparative philology especially for a knowledge
of the English language (i), the general results of
comparative philology (2), and the share which Hol-
land had in its inception (3), in its further develop-
ment (4), and consequently in the study of mediaeval
literature the only thing still to be done in this short
review is to mention in a few words (5), the results
of the study of comparative philology and of mediaeval
literature for the knowledge of English language and
literature.

Whoever studies even the works of W. W. Skeat
alone, and especially his Etymological Dictionary of
the English Language, may notice the importance of
these results in a very short time. With the utmost
care, the origin of every word has now been traced
as far as possible ; all the different parts of the great
mixture, which is called the English language, have
been isolated, every point of the English grammar has
been investigated, the whole history and all the changes
of this language have been discovered. The results
are marvelous indeed, more than for any other lan-
guage because no other language is such a
mixture of different elements. Not less are the
results for the knowledge of English literature.

52 RESULTS OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

Scholars of several nations when once they had
been attracted and absorbed by the wonderful charms
of comparative philology, studied not only their
own national literature, and language, but they found
interesting sources for research in the literature of all
those languages of which the mutual relationship was
discovered. This was a consequence of the idea itself
of comparative philology, which meant to compare the
different languages as found in the literature of many
nations. So for instance a man like Franciscus Junius
published not only the Gothic, but at the same time the
Anglo-Saxon, version of the Gospels, and his tran-
scripts of many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts have been
the subject of a special essay by Dr. Logeman. Not
less was Junius' work in publishing Caedmon's Para-
phrase, an immediate consequence of his researches in
the field of comparative philology. From these few
examples one sees how this science influences the
development of the study of English language and
literature. Only the development of comparative phi-
lology has made it possible to study the influence of
one nation on the language and the literature of an-
other, as that of Holland on the English language and
literature, to distinguish the different elements of a
language, which, like the English has been mixed
during many centuries with elements from many dif-
ferent sources ; to trace the origin and genesis of every
piece of literature and the influences that have inspired
their respective authors. It is in this whole movement
in which, as I showed, Holland had such a remarkable
share, that from the time of Junius till our present
day the numerous monographs, essays, pamphlets and
articles in periodicals have been published, which now
taken together furnish the material for a general
glance over the whole field and for finding out, for

RESULTS OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY 53

instance, what influence England exerted on the litera-
ture and language of other nations, as well as that
which other nations exerted on the English language
and literature. It is by collecting this scattered mate-
rial that I will try to recapitulate the results of men
like Skeat and De Hoog, and in continuing the epoch-
making work of such men, to bring to the attention
of the English-speaking people the influence of Hol-
land on English language and literature as set forth
in a concise form in the following pages.

PART II

Holland's Influence on the English
Language

CHAPTER VII

THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGES

According to the genealogy of the Indo-Germanic
languages as given in our sketch in the second chap-
ter of the first Part, the Dutch and the English
languages are seen to be most closely related to each
other. They are as closely related to each other as
two sisters in the genealogy of a large family and
more closely related than even Dutch and modern
German. "Although the pronunciation may differ
very much," says De Hoog, "there is a greater simi-
larity in words between the English and the Dutch
even than between the Dutch and the German." 1 The
vulgar idea that the Dutch language is pretty nearly
the same as the German, and that English and Dutch
differ much more than German and Dutch, is good
enough for those people who know these languages
only by conversation but it cannot find favor with
better informed philologists. The philologist knows
that in the early middle ages Dutch and English were

1 W. de Hoog, Studien, First edition, I, p. 63; Second edition,
I P- 1 53- This author does not hesitate to make the statement that "we
may freely say that of all the foreign languages none has so much
similarity with the Dutch as the English," I, 154.

56 THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

much more alike than at present ; that therein lies the
reason why missionaries from the British isles could
make themselves understood very easily among the
tribes of the Low Countries; that even the language
of Chaucer still shows a surprising similarity to the
Dutch, and that still in the year 1600 a man like the
great historian Van Meteren, during the glorious time
of the Netherlands, when England was far behind in
civilization, could call the English language "only a
broken Dutch." 1

The reason, however, why this close relationship
between the English and the Dutch is not observed at
first sight, is not only the difference in pronunciation,
but the difference in the way in which the words in
both languages are written.

But the main difference between Dutch and Eng-
lish is in the arrangement of words, and in the use of
prepositions and conjunctions. 2

And last but not least, since the predominance of
the French language in England during more than
three hundred years, from 1066 till 1400, the English
has been mixed with such an overwhelming element
of French words, and French expressions, that this
makes the similarity of the original and pure English,
to the Dutch still more obscure to the common reader.

Nevertheless, to be convinced of the close relation-
ship, says de Hoog, 3 it may suffice 'to look through any
dictionary to find a list of words like this:

Eng. anchor, Dutch anker; cf. ankle, enkel; apple,
appel ; ash, asch ; beacon, baken ; bean, boon ; bear,
beer; beard, baard; beast, beest; bed, bed; beech,

1 Van Meteren, Historic, I, 489.

2 De Hoog, Second edition, I, 175.

3 Ibid, First edition, I, 63. In his second edition the author gives
this list only till the word ewe, supposing that everybody easily can make
a similar list. This is certainly true, but most readers will not do it and
yet will find an interest in looking through his list..

THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP 57

beuk; begin, beginnen; bell, bel; bind, binden; bitter,
bitter; bleat, blaten; blind, blind; block, blok; blood,
bloed ; blossom, bloesem ; blue, blauw ; bosom, boezem ;
bottom, bodem ; break, breken ; bread, brood ; breast,
borst ; breed, broeden ; bride, bruid ; bridge, grug ;
bridle, breidel ; bring, brengen ; broad, breed ; breadth,
breedte; brother, breeder; brown, bruin; buckwheat,
boekweit ; busy, bezig ; butter, boter ; to clatter,
klateren; clay, klei; clear, klaar; clock, klok; dance,
dansen ; daughter, dochter ; dead, dood ; deaf, doof ;
dear, duur; dearth, duurte; deed, daad; deep, diep;
devil, duivel; dike, dijk; door, deur; dough, deeg;
dove, duif; dream, droomen; drench, drenken; drink,
drinken; earnest, ernstig; ear, oor; earth, aarde; eat,
eten; east, oost; elm, olm; etch, etsen; evil, euvel;
ewe, ooi ; give, geven ; glass, glas ; grave, graf ; great,
groot; greet, groeten; green, groen; guess, gissen;
guest, gast; hail, hagel; hair, haar; hammer, hamer;
haste, haast ; haven, haven ; heap, hoop ; hear, hooren ;
heart, hart; hedge, hegge; heed, hoede; heel, hiel;
hell, hel; helm, helm; help, helpen; herring, haring;
hide, huid ; hind, hinde ; hire, huren ; honey, honig ;
hope, hoop; hot, heet; house, huis; howl, huilen;
hunger, honger ; kiss, kussen ; knead, kneden ; knee,
knie ; kneel, knielen ; ladder, ladder ; lade, laden ; lamb,
lam ; lamp, lamp ; land, land ; lane, laan ; last, leest ;
late, laat ; lead, leiden ; lead, lood ; leak, lekken ; light,
licht ; lisp, lispelen ; little, luttel ; live, leven ; liver,
lever ; loan, leen ; long, lang ; length, lengte ; loose, los ;
make, maken ; market, markt ; mew, meeuw ; might,
macht ; mildew, meeldauw ; mill, molen ; monk,
monnik ; mouse, muis ; mustard, mosterd ; nail, nagel ;
naked, naakt ; name, naam ; neck, neck ; need, nood ;
needle, naald; nettle, netel; night, nacht; nightingale,
nachtegaal ; north, noord ; oven, oven ; oak, eik ; open,
open ; oyster, oester ; plank, plank ; plant, plant ;
plaster, pleister ; plough, ploeg ; prince, prins ; quarter,
kwartier; radish, radijs; raven, raaf ; reckon, rekenen ;
reed, riet; rich, rijk; ring, ring; rose, roos; sand,
zand ; saw, zaag ; singe, sengen ; sink, zinken ; sister,
zuster ; sit, zitten ; sketch, schets ; slave, slaaf ; sluice,
sluis ; smear, smeren ; smith, smid ; snow, sneeuw ;

58 THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

soap, zeep; sole, zool; son, zoon; soul, ziel; soup,
soep ; sour, zuur ; south, zuid ; spade, spade ; spare,
sparen, spear, speer; speed, spoed; split, splijten;
spring 1 , springen ; spread, spreiden ; sprout, spruiten ;
staff, staf; star, ster; starve, sterven; state, staat;
still, stil ; stink, stinken ; stone, steen ; storm, storm ;
strand, strand ; straw, stroo ; stream, stroom ; street,
straat ; strive, streven ; study, studie ; swallow, zwaluw ;
swarm, zwenn; swear, zweren; sweat, zweten; swell,
zwellen ; swim, zwemmen ; swine, zwijn ; table, tafel ;
tame, tarn ; tea, thee ; thank, bedanken ; thing, ding ;
token, teeken ; tongue, tong ; tread, treden ; tumble,
tuimelen ; wade, waden ; wain, wagen ; warm, warm ;
wash, wasschen ; water, water ; wax, wassen ; wealth,
weelde; weapon, wapen; weasel, wezel; weather,
weder; weave, weven; week, week; weigh, wegen;
weigh, gewicht ; welcome, welkom ; what, wat ; wild,
wild; will, wil; willow, wilg; woe, wee; wolf, wolf;
wonder, wonder ; work, work ; world, wereld ; worm,
worm ; wring, wringen.

Not only the resemblance of a great number of
words, but a comparison of the English and Dutch
grammars and of both with the Gothic, shows that the
whole structure and foundation of English and Dutch
are the same. The regularity with which differences
in vowels and consonants occur between English and
Dutch words, shows their original similarity, while
the different way in which they are written today finds
its cause in a difference of pronunciation. So great
is this regularity that long since a great number of
rules have been discovered according to which these
differences in vowels and consonants have been
brought about. Is a verb strong in its conjugation in
Dutch, it is also strong in English ; is it weak in
Dutch, it is also weak in English. And for the phi-
lologist, who is able to separate all the foreign ele-
ments, and to discover the original language of the
Saxons who crossed the Channel, later called Anglo-

THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP 59

Saxons, and the language of the Saxons who remained
on the Continent and mixed with other Low Germanic
tribes like the Frisians and the Franks, and formed
the Dutch nation for the philologist who studies both
languages in their growth through so many centuries,
English and Dutch appear clearly to be two sisters in
the great family of the Indo-Germanic languages.
To explain this more elaborately would lead us too
far away from the main idea of this work, and it may
suffice for more particulars to refer to such books as
those of W. Skeat and W. de Hoog.

But another question which really belongs here is
this: How can two languages which in their origin
are like two sisters of one family, have exerted so
much influence one on the other as to furnish each
other with many words, and with words, which really
are not foreign words to both, but belong indeed to
one of them and are borrowed by the other? How
could the English people borrow words from the
Dutch; words which are really Dutch and not bor-
rowed by the Dutch themselves from French or
German or from any other language, if we presume
that both the English and the Dutch nations sprang
from tribes which spoke the same dialects or lan-
guages? This question is answered in the best way
when we hold for a moment to the comparison of
the two sisters. If, in one and the same family, there
are two sisters who have received a very different
education, then, although they speak the same lan-
guage, the one, who developed more rapidly and got
a broader knowledge of many things, will at last
have a much larger and richer vocabulary than the
other who secured only a poor education and a very
limited knowledge. In the same way it was possible
that the Dutch, who during several centuries had a:

60 THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

regular, a never interrupted, and splendid develop-
ment, in accordance with it acquired a large vocab-
ulary, while the English during the same time only
followed from afar. On the contrary, when during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the English
nation developed enormously, while the Dutch was
declining, it is very probable that during this time the
English will gain the supremacy, will develop a rich
vocabulary, while the Dutch become the people that
follow and borrow names and new words for new
things which were introduced from England.

CHAPTER VIII

WHY THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND ON DUTCH LAN-
GUAGE AND LITERATURE is OF RECENT DATE,
WHILE THAT OF HOLLAND ON ENGLISH LAN-
GUAGE AND LITERATURE OCCURRED MUCH EARLIER
AND DURING SEVERAL CENTURIES.

Although not included necessarily in the plan of
this little volume, yet a few words about the influence
of England on Holland, and its language and litera-
ture, may find here a place, since some one who reads
these pages may ask the question: Was not the in-
fluence of Holland on England a mutual one, and did
not England exert as much influence on Holland
as the latter did on the former ? This question may be
not a necessary one, it is nevertheless so closely con-
nected with our subject that a few words of explana-
tion may not be superfluous. It is interesting, any-
how, in connection with our subject to keep in mind at
least a general outline of the whole relation through
history between the two countries. Now this is in the
main dominated by three circumstances:

1. The course of general civilization from east to
west ;

2. The peculiar development of civilization in
England which was interrupted by several conquests ;
and

3. The regular development of the Netherlands as
a world-center of civilization some centuries earlier
than the development of England as a world-empire.

62 HOLLAND AND ENGLAND

In the explanation and interpretation of these three
observations we find the history of the relations be-
tween Holland and England.

I. Civilization took its course from East to West.
It is generally accepted that in Asia is to be found
the cradle of the human race. From Asia came the
tribes which spread over Europe. From the eastern
empires of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia and Pales-
tine, civilization came to the shores of Europe. At
first Greece, later the Roman empire, became the cen-
ter of civilization in Europe, and from Greece and
Rome it spread over the western countries of Europe
under the leadership of the mediaeval Christian church.
So Christian civilization soon reached the shores of
the Atlantic, came to the Netherlands, and crossed the
Channel to the British Isles, after the way had been
prepared by the armies of heathen Rome. Holland
was part of the European Continent, was most closely
in contact with the rest of Europe, and became speedily
the center of trade between the Baltic and the Medi-
terranean, between the heart of Germany and Eng-
land. But England had a more isolated position, was
not so closely connected with all Europe, and had not
that central position which was the privilege of Hol-
land. So the Netherlands and especially the Southern
Provinces soon became a center of trade and industry,
of art and literature and of all civilization, while the
development of civilization in England remained far
behind.

II. To this course, taken by the history of civiliza-
tion, must be added the circumstance that the develop-
ment of civilization in England had been interrupted
several times by the most awful conquests, accom-
panied by wholesale devastations of every previous
civilization. England has been conquered, first by the

HOLLAND AND ENGLAND 63

Ramans, then by the Angles and Saxons, later by the
Danes, after that time by William the Conqueror with
his Normans, and especially the last conquest, and in
connection with it the dreadful wars with France,
followed by the war of the Roses, have exerted an in-
fluence on the civilization in England, which finally
left that country during the fourteenth and fifteenth
century in a condition far behind the civilization of
some other parts of Europe, especially of the southern
Netherlands. All these conquests, most of them de-
pressing and influencing the whole people for a long
time, and accompanied as they were by murder and
devastation, by robbery and oppression, .have together
brought a rough, as well as a dramatic element, into
English national life, a life which was full of tragic
stories, noble fights and criminal performances. This
may to a certain extent explain the early development
of English literature, and especially of the drama, at
a time when the general standard of civilization was
still very low. In the dramas of Shakespeare we see
the results of the whole history of England till that
time; a true mirror of all its great events, all its
energy, all its crimes, all its activity, all its sufferings,
as well as of all its display of brute power and rough-
ness. This peculiarly rough, but powerful, individ-
ualism, full of energy and activity was able to produce
exceptions like Shakespeare, Marlowe and Spenser, in
a time when the general standard of English national
life was very low indeed. This is surprising, and to
be explained only by the conquests of the island and the
nearly perpetual oppression of a large part of the Eng-
lish people. Even at the present time, notwithstand-
ing all the world-power and wealth of England, it has
as its "poet laureate" no better man than Robert
Bridges; as its history of English literature no better

64 HOLLAND AND ENGLAND

work than that of the Frenchman Taine; as its best
painter no better man than Alma Tadema, a Dutch-
man by birth and education ; while in winning Nobel
prizes it remains far behind the Netherlands of today ;
and in preserving mediaeval feudalism even in its
institutions of learning, it is more conservative than
almost any other country in the world. Yet in our
time the general standard of national life in no other
country is as high as in England. When in our days
we look at the splendor and the wealth of the British
empire, with its overwhelming position, and compare
with it the modest position of the kingdom of Holland,
we are inclined to believe that such may have been
always the situation and we hardly imagine how en-
tirely different it was some centuries ago. But as far
as we are not blinded by the present situation, and
ask just for the 'truth of history, we learn that some
centuries ago, not England, but the Netherlands were
far ahead in general civilization, and in national stand-
ard of life, and we find the cause of the backwardness
of English national life in the many conquests, and
nearly perpetual oppression of the people in English
History.

III. On the contrary the national life in the
Netherlands since the crusades developed very fast and
regularly. Modern democracy arose in the cities of
Flanders sooner, and more splendidly, than in any
other country in the world. Charles V (1500-1558)
himself born at Bruges in the same Southern Nether-
lands, where once, at Herstal, stood the cradle of
the great Carolingians Charles V, the Emperor of
Germany, the King of Spain, the Lord of the Nether-
lands, on whose empire the sun did not set, the man
of the world-empire of his time, got two-fifths of all
his income from the Netherlands, where learning and

HOLLAND AND ENGLAND 65

civilization had their headquarters, where luxury and
wealth was accumulated by trade and industry. And
at the same time England under the Tudors was so
far behind in national civilization, that we are aston-
ished when reading what the best historians tell us
about it. At the time when Elizabeth (i 55^-1603 ),
"the good queen Beth," came to the throne, England's
trade was little, and its industry did not amount to
anything; the best citizens were put to death, or fled
from the country to escape the persecutions of Bloody
Mary ; most of the land belonged to the lords of the
castles, and nearly. all the revenues of the country had
to come from the wool it produced, as being in the
main a pastoral land, so that the "woolsac" is even
today taken for the symbol of the origin of England's
wealth.

At this time, when in the Netherlands, according
to the Italian historian Guiciardini, everybody knew
how to write, and to read, in England many even of
the Peers of the land could neither write nor read.

At a time when in the Netherlands, in one city
(Antwerp), five hundred marble palaces of the wealthy
merchants were destroyed by one conquest, and the
ladies dressed like princesses, so that the French queen
one time in the year 1301 at a banquet at Brughes
exclaimed: "I thought that I was the only queen
here, but I see that all ladies are queens," 1 at that
time and even two centuries later the houses of the
upper classes in England were described by Erasmus
(otherwise full of admiration for the English people)
in these words: "The floors are commonly of clay,
strewed with rushes, which are only lifted at long

1 Groen van Prinsterer, Textbook of Dutch History, p. 17.
Incredible, says Groen, was the welfare of the Flemish cities Ghent,
Ypres and Brughes. Ghent alone had 80,000 citizens able to go to
war. This was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

66 HOLLAND AND ENGLAND

intervals, and under which lies unmolested, an ancient
collection of beer, grease, bones, spittle and every
nameless abomination. 1 In Skikton Castle, belonging
to the earl of Cumberland, and built in the year 1572,
as one of the most splendid castles of Northern Eng-
land according to Hallam "none of the chambers had
chairs, window glass or carpets." 2 Even Queen Eliza-
beth did not know the use of the fork and ate her meat
with her fingers ; her perpetual habit of swearing like
a common soldier everybody knows; and historians
like Froude and Hallam tell us that the standard of
morality at that time in England was not higher than
the standard of elegance in English homes, and in the
English way of living. No wonder that a good many
of the English soldiers, who at that time came to the
Netherlands, were looked at like "half naked bar-
barians," worse than even the Spaniards in roughness
and cruelty.

The Dutch skilled laborers and farmers, who set-
tled in England's eastern and south-eastern districts,
found there easily a living, while on the contrary the
Pilgrim fathers at Leyden could hardly make a living,
because their standard of education and skill was lower
than that of their Dutch competitors.

The simple historical truth is, that at that period
the undeveloped energy of the English people was
still waiting for the time of its glorious unfolding,
and that, notwithstanding the exceptional examples of
Spenser, Shakespeare and some other individuals, the
general standard of English civilization was very low,
while at the same time that of the Netherlands was
ahead of all Europe.

1 Marcus Dods, Erasmus and other Essays, p. 13. Other descriptions
of English houses in Douglas Campbell, The Puritans, I, 326, v. v. and
the authors quoted there.

2 Hallam, Middle Ages, quoted by Campbell, I, 327.

HOLLAND AND ENGLAND 67

The glorious time for England, as a whole, came
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That of
the Netherlands was in the fourteenth, fifteenth, six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. It is not in the
least in favor of the Netherlands, neither a disgrace
to England, but merely a chronological fact, that the
development of civilization, of wealth, and power in
the Netherlands came some centuries earlier than in
England. But the consequence of this historical fact
is, that during the centuries of higher civilization,
Holland exerted permanently its influence on England,
on English language and literature; and, on the con-
trary, that the time in which England exerted some
considerable influence on Holland is to be sought
especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
and in our present time.

Nearly all the words of English origin in the
Dutch language are of very recent date, and never in
history have so many English books been translated
into Dutch as in our present time. On the contrary
nearly all the words of Dutch origin in the English
language are from earlier ages, and the influence of
Holland exerted on English literature dates from those
centuries when Holland was in its glorious days, and
when civilization in the Netherlands was at a higher
development and more general than in any other
country in the world. And while at present Holland
cannot be said to have any influence whatever on
England in general, including English language and
literature except in South Africa it is a matter of
fact that every year English words are creeping into
the Dutch language, and that English literature exerts
an influence on Dutch literature which nobody can
deny.

All history proves that whenever two countries, by

68 HOLLAND AND ENGLAND

their natural situation, have permanent and frequent
intercourse with each other, either one or the other
will exert a more dominant and prevailing influence,
and which one shall dominate depends at any time
upon the question in which of the two countries
civilization, power and wealth are more prominent.

The predominance of the Netherlands we find as
far back as the time in which William the Conqueror
brought Flemish soldiers, and Flemish weavers, to
England, and married a Flemish princess, but is to be
found especially from the fourteenth till the eighteenth
centuries, while that of England begins in the eight-
eenth century and has been working in its full power
through the whole nineteenth century till our present
time.

Yet England's influence on Holland never could
be so very important, for the simple reason that France
as well as Germany are in more close contact with
Holland than England.

CHAPTER IX

THE INFLUENCE EXERTED ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FROM THAT ON ENGLISH
LITERATURE.

However closely and even inseparably language
and literature may be connected, yet they are not
identical, and the influence which Holland exerted on
the English language is entirely different from that
on English literature. The Flemish weavers and
soldiers, brought to England by William the Con-
queror, the thousands of skilled laborers and farmers,
who settled in the eastern districts of England during
several centuries, and the great mass of refugees who
fled to England during the sixteenth century, all
lived among the English people, mixed with the Eng-
lish population, taught different things to the inhabi-
tants of England, and used for those things their own
Flemish names. They introduced Flemish words into
England ; those words were added to the English
vocabulary, and in that way all those people exerted
some influence on the English language, but this in-
fluence did not touch English literature.

On the contrary when scholars like Erasmus and
FrancisCus Junius, Vossius and Van der Noot came to
England, they spoke from the beginning the English
language, or they spoke Latin. They did not intro-
duce Flemish words into the English language, but
by their writings, by their conversation and corre-
spondence they brought hew ideas, new suggestions

70 INFLUENCE EXERTED IS DIFFERENT

for the literary men, for the scholars and poets ; they
exerted an influence on English literature. And even
without coming themselves to England, when the
works of scholars and poets in the Netherlands are
spread over England, and read by men of education
and learning, then the influence of these scholars and
poets on English language is nothing, but on English
literature it may be considerable.

English soldiers and refugees came to the Nether-
lands by the thousand; they saw there things, and
learned there industries which they did not know
before ; they heard the names for all those new things,
and for every part of them, in the Dutch language ;
they grew familiar with these Dutch words and terms,
and coming back to England, they continued to use
these Dutch terms as they learned them in Holland.
Their influence is only on the English ^language, not on
English literature.

But when hundreds of students from England and
Scotland come to Leyden University to study there
all kinds of sciences, and some of them in later time
write books in England, then we see the influence of
what they studied in Holland, and in their writings we
shall find something of the influence which Holland
exerted on English literature.

The common citizens, the unlearned people, the
men of industry, trade and agriculture, these are the
people that are making and changing the language.

So a language is changing all the time. "Growth
and change," says Whitney, "make the life of language,
as they are everywhere else the inseparable accom-
paniment of life. A language is living when it is the
instrument of thought of a whole people, the wonted
means of expression of all their feelings, experiences,
opinions, reasonings; when the connection between it

INFLUENCE EXERTED IS DIFFERENT 71

and their mental activity is so close that the one reflects
the other, and that the two grow together, the in-
strument ever adapting itself to the uses which it is
to subserve." 1

But the scholars and poets, the learned men of
high education, the philosophers, the statesmen and
the clergymen, the people who propagate and practice
their ideas in state, in church and in society these are
the men who are making the literature. Now when
the things that happen in Holland in any department
of life are important, and interesting enough to at-
tract the attention and the interest of English people,
and to influence their writings, then we can say that
Holland has an influence on English literature, which
is the result of this interest.

When a nation is ahead in industry and trade, in
navigation and agriculture, in a word, in all those
things which touch immediately the life and the daily
work of the common people, then it is very likely that
words and terms in connection with all these things
will be introduced into the language of that other
nation, which has to learn and to follow.

But when a nation is ahead in religious and polit-
ical ideas and movements, in sciences and in art, or
in social movements, then it is very likely that philos-
ophers and statesmen, clergymen and poets, in a
word all those people who make the literature of a
nation, will feel the influence of the leading nation,
and in such cases we observe the influence of one
nation on the literature of the other.

Now in the case of Holland and England every
historian knows that during centuries Holland was
far ahead of England in industry and in trade, in

1 William Dwight Whitney, Language and the Study of Language,
p. 32-

72 INFLUENCE EXERTED IS DIFFERENT

navigation and in agriculture, as well as in political,
religious and social ideas and movements, in sciences
and in art. Consequently, before having made any
further researches, we may suppose that during those
centuries Holland has exerted some influence on the
English language, as well as on English literature, an
influence which the following pages may show more
clearly.

CHAPTER X

How IT HAPPENED THAT HOLLAND 'EXERTED INFLU-
ENCE ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The first man, and till the present time, at least
in England and America, the only man who has
made any elaborate investigation of this question, is
the Rev. W. W. Skeat. In his "brief notes," in the
introductory part of his Etymological Dictionary he
says: "The introduction into English of Dutch
words is somewhat important yet seems to have re-
ceived but little attention. I am convinced that the
influence of Dutch upon English has been much
underrated, and a closer attention to this question
might throw some light even upon English history. I
think I may take the credit of being the first to point
this out with sufficient distinctness. History tells us
that our relations with the Netherlands have often
been rather close. We read of Flemish mercenary
soldiers being employed by the Normans, and of
Flemish settlements in Wales, "where," says old
Babyan (I know not with what truth), "they re-
mayned a longe whyle, but after, they sprad all Eng-
lande over." We may recall the alliance between
Edward III, and the free towns of Flanders ; and the
importation, by Edward, of Flemish weavers. The
wool used by the cloth-workers of the Low Countries
grew on the backs of English sheep ; and other close
relations between us and our nearly related neigh-
bors grew out of the brewing-trade, the invention of

74 HOW IT HAPPENED

printing, and the reformation of religion. Caxton
spent thirty years in Flanders (where the first Eng-
lish book was printed), and translated the Low Ger-
man version of Reynard the Fox. Tyndale settled
at Antwerp to print his New Testament, and was
strangled at Vilvorde. But there was a still closer
contact in the time of Elizabeth. Very instructive is
Gascoigne's poem on the Fruits of War, where he
describes his experience in Holland, and everyone
knows that Zutphen saw the death of the beloved
Sir Philip Sidney. As to the introduction of cant
words from Holland, see Beaumont and Fletcher's
play entitled "The Beggar's Bush." After Antwerp
had been captured by the Duke of Parma, "a third
of the merchants and manufacturers of the ruined
city," says Mr. Green, "are said to have found a
refuge on the banks of the Thames." All this can-
not but have affected our language and it ought to
be accepted as tolerably certain that during the four-
teenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly
the last, several Dutch words were introduced into
England, and it would be curious to inquire whether,
during the same period, several English words did
not in like manner find currency in the Netherlands."
I wonder why Dr. Skeat did not mention, even in
this brief outline, the influence of the persecutions for
religious reasons, by which for instance under
Charles V and Philip II thousands of Dutchmen fled
to England, and under Bloody Mary, as well as
under the Stuarts, at many times, thousands of Eng-
lish people found a refuge in the Netherlands. The
armies, often, of several thousands of English sol-
diers, who were stationed for many years in the
Netherlands during Elizabeth and later as well, must
have felt the influence of Dutch, but on scattered

HOW IT HAPPENED 75

refugees all over the Netherlands we may expect a
far greater influence. During the reign of Elizabeth
we meet in the Netherlands not only Leicester and
Sir Philip Sidney with thousands of English soldiers,
but noblemen as well, like Sir John Norris, and Sir
Francis Vere, and Lord Willoughby, as well as Sir
Roger Williams, who in the year -1587 was one of
the defenders of Sluys in Zealand, and many others,
among whom were some of bad repute, as for
instance Sir William Stanley, the betrayer of Deven-
ter, and Rowland York, who betrayed the fortress
of Zutphen. The two sons of Charles I, with a great
number of their adherents, found refuge in the
Netherlands, and the story of Argyle and Monmouth
shows how many English refugees in later time dur-
ing the persecutions of Charles II and James II lived
in the Low Countries, just as the Pilgrim fathers
lived there at an earlier time during the years
1609-1620.

Not only did many thousands of English people
live in Holland either as soldiers or as refugees, and
become acquainted there with many Dutch words and
expressions, but, on the other hand, thousands of
Hollanders had lived in the eastern districts of Eng-
land for centuries, while in the time of Elizabeth,
during the reign of the Duke of Alva, the popula-
tion of some cities in the eastern parts of England
was more than half Dutch.

The question of how far Holland exerted influ-
ence on England has been made a subject of special
research by Douglas Campbell in his work, The Puri-
tans, and the material brought together in his book
certainly has spread more light, but the subject seems
far from being exhausted. And yet in these re-
searches we find more and more the way along which

76 HOW IT HAPPENED

many Dutch words have come into the English
language.

W. W. Skeat has treated this question a little more
elaborately than in his dictionary, in his work, "Prin-
ciples of English Etymology," Vol. I, Chapter XXIV,
where he gives the following explanation:

"When we consider that it has long been an ad-
mitted fact, that numerous English words were
directly borrowed from Scandinavian, being brought
over from Denmark in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies, it seems strange that so little is said in our
grammars about the borrowing of English words
from the Old Dutch and Old Friesic. Morris, in his
Historical Outlines of English Accidence, gives a
meagre list of thirteen words borrowed from Dutch,
none of them being of any great antiquity in English.
Koch, in his Grammatik, Hi. 150, gives a list of about
forty words which he supposes to be of "Nieder-
deutsch" origin. Such a treatment of the subject is
surely inadequate. It remains for me to show that
this element is of considerable importance, and should
not be so lightly passed over, as if the matter were
of little account.

"The first question is, at what period are we to date
the borrowing of English words from the Nether-
lands? The right answer is, that the dates are vari-
ous, and the occasions may have been many. It is
concede'd that several sea-terms are really Dutch.
Dr. Morris instances boom, cruise, sloop, yacht (Du.
boom, kruizen, jagt, older spelling jacht) ; as well
as the word schooner.. But the last instance is incor-
rect; the original name was scooner* and originated
in America, but was afterwards turned into schooner

1 From prqv. E. scoon, to glide over water. See the story as told in
Webster's Dictionary; a story which I once doubted, but find to be true;
see Whitney, Study of Language, 1868, p. 38. Schooner has no sense
in Dutch, and is known to be borrowed from us.

HOW IT HAPPENED 77

because such was the Dutch spelling of the word
after they had borrozved it from us! It is just one
more instance of drawing a false induction from cor-
rect premises. Because should and would are spelt
with /, could is spelt so too; and because sloop and
yacht are Dutch, schooner is supposed to be the same.
But we may, I think, safely add to the list the nautical
terms ahoy, aloof, avast, belay, 1 caboose, hoist hold
(of a ship), hoy, hull, lash (to bind spars together),
lighter (a barge), marline, moor (to fasten a boat),
orlop _(a kind of ship's deck), pink (fishing-boat),
reef (of a sail), reef (a rock), reeve, rover (sea-
robber), to sheer off, skipper, smack (fishing-boat),
splice, strand (of a rope), swab, yawl; which, with
the four already mentioned, give more than thirty
Dutch words in nautical affairs alone. Even pilot
is nothing but Old Dutch, disguised in a French
spelling. 2

"But there is another set of words of Dutch origin,
of a different kind, which must also be considered.
It is from the Netherlands that some at least of the
cant terms current in the time of Elizabeth were bor-
rowed, though a very few may be of Gipsy origin,
and may thus be traced to the East. When Fletcher
the dramatist wrote his play of the Beggar's Bush
in 1622, it is remarkable that he laid the scenes in
Ghent and in the neighborhood of Bruges, and makes
Gerrard, who is disguised as the King of the Beg-
gars, and understands a cant dialect, the father of a
rich merchant of the latter town. It is clear whence
Fletcher obtained the cant words which he introduces
into his dialogue so copiously. They are much the

1 In some senses, all obsolete, belay is a native English term. As
a nautical term, it first appears in The Complaint of Scotland, ed. Mur-
ray, ch. vi, p. 41 (1549).

2 See the note on this difficult word in the Supplement to my Dic-
tionary. W. W. Skeat.

78 HOW IT HAPPENED

same set as may be found in Awdeley's Fraternitye
of Vagabondes, first printed in 1561, and in Harman's
Caveat for Vagabondes, printed in 1567; see Furni-
vall's edition of these books for the Early English
Text Society, which contains a Glossary, and an ad-
ditional list of words at p. xxii. Harrison, in his
Description of England, bk. ii. c. 10 (ed. 1587), says
that the trade of the vagabonds, or roving Gypsies,
had begun some sixty years previously, and that their
number was said to exceed ten thousand. I suppose
they reached England by way of Holland, and
picked up some Dutch by the way; though it will be
found that the main portion of the cant language is
nothing but depraved and debased English, coined by
using words in odd senses, and with slight changes,
as when, e. g., food is called belly cheer, or night is
called darkmans. The following are some of the old
cant terms which I should explain from Dutch.
Bufe, a dog ;* from Du. baffen, to bark. Bung, a
purse; Friesic pung, a purse. Kinchin, a child (Har-
man, p. 76) ; Du. kindekin, an infant (Hexham).
Pad, a road, as in high pad, high road; Du. pad, a
path, hence the sb. padder, a robber on the road, now
called a footpad, and pad-nag, a road-horse now
shortened to pad. Prad, a horse ; Du. paard, a horse ;
Slates, sheets; Du. slet, a rag, clout. Hexham, in
his Old Dutch Dictionary (1658), records a verb
facken; "to catch or to gripe ;" which suggests a plausi-
ble origin for the cant word fake, to steal. It is to
be remarked that some of the cant terms seem to
be borrowed from parts of the continent still more
remote than Holland ; for f ambles, hands, is plainly
Danish, from the Dan. famle, to handle; whilst nase,
drunk, is precisely the High G. nass, used literally

1 The modern slang word for dog is buffer (Hotten).

HOW IT HAPPENED 79

in the sense of "wet," but figuratively in the sense
of "drunk;" the Low G. form being nat.

"There was a rather close contact between English
and Dutch in the days of Elizabeth, due to the war
against Spain. After Antwerp had been conquered
by the Duke of Parma, "a third of the merchants and
manufacturers of the ruined city," says Mr. Green,
"are said to have found a refuge on the banks of
the Thames." We should particularly note such a
poem as that entitled the Fruits of War, by George
Gascoigne, where he describes his experiences in
Holland. He and other English volunteers picked
up Dutch words, and brought them home. Thus, in
st. 136 of that poem, he says that he "equyppt a
Hoye;" where hoy, a boat (Du. hey} is a word still
in use. In st. 40, he uses the adj. frolicke to express
cheerful or merry which is borrowed from Du.
vrolijk spelt vrolick by Hexham ; Ben Jonson who
also had served in Holland spells it froelich, as if it
was hardly naturalised, in The Case is Altered, Act i,
sc. i. In his Voyage to Holland, Gascoigne quotes
several Dutch sentences, which be explains by means
of notes. He also introduces the word pynke, which
he explains by "a small bote;" this is mod. E. pink
(Du. pink).

In Ben Jonson's well-known play, "Every Man
in His Humour," we may find several Dutch words.
Thus he has guilder as the name of a coin, Act Hi,
sc. i ; this is a sort of E. translation of Du. gulden,
literally golden, also the name of a coin ; Hexham
gives: (c een Gulden, or Carolus gulden, a Gilder, or
a Charles Gilder; een Philippus gulden, a Philips
Gilder." Again, he has lance-knights, foot-soldiers,
in Act ii, sc. 4 [or 2] ; this is merely the Du. lans-
knecht, which has also been taken into French (and

80 HOW IT HAPPENED

even into English) in the form lansquenet. In Act
iii, sc. i, he has the sb. leagure, and the derivative
beleag'ring; we still use beleaguer, from the Du.
belegeren, to besiege, the Du. sb. being leger, a camp.
In Act ii, sc. i, he has quacksalvers, mountebanks,
from Du. kvvakzalver; the word is still common in the
abbreviated form quack as applied to a physician.

''There are several Dutch words in Shakespeare,
who quotes one word as Dutch when he says 'lustig,
as the Dutchman says ;' All's Well, ii., 3, 47 ; where
lustig means 'in excellent spirits.' The list of Dutch
words in Shakespeare is a much longer one than
might be expected. I give it here, referring to my
Dictionary for the etymologies. It runs thus: boor,
brabble, burgomaster, buskin (ed), canakin, 1 cope, v.,
copes-mate, 2 crants (Du. krans or G. Krans), deck
(of a ship), deck, v., doit, foist, fop, frolic, fumble,
geek, a fool (Du. gek), gilder, a coin, glib, adj., glib,
v. (M. Du. gelubben, to castrate), groat, heyday or
hoy day, used as an interjection, hogshead, hoise, not
hoist, hold (of a ship), Holland, hoy, hull (of a ship),
jeer, jerkin, leaguer f a camp (Du. leger), link, a
torch, linstock, loiter, lop, manakin, minikin, min.v, 5
mop, mope, rant, ravel, rover, ruffle, sloven (ly),
snaffle, snap, snip, snuff, v. to sniff; sprat, sutler,
swabber, snitch, toy, trick, uproar, waggon*
wainscot. Many of these terms are nautical, such
as deck, hoise, hold, hoy, hull, rover (sea-pirate),
sprat, swabber; others are just such words as might
easily be picked up by roving English volunteer

1 "Ben kanneken, A small Canne"; Hexham. Skeat.

2 "From Du. koopen, to barter, and M. Du. maet, a mate (Hexham)
But mate is also E., though hardly so in this compound." Skeat.

3 "This difficult word has been at last explained by me, in the Phil.
Soc. Trans., 1886. It is merely the Friesic (and Bremen) minsk,
variant of Du. incnsch, a man, or (when neuter) a wench." Skeat.

4 "Waggon was re-introduced into England from abroad, long after
the A. S. imaegn had passed into E. wain." Skeat.

HOW IT HAPPENED 81

soldiers, viz. boor, burgomaster, buskin, doit, fop,
frolic, geek, gilder, heyday, hogshead, jerkin, leaguer,
link, linstock, loiter, lop, manakin, minx, snaffle,
sutler, sivitch, trick, uproar, waggon; indeed, in the
case of some of these, as doit, gilder, jerkin, leaguer,
link, linstock, snaffle, sutler, trick, waggon, the con-
nection with military affairs is sufficiently obvious.

"For other words of (presumably) Dutch origin,
see the list in my Etym. Die., 2nd ed. 1884, p. 750;
or my Concise Etym. Diet., p. 607."

"In' the case of the majority of these words, the
certainty of their being borrowed from the Low
Countries is verified by their non-occurrence in Mid-
dle English. They nearly all belong to what I have
called the modern period, viz., the period after 1500,
when the introduction of new words from abroad ex-
cites no surprise. A more difficult and perhaps more
important question remains, viz., as to the possible
introduction of Dutch or Low German words into
Middle English. We are here met by the difficulty
that Old Dutch and Middle English had a strong
resemblance, which may easily mislead an inquirer.
Thus Mr. Blades, in his Life of Ca.rton, 1882, p. 2,
speaks of "the good wife of Kent, who knew what
the Flemish word eyren meant, but understood not
the English word eggs" But the whole point of the
story depends upon the fact that the word for "eggs"
was egg-is in Northern and Midland English, but
eyren in the Southern dialect ; in fact, ciren occurs
in the Ancren Riwle, p. 66, and is formed by adding
the Southern en to the form eyr-e, resulting regu-
larly from the A. S. pi. aegru. Mr. Blades tells us
we must "bear in mind that the inhabitants of the
Weald had a strong admixture of Flemish blood in
their best families, and that cloth was their chief,

82 HOW IT HAPPENED

and probably only manufacture." All this may be
true, but the particular anecdote which is quoted to
prove it does, in effect, prove nothing of the kind.
It proves, rather, that the language of the Saxons
who came to England did not originally differ from
the language of those of their fellows whom they left
behind; and the points we have to determine are
rather, to what extent had the differentiation between
these two tongues proceeded at any given date, and
what evidence have we of the actual borrowing of
Dutch, Friesic, or Low German words at various
periods? A convenient period for consideration is
that which extends over the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, when there were especially close com-
mercial relations between the English and Flemish.
The Libell of English Policye, written in 1436, speaks
of the "commoditees of Flaundres" at some length,
and reminds the Flemings that their great manufac-
ture of cloth was dependent upon England, as it was
nearly all made of English wool, to which Spanish
wool was inferior. The writer adds that merchandise
from Prussia, and even from Spain, reached England
by way of Flanders, which was indeed "but a staple 1
to other lands." We might expect such Flemish or
Dutch words as occur in Middle English to apply to
various implements used in such trades as weaving
and brewing, and in mechanical arts, but it is very
difficult to investigate these matters, since the Eng-
lish were already well supplied with necessary words.
Still, I think the word spool is a clear instance of
a borrowed word. It occurs, spelt spole, in the
Promptorium Parvulorum, about 1440, and in another
Vocabulary of the fifteenth century; and answers to

1 "The very word staple is certainly L,ow German, slightly dis-
guised by a French spelling." Skeat.

HOW IT HAPPENED 83

M. Du. spoele, Du. spoel, Low G. spole. The native
E. word is reel (A. S. hreol).

"Other low words which I regard as having been
borrowed from various forms of Low German rather
than as forming part of the stock of native English
are the following: botch, to patch; bounce, boy,
brake (for flax), bulk (in the obsolete sense of trunk
of the body), cough, curl, duck, v., to dive; fop, girl,
groat, hawker, huckster, kails (a game), knurr or
knur, a knot in wood, wooden ball ; lack, s. and v. ;
lash, to bind together ; loll, loon, luck, m&xer, mud,
muddle, nag, a horse ; nick, notch, orts, pamper,
patch, plash, a pool; rabbit (f), rabble, scoff, scold,
shock, a pile of sheaves; shudder, skew, slabber,
slender, slight, slot, a bolt; spool, sprout, tub, tuck,
v., tug, unto. All these words are, I believe, found
in the Middle English period, but not earlier ; and
in some cases the fact of the borrowing is certain.
Thus groat is Low G. groot, the E. form being
great; mazer is a bowl made of the spotted wood of
the maple, the M. H. G. word for "spot" being
maze; 1 tub, Low G. tubbe, may have been brought
in by the brewing trade, together with vat (Du. vat) ;
hawker and hukster are certainly not native words;
kails is a Dutch game, from the Du. kegel, a cone,
a sort of ninepins. Some of these words appear in
Friesic, and it is possible that they belonged to the
word-stock of the Friesians who came over with the
Saxons, but this will always be, in the absence of
evidence, a very difficult point.

"The E. Friesic Dictionary by Koolman gives
some help; I note the following: Bummsen, to
bounce, from bumms, the noise of a heavy fall; boy,

1 "Koolman utterly misses the etymology; he seems to have trusted
to Jamieson's Dictionary for English, as he mentions no other authority."
Skeat.

84 HO W IT HAPPENED

a boy, nearly obsolete in Friesic; brake, a flax-brake;
knchen, to cough (the A. S. word is hwostan) ; krul,
a curl, krullen, to curl ; duken, to duck, bend down ;
fop pen, to befool (the M. E. foppe being used to
mean a foolish person, see my Supplement) ; grote,
grot, a groat ; hdker, a hawker ; kegel, a kail ; knure,
a bump; lak, a defect; lasken, to lash together; 16m,
tired, slow, whence M. E. lowmish, slow, stupid, and
E. loon or lown (for *loivm) ; liik, luck, miidde, mud;
muddelen, to muddle ; or/, ort, remnant ; plas, plasse,
a plash, pool; rabbcln, rappeln, to chatter, rappalje,
a rabble, schelden, to scold; schiiddern, to shudder;
.slabbern, slubbern, to slabber or slubber; slicht,
smooth, also slight ; slot, a lock ; spole, spol, a spool ;
sprute, a -sprout, bud, spruten, to sprout; tubbe, a
tub. The difficult word touch-wood is easily ex-
plained when we find that the" M. E. form was tache,
tinder, or inflammable stuff, answering to E. Friesic
takke, a twig, takje, a little twig.

"Richthofen's O. Friesic Dictionary also gives
some help; we should especially notice the following:
dekka, to thatch; fro, glad (cf. E. fro-lic) ; grata, a
groat ; Ink, luck ; minska, a man, for mcnska, which
is short for manniska (cf. E. minx} ; pad, a path (cf.
E. foot-pad) ; skelda, to scold ; skof, a scoff ; slot, a
lock; snavel, mouth (cf. E. snaffle} ; spruta, to sprout;
ond-, iind-, on-, a prefix, the same as E. un-, into
un-to.

"There is a glossary to Heyne's Kleiner e altnieder-
deutsche Dcnkm'dlcr, which gives several hints ; I
note particularly the words be-scoffon, to scoff at ;
scok, a shock of corn ; slot, a lock ; tint, unto. The
Bremen Worterbuch also throws much light upon
Low German forms ; for example, it gives biinsen, to
bounce, from the inter j. bums, signifying the noise

HOW IT HAPPENED 85

of a fall, showing that the n in this word is due to
putting n for m before a following s.

"A most useful Dictionary of Old Low German
has lately appeared, by K. Schiller and A. Liibben.
As a specimen of the information to be derived from
it, I quote the following: 'Basse, botze, boitze, Art
grobes Schuhwerk ;' which explains^ E. botch, to
patch. The authors add the following curious
passage: 'Nullus allutariorum ponet soleas sub cal-
seis, quae botzc dicuntiir.' Again, they remark that
gor, a girl (whence E. girl) is much used in dialectal
speech, though it seems scarce in books. I also find
hoken, to hawk about, and hokcbokcn, to carry on
the back, which makes me think that my guess as
to huckaback, viz., that it originally meant 'pedlars'
ware,' may be right. Other useful entries are:
knerreholt, thin oaken boards (evidently wood with
knurrs or knots in it) ; lucke, luck; mascle, measles,
spots; maser, maple; 'enen maser en kop' ; a maple
cup, a mazer ; muddle, mud ; ort, ort ; placke, a patch ;
plasken, to plash or plunge into water ; plump, inter-
jection, used of the noise made by King Log when
he falls into the water ; plunder, booty, plunder-
waare, household stuff, especially bits of clothing ;
rabbat, a rabble, mob; schock, a shock, or heap of
corn, Schockcn, to put into shocks ; schudden, to
shake, shudder; slampampen, to live daintily (cf. E.
pamper) ; sprot, a sprat, etc. It is somewhat sur-
prising to find in this -work the phrase ut unde ut,
which is precisely our out and out. We want all
the light that is obtainable to guide us in this matter.

"After all, some of the above words may be
found in A. S. glosses, or may occur in unpublished
texts. The word dog seemed to me to be borrowed,
the E. word being hound; in fact, we find Du. dog, M.

86 HOW IT HAPPENED

Du. dogge, Swed. dogg, Dan. dogge, Low G. dogge.
But in the A. S. glosses to Prudentius, we find : 'canum,
docgena;' showing that the A. S. form was docga.
I have supposed the word split to be Scandian; but
the occurrence in O. Friesic of the original strong
verb split-a renders it probable that split may, after
all, be of A. S. or Mercian origin. The word mane
is not in the A. S. dictionaries, so that I believed it
to be a borrowed word from Scandinavian. But the
publication (in 1885) of Mr. Sweet's Oldest English
Texts shows that the A. S. form was manu, which
occurs in the very old Erfurt Glossary. We must
also bear in mind that the Northumbrian and Mercian
of the oldest period have almost entirely perished."

So far the results of W. W. Skeat.

In Modern Philology for July, 1908, W. H. Car-
penter, Professor in Columbia University, New York,
published an interesting article entitled: Dutch Con-
tributions to the Vocabulary of English in America.
Dr. Carpenter gives first an outline of the history of
the Dutch settlement on Manhattan, Long Island,
along the Hudson River, in the Mohawk Valley and
wherever they were found; he tells that notwith-
standing the short period of the Dutch government
in New York, and the overwhelming influx of Eng-
lish immigrants into New York City since the Eng-
lish occupation in 1664, yet the Dutch language was
maintained in many of the smaller settlements, and
to some extent even in New York City, where "down
to 1764 the Dutch language was still used exclu-
sively in the service of the Dutch Reformed church,
although Dutch had not been taught for a century in
the schools. In Flatbush, on Long Island, Petrus
van Steenburgh, who was appointed schoolmaster in
1762, was the first who taught English in the school

HOW IT HAPPENED 87

that had been established more than a century before
(1659). He gave instruction nevertheless in both
languages. His successor in 1773, Anthony Welp by
name, was the last teacher who was required to teach
Dutch." 1

Under the constant influence of English, this
American colonial Dutch, like the Dutch of the Boers
in Africa, was of course more and more perverted.
Yet many words of the Dutch settlers passed into the
English language and the American-English "dic-
tionaries have considerable lists of words that are
derived directly from borrowings from the Dutch
language in America." 2

Dr. Carpenter gives a list of seventy-six of these
words, as follows:

boss, n. master, patron (Du. baas).

clove, n., cleft, ravine, pass (Du. kloof}.

cold'-slaiv , cole'-slaiu, n., sliced cabbage served as a
salad (Du. kool, cabbage, slaa salade, salad).

cook'y, cook'ey, cook'ie, n., a small sweet cake (Du.
koekje).

cruller, n., a fried sweet cake (Du. krullen, to curl).

dom'ine, dom'inie, n., a clergyman (Du. domine, a
Protestant clergyman).

dope, n., a thick liquid (Du. doop, sauce, gravy).

dorp, n., village (Du. dorp).

kill, n., a creek, stream, channel (Du. kuil).

kill' -fish', kil'li-fisti, kil'ly-fish', kil'lie, n., a fish, espe-
cially Fundulus heteroclitus (Du. kil fish'). The
Dutch word was doubtless likvisch.

1 W. H. Carpenter, "Dutch Contributions," etc., in Modern Philology,
July, 1908, p. 58.

2 Carpenter, p. 59.

88 HOW IT HAPPENED

o'ly-kock' , oly-coek', better o'ly-cook' , pronounced also

ol'ly-cook' , n., a sweet cake fried in fat, a dough-
nut (Du. olie, oil, kock, cake).
patroon , n., proprietor of a manor- (Du. patroon,

patron, master).
Fink'stcr, Pin.rtcr, Ping'stcr, n., Whitsuntide ; now

only in Pinksterbloom, Pinksterflower, the wild

azalea (Du. Pinkster. Du. Pinksterbloem is the

peony).
Santa Clans, Klaus, n., Saint Nicholas (Du. Sant

Klaas dim. of Kikolaas).
scow, n., a flat-bottomed boat (Du. schouw).
scup, n. vb., a swing; to swing (Du. schop, schoppen).
slaiv, n., cabbage salad (Du. slaa salade).
speck, spec, n., pork, fat (Du. spck, bacon, fat, lard).

The statement in the STANDARD that "the form
speck is due partly to G. speck and partly to D. spck"
is undoubtedly correct.

spook, n. vb., a ghost, to haunt (Du. spook).
Stoop, n., entrance platform at door of a house, porch

(Du. stoep).
vly, fly, vley, vlei, vlaic, n., a swamp, marsh, shallow

pond (Du. valid, valley),
waffle, n., a batter cake (Du. wafel).

The following words are contained in the two dic-
tionaries, but with no suggestion of a Dutch origin :
blick'ie, blick'cy, n., a tin pail (Du. blikje (dim.),

metal basin, bowl). CENTURY (N. J.), but with

no suggestion of origin ; STANDARD, Penn, D.

bleck, G. blcch.

The ending -ie, -ey shows indubitably that the
word has come from the Dutch diminutive.

Tin blickcy also occurs, with an obliteration of
the real sense of blickey.

HOW IT HAPPENED 89

bush, n., a wood, grove, thicket, as in "sugar-bush,"
"Flatbush" (Du. bosch, same meaning).
Neither the CENTURY nor the STANDARD suggests
a connection of the word in this meaning with Dutch.
The usage is not English ; and in the many instances
in which the word occurs alone, e. g., "to take to the
bush," or as part of a compound- in America and
Africa, e. g., "bushman," "bushranger," "bush-
whacker," and the like, it has undoubtedly come in
through Dutch influence, exerted at one time or
another, upon the vocabulary. STANDARD: bosch,
(S. Afr.) with its true signification, but does not
connect it with the above word. Both the phonetic
form of the original and the presence of bush in the
English vocabulary have made the thorough incor-
poration of the word possible.

dob'bcr, n., a fish-line float (Du. dobber, same mean-
ing). STANDARD: (Local, U. S.), but no sugges-
tion of Dutch origin. Not in CENTURY.
dumb, adj., stupid, dull (Du. dom, same meaning).
CENTURY: (Local, U. S. In Pa. this use is partly
due to the G. dumm). STANDARD: (Local, U. S.)
Compare G. dumm.

The word in this sense has come in from both
Dutch and German, according to locality, since it is
used in territory where there is no thought of Ger-
man influence, and again, where there could have
been no Dutch influence exerted.
file, vb., to scrub, mop, scour (Diu feilen, same mean-
ing). STANDARD: (Local, U. S.) Vb. not in
CENTURY.

file, n., mop (Du. fcil (?), same meaning). CEN-
TURY: In some parts of U. S., a cloth used in
cleaning or wiping the floor. Also filecloth. Not
in STANDARD.

90 HOW IT HAPPENED

pit, n., the hard kernel of certain fruits (Du. pit,
kernel, pith). CENTURY: Variety of pip, by con-
fusion with pit (U. S.). STANDARD: (U. S.)
Variety of pip. .

slaw bank, n., a folding bed (Du. slaap, sleepbank,
bench; compound Dutch word in same meaning).
STANDARD, no etymology suggested. Not in CEN-
TURY.

snoop, vb., to pry into. Hudson and Mohawk val-
leys, to eat stealthily (Du. snoepen, to enjoy
stealthily, to eat in secret). CENTURY: (Proba-
bly a variety of snook, M. E. snoken, to lurk, pry
about). STANDARD: (For snook L. G. snoken,
search).

snoop' y, adj., sly, stealthy (Du. snoepig, same mean-
ing). STANDARD. Not in CENTURY.
All of these words, it may confidently be asserted,
owe their presence in the vocabulary to Dutch influ-
ence.

In the following words the Dutch origin is cor-
rectly assumed by one or the other of the two diction-
aries, but not by both:

hook, n., point of land, cape (Du. hoek, same mean-
ing, e. g., Hoek van Holland). This sense of the
word is Dutch and not English. STANDARD has
correctly (D. hoek). CENTURY suggests no con-
nection with Dutch.

hoop'le, n., a child's hoop for trundling (Du. hoepel
(dim) hoop). CENTURY: (Dim. of hoop, after
D. hoepel). STANDARD suggests no connection
with Dutch.

Paas, n., Easter (Du. Paasch, same meaning). CEN-
TURY has correctly (D. paasch). STANDARD:
(Local, U. S.), but with no suggestion of Dutch
origin.

HOW IT HAPPENED 91

The word also occurs in : Paas-day, Easter ; Paas-
flower, the yellow daffodil.

wink'le-hawk, n., an angular rent in cloth (Du.
winkelhaak, a rent, tear). CENTURY has correctly
(D. winkelhaak). STANDARD: (Local, U. S.),
but with no suggestion of Dutch origin.
Also occurs as wink'le-hole. ,
"In the following words the correct Dutch origin
is suggested by both dictionaries, but is not definitely
assumed by either :

bock'ey, n., a dish made from a gourd (Du. bakje,
(dim.), bowl, basin). CENTURY: Probably D.
bakje, dim. of bak. STANDARD: (Prov., U. S.),
but with no assumption of Dutch origin.
tike, fyke, n., a bow-net (Du. fuik, a hoop-net). CEN-
TURY: fyke (Perhaps D. fuik, bow-net). STAND-
ARD: Hke (Local, U. S.) (Perhaps D. log.)
Both dictionaries, in not taking account of the
inflected form, have failed to reconcile "logy" defi-
nitely with Dutch log.

"The following words are not found in the dic-
tionaries at all. It is quite likely that many of them
are in use only in restricted localities. Some of
them, however, are widely distributed and are per-
fectly vital parts of the common vocabulary. It
should undoubtedly be possible to add still further to
this list, which, as has been said, is only tentative.
The new words in their usual orthography are as fol-
lows:

afease', afeese', adj. vide fease.

aw're-griet'chies, n. pi., maize coarsely ground (Du.
aar, ear of corn; grutjes (dim.), grits). Hudson
valley.

bedrooft', bedrowft', bedruft' , adj., miserable, de-
spondent (contempt), sad, sorrowful, gloomy
(Du. bedroefd, same meaning). Hudson valley.

92 HOW IT HAPPENED

binnacle, binnakill, bcn'nakill, n., the smaller chan-
nel of a river running back from the main stream
(Du. binneri, within, kil, channel).

Kil acquires in America, where it very frequently
occurs in place-names and as a common appellative,
a meaning which it apparently never had at home,
viz., brook, stream, river; but it also is used in its
original signification, as in Arthur Kill, i. e., achter
kil, back channel. Widely used. John Burroughs,
"Pepacton"; "binocle, a still, miry place at the head
of a big eddy ;" vide also communication to the
Evening Post, February 22, 1901, by Edward Fitch.
blawk ' cr, n., a flat bedroom candlestick (Du. blaaker,

blakcr, same meaning). Hudson valley.
blum'mie, blummey, n., flower, blossom (Du.

bloempje (dim.), same meaning). Mohawk val-
ley.
blum'niachic, n., flower, blossom (Du. bloemetje

(dim.), same meaning). Mohawk valley.
boond'er, v., to brush away, drive away (Du.

boenderen, to scrub, brush). Hudson valley.
clip, adj., stony (Du. klip, rock, cliff). STANDARD

DICTIONARY: klip (S. Afr.), a rock or stone, cliff,

mountain. Hudson valley.
coss, n., wardrobe, chest of drawers (Du. kas, chest;

kast, cupboard, closet). Hudson valley.
door slag, n., colander, strainer (Du. door slag, same

meaning). Schenectady Co.

fease, feese, adj., disgusting (Du. vies, nauseous, dis-
gusting). To be fease of a thing or person: e. g.,

I am fease of him, he disgusts me ; I am fease of

it, etc., which coincides with the Dutch usage.

Widely distributed.

Occurs also as afease.

HOW IT HAPPENED 93

geheist' ', p. p. as adj., overreached, e. g., "he's
gehesit," he has overreached himself (Du.
gehuisd, housed, lodged, domiciled). Hudson val-
ley.

grill 'y, adj., chill, raw, e. g., u to-day is so grilly that I
shall not go out" (Du. grillig, same meaning).
Hudson valley.

herk'ies, hcrk'cys, n. pi., haunches, e. g., "squat down
on your herkies" (Du. hurk: op de hurken zitten,
to squat; hnrkjes (dim.).) Schenectady Co.

hock'ies, hock' ens, n. pi., soused pigsbones, i. e., the
joints- above the pochies, q. v. (Du. hakjes (dim.)
pasterns, hocks). Hudson valley.

kip, n., a word used in calling chickens, e. g., "come
kip, kip!" (Du. kip. hen, fowl.) Schnectady Co.

konkcpot' ' , n., gossip, huzzy, scold, e. .g., bedrufter
konkepot, a miserable scold (Du. honhelpot, same
meaning). Hudson valley.

lop' pic, lap'pcy, n., small mat made of rags (Du.
lapje (dim.), rag, shred, remnant). Hudson val-
ley.

nwl'lykite', n., foolishness (Du. malligheid, softness,
mildness, weakness). Hudson valley.

mont, n., basket (Du. mand, same meaning). Hud-
son valley. Schenectady Co.

niskeery, adj., curious, inquisitive (Du, nicuivsgicrig,
same meaning) . Hudson valley.

off'doch, n., inclosed stoop (Du. afdak, shed, pent-
house). Schenectady Co.

plock, v., to settle down (Du. plakken, to remain sit-
ting, to stay long). Hudson valley.

poch'ies, poch'eys, n. pi., soused pigsknuckles, i. e., the
joints above the toes (Du. pootjes (dim.) feet).
Hudson valley.

94 HOW IT HAPPENED

poos' ly, adv., tolerably, indifferently well (Du.
passelijk, same meaning). Hudson valley.

prat'chie, prat'chey, n., talk, gossip (Du. praatje
(dim.), same meaning). Hudson valley.

proyt'el, v., to boil softly, to chatter, to prattle (Du.
preutelen, to boil, to grumble). Hudson valley.

proyt'ler, n., pratter (Du. preutelaar, grumbler).
Hudson valley.

pummel-ap'pelye, n., the berry of the wintergreen
(Gaultheria procumbens), (Du. pommel, plant
appeltje (dim.), apple). Hudson valley.

slob, n., bib (Du. slobbe, same meaning). Hudson
valley.

stuck, n., swallow, draught (Du. slock, same mean-
ing). Schenectady Co.

spree, n., a homewoven bed-quilt, usually blue and
white (Du. sprei, counterpane, coverlet). Hudson
valley.

stone '-razvp'ie, -rawp'y, storiy-rawp'ie, n., a stony
field (stone + Du. raapje (dim.) (turnip) field; cf.
raapland, raapakker, raapier).
STONE ARABIA, Montgomery Co., is apparently

this word, although the connection does not seem to

have been noticed. The Dutch word was doubtless

steenraapje.

unnozel, adj., silly, simple (Du. onnoozel, same mean-
ing). Hudson valley.

Wurst, wust, n., sausage (Du. worst, same meaning).
Schenectady Co. and Hudson valley. Widely dis-
tributed.
The word in U. S. is due partly to Dutch worst

and German zvurst."

So far Dr. Carpenter.

The conclusion from all the material till this time
brought together by Skeat, Carpenter, Douglas

HOW IT HAPPENED 95

Campbell, Thorold Rogers and many historians is
this : From the time of William the Conqueror in the
eleventh century, when Flemish soldiers and Flemish
weavers were brought over to England, till the time
of Prince William III of Orange, who brought about
the glorious revolution of 1688 to protect and confirm
forever the rights of the English people, Holland has
been all. the time in close contact with England. Dur-
ing these more, than six hundred years the people of
the Low Countries have exerted an influence on the
English people in general civilization, in learning, in
trade, in industry, in agriculture, in art, in literature,
and in nearly every part of human life. In a word,
the world power of Holland was previous to that of
England: Holland was ahead in nearly everything;
England's time of glory and of world power suc-
ceeded that of Holland, and so it can be easily under-
stood why many Dutch words and terms became part
of the English language.

For the same reasons we can understand that in
the nineteenth century, when Holland had for a long
time lost its glorious position, while England was
developing into a world empire, the influence of Eng-
land on Holland became more important, and not the
least on Dutch language and literature.

The position of Holland in the world's history,
especially from the year 1200 till the year 1700, is
indeed sufficient to explain everything. A position in
the history of Europe and of all the world which
Thorold Rogers describes in this way: "The debt of
modern Europe to Holland is by no means limited
to the lessons which it taught as to the true purposes
of civil government. It taught Europe nearly every-
thing else. It instructed communities in progressive
and rational agriculture. It was the pioneer in navi-

9G HOW IT HAPPENED

gation and in discovery ; and, according to the lights
of the age, was the founder of intelligent commerce.
It produced the greatest jurists of the seventeenth
century. It was preeminent in the arts of peace. The
presses of Holland put forth more books than all the
rest of Europe did. It had the most learned scholars.
The languages of the East were first given to the
world by Dutchmen. It was foremost in physical re-
search, in rational medicine. It instructed statesmen
in finance, traders in banking and credit, philosophers
in speculative sciences. For a long time that little
storm-vexed nook of North-western Europe was the
university, of the civilized world, the centre of Euro-
pean trade, the admiration, the envy, the example of
nations." 1

In the researches of W. W. Skeat this general
position of Holland in the world's history is referred
to, but is far from being fully recognized. And while
this eminent scholar, as stated above, does not realize
the influence of the religious persecutions in Holland
as well as in England, on the other side he over-
estimates the influence of the gypsies. The English
refugees came into close contact with the Dutch peo-
ple ; so did the English soldiers serving in Dutch
armies, and the Dutch refugees in England, as well
as the Dutch traders and settlers in England's eastern
districts, had permanent contact with the English peo-
ple. But the gypsies never and nowhere came into
close and intimate contact with the nations in whose
country they lived for a short time; their life was a
separate one, and their influence in bringing Dutch
words to England can easily be overestimated.

1 James E. Thorold Rogers, Holland. In the Historv of Nations,
Preface. Thorold Rogers is a well known English scholar "and professor
in the University of Oxford.

CHAPTER XI

THE INFLUENCE WHICH HOLLAND HAS EXERTED ON
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Foreign elements never had any considerable in-
fluence either on the grammar or on the syntax, but
their effect was mostly confined to the introduction
of a small or a large number of words. Even the
influence of the French language of the Norman con-
querors, which was the official language in England
during more than three hundred years, has not
changed very much the grammar or the syntax of
English.

But the influx of French words was enormous.
So, if Holland has exerted some influence on the
English language, that influence is not likely to be
found in the introduction of alterations in English
grammar or syntax but is to be sought in the vocab-
ulary of the English language.

More recently than the researches of Skeat and
Carpenter, a Dutch scholar, W. de Hoog, has pub-
lished a remarkable list of words, in alphabetic order,
which have been introduced into the English language
by the Dutch. De Hoog does not take the English
language as it is in any one period of history, but as
it is to be found in all English literature. Conse-
quently some of these words, which were at one time
used by the best authors, are in our time hardly un-
derstood even by scholars. But nevertheless they
occur in works belonging to English literature and

7 97

98 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

therefore Mr. de Hoog was perfectly right to include
them in his list.

I give the list of words as Mr. de Hoog published
it, with this difference only, that I have translated
his explanations from Dutch into English. About
some words there may arise doubts, but such doubts
are always found in etymological studies, and it lies
in the very nature of this field of study to give in
many cases room for some difference of opinion.
Anyhow I give this list as it is: viz., as constructed
by the scholarly hand of Mr. de Hoog, and as the
best list existing at this moment. The purpose of
this little volume is not to specialize in etymology,
but to call the attention of American scholars to one
more argument showing that there is an interesting
field for research in Dutch History, Art, Literature
and Language, a broad and beautiful field which up
to this time has been almost totally neglected, even
in the greatest Universities of America. The vast
progress of etymology in our days gives abundant
hope that within a few years a better list may be
published by some scholar who may begin his re-
searches with the results of Skeat, Carpenter and
de Hoog. This list contains 448 words :
aam f other Eng. forms ame, aivm, aume. D. aam.
Ger. ahm } ohm. L. Lat. ama. A measure of
liquids, particularly of wine, containing about 40
gallons. The measure varied in different cities
(Antwerp, Dordrecht, etc.).

aardvark earth pig. An edentate mammal in South
Africa, feeding on ants. The name originated with
the Dutch settlers at the Cape of Good Hope who
thought the animal resembled a pig.
aardwolf, a South African carnivorous quadruped, liv-
ing in holes in the ground. Named by the Dutch

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 99

settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, who thought it
resembled a wolf.

after dele <lis-advantage. cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. achterdeel.

afterfeet hind leg. cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From
M. D. afterste voet.

ahoy. Interjection, cf. Ship ahoy! 'A naval expres-
sion used to hail ships. "A" intensifies the mean-
ing. From D. hui! cf. H. G. hui.

aloof on a distance, cf. to hold aloof, to stand aloof,
a on cf. afoot, asleep, abed; on loof, D. te loef,
te locve ivaart, te loevert, te loever against the
wind. cf. Eng. to luff, to loof.

am el corn an inferior variety of wheat. From D.
amelkoren, a kind of wheat ; the meaning of the
word is unground grain, cf. Lat. amylum.

anker a liquid measure of 8 to 10 gallons. Formerly
used in England. Fr. ancre. M. Lat. ancheriam
(ia), a small Carrel. A measure of wine and fish.
D. anker. The English spelling also shows its
Dutch origin. The ultimate origin of this word is
uncertain.

Armenian an adherent of the doctrine of Arminius.
From D. Arminiaan. Arminius rejected the doc-
trine of predestination. Arminius is the Latin
name for Harmensen.

arquebus a kind of gun. From Fr. arquebus e, taken
from the original D. haakbus. haak-hook. These
guns had a hook under the barrel. M. D. haec-
busse. cf. Eng. hackbut, bus, bowse, harquebus.

avast stop ! cf. avast heaving. A naval expression
from D. hou vast! It is found, for example, in
"Poor Jack", a sailor's song by Charles Dibdin
(1745-1814):

100 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

Avast ! nor don't think me a milksop so soft,

To be taken for trifles aback ;
For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!

back, beck, bawke a large shallow vessel, a vat, a
tub, bucket, a vessel used in brewing. From D.
bak.

balked became angry, cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. balch past tense of belgen to swell.
Cf. D. verbolgen, blaasbalg.

balk en to signify to fishing-boats the direction taken
by the shoals of herrings, as seen from a height.
From D. balken. A. S. bealcian. Eng. to belch.

to bale (bail) to empty water out of a ship by means
of bails (or buckets). It is found in Hackluyt's
Voyages "Having freed our ship thereof (of
water) with baling." As a substantive it is sel-
dom (but already in 1466) found in Eng. Cf.
The bail of a canoe made of a human skull (Capt.
Cook, 1772). In D. balie, in Belgium also bale,
baal. Not found in M. D., and perhaps taken from
the Fr. substantive bailie tub. The Eng. word
"to bale" is probably taken from the D. baalien,
though the resemblance is closer in spelling than
in pronunciation. In D. it is often found. Cf.
Toen vielen zy met alle macht aan het baalien.
(Brandt. De Ruyter 487). Wy sat en aan den
bak . . . een groote balie met snert. (Marine-
Schetsen by Werumeus Buning). Cf. baliemand.
The derivation is as yet uncertain.

ballast a load of sand, stone, iron, etc., to steady a
ship. Dan. ballast, baglast; Sw. barlast. In Eng.
not much used, seldom figuratively. "It is charity
must ballast (steady) the heart" (Hammond). In
Eng. and D. used only since the I5th century.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 101

For example, in Hackluyt's Voyages and in Char-
ters of Amsterdam Ai544. The oldest form is
"barlast" in older Swedish and Danish. Accord-
ing to Kluge and Murray, barlast bare last
bloote last, a load (-last) which has no value itself,
as distinguished from the real load. According
to others bal(e) means useless. Cf. D. baldadig.
In D. ballast sand, stones, iron, etc., which is
laid in the ship to give the necessary stability, so
that, even without other load, the ship will not be
in danger of capsizing. The figurative meaning
in D. proves that it has been in use formerly, and
that the meaning of "strength" had been lost al-
ready to make place for that of "nuisance." Cf.
Zet's zverelds ballast aan een sy (De Dekker).
Probably it will be proved ultimately that the word
is not a compound but a derivative. Cf. Eng. to
ballast, ballastage, ballaster.

bay baize. Introduced into Eng. in the i6th cen-
tury. From D. baai, and this from O. Fr. bale.

to bedrive to commit, to do. 1481 Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. bedriven, to act, to do.

to bedivynge to restrain. Cf. 14^80 Caxton's Ovid.
From M. D. bedztringen to necessitate, to domi-
nate.

beer mole, pier. From D. beer dam.

belay to fasten a rope by wrapping it round and
round a couple of pins. As a nautical term it
first appears in the Complaint of Scotland, 1549.
It is probably derived from the D. beleggen. M.
D. beleggen. beleggen to fasten ropes to some-
thing, fig. to fasten, cf. D. geld beleggen. An
Eng. verb to belay, M. D. beleggen, with the mean-
ing of to besiege is found already in Gower and
Spenser.

102 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

to beleaguer to besiege. It appears not to have been
used till 1590. Sir J. Smythe, Weapons. From
D. belegeren (from the substantive leger
(arniy) to encamp around a city in order to
conquer it. Cf. Sw. bclagra to besiege. Eng.
leaguer.

to berisp to censure. Cf. 1481 Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. berispen to scold, to reproach.

biltong strips of meat dried in the sun. South Afri-
can. Also called bultong. From D. bil + tong.
It looks much like an ox-tongue.

bias J. B. Van Helmont's term for a supposed influ-
ence of the stars, producing changes of weather.
From D. bias.

bluff downright rude, frank. In Eng. used for the
first time in 1627. Cf. a bluff point or bluff a
steep bank of rocks (1790 Cook's voyages). Bluff
King Hall; a bluff shore (Falconer). A bluff
sea-captain (W. Scott). Perhaps the same as the
D. blaf flat wide, given by Kiliaan 1599; D.
blaffer a clamorous proud person.

blunderbus a short gun with a large bore; blunder
derived from D. "donder" (-blunder) because of
the firing at random of this weapon. From D.
donderbus.

boil a hard tumour, a swelling. Cf. (1481 Caxton,
Reynard) two grcte bales. From M. D. bide, D.
buil, cf. Eng. beal, M. E. bele, from O. Norw.
beyla.

bomespar a spar of the larger kind. From D.
boomspar. boom a beam, a pole, barrier, cf.
Howell, Letters, 1650, p. 215. A naval expres-
sion. From D. boom. Cf. Eng. jibboom.

boor, boer a peasant, a tiller of the soil. Cf. boor-
ish; the Boors the Dutch speaking settlers of

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 103

South Africa. Already in " Beaumont en Fletch-
er's Beggars' Bush," 1622. Derived from D. boer
with dialectic oe instead of ii buurtgenoot. Boer
is etymologically the same as buur. Cf. Eng.
neighbour.

border an edge. M. Eng. bordure. From Fr.
bordure, which is derived from O. L. G. Cf. D.
boord.

boussyng, bonssinc a polecat. Cf. 1481, Caxton,
Reynard. From M. D. bonsinc, bonsem, boesinc.
D. bunsing.

bosch bosh Bosch butter artificial butter manufac-
tured at 's Hertogenbosch or den Bosch in Hol-
land: butterine. From D. Bosch, 's Hertogen-
bosch.

boss leading man, master, chief. Frequently used
in America. Cf. Eng. to boss it. From D. baas.

boss, bass a plasterer's tray, a hod. From M. D.
bosse, busse, bus, pot., cf. Eng. box.

to botch to patch. Already in Wycliff, 1382 (( eche
feble thingus thei bacchyn" (repaired). From O.
L. G. botze, cf. D. botsen intens. of boeten. M.
D. boeten (-to repair), cf. D. netten boeten, ketel-
boeter.

bottomry a mortgage on a ship. From D. bodetnery
lit. to lend money on the bottom of a ship to
lend money on a ship or its cargo, especially in a
foreign harbor, when the ship has been damaged
and needs repair.

to bounce to knock, to jump up quickly. M. Eng.
bunsen, bounsen (to strike suddenly). From O.
L. G. bunsen. Perhaps it is an onomatopoetic.
D. bonzen.

bouse, boose, bouse, booze to drink deeply. M. Eng.
bousen. Cf. Spenser, A bouzing can a drinking

104 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

vessel. Slang; boozy drunk, intoxicated. From
D. "buizen". M. D. busen. D. "buis" (intoxi-
cated). The D. buizen is derived from O. Fr.
buse, cf. M. D. buse cup, vase and finally small
ship. Cf. D. haringbuiSj Eng. buss.

bowery a farm. From D. bouwerij.

bowse a harquebus. Cf. Eng. arquebus.

boy a youngster. M. Eng. boy, boi. From O. L.
G., Fries, boy. Cf. D. boef. M. D. boef young
man, knave. Cf. stalboef.

to brabble to quarrel. Cf. brabble, a brabbler. From
D. brabbelen onomatopoeia. In Marieken of
Nymegen brabbelinghe is found with the mean-
ing; nonsense. Cf. The Story of Mary of Nim-
wegen, 1510. Cf. D. Roemer Visser's Brabbel-
ing.

brack, brackish somewhat salt, briny, said of water.
North's Plutarch, p. 471. In Gawain Douglas we
find D. brak brackish. Cf. M. D. brae. From
D. brak. The derivation uncertain.

brake a bush, thicket. M. Eng. brake. From O. L.
G. Fries, brake, cf. D. braakland.

brake a machine for breaking hemp; a contrivance
for confining refractory horses; a name for vari-
ous mechanical contrivances. M. Eng. brake. Cf.
M. D. brake, a contrivance to fasten horses. From
O. L. G., cf. D. braak.

brandy an ardent spirit. From brande-wine, brandy-
wine. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggars Bush
1622. From D. brandewyn, brandwijn, distilled
wine.

branskate to put a place to ransom, or subject to
a payment, in order to avoid pillage or destruc-
tion. From D. brandschatten.

brantcorn blight, smut. From D. brandkoren. Name
of disease of grain, caused by a kind of fungus.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 105

brasscm a kind of fish. A dark-olive colored river
fish. D. brasem. Cf. Eng. bream.

brick a lump of baked clay. M. Eng. brique. From
Fr. brique, which is derived from O. L. G. Cf. D.
breken.

to br older to adorn with needlework. M. Eng.
broder. From Fr. broder, which is derived from
O. L. G., cf. D. boord.

brokes customs. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From
D. bruke gebrink (use, custom).

bruges, brudges name of a city in Flanders. Cf.
bruges, satin. From D. Brugge.

bruin bear. In the M. D. poem and the prose work
"Van den Vos Reinaerde" the bear is called
"bruin" brown because of its color. In William
Caxton's Translation "Reynard the Fox," 1481,
the word is spelled bruine, brunne, bruyn.

bulk the trunk of the body, heap, cargo. Cf. Shake-
speare. From O. L. G. bulcke, cf. Kiliaen.

bully brother, darling, fine fellow, protector of a
prostitute, ruffian. From M. D. bo el brother,
darling.

bumkin a vessel. Cf. 1697 Dampier Voyages. From
M. D. bomekyn a small vessel.

bumkin luff-bloc. A naval term. From D. bumkin,
boomkin, boomke.

bumpkin, Perhaps the same word as bumkin,
boomke, a piece of wood ; metaphorically a block-
head or bumkin, bommekyn. Cf. a country bum-
kin, Dryden's Juvenal Satires.

bunting-crow the hooded crow. From D. bonte-kraai,
also thinking of bunting.

buoy a floating piece of wood fastened down. Prop-
erly a barrel fastened by a buoy. From D. boei,
which is derived from Lat. boia or less probably
from O. Fr. boye.

106 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

burgher a European male, no matter where resi-
dent, who is in the possession of the franchise
and liable to all public duties. First found in the
1 6th century. Cf. burgher ship. D. burger.

burgher master. Burgomaster a chief magistrate of a
town. Cf . Hackhiyt -Voyages. From D. burge-
meester; burg town. Cf. Eng. borough; Canter-
bury; boroughmaster.

bus a harquebus. Cf. arquebus.

Buschbome boxwood, box. From M. D. busboom,
bosboom, boksboom.

bush a metal box. From D. bus case. Cf. Eng.
box.

bushbuck a small species of African antelope. From
D. bosch-bok.

bushman, Bosjesman a tribe of aborigines near the
Cape of Good Flope. From D. Bosch jesman.

buskin a kind of legging. In Spenser, Shakespeare,
Milton and also earlier. From D. borsekin
leather bag. According to some people cognate
with D. broos boot. Cf. Dees wil liefst met
Thalie en lage broosjes u'andelen. Die stapt met
Melpomeen op hooge laarsen voort. (Smits.)
Others say that buskin is derived from Fr.
bousequin, a secondary form of brodcquin, brois-
sequin buskin.

butterham a slice of bread and butter. From D.
boterham.

by slabbed befouled. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. beslabben to make dirty. Cf. D.
slabbetje.

caboose the cook's cabin on board ship. Sometimes
spelt camboose. Dan. kabys. N. G. kabuse. Fr.
cambuse. From D. kombius } kabuis. Used first
in Eng. in the midst of the i8th century, as a

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 107

maritime term. Probably derived from the Celt.

cab. Cf. Fr. cabane, Eng. cabin,
cambric kind of fine white linen. In 1530 the form:

cameryk, later, camariek, cambric. From the

name Cambray Kameryk. Cf. Kamerdoek.
cant edge, corner, to cant to x incline. M. Eng.

cante. 1603 Ben Jonson: in a cant. From D.

kant. Cf. D. kantelen. D. kant is derived from

Fr. Cant. Cf. Lat. cantus, and canthus.
canty Northern dialects: cheerful, active. Cf. John

Anderson, my Jo, John

We clamb the hill thegither;

And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither.

(BURNS)

From D. Kantig sharp, prepared, ready, nice,
fine. Cf. D. kant.

cardcl a hogshead used in the Dutch whaling trade.
Cf. Eng. quardecl. From D. kardeel, quardcel a
fourth of a barrel.

cartoiv a kind of cannon, a quartercannon, which
threw a ball of a quarter of a hundred-weight.
From D. Kartonw a kind of cannon.

catkin an inflorescence consisting of rows of flow-
ers. From D. katteken, katje (of willows, etc.).

to cave in to fall in. Used when men are digging,
and a portion of a wall falls in. Lincolnshire dia-
lect. To cave to calve in. Cf. half-penny and
the pronunciation of this word. From Flemish
inkalven. Fries, kalven to produce a calf. The
word was introduced into England by English
navvies.

cavie a hen-coop, a house for fowls. From D. kavie,
kerne.

108 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

choice a selection. M. Eng. chois, choys, which
took the place of M. Eng. klre, cure. From O.
Fr. chois, which is derived from O. L. G. Cf. D.
kiezen, keuze.

to chuck to strike gently, to toss. From Fr. choquer,
which is derived from O. L. G. Cf. D. schokken.

a clamp a clasp. To clamp to fasten tightly, to
heap up. M. Eng. clamp. Cf. Bible, Exod. Ch.
36. From D. klamp hook. Klamp is a second-
ary form of klam. Cf. D. klemmen. Clamp (dia-
lectic) a heap of stones, bricks, peat. This
meaning only since 1596. From D. klamp. In
Flemish people still talk about a "klamp" stones.
M. D. hoy te setten in dampen hay in stacks.
This "clamp'' is perhaps the same word, and also
cognate with D. klemmen.

clinker hardened brick of pale colour made in Hol-
land; a hard brick. Cf. 1641, Evelyn Diary.
From D. klinker, klinkaard, klinkerd a stone
which gives a sound (-D. klinkt).

elope a blow, a knock. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. clop a blow. Cf. kloppen. Flemish
klop geven; den godsklop geven.

to closh to bowl ; a kind of game. From M. D.
closse, clos, ball. Cf. D. klos; klosbeitel.

clove a rocky cleft. From M. D. clove. D. kloof.

clump wooden sole, wooden shoe. From D. klomp.

to clunter, a clunter to run together ; a lump. Mostly
dial. Cheshire and Yorkshire. From D. klonter,
klont.

cluse a monastic cell.' Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.

From M. D. cluse kluis.
cockle a furnace of a hop kiln; a stove. From M.

D. kakele, D. kachel.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 109

to cope to buy. M. Eng. copen, cf. 1430, Lydgate,

London Lickpenny Master, "What will you copen

or buy?" This word was introduced into Eng.

by Flemish or Dutch merchants. M. D. copen, D.

koopen. Cf. Eng. to chop; cheap,
coper, cooper a vessel fitted out to supply ardent

spirits to the fishers in the North Sea. From D.

kooper.
corver a kind of Dutch herring-boat. Cf. Eng.

corued herrings. From M. D. corver. Cf. D. corf

harinck.
to cough to make a violent effort of the lungs. Cf.

1340 Gawain and the Green Knight. From O. L.

G. Fries, kuchen, cf. D. kuchen.
coy a place for entrapping ducks or other wild-fowl.

Cf. coy-duck, cf. 1621 Burton Anatomy. From

D. kovi, cf. Eng. decoy.
coyte a kind of beer. From M. D. coyte, kuyte-bier

without hops. It was brewed at Brugge, Delft

and Gouda.
cracknel a kind of biscuit of hollowed shape. Found

in 1440 already, dial, Sussex, crackling. From

Fr. craqitelin, which is derived from D. krakeling.

Cf. D. kraken.
crants a garland, wreath, a virgin crants. Cf.

Shakespeare. From D. krants, krans. M. D.

crans (of flowers) ; the symbol of virginity, cf.

Kiliaen krants. The D. krans is derived from the

H. G. krans. Cf. Fr. chapeau de neurs.
crap madder. From D. krap, meekrap.
crap the gallows. From D. krap hook.
cratch a manger, a rack or crib. M. Eng. cracche,

crecche. Cf. 1225 Ancren Rule; 1350 Will.

Palerne; dialectic critch. From Fr. creche (Pro-
vence crepcha) which is derived from O. L. G.

Cf. D. krib.

110 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

to cratch to scratch, cf. 1362 Langland. From M.
D. cratsen, D. krassen.

cremp to restrain, to contract. Only known in M.
Eng. 1250, Owl and Nightingale. From M. D.
cremp en to make, to contract. Cf. D. krimpen.

cresset a vessel of iron, made to hold grease or oil,
or an iron basket to hold pitched rope, to be burnt
for light ; usually mounted on a pole. Cf . cresset-
light, cf. 1393 Gower, Confessio. From O. Fr.
craicet, cresset. Fr. crosset, creuset, formed from
croiseul, which is derived from D. kruysel, a lan-
tern. Cf. kiliaen, kruysel kroes cup, vessel. M.
D. croese. Cf. D. smeltkroes, cf. Eng. crucible.

crewel, crule worsted yarn. Already found in 1494.
Cf. crewel-work. Nowadays also called "Berlin
wool." From D. krul. Though the sound of the
D. "u" was different, the pronunciation could
change, as soon as the word was written with one
"1" (-krule), instead of with two.

to crimp to cause to contract and become firm by
cutting. From D. krimpen.

to cruise to traverse the sea. Cf. 1651, G. Carteret,
Nicholas Papers, "Van Trump is with his fleete
crusinge about Silly." Cf. a cruiser. From D.
kruisen. Kruis from Fr. crois, which is derived
from Lat. crucem.

to curl to twist into ringlets. Cf. M. Eng. to kurl;
to croul; crulle curly. Cf. Chaucer's Prologue.
In Washington Irving's Sketchbook, Legend of
Sleepy Hollow, is found cruller a cake made of
dough, containing eggs, butter, sugar, etc. D.
krulkock. From O. L. G. Fries, krul. Cf. D.
krul.

to daker, daiker to waver, stagger, to shake to and
fro. First found in the I7th century. From M.
D. dakeren (-to stagger).

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 111

damp, domp an exhalation. Cf. 1480, Caxton. From
M. D. damp, domp. A "domp" more intense than
a "damp."

dapper pretty, spruce, neat, active. Cf. 1529 Skel-
ton, "As dapper as any crowe" ; Spenser, 1579,
The Shepherds' Calendar, "Dapper ditties". Oc-
tober i, 13. Cf. Eng. dapperisrn, dapperling, dap-
perly, dapperness. From M. D. dapper quick,
strong. The present meaning of brave did not
exist in the M. D., but to express that quality
vrome, bout, or coene was used. Cf. Goth, gada-
ben, to fit, to be proper. Gadobs proper. Cf.
D. deftig.

das a badger, rockbadger of the Cape. Cf. 1481
Caxton, Reynard. From M. D. das.

damv a South African species of zebra. From
South African D. dauw.

deal a thin plank of timber. M. Eng. dele. First
found in 1402. From D. deel plank.

to deck to cover, adorn. First found in the begin-
ning of the i6th century. From D. dekken, for
the A. S. form is theccan.

deck a ship's deck; a covering. From D. dek. Cf.
two-decker, three-decker. With the meaning of
second or third deck, the word is found in Eng.
earlier than in D.

decoy a pond or pool out of which run narrow arms
covered with network into which wild ducks or
other fowl may be allured and then caught. 1642
Evelyn's Diary: "We arrived at Dort, passed by
the decoys, where they catch innumerable quan-
tities of fowls." Cf. coy; to decoy. From D. de
kooi, a shorter form of de eendekooi (ducks'
cage).

112 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

deese dial. East-Sussex a place where herrings
are dried. Cf. to deese to dry herrings. Cf.
deesing-room, kipper-house. Cf. 1682, Collins
Salt and Fishery. From M. D. deise drying kiln,
oast. Cf. Deeste, ast.

Delf, Delft a kind of earthen ware. Made ready
in 1310 at Delft.

dell a deep hole, dale, vale. M. Eng. delle. From
D. delle valley. Cf. D. dal, Eng. dale. Derived
very early.

dell a young girl, a wench. Cf. 1567 Harman,
Caveat. From D. del, M. D. delle, dille. Cf. D.
dillen to chatter. D. dille chatterer.

derrick a hangman, the gallows. From D. Dirk, the
first name of a notorious hangman at Tyburn,
about 1600.

deutziaz. genus of shrubs, natives of China and
Japan, cultivated for the beauty of their white
flowers. Called in 1701 after J. Deutz of Amster-
dam.

to dewitt to kill by mob or violence, to lynch. This
verb was used frequently and is still to be found.
Cf. 1689, Modest Enquiry, "It is a wonder the
English nation have not in their fury de-witted
some of those men." From the D. names Johan
and Cornelius de Witt, statesmen and opponents
of William III. Murdered by the people in 1672.

dikegrave a Dutch officer whose function it is to
take charge of the dikes or sea-walls; an English
officer (in Lincolnshire) who has charge of the
drains and sea-banks. From D. dykgraaf.

dobber the float of an angler's fishing-line. From
D. dobber.

dock a basin for ships. Cf. to dock. First found
in the beginning of the i6th century. From D.
dok.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 113

dock the enclosure in a criminal court in which the

prisoner is placed at his trial. From D. dok

cage. Cf. Kiliaen.
dodkin, doydekin an early name for the doit, a small

Dutch coin. Found in Eng. already in 1415. From

D. duit+kyn. Cf-. Eng. doit.
dogger a vessel for herring- and cod-fisheries. Al-

ready doger is found in (1491) The Paston Let-

ters. M. D. dogge, dogger, ten dogge varen.

Dogger-trawl, net, a vessel fishing by means of

trawl-nets. The doggerbank was the meeting-

place for the doggers. Probably from D. dogger.
Doit a small Dutch coin. Cf. Shakespeare's Tem-

pest, 2nd Act. From D. duit, a small copper coin.

M. D. doyt, duit.
dois a crash. Cf. 1535, Stewart, "With sic ane dois

togidder that tha draif." From M. D. dosen. (Cf.

gedossen. )

dollar a silver coin of varying value. From D.
daler, daalder, which is derived from H. G. thaler
Joachin's Thaler, coin of silver from Joachims-
thai in Bohemia, where the coins were made in

to domineer to play the master. Cf. Shakespeare.

From O. D. 1573 in Plantyn, domineer en to be

noisy, which is derived from O. Fr. dominer. Cf.

Lat. dominus.
dop the cocoon of an insect; a small copper cup

with a handle, into which a diamond is cemented

to be held while being cut or polished. From D.

dop.
dope any thick liquid used as an article of food, or

as a lubricant. From D. doop. Cf. doopen. Eng.

to dip.

114 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

doppcr a Dutch Baptist or Anabaptist. From U.

dooper. Cf. D. wederdoopers.
dornick, darne a kind of cloth named after the town

Doornik in Belgium, and originally manufactured

there. Already found in 1489.
dorp a Dutch village. Cf. 1503. Stanyhurst Aeneis.

From D. dorp.

doxy a disreputable sweetheart. Cf. 1530 Hicks-
corner, Shakespeare. From O. L. G. Cf. O.

Fries, dok doll. Cf. Eng. duck; M. D. docken-

spel.
dredge an iron frame with a net, bag; a drag-net

for taking oysters ; a dredger for clearing the beds

of rivers. From O. Fr. drege, a fishing-net, and

this from D. dreg. Cf. Eng. dredger, dragnet; D.

dregge, dregnet. M. D. dregge hook, dredging-

net. In Murray "A New Eng. Dictionary" it is

declared to be a pure Eng. word.
to drill to pierce, to train soldiers. Cf. Ben Jonson

alludes to it in his "Underwoods," 1637:
"He that but saw thy curious Captain's drill
"Would think no more of Vlushing or the Brill."

From D. drill en, for the A. S. form is thirlan.

Eng. thrill. Cf. D. drilboor drill (borer).
drossart a steward, a high bailiff. Cf. 1678, London

Gazette, "The drossarts of the country of Waes."

From D. drossaard, drost-governor.
drug a medical ingredient. M. Eng. drogge, drugge

herb. Cf. Fr. droquiste, Eng. druggist. From

O. Fr. drogue, which is derived from D. droog.

D. drogen dried herbs. Cf. Eng. drogery a

drying place ; droger a boat to dry herring. Cf .

Fr. droguer.
drugget a coarse woolen cloth, to make rugs of.

From O. F. droguet. Cf. Fr. drogue, which is

derived from D. droog. Cf. Eng. drug.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 115

drumbler a fast vessel, also a piratical ship of war.
Cf. 1598 Hackluyt, Voyages. From D. drom-
melaar, drommeler a kind of vessel. Cf. O. Fr.
dromon, Eng. dromond.

duck, ducks light canvas, trousers of this material.
A maritime term of later times. From D. doek.
H. G. tuch.

duffel a kind of coarse woolen cloth. Also called:
shag of trucking cloth, cf. And let it be a duffil
gray. Wordsworth. Alice Fell. From D. duffel
a kind of cloth named after the village Duffel,
between Mechelen and Lier. Cf. D. duff else he
jas.

duiker a small South African antelope. So called
from its habit of plunging through the bushes
when pursued. From D. duiker.

dwile (Norfolk dialect) a coarse towel or napkin, a
mop. From D. dzwel. M. D. divale, dzvele. Cf.
Eng. towel.

easel a support, a wooden frame for pictures while
being painted. From D. esel.

ees food, bait. M. Eng. es, A. S. aes. From M. D.
aes food. D. aas.

eland a South African antelope. From D. eland,
which is derived from Slav.

elger an eelspear. Cf. Eng. algere. From M. D.
clger. D. aalgeer a large spear to catch eel. D.
aalgecr, consists of aal (-eel) and geer. Geer is
an old name for D. speer (-spear). Cf. A. S. gar.
M. D. gheer.

elzevir a book printed by one of the Elzeviers ; the
style of type used by those printers. Cf. Elzevir
type. From D. Elzevir name of a family of
printers at Amsterdam, The Hague, Leyden and
Utrecht 1592-1680, famous because of their edi-
tions of the classics.

116 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

Erasmian pertaining to, or after the manner of
Erasmus. A follower of Erasmus. From D.
Erasmus, the famous Humanist 1466-1536.

erf (in South Africa) A garden plot. From D.
erf.

excise a duty or tax. Cf. 1596 Spenser's State of
Ireland. From M. D. e.rcys. Cf. 1406 Assay-
books of the town of Leyden. Also M. D. accys
and this from O. Fr. accens, cf. Fr. accise, D.
cyns, Lat. census.

faldore a trap-door, a falldoor. Cf. 1481, Caxton,
Reynard. From M. D. valdoer falldoor.

farrow a cow that is not with calf. From M. D.
verwekoe, varwekoe, a cow that does not calve any
more.

filibuster a pirate, freebooter. From Sp. filibustero,
which is the Spanish pronunciation of the Eng.
word freebooter, and this is derived from D.
vrybuiter, cf. Eng. frecboater, flyboat.

to filter to strain liquors. From O. Fr. filtrer, and
this from Lat. filtrum and this from O. L. G. cf.
D. filtreeren, vilt.

to fineer to collect money. Cf. Goldsmith, Essays.
From M. D. finieren, fyneren to collect money.

fimble the male plant of hemp ; finable hemp. From
M. D. fimele, a kind of hemp. Originally an ad-
jective meaning female. Fr. femelle. Eng. female.

firkin the fourth part of a barrel. M. Eng. ferdekyn
1423. From D. vierdevat cf. verrel. Perhaps fir
four and kin, diminutive cf. D. kilderkin.

fitchet, fitchew a polecat. A form derived from O.
Fr. fissel, plural (fissiaul.v), later fissan. From
older D. fisse, visse a polecat. Cf. Killaen. Cf.
D. vies, veest. Eng. foist.

flake a pool, marsh. Cf. Linschoten, Voyages. From
D. vlak. Cf. Kiliaen.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 117

nanders D. Vlaanderen. Used as an adjective. Cf.
Flanders brick, tile, flax, lace.

flandrican, Flanderkin. From Flanderenkin an in-
habitant of Flanders; Flemish.

fleming a native or inhabitant of Flanders ; a Flem-
ing vessel. 1430 Lydgate. From M. D. Vlaming.

flemish of or belonging to Flanders ; the Flemish
language. From M. D. Vlaemisch. D. Vlaamsch,
Cf. Eng. a Flemish ell, rider, a Flemish account.
Cf. a Flemish stitch, point, fake, coil, bond, brick.

to flemish to coil or lay up a rope in a Flemish coil ;
of a hound to make a quivering movement with
the tail and body. 1857. Ch. Kingsley, Two
Years Ago, 18 ch. 1832 Marryat. From M. D.
vlaemisch, D. vlaamsch.

ftittermousc a bat. 1547. Boorde. Brev. Health.
We also find it a few times in Ben Jonson. From
D. vledermuis. Cf. D. ftadderen, and M. D.
Hederen.

to flounder to flounce about. Cf. Beaumont and
Fletcher. Nasalied form from L. L. G. Cf. D.
flodderen.

flushing a kind of rough woolen cloth, so called
from the place Flushing. 1835 Marryat. P. Sim-
ple. D. Vlissingen.

flushinger a Flushing vessel or sailor. From D.
Vlissingen.

flyboat one of the small boats used on the Vlie, after-
wards applied in ridicule to the vessels used
against the Spaniards by the Sea-Beggars 1572;
a fast sailing ship, a flat-bottomed boat. From D.
vlieboot.

fogger a man who feeds and attends to cattle. Berk-
shire dialect. From D. fokker.

118 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

fob a pocket for a watch. Cf. Butler's Hudibras.
Cf. D. fob to cheat. From O. L. G. Cf. Bre-
men Worterbuch fuppe.

fop a coxcomb, dandy. Cf. foppery, fopling. Fre-
quently found in Shakespeare. M. Eng. foppe.
From D. foppen to deceive. Cf. D. foppert, fop-
pery. Perhaps a Fries, word.

to formake to make over again, to repair. Cf. 1483.
Caxton, Vocal. From D. vermaken.

to for sling to swallow down. Cf. 1481. Caxton,
Reynard, where the past participle "verslongen"
is found, which is derived from M. D. "verlon-
den."

to forslinger to beat, to belabour. Cf. 1481, Caxton,
Reynard. From M. D. verslingcren.

forzvything reproach. Cf. Caxton, Reynard. From
M. D. verwyt.

to f other to cover a sail with oakum; to stop a leak.
Maritime term, first used in the i8th century.
From D. voederen, voeren.

foy a parting entertainment, cup of liquor, etc.,
given by or to one setting out on a journey; a
feast. From M. D. foye. This M. D. word is de-
rived from the Fr. voie, voye. Lat. via. Cf. Fr.
voyage. Cf. D. fooi. The Eng. word fee has
nothing to do with the D. fooi; it is one in origin
with D. vee.

freebooter a rover, pirate. Cf. Sidney State Papers,
"The freebutters of Flushenge." From D.
vrybuiter. Etymology of the people. From Fr.
ftibustier, a derivation from Span, fiibote, derived
from D. vlieboot. Cf. Eng. Hyboat.

fraught freight, hire of a vessel for the transport
of goods. Cf. 1483 Caxton, Golden Legends.
From D. vracht.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 119

frokin a Dutch woman, a child. Cf. 1603 Dekker.

From D. vronwken.
frolic sportive, gay,- merry. Cf . frolicsome, to frolic.

Cf. Gascoigne "Fruites of Warre." A frolicke

favour. From D.'iroolyk. M. D. vrs. H. G.

frohlich, froh.
frow a woman, a Dutch woman. Cr. 1477. Paston,

Letters. From D. vronw.
to jumble to grope about. Cf. Sir Th. More, False

fumbling heretikes. Fumble fummle. From D.

fommelen. Cf. Swed. famla, to grope.
funk, fonk spark. Cf. 1330. R. Brunne. From

M. D. vonke.- D. vonk. Origin uncertain.
funk cowering fear, a state of terror (slang). From

D. fonck. Cf. Kiliaen, and Lye in Junius Ety-

mologicum.
furlough leave of absence. From D. verlof, vorlof.

M. D. orlof. Cf. H. G. erlauben. In Sw. forlof,

which word has about the same pronunciation as

the Eng.

gas an aeriform fluid. Cf. gaseous, gasometer.
From D. gas, an artificial word. Name given by
the Brussels chemist, J. B. van Helmont, about
1640, to the aeriform fluids, to which he first
directed attention. The name was made by him
and was taken by other languages. The Greek
word chaos was in his mind. Cf. Van Helmont,
Ortus Medicinae 1640.

go/He a steel lever for bending the crossbow ; a spur
for fighting cocks. Cf. 1497. Naval accidents.
From D. gaffcl a two-pronged fork, used for
various purposes.

gay lor a dealer in earthenware. From D. gleycr,
gleier, potter.

120 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

garboard the first range of planks laid upon a ship's
bottom. Cf. 1606 Captain Smith. From D. gaar-
boord, gaderboord.

garnel a species of shrimp. From D. garnaal.

geek a fool, one who is derided, an expression of
scorn. Cf. to ,geck to mock. Cf. 1500 Dunbar.
From O. L. G. geek, D. gek.

geitje a venomous African lizard. South African
D. geitje.

gemsbok a South African antelope. South African.
From D. gemsbok, Cf. D. springbok, steinbok.

geneva a spirit distilled from grain, and flavoured
with the juice of juniper berries. From D. gen-
ever, j en ever. Cf. Eng. gin.

gherkin a small cucumber.- Cf. 1661 Pepys Diary.
From D. agurk, augurk, agurkje and this derived
from Slav. The "h" is put into the Eng. word,
while the "a" is apocopated. The ending (k)in is
diminutive.

gimp silk or cotton twist with a cord or wire run-
ning through it ; a fishing line. Cf . 1664. J. Wil-
son. From D. gimp, passement.

to glim to shine, to gleam. Cf. 1481 Caxton,
Reynard. "His eyen glymmed as a fyre." D.
glimmen.

golf the name of a game. Already known in Eng-
land in 1457. Probably from D. kolf. M. D.
colve. Cf. D. kolfbaan. Kolven a game played
with cudgels (-kolven) and balls.

Gomarist a follower of Francis Gomar 1563-1641,
who zealously defended Orthodox Calvinism in
opposition to the doctrines of Arminius. From
D. Franciscus Gomarus, Professor at Leyden, who
defended the doctrine of predestination against
Arminius.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 121

graft, graft a trench, a ditch, a canal. Cf. 1641
Evelyn Diary. From D. graft, gracht.

grate the backbone of a fish. Cf. 1481. Caxton,
Reynard. From M. D. graet.

great-father grand-father. Cf. 1484, Caxton, Aesop.
And the mule answered: my grete father was a
horse. From D. grotvader.

to grim to be angry, to look fierce. Cf. 1481. Cax-
ton, Reynard. From M. D. grimmen.

gripe the piece of timber terminating the keel at
the forward extremity. Cf. 1599. Hakluyt's Voy-
ages. Maritime term. From D. greep.

groat a coin worth 4 pence. M. Eng. grote 1351.
From O. L. G. grote. 1351. From O. L. G.
grote, a coin of Bremen. Cf. D. groot, of vary-
ing value. M. D. groot, grote. Originally the
adj. groot (-large), used as substantive with the
meaning thick, a thick (groote) coin. Cf. Eng.
groatsworth.

groll a foolish person. Cf. Bastwick Litany, 1637.
Cf. Eng. grollery, grollish. From D. .grol fool-
ish prattle. Cf. D. grollenmaker. Origin uncer-
tain. Perhaps grol has been the name of some
doctor or magician, but see: Verdam, Murray,
Vocabulary of the D. Language, Franck.

groop gutter in a stable, ditch, groove. Northamp-
tonshire dialect. From M. D. groep gutter. Cf.
Eng. grip.

groove a furrow, channel cut in wood, iron or stone.
Already in 1400. Cf. Alexander. In fig. mean-
ing humdrum way, cf. to groove; to engroone
upon (Tennyson). From D. groef, M. D. groeve
groove in a side of a board. The making of
these "groven" is called "ploegen" Cf. D.
ploegschaaf, groef schaaf ; cf. graven.

122 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

groundsop sediment, dregs. Cf. 1440, 1530-
Grounde soppe in lycoure. From D. grondsop.

to growl impersonal verb. It groivls me I have
a feeling of terror or horror. Cf. 1481, Caxton,
Reynard the Fox. From M. D. growelen; mi
gruwelt seer. Cf. D. gruwen.

growing-iron a tool in the form of nippers formerly
used by glaziers in cutting glass. From D.
gruisyzer. Cf. Eng. grozier.

gruel liquid food. M. Eng. gruel, and this from
O. L. G. Cf. D. grut, gort.

gruff coarse, rough, surly. Already found in 1533.
From M. D. grof. D. grof heavy, clumsy. Ori-
gin uncertain.

grundy groundling. Cf. 1570. Foxe. He was a
short grundy and of little stature. From D.
grontly, grundje small fish.

grysbok a small grey South African antelope. From
D. grysbok (South African).

guelder-ros, gueldres-rosc a species of Viburnum,
bearing large white ball-shaped flowers. So
named from some resemblance of the flower to a
white rose. Gueldres is the Fr. spelling of the
name of the province Gelderland. D. Gildcrsche
roos (Opulus). This flower is found wild in
Holland.

guile deceit. M. Eng. gile, gyle. From O. Fr.
guile and this from O. L. G. Cf. Eng. wile.
Origin uncertain.

guilder a Dutch coin. Cf. 1483, Caxton, Dialogues.
A changed form of D. gulden.

to gybe to swing from one side of the vessel to the
other ; to cause to swing ; to alter its course.
From D. gypen. Cf. D. met een gyp with a
swing. The "gyp" is not used any more. The
gaff takes its place.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 123

gyle wort in process of fermentation. Cf. Eng.
gyle-fat; gylc-kcr. From D. gyl, geil yeast (in
the brewery). Cf. gylen. Origin uncertain.

hackbut a kind of gun. Cf. Eng. hackbus, harque-
bus, bowse, bus, arquebus. From Fr. haquebute,
from D. haakbus, so called after the hook at the
end of the barrel. M. D. haecbusse small
cannon.

hamlet a small village. M. Eng. hamelet. From
O. Fr. hamel et. Fr. hamcau, and this from O.
L. G. Cf. D. heem, heim, Eng. home.

hank spike wooden bar, used as a lever, chiefly on
board ship. From D. handspaak.

hans-in-k elder an unborn child. Cf. 1635, Brome,
Sparagus Garden, "Come here's a health to the
hans in kelder." Is frequently found in Eng. of
the 1 7th century. From D. Hansje in de kelder.
Kelder, kildelap. Cf. de Dortsche Kit. Goth.
kilthei.

harstrang, horestrong hog's fennel. Cf. 1562.
Turner, Herbal. "Peucedanum is named in Dutch
Har strang. Cf. M. D. harn urine. H. G. harn.

hartebeest a kind of antelope. South African,
from D. hert+beest.

to haivk to carry about for sale. Formed from the
Eng. substantive hawker. Cf. Eng. hazt'ker.

hawker a kind of pedlar who travels about selling
goods with a horse and cart. From O. L. G.
hoker. Cf. D. heuker, hukker. Eng. huckster.

hayc a shark. Cf. Purchas. 1614. Cf. Eng. hay-
fish. From D. haai.

heemradcn burghers appointed by the government
to act as assessors in the district courts of Justice.
South African from D. heemraad.

124 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

herring-buss a two or three masted vessel used in
the herring-fishery. From D. haringbuis. Cf.
Eng. bouse.

hobby a small species of falcon. From O. Fr. hob.
Cf. O. Fr. hober to move and therefore so called
after its movements. From O. L. G. Cf. D. hob-
belen.

hogen mogen, hogan mogan D. hoogmogendhedem,
the High and Mighty, the Dutch, strong, mighty,
a coward. Was frequently used in the I7th
century.

hoiden, hoyden a romping girl. Cf. 1593. Nashe.
With older writers in Eng. mostly in the mean-
ing: uncivilized boor. From M. D. heyden,
heiden, man who lives on the heath (D. heide).

to hoist, to hoise to heave, to raise tackle. Cf.
Shakespeare. From D. hyschen, hyssen. Already
derived early.

Holland Dutch linen from the name of the country
Holland. Cf. A shert of feyn Holland. Cov-
entry Mysteries, 1502. A pece (of) Holland or
any other lynnen cloth. Arnold's Chronicle. Cf.
a brown Holland. Cf. Eng. a Hollander.

Hollands gin made in Holland. Cf. British Hol-
lands gin distilled in England.

holliglass a corruption of howleglass, owliglasse,
owl glass a buffoor. From D. Uilenspiegel.
Uillenspiegel, which work was translated into
Eng. about 1550.

holster a leathern case for a pistol. A word of later
times. From D. holster. Origin uncertain.

hop or hoppe a plant introduced from the Nether-
lands into England about 1500 and used in brew-
ing. Cf. hopvine, hopgarden. From D. hop.
Origin uncertain.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 125

hope a troop. Only in the phrase "forlorn hope."
Cf. 1572. Gascoigne. Also in Sir Fr. Vere. The
battle of Nieuport. From D. een verloren hoop
a troop soldiers. Cf. Kiliaen.

Hottentot one of the aborigines who formerly in-
habited the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutchmen
gave this name first to those natives because of
their singular language which made people think
that they were stammering. Cf. Hot en tot. Cf.
Dapper. Beschryvingh der Afrikaanrehe Gewes-
ten, 1670.

hoy a kind of sloop. Cf. 1495. Paston Letters.
An hoy of Dorderyght. Gascoigne, Fruits of
War. M. D. hoede, hode, hoei, heude. Flem.
huy yacht, freight-ship. Origin unknown.

hoy interjection, stop ! When one ship hails
another, the words are : What ship, hoy? stop
and tell the name of your ship. A maritime term.
From D. huy! an interjection. Cf. ahoy.

hoarding, hoard a fence inclosing a house while
builders are at work. From O. Fr. hourde, and
this from D. horde, M. D. gorde.

huckster a pedler, a retailer, hawker, venter, kramer.
Cf. hawker, to huck, hucker, huckle. Can be
found already in 1205 in Ormulum under the
form: huccster. From M. D. hoeker retailer of
groceries. D. dial heuker, hukker grocer. Cf.
hukken, huiken somebody who is bent down
under his burden or cognated with "hoek" in
the meaning of store. Origin uncertain.

hull the body of a ship. Cf. Minot Political Poems,
"The gudes that thai robbed in holl gan thai it
hide." To hull floating around of a ship with
lowered sails. Cf. Eng. hold. From D. hoi, het
hoi (hold) of a ship. Eng. hull shell. Cf. M.
D. hulle covering.

126 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

to hustle, to hutstle to toss, to push about, to jostle
in a crowd. From D. hutselen, frequently of to
hotsen. Cf. Eng. hustle-cap. M. D. hutssecru-
ysen.

hunk the goal, home in a game. From D. honk.
Cf. D. van honk gaan; honken to be on the rest-
ing-place in playing at tag. Fries, honck-home.

Huyghcnianoi or pertaining to Christian Huygens,
a Dutch mathematician and astronomer, 1629-
1695.

to inspan to yoke oxen, horses in a team to a
vehicle. From South African inspan. D. inspan-
ncn. Cf. to outspan.

isinglass a glutinous substance made from a fish.
Probably used as gelatine, . and hence the cor-
ruption of the word by thinking of ice and the
glassy appearance. From D. huizenblas, M. D.
huusblase, H. G. hauscnblas, and, according to
some dictionaries, also hnisblad, stcurblaas. M.
D. hunt a kind of sturgeon. Glue made of the
sturgeon's bladder.

jagger a sailing vessel which followed a fishing fleet
in order to bring the fish from the busses. From
D. haringjager.

jangle to sound discordantly, to quarrel. M. Eng.
janglen. From O. Fr. j angler, and this from O.
L. G. Cf. M. D. jangelen, D. jengelen, janken.

kails, keils, kayles nine-pins. Cf. M. Eng. kayles;
Ben Jonson, Chloridia. From M. D. kegel, keyl.
Cf. keylbaan. D. kegel.

kakkerlak a cockroach, an albino. From D. kak-
kerlak a beetle, a white native of Java.

to keek to peep, glance. From D. kyken. M. D.
kiken.

keel a flat bottomed vessel, a lighter. From M. D.
kiel a large seaship.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 127

to keelhaul to haul a person under the keel of a ship.
From D. kielhalen, which was abolished in 1853.

kcest sap, marrow, viguor. From D. keest mar-
row, the best part.

kelder the womb. Cf. Hans-in-kelder.

kelson, keelson a line of timber placed along the
floortimbers of a ship. From M. D. colszvyn. D.
kolzwyn, kolsem, a thick beam which is put on the
inside along the keel to make it stronger.

kermis a fair or carnival. Cf. Harrison 1577.
From D. kermis.

kilderkin liquid measure of 18 gallon. From M. D.
kindekyn, kinnekyn. Already found in Eng. in
1390. Cf. Eng. a kilderkyn of ale. In Dry den :
a kilderken of wit. The word is derived from
Lat. quinbale one-fifth of the measure unit, a
derivation from Lat. quinque. Cf. Firkin.

kink a twist in a rope. First used in Eng. in the
1 7th century. Cf. D. konkel. M. D. conk el t een
kink in den kabel. From D. kink twist, from
the same root as "konkel." Cf. D. konkelen.

kit a vessel of various kinds, a milk-pail, tub, out-
fit de "heele rommel." Cf. 1375. Barbour
Bruce. M. D. kitte, kit pitcher. Cf. D. kit,
drinking-vessel, cup. M. D. cete, barn, shed. Cf.
kot, keet, soutkeet.

klipspringer a small antelope. From South African,
D. klipspringer.

kloof a deep narrow valley; a ravine. South Afri-
can. D. kloof.

knapsack a provision-bag, case for necessaries used
by travellers, or soldiers. Cf. Eng. snapsack. Cf.
Drayton, The Barons' War, 1603. And each one
fills his knapsack or his scrip. From D. knapzak,
satchel, bag ; D. knappen to eat. Cf. D. knab-
belen.

128 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

knicker a marble. From D. knikker.

knorhan a South African bustard. From D. knor-
haan.

knuckle the projecting joint of the ringers. M. Eng.
knokel. From M. D. cnoke, cnokel.

knure, knur a swelling, a knot in wood. M. Eng.
knorre. From O. L. G. Fries, knure. Cf. D.
knor brush. M. D. cnorre. Cf. D. knoest,
knorf.

koff clumsy sailing-vessel with two masts. From
D. kof.

kopje, koppie a small hill. South African. From
D. kopje.

kraal a village of Hottentots, or other central Afri-
can natives. From D. kraal.

krantz a summit, a wall of rocks. From D. krans
kroon (kruin) crown.

kreng the carcass of a whale from which the blub-
ber has been removed. From D. kreng, and this
from O. Fr. caroigne. Cf. Lat. caro flesh.

lack want, \ failure. M. Eng. lac, lace en. Cf . Eng.
to lack. From O. L. G. Fries, lak. Cf. D. lak,
laster. Cf. lak en (denominative).

lager an enclosure for protective purposes, such as
a circular wall of stone, or a number of wagons
lashed together. South African. From D. lager.
Cf. leger.

lake fine linen. Cf. Chaucer's Sir Thopas. From
M. D. lak en, D. lak en.

lampas, hampers a kind of glassy crape. From M.
D. tampers a transparent material. Is found in
M. Eng. already in 1390 in the form of lawmpas.
Origin uncertain.

lampoon a personal satire. From Fr. lampon
drinking-song. Fr. lamper to sing, and this

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 129

from O. L. G. Cf. Fr. tapper to lick up and

also Fr. tampons let us drink, which interjection

is frequently found in drinking songs.
landdrost a stipendary magistrate, who administers

justice and receives the revenue of a district.

South African. From D. landdrost.
landgood a landed estate. From D. tandgoed.
landgrave a count of a province. Cf. landgravine.

From D. landgraaf.

landloper a vagabond. From D. landlooper.
landscape the aspect of a country. Cf. A landscape

painter, landscape gardening. The former spell-
ing in Eng. was landskip. It was derived from

the D. in the I7th century. From D. landschap.
lash a thin flexible part of a whip, a stripe. M. Eng.

lasshe. Cf. Chaucer. From O. L. G. laske. Cf.

Eng. to lash,
to lash to fasten firmly together. Maritime term.

From D. lasch strip, piece. Cf. D. lasschen,

inlasschen. Origin uncertain.
to laveer to beat to windward. Cf. 1595 Linschoten,

translated by W. Philips. From D. laveer en. M.

D. lover en. Cf. Fr. louvoyer, D. loef.
layman a lay-figure. From D. leeman, ledeman

ledepop (pop-doll), or doll with movable arms,

legs, etc., for painters.
lay-figure layman. Formed by analogy of the work :

layman.
leaguer a camp. Cf. Shakespeare. From D. leger.

Cf. to beleaguer,
leak a hole or fissure in a vessel. A maritime term,

first found in Eng. in 1407. From D. lek.
ledger a book in which a summary of accounts is

preserved, formerly called a ledgerbook. From

130 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

D. legger (ligger), a book which is always lying
ready.

lighter a boat for unloading ships. Cf. lighterman.
From D. lichter.

link a torch. Corruption of lint. From D. lont.
Cf. Eng. linstock.

linstock, lintstock a stick to hold a lighted match.
From D. lontstok. Cf. Eng. link.

litmus a kind of dye. Cf. litmose blew. From D.
lakmoes. M. D. lekmoes reddish blue dye. Ori^-
gin uncertain.

to loiter to delay, to linger. M. Eng. loitren. Cf.
lout clown. Perhaps : to stoop like a lout. Cf .
Spenser: he humbly loited. The idea probably
has been to bow humbly like a lout, to steal, to
delay. From D. leuteren. M. D. loteren to stag-
ger, to go to and fro. Cf. M. D. lutsen. The later
meaning of delay, linger, is not found in M. D.
Leuteren is a frequent of a not yet found verb,
lot en. A. S. lutan to bow.

to loll to lounge about lazily. M. Eng. lollen. From
O. L. G. Cf. D. lollen to hum, to sing, to talk,
to trifle, to be lazy. Cf. lollepot fire-pot around
which people loll. Cf. Eng. to lull; lollard.

lollard a name given to the followers of Wyclif.
From M. D. lollaerd brother of mercy, so called
after their quiet singing and praying, called by
the people in Holland lolbroeder, lollaard. Many
of them were free-thinkers and therefore lollard
got the meaning of free-thinker, heretic. Cf. D.
lollen. Eng. to lull.

loon, lowna. base fellow. Cf. Shakespeare. From
O. L. G. Fries. Ion. Cf. D. loen lout, stupid,
slow.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 131

to lop to cut branches off trees. Cf. Shakespeare.
Already derived early. From D. lubben; past
participle, gelubt to cut, to make powerless.

luck fortune, chance. From O. L. G. Fries, luck.
Cf. D. geluk.

to luff, to loof to turn a ship towards the wind. M.
D. loeveren, loveren, loeveeren. The Eng. verb
is perhaps derived from M. Eng. lof a piece of
wood, an oar. H. G. laffe. In Kiliaen loeve
rowing-pin. In the i6th century it was derived
from the D. and taken into Eng. again. The
origin is still uncertain. Cf. luff-tackle; aloof.

mangle a roller for smoothing linen. Cf. Eng. to
mangle. From D. mangel. M. D. mange, and
this from Lat. manganum.

manikan, manakin a little man, a dwarf. Cf .
Shakespeare. From D. manneken, mannetje.

margrave a marquis, a lord of the marches. Cf.
"The Maregrave of Bruges," in the translation
of Sir Th. More's Utopia, 1551. From D. mark-
graaf. Cf. Eng. margravine.

marish a marsh. D. moeras. From O. Fr. maress,
marez, and this from O. L. G.

marline -a small cord used for binding large ropes,
to protect them. Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis:
"Some the galled ropes with dauby marling bind."
From D. marly n, marling, a compound with the
root of D. marren to fasten. Cf. Eng. to mar.
Goth, mar z Jan.

mazer a drinking-bowl. M. Eng. maser. Cf. D.
maser. Kiliaen. Cf. Eng. maple, measles. From
O. L. G.

measles contagious fever accompanied by small red
spots on the skin. M. Eng. maseles. From D.
mazelen, mazel, a diminutive of maas spot.

132 WHAT INFLUENCE .HOLLAND EXERTED

mercatte an ape. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From
M. D. mercatte, a sort of ape.

minikin a little darling. Cf. Shakespeare. From
D. minnekyn, friend, loved. Cf. D. myne eerste
liefde. Fr. amour.

minx a pert, a wanton woman, or a pet dog. Cf.
Shakespeare. A corruption from Fries, minske.
Cf. D. minneken, my dearest.

mite a very small portion, a small coin. Cf. Lang-
land and Shakespeare. From M. D. mite trifle,
small coin. Cf. D. myt, M. D. mite. Cf. myt
insect.

mob a woman's nightcap. Cf. mobcap. From D-
mopmuts nightcap.

to moor to fasten a ship by cable and anchor. Cf.
mooring, marline. From D. meren to fasten.
Lat. mora delay. Cf. D. meertouw, meering,
meerpaal. Perhaps moerscreiv, a contraction of
moeder. Cf. vastmoeren, has had some influence
in deriving the Eng. word from the D.

mop a grimace, to grimace. Cf. Shakespeare.
From D. mop grimace. Cf. Eng. to mope.

to mope to be dull or dispirited. Cf. mopish. Cf.
Eng. mop. From D. mop, moppen. Cf. D. mop-
peren.

morass a swamp, bog. From D. moeras. The M.
D. marasch, M. Eng. mar els, Eng. marish are
taken from the Fr. marais. The younger forms
of the Germanic languages D. maeras, H. G.
morast, originated by thinking of maer. The Eng.
morass is probably derived from D. moeras.

mow a grimace (Cf. Shakespeare). From Fr.
moue, and this from M. D. mouwe a thick lip.

mud mire. M. Eng! mud. From O. L. G. mudder.
Cf. D. modder.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 133

to muddle to confuse. A frequentative of Eng.

mud; to confuse. From O. L. G. Fries, muddelen.

Cf. Eng. to mud.
muffle to cover up warmly. From O. Fr. mofle,

moufle, and this from O. L. G. Cf. D. mof, moffel.
mummer a masker, a buffoon. From O. Fr. mom-

meur, and this from D. mommer, mom. Cf. D.

vermommen, mommelen. Cf. Eng. mummery, D.

mommery.
to mump to mumble, to whine, to sulk, to beg. Cf.

a mumper beggar. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher,

Pedro. From D. mompelen, mommelen to growl,

to hum. This is a frequentative of mommen, sich

vermommen, to speak within one's teeth, to make

oneself irrecognisable. Cf. mom-mask. Cf. Eng.

mumps,
mumps a swelling of the glands of the neck. The

disease renders speaking and eating difficult and

gives the patient the appearance of being sulky.

Derived from Mump. In D. they call it bof. Cf.

Eng. mump,
mute to dung, used of birds. From O. Fr. mutir,

esmeltir, and this from O. L. G. Cf. D. smelten.
nag a small horse. M. Eng. nagge. From O. L. G.

Cf. D. negghe in Kiliaen. Cf. Eng. to neigh,
nick a small notch. From O. L. G. Cf. Eng. to

notch,
notch, nock an indentation. M. Eng. nokke. Cf.

to notch. From O. L. G. Cf. D. nocke notch

in an arrow to put it on the string. Kiliaen. Cf.

Eng. nick,
to ogle to look at sideways, to glance at. A verb

found since the latter part of the I7th century.

From D. oogelen. Tho the frequentative oogelen,

from oogen, is not found in D., it may have

134 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

existed formerly. (The use of it by Beets is an

independent case.) It is found in Meyer's

Woordenschat, oogeler.

oom uncle. South African. From D. oom.
orlop a deck of a ship. Maritime term. From D.

overlap e overloop.
ort, orts leaving, morsel left at a meal. From O.

L. G. Fries, ort. Cf. D. orte, oorte leaving.
to outspan to unharness ; Cf . een ontspan a place

in the field where one unharnesses. Cf. to ins pan.

South African. From D. nitspannen.
owlglass Cf. Holliglass.
pad a thief on the high road. Cf. footpad, padnag.

Cf. Massinger. A new way to pay old debts.

From D. pad road, path.
to pamper to glut. From O. L. G. slamp-ampen.

Cf. D. pampelen, slamp-ampen.
patch a paltry fellow. Cf. Shakespeare. From O.

L. G. Cf. Eng. patch. The meaning was a clown,

so called after his patched or motley coat.
patch a piece sewn on a garment. Cf. to patch. M.

Eng. pacche. Cf. to stretch and D. strekken. A

syncopized form of D. plak.
paw the foot of a beast of prey. From O. Fr. poe,

and this from O. L. G. Cf. D. poot.
to peer to pry. M. Eng. piren. Cf. Shakespeare.

From O. L. G. piren.
pink a kind of boat, a fishing-boat. From D. pink

fishing boat. The origin is uncertain.
pitchyarda. signal, a flag. A kind of commando-
flag, used as signal to get on board. From D.

pitsjaar, derived from Malay bitjara counsel.

First used as the signal of an admiral's ship, when

the admiral wanted to hold a council.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 135

placard a bill stuck up as an advertisement. From
Fr. placard, Cf. plaqner, and this from D. plakken.

plash a puddle. M. Eng. plasche. From O. L. G.
Fries, plasse. Cf. D. plas.

plump full, round, fleshy. M. Eng. plomp rude,
clownish. Cf. Caxton, Reynard the Fox. From
D. plomp rude, clownish. M/ D. plomp shape-
less, blunt.

to pry to peer, gaze. M. Eng. pry en. The same
word, through metathesis, as to peer. Cf. Eng.
to peer.

quacksalver a quack who puffs up his salves or oint-
ments. From D. kwakzalver. Cf. kwaken,
kwakken.

quail a migratory bird. M. Eng. quaille. From O.
Fr. quaille. From Lat. quaquila, and this from
L. G. Cf. D. kwakkel, kivartel, wachtel.

queer strange, odd. From O. L. G. queer, quere.

quyteskylle to acquit of. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. quiteschelden. D. kwytschelden. Cf.
Eng. to scold.

rabbit a small quadruped. From D. robbe. The
Eng. word is cony. Cf. dial. Fr. robette, rabotte.

rabble a noisy crowd, mob. M. Eng. rablen to
speak confusedly. From O. L. G. Fries, rabbeln.
Cf. D. rabbelen.

rail a bar of timber, of iron. From O. L. G. Cf.
D. regel, richel.

to rant to use violent language. Cf. Shakespeare.
From M. D. rant en to speak, to rage. Origin
uncertain.

to ravel to untwist, to unweave. Cf. to unravel,
Cf. Shakespeare. From D. rafelen. Already de-
rived early. Origin unknown.

136 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

reef a portion of a sail that can be drawn close to-
gether. Cf. In Surrey: ryft. From D. reef

a small portion of a sail. Cognated with rib.
reef a ridge of rocks. From D. rib, of the verb

ryven, and therefore: a split mass of rocks.
rider a Dutch coin, worth about 24 shillings. From

D. ryder gold coin, worth about $5.80.
to reeve to pass the end of a rope through a hole

or ring. A maritime term. From D. reven to

fasten the sails. Cf. Eng. reef,
riv-dollar the name of a coin. Cf. Evelyn's Diary,

1641. From D. rykdaalder. Cf. Eng. dollar,
rover a pirate, a wanderer. M. Eng. rover, rovare.

Cf. to rove to wander. From D. roover, rooven.

Cf. Eng. to bereave,
to ruffle to be noisy, a ruffle. From D. roffelen

frequentative of r off en to carry something

through by force.
rummer a sort of drinking glass. Cf. Dryden.

From D. roemer.
to rutsele dial, to slide. From D. rut sen, rutselen

to slide. Cf. Van den Vos Reinaerde.
scalp the skin of the head. M. Eng. scalp. From

O. L. G. Cf. D. schelp.
scoff a taunt. M. Eng. scof. From O. L. G. Fries.

skoff. D. schoppen. Cf. Eng. to scoff,
to scold to rail at. From O. L. G. Fries, schelden.

Cf. D. schold, schelden.
scorbutic pertaining to or afflicted with scurvy.

From Lat. scorbutus, and this from L. G. schor-

bock. Cf. D. scheurbuik.
selvage, selvedge a border of cloth. From D.

selvegge, D. zelfkant. M. D. egge sharp edge.

Eng. edge. In Groningen people still call zelf-
kant, zclfegge. So called to distinguish it from

the real border.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 137

to sheer to deviate from one's course. A naval ex-
pression. From D. scheren, wegscheren. Cf. D.
scheerje weg. Cf. Eng. sheer off.

shock a pile of sheaves of corn. From O. L. G.
schock. . Cf. D. schok sixty.

shock a violent shake. M. -Eiig. schokken. From
D. schok, schokken. Cf. Fr. choquer.

to shudder to tremble with fear of horror. From
O. L. G. Fries, schuddern. Cf. D. schuddcn.

skate, scatc a frame of wood or iron with a steel
ridge, beneath it, for sliding on ice. The singu-
lar ought to be skates. People thought the "s"
was the ending of the plural. Cf. Eng. pea,
cherry. From D. schaats. Origin uncertain.

sketch a rough draught, an outline. Cf. Dryden.
From D. schets, and this from Italian schizzo.

skew oblique, wry. Cf. M. Eng. skewen to turn
aside. From O. L G. Cf. D. schnzv. Cf. Eng.
skezvbald, askeiv.

skipper the master of a ship. From D. schipper.

to slabber to slaver. From O. L. G. Fries, slabbern.
Cf. D. slabben, slobberen.

slender thin, feeble. From O. L. G. Cf. D.
verslinden.

to slepe to drag. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From
M. D. slepen. D. sleepcn.

slim weak, slender, thin, slight, cunning. Only
found lately. Especially in the Lincolnshire
dialect. From D. slim. Cf. D. slimme wegen, een
slim geval. M. D. stem. Origin unknown.

sloop a one-masted ship. From D. sloap. Origin
unknown.

slot a broad, wooden bar, bolt of a door. From O.
L; G. Fries, slot. Cf. D. slot.

138 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

sloven a careless, lazy person. M. Eng. sloveyn.
Cf. Coventry Mysteries. From D. slof slow. Cf.
D., sluipen.

smack a fishing-boat. From D., smak a vessel
which is used for fishing or coasting-trade in the
North Sea. Origin unknown.

smous dial. Suffolk a Jew. From D. smous, and
this from Jewish German : Mausche, i. e., Moses.

snaffle a bridle with a piece confining the nose and
with a slender mouth-piece. Cf. Sir Th. More's
Works. From D. snavel, sneb. Cf. D. snappen.

to snap to bite suddenly, to snatch up. Cf. Shakes-
peare. Cf. snappish, snap-dragon; to snap to
break suddenly, to seize. From D. snappen. Cf.
D. snavel.

to snip to cut off with shears or scissors. Cf.
Shakespeare. Cf. snip-snap. From D. snippen,
snipperen. Cf. snavel and snappen, and there-
fore: to pick to pieces with the bill.

snot mucus from the nose. M. Eng. snotte. From
O. L. G. Cf. D. snot, snniten.

snow a ship, a kind of brig. Cf. Falconer. From
D. snauw a ship with two masts; ship with a
bill. Cf. D. sncfvel.

to snuff to draw in air violently through the nose, to
smell. From D. snuff en, snuiven, snuffelen.

spa a place with a spring of mineral water. After
the name of the place, Spa, near Liege, Belgium.

spellicans a game played with thin slips of wood.
From D. spelleken, speldeken wooden pin.

spinde a pantry, or larder, dial. From D. spinde
pantry.

to splice to join two rope-ends by interweaving.
Naval expression. From D. split sen, splitten, in-
tensive of D. splyten to split.

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 139

spool, M. Eng. spole. A reel for winding yarn on.

Introduced into England by Flemish weavers.

From D. spoel. Cf. Fries, spole.
spoor a trail. From D. spoor, of a wild beast.
to sprout to shoot out germs. M. Eng. spruten.

From O. L. G., cf. O. Fries, sprute, D. spruit,
stadtholder Lord Lieutenant, title' of the Princes of

Orange. From D. stadhouder.
spynde a pantry. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From

M. D. spynde spinde pantry. Cf. Lat. spenda;

expendere, Eng. to spend. D. spandeeren, spys.

Cf. spinde.
staple a chief commodity. From Fr. estaple and

this from L. G. stapel. Cf. D. stapel.
to stay to remain, to wait. Cf. Eng. staid calm,

serious. From O. Fr. estayer to assist, to help,

and this from D. staai, stade assistance, leisure,

opportunity. Cf. te stade komen.
to stipple to engrave by means of dots. From D.

stippelen, frequentative of stippen.
stiver a Dutch penny. From D. stuiver.
stoker one who tends the fire. Cf. to stoke. From

D. stoker. Cf. steken.
stout bold, strong. M. Eng. stout. From O. Fr.

estout and this from O. L. G. Cf. M. D. stout,
strand a string of a rope. With a paragogic "d".

From D. streen. M. D. strene. Cf. D. striem.
stripe streak, a blow with a whip. From D. stryp,

streep.
to strive to struggle, to contend. Originally a weak

verb in the Eng. M. Eng. striven. From O. F.

estriver and this from D. sir even to try, to con-
tend.
stitf dust. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From M.

D. stof.

140 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

sturgeon a. large fish. From Fr. esturgeon,

etourgeon and this from D. steiir. M. D. store,
supper a meal at the close of the day. M. Eng.

soper, super. From O. Fr. soper, super and this

from O. L. G. Cf. D. suipen. M. D. sup en.
sutler one who sells provisions in camp. Cf.

Shakespeare. From D. zoetelaar soedelen; cf.

zieden, koken, therefore: eating-house-keeper.
swab to clean the deck. Cf. Shakespeare. Cf. D.

swabber. Eng. swab from D. sivabberen, fre-

qentative of zwabben.
switch a small flexible twig. Cf. Shakespeare. From

D. sivik a twig. Cf. D. swikken.
taffcrel, taffrail the upperpart of the stern of a ship.

From D. tafereel tafeleel and this from D. tafel,

which is derived from Lat. tabula,
tallow fat of animals melted. M. Eng. talgh. From

O. L. G. Cf. D. talk,
tampion kind of plug. From Fr. tampon and this

from L. G. Cf. D. tap.
tang a strong taste. From D. tanger strong,

biting. Cf. D. tenger, taai. Origin uncertain.
tattoo spelled in 1627 taptoo the beat of drum re-
calling soldiers to their quarters. From D. taptoe

doe den tap toe.
to tiff to deck, dress out. From O. Fr. tiffer and

this from O. L. G. Cf. D. tippen. Cf. D. het

haar tippen.
to toot to blow a horn. From O. L. G. Cf. D.

toeten.
touch-wood wood for taking fire from a spark;

touch is a corruption of M. Eng. tache, tach. From

L. G. Cf. D. tak. Therefore the meaning really

is: tak (-branch) or stokhout (stick-wood).

WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED 141

toy a plaything. Cf. Shakespeare. Cf. to toy to
trifle, dally. From D. tuig, cf. speelting. Cf.
tie gen, to draw.

to trek to go to another place. South African. Cf.
trekboer. From D. trekken.

trick a stratagem, fraud, parcel x of cards won at
once, lineament. Cf. Shakespeare. Cf. to trick
to dress out, to adorn, to blazon. From D. trek,
in many meanings.

trigger tricker a catch, which, when pulled, lets
fall the hammer "or cock of a gun. From D.
trekker.

trinket, trinquet the highest sail of a ship. From
Fr. trinquet; this from Sp. trinquete and this from
D. strikken with loss of the "s".

tub a small cask. M. Eng. tubbe, cf. Chaucer. In-
troduced into England by Flemish brewers. From
D. tobbe, M. D. tubbe, cf. Fries, tubbe.

to tuck to draw close together. From O. L. G. Cf.
D. tokken to draw, to attract.

to tug to pull, to drag. From O. L. G. Cf. D.
tokken, tiegen.

twill woven stuff with an appearance of diagonal
lines in textile fabrics. From D. twillen.

ungheluch unhappiness. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard.
From M. D. ongheluck. D. ongeluk.

unto to, M. Eng. unto. It consists of und+to. Und
from O. L. G. Cf. O. Fries, und. Goth. und.
Cf. until

uproar a tumult, disturbance. Cf. Shakespeare.
From D. oproer.

veldt field. South African. From D. veld.

volksraad the People's council; an elected legisla-
tive body. South African. From D. volksraad.

vrouw woman. South African. From D. vrouw.

142 WHAT INFLUENCE HOLLAND EXERTED

vysevase a folly, a whim. Cf. 1481, Caxton,

Reynard. From M. D. vysevase. Cf. D. fazelen,

vazen, feziken.
wafer a thin small cake. M. Eng. ivafre. From O.

Fr. waufre, gaufre and this from O. L. G. Cf.

D. wafel, weven.

wagon, waggon a wain, vehicle for goods. Cf. Spen-
ser. The Eng. form of this word is wain, A. S.

waegn. From D. wag en.
wainscot panelled boards on the walls of rooms, cf.

Shakespeare. From D. ivagenschot wandeschot;

wagen by folk etymology from Fries, weeg-wall;

A. S. wah wooden wall.
walnut a foreign nut. The first syllable is the name

Waal Cf. Wales, Cornwall.
wapper cudgel. Cf. 1481, Caxton, Reynard. From

M. D. wappere cudgel.
water-gueux a name first given in contempt to the

Protestant nobles and afterwards adopted by va-
rious bodies of Dutch in the wars with Spain.

From D. watergeus.
wentele to twist, to turn round. Cf. 1481, Caxton,

Reynard. From M. D. zuentelen to turn.
wig periwig a peruke. From D. peruyk and this

from Fr. perrigue. Cf. D. pruik.
wreck destruction, ruin, cf. shipwreck. Already in

the 1 3th century. M. Eng. zvreck. From D.

wrak damaged, a damaged ship. Cf. D. getuigen

wraken.
yacht a swift pleasure boat. Cf. Evelyn's Diary

1661. From D. jacht, jachtship, fast ship. Cf.

D. jag en.
yawl a small boat. From D. jol small vessel.

PART III

The Influence of the Netherlands on
English Literature

CHAPTER XII
ON CEDMON

The name of Csedmon is one of the most promi-
nent in the history of early English literature.
Everybody knows the beautiful poems of old
Christian England on "the beginning of created
things" in paraphrases on Genesis (Chap. I-XX1I)
extending to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac by
Abraham, on Exodus (Chap. II-XV), on Daniel,
and the three minor poems, the first one dealing with
the Fall of the Angels, the second one with Christ's
Harrowing of Hell, and the third one with Christ's
Temptation. "No one would today seriously main-
tain even that these poems are all by one author ; it
is more likely that more than one writer has had a
hand in each." 1 One interpolated part, in the second
version of the Fall of the Angels in the paraphrases
on Genesis, has been brought into connection with the
author of the Heliand. 2 And as the Heliand was
probably written under the immediate suggestion of
Ludger, 3 the great Dutch missionary among the Sax-
ons along the borderline of Holland and Germany,

1 The Cambridge History of English Literature, I, 50.

2 Sievers, Der Heliand und die Angelsachsische genesis.

3 On Ludger see the first chapters.

143

144 ON C^EDMON

we may see in the poems of Caedmon "a fruitful ex-
change of literary ideas" between England, the
Netherlands, and the western part of Germany during
the first half of the ninth century.

But there is another interesting point, viz., the
question how these poems of Csedmon, as they are
generally called, became first a subject of study, how
they were published, and became at last a subject of
discussion in every textbook of English Literature.
This has been as a whole the work of the well-known
Dutch scholar, Franciscus Junius. 1 During his so-
journ in England, Junius collected transcripts of many
old English manuscripts, and in the year 1649 he got
from Archbishop Ussher a copy of the manuscript
containing the poems, which Junius, in consequence of
the description given by Bede of a certain poet
Grdmon and his poems, called the poems of Cced-
mon, and under that name published them in the
year 1655 at Amsterdam, 2 so that these famous poems
were first studied by a Dutchman, and were first
printed in Holland.

1 On Junius, see our first chapters.

2 "Diese Veroffentlichung war bahnbrechend fur die Entschliessung
der Angelsachsischen Poesie, da mit Ausnahme eines unbedeutenden
Stiickes bis dahin nur prosaische Denkmahler herausgegeben waren."
Herman Paul. Grundriss, I, 35.

CHAPTER XIII

ON THE STORIES OF KING ARTHUR,, AND THE FRENCH
ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY IN ENGLAND

The stories of King Arthur were written orig-
inally, as far as we know, in Latin by Geoffrey of
Monmouth about the year 1140. From Latin, this
collection of Welsh and English legends was trans-
lated into French verse by a Frenchman called Wace.
And from the French they were translated into
English by the well-known Layamon in his Brut. Now
the French language was the official language in
England from the time of the Norman Conquest in
the year 1066, till the year 1362, when English was
made the language of the law courts, and the year
1386 when English displaced French in the schools.
During three hundred years (from 1066 till 1362),
the French language was the language of the upper
classes in England the language of those classes who
read books and studied literature. During those three
centuries it was the French romances of chivalry,
telling the stories of King Arthur, and his round
table, of Charlemagne, of Alexander the Great, and
the story of the siege of Troy, which formed the
reading and the main literature of the higher edu-
cated classes in England. Now, in composing these
French romances of chivalry, including many of the
Arthurian legends, the Southern Netherlands had a
good share. Not only did many of the stories orig-
inate in the Netherlands, where the cradle of the
Carolingians was to be found at Herstal, and where
10 145

146 ON THE STORIES OF KING ARTHUR

Charlemagne had his residence at Ninwegen, but
some of the best poets who told these romances lived
there. Chretien de Troyes, one of the most famous of
these poets, lived for some, years at the court of the
Count of Flanders; he died about the year 1175; and
he wrote at least five Arthur romances, entitled Erec
and Enide, Cliges, Le Chevalier de la Charette
(Lancelot), le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), and le
conte du Saint-Graal (Perceval). 1 Other poets, as
Adam de la Halle and Jehan Bodel, lived at Atrecht
in the Southern Netherlands. The setting of many of
these romances is in the Netherlands, and no doubt
the civilization and the conditions of the Low Coun-
tries have been a prevailing influence for the poets
who lived there. 2

How far the works of Jacob van Maerlant (1235-
1300) had influence in England is not yet decided.
We know that there was all the time a close and fre-
quent intercourse between the Netherlands and
England. We know that Maerlant, whose poems, now
all printed, cover not less than 226,000 lines, criticized
the corruption of the clergy, and the oppression of
the poor under the feudal system, long before Wil-
liam Langland in 1362 did the same in England, by
writing his "Vision Concerning Piers, the Plough-
man" ; we know that Maerlant translated the Bible,
in rhymed verse, into the Dutch vernacular long before
Wicliff translated the Bible into English in 1380. But
how far this reformatory and democratic movement
in the Netherlands was the cause of the same move-
ment in England more than half a century later, re-
mains for historical and literary research to discover.

1 W. J. A. Jonckbloet, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde,
I, 117-

2 For further information see the quoted works of Jonckbloet and
Kalff.

ON THE STORIES OF KING ARTHUR 147

The same we must say about any probable influ-
ence of the literary movement in the Southern "
Netherlands on Chaucer. We know that Chaucer was
well acquainted with France and. Italy; that he was
not at all a stranger on the continent ; that very prob-
ably he may have visited Flanders, and have come in
contact with the literary circles in 'the Netherlands;
but here also is a field still to be explored and about
which we can only conjecture, not decide. We know
that Chaucer was closely connected with the court of
Edward III, and even that he bore arms in Edward
Ill's expedition into France, while Edward was very
familiar with the Flemish cities, and with the Count
of Holland, who brought him to the throne, and whose
daughter, Philippa, he married ; we know that he
made a treaty with them, and tried to persuade his
Flemish supporters to accept his son, the Black
Prince, as their sovereign. But historical and literary
researches in this field have hardly been begun, and
we can only infer from the well-known general
conditions and relations that some considerable influ-
ence may have been exerted.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when modern democracy arose in the free cities of the
Southern Netherlands, where at that time wealth and
luxury was being accumulated, when the religious
movement of the Reformation took the leadership of
this democracy, there was a development of literary
life in the Netherlands of which one hardly gets an
adequate idea. The literary societies, called Chambres
de Rhetorique, were so numerous, and so flourishing,
in every one of the Flemish gities, and the miracle
plays and morality plays those precursors of our
modern drama were written in such numbers that
their influence on the whole people, and on the lit-

148 ON THE STORIES OF KING ARTHUR

erature of other nations, especially of England, must
have been much larger than as yet is generally known.
We know, for instance, that one poet, by the name of
Thomas de Kasteleyne, wrote more than one hundred
plays, and that the land- jewels, where sometimes more
than thirty guilds of Rhetoric met in competition, were
great attractions at that time, when, according to all
historians; England was very far behind in civiliza-
tion, in industry, in trade, in art and in literature.

CHAPTER XIV
ON WILLIAM CAXTON

William Caxton is the famous name connected
with the introduction of the printing press into Eng-
land. Caxton printed more than one hundred books.
"A greater benefactor, indeed, to the intellectual im-
provement of his country it would be difficult to men-
tion than him, who introduced the art of printing."
His four hundredth anniversary was celebrated in
England on the i8th of November, 1877, that date
having been adopted as marking the introduction of
printing into England, because, according to the
unique colophon of a copy of the "Dictes and Sayinges
of the Philosophers" this work was published on the
1 5th of November, 1477, while the date of the earliest
publications of Caxton is unknown. "For many years
an old building, which tumbled down in 1846, was
pointed out as Caxton's house, but it was proved to
be no older than the time of Charles the Second.
This did not prevent parts of the woodwork being
made into walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, and pre-
sented to various patrons of literature as genuine
relics of our famous printer." 1

Born in "Kent in the Weeld," a place about the
situation of which topographers do not agree, and at
a date (perhaps 1420) unknown till this day, Wil-
liam Caxton was educated to be a- merchant. In the
year 1438 he was entered apprentice to Robert Large,

1 F. C. Price, Facsimiles with a Memoir of our first Printer. London,
1877. Printed only in 125 copies.

149

150 ON WILLIAM CAXTON

who, in the next year, became Lord Mayor of Lon-
don, and died in 1441. One year after the death of
his master, Caxton went abroad and lived at Bruges,
the Burgundian Capital in the Southern Netherlands,
and he stayed there for the following thirty-five years,
with the exception of some short visits to London,
Cologne and perhaps some other places. As a youth
of twenty years, Caxton came to the Netherlands;
as a man of fifty-five he went back to England, to
spend there the remaining fourteen years of his life,
so that for more than half of his life he lived in the
Netherlands. In 1463 Caxton became what they
called at that time ' 'governor of the English nation"
at Bruges, which post he retained till the year 1469;
but about this time some reverse of fortune appar-
ently befell him, by which he was obliged to leave
Bruges for a while. But in the year 1467 Count
Charles the Bold had married Margaret, the sister of
the English King, Edward IV, and now we know that
Caxton "received some appointment in the court of
the English wife of Charles at Bruges, and became
a favorite with the noble lady." 1 Before the Princess
Margaret came to the Netherlands, Caxton, having
no great charge or occupation, had commenced for
his amusement the translation of "Le recueil des His-
toires de Troye" by Raoul le Fevre, from French into
English, but, discouraged, he had abandoned the task.
This he told one time to Margaret and she, as he
himself tells it, not only encouraged but commanded
him to continue and finish the work. Caxton obeyed
and the translation was finished in 1471. The work
was printed at Bruges by Caxton, and Colard Man-
sion, a copyist and calligrapher, who about that time
had started a printing office. After this first book,
another one was printed, viz., "The game and the

1 Price, Facsimiles and Memoir

ON WILLIAM CAXTON 151

playe of chesse moralysed," and soon after that time
Caxton took leave of the land of his adoption, where
he had lived for thirty-five years, and arrived at Lon-
don, "laden with a freight more precious than the
most opulent merchant adventurer ever dreame3 of,
to endow his country with that inestimable blessing,
the printing press." 1

"Towards the end of the year 1476 or in the. be-
ginning of 1477 we find Caxton in occupation at
Westminster, his press erected in the Almonry. At
the time Caxton started in England his whole stock
of type consisted of two fonts, or sets of types, a
church or text type, and a secretary type. These
fonts he purchased in the Low Countries and brought
them with him." 2 From that time Caxton began the
printing of a series of at least one hundred works,
which continued till his death in the year 1491.

As a young apprentice of a merchant's office, Cax-
ton went to the Netherlands, and after thirty-five years
he came back to England as a man, acquainted with
book-printing, with the literature, the language, with
the whole civilization of a city like Bruges, the cap-
ital of the Burgundian Counts, the most brilliant and
most luxurious, the most wealthy, and highly civilized
center of European civilization, at that time. The
fruits of his thirty-five years of abode in the Nether-
lands we see in what he performed during the re-
maining fourteen years of work in his native country.
As translator and as printer he blessed his people
with the literature, and the civilization, he had ob-
served, and made himself acquainted with, in the
Netherlands. To the Dutch language he was so ac-
customed that he used many Dutch words (of which

1 Ibid.

2 Price, Facsimiles and Memoir.

152 ON WILLIAM CAXTON

De Hoog gives a list of ftvcnty nine examples) as if
they were pure English. The famous animal-epos of
Reinard the Fox he translated, not from the original
French, but from the Dutch version, which is "much
superior to the original and admittedly the finest ver-
sion of the Reynard story." 1

pcan

1 Herbert J. C. Grierson, in vol. VIII, p. 5, of the Periods of Euro-
Literature, by Prof. Saintsbury, New York, 1906.

CHAPTER XV
ON PROGNOSTICATIONS OR PROPHETIC ALMANACS

During the last part of the fifteenth, and the whole
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the literature of
Prognostications or prophetic almanacs was quite
prominent and popular. They form one of the super-
stitious extravagances and abuses which accompanied
the great religious movement of the Reformation, but
which had their origin more in the revival of the
heathen traditions of ancient history, which was fos-
tered by the humanistic movement of the Renaissance.
Martin Luther brought these astronomic predictions
to ridicule in his "Table-talk"; King Henry III of
France prohibited, in 1579, the making of political
predictions in almanacs ; in England satires were writ-
ten against them, for instance, one in 1544 entitled
"A Mery Prognostication" written in ridicule of those
false prognostications against which Henry the
Eighth considered it necessary or advisable to level
a proclamation. Another satire of the same kind from
the year 1623 has been republished by James O. Halli-
well, London, 1860. The first almanac printed in
England is from the year 1497, being the Calender
of Shepardis. But before this time, and also in later
years, they were introduced in England from the
continent, and especially from the Netherlands. In
the year 1491, Caspar Laet, physician at Antwerp,
published a prognostication written in Latin, and ded-
icated to William Schevez, archbishop of St. Andrews.
In the year 1515 the same Caspar Laet published a

153

154 ON PROGNOSTICATIONS

"Prognostication for the year 1516" with this addi-
tion : "this prognostication of Master Jasper Laet of
Borchloon, doctour of astrologie, of the year 1516, is
translated into English by Nicholas Longwater." Sev-
eral years later, in 1534, a prognostication of the same
Flemish author was published in English as "Prog-
nostication by Caspar Late of Antwerpe, calked (cal-
culated) upon the meridyan of the same citie for the
year of our Lorde God." 1

Although this popular literature of the Prognosti-
cations is not of such great importance, it shows
again, like the story of Caxton, that at that time the
civilization and the literature of The Netherlands
exerted its influence on England.

1 W. de Hoog, Studien, II, 26.

CHAPTER XVI
ON THOMAS A KEMPIS

Quite different from that of the Dutch Prognosti-
cations, was the influence of Thomas a Kempis on
the spirit of the English people, and, consequently,
on the expression of that spirit in English literature.
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, has a
world-wide fame, and its influence can hardly be over-
estimated. "In 1828 M. Languinais reckoned the
editions and translations of the "Imitation," a book
which Johnson said the world had opened its arms
to receive, at more than two thousand. He saw in
the library of the Vatican, translations in the Catalan,
Castilian, Flemish, Portuguese, Dutch, Bohemian,
Polish, Greek, English, Hungarian, Illyrian, Japanese,
Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Persian, and
other languages ; so that the words of Samuel John-
son, cited in the preface, "that the book had been
reprinted as many times as there were months since
its first production," are not exaggerated, if we con-
sider the many versions which have been printed of
this singular book." 1 The original Latin edition was
spread over all Europe since the time of its first ap-
pearance in the year 1471. English editions followed
soon, within a few years after the printing press was
introduced into England. We find at least the fol-
lowing English editions:

i. Mayrtes, William, the Imitation or the
following of Christ. London, W. de Worde

1 English edition of Samson Low, Son and Marston. London, 1865,
Preface, XXIII.

155

156 THOMAS A KEMPIS

and Rich. Pinson in 4, without date, probably
about the end of the I5th century. Reprinted
by Rich. Pinson, London, 1503.

2. Atkinson, the Imitation, etc., Lon. W. de
Worde and Pinson, 1504. This translation was
made at the express command of the mother of
Henry VII.

3. Hake, Edward, of Gray's Inn. The Imi-
tation, or following of Christ, and the contend-
ing- of worldly vanities, at first written by
Thomas Kempise, a Dutchman, amended and
polished by Sebastien Castalio, an Italian, and
Englished by Edward Hake, London. 1567, re-
printed 1568.

4. Rogers, Thomas. The Imitation or fol-
lowing of Christ, 1584. This contains only the
first three books. In 1592 Rogers published the
fourth, under the title of "Soliloquium Animae."
"The Sole Talke of Soule ; or a Spiritual and
Heauenlie Dialogue between the Soule of Man
and God." Reprinted 1596.

5. Page, William. The Imitation or fol-
lowing of Christ, London, 1597.

6. Milburne, Luke. The Imitation or fol-
lowing of Christ, translation in verse, 1697.

7. Stanhope, Dean. The Christian's Pat-
tern, or a treatise on the Imitation of Christ,
6th edition, in 1708. The text is herein much
mutilated.

8. Payne, John. The Imitation of Christ,
1763, in 8vo. Dove reproduced this in his
Classics. Payne was a government clerk and
afterwards a bookseller. Dibdin has used this
translation.

9. Challoner, The Rev. The Imitation or
following of Christ. A very faithful transla-
tion, often reprinted.

10. Dibdin, Thomas Frognall. Of the Im-
itation of Jesus Christ, translated from the
Latin original, ascribed to Thomas a Kempis,
with an introduction and notes. William Pick-
ering, London, printed by William Nicol at the
Shakespeare Press, 1828.

THOMAS A KEMPIS 157

During the nineteenth century many more Eng-
lish editions were published, and even at the present
time, in nearly every book store, in America as well
as in England, an English version of the Imitation is
in stock.

Not without reason one may ask: What was the
attraction of this wonderful book? What was its in-
fluence? What was the spiritual and literary move-
ment, and who was the author that produced this
marvel in the history of human literature, and blessed
with it the Christian world of the I5th century? Let
me answer these questions with a few words.

Its attraction is in the wonderful piety and hon-
esty, the simplicity and naivete with which the author
speaks to the very heart of the reader. The author's
faith is so thoroughly that of a Christian "pure and
simple," his love of God is so intense, his admiration
of the love and mercy of God is so fresh, and ever
present, that it not only attracts but overpowers, at
least for a moment, every reader in whose soul is left
the slightest idea of religion.

Its influence was, and is, in making a revival of
religion in the heart of the reader ; in laying the
sound foundation of every real reformation ; in inter-
preting the word of the Lord : "Come unto me all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest" (Matthew XI: 28) ; in bringing back the rest-
less human soul face to face with its heavenly Father,
and with the Christ Consolator. The immense con-
sequences of the influence of the Imitation on the re-
ligious movement of the I5th and the i6th centuries
can hardly be overestimated. Without talking about
the outward form and government of the Church, it
lays full stress on inner, personal piety and devotion.
If the outward form of Church government proves

158 THOMAS A KEMPIS

to be an obstacle to that inward piety, the nations
soon will change that outward Church. In that way
Thomas a Kempis became one of the great precursors
of Luther, Calvin and Knox.

The spiritual and literary movement, in the midst
of which the author lived from his twelfth year till
his death, was that of the "brethren of common life"
in the Netherlands during the I5th century. Gerard
Groot of Deventer, and Florentius Radewyn, are the
founders of this Brotherhood of Common Life. From
the Southern Netherlands, from Johannes Ruysbroek
at Groenendaal, near Brussels, this revival, this re-
formation of inner Christian life came to the northern
Provinces. Two years after the death of Gerard
Groot, in the year 1386, the monastery of Agneten-
berg, near Windeshiem, four miles to the southeast
of Zwolle, was founded by this Brotherhood, and it
was in this monastery that Thomas a Kempis spent
the greater part of his life and there he wrote his
Imitation of Christ. The Congregation of Common
Life, founded by Gerard Groot and Florentius
Radewyn, became a famous center of learning and
education in the midst of the corruption of the late
mediaeval time. "Strange and troubled were those
times, and fraught with scandal and confusion. Hu-
man ambition and the curses of wealth and worldli-
ness had eaten their way, so far as God permitted,
in the very fold of Christ. Prosperity had done its
worst. What persecution had failed to do, luxury
bade fair to accomplish. To a considerable extent
the morals of the people and even of the clergy, from
the highest to the lowest, were deeply corrupted, and
the church appeared in urgent danger." 1 In such a
time, the thoughts that filled the minds of Gerard

1 F. R. Cruise, Thomas a Kempis, London, 1887, p. 33.

THOMAS A KEMPIS 159

Groot and Florentius Radewyn, wh,en they inaugu-
rated the Congregation of Common Life, were as fol-
lows: "In the first place, it was designed that its
members should endeavor, from their hearts, to return
to the life of the early Christians; to such a life as
the Apostles led when following our Lord Jesus
Christ on earth, and which they and their companions
carried out after His ascent into heaven. All were
to live in common, to work for the general good, to
hold their worldly possessions in community, and to
spend their leisure hours in prayer and works of
charity." 1

In this community, Thomas a Kempis entered as
a boy of twelve years, and stayed there till he died at
the age of ninety-one. He was born at Kempen, near
Cologne in Germany, not far from the borderline be-
tween the Netherlands and Germany, and in one of
those provinces where was spoken the same low Ger-
man dialect which was the language of the Dutch
Provinces along the border of Germany. So he was
by his birth what we should call in America "Penn-
sylvania Dutch." But in his twelfth year, he left
Germany, and stayed the remaining seventy-eight
years in the Netherlands, and as far as his education,
the spirit of his works, and of his life is concerned,
he was a son of the Brethren of Common Life in the
Netherlands.

1 Ibid, p. 64.

CHAPTER XVII
ELCKERLYC AND EVERYMAN

In the numerous morality-plays of the I4th and
1 5th centuries, the rising democracy celebrates one of
its great triumphs. Delivering themselves from the
bondage of the feu'dal system, and growing more civ-
ilized and better educated every day, notwithstanding
the hierarchic system of the church, the free citizens
of the powerful cities, especially in Flanders, self-
supporting, self-reliant and self-directing as they
were, began to develop their own literature and their
own art. Producing their own wealth, proud of their
own privileges, strengthening their own power in
their guilds, and in their cities, these children of the
rising democracy poured out their wonderfully fresh,
youthful energy in every department o'f human life.
Instead of the mystery-plays and the miracle-plays of
the mediaeval church, the free citizens asked for their
morality-plays, not to exclude their religious life but
to include their social life in the sphere of their lit-
erary education. "From a performance within the
church building it went on into the church yard or
the adjoining close or street, and so into the town at
large. The clerics still kept a hand in its purvey-
ance; but the rise of the town guilds gave it a new
character, a new relation to the current life, and a
larger equipment. The friendly rivalry between the
guilds and the craftsmen's pride in not being outdone
by other crafts, helped to stimulate the town-play till

160

"ELCKERLYC" AND "EVERYMAN' 9 161

at length the elaborate cycle was formed that began
with sunrise on a June morning and lasted until the
torch-bearers were called out at dark to stand at the
foot of the pageant." 1

Enormous is the number of morality-plays pro-
duced during those first centuries of the rising democ-
racy, at the dawn of modern history, and one of the
most famous among them is that of "Everyman," or,
as the original Dutch play is called, "Elckerlyc." The
full title is, "Den Spieghel der Salichhelt van Elck-
erlyc" (The mirror of salvation for every man).
This great and simple tragic masterpiece is called
"the noblest interlude of death, the religious imagina-
tion of the middle ages has given to the stage." 2
Maintaining the idea that moral and religious life are
inseparably connected, this play shows from the be-
ginning to the end its grand tendency and its sub-
lime character, as we read on the title page of the
English translation, "Here beginneth a treatise how
the High Father of Heaven sendeth Death to sum-
mon every creature to come and give account of their
lives in this world, and is in manner of a moral play."

The original Dutch play was probably written by
a monk, Pieter Dorland (1454-1507) at Diest, about
the year 1485, and for the first time printed about
the year 1495. In a competition between the guilds
of rhetoric at Antwerp in the year 1500, Elckerlyc
got the first prize. In 1536 it was translated into
Latin as "Homulus," and soon afterwards a German
bookprinter at Cologne published a German version
to which was given a Lutheran tendency. 3 Within
a very short time after its first appearance it was

1 Ernest Rhys, Poetry and the Drama, in Everyman's Library, In-
troduction, p. XIV.

2 Ibid, XV.

3 W. de Hoog, Studien, II, 22.

162 "ELCKERLYC" AND "EVERYMAN"

translated into English, and this became the reason
why among the philologists in the nineteenth century,
who studied the history of this play, the question
arose whether the Dutch or the English version was
the original. For several years it was a very spirited
controversy between the philologists in the Nether-
lands. Prof. Moltzer and later De Raef, Prof. Loge-
man, Pollard and Kalfr", maintained from the begin-
ning the priority of the Dutch play. But other men
of good fame, as Prof. Cozyn, Van Helten, Te Winkel
and De Hoog defended the priority of the English
version. At present the question can be considered
as decided. The elaborate researches of Prof. Loge-
man 1 of Ghent and the last studies on this subject
of Prof. J. M. Monly 2 and Prof. Francis A. Wood, 3
at the University of Chicago, have left no room for
any further doubt about the priority of the Dutch
play. According to Prof. Manly, the arguments of
Prof. Logeman in 1902 were "enough, indeed, in my
opinion, to settle the question of priority definitely
and finally," but "unfortunately, as it seems to me,
Professor Logeman, in his attempt at an entirely ob-
jective treatment, has buried his decisive arguments
under a mass of interesting, but indecisive and some-
times erroneous discussions ; and this is the reason
why his pamphlet was not recognized as containing
the final words on the subject." Although decided
by Prof. Logeman in 1902, the researches of Prof.
Wood on this question are entirely independent of
those of Logeman, for "the main evidence here pre-
sented is of a different character" from that of Prof.
Logeman, and the conclusion of Prof. Wood is as

1 H. Logeman, Elckerlyc, Everyman, De vraag naar de Prioriteit,
opnieuw onderzocht. Gand., 1902.

2 In Modern Philology, October, 1910.

3 In Modern Philology, October, 1910.

"ELGKERLYC" AND "EVERYMAN" 163

follows: "In conclusion it may be said that, though
Everyman in one or two instances may have improved
on the original, Elckerlyc, as a whole, is artistically
superior. With the exception of a very few passages
where the text is evidently corrupt, Elckerlyc is writ-
ten in fairly good language and meter. It is theolog-
ically correct and remarkably consistent and logical.
It must have been the product of a trained mind. On
the other hand, Everyman is faulty in language and
meter, wrong in theology, inapt in its biblical allu-
sions, full of inconsistencies, and betrays on every
page the hand of an unskilled workman who was not
even capable of making a good translation."

At this conclusion we are not surprised. If two
plays so much alike in subject and contents, in Eng-
lish and in Dutch, were written during the rQth cen-
tury, we should presume the Dutch to be probably
a translation from the English, or at least we should
not be surprised if this was proved to be the fact.
But at the end of the I5th century we feel inclined
in such cases to presume the priority of the Dutch,
in accordance with the general conditions of those
countries during that period of the world's history.
Exceptions to this general rule, of course, are pos-
sible, and do exist; but in this case we have only an-
other example of Holland's influence on English lit-
erature at the end of the I5th century, just the same
as in the case of Caxton. Not a Dutch Caxton
learned book printing in England, but an English-
man Caxton learned book printing in the Netherlands
to introduce it into England. In the same way, an
Englishman, although hardly able to do this work,
translated the famous masterpiece of Pieter Dorland
to introduce it into England.

CHAPTER XVIII
ON DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, 1467-1536

If there is any son of the Dutch nation whose
name is familiar to the English people, and whose
works have been read during four centuries by every-
body in the highest circles of English society, it is
Desiderius Erasmus. Not only because he had his
pupils among the sons of the English aristocracy, not
only because he was the intimate friend of Thomas
Moore, but because of his Christian humanism, his
high erudition and marvelous learning, his fine humor
and criticism, attacking every kind of corruption and
yet avoiding martyrdom, the entertaining style of his
letters and books this altogether has given to Eras-
mus that popularity among the higher classes of Eng-
lish society, which even after four hundred years has
never ceased to accompany his familiar name. The
young English nobleman, Lord Mount joy, knew what
he did, when, in the year 1497, he invited Erasmus,
his tutor in Paris, to England, in order to bless his
friends and his country with the wonderful learning
and with the entertaining conversation of this broad-
minded scholar, whose amiable humor and universal
criticism, perhaps in no country was needed and ap-
preciated as much as in England at the end of the
1 5th century.

The influence of Erasmus was a European one.
His life was an international life : his works were
printed and read in nearly every country, and his

164

DESIDERWS ERASMUS 165

name was known even in the remotest corners of
Christianity. And yet, his relation to England is a
peculiar one, neither to be exaggerated nor to be un-
derestimated.

Born at Rotterdam in the year 1467, he was edu-
cated in the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands
till the twenty-seventh year of his life. Then there
follow twenty years (1494-1519) in which we find
him in France, in the Southern Netherlands (the only
country where he had for years his own house at
Louvain), in England, and in Italy. And finally the
third period of his life (1519-1536) in which he set-
tled at Basel as editor in connection with the Froben-
press till the death of his friend Froben, after which
he retired to Freiburg in Breisgau, to stay there for
seven years. In 1535 he returned to Basel, where he
died the next year.

It was during the second period of his life (1497-
1519) that he visited England, according to one of
his biographers, Drummond, 1 four times ; according
to Nichols, 2 the editor of a part of his letters, six
times. According to his correspondence, as published
by Nichols, Erasmus was in England, first, from May,
1499, to January, 1500 (six months) ; second, from
April, 1505, to June, 1506 (fourteen months) ; third,
from July, 1509, to July, 1514 (five years) ; fourth,
from March, 1515, to June, 1515 (three months) ;
fifth, in August, 1516; sixth, in April, 1517; alto-
gether nearly seven years, which was a tenth part of
his whole life.

His personal influence with the most learned men
of all Europe is evident from his letters published as

1 R. B. Drummond, Erasmus. His Life and Character. 2 vols.
London, 1873.

2 Francis Morgan Nichols, The Epistles of Erasmus, from his earliest
letters to his fifty-first year. English translations, 2 vols. London, 1904.

1G6 DESIDERIVS ERASMUS

Vols. IV and V of the edition of Erasmus' works in
ten volumes in 1703 at Ley den, a part of which now
have been translated and published by Nichols in two
volumes. In the personal influence of Erasmus, Eng-
land had a good share, since his most intimate friend
was Thomas More (1478-1535) whom he himself
called "a friend dearer to me than all besides." It
was Thomas More who advised Erasmus to write his
"Praise of Folly," and it is said that Erasmus wrote
this famous book from his note-book in one week
at the house of More. To stay in the home of More,
in the midst of this delightful family, where the old-
est daughter, Margaret they called her "Mek"
was, for instance, so well educated that she knew the
Greek and the Latin languages very well, must have
been for Erasmus very pleasant and interesting. Some
of the best information about Thomas More we have
from Erasmus. He tells us that More published his
"Utopia" to point out the circumstances which dimin-
ish the happiness of states in general, but the British
he chiefly had in view, the constitution of which he
knows and understands thoroughly. The second book
had been written some time during his leisure he
afterwards, as occasion served, wrote the first off-
hand. Hence there is some inequality of style." 1
Erasmus himself took 'care of the printing of More's
Utopia. The close connection of Erasmus with More,
with Colet, with the Universities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge, and with many other prominent men in Eng-
land, have made his life most interesting for the
study of English history. His longest abode in Eng-
land, 1509-1514, was at the time when Henry VIII

1 See Retrospective Review, Vol. V, 1822, p. 257, article on the
Letters of Erasmus. In the edition of 1703 this quotation is to be found
in an elaborate letter of Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten on Thomas
More, dated, Antwerp, July 23, 1519. Vol. Ill, p. 472-477.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS 167

came to the throne, and began to act as a pro-
tector of sciences and arts. How little could Erasmus
imagine at that time that twenty-five years later, in
1535, the message would reach him that his dearest
friend, More, was put to death by the same monarch,
and his head exposed on London bridge. Erasmus'
personal influence on More, who was eleven years his
junior, and on all the learned men in England with
whom he came in contact, can hardly be overesti-
mated. He was to them a living dictionary for all
kinds of civilization and learning which existed in
the 'great centers of the European continent, a civili-
zation which at that time was in many respects ahead
of that in England. From his letters we know how
he gave advice about nearly everything. He even
gave them advice how to get rid of their manifold
diseases, such as the plague, by cleaning their houses
and building them in a more sanitary way. This ad-
vice, given to the physician of Cardinal Wolsey, is
for us the more remarkable because he describes in it
the condition of the houses in which the upper classes
in England lived at that time, and the more trust-
worthy because he wrote this to a man who knew
all about it. 1 The editor of the Retrospective Review,
in Vol. V, 1822, p. 250, gives a translation of this
letter, and probably because he did not like this de-
scription of the English houses translated it incor-
rectly. Erasmus tells among other things that the
floors of the houses generally were of clay and covered
with rushes, which were so seldom renewed that the
covering sometimes remained twenty years, conceal-

1 This letter is to be found in Tom., Ill, p. 1815, as Epistola 432 of
the Appendix, Ed., Leyden, 1703. This edition of Erasmus' works is in
ip volumes, of which vols. Ill and IV contain the correspondence
giving at first 1298 letters from and to Erasmus, and furthermore an
Appendix containing 517 letters. At the end we find a careful index of
names and one of subjects.

168 DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

ing beneath a mass of all descriptions of filth and
other abominations not fit to mention. In translating
this part, the poor zealot of English patriotism ren-
ders in this way: "The streets are generally cov-
ered," etc., which, of course, gives no sense at all in
this connection. 1 If used in such a way, even the best
sources for the truth of history lose their value. In
connection with this description, and advice of Eras-
mus, F. M. Nichols, in his translation of a part of
Erasmus' letters says: "And the accounts published
in the abstracts of state papers show with how little
comfort the highest personages were compelled to be
content within royal palaces. A pallet for my lord
marquis' bed and rushes for my lord's chamber are
supplemented with an ounce of clover to make per-
fume to overcome the evil odors. We may imagine
how my lord's numerous gentlemen and servants were
lodged." 2

Quite another advice than that to clean the houses,
and to build them in a more sanitary way, was that
which Erasmus gave to his friend, Faustus Andreli-
nus, poet laureate, who lived in France for his health,
and whom Erasmus advised to come to England for
a reason which we hardly should expect from a man
who remained a bachelor for all his life. At that
time Erasmus himself was only thirty-two years of
age, and he himself was for the first time in England.
Invited by his pupil, Lord Mount joy, it seems that he
had a very good time, and so he wrote to his friend :
"If you knew well the advantages of Britain, truly
you would hasten hither with wings to your feet, and

1 Erasmus wrote literally this: "Turn sola fere strata sunt argilla,
turn scirpis palustribus, qui subinde sic renovantur, ut fundamentum
maneat aliquoties annos viginti, sub se fovens sputa, vomitus, mictum
canum et huminum, projectam cervisiam, et piscium reliquias, aliasque
sordes non nominanda." Appendix Epistola, 432, p. 1815. Opera, Tomus,
III, ed. 1703. Leyden.

2 F. M. Nichols, Epistles of Erasmus, II, p. 44.

AVAGO- ERASMJ-ROTERODA

AM AR ALBERTO DVREROAD j
VIVA AY- EFFiGiEAVDELINlATA-1

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS.
Kopergravure naar en dooi Albert Diirer

DESIDERWS ERASMUS 169

if your gout would not permit, you would wish you
possessed the art of Daedalus. For just to touch on
one thing out of many, here there are lasses with
heavenly faces, kind, obliging; and you would far
prefer them to all your muses. There is, besides, a
practice never to be sufficiently commended. If you
go to any place, you are received with a kiss by all;
if you depart on a journey you are dismissed with a
kiss; you return, kisses are exchanged; they come to
visit you, a kiss the first thing; they leave you, you
kiss them all round ; do they meet you anywhere ?
kisses in abundance lastly, wherever you move,
there is nothing but kisses. And if you, Faustus, had
but once tasted them, how soft they are, how fra-
grant, on my honour you would wish not to reside
here for ten years only, but to take up your abode in
England for life." 1 Hundreds are the subjects treated
in the letters of Erasmus showing the abundance of
his knowledge, and the most interesting way he uses
it. It is a delight just to look through the beautiful
index of subjects in the edition of 1703 of Erasmus'
works and the man who made that index must have
known more about Erasmus than most of his biogra-
phers. From his correspondence we may deduce the
character of his conversation, and it is clear that his
personal influence, by his letters as well as by his
conversation, must have been remarkable.

Not less than his personal influence was that of
his writings. This is evident to everybody who looks
at the many editions of his most famous books, as the
Adages, the Praise of Folly and the Colloquies. In
the bibliography of Erasmus, called Bibliotheca Eras-
miana, published in seven volumes by the University
of Ghent, there are mentioned 258 editions of the

1 Epistola, 65. p. 55. Opera Tom., Ill, Ed. 1703. The translation of
this letter is in Retrospective Revieiv, vol. V, p. 251.

170 DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

Adages and of parts of it, 247 editions of the Praise
of Folly and 483 editions of the Colloquies and of
parts of it. Many of these editions are, of course, in
the original Latin, in which Erasmus wrote them,
and in which they were spread all over Europe. But
translations soon followed, and the 247 editions of
the Praise of Folly are divided as follows : Latin 99,
French 55, Dutch 32, English 22, German 21, Italian
14, Spanish i, Swedish I, Danish i, Hungarian i.
The first Latin edition is of the year 1511 at Paris;
the first English of 1549; the first Dutch of 1560; the
first German of 1520, and the first French of 1520.

The first edition of the Adages is of the year
1500 at Paris; the first English translation of 1539
at London; the first German of 1539; the first Dutch
of 1556. The first edition contained only 400
proverbs, some of the later editions more than 4,000.

The first edition of the Colloquies is of the year
1518 at Basel, but the translations of this work fol-
lowed much later; the first of the 61 French editions
is of the year 1720; the first of the 16 Dutch ones of
1610; the first of the 38 German ones of 1683; the
first of the 48 English ones of 1671 ; two Greek
editions were of the years 1566 and 1567 at Ant-
werp; one in Russian and Dutch of the year 1716;
the first of the seven Italian editions is of 1545; the
first of the seven Spanish ones of 1529 at Sevilla.

These lists of editions tell more than volumes
about Erasmus' influence.

And even some of the much less known works of
Erasmus, as for instance his Apophthegmata, or as
they are called in English the "Apophtegmes, that
is to saie prompte, quicke, wittie and sentencious
saiynges of certain emperours, kynges, capitaines, phi-
losophers" have been published in a great number of

DESIDERWS ERASMUS 171

editions. The bibliography of Erasmus, referred to
above, mentions 98 editions of the Apophtegmes; 68
in Latin, of which the first is in the year 1531 ; 4 in
English, of which the first is in 1542; 22 in French,
of which the first is in 1539; one in Italian, in 1546;
two in Spanish, both in 1549; and one in Dutch in the
year 1672.

To investigate the reasons why these works were
translated so many years earlier in one country than
in another would take too long a time for the present
purpose. It is also a difficult question why so many
more editions appeared in one country than in an-
other. In the investigation of these questions there
is still room, for some doctoral theses. In Holland,
for instance, they did not need translations because
the majority of the readers of Erasmus' works pre-
ferred the Latin original.

His influence on England, and consequently on the
English literature by his conversation and his corre-
spondence, as well as by his works, has been a three-
fold one : First, in bringing the best educated circles
in England more closely into contact with the civili-
zation of the continent; secondly, by fostering the
study of the Roman and Greek literature with all its
treasures of human knowledge and wisdom of life ;
and in the third place, by his criticism, in humor and
in satire, of the corruption, the ignorance and the
stupidity of the kings and nobles, clergymen and
monks of his time.

This influence forms an antithesis to that of
Thomas a Kempis, and the mystic movement of which
he was the representative, because Erasmus, although
a pious and true Christian, laid more stress on higher
intellectual education than on quiet devotion.

And, finally, his influence was quite another than

172 DESIDERWS ERASMUS

that of Luther, Calvin and Knox, because he looked
at the corruption and the depravity of his time with
another eye than the great Reformers. The Reform-
ers looked at corruption as did the prophets and
Apostles from the guilty side of sin and depravity;
it aroused their indignation ; they preached conver-
sion, and humiliation before God ; and their theme
was the duty of all creatures to glorify God. Erasmus
looked at corruption and depravity from the side
of its stupidity, its helplessness, its natural conse-
quences, and it aroused his humor and his satire ; his
preaching was against the foolishness of sin ; and his
aim was more at morality than at religion ; more at
a humanistic reform than at a religious reformation.
His eye was more on the innumerable relations be-
tween man and man in human society, than on the
depths of the human heart, facing his relation to
Almighty God.

How far he introduced his manifold knowledge of
Greece and Rome, his humor and his satire into Eng-
lish literature, we can only presume or conjecture in
a general way, and the investigation of this question
we must leave to monographs on the subject, for
which there is abundant room.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOK ON AMERICA A TRANSLA-
TION FROM THE DUTCH

More than one printer at Antwerp in the begin-
ning of the i6th century published English books,
and found a market in England, where book printing
still was in the period of its first beginning. We
know, for instance, that Gerard Leeu, who first had a
printing office at Gonda, later came to Antwerp and
printed some English books, and that the well-known
printer, Jan van Doesburgh, at Antwerp, printed
"The fifteen Tokens" in 1505; "A Gest of Robin
Hode" in 1515; "The life of Virgilius" in 1520, and
"The Story of Mary van Nymwegen" in 1520.

One of the pupils of this Jan van Doesburgh was
Laurent Andrewe, who, after having', like Caxton,
learned book printing in the Netherlands, settled in
the year 1527 at London. During his abode in the
Netherlands he had learned the Dutch language, and
so he was able to translate some books from the
Dutch into the English, translations which he then
printed and published. So he published, as a transla-
tion from the Dutch, a little book entitled : "The Val-
uation of Gold and Silver," and another entitled:
"The Art and Craft to know well to die." But the
best known of all these translations is that of the
Dutch book: "Die Reise van Lissabone," published in
1508, which he translated in 1520 and published with

173

174 FIRST ENGLISH BOOK ON AMERICA

the title : "Of the New Landes." This was the first
English book on America. 1

This simple fact would be, of course, more curi-
ous than important, if it stood alone. But it does not
stand alone. It is just one of the single stones which
together form a building. A good architect does not
fix his eyes on only one stone at a time, afterwards
on another, and then on a third and a fourth, but his
mind takes them all together, connected and well-
placed, so as to form a building in which every one
of them has its proper place. So everybody who is
not blinded by ignorance and prejudice against the
Netherlands, and who honestly seeks the truth of his-
tory in order to have, in this case, the right idea of
Holland's influence on English language and Litera-
ture, will do as the good architect does. He takes
all the facts together and in connection with each
other, and then he is able to see what he was looking
for. He sees something which touches the world's
history, taking, as a rule, its course from East to
West, and so from the Netherlands to England,
especially in those centuries, in which from 1400 till
1700, we can say that the headquarters of the World's
History are in the Low Countries. And once arrived
at that point of view, he understands the story of the
traveller who took with him from a foreign country
one single stone of an old building, famous in history.
To him that one stone spoke more than volumes. The
case is same with the one single fact that the first Eng-
lish book on America was a translation from the Dutch.
How was that possible? There must be something
behind that isolated fact. Yes, there is behind that
fact the earlier development, and the superior civili-

De Hoog, Studien, II, 34.

FIRST ENGLISH BOOK ON AMERICA 175

zation in the Netherlands during the I5th and i6th
centuries. A part of the world's history, and a very
interesting part, the beginning of modern history and
of nearly all the good ideas of our modern times, is
behind this simple fact.

CHAPTER XX

DUTCH LEGENDS IN ENGLAND

Although in the middle ages legends were very
numerous in the Netherlands, yet in the last part of
the middle ages and in the beginning of modern his-
tory, the time in which Holland played its great part
in the world's history, legends lost their general in-
terest. The mass of the people did not look at
legends from their literary side, but turned away from
them as from popish superstitions. The great prob-
lems of reform in church, in state and in society got
hold of the heart and of the intellect. The struggle
for liberty from feudal oppression and from ecclesias-
tical persecution, in which so many thousands sac-
rificed their lives, made them lose sympathy for the
legendary stories of the mediaeval church and only
in those parts of the country where Catholicism re-
mained intact and undisputed did legends retain their
popularity.

Yet, with the "popish superstitions" the funda-
mental dogmas of Christianity were not abandoned,
but rather restored to their full power. The sturdy
men and women of the sixteenth century believed in
the fall of man, in the perverseness of human nature,
in the reality of the devil, and in a world of evil spir-
its who influenced human affairs, in regeneration and
conversion by confession of sin, and in reconciliation
with their heavenly Father by the sufferings and
death of Christ. Yet the imagination of the people

176

DUTCH LEGENDS IN ENGLAND 177

produced some new legends of a peculiar character,
although these few legends originated in the Roman
Catholic parts of the country, and showed some
Catholic ideas. We have at least one, which was
printed in several editions, of which that of 1608 was
entitled: "Een schoone Historic ende een zeer won-
derlyke ende waerachtige geschiedenis van Marike
van Nimwegen, hoe zy meer dan seven jaren met den
Duyvel woonde en leefde" (A beautiful story and
very miraculous and true narrative of Mary of Nim-
wegen; how she lived with the Devil for more than
seven years).

As early as the year 1520, after one of the first
Dutch editions, an English translation of this legend
was printed by Jan van Doesburgh at Antwerp.

The heroine of this story is Mary, the niece of a
priest, who once sent her to Nimwegen to shop. Sur-
prised by the approach of evening, she tried to stay
over night with her aunt. But this termagant woman
refused to let her stay, and chased her out of her
house. In the middle of the night Mary was seduced
by the Devil Moenen (Daemon), who promised to
teach her the seven arts. With him she travelled to
Bois la Due and Antwerp and lived for seven years
a life of vice. Finally she repented, and tried to flee
from the Devil, but he grasped her, took her with
him high in the air, and threw her down on the earth,
but the holy Virgin saved her life. She was received
by her uncle, the priest, and died after many deeds
of repentance in a monastery at Mastricht. 1

It is quite possible that more such stories writ-
ten in the Netherlands, might have been translated
into English, and so have become part of English lit-
erature. Further investigation might reve'al new re-
lationships.

i W. de Hoog, Studien, II, 34.
12

CHAPTER XXI

JEST BOOKS AND ANECDOTES (FOOL-LITERATURE)
HOWLEGLASS (ULENSPIEGEL)

Jest books and anecdotes have played a remark-
able part in the literature of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. In his "Studies on the literary rela-
tions between England and Germany," Charles H.
Herford has a very interesting chapter on the sub-
ject. In this chapter he shows how the stimulus for
this "fool-literature" of jests and anecdotes came from
the Italian Renaissance; how from Italy this move-
ment went to Germany, from Germany to the Nether-
lands, and how the most famous jest books were
translated from the Dutch into French as well as
into English, and finally how in England and Scot-
land this kind of book was looked at.

The humanistic movement of the Renaissance
opened not only the stores of all the wit and humor,
the satires, the jests and the anecdotes of the Greek
and Roman literature, but was as well the stimulus
for literary men in western Europe to enrich their
literature with the stories that lived among the peo-
ple and with the jokes and anecdotes that were retold
from generation to generation.

During the late mediaeval time certain typical fig-
ures, often a priest or a monk, became the protagonists
of these anecdotes. In the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, when democracy arose, when free
cities grew rapidly in population and in wealth, and

178

JEST BOOKS AND ANECDOTES 179

when all kind's of industry were rising, it was espe-
cially the class distinction which became the inex-
haustible source of jests and anecdotes. A school
teacher, a village preacher, a tailor, an innkeeper, a
shoemaker or a blacksmith, a peasant, a miller or a
barber, were alternately made the butts of popular
wit, while the hero of many stories of that kind was
often one or the other popular citizen who had got
some reputation for wit amongst his fellow citizens.
Among those personalities, around whose names have
been collected a large number of jokes and anecdotes,
written down in special books by which they got an
immortality of their own, there are in Germany, for
instance, Amis, the Kalemberger, Rausch, Markoff
and Ulenspiegel, especially the last.

"Amis is the German counterpart of the Abbot
of Canterbury ; the Kalemberger is the facetious parish
priest, who outwits his parishioners, makes game of
his bishop, and extracts unintended bounties from his
patron ; Rausch, the young novice in the convent, who
lays traps for the friar and the cook; Markhoff, the
foul but witty boor, who paralyzes the wisdom of
Solomon with keen rejoinders, and his modesty with
the tricks of an unclean animal ; Ulenspiegcl, the
knavish peasant who retaliates on the haughty citi-
zens with strokes in which the literature of the
"Swank" probably reaches its acme of fatuous inso-
lence. In these homely, yet vivid figures, and par-
ticularly in Ulenspiegel, the best known and the most
purely national of all, the low life of the later Middle
Ages in Germany lives before us; we hurry to and
fro between tavern and workshop, highway and mar-
ket-place, stable and scullery. Every line of Ulen-
spiegel vividly records the essential qualities of the
society which made a hero of him ; its gross appe-

180 JEST BOOKS AND ANECDOTES

tites, its intellectual insensibility, its phlegmatic good
humour, its boisterous delight in all forms of physical
energy and physical prowess, its inexhaustible inter-
est in the daily events of the bodily life, and the
stoutness of nerve which permitted it to find up-
roarous enjoyment in mere foulness of stench. The
whole interest of Ulenspiegel for us is social, not lit-
erary ; all his jests together would scarcely yield a
grain of Attic salt; we could not read the book but
for the light which it throws upon a society which
could and did." 1

"The first extant versions of Ulenspiegel, says
Herford, take us to Strassburg, where in 1515 the
earliest known editions, and in 1519 that till recently
regarded as such and attributed to Murner, were pub-
lished. From Strassburg it passed to Angsburg
(ed. 1540) and Erfurt (ed. 1532-38) and Northwards
to Cologne (Servais Kruffter's undated edition),
thence to Antwerp (undated ed. 1520-30) and from
Antwerp to Paris and London." 2

"The Antwerp edition a canto containing about
one-half the stories of the original was the basis of
the French version of 1532 and its successors, and of
the English version, printed probably between 1548
and 1560 by William Copland." 3 This English ver-
sion, translated from the Dutch, was entitled ''Howie-
glass Here beginneth a merye jest of a man called
Howleglass, and of many marvelous thinges and jestes
that he did in his lyffe."

It was therefore not the German but the Dutch
Ulenspiegel which was introduced into England, and
this Dutch version differed very much from the Ger-

1 Charles H. Herford, Studies in the literary relations of England
and Germany, Cambridge, 1886.

2 Ibid, 285.

3 Ibid.

JEST BOOKS AND ANECDOTES 181

man, as far as many things were left out and one new
chapter brought in, viz., "How Howleglass answered
the man who asked him about the way." 1 ' Besides
this, the English version contained a chapter with
verses entitled "How Howleglass came to a scholar
to make verses with hym to the use of reason." 2

Neither in England nor in Scotland did the Ulen-
spiegel, under his new name of Howleglass, find sym-
pathy among the strong religious people of the
Protestants of that time. But at least in England,
under the reign of the not very religious Queen Eliz-
abeth, and under the merry-making Stuarts, existed
all the time a strong party, which was humanistic
rather than religious, in the eyes of which Howleglass
found more favor, so that, as Herford says, he "gravi-
tated at once to the class of native jesters," lost all
foreign associations, and became an inseparable mem-
ber of the Brotherhood of Scogins and Skeletons,
Robin Goodfellows and Robin Hoods, and his history
took its place in the library of Captain Cox, etc. 3 On
the contrary, in Scotland the name of Howleglass
"became a taunt, if not an insult, and was intruded
into the most acrid region of the polemical vocabu-
lary." 4 The land of John Knox seemed not to be the
best country for Howleglass.

1 In Dutch, Hoe UlcnspiegJiel an-worde eenen man die nae den week
vraghcde." Herford, p. 286.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid, 288.

4 Ibid, 287.

CHAPTER XXII
HADRIANUS JUNIUS, 1511-1575

"Next to Erasmus, the most learned man in
Europe," that is what the well known philologist,
Lipsius of Leyden, said about Hadrianus Junius.
Another, viz., Lucas Fruterius, called him "seterni
felix successor Erasmi" (the happy successor of the
immortal Erasmus), and several others made a com-
parison between Junius and the great scholar of Rot-
terdam. Andj indeed, there is some reason for com-
paring these two great humanists of European fame.
They had in common (i) the same devotion to the
revival of Greek and Roman literature, (2) the same
attitude towards the religious movement of their time
in keeping themselves outside of the terrible struggle,
and (3) the same international life and international
significance in their work.

We know that Erasmus spent about seven years
in England. Junius as well strangely enough lived
about seven years in England, and dedicated some of
his works successively to King Edward VI, Queen
"Bloody Mary" and Queen Elizabeth. Was Erasmus
invited to England by one of his pupils, the young
Lord Mount joy, Junius was invited to Britain by
Bonerus, the Bishop of London. To Erasmus were
offered lucrative positions by several European
sovereigns and Prelates ; Junius was tutor to the son
of King Frederic II of Denmark; the University of
Rostock offered him a professorship, and the King
of Poland, as well as the King of Hungary, offered
him lucrative positions. Erasmus published numerous

182

['{!i$WOTpfp'i!i,,
_.__.__ studio, fr
nuttc , fnrrzUs readita

HADRIANUS JUNIUS 183

works to foster the revival of classic literature;
Junius' list of publications, among which we find a
great number of Greek and Latin authors, amounts
to the number of forty-two. A young man of twenty-
five years at the time when Erasmus died, the fame
of this great compatriot must have been a stimulus
for Junius to follow in his steps.' And although
Junius studied philosophy and medicine at the uni-
versity, and later, in order to make a living, always
practiced as a physician, yet he devoted the greater
part of his life to the study of languages and litera-
ture; all his books are on philological subjects; and
his European fame is that of a philologist. It often
happens in history that a man, after the short years
of his life in the University gets his degree in one
branch of knowledge, and later produces his best
works in another branch. The great philologist,
Franciscus Junius, the father of comparative philology
(not a relative of Hadrianus Junius), took his degree
in theology, and in our own time the Rev. W. W.
Skeat, although a clergyman, gave us the great ety-
mological dictionary of the English language. For the
real scholar it means little how he is labelled at the end
of his short college life. What distinguished Eras-
mus from Junius was ( i ) that none of the writings of
Junius, because of the special character of his work,
became as popular as the Praise of Folly and the
Colloquies, (2) that in Erasmus we find a decidedly
Christian humanism, while in Junius the humanist
stands so much in the foreground that the Christian
nearly disappears altogether.

Hadrianus Junius, whose original Dutch name was
Adriaen de Jongh, was born in the year 1511 at Hoorn,
one of the old cities on the Zuyder Sea, studied at
the Latin school at Haarlem, and later at the Uni-

184 HADRIANUS JUNWS

versity of Louvain. At Lotivain he studied philoso-
phy and medicine, and after two years he went to
Germany and later to Italy, where in the year 1540,
at Bologna, he got the degree of Doctor of Philoso-
phy and Doctor of Medicine. From Italy he went to
Paris to take the courses of some famous professors
in medicine.

About the year 1543 the exact date is unknown
the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, invited him
to cross the Channel and to live in England. Soon
afterwards Junius became the family physician of the
Duke of Norfolk at Kenninghall, near Norwich, and
at the same time the tutor of the Duke's son. In
1547, however, his protector fell into disgrace with
King Henry VIII, and was beheaded, and Junius lost
not only his office but also the property, including
books and manuscripts, which he had with him. After
this disaster, he became the physician of a noble lady,
and we know that at that time he was much esteemed
both as a physician and as a scholar, for he received
several calls. To the new King, Edward VI (1557-
1553), he dedicated his Lexicon Grccco-Latinum, and
this lexicon was one of Junius' most important works,
which made his name immortal in the field of lexicog-
raphy. He added more than six thousand words to
the best Greek dictionary existing at that time. What
that meant for the study and the fostering of Greek
literature everybody can easily understand. But now
his heart was longing for his native country, and after
an abode of more than six years in England, he went
back to Holland, probably in the year 1550. Four
years later we find him again in England, under the
reign of Bloody Mary (1553-1558), and after this
queen married Philip II of Spain, Junius wrote a
poem entitled "Philip pels sive EpithalaniiuM in

HADRIANUS JUNIUS 185

Philip pi ct Mar iff nnptias, which was printed at Lon-
don in 1554, and dedicated to Queen Mary and Philip.
Several years later in the year 1568, Junius was in
England for the third time, now dedicating one of
his works, entitled Eunapius Sardianus, printed at
Antwerp, to Queen Elizabeth (1550-1603).

The rest of his life Junius spent in the Nether-
lands, first as physician and as rector of the Latin
school at Haarlem, later as historiographer of the
States of Holland. In this capacity he wrote his
"Batavia," or a history of Holland and its cities. In
this book he gives his well-known narrative of the
invention of book printing by Koster at Haarlem, a
narrative which since that time has been one of the
arguments in favor of Koster and against Gutenberg
of Maintz as the inventor of printing.

During the siege of Haarlem in 1573, Junius was
present, but he fled in time to Delft to assist Prince
William, the Silent, as physician. Nearly all his
books and manuscripts, however, were destroyed by
the Spaniards after the surrender of Haarlem.

The next year, 1574, after the conquest of Mid-
delburg by the sea-beggars of the Prince, Junius, on
the recommendation of the Prince, was made physi-
cian of that city, but the next year, 1575, he died, and
was buried in the great church, where a monument
indicates the place of his grave.

A biography of Junius was written by P. Schel-
tema "Diatribe in Hadriani Junii vitam, ingeninm,
familiam, merita liter aria. Amsterdam, 1836. One
of the best articles on Junius is that of A. G. Hoff-
man in Ersch und Gruber. A list of the works of
Junius is given in the Dutch Biographical Dictionary
of Van der Aa, containing not less than forty-two
titles, all written in Latin. A great number of his

186 HADRIANUS JUNIUS

works are editions and commentaries of Greek and
Latin authors, among whom we find Seneca, Homer,
Juvenalis, Horatius, Virgilius, Martialis, Plautus and
Plinius. Very few of his works, except the "Batavia"
and the "Emblemata," were translated into Dutch.
The Emblems were translated also into French. One
of his most important works in the field of Lexicog-
raphy was his ^Nomenclator omnium rerum propria
nomina variis linguis explicata indicans." Antwerp,
1567. This work was often reprinted, and -in 1585,
in London, was published an English edition, with the
title "The Nomenclator or Remembrancer of Adrianus
Junius, Physician, divided in two tomes, containing
proper names and apt termes for all things under their
convenient titles, which within a few leaves do follow.
Written by the said Adr. Jun., in Latine, Greeke,
French and other foreign tongues, and now in Eng-
lish by John Higins with a full supplie of all such
words as the last enlarged edition afforded." 1

As a poet, he is known for several poems in Latin,
brought together long after his death in one volume,
as "Poematum liber primus," in 1598.

Continuing the work of Erasmus, he published
"Adagiorum ab Erasmo omissorum centuries octo cum
dimidia," Basel 1558; reprinted in 1598.

His influence in introducing the riches of Greek
and Roman literature into the national literature of
several countries, and in fostering the study of Greek
and Latin, has been appreciated by the best philologists
from his time till the present day. And not the least
part of that influence he exerted in England, where
during seven years the circles of the higher class at
London and at Norwich enjoyed the privilege of his
personal acquaintance and conversation.

1 The "Nomenclator" has been reprinted at least in ten editions:
in 1557. 1567, 1576, 1596 at Antwerp, in 1590 at Frankfort, in 1606 at
Paris, also a French translation in 1606, in 1611 and 1619 at Geneve, in
1671 at Bois le due, in 1585 at London.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH BIBLE PRINTED AT
ANTWERP, 1527-1535, AS A MISSIONARY WORK OF
THE DUTCH. MILES COVERDALE IN THE SERVICE
OF JACOB VAN METEREN.

The church of the Middle Ages did not give the
bible into the hands of every man. The rhymed-bible
of Jacob van Maerlant in the Dutch language, and
hundred years later the bible of Wicliff in English,
began a new movement, and the written copies of
these translations came into many hands, but into the
reach of the great mass of people the bible came first
after the invention of printing, when it was translated
and printed in English, Dutch, French, German and
other languages. Since that time the printed bible in
the vernacular of the people has had an influence on
the language and the literature of every Protestant
nation, which hardly can be overestimated. The
language, the expressions, the stories, the style of the
bible became part of the life and the thought of the
people, and got a place in the very heart of the
nations. The bible became an important element in
the development of language and the literature.
Therefore, the translation and printing of the bible
has been in the history of every nation an event of
importance to its language and its literature.

In the Netherlands, the first complete bible in the
Dutch language was that of Liesveld, printed at Ant-

187

188 FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH BIBLE

werp in the year 1526. Luther's bible in the German
language was completed and printed at first in 1534.
And the first English bible, commonly called the bible
of Coverdale, was translated and printed during the
years 1527-1535, and consequently published in 1535.

It was in the Netherlands that this first bible in the
English language was translated, printed and given
to the English nation. A wealthy merchant at Ant-
werp called Jacob van Meteren, the father of the
famous historian Immanuel van Meteren, came often
to London, and, being a zealous and pious Protestant,
wished to do something for the Kingdom of Christ
among the English people. Therefore, he took into
his service a learned Englishman by the name of Miles
Coverdale, who, at that time, happened to be at Ant-
werp, in order that Coverdale should translate the
bible into English. Van Meteren did not ask a. trans-
lation from the original Hebrew and Greek languages
of the Old and New Testament, for which work cer-
tainly Coverdale would not have been the right man,
but the originals from which he had to translate, and
which he could use, were the Dutch version, and the
Latin, called the Vulgate, and, furthermore, Jacob
van Meteren paid all the expenses for having the
whole work printed. His purpose in this expensive
work was a missionary one, as he says "tot groote
bevordering van het Rycke Christi in Engelandt" (to
the great fostering of the Kingdom of Christ in
England).

Before the publishing of this "bible of Coverdale,"
several parts of the bible had been printed, for
instance, in "The Golden Legend" of Caxton, and
some other parts, as the Pentateuch, and even the
New Testament of Tyndale, were printed in Germany,

FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH BIBLE 189

But as a complete English bible, this work of Van
Meteren, and Coverdale was the first. About this
story of Van Meteren we read in the Encyclopaedia
Brittannica, "Mr. Henry Stevens has pointed out that
in a biographical notice of Immanuel van Meteren, ap-
pended to his history of Belgium by Simon Ruytinck,
the latter states that Jacob van Meteren, the father of
Immanuel, had manifested great zeal in producing at
Antwerp a translation of the bible into English "for
the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ in Eng-
land, and for this purpose he employed a certain
learned scholar named Miles Coverdale." As Van
Meteren had been taught the art of printing in his
youth, it seems very probable that he exercised his
zeal in the matter by undertaking the cost of printing
the work as well as that of remunerating the trans-
lator. The woodcuts in Coverdale's bible, but not
the type, have been traced back to James Nicolson,
printer in St. Thomas' hospital in 1535, and Mr.
Stevens connects him with the book and with Van
Meteren in the following manner : "The London
book binders and stationers, finding the market filled
with foreign books, especially Testaments, made com-
plaint in 1533-34, and petitioned for relief; in conse-
quence of which a statute was passed compelling for-
eigners to sell their editions entire to some London
stationer, in sheets, so that the binders might not
suffer. This new law was to come into operation
about the beginning of 1535. In consequence of this
law, Jacob van Meteren, as his bible approached com-
pletion, was obliged to come to London to sell the
edition. We have reason to believe that he sold it
to James Nicolson of Southwark, who not only bought
the entire edition, but the woodcuts, and probably
the punches and type; but, if the latter, they were

190 FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH BIBLE

doubtless lost in transmission as they have never
turned up in any shape since. All the copies of the
Coverdale bible in the original condition, as far as
we know, have appeared in English binding, thus con-
firming this law of 1534. (Caxton Celebration Catal,
p. 88-89). I* ^ now evident that Coverdale refers
partly, at least to Jacob van Meteren when he says in
his dedication : "Trusting in His infinite goodness that
He would bring my simple and rude labour herein to
good effect, therefore, as the Holy Ghost moved other
men, to do the cost hereof, so was I boldened in God
to labour in the same." "The discovery of Ruytinck's
statement seems to show conclusively that Coverdale
completed "his translation, after Wolsey's fall, at the
cost of Van Meteren, and at Antwerp instead of Cam-
bridge." "The first of all printed English bibles is
a small folio volume measuring n^4 by 8 inches, and
bears the title: "Biblia, The Bible, that is, the Holy
Scripture -of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully
and truly translated out of Douche (Dutch) and
Latyn into Englyshe MDXXXV," with the texts 2.
Thes. iii-i, Col. iii-i6, Josh, i-8 underneath. The
colophon is: Prynted in the yeare of our Lord
MDXXXV, and fynished the fourth daye of October."
The title page was, however, for some reason can-
celled immediately, and only one perfect copy of it is
known. The new title page with the same date, 1535,
merely says: "faythfully translated into Englyshe,"
omitting the words "and truly" and "out of Douche
and Latyn." Encycl. Britt. in voce: English Bible.
The English publisher thought it unnecessary to
mention so exactly that this bible was translated from
the Dutch and the Latin, nor did he give a single
word to the real story of the translation. Appar-
ently he looked at the matter from the point of view
of a business man.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE EMBLEM BOOKS, VAN DER NOOT, ERASMUS,
HADRIANUS JUNIUS, WHITNEY, PLANTYN, JACOB
CATS.

The word "emblem," in Latin, "emblema," is from
the Greek verb, "emballein," to lay or throw in, and
so emblem means the representation of some idea,
thought or story; for instance, a crown is called the
emblem of royalty, the balance is the emblem of jus-
tice, a scepter the emblem of power.

Books containing nothing else but a number of
those emblems, illustrations, wood cuts or copper-
plates, with mottos at the head and an explanatory
poem underneath, became very popular in the six-
teenth century, and this is easily understood. The
Rennaissance brought the wisdom for life which was
found in the riches of Greek and Roman Literature,
not in a systematic and philosophical form the time
for a modern philosophy had not yet come, and the
philosophical system of the Reformation was too much
different from, and opposed to that of the classic
humanism but in the didactic form of adages,
proverbs, "dictes and sayings," or, however, they may
have been called. Caxton's first book, printed in Eng-
land, was the "dictes and sayinges;" Erasmus'
Adages, in the first edition containing only 800, grew
in the later editions to the number of 4,000; Hadri-
amus Junius, in his volume of Adages added to them
several hundreds not yet found in Erasmus.

As soon as the art of printing was advanced far
enough to reproduce illustrations ; painters and en-

191

192 THE EMBLEM-BOOKS

gravers, pupils of the schools of Marc Antonio,
Albrecht Durer, Lucas van Leyden, found a new field
for their art in producing pictures with which the
printers might illustrate proverbs and adages; poets
then wrote their explanations in verses, and so the
emblems were born. What case-books are for the law
student today, the emblem-books were for general
education, and especially for the development of wis-
dom in life, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The luxurious editions of the best
authors, illustrated with the best pictures, and to be
found in the family library of all wealthy people are
today what the emblem books were during the first
centuries of modern history. And those whose re-
fined taste and spiritual aristocracy disliked the vul-
garity of the Howleglass (Ulenspiegel) literature,
found their full satisfaction in the luxury of emblem
books. The preyailing life system of the nations in
Europe was still that of the Christian Church, and
this system was soon explained more clearly, more
logically, and more elaborately by the Reformers than
ever before. For the foundations of this system as
a whole all the reviving literature of Greece and Rome
was of little or no value. But for the common wisdom
of daily human life, the heathen literature of Rome
and Greece produced a richness of scattered and sep-
arate proverbs and devices, adages and practical les-
sons, parables and stories, which the great mass of
the rising democracy enj../~d immensely. Even
Theodore Beza, the intimate frend and successor of
Calvin, saw this blessing which there was in the wis-
dom of the old classic world raid published his 'Tor-
traits and Emblems" in accordance with what people
needed and enjoyed along that line for their social
life. Soon the emblem-literature got an illustrious

.VAN H. M.HEERN STATE!* VAN HOLLANT CVRAT.VAH LEYDS ACAJD.

id. ivaj, en u m&k-' v (M)af tck namadj '

K bin, is 'wvwtr- tvtr, ^tfwf G^fF^wt^

Excvorr

JACOB CATS.
Kopergravure dootl Michael Natalis naar P. Dubordieu.

THE EMBLEM-BOOKS 193

name all over Europe. "With Andreas Alciatus,"
says Green, 1 "in 1522, we may date the rise of the em-
blem-literature and its popularity ; with Paolo, Giovio,
Bocchius and Sambucus, its continuance ; with Jacob
Cats, its glory, that still shines and has lately been
renewed." 2

In England this emblem-literature was not less
popular than in the other parts of Europe, and, here
we find again the influence of Holland on English
literature. The first emblem-book in English was the
"Theatre of voluptuous worldlings," of Jan van Der
Noot, the Dutch nobleman, whose influence will be
treated more elaborately in connection with Spenser.
It seems that Henry Green, in his beautiful work on
Geffrey Whitney's "Choice of Emblemes," did not
know Van der Noot at all, probably because the ques-
tion Spenser- Van der Noot at that time was not yet
as prominent as in our present time. But other Eng-
lish authors, as for instance, Charles H. Herford, in
his Studies on the literary relations between Germany
and England (p. 369), recognizes as a mere matter of
fact that Van der Noot gave to England the first Eng-
lish emblem-book. 3 It was printed at London in the
year 1569.

One of the most famous English emblem-books,
however, is that of Geffrey Whitney, entitled "A
Choice of Emblemes" "and other devices for the moste
parte gathered out of sundrie writers Englished and
Moralized and divers newly devised," "Imprinted at
Leyden in the house of Christopher Plantyn, by
Francis Raphelengius, 1586."

This remarkable book, one of the most artistic

1 Henry Green, Whitney's Choice of Emblemes. A facsimile reprint
with explanations. London. Covell Reeve & Co., 1860.

2 Green alludes here to the English editions of Emblems of Cats,
in 1862.

3 Green, Whitney, p. 268. August Vermeulen, Leven en Werken
van Jonkheer Jan van der Noot. Antwerp, 1899, P- 47.

194 THE EMBLEM-BOOKS

examples of book printing during the sixteenth cen-
tury, combining its 248 wood cuts with the same num-
ber of devices and poems, has been reprinted in fac-
simile and provided with elaborate introductions and
explanations, by Henry Green, London, Lovell Reeve
& Co., 1866.

Little is known about the author of this splendid
work, as it lies before us in the beautiful edition of
Mr. Green, an edition which makes the name of
Mr. Green immortal in the history of literature.
But what we, after the researches of Mr. Green, know
about Geffrey Whitney, brings him and his work into
immediate contact with the Netherlands.

The work is dedicated to "the right honorable my
singular good Lord and Maister Robert Earle of
Leicester, etc., Lorde Lieutenant and Captaine Gen-
eral of her Majesties forces in the lowe countries."
It is "imprinted at Leyden in the house of Christo-
pher Plantyn, by Francis Raphelengius, 1585." The
press of Plantyn, at Leyden, was at that time one of
the most famous in the world, first at Antwerp, later
at Leyden. The "French historian, De Thou, on a
journey to Flanders and Holland, in 1576, visited the
workshops of Plantyn and saw twenty-seven presses
in action, although, as he remarks, this famous printer
was embarrassed in his affairs ; but carrying out his
well known motto, Labor et Constantia (work and
steadiness), he re-established his fortunes. The cata-
logue of Plantyn's publications compiled by M. M. A.
de Backer and Ch. Buelens gives the titles of 1030
works which had their origin from his types and
presses." 1 From the time when Christopher Plantyn
commenced his business at Antwerp, in 1555, until his
death at Leyden, in 1589, there issued from his press

1 Green, Whitney, p. 268.

THE EMBLEM-BOOKS 195

nearly thirty editions of the chief emblem-books of
the day, all executed with the utmost care, some pos-
sessing great beauty of execution and one or two
equal, if not superior, to any similar work of that
age. In considerable part it is due to the coopera-
tion of Christopher Plantyn and his son-in-law, Fran-
cis Raphelengius, that the poems of Geffrey Whitney
have been preserved in so splendid form. Of the 248
wood-cuts in Whitney's work, at least 225 were used
before by Plantyn in the emblem-books of Andreas
Alciatus the founder of the emblem-literature
Claude Paradin, John Sambucus, Hadrianus Junius
and Gabriel Faerni, all emblem-books published by
Plantyn before Whitney's "Choice of Emblemes' and
only twenty-three is the number of the "divers newly
devised." 1 Among the five sources of Whitney's work,
just mentioned, we see the name of Hadrianus Junius,
the famous Dutch humanist, whose emblem-book was
eight times reprinted by Plantyn, a book from which
Whitney derived twenty emblems. Some of the inti-
mate friends of Whitney are the Englishmen, Philip
Sydney and Edmund Spenser, as well as some of the
most learned Dutchmen. "A fast friend of Whitney,
Jan Douza, the elder, was the first who presided over
the newly- founded University at Leyden; another
friend, Bonaventura Vulcanius, was the Greek Pro-
fessor at the same time ; and Justus Lipsius for thir-
teen years, until 1590, filled the chair of history.
Raphelengius, too, by whom the "Choice of Em-
blemes" was imprinted, had taught Greek in Cam-
bridge when Whitney was a student, or shortly before,
and thus we have all the elements of the acquaintance
and friendship between our poet and several of the
eminent men by whom Leyden was adorned. 2

1 Ibid, p. 266.

2 Green, Ibid, Introduction, p. 1,1V.

196 THE EMBLEM-BOOKS

Jan Douza, Bonaventura Vulcanius, and Peter Col-
vins of Bruges, wrote poems on the Emblems of
Whitney. So we find in Whitney's life and in his
work one of the best links between the most learned
and literary men of England, and of the Netherlands,
during the last half of the sixteenth century.

If Van der Noot gave to England its first English
emblem-book, Whitney's Choice of Emblemes, prob-
ably one of the most beautiful in English Literature,
was written under the suggestions of his Dutch
friends and printed at the press of Plantyn. 1

Half a century later, another English Emblem-
book was published, mentioned by Green, 2 as Hey-
wood's Pleasant Dialogue, etc., extracted from Jacob
Catsius, 1637. Now Jacob Cats (1577-1660) was the
well-known and most popular poet of the Nether-
lands, about whose life and work there are articles
or chapters in any book on the history of Dutch Lit-
erature. During more than 150 years the poetical
works of 'Father Cats" were found in every Dutch
home, providing the Dutch families with that abun-
dance of wisdom of life for which this prince of didac-
tic poetry has an immortal fame. "Britain," says
Green, "can advance no early claims to originality in
the production of emblem-books, and scarcely im-
proved the works of this kind, which she touched upon
and translated, yet she took no inconsiderable interest
in emblem-literature; and during the century, begin-
ning with Whitney and ending with Arwaker if we
except Jacob Cats, who died in 1660 in his eighty-
third year, and who to this day is spoken of famil-
iarly yet affectionately in Holland as "Vader Cats"

1 About the life and works of Whitney see more elaborate treatment
in Green's edition of the Choice of Emblemes.

2 Green, Ibid, Introduction, p. XXII.

THE EMBLEM-BOOKS 197

our country may be said to have marched at least with
equal steps by the side of other European nations." 1
As far as Jacob Cats is concerned, Green says: "A
splendid tribute to his excellence has lately been sup-
plied by the publication of 'Moral Emblems from
Jacob Cats and Robert Farlie," London, 1862. "The
beautiful illustrations by John Leighton and the trans-
lation by the editor Richart Pigot, are contributions
in all respects worthy of emblem-art and deserve the
admiration of all lovers of the old proverbial philos-
ophy and literature." 2 During the eighteenth century
the Emblems of "father Cats" were so well known in
England that the famous painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
in his youth took delight in studying them. In the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica, article on Jacob Cats, we
read: "His book of Emblems was a great favorite
with Sir Joshua Reynolds in his childhood, being often
styled The Household Bible." Those emblems cer-
tainly must have inspired the young Reynolds with
love for pictures representing fine ideas and lessons,
and nobody knows how much they may have contrib-
uted to the wonderful inspiration which in later time
made a great painter out of the emblem-studying boy.
One more emblem-book, printed in the Netherlands
and later translated into English, is mentioned by
Green viz., Hugo Hermann's Pia desideria, Gemitus,
Vota, animae poenitentiae, etc. (Pious aspirations,
Groans, Vows, and Sighs of a penitent soul, etc.),
published at Antwerp in 1628 with wood cuts ; and
again in 1632 with Bolswert's beautiful copperplates.
It was Englished by Edmund Arwaker, M.A., in 1686,
and illustrated with forty-seven copperplates; but the
omissions and alterations of the original, render it
scarcely deserving the name of a translation. 3

1 Green, Introduction, p. XXII.

2 Ibid., XXIII.

3 Green, Introduction, XXII.

CHAPTER XXV

GEORGE GASCOIGNE His ABODE IN THE NETHERLANDS
AND His WORKS His "GLASSE OF GOVERNMENT"
AND THE LATIN SCHOOL-DRAMAS IN HOLLAND
MACROPEDIUS GNAPHAEUS.

It was during the winter of the years 1573-1574
that a tall English gentleman, whom his English
friends called "long George," lived in the little Dutch
city of Delft. The citizens of Delft called him "de
groene hopman" (the green captain), and for this
reason, in later time he alluded to himself as "the
green knight." 1 Prince William the Silent, at that
time had his residence at Delft, and the green captain
came especially thither to see the Prince, who received
him very kindly, although the citizens of Delft did
not trust the adventurous and strange Englishman,
who had received a letter from the camp of the enemy
at the Hague, written by a lady, with whom he appar-
ently stood in pretty intimate connection. But the
captain explained the matter to the satisfaction of the
Prince, and everything was all right.

That "green captain" was George Gascoigne, the
poet-soldier, a pioneer of Elizabethan literature, an im-
mediate precursor of Philip Sydney, Edmund Spenser
and Shakespeare, the later author of the first famous
English satire, "The Steelglass," of the beautiful ele-
gie, "The Complaint of Philomele" and of all those

1 See "The Fruite of Fetters with the Complaint of the greene
Knight," etc.

198

GEORGE GASCO1GNE 199

wonderful stories and love songs nowadays connected
with his name.

The reason why we find him at Delft as "the green
captain" is to be found partly in his unlucky educa-
tion, in his independent character, in his geniality, with
such an amount of self-reliance as seduced him to im-
prudence and dissipation, with the consequence that
his life seemed to be destined to become a failure, and
his great capacities likely not to be recognized, and
partly in the fame of the wealthy Netherlands with
their attractiveness for foreign Protestants who de-
sired to assist in the struggle for toleration and free-
dom of thought.

"He was born probably about 1535 of a good
Bedfordshire family and educated at Trinity College,
Cambridge" ; he left the University without a degree,
entered Gray's Inn one of the well-known Law
Schools at London in 1555, and represented the
county of Bedford in Parliament, 1557-1559. "His
youthful extravagances led to debt, disgrace and dis-
inheritance by his father, Sir John Gascoigne." 1 "In
the midst of his youth, he tells us, he determined to
abandone all vaine delightes and to return unto Greye's
Inne, there to undertake againe the studdie of the com-
mon Lawe." And after having paid his fines and per-
formed what was asked from him he was accepted.
"He took a further step towards reform by marrying
a rich widow, whose children by her first marriage
brought a suit in 1568 for the protection of their inter-
ests. The action seems to have been amicably settled,
and he remained on good terms with his stepson, Nich-
olas Breton, who was himself a poet of some note. But
it is to be feared that as a man of middle age Gascoigne
returned to the evil course of his youth, if we are to

1 The Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 228.

200 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

accept the evidence of his autobiographical poem, Dan
Barthelemew of Bathe." 1 In 1572 he was prevented
from taking his seat in Parliament in consequence of a
petition in which he was charged with all kinds of
crooked things. The obvious intention of the petition
was to prevent Gascoigne from pleading privilege
against his creditors, and securing immunity from
arrest." 2 About that time, at least in the same year,
1572, Gascoigne made up his mind to leave his father-
land. In trouble, disappointed, not recognized ; like
Lord Byron two centuries later, he resolved to go
abroad, and, like a Childe Harolde of the sixteenth
century, he became enamored of two ideals, viz., of
love and of liberty. As Byron poured out his soul
in songs of love, and fought for the liberty of Greece,
so Gascoigne describes himself as "professing armes
in the defence of God's truth" in the Netherlands, and
there at the same time a stream of glowing love-songs
flowed from his pen, which alone were sufficient to
assure immortality to his name.

Before he went to the Netherlands, he had writ-
ten only his translations, "Supposes" and "Jocasta"
and perhaps because at that time he seemed to live
in the literature of the dramas his "Glasse of Gov-
ernment," of which the source lay before him in the
Acolastus of Gnapheus, accessible in an English trans-
lation dating from the year 1540. But during his
abode in the Netherlands and after that during the
few last years of his life he died on the 7th of Octo-
ber, 1577 the multitude of poems on different sub-
jects flowed from his pen, which now lie before us in
his complete works.

From the very first day of his departure, the iQth

1 Ibid., 229.

2 Ibid., 230.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 201

of March, 1573, from Gravesend to Den Briel, his
impressions were deep and interesting, as he describes
them in his "Voyage into Hollande." For a poet,
and a genius, who had lived all his life in the highest
circles in England, with the people of the Court, and
with those of the best literary circles of his time, and
who was not at all acquainted with the terrible con-
dition of the poor, desperate Protestant people in
those days of the Duke of Alva, it was indeed a
doubtful experiment to go to the Netherlands in order
to join the desperate sea-beggars, robbed of every-
thing, maddened by the cruelties of the Spaniards,
accustomed to the roughness of their deadly warfare,
and we are not at all surprised to find that from the
first day on which he endured the dangers of the sea,
till the last day on which he, in September, 1574, came
back after having been for the last four months a
prisoner of the Spaniards, this warfare and the life
among those warriors was a disappointment to
Gascoigne.

On the other hand, when he came into personal
contact with the Prince of Orange and his friends, he
found a kindness, an idealism, a life of devotion and
sacrifice to the best ideals, which gave satisfaction
and consolation to the deepest longings of his soul,
and we are not surprised to find in the midst of his
often bitter "Fruits of war" a poem which he began
at Delft with lines like these :

"Where good Guyllam of Nassau badde me be
There needed I none other guyde but he." 1

Or in another place :

"O noble Prince, there are too fewe like thee !
If virtue wake, she watcheth in thy will,
If justice live, then surely thou art hee,

1 The Fruits of War, Hansen, 99.

202 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

If grace do growe, it groweth with thee still.
O worthy Prince, would God I had the skill
To write thy worth that men thereby might see
How much they erre that speake amisse of thee.

"The simple Sottes do coumpt thee simple, too,
Whose like for witte our age hath seldome bredde,
The rayling roges mistrust thou darest not do,
As Hector did for whom the Grecians fledde,
Although thou yet werte never scene to dredde.
The slandrous tongues do say thou drinkest to much
When God he knowes thy custome is not such.

"But why do I in worthlesse verse devise
To write his prayse that doth excell so far?
He heard our greeves himself in gracious wise" etc.

"I could not leave that Prince in such distresse
Which cared for me, and yet the cause much less." 1

These lines increase our knowledge both of the Prince
and of Gascoigne. Such were the impressions that
Gascoigne took with him to the court of Queen Eliza-
beth, about the Prince who was the leader of strug-
gling Protestantism in Europe. From the time Gas-
coigne arrived at Den Briel in March, 1573, till the
next winter, when we find him at Delft, he had served
as a captain of the Sea-Beggars under Admiral Boisot.
According to his own narrative in "The Fruits of
War" 2 he fought against the Spaniards in Zealand,
defending Aardenburgh, "in the trench before Ter-
goes," 3 at the conquest of Fort Rammekens, 4 then
"our camp removed to Streine" (Stryen) and at last at
the siege of Middelburg, the capital of Zealand, which
surrendered Feb. 19, 1574. But during the siege of

1 Fruits of War, Stanza 99, 118-121.

2 Stanzas 95-114.

3 See J. Wagenaar Historie, VI, p. 366 and 437. This was in
June.

4 Wagenaar VI, 439. This was in August, under Admiral Boisot.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 203

Middelburg, which lasted for nearly two years,
Gascoigne went to Delft, 1 with the intention of going
back to England, after having visited the Prince. But
William of Orange made such an 'impression on
Gascoigne, treated him so kindly, and gave him such
new inspiration to fight for the cause of liberty and
of Protestantism, that, after having "dwelt in Delft
a winter's tyde," 2 Gascoigne returned to Zealand to
fight on the side of the Sea-Beggars. The Prince
himself came at that time to Zealand "to hunger Mid-
delburg or make it yield," and Gascoigne once for
three days fought along with the Sea-Beggars before
Flushing, while every day the Prince from the pier
looked at the fight. And when Mondragon, the Span-
ish commander, at Middelburg, at last (on February
19, 1574) surrendered, Gascoigne was in the city be-
fore Mondragon left:

"And when Mountdragon might no more endure
He came to talk and rendred all at last,
With whom I was within the Citie sure,
Before he went, and on his promisse past,
So trust I had to thinke his fayth was fast.
I dinde, and supt, and laye within the towne
A daye before he was from thence ybowne." 3

The Prince of Orange gave to Gascoigne "three
hundred guilders good above my pay," and "bad me
bide till his abilitie might better gwerdon my fidelitie."
Gascoigne needed very badly those three hundred
guilders, and was much pleased, "much the more be-
cause they came uncraved, though not unneeded" and
"thereby my credite still was saved." 4 The Prince of
Orange, himself from his youth accustomed to high

1 Stanza, 112, Fruits of War.

2 Stanza, 131.

3 Stanza, 140.

4 Stanza, 142, Fruits of War.

204 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

expenses and luxury of life, understood perfectly the
condition of Gascoigne, and had seen soon enough
that Gascoigne was not a common soldier, but a
highly civilized, social, courteous and literary man of
attractive geniality. And when at last "a English
newe relief came over sea," of which Edward Chester
was the chief, then the Prince, with the consent of
Chester, made Gascoigne "to take a band in charge,"
and soon afterwards, when the Spaniards for a sec-
ond time started to besiege Leyden this was the
famous siege we find Gascoigne with his band near
Leyden in the "new begun fort Valkenburg." 1 But
the Spaniards pressed upon them so badly that they
fled towards the walls of Leyden, where Gascoigne
with his band arrived in the evening. The citizens of
Leyden, however, afraid of treason on the part of the
English troops, did not open their gates and so the
English were forced to surrender to the Spaniards.
Wagenaar tells us, what Gascoigne himself does not
mention, that thirty of those English troops refused
to surrender and that those thirty were allowed to
enter the city of Leyden. 2 Anyhow, Gascoigne was
made prisoner and after having been for four months
as prisoner with the Spaniards, was sent back to
England in September, 1574.

So his endeavor to make a success as a soldier
became a failure from start to finish, and we read his
disappointment in his "Voyage into Holland" as well
as in his "Fruits of War." The only brilliant point
in this whole affair is Gascoigne's attractiveness as a
gentleman, his amiable sociability and courtesie, his
noble character, which attracted not only the Prince
of Orange but the Spanish officers as well. In Mid-
delburg with Mondragon, and during the four months

1 Stanza 146, J. Wagenaar, VI, 483.

2 Wagenaar VI, 484.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 205

he was a prisoner, the Spanish officers treated him
very kindly. And during his abode at Delft, when he
got a letter from the Hague, at that time the residence
of the Spanish general Valdez, this Spanish general
was as courteous to him as was the Prince of Orange.
Gascoigne had a lady friend living at the Hague, who
wrote him a letter to Delft, for the bearer of which
Valdez readily gave a passport. And in return the
Prince gave him a passport to visit that lady at the
Hague. Who that lady friend was we do not know.
We know that Valdez himself also had a lady friend
at the Hague by the name of Magdalena Moons, 1 who
was nothing more than his mistress. But whether she
knew the lady friend of Gascoigne, or whether this
had any connection with the courtesy of Valdez
towards Gascoigne, we do not know. Whether that
lady friend at the Hague was the subject of his hun-
dredfold outpouring of love and devotion, in so many
of his beautiful songs, we cannot decide.

Once more, after his return to* England, we find
Gascoigne in the Netherlands, viz., in the year 1576,
at Antwerp. On the 8th of October he left Paris,
and arrived at Antwerp on the 22nd of that month.
There he stayed for two weeks, and then returned to
England. But in those two weeks one of the most
dreadful events in the history of that city happened
an event known as the "Spoil of Antwerp" by the
Spaniards. And to Gascoigne we owe the narrative
of that dreadful event, as from an eye witness. 2 If
we knew nothing about the author of "The Spoil of
Antwerp" except what he tells about his discussions

1 See R. Fruin, Verspreide Geschniften, VIII, 380-397.

2 On the authorship of this narrative see Edward Arber, An Eng-
lish Garner, VIII, 141, where we find a reprint of it^ with the docu-
ments showing Gascoigne to be the author. The objection made in
the Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 235, that this nar-
rative was at first printed anonymously, does not amount to much
since the same happened with the Hundred Sundry Flowers.

206 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

with the Spanish officers, we should immediately rec-
ognize Gascoigne as he appeared at Middelburg, at
Delft, and as a prisoner in the Spanish camp. 1

That all his misfortunes, his experiences, his ad-
ventures in the Netherlands made a deep impression
on Gascoigne is easily understood, and may be felt
through all the poems that were written after his first
arrival at Den Briel.

In the Netherlands also he learned the French
language, as he tells us himself in his address to
Queen Elizabeth before his "Tale of Hemetes," using
the expression, "such frenche as I borrowed in Hol-
land."

From Erasmus he borrowed the device of his
Fruits of War, which is : Bellum duke inexpertis.

But there is one work of Gascoigne which brings
us still more directly into contact not only with Hol-
land but immediately with Dutch literature, viz., his
"Glasse of Government." A short explanation may
make this clear, * and is interesting enough, since
Gascoigne deserves a special attention for his place in
English Literature, as far as the development of the
English drama is concerned. He was "the first to
present in English dress a characteristic Italian com-
edy of intrigue" in his "Supposes" and in the "Bug-
bears," and he is the first who used the vernacular
prose throughout a "prodigal son drama" in his
"Glasse of Government." 2

At that time there was a twofold movement one,
that of the Renaissance, more aristocratic, prevailing
among the higher classes, favored by the Roman Cath-
olic clergy, and bringing about a revival of Roman

1 "In 1602," says Arber, "an anonymously written play, based
on the narrative, was published in London, under the title, "Alarum
for London, or the Siege of Antwerp." An English Garner, VIII, 167.

2 Cambridge History of English Literature, V, p. 128.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 207

and Greek literature; and another one, that of the
Reformation, more democratic, moving the masses of
the rising democracy, religious in its character, bring-
ing learning and education to the people with a de-
cided tendency towards moral and religious reform.

The artistocratic humanists of the Renaissance de-
spised the vernacular, and used as much as possible
the Latin language. The religious democrats of the
awakened masses preferred the vernacular, as the only
language fit for the education of the people. This
twofold movement produced a twofold literature
one in Latin, and the other in the vernacular. Both
showed a prevailing preference for dramatic poetry:
the Renaissance producing a great number of Latin
dramas, written for the most part by the heads of the
Latin schools for the use of their students ; the Democ-
racy, with its numerous guilds or chambers of
Rhetoric, producing an innumerable number of
morality plays, destined to be shown in the streets, and
on the market places of the cities, especially in the
"land-jewels," the great festivities for the masses dur-
ing the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Now, there was no country where both the Re-
naissance and the Reformation became as strong as in
the Netherlands. The community of the Brethren of
Common Life, founded by Gerard Grote at Deventer,
produced not only men like Wessel Gansfort, Ru-
dolphus Agricola and Erasmus, as so many leaders
of the Renaissance, but as well a Thomas a Kempis,
who, with his Imitation of Christ, laid the mystic
foundation of the Reformation in the awakening of
personal religious devotion. In this beautiful com-
munity, with its pupils soon spread all over the Neth-
erlands, we see both the movements of Renaissance and
Reformation still united in perfect harmony, and we

208 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

hardly know which to admire more in these broad
minded and plainly living men, their classic learning
or their religious devotion. But the rapid develop-
ment of democracy on one hand, and the conservatism
of the Roman Catholic church on the other, brought
about an antithesis between aristocracy and democ-
racy, and made it soon impossible to keep those two
movements of Renaissance and Reformation together.
The poets of the Latin school dramas were quite dif-
ferent from the authors of the popular morality-plays,
although both were more numerous in the Low Coun-
tries than anywhere else. In every city were found
the Guilds of Rhetoric, producing their morality-
plays in the Dutch vernacular; as well as Latin
schools, where the Latin plays of Terentius, Seneca
and Plautus soon proved to be too few in number as
well as too heathen and immoral in their tendency.
Consequently, new Latin dramas, in their literary form
as polite as Terentius and Seneca, but in their sub-
jects and tendency more Christian, were asked for.
Biblical themes, as that of the Prodigal son, so often
treated in the popular plays, were now taken up by
the principals of the Latin schools for their new Latin
dramas, and the tendency arose to give to the students
a Christianized Terentius. Very numerous are the
poets of those Latin school dramas in the Nether-
lands. 1 Two of the most prominent among them
were Guilielmus Gnapheus and Georgius Macrope-
dius, and these two men bring us into immediate con-
tact with Gascoigne as the author of "The Glasse of
Government."

Georgius Macropedius, whose Dutch name was
Georg van Langveldt, was born in the year 1475 in

1 See J. te Winkel, De ontu'ikkelingsgang der Nederlandschi
letterkunde, I, p. 274-278, and G. Kalff, Geschiedenis der Neder-
landsche letterkunde, III, p. 94-107.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 209

the neighborhood of the castle Langveldt, at the little
village of Gemert, near Bois le due. He got his edu-
cation among the Brethren of Common Life, and his
portrait shows him in their plain dress of the monas-
teries of that time. Probably he studied at the Uni-
versity of Louvain, and after that he became the prin-
cipal of the school of the Brethren of Common Life
at Bois le due. Later we find him as rector or prin-
cipal of the Latin school at Utrecht, where he stayed
from 1535 till 1554. At last he returned to Bois le
due for his health, and there he died in July, 1558.
He left us twelve Latin dramas, published during his
lifetime, in 1553, in one volume, viz., Asotus, Lazarus,
Joseph, Jesus Scholasticus, Adamus, Hypomene,
Hecastus, Rebelles, Aluta, Petriscus, Andrisca and
Bassarus. 1 In the "Rebelles" he especially treats the
theme of the Prodigal Son, in the same way that later
Gascoigne did in his Glasse of Government.

Guilielmus Gnapheus, whose Dutch name was
Willem de Voider, was born in the year 1493, at the
Hague, and was therefore sometimes called Hagien-
sis. Later he translated his name into Greek and into
Latin, and called himself Gnapheus, or sometimes
Fullonius. Probably educated by the Brethren of
Common Life, he got his B. A. at the University of
Cologne, and after that he settled as a teacher at the
Hague. But pretty soon he came under the sus-
picion of being a Lutheran, and was put into the
prison of the Inquisition at Delft immediately after
the Inquisition was introduced in the Netherlands.
He was, however, set free by the influence of the
States of Holland. After having been imprisoned
again in 1525 as being the author of a pamphlet

1 See Lateinische Literatur denkmaler des XV und XVI Jahr-
hunderts no 13. Georgius Macropedius' Rebelles und Aluta heraus-
gegeben von Johannes Bolte, Berlin, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1897.

210 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

against monastic life, he fled in 1528 from persecu-
tion, at first to Elbing in Germany, where, in 1535, he
became rector of the Latin school. In 1541 we find
him at Konigsberg as counsel of the Duke Albrecht,
and as rector of the newly founded University. The
Lutherans, however, accused him of being a Calvin-
ist, and therefore he went to Embden in East Fries-
land, in the year 1547, where he, on the recommenda-
tion of the Reformer Johannes a Lasco, became the
secretary of the Countess Anna, and the tutor of her
children. He died on the 2Qth of September, 1568, at
Norden in East Friesland. He wrote several Latin
plays, as Triumphus Eloquentiae, Morosophus, and
Hypocrisis. But the most important one by far is his
Acolastus, written for the students of the Latin school
at the Hague, in which he treated the same subject,
and in the same way as later Gascoigne in his Glasse
of Government.^

The Acolastus of Gnapheus is considered as the
source of Gascoigne's Glasse of Government. Prob-
ably the Rebelles of Macropedius may have been a
second source. And then there is still a third Latin
drama on the same theme, written by a man called
Stymmelius, a play which Gascoigne might have
known, and which is entitled "Studentes," but this is
"a direct imitation of the Acolastus" 2 of Gnapheus,
and is much inferior not only to Acolastus but to
Rebelles. 5

The Acolastus of Grapheus won a European fame.
Bolte mentions forty-eight editions, which appeared
in the centers of learning in Europe before the year

1 See Lateinische Litteratur denkmaler des XV \md XVI Jahr-
hunderts. Guilielmus Gnaphens, Acolastus. Herausgegeben von Johan-
nes Bolte, Berlin, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1891.

2 Charles H. Herford. Studies in the literary relations of England
and Germany in the sixteenth century. Cambridge, 1886, p. 155.

3 Ibid., p. 156.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE 211

1587, the first edition being that at Antwerp in the
year 1529. It was translated into French, German
and English. The English edition is from the year
1540 by a school teacher at London called Johannes
Palsgrave, and is dedicated to King Henry VIII, so
that it is nearly impossible that Gascoigne should not
have known the work, even if he never had been in
the Netherlands. The question whether Gascoigne
wrote his Glasse of Government in 1565, 'before he
came to the Netherlands, or in 1575, after he returned
to England, is therefore of very little importance.

Herford, in his Studies, makes an elaborate com-
parison between Gascoigne's Glasse of Government
and the Acolastus of Gnapheus, with Macropedius'
Rebelles and the Studentes of Stymmelius, showing
that in all the main points, the subject is treated in
the same way, so that every thought of their being
independent of each other is excluded 1 "Distinct
copy," says Herford, "is Gascoigne's Glasse of Gov-
ernment not; it is written throughout with a differ-
ent bias ; it is the work of a Calvinist, not of a Cath-
olic or of a Lutheran ; it is in the vernacular, not in
Latin ; in prose, not in verse. For all that, however,
it assuredly belongs to the same dramatic cycle; it is
the attempt, that is, to connect Terentian situations
with a Christian moral in a picture of school life." 2

The interesting part about Gascoigne is that in his
broadminded conception the two lines of Renaissance
and Reformation seem to meet each other, and to
unite as in the works of the great Reformers, avoid-
ing the one sidedness of the Humanists in their ex-
clusive admiration of classical form, as well as that

1 Ibid., p. 162-164.

2 Ibid., p. 160. A review of the contents of the Acolastus, as well
as of Gascoigne's Glasse of Government, is given by Herford and in
the Cambridge History of English Literature, V. 127.

212 GEORGE GASCOIGNE

of the Protestant people, where they, in their zeal for
religious reform, neglected too much the value of lit-
erary beauty.

Besides the works of Gascoigne we find the influ-
ence of the Latin dramas in different works of Eng-
lish literature. "A reminiscence of the Acolastus of
Gnapheus," says Herford, "is doubtless also to be
found in 5\ Nicholson's Acolastus, His After-wit,
where Eubulus, the ancient friend and good counsel-
lor, corresponds to the Prodigal's father of the same
name in Gnapheus; while Acolastus himself is dis-
tinctly assimilated to the Prodigal." 1

Finally, Johannes Bolte, in his edition of Macro-
pedius' Rebelles and Aluta, mentions one of the bal-
lads of the Scottish priest, Alexander Geldes (1737-
1802), to be found in R. Chambers, The Scottish
Songs, II, 316, and in A. Whitelaw, The Book of
Scottish Songs, p. 76, as showing the most close con-
nection with the Aluta of Macropedius. 2

1 Herford, p. 159, note.

2 J. Bolte, Macropedius Rebelles und Aluta, Einleitung, p. XXIII.

CHAPTER XXVI

THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1604) THE "NESTOR
OF ELIZABETHAN HEROES" AS A SOLDIER AND POET
IN THE NETHERLANDS.

Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604), although not a
genius as powerful as Gascoigne, and not to be com-
pared with Spenser and Shakespeare, yet "honestly
is ranked by a competent judge among the great poets
of his age; among such poets, as have not often been
equalled and will not soon be surpassed ;" a poet "who
may run abreast with any of that age writing in the
beginning of Elizabeth's reign." 1 "For his period a
smooth and accomplished versifier, who had taken to
heart the lessons taught by Wyatt and Surrey, and
who did his share of work of restoring form and order
to English poetry." 2 Both in his life and in his works
he stands in close contact with the Netherlands.

His life is divided into three periods: The first
period is from his birth in 1520, at Shrewsbury, till the
year 1542, when he left his native country to serve
as a soldier on the Continent. About this period we
know that he studied at Oxford; that, at the age of
17, he "besought his father to let him depart from
home, to seek his hap amidst the many competitions
of life ;" that he went to court, wasted his money, and
found service with Henry Howard, the Earl of Sur-
rey, during the four years from 1537 to 1541. The
Earl of Surrey, the same nobleman in whose home
Hadrianus Junius lived as a tutor during some years
just after Churchyard left, is always remembered by
Churchyard with gratefulness and praise.

1 George Chalmers, Churchyard's Chips concerning Scotland, with
historical notes, and a life of the author, London, 1817. This little .
book, although under so modest a title, gives by far the best biography /
of Churchyard ever published till our present day.

2 Cambridge History of English Literature, III, p. 205.

213

214 THOMAS CHURCHYARD

The second period (1542-1572) contains the thirty
years in which Churchyard served as a soldier in the
Netherlands, in Ireland and in Scotland, writing at the
same time a great number of his works in verse and in
prose. This period, from his twenty-second till his
fifty-second year, is the deciding one of his life and has
made him forever the poet-soldier in English literature.
The third period (1572-1604) of Churchyard's
life, contains the thirty years of life's decline, during
which he often "assisted in amusing the queen" Eliz-
abeth by his poems, and out of all the richness of his
experiences produced a great number of poems and
prose works, reflecting all the knowledge and the wis-
dom, all the thrilling stories, dangers and braveries
of his eventful life.

During the second period of his life, we find
Churchyard in the Netherlands successively in seven
different campaigns:

(i) In the years 1542-1544 he fought in the army
of the Emperor, Charles V, who, in alliance with the
King of England, Henry VIII, made war against
Francis I of France. After the peace of Crespy, in
1544, Churchyard returned to England,
"Aweary of those wasting woes,

Awhile he left the war,
And for desire to learn the tongues

He travelled very far,
And had of every language part
When homeward did he draw,
And could rehearsal make full well
Of that abroad he saw."

But this was only the first campaign, and the oppor-
tunity to see many things and to make rehearsal was
to be offered to him still many times.

.(2) In the years I55 2 - T 555, after Churchyard had
wooed the widow Browning, who gave him a plain

THOMAS CHURCHYARD 215

refusal, he again "found solace in war, with its perils,
its varieties and its pleasures." He served again in
the army of Charles V against Francis I during three
years. It was during this war that Churchyard
"sailed down the pleasant flood of .Rhine" and served
in Flanders, the richest of all the countries under the
dominion of the Emperor. From the Netherlands and
especially from Flanders, Charles V got two-fifths of
all his income. But soon it became the scene of mur-
der and devastation, of which Churchyard was
destined to be an eye-witness.

(3) During the years 1557-1559, in the beginning
of the reign of Philip II over Spain and over the
Netherlands, Churchyard was again at the wars when
Queen Mary of England (1553-1558), whom Philip
had married, made war against France. During that
campaign Calais was taken by the French army under
Guise in 1558, and after the conquest of Calais, imme-
diately the city of Guisnes was besieged. Churchyard
was one of the defenders, and- he was an intermediary
in offering the surrender of this city.

(4) In the year 1566, during the outbreak of
image-breaking in Antwerp, Churchyard was there,
being an eye-witness of that tremendous tumult.
There he offered his services to the Prince of Orange ;
the Prince

"Bad me do well, and shed no guiltless blood;
And save from spoil poor people and their good."

B'eing in the service of the Prince, and probably agree-
ing with his policy, we can understand what Church-
yard says, that in the eyes of the tumultuous popula-
tion he was too moderate. "The Prince retired from
this scene of tumult. The insurgents, amounting to
30,000, placed Churchyard at their head ; the nobles
having fled, he saved the religious houses and the

216 THOMAS CHURCHYARD

town from cruel sword and fire. But such a multi-
tude he could not manage long, and he was obliged
to abscond, and to make his escape in priest's attire,
but not with shaven crown. He found his way
through many hazards, into Sealand, followed by the
marshall, but, getting into a ship, at the Sluis, not-
withstanding that officer's searches, he arrived safe in
England, at the end of I566." 1

(5) In the years 1567-1568. The troubles at- Ant-
werp had not at all deterred Churchyard. On the
contrary it seems that his first contact with the Prince
of Orange had inspired him to devote himself to the
sacred cause of liberty. In the very first campaign of
the Prince of Orange, in the war of independence,
Churchyard was with the Prince. Chalmers tells the
story as follows: "At the beginning of 1567, the
Prince of Orange, encouraged by the princes of Ger-
many, began to collect troops at his own domain of
Dillenburgh, about ten leagues from Cologne.
Thither was Churchyard sent, by the Earl of Oxford,
lord high chamberlain of England, as an agent, no
doubt, to see, and to report, what passed at the com-
mencement of a war, which was attended by mem-
orable consequences. He was obliged to go by the
way of Paris, where he was kindly assisted by lord
Norris, the English ambassador. Churchyard arrived
at Dillenburgh in time to see the meeting of that great
assembly of warriors who were to contest with .so
great a general as the duke of Alva, for the inde-
pendence of the Law Countries. Churchyard served
under Count de la March as cornet-bearer to 250
light horsemen, during the first campaign of this sig-
nal war. The Prince of Orange mustered his army
of 22,000 foot and 13,000 horse, beyond the Rhine at
Anderwike. The Prince marched forward toward

1 Chalmers, p. 20.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD 217

Aix, Sentre and Tongre; but, when he approached
to Flanders, he was everywhere "bearded" by the
Duke of Alva, with 30,000 shot and 4,000 horsemen.
The Prince had thus a hard antagonist to contend
with, for the prize of skill, experience and circum-
spection. These two great commanders avoided a
general action ; knowing how much they risked and
might lose. After many sharp encounters, the Prince,
perceiving that he could make no impression upon
such a general as Alva, drew off his army from Flan-
ders into France, near Guise and St. Quinten; and
afterwards marched into winter quarters about Stras-
bourgh. It was on this march that Churchyard took
his leave and departed for England. From the ac-
count which he afterwards published of the late cam-
paign, we may easily suppose what report he made to
the lord great chamberlain, his employer."

"Churchyard now felt for the Flemings ; wished
success to the Prince of Orange; and entertained a
strong desire to see the event of the subsequent cam-
paign of 1568. Whether he was again sent by the
lord great chamberlain, he does not say, though it
may be inferred from subsequent events that he was ;
but he is studious to tell what risks he ran and dan-
gers he endured in traveling through France to the
Rhine during an age of warfare and demoralization.
After escaping many hazards he at length joined the
Prince of Orange at his house of Dillenbourgh. By
the Prince's people, Churchyard was now made wel-
come with many a mad carouse. At the opening of
the campaign, 1568, towards Flanders they marched;
but for want of monjey the Prince's army lay for some
months near the Rhine and at some distance from
such an enemy. Whatever may have been given out,
the Prince was too penetrating not to perceive the

218 THOMAS CHURCHYARD

superiority of his opponent in great talents, in a dis-
ciplined army and the compactness of his force. Mean-
time, the governor of the Netherlands published an
act of tolerance for the Protestants, which enfeebled
the Prince's arms. Owing to all those causes the cam-
paign of 1568 passed away, in demonstration rather
than in efforts. Churchyard found in his privations
that his own share of sufferings was not the severest
of the patriot soldiers. When the Prince of Orange
retired from Flanders and passed into France, our ad-
venturer asked his permission to visit his native soil.
The Prince assented but warned him that the French
by some artifice would arrest his journey. The duke
of Alva commanded every Englishman to be detained
as so many pledges for the Spanish treasure that had
been stopped in England. We may thus see that
Churchyard ran a double risk of being detained either
in Flanders or in France. Riding along the limits of
the two countries, and pointing to the nearest port,
he was betrayed by a peasant into the hands of ban-
ditti, who robbed him of his horse and his equipments,
and from whom he escaped by a sort of miracle. These
disasters happened near St. Quinten. And he was
now reduced to the necessity of trudging on foot
sixty miles through an unfriendly people; while he
was hardly treated by the captain of Peronne as he
pressed forward to Abbeville. He at length found a
vessel which was bound to Guernsey, where he was
well received by Captain Leighton, the governor. Yet,
in this hospitable isle he remained not longer than his
refreshment required. And he arrived at last, after
so many disasters, on his native soil at the beginning
of 1569, a year of disturbance and rebellion/' 1

(6) During the years 1569-1570 we find Church-

1 Chalmers, p. 20-24.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD 219

yard fighting among the Sea-Beggars, those desperate
heroes who had lost everything, who had seen their
fathers and their mothers, their brothers and sisters,
murdered by the Inquisition or by the Spanish sol-
diers, and who, in their utmost despair, at last fought
their battle to the knife and gained the first victories
in the great struggle. Their victories really began
with the capture of Den Briel on the first of April,
1572. Before that date they tried several times to
conquer one or the other city, but in vain. And dur-
ing that first time of misfortune Churchyard was with
them. With several other English stipendaries under
their captain Morgan, we find him at the siege of Ter
Goes, in 1569, but without success. The siege was
raised by the persevering fortitude of the Spanish sol-
diers, with the loss of 200 English and French troops
who were either slain or taken. After" performing 1
great service sundry times during half a year, Church-
yard was wounded and taken prisoner. This hap-
pened in 1570. Churchyard seems to have been now
recognized as the soldier who had mingled in the late
tumult at Antwerp ; who had then only escaped death
for his misdeeds to return again and again into a dis-
tracted country ; he was now imprisoned as a spy ;
and was even condemned to lose his head by martial
law. The day which was appointed for his execution
had even arrived, "when a noble dame his respite
craved and spoke for him so fair that the marshal of
the camp listened to her speech ; and he was pardoned
and again allowed to return home with money in his
purse." 1

(7) Two years later, in 1572, once more we find
Churchyard fighting with the sons of liberty in the
Netherlands, viz., as one of the defenders of the city
of Zutphen, which city in the beginning of 1572 had

1 Chalmers, p. 27.

220 THOMAS CHURCHYARD

chosen the side of the Prince, and was now be-
leaguered by the Spaniards. "Neither the experiences
nor the hair-breadth escapes of Churchyard could re-
strain him from mingling in the hostilities of the
Netherlands, while Protestantism continued to be per-
secuted. He again seems to Iiave joined with the
English volunteers, who defended Zutphen for the
States, which was taken, however, by the son of Alva
in November, I572." 1 At Zutphen, near the spot
where Philip Sydney, several years later, lost his life
fighting against the same enemy, it was that for the
last time Churchyard drew his sword for the great
cause of liberty. Now he "hung up his corslet like
the soldier tired of war's alarm." 2

Four years later, in 1576, we find Churchyard
again, and, as far as we know, for the last time in
the Netherlands. "The Netherlands," says Chalmers,
"had been so much the adventurous scenes of Church-
yard's younger life, that he could not, in his latter
days, refrain from visiting those celebrated countries,
for commerce, for wars, for policy. He certainly went
to Brussels in the autumn of 1576, but whether he
was sent thither by some great man or went in obedi-
ence of -his own desire to contemplate the passing
scene, appears not. At Brussels he saw a meeting of
many ambassadors to concert a pacification for those
wretched countries. He saw the rejoicing for their
peace restored. He perhaps remained long enough
to witness the breach of that treaty by the habitual
treachery of don John, the bastard of Austria." 3

Such were the connections of Thomas Churchyard
with the Netherlands during the thirty best years of
his life. Was it possible that a man who, in his many
works in verse and in prose, wrote down nearly every

1 Chalmers, p. 27.

2 Ibid.

3 Chalmers, p. 31

THOMAS CHURCHYARD 221

story, every feature, every experience of his life,
should not have felt as a poet the influence of such
immensely interesting campaigns, and events, of
which he had been an eye-witness, as for instance, the
image-breaking at Antwerp in 1566, the first cam-
paign of William of Orange in 1567 and 1568, the
first endeavors of the Sea-Beggars in 1569, the de-
fense of Zutphen in 1572, and at last the festivities
with Don Juan at Brussels in 1576? No, that was
impossible. On the contrary, several of his works are
just the result of his experiences in the Netherlands,
as even their titles may show, and many a poem prob-
ably has been inspired by what Churchyard saw dur-
ing those adventurous years.

The following works of Churchyard are the imme-
diate result of his experiences in the Netherlands:

(1) A lamentable and pitifull Description of the
wofull Warres in Flaunders, since the foure last years
of the Emperor Charles the fifth his raigne. With a
briefe rehearsall of many things done since that sea-
son, untill this present yeare and death of Don John.
Written by Thomas Churchyard Gentleman. Im-
printed at London by Ralph Newberrie, Anno 1578.

This work was dedicated to Sir Francis Walsing-
ham, and in his dedication, the author informs us that
this brief discourse on the troubles and afflictions of
Flanders was not gathered out of other men's gar-
dens, but derived entirely from his own knowledge
and experience." See Thomas Corser. Collectanea
Anglo-Poetica. Part IV, p. 364-366.

(2) Churchyard's Choise. London, 1579.

The contents of this work, as given by Chalmers,
p. 56, are in ten parts, of which No. I is entitled, A
general Rehearsell of Warres in the Netherlands, in
Scotland, in Ireland and at Sea, which comprehends

222 THOMAS CHURCHYARD

one half of the volume; and No. 4 entitled, "A small
Rehearsell of some special Services in Flaunders of
late part whereof were in the tyme of Don Jhon's
government and the rest beying doen in the present
service of the Prince of Parma, now governour of
Flaunders."

(3) A true Report of a dangerous Service at-
tempted and brought to pass by Englishmen, Scots-
men, and Walloons for the taking of Machlin in Flan-
ders. Dedicated to Lord Norrice, London, 1580.

(4) The right pleasant and variable tragical His-
tory of Fortunatus : first penned in the Dutch tongue,
hence abstracted and now first of all published in Eng-
lish by T. C. London, 1682 "but certainly printed be-
fore 1600" says Chalmers, p. 59, quoting Ritson's
Bibl., 169.

W. C. Hazlitt, in his Hand-Book, also gives this
as the work of Churchyard, without mentioning that
it was translated from the Dutch.

Charles H. Herford, in his Studies in the literary
relations between England and Germany, tells some-
thing about the history of Fortunatus as a story spread
over several countries of Europe, but does not men-
tion Churchyard's translation from the Dutch. If
Herford had known this work, it might have changed
some of his ideas about the way the story of Fortu-
natus came into English literature. Herford, p. 203-
219 and 405.

(5) "A true Discourse historical of the succeed-
ing Governors in the Netherlands and the Civil Wars
there begun in the yeare 1565 with the memorable
services of our Honourable English Generals, Cap-
taines and Souldiers, especially under Sir John Nor-
rice Knight there performed from the yeare 1577 until
the yeare 1589, and afterwards in Portugale, France,

THOMAS CHURCHYARD 223

Britaine and Ireland until the year 1598. Translated
and collected by T. C. Esquire and Ric: Ro. out of
the Reverend E. M. of Antwerp his fifteen books
Historiae Belgicae and other collections added, alto-
gether manifesting all martiall actions meete for every
good subject to reade, for defence of Prince and
Country. London, 1602."

The main source for this work of Churchyard, the
Reverend E. M., of Antwerp, is the well-known Dutch
historian, Emmanuel van Meteren, in Latin, Emman-
uel Meteranus. See Corser's Collectanea IV, 385-390,
where the author gives an extensive review of this
interesting work of Churchyard.

Churchyard himself mentions still another book,
"in which was the whole service of my L. of Lester
mentioned, that he and his train did in Flanders."
See Chalmers, p. 64.

How many poems and stones told in the numer-
ous works of Churchyard may be the result of all his
experiences in the Netherlands, would be very inter-
esting to know, and here is an almost unexplored field,
left for the research of some scholar, for instance, for
a doctoral thesis. How many tales Churchyard may
have told at the court of Queen Elizabeth, and in the
literary circles, tales brought from the Netherlands,
and by his agency introduced into the center of liter-
ary England, we can hardly imagine. 1

1 In connection with Gascoigne and Churchyard, I may add here a
few words about the well-known playwright, Ben Jonson (1573-1637).
From the way De Hoog writes about Jonson one would get the idea that
he was as much influenced by the Netherlands as Gascoigne and Church-
yard. But so far as I haye found out, the influence of Holland on Jonson
is not to be compared with that on Gascoigne and Churchyard. Jonson
in his youth served for a short time as a soldier in the Netherlands, and
as W. Gifford says in his Biographical Memoir (Works of Jonson, ed.
1875, Vol. I, p. XXX), this happened in the year 1591 at Ostend, which
city was held by an English garrison. It seems that he fought there a
duel with good success for him, but otherwise he "brought little from
Flanders but the reputation of a brave man, a smattering of Dutch and
an empty purse." Any influence of this short abode in the Netherlands on
his writings seems not yet to have been discovered. Nevertheless, the
possibility remains that some day something may be discovered which may
be worthy to be mentioned in this connection.

CHAPTER XXVII

SIR JAN VAN DER NOOT AND EDMUND SPENSER

(1) THE THEATRE OF WORLDLINGS

(2) ITS AUTHOR

(3) SPENSER'S CONNECTION WITH IT

(4) SPENSER AND VAN DER NOOT

i. The Theater of Worldlings.

In the year 1569 there appeared at London a book
entitled, "A Theatre wherein be represented as well
the miseries and calamities that follow the voluptuous
Worldlings, as also the greate joyes and pleasures
which the faithfull do enjoy. An argument both prof-
itable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word
of God. Devised by John van der Noodt." 1 "Scene
and allowed according to the order appointed. Im-
printed at London by Henry Bynnerman. Anno
Domini 1569. Cum Privilegio." This book is dedi-
cated to Queen Elizabeth and the dedication is dated
May 25, 1569.

The contents are divided into two parts, the first
and smaller part being twenty-one verses of about
twelve lines each, and the second part containing an
elaborate explanation of 107 pages about what is said
in the verses.

The verses are called "either visions or epigrams,
or sonnets or emblems, as you like it" ; the first six of
them are translated from the Italian poet, Petrarch ;
the next eleven from the French poet, De Bellay ; and
the last four from the original Dutch verses of the

1 A copy of this book is in the British Museum.

224

SIR JOHN FAN DER NOOT 225

author himself. Twenty of these twenty-one verses
are illustrated with woodcuts, and this makes the book
look like an emblem book as this first part really is.

The verses from Petrarch, and De Bellay are in-
tended, everyone of them, to give an example of the
world's vanity.

In those from Petrarch, the following subjects are
treated :

(i) a fair hinde suddenly attacked and killed
by two "egre dogs" ;

(2) a beautiful tall ship, freighted with riche
treasures, in one moment lost and
drowned by striking a rock ;

(3) a "fresh and lusty lawrell tree" struck by a
sudden flash of heaven's fire ;

(4) a spring of water being on a certain mo-
ment devoured by the gaping earth ;

(5) a fine bird, a Phoenix, who "himself smote
with his beake," as in disdain, so that he
died;

(6) a fair lady suddenly caught by the heele by
a stinging serpent.

In those from De Bellay we find the following ex-
amples of the world's vanity :

(i) a ghost appearing to the poet on the great
river's bank "that runnes by Rome,"
telling him about the vanity of Rome
and "what under this great temple is
contained" ;

(2) a building, a frame on a hill suddenly de-
stroyed by an earthquake;

(3) a magnificent monument of an emperor
destroyed by a sudden "tempest from
heaven with flash striking down the no-
ble monument" ;

(4) a "triumphal arke," but "let me no more
see faire things under heaven, since I
saw so fair a thing as this with sudden
falling broken all to dust" ;

226 SIR JOHN FAN DER NOOT

(5) a fair Dodonian tree upon seven hills,
when barbarous villaines outraged the
honor of these noble bowes ;

(6) a bird that dares behold the sun, when
suddenly he tumbles down from the air,
"in lompe of fire" ;

(7) a. hideous body, big and strong, the Tro-
jan hero, founding Rome, in his right
hand the tree of peace, in his left the
conquering palme ; then suddenly the
palm and olive fell;

(8) a wailing nimphe, tuning her plaint to fall-
ing rivers sound at Rome, that always
again produces so many Neroes and
Caligulas to rule this croked shore" ;

(9) a kindled flame of precious ceder tree,
with balmlike oder perfuming the air,
when suddenly "dropping of a golden
shower gan quench the glystering flame
and of sulphur now did breathe cor-
rupted smell" ;

(10) a fresh spring and hundred nymphes, who
sat by side "when from the hills a naked
rout of faunes with hideous cry assem-
bled on the place and with their feet
unclean the water fouled, threw down
the seats and drove the nymphes to
flight";

(n) the great Typhaeus' sister, raising a
trophee over all the world and hundred
vanquished kings at her feet, but the
heavens war against her" ; "I saw her
stricken fall with clap of thunder."

After all these examples of the world's vanity,
interesting in their variety, beautifully described, but
monotonous in representing the same idea, follow the
four poems of the author himself. They form the
central part of the book, they show us that all the
previous examples of the world's vanity serve only
as an introduction to the solution of the great prob-

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 227

lem which the poet has in his mind. They give the
solution of the great problem of that time ; they con-
tain the life system of the persecuted Protestants of
Europe ; they touch the very heart of the thousands
of refugees, who fled from persecution ; who saw their
relatives burned at the stake ; who lost everything
except life, and who felt the world's vanity to the
extreme.

It was at the time when the Duke of Alva was
murdering his thousands in the Netherlands, when
Lutherans in Germany, Huguenots in France, Puri-
tans in England, during several years had suffered
the severest persecution, and all Protestantism was
in danger of being annihilated by the Roman Catholic
world power, and when no Protestant was safe with
his life. At that horrible time in the world's history,
Protestants were horror-stricken by' the terrible action
of Roman Catholicism ; they saw in Rome, the Beast
of the Apocalypse, the Anti-Christ, and in the Roman
Catholic Church the "woman" sitting on the Beast,"
whose delight was the blood of the martyrs. Their
prayer was day and night to God in Heaven for
relief, and the solution of their great problem was in
the future triumph of Christ; their consolation was
in looking upward to the Holy City, the new Jeru-
salem, where there shall be no vanity of this world,
no more persecution of the saints; where dwells their
Lord and their God, and where "all their tears He
shall wipe clean away." To these ideas, to this very
life-system of the persecuted Protestants, the author,
who himself was one of them, gave expression in his
Theatre. After all the examples of Petrarch, and
De Bellay, showing the world's vanity, he proceeds
to print his four poems (i) on the Anti-Christ, the
Beast of the Apocalypse; (2) on the Roman Catholic

228 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

Church, the woman sitting on the Beast; (3) on the
triumph of the Christ, the faithful man sitting on a
white horse ; and (4) on the Holy City, the New Jeru-
salem in Heaven. Because they form the very pith
of the book, I give them here in full:

"I saw an ugly beast come from the sea,
That seven heads, ten crounes, ten homes did bear,
Having thereon the vile blaspheming name.
The cmell leopard she resembled much:
Feete of a beare, a lions throte she had.
The mightie Dragon gave to hir his power.
One of hir heads yet there I did espie,
Still freshly bleeding of a grievous wounde.
One cride aloude. 'What one is like (quod he)
This honoured Dragon, or may him withstande?
And then came from the sea a savage beast,
With Dragons speche, and shewde his force by fire,
With wondrous signes to make all wights adore
The beast, in setting of hir image up.

"I saw a woman sitting on a beast
Before mine eyes, of orenge colour hew:
Horrour and dreadful! name of blasphemie
Filde hir with pride. And seven heads I saw;
Ten homes also the stately beast did beare.
She seemde with glorie of the scarlet faire,
And with fine perle and golde puft up in heart.
The wine of hooredome in a cup she bare.
The name of mysterie writ in hir face;
The bloud of martyrs dere were hir delite.
Host fierce and fell this woman seemde to me.
An angell then descending downe from Heaven
Whh thondring voice cride out aloude, and sayd,
*Now for a truth great Babylon is fallen/

"Then might I see upon a white horse set
The faithfull man with flaming countenaunce ;

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 229

His head did shine with crounes set therupon ;
The Worde of God made him a noble name.
His precious robe I saw embrued with bloud.
Then saw I from the heaven on horses white,
A puissant armie come the selfe same way.
Then cried a shining angell, as me thought,
That birdes from aire descending downe on earth
Should warre upon the kings, and eate their flesh.
Then did I see the beast and kings also
Joinyng their force to slea the faithfull man.
But this fierce hatefull beast and all hir traine
Is pitilesse throwne downe in pit of fire.

"I saw new Earth, new Heaven, sayde Saint John.
And loe! the sea (quod he) is now no more.
The holy citie of the Lorde from hye
Descendeth, garnisht as a loved spouse.
A voice then sayde, 'Beholde the bright abode
Of God and men. For he shall be their God,
And all their teares he shall wipe cleane away.'
Hir brightnesses greater was than can be founde.
Square was this citie, and twelve gates it had.
Eche gate was of an orient perfect pearle,
The houses golde, the pavement precious stone.
A lively streame, more cleere than christall is,
Ranne through the mid, sprong from triumphant seat.
There growes lifes fruite unto the Churches good. 1

In reading these verses, after having read those
from Petrarch and De Bellay, we see the whole con-
ception of the book. In these verses we meet with
the author, and with the very pith and the heart of
the book. In all the examples of the world's vanity,
taken from Petrarch and De Bellay, the persecuted
Protestants read only their own misery and bereaved
condition, which, in themselves should have depressed

1 A reprint of all the verses of the Theatre is in the Cambridge
edition of Spenser's works, p. 765-767. A reprint of all these verses
in the original Dutch is in Albert Verwey Gedichten van Jonker Jan
van der Noot. Amsterdam, 1895.

230 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

and disheartened them to death. But that was not
the idea of the author. He, one of their leading
spirits, their poet and their genius, says to his
brethren and sisters : This world's vanity, which we
endure, is everywhere, and is no exception in this
world; but our hope and our consolation is some-
where else. Our enemy, the Anti-Christ, and the
Church of Rome, which is under the leadership of
Anti-Christ in persecuting the martyrs, shall fall down
as the great Babylon ; our Lord and Saviour, Christ,
shall be triumphant, and our future is the eternal life
in the Holy City of God.

In these four verses the author gives with mas-
terly treatment the four chapters of the life-system
of the persecuted Protestants of his time, and the
real expression of what lived in the hearts of thou-
sands of refugees in England, in Germany, in France
and in the Netherlands. The elaborate prose part
that follows in the second part of the book, and covers
107 pages, is nothing but a broad explanation of this
great scheme.

Knowing the contents of this book, we do not
wonder that it appeared within a few years, succes-
sively, in Dutch, in French, in English and in
German.

The original edition was in Dutch, published in
1568 at Antwerp; 1 then he translated his work in
French during the same year; the next year, 1569, ap-
peared his English edition printed at London ; and two
years later, in 1571, it appeared in German, printed
at Cologne.

This book is one of the most striking answers

1 A copy of the original Dutch edition is in the Koninklyke
bibliotheek at Brussels and another one in the Kon. Bibl. at the Hague.
All the editions are mentioned by Aug. Vermeulen Leven en werken
van Jonker Jan van der Noot, Antwerp, 1899.

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 231

given from the Protestant side of that time to the
dreadful persecutions instigated by the Roman
Catholic world power, and one of the best expressions
of what lived in the hearts of thousands of perse-
cuted people in the different countries of western
Europe.

It is not for this reason only that this book may
be called a remarkable one, but for its literary value,
and for its illustrations as well.

The best authors on the history of the Dutch liter-
ature agree at least in this point, that this and other
works of Van der Noot belong to those books, which
started a new epoch in national literature, and pre-
pared the way for the work of Hooft and Vondel. 1

The English version of this book, especially as
regards the first part, containing the verses, is more
and more considered to be an event in the history of
English literature, as far as the development of the
sonnet and of blank verse is concerned.

Speaking about the verses contained in this book,
Alexander B. Grosart, the editor of the famous edi-
tion of Edmund Spenser's works, says: "But this is
more than a curiosity of Literature. It is a central
fact in the story of our national Literature, and
specifically in the story of the origin and the progress
of the blank verse which was predestined soon to grow
so mighty and marvelous an instrument in the hands
of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare, and onward
of Milton, Cowper and Wordsworth." 2

Finally, as regards its illustrations this book, as
everybody acknowledges, has the honor of being the
first emblem book printed in the English language.

1 Albert Verwey, Kedichten van Jonker Jan ban der Noot,
Amsterdam, 1905, p. 1-6; G. Kalff, Gcschiedenis der Nederlandsche
Letterkunde, III, 356; J. de Winkel, De antwilkkelingsgang der
Nederlandsche Letterkunde, I, 298; Aug. Vermeulen, Lcven en werken
van Jonker Jan van der Noot, Antwerp, 1899, p. 114-140.

2 Alexander B. Grosart, Complete Works of Spenser, I. 25.

232 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

2. Its author.

The author of this book was Sir John van der
Noot 1 (1539-1595), a nobleman of the Southern
Netherlands, born at Brecht, near Antwerp. The
ancestors of Van der Noot were, during several cen-
turies, held in great esteem in Brabant, and often en-
joyed the highest offices in the state. Our poet, whose
real name was Jan Baptista van der Noot, had the
advantage of a high education. He knew how to
write Latin, was well acquainted with Italian and
Spanish, while in the French language he expressed
himself nearly as well as in Flemish, his mother
tongue. After the death of his father, in 1558, he
settled at Antwerp, and after he became of age, we
find him among the magistrates of Antwerp. Some
years later, Van der Noot was celebrated at Antwerp
as a great poet, and even was made poet laureate,
which was in Flanders very exceptional A great
admirer of the Italian and French humanistic poetry,
especially of Petrarch and Marot, Du Bellay and
Ronsard, he had much esteem for poetry, "which gives
immortality," and he was well conscious of his own
literary abilities, as well as of his noble birth, and
his high standing. During the tumultuous days of
1566, when the long fostered spirit of the Reforma-
tion inspired the mass of the people more and more
with antipathy against the Roman Catholic Church,
and at last broke out in the image-breaking, Van der
Noot appears as one of the leaders of the Calvinistic
people, trying to get hold of the government of the
city. But soon, when the Duke of Alva was on his
way to the Netherlands, Van der Noot was among
the hundred thousand people who fled from the coun-

iTAll we know about the life of Van der Noot is brought together
by August Vermeulen in his "Het leven en de werken van Jonker
Jan van der Noot, Antwerpen, 1899."

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 233

try, and so, in the year 1569, we find him at London,
as one of the thousands of Dutch refugees in that city.
Here he stayed for more than two years at least
(March, 1567, until May 25, 1569, the date of the
dedication of his English version of the Theatre to
Queen Elizabeth). At what time he really left Lon-
don we do not know, but in 1571 w'e find him in Ger-
many, and during the next year, 1572, the remarkable
year of the St. Bartholemew, the year of the first
triumph of the sea-beggars, those first invincible sons
of liberty, Van der Noot published his German trans-
lation of the Theatre, printed at Cologne. But this
German translation was no more the same Theatre
that was written in Dutch, translated into French
and English and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. The
sharpest expressions against the Roman Catholic
Church were changed and softened. Van der Noot,
after having left London, and probably after having
been disappointed in a social way, had gone to live in
Germany, and had there become acquainted with quite
another kind of people, for instance, with the great
Dutch humanist, Coornhert, who later proved able
enough to convert the young Arminius from Calvinism
to Humanism. Under such influences, Van der Noot
was converted, probably first from Calvinism, and
finally from Humanism to Roman Catholicism, and
his German Theatre is the best proof of this conver-
sion. The manifold discussions about principles and
dogmas among the Calvinists, and the often one-sided
predominance amongst them of intellectualism, and
logical ideas, with their unavoidable consequences, ac-
companied but too often with a lack of kindred feel-
ing, seem to have been unbearable for Van der Noot,
a poet of tender feeling, more than of intellectual
strength. On the social side not independent, and

234 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

probably pretty badly supported; on the literary and
artistic side not so much appreciated as he deserved,
he did not more feel himself at home among those
stubborn Calvinists, who submitted every part of
human life to the iron consequences of their infallible
dogmas, and who, at that time, had not made enough
progress in the finer side of life to pay full attention
to the value of poetry and of art. Like Hugo Grotius,
like Rousseau, like Robespierre, Van der Noot was
of a soft and tender nature, easily aroused to sym-
pathy, as well as to antipathy, using with literary
ability the power of his pen like a flash of lightning,
and consequently easily misunderstood by posterity,
which often does not take the trouble to analyse, and
fully to understand, and is but too often satisfied by
simply looking at men and events from their outward
side. His return to the Roman Catholic Church does
not show him in the sublime splendor of a martyr,
but for us at least his return is as easily understood
as that of his famous English contemporary, Ben
Jonson, or as that of his great compatriot, Vondel.
The true explanation of Van der Noot's return to the
Roman Catholic Church, and of other facts of his
life, as, for instance, the real story of the English
translation of the verses in his Theatre, have not yet
been fully discovered, but it is certainly going too
far to say that Van der Noot "never hesitated to make
the biggest lies," 1 and I fully agree with Dr. Kalff
when he says that a "Sufficient answer to these ques-
tions as yet cannot be given." 2

However this may be, Van der Noot lived in Ger-
many for several years. In 1576 he published there
"Das Buch Extrasis," but in 1578 we find him in

lAug Vermeulen, p. 30. Literally Vermeulen says "Nooit heeft
hy gevreesd over alle waarheid heente spnngen.

2 G. Kalff, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Lctterkunde, III, 34 1-

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 235

Paris, and a short time afterwards he returned to his
native city, after having traveled for eleven years in
England, Germany and France. Recommended by
the Arch-Duke, Matthias of Austria, who hoped for
a while to be governor of the Netherlands, Van der
Noot returned to Antwerp as a Catholic, and, as far
as we know, lived there till his death in 1595.

His poetical works are (i) "Het Bosken" (1567),
containing several little poems ; this work has been
reprinted many times ; (2) The Theatre, in Dutch
(1568), in French (1568), in English (1569), in Ger-
man (1571); (3) The Olympias (Antwerp, 1579),
an allegorical-epic poem in twelve books, after the
model of the great French and Italian poets of the
Rennaisance. Of this work, Aug. Vermeulen men-
tions several editions ; in German it was translated
under the title, "Das Buch Extasis ;" (4) Lofsang
van Brabant (Song in Praise of Brabant), 1580.

In the history of Dutch literature, Van der Noot's
place is that of the best known precursor of the great
literature of Hooft and Vondel, as "the only one from
an age in which we till this time did not find one
single poet of any importance j" 1 as the poet who has
been intermediate between the poets of the French
Renaissance, and the Dutch poets of the seventeenth
century; as "the Pleiade-poet of the Netherlands,"
without whom there would have been no Hooft and
even no Vondel, at least not so complete and not with
so much authority in the language of the jambus," 2
or as "one of those who prepared the way for the
Renaissance" in the Netherlands. 3

For the history of English literature, his influence

1 Albert Verwey, Gedichtcn van Jonker Van der Noot. Preface,
p. i.

2 Verwey, p. V.
SKalff, III, 386.

236 SIR JOHN FAN DER NOOT

is confined to that of the Theatre, especially to the
verses in that book, and secondly to the personal influ-
ence he may have exerted on Edmund Spenser. The
question of the translation of the poems of Van der
Noot's Theatre into English, and the connection of
Van der Noot with Spenser is, however, so important
that it for a moment requires our special attention.
3. Spenser's connection with ff the Theatre/'
In the year 1591, Edmund Spenser, among the
poems of his Complaints, reprinted the verses which
in 1569 had appeared in the Theatre of Van der
Noot. By revising, and partly rewriting them,
Spenser places these verses so decidedly under his
own name, and authority, that nobody can doubt
Spenser's authorship of these English translations of
Van der Noot's verses, unless for very serious reasons,
since Spenser's character is not of such kind as to
make it easy for us to assume him guilty of so bold
a lie, involving a literary theft of the very worst kind
that can be thought of. That Spenser himself super-
vised the reprint of these verses in 1591 is absolutely
certain, since he gives therein an entirely new version
of those of Du Bellay, and makes several little cor-
rections in those of Petrarch. 1

On the other hand, Van der Noot, in his Theatre
in 1569, does not mention Spenser with one word, but,
on the contrary, says only that he translated those
verses from the original Dutch edition of the Theatre.
Consequently, any honest treatment of the question
has to start with an endeavor to reconcile all the other
facts with the statement of Spenser and with that of
Van der Noot, and if possible to reconcile these state-

1 Rev. Henry John Todd, in his "Works of Spenser," Vol. VII,
3 2 S"33 2 > gives both the editions of 1569 and of 1591, comparing
them one with the other and showing the differences. Also in the
Cambridge edition of Spenser's works by Dr. E. E. N. Dodge both
versions are reprinted, p. 764-767.

Jonkheer Jan van der Noot.

Kopergravure, voorkomende in Cort Begryp der XII Boeken
Olympiados (1579).

SIR JOHN FAN DER NOOT 237

ments. Neither the short solution of the Westminster
Review, 1 boldly accusing Van der Noot of being a
pharisee, who did not acknowledge the production of
another author, nor that of De Hoog 2 supposing
simply that the edition of the Complaints in 1591 was
published without Spenser's knowing it, nor that of
the Cambridge History of English Literature* in mak-
ing a haughty and empty statement, as if there was
no question at all, and as if even the name of Van
der Noot might be entirely left out in treating
Spenser's earliest work, can satisfy anybody who is
acquainted with the difficulties in this remarkable
question. Recognizing the fact that scholars of repu-
tation who have made this question the subject of
their especial research, differ so much, that, for
instance, Grosart says: "Looking closely into the
Petrarch series, it will be felt that their style is de-
cisively that of Spenser in his early manner Charac-
ter and cadence are pre-eminently Spenserian here and
throughout," while, on the contrary, Koeppler says :
"Die Gedichte des 'Theatre' von 1569 zeigen keine
Spur der so augenfalligen Farbung der Spenserschen
Sprache," and a third one, August Vermeulen, after
his researches, comes to this conclusion: "Whether
Van der Noot has known Spenser at all, remains an
open question/' 4 we have to admit that here is an inter-
esting question, the solution of which has been sought
by scholars in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in Eng-
land, in Germany and in America.

The first and most important question is : how to
reconcile the authorship claimed by Spenser in 1591
with the statement of Van der Noot in 1569 that he

1 Alexander B. Grosart, Complete Works of Spenser, I, 22.

2 De Hoog, Studien II, 48.

3 Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 241 and 285.

4 August Vermeulen, p. 58 and 59.

238 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

translated the verses himself. Now we can prove that
when Van der Noot says that he translated those
verses from the Dutch, this is anyhow not quite true,
and that, to save the honor of Van der Noot, we have
to take these words in any possible sense in which
the author of the book at that moment might have
used them. The comparison of the English transla-
tion with the Dutch and the French versions shows
clearly that they are translated more from the French
than from the Dutch. 1 If this be a fact, which nobody
can deny, we have to find out what else Van der Noot
as an honest man can have meant by the words
"translated from the Dutch." This is indeed not as
difficult as it looks. Van der Noot had published his
"Theatre" first of all in Dutch, his own mother
tongue. So he considered his "Theatre" as a Dutch
work. All the other editions, the French, the English
and the German, he considered and he wished other
people to consider them as versions of his Dutch
work. That, in his sovereign power over his own
work, he, as the author, followed for his English ver-
sion more the French than the Dutch, did not take
away the fact that the original of his book was the
Dutch edition. In that sense he certainly could main-
tain that the English version was a translation from
the Dutch, notwithstanding the fact that in making
this English translation another, viz., a French trans-
lation, had rendered so considerable a service. Fur-
thermore, that he, for his English version, used the
assistance of Spenser, at that time a poor young stu-
dent, hardly seventeen years old, whom he probably
paid one penny for each line, just as Rubens used the
assistance of his pupils for some details of hundreds
of his pictures which were sold under his name, could

1 Ibid, 54 and 55.

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 239

not be such an important fact for the author, who was
the master of the whole work. The young assistant
"was in no way a principal in the main undertaking
when the volume came out, therefore, it nowhere gave
his name. He had done his work, and received his
pay there was no need to acknowledge his services." 1
At that moment Van der Noot coufd not imagine that
the name of his young assistant would one day become
famous, and that those translations would play an
important part in English literature. As a principal
he did what, all over the world, principals do with
their young assistants, and with their work. By get-
ting his pay, and no further recognition at that
moment, Spenser got just what every young man gets,
when the master honors him by asking his assistance.
Just as an architect says, with our full consent: "I
built that house," even where he personally did not
touch one single stone, so Van der Noot could say:
"I made this English version of my original Dutch
work." Van der Noot was here the architect ; he was
the author of the work which he wrote in Dutch, and
the work of translating was of course considered as
an insignificant task, for which he might have em-
ployed any other unknown person, as well as the
young Spenser. Of his original Dutch work, the
sovereign author made his different versions with as
many alterations as he thought necessary, and with
the assistance of such persons as he chose. Looking
at the matter from that point of view, he could hon-
estly maintain that he translated his original work into
French, English and German, just as we ourselves
speak about the French, English and German versions
of Van der Noot's Theatre.

Interpreting Van der Noot's statement, from . his

1 R. E. N. Dpdge, Cambridge edition of Spenser's Works, p. 765.

240 SIR JOHN FAN DER NOOT

point of view as chief author of the work, we can
perfectly reconcile the claim of Spenser that he really
translated these verses although in an absolutely
strict sense of the word this cannot be maintained
either, but has to be taken with some explanation of
common sense. The fact that Spenser in this trans-
lation of 1569, who, as a boy of seventeen years, sup-
posed that he did the work alone, shows a better
knowledge of the French language than when twenty
years later in 1591, as a learned man of thirty-eight,
he, at least in three places, shows that he failed to
understand the French text of the Ruins of Rome
by Du Bellay, which he at that time translated, 1 this
fact shows clearly that Van der Noot, who understood
perfectly his French, probably explained to the young
Spenser the meaning of the French, and the Dutch
texts, and that consequently the translation was not
entirely an independent work by the young Spenser.
Nevertheless, the masterly expression of the thought
in English verses was Spenser's work and the devel-
opment of the English Literature has made this part
of the work for us the most important part. The ex-
planations given by Van der Noot to his assistant-
translator, the young Spenser, for the right under-
standing of the Dutch and the French texts, may have
been felt too deeply by the honest Spenser for him to
have felt like claiming immediately a full right to call
these verses his own, and this, as well as the fact that
the translating was done in the service of Van der
Noot, may have been the reason for the vague expres-
sion, "formerly translated," added to the title of the
verses when Spenser republished them in 1591. At
that time, the name of Van der Noot, an apostate
from Protestantism, had lost a great part of its fame

1 See Vermeulen, p. 58.

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 241

among the Reformed people, and the author of the
Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene might
not think it desirable to mention publicly his connec-
tion with Van der Noot. On the other hand, as soon
as it was no longer the fact of their being translations
but the masterly character of the English verses that
had become important, Spenser could with full right
claim them as his own work. The fact that the prin-
cipal, Dr. Mulcaster, of the Merchant Taylor's school,
from which the young Spenser had just graduated
when he met Van der Noot, is said by Warton to have
given special attention to the teaching of the English
language, 1 seems to be in full accordance with this
view of the question, as it implies that Spenser did
not give the customary amount of attention to French
and other foreign languages. It can hardly mean that
no attention was paid to foreign languages, including
French, without some knowledge of which the young
Spenser could not have done the work at all.

In so far everything can reasonably be explained
if we presume that Spenser really is the translator,
while on the other hand, when we for a moment
assume that Spenser was not the translator, we are
immediately coerced to the absurd conclusion that the
author of Shepherd's Calendar (1579), and of the
Faerie Queene (1590) chose to publish under his
name a few verses, which had been printed twenty
years before, in which verses he had no part at all,
and that with the chance at any moment of being
blamed for so shameless a literary theft by Van der
Noot himself, who was still living, or by the real trans-
lator, if such an one was alive, or had any living
friends.

An additional argument in favor of Spenser's

1 Grosart's Works of Spenser, I. 18.
16

242 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

authorship of these verses is that of Grosart, 1 viz.,
that probably Van der Noot did not master well
enough the English language to make these verses.
This argument, although perhaps of some value, has
been exaggerated very much by Grosart, who goes
so far as to suppose that even in prose Van der Noot
could not express his thoughts in English. This
indeed looks very improbable. A man of noble birth,
of high education, and of remarkable capacity, who
knew not only his French perfectly, but even his
Italian very well, one of the magistrates in the cos-
mopolitan metropolis of Antwerp, at that time a city
where thousands of English people lived, and where
the opportunity of learning English was very great,
such a man probably spoke and wrote the English
language sufficiently to express his thoughts in a
language which was at that time so near to Dutch,
and so easy for a Dutchman to learn, that the his-
torian, Van Meteren, about the year 1600 calls Eng-
lish "only a broken Dutch." And that Van der Noot
for this reason should have to be considered as not
having written himself even the pamphlet entitled
"Governance and preservation of them that fear the
Playe," and that there should be no evidence what-
ever to show that Van der Noot commanded enough
of English to write it idiomatically, when living at
London for at least two years and a half, and having
all sorts of correctors around him, seems to me an
unnecessary exaggeration, for which there is "no evi-
dence whatever."

The real reason why Van der Noot, in making his
English version of the Theatre, put as much of the
work as possible upon other persons in his service,
and caused even the prose part to be translated by

1 Grosart, p. 19.

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 243

another man, seems to me to lie in the character and
position of Van der Noot as a nobleman, an aristocrat,
a high spirited poet of the Rennaissance, a former
magistrate at Antwerp, who had formed the custom
of commanding others, and of having everything done
as much as possible by other people in his service.

Another interesting question in connection with
Spenser's authorship of these translations, is the prob-
lem that lies before us in the four "visions" or verses
taken from the Apocalypse of St. John. Spenser
claims the authorship of the verses translated from
Petrarch, and of those from Du Bellay, but he neither
reprints nor says a word about the four beautiful and
most important verses from the Apocalypse, which,
as we saw, form the very pith and kernel of the whole
"Theatre." These verses are in their original Dutch,
the only original poems of Van der Noot in this col-
lection, and in their English version they are as beau-
tiful in literary form as any of the others. Did Van
der Noot himself translate these four verses? But
then it would become very probable that he translated
the others as well. Or did Spenser translate also
these verses ? But then the question arises : Why
did Spenser not reprint these four verses with the
others in his Complaints? There is great reason to
think that Spenser translated them and that Van der
Noot did not, and it is not difficult to see why Spenser
did not reprint these verses in his volume of "Com-
plaints." It is very improbable that Van der Noot
should have had another man in his service for the
translation of only these four verses, and conse-
quently all the evidence for Spenser's authorship of the
other verses, operate also as evidence for his author-
ship of these four. Besides this, it seems to me, from
inner evidence, impossible to consider Van der Noot

244 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

himself as the translator. Some expressions and
thoughts which are found in the Dutch original are
left out in the English version, expressions which
Van der Noot himself at that time never would have
left out. In the second of the four verses, a special
verse against the Roman Catholic Church, "the woman
sitting on the Beast," which Van der Noot thus
expresses in the Dutch original, is altered in the
English :

"Wt den hemel hoorde ick een ander steemme buyghen
"Segghende, gaat wt heur op dat ghy heurder plagen
"Niet deelachtig en wort, myn volck, myn goet behagen."

The expression "gaat wt heur" (go out of her), that
is the advice from heaven to leave the Roman Catholic
Church, is not to be found in the English version, but
is at that moment such a prevailing idea of Van der
Noot that he himself when translating these lines
never would have left out this main idea, unless we
suppose that he accommodated his language to- cir-
cumstances and conditions in England, just as in later
time he did in Germany, which is a possibility. In the
same verse, Van der Noot speaks about "the blood
of the saints, the good witnesses of Jesus" ("Van der
heylighen bloet, Jesus goede ghetuyghen"), while in
the English version we read about "The blood of
martyrs dere." The warmer and more sympathetic
expression "martyrs dere" looks, indeed, quite Spen-
serian, while "the good witnesses" of Van der Noot,
looks more like that of the Humanist. It is only a
little difference, but one in which speaks the heart of
the author, as well as that of the translator in a typi-
cal and characteristic way.

Finally, the question why Spenser, although he
translated them, did not claim them, and did not re-

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 245

print them in his Complaints with the others, is not
difficult to answer. These four "visions" are not
complaints. These verses on Anti-Christ, on the
Woman sitting on the Beast, on Christ, and on the
Holy City, were perfectly in their place in Van der
Noot's Theatre, "an argument both profitable and de-
lectable to all that sincerely love the word of God,"
as the title tells us, but they were not at all in their
place in the Complaints. So we can perfectly under-
stand that Spenser, perhaps to keep faith with his
publisher, left them out, as not belonging to the kind
of poems which he intended to publish in his Com-
plaints,

That Spenser, in the edition of his Complaints,
did not mention at all the name of Van der Noot, and
his "Theatre," may find its reason in the fact that Van
der Noot had returned to the Roman Catholic Church,
and, therefore, as an apostate from Protestantism, had
fallen into disgrace among the Protestants. This m&y
have been the reason, as well, why Spenser never
claimed the translations of the four verses of the
Apocalypse, because he never could claim them, with-
out telling that they were translated from Van der
Noot, and since Spenser as a Calvinist could not wish
his name to be connected any more with that of the
Catholic, Van der Noot, he left them unmentioned.

4. Van der Noot and Spenser

The last question which asks our attention is:
What was the relation between Spenser and Van der
Noot? And: Has Van der Noot exerted any influ-
ence on Spenser, and through Spenser on English liter-
ature? I know that this question has to be decided
in the main by logical inference rather more than by
direct facts. But there is some value in logical rea-
soning. At least once in a while, logical inferences

246 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

do mean something, when applied to creatures pre-
tending to be reasonable beings. For the present
purpose I give consideration to the following seven
points :

(1) The verses of Van der Noot's English edition
of his Theatre are the earliest known verses of Spen-
ser.

(2) If Van der Noot's Theatre was successful,
expressing the deepest thoughts of thousands of per-
secuted Protestants in several countries of Western
Europe, and at the same time making some precious
contributions to literature, then this success was at
the same time a success for the young Spenser, and
an encouragement to him to develop his abilities as
a poet, which hardly can be overestimated.

(3) The ideas of the Theatre, as Van der Noot laid
them before the young Spenser, and explained them
to him, these great ideas of the world's vanity, of the
struggle and sufferings of Christians, and of their
final triumph, and their eternal happiness, have re-
mained with Spenser ; they have formed the center of
his life-system, and are to be found in all his later
works.

(4) In Van der Noot the young Spenser found
just the leading spirit he needed for the development
of his genius a man who combined the high literary
taste of the Rennaissance, with the religious struggle
of the Reformation, a beautiful combination, which in
Spenser's later works came to such a mighty develop-
ment. Neither a pure humanist, dwelling one-sidedly
on the literature of Greece and Rome, nor a simple
Reformed preacher, forgetting in his religious zeal
the value of literary beauty, but both combined in one
human consciousness, the deep religious ideas of the
Reformation, and the finest humanistic taste for art

SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT 247

and literature, that was what the developing genius
of Spenser needed, and that was what he must have
admired in the author of the Theatre. The young
Spenser, says Grosart and he studied Spenser was
"quickened and fired by Van der Noot." 1

(5) Twenty years after the publication of the
Theatre, Spenser still cherished these first poems so
much that he added to them several more of the same
kind, under the title of the "World's Vanity"
in his Complaints, although at. that time it must have
been with feelings of sorrow that Spenser recalled his
early acquaintance with the Dutch nobleman, of such
high education and learning, now long since returned
to the Catholic Church, the man in whose service he
had gained his first success as a poet and his first
great encouragement in the field of poetry.

(6) During these twenty years, Spenser wrote his
Shepherd's Calendar-, with the Eclogue for Septem-
ber, in which we find the dialogue between Diggon
Davie and Hobbinol. This Diggon Davie is, accord-
ing to Kirk's Glasse, "the very friend of the author
and this friend had been long in foreign countries." 2
Grosart recognizes in this very friend Spenser's early
patron-friend, Van der Noot. 3 The whole diologue of
Diggon Davie and Hobbinol, says Grosart, is "a pas-
sionate indictment of Popery, exactly reflecting the
Theatre." 4 And after having found Van der Noot's
person, as well as Van der Noot's ideas, in Spenser's
Shepherd's Calendar, Grosart says, "One thinks the
more of Spenser, that he thus warmly celebrated his
early patron-friend." 5

1 Grosart, Spenser's Works, I. p. 25.

2 Grosart, p. 27.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 28.

248 SIR JOHN VAN DER NOOT

(7) After the example of Van der Noot as he
appeared in 1569, as a Protestant refugee, a noble-
man, a learned humanist, the author of the Theatre,
Spenser's genius has developed through all his later
life as we see in his works. When Van der Noot
and Spenser met together, Van der Noot was at the
highest point of his fame, and of his ability, while
Spenser was just at that age which is so apt for great
impressions, which often is so decisive for life, and
therefore we may ask: Has there been anybody, of
whom we have knowledge that probably had a more
important and a more deciding influence on Spenser
than Van der Noot? And is not the spirit of the
Theatre hauntingly present in the works of Spenser?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE "BEE HIVE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH," BY MAR-
NIX OF ST. ALDEGONDE

With the exception of Erasmus' Praise of Folly,
there is probably no other book written in the six-
teenth century which found so many readers among
the Protestants, as the biting satire of Marnix of St.
Aldegonde, published under the title of "The Bee-
hive."

The author of this book, Philip of Marnix, Lord
of St. Aldegonde, commonly called "Marnix" or "St.
Aldegonde," or Marnix of St. Aldegonde, was born
at Brussels in the year 1538, studied at the University
of Lotivain, and at Geneva under Calvin and Beza.
After having returned to the Netherlands, he be-
came one of the leaders in the revolt against Spain,
and by his writings one of the best defenders of
Protestantism. He defended the image-breaking of
1566, and fled from the country when, in 1567, the
duke of Alva came to the Netherlands. All his pos-
sessions were confiscated, and he himself was con-
demned to death. During five years, from 1567 until
1572, he lived in exile, most of the time in Germany,
and it was during this time that he wrote his "Wil-
helmus van Nassauwe," the most beautiful national
hymn of the Dutch people, and his famous satire
against the Roman Catholic Church entitled, "De
Byencorf der H. Romische Kercke" (The Beehive
of the H. Roman Catholic Church). After his return
to the Netherlands he appears as one of the most

249

250 "BEE HIVE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH"

intimate friends of the Prince of Orange, who often
employed him for diplomatic missions and at last
made him, in 1583, first burgomaster or governor of
Antwerp. But when, during the year 1585, he had
been forced to surrender the city to the Spaniards,
he retired to his country place at Sauburg in Zealand,
and after that time devoted himself entirely to his
studies. During the last years of his life, when he
was appointed by the States General to prepare a
new translation of the Bible, he moved to Leyden,'
where he died in 1598, after having finished only a
small part of this work. "He was a poet of much
vigor and imagination, a prose writer whose style was
surpassed by that of none of his contemporaries, a
diplomatist in whose tact and delicacy William of
Orange reposed in the most difficult and important
negotiations, an orator whose discourses on many
great public occasions attracted the attention of Eur-
ope, a soldier whose bravery was to be attested on
many a well-fought field, a theologian so skillful in
the polemics of divinity that he was more than a
match for a bench of bishops upon their own ground,
and a scholar so accomplished that besides speaking
and writing the classical and several modern lan-
guages with facility he had also translated for popular
use the Psalms of David into vernacular verse, and
at a very late period of his life was requested by the
States-General of the republic to translate all the
Scriptures, a work the fulfillment of which was pre-
vented by his death." "His device, Repos ailleurs,
finely typified the restless, agitated and laborious life
to which he was destined." 1

ij. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, Part II,
Chapter VI. The best monographs on the life and works of St.
Aldegonde are those of Edgar Quinet, Th. Juste, Alberdinck Thym,
J. van der Have, and especially ' G. Tjalma. The wprks of St. Alde-
gonde are published in seven volumes with introduction by E. Quinet
at Brussels, 1857-1860. His religious and ecclesiastic writings in
Dutch were collected and republished in four vols., with introduction
by J. J. Torenenbergen, The Hague, 1878.

"BEE HIVE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH" 251

His great satire, "The Beehive," was an answer
to a letter published by Gentian Hervet, Bishop of
Bois le Due, in which letter an endeavor was
made to convince the Protestants of their error
in leaving the Roman Catholic Church. In the form
of a commentary to that letter St. Aldegonde sub-
mits all the peculiar dogmas, and the whole policy
of the Roman Catholic Church, to the most subtle
criticism, taking himself the appearance of a de-
fender, and in that way producing a biting satire,
in which he compared the Roman Catholic Church
to a bee hive, and the pope, the cardinals, the bishops,
monks, and priests to the different kinds of bees
every kind with its own sundry qualities. Some of
these bees, he says (alluding to cardinals and bishops)
live in the neighborhood of their king and "how much
the nearer they approach to the king so much the
thicker and rounder they commonly grow." Others
live a more solitary life, and these bees, therefore,
"are called with the Greek word Monachi." Another
kind are horseflies, wasps and hornets (the common
priests) with this difference, that they do not settle
themselves on horses, but on sheep (the people of
their congregation), on which they, "for fear of being
entangled in the fleece, first bite away the wool, after
that their skinne, and lastly do suckle their blood,
to which they are wonderfully adjected."

As the subject of this book touched the great
struggle between Protestantism and Roman Catholic-
ism, and as the literary form of it was very attrac-
tive, and its author one of the most learned men
of his age, we do not wonder that everywhere the
Protestants were anxious to read this book, the fame
of which soon spread over all Western Europe.

After the first three editions in Dutch, in 1569,

252 "BEE HIVE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH"

1572 and 1674, a German translation followed in 1576,
and an English version in 1578. The title of the first
English edition is : "Bee Hive of the Romish Church,
a Worke of all Good Catholiks too be read, and most
necessary to be understoode, wherein both the Cath-
olike religion is substantially confirmed, and the here-
tikes finely fetcht over the coales. Translated from
Dutch by George Gilpin the Elder."

After this first English edition there followed at
least three later ones, viz., in 1580, 1623 and 1636.
One of the year 1598 is declared by Van Torenen-
bergen to be probably the same as that of 1578, the
year 1598 being a printer's error in the catalogue of
Alfred Russell Smith, at London, for 1578.

In Dutch this book has appeared since it was first
published in at least twenty-eight editions, and in Ger-
man in at least fourteen.

For the Huguenots in France, St. Aldegonde
wrote his elaborate work, "Tableu des differens de la
Religion," treating to a large extent the same sub-
ject, in which the author, after the example of Rabe-
lais, uses as skillfully the weapon of satire. Never-
theless, some authors maintain that the Bee Haw also
was translated into French. 1

That St. Aldegonde, by this work, advanced the
cause of Protestantism, not only on the Continent
but as well on the British Isles, is without doubt, and
also that the work had its influence on the develop-
ment of satire in every language into which it was
translated. And the four English editions show
clearly enough that the Beehive of St. Aldegonde was
a popular book among English people.

1 Edgar Quinet, Oeuvres de Th. de Marnix, Vol. IV, p. 347, where
he quotes the work of Prins.

CHAPTER XXIX

DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES. LUCAS JANSS WAGHEN-
AER, BERNARD LANGHENES, JAN HUYGHEN VAN
LINSCHOTEN, WILLIAM CORNELIS SCHOUTEN, GER-
RIT DE VEER, HENDRIK TOLLENS.

Descriptions of voyages have formed for centuries
in the most natural way a typical part of the litera-
ture read by the English. A nation destined to "rule
the waves," a nation whose country is surrounded by
the sea, learned through all generations to enjoy voy-
ages ; a nation, whose sons looked from their earliest
youth to the sea for their future success in life, must
enjoy and favor every kind of story relating to the
bravery and the success, the dangers and the trag-
edies, the heroism and the sufferings, of those who
sailed with their ships to the remotest corners of the
globe, and coming home brought with them trophies
of their trade or their robberies, as well as thrilling
stories of their wonderful experiences.

From the "Voiage and Trevaile" (13001372) until-
the time that the last of the one hundred and twenty
volumes of the Hakluyt Society was published, Eng-
lish literature is full of "voyages and travels," which
give abundant proof of this typical characteristic of
the English nation. Among these descriptions of
voyages are some translations from the Dutch, which
have played a very important and interesting part, not
only as a much cherished amusement for the reading
classes in England but as an incentive to the develop-

253

254 DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES

ment of English maritime power. Within the short
but deciding period, from the year 1590 until 1620, we
find the following books, and perhaps others, trans-
lated from the Dutch:

(1) Lucas Janss Waghenaer (1550-1600), Mari-
ners Mirrour. This book is mentioned by P. A. Tiele
in his introduction to The Voyage of John Huyghen
Linschoten, p. XXVII, as a translation of Waghen-
aer's Spiegel der Seevaert, published by C. Plantyn,
Leyden, 1584.

(2) Bernard Langhenes The description of a
voyage made by certain Ships of Holland into the
East Indies who set forth on the 2nd of April, 1595,
and returned on the I4th of August, 1597. Printed
by John Woolfe, 1598.

"In his dedication to this work, of which the origi-
nal was written by Bernard Langhenes, Phillip an-
nounces a translation of Linschoten's voyages." 1 This
work was translated by William Phillip.

(3) John Huyghen van Linschoten, his discours
of voyages into ye Easte and West Indies. Devided
into foure books. Printed at London by John Woolfe
(1598) ; on the title pages of the second, third and
fourth books of which work the initials W. P. (Will-
iam Phillip) are given as those of the translator.

"In the advertisement to the reader in this work
(copies of which have sold as high as ten pounds,
fifteen shillings) it is stated that the Booke being
commended by Maister Richard Hakluyt, a man that
laboureth greatly to advance our English name and
nation, the printer thought good to cause the same
to be translated into the English tongue." 2 Reprinted
by the Hakluyt Society in two volumes, London, 1885,
with introduction of P. A. Thiele.

1 Charles T. Beke, in his introduction to the work of Gerrit de
Veer, p. CXXXIX.

2 Ibid.

Eoum nobi$ heic dat LynfcottM Orbcm.),
Lynfcotunu, arfifai jculpta tabclU manu.

DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES 255

(4) Gerrit de Veer A true description of three
voyages by the North-East towards Cathay and
China, undertaken by the Dutch in the years 1594,
1595 and 1596, published at Amsterdam in the year
1598, and in 1609 translated into English by William
Phillip.

This book is reprinted in 1853 'for the Hakluyt.
Society and edited by Charles T. Beke.

(5) William Cornelison Schouten. The Relation
of a wonderfull Voyage made by William Cornelison
Schouten of Home, Shewing how South from the
Straights of Magellan in Terra del Fuego, he found
and discovered a newe passage through the great
South Sea, and that way seyled round about the
World Describing what Islands, Countries, People
and strange Adventures he found in his saicle Pass-
age. London, imprinted by T. D. for Nathaneel New-
berry, 1619. "This English edition," says Beke, is
exceedingly rare." 1

Of these five books, those of Van Linschoten, De
Veer and Schouten are by far the most important.

That of Langhenes I have found mentioned only
by Beke in his introduction to that of De Veer ; that
of Lucas Jan Waghenaer is mentioned, in the Dutch
edition, by Van der Aa's Dutch Biography under the
name of Waghenaer.

That of William Cornelis Schouten, however, who
died in 1625, I have found in not less than twenty-
five editions, of which seventeen are in Dutch, five
in French, one in Latin, one in German and one in
English. The importance of this work lies in what
is mentioned in the title about the discovery of "a
newe passage through the great South Sea."

Far more important is that of De Veer, relat-

1 Charles T. Beke in his introduction to the work of De Veer,
p. c., XXXIX.

256 DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES

ing the three voyages by Dutch ships in 1594, 1595
and 1 596, which were trying to find a new passage to
China and India through the North-East, around the
Northern coast of Russia. Especially the thrilling
narrative of the third one of these voyages, in which
William Barends was the commander, and in which
this daring mariner, with his little company, was
forced to stay a whole winter on Nova Sembla, has
gained a world-wide fame. The struggle of these
stubborn and daring explorers, against the intense
cold of an arctic winter, against the attacks of polar
bears and against other difficulties, is so interesting,
and is described with such a naive simplicity, that it
is retold in hundreds of books, and forever belongs
to the most interesting literature of the kind in the
world. Gerrit de Veer, himself one of the little com-
pany of Barends, describes the first of the three voy-
ages, as published in the English edition of the Hak-
luyt Society, in thirty-eight pages, the second voyage
in thirty pages, while all the rest of the book, covering
two hundred and forty-two pages, is devoted to the
third voyage. The building of a cabin, the accident
that befel two of the company who were devoured
by a bear, the sickness and death of Barends himself,
the return in open boats from Nova Sembla to Kola
on the White sea, a distance of about six hundred
miles, are some of the most interesting parts of the
story. More than two hundred years after this voy-
age, the Dutch poet, Hendrik Tollens (1780-1856)
made the story a subject of one of his poems ("De
overwintering op Nova Sembla"), and this poem, too,
is translated into English in 1860 by "Anglo-Saxon"
and entitled: "The Hollanders in Nova-Sembla An
Arctic poem."

There exist at least . three Dutch editions of the

DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES 257

work of De Veer, in 1598, 1605 an d 1619; one in
Latin in 1598, four editions in French in 1598, 1599,
1600 and 1609; and one in English. Several abridg-
ments of the work are published in German, one in
Latin, and one in English, in the third volume of
Purchas' collection. Short abstracts of the work have
been published in Dutch, Latin, German, French and
English, and all these editions are mentioned in -the
introduction to the English edition as published by
the Hakluyt Society in 1853.

But the most important of all, is the book of Van
Linschoten. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was born
at Haarlem, probably in the year 1560. His portrait
has: "Anno 1595 act 32," and this should indicate
as the year of his birth 1563. But all the stories of
his life tell that in the year 1576 he went to Spain
as a boy of sixteen years, which brings the year of
his birth back to 1560. And, as it is much more prob-
able that he left home at sixteen than at thirteen, I
rather believe that he was born in 1560. Probably
about the year 1573, before or after the siege and con-
quest of Haarlem by the Spaniards, his parents moved
to Enkhuizen, one of the first cities which fell into
the hands of the Sea-Beggars, and was held for the
Prince of Orange. Enkhuizen, to day one of the dead
cities on the Zuider Zee, was at that time one of the
best sea ports of the Netherlands and one of the cen-
ters of Dutch trade and fishery. "We learn from
John that two brothers of his some years previous to
the year 1576 had gone to Spain and established
themselves probably in business at Seville. In spite
of the war between the two nations, commercial rela-
tions were still maintained, and could not well be
abandoned by either side, as the Dutch market was
then indispensable to the prosperity of the Indian

258 DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES

trade of Spain and Portugal." 1 As a boy of sixteen
years, in 1576, he left the home of his parents to
join his brothers in Spain, and he did not return to
Enkhuizen before the year 1592, "after an absence
of thirteen years." 2 If he really left home in 1576,
and returned in 1592, his absence must 'have been
not thirteen but sixteen years. But, however this
may be, he stayed for six or seven years in Spain,
and in Portugal in the house of a merchant at Lis-
bon ; went in 1 583 to India in the suite of Vincente
de Fonseca, the newly appointed Archbishop of Goa,
where the young Van Linschoten stayed for five
years. During the years he spent in Spain and Portu-
gal and in India, he studied not only the Spanish and
Portuguese languages, but especially all the maps and
books of the Spaniards and Portuguese about the
route to India, and the countries of the far East,
which at that time, were, in great part, entirely un-
known to the Dutch and the English. And after he
had returned to Enkhuizen in 1592, where he found
that his father had died long ago, but his mother,
brother and sister were in good health, he began to
compile all his notes and maps for a book, to which
he gave the title of "Intinerario," and in which he
set forth the precious information which he had
gained in his voyages. This beok put an end to the
monopoly which the Spaniards and Portuguese en-
joyed of the trade with East India, and became the
cause of the establishing of the Dutch, and of the
English, East-Indian-Companies. This "Itinerario,"
the great work of Van Linschoten, is divided into
three parts. The first part, being the Itinerario prop-
er, is that which in 1885 was reprinted by the Hakluyt

1 P. A. Thiele, Introduction to "The Voyage of John Huyghen
van Linschoten to the Bast Indies. Ed. Hakluyt Society, 1885, p.
XXIII.

2 Ibid., p. XXIX.

DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES 259

Society in two volumes. For this part the author
received the assistance of Bernard ten Broeke, whose
name, after the manner of the time, was Latinized
into Paludanus. The second part, containing "a col-
lection of the routes to India, the Eastern seas and the
American coasts, was translated from the manu-
scripts of Spanish and Portuguese pilots; and is, in
particular, full of details on the routes beyond Ma-
lacca, in the Malay Archipelago and on the Chinese
coasts. It is by this compilation that Linschoten ren-
dered his countrymen the most direct benefit/' 1 "The
third part consists of a short description of the east-
ern and western coasts of Africa, with a more ample
description of America." 2 The maps of the Itinerario
were declared to be from "the most correct charts
that the Portuguese pilots nowadays make use of."
"From a careful comparison of some parts," says
Thiele, "with the earlier printed maps, I can affirm
that this claim is no vain boast, but .the simple truth." 3
The second part, as being most needed by the
Dutch and English, was printed first of all in 1595,
and immediately used on voyages to India, before the
whole work of Van Linschoten was published in 1596.
After having so far finished his work that it was
ready for the press, Van Linschoten himself took part
in the two first voyages around the North-East, de-
scribed in the work of Gerrit de Veer, as mentioned
above, but when he had come back from that second
voyage, he took no further active part in maritime
expeditions, although his interest in them remained
unabated. 4 The flourishing seaport of Enkhuizen
where he found such congenial friends as Paludanus,

IP. A. Thiele, p. XXX.

2 Ibid., p. XXXI.

3 Ibid.

4 P. A. Thiele, p. XXXVII.

260 DESCRIPTIONS OF VOYAGES

and Lucas Jansz Waghenaer, attracted him so much
that he settled there, and was appointed treasurer of
the town. In 1606 we find his name among the mem-
bers of the committee for the establishing of a West-
India-Company. He died on the 8th of February,
1611, at the age of fifty-one years.

His "Itinerario" was in some respects a revela-
tion. "After its publication, every one learned that
the colonial empire of the Portuguese was rotten, and
that an energetic rival would have every chance of
supplanting them. Its importance met with speedy
and extensive recognition. English and German
translations were published in 1598; two Latin trans-
lations (one at Frankfort and one at Amsterdam)
in 1599; a French translation in 1610. The latter as
well as the original Dutch was more than once re-
printed. For long the book was constantly quoted
as an authority." 1

i Ibid., XL.

CHAPTER XXX

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. BROWNISTS, SEPARATISTS OR
INDEPENDENTS, BAPTISTS, CONGREGATIONALISTS,
QUAKERS, PRESBYTERIANS, METHODISTS.

The influence of religious ideas and movements on
the literature of a nation can hardly be overestimated,
and yet is often treated with very moderate attention.
In Dante's Divine Comoedia we should not have a
Purgatory if Dante had not been a Roman Catholic;
Voltaire never would have written his many satires,
full of literary beauty, if he had not been an eight-
eenth century Rationalist and Deist ; Milton's Para-
dise Lost and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress are in-
separably connected with the ideas of the Indepen-
dents, and with the religious struggle of the different
Protestant denominations in England during the sev-
enteenth century. That great religious struggle of
the Reformation, as far as the whole people took part,
in it, developed in England much later than in Ger-
many, France, and the Netherlands. In the latter
countries it happened during- the sixteenth century,
while at that time in England the great event
was only the establishing of the Anglican Church.
But the real Reformation, among and by the
masses of the English people,' the real struggle
for Presbyterianism, for Congregationalism, for the
Baptist views, took place in the seventeenth century,
against the Party of the Stuarts. That strug-
gle, although preparing its way since the last

261

262 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

part of the sixteenth century, found its historical
zenith in the time of Cromwell, and got at last its final
decision in the glorious Revolution of 1688 under
William III of Orange. Before the deciding period
of the real Reformation in England arrived, during a
great part of the sixteenth, and the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the continual influence of Pro-
testant ideas introduced from the Continent, and espe-
cially from the Netherlands, was working among the
masses of the English people, preparing the way for
the different religious denominations, which were des-
tined to play such an important part in later English
history, and to find their adequate reflection in Eng-
lish literature. During the persecutions under
Charles V, beginning immediately after the edict of
Worms in 1521, with the introduction of the inquisi-
tion in the Netherlands, thousands fled from that
country, and a great part of them, most of whom
were Anabaptists, took refuge in England. At the
time of the arrival of the Duke of Alva in the Nether-
lands in 1567, probably one hundred thousand people
fled from the country, half of them crossing the chan-
nel to find safety in England. They all settled at
London, and in the eastern districts of England,
where, during centuries, for economic reasons, Dutch
settlements had existed. These thousands of Pro-
testant refugees were for a great part Anabaptists,
preaching rejection of infant baptism, separation
from the established church, priesthood of all believ-
ers, the formation of churches by "a company of
Christians or believers who, by a willing covenant
made with their God, are tinder the government of
God and Christ and keep His laws in one holy com-
munion," as Robert Browne defines it. Now refu-
gees, who sacrifice everything for the principles they

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 263

confess, are always the most zealous and most suc-
cessful propagandists, because they show with their
lives the sincerity of their preaching. And the mass
of the English people was ripe for these numer-
ous and sincere missionaries of Dutch Protestantism.
The University of Cambridge, which is nearer to
these eastern districts in England, -happened to be the
most progressive one, and among its graduates we
soon find learned men, who adopted the Continental
Protestant ideas of the refugees, and who became
natural leaders of the new movement in England.
Robert Browne was the first prominent man of the
kind, and after him the first converted English people
were called either Broimists, or, because they preached
separation from the established church, Separatists,
or, as they propagated the independency of the
churches from the state, they were also called Inde-
pendents. Among those people who were variously
called Brownists, or Separatists, or Independents, as
soon as they became more numerous, churches were
formed, to which they themselves gave the names either
of Baptists, where they laid stress on the rejection of
infant baptism, or of Congregationalists, where the
equality of the members, and the priesthood of all
believers was put in the foreground. It is here that
we find the first beginning of the denominations of
Baptists and Congregationalists, today so numerous
in England and America.

Later we find the rise of the Quakers under
George Fox, and William Penn, and still later that
of the Methodists, under Wesley and Whitefield,
while at the same time the Presbyterians became pow-
erful all over England and Scotland. Finally in the
eighteenth century we see in England the rise of
Rationalism and Deism, and after that time the de-
velopment of Pantheism.

264 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

It is interesting to trace the influence of the Neth-
erlands on the rise and development of every one of
these religious movements. To begin with the Brown-
ists, those first, Separatists or Independents, as they
were called, we know that Robert Browne, after be-
ing graduated from Cambridge, began to preach, and
that "the vehemence of his character gained him a
reputation with the people," and "being a fiery, hot-
headed young man, he went about the countries in-
veighing against the discipline and ceremonies of the
Church, and exhorting the people by no means to
comply with them." 1 We know that he became the
founder of those first Separatist Churches, which
were called Brownists, or Barrowists. In the year
1592 the Brownists were estimated by Walter Ral-
eigh to number twenty thousand 2 and they were soon
divided into those who called themselves Congrega-
tionalists, and others who called themselves Baptists.
And about this same Robert Browne, the founder of
the Separatists or Independents, and more especially
of the C on gre Rationalists and Baptists, we read that
after he left Cambridge University, he lived "for
about a year among some Dutch emigrants in the
diocese of Norfolk," 3 and that he, persecuted by the
bishops, "retired with several friends to Zealand, at
Middelburg." "In that then cradle of liberty, they
constituted themselves into a church ;" and the press
being unrestrained in the Netherlands, the pastor pub-
lished his doctrine in a book entitled : "A book which
showeth the life and Manners of all true Christians ;
and how unlike they are unto Turks and Papists and
Heathen folk. 4 Also the Points and Parts of all Di-

1 Daniel Neal. The History of the Puritans. Vol. I, p. 149-

2 Ibid., p. 198.

3 Benjamin Hanbury. Historical memorials relating to the Inde-
pendents or Congregationalists. Vol. I, p. 19.

4 Ibid, p. 19. This book of Robert Browne was printed at Mid-
delburg by Richard Painter in the year 1582.

lACOBUS AnMINITJS. OVDE \\rATERJE TfATUS Jtt.iSft

Obiit Lueduni Batavorum . Vixit Anno* 4^ .

tSt fictdf ,Ji ^oct* manuf , (<tLani<p latorcf %.oo 'fhfu/cJi aeirufF, ~bf WyfAeff , en- Gtlterinejrt-

Orbif martenf. JtliraaJa. , Gftn Vffft{itrj ssyn ran '"dtt'a&njA , ft- verktfHheyt-,

Cernitf tvrrffrtm errorif, pietaiis tlmerem*, ^Zoa xie ifabeett^etn. bit yrjr yon fi*yn /

.tfj^num vUrtt .frmtmum . tt'ie 't~ Vmrns yelf^e torinl van ^4rm\

lacobvus Arminixts tintien. Oude\vater j^eboren. A* ijoo
te Leyden overlederi out z_ynde ^.q laren ,
-----'-- ^ * - -,igb K^rfinur.

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 265

vinity, that is, of the revealed Will and Word of God,
are declared by their several Definitions and Divi-
sions, in order as followeth, etc." An outline of this
fundamental book for all the further development of
Congregationalism and Baptism is given by Han-
bury. 1

So we see that from the very first starting point
Robert Browne adopted the ideas of the Dutch Ana-
baptist refugees in England, and developed his ideas
in founding the English Separatist Church at Middel-
burg, where they were protected by the special' order
of William the Silent, and where Browne found an
opportunity to develop his ideas, to write his books,
and have them printed, whence they were spread over
England. In England every endeavor to establish a
Separatist congregation was prevented, but in the
Netherlands, at Middelburg, Separatists found refuge
and protection as early as the year 1581. In her deal-
ings with the origins of the powerful denominations
of Congregationalists and Baptists, Queen Elizabeth
did not show serself the so-often-praised "Good Queen
Beth," but a bloody, persecuting sovereign, a woman
careless about religion, who swore like a soldier every
day, 2 while her separatist subjects sighed in prison or
were put to death. 3 It was during the last twenty
years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that many of
the Separatists (Brownists, Independents) fled to the
Netherlands, while after the death of Elizabeth, under
James I, many more followed their example. Amster-
dam became, after Middelburg, the place of refuge,
and soon the greatest center of the English Separa-
tists, and after 1609 Leyden also gave hospitality to a

1 Hanbury. I, p. 20-22.

2 The expression "By God's son" was always on her lips.

3 Neal, I, 201. The two ministers, Greenwood and Penry, are
well known among those first martyrs of English Independentism.

266 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

number of them, who formed a congregation under
the well-known leaders John Robinson and William
Brewster. This congregation at Leyden was that of
the Pilgrims, a part of whom in the year 1620 crossed
the ocean on the Mayflower and landed at Plymouth
rock. 1 Although the ideas of all these English Sepa-
ratists did not differ very much; and approached
those of the Anabaptists, as they were recognized
and taught by Memo Simons (1492-1559), their emi-
nent leader; yet some of them laid more stress upon
a congregational form of church government; others
put in the foreground the rejection of infant baptism,
and other questions; and so it happened that, under
their different ministers, they laid the foundations for
different denominations. The churches at MIDDEL-
BURG and LEYDEN are to be considered as THE FIRST
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES, while at AMSTERDAM in
the year 1611 a number of the ENGLISH SEPARATISTS
CALLED THEMSELVES BAPTISTS. But as soon as it was
safe to return to England, these people crossed the
Channel again, and in the year 1611 THE FIRST BAP-
TIST CHURCH WENT FROM AMSTERDAM TO ENGLAND,
while in 1616 the First Congregational Church was
established in the British Isles.

The movement of the Friends, or, as they soon
were called, the QUAKERS began several years later,
but was no less under the influence of Holland than
were the first Congregationalists and Baptists. The
two great founders of Quakerism were George Fox
and William Penn.

1 The history of the Pilgrims has been too often told to be
repeated here, even in an outline. See W. E. Griffith. The Pilgrims
in their three homes, Boston and New York,- 1898; and Alexander
Mackenal, Homes and Haunts of the Pilgrim Fathers, London, 1899.
The works of Neal, Henry Dexter, Samuel Hopkins, Bartlett, Douglas
Campbell, and many others on Puritanism, Independentism and Con-
gregationalism are at hand in every library. See also the articles in
the Encyclopaedia Brittanica on Independents, etc.

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 267

Speaking of George Fox, the English founder of
the sect, Barclay, the best authority upon the sub-
ject, himself a member of the Society, says, in a dis-
cussion of the doctrines of the Menonites: "So
closely do these views correspond with those of
George Fox, that we are compelled to view him
viz., Menno Simons as the unconscious exponent
of the doctrine, practice, and discipline of the
ancient and strict party of the Dutch Mennonites, at
a period when, under the pressure of the times, some
deviation took place among the General Baptists from
their original principles." 1 It is an interesting fact
in this connection that Sewel's History of the Quakers,
the pioneer book upon this subject, was written in
Dutch. Sewel was born at Amsterdam in 1654, and
in his family we have the pedigree of the Quakers.
His grandfather was an English Brownist, or Sepa-
ratist. His father became a Baptist, and so continued
until 1657, when he joined the Quakers." 2 .

To this interesting fact, mentioned by Campbell, we
may add another equally as interesting one ; viz., that
an English translation of several works of Menno
Simons was published in the year 1863 by Elias Barr
and Co., at Lancaster in Pennsylvania, the State of
the Quakers, and all the works of Menno Simons were
translated into English and published in 1871 at Elk-
hart, Indiana, a state in which many Quakers from
Pennsylvania have settled.

"Thus it is," says Campbell, "that the Quakers of
England trace their descent back through the English
Separatists to the Mennonites of Holland. But for
those of America there is even a closer connection.
William Penn's mother was a Dutch woman, and a

1 Barcay's Inner Life, p. 77, quoted by Douglas Campbell. The
Puritans, II, 207.

2 Ibid.

268 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

very notable one, the daughter of John Jasper of Rot-
terdam, ''Dutch Peg," according to Pepy's, the charm-
ing gossip, had more wit than her English husband,
who, at the time of their marriage, was a captain in
the navy, soon to become an admiral. 1 Her son, the
founder of Pennsylvania, was, like Roger Williams, a
thorough Dutch scholar. He had travelled extensively
in Holland, and preached to the Quakers of that conn-
try in their native tongue." 2

The indebtedness of the METHODISTS, as adherents
of that great movement in America which numbers
more than forty-six thousand churches, are called, to
the Netherlands, is not less important, and is recognized
in almost every book on the history of Methodism.
With the exception of the Welsh branch, the Method-
ists from the time of Wesley have adopted the Armin-
ian doctrine, and from the start found all the sources
for their fundamental ideas ready in the elaborate
works of the Dutch Arminians. Holland was the
home of Arminians x and of the great struggle be-
tween Arminianism and Calvinism which culminated
in the first period in the famous Synod of Dordrecht
in the years 1618 and 1619.

"That little country," says Curtiss in his book on
Arminianism in History, "on the northwest coast of
Europe, which had been rescued from the sea by the
hard and persistent labor of the people, was the early
home of two great classes of thought, founded upon
a solid basis Puritanism and Arminianism." The
great classic authors of Arminianism and consequently
of Methodism, men like Jacobus Arminius, Simon
Episcopius, Hugo Grotius, and many others, are to
be found in the Netherlands, and their lives and works

1 Pepy's Diary, II. 160, quoted by Campbell. The Puritans, II, 207.
- Life of William Penn, by Jauney, Dixon, etc., quoted by
Campbell, II, 208.

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 269

are inseparably connected with the history of Hol-
land. After the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618 and 1619,
the Arminian ministers had to leave the country, so
that they became missionaries of Arminianism, but
this banishment, or persecution, as we may call it, al-
though in a milder sense than the word persecution
had in those days, did not last very long, and was
not more severe than what the Arminian magistrates
in cities like Schoonhoven, Utrecht, Rotterdam and
other places had attempted before the Synod of Dord-
recht. The political head and leader of the Armin-
ians had even tried in 1617 with his "Sharp resolve/'
to raise troops for the Province of Holland against
the States General, and so really to break the union
of the state in a period when that union was more
necessary, than it was for the United States at the
time of the civil war. We must therefore not be sur-
prised, when immediately after the Synod of Dordt,
which was a triumph of the Calvinists over the Ar-
minians, at least for a short time, some measures were
taken against the Arminians. Very soon the Remon-
strant ministers were admitted again to the country,
and in 1634 a Remonstrant's College was opened at
Amsterdam, which college became a great nursery for
Arminian theology, where several of the best Armin-
ian scholars laid the foundations for the great Armin-
ian movement, which later developed in England and
America. There in Amsterdam we find the promi-
nent Arminian professors and scholars, Simon Episco-
pius, Stephanus Curcellseus, Arnold Poelenburg, Philip
Limborch, John Le Clerc, Adrian van Cattenburgh,
and John James Wettstein.

In most books on the history of Arminianism, little
stress is laid on the name of one man who, however,
played a very important part in the movement, the

270 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

man who really converted and strengthened Jacobus
Arminius, at a time when Arminius himself was
sceptical and hesitant about which direction to take, on
those questions which later on divided the Calvinists
from the Arminians. This man was Dirk Volkerts
Coornhert, who, therefore, deserves the title of spirit-
ual father of Arminianism. Coornhert was a great
scholar and a man of great literary and philosophical
ability, who, in the most troublesome time of the great
struggle for liberty, took a place of honor. Born at
Amsterdam in 1522, he studied several languages,
French, Spanish, Greek and Latin ; was personally ac-
quainted with William the Silent, who in 1567 invited
him to his castle Dillenburg, to advise him about the
situation in the Netherlands; he suffered exile and
even imprisonment from the Spaniards, while his wife
horror-stricken, died of the plague; held about the
same broadminded ideas of toleration even towards
Roman Catholics in Protestant cities, which were held
by the Prince of Orange ; and as far as Arminianism
is concerned, had several disputes, and even public
debates, with Calvanistic ministers, amongst others
with Professor Saravia of the Leyden University, long
before Arminius appeared on the stage of history.
And when Arminius, at that time still estimated as a
good Calvinist, and a great scholar, was appointed
to try to convert Coornhert, it happened that the old
well-trained scholar and philosopher, was a too power-
ful match for the young Arminius, who, instead of
converting Coornhert, was himself converted to the
principles of Coornhert. This spiritual father of Ar-
minius, and of Arminianism, died at Gonda in the
year 1590. In the Dutch national biography of Van
der Aa is given a list of forty-four books and pamph-
lets, political, theological, and literary, written by

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 271

Coornhert, too many to be repeated here. Since the
days of Coornhert and Arminius, the line of Arminian
scholars has never been interrupted, and since Wesley
started his movement in England, and Methodism
spread all over England and America, the Arminian
scholars have always found and will always find, in
the Netherlands, not only the cradle of Arminianism,
but also the great classics of Arminianism, to whose
scholarly investigations they have to go back, to find
out that nowadays there is not much that is new under
the sun.

In his book on Arminianism in History, George L.
Curtiss, on p. 70, makes a statement that has a strange
sound to those who are acquainted with Dutch his-
tory, and especially with the struggle between Cal-
vinism and Arminianism. He says: "The Calvinists
demanded the support of the State and that there
should not be toleration of other sentiments; the Ar-
minians demanded that there should be perfect tolera-
tion, and that the State should not decide the one or
the other as being true." This statement is not true
to history. The author himself knows it, and shows
that he knows better, when he writes on page 154;
"The Arminians, while denying predestination, pro-
claimed a practical theory which was more important
to the people than any gone before in the struggle to
found a republic. They claimed that in religious mat-
ters the State was supreme, that it should appoint the
ministers, and that it alone should have the regula-
tion of Church discipline and dogma." The truth is
that all parties and all denominations at that time,
Roman Catholics, Calvinists and Arminians were in-
tolerant, that none of them believed in equal freedom
for every denomination, and that they all claimed the
power of the State to give their own denomination the

272 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

predominant place and to suppress every other opin-
ion. Only very few men were far enough ahead of
their time to declare themselves in favor of real tolera-
tion. William the Silent, the father of his country,
and Coornhert, the father of Arminianism, are two
examples of men who stood for toleration in a very
early period of the great struggle, and they were great
exceptions. The fact is that as far as the practical
application of the principle of toleration is concerned,
there was not a state in the world during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, where a greater freedom
and toleration was given to every denomination than
the Reformed State of the Netherlands ; consequently
the refugees from all countries fled to the Nether-
lands.

And another surprising fact is, that, even till in
our present time, the principle of intolerance has been
maintained in Art. 36 of the Confession of the Dutch
Reformed Church, and even in the Confession of the
free reformed, or Separatist-churches in Holland,
notwithstanding the gravamina of the most promi-
nent theologians against that article, a fact very inter-
esting from a psychological .point of view. At a time
when the fundamental ideas of Arminianism, and
consequently of Methodism, were still in their first
period of growth, there was a fully-developed set of
principles, inspiring the life of hundreds of churches
in France, in Holland, in England, and in Scotland.
These principles, first systematically explained in the
Institutes of John Calvin, were then adopted by the
Huguenots in France, by the Reformed in the Nether-
lands, and by THE PRESBYTERIANS in England and
Scotland. These principles were called CALVINISM
after the great leader of the movement, John Calvin,
just as Arminianism later on was so named after Ar-

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE 273

minius. And this movement too had its greatest
stronghold for a long time in the Netherlands. At
a time when the Huguenots in France, and the Puri-
tans, later the Presbyterians in England and Scotland,
were subject to the severest persecutions, the Re-
formed Churches in the Netherlands were flourishing.
Refugees from France and from England fled to the
hospitable shores of the United Provinces, and found
there the full development and practice of the same
principles, which the persecuting powers in France
and in England were trying to extirpate. In that
Calvinism was, according to the best historians, 1 the
strength of the resistance of Holland, in its struggle
against Spain. The famous National Synod of Dordt
in 1618 and 1619 was Calvinistic through and
through, and at the same time the only real ecumenic
counsel of the Protestant churches ever held, as it in-
cluded delegates from churches of all the nations
where Calvinistic Protestantism had got any foot-
hold, except the French churches, whose seats in the
Synod remained empty, because the French king did
not allow them to be represented. That Synod was
the forerunner, and the foundation of the great West-
minster Assembly held twenty years later. Tt was
not only by this Synod of Dordt, and by Dutch influ-
ence on refugees, but especially by the great number
of scholars and professors in the Dutch Universities
that Holland took a leading part in the development
of Presbyterianism. The Universities of Leyden,
founded in 1574, Utrecht, founded in 1636, Groningen,
founded in 1614, and Franeker, founded in 1624, were
the strongholds of Calvinism ; and many students
from England came to the Netherlands, especially to

1 On this point all the best historians of Holland, as Groen van
Prinsterer and Robert Fruin, Bakhuizen van den Brink and Blok,
a^ree.

274 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

Leyden, to follow the courses, and to imbibe the re-
publican and Calvinistic spirit prevailing in "the Low
Countries/' Books by Dutch professors were com-
monly written in Latin, the international language of
the scholars of that time, so that the Dutch language
presented no obstacle at all. By the agency of Eng-
lish ministers, among whom were many good schol-
ars, Dutch Calvinism and closely connected with it,
Dutch republicanism, and democracy, entered into the
English churches, into the life and the spirit of the
English people, and were reflected in English litera-
ture.

CHAPTER XXXI

SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO AND JULIET. JACOBUS STRUYCK.
THE MORALITY PLAYS IN THE NETHERLANDS

In Modern Philology of July, 1906, Mr. Harold
de Wolf Fuller published an extensive article on Ro-
meo and Juliet, on the first page of which he says :
"At the present time, the only recognized sources of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are Arthur Brooke's
long poem, Romeus and Juliet published in 1562, and
William Painter's novel, contained in his Palace of
Pleasures, 1 566-67, both of these works being based
directly on a French novel by Boaistuau, written in
1559. Painter's story is merely a close prose trans-
lation, whereas the poem shows a much freer handling
of its original ; of the two productions, it was chiefly
from the poem that Shakespeare drew his material.
But in addition to these two sources, there seems to
have existed once in England a pre-Shakespearian
play on this subject. Brief mention of it is made in
the address to the reader which Brooke prefixed to
his poem. He says : "Though I saw the same argu-
ment lately set forth on stage with more commenda-
tion than I can look for (being there much better set
forth than I have or can do) yet the same matter
penned as it is, may serve the like good effect." Un-
fortunately, this play seems to have been short-lived
in England, for no other explicit reference to it has
been found, and, so far as we are aware, it is no
longer extant. The important part, therefore, which

275

276 SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO AND JULIET

it may have played in the history of the drama, and
the influence which it may have exerted on Shakes-
peare have remained hitherto matters of profitless
speculation. "But though this play in its original form
be irrevocably lost, we shall find, I think, that it has
been fairly well preserved in a foreign application ;
namely, in the Romeo en Juliette, a Dutch play in
Alexandrine couplets by Jocob Struys, written about
I630." 1

Mr. De Wolf Fuller tells us nothing more about
Jacob Struys, and indeed not much is known about
him ; only that he was a playwright in the beginning
of the seventeenth century, and wrote the following
plays: Alb onus and Rosamunde, Amsterdam, 1631;
Rape of Proserpina, with the wedding of Pluto, Am-
sterdam, 1634; Styrus and Ariane, Amsterdam, 1642;
Romeo and Juliette, Amsterdam, 1634; and Het Am-
deramsch Juffertje (The young lady of Amsterdam),
1633. All these plays are written in Dutch. 2

The Romeo and Juliette was written not only
"about 1630," as De Wolf Fuller says, but more ac-
curately in 1634, and was played on the stage at
Christmas of the same year at Amsterdam.

In his extensive article, Mr. De Wolf Fuller has
succeeded in showing us, that according to Arthur
Brooke's statement, there must have been a play on
the subject Romeo and Juliet, and that probably this
play has been preserved in the later application of the
theme by Jacob Struys.

But Arthur Brooke does not tell us where he saw
it on the stage ; whether in England, or in Flanders,
wh'ere during the time before Shakespeare morality
plays were very popular. He does not tell us whether
the play, as he saw it, was in English or in Dutch.

1 Modern Philology, July, 1906, p. i.

2 Van der Aa. Biographical Woordenboek, in voce Jacob Struys.

SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO AND JULIET 277

And it is a possibility that the original was written in
Dutch, as in the case of "Elckerlyck and Everyman."
The enormous number of plays written in Flanders,
and in Holland during the fifteenth century, the bril-
liant "land jewels" in the cities^ of the Netherlands,
where sometimes more than thirty "chambers of rhet-
oric" went into competition ; th'e great number of
playwrights, one of whom, by the name of Mathys de
Casteleyne, wrote more than a hundred plays, and in
general the whole civilization in which especially the
Southern Netherlands were far ahead of England,
make us feel as if we, looking for the sources of
Shakespearian plays, might find some material to help
us among the mass of plays produced in the Low
Countries.

The able article of De Wolf Fuller has brought us
as far as Jacob Struys; he has brought us to the
Netherlands, and we have to wait for somebody, who
as in the case of Elckerlyck and Everyman, can trace
the story further back and perhaps bring us to more
discoveries of the same kind.

In the fifteenth, and at the beginning of the six-
teenth century, general probability is in favor of a
source in the Southern Netherlands, on account of the
great superiority of civilization there at that time.

CHAPTER XXXII

PHILIP SIDNEY

Hardly any place in the Netherlands is more in-
teresting, more tragic, and more sacred to travelers,
who are acquainted with English literature, than the
spot on the heath near Zutphen, where on the chilly
and misty morning of September 22, 1586, Sir Philip
Sidney was fatally wounded, while fighting beside the
Dutch sons of liberty, against the soldiers of the Span-
ish tyrant. Splendid is Sir Philip Sidney's name in
English literature, everla'sting is the admiration of the
civilized world for the author of the Defense of Poe-
try and of Arcadia, but more than that is the wonder-
ful halo that surrounds his name by reason of his
lovely, and beautiful character, and the noble spirit
with which without fear he stood for the best cause
in literature, as well as on the battlefield. It was that
last cause, the deadly struggle for liberty, that for-
ever connected the name of Sidney with that of the
Netherlands. Eight years before his death, Sidney
was sent by his Queen to the Prince of Orange at
Delft to compliment him on the birth of his son, and
during that visit the Prince received such a noble im-
pression of him, that later on he sent the English em-
bassador Fulke Granville to Queen Elizabeth to report
to her his opinion "that her Majesty had one of the
ripest and greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip
Sidney that at this day lived in Europe ; to the trial
of which he was pleased to leave his own credit en-

278

PHILIP SIDNEY 279

gaged until her Majesty might please to employ this
gentleman either amongst her friends or enemies." 1 .
At the time Sidney traveled through Germany and
France, he enjoyed the company of Hubert Languet,
for a time the private secretary of the Prince of Or-
ange, and most probably the author of the famous
"Vindiciae contra Tyrannos," and perhaps even the
author of the "Apology" of the Prince against Philip
the Second. When, during the last year of his life
Sidney was governor of Flushing, he had under his
command the young Roger Williams, about whom he
writes to his uncle Leicester, at that time Governor
of the Netherlands : "Roger Williams beseechest your
Excellency to pass him his sergeant-ma jorship gen-
eral, with such allowance as shall seem good unto you.
Of all nations they do desire him ; he is fain to be
at charge at Berghen. Your Excellency shall take
care of few men that more bravely deserve it, as I
hope he will." 2 .

One of his songs, which was probably written
during his abode in the Netherlands, bears the in-
scription : Song "To the tune of Wilhelmus van Nas-
sauc," the Dutch national hymn written by Marnix
van Sint Aldegonde, who at that time was at Middel-
burg under the protection of Sydney, and whom he
mentions in his letters to Leicester. Sidney knew what
it meant to stand at the side of William the Silent,
and td fight for the cause of liberty after that great
prince had been murdered. He was himself in Paris
during the horrible night of St. Bartholomew, on Au-
gust 24, 1572; his own eyes had seen the massacre
of the Huguenots. Nobody was more true to his
queen, nobody more frank with her, and from nobody

1 J. A. Symonds, Life of Sidney, p. 41.

2 William Gray, The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Philip Sidney,
p. 376.

280 PHILIP SIDNEY

else would Queen Elizabeth have accepted such frank-
ness; so that in the most critical moments, as for in-
stance when the queen had almost accepted the hand
of the Duke of Anjou, Sidney's advice was more
courageous and more influential, than that of any one
else. He had a personal acquaintance with almost all
the leaders of Protestant Europe; he saw the deadly
struggle in all its immensity ; in his breast, as in that
of William the Silent, beat the very heart of Protest-
antism, and when he fell in battle, it was a loss, not
only for England, and for the Netherlands, but for
the cause of Protestantism as a whole. He died at
the moment when more than ever before he was unit-
ing his own life and fate with that of the Dutch peo-
ple, in their heroic struggle for freedom and tolera-
tion.

The people in the Netherlands had great confidence
in Philip Sidney and after his death they begged to be
allowed to keep his body, and promised to erect a royal
monument to his memory, "Yea, though the same
should cost half a ton of gold in the building." But
this petition was rejected. His body was brought
over to England in a ship, called occasionally the
Black Prince, and buried with pomp in St. Paul's
cathedral. And the whole nation went into mourn-
ing, and for many months it was counted a sin for
any gentleman of quality to appear at Court, or in
the City, in any light or gaudy apparel. 1

"Sidney's death sent a thrill through Europe. Lei-
cester, who truly loved him, wrote in words of pas-
sionate grief to Walsingham ; Elizabeth declared that
she had lost her mainstay in the struggle with Spain ;
Duplessis-Mornay bewailed his loss not for England
only, but for all Christendom" 2 and the common peo-

1 J. A. Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney, p. 174 and 175.
2 Idem., p. 173.

PHILIP SIDNEY 281

pie remembered his love and kindness towards them,
by his last words to one of his dying soldiers on the
battlefield, when he himself, deadly wounded, called
for drink, but seeing the soldier, gave the bottle to
him with the everlasting words : "Thy necessity is
greater than mine"

CHAPTER XXXIII

TRACTS RELATING THE EXECUTION OF JOHN OF OLD-
ENBARNEVELT IN 1619. THE TRAGEDY OF SlR
JOHN VAN OLDEN BARNEVELT, A PLAY CALLED
THE JEWELLER OF AMSTERDAM.

During the centuries in which the Netherlands
played their greatest part in the world's history, all
the nations of Europe took interest in what happened
in Holland. In many cases pamphlets were written
in English, in French, and in German, and sent abroad
to spread the news of what happened in Holland
among the people in England, France, and Germany.
From these pamphlets the narratives often entered into
literary circles, where they were taken up as subjects
for all kinds of literary productions. So it happened
in the year 1619; at a time, when according to R.
Boyle "Englishmen took more interest in Holland
than in any other country in Europe." 1 In May of
that year, one of the most tragic events in the history
of the Dutch Republic took place. The old, and in
many respects eminent, statesman John of Olden-
barnevelt, accused and convicted of high treason, was
beheaded at the Hague, after a splendid and hardly
ever equalled career as Pensionary of the States of
Holland. Everybody knows the story, at least so far
as the great merit of the Pensionary, and the fact of
his execution is concerned, and therefore it would be
out of place to tell it here again at length. Interesting

1A. H. Sullen, A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II, p. 434.
in an Appendix written by R. Boyle.

282

JOHN OF OLDENBARNEVELT EXECUTED 283

for our present purpose is the fact, that, immediately
after the execution three different pamphlets in the
English language were written and spread abroad in
England :

1. Barnavelt's Apologie, or Holland's Hysteria,
with marginal castigations by Robert Houlderus, Min-
ister of the Word of God. I6I8. 1 '

2. Newes out of Holland Concerning Barnavelt
and his fellow-prisoners, their conspirary against their
Native Country with the enemies thereof The Ora-
tion and Propositions made in their behalf unto the
General States of the United Provinces at the Hague
by the Ambassadours of the French King, etc. 1619.

3. The Arraignment of John van Olden Barnevelt,
late Advocate of Holland and West Friesland. Con-
taining the articles alleged against him and the rea-
sons of his execution 1619.

Probably in the main by these pamphlets, the story
of Oldenbarnevelt made an impression in England,
with the result that within three months after the
execution of Oldenbarnevelt a tragedy was written
and played in London by the King's company acting
at Blackfriars, under the title : "The tragedy of Sir
John of Olden Barnavelt." This play was, so far as
we know, never printed during the I7th century, and
was later entirely forgotten, until, in the year 1851,
the British Museum purchased the original manu-
script, "a folio of thirty-one leaves, written in a small
clear hand," from the Earl of Denbigh. At the Brit-
ish Museum Mr. A. H. Bullen found it, and published
it in Vol. II of his collection of Old English Plays,
IV Vols. London, 1883. The edition is printed only
in one hundred and fifty copies "on Dutch Hand-made

1 A. H. Bullen, 1. e., p. 205. If the year 1618, as Bullen gives
it, is right, then of course this pamphlet cannot yet describe the execu-
tion, but only the great struggle that preceded it.

284 JOHN OF OLDENBARNEVELT EXECUTED

paper," so that even now, after it has been published,
the play would be pretty rare, were it not that the
great Dutch historian, Robert Fruin, has reprinted it
in the original English language, with an introduction
in Dutch : Gravenhage. Martinus Nyhoff, 1884. Both
Bullen and Fruin, as well as other competent judges
in England and in Holland, are enthusiastic in valuing
this tragedy as a masterpiece of dramatic literature.
"It is curious," says Bullen, "that it should have been
left to the present editor to call attention to a piece
of such extraordinary interest ; for I have no hesita-
tion in predicting that Barnavelt's Tragedy, for its
splendid command of fiery dramatic rhetoric, will
rank among the masterpieces of English dramatic
literature." 1 Another English author and scholar in
dramatic poetry, F. G. Fleay, calls it a "magnificent
play," while Robert Boyle, not less competent in this
field of literature, says : "This play, the most valuable
Christmas present English scholars have for half a
century received, appears indubitably to belong to the
Massinger and Fletcher series. Even a cursory glance
will convince the reader that it is one of the greatest
treasures of our dramatic literature. That such a gem
should lie in manuscript for over two hundred years,
should be catalogued in our first library, should be
accessible to the eye of the prying scholar, and yet
never even be noticed till now, affords a disagreeable
but convincing proof of the want of interest in our
early literature displayed even by those whose studies
in this field would seem to point them out for the
work of rescuing these literary treasures from a fate
as bad as that which befell those plays which perished
at the hands of Warburton's accursed menial." 2 Swin-

1 A. H. Bullen. Introduction.

2 Ed. A. H. Bullen, p. 434. It is interesting that in this play
the Netherlands are called "the United States," p. 306.

JOHN OF OLDENBARNEVELT EXECUTED 285

burne calls it : "so noble a poem, this newly unearthed
treasure." Fruin, the Dutch historian and editor of
the play, after having made some critical remarks,
says that the tragedy Palaniedes, treating the same
historical theme, written by Vondel, the prince of
Dutch poets, may not be compared with it, and that
it is not a shame for Vondel to be' beaten by such a
competitor." 1 Fruin was also the man who solved the
question of the date at which the play was written.
This question had been solved by Bullen only so far
as to prove that it was written between May, 1619,
the date of the execution of Oldenbarnevelt, and the
year 1622, the year in which George Buc, who signed
it in a marginal note with his initials, resigned as
"master of the' revels." But Fruin fixed the date of
the play much more exactly from two unpublished
letters written by Thomas Locke from London to
the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, at the
Hague. The first letter is dated August 14, 1619,
and therein it is said : "The players here were bring-
ing "of Barnavelt" upon the stage and had bestowed
a great deal of money to prepare all things for the
purpose, but at th' instant were prohibited by my
Lo of London." The second letter was dated
August 27th, in which it is said : "Our players have
found the means to goe through with the play of
Barnevelt, and it had many spectators and received
applause." Consequently the play must have been
written between May, 1619, the date of Oldenbarne-

1 R. Fruin, Verspreide geschriften, Vol. IX, p. 122. On p. 125
Fruin gives six Dutch words used in the play by the English author,
viz.: schellain (Dutch schelm), the bree (brui), lustique (lustig),
kremis (kermis), doyt (duit), and vroa (vrouw). In the main the
play is true to history in so far as it lays full stress on the point
that Oldenbarnevelt tried to break the union of the state (p. 226,
286 and 291) at a time when the other party certainly might claim:
"The union must be preserved." It is more true to history than
Motley's book, Life and Death of Oldenbarnerelt. See Grqen van
Prinsterer, Maurice et Barnevelt, the best book on this question.

286 JOHN OF OLDENBARNEVELT EXECUTED

velt's execution, and August 14, 1619, the time when
the players were ready to bring it on the stage. But
even that time of three months, in which the play
must have been written, was shortened by the
researches of Fruin. He found two places in the play
where the dismissing of the son of Oldenbarnevelt
as governor of the city of Bergen op Zoom is spoken
about. 1 This fact is mentioned by the Ambassador
Carleton in a letter to London dated July I4th. The
letter says that the dismission took place "last week,"
which is in accordance with the resolutions of the
States General of July 5, 9, n and 17. Consequently
the tragedy must have been written after July I4th,
the first date at which the dismissal of Barnevelt's
son could be known in England, and before August
I4th, the date on which the players were ready to
bring it on the stage, so that not more than one month
was taken for the writing of the play just approxi-
mately the time, says Fruin, which in those days was
allowed for the writing of a play. 2

Another question is, who was the author of this
play?

Both Bullen and Boyle come to the conclusion
that Fletcher and Massinger together were the
authors. Their arguments founded on long quotations
are too extensive to be given here. . But Boyle in
one place gives this summary of the evidence, which
may suffice: "But, it may be asked, what proof have
we that it was a production of Massinger and
Fletcher? As for the latter, there can be no doubt.
His double endings are sufficient proof. As for the
Massinger part, there is first the probability of his
being Fletcher's partner, as the play belongs to a

1 Ed. Bullen, p. 249. Here the son of Oldenbarnevelt says: "My
government of Berghen is disposed of." See also p. 277, where
Oldenbarnevelt says: "Where's my son William? His government is
gon too."

2 Fruin Verspreide Geschriften, IX, p. 113.

JOHN OF OLDENBARNEVELT EXECUTED 287

period when we know they were working together;
secondly, the metrical style could belong to nobody
else; thirdly, according to his well-known manner, he
has allusions to and repetitions of expressions in his
other plays."

Finally in connection with this tragedy of Olden-
barnevelt, I must mention with a few words another
play written at about the same time, and for which
the subject also was obtained from the Dutch. At
the end of his introduction to the Tragedy of Olden-
barnevclt, the editor Bullen writes "The following
note, for which I am indebted to Mr. Fleay, will be
read with interest: It is noticeable that a play called
the Jeweller of Amsterdam or the Hague, by John
Fletcher, Nathaniel Field and Phillip Massinger, was
entered on the Stationer's Books, 8th April, 1654, but
not printed. " This play must have been written
between 1617 and 1619, while Field was connected
with the King's company, and undoubtedly referred
to the murder of John van Wely, the Jeweller of
Amsterdam, by John of Paris, the confidential groom
of Prince Maurice, in 1619."

CHAPTER XXXIV

JOHN MILTON. His LIFE AND PARADISE LOST.
MILTON AND GROTIUS. MILTON AND VONDEL.
MILTON AND JUNIUS, MILTON AND SALMASIUS.
MILTON AND ALEXANDER MORUS. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
HUGO GROTIUS AND JOHN SELDEN. SELDEN AND
GRASWINCKEL.

For the questions to be considered in this chap-
ter a short outline of the most important dates in
Milton's life may be useful. Milton's life is com-
monly divided for the convenience of the students
into three periods: his education, followed by his
life at his father's home at Hortqn, and his travel
to France and Italy (1608-1639); his public life in
the service of the great cause of the struggle against
the Stuarts, before and during the Commonwealth
(1640-1660) ; and his retirement after the great
struggle and under the restoration of the Stuarts
(1660-1674).

From his earliest youth until 1632, the year in
which he received his master's degree at Christ's Col-
lege, Cambridge, Milton had a splendid education and
was a very serious student, having very early a strong
consciousness of the important task of his life.
Although he expected to become a minister of the
church, Milton, after he left the University, devoted
himself rather to the writing of poems and to scholar-
ship, and consequently he stayed with his father at
Horton, not far from Windsor Castle, until in 1638

288

JOHN MILTON 289

he started on his journey to Italy. On his way to
Italy he stopped at Paris, where he made the
acquaintance of Hugo Grotius, at that time in more
than one respect the most famous scholar, poet, law-
yer, and theologian in Europe. From that time on,
new subjects and new ideals influenced his mind and
his program of life, while in England the most critical
period of a civil war began.

Therefore, with Milton's return to England in
1639 commences the second period of his life. It is
the period of the civil war, and of the Commonwealth.
Feeling to the bottom of his heart the far reaching
importance of the mortal struggle in which the whole
nation was involved, and in which freedom of con-
science was at stake, Milton sided with Cromwell and
the other leaders of Democracy from start to finish.
During that struggle, to which he gave all the assist-
ance he could, and which pressed upon his mind with
all its bewildering grandeur, and its overwhelming
power of earnestness, his poetic feelings grasped for
subjects adequate to, and in harmony with what was
going on, subjects which he found in the sublime
problems of "the ways of God with men," and in the
tremendous ideas of the fall of the angels and of man,
which make up the majestic pictures of Paradise Lost.
No trace of this subject can be found in the first period
of his life, although his poems written during that
period, give us ample information of what were sub-
jects in his mind. After his return from Italy in
1639, authentic proofs in his own handwriting exist
to show, that these sublime questions had engrossed
his mind, and that they never left him, until, in the
years from 1658 until 1663, he composed the magnifi-
cent work which lies now before us in Paradise Lost.
And as if the natural depth and seriousness of his life,

290 JOHN MILTON

the religious strictness of his education and the terri-
ble struggle in which his people became involved,
were by themselves not enough to uplift his soul to
the serene sublimity of this subject, he was after the
year 1652 afflicted with total blindness, by which still
more if possible his entire mind was directed to the
unseen spiritual world.

After the great conceptions of Paradise Lost had
taken their final form and shape, and while Milton
was engaged in dictating them, in 1660 occurred the
Restoration, and from that time, begins the third
period of Milton's life. From 1660, until his death
in 1674, he lived in retirement, writing his Paradise
Regained, as a triumphant consequence of his Para-
dise Lost, and many other poems and prose works,
amongst which .the Samson Ag.onistes, "a subject
peculiarly appropriate to the last sad years of the old
Independent," came the "nearest to the level of his
great epic."

After this brief outline, which may recall the cir-
cumstances under which Paradise Lost was written
and its place in the great poet's life, we come now to
the great question, what were the sources accessible
to Milton for this grand epic, and to which of them
was he most indebted?

That Milton's work rested only on what he read
in his bible, and consequently that he did not even
know what had been written about the subject before
him, and during his lifetime, as Dr. J. J. Moolhuizen
puts the case, is certainly the most improbable possi-
bility that ever could be supposed. A scholar like
Milton, "a man of epic genius, great artist and origi-
nator that he is before anything else, is also inescapa-
bly predisposed to be a collector and conserver of the

JOHN MILTON 291

perishing riches of the past." 1 No scholar in the
world, of any account, would do such a thing, as Dr.
Moolhuizen thinks Milton did. Indeed we may be
sure, before anything else be said, that Milton had
taken due notice of everything written about his great
subject, which he could in any possible way obtain.
We may be just as sure that every great idea, which
he found in any work, and which he could make use
of in his gigantic composition, really was used. It is
derogatory to the high standard of Milton's scholar-
ship, even to doubt about this.

Three works there are, which in this connection,
deserve to be taken into special consideration: ist,
The Adamus E.rul by Hugo Grotius, published in
1600; 2nd, The Lucifer by Joost van den Vondel, pub-
lished in 1653, and, 3rd, The "Paraphrasis" of Qed-
mon, published by Franciscus Junius in 1655. That
these three works were the most important sources,
which were at Milton's disposal, is just as sure as
that every one of these books was published by a
man of Dutch nationality.
MILTON AND HUGO GROTIUS.

In the year 1638, on his way to Italy,' Milton at
Paris made the acquaintance of Hugo Grotius. This
means that a young English poet of thirty years of
age, as Milton was at that time, enjoyed the oppor-
tunity of getting into contact with a man twenty-five
years his senior ; a man famous throughout all Europe
as a scholar, lawyer, poet, theologian and historian,
some of whose works were in the library of every

1 Carey Herbert Conley, Milton's indebtedness to his contem-
poraries in "Paradise Lost." Typewritten master's thesis in the
University of Chicago, 1910, p. 9. A copy of this eminent disserta-
tion, which deserves to be printed, is in the library of the University
of Chicago. It is a work of 233 pages (8^xn), divided as follows:
Introduction, 1-13; Fletcher's Locustae and Appolyontis, 14-38;
Grotius' Adamus Exul, 35-85; Caedmon's Genesis, 87-112; Vondel's
Lucifer, 116-185; Vondel's Adam in Ballingschap, 186-204; Conclu-
sion, 206-230; Bibliography, 232-233.

292 JOHN MILTON

University; whom, years before Princes like Louis
XIII and Gustaphus Adolphus had admired and hon-
ored; whose work De jure belli ac pads, alone, had
established his everlasting fame, and whose book De
veritate Religionis Christianas had been translated in
many languages, even into the Arabic and the
Chinese ; a Dutch scholar who was at that time ambas-
sador for Queen Christina of Sweden at the Court
of France ; besides that a man of a very gentle and
amiable character. That Milton must have highly
appreciated this meeting with Grotius, does not admit
of doubt. It must have brought Milton, into more
close contact also with the works of Grotius. At least
when we see that among the themes for projected
poems in the manuscripts of Milton, which are now
in the Library of Trinity College, and which date
about 1640-1642, there are four which relate to the
theme of Paradise. Lost, and one called Christus
Patiens, we cannot help thinking of Hugo Grotius,
whose A damns Exul and Christus Patiens, as two
Tragoediae Sacrae, were published in one volume in
1603, in 1608 at Leyden antf in 1610 and 1618 at
Paris.

Before Milton's personal acquaintance with Hugo
Grotius, he might have read these tragedies of
Grotius, and he might have seen, the plays of Phineas
Fletcher, published in 1627, while Milton was a stu-
dent ; he might have known Joshua Sylvester's trans-
lation of Du Bartas' Divine Weeks, but the fact is
that Milton up to 1640 had written many poems, and
had been pondering over many beautiful subjects, but
had not written a single verse that reminds us of the
sublime theme of these works. On the other hand,
immediately after he met Hugo Grotius, the theme
appears in his common-place book, and, as if to

JOHN MILTON 293

remind us of Grotius, he inserts also the title Christus
Fattens. For this reason it seems probable that, what-
ever else Milton may have read or known about the
theme of Paradise Lost, he got from Hugo Grotius
the deciding inspiration for the great theme, for the
development of which the following years in Milton's
life became so exceedingly favorable.

In England the idea that Milton got his first
inspiration for Paradise Lost from Grotius, has been
held from a very early date, for in the Life of Milton
in the English Plutarch, published in 1762, the author
says on p. 124: "Mr. Lauder, in his Essay on Milton's
Life and Imitation of the Moderns, has insinuated
that Milton's first hint of Paradise Lost was taken
from a tragedy of the celebrated Grotius, called
A damns Exul, and that Milton has not thought it
beneath him to transplant some of that author's beau-
ties into his noble work, as well as some other flowers
culled from the gardens of inferior geniuses ; but by
an elegance of art, and force of nature peculiar to him,
he has drawn the admiration of the world upon pas-
sages, which, in their original authors, stood neglected
and undistinguished." 1

As for the comparison of passages in Grotius'
Adamus Exul, and Milton's Paradise Lost, to find
the indebtedness of Milton to Grotius as far as the
contents of the poem goes, I refer to the dissertation
of Conley because he follows the only method I can
agree with, when he says: "We shall moreover dis-
card a method often pursued in the study of this and
other like problems that of rather promiscuously
ransacking one or more poems for single lines or
passages that are similar to an equal number of lines
or words in the poem which is being considered.

1 The work of Mr. Lauder was published at London in 1750.

294 JOHN MILTON

Many results, often of value only to the curious have
been produced in this way, but we prefer to consider
here only such likenesses as exhibit fundamental
parallelisms of plot, matter and imagery in passages
of some length." 1

Conley devotes not less than fifty pages to a com-
parison of Adamns E.rul and Paradise Lost, and at
the end, in a summary, he makes, among others, the
conclusion that "we can safely say that the outlines
of Adamus Exul and Paradise Lost are the same,"
and "that the relationship in most of the cases" (as
quoted in great number) "are fairly evident." "We
have now come to the end of this long set of interest-
ing correspondences between Paradise Lost and
Adamus Exul, which, we find, has extended from the
very beginning of each poem almost to the end." 2

MILTON AND VONDEL.

Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) is considered
the greatest poet of the Netherlands, and his drama
Lucifer, is, of his thirty-two plays, the masterpiece.
His particular beauty, in which he can hardly be said
to be excelled by any poet in the world, lies in the
lyrical songs, which, after the manner of Greek
tragedy, he introduces into his plays. Although until
the year 1640 he belonged to the more humanistic
circle of literary men, he was of a deeply religious
character, and being strongly opposed to the Calvin-
istic party, he at last took refuge in the Roman
Catholic Church in the year 1640. His tragedy,
Gysbrecht van Amstel, having for its subject an
episode of the early history of Amsterdam, is played
every year on Christmas in the great theatre of that
city. Lack of sufficient action, too many monologues

1 Conley, Dissertation, p. 2.

2 Conley, p. 84.

JOHN MILTON 295

and narratives, are the faults of Vondel's plays, and
because of these faults they never attained to world-
fame by being often brought on the stage, either^ in
Holland or in foreign countries.

Among his plays are, besides the Lucifer, the
Adam in Ballings chap on the same theme as Grotius'
Adamus Exul; and his Samson Agonistes. Vondel
was a strong royalist, and wrote a drama Maria Stuart
of Gemartelde Majestcit (Tortured Majesty). Dur-
ing the civil war he wrote satires in favor of Charles
I, and against Cromwell.

Milton probably never got personally acquainted
with Vondel, but there were many ways for Milton to
know about Vondel's writings. Vondel was a great
friend of Hugo Grotius, whom Milton met at Paris,
and was well acquainted with Franciscus Junius, who
lived in England for many years, and above all, as
Conley remarks: "Vondel's efforts as a royalist
pamphleteer, both as regards Dutch and English poli-
tics, if nothing else, would have brought him and his
play to Milton's notice." 1

The question of Milton's indebtedness to Vondel
in his Samson Agonistes, and especially in his Para-
dise Lost, is a very interesting one, and a considerable
number of monographs have been published on the
subject, a list of which has been made up by Conley,
and is given at the end of this chapter. Edmund-
son may have gone too far in a few respects in assert-
ing Milton's indebtedness; on the other hand Dr.
Moolhuizen undoubtedly goes to the other extreme
by denying every relationship between Vondel and
Milton. The last and the best monograph on the sub-
ject seems to me indeed tlie dissertation of Conley,
both for his right method and his thorough researches.

1 Conley, p. 1 16.

296 JOHN MILTON

In a really scrutinizing comparison of all the parallel
places in Paradise Lost and Lucifer, which fills not
less than seventy pages of his dissertation, Conley
comes to the following conclusions : "Indeed, though
Lucifer certainly did not furnish the initial impulse
for the composition of Paradise Lost, it probably
exerted the dominant influence upon Milton's mind
while he was giving his poem its final form." And:
"we have been enabled, we think, to show that in a
large number of cases Milton greatly elaborated sug-
gestions which he obtained from Lucifer, and in still
others he probably expressed his disagreement with
Vondel." 1

As for Vondel's Adam in Ballingschap (Adam in
exile), and its influence on Milton, Conley says: "The
certainty of Vondel's intimate knowledge of A damns
Exul (of Grotius) is confirmed by the discovery that
Vondel had previously made a Dutch translation of
Adamus Exul. These facts throw light upon our
problem in this way : Milton, as we have discovered,
had with Adamus Exul as a basis, in his early writing
formed the plan of the whole epic, and since Vondel
had formed his plan upon the same, when Adam in
Ballingschap came into his hands, he found VondeFs
plot without change, enough like his own to furnish
excellent material for elaboration." 2
MILTON AND JUNIUS.

Franciscus Junius 3 was the man who furnished
Milton with that source for his Paradise Lost, which
is called the Paraphrase of Genesis by Csedmon.
Junius studied this "Paraphrase," and after having
learned its old Anglo-Saxon language, published it in
1655 at Amsterdam, just* in time for Milton to use it
as one of his sources.

1 Conley, p. 185 and 186.

2 Conley, p. 188.

3 See about Junius our first chapter.

JOHN MILTON 297

"At first," says Conley, "it seems rather hard to
connect Milton with this poem, for very probably he
knew no Anglo-Saxon, at least, very little, but Junius
was in England from 1620 to 1651, employed as the
librarian of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, an
estate famous for its antiquities, and situated fifty-
five miles southwest of London. 'During his life at
Arundel, Junius made several trips to Oxford, and
doubtless passed through London many times. And
it is believed that through conversations with Junius,
and by examining his manuscript for the sake of the
illuminations, Milton became thoroughly acquainted
with the contents of the poem."

It would be hard to find anyone except Junius who
could have given such full information about the con-
tents of the Csedmon Paraphrase, at that period, as
Milton needed to be useful for his purpose.

It was especially for the "visual images" as "the
imagery of this poem surpasses anything tradition
may have possessed, and approaches Milton's bril-
liant conceptions." 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE "MILTON AND VONDEL"

QUESTION.

Conley, Gary Herbert. Milton's indebtedness to
his contemporaries in "Paradise Lost." A master's
thesis for the University of Chicago, 1910. Only in
typewritten copies in the Harper Library. As I think
this is the best treatise on the subject, I give here as
further bibliography, the books and articles enumer-
ated by Conley.

BARHAM, F. The Adamus Exul of Grotius; Sherwood, Gil-
bert and Piper, London, 1839.

GURTEEN, S. H. The Epic of the Fall of Man; G. P. Put-
nam's Sons, New York and London, 1896.

1 Conley, p. 112.

298 JOHN MILTON

KUIPER, DR. E. T. Joost van den Vondel, Adam in Balling-
schap; W. J. Thieme en Cie, Zutphen, 1906.

MOODY, W. V. The Complete Poetical Works of John Mil-
ton; Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New
York, 1899.

CARUS, P. History of the Devil; Open Court Publishing
Company, Chicago and London, 1906.

CONWAY, M. D. Demonology and Devil Lore ; 2 Volumes,
New York, 1879.

DOUGLAS, N. Another Source for Paradise Lost; Atlantic
Monthly, November, 1908.

DUFLOU, G. D. Milton's Indebtedness to Vondel; Academy
47-379-

DUNSTER, C. Considerations on Milton's early reading and
the prima stanina of his "Pardise Lost" etc., in a letter to
William Falconer, etc. ; J. Nichols, London, 1800.

EDMUNDSON, G. Milton and Vondel; a curiosity of Litera-
ture; Truebner and Company, London, 1865.

GOSSE, E., and EDMUNDSON, G. Milton and Vondel; Acad-
emy 28: 265, 293, 342.

LAUDER, W. An Essay on Milton's Imitation of the Moderns
in his Paradise Lost; J. Payne and J. Bouquet, London,
1750.

MAC!LRAITH, J. R. Milton and Vondel; Academy 28-308.

MOOLHUIZEN, J. J. Vondel's Lucifer en Milton's Verloren
Paradys; Dissertation, Gravenhage, 1895.

MUELLER, A. Milton's Abhaengigkeit von Vondel; Disserta-
tion, Berlin, 1891.

WESTWOOD, J. C. Milton and Caedmon; Academy 35-10.

WOODHULL, M. The Epic of Paradise Lost; G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York and London, 1907.
Milton and Vondel; Nation 42-264.
Milton and Vondel; Atheneum '85, 2-599.

MILTON AND SALMASIUS.

At a time when Cromwell with his Ironsides was
fighting the battle of Marston-Moor, and Milton was
defending the cause of English Democracy w r ith his
arguments, there was at the University of Leyden a

JOHN MILTON 299

professor by the name of Claude Salmasius, or
Saumaise as he was called in France, from where
he came. Born in 1588 at Semur-en-Auxois, in Bur-
gundy, Salmasius had a very brilliant career in almost
every department of learning, and scholarship. He
studied law for three years under the famous Gode-
froy at Heidelberg, but afterwards preferred the study
of languages and literature. His fame as a scholar
of the very first rank ran through all Europe. The
Universities of Padua and Bologna offered him a pro-
fessorship, and England tried to win him, until in
1623 he accepted the call of Ley den in order to take
the place of Scaliger. After that Louis XIII of
France made him Counsel of State; Henry of Bour-
bon, Governor of Burgundy, made all efforts to recall
him to France ; the queen Christina of Sweden invited
him to her court ; the Cardinal de Richelieu offered
him a great amount of money in case he would leave
Holland; Prince Maurits asked him to write a book
on Roman military training, and Prince Frederick
Henry once, when Salmasius had to make a journey
to France, ordered a ship to be put at his disposal,
and a part of the Dutch fleet to accompany him to
one of the seaports of France. Never before was a
scholar given so much honor. To all this Salmasius
responded by writing an almost incredible number of
books on all kinds of subjects, as well as pamphlets
on the prominent questions of the day. Being a
royalist, he wrote, shortly after the execution of
Charles I, a booklet entitled "Defensio Regia pro
Carolo I," dedicated to the king's oldest son Charles,
whom he called the heir and legitimate successor of
his father as King of England.

This book appeared in October or November,
1649. On January 8, 1650, it was ordered by the

300 JOHN MILTON

English Council of State "that Mr. Milton do pre-
pare something in answer to the book of Salmasius,
and when he has done it bring it to the Council."
Milton undertook this task and wrote his book "Pro-
Populo Anglicano Defensio." Salmasius at the height
of his European fame, living near to the court of
Prince William II, who had married Princess Mary,
the daughter of the beheaded king, and the sister of
the 'Princes Charles and James, who had found refuge
at The Hague, wrote in a very dignified, quiet, some-
what pedantic style, hardly imagining that anybody
in the world could surpass him. But Milton was in
quite another disposition. His indignation rose to
heaven. "His scorn of the presumptuous intermed-
dler, who had dared to libel the people of England, is
ten thousand times more real than Salmasius' official
indignation at the execution of Charles. His con-
tempt for Salmasius' pedantry is quite genuine; and
he revels in ecstacies of savage glee, when taunting
the apologist of tyranny with his own notorious sub-
jection to a tyrannical wife. But the reveler in Milton
is too far ahead of the reasoner." 1

"There is no comparison between the invective of
Milton and of Salmasius ; not so much from Milton's
superiority as a controversialist, though this is very
evident, as because he writes under the inspiration
of a true passion."

Of course both Salmasius and Milton were able
to adduce strong arguments in favor of the side
which they were defending, and the question which
wrote best depends largely upon what point of view
the critic adopts. Those who look at the controversy
from a purely literary point of view, will certainly
give the palm of victory to Milton.

1 Richard Garnett, Life of John Milton, p. 112.

JOHN MILTON 301

MILTON AND ALEXANDER MORUS.

Among the pamphlets that were published in
answer to Milton's Defense of the English people,
there was one that was deemed worthy of an answer.
It was entitled "Clamor regii sanguinis ad coelum
adversus paricidas Anglicanos," and was published
at The Hague in 1652, without mentioning the author.
Milton was informed that Alexander Morus, a pro-
fessor in the Athenaeum at Amsterdam, was the author,
and wrote his Defensio secunda against Morus, who
was an accomplice, only in so far as he seems to have
brought the pamphlet to the printer, and may be sup-
posed to have agreed with it perfectly. Milton's
Defensio secunda, published in 1654, is especially inter-
esting, because in answering the personal attacks
made upon him, he gave a fairly complete account of
his own youth. At the same time Milton had obtained
such intimate information about the life and the faults
of Morus, and with this knowledge attacked him so
fiercely, that the curators of the Athenaeum took
official notice of it, and he became involved in a good
deal of trouble, from which he tried to extricate him-
self in a pamphlet entitled, "Alexandri Mori fides
publica." The real author, however, was not Morus,
but Peter Du Moulin (son of the well-known French-
man of the same name) ex-rector of Wheldrake in
Yorkshire.

The only merit in these controversies, whether
with Salmasius or with Morus, is that they gave
sufficient offense to Milton to make him produce his
double defense of the English Democracy.

HUGO GROTIUS AND JOHN SELDEN.

In this connection the controversy between Hugo
Grotius and John Selden may be mentioned in a few
words, as occurring at the same time between an Eng-

302 JOHN MILTON

lish and a Dutch scholar. It is the famous contro-
versy between the Mare Liberum of Hugo Grotius
and the Mare Clausum of John Selden.

John Selden (1584-1654) was one of the greatest
scholars, one of the best defenders of the people's
liberties, one of the most able members of Parliament,
that ever lived in England. Some of the authors who
write about him, will tell us that he was not in favor
of Democracy, but they do not understand that a man
may be of the highest aristocratic spirit, and be living
exclusively with men of high learning, and high stand-
ing, and yet be one of the best defenders of the rights
of the people.

But in the controversy with Grotius, Selden made
the great mistake of his life. He declared in his Mare
Clausum, that "the sea as much as the land is the sub-
ject of private property," and more especially that
England owned that property to a considerable ex-
tent, while Grotius defended the freedom of the open
sea.

With Grotius the Mare Liberum was originally
only a chapter in his great work De jure Praedae
Commcntarius, which formed the fundamental con-
ception of his later work, De jure belli ac pads, which
is considered now all over the world as the founda-
tion of international law, and which gave to the name
of Hugo Grotius an imperishable fame. 1 Selden's
book was only a single study in that field, written at
the command of James I and Charles I ; King Charles
was very much pleased with it, and although this is
no great compliment for Selden, it was no reason for
another Dutch juris consult of fame, Graswinckiel,
to accuse Selden of writing the book to get out of
prison. Selden gave a due answer to Graswinckel in
his Vindiciae, a short time before he died, in 1654.

l Cf. R. Fruin, Verspreide Geschriften, III, 367-445.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS. JOHN
DRYDEN, ANDREW MARVELL AND EDMUND
WALLER

The seventeenth century was the most glorious
time for the Dutch Republic. The Dutch flag was
on all seas, Dutch colonies were found in every corner
of the globe ; the riches accumulated in the cities of
Holland was for those times beyond all imagination ;
art and literature flourished under the protection of
wealthy business men, and names like those of Rem-
brandt and Van Dyck, Vondel and Cats were being
added to the list of world-famous men ; admirals like
Tromp and DeRuyter maintained the respect which
was due to the sturdy Republic; generals, like the
Princes of Orange, made their armies a training-
school for the best soldiers in Europe. The Northern
Provinces, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
with their wealthy cities like Amsterdam and Rot-
terdam, were worthy successors of the cities of the
Southern Netherlands in the sixteenth and fifteenth
centuries and even excelled them by far. In a city
like Brughes, it happened in the year 1301, that the
queen of France, sitting at a dinner party, made the
remark, "I thought that I alone was the queen here,
but I see that all the ladies here are queens." But in
Amsterdam it happened that a foreign prince while
taking dinner with the magistrates, asked one of his
neighbors at the table if there were any nobles there,

303

304 TIME OF THE ANGLO -DUTCH WARS

and received as an answer, "We are all princes here."
Holland "had reached the height of power, prosperity
and glory. The Batavian territory, conquered from
the waves, and defended against them by human art,
was in extent little superior to the principality of
Wales. But all that narrow space was a busy and
populous hive, in which new wealth was every day
created, and in which vast masses of old wealth were
hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation,
the innumerable canals, the ever whirling mills, the
endless fleets of barges, the numerous clusters of
great towns, the ports bristling with thousands of
masts, the large and stately mansions, the trim villas,
the richly furnished apartments, the picture galleries,
the summer-houses, the tulip-beds, produced on Eng-
lish travelers in that age an effect similar to the effect,
which the first sight of England now produces on
a Norwegian or a Canadian." 1 That foreigners who
travelled in Holland during the seventeenth century
were profoundly impressed by its tremendous wealth
and power is evident from contemporary English
writers such as Evelyn in his Diary (published Lon-
don, 1818), and William Temple, and from an anony-
mous pamphlet, published in 1664, entitled, "The
Dutch Drawn to the Life," 2 and another work, A Late
Voyage to Holland, which was published in 1691. 3

But this glorious position of Holland, leading the
nations of Europe in civilization, in trade, in industry,
in art, and last, but not least, in politics, was not
destined to endure. England's trade and power were
now growing very fast, and because Cromwell made
up his mind either to unite the Dutch Republic with
the English Commonwealth, or to conquer the Dutch

1 Macaulay, History of England, Vol. I, p. 188.

2 A copy of this pamphlet is in the University Library at Leyden.

3 Harleian miscellany, Vol. II.

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 305

on the sea, and because the Dutch could not accept
the former alternative, there was left for Holland only
one choice, viz., a struggle against England for the
empire of the waves. Cromwell's navigation acts
gave the first, but at the same time, the fatal stroke
to Holland's supremacy on the sea. 1 Since that time
England grew in power very fast and Holland de-
clined. Only once more, and that in confederation
with England, did Holland lead the politics of the
world. It was under William the Third, Prince of
Orange, stadholder of Holland and King of England,
when Louis XIV of France threatened all Protes-
tantism with complete extirpation, and this great
Prince, a statesman and general of such ability that
the world's history knows only a few like him, at the
head of Holland and England, frustrated all the plans
of the French King, delivered England from the
tyranny of the Stuarts, and dominated all the factions
that weakened the United Netherlands.

The Dutch-English wars were begun for no other
reason "but that the Hollanders exceeded us in com-
merce and industries, and in all things but envy" as
Evelyn wrote on June 2, 1672. This constant envy,
and the wars brought about a bad feeling between
the two nations, which is easily perceived, and is
apparent in the literature -of both nations during the
period. Patriotism received an evil development and
was exaggerated to the limit, and in such cases some
literary men are always found who are eager to please
public opinion.

There was, indeed, an opportunity for a man like

1 Like John Dryden, writing poems for his daily bread, said in
his stanzas on Oliver Cromwell:

"He (viz. Cromwell) made us freemen of the continent
Whom nature did like captives treat before;
To nobler preys the English lion sent,
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar."

806 TIME OP THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

John Dryden (1631-1700), a man "who made writing
a trade." "He was quick to feel what the public
wanted and he showed no scruples in adapting his
wares to the popular demand." 1 Dryden's ability was
great, indeed, and from the death of Milton in 1674,
till his own in 1700, he reigned undisputed; and sat
on his throne in Will's Coffeehouse, as "glorious
John," surrounded by several of the minor poets, and
writers of his time; but at the same time the moral
danger of the influence of his character, or rather of
his lack of character, has been felt ever since, and is
warned against by every author to the present day. In
the days of Cromwell, he praised the Lord Protector ;
after the restoration, he celebrated the return of the
Stuarts, and when the Catholic James II ascended the
throne, Dryden wrote his Hind and Panther, glorify-
ing the Church of Rome. No wonder that this man,
as he felt that the envy and competition between the
English and the Dutch nations was growing, inspired
himself with a hatred against the Dutch, that knew
no limit. His tragedy, Amboyna, gives the proof.
The full title is: Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the
Dutch to the English Merchants, a Tragedy, 1672.
His subject is the story of some Englishmen on the
Dutch isle of Amboyna in East India, who were
accused of conspiring to overpower the Dutch gov-
ernment of the isle, were arrested, convicted and exe-
cuted. The story as related in Dutch and English
.books seems to be different and the truth is difficult
to find out; but there is no difference of opinion as
to this tragedy of Dryden. According to the authors
of the best edition of Dryden's works, Sir Walter
Scott and George Saintsbury, "the play is beneath
criticism" and, says Scott, "I can hardly hesitate to

1 Henry Pancoast and P. van Dyke Shelly, English Literature,
p. 227.

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 307

term it the worst production Dryden ever wrote," and
Saintsbury adds: "The play is the one production of
Dryden which is utterly worthless except as a curi-
osity." 1 Dryden wrote it "with the avowed intention
of exasperating the nation against the Dutch." 2 at a
time when the Lord Chancellor of England, Shaftes-
bury, stated that "the States of Holland were Eng-
land's eternal enemies, both by interest and by inclina-
tion." 3 The play was acted and printed in 1673. Both
the language spoken by the Lord Chancellor, and the
play of Dryden, show with what apprehension at that
time a war with Holland was regarded. Such lan-
guage is not inspired by strength, but by fear and
despair. It shows how strong Holland still was at
that time, and the war, that followed these utterances,
lasted from 1672 until 1674, when Holland had to
fight at the same time against England, France,
Munster and Cologne. And the result for England
was doubtful. From 1672, to February, 1674, not
less than twenty-seven hundred and three English
ships were taken by the Dutch, and after two years'
experience England was ready to make peace. The
time for the annihilation of Holland as one of the
great powers on sea had not yet come.

Besides his Amboyna, Dryden in 1665 wrote a
poem on the victory of the Duke of York over the
Dutch. June 3, 1665, during the war of 1665-1667,
with Holland. Much better than his Amboyna is
Dryden's poem entitled, Annus Mirabilis, the year of
Wonders, 1666. This is generally considered as one
of Dryden's best works. The versification is brilliant,
indeed, and from an enthusiastic English patriotic
point of view, one can understand that even the con-

1 The works of John Dryden, Vol. V, p. 3.

2 Idem., p. 2.

3 Idem., p. 2.

308 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

tents are wonderful, when the poet sings the praise
of the English in the Anglo-Dutch war of that time.
When describing the four days' battle of June, 1666,
his enthusiasm nearly makes a glorious victory out
of a decided defeat, from which the remnant of the
English fleet was saved only by a heavy fog. And
as for the inspiration of the poet, it was the same as
the reason why England declared war, viz., a jealousy
of the commerce, and a greedy desire to grasp the
riches of the Dutch commercial vessels. His enthusi-
astic praise of simple brute force, without any higher
ideal of righteousness shows this. He begins with
these stanzas:

In thriving arts long time had Holland grown,
Crouching at home and cruel when abroad ;

Scarce leaving us the means to take our own;
Our king they courted and our merchants awed.

Trade, which like blood should circularly flow,
Stopped in their channels, found its freedom lost;

Thither the wealth of all the world did go,
And seemed but shipwrecked on so base a coast.

For them alone the heavens had kindly heat
In eastern quarries ripening precious dew;

For them the Idumaean balm did sweat,
And in hot Ceylon spicy forest grew.

The sun but seemed the labourer of their year;

Each waning moon supplied her watery store,
To swell those tides, which from the Line did bear

Their brim-full vessels to the Belgian shore.

Thus mighty in her ships, stood Carthage long,
And swept the richess of the world from far ;

Yet stooped to Rome, less wealthy, but more strong;
And this may proof our second Punic war.

What peace can be, where both to one pretend?

(But they more diligent, and we more strong)
Or if a peace, it soon must have an end;

For they would grow too powerful, were it long.

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 309

Such language as this reminds one of the fallen
angels in Paradise Lost or in Vondel's Lucifer, telling
each other about the happiness and luxury of Adam
and Eve in Paradise, at a time when they, over-
whelmed by jealousy, were stirring each other up to a
revolt against Heaven.

Dryden used sometimes to visit Milton, but Milton
"thought him no poet but a good rhimest," 1 and
Milton knew what poetry was.

Another English poet, inspired by English patri-
otism against the Dutch, was Andrew Marvel! (1621-
1678), an intimate friend of Milton, an adherent of
Cromwell, and for sometime member of Parliament
for Hull. Marvell was not a vile hireling of every
dominant party like Dryden, for x after the restoration
of the Stuarts, the government was once advised "to
crush the pestilent wit, the servant of Cromwell and
the friend of Milton." He visited Holland more than
once and in 1653 he wrote a satire upon Holland
entitled: The character of Holland. It is a satire
of 192 lines, and contains several really humorous
parts. The small size of the country, its low level,
which is in part below that of the sea, the work of
draining, the herring-fishery, and many things in Hol-
land, seen with the superficial view of an English
member of Parliament, furnish him abundant material
for his wit.

He begins by looking at Holland from his Eng-
lish patriotic point of view, and says :

"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand."

The city of Amsterdam he describes as follows :

Sure when religion did itself embark

And from, the east would westward steer its ark,

1 English Plutarch, Life of Milton, p. 142.

310 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground
Each one thence pillaged the first piece he found;
Hence Amsterdam, Turk Christian Pagan Jew ;
Staple of sects and mint of schism grew;
The bank of conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion but finds credit, and exchange.

The old custom which Dutch women in the vil-
lages had of taking with them, when going to church
in wintertime, a footstool heated by glowing pieces of
peat or "turf," he described as follows:

See but the mermaids with their tails of fish
Reeking at church over the chafing-dish !
A vestal turf, enshrined in earthern ware,
Fumes through the loopholes of a wooden square;
Each to the temple with these altars bend.

He shows himself even acquainted with the works
of Hugo Grotius, and brings his book entitled Mare
Liberum or "the free sea" into his satire in this way:

Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.

Yet after all he cannot deny that Holland in the year
1653 amounted to something, for he called it "the
Hydra of the seven provinces." But he is not afraid,
for there is England, the young Hercules that will
beat the Dutch.

And now the Hydra of seven provinces
Is strangled by our infant Hercules.

England is further compared with Rome, and Hol-
land is the Carthago delenda:

Or, what is left, their Carthago overcome
Would render fain unto our better Rome.

Another much longer poem, containing 900 lines,

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH- WARS 311

is a satire directed against Holland and is entitled:
The last instructions to a painter about the Dutch
Wars, 1667. From the picture which the painter is
supposed to make of our lady State, it is apparent that
the Dutch war of 1665-1667 has made a painfully
sore impression on our poet. The Dutch admiral, De
Ruyter, had just taken as his trophy the Royal
Charles, the English flagship, while the English
Parliament and Lords, horror-stricken, listened to the
music of the Dutch guns on the Thames. Now our
poet is in sack-cloth and ashes! Just listen how he
complains over that day of Chattam ; the sublime
style of the book Job is hardly good enough :

Black day, accursed ! on thee let no man hail

Out of the port, or dare to hoist a sail,

Or row a boat in thy unlucky hour!

Thee, the year's monster, let thy dam devour

And constant Time, to keep his course yet right,

Fill up thy space with a redoubled night.

His heart really breaks, when he thinks of that flag-
ship, the Royal Charles:

That sacred keel that had, as he, restored
Its exiled sovereign on its happy board
That pleasure boat of war, in whose dear side
. Secure, so oft he had this foe defied
Now a cheap spoil, and the mean victor's slave
Taught the Dutch colours from its top to wave ;
Of former glories the reproachful thought,
With present shame compared, his mind distraught.

They would rather have seen it burnt, I think he is
right ! than to see it taken as a trophy to Holland :

But most they for their darling Charles complain
And were it burned, yet less would be their pain.
To see that fatal pledge of sea-command,

312 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

Now in the ravisher De Ruyter's hand,

The Thames roared, swooning Medway turned her tide,

And were they mortal, both for grief had died.

But enough to see the influence of Holland on Andrew
Marvell. Holland made the deepest and the most
different impressions on him; it made him laugh, so
that his sides were sore, and on the other hand it made
him cry like a baby, so that the tears rolled down
his cheeks ; him, Andrew Marvell, Englishman, M. P.
Another poet, who deserves to be mentioned here,
is Edmund Waller (1606-1678), whose lovely poems
cannot but make a charming impression on the reader,
whose conduct in life was controlled by personal
friendship, and by noble principles, not always without
conflict between the two leading elements ; to whom
we can forgive his personal friendship both for Stuart
Kings and for Cromwell, because he ever tried to stand
for liberty and the rights of property, for freedom
and toleration. "No poetical reputation," says Drury, 1
"has suffered such vicissitudes as that of Edmund
Waller ; described in the inscription upon his tomb as
'inter poetas sui temporis facile princeps,' it was still
possible, in 1766, to introduce him to the readers of
the Biographia Brittannica as "The most celebrated
Lyric poet that ever England produced," and when,
in 1772, Percival Stockdale wrote his Life in which he
declared that "his zvorks gave a new era to Eng-
lish poetry," his performance was considered of
such merit, that he was on the point of re-
ceiving that commission to write "The lives of
the Poets," which was afterwards entrusted to John-
son.' His position as member of Parliament dur-
ing many years, and from his early youth, his wealth,

1 The Poems of Edmund Waller, edited by G. Thorn, Vol. I, Introd.
p. 69.

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 313

and that of his wife, which gave him the name of
being probably the richest pdet in English literature,
have added lustre to his refined spirit, and to the
charming elegance of his poetry.

Waller wrote several poems inspired by Dutch sub-
jects, the first of which was that to Anton Van Dyck,
a Dutch painter, who lived in England during ten years
(1630-1640), and whom everybody knows from his
lovely portraits of the children of Charles I. The
poem is apparently written by Waller after having
admired a lady's portrait painted by Van Dyck, and
reads as follows :

To VAN DYCK

Rare Artisan whose pencil moves

Not our delights alone, but loves !

From thy shop of beaut)' we

Slaves return, that entered free.

The heedless lover does not know

Whose eyes they are that wound him so;

But, confounded with thy art,

Inquires her name that has his heart.

Another, who did long refrain,

Feels his old wound bleed again

With dear remembrance of that face,

Where now he reads new hopes of grace :

Nor scorn nor cruelty does find,

But gladly suffers a false wind

To blow the ashes of despair

From the reviving brand of care.

Fool ! that forgets her stubborn look

This softness from thy finger took.

Strange! that thy hand should not inspire

The beauty only, but the fire;

Not the form alone, and grace,

But act and power of the face.

Mayst thou yet thyself as well,

As all the world besides, excel!

So you the unfeigned truth rehearse

314 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

(That I may make it live in verse)
Why thou couldst not at one assay
That face to aftertimes convey,
Which this admires. Was it thy wit
To make her oft before thee sit?
Confess, and we'll forgive thee this ;
For who would not repeat that bliss?
And frequent sight of such a dame
Buy with the hazard of his fame?
Yet who can tax thy blameless skill,
Though thy good hand had failed still,
When nature's self so often errs?
She for this many thousand years
Seems to have practiced with much care,
To frame the race of women fair;
Yet never could a perfect birth
Produce before to grace the earth,
Which waxed old ere it could see
Her that amazed thy art and thee.
But now 'tis done, O let me know
Where those immortal colors grow,
That could this deathless piece compose !
In lilies? or the fading rose?
No; for this theft thou hast climbed higher
Than did Prometheus for his fire.

Another poem in which he mentions Holland is :
A panegyric to my Lord Protector, Of the present
greatness, and joint interest of his Highness, and this
nation. Here speaks the English patriot at the time
in which the great struggle between Holland and Eng-
land for the supremacy of the sea began. Addressing
the Lord Protector the poet says:

Holland, to gain your friendship, is content
To be our outguard on the continent;
She from her fellow-provinces would go,
Rather than hazard to have you her foe.

Several years later, after the restoration, in the
year 1665, Waller wrote a poem entitled : Instruction

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 315

to a painter. For the dr ailing of the posture and the
progress of his Majesty's forces at sea, under the
command of his Highness-Royal; together ivith the
battle and victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3,
1665.

In this poem he describes the battle in which the
Dutch admiral Wassenear-Obdam, with his flagship,
was blown up, after which the Dutch fleet retired to
the coast of Holland. He calls the Hollanders :

Those greedy mariners, out of whose way
Diffusive Nature could no region lay,
At home, preserved from rocks and tempests, lie,
Compelled, like others, in their beds to die.
Their single towns, the Iberian armies pressed ;
We all their provinces at once invest;
And, in one month, ruin their traffic more
Than that long war could in an age before.

Yet, the poet cannot deny that the Dutch still had
some soldiers and some ships :

Meanwhile, like bees, when stormy winter's gone,

The Dutch (as if the sea were all their own)

Desert their ports, and, falling in their way,

Our hamburg merchants are become their prey.

Thus flourish they, before the approaching fight;

As dying tapers give a blazing light

To check their pride, our fleet, half-victualled goes ;

Enough to serve us till we reach our foes;

Who now appear so numerous and bold,

The action worthy of our arms we hold.

A greater force than that which here we find,

Ne'er pressed the ocean, nor employed the wind.

The death of Van Wassenear-Obdam is described as
follows :

Against him first Obdam his squadron leads
Proud of his late success against the Swedes;
Made by that action, and his high command,

316 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

Worthy to perish by a prince's hand.

The tall Batavian in a vast ship rides,

Bearing an army in her hollow sides;

Yet, not inclined the English ship to board,

More on her guns relies, than on his sword;

From whence a fatal volley we received ;

It missed the Duke, but his great heart is grieved;

Three worthy persons from his side it tore,

And dyed his garment with their scattered gore.

Happy ! to whom this glorious death arrives,

More to be valued than a thousand lives!

On such a theatre as this to die,

For such a cause, and such a witness by!

Who would not thus a sacrifice be made,

To have his blood on such an altar laid?

The rest about him struck with horror stood

To see their leader covered o'er with blood.

So trembled Jacob, when he thought the stains

Of his son's coat had issued from his veins.

He feels no wound but in his troubled thought,

Before, for honor, now, revenge he sought;

His friends in pieces torn, (the bitter news

Not brought by Fame) with his own eyes he views.

His mind at once reflecting on their youth,

Their worth, their love, their valour, and their truth,

The joys of court, their mothers, and their wifes,

To follow him, abandoned, and their lives!

He storms and shoots, but fiying bullets now,

To execute his rage, appear too slow ;

They miss, or sweep but common souls away;

For such a loss Obdam his life must pay.

Encouraging his men, he gives the word,

With fierce intent that hated ship to board,

And make the guilty Dutch, with his own arm,

Wait on his friends, while yet their blood is warm.

His winged vessel like an eagle shows,

When through the clouds to truss a swan she goes ;

The Belgian ship unmoved, like some huge rock

Inhabiting the sea, expects the shock.

From both the fleets men's eyes are bent this way,

Neglecting all the business of the day,

Bullets their flight, and guns their noise suspend;

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 317

The silent ocean does the event attend,
Which leader shall the doubtful victory bless,
And give an earnest of the war's success;
When Heaven itself, for England to declare
Turns ship, and men, and tackle, into air.

Shortly before the marriage of Prince William of
Orange, the future king of England, with Mary, the
daughter of the Duke of York, who later became
King James II, Waller wrote two poems, one Of the
Lady Mary, and another To the Prince of Orange in
1677. Both are gems of poetry, and interesting
enough to be given here in full.

OF THE LADY MARY

As once the lion honey gave

Out of the strong such sweetness came ;

A royal hero, no less brave,

Produced this sweet, this lovely dame.

To her the prince, that did oppose

Such mighty armies in the field,
And Holland from prevailing foes ,

Could so well free, himself does yield.

No Belgia's fleet (his high command)
Which triumphs where the sun does rise,

Nor all the force he leads by land,

Could guard him from her conquering eyes.

Orange, with youth, experience has;

In action young, in council old ;
Orange is, what Augustus was,

Brave, wary, provident, and bold.

On that fair tree which bears his name,

Blossoms and fruit at once are found;
In him we all admire the same,

His flowery youth with wisdom crowned !

318 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

Empire and freedom reconciled

In Holland are by great Nassau ;
Like those he sprung from, just and mild,

To willing people he gives law.

Thrice happy pair! so near allied

In royal blood, and virtue too!
Now Love has you together tied,

May none this triple knot undo !

The church shall be the happy place

Where streams, which from the same source run,
Though divers lands awhile they grace,

Unite again, and are made one.

A thousand thanks the nation owes

To him that does protect us all;
For while he thus his niece bestows,

About our isle he builds a wall;

A wall ! like that which Athens had,

By the oracle's advice, of wood;
Had theirs been such as Charles has made,

That mighty state till now had stood.

To THE PRINCE OF ORANGE IN 1677

Welcome, great Prince, unto this land,
Skilled in the arts of war and peace,

Your birth does call you to command,
Your nature does incline to peace.

When Holland, by her foes oppressed
No longer could sustain their weight;

To a native prince they thought it best
To recommend their dying state.

Your very name did France expel;

Those conquered towns which lately cost
So little blood, unto you fell

With the same ease they once were lost

TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS 319

Twas not your force did them defeat;

They neither felt your sword nor fire;
But seemed willing to retreat,

And to your greatness did conspire.

Nor have you since ungrateful been,

When at Seneff you did expose,
And at Mount Cassel, your own men

Whereby you might secure your foes.

Let Maestricht's siege enlarge your name,

And your retreat at Charleroy;
Warriors by flying may gain fame

And Parthian-like their foes destroy.

I
Thus Fabius gained repute of old,

When Roman glory gasping lay;
In council slow, in action cold,

His country saved, running away.

What better method could you take?

When you by beauty's charm must move.
And must at once a progress make,

I' th' stratagems of war and love.

He that a princess' heart would gain,

Must learn submissively to yield ;
The stubborn ne'er their ends obtain ;

The vanquished masters are o' the field.

Go on, brave Prince, with like success,

Still to increase your hoped renown,
Till to your conduct and adress,

Not to your birth, you owe a crown

Proud Alva with the power of Spain

Could not the noble Dutch enslave;
And wiser Parma strove in vain

For to reduce a race so brave.

They now those very armies pay,
By which they were forced to yield to you;

320 TIME OF THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS

Their ancient birthright they betray,
By their own votes you them subdue.

Who can then liberty maintain

When by such arts it is withstood?

Freedom to princes is a chain

To all that spring from royal blood.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HOLLAND'S INFLUENCE DURING THE TIME OF WILL-
IAM III, KING OF ENGLAND AND STADHOLDER OF
HOLLAND. DANIEL DE FOE, MATTHEW PRIOR,
BURNET AND LOCKE.

The time of the glorious English revolution in
1688, was different from that of the Anglo-Dutch
wars, during Cromwell's Republic, and after the restor-
ation of the Stuarts. Enmity and hatred between
Holland and England gave place to a confederation
between the two nations against one foe, Louis XIV
of France, who threatened all Protestantism in Eng-
land as well as in Holland, with extirpation. Pro-
testantism in its last and great struggle for freedo,^
and existence, found in Prince William III a leader,
both in politics and on the battlefield, able enough to
match the French intrigues as well as the French
armies. Married to the noble Mary, daughter of
James II, a princess, whose lovely character and great
devotion to her husband, and to the cause of Protes-
tantism enabled her to give him the best assistance
that anybody could imagine, William was called to a
great task, which he notwithstanding all difficulties,
in Holland as well as in England, performed in the
most splendid way.

The feelings in England towards Holland were
now better than during the period of the Anglo-Dutch
wars, yet, there remained many malcontents, some
of whom were the zealous adherents of Catholicism,

21 321

322 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

and of the Stuarts, while others exaggerated Eng-
lish patriotism against the Dutch, whom they tried
to discredit in the eyes of the English people by call-
ing them "foreigners." As late as the year 1701 a
pamphlet entitled "The Foreigners/' was written by
one Mr. Tutchin, in which, says De Foe, "the author
fell personally upon the king himself, and then upon
the Dutch nation. And after having reproached his
Majesty with crimes, that his worst enemies could not
think of without horror, he sums up all in the odious
name of Foreigner." "This," says De Foe, "filled me
with a kind of rage against the book, and gave birth
to a trifle, which I never could hope should have met
with so general an acceptance as it did." This "trifle,"
was the famous satire entitled "The Trueborn Eng-
lishman" by Daniel De Foe, 1701, a poem of more
than six hundred lines, in which the author of Robin-
son Crusoe displayed such splendid polemical ability
that this poem has maintained itself till the present
day as one of the classics of English literature. "Pos-
sibly," says the author in the Preface, "somebody may
take me for a Dutchman, in which they are mistaken,
but I am one that would be glad to see Englishmen
behave themselves better to strangers, and to govern-
ors also, that one might not be reproached in foreign
countries for belonging to a nation that wants man-
ners. I assure you, gentlemen, strangers use us bet-
ter abroad, and we can give no reason but our ill
nature for the contrary here. Methinks an English-
man, who is so proud of being called a good fellow,
should be civil. And it cannot be denied but we are,
in many cases and particularly to strangers, the most
churlish people alive. As to vices, who can dispute
our intemperance, while an honest drunken fellow
is a character in a man's praise ! All our reformations

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 323

are banters, and will be so till our magistrates and
gentry reform themselves, by way of example; then,
and not till then, they may be expected to punish
others without blushing." "As to our ingratitude"
(viz. towards William III in bringing about the
Glorious Revolution) "I desire to he understood of
that particular people who, pretending to be Protes-
tants, have all along endeavored to reduce the liber-
ties and religion of this nation into the hands of King
James and his Popish powers, together with such who
enjoy the peace and protection of the present govern-
ment, and yet abuse and affront the king who pro-
cured it, and openly profess their uneasiness under
him these, by whatsoever names or titles they are
dignified or distinguished, are the people aimed at ;
nor do I disown but that it is so much the temper
of an Englishman to abuse his benefactor, that I could
be glad to see it rectified."

So he did not write as a Dutchman, but as him-
self a true Englishman, trying to rectify some wrong
ideas among his own people.

As to the main argument, against which he wrote,
viz.: that William. Ill was a foreigner, and that there-
fore he was to be rejected, the author explains in his
Explanatory Preface: "True-born, in the sense of
being not mixed up with foreign blood, hardly exist in
England and may be could be found only among the
Welsh, the Irish or the Scots. The whole English
nation is a mix-up of Romans, Danes, Saxons and
Normans, Welsh and Scots. "From hence I only in-
fer that an Englishman, of all men, ought not to de-
spise foreigners, as such ; and I think the inference is
just, since what they are today, we were yesterday,
and tomorrow they will be like us."

"But when I see the town full of lampoons and

324 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

invectives against Dutchmen, only because they are
foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by
insolent pedants, and ballad-making poets, for employ-
ing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I
confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of
their own origin, thereby to let them see what a ban-
ter is put upon ourselves by it; since, speaking of
Englishmen ab origine, we are really all foreigners
ourselves."

"I could go on to prove it is also impolitic in us
to discourage foreigners; since it is easy to make it
appear that the multitude of foreign nations who have
taken sanctuary here, have been the greatest additions
to the wealth and strength of the nation ; the essen-
tial whereof is the number of its inhabitants nor
would this nation ever have arrived to the degree of
wealth and glory it now boasts of, if the addition of
foreign nations, both as to manufactures and arms,
had not been helpful to it. This is so plain, that he
who is ignorant of it, is too dull to be talked with."

"The Satire therefore I must allow to be just, till
I am otherwise convinced ; because nothing can be
more ridiculous than to hear our people boast of that
antiquity, which if it had been true, would have left
us in so much worse condition than we are now ;
whereas we ought rather to boast among our neigh-
bours that we are part of themselves, of the same
origin as they, but bettered by our climate, and, like
our language and manufactures, derived from them,
and improved by us to a perfection greater than they
can pretend to."

"This we might have valued ourselves upon with--
out vanity ; but to disown our descent from them,
talking big of our ancient families, and long originals,
and stand at a distance from foreigners, like the en-

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 325

thnsiast in religion, with a 'stand off. I am more
holy than thou,' this is a thing so ridiculous in a
nation derived from foreigners, as we are, that I could
not but attack them as I have done."

Thus far I quote from the author in his Explana-
tory Preface. This poem which is published in pamph-
let form was enormously successful.

About four years after its first appearance, the
author tells us that he himself had published nine
editions, besides which it had been printed twelve
times by others without his concurrence. Of the
cheap editions no less than 80,000 were disposed of,
in the streets of London. 1

Finally to give some specimen of what the poem
really is, since it is too long to reprint in full, I quote
a few passages:"

How FOREIGNERS CAME TO ENGLAND

The Romans first with Julius Csesar came
Including all the nations of that name
Gauls, Greek and Lombards and by computation
Auxiliaries or slaves of ev'ry nation.
With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sweno came,
In search of plunder, not in search of fame.
Scots, Picts and Irish from the Hibernian shore;
And conq'ring William brought the Normans o'er.
All these their barb'rous offspring left behind,
The dregs of armies, they of all mankind;
Blended with Britons, who before were here,
Of whom the W'elsh ha' blest the character.
From these amphibious, ill-born mob began
That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

THE ENGLISH NOBILITY
The great invading Norman let us know
What conquerors in aftertimes might do.
To every muskateer he brought to town
He gave the lands which never were his own ;

i The Works of Daniel Defoe, Edinburgh, William P. Nimmo,
P- 591-

326 " DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

When first the English crown he did obtain

He did not send his Dutchmen home again. 1

No reassumptions in his reign were known,

Davenant might there ha' let his book alone.

No parliament his army could disband ;

He raised no money, for he paid in land.

He gave his legions their eternal station

And made them all freeholders of the nation.

He canton'd out the country to his men,

And every soldier was a denizen

The rascals thus enriched he called them Lords,

To please their upstart pride with new-made words

And here begins the ancient pedigree

That so exalts our poor nobility.

'Tis that from some French trooper they derive,

Who with the Norman bastard did arrive ;

The trophies of the families appear;

Some show the sword, the bow, and some the spear,

Which their great ancestor, forsooth, did wear.-

These in the herald's register remain,

Their noble mean extraction to explain;

Yet who the hero was, no man can tell,

Whether a drummer or a colonel;

The silent record blushes to reveal

Their undescended dark original.

THE MEN THAT DESPISE THE DUTCH

These are the heroes that despise the Dutch
And rail at new-come foreigners so much;
Forgetting that themselves are all derived
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived;
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drtmes,
Who ransack'd kingdoms and dispeopled towns.
The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot,
By hunger, theft and rapine, higher brought;
Norwegian pirates, bucaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains ;
Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.

1 Here Defoe probably alludes to the Dutch weavers, whom
William the Conqueror brought over to England as instructors for
his people. William himself married a Dutch princess.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 327
INGRATITUDE OF ENGLAND TOWARDS THE DUTCH

If e'er this nation be distressed again
To whomsoever they cry, they'll cry in vain;
To heaven they cannot have the face to look
Or, if they should, it would but heaven provoke ;
To hope for help from man, would be too much,
Mankind would always tell 'em of the Dutch:
How they came here our freedom to maintain,
Were paid, and cursed, and hurried home again;
How by their aid we first dissolved our fears,
And then our helpers damn'd for foreigners
'Tis not our English temper to do better,
For Englishmen think ev'ry one their debtor.

WHY KING WILLIAM MADE SOME FOREIGNERS His
INTIMATE FRIENDS

We blame the king, that he relies too much

On strangers, Germans, Huguenots and Dutch,

And seldom does his great affairs of state

To English counsellors communicate.

The fact might very well be answered thus:

He had so often been betrayed by us,

He must have been a madman to rely

On English gentlemen's fidelity;

For, laying other arguments aside,

This thought might mortify our English pride,

That foreigners have faithfully obeyed him,

And none but Englishmen have ever betrayed him;

They have our ships and merchants bought and sold,

And bartered English blood for foreign gold;

First to the French they sold our Turkey fleet,

And injured Talmarsh next at Cameret;

The king himself is sheltered from their snares,

Not by his merits, but the crown he wears;

Experience tells us 'tis the English way

Their benefactors always to betray.

328 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

THE CONCLUSION

Then let us boast of ancestors no more,

Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore,

In latent records of the ages past,

Behind the rear of time, in long oblivion placed ;

For if our virtues must in lines descend

The merit with the families would end

And intermixtures would most fatal grow.

For vice would be hereditary too ;

The tainted blood would of necessity

Involuntary wickedness convey.

Vice, like ill-nature, for an age or two,

May seem a generation to pursue ;

But virtue seldom does regard the breed :

Fools do the wise, and wise the fools succeed.

What is 't to us what ancestors we had ?

If good, what better? or what worse, if bad?

Examples are for imitation set,

Yet all men follow virtue with regret.

Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate,

And see their offspring thus degenerate ;

How we contend for birth and names unknown,

And build on their past actions, not our own ;

They'd cancel records, and their tombs deface,

And openly disown the vile degenerate race ;

For fame of families is all a cheat,

It's personal virtue only makes us great.

Everybody who reads these fragments, which do
not amount together to a third part of the poem, must
recognize that there is a naive power, combined with a
charming reality, in the language of Defoe, which
made him dreadful for his enemies, and a not-to-be-
neglected help for his friends. During several years
Defoe used his great abilities as publicist in serving
the party of the glorious revolution, which was also
the party of all Protestants, both in England and in
Holland. In the midst of the great spiritual struggle
between all kinds of factions, conflicting opinions, con-

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 329

spiracies, secret and confessed hatred, noble tenden-
cies and selfish aspirations, Defoe on his own personal
responsibility, without power or protection back
of him, fought like a lonely lion for the great cause,
and consequently the better part of the English
nation, the common citizens admired and loved him.
Defoe takes suo jure not only an honorable place in
English literature, but also a more honorable one in
that important and most critical period of the world's
history, and in the history of Protestantism, which is
called the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Defoe was a born writer, and his influence was a
considerable one with the masses of the English peo-
ple, and of course, made him many enemies among the
Roman Catholics and the secret adherents of the
Stuarts. For his True Born Englishman he was
amply rewarded. "How this poem was the occa-
sion," he says in later time, "of my being known to
his Majesty, how I was afterwards received by him,
how employed abroad, and how, above my capacity of
deserving, rewarded, is no part of the present case,
and is only mentioned here as I take all occasions
to do, for expressing the honour I ever preserved for
the immortal and glorious memory of that greatest
and best of all princes and whom it was my honour
and advantage to call master as well as sovereign,
whose goodness to me I never forgot and whose
memory I never patiently heard abused and never can
do so ; and who, had he lived, would never have suf-
fered me to be treated as I have been in this world." 1
After the death of King William, Defoe continued to
defend liberty and toleration for many years, but
missing his noble protector and persecuted in every
way that was possible by his many and powerful

1 Appeal to honour and justice, quoted. Works of Defoe, p. 4.

330 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

enemies, he died in 1731, a poor man. Satisfied with,
and totally absorbed in, the sovereignty over his own
field as a writer, 1 as an author of polemics, and as
a poet; inspired to the bottom of his soul by the
highest principles of Protestantism and Democracy;
a staunch defender of liberty and toleration and one-
sidedly attached to this great task of his life, like
most geniuses in history, he could not succeed in any
other business, and with pity we see that after the
death of King William, a protector to shield his do-
mestic life, and to guarantee to this great man even
a decent living was lacking. At the time when Will-
iam and Mary came to the throne in 1688, Defoe, born
in 1 66 1, was still a youth, but was nevertheless at-
tached already with his whole heart to the great cause,
and in all his life he never alludes to King William
but in language of deep gratitude and intense attach-
ment. Scarcely had the king breathed his last, when
his enemies vented their hatred in the most indecent
manner, by malignant speeches, toasts and lampoons.
This roused Defoe's indignation, and urged him again
to dip his pen into bitter ink, and produce : The Mock-
Mourners, by way of elegy on King William, 1702.
In a few weeks it passed through five large editions.
Defoe was a man with a character a splendid, mag-
nificent character. The transition from John Dryden
to Daniel Defoe, is that from darkness to the light ;
from the hireling to the sovereignty of a man with
sacred principles; from a spiritual prostitute to the
martyr of a holy cause ; from a devilish dividedness
against himself", dissolving itself in sarcastic mockery
with every cause, to the serene heavenly steadfastness
of a man fighting for principles which were dear to
him, to his people, to his sovereign and to all Protes-

1 Defoe wrote upwards of 250 distinct productions. Ijfe of
Defoe, p. 4, in The Works of Defoe.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 331

tantism. Dryden followed the example of the man
who betrayed his Master, after having eaten his
bread, and after he saw that suffering for his Master's
sake were coming; and he did this not once but re-
peatedly ; he did it, as far as we know even with some
remorse though with a brazen forehead confessing
himself shamelessly, "O gracious God ! how far have
we profaned thy heavenly gift of poetry," which words
remind us, without willing it, of those other words :
"I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood." Defoe followed in the footsteps of the Apos-
tles and Prophets, in the footsteps of his Master and
in those of all the heroes and martyrs of Christendom,
sacrificing all his cares and abilities, to the higher
ideals of life, suffering scorn and disdain, persecu-
tion and poverty, standing for the honor and name
of his protector, not only so long as he enjoyed his
favor, but during half a lifetime, after the death of
his king had made all protection impossible. It is not
till in our time that the researches of William Lee x
have brought to light how important a part Defoe
played in bringing forth and maintaining the blessing
results of the Glorious Revolution. A star of such
brilliancy could not escape attracting again and again,
the attention of the astronomer until its real value
and greatness should be fixed forever.

Quite another character from Defoe, was Matthew
Prior. More a poet than a hero, he served King
William III during the whole time of his reign, was
for several years attached to the English Embassy at
the Hague, and during the deliberations followed by
the treaty of peace at Ryswyck, 1697, he was secretary
to the Embassy. At the Hague he wrote his witty
English Ballad on the taking of Namur in 1695, a

1 William L,ee, Life and newly discovered writings of Daniel
Defoe, 3 Vols. London, J. Camden Hotten, 1869.

332 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

parody of Boileau's Ode on the capture of Namur by
the French three years before. In 1698 he was sent to
Paris as secretary to the English Embassy. In one of
his letters to Lord Halifax he tells how he saw the
exiled English King James II at the court of the
French King : "I faced old James and all his court the
other day at St. Cloud. Vive Guillaume. You never
saw such a strange figure as the old bully is, lean,
worn, and ri veiled, not unlike Neale the projector. The
queen looks melancholy, but otherwise well enough:
their equipages are all very ragged and contempt-
able." 1 But after the death of King William, when
the influence of the Tories was in the ascendant, Prior
joined their ranks and later became a close friend of
Lord Bolingbroke. During his early days in the poli-
tical business at the Hague he tells us, "he had enough
to do in studying French and Dutch."* Prior was not
a man after the heart, either of Defoe or of Burnet.
To please those ironsides of King William a stronger
and more heroic character was required than that of
Prior. His devotion to the cause of King William
and Queen Mary was nevertheless an honest one, as
the spirit of his poems abundantly show. Some of
these poems are really beautiful, and full of tender
feelings and noble thoughts. By his diplomatic career
he had the best opportunity to learn the policy of
William III, an opportunity, such as was given to very
few. Prior was secretary to Lord Dursley, but that
nobleman's gout gave the young man many oppor-
tunities for personal communication with his sover-
eign. His readiness and address caused William to
give him the half-serious nickname of "Secretaire du
Roy" and his appointment of "Gentleman to the King's

1 Life of Prior, by Reginald Brinsley Johnson, in Frior's Works,
London, 1892, p. 26.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 333

Bedchamber." 1 And his verses bear witness of the
intimate information, which he by his position had
daily opportunity to acquire.

In his famous "Carmen Seculare for the year
1700" he wrote about William III, Prince of Orange,
for instance these lines:

Whither wouldst thou further look?

Read William's acts, and close the ample book;

Peruse the wonders of his dawning life:

How, like Alcides, he began;

With infant patience calm'd seditious strife, *

And quell'd the snakes which round his cradle ran.

Describe his youth, attentive to alarms,

By dangers form'd, and perfected in arms ;

When conq'ring, mild; when conquer'd, not disgrac'd ;

By wrongs not lessen'd, nor by triumphs rais'd :

Superior to the blind events

Of little human accidents;

And constant to his first decree,

To curb the proud, to set the injur'd free;

To bow the haughty neck, and raise the suppliant knee.

His opening years to riper manhood bring ;
And see the hero perfect in the king:
Imperious arms by manly reasons sway'd,
And power supreme by free' consent obey'd ;
With how much haste his mercy meets his foes :
And how unbounded his forgiveness flows ;
With what desire he makes his subjects bless'd,
His favours granted ere his throne adress'd :
What trophies o'er our captiv'd hearts he rears,
By arts of peace more potent, than by wars :
How over himself as o'er the world, he reigns,
His morals strengthening what his law ordains.

Through all his thread of life already spun,

Becoming grace and proper action run :

The piece by Virtue's equal hand is wrought,

Works of Prior, Biography, p. XXIII.

334 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

Mixt with no crime, and shaded with no fault;

No footsteps of the victor's rage

Left in the camp where William did engage:

No tincture of the monarch's pride

Upon the royal purple spied ;

His fame, like gold, the more 'tis tried,

The more shall its intrinsic worth proclaim ;

Shall pass the combat of the searching flame,

And triumph o'er the vanquish'd heat,

For ever coming out the same,

And losing nor its lustre nor its weight.

This is just as true to history, as it is beautifully
told and reminds us of those other lines, intended to
describe King William's character :

When certain to o'ercome, inclined to save,
Tardy to vengeance and with mercy brave

or those others :

Serene yet strong, majestic yet sedate,
Swift without violence, without terror great.

That Prior understood something of William's
great task, the following lines may show :

Europe freed, and France repelled,

The hero from the height beheld ;

He spoke the word, that war and rage should cease;

He bid the Maas and Rhine in safety flow;

And dictated a lasting peace

To the rejoicing world below;

To rescued states, and vindicated crowns,

His equal hand prescribed their ancient bounds ;

Ordained whom every province should obey;

How far each monarch should extend his sway;

Taught them how clemency made power revered ;

And that the prince beloved was truly feared.

Firm by his side unspotted Honour stood,

Pleased to confess him not so great as good;

His head with brighter beams fair Virtue decked

Than those which all his numerous crowns reflect;

Established freedom clapped her joyful wings ;

Proclaimed the first of men, and best of kings.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 335

In the phrase "unspotted Honour/' the poet alludes
to Queen Mary, who was William's wife, and here
too, indeed, he does not tell anything more than the
simple truth, although far less than the whole truth.
Whatever thousand-fold crimes may have been com-
mitted by the Stuarts, and whatever horrible characters
the House of Stuart may have produced, there is at
least one glorious spot in its bloody and scandalous
history, and that glorious spot is Queen Mary. Who-
ever has read the secret diary and the letters of Mary,
in which she from day to day expressed her sorrows
and her joy, her unmatched love for her William, her
devotedness to him, her clear understanding of his
great task, her piety and at the same time her womanly
strength to assist her husband, whoever has looked
through those precious pages full of the most tender
affections, must confess that neither Holland nor Eng-
land ever saw a princess at the side of a sovereign,
with a character superior, or even equal to that of
Queen Mary. Prior did not know these sacred pages,
because they did not become accessible to the public
until more than 150 years later, but Prior knew the
Prince and the Queen personally, and his personal
impression gives a testimony not differing from the
truth as discovered in her secret papers. In his Ode,
presented to the King on his Majesty's arrival in Hol-
land after the death of the Queen, 1695, the poet
sings :

For her the wise and great shall mourn;
When late records her deeds repeat;
Ages to come, and men unborn
Shall bless her name and sigh her fate.

Fair Albion shall, with faithful trust,
Her holy Queen's sad reliques guard;

336 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

Till Heaven awakes the precious dust,
And gives the saint her full reward.

And in another place in the same Ode, he writes:

She was instructed to command,
Great king, by long obeying thee ;
Her sceptre, guided by thy hand
Preserved the isles, and ruled the sea.

As William married Mary when she was only six-
teen years of age, while he was twenty-six, and took
her out of her English life to Holland, the develop-
ment of Mary's beautiful character is certainly no
little credit for the Prince. To this probably the poet
alludes when he says-:

From Mary's glory, Angels trace
The beauty of her partner's soul.

But not only do the names of King William and
Queen Mary connect the name of Prior with Holland.
During his years of abode; in Holland, Prior studied
the Dutch language, and made himself acquainted with
Dutch literature, as, for instance, he shows in one
poem, entitled:

A PASSAGE IN THE MORIAE ENCOMIUM OF ERASMUS
IMITATED

In awful pomp, and melancholy state
See settled Reason on the judgment seat;
Around her crowd Distrust and Doubt and Fear,
And thoughtful Foresight, and tormenting Care :
Far from the throne, the trembling Pleasures stand
Chained up, or exiled by her stern command
Wretched her subject, gloomy sits the queen;
Till happy Chance reverts the cruel scene :
And apish Folly with her wild resort
Of wit and jest desturbs the solemn court.

See the fantastic minstrelsy advance
To breathe the song, and animate the dance.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 337

Blest the usurper ! happy the surprise !

Her mimic postures catch our eager eyes;

Her jingling bells affect our captive ear;

And in the sights we see, and sounds we hear,

Against our judgment she our sense employs;

The laws 'of troubled Reason she destroys ;

And in their place rejoices to indite

Wild schemes of mirth, and plans of loose delight.

Still another little poem of Prior reminds us of
Dutch influence, it is as follows :

A DUTCH PROVERB

Fire, water, woman, are man's ruin ;

Says wise professor Van der Bruin.

By flames a house I hired was lost

Last year, and I must pay the cost.

This spring the rains overflowed my ground ;

And my best Flanders mare was drowned.

A slave I am to Clara's eyes;

The gipsy knows her power and flies.

Fire, water, woman, are my ruin;

And great thy wisdom Van der Bruin.

How well Prior understood the character of his
great master, King William, and how well he repre-
sented him, he showed for instance at Paris, where
he was for a time a secretary to the Earl of Port-
land, the English ambassador. "While. he was in that
kingdom, one of the officers of the French king's
household, showing him the royal apartments and
curiosities at Versailles, especially the paintings of Le
Brun, wherein the victories of Louis XIV were glori-
fied, asked him whether King William's actions were
to be seen in his palace ; 'No sir,' replied Mr. Prior ;
'the monuments of my 'master's actions are to be seen
everywhere, but in his own house.' " l

Another famous English author, whose name is

1 British Plutarch, Life of Prior, p. 31.
22

338 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

closely connected with Holland, who lived several
years in the Netherlands, learned there the practice
of toleration, married a Dutch lady, and even became
a naturalized Dutch citizen, was the well known chap-
lain of William and Mary at the Hague, the clergy-
man and historian, scholar and polemic, Gilbert Bur-
net. Born in Edinburgh in 1643, Burnet got his edu-
cation in Scotland, and after having finished his
studies for the ministry at Glasgow, went to England,
stayed for six months in Oxford and Cambridge, and
then took a voyage to Holland and France in 1674.
"At Amsterdam by the help of a Jewish Rabbi, he
perfected himself in the Hebrew language, and like-
wise became acquainted with the leading men of the
different persuasions tolerated in that country ; as Cal-
vinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Brownists,
Papists and Unitarians, amongst each of which, he
used frequently to declare, he met with men of such
unfeigned piety and virtue, that he became fixed in a
strong principle of universal charity, and an invinci-
ble abhorrence of all severities on account of religious
dissensions." 1 The practice of toleration, as he saw
it in Holland, and nowhere else at that time, was for
Burnet a new light shining in the darkness of perse-
cution and narrow-mindedness. It changed the whole
system of his thoughts. As a man thoroughly con-
verted to the principles of toleration, Burnet returned
from Holland to England, the England of the Stuarts.
After that time he could not help trying to bring over
from Holland a tolerant spirit into the minds and the
hearts of his own nation. He looked now from an-
other angle upon the tyranny of every predominant
party, and the persecution of every party in minority.
Conflict and trouble was unavoidable, as a great part

1 The British Plutarch, Life of Burnet, p. 50.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 339

of his compatriots did not see things as he had seen
them in the Netherlands. Soon after he was ap-
pointed professor of divinity at the University of
Glasgow the Royalists took offense at his opinions,
and brought accusations against him, by which he saw
himself forced to quit his position and to move, first
to London, where also after some years it became in-
tolerable for him, until, with the accession of King
James II to the throne, he obtained leave to go out
of the kingdom in 1685. Burnet then visited Paris,
went through Italy, and stayed at Rome for a while,
but his intention was to settle down in the Nether-
lands.

"In 1688, he came to Ubrecht, with an intention
to settle in some of the Seven Provinces. There he
received an invitation from the Prince and Princess
of Orange, to whom their party in England had recom-
mended him, to come to The Hague ; which he ac-
cepted. He was soon made acquainted with the sec-
ret of their counsels and advised the fitting out of a
fleet in Holland sufficient to support their designs and
encourage their friends. This and the account of his
travels in which he endeavored to blend popery and
tyranny together and represent them as inseparable,
with some papers, reflecting on the proceedings of
England, that came out in single sheets and were dis-
persed in several parts of England, most of which Mr.
Burnet owns himself the author of, alarmed King
James, and were the occasion of his writing twice
against him to the Princess of. Orange ; and insisting,
by his ambassador, on his being forbid the court;
which, after much importunity, was done, though he
continued to be trusted and employed as before, the
Dutch ministers consulting him daily. But that which
gave, he tells us, the crisis to the king's anger, was

340 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

the news of Burnet's being married to a considerable
fortune at The Hague."

"To put an end to his frequent conferences with
the ministers, a prosecution for high treason was set
on foot against him both in England and in Scotland ;
but Burnet receiving the news thereof before it came
to the States, he avoided the storm, by petitioning for
and obtaining without any difficulty, a bill of natural-
ization in order to accomplish his intended marriage
with Mary Scot, a Dutch lady of considerable for-
tune, who, with the advantage of birth, had those of
a fine person and understanding."

"After his marriage with this lady, being legally
under the protection of Holland, he undertook, in a
letter to the Earl of Middleton, to answer all the mat-
ters laid to his charge and added, that, being now
naturalized in Holland, his allegiance was during his
stay in these parts, transferred from his Majesty to
the States-General ; and in another letter, that if, upon
non-appearance a sentence should be passed upon him,
he might, to justify himself, be forced to give an ac-
count of the share he had in affairs, in which he might
be led to mention what he was afraid would not please
his Majesty.

"These expressions gave such offense to the Eng-
lish court that, dropping the former prosecution, they
proceeded against him as guilty of high treason, and
a sentence of outlawry was passed upon him and there-
upon the king first demanded him to be delivered up
and afterwards insisted on his being banished the
Seven Provinces; which the States refused, alleging,
that he was become their subject; and if the king had'
anything to lay to Dr. Burnet's charge, justice should
be done in their court.

"This put an end to all farther applications to the

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 341

States; and Dr. Burnet, secured from any danger,
went on in assisting and forwarding the important
affair of the revolution.

"He wrote also several pamphlets in support of the
Prince of Orange's designs and assisted in drawing
up his Declaration and when the Prince undertook
the expedition to England, Dr. Burnet accompanied
him as his chaplain."

"After his landing at Exeter he proposed and drew
up the association and was of no small service on sev-
eral occasions by a seasonable display of pulpit-elo-
quence, to animate the Prince's followers and gain
over others to his interest.

"Nor did his services pass unrewarded ; for King
William had not been many days on the throne be-
fore Dr. Burnet was advanced to the seat of Bishop
of Salisbury, in the place of Seth Ward who died ;
Dr. Burnet being consecrated May 31, 1689. He dis-
tinguished himself in the House of Lords by declaring
for moderate measures with regard to the clergy, who
scrupled to take the oaths and for a toleration of the
dissenters." 1

Besides many pamphlets, Burnet wrote two great
works, the History of my own time and The History
of the Reformation which are standard works among
the literature of English history, and in all his pamph-
lets and works we feel the same spirit of freedom and
toleration, for which he, at so early a time in his
life, received an inspiration in the Netherlands.

Another man, belonging to the same cycle of bril-
liant stars that shine around the two grand figures of
William and Mary, and who was inspired by the
spirit of the glorious Republic of the Low Countries,
was John Locke, who after having lived in Holland

1 The British Plutarch, Life of Burnet, p. 55-58.

342 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

for years, came back to England with the Revolution
of 1688. His main task lay in the field of Philosophy,
the results of his researches may in some respects be
doubtful, but his love for liberty and toleration, as
well as the brilliance of his genius are unquestionable,
while his personal character, and even his piety, have
aroused the admiration and love of all who have be-
longed to the intimate circle of his relatives and
friends. John Locke was born at Wrington in Som-
ersetshire in the year 1632 ; was very carefully edu-
cated under the severe leadership of his father ;
studied physics and philosophy at Oxford ; was for
many years under the protection of Lord Ashley, Earl
of Shaftesbury, and being of a weak physical consti-
tution, he went in 1675 to Montpellier in France to
restore his health.

From Montpellier he went to Paris where he met
Mr. Guenelon a celebrated physician from Amster-
dam, "who held anatomical conferences there with
great reputation/' and when in 1682 his protector
Shaftesbury, prosecuted by the Stuart government for
high treason, escaped and fled to Holland, John Locke
followed him thither." 1 "He had not been a year in
Holland, when he was accused at the English court of
having written certain tracts against the government ;
and though another person was afterwards discovered
to be the author, yet being observed to join in com-
pany with several English malcontents at The Hague,
this conduct was communicated to our resident there,
to the Earl of Sunderland, then Secretary of State,
who accompanied the king therewith, and his Majesty
ordered the proper methods to be taken for expelling
him from the College," Locke being a member of
Christ Church College at Oxford. Since that time it

1 British Plutarch, Life of Locke, p. 144.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 343

was dangerous for Locke to return to England. "In
May, 1685, after accession of James II to the throne,
the English envoy at The Hague demanded him to
be delivered up by the States-General, upon suspicion
of having been concerned in the Duke of Monmouth's
invasion. This obliged him to lie concealed nearly
for twelve months, till it became sufficiently known
that he had no hand in that enterprise. During this
privacy, which, by the assistance of some friends,
was rendered very secure from any danger of a dis-
covery, he composed his first letter upon Toleration,
which being translated from the Latin original into
English and Dutch was printed in London." 1

"Towards the latter end of 1686 he appeared again
in public, and, in the following year he formed a
weekly assembly at Amsterdam, with Messieurs Lim-
borch and LeClerc, who were joined by some others
in the view of holding conferences, upon subjects of
learning. These two divines were among our author's
first friends in Holland and he held a correspondence
with both of them till the day of his death; not long
after which there came out several letters that had
passed between him and the former, whereby it ap-
pears, that Mr. Limborch was very serviceable to our
author as well with respect to some improvements in
his Essay on Human Understanding as to his Reason-
ableness of Christianity and on the other hand these
favors were repaid by Mr. Locke in procuring him
Archbishop Tillotson's assistance in his History of the
Inquisition which was afterwards dedicated by that
author of his grace. As to Mr. LeClerc, the dedica-
tion of his Ontologia to our author shows the pro-
found esteem he had for him. 2

1 Idem., p. 149-

2 British Plutarch, Life of Locke, p. 153-

344 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

In 1689 Locke returned to England in the fleet
which conveyed the Princess of Orange to her con-
sort.

King William recognized and appreciated Locke,
as one of the powerful defenders of toleration, and
"left it to his choice, whether he would be envoy at the
court of the emperor, that of elector of Brandenburgh,
or any other, where he thought the air most suitable
to him" as he was suffering from asthma and the king
himself knew what that meant. "But he waived all
these on account of the ill state of his health, which
disposed him gladly to accept another offer that was
made him by Sir Francis Masnam and his lady, of an
apartment in their country-seat at Gates in Essex.
This situation proved in all respects so agreeable to
him, that he spent a great part of the remainder of
his life at it. Locke died at that same hospitable home
in 1704, while Mrs. Masman was reading- to him out
of the Psalms, which he asked her to do during the
last hour of his life." 1

From the facts, mentioned above, we see that
Locke spent no less than six years in Holland ; that
he lived there mostly in the circle of the Arminians
the Arminian professors, Limborgh and LeClerc being
his intimate friends. In the Netherlands he found
refuge, friendship and scholarly learning. There he
wrote his treatise on Toleration; there he continued
the researches laid down in his Essay on Human Un-
derstanding; there he wrote the substance of his later
published Thoughts concerning Education; and he
published his Two Treatises of Civil Government in
defense of the Revolution of 1688 in England shortly
after he left Holland. The influence which Holland
with its republican institutions, with its freedom, with

1 British Plutarch, Life of Locke, p. 174.

DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III 345

its many scholars and famous universities, with its
generally high standard of education, had on the
development of so subtle and tender genius as Locke
was, can hardly be over-estimated.

At the time when William of Orange came to
England to deliver the English people from oppres-
sion and persecution, and to save all Protestantism
from being annihilated, he had with him a splendid
army; an army in which served the flower of the
Huguenot nobility, of German and English refugees
and Dutch soldiers trained in the struggle for liberty,
an army of men, whose slaughtered relatives and dev-
astated properties, called them to the long desired
opportunity of facing their persecutors on equal terms,
and who found their happy day in Ireland on the
banks of the Boyne. But there was still another army
with William and Mary ; an army equipped with more
decisive weapons than sword and musket ; an army of
unlimited spiritual strength, whose victory was to be
won in the very heart and soul of the English na-
tion, and that should defeat its enemies far beyond
the borders of the British Isles; an army in whose
ranks a Burnet served, whose thundering voice from
the pulpit sounded through Great Britain from the
Channel to the Highlands of Scotland; an army in
which a John Locke fought with his two-edged sword
of logic, human understanding, lifting up the standard
of toleration, and smashing the arguments of pious
tyranny in such a way that further discussion could be
met with a smile ; an army in which Daniel Defoe,
with never-matched satire scourged the folly and cor-
ruption of the tyrants, pointing out to the nation
that, while at the Stuart's court under cover of pre-
tended "divine right" the most frivolous debauchery
of every kind was raging, at the same time the masses

346 DURING THE TIME OF WILLIAM III

of the most honest citizens all over the country were
crying from the depth of their misery to Heaven, be-
cause they saw their dearest ones either murdered on
the scaffold or sighing in the darkness of the dun-
geon; an army in the midst of which the lyric voice
was heard of a man like Prior, who saw, and there-
fore praised in his songs, the virtues and piety, the
modesty and the God-given strength of both William
and Mary in leading the nation to safety and liberty ;
an army not of foreigners, but of the best English
patriots, trained however in the school of freedom
and toleration at the other side of the Channel. Here
we observe the influence of Holland on all the most
edifying parts of English literature.

CHAPTER XXXVII

HOLLAND'S DECLINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
FIELDING, SMOLLETT, GOLDSMITH, SOUTHEY AND
HENRY TAYLOR

Like Greece, like Palestine, like Rome and like
every nation that has contributed to the development
of the world's history, Holland had its rise, its glory
and its decline. The rise of the Netherlands goes as
far back as the origin of the Flemish cities, and the
development of democracy which began with the cru-
sades. The glorious period is for the Southern Neth-
erlands that from 1300 until the last half of the six-
teenth century when the Spanish armies began their
devastation, and for the Northern provinces, the pres-
ent Netherlands, from the eighty-years war, until,
after the period of William III, the stadholder of Hol-
land and the King of England. During the eighteenth
century we see the decline, and with the French revo-
lution, the downfall, of the great Republic. It seems
to be a fact with every leading nation in the world's
history, that each nation has a certain time of over-
abundant energy, a triumphant spirit of enthusiasm
that brings it to the highest development of hu-
man society in its epoch, but that after this period
of nearly super-human endeavor, there comes a period
of apparent exhaustion, of inertia, like that of old age
in human life and it has never happened in history that
any one of those nations, in which the energy of the
human race has for a certain period attained its high-

347

348 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

est expression, has in a later period end for a second
time regained that leadership. Holland in the eight-
eenth century was in her time of decline, approach-
ing to her downfall, with a future certainty of some
revival in the nineteenth century but never destined to
regain the leading position which it had held for cen-
turies up to the death of that greatest of all the Princes
of Orange, William III, King of England. On the
contrary England in the eighteenth century was grow-
ing very fast. The eighteenth century marks for Eng-
land the accession of the British empire to world
power; it is the age of Samuel Johnson, the age of
Sir Joshua Reynolds of Hogarth and of Gainsbor-
ough, ending in triumphs even over the short but des-
perate empire of Napoleon. The Nelson-monument
on Trafalgar Square in the center of London indi-
cates the very place where for the time being the cen-
tre of the world's trade and industry was to be found.
Greece was once the leader of the world in art and
literature, but the great task of Greece once having
been performed the time of Pericles never will come
back; the Roman empire of "divus Augustus,"' that
gave to the world its system of civil law, passed away,
never to return ; the Frankish empire of Charlemagne,
which christianized and educated Western Europe,
and left an everlasting blessing, is only an event in
the history of many centuries ago; the French empire
of "le Roy Soleil"is no more, its vanity only being
reflected in the ever-changing fashion of to day ; Hol-
land spent its 'best blood and its greatest energy in
securing freedom and toleration for the civilized world,
but after having performed this grand task, it may
hold a respectable position among the nations of Eur-
ope, but the time of its glory, the time of William
the Silent and Maurice, of Frederick Henry and Will-

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 349

iam III, of Rembrandt and Vondel, of Tromp and De
Ruyter, will never come back; England at the height
of its world empire and Germany as its rival may
continue for a while, but old Europe as a wtwle, de-
vouring itself by the most horrible war in history,
sees already coming the time, if it has not come yet, in
which America will lead the world'; the overwhelming
energy of the New World, the American spirit of to-
day, absorbing elements from all the nations of the
earth, reuniting the human race in her national life
after a dissecting process of many centuries in the old
world, presents today an incomparable aspect of
leadership, such as only our modern development has
been able to produce. Such is the unchangeable logic
of history, and as sure as the sun rises in the East
and walks through heaven until she sets in the West,
so sure is the course of the World's history from its
beginning in the Eastern empires of Babylon and
Egypt, taking its course through the European conti-
nent from Greece to the British Isles, until its light
is seen on Manhattan and Plymouth Rock, and its
full glory comes over a tremendous new continent,
brightening the valleys of the Alleghenies and the
Rocky Mountains and developing a world-empire be-
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific ; an empire not of
fighting monarchs always greedy to conquer by brute
force, but an empire of the most advanced civiliza-
tion which the world has ever seen.

Such being the case, we cannot be surprised by
the fact that since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, England exerted more influence on Holland
than Holland on England, and more especially that
the latter influence has been very limited indeed.

Of course the spirit of decline was not felt in
equal proportion in every department of national life.

350 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

There was no longer in Holland any more, any such
righting and dominating, triumphant spirit either in
the army or in the navy ; great generals and admirals
were lacking; most Dutch families, grown wealthy by
trade and industry were now resting on their victories
in beautiful houses along the canals of Amsterdam
and along the rivers in the country. But the univer-
sities (especially that of Leyden), with their beautiful
libraries and laboratories maintained pretty well their
old fame, and remained among the best centers -of
learning and scholarship in the world. So it happened
that even during the eighteenth century hundreds of
English and specially of Scotch students, came to
Leyden to follow for some years special courses at
the University. Amongst these English students at the
University of Leyden we find at least two men who
became prominent in English literature. Henry Field-
ing and Oliver Goldsmith, and at least two others,
Smollett and S out hey, who show in their works im-
pressions obtained directly from Holland. Henry
Fielding (1707-1754), one of England's first novel-
ists, well known for his Tom Jones, "the boisterous,
easy-going, masculine Henry Fielding," the greatest
contrast with the "sentimentalist, water-drinker and
vegetarian Richardson," the satirist in literature, as
Hogarth was in art, after having studied at Eton
College, was sent to the University of Leyden to fin-
ish his education. "When most of his companions,"
says his biographer Leslie Stephen in the first volume
of his works, "went to Oxford or Cambridge, Field-
ing for some reason was sent to Leyden. He lost no
time, we are assured, in placing himself under the
celebrated Vitriarius, then professor of civil law, and
was assiduous in attending lectures and taking notes.
The selection of Leyden seems rather curious, as one

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 351

would fancy that the celebrated Vitriarius had little
authority in Westminster." When writing this, Mr.
Stephen probably did not know much about Vitriarius
and the condition of law studies at that time. In those
days it was .the study of the natural law, "jus nat-
urae" which was considered as the highest and most
promising part of the study of law/ Whoever wished
to be a good scholar in the field of law, had to study
the "jus naturae." And it was just that study, which
professor Vitriarius had made a specialty of. When,
in the year 1720, Vitriarius, who was at that time
professor at Utrecht, accepted the call from JLeyden,
he opened his courses with an oration "de Juris na-
turae necessitate et utilitate," a very vital question in
the study of law during the eighteenth century, and
it looks very doubtful whether a man like Vitriarius,
who was so well up to date for his time, enjoyed little
authority in Westminster Hall." That Mr. Stephen
gives not a single reason for his statement is there-
fore no surprise.

"Scotch students of law frequently resorted to
Leyden, for example the immortal Boswell, a gen-
eration later; and medical students, like Goldsmith
and Akenside might go there to attend lectures, or to
obtain a degree." John Wilkes, too, was sent to Ley-
den some twenty years afterwards, because his par-
ents were dissenters, and wished to protect him (as
they certainly did) from the contamination of English
orthodoxy. In Fielding's case, it seems probable, that
pecuniary considerations were already coming into
play; and it appears that as funds became scarce, he
speedily returned to London with that famous allow-
ance of 200 pounds a year, which "anybody might pay
who would." About the only reference to his Dutch
experiences which I have noticed in Fielding's works

352 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

is a comparison in the Journey from this World to the
Next. An offensive smell as he approaches the city
of diseases, "very much resembled the savour which
travellers in summer perceive as they approach to that
beautiful village of the Hague, arising from those
delicious canals, which, as they consist of standing
water, do at that time -emit odours greatly agreeable
to a Dutch taste, 1 but not so pleasant to any other.
Those perfumes, with the assistance of a fair wind,
begin to affect persons of quick olfactory nerves at
a league's distance, and increase gradually as you ap-
proach." The comparison may possibly recall Dante,
but it does not throw much light upon Fielding's
academical career. He refers also, in the essay on the
Increase of Robbers, to the rarity and solemnity of
capital punishment in Holland. 2 Fielding studied
at Leyden during the years 1726-1728. That all these
English students at the University of Leyden, as a
rule, profited more from their life among the Dutch
people, in the circles of the University, than from
the courses of the professors, given either in Dutch
or in Latin, can surprise nobody. For students with
literary abilities like Fielding, Goldsmith, Boswell,
Smollett and others, nothing could be more educative
than to observe the customs and habits 'of a foreign
people, in their greater and smaller towns, in the
peculiarities of their homes, their dresses, their morals,
their religion, their art, and the way they made a
living. It made them heed the differences in many
respects from what they saw at home ; it opened their
eyes to the peculiarity of all common things in life,
because they learned that all these things could be
different and in reality were different among other

1 Here speaks apparently the silly scorn of that innocent pride
by which so many an English patriot has brought himself to ridicule.

2 Stephens, Biography of Fielding, Vol. I, p. VII and VIII.

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 353

nations, and it revealed to them the interest of describ-
ing the minutest details of life in their novels and
poems, in their plays and narratives.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), who studied at
Leyden during the years 1754 and 1755, shows the
same experience. Hardly anything in his works
reminds us of his following the courses of the pro-
fessors, and on the contrary with keen observation
he looks at thousands of things, which he saw every-
where around him, and which made him make an
antithesis between what he saw at home, and what
he saw among the Dutch people. In a letter to his
uncle, Contarine, written from Leyden, "he touches
humorously on the contrast between the Dutch about
him and the Scotch he has just left; describes the
phlegmatic pleasures of the country, the ice-boats, and
the delights of canal travelling." "They sail in cov-
ered boats drawn by horses," he says; "and in these
you are sure to meet people of all nations." There
the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the Eng-
lish play at cards. Any man who likes company may
have it to his taste. "For my part, I generally de-
tached myself from all society, and was wholly taken
up in observing the face of the country. Nothing
can equal its beauty ; wherever I turn my eye, fine
houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas pre-
sented themselves ; but when you enter their towns
you are charmed beyond description. No misery is
to be seen here ; every one is usefully employed." 1
After these quotations Mr. Dobson makes the just
remark Already, it is plain, he was insensibly storing
up material for the subsequent "Traveller," 2 and we
may add He was training himself in seeing things,
while he could not help seeing them, because they

1 Austin Dobson, Life of Oliver Goldsmith, p. 35 and 36.

2 Idem., p. 35.

354 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

were so different from what his eyes were accus-
tomed to see and so, as he saw things, he created the
possibility of describing them. On the contrary, so
far as his life in the University is concerned, his
biographer says "Little is known in the way of fact,
as to his residence at Leyden. Gaubius, the professor
in chemistry, is indeed mentioned in one of his works ;
but it would be too much to conclude an intimacy from
a chance reference. From the account of a fellow-
countryman, Dr. Ellis, then a student like himself,
he was, as always, frequently pressed for money, often
supporting himself by teaching his native language,
and then, in the hope of recruiting his finances,
resorting to the gambling-table. On one occasion,
according to this informant, he had a successful run,
butj disregarding the advice of his friend to hold his
hand, he lost his gains almost immediately. By and
by the old restless longing to see foreign countries,
probably dating from the days when he was a pupil
under Thomas Byrne, came back with redoubled force.
The recent death of the Danish savant and play-
wright, Baren de Holberg, who in his youth had made
the tour of Europe on foot, probably suggested the
way; and equipped with a small loan from Dr. Ellis
he determined to leave Leyden. Unhappily, in passing
a florist's, he saw some rare bulbs, which he straight-
way transmitted to his Uncle Contarine. His imme-
diate resources being thus disposed of, he quitted Ley-
den in February, 1755, with only one clean shirt and
no money in his pocket." 1

What Goldsmith later in his poem The Traveller
wrote about Holland is this :

To men of other minds 2 my fancy flies,
Embosomed in the deep, where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand

1 Dobson, Life of Oliver Goldsmith, p. 36.

2 He turns from France to Holland.

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 355

Where the broad ocean leans against the land
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire, 1 artificial pride
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow,
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore;
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale ,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding plain
A new creation rescued from his reign.

Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil
Impels the native to repeated toil,
Industrious habits in each bosom reign,
And industry begets the love of gain.
Hence all the good from opulence that springs,
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,
Are here displayed. Their much-loved wealth imparts
Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts ;
But view them closer, craft and fraud appear;
Even liberty itself is bartered here:
At gold's superior charms all freedom flies.
The needy sell it and the. rich man buys.
A land of tyrants and a den of slaves,
Here wretches seek dishonourable graves,
And, calmly bent, to servitude conform,
* Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm.

Heavens ! how unlike their Belgic sires of old !
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold,
War in each breast, and freedom on each brow;
How much unlike the sons of Britian now!

These verses show clearly the master mind of Gold-
smith in keen observation. His eyes were open for
the glory of the Dutch Republic in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and his admiration is unre-
stricted. But at the same time he saw the decline of

i "Rampire, the wall of a dyke or canal." ICd. of Goldsmith's
works.

356 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

Holland, and how England was now what the Nether-
lands were before. No historian could describe it
better than we see it reflected in the mirror of the
poet's mind, and expressed in these inspired lines. In
reading them, we feel a contact with the author of
The Deserted Village, and The Vicar of Wakefield.
How different are the impressions which another
English author of the same period, viz., Smollett, wrote
down from a trip through the Netherlands in the
eighteenth century! Tobias George Smollett (1720
1771) is considered to be one of the four great Eng-
lish novelists of the mid-eighteenth century, the other
three being Richardson, Fielding and Sterne. In one
of his best novels, Peregrine Pickle, considered by his
biographers to be, for a great part, autobiography, his
hero makes a trip through the Netherlands. As Pere-
grine Pickle was published in 1751, and Smollett was
travelling in France during the year before, it is very
probable that he came back from France through Bel-
gium and Holland. In that case, he stayed in Holland
only for a very short time, and while writing his novel
his impressions must have been lively and written
down during, or immediately after the trip. And this
is just what we find in Peregrine Pickle's trip through
Holland. He comes from France, travels through
Belgium, and in Chapters 64 and 65 he describes how
he arrived at Rotterdam, went from that place to the
Hague, Amsterdam and Leyden and returned to Rot-
terdam, whence he went back to England. This
description is remarkable in more than one respect ;
remarkable for what he sees in Holland, and still more
remarkable for what he passes by without ever
noticing; remarkable for the kind of people that he
comes in contact with, and the places of entertainment
he chooses during his short visit. To begin with, in

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 357

Rotterdam he puts up, not in a real Dutch hotel but
"in an English house of entertainment," the company
which he is introduced to consists in the main of Eng-
lishmen "to the number of twenty or thirty, English-
men of all ranks and degrees, from the merchant to
the perriwigmakers prentice." From Rotterdam he
goes to the Hague "in the Treckskuyt" The very
evening of the day of his arrival, if we believe him,
he went to the reception of the Prince and Princess
"without any introduction." Next day he saw the
Foundery, the Stadhouse, the Spinhuys, Vauxhall and
Count Bentinck's gardens, but tells nothing about all
these except the names, and the fact that he saw
them. On the contrary, when in the evening he goes
to what he calls "the French comedy," he tells us
about some dirty and silly pieces, which were repre-
sented, and which show the character of the place
he went to, and his refined taste in telling all about
it in shameless realistic style. From the Hague to
Amsterdam he goes in a post-waggon, with an intro-
duction to an English merchant. The theatre and the
night-houses are the things he goes there to see.
About the latter he tells us that they were called
"Spuyl, or music-houses, which, by the connivance of
the magistrates, are maintained for the recreation of
those who might attempt the chastity of creditable
women if they were not provided with such conveni-
ences. To one of those night-houses did our traveller
repair under the conduct of the English merchant."
There he "made up to a sprightly French girl who sat
in seeming expectation of a customer," and danced
with her to the music of "a scurvy organ" until a
sailor came in to put up a fight with him about the
girl, hardly escaping the chance of being killed. From
Amsterdam to Haerlem he goes again with the

358 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

"skuyt." At Haerlem he only takes dinner and then
departs for Leyden, "where they met with some Eng-
lish students who treated them with great hospitality."
All he tells about that hospitality is that his friend
had a heav/ dispute. "After they had visited the
Physic Garden, the University, the Anatomic Hall and
every other thing that was recommended to .their
view, they returned to Rotterdam and held a consulta-
tion upon the method of transporting themselves to
England." As far as Leyden is concerned, he speaks
not another word about anything exqept the dispute
in the circle of his own friends. When I read these
experiences on a trip through Holland of Peregrine
Pickle, alias Tobias Smollett, it reminds me of a little
joke I had one time with one of my English friends
in the Primrose Club at London. Sitting around a
comfortable English fireplace, and talking about Hol-
land, one of my younger friends, trying to tease me,
said to me, "Do you really wear wooden shoes when
you live in Holland?'' I said, "Why, don't you know
what the Dutch people make those wooden shoes for ?"
He said, "No, I don't." "Well," I said to him, "they
make those wooden shoes for all the young English-
men of good standing who visit Holland, and do noth-
ing there but just walk in the mud." Smollett cer-
tainly was one of them, according to his own narra-
tive. Last summer, being in Brussels for a few days,
just before the war started, I observed unwillingly
a couple of the same kind of young English gentle-
men. I had been looking through picture galleries,
and through a large bookstore of antique and modern
books for a whole day. A young, clever and well-edu-
cated antiquarian had been kind enough to accompany
me, and help me to buy some things I liked, and conse-
quently I invited him for dinner to my hotel. After

HOLLAND'S DECLINE ' 359

dinner we were sitting in front of the Grand Hotel,
smoking our cigars and drinking our demi-tasse. Our
conversation was in French, simply because my friend
spoke neither Dutch nor English. After a while two
young Englishmen, well-dressed, took seats just in
back of us, and hearing some of our French talk, they
apparently concluded that nobody understood their
English, and began to talk very frankly to each other
about their experiences of the night before. "If I
had thought," said one of them, "that you cared so
much for that girl, I might just as well have taken
the other one." "Why," said the other one, "let us
forget all about it; this is a pleasure trip, let us have
another drink." Just in the style of Smollett ! They,
too, needed some wooden shoes. And yet, this muddy
realistic style of Smollett has been able to start a
whole school of realistic novels, and in our own time
some of the most famous novelists go much deeper
even through the mud than Smollett did. There must
be some attractive side, some idealism in the very
realistic style, and there is there is a kind of straight-
ness, a heroism, a defiance of all hypocrisy, heroic
especially when carried through with a brazen face
and without any shame whatever. Not to be a hypo-
crite, to love the truth, to stand like a man, knowing
and willing what he is doing, whatever it may be,
this has some charming attraction, and finds always a
beautiful black background in the despicable hypocrisy
to be found to some degree everywhere. It takes the
form of a war against a world of lies, in an endeavor
to be truthful and straight. But its weak side is
apparent. Smollett shows it in describing his trip
through Holland. He sees nothing but mud, he walks
always in it, his eyes are hardly for a moment on
anything else. Compared with a vile hireling of pub-

300 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

lie opinion like Dryden, Smollett is a man, a charac-
ter, confessing that he is walking in the mud and
standing for it without shame or repentance, and with
a stubborn heroic smile, a forerunner of Dickens and
even of Byron, although this sublime name might be
abused in this connection. But the result, at least in
this case, for Smollett and for what we might expect
from a description of a journey through the Nether-
lands, is very poor indeed. How different from what
Goldsmith in his short poem gives ! How different
also from the impressions which Southey got during
his visit in Holland !

Robert Southey (1774-1843), well known as a
poet, and famous for his Life of Nelson and his Life
of Wesley, spent several weeks in the Netherlands
during the year 1825, and he gives his impressions
from that trip in several of his letters written from
Holland. 1 To Henry Taylor he wrote on March 28,
1825 : "I want to see Holland, which is a place of
man's making, country as well as towns. I want
monastic books, which it is hopeless to look for in
England, and which there is every probability of find-
ing at Brussels, Antwerp, or Leyden. In the course
of three or four weeks, going sometimes by
trekschuits and sometimes upon wheels, we might see
the principal places of the Dutch Netherlands, visit
the spot where Sir Philip Sidney fell, talk of the
Dousas and Scaliger at Leyden, and obtain such a
general notion of the land as would enable us better
to understand the history of the Low Country wars."

On May 2, 1825, he wrote to the same man : "You
do not expect enough from Holland. It is a mar-
vellous country in itself, in its history, and in the

1 John Dennis, Robert Southey The story of his life written
in his letters. London and New York, 1894, p. 326, v. v.

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 361

men and works which it has produced. The very
existence of the country is at once a natural and a
moral phenomenon. Mounteneer as I am, I expect
to feel more in Holland than in Switzerland. Instead
of climbing mountains, we shall have to ascend
church-towers. The panorama from that at Harlem
is said to be one of the most impressive in the world.
Evening is the time for seeing it to the most advan :
tage.

"I have not yet forgotten the interest which Wat-
son's Histories of Philip II and III excited in me
when a school-boy. They are books which I have
never looked in since ; but I have read largely con-
cerning the Dutch war against the Spanjards, on both
sides, and there is no part of Europe which could be
so interesting to me as historical ground. Perhaps
my persuits may have made me more alive than most
men to associations of this kind ; but I would go far
to see the scene of any event which has made my
heart throb with a generous emotion, or the grave
of any one whom I desire to meet in another state
of existence."

"To Holland," says Dennis, "Southey went accord-
ingly, and at Leyden he was laid up with a bad foot
and for three weeks was hospitably entertained by
the poet Bilderdyk and his poet wife, who, as we have
seen, had translated Roderick."^ William Bilderdyk
(1756-1831) was one of the greatest poets, scholars,
historians, Holland ever produced ; the four greatest
men in Dutch literature are Jacob van Maerland
(1235-1295), Joost van den Vondel (1587-1678),
Jacob Cats (1577-1660), and Willem Bilderdyk.
During the French Revolution, Bilderdyk was ban-
ished from his own country, and lived for some time

l Dennis, Robert Southey, p. 328.

862 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

in England, where he got acquainted with Southey.
Nowhere could Southey have found a man better
acquainted with Holland and its history, and in the
letters of Southey one can feel on almost every page
the influence of Bilderdyk. The most popular edi-
tion of Bilderdyk's poetical works is that in fifteen
volumes, with an addition of three volumes of verses
written by Mrs. Bilderdyk. Besides that, he wrote
a History of the Netherlands, published after his
death, in thirteen volumes.

Being at Leyden with Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk,
Southey wrote to his wife on June 30, 1825 : "You
will now expect to hear something of the establish-
ment into which I have been thus unluckily shall I
say, or luckily? introduced. The house is a good
one, in a cheerful street, with a row of trees and a
canal in front large, and with everything good and
comfortable about it. The only child, Lodewyk
Willem, is at home, Mr. Bilderdyk being as little fond
of schools as I am. The boy has a peculiar and to
me an interesting countenance. He is evidently of a
weak constitution ; his dress neat but formal, and
his behaviour towards me amusing from his extreme
politeness, and the evident pleasure with which he
receives any attempt on my part to address him, or
any notice that I take of him at table. A young
vrouw waits at table. I wish you could see her, for
she is a much odder figure than Maria Rosa ("a
Portuguese servant," says Dennis) appeared on her
first introduction, only not so cheerful a one. Her
dress is black and white, perfectly neat .and not more
graceful than a Beguine's. The cap, which is very
little, and has a small front not projecting farther
than the green shade which I wear sometimes for my
eyes, comes down to the roots of her hair, which is

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 363

all combed back on the forehead ; and she is as white
and wan in complexion as her cap ; slender and not
ill-made ; and were it not for this utter paleness, she
would be rather handsome. Another vrouw, who
appears more rarely, is not in such plain dress, but
is quite as odd in her way. Nothing can be more
amusing than Mr. Bilderdyk's conversation. Dr. Bell
is not more full of life, spirits and enthusiasm ; I am
reminded of him every minute. He seems delighted
to have a guest who can understand, and will listen
to him; and he is not a little pleased at discerning
how many points of resemblance there are between
us. For he is as laborious as I have been ; has written
upon as many subjects; is just as much abused by
the Liberals in his country as I am in mine, and does
contempt them as heartily and as merrily as I do. I
am growing intimate with Mrs. Bilderdyk, about
whom her husband,- in the overflowing of his spirits,
tells me everything. He is very fond of her, and very
proud of her, as well he may be, and on her part she
is as proud of him."

Again Southey writes to his wife from Leyden,
July 7, 1825: "This is our manner of life: At eight
in the morning Lodewyck knocks at my door. My
movements in dressing are as regular as clock work,
and when I enter the adjoining room breakfast is
ready on a sofa-table, which is placed for my con-
venience close to the sofa. There I take my place,
seated on one cushion, and with my leg raised on
another. The sofa is covered with black plush. The
family take coffee, but I have a jug of boiled milk.
Two sorts of cheese are on the table, one of which is
very strong, and highly flavored with cummin and
cloves; this is called Leyden cheese, and is eaten at
breakfast laid in thin slices on bread and butter. The

,'J64 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

bread is soft, in rolls, which have rather skin than
crust; the butter very rich, but so soft that it is
brought in a pot to table, like potted meat. Before
we begin Mr. B. takes off a little gray cap, and a
silent grace is said, not longer than it ought to be ;
when it is over, he generally takes his wife's hand.
They sit side by side opposite me; Lodewyck at the
end of the table. About ten o'clock Mr. Dousa comes
and dresses my foot, which is swathed in one of my
silk handkerchiefs. I bind a second round the bottom
of the pantalon, and if the weather be cold, I put on
a third; so that the leg has not merely a decent but
rather a splendid appearance. After breakfast and
tea, Mrs. B. washes up the china herself at the table.
Part of the morning Mr. B. sits with me. During
the rest I read Dutch, or, as at present, retire into
my bedroom and write. Henry Taylor calls in the
morning, and is always pressed to dine, which he does
twice or thrice in the week. We dine at half past
two or three, and the dinners, to my great pleasure,
are altogether Dutch. You know I am a valiant eater,
and having retained my appetite as well as my spirits
during this confinement, I eat everything which is put
before me. The dinner lasts very long strawberries
and cherries always follow. After coffee, they leave
me to an hour's nap. Tea follows. Supper at half
past nine, when Mr. B. takes milk, and I a little cold
meat with pickles, or the gravy of the meat preserved
in a form like jelly, and at half past ten I go to bed.
My host's conversation is amusing beyond anything
I ever heard. I cannot hope to describe it so as to
make you conceive it. The matter is always so inter-
esting, that it would alone suffice to keep one's atten-
tion on the alert; his manner is beyond expression
animated, and his language the most extraordinary

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 365

that can be imagined. Even my French cannot be
half so odd. It is English pronounced like Dutch
and with such a mixture of other languages, that it
is an even chance whether the next word that comes
be French, Latin or Dutch, or one of either tongues
shaped into an English form. Sometimes the oddest
imaginable expressions occur. Wheri he would say :
"I was pleased," he says : "I was very pleasant ;" and
instead of saying that a poor woman was wounded,
with whom he was overturned in a stage-coach in
England, he said she was severely blessed. Withal,
whatever he says is so full of information, vivacity,
and character, and there is such a thorough good
nature, kindness and frankness about him, that I never
felt myself more interested in any man's company.
The profits of literature here are miserably small. In
that respect I am in relation to them what Sir Walter
Scott is in relation to me. I can never sufficiently
show my sense of the kindness which I am experi-
encing here. Think what a difference it is to be con-
fined in a hotel, with all the discomforts, or to be in
such a family as this, who show by every word and
every action that they are truly pleased in having me
under their roof."

On the 1 6th of July, Southey wrote from Amster-
dam a letter to his daughter, Miss Katherine Southey,
at his home at Keswick, in which he says :

"Thursday I settled my business as to booksellers
Oh, joy! when that chest of glorious folios shall arrive
at Keswick the pleasure of unpacking, of arranging
them on the new shelves that must be provided, and
the whole year's repast after supper which they will
afford !"

"Yesterday our kind friends (Mr. and Mrs. Bil-
derdyk) accompanied us a little way in the trekschuit

366 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

on our departure, and we parted with much regret on
both sides. If Mr. Bilderdyk can muster spirits for
the undertaking, they will come and pass a summer
with me, which of all things in the world would give
me most pleasure, for never did I meet with more
true kindness than they have shown me, or with two
persons who have in so many essential respects so
entirely pleased me. Lodewyk, too, is a very engag-
ing boy, and attached himself greatly to me; he is
the only survivor of eight children, whom Mr. Bilder-
dyk has had by his present wife, and of seven by the
first ! I can truly say that, unpleasant as the circum-
stance was which brought me under their roof, no
part of my life ever seemed to pass away more rapidly
or more pleasantly."

So far I quote from the letters of Southey.

I suppose these quotations to be sufficient to prove
how much Southey was under the influence of Bilder-
dyk. And that meant something, as everybody who
knows Bilderdyk can easily understand. Bilderdyk
was the greatest Dutch scholar, poet and historian
of his time, and Southey was not the only man, indeed,
that came under the irresistible charm of his intimate
friendship, and unmatched conversation. A consid-
erable circle of the very highest class of students in
the University of Leyden, and among them Groen
van Prinsterer, who was destined to be the archivist
of the House of Orange, and the greatest historian
Holland ever had, and who became the leader of the
old Orange-party, which revived under his leader-
ship, flocked to the hospitable home of Bilderdyk for
years to listen to his private lectures on Dutch his-
tory, and to enjoy his conversation. Southey uses
strong language when he says that "nothing can be
more amusing than Bilderdyk's conversation," that

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 367

"his conversation is amusing beyond anything I ever
heard," and "I never felt myself more interested in
any man's company," but we are not surprised at it
at all. Southey was not the only one who spoke that
way about Bilderdyk. Southey's sympathy for the
Dutch poet, Jacob Cats (1577-1660), an author much
beloved by Bilderdyk, is without question due to Bil-
derdyk. On February 18, 1825, Southey in a letter
to Grosvenor Belford says : "Do you remember my
buying a Dutch grammar in the "cool May" of 1799,
and how we were amused at Brinton w r ith the Dutch
grammarian who pities himself and loved his good
and rich brother ? That grammar 1 is in use now ; and
Cuthbert and I have begun upon Jacob Cats ; who
in spite of his name, and of the ill-looking and not-
much-better-sounding language in which he wrote, I
verily believe to have been the most useful poet that
any country ever produced. In Bilderdyk's youth,
Jacob Cats was to be found in every respectable house
throughout Holland, lying beside the hall Bible. One
of his longer poems, which describes the course of
female life, and female duties, from childhood to the
grave, was in such estimation, that an ornamented
edition of it was printed solely for bridal presents.
He is, in the best sense of the word, a domestic poet ;
intelligible to the humblest of his readers, while the
dexterity and felicity of his diction make him the
admiration of those who are but able to appreciate the
merits of his style. And for useful practical morals,
maxims for every-day life, lessons that find their way
through the understanding to the heart, and fix them-
selves there, I know of no poet who can be compared
to him. Mi Cats inter omnes. Cedite Romani Scrip-
tores, cedite Graii !"

1 As early as the year 1700 there were written Dutch grammars
in English, for instance one by Sewel, a copy of which is in my
library.

368 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

To these words of Southey we may add that Jacob
Cats was not at all unknown in England ; Sir Joshua
Reynolds, the famous English painter, in his early
youth was delighted in looking at the beautiful en-
gravings in the works of "Father Cats" which may
have been the first inspiration for the great artist to
devote his life to painting.

But there was still another Englishman of good
literary ability, who came largely under the influence
of Holland, who lived at Leyden with Southey and
even came in close contact with Bilderdyk. It was
Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886), the author of "Philip
van Artevelde," for many years an officer of the Eng-
lish government in the Colonial Department, a friend
of Wordsworth and Southey, to whose circle in litera-
ture he belongs. In 1823 he made the acquaintance
of Southey, which soon afterwards ripened into a
warm friendship, and in the year 1825 we find the
two friends together in the Netherlands, more espe-
cially at Leyden and at the home of Willem Bilder-
dyk. Southey, in his letter of July 7, 1825, written
at Mr. Bilderdyk's home, to Mrs. Southey, says:
"Henry Taylor calls in the morning, and is always
pressed to dine, which he does twice or thrice a
week." During the next year, 1826, "Southey paid
another short visit to Holland, accompanied by his
friends, Henry Taylor and Mr. Rickman." 1

Probably from Bilderdyk, and through Bilderdyk
from Southey, he got the inspiration for Dutch his-
tory, and more especially for his great theme of
Philip van Artevelde, as Bilderdyk was the greatest
Dutch historian of his. time, and a man of great
attraction in, his conversation, as we learn from
Southey's letters, quoted above. Six years, from

l Dennis. Robert Southey, p. 341.

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 369

1828-1834, Henry Taylor is said to have spent in pre-
paring his great play, in two parts, of Philip van
Artevelde. Taylor wrote four more plays, Corn-
menus, Edwin the Fair, A Sicilian Summer, and St.
Clement's Eve, but it is the two-fold play of Philip
van Artevelde that gave Taylor a permanent place
in English literature. It certainly was a great theme,
that attracted Taylor the more because he saw in the
life of his hero the ideas and feelings, and last, not
least, the intimate experiences of his own life. The
names of Jacob van Artevelde, who was murdered
in 1345, and that of his son Philip, who was killed
in battle in 1382, stand for a whole epoch in the his-
tory and development of Democracy, and are for their
own time the representatives of the same great move-
ment in history, at the head of which we find a
William the Silent in the Netherlands, a Johannes
Althusius at Embden in East-Triesland, a Wycliff and
a Cromwell in England, a George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln in America. A great movement, in
its character social as well as religious and political,
a gigantic struggle of the masses of the people against
feudalism and aristocracy, in church, in state, and in
society ; a movement for equality of opportunity, be-
ginning with the crusades, in which many of the
nobles were killed, and the free men of the villages
(villanei, or villains) got an opportunity to leave their
poor homes around the castles of the nobles, to find
refuge in the rapidly rising cities ; growing more and
more strong in the cities, and the leagues of the cities
in Flanders and in the Hansa; developing still more
under the inspiring religious revival of the Reforma-
tion, when the Northern Netherlands got the leader-
ship; leading the way in England to the Common-
wealth of Cromwell, until at last it found its final

370 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

triumph in the great American Democracy of Wash-
ington and Lincoln. This great movement of Democ-
racy had its headquarters during the fourteenth cen-
tury in the cities of Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres
and in other cities of the Southern Netherlands, and
it is during that period that we find the names of the
Van Arteveldes written in large characters on the
pages of the World's History. It was in the first
part of the hundred years' war between England and
France (1337-1454). Both the king of France and
the king of England tried to get the powerful alliance
of Flanders. The count of Flanders was the vassal
of the king of France, and chose in the main the side
of that country, but the cities of Flanders, suffering
under the feudal tyranny of the count and his nobles,
found in Edward III (1327-1377), king of England,
their ally, for the double reason that they got the wool
for their looms from England, in which country they
found a great market for their trade, and that they
were fighting for their liberties against the Count and
his suzerain, the king of France. It was the organ-
izing power of Jacob van Artevelde, who first united
the guilds of his city Ghent, then brought about a
union of the cities of Flanders, and finally made that
famous alliance in the name of nearly all Flanders
with Edward the Third in the year 1339, an alliance
which soon afterwards was joined by the Count of
Holland. It was the first great accomplishment of
Democracy in modern times. Battles were fought,
victories gained, and Artevelde himself after a few
years was murdered in 1345 but his great work is
a milestone in the history of Democracy forever.

Forty years later, his son, Philip van Artevelde,
appears in the midst of the continuous struggle on the
stage of the world's history. Born about the year

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 371

1340, Philip was only a boy of five years when his
father was murdered, and although little is known
about it, it seems that the intimate friendship of King
Edward III gave a safe refuge to the rest of the fam-
ily in England for some time. Probably in England
Philip came under the influence of the Lollards, as
the followers of John Wicliff were called, at least he
is said to have lived for a long time the ascetic life of
the Lollards; 1 until the time came in 1380 that the
Democracy in Flanders, in a time of utmost distress,
looked for another energetic leader in its struggle
against the Count and his nobility. With Philip van
Artevelde as their leader, the city of Ghent rose to
arms, and in a few days stormed the residence of the
Count, the city of Bruges, at the same time the centre
of the nobles. The Count Louis de Male hardly
escaped with his life, and a great number of the nobles
and aristocrats were slain in a furious battle. The
Count fled to France to ask for help from the King
of that country, and Artevelde, in the footsteps of
his father, tried to make an alliance with England.
This catastrophe in Flanders was felt through all
western Europe, and at the same time we find the
uprisings of democracy in the "Jacquerie." at Paris,
at Amiens, at Rouen and other places in France, as
well as the Wat Tyler insurrection in England. 2 But
while the French King came to the rescue of his
Count, the English King stayed behind, and in 1382
Van Artevelde and his citizens were .defeated in the
terrible battle of Roozebeke, in which 26,000 Flamings
were killed, and the corpse of Van Artevelde remained
upon the battlefield.

1 H. Firenne, Histoire de Belguique, II, p. 208.

2 "L,es Gantois fomenterent les insurrections frangaises de Ferrier-
Mars 1382" and "ceux de Gant etaient alles de ceux de Rouen."
Pirenne, p. 211.

372 HOLLAND'S DECLINE

This is the short, heroic and tragic story of the
leadership of Philip van Artevelde, which inspired
Henry Taylor, and which he worked out in detail,
interwoven with a characteristic love story, in his
tragedy in two parts called Philip van Artevelde.

Writing about this two-fold play, Aubrey de Vere
says:

"Mr. Taylor's poetry is pre-eminently that of
action, as Lord Byron's is that of passion; or rather,
it includes action as well as passion, thus correspond-
ing with Milton's definition of tragic poetry as "high
actions and high passions best describing." It is this
peculiarity which has made him succeed in drama
which most of our modern poets have attempted, but
almost all unsuccessfully." 1 In his autobiography,
Taylor tells us: "Miss Bremer, the Swedish novelist,
told me that it (viz., the Philip van Artevelde} had
been translated into Swedish and brought on the stage
with great success at Stockholm." 2

Philip van Artevelde was the most successful thing
in Taylors life.

"The sale was rapid and as the edition had num-
bered only 500 copies, another had to be put in prep-
aration without delay. Lansdowne House and Hol-
land House, then the great receiving houses of Lon-
don society, opened their gates wide. In that society
I found that I was going by the name of my hero ;
and one lady, more fashionable than well-informed,
sent me an invitation addressed to "Philip van Arte-
velde, Esq." 3

Concerning the way in which Taylor received his
first suggestion to choose this subject, he tells us: "In-
the spring of 1828, I was meditating another drama;

1 Aubrey de Vere, Essays chiefly on poetry, p. 267.

2 Henry Taylor, Autobiography, Vol. II, p. 32.

3 Autobiography, I, p. 196.

HOLLAND'S DECLINE 373

and Southey, after dissuading me from founding one
upon the story of Patkul, suggested that of Philip
van Artevelde, which I at once adopted." 1 And
Southey undoubtedly got his inspiration on this sub-
ject from Bilderdyk, who was most enthusiastic about
the earlier history of the Netherlands.

1 Autobiography, I, p. 109.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST REMAINS INSPIRING.
MOTLEY, MACAULAY, WALTER SCOTT, WASH-
INGTON IRVING, AND PAULDING, EONGFELLOW,
CHARLES READE AND ROBERT Louis STEVENSON.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF DUTCH WORKS.
INSPIRATION FROM DUTCH ART. WALTER CRANS-
TON LARNET'S NOVEL REMBRANDT.

After a period of decline like that of the eight-
eenth century, the downfall of the Dutch Republic
during the French Revolution followed rapidly.
When the whirlwind of revolutionary enthusiasm
swept over the nations of Western Europe, it could
not be expected that a nation whose strength was
neither in the vastness of its area, nor in the many
millions of its inhabitants, should remain intact. And
when that terrible storm had passed by, and the battle
of Waterloo was fought, Holland reappeared among
independent nations, but to start a new history ; a his-
tory entirely different from that of the great Dutch
Republic ; a history more in accordance with the
natural limits of the country and the number of its
inhabitants. Nevertheless, by its central location
between England, France and Germany, Holland,
although one of the minor states, will always remain
a remarkable spot on the globe, and as long as the
balance of the great powers leaves to her the posses-
sions of her vast colonies, it will count as one of the
commercial nations of greater importance. Holland

374

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 375

came into the position in which Greece has been for
centuries, and into which Italy at last has come, and
a comparison with Greece and Italy illustrates the
present situation of Holland. When a traveler visits
Greece, he may enjoy the life and the pleasures of the
present Greek people, but his main purpose is to see
the places where the warriors of Homer lived, where
Apelles. and Phidias displayed their art, where Plato
and Aristoteles were teaching. Whoever goes to
Italy may admire the Italian art of later centuries,
may enjoy the beauty of the Italian climate, but before
everything else, his thoughts are on ancient Rome,
on the empire of the Caesars, his longings are to see
the sacred places where the first Christians were
persecuted and murdered, in the Catacombs and in
the Coliseum, to stand on the forum Romanum, to
walk through the palace of the Palatine, to look down
from the Tarpeian rock, to ride along the via Appia,
to stand quietly in many places and recall all the great-
ness and glory that was one time and now is no more.
And here in the comparison with Italy we find the
hope for Holland's present condition and its future.
Italy never again has played the part of a world-
empire, never has regained its glorious days of ancient
Rome, but Italy, after having been reduced to more
natural and fitting conditions, and after its great task
in history has passed long ago, has nevertheless devel-
oped a wonderful splendor in art and in literature,
in science and in every other respect. So, when any-
body visits Holland, if he is not an "innocent abroad,"
he will look first for Holland's glory of the past, he
may see first the many places, sacred in history,
remarkable as any places on the face of the earth;
places connected with tragedies, more tragic than
any history ever saw ; places of martyrdom and

376 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

heroism for the liberties now enjoyed in the most
remote countries, and we can only pity those poor
tourists whose entire interest consists in seeing the
wooden shoes of some poor fisher people, because they
do not see that they themselves in a spiritual sense
are just as poor as those people begging at the side of
the sea. But besides all those glorious remainders of
the past, in sacred places and in art, there is still a
modern civilization in Holland, a national energy,
which is illustrated by the fact that, in proportion,
the scholars and scientists of Holland in our days get
more Nobel prizes than those of any country in the
world, and that the modern school of Dutch art, the
school of Josef Israels and Maris, Mesdag and Mauve
can stand comparison with any school in the world.

Only in the field of language and literature we
must not expect much from Holland, because there
competition is on too unequal terms. Art and science
speak in a world-language, but literature is largely
confined to a certain language. The Dutch language
is spoken only by comparatively a few, while, for
instance, English is the language of the English
Empire, and of the United States. Consequently a
literary work written in Dutch becomes important for
the world at large only in translation, while in the
original it is limited to that comparatively very small
part of the civilized world where the Dutch language
is spoken.

But what will remain inspiring for the whole
world, and for the literary artists of all nations, is the
grand history of the Dutch republic, with its deeds
of great heroism and martyrdom, of stubborn stead-
fastness in standing for freedom and independence,
deeds written in the language of the human heart, as

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 377

well as in the books of the world's history. Names
like those of Motley and Macaulay may prove at once
how far this is true; two men whose volumes take
their place of honor in the literature of England and
America, and whose inspiration holds immediate con-
tact with the history of Holland. f As Southey and
Henry Taylor came into personal contact with Bilder-
dyk, so Motley and Macaulay, half a century later,
made the acquaintance of the great pupil of Bilder-
dyk, the archivist of the House of Orange and great
historian, G. Groen van Prinsterer.

John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877), born at Dor-
chester, Massachusetts, after having finished his
studies at Harvard, and after having made a trip
through Europe, became, in 1841, secretary of the
Ambassador of the United States at St. Petersburg;
lived in the United States from 1842-1851 ; from 1851
until 1856 at Berlin, Dresden and Brussels ; was
Ambassador at Vienna 1861-1868, and after 1870 at
London, until he died in England, in Kingston Russel
House, near Dorchester (Dorsetshire), in 1877. Mot-
ley began his literary career in 1839 by writing a
novel, Morton's Hope, and ten years later he pub-
lished another novel called Merry Mount. After that
he gave himself, as much as his diplomatic career
allowed him time for it, entirely to historical
researches*, and it was the history of the Netherlands
that became the great source of inspiration of his life.
In 1856 Motley published his Rise of the Dutch Re-
public, in three volumes; after that he wrote the His-
tory of the United Netherlands, in four volumes 1860-
1868; and finally in 1874 his Life and Death of John
of Barnevelt, in two volumes. The first of these
works brought the name of Motley at once into fame
all over the world, and not without reason. It is

378 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

splendid in every respect. The second work, his His-
tory of the Netherlands, is not as trustworthy and
contains many mistakes. His last work, the Life and
Death of Olden Barnevelt, is another masterpiece of
literary merit, but, as a work of history, it is a com-
plete failure, because on the main question he goes
absolutely wrong. The best historians of the most
different parties, like the liberal Robert Fruin, and the
conservative Groen van Prinsterer, agree in this point
against Motley. I am sorry that, according to these
historians, we have to go still further. Motley was
not only wrong, but he was so much prejudiced that
he took no notice of the very best documents which
were put at his disposal from the archives of the
House of Orange. The main idea of Motley, in the
great question between Prince Maurits and Olden
Barnevelt, was, that Prince Maurits was ambitious,
that he tried to get the sovereignty instead of being
Stadholder, that Olden Barnevelt refused in that point
his assistance, and that therefore the Prince hated
Olden Barnevelt. This presumption, once accepted,
dominated the whole work of Motley, and he could
not change this idea, he could not admit that he was
wrong, without changing his whole work, and its per-
vading spirit from start to finish. Groen van
Prinsterer published, in the meantime, the secret cor-
respondence between Prince Maurits and his cousin,
Willem Lodewyk, Stadholder of Friesland, who stood
side by side with the Prince against Olden Barnevelt.
In those letters, during the most critical years of the
conflict, Prince Maurits writes his intimate thoughts
and feelings to a cousin, whom he perfectly trusts, and
who stands with him. Those secret letters have to
decide the question of Maurits' intentions, and they
do. But they decided against Motley, and Motley
knew it before his book was published, but he refused

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 379

to change the whole work, and stuck to his story.
How to explain prejudices like these? How Motley
got the prejudices can easily be explained, but why
he stuck to them nobody can explain without touch-
ing the character of Motley as an honest and sincere
historian. Motley was a Unitarian, and had a strong
feeling of antipathy against the Calvinistic party, of
which Prince Maurits was the head. Motley, when
he lived at the Hague for some time in a house on the
Kneuterdyk, was a great friend of Queen Sophia, at
that time living separately from her royal husband,
King William III, whom she hated and despised. A
life-size portrait of Motley is still hanging in the
Palace in the woods near the Hague, where Queen
Sophia lived. No princess ever did so much harm
to the House of Orange as she did. She was better
suited to be the editor of a magazine or the teacher
of a high school than to be the wife of a king like
William III. This wrong conception of her life's
task was so terrible in its consequences that really the
whole royal family was destroyed, and not before the
queen died, and another and better Princess, viz.,
Queen Emma, came in her place, was the sensitive
character of William III, by her soft and wise hand,
led in the right way. That Motley, starting with a
prejudiced mind, and favored with the friendship of
a queen, who hated the House of Orange, and whose
literary abilities were acknowledged, but who neg-
lected the great task of her life, hardly could change
his mind, is easily understood. And yet that he,
knowing better, as an honest man, preserved and gave
his book to the world as he did, looks psychologically
like the fall of an angel." After the publishing of
Motley's book, Groen van Prinsterer told Motley per-
sonally that he was obliged to write against him, and

380 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

he published his "Maurice et Barncvclt," a book of
about 600 pages, written in French in order that the
whole world should be able to read it. In the family
archives of Mr. Groen van Prinsterer, now in the
State-Archives at the Hague, are only six letters of
Motley written to Groen, and only three copies of let-
ters written by Groen to Motley. I take here, finally,
the opportunity of publishing two letters of Motley,
which came into my possession by purchase at the
Antiquariat of Van Stockum at the Hague. They
may be valuable for the biographer of Motley, and
once printed they cannot be lost any more to historical
research.

The paper of the first letter is stamped 31 Hert-
ford street, May Fair, and dated "13 July, '60."

Dear Sir: Since sending my letter of yes-
terday, I have cut the leaves of the last portion
of the Olden Barneveld papers received. I find
that the instructions to Leicester sent by me to
Mr. van Deventer, have already been printed by
you. It is unnecessary therefore to trouble that
gentleman or yourself with any more questions.

I remain

Yours truly,

J. L. MOTLEY.

P. S. Pray do not forget the missing pages,
128-145.

The other letter is written at the Hague to Pro-
fessor P. G. Frederiks:

6 neuterdyk, The Hague, 8 April, '72.

Dear Sir: Pray accept my best thanks for
your kind letter of 4th inst., together with the
"Feestnummer" of the "Zutphensche Courant,"
which I have read with much interest. I have
a very agreeable remembrance of my visit to

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 381

Zutphen fourteen years ago and of the interest-
ing and instructive conversation of the gentle-
man, Mr. Tadema, who was so good as to show
me all that was interesting there. 1 I read with
interest what you tell me of the papers in the
Wynhuistoren. I thank you sincerely for your
friendly intentions in my behalf as well as for
the indulgent manner in which you are pleased
to speak of my labors to illustrate the history
of your noble country and of the honor recently
done me by the time-honored University of
Ley den.

I am, dear sir,

Very respectfully and truly yours,

J. L. MOTLEY.
Professor
P. G. Frederiks.

Macaulay, as well as Motley, was personally
acquainted with the Dutch historian, Groen van
Prinsterer, and without any painful difference of opin-
ion such as overshadowed the friendship of Groen and
Motley.

Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859),
born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire ; died at Holly
Lodge, Campden Hill, and was given a resting place
in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Among
the tombs of Johnson and Garrick, Handel and
Goldsmith, and at the feet of the statue of Addison,
lies the tombstone of the man who spent the best part
of his life in writing the story of William III, Prince
of Orange and King of England, in a monumental
work that bears the name of History of England.
Four of the five volumes are devoted to the time of
William and Mary, and the great hero of the work,
the hero of Macaulay's life was the illustrious Prince
of Orange. Several times Macaulay travelled on the

1 Motley alludes here of course to the place where Philip Sidney
lost his life.

382 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

European Continent, and at least in 1844 ne made
a journey through Holland, but I have not been able
to find out how far he visited the Netherlands during
his later trips. That he was well acquainted with
Groen van Prinsterer is apparent from the thirty-one
letters of Macaulay, which are in the family-archives
of Groen, now in the State-Archives at the Hague,
and that he knew the Dutch language may be proved
by the following letter, the original of which is in my
possession.

London, August 14, 1855.
Sir I beg you to accept my thanks for the
volumes which you have had the kindness to
send me. The history of your province is pecu-
liarly interesting to an Englishman. For you
and we are, as the resemblance of our language
proves, very near akin. I promise myself great
pleasure and profit from the perusal of your
work. But I am sorry to say that it will be a
matter of time for, though I read Dutch, I read
it with difficulty, and I find the style of your
modern writers very different from that of your
diplomatists of the seventeenth century, with
whose dispatches I am better acquainted than
with any other part of your literature.

With repeated thanks for the honor which
you have done me, I beg you to believe me,
Sir,

Your most faithful servant,

T. B. MACAULAY.

An admiration for the great hero of his history
Macaulay seems to have gained t at a very early time
of his life, when during the years 1818-1824 he was
a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. During the
year 1821, the same year in which the great Dutch
historian, Groen van Prinsterer, got his double doc-
tor's degree in law and in philosophy at Leyden, a
certain Mr. Greaves of Fulbourn had provided a

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 383

reward of ten pounds for the junior bachelor of
Trinity College, who wrote the best essay on "the
conduct and character of William the Third."

"It is more than probable," says Trevelyan, the
biographer of Macaulay, "that to this old Cambridge-
shire Whig was due the first idea of that "History"
in whose pages William of Orange stands as the cen-
tral figure."

The essay by which the student Macaulay won the
prize is still in existence, and it is interesting how,
at that time, he already outlines the characters of the
two great antagonists, Louis XIV and William III.
Mr. Trevelyan gives us two passages. He thus
describes William's life-long enemy and rival, whose
name he already spells after his own fashion : "Lewis
was not a great general. He was not a great legis-
lator. But he was, in one sense of the word, a great
king. He was a perfect master of all the mysteries
of the science of royalty of all the arts which at
once extend power and conciliate popularity which
most advantageously display the merits, or most dex-
terously conceal the deficiencies of a sovereign. He
was surrounded by great men, by victorious com-
manders, by sagacious statesmen. Yet, while he
availed himself to the utmost of their services, he
never incurred any danger from their rivalry. He
was a talisman which extorted the obedience of the
proudest and mightiest spirits. The haughty and
turbulent warriors whose contests had agitated France
during his minority yielded to the irresistible spell,
and, like the gigantic slaves of the ring and lamp of
Aladdin, labored to decorate and aggrandize a master
whom they could have crushed. With incomparable
address he appropriated to himself the glory of cam-
paigns which had been planned and counsels which

384 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

had been suggested by others. The arms of Turenne
were the terror of Europe. The policy of Colbert
was the strength of France. But in their foreign
successes and their internal prosperity the people saw
only the greatness and wisdom of Lewis."

His favored hero, William III, the young
Macaulay, describes as follows: "To have been a
sovereign, yet the champion of liberty ; a revolution-
ary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the
peculiar glory of William. He knew where to pause.
He outraged no national prejudice. He abolished no
ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He
saw that the existing institutions possessed the great-
est capabilities of excellence, and that stronger
sanctions and clearer definitions were alone required
to make the practice of the British constitution as
admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted to innova-
tion the dignity and stability of antiquity. He trans-
ferred to a happier order of things the associations
which had attached the people to their former Gov-
ernment. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted
Veii, invoked its guardian gods to leave the walls,
and to accept the worship and patronize the cause of
the besiegers, this great prince, in attacking a system
of oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable
principles and deeply-seated feelings to which that
system was indebted for protection."

This admiration that had inspired the student,
remained with him during his whole life ; the grand,
inspired style of this essay, developed into the most
splendid art of history-writing, and the first success
of the youth was a prophecy of the glory with which
the whole world was going to crown his head. Since
Macaulay's bones went to their resting place in West-
minster Abbey, his name and the name of William
III of Orange are forever connected.

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 385

The influence of Holland on Walter Scott (1771-
1832) attracted at first my attention when I read the
footnote on Page 244 of Charles H. Herford's
Studies in the literary relations of England and Ger-
many in the sixteenth century, where the author says :
"The chapter on Diversoria in Erasmus' Colloquia,
a chapter from which Scott drew 'nearly every detail
of the tavern described in Anne of Geicrstein!' I
found that the chapter in Anne of Geierstein men-
tioned by Mr. Herford is Chapter Nineteen, and after
comparing it with the chapter of "Erasmus' Colloquia
entitled Diversoria, I saw that Mr. Herford was right.
Walter Scott mentions his source only in so far as in
the beginning of that chapter he says: "The social
spirit peculiar to the French nation had already intro-
duced into the inns of that country the gay and cheer-
ful character of welcome upon which Erasmus, at a
later period, dwells with strong emphasis, as a con-
trast to the saturnine and sullen reception which
strangers were apt to meet with in a German cara 1
vansera." In reading this statement at the beginning,
the reader certainly could not expect that every de-
tail of the chapter is taken from Erasmus, and Wal-
ter Scott certainly is not far from putting a literary
description of value over his own name for which the
honor belongs entirely to Erasmus, which, accord-
ing to Erasmus himself, is one of the greatest crimes
a literary man can commit. In this respect the moral
standard of honesty in the days of Erasmus seems to
be considerably higher than in the days of Walter
Scott, and in our own.

In another novel of Walter Scott, entitled Quen-
tin Durward, the descriptions of conditions in the fif-
teenth century are drawn from the history of the
'Southern Netherlands, the city of Liege being one

386 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

of the central places of this romance. But Walter
Scott was not the right man to describe the rise of
Democracy ; his enthusiasm is aroused by the chivalry
of the feudal knights, and the freedom and the rights
of . the masses of the citizens does not inspire him
any more than did Erasmus' standard of honesty in
respecting the rights of literary men concerning the
production of their own genius.

In this respect Walter Scott perfectly harmonizes
with his intimate friend Washington Irving (1783-
1859), the author of the History of New York by
Diedrich Knickerbocker and the Sketchbook. In both
these books Irving writes about the first Dutch set-
tlers of New York State. His style is splendid and
his continuous humor attractive, but his stories
are too often accepted at least in part in many books
on American history as truthful to history . For this
reason, it was quite natural that the Dutch people
took offense at Irving's ridicule of their ancestors.
The greatest humor of this story is, however, that in
the very pages of his Sketchbook, and in the most
famous of his stories ; viz., the story of Rip Van Win-
kle, in which he brings to ridicule the Dutch people,
he was purloining the whole attractive tale from a
son of that same Dutch nation ; viz., from Erasmus. 1
Washington Irving was a great friend of Walter
Scott, and it certainly is not accidental that both these
authors purloined from the same Dutch author, Eras-
mus. Probably through Scott, Washington Irving

1 Two- years ago I published eight lectures given in the Uni-
versity of Chicago in a volume entitled: Dutch history, art and lit-
erature for Americans. The subjects of these lectures are: (i) Influ-
ence of Holland on America; (2) Dutch and American History A
Comparison; (3) William the Silent; (4) Philip II; (5) Rembrandt;
(6)The Rise of Amsterdam; (7) Jacob Steendam, the first poet of
America, and (8) Washington Irving and the Dutch people of New
York. It was in this last lecture with an appendix in six parts that
I treated elaborately the question of the Rip Van Winkle story.
These lectures are to be found in the libraries of almost all the
great universities in America.

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 387

got acquainted with the Colloquies, the Praise of Folly
and the letters of Erasmus, those inexhaustible sources
of humor, and of such detailed collected descrip-
tions as are found in the works of the two friends
Scott and Irving. Both had in their character some-
thing of that same poor imitation of English aristoc-
racy that made them laugh at the Dutch people,
even of the seventeenth century, and that prevented
them from the honesty of mentioning the source of
some of their best descriptions, giving themselves the
literary honor, that belonged to the Dutchman from
whom they purloined.

Closely connected with Washington Irving was
James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860), who tried his
literary abilities on two Dutch subjects one entitled
The Dutchman's fireside, published in 1841, and the
other The book of Saint Nicholaes, a series of stories
of the old Dutch settlers, published in 1837. Pauld-
ing's inclinations, so far as the Dutch people is con-
cerned, are better than those of his friend Washing-
ton Irving; only his capacities are much poorer, and
not to be compared with those of Irving. As Vol. 44
of the Standard Literature Series, the Dutchman's
Fireside takes a decent place among America's
popular literature, a place which it fully deserves.

A better inspiration from Dutch history we find in
the poem of Longfellow (1807-1882), who, in his
Belfry of Bruges, sings the splendor and glory of the
grand history of Flanders:

"Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the

olden times
With their strange, unearthly changes, rang the

melancholy chimes."

388 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the
nuns sing in the choir ;

And the great bell tolled among them, like the chant-
ing of a friar

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those
days of old;

Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore
the Fleece of Gold ;

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep laden
argosies

Ministers from twenty nations ; more than royal
pomp and ease"."

In these few lines taken from the poem, we taste
the author of the Psalm of Life and the Footsteps of
Angels, of the Songs of Hiawatha and the Courtship
of Miles Standish.

In another poem, entitled "A Dutch Picture," the
poet describes Simon Danz, one of those Dutch sea-
captains who fought the Spaniards on all seas, and
who now having come home for a while, sits at his
fireplace, smokes his pipe and makes plans for a new
campaign when the winter is over.

Charles Reade (1814-1884) wrote several novels,
but the only one that made his name famous in liter-
ature and is known by everybody is "The Cloister and
the Hearth" published in 1861, in which the author
describes the story of the parents of Desiderins Eras-
mus.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), the great
Scotch novelist, in his David Balfour takes Holland
as the scene for a great part of his story, and the
trip which David and Catriona make from Hellevoet-
slius to Rotterdam and then to Delft, the Hague and
Leyden, is certainly unique among all the trips made

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 389

by foreigners in the Netherlands, and as unique as the
circumstances under which David studies law from
the textbook of Heinneccius at Leyden.

Caroline At water Mason in her well known novel
A Lily of France gives us a beautiful description of
Charlotte Bourbon, the third wife of Prince William
the Silent, and makes us familiar with an interesting
period in the life of the great Prince of Orange. This
novel by a talented American authoress, has been
translated from English into Dutch by Miss Henrietta.
Kuyper, and belongs now, even in Holland, to popu-
lar literature.
LITERARY INSPIRATION FROM DUTCH ART

In our modern life art takes a considerable place.
Love and admiration for things beautiful is so closely
connected, and affiliated with praise and worship in
religion, that wherever religion is losing ground, it
is art that conies to the rescue, to lead the affections
and feelings back from materialistic tendencies to the
admiration of the sublime and beautiful. The works
of Rembrandt are like sermons preached in the lan-
guage of art, addressing directly our deepest con-
sciousness and our feelings, uplifting our souls to
things sublime and unseen ; the pictures of Jan Steen
and Gerard Dou' tell us in a glance, as much as a
chapter of Erasmus' Colloquies or Praise of Folly
can do in an hour ; the masterpieces of Joseph Israels,
as his Alone in the World, his Along the Churchyard,
and others, are full of tragic poetry, and the lyric
songs presented by the best of our modern landscape-
painters are impressive and charming beyond descrip-
tion.

Books about Dutch art published during the last
fifty years in the English language are so numerous
that they would fill a little library by themselves. Re-

390 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

productions of the masterworks are seen in almost
every home. Many of the descriptions in books about
art are of high literary value.

That this predominance of art in our modern life
should give inspiration to poets and novelists is there-
fore easily understood.

The novel of Walter Cranston Larned, entitled
Rembrandt, A Romance of Holland, New York, 1898,
may serve as an example of the movement. Besides
giving the inspiration for these contributions to Eng-
lish literature during the nineteenth century, many
works of Dutch authors have been translated into
English during this period.

One Dutch author, /. M. W '. Schwartz, wrote his
novels directly in English under the pseudonym of
Maarten Maartens, well known in England and Amer-
ica. He wrote : The Morning of a Love, and other
poems, 1885; Julian, a Tragedy, 1886; A Sheaf of
Sonnets, 1888; The Son of Joost' Avelnigh; An Old
Maid's Love; and, God's Fool. 1

Mr. De Hoog gives the following list of authors
of whom works have been translated from the Dutch :

JACOB VAN LENNEP, De pleegroon (The adopted son) and

De Roos van Dekema (The Rose Dekama or the Frisian

Heiress) 1847.
VAN KOETSVELD, De pastorie van Mastland (The manse of

Mastland, London, 1860).
MRS. BOSBOOM TOUSSAINT, Het Huis Lauernesse, and Majoor

Frans.

VOSMAER, Amazone.
MULTATULI, Max Havelaar.
HENDRIK CONSIENCE, Most all of his works, as : The curse

of the Village; The happiness of being rich; The Miser;

Ricketicketak ; The war of Peasants ; The Lion of

Flanders; Count Hugo of Craenhove ; Wooden Clara;

and others.

1 Cf, De Hoog, Studien.

HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST 391

PERELAER, Baboe Delima (Baboe Delima or the opium fiend)

1886.
WALLIS, Vorstengnnst (Royal Favour) ; and In dagen van

stryd (In trouMed times).
SCHIMMEL, Kapitein van de Lyfgarde (The Lifeguardsman)

1896.

Louis COUPERUS, Elene Vere; and Majesteit, 1894.
JOHN H. BEEN, De Geschiedenis van een Hollandschenjongen

(The History of a Dutch Boy).
FREDERIK VAN EEDEN, Van de Koele meren des doods (Deeps

of Deliverance) 1902.
JOHANNA VAN WOUDE, Oudhollandsch Binnenhuisje (A Dutch

Household) 1902.

J. L. TEN KATE, De Schepping (The Creation) 1888.
H. TOLLENS, De overwintering op Nova Zembla (The Hol-
landers in Nova Zembla, An arctic poem 1860 and another

in 1888.
VONDEL, Lucifer, Translated by Van Noppen, New York.

Of course, these translations of Dutch books and
the possible influence they may have on English litera-
ture, can be easily overestimated, because at present
nearly everything that is written in the whole world
and that amounts to anything, is translated into Eng-
lish. The whole classic literature of Greece and Rome,
the literature of France and Germany, lie before us in
English translations, and the few translations from
the Dutch are like a glass of water in the ocean of
English translations from foreign authors.

I agree with De Hoog 1 when he says that even
the best authors of Dutch literature, like "Vondel,
Bilderdyk, Cats, TollSns, Da Costa, van Lennep and
Beets do not belong to the world-literature,' 1 only I
would make some exceptions ; e. g., for Vondel's Lu-
cifer. Even some novels of the best authors in Ger-
many and in France have been inspired by great events
or by great characters in the history of Holland, and

1 De Hoog, Studien, II, p. 239.

392 HOLLAND'S GLORY OF THE PAST

have been translated from the German and from the
French into English. Some of these novels are
among the most popular books in America. As an
example from Germany, I think of George Ebers and
his novel The Burgomaster's Wife, for which
inspiration is taken from the history of the siege of
Ley don in 1574 and the life of burgomaster Adriaen
van der Werff.

As an example from France, I may take Alexan-
der Dumas' novel The Black Tulip, read in nearly
every family in America, the hero of which is Cor-
nelius van Baerle, the friend of Cornelius and John
De Witt. This book gives us a glance at the charac-
ter of Prins William the Third.

Yet, the influence of Holland on English litera-
ture is not to be looked for in our present age but in
the everlasting glory of the past.

INDEX OF NAMES

Ackersdyk, W. C, 50.

Adams, John, 16, 19, 20.

Alcuin, 33.

Agricola, Rudolph, 207.

Akenside, 351.

Alciatus, Andreas, 193, 195.

Alfridus, 32.

Althusius, Johannes, 369.

Alva, Duke of, 75, 201, 216.

Andrelinus, Faustus, 168.

Andrewe, Laurent, 173.

Angles, S., 23, 63.

An j on, Duke of, 280.

Appelles, 375.

Arber, Edward, 205.

Aristoteles, 375.

Arminius, Jacob, 233, 268,

270.

Arthur, King, 145.
Arundel, Count, 38.
Ashley, Lord, earl of

Shalftesbury, 342.
Atkinson, 156.
Awdeley, 78.

Backhuizen van den Brink,

273-

Baptists, 261.
Barclay, 267.
Barends, William, 256.
Barham, F, 297.
Barker, Ellis, 16.
Bartlett, 266.
Beaumont, 74.
Bede, 144.
Been, John H., 391.
Beke, Charles F., 255.
Belford, Grosvenor, 367.
Belte, Johannes, 209.
Beza, Theodorus, 193.
Bilderdijk, William, 50, 361.

Blades, 81.

Blok, P., 273.

Bodel, Johan, 145.

Boerhaave, H., 17.

Boisot, Admiral, 202.

Bonerus, Edmund, 182.

Boaistuau, 275.

Bopp, F., 27.

Bosboom, Toussaint, Mrs.,

391.

Boswell, 351.
Boyle, R., 282.
Brandt, G., 36.
Bremer, Miss, 372.
Brewster, William 266.
Bridges, Robert, 63.
Broadhead, 16.
Brooke, Arthur, 274.
Browne, Robert, 265.
Brownists, 261.
Buelens, Ch., 195.
Bullen, A. H., 282.
Bunyan, 261.
Burner, Gilbert, 338.
Butler, 19.

Bynnerman, Henry, 224.
Byrne, Thomas, 354.
Byron, Lord, 200.

Caedmon, 39, 52, 143.
Calvin, John, 158, 172, 272.
Campbell, Douglas, T3, 20, 75,

266.

Carleton, Sir Dudley, 285.
Carpenter, W. H., 86.
Carus, P., 297.
Cats, Jacob, 191, 367.
Caxton, William, 149.
Celts, 23.

Challoner, Rev., 157.
Chalmers, George, 213.
Charlemagne, 29, 145, 348.

393

394

INDEX OF NAMES

Charles the Bold, 150.
.Charles the Fifth, Emperor,

64, 74, 214.
Charles the First, King, 75,

300.

Charles the Second, King, 75.
Chaucer, 147.
Chretien de Troyes, 145.
Christina, Queen, 34.
Churchyard, Thomas, 213.
Clarisse, J., 50.
Clignett, J. A., 50.
Colbert, 384.
Congregationalists, 261.
Conley, C. H., 297.
Conscience, Hendrik, 391.
Conway, M. D., 297.
Coornhert, D. V., 233, 270.
Copland, William, 180.
Couperus, Louis, 391.
Coverdale, Miles, 187.
Cowper, 231.
Cromwell, 296, 304, 369.
Crusoe, Robinson, 322.
Curcellseus, Stephanus, 270.
Curtiss, George L., 271.

Dahn, Felix, 31.

Danes, 23, 63.

Dante, 261.

Davie, Diggon, 247.

De Backer, M. M. A., 195.

De Bellay, 225.

De Busbeck, 30.

De Casteleyne, Matthys, 277.

Defoe, Daniel, 321.

De Fonseca, Vincente, 258.

De Hoog, 55, 98.

De la Gardie, 35.

De la Halle, Adam, 145.

Denbigh, Earl of, 283.

Dennis, John, 360.

De Ruyter, Admiral, 311.

De Veer, Gerrit 253.

De Vere, Aubrey, 372.

De Vries, M., 49.

De Witt, Johan, 18.

Dexter, Henry, 266.

Dibdin, Thomas Frognell,

157-

Dobson, Austin, 354.
Dorland Pieter, 161.

Douglas, N., 297.
Douza, Janus, 196.
Dow, Gerard, 389.
Drummond, R. B., 165.
Drury, G. Thorn. 312.
Dryden, John, 303, 305, 306.
Du Bartas, 292.
Duflcn, G. D., 297.
Dumas, Alexander, 392.
Dunster, C., 297.
Duplessis, Mornay, 280.
Durer, Albrecht, 192.
Dursley, Lord, 332.
Du Thou, 194.

Ebers, George, 392. .
Edmundson, C~., 295.
Edward III, King, 73, 370.
Elckerlick, Everyman, 160.
Elizabeth, Queen, 65. 66, 280.
Episcopius, Simon, 269.
Erasmus, Desiderius, 164,

183, 385-

Ersch und Grube, 185.
Evelyn, 305.

Farlie Robert, 197.
Faerni, Gabriel, 195.
Field, Nathanael, 284.
Fielding, Henry, 350.
Fleay, 284.

Fletcher, John, 74, 77, 284.
Fletcher, Phineas, 292.
Foltaire, 261.
Fox, George, 266.
Francis I, King, 215.
Frederik, Henry, Prince, 299.
Frederiks, P. G., 380.
Froben, 165.
Fruin, Robert, 284, 378.
Froude, J. A., 16, 66.
Fuller, Harold de Wolf, 275.

Gansford, Wessel, 206.

Garnett, Richard, 300.

Gascoigne, George, 79, 198.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 145.

Gilpin, George, 252.

Gipsies, 78.

Gnapheus, Guilielmus, 208.

Godefroy, J.

Goldsmith, Oliver, 350, 353-

INDEX OF NAMES

395

Goose, E., 298.

Gothis, 31.

Granville, Fulke, 278.

Graswinckel, 288.

Gray, William, 279.

Green, He,nry, 194.

Greenwood, 265.

Grierson, Herbert J. C., 152.

Griffith William Elliot, 13,

266.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm,

30-
Groen van Prinsterer, 6=;, 378,

38o.

Grosart, Alexander, 231, 237.
Grote, Gerard, 158.
Grotius, Hugo, 234, 289.
Guiciardini, 65.
Gurteen, S. H., 297.
Gustavus Adolphus, 292.

Hake, Edward, 156.
Hakluyt Society, 254.
Halbertsma, J. H., 50.
Hallam, 66.
Halliwel, James O.
Hanbury, Benjamin, 264.
Hansa, 369.
Harrison, 78.
Heiand, 33, 46, 143.
Henry the Eighth, King, 166,

184.
Her ford, Charles H., 178,

222.

Heyne, 84.
Hickes, George, 41.
Hoffman von Fallersleben,

50.

Holberg, Baron de, 354.
Homer, 375.
Hooft, P. C.
Hopkins, Samuel, 266.
Houlderus, Robert, 283.
Howleglass, 178.
Huebald, 47.
Huydecoper, 30, 42.

Independents, 261.
Irving, Washington, 386.
Israels, Joseph, 389.

Jacquerie, 371.
Jasper, John, 268.

Jefferson, 19.

John, of Austria, 220.

Johnson, Reginald Brinsley,

332-

Johnson, Ben, 79, 223, 234.
Johnson, Samuel, 41, 348.
Jonckbloet, 30.
Junius, Franciscus, 36-41, 69,

288.

Junius, Hadrianns, 182, 191.
Judith Tinspenning, 42.
Juste, Th., 250.
Jutes, 24.

Kalff, 18, 231, 234.

Kanzler, 50.

Kanura, 18.

Kempis, Thomas a, 155, 171.

Knox, 172.

Koch, 76.

Koeppler, 237.

Koolman, 83.

Koster, L. J., 185.

Kudrun, 46.

Kuiper, E. T., 298.

Kuyper, Henriette, 389.

Laet, Caspar, 153.
Langhenes, Bernhard, 254.
Langland, William, 146.
Languet, Hubert, 279.
Larned, Walter Cranston,

390-

Lasco, Johannes a, 210.
Lander, W., 293.
Le Brun, 337.
Le Clerk, John, 343.
Lee, William, 331.
Leicester, Robert, Earl of,

195, 280.

Leighton, John, 197.
Lichtenstein, W., 12.
Limborgh, Philips, 269, 343.
Lincoln, Abraham, 369.
Linneaus, 17.
Lipsius, 17, 182.
Locke, John, 321, 341.
Locke, Thomas, 285.
Logeman, H., 162.
Lohengrin, 46.
Longfellow, 387.
Longwater, Nicholas, 154.

396

INDEX OF NAMES

Louis XIV, 20, 305.
Louis XIII, 285.
Liibben, A., 85.
Ludger, 29, 143.
Luther, M., 153, 172.
Lye, Edward, 41.

Maarten, Maartens, 390.

Macaulay, 381.

Maccovius, 17.

Mac Ilbraith, J. R., 298.

Mackenal, Alexander, 266.

Macropedius, Georgius, 208.

Mandeville, 254.

Manly, J. W., 162.

Mansion, Colard, 150.

Maresius, 17.

Margaret, sister of Edward
IV.

Maris, brothers, 376.

Marlowe, Christopher, 63.

Marnix of St. Aldegonde,
249-

Marot, Clement, 232.

Marvell, Andrew, 309.

Mary, daughter of Charles I,
300.

Mary, Daughter of James II,
321.

Mary, Bloody, 65.

Mary van Nimwegen, 177.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scot-
land, 295.

Masnam, Sir Francis, 344.

Mason, Caroline Atwater,
389-

Massmann, H. F., 32.

Massinger, Philip, 284, 287.

Mauritz, Prince, 285.

Mauve, 376.

Mayrtes, William, 155.

Mesdag, H. W., 376.

Meyer, C. J., 50.

Methodists, 261.

Middleton, Earl of, 340.

Milburne, Luke, 156.

Milton, John, 288.

Mondragon, 204.

Moonen, Arnold, 42.

Monen, F. J., 50.

Moody, W. V., 298.

Moolhuizen, J. J., 290, 298.

Moons, Magdalena, 205.
More, Thomas, 166.
Morus, Alexander, 288.
Motley, John Lothrop, 377.
Mountjoy, Lord, 164.
.Mueller, A., 298.
'Mulcaster, 241.
Multatuli, 390.

Neal, Daniel, 264.
Nichols, Francis Morgan,

165, 168.

Nicholsen, James, 189.
Nicholson, S., 212.
Nimmo, Will : am P., 325.
Norfolk, Duke of, 184.
Normans, 24, 63.
Norris, W., 75.

O'Callaghan, 16.
Oldenbarnevelt, 282.
Oxford, Earl of, 216.

Page, William, 156.
Paine, Thomas, 19.
Painter, Richard, 264.
Painter, William, 275.
Paludanus, 259.
Paradin, Claude, 195.
Parma, Duke of, 79.
Paul, Herman, 29.
Paulding, James Kirke, 387.
Payne, John, 157.
Penn, William, 14, 263.
Penry, 265.

Peppin, of Herstal, 47.
Pepys, 268.
Perelaer, 391.
Petrarche, 224.
Phidias, 375.
Philippa, Queen, 147.
Philip II, King, 74.
Philip, William, 254.
Pigot, Richard, 197.
Pilgrims, 66.

Pingsman, L. Th. W., 32.
Pirenne, H., 371.
Plantyn, 191.
Plato, 375.
Plautus, 208.

Plutarch, English, 293, 309,
337, 338.

INDEX OF NAMES

397

Poelenburg, Arnold, 269.
Presbyterians, 261.
Price, F. C., 149.
Prior, Matthew, 321, 331.
Putnam, Ruth, 13, 20.

Quakers, 261.
Quinet, Edgar, 250.

Radbond, King, 32, 46.
Radewyn, Florentius, 158.
Raphelen-gius, Francis, 195.
Reade, Charles, 388.
Reinard the Fox, 48.
Rembrandt 389.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 197,

348.

Rhys, Ernest, 161.
Richelieu, 288.
Richthoven, 84.
Rickman, 368.
Rivet, Andreas, 17.
Robespierre, 234.
Robinson, John, 266.
Rogers, Thomas, 156.
Rogers, J. Thorold, 17, 95.
Romans, 63.
Rousseau, J. J., 234.
Rubens, P. P., 17, 238.
Ruysbroeck, Johannes, 158.
Ruytinck, Simon, 189.

Salmasius, 288.
Sambucus, John, 195.
Saxon, 24, 63, 82.
Scheltema, P., 185.
Schevez, William, 153.
Schiller, K., 85.
Schimmel, 391.
Schmeller, 32.
Schouten, William Cornell's,

253-

Scot, Mary, 340.
Scott, Walter, 385.
Selden, John, 288.
Seneca, 186.
Separatists, 261.
Sewel, William, 42, 267.
Shaftesbury, 307, 342.
Shakespeare, 63, 80, 275.
Sidney, Philip, 278.
Siegenbeek M., 50.

Siegfried, 46.
Simons, Menno, 266, 267.
Sievers, 143.

Skeat, W T alter, 20, 73, 76.
Smollett, Tobias George, 356.
Sophia, Queen, 379.
Southey, Robert, 360.
Spenser, Edmund, 63, 224.
Spinoza, '17. ~
Stanhope, Dean, 157.
Stanley, Sir William, 75.
Staring, A. C. W., 50.
Steen, Jan, 389.
Stephen, Leslie, 350.
Stevens, Henry, 189.
Stevenson, Robert Louis,

388.

Stockdale, Percival, 312.
Struys, Jacob, 276.
Stuart, 261.

Sunderland, Earl of, 342.
Surrey, Earl of, 213.
Swinburne, 284.
Symonds, J. A., 279.

Tadema, Alma, 64.

Taine, 64.

Taylor, Henry, 368, 372.

Temple, William, 304.

Ten Brink, Jan, 18.

Ten Kate, J. J. L., 391.

Ten Kate, Lambert, 30, 42.

Terentius, 208.

Theosinda, 31.

Te Winkel, 18, 42.

Thym, Alberdink, 250.

Tiele, P. A., 254.

Tjalma, G., 250.

Todd, Henry John, 236.

Tollens, Hendrik, 253, 391.

Trevelyan, 383.

Tross, L., 50.

Turenne, 384.

Tyler, Watt, 371.

Tyndale, 74, 189."

Ulphilas, 31.
Ussher, 144.

Valdez, 205.

Van Artevelde, Jacob, 370.

Van Artevelde, Philip, 371.

398

INDEX OF NAMES

Van Cattenburg, Adriaan,

269.

Van den Berg, S.Ph., 50.
Van der Aa, 42, 185.
Van der Have, J., 250.
Van der Noot, jonkheer Jan,

69, 19.1, 224.

Van Doesburgh, Jan, 173.
Van Dyk, Anton, 313.
Van Dyke, Henry, 17.
Van Eeden, Fred, 391.
Van Hutten, U., 166.
Van Koetsveld, 390.
Van Lennep, Jacob, 390.
Van Linschoten, Jan Huy-

ghen, 253.

Van Leyden, Lucas, 192.
Van Maerlant, Jacob, 49, 146.
Van Meteren, E., 56, 223.
Van Meteren, Jacob, 187.
Van Noppen, L. C, 18.
Van Toorenenbergen, J. J.,

250.

Van Veldeke, Henric, 47.
Van Wassenaer, Abdam,

315.

Van Wely, John, 287.
Van Woude, Johanna, 391.
Van Wijn, H., 50.
Vere, Francis, 75.
Vermenlen, Aug., 230.
Verwey, Albert, 231.
Vitriarius, 351.
Voet, Johannes, 17.
Voet, Paul, 17.
Voetius, Gysbertus, 17.
Volcanius, Bonaventura, 34,

196.
Vondel, Joost van den, 234,

285, 288.

Von Moltke, 34. "
Vosmaer, 390.

Vossius, Gerardus, 34.
Vossius, Isaac, 30, 34.

Wagenaar, Jan, 202.
Waghenaer Lucas Jansz,

253-

Waller, Edmund, 312.

Wallis, 391.

Walsingham, Francis, 221.

Ward, Seth, 341.

Washington, George, 369.

Watson, 361.

Wesley, 263.

Westwood, J. C., 298.

Wettstein, J. J., 269.

Whitney, Goffrey, 193.

Whitney, William Dwight,
7L

Wickliff, 146, 369.

Wilkes, John, 351.

William, the Conquerer, 24,
68, 69.

William the Silent, 14, 185,
198.

William II, Prince, 300.

William III, Stadhoder of

William III, Stadholder of
Holland, King of Eng-
land, 14, 305.

William III, King of Hol-
land, 379.

Williams, Roger, 75, 279.

Willoughby, Lord, 75.

Wolsey, Cardinal, 167.

Wood, Francis A., 162.

Woodhull, M., 298.

W r ordsworth, 368.

Wurfing, 32.

Wyatt, 213.

York, Rowland, 75.
York, Duke of, 307.
Young, A., 16.

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