/OZZ











DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH







DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
a sjyvy 07 jm romantic revival
BY
JAMES ANDERSON RUSSELL, m. a„ ph. d.
Author of "Jbe No vel in the 'Netherlands A Comparative Study"
AMSTERDAM - H. J. PARIS - 1939



m 7AE7AOV3A7A-. WlLLfJM XLOOS AND 7 O LOVEWTJK VAN DEJSSEL, . LAS7 07 7Ji£ 7 ACH 71 Q ER S
m



P R E F A C E
The inception of this study was owing to a suggestion of Professor W. L. Renwick, that in the poetry of the so-called 'Lake School' might possibly be discoverable a fruitful source of influence for just such a small, sane country as Holland. As it happened, I did not find the suggestion well borne out — less almost, it seemed, for Wordsworth and Coleridge than for the other English major poets — but the extensive course of delving into which it led me opened my eyes in new and further directions; in especial, it enabled me to realize how continuous and how important had been the part played in the Netherlands by the main line of British poets it still seems most convenient to refer to as the Romantics.
Having thus secured a foothold, the difficulty was to know where best to draw the line; Dutch being so definitely a literature of fluctuating inspirations and minor realizations, in no sense greater than the language (about the uncouthness and terrors of which people on this side of the North Sea seem to be altogether of one mind). Paramountly, the question had to be faced of whether it were truly worth while to ransack the dusty premises of its inchoate succession of Cats's, Smits's, Borger's, Tollens's, Da Costa's, merely to be the first British writer to compile a thesis of a type already too well known in Amsterdam and The Hague — the type that involves the application of an invloed here, the working out of a neiging there, with all the rest of that array of hackneyed terms so beloved by the student of literature and so wittily denounced, on its English side, by Sir Arthur QuillerCouch. There was only one basis, I decided, upon which it was



VI PREFACE
worth while to proceed — that, while I resolutely refused to be dismayed by the severe, almost absolute, dearth of great names, I nevertheless ruthlessly eliminated those bearing no sort of vital significance, and further, in view of the strange lack of cohesion between what outstanding achievements there are, that I brought in, where necessary, the 'new' poetry of England to redress the balance of the 'old' in Holland. Not that, even on this basis, it has been my intention seriously to impugn the dictum of Dr. Johnson that a nation is the best judge of its own literature. For the submission of my work in English I feel I need offer no apology. It was simply in the highest tribute to the linguistic aptitude of the Dutch that I imagined that those likely to be interested in the Anglo-Dutch literary problems set forth here would prefer to deal with them in English themselves. This certainly I can maintain for those leading writers of Holland whom I have been privileged to know over a lengthy period of time Herman Robbers, Willem Kloos, Frederik van Eeden, Jeanne Kloos—Reyneke van Stuwe, Lodewijk van Deyssel (and again in this connection may I say of what inestimable benefit it was to me, in the latter stages of my treatise particularly, to have been in touch with them, and with the figures remaining from Jachtig most of all!).
Finally, I would mention that my various chapters are based upon studies originally contributed to "De Nieuwe Gids", and to the editors of that long-lived and thriving review I return thanks for permission to make use of whatever material I might require.



CONTENTS
Chap. Page
I - HOLLAND'S HERITAGE 1
Hooft Vondel
II - THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 32
Poot
Van Alphen
III - YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS 58
F e i t h B i 1 d e r d ij k
IV - THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON 90
Van Lennep B e e t s
V - ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS 115
Potgieter Busken Huet
VI - KEATS AND SHELLEY AND „DE BEWEGING VAN
TACHTIG" 139
Perk K1 o o s
VII - KEATS AND SHELLEY AND „DE NIEUWE GIDS" . 182 V e r w e y Van Eeden Gorter
INDEX 227







CHAPTER I
HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
I shall not begin by pretending that there is to be made out for the literature of Holland anything like the degree of continuity which M. Georges Duhamel has so brilliantly noted for that of France 1 or Dr Norman McLeod for the literature of England. 2 Yet, equally foolish would it be to proceed in the study of even such a lesser literature without first seeking to understand something of the national background; I would, indeed, count it of less value to show Bilderdijk, Potgieter, Van Lennep, Perk, Kloos, Verwey, Gorter, as poets who followed Macpherson, Scott, Byron, Keats, Shelley, in breaking with tradition than as men who, remembering their own proud native heritage, actually also contrived to assert it accordingly. Above all, therefore, in any conspectus of Dutch poetry, not to insist on the primary importance of Vondel and Hooft — the latter in lesser degree, despite Professor Verwey — 3 would be to veer dangerously near to denationalising it altogether, of reducing it to a mere series of poets. Admittedly, in the seventeenth and eighteenth — and even nineteenth — centuries there were numerous writers in Holland who, quite misguidedly, divorced their work from indigenous forms and motives and sought to engross it with the classical fashions current in Italy and France. But never did any writer whose name has lived
1 Vide "Times Literary Supplement," December 3, 1938.
2 Vide "German Lyric Poetry," p. 10./
3 "De keel in Holland die het strakst gespannen stond, is niet die van den grooten Vondel, maar die van den artistieken Hooft" („Nederlandsche Dichters P. C. Hooft," p. I).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
forget for long the springs of racial feeling and experience and fail in the end to be drawn back. Is it not significant that little today is made of Antonides van der Goes and nothing at all of Feitama, but a great deal of Bilderdijk who, if he sedulously imitated Theocritus and Anacreon, did, besides, turn his later attention to the lyric, brought back the ballad to his own country, and almost managed to make even "Ossian Dutch. When all is said, what literature should be more national in its essential features than that of the "land of sea-dunes and sea borders", the land that shook off the yoke of Parma and became the equal of Britain in the spirit that derives from the sea?
The importance of Vondel, then, is not international but national. In 1824 Sir John Bowring wrote that "Vondel himself, ingenious, emphatic and sublime, as he is, has never found an interpreter, perhaps scarcely even a reader in England".1 Well over a hundred years later Professor Huizinga is still able to declare: "Es stehen fast drei Jahrhunderte zwischen ihm und uns, und seine Stimme klingt nicht hindurch wie die eines Shakespeare oder Dante. Man liest ihn vielmehr wie Vergil, das heiszt, es gehort dazu entweder eine bestimmte Erudition oder eine bewuszte aesthetische Beflissenheit. So steht es mit unserem gröszten Dichter."1 So, even nationally regarded, it is doubtful if Vondel is all to Holland that Camoens is to Portugal. For poetry he is supreme, but for art in general there is another figure that transcends quite uniquely. ■Het Land van Rembrandt! Thus did Busken Huet seek to apotheosize the period in a name. It is a view with which there can be no serious quarrel. Poetry does not complain, for it is surely a proud thing to be represented by a Rembrandt; to know that the seeds of verse and drama, being watered and nourished, should sprout forth and yield their quota to bis 'Golden Age'. That any other name should substitute his is utterly incon-
1 "Batavian Anthology," Introduction, p. 2.
2 "Hollandische Kultur des Siebzehnten Jahrhunderts," p. 41.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
ceivable. How thinly, for instance, would read that of a Vondel instead! Or even those of Vondel, Hooft and Cats together, the great triumvirate among the sixty recognized bards of the time! But it is futile further to regret the inequality. 1 For poetry the Zeitcjeist was as favourable, one would have thought, as for painting: the signs as democratising — and as portentous. It must for all time be a matter of the highest pride that the painters of Holland, so immediately after the successful struggle for freedom, should have spoken with such a united voice of the national relief, by setting themselves so lovingly to transcribe scenes of the now peaceful life in town and country. There is a saying of Constable that the painters of Holland stayed at home and were therefore original. It is scarcely an exaggeration. Not for their canvases the extraordinary and the stupendous. Enough if their vision could comprehend the ordinary — a canal scene at Delft, cattle grazing on the dunes, the rain blowing across the heath, a comfortable home in The Hague or Haarlem, the merrymaking of the Xermesse at Leyden or Gouda. But with what depths and precision were these plain things grasped! A few strokes of genius, and to the apparently trivial and unremarkable had been imparted an all-enduring charm and glory.
About the poetry contemporaneous with such art there is — could not but be — a superb might-have-been.Yet,as it was,noage in the Netherlands was ever by nature more lyrically inspired than this one. Nor has any other proved richer in actual achievement. Here too, however, is to be noted much more that was spurious and devitalising, while there was nothing like the same balance of effort, but, in the main, the productivity of only two exceptionally voluminous writers. We begin to see why this bloeitijd
1 Jethro Bithell goes so far as to say that, if there had been a school of poetry able to vie with the pictorial artists, "the Pléiade would have been outsung and there would have been a lyric harvest as great as that of our Elizabethan days"' ("Contemporary Flemish Poetry," XXXIII).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
has not the European importance of that other. For one thing, no longer can it truthfully be maintained that its output of poetry is recognizably that of the men of a single nation; it is not like the unmistakable landscapes of Ruysdael, the wooded hills of Hobbema; we do not go back to it as we do again and again to the gracious colouring of the Old Masters ; in a word, there is in most of it little that is finely exciting to the Dutch scene of our imagination (even as the natural descriptions of George Borrow might be said to relate him to the 'Norwich School' of painters). But we think further of the times; and then the reason comes home to us — these poets had patently neither the strength nor the skill to keep their heads high above the still-running tides of the Renaissance.1 With typical insular obstinacy their contemporaries in England had managed that, so that their work is still found full of healthy life, sound and fury. And Dutch art could be as infallibly right both in origin and aim. But the Dutch poets, while doubtless also proud of the country they had wrested from the ocean and defended against powerful foes, were obviously not yet sufficiently interested in the results of the process of re-establishment going on beside them; quite disproportionately now they kept on being alive to what was happening in the bigger nations around them; and so, in the main, they failed to manifest an invariably Dutch spirit and make what they learned from abroad tributary to what they learned for themselves. Beyond Vondel and Hooft I make no exceptions - no longer is there room for anything so fatuous as a "Vader Cats school of thought. 2
So often have the poets of Holland chosen to hunt together in twos and threes that in the mere juxtaposition of these names —
1 Mr Laurie Magnus makes a point of interest regarding Holland here when he says that "the Pléiade arrived later than in Portugal, Spain, and England
("A History of European Literature," p. 122). .....
2 Feith, Bilderdijk, Southey, Delepierre, Ten Brink, must all be indicted r
having 'helped to build up this singular legend.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
Vondel, Hooft — appears to coalesce a truly impressive blend of sound — a suggestion of strong intellectual integrity and artistic balance and perfection. On that score alone one would fain consider their poetry as a grand organic whole. Rarely, however, can there ever have lived so near one another, in time and place, two writers of such utterly dissimilar taste, temperament, outlook, style: Hooft, the comfortable bourgeois, the founder and presiding genius of the cultural 'Muiderkrin^, the admitted Dutch "Tacitus", the amused sceptic for whom Montaigne was "den Godlijken Gascoen"; Vondel, the humble incomer, the strenuous Amsterdam citizen, the afflicted father, the belated home-student of the classics, the financially embarrassed business man, the devout believer, engulfed more and more by the mysticism and the obscurantism of the age. Only in one incontrovertible respect do the two seem to align themselves — in the respect that they were both of the late brood of the Renaissance. Certain it is that without that impulse working in them they could never have given their mutual tongue its highest finish and perfection. Yet, even in this, the classification made by Professor Prinsen tends, I think, to be much too rigid. He is right, of course, in seeing "twee groepen van Vroeg-Renaissancisten", to distinguish "de zoekers van schoonheid van Vondel, Hooft en Breero als hoofdfiguren tegenover de zoekers van nutte leering en levenswijsheid als Huygens en Cats".1 But Hooft is so much more the "Renaissancist" than Vondel that one is constrained to wonder if, in the final analysis, he is anything beyond that. R. J. Spitz grasps the implication clearly when he says: "Levenskracht, schoonheid, ziedaar de wezenlijke kenmerken van het werk van Hooft, van het schoonste van zijn werk, gelijk zij de kenmerken zijn van die groote geestelijke beweging waarvan hij, gelijk boven al gezegd werd, de meest karakteristieke vertegenwoordiger in onze literatuur is: de Renais1 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 122.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
sance." 1 The simple truth is that Hooft is not completely at home in the Holland of his day; he is a Renaissance exile in a country that had in great measure refused to "receive" it; between him and his countrymen lay the Calvinistic theocracy, which he himself had largely repudiated, yet thereby cut irreparably the line of Dutch literary history and sadly reduced, in national value at least, his exquisite garnerings in the fields of Italy. Frankly, for Holland it is all an exotic growth — this dazzle of the sun, this gay, insouciant laughter, this frankly sensuous enjoyment of life:
"Wilt mij noch een kusgen geven Och mijn leven!
Jont mij noch een kusgen van u blije mont."
It is the abrogation of the intellectual, always to sport with Amaryllis in the shade":
"Amaryll de deken sacht
Van de macht,
Met zijn blaeuwe wolken buijen,
Maeckt de werelt sluimerblint
En de wintt Soeckt de maen in slaep te suijen."
In song after song we are asked to worship at the shrine of (a Dutch-like touch) Vrouw Venus:
"Voor 't al te schittrich licht,
Dat Venus, uit haer lampen Geblasen, heeft gesticht In uw hel aengesicht,
Hemel en Aerde swicht En afgrondt met haer dampen";
"Soo Venus schóón,
Aenschijn ten tóón.
Door 's Hemels blaeuw verscheenen,
Met vlechten blondt
1 "Uit Hooft's Lyriek," Introduction, p. 6.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
En morgenstondt Van schitterende steenen Inde gestalt Gelijckse bralt Daer 't tijdt is om te bóóghen,
Sonck Jeuchd en Min
De wereld in Met neêrslaen van haer voghen";
"In het Idalisch dal,
Heeft Venus zonder gal Een lusthof, daer in, bloejdt het, al Wat soetjes door de Sinnen leekt,
Wat hartjen lockt wat sieltjen treckt."
Always, it seems of Hooft, "he has an ear open for Italy". But, while we can readily grant the deftness of these couplets and strophes, we do feel how welcome now and then would be a tender brushing of the dews of the poet's native Holland instead. Great lyricist though he is (and there is no question of the superiority of this side of his genius against that of the dramatist or historian), in the end it is chiefly these tripping Italian measures that remain with us. Never has any other Dutch poet attained such varied or graceful mastery over his medium as this:
"Hoogher Doris niet mijn gloetje,
Spaert uw krachjes wat op mij Al te groot is de lief-lijcke lij,
Daer jek flaeuwende los in glij,
Die daghjes Die nachjes Die lachjes Die klaghjes Bij draghjes,
Dat alte soete soetje Mengen moetje,
Met een roetje,
Oft jek stick aen leckernij."
As Sir H. J. C. Grierson well says; he "did for Holland something of what Wyatt and Surrey attempted and Sidney and Spenser



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
achieved for English poetry — grafting and naturalizing the elegant, dignified, and musical poetry of the Renaissance".1 More, perhaps, we have no right to ask.
If from Hooft it is the Verwey-an impression of "Artiest-metde-taal" that we best carry away, the work of his great contemporary and rival is in no similar way to be so easily rounded off. As a poet Vondel may be said to so vulnerable as to be assailable at almost every point. He has been subjected to pitiless criticism; practically everything may have been granted him, but neaily as much has also been denied him. Of the sheer immensity of his achievement, however, no one can seriously make question. The most voluminous of all Dutch writers, he was also surely the most versatile. Every type of composition he essayed — drama, epic, lyric, satire, sonnet, epithalamium, elegy. He was everything at once and by turns — moralist, classicist, piëtist, lampoonist, nationalist, inscriptionist. At heart a zealous republican, he yet kept a reverence for kings and God-constituted authority; a devout pietest, he could also approach questions of the time in a spirit of enlightened enquiry — could show his
Hhatred of the Spanish Catholics and at the same time write in favour of Arminianism. Above everything burned his love of his Fatherland — that might truthfully be called the alpha and omega of his inspiration. He was, indeed, probably the first Dutch writer to become deeply conscious of the new national power and possibilities, so that — a lover of peace — he could still, like any fiery patriot, rejoice in the mighty triumphs of Tromp and De Ruyter, could also applaud the exploits of famous Dutch adventurers, explorers and pioneers. Little wonder that such a man lived to become one of the great figures of the day in his adopted city of Amsterdam, had a medal struck in his honour when he died, and is now commemorated there by a street, a statue, and a public park!
1 "Two Dutch Poets", p. 8.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
Over the quality of the output of this remarkable writer controversy still rages. And not least over the question of which section of his work — the lyric portion or the dramatic portion — merits the higher award and has had the more lasting influence. The "Shakespeare of Holland" is a description that comes readily to mind,1 and perhaps it is in his röle of dramatist that he has been most characteristically regarded. It is a view for which, incontestably, there is much justification, since it was as a writer of tragedy on the classical model that he began his career, choosing this form almost as deliberately as Milton the epic. 2 The fact that he wrote almost as many plays as Shakespeare himself — thirty-three in all — would seem to establish his position as by far the most outstanding dramatist in all the Dutch-speaking lands — Holland, Flanders, South Africa. So much for the bare record of Vondel's achievement in the dramatic field. He would, nevertheless, be a bold person who would assert that it is fit to take rank alongside Shakespeare's, or indeed, that the looselyconferred title bestowed in recognition is merited on other than the historie concept. Only eighteen of his plays, for instance, we learn, were ever acted on the stage; while it is questionable if he ever created any truly outstanding tragic character — Lucifer not excepted — or developed any stupendously great dramatic action, in the inevitable manner of Shakespeare. There seems, in a word, little possible basis of comparison between the unfettered sweep of the Englishman, holding a high, philosophic balance between the powers of good and evil, impersonal of mind (Coleridge's "Spinozistic deity"), caring chiefly for beauty — and not very much whether that were of God or the devil — and
1 Vide K. Sybrandt, "Shakespeare en Vondel als Treurspeldichters" and H. E. Moltzer, "Shakespeare's Invloed op het Nederlandsche Tooneel".
2 "Tragedy," says Professor Barnouw, "was to him the magie mirror in which man's history is symbolized" "(Vondel" in "Seventeenth Century Studies," p. 112).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
his supposed Dutch counterpart, heavily concerned from first to last with the Unities, the moralities of mediaeval Christianity, the complexities of the Greek mythology, the historicity of the Old Testament, so partisanly involved with religion and politics as ever to be ready to ventilate and propagate his own ideas about them.
Companies of English players, we know, visited Amsterdam from time to time, performing Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare. But there is no record that Vondel ever witnessed any of their performances.1 Had he done so, I think he would have found it hard to forgive the treatment accorded "The Jew of Malta", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", perhaps even "Volpone".2 But what, on the other hand, would the usual Elizabethan audience have made of Vondel? One can hardly think it would have been content to sit through plays of the calibre of the Joseph trilogy plays which merely applied the dramatic art of the Renaissance to the matter of the old 'Moralities'. In fact, I have the feeling that the only Vondelian plays which might have been reasonably palatable to it were the popularly-conceived "Gysbrecht van Amstel and the pastoral "De Leeuwendaelers", in which there is at least a slight admixture of the comic and the tragic, justly regarded as pre-eminently an English creation.
Speaking of Vondel's doublé loyalties to the Hebrew and classical
literatures, Professor Prinsen does well to observe: "De dochter . • «1 . _• j_ Unr-irUl rlp \t" O tl inkliike haroenaar staat
van bion wijki mei vuui 1 itv-uua, ^ j— r
naast Euripides." 3 In face of such massive devotion it becomes easier to understand why Holland's own story could enter but incidentally into the dramatic reckoning. "Gysbrecht van Amstel ,
1 "The names of Shakespeare and Spenser," says Professor Barnouw very definitely, "were unknown to Vondel" ("Vondel," p. 121). ^ ^ ,
2 The first-named of these seems to have been known to him through a Dutch
translation. m
3 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 137.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
of course, weaves into the local history the warp of legend, (all very burdensomely allusive), yet it seems about the only possible approach to what Shakespeare did for England with his bold series of reconstructions. Unless it be that we care to accept a stage-satire like "Palamedes" as yielding a more exact equivalent. But here we simply cannot get past the fact that the persons are all "de dragers van 'n dubbele rol" — Palamedes plainly representing Oldenbarneveldt; Agamemnon, Prince Maurice — which seems virtually like imagining the Shakespeare of "Hamlet" to have had specifically in mind an indictment of the Elizabethan Court.1 And, in any case, there seems no need to proceed to any such extremes, for it can be well established, I think, that Vonders historical commentary is best illustrated in his poems, and not in his dramas at all. 2 First, however, it must appear a strange piece of iconoclasm that would dislodge "Lucifer" as an example of real, constructive drama. Is not this one of the high-lights of all Dutch literature, Vonders undoubted masterpiece, his "Hamlet" if anything is? Have we not a great central figure in Lucifer — humanised as Stedehouder — and a perfect host of outstanding characters besides — Belzebub, Belial, Apollion, Gabriel, Michaël? And are not the choric songs introduced after the accepted manner of Greek tragedy? One would fain be lenient towards a work of such undoubted beauty and austerity of tone, but honesty also compels that one should not overlook the glaring insufficiency of the action, the prevailing habit of lengthy and all too wearisome monologues, the excessive curbing of the poet's natural enthusiasms by his religious dread of taking too great liberty with his sacred subject-matter. As Van Noppen truly observes: "In'Lucifer' there is no death, no blood, no murder; it remains the drama
1 Vide J. Walch, "De Varianten van Vondel's Palamedes".
2 One also wonders how "Hamlet" would have carried such a sub-title as "Murdered Innocence" (Vermoorde Onnooselheyd).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
of a magnificent ruin".1 That definite verdict should, I think, extinguish all possible comparison with Shakespeare. When Vondel echoes the English dramatist he has to do so directly, as in his lines on the new theatre at Amsterdam, "Op het Tooneel":
"De wereld is een speeltooneel,
Elck speelt zijn rol, en krijght zijn deel."
As regards "Lucifer" at any rate, the one English poet with whom Vondel may properly be compared is the author of "Paradise Lost". 2 Even outwardly here, there are many affinities between the two. Fairly exact contemporaries, both were grasped by the political and religious struggles of the time, and on this account were made to suffer many private and personal vicissitudes of fortune. Both, again, were men of vast learning as of intense conviction — in their different fashions — and the influence alike of the classics and the Bible upon their work was simply prodigious. In their characters was all the independence of the artist; characters somewhat harsh, it may be — and more so in the case of Milton — but, if making each man "a good hater", it was ever of tyranny and injustice, and the note of sublimity imparted to their work thereby abundantly proves, as much for the one as for the other, that "all his fighting was for peace". In itself, of course, merely to externalise the lives of the two poets is a valueless affair. Infinitely more important is it to notice what light it sheds upon their inner activities and relationships. And at once this brings us to one of the causes célèbres of Dutch literary history — the extent of Milton's dependence upon Vondel, and particularly of "Paradise Lost" upon Lucifer . It is not my intention to argue the case out here, for that has already been done by a legion of critics, foreign as well as Dutch; I shall only
1 "Vondel's 'Lucifer'", p. 140.
2 Hofdijk sees him as fit to sustain comparison with both English writers. "Daar is Vondel," he says, "te gelijk de Shakespeare en de Milton van Nederland" ("Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 205).



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
make one or two remarks about it, before advancing a minor thesis of my own with regard to the two writers.
In general it is true to say that the outside critics are more combative in urging the claims of Vondel than are the Dutch, who favour the local champion largely on sentimental grounds. Herr Müller in this way has spoken out for Germany,1 Sir Edmund Gosse more moderately for England,2 and Mr George Edmundson very emphatically for America. 3 If the case were so good, one would imagine that the heavy thunderings could have been dispensed with and that it could easily have been established instead along common-sense textual lines. Yet, such a policy as the latter has never been satisfactorily fulfilled; for I do not admit the relevancy of the criticism that seeks to draw attention to the superiority of some random passage in Vondel, as Ten Brink somewhat notoriously does with the opening scenes of "Lucifer", Act I, against those at the close of "Paradise Lost", Book 111. 4 1 am not sure, indeed, that anything very much has been proved at all — not even that the works of Vondel were positively accessible to Milton or that he advanced far in the study of the Dutch language (while always allowing that Dutch theology was a matter of deep interest to him). 5 Against the "Vondelians" it might not be entirely out of order to issue a categorical denial; but better still perhaps is it to content ourselves with the knowledge of the many purely co-incidental parallels that exist, based on the similarity of the scope of each work and on the fact of the two astronomies having been much more drawn upon than was at one time supposed: this, to his credit, is how Dr Moolhuizen, Holland's greatest autho-
1 "Ueber Miltons Abhangigkeit von Vondel".
2 "Vondel and Milton" in "Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe".
3 "Milton and Vondel — a Curiosity of Literature".
4 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 430.
8 His name, we know, became something of a household one in Holland through his controversies with Professor Morus.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
rity on the subject, seeks to solve the matter.1 His openmindedness carries us back in Milton's own famous dictum: "To borrow, and better in the borrowing, is no plagiarie". And that in itself seems a pretty fair sort of compromise.
The irreconcilability of form between "Lucifer" and "Paradise Lost" — the dramatic against the epic — with all the attendant difference of style and treatment, should long ago have forced the critics to concentrate on the common debt of Vondel and Milton to writers like Du Bartas and Grotius. 2 And if it be really desired to press further the claims of Vondel as the "Dutch Milton", there is, 1 would say, a more marked series of probabilities in certain other directions far removed from "Lucifer". I refer, firstly, to "Johannes de Boetgezant". Vondel may be accounted an epic poet, but it is on a loose application of the term only; for, strangely enough, he happened to write no true epics at all. Here, however, in this historical poem with its six books, we discover a work almost meriting the description. Published in 1662, it also was a fore-runner of "Paradise Lost", yet the critics have been singularly neglectful of its possible influence. And, more definitely still, there is his "Samson", a play certainly, but making its appearance no less than seven years before "Samson Agonistes". In this, surely, one would say — on the "Vondelian" psychology — would be the gist at least of that tremendous conception. But, no, the critics are one and all without response — not even Ten Brink this time can fit a theory round some overhandy passages. 1 gladly accept their silence as the end, for any
1 Vide "Vondels Lucifer en Miltons Verloren Paradijs".
2 As early as 1620, for instance, we find Vondel acclaiming "Heer Van Bartas" as "de phoenix van de Fransche Poëten", and he translated from him his "Heerlyckheyd van Solomon". Grotius, as a compatriot, he naturally knew well. He shared his view of a united Christendom and wrote an ode in his honour, on his return to Amsterdam in 1632 after his Iengthy exile. His "Josef, of Sofompaneas" was a translation from Grotius, while Adam in Ballingschap" was definitely based upon "Adamus Exul".



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
comparisons I may have instituted have really had little or nothing to do with the vexed Vondel v. Milton question at all. My purpose, rather, has been to show that Vondel's reputation — sadly shrunken in the dramatic field against Shakespeare and in the epic against Milton — must of necessity rise to its greatest heights in the third large poetical division — that of the lyric.
To begin with, it is lyrical tragedy, but that factor does not seriously affect the issue. Vondel — the more we read him the plainer does it become — was essentially the poet of an intense lyricism, even though he was constrained to an inordinate extent to cast his work in the dramatic mould. Nor, when we consider the devotional tendency of his mind and the influence over it of the great, poetically-treated themes of the Old Testament, is this the incompatible things that it sounds. His dramas are filled with much that is utterly banal and tedious, but always the indispensable choric songs stand forth by reason of sheer compelling beauty and word-music. In that of Eubeërs in "Palamedes", for instance, we come as near to perfection of form and feeling as ever in the whole range of Netherlands' poetry:
"De gouden Titan rijst alree Met blaeuwe paerden uit der zee,
En schittert over bosch en duinen,
En Idaes bladerrijcke kruinen.
O wellekoome morghenstont,
Ghy voert hem speelen in den mont Van eindelooze zaligheden,
Die, lustigh rustigh, wel te vreden,
Beschouwt als wat natuur ons geeft."
Then, the many lovely lyrics in "Lucifer" might bring us back for a moment to that work, for certain it is — when the laboured Miltonic disputation has long given over, when the last political parallel or possible doublé allegory has been worked out — there will still be sung the happy, tripping measures of:



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Hemel, aerde, zee en strant Zullen staen in lichten brant.
Straetzucht, eens door triomfeeren Als gewettigdht, zal verwoet Godt en alle maght braveeren."
And that religious adoration can remain spontaneous though interfused with moral philosophy he is also fully capable of showing us, as in the Chorus of Angels in Act I. We can scarcely expect as yet, of course, a knowledge of Descartes or Spinoza (even if Vondel's were strictly the mind to convey it) such as Dryden and one or two of the Restoration dramatists in England were later to reveal; but here we might almost have the poet in the röle of mild apologist for the "Gott-betrunkener Mann" himself:
"Wie is het, die zoo hoogh gezeten,
Zoo diep in 't grondelooze licht,
Van tyt noch eeuwigheit gemeten,
Noch ronden, zonder tegenwight,
Bij zich bestaet, geen steun van buiten Ontleent, maer op zich zeiven rust,
En in zijn wezen kan besluiten Wat om en in hem, onbewust,
Van wancken, draeit, en wort gedreven,
Om 't een en eenig middelpunt;
Der zonnen zon, de geest, het leven;
De ziel van alles wat ghy kunt Bevroên, of nimmermeer bevroeden;
Het hart, de bronaêr, d'oceaen En oirsprong van zoo velen goeden Als uit hem vloeien, en bestaen By zyn genade en alvermogen,
En wysheit, die hun 't wezen schonck Uit niet, eer dit in top voltogen Palais, des heemlen hemel, blonck;
Daer wy met vleughlen d'oogen decken,
Voor aller glansen Majesteit."
Of Vondel and his tragedy, "Marie Stuart, of Gemartelde Majesteit', written in 1646, Sir Edmund Gosse makes the remark that "he was the first poet to select for dramatic treatment this highly



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
romantic theme; at Mary's death he was two years old, and therefore in some sense her contemporary".1 But plainly (as all too frequently with his Dutch commentaries) Sir Edmund had never read the original work, for, had he done so, he would soon have found that the treatment given in it is so much the reverse of romantic that the whole performance can only be called forced and tendencious; it is a play full of flat and dismal lines of the order of:
"Twee punten hebben haer de bijl door 't vleesch gedreven,
Haer erfrecht tot de Kroon, en haer Katholisch leven."
In general one could scarcely imagine much greater martyrdom for the Muse itself. Yet, let the poet permit himself but a momentary relaxation from the woes of the Queen, and at once we get the magnificent storm-song in Act. II;
"In 't schuim der Kaledonsche baren,
Om Orkades noch Yrlant vont De visscher, grijs en afgevaren,
Geen zeegedroght, zoo wreet van mont Dan dit, zoo spits en scherp van vinnen,
Zoo schalck, zoo loos en boos van vaert."
Even the otherwise far from convincing tragedy, "Jeptha", is not without its notable song-lyric:
"In gelaetenheit
Tegens eigens oordeel,
Dat hier tegens pleit,
Afstaen van zijn voordeel,
Heeft een stercke maght
Onder sich gebracht Dan die heiren overwint."
It is, of course, a narrow and misleading conception of Vondel as lyricist that would seek to confine him primarily to what was
1 "Vondel and Milton" in "Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe", p. 281.
2 It is not without interest to notice that he claimed to have based his play on the Protestant William Camden's "Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum Annales Regnante Elisabetha".
2



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
but incorporated, — after the Greek manner — into the matter of his plays: innumerable other lyrics he composed, on an infinite variety of occasions, and quite independent of his satmc, dramatic, and even religious, occasions. Ever he was prone to rush into the political sphere, and in this was, of necessity — despite his sympathies with the "Gra^f-Naeldt van Montrosse" and his seeing of Strafford as the British "Palamedes", brother in martyrdom to Oldenbarneveldt - reminiscent of Milton himself. i His famous "Olyftack aan Gustaaf Adolf", when the latter had entered his native city of Cologne in 1632, is particularly akin and but carries a little further the sentiment of "When the Assault was intended to the City". But, since comparison with the English poet seems inevitable, it is, poetically, more valuable to show how, in the "Lofzang van Sinte Agnes", he so perfectly captures the spirit and style, and almost the metre, of the great "Nativity" Ode:
"Hoe zaligh was de Maeght,
Die Gode zoo behaeght,
Dat op haer ziel Het oogh van Jesus viel,
Die dees bedaende roos Tot zijne bruit verkoos,
Zoo ras zijn licht Verheughde haer gezicht En zy hem opdroegh den morghenstont Van 's levens geuren En knop en kleuren,
In 't hart gewont."
Sir Herbert Grierson, soundest of critics, has it that his highest flights are on wings of adoration and love, and recall Crashaw rather than Milton".2 Some of these flights we have tried to follow in dealing with the lyrical element in his dramas. But as there was a Crashaw who hymned the lines:
1 In the operations of the Civil War he saw nothing at any time to remind him of the rising of his own Netherlands against the tyranny of Spain but only a repetition of the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots.
2 "The First Half of the Seventeenth Century" — "Periods of European
Literature", Vol. VIII, p. 28.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
"We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,
Bright dawn of our eternal day!
We saw Thine eyes break from their East And chase the trembling shades away.
We saw Thee: and we biest the sight.
We saw Thee, by Thine own sweet light,"
so there was a Crashaw who wrote "Wishes to his Supposed Mistress", "The Weeper", "The Temple". And as there was a Vondel vested with the adoration of mood and the elevation of style inseparable from the presentation of sacred drama, just so was there a Vondel capable of knowing more human love, tenderness, and passion. It is, indeed, through these shorter, more inconsequential pieces — sonnets, simple personal elegies, and even these trivialities of verse which, as Professor Barnouw notes,1 he produced for money and valued least himself — it is through these, that he is revealed most freely and personably. These it indubitably was — and not the classical "Gebroeders" or the Biblical "Peter en Pauwels" or the satiric "Roskam" and "Harpoen" — that made him the loved laureate of his 'Holy City', Amsterdam. By then he was no more the poet of "Palamedes" and "Lucifer"; his dramatic powers greatly failing, he does try rather pathetically to get back to his well-worn Biblical choices of theme, but achieves only safe, orthodox pieces of reconstruction — "Jeptha", "Samson", "Adam in Ballingschap", "Noah". 2 Not so, his lyric propensities, however; they apparently go on unchecked, fresh and skilful as ever. In any study of the evolution of the mind and art of Vondel, it must be noticeable how these antinomies between his lyric and dramatic gifts are constantly widening and deepening: and no matter how much in the beginning he may have thought to dedicate himself to the
1 "Vondel", p. 200.
2 Professor Barnouw, though seeing "Adam in Ballingschap" as coming near to the sublimity of "Lucifer", does allow that "plays that he had begun and left unfinished long ago were rescued from the bottom of the drawer and made ready for the printer" ("Vondel," p. 199).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
dramatic art, in the end so great is the resurgence of his more natural lyric impulses that it is little wonder that they almost succeed in sweeping away such shreds of dramatic opposition as remain. Quite irresistibly the conviction is borne in upon us that these lyric gifts actually so far exceeded his dramatic powers that he may best be understood as a lyric poet fretting, unwittingly, under the restraints imposed by classical training, method, diction, formulae.
It is always interesting — if futile — to speculate on what various writers might have been, living in other ages and times. Vondel it is almost certain, had he been re-incarnated a century later, would not have adopted drama as his medium, unless (knowing definitely the influence of Milton now) he had held to lyrical drama and epic for his graver themes. Otherwise, I think, he would have kept to satire — probably on Popean lines; dropping his Alexandrines in favour of the heroic couplet, but just lacking the full, deadly incisiveness and wit of the English master of this Augustan vogue. Beyond this I can hardly see him; but certainly not as a Dr Johnson for Amsterdam, sitting in pontifical judgment on his fellows, nor, I think, as a complete nature poet, first heralding to Holland the Romantic Revival...
Returning to the actual Vondel of the seventeenth century, it may not be out of place here to consider him specifically as a poet of nature. My own opinion is that on this side an altogether exaggerated importance has been assigned him. Here, for me at any rate, he was Johnsonian enough — too much the spectator of men and affairs, with too much of the busy townsman in his composition, to be other than incidentally influenced by nature in its larger moods.1 And now in so great isolation does this
i Professor Barnouw sees his vision as "a purely literary, as opposed to the pictorial conception of the landscape . . . It is nature thought of as a foil to the folly of cultured city life, a fanciful reminder to civilized man in his sins that he also was once in Arcady" ("Vondel," p. 181).



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
part of his work stand that I cannot seriously discover its influence to be either deep or strong. His most considerable nature poem is probably his "Rynstroom"; but, though penned as a hymn to his "teeckenden geboorte-stroom", it is the type of all the rest — a patriotic paean far more than an evocation of beauty for itself; we get the outline all right but only conventional colouring, the outer atmosphere and not the true "weather of his soul". A river like the Rhine is itself a great symphonic poem, as even Byron deeply sensed:
"But Thou, exulting and abounding river!
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever Could man but Ieave thy bright creation so,
Nor its fair promise from the surface mow With the sharp scythe of conflict, — then to see Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know Earth paved like Heaven."
But with Vondel it all comes perilously near to being reduced to a brisk catalogue of mere data:
"Daer is de Main, een pijnberghs zoon,
De Moesel met haer appelvlechten,
De Maes, die met een myterkroon Om d'eer met onzen Rijn wil vechten,
De Roer, die 't haer met riet vertuit,
De Necker, met een riem van trossen,
De Lip, gedoscht met mosch en kruit Van overhangende eikenbosschen,
En duizent andren, min van roem,
Bekranst met loof en korenbloem."
Doubtless it was the fashion of the time. Drummond, in the same way, must be said to show singularly small personal reaction to his native Scottish scenery — many of the epithets applied to its rivers in bis rhymed inventory sounding ludicrously inappropriate. In Vondel, of course, we have no right to expect any definite "philosophy of nature", yet it is also disappointing



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
that we should not find so much as the vaguest intimations of one: if only, instead of the accepted pattern of Dutch riverine ode — the artificial, mythology-charged "Ystroom , Rottestroom", "Amstelstroom" — we could have looked forward to something akin to the gently inspired ruminations of Cowper by placid Ouse! But the truth is that in the men from whom he could best have learned an imaginative love of nature — the contemporary painters — Vondel was amazingly disinterested. As the painters were quick to discover, the contours of the country admirably suited natural delineation; and if poetry lagged behind, the fault must be accounted primarily to Vondel. He lived among great painters, yet failed incredibly to realize their powerful genius - only once does he name Rembrandt in his work,1 he has little to say of Steen, Ostade, Teniers, and otherrealists,andthough he may bestow some praise on Rubens, he seems, on the whole, to prefer the Italian idealists, Raphael above all. "Now and then," says Van Noppen, "his descriptions remind one of the brooding landscapes of the 'melancholy Ruysdael'; at other times of the creations of Lingelbach and Pynache, in these striking scenes where Dutch realism and Italian fancy are oddly combined." 2 With this view I am not going out of my way to quarrel, though one can scarcely afford not "to hold opinion'. But when he goes the length of definitely naming Vondel "the painter's poet", 3 (seemingly on the imagined strength of such 'reminders' and the numerous inscriptions actually wntten for paintings), then I feel I most heartily want to dissent. Few terms could be used of him, I think, more inapt than this one; it is . just the absence of appreciation of the sister art that I seem to feel most of all on this side of his work. The Painter's Poet!
1 Vide A. J. Barnouw, "Vondel," p. 163 and p. 179, and "De Werken van
Vondel," Vol. IV, p. 10.
2 "Vondel's 'Lucifer'", p. 133.
3 Jbid., p. 129.



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
He should have been that, of course; and when he allowed what was probably the most powerful natural influence of the time to pass over him, his failure could only mean an incalculable loss to the whole of Dutch literature, leaving the poetry of natural description more slight, more occasional, than it had any right to be.
This severe loss apart, the imaginative experiences, into which, in the course of a busy and active life, Vondel was able to enter, were evidently sufficiently wide and varied — even, at times, rhapsodical — to sustain the lyric temper at a high pitch within him. Ecstasies of joy, sorrow, love and death, called forth from common experience and play of circumstance, he knew well — in addition to those promptings of religious feeling which resulted in other, more beatific, visions — and often he came to utter them in a manner wholly free from literary complication and subtlety. His "Bruiloftsliedt", written for the wedding of Johann George, Count of Anhalt, and Henrietta Katharine, Princess of Orange, is rendered in particularly sprightly vein, and approaches near to the joyous abandon of "John Gilpin" itself:
"Hy zong ze voor: zy zongen na:
Hie^heeft het ooflogh uit.
Wy winnen 't rijck, tot niemants scha,
Noch vlammen op vrybuit.
"Wy houwen, noch wy kerven niet.
Wy staen naer niemants bloet.
Het is al blyschap wat men ziet.
Wat smaeckt dees bruiloft zoet."
Verve and spontaneity also mark both "zang" and "slotzang" in his "Blyde Aenkomste t'Amsterdam van zijne Excellentie D. Estevan de Gamarra":
"Wie rijst zoo heerlijck op van verre,
En voert den glans der Avondsterre
In 't helder voorhooft, daer men niet
Dan vrede en vreugt uit straelen ziet?



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"Zijt wellekoom: ry in, en nader,
O Estevan, ghy vredevader,
En vredevader, vredetong.
Ry in, onthaelt van out en jong."
Through the measures of his "Uitvaert van Orpheus dances
the very spirit of the Elizabethans, while, more closely, there
is even something like an advance echo of "The Lady of
Shalott":
"De leeu zyn brullen staeckt,
De leeu zyn brullen staeckt en blaeckt.
De duiven treckebecken,
Tierelier, tierelier,
Wat Godt blyft ongeraecht!
"Maer onder spel en zang,
Maer onder spel en zang eerlang.
Een rey van Boschbuchanten,
Tierelier, tierelier,
Nam derwaent haren gang."
Time and again in the lyric verse of Vondel it is the note of high patriotism and devoted loyalty that we have to mark above all:
"'sLands rechten en vryheden lek helpen sal in zwang."
"Mijn vroomheyd is gebleken Bij Nieuwpoort in den slagh."
"Frederick van Nassauwe
Ben ick vroom Hollandsch bloed —
Mijn Vaderland getrouwen
Met leven lijf en goed."
To him Amsterdam might have been one of the old City-States of Greece:
"Ons Amstel zal een Jftnthus stecken."
Yet, his very love for it, his boundless pride in its achievements, tended to make him undiscriminating; and the time came when every single communal happening — be it the first-night oi a



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
new play at the theatre, a church burned down, the laying of the foundation-stone for the new Stadhuis, or the opening of this building eight years later — had to receive its due meed of laureated attention. Of this poetry produced so steadily for municipal and official occasions Vondel gives us altogether too much; which means of the banal and commonplace — the paramount weakness of all voluminous writers. And it is for this reason that I do not contend that his lyricism combines all the variety, aesthetic discipline, peculiarly objective idealism, of the great Elizabethan song-writers. In some ways 1 would even suggest that Hooft with his keener perception and his greater delicacy of touch might more fittingly be regarded as representing the genre. But only superficially. Hooft, for the most part, I have taken as expressing the lyric sentiment in terms of the older, Italian pastoral, while in his love-songs reaching only to the faintly decadent stage expressed in England by Herrick. Vondel, however, despite his ineradicable turn for moralising and the severe weakening of his lyric impulses by outbursts of satire and of political and religious bigotry.1 I have still wished to show as possessed of a style and a diction classical in their simplicity, with also about him a good suggestion of the personal preoccupation of the Romantics. If he is to be looked on as the chief 'Makir', the greatest re-shaper of Dutch poetry, it can, so far as I can see, only be along such set lines.
Once upon a time it would have been a thoroughly revolutionary view to regard Vondel in this fashion as essentially a lyric poet — how else explain Bilderdijk's imitation of his epic and dramatic styles, and the partiality shown by poets like Da Costa and Tollens for the domestic tendencies of Cats instead? Following
1 An instance of this is surely his "Jammerklaght over de gruwsame verwoestinge van Londen", in which he sees "de pest en de brand" there as a punishment of the Heavens for the burning of the town of West-Terschelling by the English!



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Lyly and Shakespeare, Vondel had already in his dramas shown an appreciation of the purpose and value of the incidental lyric. Indeed, like the master of English drama himself, he might be said to owe his immortal vogue in some considerable degree to these of ten exquisite interludes. With Lodge, Drayton, Beaumont, Campion, Shakespeare, England was at this time "a nest of singing birds", and Vondel must surely have sensed that in writing a song which can be sung — and perhaps sung widely — a poet was but reverting, amid his general accomplishment, to his primary function and, at the same time, establishing a living link with the people — in this case the musicloving burghers of Amsterdam — by which they might be drawn on to read his other works.1
Lyric poetry for the Elizabethans was poetry made to be sung, and with such matchless melodies as Shakespeare's "Where the bee sucks", "Hark, hark! the lark", "Who is Sylvia?",^ Marlowe's "Come, live with me and be my Love", Ben Jonson's "Drink to me only with thine eyes", they established the modern world's greatest age of song. The longer poems of these writers may have their weaknesses, their dramas contain their dull, matterof-fact portions, but in their lyric gems nothing of inferior grade is admitted; all is perfection in lightness of touch and dexterity of manipulation; slight may be the melody, but it is always various — brilliant its fancy and unfailing its vivacity; conventionality of theme there may be, a certain lack of intensity, an imitation of precedent and example — but all features well adapted to its essentially impersonal character. It would be asking too much to expect our single poet to possess all this art and the ability to express it. He had to learn — as the poets of England had had to learn - before he could possibly hope to
1 "The praise of his verse," says Professor Barnouw, "was his only profit. There was royalty in his lavish gift of poetry to the nation, there was none from the sale of his books or the production of his plays" ("Vondel," p. 200).



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
transmit all these fine, ungovernable and incalculable elements to those who might come after him. If we glance at the position in England we shall see how magnificently the lesson had been taught there — by Edmund Spenser. By his own learning, passion, exquisite sense of form, and by his delicate ear, he had been able to establish to the English language all that it would admit of the tunes and technique previously accumulated, making it certain that he would be henceforth the great teacher of English poets, the Poets' Poet — "Milton's Poet", "Keats's Poet", even "Shakespeare's Poet".
The temptation is very strong. But if we now take Vondel as the Poets' Poet in Holland, the analogy is not to be regarded as by any means complete. More than any other he too subsumed what was best in the poets of the past — Van Maerlant, Anna Bijns, Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde — but also for him, more than for any other, it was a constitutional impossibility to assert in the same way the principle of beauty for its own sake. No doubt as much as anything the time-honoured question of moral intention comes in to complicate the issue. In Holland as in England the Renaissance was ethical — just as in Italy it was unmoral. But exceptions — or partial exceptions — there were too. Notably in Holland, there was Hooft. But in England there was Spenser himself (however preposterous the idea may seem, remembering his open parade of the moral purpose of "The Faery Queen"). Lately, however, it has been proved to us how little, in reality, this ethical intention amounted to; that Spenser's heart was not truly in his morality; that as a moralist he was hopelessly divided. Professor W. L. Renwick has cleared the air. "Spenser's difficulty", he says, "or perhaps rather his readers, lies in his intermediate position, with the inherited habit of allegory strong in him and at the same time the Renaissance instinct of the value of the senses and of their cultivation in art." 1 1 "Edmund Spenser; An Essay in Renaissance Poetry", p. 145.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
It is here, undoubtedly, that we arrivé at the culminating point of difference between the poetry of Hooft and that of Vondel: Hooft we can now see as the Spenserian, quite fairly caught between the old ascetic morality, reinforced by the local Calvinism, and the new enthusiasm for beauty above all else, Vondel as the Catholic of almost Spanish intensity and, if a Renaissance writer at all, then as one seeking to reform the Reformation itself.1 No more clearly than Spenser may Hooft have differentiated his allegorical modes to himself, but in the case of Vondel there could not even be any question of scruples of the kind arising to trouble his mind and conscience. In his hand poetry became, not a 'trumpet', but a direct teaching process, the inculcation of morality not only its highest but also its only aim; 'Grave, moral', words used of the sober Gower, might as significantly be used of him. Not that his Christianity was based on the Bible alone: it drew upon Homer, Sophocles and Euripides, and adapted the Greek chorus as a form of revelation, to impress the moral of the play". But if this is his strength as a poet, it is also his weakness; for, while it is responsible for having fixed a high Christian strain, it has at the same time had a retarding, conventionalising, and limiting effect: through its extreme domination he failed to unite his own art effectively to other great perennial themes of the Muse — Nature, above all — while the poets of Holland (thinking of Poot, Bellamy, Da Costa, Tollens, Beets) it left, later, "painfully at ease in Zion", by not inducing in them a habit of thought which, if less infectious, would have been in every way more philosophically complete, a habit which, with subsequent developments in mind, we might be inclined to regard as Romantic rather than lyrical (while not seeking as yet to define too precisely what is Romantic and what is lyrical). "The great Vondel himself," says Delepierre, "may even be cited
1 Vide ]. Koopmans, "Letterkundige Studiën" — "Hooft als Allegorist . "Vondel als Christen Symbolist".



HOLLAND'S HERITAGE
as the originator of the Bucolic drama";1 and though it is not a matter we are bound to consider in this purely introductory sketch,
Sit does serve at least to draw attention to a really important factor governing his genius — and that is, just how near to the spirit of the Middle Ages he seems now to stand. His Greek gods, choruses and angels, have long served their day; nor is any verse technique more obsolete than his, with its needless Alexandrines", its reactionary dependence upon rhyme. The Tachtigers dealt the final blows — how the old morality crumbled away under their demand for laws that would be appropriate to their own age! Not that they ever ceased paying some measure of tribute to their greatest predecessor. But is was expressly as the poet of a vast medley of forms and — on that very account not as the ineffable singer. His "lyric cry" was too distant, too occasional, for them to catch it other than at a level considerably below the highest; whereas from Keats it came sounding forth in fulp— with "dance, and Provengal song, and sunburnt mirth".
1 "A Sketch of the History of Flemish Literature," p. 165.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam,
1897. „ . , ,
Grierson, H. J. C. - The First Half of the Seventeenth Century — Periods of
European Literature, Vol. VII. Edinburgh and London, 1906.
Hamel, A. G. van - Zeventiende-eeuwsche Opvattingen en Theorieën over
Litteratuur in Nederland. The Hague, 1918.
Hofdijk, W. J. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam,
1867.
Huizinga, J. - Hollandische Kultur des Siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Jena, 1933. Kalff, G. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, Vol. IV. Groningen, 1912.
Literatuur en Tooneel in Amsterdam in de Zeventiende Eeuw. Haarlem,
1895.
Studiën over Nederlandsche Dichters der 17e Eeuw. Haarlem, 1915.
Kampen, N. J. van - The Influence of English Literature upon Dutch Literature. Amsterdam, 1833.
Koopmans, J. - Letterkundige Studiën (Hooft-Vondel). Amsterdam, 1906. Magnus, L. - A History of European Literature. London, 1934.
Prinsen J.Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924.
Walch, J. L. - Jtt The Encyclopedia Britannica. 14th. Edition. London and New York, 1929.
Winkel, J. te - De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part H, Vol. 2. Haarlem, 1927.
HOOFT
Grierson, H. J. C. - 7n Two Dutch Poets. The Taylorian Lecture. Oxford,
1936. . . ,
Haan, J. C. De - Studiën over de Romeinsche Elementen in Hooft s niet dramatische Poëzie. Antwerp, 1923.
Kalff, G. - Hooft's Lyriek. Haarlem, 1891.
Leendertz, P. - Bibliographie der Werken van P. C. Hooft. The Hague, 1931. Prinsen J.Lzn., J. - Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft. Amsterdam, 1922.
Stoett, F. A. - Hooft - Gedichten. 2 Vols. Amsterdam, 1899—1900.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
VONDEL
Barnouw, A. J. - Vondel. New York, 1925
, Joost van den Vondel in Seventeenth Century Studies. Edinburgh, 1937.
Beets, N. - De Reizangen in Vondels Treurspelen. 2 Vols. Haarlem, 1871. Brandt, G. - Het Leven van Joost van den Vondel. Ed. Eelco Verwijs, 2nd.
Edition by J. Hoeksma. Amsterdam, 1905.
Diferee, H. C. - Vondel's Leven en Kunstontwikkeling. Amsterdam, 1912. Elring, G. van - Vondels Lyriek. Amsterdam, 1905.
Gosse, E. W. - Vondel and Milton in Studies in the Literature of Northern
Europe. London, 1879.
Leendertz, P. - Het Leven van Vondel. Amsterdam, 1910.
Looten, C. - Etude Littéraire sur le Poète Néerlandais Vondel. Lille, 1889. Moltzer, H. E. - Studiën en Schetsen van Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Haarlem, 1881.
Sterck, J. F. M. - Oorkonden over Vondel en zijn Kring. Bussum, 1908. Sterck, J. F. M., MoIIner, H. W. E., and Others - De Werken van Vondel. 10 Vols. Amsterdam, 1927—1937.



CHAPTER U
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
It was upon the brilliant period of Vondel that Longfellow sought to bestow the fine-sounding description, "Augustan Age of Holland".1 But not, so far as I can see, can it be looked upon as a particularly apt or useful change — and less so than ever now that much more importance is shown to be attached to Vondel as lyric poet than as classical dramatist. Not thus by simply shifting the emphasis back half a century, I am afraid, can the implications of this notoriously dull epoch hope to be circumvented. And so, for comparative purposes, we shall continue to align ourselves with the divisions most common in literary usage (however sad that may be, meantime, for the honour of Dutch poetry). It is not our purpose here, in any case, to deal with the characteristics of the so-called Classical or Augustan Age, except in so far as they can be said to bear upon the inception of the Romantic Movement.
The general character of eighteenth century literature was, we know, formal, critical, and prosaic; poetry — both dramatic and lyric — following the glorious, creative days of Shakespeare, sank to its lowest ebb. But prose, on the other hand, came into its own and shaped itself into new and original forms; and intellect in more academie directions was exalted for its own sake. It was so, at any rate, in England and France. But this general presentation of the case is rather flattering to a small country like Holland, and, if we are to look on the century there as essentially an
1 "Poets and Poetry of Europe," p. 375.



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
"age of prose and reason", it is more that poetry so lamentably declined from the lofty Vondelian Standard than that there was produced a period of severe, organizing discipline, an appraisement of the past, a saving of "the sum of things" for treatment in fresh and witty prose. To be blunt about it, the literature produced was almost entirely imitated from French and English sources. England it was that provided most of the prose models — for "De Hollandsche Spectator" of Justus van Effen and all the provincial "Robinson Crusoes" that arose, on Walcheren island, in The Hague city, and across in Friesland, and for the sentimental, Richardsonian roman in brieven. What poetry there was came through France, exposing the pseudo-classic nature of the entire movement.
Faced with the wholesale declinature of Dutch poetry there should be consolation in Professor Oliver Elton's remark that "the literary glory of Flolland during this period is to be found in her hospitalities; her intellectual glory in her men of sceince".1 But it can be no more than of a negative kind. It clearly meant for literature that French classicism, already growing, received an incalculable accession of strength from the exodus of Huguenots consequent upon the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It almost meant that with the passing of the patriotic stroomgedicht, "De Ystroom", there was nowhere left for the native springs of Dutch poetry to flow, so that they must inevitably lose themselves in conflict with the spreading sands of Gallic influence and taste. For this sad fate, however, it will not do to lay the full blame on the French, visiting or otherwise. The plain, unvarnished fact is that the poets of Holland at this time seemed themselves suicidally determined to suppress all national forces and inspirations, to sacrifice their very birth-right on the altar of the misunderstood classical Unities.
1 "The Augustan Ages" — "Periods of European Literature", Vol. VIII, p. 374.
3



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Within their own century the lyric impulses of Vondel and Hooft seemed dead and forgotten. Beyond Antonides the collapse was complete and absolute. A handful of pedants gained possession of the literary field and developed a perfect mania for translating and imitating from the French whatever material they could lay their inconsiderate fingers upon. Can any country ever have been so badly served by its poets as Holland now in its need? In the efforts of such a pernicious fop as Sybrand Feitama we surely reach a climax in sheer human futility. In the state in which he found the poetry of his country we can only shake our heads in sorrow that any writer should ever have managed to fill in twenty solid years of his life in making feeble rhymed translations of Fénelon's „Télémaque" and Voltaire s „Henriade . Had he but realized it, such unnatural orientation towards a foreign literature was actually the thing least calculated to launch Holland back into the main European current, and more than any other factor has been responsible for the failure to link up the Vondelian age with the recurring phases of Romanticism and weid Dutch poetry into something like a homogeneous whole. The absolute dominance of the classical spirit in England, we now see, has been exaggerated. Attention had been concentrated on the characteristic verse of the Augustans, written with Man as the theme, and upon the strict aesthetic discipline under which their choice of the closed couplet had brought their art. Above all, it had become a commonplace of criticism to speak of the absence in their work of a feeling for nature. Today we recognize even Pope _ the most typical of all these poets, and perhaps the greatest of his time anywhere — as a link in the Romantic chain itself — through the minor poems of Milton, to those of Thomson and Gray. Far too exclusively had we been told of his urban pre-occupation with morals and satire; far too much had it been overlooked that he was a country poet before he became a town one; that, in a word, his world of experience was really as ex-



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
tensive as that of any other poet. Whether his way of seeing meaning among things — rather than seeing beauty or mystery — would not have proved disconcerting to the genuine "nature poets" it is not of moment to discuss here. The main point is that in "Windsor Forest", "Eloisa to Abelard", and other poems, enough could be found of natural description to point the road along which poets like Gray and Collins were soon to travel. If, however, the English were able to preserve some degree of continuity of nature-writing in this way, the same can hardly be affirmed of the Dutch.1 With them the spirit of Romanticism — if it could really be said ever to have existed — was now wholly extinct. For similar liberating tendencies to those of the poets of England we look in vain. No one has ever attempted in Holland to start a study comparable with Mr Oswald DoughtyJs; 2 to speak of 'The Romanticism of the Classicists' would, in this connection, be not a paradox but a joke. In Holland the literature of the city was at its height: nature itself might well have dried up, much less the lyric. Of its poets there is none that I can see who can be said to have given any real promise of being able to stage a counter-revolution. I say this quite deliberately, for I am well aware that in Hubert Corneliszoon Poot lived a poet whose value has undergone various re-assessment and been found not so badly wanting, even by the Tachtigers. Willem Kloos, their leader, in fact, thought it well to attempt a vindication of his worth. "H. Czn. Poot," he said, "is een dichter, wiens waarde en beteekenis men tot dusver een beetje verkeerd heeft voorgesteld." 3 But I must confess myself still unconvinced. The light shed by Poot is certainly the sole gleam in the blackness of this period. Yet, how feeble and flickering it shows itself
1 Dr Pienaar has it otherwise, but does not seek to prove his case far.
2 "English Lyric in the Age of Reason".
3 "Een Daad van Eenvoudige Rechtvaardigheid: Studies over onze 18e Eeuwsche Dichters," p. 121.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
today! Correct his style is. But what a preposterously heavy burden of mythological imagery it is made to carry! 1 This, doubtless, is a defect to be imputed to the period rather than to the poet in particular, but how wearisomely importunate those "Zanggodinnen" of his can be:
"O Erato, die, klaer van stem en edel,
Diones groote daden zingt,
En naer de maet van uw vergulde vedel
Kupidoos dartle voeten dwingt,
Wanneer hy danst aen zyn vrou moeders handen.
If I truly feit that an ago so anti-lyrical demanded the acceptance of a lower Standard of lyric quality, I would not hesitate to make the concession. But, thinking of Poot's mentors - not Ramsay and Fergusson, but Vondel and Hooft themselves - I can only feel that to agree would be to play into the hands of a score of poetasters of the order of Tollens, Bogaers, and Da Costa. My quarrel with Poot is, that, being so well - or at least, painstakingly - read in the past, he should still have been able to effect no fundamental change in language or thought; should, in Vondel, have concentrated, not upon his simple, unaffected poems, but upon his elegiac and didactic styles, and in Hooft upon an Italianate manner which could never convey measures real y characteristic and spontaneous to himself. His imitation of Hooft, is, admittedly, far from unsuccesssful, but for all that doesnot rid one of the impression of Poot as a man who should have had a personal hand setting himself sedulously to emulate a
writing-master's copy:
! Hofdijk makes much play upon this tendency. "Dat blijft" he says, 'Wig te bejammeren: dat heeft - vereenigd met den droogen adem des txjds de gerekte deftigheid, die de vaerzen toch zonderling verwaterde, en me eenzijdige voorkeur voor stichtelijke- en gelegenheids-poëzy - ons meer dan een james Hogg, misschien wel een Robert Burns, ontstolen ( Gesch.eden.s der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 348).



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
"Galaté, myn schoone, kom;
Laet ons minnen, spelen, zoenen,
Eer de bevende ouderdom,
Die al stil op wolle schoenen Aensluipt, onze jeugt verbyt,
Jeugt en minlust raekt men quyt Eer men 't denken kan of merken.
Galaté, de min heeft vlerken."
For him Vrouw Venus must be for ever escorted by the courtly Brost of Muiden:
"Hier reeg Adoon haer' gordel los En deê 't geen lust gehoodt,
Dat Venus niet verdroot."
And if "De Maen bij Endymion" be, indeed, the finest of all his compositions,1 then the more than ever Hooftian he:
"De zuster van de zon Liet op Endymion.
Haer minnende oogen dalen.
't Was nacht toen zy hem zagh;
Maer heur gezicht schoot stralen Trots Febus over dagh."
Within his owti language, of course, Poot could not have been more magnificently instructed than by Vondel. Yet, the strange paradox here arises that, while his influence was necessary to make him a poet, it was at the same time not of a sort likely to make him a great one. In essaying similar scholarly Renaissance effects, it was bound to arise that he, who by every token of birth and circumstance, should have remained the most completely and harmoniously human of all his country's versemakers, would actually become one of the most difficult, one of the most stilted and pretentious:
"'s Lichts jeugt, gansch lief, in 't heldere oost ontloken, En ryklyk aengedaen
1 The accepted opinion of Longfellow, Prinsen, Kloos.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Met gout, saffier, puikpaerlen, purperstrooken,
En koele roozeblaên;
Beloofe thans door aertsbevalligheden
En goddelyken lach Een' goên, gedweên, hoogmilden, luisterbreeden,
En schoonen dagh."
This, technically, is well-shaped, finished verse, but one looks in vain for that key-note of poetic genius — the ceaseless effort to extend the range of human consciousness; it does not belong to Poot personatly — one feels that all the time. Against that, of course, one may put the simple and sincere, almost sublime:
"Jacoba trad met tegenzin
Ter snode werelt in,En heeft zich aen het endt geschreit
In haere onnozelheit.
Zy was hier naeu verscheenen,
Of ging, wel graeg, weêr heenen."
In three hundred poems there is not much of it, yet it seriously makes us reconsider how near the truth De Clercq's dictum comes, that he "was een dichter door de natuur gevormd, door de kunst bedorven. Geen onzer dichters was beter dan hij in staat de natuur te schilderen." 1
It cannot be held that De Clercq bears out his contention really well; and while indicating a line by no means unprofitable to pursue, he has probably put many on quite a false trail by implying for Poot a place along with Burns. Certainly, in a number of external features of the lives of the two bards are obvious resemblances — each was born to the plough and reared in the hardest of circumstances, and each later sought the distractions of the town and of town society, greatly to the deterioration of his rustic character. But the chronological difference of more than two
1 "Verhandeling ter Beantwoording der Vraag: Welken Invloed heeft Vreemde Letterkunde, inzonderheid de Italiaansche, Spaansche, Fransche en Duitsche, gehad op de Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, sinds het Begin der Vijftiende Eeuw tot onze Dagen," p. 270.



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
generations between them is already more fatal to the maintenance of the theory than any number of adventitious similarities could be in favour of it: spiritually, Abtswoude can never be Alloway or Delft, Edinburgh. Only in respect of a certain democratisation of outlook — and the work of Vondel was surely not lacking in that, a century earlier — can they be compared, 1 think, to any serious purpose. Burns, for one thing, stands right at the forefront of the Romantic Movement — tentatively, it is true, as regards his ordinary English verse, but most potently as regards his development of a Scottish native tradition. Of that great Movement, of course, he was no more aware than was Poot, for he also was borntoosoon — or, it may be, died too soon — to be absorbed into it; nor from the shackles still imposed by transitionalists like Shenstone and Young did he ever manage to shake himself wholly free. But with his hedonism, his robust love of life, he would always have been bound to stand peculiarly apart from the main tradition. In his matchless Scottish songs at least he struck out on a new path, or — if not on a new one altogether — largely helped to draw the English lyric back to its natural fountain of inspiration in the ancient ballad poetry. Where can Poot's record be said to stand against this? Is there an single thing he consciously did to assert the right of naturalism against formulism, of imagination against reason? Is there a single great love-poem by which he lives (since it seems a recognized phenomenon that love-poets should appear for the most part at moments of ebb or transition) ? He may give us, brightly for him:
"En hy kust er Elsje voor.
Dus brengt Melker 't leven door "
But it is no more than an odd flash; there is almost literally nothing to put alongside "O my Love's like a Red Red Rose ,1 and the whole buoyant sequence of "The Lea Rig", "Afton
1 F. De Cort by his "Schoonste Liederen uit het Schotsch" (Brussels, 1862)



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Water", Of a' the Airts the Wind can blaw", "Ae Fond Kiss", "Ca' the Yowes", "O wert thou in the Cauld Blast".
Poot's misfortune it simply was to be born into an epoch far more formally fixed in its tendencies than any other, and one with a language unduly elaborated from the classics. With the weak, periphrastic verse of the Franco-Dutch school he had nothing in common, it is true, but in his own appear elements almost as incongruous — many occasions when, his homespun wearing thin, he is all too ready to assume the gaudy habits of a classic style still very imperfectly assimilated. Burns I have sought to show as not Romantic in the sense that his poetry builds a new world in a wonderland of Fancy; and Poot, though denied contact with a living tradition, might nevertheless, I think, have achieved something of the same kind of realism, based on an actual experience of a very similar order. But, taking everything into account, the truth seems to be that Poot's mind was limited by a certain flatness. In it I detect a fundamental difference of cjuality as compared with that of Burns. Many sides of life he doubtless saw and feit, providing the minor excellencies of his verse. But how, again, with his severe moral restraint and his vague, mystic refle'cting, could he ever be expected to let his art run gaily away with him by entering closely into the full-blooded life of the peasants around him? Constitutionally it seemed impossible for him to reject the unessential, the insignificant, the ephemeral, and rise to a truly impressive height of song. Little in his work do 1 discover that would seriously merit for him "den naam van dichter der natuur". Hofdijk and Kloos, 1 am glad to see, fully concur here. Says the latter: "Men heeft hem den dichter der
did much to popularise Burns in Holland. The true inspiration of this song, however, he misses by just failing to get the metre aright. He gives:
"Mijn lief is als de roode roos Den knoppe versch ontsprongen;
Mijn lief is als de melodie Bij snarenspel gezongen."



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
natuur genoemd, maar als men elkander niet napraat, doch inderdaad ernstig alles leest wat hij heeft geschreven, — wat geloof ik zijn lofredenaars maar zelden deden — dan komt men al zeer spoedig tot de slotsom, dat er van wat wij 'natuur' noemen volstrekt niet méér in zijn verswerk valt te bespeuren, maar óók niet minder, dan in dat der andere dichters van zijn tijd." 1 Poot also falls far behind Burns in that, while at times as selfrevealing in the matter of his origins, he is much more inclined to be self-pitying over his personal misfortunes:
"'k Ben Poot, een lantmans zoon, misdeelt van ryke schatten De dartele Fortuin keert my den rugge toe."
Yet almost, again, he seems to agree with Wordsworth that "verse may build a stately throne on humble truth":
"Myn zangster vlecht den gouden lof Der heiige Poëzie.
Dat's van natuur een schoone stof Daer haeft geen tooisel by."
Unfortunately, far less than in the case of Wordsworth himself, does his performance bear out his theory:
"Zoo verdween met natte leden 's Winters grauwe dwinglandy Voor de groene monarchy Der bebloemde lieflykheden.
Zoo genaeckt de zomerbrant 't Vee- en vischrijk Nederlandt."
No sooner do we see signs of a budding nature-genius than he forgets this healthy, rustic outlook, throws off his Burnsian clogs and flies back to the Italian dance-measures of Hooft:
"Zy nam hem in haer arm,
De middernacht was warm,
En queekte lusje op lusje.
De koude Maen wert heet.
1 "Een Daad van Eenvoudige Rechtvaardigheid: Studies over onze 18e Eeuwsche Dichters," p. 121.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
De Herder kreeg een kusje,
Hy klaegde van geen leet."
So uncertainly led, it is not surprising that, when we come to the deeper things of life, Poot is at a painful disadvantage; capable of sincerity and simplicity, but — fed also by a weary spirit of orthodoxy and resignation — failing to tug strongly at the heart-strings. In unsteady, lachrymose vein, thus, he ponders his mother's death:
"Schoon troost en tyt den rou verzoeten,
Waermê wy eertyts Moeders lyk Geleidden naer het stille ryk,
Daer alle menschen komen moeten,
Nogh denk ik om de vrome weêr.
En zou ik niet van haer gewagen Die my heeft onder 't hart gedragen?"
It is worth while, I think, contrasting with this "John Anderson, My Jo", to show in what beauty the twin factors of old age and death may be conceived, and with what courage and sublimity accepted. And for this purpose there are, fortunately, two excellent translations available.1 I take Potgieter's in preference to De Cort's: it bears the impress of deeper understanding, shows higher actual poetic powers, and contrives to give a local suggestion to the name and situation.
"Wij klommen zaam den heuvel op,
Claes Hendrikszen, myn schat!
En hebben op zijn groenen top Veel vreugde en heils gehad;
Wij stromp'len nu vast naar beneên,
Maar helpen d'een den aêr,
En slapen ginder niet alleen,
Claes Hendriksz, beste vaêr!"
In such lines, it is obvious, we have death seen, not as with Poot, a retreat from life, but as the supreme way of affirming it. 1 Both are given by William Jacks in his "Robert Burns in Other Tongues" (Glasgow, 1896).



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
After a careful reading through of his three hundred poems, I cannot pretend to find much that truly anticipates the Romantics — Hood a little, if you like, or Wordsworth in his weakest moments, and Burns — in such a poem as Ryke Armoede . In this last I think there is the basis of a comparison with "Eerlijke Armoê", as Potgieter, taking him again as translator, renders "Is there, for Honest Poverty"; though, as might be expected, the Dutch peasant sums up his philosophy of life in much the more conventional terms:
"Bid dan om rykdom dien geen lage zinnen vatten,
Te blint in hun bedrijf.
Bedrukte Salonyn, de waerdigste aller schatten Is een gezonde ziel in een welvarend lyf.
On the other hand, it is doubtless the very expression of such sentiments that makes Professor Kalff deplore Burns's lack of penitence compared with his own countryman and see him as far inferior to the other in the (here) very Victorian-seeming virtues of "vroomheid en zedelykheid". 1 Which is quite to overlook the greater terseness, boldness, independence, manliness, of the Scottish national poet, standing nearly at the opposite end of the scale in the matter of the universality imparted to his feelings precisely by being the Satanist (a harsh term here) as well as the Godist.
Poofs mind, it must be plain, could never have developed, under the ambling conditions of his time, more than an enforced contentment, fervour, and placidity; a somewhat moody renunciation of life's exaltations: and with him truly went no hope of an Augustan Revolution. Even fifty years later I am not sure that he would have sensed the revolt against the Augustans and an outworn poetic diction and set himself to compass the use of a language more adequate in every way to the expression of his inner self. In a word, it would be almost impossible to imagine 1 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde", Vol. V, p. 429.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
him living at any other time than the middle or end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth. But we must not blame him overmuch if his work has so pseudo-classical an atmosphere and not the starkness of Crabbe's, or if his nature had not the strength and originality to fashion just such a vocabulary as Burns adapted for hia songs. He has been uncritically exalted far beyond his merits, but Longfellow, thinking doubtless of the artificiality and the mythologizing that disfigure his descriptions, is altogether too severe in dismissing him as "the poet of the plough, whom we mention more because he was a ploughman, than because we deem him a poet . 1 Professor Prinsen preserves a proper balance of fairness towards him when he writes: "Hij was bij al zijn nationalen zin en eerbied voor de 17de eeuwers, een man van zijn tijd, die de pastorale cultiveerde en veel liefhebberij had in uiterlijke fraaiigheden uit de mythologie der Ouden." 2
Let us reflect that even in England it was the middle of the century before it was evident that any considerable reaction had set in against the Augustans. Till then a confused, unconscious struggle it remained, Reason, though sorely tried, giving way but gradually. In their individual fashion spoke several voices, but it is to James Thomson, whom Professor F. E. Schelling calls "the true coryphaeus of the movement", 3 that we turn first for a moment. It is usual to half-sneer at Thomson today, or at least teil ourselves that the interest of his work is for the student of literature rather than for the lover of poetry. We find his "Seasons" a conventional performance; with none of that blending of nature with human passion so characteristic of Wordsworth; none of the marmorean resignation of Gray; of the mountain despairs of Manfred-Byron; of the struggles of the chained Titans
1 "The Poets and Poetry of Europe", p. 375.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 166.
3 "The English Lyric," p. 133.
H Jlilllll. i



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
of the nineteenth century. Alfred Biese scarcely exaggerates in insisting that "it is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome detail which destroys interest". 1 At the same time these blemishes to the modern mind must not blind us to the fact that this poem in its own day served as a much-needed protest against the urban school, and in itself was a revelation of fresh, unimagined beauty. And if in England its influence was great, on the continent it was almost revolutionary and brought about a vital change in the whole style of descriptive writing. In Germany and France especially the reputation of Thomson was extraordinarily high — Germany having its first Frühlings as early as 1742 and France its complete translation by 1759. What, then, of Holland? Did it not, too, feel "the contagion of his manner"?
At all times a dreamy and sentimental literature had sprung up on Dutch soil. Nothing at this moment seemed more ready-made for it than the smooth-running, somewhat wistful, nature poetry of James Thomson. It was, to start with, the work of a Scotsman, and the Scots like the Dutch have an inevitable tendency to pictorialise their thoughts — indicating, on the one side, the Celtic spirit, and, on the other, that close affinity with the great etchers and tone painters for whom Holland has always been so justly renowned. Also, it was in every sense descriptive, but so little localised that the landscape seemed to offer as much of space and wind and freedom as even a Dutchman might reasonably be expected to require. Why, then, did it fail, for certain it is it did not set the Netherlands buzzing in the way it did other parts of Europe?
The fact that the first Dutch poet who troubled himself about Thomson was named Van Winter should in itself have formed a symbol. But Van Winter had already given proof of his lack of quality by the lines of his heavy-flowing "Amstelstroom": 1 "The Development of the Feeling for Nature," p. 227.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"Vloei, Landstroom, van wiens lof vier waerelddeelen wagen!
Vloei, langs uw' groenen zoom, naar 't Y met vlugger vaart. De grootsche zeetrompet moog aan die reê behagen,
Een tooverende lier is tot uw' roem gesnaard."
In essaying his "Jaargetijden" he suffered frorn the further handicap of being himself dependent on a translation, a prose version made for him by a friend; and, being thus got ready, he committed the further blunder of rendering his work in rhyme — in the most conflicting kind of Alexandrines:
"Ik zing, tot glori van den Schepper der Natuur,
Het jeugdig Lenteschoon, het zomerzonnevuur,
Den Rykdoom, van den Herfst, des Winters heerschappye, Al 't mildgeschonken nut van ieder Jaargetyê.
Throughout the poem he does not keep strictly to Thomson, but lengthens out, as it were, both moral and metre. One typical example will suffice. The original runs:
"The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.
This Van Winter expands into:
"Dan zal de winterstorm van 't aardsch verdriet verdwynen, En 's Hemels blyde Lent' zal eeuwig u beschynen."
Which may be translated back as the clumsy:
Then shall the winter storms of afflicted earth depart, ^ And evermore Heaven's happy Spring shall shine on you.
An unpromising start for Romanticism in Holland, a golden opportunity lost by Van Winter himself to become the father of Dutch rural verse. Not so much would we ridicule him, however for his placing of sentimentality with Romance as an ally on équal terms, but for the far more real anomalies of trying to wed the combination with the speciously false diction of the classics and of maintaining the tyranny of rhymed Alexandrines, when the excellent variation of blank verse lay so ready to his



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
hand. Yet, remembering that even Gray achieved but a halfsuccess, it is perhaps best to leave. "De Jaargetijden" at this time of day by thinking of the date — 1769 — as absolutely the most significant thing about it!
From this very time, as it happens, we do begin to note a new and sustained development in Romantic literature throughout Europe. English and German influence has won the day over French classicism, and rapidly advances with its watchword: "Return to Nature". But difficulties immediately arise over the apportionment of that influence. Professor T. G. Tucker can scarcely be refuted in seeing the influence on the German side as one of thought. "The fact seems to be/' he adds, "that German literature is naturally too much like our own to exert such clear and palpable influence." 1 It is not necessary here, of course, to take separate stock of Romanticism in Germany, even although that country has come to regard the Movement as peculiarly its own; for what definitions will be required if we are to include the Idealist philosophers, the discovery of Shakespeare by Schlegel, the ballads of Bürger, the enormous wealth of lyric poetry let loose by the new doctrine of spontaneity — and culminating in the work of the young Goethe and the songs of Heine! Simply allowing, then, for the greater complication of the German case, all we would do is emphasize one paramount difference between Romanticism in England and in Germany. We have this in the fact that the Renaissance was really two hundred years late in coming to the latter country. In the second half of the eighteenth century that could mean but one thing — the Romanticisation of the Classical tradition of ancient Greece. So came the tendency to indulge in a vague historicism; an antiquarian idealism was set up; the Germans returned to a fabulous past, while seeing in that past the goal of the future.
So long under the domination of the pseudo-classicism of France, 1 "The Foreign Debt of English Literature," p. 246.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
it was to this remarkable German Romantic spirit that the writers of Holland turned in their own endeavour to rediscover "the glory that was Greece". In principle their revolution was also an aesthetic one: before the mythology of Greece could hope to be made into a Vertelling or its poetry into a Ballade, there had first to be established a new and powerful canon of art. England worked differently, but for Holland at this moment the adoption of the German course was perhaps a blessing in disguise. It is certainly no overstatement of fact to say that Holland in the main has been as neglectful of aesthetics and of critical theory as its neighbour Germany has been prolific in these same spheres; its poets especially — contrasting now rather with England — have been astonishingly little concerned to take the implications of their art. Even hereabouts I shall not try to show Holland as ripe enough yet to produce a Wieland or a Klopstock. But the signs were there; and it was so far ready as to reach out and receive from Lessing and Riedel those germs which, later on, were destined to overthrow all sorts of "old régimes — in literature, in politics, and in thought.
In the sheer novelty of this Verlichting it is not at all to be wondered at that Van Alphen, the man who struck the first blow, should almost have been reviled by his classical contemp'oraries. Bilderdijk was naturally most virulent of them all in charging him with having been completely corrupted by his strenuous reading of all this new-fangled aesthetic theory of the Germans:
"Ach! hadt ge ons nooit vergast op Riedels mijmeringen,
Den Duitschren les noch spraak noch voorbeeld afgeleerd,
Noch met hun Schoolgezwets de schoone kunst onteerd!
How little far-seeing he was! For even though Dr De Koe may say that "bij Bilderdijk gaat het inzicht in deze dingen veel dieper dan bij Van Alphen",1 we cannot, even in the light of that poet's later dependence on Bürger and "Ossian", deny Van Alphen 1 "Van Alphen's Literair-Aesthetische Theorieën," p. 162.



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
the credit due to an early pioneer. And if Van Alphen did go outside, it was not because he had overlooked anything that Holland itself might be capable of giving him; in fact, for the first time it might be said that even that mighty duality, Vondel and Hooft, had been looked at in something like true perspective. High praise he did not withhold from these pioneering spirits in turn — "eerste ijsbrekers", as he termed them — but not all their genius could stay the criticism that "hun theorie was gebrekkig", their taste simply "niet fijn en kiesch genoeg": there was but one drastic conclusion to be drawn, and Van Alphen did not hesitate to announce that "wij tot hiertoe in het stuk van poëzy die vordering niet gemaakt hebben, die wij bij onze naburen aantreffen".1 In face of this perspicacious judgment, it seems to me that his translating Riedel's "Theorie der schonen Künsten und Wissenschaften" must be allowed to carry its own justification; nor can this opinion be seriously disturbed even by the acceptance of Ten Brink's view that "het boek van Riedel heeft als aesthetisch geschrift uit de school van Baumgarten in het geheel geene waarde." 2
A man, for the most part, of exact, judicial temper, Van Alphen found in the work of translation an exercise in discipline not unsuited to his taste. But, while allowing that to be so, it was surely nothing short of a stroke of genius that prompted him to provide his translation with a long and informal Introduction — one, indeed, so personally subscribed to as fully to entitle him to a place alongside Potgieter, Busken Huet, Verwey, Kloos, in Holland's short calendar of critics.3 And when one includes with this work the complementary "Digtkundige Verhandelingen", it all begins to assume for Holland
1 "Theorie," Introduction, XI.
2 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 571.
3 He is himself at considerable pains to make clear that "hij hier een omwerking geeft en geen vertaling".
4



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
something of the unique importance of Wordsworth's famous Prefaces for England, first written twenty years later. That must sound a very large claim, but I am prepared to stand by it: there are some of Van Alphen's dicta, I do genuinely consider, that are not unworthy of Romanticism's greatest poet-critic, even if the utterance is not always so felicitous and he has nothing to match in sheer originality with the famous definition that "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity". For instance, over the thorny question of "poetic diction" he writes that de verbetering en volmaking van eene taal, met opzigt tot de poëzie, daar in bijzonder bestaat, dat men ze beeldiger make, en dat men er meer harmonie en melodie inbrenge'. 1 This may not involve him in any doctrine so speciously simple as Wordsworth's "selection of language really used by men", but it has the definite savour of his continuation: "and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect".
Van Alphen is also with the English poet in wishing "to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing"; at least, the art of poetry is to him like "een leermeester, die zijne discipelen laat wandelen of spelemeijen, maar die, terwijl hij zijne leidende hand verbergt, hun gedurig zulke voorwerpen op hunnen weg doet aantreffen, die hen leeren, vermaanen en verbeteren." 2 But most of all is he Wordsworthian when he comes to consider the nature and the character of the poet, and desiderates for him the qualities of: "Teergevoeligheid, aandoenlijkheid, wederomklinkende vlugheid — mogelijkheid en dispositie om alles gemakkelijk, rein, zuiver en geheel te ontvangen, en gemakkelijk en rein en geheel wederom te geven; egter met een bijvoegsel van zijne eigene egte indivi-
1 "Digtkundige Verhandelingen," XII.
2 "Digtkundige Verhandelingen," p. 257.



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
dualiteit.''1 And thinking of Wordsworth's own answer to the question, "What is a poet?" in the great passage beginning, "He is a man speaking to men ..who will maintain that even he would have feit no profit to himself had he been able to snatch a glance or two over at the other? In the opposite direction, of course, there seems just sufficiënt anticipation of the inspired matter of the Prefaces to set us wondering if, born a generation later and given access to these revolutionary documents, Van Alphen might not have become more the actual Wordsworth of Holland, the greatest of all its interpreters of poetry — an interpreter that, as it happened, she was scarcely to discover even among the Tachtigers? 2
Before proceeding further, it is necessary we should recognize that the poetry of Holland has never been a poetry set in the framework of a great tradition; rather must it be seen as a poetry set in two or — thinking particularly of the influences at work in a poet like Bilderdijk — even three co-incident frameworks of this character. What I am seriously going to suggest now is that, in fashioning a new artistic canon, as promoted especially by Van Alphen, the influence of England upon Holland was no less potent than was that of Germany, as represented by Riedel, Lessing, and Klopstock. The name of the latter especially, Van Alphen may mention over and over again; but nearly always there is a disquietingly fulsome note about his praise; and when he reaches the climax of placing him as schepper above both Vondel and Milton, it does seem time to begin to query at least the comparative value of his critical acumen. Where, above all, stands the literature of England in his schemes
1 "Digtkundige Verhandelingen," p. 235. The obvious connection between the last sentence of this and Kloos's celebrated definition that "Kunst moet zijn de allerindividueelste expressie van de allerindividueelste emotie" has been quite lost sight of by the critics.
2 Kloos in his theories has a great deal of Shelley, but singularly little of Wordsworth.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
of values? Has he a wide and understanding knowledge of lts poetry? As it happens, the answer to these questions are readily forthcoming. To read the scholarly Van Alphen is at once to have it proclaimed that he does possess a wide and understanding knowledge of our literature. No Dutch critic in fact, can ever have tried to take direct personal stock at the one time of so many of Britain's leading writers. Incidentally, even in the strictly "German" field of aesthetics he acknowledges a definite debt to Britain. "De Engelsche aesthetici trokken hem vooral aan," declares his interpreter, De Koe, "door hun psychologische methode: Lord Kaimes, Gerard and Priestley zijn de auteurs die hij bij voorkeur aanhaalt." 1
Above all to Van Alphen must go the credit for being the first Dutch critic of consequence to acclaim the genius of Shakespeare — surpassed, in his opinion, only by that of Homer. Not that he was another Schlegel to fling himself whole-heartedly into the waiting task of translation. Yet, neither can his views be said to represent a mere stereotyped lip-service; and once again in this matter he shows up to marked advantage against his rival, Bilderdijk — affecting to abominate the very name of the Bard . Not unnaturally, perhaps, the animadversions he still feels bound to make are mainly reserved for the quality of what he terms lage burlesque"2 in his work. Largely on this score he sees the glorious Elizabethan age itself as actually a barbaric one, and shows himself very much the man of his own by proceeding to propound the startling theory that Shakespeare would "veel grooter nog geweest zijn (geen grooter genie in den eigenlijken zin, maar grooter in het algemeen) bij aldien hij in de eeuw van Augustus geleefd of Pope & Addisson onder zijne gemeenzame
1 "Van Alphen's Literair-Aesthetische Theorieën," p. 58. The spelling "Kaimes is as given.
2 "Theorie," Introduction, LXXXIV.



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
vrienden geteld had." 1 Faith is further shaken a little by his seeming to place "Ossian" with Shakespeare and Homer, as one of a great triumvirate in uninstructed genius: "Wie heeft Homerus, wie heeft Ossian, wie heeft Shakespeare onderwezen?" Van Alphen, on the whole, is happier in dealing with the poets nearer to himself in sympathy as in time; and in these respects his highest regard is for Pope, Thomson, and Young. That it is the "schoone, zinnelijke en beeldvolle stijl" of Young that most of all commands his respect can be accepted as a striking portent of what was soon to happen throughout all Holland. So thoroughly, indeed, does he seem to have indoctrinated himself with the spirit of "Night Thoughts" that something of Young's own vapid sensibility creeps into his style whenever he writes of him. 2 But the height of admiration is reached in a poem inscribed to "Mijne onbekende Vrienden", in which the English poet figures very prominently:
"Dronk ik eenen bittren kelk, en borst ik uit in klagten,
Dan koos ik Young tot medgezel."
The lines throughout are in this strain, but those beginning the second stanza are interesting as also pointing now to the partial relegation of "the Homer of the North":
"O Grijsaard! vol van God! uw schildrend dichtvermogen Heeft zuivrer gloed van Ossian." 3
While Van Alphen for his much greater union of practice with theory stands well apart from the poets so often named with him — especially Bellamy and Nieuwland — this is not to say
1 "Theory," Introduction, XLVI. Spelling "Addisson is as given. He also speaks of Pope's "Essay on !Men".
2 Vide "Theorie," Intro. XI, I 94, 127, 239; "Digtkundige Verhandelingen," XXXI, CLX1X and p. 157; Prijsverhandeling van 1782, VII, 220.
3 In his "Over het Aangeboorne in de Poëzie" he writes: "In Ossian treft men geen geestige wendingen, maar alles werkt op de verbeelding en de gewaarwording."



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
that in practice his poetry worked out in full conformity with his enunciated theories — any more than did that of another critic-poet, Wordsworth. There is, however, the vital difference between the two that the Dutchman's theory, taken over from Germany, is, as might be expected, of a more strictly academic order; and that, besides, he had written and published most of his poems bef ore he ever thought of learning how to write poetry. As poets of nature particularly, therefore, there is little to be made out between the two. Van Alphen remains the man of set mottoes like "de kunst is navolging der Natuur"; Wordsworth, in the last resort, simply dissolves in Nature "as a Buddhist dissolves in Nirvana". If they echo at all it is but loosely and for the wrong things, as when Van Alphen's Stroomspiegel happens to hit off both metre and thought of such a characteristic, but minor, piece of Wordsworth's as "The Reverie of Poor Susan":
"Vloeit, vloeijende stroomen! glijdt zacht door dit dal!
En laat me mij spieglen, ö kabblend krystal!
Ontrolt mij niet golfjes! wordt effen, gij stroomen!
Of ben ik te laat aan uw oever gekomen?"
Sometimes in Van Alphen, however, it has occurred to me, there is a refreshing suggestion of the tender, child-like fluting of the "Songs of Innocence"; so that, as Blake speaks cosmically, if rather disjointedly, of the power "to see the world in a grain of sand", the Dutchman (in infinitely more occasional fashion, of course) can display a force of conception far beyond his skill in execution:
"Ik zie mij zelf bij 't eeuwig Licht
En spiegel me in Gods aangezicht."
But much more often his verse — even if specially written for children — is apt to be childish rather than child-like.
'"t Leven is een school der wijsheid,
Waar het Godgewijd gemoed,



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Aan de hand eens trouwen Vaders,
Teederlijk wordt opgevoed."
In religion at any rate his theories can be said to carry in no wise beyond his time, and he is seemingly well content to remain the conventional moralist — indeed, when without a dash of Young for truly sombre effect, he is almost the perfect hymnalists' poet:
"Rust, mijn ziel! wat zoude u kwellen
Of onstellen?
Leeft uw God en Vader niet?
Hoort Hij niet uws Voorspraaks bede?
Kan zijn vrede Niet verzachten uw verdriet?"
"Jezus is alleen mijn Schat."
"Rust, mijn ziel; uw God is Koning
Otherwise his best work seems to be done in poems of the easy, jingling order of:
"Lust mijner oogen, o vreugd van mijn leven!
Dierbaer geschenk van een zegenend God!
Hebt ge vol liefde me uw harte gegeven.
Groot is mijn blijdschap en zalig mijn lot."
With stuff of this sort one may not wish seriously to quarrel; it is pleasant enough and, technically, not incompetent. Yet, though we must not demand that even a poet so much in touch with the German mind should be also a philosopher, we have surely the right to expect a more definite contact with ideas than anything revealed here. The truth is that, though in the seclusion of his study in Utrecht Van Alphen might work out the view "dat men den man van genie meer vrijheid gaf",1 such a charter of intellectual freedom as Wordsworth's or Shelley's would wellnigh have dismayed him. In the subjects upon which he mainly wrote there was really no very necessary groundwork for poetry
1 "Digtkundige Verhandelingen," CLXX.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
— a fact that goes far towards proving how incompatible in practice could be a union with Teutonic aesthetics, treated at least as an exact science. Yet that study, taken by itself, is precisely where his value to literature does lie. Merely to contrast the poetry produced at the beginning of the eighteenth century with that produced at its close leads us but from Poot to Nieuwland, Bellamy, and Van Alphen himself; but to take the implications in critical theory between Classicists and Romanticists is to realize that a new and powerful intellectual force has come into being. Van Alphen's efforts, aimed solely at raising the Standard of poetry in Holland, would definitely ensure that his compatriots would find more adequate means of expression for any rich, "Ossianic" store of emotion that might be in them; and more particularly, that never again could it happen that great British poets like Shakespeare, Thomson, Young — and, soon, Wordsworth — would remain unknown in the Netherlands, or be looked up to mainly as distant, inaccessible masters.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1897.
Hofdijk, W. J. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1867.
Kalff, G. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Vols. V, VI. Groningen, 1912.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924.
Winkel, J. Te. - De Ontwikkeling der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part II, Vol. 3. Haarlem, 1927.
POOT
Busken Huet, C. - Gedichten van Hubert Korneliszoon Poot. Met Leven door Jacob Spex. Schiedam, 1866.
Kalff, G. - Jn Dichters van den Ouden Tijd. Amsterdam, 1919.
KIoos, W. - Jn Een Daad van Eenvoudige Rechtvaardigheid. Amsterdam, 1909.
Poot, H. K. - Gedichten. 3 Vols. Groningen, 1805.
VAN ALPHEN
Alphen, H. van - Dightkundige Verhandelingen. Utrecht, 1782.
Mengelingen, in Proza en Poëzie. Utrecht, 1802.
Clarisse, J. - Over Hieronymus van Alphen als Dichter en als Kinderdichter. Rotterdam, 1836.
Koe, A. C. S. De - Van Alphen's Literair-Aesthetische Theorieën. Utrecht, 1910.
Koenen, H. J. - Hieronymus van Alphen, als Christen, als Letterkundige en als Staatsman. Amsterdam, 1844.
Nepveu, J. I. D. - Het Leven van Mr Hieronymus van Alphen gevoegd achter zijne Uitgave van Van Alphen's Dichtwerken. Utrecht, 1838.
Pomes, H. - Over Van Alphen's Kindergedichtjes. Rotterdam, 1908.
Water, J. W. Te - Levensschets van H. van Alphen. Utrecht, 1813.



CHAPTER III
YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS
The period of transition to which we generally give the name Romantic Revolt was not one in which Holland could claim a main share of importance. Above all for this it lacked inspired fore-runners like Blake, Cowper, Collins, Burns; what heralding of Romance there was, had to come much more indirectly, through the aesthetic ministrations of the Germanised Van Alphen. Only very gradually, therefore, began to gather even the gloomy, rather un-English, clouds of "Night Thoughts" and the dim, Highland hazes of "Ossian"; for while Young and Macpherson — to whose spirits we might now add the kindred one of Bishop Percy may belong to the same general Romantic vogue, they must also be allowed to represent that vogue according to a wide difference of temperament and cannot simply be assigned to the same category. But Holland made little of these distinctions and, content apparently to overlook the more critical sense of revolt distinctive of the best type of Romantic, accepted revival thus one-sidedly
in the sense of sheer adventure, a deliberate return to the
elemental and primitive. Had it not been so, I do not hesitate to maintain that the whole course of Dutch poetry would have been changed — and changed probably for the better; the fact, remains, however, that now and for a considerable time to come, it sought to cover up any loss it might have sustained, by performing the kow-tow before the spell of heroic afflatus and nebulous rhetoric cast by a picturesque Scottish Highlander, by



YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS
lending a bemused ear to the melancholy meditations among the tombs of an obscure English clergyman, and by bursting into clamorous recognition of the long-neglected ancient ballads and folk-songs of Britain: the sole criterion of song seeming to be that it should proceed from some sombre or distant recess and sound the fashionable "note of romantic despair".
For Holland this must be accounted a thoroughly prolific period, roughly co-inciding in the political sphere with the Napoleonic Revolution and the Restoration of 1830. Nevertheless, I do not find in it much poetry that is in itself very positive or compelling, but a great deal, I am afraid, that is weak and trivial. And, since my purpose is to exhibit only those writers who can be said to have achieved something fundamental for the poetry of Holland
— considered virtually as a phase of the English Romantic Revival
— 1 cannot, with the best will in the world, afford to treat of the talented unimportance of men like Bellamy, Kinker, Staring, Nieuwland, Tollens. What a tame and conventional bunch they are! How uninteresting, if 1 may say so, in their perfect health and sanity, against the "madness" of Shelley and Blake! And in their rigid moral balance how dull even, compared with passionate, attractive types like Burns and Byron! Always, I admit, they had to be prepared to satisfy the didactic tendencies so prevalent in their part of the Netherlands. But perhaps that brings us to the very point — were the highest flights of lyrical fancy really possible to men content to be so unreasonably circumscribed? Against the particular English background I have raised for myself they appear, at any rate, to sink into insignificance; and in consonance with my practice of taking only those seeking some contact with ideas, those contriving, by whatever means, to link the lyric form with human feelings and the deeper aspects of life, I restrict my analysis to two poets of this possible order — Feith and Bilderdijk: and though neither of these was exactly "mad" in the Shelleyan sense, they did at least show a "difference"



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
in their nature — the first revealing more than sufficiënt of that psychological, if not exactly pathological, condition which so easily becomes "romantic", and the second evidencing as divided a personality, for Holland, as did Byron, for all Europe Undoubtedly, as I see them, these are the only Dutch poets of the period in any way worthy of outside recognition - and that, as I hope to show, because they themselves had the vision to see that the spiritual landscape of Holland was at least as much akin to Welwyn as to Weimar. For each of them, I consider, that vision was a paramount thing, even if 1 do not go so far as to insist that, lacking it, they would have reverted to mere Staring s and Helmers's. Feith, I think, always had it in him - from his early acquaintanceship with the work of Klopstock and Goet e _ to be in his own country a "John the Baptist of the Romantic Movement", though he would probably not have achieved his individual masterpiece - or have produced only a very attenuated sort of "Graf". Bilderdijk, I fancy, would have been the greater sufferer: I cannot for a moment see that ever he would have been volcanic enough to reach forward to Wordsworth and Coleridge, any more than he had the courage to go back to Thomson.1 In the main, 1 think, he would have continued the mode of feeling, of argument, and of versification so popular since the days of the Augustans; he would still have given us his translations of Pope and Goldsmith, his "Ondergang der Eerste Wereld" '"t Gebed", his "Ode aan Napoleon". But he would not have become the whole-hearted "Ossianist", the greatest recreator of Dutch balladry; nor is it likely that he would have attained to so intense a lyrical pitch in his love-songs Immediately we come to a closer consideration of the work of Feith and Bilderdijk we find (though they both belonged to a period) how necessary it is to effect a separation between them.
x Even Kinker, so late as 1803, we find producing "De jaargetijden... naar 't Hoogduitsch gevolgd".



YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS
Not only is it that there is a profound difference in the nature of that work — Feith the whole-hearted Klopstock-cum-Young Romanticist against Bilderdijk, the born Classicist, the Romanticist almost malgré tui — but there is also the question of their rather bitter personal relations and of a host of supervening professional animosities. 1 With Feith, then, we naturally begin, for, far from sharing the uprooted condition of his rival, "hij was," as Dr Zijderveld notes, "genoeg man van zijn tijd om behoefte te hebben aan een theorie". 2 This theory he formulated from a careful study of the German aesthetes, also of Herder, of Goethe, of De Moncrif; but, withal, he was no very virile eclectic, and it all remains a difficult and somewhat confusing amalgam. 3 In the first place, Feith never seems to settle properly between Romance and his own first-written "romances". For him Romance is whatever is recalled by "de verloopene jaren van onschuld en eenvoudigheid"; while, following De Moncrif, he is led into the unwarrantably wide definition of a "romance" as "het naïve verhaal van één aandoenlijke daad". 4 Again, he declares that "om de ware romance aan te treffen is men verpligt zijn toevlugt tot de oude volksliederen, en vooral, tot die der Schotten te nemen," yet obviously has no first-hand acquaintanceship with Percy's "Reliques" and takes his model of an ancient ballad from Herder's translation of "Sweet William's Ghost" in his "Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker". Of a truth Feith's sophisticated mind was not the type to grasp the essentials of Volkspoëzie. Art he sees, certainly, as "navolging der natuur", but the true artist
1 For example Bilderdijk's instigation of Kinker to ridicule in his "Post van den Helicon" the sentimentality of Feith's romances.
2 "De Romancepoëzie in Noord-Nederland van 1780 tot 1830," p. 46.
3 Vide "Over de Romance" and "Over de Navolging der Natuur", Werken II; "Over de Waarde der Zinnelijkheid in de Poëzy", Werken III; "Over het Minnedicht in het Algemeen", Werken IV; "Verhandeling over het Heldendicht", Werken VI.
4 Given in his Brief "Over de Romance".



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
was one who "de schoone natuur navolgde" — far more than even Thomson, therefore, was he still the poet of "nature methodized". And, not surprisingly, the young Goethe he also failed completely to understand, though, ironically enough, the German poet was busy at that very time providing the formula for the art of the future — the Romantic. In consideration of these limitations, therefore, Dr Zijderveld sums up admirably when he writes: "De definitie van Goethe omtrent kunst sluit de volkskunst in, die van Feith sluit ze wel niet uit, maar betitelt ze toch als minderwaardig in vergelijking tot de scboone kunst.''1
With this variously assimilated load of theory and counter-theory to support him, Feith delayed no longer to plunge into the graf-, maan- en doodspoëzie" and — be it added — prose of Germany, of which apparently he could not now be anything but the perfect imitator! In these different groups it is not hard to detect the particular stimuli. In the poem "Werther en Ismeene" it is the "Werther" of Goethe that has been seized upon; in the foolish prose romance "Julia" it is the "Siegwart" of Miller; in "Lady Johanna Gray" it is Wieland's early tragedy of the same name. Of more interest to us, however, is the fact that with this German influence is seen gradually to interfuse an English one, if not always to any greater advantage. Goethe's "Werther", for instance, is again made large use of in Feith's second prose romance, "Ferdinand en Constantia", but it is perhaps significant of how he misses the true revolutionary spirit of this work in the way he makes his dismal hero pour perpetually over the poetry of Young and over "Ossian". Professor Prinsen is disposed to see his romances as "modelitteratuur in navolging van Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry". 2 But with this view I am not inclined in any way to agree. Professor Te
1 Op. cit., p. 49.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 189.



YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS
Winkel, it seems to me, sums up much more acutely here. "Feith," he plainly states, "had voor volkshumor geen gevoel." 1 Herder, Bürger,, Stolberg, De Moncrif for him, if you will — but not the great "Anon" of the ancient ballads. Personally, I would say that the far less versatile Bellamy offers more in his single "Roosje" (though the connotation "romance" has for him is not unlike Wordsworth's later conception of "ballad"). Feith, even when superficially he seems to be giving us Percy, is really providing us with the more spurious "Oudschotsch" atmosphereof "Ossian"; names like Colma and Alpin he clearly borrows from this source. 2 But of all the English sentimentalists it is, undoubtedly, to Young that he comes nearest in his own "pale cast of thought" — 3 Richardson he left to the lady novelists, Wolff and Deken, and to the poetess Elizabeth Post, and the much less subtle Blair again, to Betje Wolff. 4
Professor Ten Brink shows considerable courage when he writes: "Van den beginne is er iets nieuws in Feith's gedichten: de zeer duidelijke bewondering voor Klopstock's pathos," 5 for yas not this strong "man of feeling", in turn, a member of the tribe of Young? Assuredly, not any of the German poet's odes, nor even his "Messias", can take the place of "Night Thoughts" as the typical poem for Feith of this age of simulated melancholy. Also, Klopstock's nature was best attuned to lyric poetry; while Feith's "mortuary verse" has little that is lyrical in it, and shows him, like Young, as the heavy didactic-moral poet. De Beers
1 "De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," III, p. 47.
2 Dr Zijderveld also notes his use of Edwin, "later een veel voorkomende naam voor een romanceheid", and surmises that this he acquired from Goldsmith's "Edwin and Angelina".
3 Dutch translation of "Night Thoughts" published in 1767.
4 Strangely enough, the title of her "Eenzame Nachtgedachten over den Slaap en den Dood" almost as exactly suggests Young as does Feith's own "Graf", Blair.
8 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 565.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
questions if Blair and Young are strictly to be reckoned among the Romanticists, but decides finally in their favour when he thinks of the "Gothic" element in their work.1 lt is the very saving clause made out by Dr Zijderveld on behalf of Feith. "Men ziet," he says, "wat wij Romaanschen stijl noemen, heet
bij Feith 'Gothische' 2
Today such a sustained piece of rhetorical moralistng as Night Thoughts" constitutes, does seem made to destroy rather than to excite enjoyment. But this must not blind us to the fact that in that time of "the literature of low spirits" its air of theatrical gloom was thoroughly effective. What else than sheer Romancestarvation could ever have led Chateaubriand to consider it as the foundation of all descriptive, elegiac poetry, or Baculard d Arnaud to put it on a level with the "Inferno" and "Paradise Lost ? lts merits, though they may become more and more difficult to appreciate, are by no means indefinite, nor, in their own way, unimpressive; often in its admirable blank verse, beneath the exaggerated and declamatory style, indeed, we can find its actua initiature in Thomson's "Seasons".
Even less than Blair and Young did Feith suffer from the intense, sincere sadness of a Leopardi, or from any private or domestic calamity that might have given his verse the tone of final affliction that haunts a poem like Coleridge's "Dejection" ode. When we think of his ample means, his successful Burgomastersh.p of Zwolle, his large and comfortable household at beautiful Boschwijk, the whole story reads, in fact, more like a fairy-ta e than anything else.3 But Feith's disposition was naturally P>amü^e and sentimental, easily enabling him to exploit grief in the abstract" and turn it into a matter of attitudes and studied effects.
1 "A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century," p. 164.
• "De Romancepoëzie in Noord-Nederland ,» « yV- »
3 Ten Brink wittily likens him to the lucky man m Gellerts fabelen: Hj
leefde, nam een vrouw, en stierf."



YOUNG, "OSSIAN", AND THE BALLADS
What more obvious, therefore, than he should have encouraged this anti-vital droop by imitating the vogue best calculated to minister to it?
Something like definite revulsion of feeling must arise, I suppose, whenever we reflect on the inception of poems like "Het Graf" and the complementary "De Ouderdom". Fostered so conventionally, it is undeniably true that they are full of gross artificiality and sickly sentiment. Nevertheless, they are not the mere academie exercises in the art of grief and futile repining that all this might suggest. "Het Graf", at any rate, holds its place well in Dutch literature and has even something of the importance there of a definite landmark. 1 The success of Feith in Holland was, relatively, much greater than that of Young in England, for, as Professor Mackail has told us, this poet "was not fortunate in his chroniclers and critics any more than in the success of his poetry with the public".2 One thing only accounts for this. As Professor Ten Brink very positively declares: "In zekeren zin kende Feith zijn publiek." 3 Much less than Young had he any real feeling for nature, and more even than with him did it require the moralizing elegy to foster the true bent of his mind; such poetry quite admirably cloaked his thoughts on death, the grave, eternity, while being at the same time exactly to the liking of a public didactically led from childhood and earnestly prepared to find even the sterner passions worth an effort to understand. Death and Romanticism had been so traditionally associated through Young and his like that it was an inevitable phase, therefore, that now accepted Feith all unquestioningly as "de vriend der treurigen, de dichter van het hart" and allowed him to go sentimentalising through four complete — how perfectly chosen the term! — Zangen:
1 A German translation was made in 1821 and even a Hebrew one in 1836.
2 "Edward Young" in "Studies of English Poets", p. 115.
3 Op. cit., p. 569.
5



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"Zoo is de stille rust voor eeuwig de aarde ontvloden?
Zoo woont zij nergens meer dan in 't verblijf der dooden?
o Matte pelgrim! zink vrolijk dan ter rust,
Gij doolde reeds te lang aan deze levenskust.
Rampzalige aarde, die een Eden kondt vertrekken,
Maar die door stroomen bloeds uw velden ziet bevlekken!
Rampzalige aarde, wie uw Schepper mild beschonk,
Maar wie het menschdom aan 't verwoestend misdrijf klonk!
Nog daalt de lente van 't gebergte met uw stroomen;
Nog ruischt natuur in ieder koeltje door uw boomen;
Nog spiegelt zich de maan in d'onbewogen vliet;
Maar rust, rampzalige aard'! woont op uw vlakte niet!
"o Eenzaam kerkhof, daar mijn dierbre vaadren wonen,
Gij kunt mij in 't verschiet de blijde ruste toonen;
Ik dool langs uwen grond in dezen stillen nacht.
En staar de wijkplaats aan, die mijn gebeente eens wacht.
Hier onder dezen eik, hier zal ik rust genieten,
Hier zal geen zucht mijn borst, geen traan mijn oog ontschieten;
Hier drijven de eeuwen met haar schande en leed voorbij,
En 't zwart geschichtverhaal bestaat niet meer voor mij.
De wraakzucht aast 'er niet op heilloosheid en smarte;
Geen trouwloos boezemvriend wet hier een' dolk voor t harte;
De hoogmoed zwijgt 'er, en de driften zwijgen meê,
En in dat vaderland woont ongestoorde vreê.
De Nachtster, die mijn oog door tranen vaak aanschouwde,
De Wagen, wien ik vaak mijn lijdend hart vertrouwde,
De Maan, die menigwerf mijn doornig pad bescheen,
Die allen blikken dan op mijn' gerusten steen!
o Stille dooden, die den lijder hier omringen,
Ook gij hebt leed gekend, ook gij waart stervelingen!
Hoe menig sluimert hier in 's aardrijks koelen schoot,
Wien, ach! een leven lang! de rust als mij ontvloot,
Die door een knagend heer van zorgen voorgedreven,
Zijn aanzijn vond beperkt tot een rampzalig leven!
En nu — hij ziet, hij hoort, hij denkt, hij voelt niet meer.
Zijn hoofd zonk zachtkens op de koele peluw neêr,
En smaakt nu in den kring van zijne voorgeslachten
Een rust, waarna mijn ziel nog rusteloos blijft smachten!
Alongside "Het Graf", with its introverted splashes of troubled feeling, the heroic poetry of "Ossian" feil naturally into line, and



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
Young and Macpherson may well be thought of as having made a triumphal tour of Europe together — with the "Reliques" of Bishop Percy cropping up to meet them in the most unexpected corners. Like Young himself, Macpherson could only have been accepted when Europe had imagined itself into a mist of despondency and despair; his bagpipe wail of wistful longing for the chants of the dim, heroic past was just the right note to sound. In Holland, lagging behind the general Romantic Movement, it was heard later than in most countries; at a stage when, in fact, the most important littérateurs in England had already somewhat nigglingly, on purely ethical grounds, pronounced against the importance of "Ossian" so-called. But that made little difference to the enthusiasm shown towards these spirited reconstructions of the epic story of Fingal: Macpherson was a real poet, and, whether forger and dissembler besides, was not allowed to enter into the matter at all. Nor can it be said that in Holland there has ever been any sort of spectacular denunciation of Macpherson the man; and for there at least the otherwise rather easy assumption of Dr Smart seems correct enough: "To this day the belief that Ossian is one of the glories of English literature, a burning planet in our sky, lingers over the Continent."1 It was simply that the Dutch ultimately grew out of him,when his unflagging passages of Gaeliccum-Bible rhetoric had done their work in permitting adaptation and emulation, however uncritical, and freeing men's minds from the fetters of an outmoded classicism. Meantime, at this naïve stage in the development of the Romantic ideal, they had little real conception of what it was he was doing so skilfully and plausibly, but accepted him in his entirety as the supremely unconscious artist. The way may have been paved for him by the idealistic revolt of Van Alphen; but there had still been lacking an embodiment of these feelings of awakened subjectivity, and such a projection it became his brilliantly to supply.
1 "James Macpherson: An Epistle in Literature," p. II.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Holland's first indication of the awareness of the "poet of the genius of ruins and battles" came in 1763, with the very tentative translation of "The Songs of Selma" made by Van Lelyveld. But it required Van Alphen in 1779 to make more popular acknowledgment by prefixing to his "Nederlandsche Gedichten" ai quotation from these. Next in 1793 came Van de Kasteele s translation in unrhymed hexameters, "De Gedichten van Ossiaan". This was only a first part, but no more was ever published; and, in any case, Van de Kasteele was too much the scholar and too little the poet to be the right person to tackle the job as it deserved. The first really effective study in Holland, therefore, was only when the much greater Bilderdijk published his "Fingal in Zes Zangen, naar Ossiaan gevolgd", written variously between 1795 and 1805.1 Bilderdijk's part here can hardly be overestimated; for if it was the melancholy tenderness of Macpherson's treatment of the old Celtic legends of Scotland that, more than any other single force, brought about the revival of Romance in Hurope, it is not too much to say that it was Bilderdijk more than any other who spread the inspiring gospel in the Netherlands. 2 And it is because (in addition to considering him the most outstanding poetic figure and personality between Vondel and Kloos) I regard this particular work as furnishing the clue to the most important factor in his whole literary development, that I feel some larger analysis of his mind, character, ideas, should now be attempted.
That the true precursor of the new urge in poetry should have been Willem Bilderdijk — a man so little outwardly in the fashion of the day as to seem almost the least likely of all to become the upholder and virtual resuscitator of Romance — must, I
1 Kollewijn tells us that he had already written fragments of it to Feith ("Bilderdijk," Vol. I, p. 272).
2 "Bilderdijks prachtige bewerking van Ossiaan," says Hofdijk, heeft Kasteeles geheel doen vergeten" ("Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," Footnote, p. 397).



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
suppose, be accounted one of the supreme paradoxes of Dutch literary history. About this poet there has always been something peculiarly enigmatical. In his own time Sir John Bowring could write of him: "The intellectual powers, the varied erudition of Bilderdijk, are not more remarkable than the purity of his life and the warmth of his benevolent affections." 1 Thirty years later it was possible for Longfellow almost entirely to reverse this judgment and say: "His feelings were strong and impetuous. He was 'a good hater'; and his expressions of literature and national animosity were often violent and overcharged." 2 About his actual works Busken Huet was well-nigh shattering, summing up the majority of them under the fearful head of "schrijfoefeningen". 3 Of the Tachtigers, in turn, he was one of the first and greatest victims, even if their youthful immoderation we may now largely discount. 4 It is all very bewildering to the foreigner. But the truth, it seems to me, is that Bilderdijk — as the author of well over a hundred works, and despite all the winnowing of them that has taken place — is still far too big and versatile a personage to be fitted into any ready-made scheme of the critics. His was certainly genius by productivity. And, while saying this, there need be no necessary inconsistency in substantiating the view of Sir Edmund Gosse of "this remarkable man, whose force of character was even greater than his genius" and who "impressed his personality on his generation so indelibly that to think of a Dutchman of the beginning of the present century is to think of Bilderdijk". 5
As a writer it might be said that Bilderdijk was "everything by turns and nothing long". An avowed student of the classics, he
1 "Batavian Anthology," Introduction, p. 15.
2 "The Poets and Poetry of Europe," p. 393.
3 "Litterarische Fantasiën en Kritieken," XXIV, p. 126.
4 Vide Part I of A. Heyting's "Willem Bilderdijk als Dichter" — "Albert Verwey en Bilderdijk".
5 "The Encyclopedia Britannica," Ninth Edition, Vol. XII, p. 96.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
began with a translation, in the usual Alexandrines, of the "CEdipus Tyrannus", and continued with a long list of other translations or free renderings from Theocritus, Horace, Anacreon. The classical drama of France claimed him for a time, and under its inspiration he produced "Kormak", "Floris de Vijfde", and "Willem van Holland". Epic he essayed, and designed as his life's masterpiece his treatment of the Biblical "Ondergang der Eerste Wereld". But he was no Milton to dedicate himself seriously to such a task, and the poen remained but a fragment. Sir Edmund Gosse is again in error, in describing his early ' Elius as an epic, when it is actually no more than a long narrative piece.1 Didactic verse he also produced endlessly — most notably perhaps in "De Ziekte der Geleerden". For the English Augustan writers, as it happened, he had a distinct fondness. Pope he paid compliment to by translating his "Essay on Man", 2 while Goldsmith he had definitely in mind in picturing his "Dorpsschoolmeester" in "Het Buitenleven" : 3
"'t. Heelal, het gansche dorp, staat van den man verstomd,
En weet niet hoe één hoofd aan zoo veel wijsheid komt.
And to all this can be added his "Geschiedenis des Vaderlands", his treatise on poetic diction, Taal- en Dichtkundige Verscheidenheden", and his scholarly contributions on philology and lexiocography.
It is a formidable array of talent. Yet, only the half has been told — and, as I think of it, the lesser half. It is the artist on his most formal side; the Classicist; the mystifying linguist; the Nationalist historian; the lawyer; the private tutor; the Calvinistic religionist. It is precisely what we would expect the steady, regularising part of his genius to disclose — his "infinite capacity
1 Op. cit., p. 97.
2 "De Mensch", written 1804—1805, published 1808.
3 Otherwise a translation of Delille's "L'homme des Champs .



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
for taking pains". Above all, one would say, it is the poet he has become — "met geheel zijn wezen , and niet met geheel zijn ziel". It is what corresponds in his life to all that was antirevolutionary, anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevensteinish, anti-liberal
and, for myself I would add, all that was anti-Romantic! It is
the view he presents as the intolerant dictator of literature, always so tiresomely pronouncing in favour of the past and always so determinedly opposed to the present; the view he gives as the ponderous scholar, the self-righteous, self-opinionated moralist, the stupid provincial who could calmly place Vondel above Milton and affect to abominate the "kindergrillen" of Shakespeare and, it would seem, the same kind of "puerillities" in Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and many another name great in poetry. The picture begins to lose its attractive colouring;in fact, it has changed into that of a singularly uninviting, unpleasing figure. How — one is quite justified in asking — can the productions, whether in prose or verse, of so insufferable a pedant as this, so merciless a castigator of the work of others, be truly of a calibre to entitle him to a high and lasting place in the literary records of his own — or any — country?
Such a rank he, undoubtedly, has — and merits. But, to me, it is no longer due on the basis of the great classicist — when he was only a stereotyped one; no longer as the purveyor of creative drama — when he but happened to be well versed in the canons of Aristotle; no longer as the Miltonian epic poet — when his respect was primarily for form and an appropriatelyassumed elevation of religious tone. On all of these scores it is by no means difficult to indict him. Indeed, as with Vondel himself, it seems to me we can now cast away, as having served their day, most of those very works for which for a century he has been chiefly lauded. The truth is that for dramatic and epic poetry his nature was entirely too subjective. Bij Shakespeare," says Jonckbloet, "spreken de menschen, bij Bilderdijk



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
spreekt de situatie." 1 Again, declares Ten Brink emphatically: "Voor het zuiver epische was de aanleg van Bilderdijk niet geschikt." 2 Nor is he even to be accepted as the complete Popean. He is at once too moralitarian and heavy-footed. It is highly symptomatic that Pope's famous "Whatever is, is right" has to be evangelised into: "Wat de Almacht heeft gewrocht, is onberisplijk goed"; while the point of "The Dunciad" is overrun completely in a macabre performance like his "Rondedans om een Doodkist" — "Humor is schaarsch in zijn werk," says Professor Kalff with unusual bluntness. 3
As to what, then, was the forte of Bilderdijk, Ten Brink, 1 consider, never wrote truer words than when he summed up his vast and miscellaneous output with the words: "De lyrische, de didactische poëzie, vooral, als hij uit den vollen overvloed zijner kennis kan putten en in breede schilderingen zijn rhythmisch genie kan openbaren — ziedaar zijn terrein." 4 The only slightly chilling note for me in this judgment is the emphasis placed on his didactic work: poetry so overcharged with unbendingly dogmatic principles, as lacking in beauty as in verve, must always remain for me of a mediocre and sententious order. I am, however, in full agreement with any view that sees in him the lyric poet above all else; for, though there can be little question that he started off with marked limitations even in this röle, none was at all so disabling as when he aspired to scale the heights of epic or to create actual dramatic characters — no more was he truly the "geboren dichter", but at least he showed himself willing to try to make himself a singer. It is usual to hold that he was handicapped principally because the lyric urge was not sufficiently backed by abounding joie-de-vivre. But this, I think, is due to the
1 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," Part VI, p. 57.
2 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 578.
3 "Geschiedenis der Nelerlandsche Letterkunde," Vol. VII, p. 75.
4 Op. cit., p. 586.



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
confusion that is bound to be created when we seek too precisely to separate what is lyrical and what is Romantic in his work. For the Holland of Bilderdijk's time these were not really such distinctive issues; and also in him, more than in any other contemporary poet, the two aspects seem to have been inextricably intertwined. Is it without significance that he who knew so well Macpherson and Percy's "Reliques", and even caught up a little with Byron ultimately, seems never to have heard of "Lyrical Ballads", or of Shelley or Keats, though he outlived the latter by ten full years?
Like his great contemporary, Scott, Bilderdijk had wished to become a soldier, but had been thwarted in that design, likewise through an accident, and so had settled down to the study of the law and the classics. As a classical student, it is certain that he remained far from satisfied with his attainments. The work he set himself to do demanded calm and serenity. But in his own mind, to begin with, Bilderdijk never possessed these attributes; this poet, seemingly so sure of himself, so aggressively certain about his political, religious, and artistic beliefs, was, in truth, a restless, unhappy soul. A Dutch Strindberg more than anything else he was, even more deliberately taking in his hand "the pilgrim's staff and sandals swift for roaming" and forcing himself away from the Fatherland he loved and sought to serve in his own devious fashion. Modern psycho-analysis would certainly have an exciting story to teil of him. What was his problem? On the surface, a sturdy political type, a staunch Calvinist, a born teacher and preacher; but beneath, a revolutionary fire-brand, a blatant non-church-goer, an egotistical scoffer, as disappointed of an academic chair as Swift of an episcopal one. The portents all suggest that he would be one of the very first types to be suspect in our day. We have no wish to follow all the way with Freud and his school, but may it not really be that we have hitherto viewed the man too much on the outside and given too



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
little consideration to that other, possibly repressed, side, covering a wide variety of inhibitions — the true Bilderdijk, as likely as not? Might we not through psychology learn something of value about the philosophical doubter, the Jansenist sympathizer, the sensualist and writer of erotic verses, the man who could make the passionate avowal: "Ik kan niet leven buiten eene vrouw"? More perhaps we do not need to know. Already there is enough to unmask the continuous rebel against restriction and convention, the constant seeker after spiritual freedom; and, I believe, beneath the trained Classicist, all the elements that might go towards the making of an even greater Romanticist...
Professor Vaughan affects a rather naïve suprise, it seems to me, when he writes of Bilderdijk that "it is something of a shock to find that he also turned his head to the romantic Ossian .1 Apart from the ineluctable force of that great vogue, this is to overlook too much the fact that already he had composed a great many poetical romances. 2 For these he had drawn upon the widest sources possible — Oriental, Indian, Swedish, Frankish, German, in making two translations from Bürger, and (following Herder) even from Laplandish. His English period commenced in 1795, when he followed Willem V into exile; for, though only two of the ten years spent out of Holland were passed in London, it was these, undoubtedly, that had the most formative value of all. Their momentum, it is obvious, carried right through the far longer Brunswick period, and during the full decade were produced the voluminous translations from "Ossian" and at least fifty other translations from English, chiefly from Percy's "Reliques". It is a fascinating sort of metamorphosis; and even Ten Brink, who otherwise makes much allowance for the influence
1 "The Romantic Revolt" — "Periods of European Literature," Vol. X, p. 475.
2 The following is a list of them: — "Olinde en Theodoor" (1785), "Elius" (1786), "Ahacha" (1788), "Yrwin en Vreedebag" (1788), "Ada" (1790), "Bertha" (1792), "Katharina Herman" (1793), "Roosjen" (1794), "De Indiaansche Maagdenroover" (1794), "De Vrouwen van Wijnsberg" (1794).



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
of those German writers so much maligned by the poet himself, feels bound to record: "Hij leeft jaren in Duitschland, terwijl Goethe zijn 'Hermann und Dorothea' (1797), Schiller zijn 'Jungfrau von Orleans' (1801), Novalis zijn 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' (1802), Hebei zijne 'Alemannische Gedichte' (1803), en Herder zijn 'Cid' (1805) in het licht geven — hij bemerkt er niets van." 1
The atmosphere of London apparently suited Bilderdijk far better than that of Brunswick or, for that matter, than any of his own cities. 2 His reception in the British capital appears to have been cordial in the extreme, and on his own showing (in that strange, mixed English that was, thirty years later, both to amuse and amaze Southey) the people there looked upon him as "the Encyclopedy alive". 3 Very quickly he settled down, married for the second time, and found himself seriously contemplating a union of Great Britain and Holland under the sovereignty of George III. All the time his writing went on. To Romance he had at least served his early apprenticeship; but it was only now that he prepared conclusively to enter the lists as its staunch upholder; and during this time he steeped himself as completely in every form of heroic poetry, ballad poetry, folk poetry, as previously he had done in the classics and in the literature of France. And whom better could he possibly have followed here than the mighty-sounding "Ossian" and the doughty Percy (like a literary Bishop Odo, assembling his "Reliques" as magically as the Bayeux Tapestry of old)? What wonder if these jointly became the great and well-nigh inexhaustible sources of his best Romantic endeavour?
Though the miracle of Bilderdijk's Romantic conversion must be shared, it is easily possible to separate the individual influences
1 Op. cit., p. 582.
2 He seems first to have lived at 39 Sloane-steet, Knightsbridge, afterwards at 3 Cleveland Row, St. James's.
3 Vide Kollewijn, "Bilderdijk," Vol. I, p. 253.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
at work (the difference being one of method, not of kind). In the main it is the general against the particular: "Fingal" we must take in bulk, the ballads in their peculiar incidence. This is probably to begin the collected "Zangen" with a tremendous advantage; yet, it is not, I feel, an unfair one, but one which it sustains and justifies out to the end. Comparing the ballad work of Bilderdijk with the originals in Percy or (strange juxtaposition) Goldsmith, Professor Kalff finds that it falls very far short in almost every way — "in zin en eenvoud, in beeldende kennis en verhaaltrant". 1 Of "Ossiaan", on the other hand, he has nothing to say. Indeed, it amazes me that the accepted critics have so little to say about this, to me, wholly admirable performance
— by far the finest single feat in the whole catalogue of the poet's achievements. The usually conservative Ten Brink for once comes almost best out of the list. He even comes near, I think, to accounting for the fundamental reason behind this striking success when he writes: "Dat Bilderdijk op zoo meesterlijke wijze vertaalde, spreekt luide voor zijne gadelooze bedrevenheid in de techniek der poëzie. Daar hij bij vertalingen zich liet leiden door den gedachtengang van een ander kunstenaar, kwam de dichter Bilderdijk alleen op den voorgrond en bleef de menscb Bilderdijk geheel in de schaduw. Juist hierdoor werden zijne vertalingen meesterstukken." 2 There is more to it than that, of course; and, personally, I doubt if it has so much to commend it technically, as it has spiritually. The fact that it is in rhyme serves to draw attention certainly and is not in itself to be interpreted as a weakness — did not Coleridge give an imitation of "Ossian" in ballad-metre, and did not Macpherson himself seriously think at first of using the heroic couplet? Not here can it truthfully be said — as it has often been said — that the long, free-flowing Dutch Alexandrines are not in keeping with the dynamic prose-
1 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," Vol. VI, p. 391.
- Op. cit., p. 581.



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
poetry of "Fingal". Indeed, for almost the first time in the literary history of Holland is there a splendid defiance of their worst tyrannies — aided, no doubt, by the poet's experienced and tuneful love of the harp of David. Hardly less effectively, therefore, than the authentic "Ossian" — if that is ever the right word to use — do they captivate us by their unusual naïvety, their altered ruggedness for Nature and the primitive things:
Naby aan Turaas Wal, by 't ruischen van een pijn Hem ritslend over 't hoofd, zat d'eedle Kuthullijn.
Zijn speer leunde aan de rots, zijn schild lag aan zijn zijde In 't gras. Hij peinsde, en dacht (de Krijgsman, heet ten stijde!) Den flag met Karbar na, door zijnen arm geveld.
Een sombre aandoenlijkheid vermeesterde den Held;
Wen Fithils wakkre zoon hem onverhoeds genaakte,Hy, die aan 't Noordlijk strand de waterkust bewaakte.
Aamechtig van den spoed, verried zijn woeste blik In 't hol en starrende oog een' onbedwingbren schrik.
"Rijs (sprak hy), Veldheer! rijs! Ik zie de Noordsche kielen.
Zy zetten strandwaart heen! Een menigte van zielen Bemant ze, en Zwaran spoedt met duizenden door 't meir.
Te wapen, Erins Hoofd! hy nadert met zijn heir." —
De Veldheer ziet hem aan, verheft zijn blaauwende oogen Al lachende, en herneemt: "De vrees heeft u bedrogen.
Steeds beeft ge, o Fithils zoon, en siddert buiten nood,
En de angst, die u bedwelmt, heeft 's vijands magt vergroot, 't Is Fingal, die zijn hulp ons aanvoert door de baren!" —
Among all the many converts that he made in every clime, it is doubtful if Macpherson ever made a more completely satisfactory one than Bilderdijk. Such a follower (especially could it have been learned that he knew fifteen different languages and had himself translated generously from the "ancients") would have been intensely gratifying to "L'Homère du Nord". There was probably something of Macpherson's own vanity, ingenuity, deviousness, in the nature of Bilderdijk; or how otherwise could he ever have asserted of his "Zangen van Ossiaan" that "hij ze uit het oorspronkelijk Keltisch vertaald had", in



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
which, as Dr Zijderveld caustically comments, "nooit iemand ze gezien heeft, zelfs Macpherson niet"?1 Yet, on the grounds of plain misunderstanding and simplicity, we might well, 1 think, acquit him of intentional duplicity; for, just as he had been the first "Ossianist" in Holland, so he must surely have been the 'latest-left' in all Europe; so late as 1809 he was still undeceived over Chatterton and "explique les doutes des Anglais sur Ossian par leur manie de voir partout des faux, qu il s agisse de testaments ou de papiers d'affaires, manie dont il a, dit-il, souffert personellement en Angleterre". 2
In turning, concurrently with this work, to the composition of the ballads, it is clear that Bilderdijk made no absolute distinction between this form and the romance (as the English poets were careful to do). As Dr Zijderveld notes; "Bij Bilderdijk en zijn vrouw is romance de gewone naam voor allerlei epische gedichten." 3 "Ballad" was, therefore, as yet a foreign word in Holland, and only the later efforts of Tollens and Bogaers succeeded in definitely popularising it. For the fact that the Dutch poet confounded all ancient poetry together and sought merely the reproduction of metrical heroic tales we must, to some extent, blame his mentor, Percy, paradoxical though such a statement may sound. The value of his "Reliques" - in Professor Herford's phrase, the "Bible of the Romantic reformation" — I do not for a moment wish to underrate. But, though behind the compilation of his great work was the desire to show the world what treasures of beauty, pathos, and magnificence lay buried in the old Minstrel Ballads of the Middle Ages, it is not so generally realized that his collections embraced such diversity of types as the pastoral "Robin and Makyne" and the artistically perfect love-lyrics' Come
1 Op. cit., p. 155.
2 P. Van Tieghem, "Ossian et 1'Ossianisme dans la Littérature Europeenne au XVIlIe Siècle," p. 12.
3 Op. cit., p. 42.



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
live with me and be my Love" and "To Lucasta, on going to the Wars", as well as genuine, instinctively-written folk-songs. His reason, of course, is not far to seek. A pioneer, he feit bound in his Preface to make apologies for the "unliterary literature" of balladry, and by skilful editing to seek to modify the rough fare offered. Small blame, then, to Bilderdijk if he gave to "ballad" an interpretation almost inadmissably wide. Much more serious is the fact that, when he did essay his task, he should have given so little critical study to the enormous wealth of tradition behind the whole form. Many undue liberties, therefore, he assumed with its usage; with the result that, in the main, his productions smack of a sentimentality which this — the most sturdy growth in the entire development of literature — certainly does not have.
In general it can be said that he catches the metres well enough:
"Zij droeg een gouden keten Met diamanten boot;
Die hong haar van de schouders,
En wapperde in haar' schoot."
"Vergeefsch, met wapens in de hand De wachters aangetast!
Vergeefsch, een vreemd, een gastvrij land Met stroomen bloeds beplascht!"
But, against that, he usually misses that earth-bound realism of the spirit which is the abiding charm of every great ballad. I shall illustrate this very simply. Percy in "Sweet William's Ghost" gives typically:
"Then up and crew the red red cock And up and crew the gray."
In Bilderdijk's translated version, "Des Minnaar's Geest", these lines are very much less colourfully rendered by:
"Met kraaide daar de Dorpstêehaan En scheidde zich de lucht."



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
The incurable diffuseness of the Dutchman also militates against a high measure of success. Often he requires two stanzas, or even three sometimes, for no more than one in the Reliques . We have an excellent example of this trait in his very first adaptation of a genuine old ballad. It is "Child Waters and the verse runs:
"She leaned her backe to the manger side,
And grievously did groane:
She leaned her backe to the manger side,
And there she made her moane."
Bilderdijk's "Jonker Brand van Wijk" manages to expand this somewhat ludicrously out to:
"Zij leunt zich zuchtend aan de ruif
En schreeuwt en gilt het uit,
En kromt het lichaam van de pijn Waarmee het zich ontsluit."
"De droeve jammert hier eri schreit,
Van allen heul ontbloot:
Niets speurt ze dan een scheurend wee,
Niets wacht zij dan de dood."
He also lost a further great opportunity by not making his selections the best available. Often, indeed, he seems to have gone out of his way to procure the most exotic or least interesting models; such as "Valentine and Ursine" and The Child of Elle . Or he may decide to serve up his simple matter so richly and mysteriously that in the process it grows almost out of recognition. this, rather notoriously, he does with his Spanish-flavoured Almanzor en Zaïde", which is at heart no more than Percy's "Gentle River", and with his French-flavoured Graaf Floris de Vierde , when 'all the time "Young Waters" or "The Bonnie Earl o| Murray" was crying out simply to be translated. In Edom o Gordon" he does take one of the most famous of Scottish ballads, but once more, almost from the start, the sense of direct appeal is



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
lost when he changes the title itself into the meaningless "Adam Gordon"!
To the Dutch reader here, most tantalising feature of all must remain the fact that for Bilderdijk, wrestling with difficult foreign elements so continually, it never came to mean asking why there was no native oral tradition to correspond to that of Scotland and England. Such a tradition, in fact, there had been, going as far back as to Jakob van Maerlant. It had certainly become hopelessly involved with the many classes of devotional songs in which Holland at all times has been rich; but disentanglement was by no means impossible, as Le Jeune 1 proved within Bilderdijk's own life-time, and Hoffmann again a year or two after it. 2 Bilderdijk, however, had neither a genius nor imagination that could, like Scott's, join the history of balladry to the ranks of science by a wide research into the story of origins and variant versions; and even if it had been found to exist, it is questionable if he could have tackled successfully picturesque material of a kind comparable with Percy's "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Chevy Chase". Only then, however, do I really think he would deserve to be fitted completely into Van Elring's all-too-flattering picture: "Maerlant, Vondel en Bilderdijk zijn de vaderen onzer poëzie, de machtige werkers, de brede geesten, die gepoogd hebben ons volk op te drijven, en werkelijk ook met reuzenstappen hebben vooruitgebracht, ondanks hun vaak behoudende ideeën." 3 Once the harsh reviler of English poetical taste, with its "verwoestenden invloed", 4 Bilderdijk by the beginning of the nineteenth century was clearly becoming reconciled to some of the younger writers there; particularly to Campbell, Southey, and
1 "Letterkundig overzigt en proeven van de Nederlandsche Volks-zangen sedert de XVde Eeuw" (1828).
2 "Hollandische Volkslieder, gesammelt und erlautert von Dr Heinrich Hoffmann" (1833).
3 "Bloemlezing uit de Gedichten van Willem Bilderdijk," Preface, IX.
4 "Brieven," II, p. 203.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Scott. His romance, "De Marokkane", he based on Campbell s "Turkish Lady", and he made a translation of the same poet's "The Brave Roland". With Southey he exchanged some complimentary verses and the English poet actually stayed with him for almost four weeks at Leyden in 1825.1 Mevrouw Bilderdijk also, in 1823, translated "Roderick the Goth". But these contacts cannot be taken as more than pleasant personal interludes — compared with what might have been! However, we must not be too unreasonable: if he showed no knowledge or appreciation of the other members of the 'Lake School', there is Professor Kalff to remind us that'Wordsworth was as yet but (a generous estimate) "half gewaardeerd" among his own countrymen.2 His lapses over Scott are less excusable, for "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" was known to him and he had been given "Waterley" to read by his friend Da Costa. 3 But he was now well over sixty years of age- his Romantic enthusiasms had died down, or been replaced by fresh lyric impulses and a Campbell-like fondness for pure "strijdpoëzie". Even so, following "Ossian", it seems he would fain have done further justice to Scotland itself. That nation definitely attracted him, a note about it running that it had originally "veel Hollandsch". He duly selects, therefore, from "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders" (sic). Unfortunately, however, his eye lighting on "The Curse of Moy", he proceeds to translate this as "De Vloek van 't Burchtslot Moy , under the mistaken notion that it was by Scott (as perhaps, despite the names of people like Morritt, he imagined the entire contents of the "Minstrelsy" to have been!) 4 Bilderdijk, it is plain, would
1 An account of this visit is given by Southey in his "Epistle to Allan Cunningham" ("Works," Vol. 111, pp. 311, 312).
2 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, Vol. VII p. 110.
3 In his Brieven he makes mention of this novel, as well as Ken.lworth,
"The Abbot", "Ivanhoe". ,, „ .
^ This error is repeated by Vissink ("Scott and his Influence on Dutch
Literature," p. 125).



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
himself have made a poor editor for so eclectic a work, for we find again in his "Sint Albaan" that, while he actually draws upon the story of Scott's "Fire King", he proceeds to ascribe it this time to his own friend Southey! And the metre seems also to prove that he had definitely Scott in mind, for it is in exactly his early anapaestic style:
"Nu schudden haar knieën, heur blosjen verschiet."
Where Bilderdijk still breaks down as a disciple of Scott, however, is in his failure to disabuse his Romanticism of that strain of sentimentality he affected to despise so unutterably in contemporaries like Feith and Post: the truth being that, as Dr Zijderveld thesistically positions himself to maintain, "Bilderdijk toont zich in zijn romancen veel meer een sentimenteel poëet, dan hij zelf wil doen voorkomen".1 He had a heart more sensitive perhaps than Scott's, but also one far more unquiet; a heart born out of self-pity and passion in the best manner of the current Wereld-smart — in a word, the heart of a Byron ...
Between the actual lives of Bilderdijk and Byron Professor Prinsen has drawn an illuminating comparison — the unhappy boyhood of each, their disastrous marriages, their sharp reactions at all times to authority, their political exile and complete social ostracisation. And in their respective ideas he has also found something to compare — Byron's continuous lashing of English hypocrisy and Bilderdijk's endless vituperations against almost every colleague and contemporary, their joint love of liberty, and their unusual fondness for the writings of Pope. 2 Unfortunately, not much in the end is to be made of these deductions; the use to which these experiences and ideas were put having been so wholly at variance. The fact that, withal, Bilderdijk was Dutch simply serves to change the entire complexion of matters. He was a born Dutch-
1 The fifth of the Stellingen attached to his "Romancepoëzie in Noord-Nederland van 1780 tot 1830".
2 Vide "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 195.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
man and, so far from being able to follow Byron all the way, found — as all his kind were bound to find — "iets aanstootelijks" 1 about the Englishman's moral nature and character, which forced him to deal tentatively and sparingly in turn with his writings. A doubtful poem like "Beppo", therefore, he does not translate, but contents himself with using the couplet beginning "I love the language, that soft bastard Latin" as a text for a poem on Italian; while in "Childe Harold" he merely suits himself with a rendering of "Adieu, adieu my native shore".
Apologists have suggested that Bilderdijk reserved his best blooms for age It is the view of Bavinck, Da Costa, Kollewijn, Heyting. And certainly in poems like "Landzang", "Uitvaart", "Aan de Nachtegaal", "Licht en Schaduw", "'t Gebed", we find inspiration that rises to clear and swift-moving heights; while no longer is the poet at the mercy of every classical allusion that blows. Yet, the unevenness remains, the baroque and tedious style, the all 'too frequent descents into triteness and bathos. There is a perversely repetitive habit of thought - the massed artillery o the Olympian gods may have gone, but it is the still heavier ordnance of the Calvinistic morality that has to make good the deficiency. It may not be true to say that his art has stood still, yet it is not to be denied that there exists in the mind of the poet a strange confusion with regard to it; his "romantic" penod past, he is again very much the man of indecision swayed between the old and the new, the eighteenth century and the mn^ent ' between feeling and raciocination. Almost everything of Shakespeare's he has now read, 2 yet gives us nothing to equal his early unrhymed commentary on "Romeo and Juliet"; rhyme he seems to regard as more than ever essential to poetry; he develops no taste for nature, music, beauty - het liet
2 DrToUewijn suggïts that this was during his penod of residence in London ("Bilderdijk: zijn Leven en zijn Werk," Vol. II, P- 4 ).



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
hem alles koud"; of Wordsworth's theory concerningpoeticdiction he seems never to have heard, but as much as ever ekes out his compositions with resounding words and forced effects. The whole truth seems to be that, though he has tried hard enough to take the implications of his art, he has never managed to work out an adequate theory of poetry. With the realm of pure aesthetics he had little concern — being content to take the word of Lessing in all things — and on that score marks an advance on predecessors like Van Alphen and Feith. His general definition of poetry, however, surprises us not a little by having the true Wordsworthian mark upon it. Poëzie, he declares, "is eenzelvig; zij is uitgieting van het overstelpende Gevoel, even onwillekeurig als schreien of lachen; uitstorting van het hart; afspiegeling van het binnenste der ziel; uitdrukking van het innigste overtuigen." * are at once in difficulties, however, when we begin to enquire what he means by concepts like beauty, feeling, nature. Over the first-named especially there is a distinct vagueness about his thinking. When he speaks of it as Eenheid gevoeld", we might think of it as subjective, as something we can receive; but when he goes on to say:
"De Dichtkunst des Poëets, de Godsdienst van den Christen Is één,"
he indicates that it is really something to be reproduced for us. "Objectief bestaat de schoonheid in de afspiegeling van Gods alvolmaaktheid en algenoegzaamheid." 2 It is, thus, a conception far from the undiluted feeling of Keats; nor could it possibly hope to satisfy the later Jachtigers. Again, in his "Kunst der Poëzie", he insists:
"Ja, uw kunstkracht is gevoelen,
Juist gevoelen, met een hart," _
but in practice makes no strong distinction between art and know-
1 "Taal- en Dichtkundige Verscheidenheden," Part I, p. I ff.
2 "H. Bavinck, "Bilderdijk als Denker en Dichter," p. 149.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
ledge or science, and altogether too obviously and strenuously intellectualises this "feeling". Nor can we say of him that "Nature he loved, and next to Nature art". Here, above all, he would have clashed badly with the English nature poets: even if they had accepted his picture of their supposed "tuinaanleg", his own desire for a "tuinkunst" would quickly have put him back with Pope and Shenstone. Wordsworth might well have proved to him how profoundly Nature herself could be followed; but instead he preferred to traffick with the Kantian metaphysic that "het Ding an sich kennen wij niet" and with Leibnitz's theory of "monads" and produce an oftentimes fantastic amalgam of philosophy and descriptive verse. That "geen natuurkind dus is Bilderdijk's muze" 1 is, no doubt, an incontrovertible conclusion, but it is also precisely where he comes most short of the very greatest Romantic poets.
Indefatigable as was his scholastic energy, colossal as was his classical range, we must in the end come back to Bilderdijk the early Romantic. Altogether too fulsome, I consider, has been the recognition given him on those other scores, all too slight the recognition on this one. He was, it is true, a Romantic with a difference — a Dutch difference, if you like; no Byron or Hugo, as Professor Prinsen points out, yet "in den grond ... dezelfde romanticus". 2 The day he sensed what Romance was — that it might be more than "losse scherts van weinig arbeid" — and decided to throw in his lot with "Ossian" was — I scarcely hesitate to say quite the most momentous of his whole literary career, making him at one sweep the father of Romanticism in his own country, and shedding lustre upon a period in its poetry barren in all but German sentimentality. Not all the stimulation of the events in the national history between 1813 and 1830 could really do as much for him as a couple of years spent in
1 Kollewijn, Op. cit., II, p. 454.
2 Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 195.



YOUNG, "OSSIAN" AND THE BALLADS
England; for here in London it was that he, who had once begun so unpromisingly as to speak of Schiller as geen poëet , lived to make triumphant amends by grasping the hand of Macpherson, by going back with Percy to the Middle Ages and so coming to stand closer to the old spirit of balladry than ever he could have done through his own merely patriotic effusions. Only the genius of Scott eluded him here; but soon, in pupils of his very style and method like Van Lennep and Beets, was to be reincarnated as finely as ever in the Netherlands all that the Romantic baronet of Abbotsford best represented in poetry. With this and other British associations in mind, therefore, it is no needless and revolutionary change that would cease paying what has often been no more than empty lip-service to sententious works like "De Ziekte der Geleerden", "De Ondergang der Eerste Wereld", the "Napoleon" ode, "De Dood van CEdipus", and with more genuine satisfaction award the palm instead to vital, unlaboured productions like "Fingal", "Graaf Floris de Vierde , "De Vloek van 't Burchtslot Moy", and (though I dare not insist quite so much about this) "De Kunst der Poëzie".



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1897.
Hofdijk, W. J. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1867.
Jonckbloet, W. J. A. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Vol. VI. Groningen, 1892.
Kalff, G. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Vols. VI, VII. Groningen, 1912.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924. Winkel, J. Te - De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part
III, Vol. I. Haarlem, 1927.
Zijderveld, A. - De Romancepoëzie in Noord-Nederland van 1780 tot 1830. Amsterdam, 1915.
FEITH
Bruggencate, H. G. Ten - Mr Rhijnvis Feith. Wagen, 1911.
Inklaar, D. - Fran?ois-Thomas de Baculard d'Arnaud, ses Imitateurs en Hol-
lande et dans d'Autres Pays. The Hague, 1925.
Kampen, N. G. van - Dicht- en Prozaische Werken van Mr Rhijnvis Feith.
15 Vols. Rotterdam, Zwolle, 1824—1826.
Tieghem, P. van - La Poésie de la Nuit et des Tombeaux en Europe. Brussels, 1921.
BILDERDIJK
Bavinck, H. - Bilderdijk als Denker en Dichter. Kampen, 1906.
Bogaers, A. - Woordenboek op de Dichtwerken van Willem Bilderdijk. Haarlem, 1878.
Costa, I. Da - Dichtwerken. 15 Vols. Haarlem, 1856—1859.
De Mensch en de Dichter Willem Bilderdijk. Haarlem, 1859.
Elring, G. van - Willem Bilderdijk. Een Dichterstudie. The Hague, 1908. Heyting, A. - Willem Bilderdijk als Dichter. Nieuwe Studies. 2 Vols. The Hague, 1931.
Kate, J. J. L. Te - Bilderdijk en Da Costa. Amsterdam, 1862.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
KIoos, W. - Bloemlezing (M. Inleid, en Opmerk.)- Amsterdam, 1906.
Kollewijn, R. A. - Bilderdijk. Zijn Leven en Zijne Werken. 2 Vols. Amsterdam, 1892.
Tieghem, P. van - Ossian et POssianisme dans la Littérature Européenne au
XVIIIe Siècle. Groningen, 1920.
Vloten, J. van - De Dichtwerken van Mr Willem Bilderdijk. 4 Vols. ArnheimNijmegen, 1884.
Winkel, J. Te - Bilderdijk, Lotgenoot van Multatuli. Haarlem, 1890.



CHAPTER IV
THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
It can only be reckoned the strength of the Romantic Movement that, as the original sentimentalists - Sterne, Richardson the young Goethe, Rousseau, Post, Feith - declined, there should have arisen new representatives, with little of their spirit, yet able to hold themselves just as incontestably Romantic. The lachrymosity, the grisliness and supernaturalism, of the ear y e eet were indeed shed, and if the habit of introspection remained, there was added to it an inexhaustible invention, a gusto for the human pageant, a formidable ability to recapture the past, and an immense power of application. In no one mind and personahty, of course, were all these qualities subsumed - Romance, obviously, is subject to an ever-widening connotation - but between them, it might be said, two men did virtually subsume them — Scott and Byron-, the first, objective so far as working methods were concerned, at all times "the inquisitive historian", the true hero-worshipper; the other, in style, completely subjective, t e restless introvert, the born self-worshipper. Clearly they lacked the higher beauties and excellences of style of the supremely great Romantic poets - Goethe, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth marking the culminating points of the entire Movement. Yet, because they were, far more than any of these, men of thor age with a livelier and, superficially, shrewder perception of thei'r social environment, they quickly gained the ear of the public,



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
grew into the most popular writers of the time, and went on to enjoy a longer run of success than any ever attained before or after in the whole course of Romanticism. 1 Nowhere, it can safely be said, was the conjoint vogue of Byron and Scott on the continent more obvious and complete than in the case of Holland; being conspired thereto by the historical circumstances which for nearly half a century had denied it the full privileges and forms of nationality, brought the literary flow to a dangerously low ebb — the work of the renegade Bilderdijk apart — and made revival possible only through the medium of greater, outside forces. During these spectacular years, indeed, it might almost be said that Dutch literature was Byron and Scott. That such could be the case, of course, is not to be accounted particularly to the credit of the writers of Holland; a country which, however much it may have lacked a starting-point, was far from being one without annals that might furnish material for the projection of strong Romantic fancy, or an active life that would permit vivid and characteristic transcripts to be made of it. The finest discipleship would undoubtedly have been that which aimed at the creation of a strong native poetry — individual, localised, original, while conforming to the highest canons of the art. But if the Dutch poets of the first part of the nineteenth century ever had so ennobling an ideal, they have left us today with a very faded sort of colouring for the rich, enhancive glamour of Scott. So obscure, slight, and unsatisfactory a set of writers were they, in fact, that it is scarcely too much to say that the chief result of their efforts is the barm they have done the national literature; particularly through their weak pastiche, their narrow, formalistic prejudice, and their penchant for flat, stale moralising. Popular though their poetry might be for a period, it was bound to be that, when its novelty and immediate applicability
1 Cf. T. S. Eliot: "Scott, and Byron in his more popular works, were merely society entertainers" ("The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," p. 87).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
wore off, future generations would find it almost unreadable. We cannot help, of course, that Borger, Hofdijk, Tollens, Staring, Da Costa, Bogaers, should not have been men of original creative genius. But what tells more than anything against them is that they should have refused, besides, to serve more than the most perfunctory apprenticeship to the Muse, and so should have degraded the whole character of the art; making it seem to be the mouth-piece but of homely fireside contentment and vague national enthusiasm; instead of being (even as with Bilderdijk) a deep thing, a teaching thing, the most surely and wisely elevating of all human things. Yet, after all perhaps, what should we expect, when the era of sentimentalism was so slowly on the wane and there was still found a voice here and there to lament De(n) Dood van Ossian"? As Dr Ten Bruggencate says so unequivocably of them: "De burgerlijke poëzie — en dat is haar glorie — is huiselijk, is innig, is sentimenteel." 1 Beyond these words it does not seem possible to go.
If this middle phase of the Romantic Revival could furnish us with nothing better than the needless pieties of the wholly admirable but wholly wearisome Da Costa, the enormities in bathos committed by Staring, the petty jingles of Tollens, the fragmentary success of Hofdijk with his belated "Kennemerland Balladen", there could be no need to write further of it at all. Yet, even more difficult than usual though it is, amid the prevailing mediocrity of tone, to disinter talent worthy of cntical attention, there is, I believe, just sufficiënt of the magie and the realism — if not the humour - of Scott in Jacob van Lennep, and a bare, qualifying amount of the spirit - if not the practice - of Byron in Nicolaas Beets, to merit their being saving from the general extinction. Perhaps even over them 1 may be challenged — though 1 rather think any challenge there may be will arise from the exclusion of certain at least of their fellows. Yet, if so, I am ready i "Bloemlezing uit de Werken van Mr Rhijnvis Feith," Intro., XI.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
to reply that in one fundamental respect these two writers must be placed in a special category — by themselves alone. It is in this: that only they, of all the authors cited, can be said to enjoy a doublé chance in the lottery of immortality; for, even if their poetry should turn to a mere tinkle, they can always point to their prose work — Van Lennep to his historical novels, Beets to his "Camera Obscura": though again, Romantically, this might have the somewhat disastrous consequence of keeping the weaker of the twain longer in the field — Van Lennep more safely entrenched than ever as "the Dutch Scott"; Beets, become if you like "the Dutch Dickens", but perished, for the most part, his high Byronic aspirations.
Though Byron enjoyed a flattering period of supremacy in Holland, it was a period, nevertheless, in time and importance, not to be seriously compared with that enjoyed by Scott always remembering, of course, that Scott's main influence was exerted through his colossally great efforts in prose, while Byron had to depend almost wholly on verse — including in this the romantic exigencies of his own life and character. One other point seems worthy of notice in this connection, a point of considerable importance in weighing the work of Van Lennep, the only Dutch writer seriously influenced by both Byron and Scott and, again, by Scott on both sides of his genius. It is this: that, while Scott's renunciation of narrative verse was possibly no very severe loss to poetry, it came about because the younger Byron beat him clean out of the field; and that, in turn, while it will always count to the Scotsman as his supreme glory that he improved the historical novel out of all recognition (even if he did not invent it) the author of "Waverley" had himself but one genuine precursor there — the author of Rokeby , The Lady of the Lake", and "Marmion". How wittily true is the remark that in the history of narrative there are but two epoch-makers — Cervantes, who did the ancient and beloved art of pure story-telling



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
to a cruel death, and Walter Scott, who brought it to a glorious resurrection!
Bilderdijk it was who, in Holland, first sensed the way the wind was blowing with regard to Scott. But even though he was the last important Dutch poet of the eighteenth century, rather than the first important one of the nineteenth — just as Scott, for the European novel, strikes a similar correspondence — times and conditions were clearly not yet propitious enough for him to call a truce to the Romanticism of Macpherson and Bishop Percy. Geel's translations in 1822 of two small portions of "The Lady of the Lake",1 marked a little advance, but are not to be compared in importance with his later critical essays (to be considered in the next chapter). D. J. van Lennep's "Dissertation" 2 of 1827 proved an infinitely more appealing document, and directly inspired the writer's own son, Jacob van Lennep, to make his first ventures into the realm of Scott's new-found wonderland.
Like Scott himself, Van Lennep opened his literary account with the poetic romance. Four romances he wrote between 1828 and 1831, adding a fifth in 1847 to complete his "Nederlandsche Legenden". The best, undoubtedly, is the last, "Eduard vanGelre"; being both the most original in itself and the one which best recaptures the vivid manner of Scott. It is also by far the most historical of the "Legends"; turning to fourteenth-century Gelderland and giving a sustained picture of the joys and sorrows of its reigning house. It is not possible to say that any one narrative poem of Scott's is followed, but the general resemblance to the type is never far away and there is copious imitation in detailed particulars. The hero is not now a neutral character but an important public figure, who assumes precedence of interest. A
1 These are of the hunt in Canto I and of the sending round of the Fiery Cross in Canto III, published under the title of: "Proeve eener navolging van de Lady of The Lake van Walter Scott".
2 "Verhandeling over het belangrijke van Hollands grond en oudheden voor gevoel en verbeelding".



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
love-story is intertwined, as in "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake", and is not quite so incidental. There are the usual Scott notabilities, scenes, incidents — the warlike knight, the minstrel, the banquet-hall, the battle climax. In the mere matter of form there is also a closer approximation to Scott; the story being told through six cantoes, the titles of which have the true flavour of "The Lady of the Lake" — "De Intocht", "Het Feestmaal", "De Dagreis", "De Bruiloft", "Het Sterfbed", "De Veldslag". 1 Metrically, the tale marks an almost inconceivable advance on anything ever before attempted by Van Lennep. Where it still suffers by comparison with Scott's work is in its somewhat strained evocation of the spirit of the past, and in the weakness of the local colour; the magie of "the land of the warriors and minstrels of the Middle Ages" rarely thrills us as does the archaically rendered 'matter' of Scotland.
Van Lennep's first "Legend", "Het Huis Ter Leede", is, in almost every way, so unsatisfactory a performance as to be sinking visibly beneath the level of tolerable native tradition, as represented by the new Romantic ideas. If it is Scott at all, it is the Scott who toyed a little in youth with the charnel-house of Lewis's "Monk" — though in this "tale of terror" there is not the same feeling of assurance that, for the author, it was all no more than decoration. Van Lennep's work is so little inspired by humour, grim or otherwise, that we have to take as entirely serious his hotch-potch of life in Crusading times; the baron who has sold himself to the devil and has then to receive him as guest, the wife whose flight causes the curse to break out, and the fateful fire that finally ends the House "Ter Leede" and its Faust-like owner. The Crusading touches, of course, are by way of Scott, and the magie elements are loosely related to Michael Scott's Mighty Book and the Goblin Page — all in "The
1 The Entry, The Festival, The Journey, The Wedding, The Death-bed, The Battle.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Lay of the Last Minstrel". But beyond that, the weird compound of subject-matter makes the poetry wear thin almost to disappearing point, and one does not feel justified in saddling the real 'Wizard of the North5 with other similarities which, if not purely adventitious, are of decidedly minor consequence. Dr Vissink, for instance, is surely guilty of the most woeful tautology in having to note so slowly and painstakingly that "the description of the castle as seen in the moonlight makes us think of fair Melrose, in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel'1 By comparison, little fault can be found with Van Lennep for having sought his matter in the 'pre-history' of Holland or in its broken mediaeval history with its tale of contending provinces, countdoms, and bishoprics. So "Adegild" carries us back to the struggle between the heathen Frisians and the Christian Franks under Charles Martel; while "Jacoba en Bertha" steeps us in the endless feuds of the Hoeks and the Kabbeljauws — factions as famed in Holland as the Montagues and theCapuletsinVerona.But of such epic material he was, unfortunately, too stereotyped in mind and too uninstructed to take anything like full advantage. He was plunging into a field that even Scott had but touched the fringe of, in "Quentin Durward", and the thought seemed both to stay and dismay him. For what might have been two of the finest national epics, therefore, we have to rest content with a modicum of solid history and everything else resolved into conventional love-stories. It seemed that Van Lennep simply could not do without Scott's help when it came to filling in his overvast frame-work. Sometimes it is translation complete, as of Norna's "Song of the Reimkennar" in "The Pirate", the introductory stanzas to the Third Canto of 'Marmion , Lady Heron s song, "Young Lochinvar", in Canto Five of the same poem; though even here Van Lennep does not get so close as a contemporary like Tollens, who contrives a national name and setting for his 1 "Scott and his Influence on Dutch Literature", p. 156.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
"Jonker van 't Sticht" and achieves far more of Scott's own galloping verve:
"Geen steilten, geen grebben vertraagden zijn hart;
Hij zwom door den Rijn, door de Waal en de beken."
But how he does pack in all the Romantic "circumjacencies" of his British master — the responses of the sorceress so reminiscent of the prophecy in "The Lady of the Lake",the bale-fires that flash their warning of danger and beseech help, the maid of honour, Bertha, who so recalls Ellen Douglas, the sleep of Brederode so like to the troubled dreams of James Fitz-James, the hunt that would be almost standardised but for the quarry's being a boar instead of a stag! It is flimsy art, with none of the real tang of the prosaic about it; simply Scott from the outside; a writer satisfied with surface values and buoying himself up for a season with temporary expedients and make-shifts.
Charges of plagiarism were naturally not slow in being levelled against Van Lennep; and though, for his outrageous artistic methods, there could be no real defence, it was perhaps his professional position as Rijksadvokaat that prompted him to attempt one. "We steal from the poets," says Burton, speaking in the universal sense. But no such thought could have been in Van Lennep's mind when he sought to excuse himself by admitting, with almost naïve blandness: "Sedert bijna veertig jaren heb ik voornamelijk geleefd van roof en diefstal." 1 The reprehensibility of his action was evidently nothing against the infinitely greater service he was rendering his country by introducing to it the poetic romance as written by a master like Scott! So utterly haphazard had he grown in this matter of "borrowing" that he could not even always remember what it was he had taken over! All, therefore, that he could promise was that for the future he would point out regularly in the notes his "letterdieverijen" —
1 "Poëtische Werken," Vol. I, Advertisement to third edition.
7



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
a promise which, as it happened, was quickly forgotten when he left the poetry of Scott behind and began a fresh onslaught upon the plots and characters of the novels. That was in 1833. In considering the last of the early "Legends", "De Strijd met Vlaanderen", one would like to think that the poet could prove himself less despicable in practice than in theory; but whether or not, the fact remains that when Holland itself provided him with an experience upon which his work could rest squarely, he did in some measure get away from the stimulus that apparently Scotland could always so easily offer him. This "Legend" was assuredly written at the right moment — in 1831; for though he had ostensibly selected for treatment the story of the inroads of Guy of Flanders into Zeeland and South Holland, this was meant to serve but as an inspiring analogy for the fight his nation was then waging with the armies of Flanders. This is reflected in Witte van Haemstede, the hero, who is a much more personally disinterested character than usual, especially in thinking of his country bef ore himself; and in the more concentrated descriptions of the defence of Zeeland, the defeat of the invaders at Haarlem, and, above all, the naval battle of Het Gouw. It is only in the description of this last fight that Van Lennep seems much beholden at all to Scott — the device used to inform Voorne of the course of events bearing a real resemblance to that used when Rebecca tells the wounded Ivanhoe how matters are proceeding during the storming of Front-de-Boeuf's castle.
I have no wish to pursue these almost tangible likenesses the whole way. They are of slight importance, after all, compared with trying to find some real spiritual affinity between the two authors; and enough has been written, I think, to show that in the imitation of the outward characteristics of Scott Van Lennep was by no means unsuccessful. No more than his mentor did he consider himself as one solemnly dedicated to poetry — a Goethe, a Wordsworth, even a Bilderdijk — but as one standing



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
near the "norm" of human nature: he held the same sort of respect for convention and received tradition; his ideas were as local, allowing for no "development" of doctrine; an instinctive sense of wonder was as conspicuously lacking; and to a certain extent both of them were Romantics by a proved easiness of disposition and the evasion of serious, central issues. Where Scott triumphed supremely, however, was in the possession of an enormous creative power: never can the history — and the geography — of any nation and country have been so gloriously portrayed by any single pen as by his. Here one can only be blunt and say that Van Lennep is out of the hunt completely. With Scott the magie of his native countryside was always at work; his "genius for history" gave him an unsurpassed understanding, and he was always at his best when nearest to Lowland and Highland Scotland and its people. Against so inspired a background as this it is easily possible to find excuse for the Dutch poet; who for the Trossachs, or any other rugged and beautiful district, could but substitute the lonely heaths of Gelderland, and for the rocky romantic coastlands of Orkney and Galloway the dreary mudbanks of Frisia. But if geography was unkind, history should have more than made up to him; with all the absorbing incoherence of detail provided by the old feudal divisions, by chivalrous counts like Floris V, by the ancient Burgundian dynasty, by the heroic House of Orange. Into this picturesque national story Van Lennep — and it is to his infinite credit — did make some considerable attempt to delve: but, unfortunately, there was lacking that intense personal predilection for the task, that endless resource and patience to accumulate an encyclopedic knowledge of the past, which are the marks of the greatest of all historical romancers. Van Lennep's was truly no feudal mind: he was by no means kindly disposed to the Middle Dutch which would have been an invaluable aid to him; and not even a subject so rich in suggestion as Jacoba, "the Dutch Mary Stuart", could rally him to make



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
the effort to master it — an effort certainly not beyond him as already a distinguished scholar of French and English. He was determined to be the Romantic poet and novelist, but it must always be with the minimum of trouble to himself. Too late the lesson came home to him that, while it might be an easy and pleasant business to lift from the pages of Scott scenes and characters ready made, it was also one that might be well-nigh fatal to his own literary reputation. Joyfully he might commit himself to the confidence "dat het samenstellen van eenen zang van 'Eduard van Gelre' mij drie malen zooveel tijd kostte als vroeger dat eenen der zangen van den 'Strijd met Vlaanderen ,1 but by 1847 it was, unluckily, time also to question if the public taste, which had so enthusiastically acclaimed the "Legends" when they first appeared as a respite from the current didacticism, had not undergone a further change and demanded something of more living interest and of higher literary standards. Dr Vissink seems to take a strange view here. His principal merit, as regards Dutch literature," he says, speaking of Van Lennep's achievement, "even lies in his mediocrity. Had he had genius he might have risen to a height to which but few could have followed." 2 One would have been prepared, unconditionally I think, to accept the accruing results of genius!
No such dishonour as sullies the name of this poet in his dealings with Scott's works can possibly be said to rest upon that of his younger Netherlands' colleague, Nicolaas Beets. For one thing, Beets was a clergyman — later a professor of theology at Utrecht. But, more, he was a man of as high integrity of character as Scott himself. Even as a boy he would have been entirely after the great Romanticist's heart; prosaically he might walk backwards and forwards between his home and the gymnasium of Haarlem, but all the time his heart was yearning for the same
1 "Eduard van Gelre," Preface.
2 "Scott and his Influence on Dutch Literature", p. 217.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
kind of imagined past, of jousts and tourneys, trumpets, drums and clattering horse. Of Scott himself Beets early became a devoted admirer, and his first published prose work, written at the age of eighteen, was fittingly entitled "Proeve van Hulde aan Sir Walter Scott".1 Proceeding to the University of Leyden, he followed up this piece of homage with his "Proeve uit de Dichterlijke Werken van Walter Scott", which contained translations of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel", "Rokeby", "Harold the Dauntless", and other shorter poems. But this second tribute attracted no attention, running counter, in fact, to Westerman's collected "Proeven uit Lord Byron's Werken" which appeared at that very time. It was probably this factor that was responsible, two years later, for Beets himself deciding to begin the composition of the poetic romance under the tutelage of England's second great pillar of early nineteenth century Romanticism. Not till his third tale, "Kuser", in 1835, did he come round to Scott's diametrically opposed style in narration. Previously he had followed Byron into Spain; but now he sought his history at home, in the story of the romantic Aleid van Poelgeest, loved by the historie Albrecht, Count of Holland, and by the fictitious Kuser. With this 'triangle' much definite mediaeval history, particularly involving the internecine strife of Hoeks and Kabbeljauws, is interfused, and the plagiarism that so disfigures Van Lennep's mock-romances is now fully counterbalanced by the original characterisation and by the fine natural descriptions given, particularly that of the far-famed landscape of The Hague forest — the romantic core of all Dutch history. As an historical romance this poem is successful in all but one respect — it does not truly revive the atmosphere of the past! It showed promise enough, however, to decide Van Lennep to retire from the field! By 1840 Beets had decided to shed every scrap of Byronic influence, and in his final poetic romance, "Ada van Holland", he 1 It appeared in "Algemeen Letterlievend Maandschrift" (Amsterdam).



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
comes back whole-heartedly to the side of Scott. It is based on a less well known section of history at the beginning of the thirteenth century, involving the tragic career of Ada of Holland following the death of her father, Dirk VII, and the deperate struggle for ascendancy in the unhappy county. The poet shows a good grasp of the period; nor can his depicting of scenes and persons be impugned on the score of its not being picturesque. But though he escapes the pitfalls of anachronism, and is not guilty of unworthy plagiarism, the criticism remains that not all his efforts can yet succeed in transporting us unmistakably to the past. This is probably the best metrical tale ever written by him, yet it shows him, by comparison with Scott, to be but a minor type of narrative poet, with emotions second hand and bookish, incapable of breathing virtue into the characters he would create. As the success of his "Camera Obscura' was to prove, his truest vein was the reminiscent, and not the historical at all; for no more than his fellow disciple Van Lennep had Beets the imagination, the inspired application, to steep himself in the period of which he wished to write; both of the tales referred to are sadly deficient in those vast stores of historie and legendary lore, in all that bright personal observation, which characterise the best passages in "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake so far, in their turn, behind the great prose romances. The interest of a poet like Beets, then, might seem to be to show how, in a severely barren period in a small country, the gloss of Romanticism could for a time be given to whatever, out of a boundless admiration, he cared to imitate from the work of one of its most lovable exponents. Still, why only the "gloss" of Romanticism? Was the world in which the Dutchman lived so different from Scott's own world? Was it not also a world in which will and action counted as supreme interests — these moving within and from a rigid framework of religious creed and religious morality; a world in which there was as little room



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
for "general ideas", and no room at all for romantic experimentation and "states of soul", such as were to inspire the younger school of Romantics in the still very distant 'eighties? And what, next, of the political sphere? Is these any essential difference to be noted there? When Crane Brinton says that "Scott was born a Tory, and died a Tory",1 there would for Holland, I think, be not the slightest injustice if we substituted the name of Beets instead. Scott's Toryism, in fact, was of a more empirical kind than the other's; so that his political ideas are perhaps not so far out of date in these modern days, as when he sought the Border workers to oppose their own parliamentary enfranchisement. With Beets, on the other hand, one does not readily expunge from memory Mevrouw Ammers-Küller's satirical picture of him in "The Rebel Generation", as he speaks — as uncompromisingly as his once-loved Bilderdijk himself might have done — against the "rechten" of women. And even in asserting the importance of poets as public figures, who will say, on top of this, that the day Beets represented his country at the Scott Centenary celebrations in Edinburgh in 1871 2 was not as close a contact as he ever established with the spirit of the man who for him was the greatest of all the heroes of ages-long Romance?
Contemporary society, it cannot be said, conflicted deeply with any emotional attachment for the past in the heart of either Beets or Van Lennep, however much it may have been antipathetic to Scott's strongly passionate and imaginative secret life; that society, in fact, was very agreeable to the natural bonhomie and practical good-sense of Beets and to the respect for order fostered by the legal training and preoccupation of Van Lennep. But, while this may allow us to understand in what measure they
1 "The Political Ideas of the English Romanticists," p. 108.
2 An account of his visit and of the celebrations is given in his essay, "Het Eeuwfeest van Sir Walter Scott, 1871, te Edinburgh," prefixed to M. P. Lindo's new edition of "Ivanhoe" in 1872.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
were bound to fall short of literature's outstanding 'Antiquary', it does little to fathom for us the riddle of what it was that attracted men so stereotyped in outlook, so little passionate in themselves, to worship, almost at the same time, at the rival shrine of Byron. It is easy to answer, of course, that all Europe was aflame with his name; that everywhere people read and admired this milord of Continental legend and quickly came to worship him as they might have done a god. But, even when we allow for the fact that in Holland the classical movement had struggled to keep going when virtually moribund, and that the long wars over at length — all need for restraint had vanished, this is not to admit more than that the Romantic would now begin to get on terms with the Classic. The events of the French invasion and the artificial union with Belgium, naturally, could not but create feelings of nervous excitement; but they by no means implied an appetite for strong emotion. Even less in Holland than elsewhere has poetry ever been compatible with morbid introspection and social notoriety. It was impossible that poets like Beets, Van Lennep, Da Costa, Hofdijk, possessing neither the big personal faults of Byron nor a strain of his virile greatness, could perceive in him, as Goethe once seriously did, their own complement; their most ardent romantic longings could be well, satisfied by the theatrical effects of "Manfred" and "Cain" and the ethically skittish ones of "Don Juan" and Beppo , without the need to nurse an "immortal ennui" in soft Oriental or Mediterranean lands.
One may agree with Dr Popma that geen enkele Engelsche schrijver heeft, na Shakespeare, zulk een grooten en sterk uitgesproken invloed op de wereldliteratuur gehad als Lord Byron",1 while not accepting his stiffly uniform way of seeking to link this enthusiasm with the strange social phenomenonof "Byronism"; without due regard to the temperament and abilities of the writers 1 "Byron en het Byronisme in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde , p. 120.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
concerned. His theory would go far towards making Lamartine s and Jié Vigny's out of such purely orthodox types as Beets and Van Lennep. So, it seems to me that, while he states his case at impressive length, he is far from proving it satisfactorily. Zoo verstaan wij onder Byronisme", he says, de uitdrukking van de bitterheid en de droefheid, die veroorzaakt is door werkelijk of vermeend leed; de uiting der droefgeestige stemming, ontstaan door de gedachte aan de vergankelijkheid van al het aardsche en de onzekerheid omtrent 's menschen lot na den dood, een stemming, die aan Byron geëigend was; het uitdrukken van de onvoldaanheid, die men tenslotte gevoelt, wanneer men aan zijn hartstochten den vrijen teugel heeft gegeven, en van het ijdele verlangen naar wat het leven nimmer kan geven." 1 All this may be very true; but, nevertheless, it has singularly little application to Holland. This moody Apollo out of the West the young poets there also saw as the very type of romantic wanderer; but they were far less interested in his poetry as such, than as a determinedly personal revelation. The lack of beauty, the loose and tawdry abundance, the vain vehemence — all that constitutes his semifailure as a poet — struck less unkindly on their ears as foreigners; with the best of motives they accepted a great deal of what was bad, if not the worst, in Byron; and before they could discover what passion, sincerity, strong sense, could often lie beneath his fripperies, the enormity of his ill-conceived attempt to assert the claims of personality in an artificial and largely corrupt environment was brought home to their rabidly Calvinistic minds, and automatically deterred them from any further imitation or admiration. To men of such hide-bound morality the qualities that we now regard as characteristically Byronic could only be repugnant in the end; they had not the discernment to see that the Briton had imbibed some of their own ideas of predestinarianism and divine vengeance and actually sinned often out of a 1 Op. cit., p. 112.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
desperate defiance; that, as with themselves, a certain inhibition was nearly always at work to prevent the passage of emotion into perfect form.
In Nicolaas Beets lurked no such "complexes" of mother-hatred and sister-love; no desire to assert the self against false forms of social organisation; no fundamental dissonance of character at all; every mark of temperament placid and untroubled. Only if one is prepared to be ironical can one think of Byron suffering from a partisan of such faultless pattern as this; truly this poet who would soon be penning his pleasant student recollections, translating the hymns of Isaac Watts, and singing "Mijn God! ik zie uw hand in alle dingen", was not frantic or perverse enough — but also not fine or sensitive enough either — to play the Byron for long. Dr Popma would emphasize the most specious aspects of Byronism as a method of enhancing interest in Byron's writings; and not, as is more usual, as a means of discrediting them. But since the balance of fairness is no more held properly thus, his prescribed thesis follows very reluctantly, and has to be eked out by considering every possible partiele of invloed upon a complete "school" of singularly ineffective little Byronists. Beets stands apart from everyone else in that he knew his limitations sufficiently well to avoid the intolerably subjective, the atrociously defamatory, the dangerously subversive, and concentrate instead on the descriptive, the heroic, and the humorous. And if this does not give us anything like the complete Byron, it at least gives us less of the false and the attudinising, and more of the unaffected and even the reverential. Beets began with translation exercises, publishing in 1835 his "Gedichten van Lord Byron", including "The Prisoner of Chillon", "Mazeppa", and fifty shorter pieces. This was an excellent way of studying the English poet and of inculcating a sense of form at the same time, and the young Dutchman must be allowed to have made an encouraging start. "De Gevangene van Chillon", I think, gives



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
special evidence of competent skill in versifying, contains many happy turns of phrase, and reveals moments of real poetic vision:
"Diep is 't meer Leman: duizend voet
Zonk 't peillood, dat het sterk kasteel
Liet dalen van zijn wit rondeel
En nederzinken in den vloed,
Die 't insluit van rondsom,-
En onder 't waterpas der kom
Was 't wulf, waar 'k met mijn broeder lag,
Door dikke muren, diepe golven
Als levende in dit graf bedolven."
But it was the "Eastern Melodies" that attracted him most of all in Byron s work, and two years later appeared "Parisina en andere Gedichten van Lord Byron", these latter including "Hebrew Melodies", the "Thyrza" poems, and "The Dream" — in many ways, of course, the least characteristic poems he could possibly have chosen. As Dr Popma well notes: "Wij missen 'The Giaour', The Corsair, Lara . Het is dan ook niet door zijn vertalingen, waarop wij terugkomen, dat Beets de Byron-helden in onze litteratuur heeft binnengeleid." 1 But this omission is made good with the publication of the first of his original metrical tales, "Jose"; for in the hero of this Spanish tale the type of the Giaour, Lara, Conrad, definitely enters Dutch literature. Dr Popma certainly makes no mistake in saying that "hier is de onveranderlijke held van Byron's Muze; wij herkennen het bleeke en droefgeestige gelaat, de donkere blikken, den verachtelijken grimlach om den mond": 2
Zijn wang was bleek en droef zijn trekken,Doch in den wrevel van zijn oog Was 't morren van een hart te ontdekken,
Dat niet in ootmoed nederboog,
Maar dat zijn haat, zijn onbescheid,
Des hemels roede tegenstelde,
1 "Byron en het Byronisme in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 172.
2 Ibid., p. 175.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
Of al zijn rampen overtelde,
In ijskoude onverschilligheid."
A highly eclectic Byronesque being is he, but in the main it is the joint figure of Conrad-Lara that is presented to us. Like Conrad's own, his name is bound up with one single virtue and a thousands evils, and he has all that character's penchant for solitary, brooding wandering:
"Alleen — met velen om mij heen!
Alleen — maar onvervaard;
Alleen — maar met mijn wraak alleen;
Alleen — maar met een driftenstoet Tot bondgenooten."
But his youth is the youth of Lara: he too is reared in an atmosphere of evil, hatred, deception, and oppression, quits his fatherland without telling a soul where he is bound for, wreaks his vengeance on mankind, and at last returns; all in very similar circumstances:
"Daar is hij weer in 't oord dat hij ontvluchtte."
Beets' next romantic tale "Kuser", has been already dealt with under the influence of Scott. Both Dr Vissink and Dr Popma, however, from their arbitrarily conditioned viewpoints, claim it as a specimen for their own particular collection, and a further word might, therefore, be said about it. In its historical subjectmatter and treatment there can be little question that it favours the side of Scott. But in two outstanding respects at least it also suggests Byron — these are, in its five-footed iambic lines and in the picture given of its hero. Kuser has all the sombre despair of his type. He has really only one desire: "dat 't verdriet hem van het leven, waarvoor hij een afschuw heeft gekregen, zal verlossen." On one occasion, after some mocking words from Aleid van Poelgeest, he even enters The Hague forest with thoughts of suicide, but is distracted from these to go to her defence, and



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
in this receives a mortal wound in the fight with the Hoeks' faction. It all reads very very melodramatically:
"Die Kuser was een kind geweest van smarte,
En doornenvol zijn korte weg op aard;
Maar 't grievendst leed was zijner ziel gespaard,
Het ergste bleef verborgen voor zijn harte."
Beyond that the hero is unmistakably created in the Byron manner — even if less immoderately so than in the case of his predecessor Jose — the whole tale is mainly important perhaps in showing us something of the incongruity that can arise from a union of the Romantic elements supplied by Scott and those supplied by Byron ...
In other two tales did Beets acknowledge his indebtedness to Byron. "Gwy de Vlaming" let us take first, as the more intrinsically important; though "Maskerade" possesses the unique interest of being nearest in form and content, and even humour, to the immortal "Don Juan". The gloom and mystery that enshroud "Gwy de Vlaming" are deeper than in any other work of Beets. But this is expectedly so because the hero is himself cast in the röle of the Giaour, on account of his unrelieved despair; while his fanaticism might be held to relate itself to the terrifying visions of Manfred: the Dutchman here seems actually to penetrate further into the shade than his British prototype, by introducing from Sophocles the "CEdipus" motto and involving his hero in a fate from which death alone can grant him release. The use of this motto, however, seems not so important in itself as in showing Beets nearing the end of his tether with Byron the man; for him there can be no possible suspension of judgment over the Augusta revelations; decisively the professorship in theology casts its shadow before, and the fate of Byron is soon well and truly settled for ever. Before he could make formal renunciation of his adherence, however, in "De Zwarte Tijd",1 there appeared 1 Published 1840 in "Proza en Poëzie".



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
in 1838 an anonymous satire upon the Dutch followers of Byron.1 This poem, entitled "Hippokreen-ontzwaveling", contains some most pungent passages and is itself probably the nearest approach in Dutch to Byron's own "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". Beets and Van Lennep are, of course, both soundly rated as the chief upholders of the new school:
"Beets heeft ons nieuwen geest en jonkheid ingeblazen Door als Van Lennep trouw op lekkernijtjes te azen Van vreemde tafels, waar hij bij den hoop van tast,
En ons, arm volkjen, dat verhongert, op vergast:
Wat droeg hij Byron als een atlas op zijn schouderen,
En, raakte al in Euroop diens roem wat aan 't verouderen,
Als ware apostel leidde Beets in elk verhaal Zijn wanhoop nog door 't land in volle zegepraal."
Nothing is spared the Beetsian heroes; Jose, the first, seemingly being in every way of the true "brood of folly", while there are no rascals "eens zoo erg als Qwy en 'Manjred".
After we have read it all, it is not unpleasing to go back to "Maskerade"; there to find other, and equally genuine, qualities of Byron himself. As in "Jose" and in "Don Juan" itself, we betake us to Spain; suddenly discovering ourselves in the Granada of 1492 spectating at the entry of Ferdinand and Isabella into the city after its re-conquest from the Moors. It is a bright and colourful picture and often recalls "Beppo" by its sprightliness and verve — "insouciance" being just too strong a word to apply to Beets even here. The poem is also written in the ottava rima of "Beppo" and "Don Juan"; but this, though handled with dexterity, is perhaps not so notable a performance as the way the poets attempts, and successfully carries off, the humorous type of doublé rhyming so common throughout "Don Juan", couplets like:
1 The author was afterwards revealed as the future Groningen professor, W. Hecker.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
"Toen aan één woord het leven van zijn zoon hing,
Sprak hij: 'Het bloed weegt minder dan de koning'"
and:
"Maar nimmer hebt ge zulk een bal gezien? O,
Dan waart ge in zeekre stad nooit op 't Casino"
being quite fit to stand alongside the Byronic stock-lines:
"Don Juan's parents lived beside the river,
A noble stream, and called the Guadalquivir."
Though Beets, so greatly lacking in personal idiosyncrasy, was not the man to be swept off his feet by the "Byron legend", it can be said that he had yet enough of the Romantic in his nature and sufficiënt versatility as a versifier to be carried away at times on those flights of sublime disquietude and moving despair so much beloved of the English poet. Van Lennep, for instance, though he may come next in importance, was still very far behind him in the temperament and technique that might help to spread so revolutionary and spectacular an evangel as this Byronism. His best work was really done in translation; for in all his "Nederlandsche Legenden" there is but one character remotely Byronic. That is the evil Heer van Lederman who, having sold himself to the devil, becomes as morose a figure as Lara himself:
"Doch van zijn reizen, van zijn trekken,
Sprak hij slechts weinig, en kortaf:
Werd grage weetlust onverduldig,
Hij bleef meestal het antwoordt schuldig,
Of onvoldoend was 't, zoo hij 't gaf;
En dorst men onbescheiden 't wagen,
Hem nog, aanhoudend, meer te vragen,
Dan werd zijn aanblik zwart en straf:
't Gesprek werd ijlings afgebroken,
Hij snelde weg, in drift ontstoken,
En liet den vrager, ontevreên En onvoldaan op 't slot alleen."
Into the matter of the translations made by Beets and Van Lennep from Byron there seems little need to enter. That would be to impinge upon the special province of Dr Popma. But, in any



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
case, translation is at best but an unsatisfactory medium through which to seek to convey the essential spirit — as very distinct from the mere outward characteristics — of a foreign writer. In the case of so literally-minded a poet as Van Lennep, it proves almost nothing at all. Doubtless, he has many memorable passages to offer. Especially true is this of his quatrain from the Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa":
"Spreek mij nooit een naam, dien het nageslacht noem ;
Slechts de dagen der jonkheid zijn dagen van roem.
Voor de mirt en de roos, die haar slapen omzwieren,
Ruil ik willig uw bundels van palm en laurieren."
But he can be quite as effective when he attempts renderings from other, totally different, poets, as when he gives Burns's "Ae Fond Kiss" almost perfectly as:
"Nog een kusje, rein en teeder,
En vaarwel dan voor altijd!"
And, candidly, there is far too much which, viewed from any angle, is tamely pedestrian, and even inaccurate. Byron s finesounding lines:
"Know you the land where the cypress and the myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?"
for instance, do not deserve to be whittled down to the slack, halting measures of:
"Is het land u bekend waar cypres en waar mirt Ons de daden des landaards vertoonen?"
As Dr Popma justly remarks: "Vergelijkt men deze verzen met
de oorspronkelijke, dan valt terstond op hoeveel van het poëtische
in Byron's aanhef bij Van Lennep gemist wordt." 1 Still, let us
not forget how often the original itself was weak, loose, alliterative;
making the labour of perpetuating bad verse in another language
merely a preposterous, and wholly redundant, exercise.
1 "Byron en het Byronisme in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde, p. 356.



THE VOGUE OF SCOTT AND BYRON
Looking back on the days of Byron's own "glory" in the Netherlands, it must definitely appear as the worst feature of his revolt that it did result in a great deal of very bad poetry. In truth, few of the things for which his poetry stands most predominantly can be said to have found a resting-place there at all. lts impulse was not really great enough to prove if writers like Van Lennep and Beets were men of as centrally poetic talents as he himself; and certainly it failed to impress them with any particularly savage melancholy, or imbue them with any strenger notions of liberty and independence. The fault, of course, is to be sought as much in their own stars as in any limitations of Byron's. In poetry, as in music, it has been remarked that the personal records are sad and brief. But plainly neither Beets nor Van Lennep was a Villon, a Tasso, a Marlowe, a Leopardi, a Schiller, a Burns, a Shelley, a Keats; to the end they preferred to live on blissfully unaware of the price the gods exact for the immortal gift of song. Only in the more savage, more sensitive, personality of Multatuli, steeped in misunderstandings and hurling his defiances forth to the world beyond Java, would the Dutch attain to a living "Manfred" or "Cain"; so that at last Dr Popma himself has to capitulate and frankly confess regarding Beets: "Deze Nederlandsche Poëzie, was grootendeels onecht." 1 Fortunately, with Scott both this poet and Van Lennep could claim to be on much happier terms. The enduring and salutary nature of his influence upon their work speaks for himself; for, while it may not have taught them their actual conception of poetry, it did serve to alter that out of all recognition, by showing them how to exalt the sterner appearances of nature, and, above all, by showing them how they could find in the old historie Counties of Holland and Gelderland and in the terra incognita of Frisia all the great, nationalising themes that their Muse was ever likely to require.
1 Op. cit., p. 208.
8



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1897. Geschiedenis der Noord-Nederlandsche Letteren in de XlXe Eeuw. Rotterdam, 1902. „
Hofdijk, W. J. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam,
1867- . j
Jonckbloet, W. J. A. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Groningen, 1892.
Kalff, G. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Vol. VII. Groningen,
1912. , i j \
Popma, T. - Byron en het Byronisme in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1928.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924. Schults Jr., U. - Het Byronianisme in Nederland. Utrecht, 1929.
Winkel, J. Te - De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part III, Vol. I. Haarlem, 1927.
VAN LENNEP
Beeloo, A. - Levensbericht van Mr J. van Lennep. Amsterdam, 1910.
Beets, N. - Ter Nagedachtenis van Mr Jacob van Lennep in De Werken van
Vondel, door J. van Lennep, Vol. XII. Amsterdam, 1869.
Buil, A. J. de - Levensschets van Mr J. van Lennep appended to De Vrouw
van Waardenburg, door J. van Lennep. Amsterdam, 1869.
Lennep, J. van - Romantische Werken. 20 Vols. The Hague, 1858-1868. Lennep, M. F. van - Het Leven van Mr Jacob van Lennep. 2 Vols. Amsterdam, 1910.
BEETS
Beets, N. - Dichtwerken, 1830-1873. 3 Vols. Amsterdam, 1876.
Chantepie de la Saussaye, P. D. - Het Leven van Nicolaas Beets. Haarlem,
1904.
Dyserinck, J. - Dr Nicolaas Beets. Haarlem, 1903.
Duproix, J. J. - Nicolaas Beets et la Littérature Hollandaise. Amsterdam, 1907. Rijn, G. van - Nicolaas Beets. 3 Vols. Rotterdam, 1910—1919.



CHAPTER V
ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
Were we dealing with a great literature like English or German we could easily agree that the Romantic poets who live — the Wordsworths, the Goethes, the Shelleys, the Keats5 — are alone those who concerned themselves with life, who feit that as a thing of tremendous issues and, further, who knew how to recreate their sense of it and give to that sense a visible shape in the form of a work of art. But in the lesser literature that is Dutch there was assuredly no early nineteenth century poet who accepted his calling in the fashion of these. One poet, Bilderdijk, had, it is true, a glimpse of something important, a first intimation of life and poetry seen as one, but he, unfortunately, could not speak simply about it but must lose himself in a maze of verbosity, parentheses, and interminable notes and explanations — patently he was as constitutionally incapable as Coleridge himself of devising a new poetic scheme in which no symbols should stand between him and the outer world. But of his fellows, in turn, it can only be said that, far from ever seeming likely to go on and give expression to a dominating philosophy, they were from the first irretrievably buried in masses of sentiment and cloudy verbiage. There was in poets like Bogaers, Da Costa, Staring, Tollens, Beets, Van Lennep, an incurable lack of selfcriticism; at no time had they a clear or passionate idea as to the nature of their mission; not one of them ever properly grasped the principles of his art — "custom lies upon it with a weight". Content they were to make their poetry a medium for the ex-



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
pression of concepts merely, and were infinitely far from realizing that true poetry is the medium in which the concept becomes something different from itself — what that is, it is the great problem of poetical criticism to say. Actually, therefore, what Holland lacked at the moment more than great poets was a great critic or two: or we may think of a combination of those functions
as Professor Garrod does, when he draws from Seneca the
inference that "the critic of poetry must be a poet, but not a very good one".1
In no sense is it fantastic, I think, to ascribe the poverty of the poetry of this Dutch domestic school to the fact that its exponents put on record incredibly little thinking about poetry. When we read them we have little of the sensation of being in contact with the serious creative imtelligence of a cultured nation: their poetry, like the life of each one, revels in a sort of dull decency. And detached from the deep and awesome problems of human life they were, evidently, fully determined to remain; for though they could claim a closer connection with Revolutionary France than could the writers of England, it was of necessity only; and for no individual poet came such a simultaneous immersion in its tumultuous idealism as was experienced by Wordsworth. The set "didactic poem" was as far as they ever allowed themselves to go, carrying this out in the spirit of that weary, heavy-footed style which drags down to earth the very conception it was meant to exalt. With such a standpoint Romanticism could admit no truce, and Professor Prinsen's impatience is very understandable when he writes: "Welk een slap figuur maakt heel onze letterkundige kunst vóór '80 tegenover heel de wereld van krachtige, frissche schoonheid. Wat is Borger's Rijn in 1820 tegenover het werk van Coleridge, Byron, Shelley van dien zelfden tijd 2 Not, of course, that the Dutch have ever been very
1 "Poetry and the Criticism of Life, p. 149.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 205.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
strong in the matter of critical writing. But there had been Van Alphen, Feith, Bilderdijk himself, who, before they were poets, were, in a measure, professors of poetry, seeking to write to, and from, theory; and for their own time at least were entitled to be looked on as the re-shapers of the art and spirit of the national literature. They did not, it is true, raise fundamentally the issue of what poetry is in the same way as Wordsworth and Shelley; and soon after them again, it was apparent, something vital was lacking; a realm of possible emotion was being lost to Holland, since mere "burgerlijke poëzie", however well-intentioned, could never be accepted as adequate to the largest aims of all; here were no enunciated poetics, nothing of the impressive intellectual tradition of Vondel and Hooft that might cause the emotions to result in a critical attitude towards the whole human question. "Holland," freely wrote Sir John Bowring in 1829, "is suffering under the visitation of an overflowing mediocrity. Many excellent and amiable men, whose poetry would sound sweetly by the firesides of their little social circle, have received but too much encouragement to break through it, in order to fascinate the world. And in numerous cases an affection for these persons has interposed between them and their work. Sound and severe criticism is wanting — the criticism that while it smites hard, smites well." 1
Not until 1835 can we say there was so much as the flutter of a straw that might show which way the Romantic wind was blowing. Jacob Geel it then was who most struggled to free himself from the doubts which seemed to have paralysed the poetic faculty; and though his gospel was one of faith without works, any sort of critical intervention at this particular stage was likely to prove more effective than a host of doubtfully assured classics. His best-known essay he labelled "Gesprek op den Drachenfels"; but in reality he was drawn almost entirely by the form of Ro1 "Sketch of the Language and Literature of Holland," p. 126.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
manticism most current in England; his title was fixed largely out of tribute to Byron and "the castled crag" pictured in "Childe Harold" — "Misschien," he even muses, "stond op deze zelfde plek die sombere dichter, wiens hart een gapende wonde was". Unfortunately, however, Geel contrived to remain very much the academie lecturer and, in other respects, never freed himself from sundry grave misunderstandings over the new literary order. His incursion into the time-honoured conflict between Classical and Romantic was altogether far more tentative than it might have been; almost elementary at times, indeed, as some of his attempted definitions show. Thus, he hazards the opinion that "de mengeling van Oostersche en Westersche kleuren geeft misschien, wat men romantisch noemt," ludicrously citing as an example "de bewonderde dichtstukken van Thomas Moore".1 Again, for the historical novels of Scott he expresses the highest admiration, yet seems to regret that he "niet veel meer gezien dan het schoone Schotland"; unlike Byron who "had Europa doorkruist, en alle de denkbeelden, die het in hem opwekte, kruisten zich in zijn gemoed, en er werd een strijd en gisting in geboren, die een voorstelling geeft eener onbevredigde begeerte, van een onophoudelijk zoeken naar kalmte, die hij niet vond". 2 And the very fact that the discussion is couched in the form of a Platonic dialogue shows the author himself, despite the novel nature of his pleas, to be still working under the restraints imposed by a classical style and diction. The Romanticism he espoused was at no time more than the revolutionary individualism of Byron and the hearty and joyous familiarity of Scott with his world; and even here it rested on such decidedly frail and speculative premises that the whole movement rapidly outgrew his timidly professorial handling. So far from there being any indication, therefore, that he could ever have passed on to the more ornate
1 "Onderzoek en Phantasie; Gesprek op den Drachenfels; Het Proza, p. 138.
2 Op. cit., p. 138.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
and elaborate vein of Keats, with charmed, magie casements to fascinate more subtly by far than the castled crag of Drachenfels", or realized Wordsworth's abounding life of nature and its profound meaning for the heart that watches and receives , he was thrown back in the end on the old sentimental modes and moods of Laurence Sterne.1
If the task upon which Geel set out to labour — no less than the creation in Holland of a definite levenskunst, a new spiritual unity of all its art and civilization — was one for which he had neither the inward assurance nor the ability to transcend personal considerations, it was also a task that was to prove beyond the powers of any other contemporary or successor. Yet, if ever a man made an effort, single-handed, to awaken the disinterested intelligence of his countrymen, in order that they might understand their own situation, that man was Everardus Johannes Potgieter, greatest by far of all Dutch critics before the significant days of '80. Potgieter's first step towards the rebirth of the national literature was the obvious one of establishing a critical organ. This was the famous "Gids"; which, as it functioned above all "als het orgaan der historisch gerechtvaardigde Romantiek", must be reckoned with as the most formative of all influences upon the thought of the time. For almost thirty years — and these by far the most fruitful in its entire existence — Potgieter remained its directing spirit; and if he did not bring about the marvellous rebirth of poetry that Kloos and the 'Tachtigers achieved, his name undeniably stands out most prominently of all as a pointer to their astounding "Nieuwe Gids". "Het strekt hem tot onverwelkelijke glorie," says Ten Brink, dat hij door zijn critiseerenden en scheppenden arbeid een frisschen en nieuwen gloed in ons letterkundig leven heeft doen blaken. Engeland en Frankrijk verheugden zich al lang in een geheel nieuwen
1 In 1837 appeared his translation of the "Sentimental Journey" as "Sentimenteele Reis door Frankrijk en Italië".



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
bloei der nationale letteren — eindelijk ook ontwaakten de Nederlandsche Muzen uit de lange sluimering van 1813 tot 1830." 1 With the poet Potgieter I am here naturally less concerned than with the critic. He began as a poet certainly, but there is not a great deal in his large output to encourage the belief that he was a man gifted with more than ordinary organic sensibility. His late masterpieces, "Florence" and Gedroomd Paardrijden , certainly show his art deepened and enriched by years of disciplined study, but up to a point I agree with Ten Brink when $e says again: "Ondanks al zijn meesterschap dunkt mij, dat Potgieter als dichter in 1840 met zijne 'Liedekins van Bontekoe' meer harten veroverd heeft, dan met zijn 'Florence' in 1868." 2 In these later poems he has simply got over "de JanSalie-geest"; but if no longer addicted to the representation of vulgar manners — never in very vulgar language, be it said he is so consciously concemed to preserve outward decorum and correctness that he swings to the opposite extreme and becomes more truly the mystifying man of travel and the historical dreamer. The sovereign poet, however, must be more than a scholar, no matter how erudite; he must also be a sage. It is Potgieters cardinal deficiency, therefore, that he does not extend in width as in height. When, Wordsworth-like, he should be prepared to enunciate a great personal philosophy, he is ready to put bef ore us merely two sets of reminiscences; and reminiscences so involved as to stand in continuous need of the most lavish foot-notes — the fact that these are in prose might well have suggested the use of prose all through as a medium better suited to the laboured exercises in question!
As a poet Potgieter is more curiously uneven in some respects than Bilderdijk. In the end his poetry breaks down through pretentiousness and over-elaboration; yet in nearly all his early work
1 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 635.
2 7bid., p. 637.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
the most dismaying factor is just that the thought seems immeasurably inferior to what was actually soon to go to the making of "De Gids" as a high-class review of letters. Not on this basis would we be justified in regarding Potgieter's poetry as a province of his fine critical prose. Here there is no infiltration of theory, no vision of the world of man save under certain broad and over-simplified aspects, virtually no speculative thought. For the past alone is there much vision at all; and even then it is bounded by the Rijksmuseum and the Prinsenhof. But there is much that is completely banal; and if the critic Potgieter affected to detest anything it was precisely that. Even if we allow that in him we have the sole pre-Jachtig poet holding so much as the faintest affinity with Wordsworth, we also remember how the very banalities of Wordsworth are of ten informed by an enthusiastic and meditative imagination, and can at once assure ourselves that not in this jingling "Jan Salie" stuff, with its most palpable design upon the reader, is there as yet the necessary groundwork for comparison.
Dr Popma, with his unerring instinct for what is thesistically relevant, has not failed to note that "een dergelijk dualisme merken we trouwens op bij Potgieter, die geen romantisch werk kon goedvinden, als niet onze nationaliteit er een rol in speelde." 1 And as one reads his animadversions on the Romantic qualities of "Gwy de Vlaming",2 or his disparaging remarks on Beets and Ten Kate as translators of Byron, 3 it comes home with laughable force that from the first moment he put pen to paper he belonged himself to "de romantische groep". Not, of course, that it was in his nature to seek the ornate and elaborate vein of Keats — beauty of imagery and musical subtlety had little power over his mind. Nor was poetry to be regarded as an
1 "Byron en het Byronisme in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 169.
2 "De Gids," 1837, p. 615 ff.
3 "De Gids," 1844, p. 242.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
avenue to the world of Romance as disclosed by the imagination of a Coleridge. It might bring a sense of wonder into life, providing a way of escape from the real world and fascinating with a new potency of aesthetic appeal. But since it always had in view the higher education of "Jan, Jannetje en hun Jongste Kind , its world in the main was one of simple make-believe; it came nowhere within the orbit of a poem like "The Ancient Mariner , hallucinating us, but without needing to solve any "problems' of human life. The only possible suggestion of Coleridge is in a certain dramatic intensity, which comes out best in a poem like "'t Passeren der Linie".
Potgieter's poetry is best to be thought of as Romantic in that the spirit of Bilderdijk has won its way to a more poignant diction and a freer rhythm. Occasionally, when these factors are combined, it might even seem that the strongest force at work had been that conducing to his very successful essay as an interpreter of the lyric mood of Burns:
"Golf bij golfje zag ik dansen
Op het zonnig IJ,
Luchtig stoof de rei in 't glansen
't Steigerhoofd voorbij:
Of mij de eigen aandrift spoorde,
De eigen lust naar zee,
Ging ik, die haar lokstem hoorde,
In gedachten meê.
"Hoe het schuim om 't bootje krulde,
Dat ter brik mij droeg!
Hoe de wind de zeilen vulde,
Daar 't genot uit sloeg!
Stad en werf, — paleis en toren,
Dook ten waterrand,
Alles scheen in 't zwerk verloren:
Goeden nacht, mijn Land!"
But when this sparkle fails to redeem from failure themes common-



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
place in themselves, the influence at work might just as easily have been that of Tollens, Bogaers, or Da Costa.
Descriptions of external nature are very frequent in his work:
'"t Was zomer tot op Hollands duinen;
't Was middag, enkel licht en vreê ;
Geen windje voerde van hun kruinen Het blinkend zand ter vlakte meê;
Geen koeltje rimpelde de zee,
"Al deinsde 't landschap voor een vlugt Van vlokjes, dwarlende uit de lucht;
Al viel het bosch, al viel het ijs Der weem'ling van de jagtsneeuw prijs."
But one feels that he "externalises" merely. Never, it seems, does his poetry pass from this straight-forward descriptive phase to the higher one of inner reflection. There is no imaginative blending of the poet with the landscape in "a wise passiveness"; he is able to establish no true relation between sight and insight; he reads no transcendental significance into "the meanest flower that blows"; plainly, external nature does not offer him thesolution of life's primary problems.
It is not easy to see how Potgieter did begin to solve the dualism between spirit and matter; since, undoubtedly, his greatest need was to discover a system in which his zealous, reforming mind could repose. Such a system he might have found later as a derivative of religion and science, could his philosophical curiosity, his metaphysical hunger, just have permitted him to throw his whole being into the struggle. In these days undarkened as yet by Darwinian science, however, his ethical creed was still not far off being a gospel of love and compassion for the human race. Why then did he fail to find proper endorsement for it? Paradoxically, I think it was mainly because he was the slave of conscience, and drew a distinction between it and religious feeling so rigid that it no longer enabled him to attach himself to any solid object of worship, such as theGoethean philosophy of life



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
or the Wordsworthian theology of Nature. Potgieter was never built for the comfortable sceptic. His was above all an anxious nature, a moral nature; according to the portents he should have been completely decorous and respectable in religious matters. And that he was not so was due largely, I think, to his maintenance of the old "heresy of instruction", which kept coming between him and the highest spiritual idealism. Mr T. S. Eliot, professedly no great lover of Shelley, tells us that, while this poet may inform us that he disliked didactic poetry, "his own poetry is chiefly didactic".1 But there is the widest difference between the beauty of the ideas propagated in "Alastor" and those propagated in the "Jan Salie" cycle, where the pictures presented to the Dutch "man-in-the-street" so obviously elucidate the moral tendencies of the age, that the conflict between poetry as propaganda and poetry as art never seriously arises, and the conflict over the question of poetry as entertainment but in the dimmest way:
"'Een wonder is de Nieuwe Beurs!'
Geloof het maar, Jan Salie!
Doch wacht u voor die duisternis:
Men loopt er zijn kassier soms mis,
En spreekt een aêr aan op den gis,
Juist nu de Bank zoo moeilijk is,
En 't geld zoo schaarsch, Jan Salie!"
Even when he turns back, as he does time and again, to the "gouden eeuw" of Vondel, it is not to seize upon what is best in his lyric gifts but to attempt some greater moral hit still, and so confirm himself in his reactionary theory of verbetering. Professor Prinsen makes an excellent point in suggesting that the 'Lake Poets' "beter onder het bereik vielen van onze brave Hollanders, daar ze minder excessen vertoonen" 2 than actually did Byron. He does not elaborate; for, though the truth is that
1 "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," p. 93.
2 Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 204. Italics are mine.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
Wordsworth the greatest of all the Romantic poets, has never been established in Holland, it is not a question that need trouble the Dutch literary historian. In the comparative field, however, the causes for this denial must be allowed to form a not unprofitable line of enquiry. If it was simply due to the darkness of the age, as the poet himself surmised about England, then it would seem that critical "Gids-ers" like Potgieter should, in a manner, be held responsible. But consider the general trend of critical thought. In 1837, so far from Wordsworth being either hailed as prophet or seen as "lost leader", Van Kampen was still able to write: "Cowper is almost unknown in Holland, though he is of all English Poets, that which (sic) would be the most read in this Country, were he to find an able Translator. 1 It is exactly the kind of sentiment Van Alphen should have been expressing fifty or sixty years previously. Take Potgieter in turn. He did, it is true, make some sort of a discovery of Wordsworth, and in that respect is to be accounted the one 'Lake School' poet of Holland. But his allegiance was never so fixed and certain a thing that he could hope on the strength of it to recreate the whole spirit of Dutch poetry and the criticism of poetry. He was really caught, like so many others, between two views of the poet. Wordsworth's passion and sublimity at their very greatest were the objects of wonder and reverence. But, inevitably also, they stood in the way of appreciation of his lesser, and in some ways equally valuable, gifts. Potgieter was quick to sense that Wordsworth's style was really inimitable, that the influence emanating from poems of the order of The Prelude and "The Excursion" was bound to be spiritual rather than formal. Yet, he placed difficulties in the way of his own understanding here and was far from realizing the consistent and patiënt realism of his art in other directions. Other poets were repelled
i "Verhandeling uitgesproken in The English Literary Society (Amsterdam), p. III. Italics are mine.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
by the feelings of strangeness and awkwardness to which his early verses gave rise; Professor Kalff, taking note, for instance, of the fact that Tollens who translated so much else attempted nothing of Wordsworth's. 1 But Potgieter, who would fain have taken the implications of the mind of the mature Wordsworth, with all its high and spacious intellectual machinery, was also most surprisingly lost when called on to deal with the "familiar matter of today" of "Lucy Gray" and "We are Seven", and of themes seeming to border on the ludicrous, as in "Simon Lee" and "The Idiot Boy". Only once does he at all succeed here, and that is when he interprets the typically poignant, if decidedly jingling, "Reverie of Poor Susan", under the title of "Arme Geerte":
"Op den hoek van den Dam, bij het dagen in 't Oost',
Zingt een lijster, sinds jaren haar kooi er getroost;
De arme Geert moest er langs om uit schomm'len te gaan,
Leende 't oor aan het lied en bleef peinzende staan."
But over his mind the specific and the contemporary had obviously too great a hold for him to compete for long with that distinguishing mark of Wordsworth, by which reality was taken, lost, and then restored at some higher point altogether.
It is unlikely that Dutch scholarship will ever manage to produce a dissertation that will reveal the "influences' (I use the plural advisedly) of Wordsworth upon the poets of Holland; as has been done so exhaustively in the case of certain other British writers. The direct references to him — which count for so much in works of the sort — are so few and fugitive as to render the task almost an abortive one. This, in itself, might not be a bad think at all; it might, for the first time, raise the whole question of the value of these "influences". "Influences," as Professor Cazamian all too truly says, "are moral facts, inward changes, and nothing that lives changes but according to the
1 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," Vol. VII, p. 744.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
law of its life; a contact that matters is a stimulus given to a budding originality, and what matters then is the originality much more than the contact." 1
Judged by the usual criteria, Wordsworth's influence on Potgieter was so slight as to be almost negligible. Yet, neither can the matter be allowed to rest there. What I am going to suggest is that, while he knew the English poet's work well enough, actually so intimidating was the effect of his genius upon him that it precluded the possibility of any full intellectual understanding of it. We are not surprised, of course, that he should have viewed with profound respect the mazy wanderings of "The Excursion". "De engelsche school van lateren tijd," he says in a note of highest tribute, "is een statelijk portret rijk, dat we gaarne grootsch prijzen, maar de Pastor van Wordsworth, die de diepste geheimen onzer natuur door geloof verklaart, is zoo verre verheven boven ons onderwerp, als de 'Excursion' de boekskes, die voor ons liggen, overtreft." 2 In face of this declaration Professor Kalff shows considerable courage in suggesting that in "Op Twikkel" are to be found motieven as they are blended in the Argument of Book VIII. 3 The ground-work, unfortunately, is more frail than serious opinionating would require, though it is, nevertheless, a speculation that must always carry with it a high degree of interest.
I wish only that it were possible for surmise to point further — in the direction of "The Prelude" itself. Potgieter, we know, had always it in mind to undertake the composition of a great autobiographical poem — was not his "Nalatenschap van een Landjonker" begun with just such an intention? But not in this, nor in its continuation, "Gedroomd Paardrijden", did he realize the ambition in the high Wordsworthian sense. It is his "testament
1 "Criticism in the Making," Foreword, IX.
2 "Kritische Studiën," Vol. III, p. 231.
3 "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde," Vol. VII, p. 744.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
of faith"; but artistically so, not psychologically. As a work of poetical introspection it does not compare, for instance, with the collected "Binnengedachten" of Kloos. For philosophical poetry Potgieter could really claim no great aptitude. "Poetry," it has been said, "is philosophy and philosophy is poetry"; but to agree, we have to think of the Goethes, the Wordsworths, and the Shelleys, not of the Scotts, the Byrons, the Potgieters. The most we may allow is that Potgieter did possess an unusually enquiring mind; chiefly directed towards perceiving the harmonies between man and his background in history, art, literature, and not between man and man. Meerkerk distinguishes this attitude from the true metaphysical when he says that "aan philosophie deed hij niet, doch was philosoof op eigen houtje. . . Strikt genomen kende hij niet wat men tegenwoordig 'objective waarheid1 noemt. Voor hem bestond er alleen betrekkelijke, Potgieteraansche waarheid." 1 This, however, also somewhat overstates the case. "Gedroomd Paardrijden" is assuredly a comprehensively wrought out poem, with its three hundred and eighty four verses. But it changes into such a vast compound of travel impressions, folklore, artistic ideas, historical notes that it tends to make correct aesthetic taste a substitute for the exercise of "the primary imagination"; it deals with the great historie process, but fails to realize that personal faith counts above it all; there is no note anywhere in it of that high Pantheism which was the product of immediate experience; in a word, spiritual unity is not achieved — "Toch is geen heilige in zijn mystisch droomen". Wordsworth himself has been rebuked by Mr Aldous Huxley for his failure to take stock of the elements of conflict and pain in nature and imposing on its terrifying multifariousness a tame "Anglican" pantheism. But few of these arguments are apposite here. No more had Potgieter been to the Tropics; but if it really were that the landscape of North Holland had failed to provide even the mild stimuli 1 "E. J. Potgieter's Gedroomd Paardrijden," Introduction, p. 4.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
of the Cumbrian hills, there was always Busken Huet in Java to open his eyes to the "truth". Pantheism, as it happened, was not one of his "interests" — not thus could ever arise any great and passionate declaration of himself as a poet. And of far greater importance than any difference of physical background in accounting for the fact that he did not learn more from Wordsworth is probably the spiritual difference between the ages in which they spent their youth; the difference mainly perhaps of being on the wrong sides of the French Revolutionary movement. Critically, as we must see, Potgieter left the major implications of his craft still to be taken. And this, later, was what brought him most violently into conflict with the "Nieuwe Gids-ers": a conflict that might well be considered, I think, as resolving itself round the question of how far he was aware — not of Wordsworth, as might just as reasonably have been asked — — but of the importance of Keats and Shelley; so very new-found in the Holland of 1885. Strangely enough, he seems actually to have been more aware of Crabbe than of either of these infinitely greater poets: his "Blik naar Crabbe", Dr Dekker calls "sy nobelste hulde aan die Engelse literatuur".1 Potgieter himself takes the opportunity to say here: "Het heugt ieder die voor vijfentwintig jaren jong is geweest, welk een invloed de engelsche poëzie toenmaals op de hollandsche uitoefende."2 But it was 1863 before he thought of dealing directly with Shelley; and then it was, in the words of the attacking Kloos, "een van diens minst belangrijke gedichtjes, 'The Fugitives' toevalligerwijs vertaald". 3 He made amends, however, with a study of the poet nine years later, taking as his text the famous saying: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". The measure of
1 De Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 56.
2 "Studiën en Kritieken," Vol. II, p. 219.
3 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1922 II, p. 307.
9



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
his admiration can be readily gauged from the fact that he cites in full the "Lines written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon", setting them against the dogmatically Calvinistic epode of Bilderdijk on the same theme. "Excentrisch; ja, maar poëtisch!" he exclaims of them: "Excentrisch, en daarom onhollandsch. Nooit leverde de Nederlandsche dichtkunst iets op, wat naar dat vers zweemde." 1 Thereafter he institutes a comparison between the freedom-loving Shelley and the satirical Béranger; contriving in the end to reconcile their Muse of pity, "la sainte Alliance des Peuples".
As stated by Meerkerk, Potgieter's personal ideals might almost have been those of Shelley himself. "Vorming van karakter, he catalogues, "loutering van de ziel, bevestiging van den wil," adding more significantly, "Want voor Potgieter was de kunstenaar niet iets buiten den mensch". 2 There was, indeed something of the nature of the English poet in the Dutchman: his sensitiveness to pain, not in himself but in others, his love of beauty, his zeal to reform, his strain of pessimism. More a man of his 'time than the other, however, Potgieter went where the thought of the age led him. At first he went most valiantly; until, with a shock, it came home to him that a further, more supreme, effort was imperative. Even then he did not slide feebly into the slough of despond, but sought to bestride the winged Pegasus, as other poets had done before him, and fly far off from the present, thus to work from the experiences of the greater spirits of the past - Vondel, Dante, Shakespeare. In this, of course, he sadly misread life's purposes, and long before the end was conscious of having failed. Coming from the lips of a poet, his "Ik heb geworsteld met mijne eeuw" has a devastatingly weary ring. In it he seems to shake off all personal responsibility; it is the age, not himself, that has failed — by its failure to
1 "Studiën en Schetsen," p. 208.
2 "E. J. Potgieter's Gedroomd Paardrijden," Introduction, p. 5.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
rise to its artistic responsibilities through the new liberal ideas he has so long helped to preach.
Potgieter's sadness is profound. But it is just a little vitiated, since unaccompanied by any note of genuine self-accusation. There is no true understanding of the motives which have led him to abandon his task; correspondingly, there is not in his ultimate position any deep sense of personal tragedy — and his work, it seems to me, cannot be held to suffer greatly if it is considered simply as a literary entity, rather than as an introduction to a wider criticism of man and society. On this score Meerkerk, 1 think, is inclined to deal over-indulgently with his lack of a positive philosophy. "Potgieter/5 he writes, "was in zekeren zin agnosticus, in Socratischen zin mocht ik zeggen: we weten niets zeker, dan dat wij niets weten." This is to give too much importance to the critic's mere protest against the "Jan Salie" mentality, and the barbarians and Philistines; it fails to insist that the poet is also expected to make a genuine contribution towards the spiritual basis of the new order he envisages.
To me, then, if pathos there is in Potgieter's experience, it arises not so much from the wistfulness of his agnostic doctrines as from the fact that one so genial and so little arrogant in himself should have lacked a fellow mind to assist in the elucidation of his central insight. There was but one possible mind, of course, at this time with the intellectual resources fit even to approach this task — the mind of Conrad Busken Huet. But if Potgieter was himself a very mild reproduction in Holland of the spirit of Wordsworth, Huet was assuredly no Coleridge. Wordsworth's new mystical religion, of which Potgieter undeniably feit the stirrings within himself, could hardly be uttered; but here was one — akin to the extent of having once been a Wallonian preacher — openly scornful of all religion. Too much insistence, I think, 1 "E. J. Potgieter's Gedroomd Paardrijden," Introduction, p. 4.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
has been placed on the close collaboration of the two in the work of editing "De Gids", too much attention given to the somewhat arbitrary cause of their final resignation and separation, and all too little to a consideration of the inter-action of their strangely assorted gifts of mind and heart.
I have not seen it stated anywhere, but in my own mind there is no doubt that Huet excelled as a critic of prose far more than as a critic of poetry. The finest work he ever accomplished was, without a doubt, his Land van Rubens , his "Land van Rembrandt", his essays on subjects like "La Nouvelle Heloïse", "Werther", "Paul et Virginie", "Sara Burgerhart", "Willem Leevend", "Multatuli". The magnificent tributes he paid Hooft and Potgieter himself are to be accounted as in an exceptional key.1 Normally his very much intellectualised standards of value were too severe and absolute to allow him to move far in the direction prescribed by the highest poetic tradition. As Professor Prinsen recognizes: "Er gaat geen gloed, geen koesterende warmte van Huet uit; door zijn agnosticisme vooral is hij wat te veel geworden de koele intellectueele ontleder, die er vermaak in schept het waardelooze en onbetrouwbare uiteen te rafelen". 2 This tendency to construct over-intellectual theories he, of course, derived from France (for his work was intellectual to a degree never before known in Holland). Leerling van SainteBeuve" Saks names him, 3 and there is no gainsaying the judgment. It is the closeness of his method to that of the French master that is always uppermost in reading him: he had clearly no other ambition than "een Nederlandse Sainte-Beuve te worden".4 It was this affection for the superior culture of France
1 Against them must be set his unsatisfactory studies of Cats and Staring and his inability to do justice to Bilderdijk.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 239.
3 "Busken Huet en Potgieter," p. 83. . _
4 C. G. N. De Vooys and W. H. Staverman, "Uit de Litterarische Fantasten
en Kritieken van Cd. Busken Huet," Introduction, IX.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
that made Huet at once by far the most cosmopolitan and the most incisive of all critics of his country. But, unfortunately, since the traffic resulting was entirely one-way, it also kept him the most dissatisfied, the most ruthless, the most humourless, the most despairing, where his own own countrymen were concerned.
This is no systematic history of literature, and it is not my intention, therefore, to go thoroughly into Huet's literary surveys; seen in any case so persistently through Gallic glasses. A point of much greater importance for my purpose is the fact that when he was persuaded to change his perspective to Holland itself, it was once more his friend Potgieter who acted as intermediary. De Vooys and Staverman, indeed, I am glad to find, allow him to have been only a less formative influence upon the other's thought than the mighty Sainte-Beuve himself. "Om de betekenis," they write plainly, "van Huet's kritiek in de vruchtbare jaren 1862—1864 te begrijpen, moet men rekening houden met twee factoren: de invloed van de Franse letterkundige kritiek, in het biezonder van Sainte-Beuve, en de persoonlijke invloed van zijn oudere vriend Potgieter." 1 And again, as 1 read the signs, it can only have been he who inspired him to make his one incursion of importance into the poetical literature of England. Potgieter himself had shown the way as long ago as 1858 with his own excellent appreciation of Crabbe; and though the work of such a relatively obscure poet was totally without interest for Huet, he forced himself into selecting for review the more anarchical types of Byron and Shelley. 2 In respect of the latter poet his debt to his friend is clearly acknowledged (for though Huet was not able to show a reciprocal influence, he was not niggardly towards Potgieter at least in returning thanks for any favours received). "Om Shelley," he therefore says, bekom-
1 Op. cit., Introduction, XI.
2 "Byron en Shelley" in "Litterarische Fantasiën en Kritieken," Vol. IV.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
merde zich niemand; en geruimen tijd was Potgieter de eenige, welke op dien regel eene uitzondering vormde." 1 Huet's essay is in many ways a most contradictory piece of work. It seems especially strange, for instance, to find this critic, so much out of tune with the Zeitgeist himself, rebuking the English writer for his indiscretion in so publicly and defiantly announcing his "atheism" and his opposition to organized religion. "Bovenal was het kortzigtig," he says, "niet te bevroeden, dat het zoogenaamde atheïsme, waarmede hij als jongeling dweepte, dien naam alleen verdiende als tegenhanger van een zoo positief geloof als het Christelijke der Anglikaansche kerk. He does express, after so belated an acquaintanceship with his work, admiration for his abilities, veneration for the nobility of his spirit, awe at the sublimity of his nostalgia; but always there seems to stick in his throat this matter of his "irrational claim for freedom and his wilful rousing, thereby, of society against him.
The comparison with Byron, in turn, runs on somewhat pedestrian lines. It is instituted by considering "Julian and Maddalo , and the influence of Shelley apparent in "Manfred" and the third canto of "Childe Harold". "Queen Mab" he deliberately passes by, but dwells at length on Byron's "twee meesterstukken", the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" and the sixth of "Don Juan", beside which "vindt men bij Shelley . . . geen spoor". The latter, however, he at once vindicates again by declaring that "bij Byron zal men vruchtloos zoeken naar iets wat Shelley's ode aan de najaarsstorm, zijn lied aan den leeuwerik, of, om bij de grootere werken te blijven, het modern treurspel The Cenci, het antieke Prometheus, den lijkzang Adonais, in de schaduw stelt". Byron he finds richer than Shelley, but more sensual; Shelley more abstract than Byron, more elevated. Finally, he seeks to account
1 "Litterarische Fantasiën en Kritieken," Vol. IV, p. 108.
2 Jbid., p. 102.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
for the long delay in recognizing the English poets. The cause he rightly finds in the inherent conservatism of the Dutch national character. "Waar Bilderdijk en Van der Palm bloeiden," he characteristically takes the chance to lash his predecessors by saying, "was voor de twee vreemde planten geen lucht." 1 With regard to Huet only one further point remains to be considered — his relationship with the culminating movement in Holland now taking its beginning from the free rendering of Shelley's "Cloud" by the young poet Perk. It is perhaps typical that, to the end, the critic watched it from the outside — from his beloved Paris. His life's endeavour had been to show that literature is a loyalty with a higher claim than the national one. In this he had gone his own way, not even seeking to carry his friend Potgieter with him; but in the end it had left him in isolation, not as the unselfish devotee of modes more permanent and satisfying than the literature of his fatherland might allow, but as the neglectful, or at least very partial and erratic, reviewer where that very literature was concerned. He had intended to be ruthless in his dealings with it, but had often only succeeded in being grossly unfair towards it. To him it had consisted of two explosions merely — the poetry of the age of Hooft, rather than of Vondel — and the period of the "Oude Romans" at the end of the eighteenth century. Now, apparently, the wheel had come full circle. To the next writers his scepticism over their idealism was as unintelligible a thing as had been the platburgerlijk" flavour of Cats to his own sensitive ear. Kloos the leader took occasion much later to rebuke him for lack of het fijnaanvoelende, aesthetisch-psychische temperament" necessary to appreciate the great English poet, whose name he had freely enough mentioned in his critical studies while failing abysmally to understand for what it stood. "Neen," is his emphatic declaration, "voor Huet evenals voor Potgieter was Shelley slechts 1 Op. cit., p. 108.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
een dichter als elk ander, zooals er bij honderden in alle landen en tijden hebben bestaan." 1 He is, I think, unnecessarily severe. But, then, Huet had committed the unpardonable sin of throwing doubt upon the genius of his idol Perk and of his ability, in turn, to appreciate a poet like Shelley in the highest sense. Now the revolutionary fires have burned down, time has mellowed these differences; the critic is being hailed once again, so that I have even the feeling that he was not very far wrong after all in thinking Perk to have been overpraised. 2 And can we be completely sure that he had no vision of the third great literary explosion that was about to burst forth in Holland? Was not the most splendid gesture of his whole career just that his very last critique, the fragment "De Romantiek in Nederland', was intended for publication in '"De Nieuwe Gids", that upstart rival of his own old, long-cherished "Gids"?
The murmurings which latterly began to arise against the authority and long-continued domination of Potgieter and Huet were inevitable. Of neither critic can it be truly asserted that there was ever serious eclipse or exhaustion of genius, yet contribute to their own eventual supersession they undoubtedly did. In the case of Potgieter the too open parade — almost boast — he made of the "unpopularity" of his work recoiled very definitely upon himself; while Huet, never ceasing to side-track with SainteBeuve and Taine, seemed to be using his gifts in the service of a system of criticism that held no real promise of salvation for Dutch letters. Nevertheless, all too easily was it forgotten of what inestimable service they had already been to their country. "De Gids" had been set up roughly as the Dutch equivalent of "The Edinburgh Review", and at all times in their conduct of it they had striven to maintain an independent and unbiassed line. To the successors they all too typically despaired of finding
1 "Percy Bysshe Shelley in Nederland" — "De Nieuwe Gids", 1922 II, p. 309.
2 Vide "Brieven," Vol. II, p. 253.



ENGLISH BARDS AND DUTCH REVIEWERS
they would in this alone hand down a not unuseful heritage; and while, for the moment, the youthful, rebellious "Nieuwe Gids-ers" might see them as a kind of joint Jeffrey, repressive and discouraging, soon they would be able to view them in better perspective — as the rock out of which they themselves had in part been hewn.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1897
Geschiedenis der Noord-Nederlandsche Letteren in de XlXe Eeuw.
Rotterdam, 1902.
Kalff, G. - Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Vol. VII. Groningen, 1912.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924.
Saks, J. - Busken Huet en Potgieter. Rotterdam, 1927.
Verwey, A. - De Gids nu hij 50 jaar is in De Oude Strijd. Amsterdam, 1905.
POTGIETER
Beets, N. - Jrt Nieuwe Verscheidenheden. Vol. III. Haarlem, 1902.
Groenewegen, J. H. - Everhardus Johannes Potgieter. Haarlem, 1894.
Hertog C. H. den - Potgieter's Poëzie. Amsterdam, 1896.
Potgieter, E. J. - Brieven aan Cd. Busken Huet. 3 Vols. Haarlem, 1902.
Verwey, A. - Het Leven van Potgieter. Haarlem, 1903.
Zimmermann, J. C. - De Werken van E. J. Potgieter. 19 Vols. Haarlem, 1890—
1899.
BUSKEN HUET
Busken Huet, C. - Litterarische Fantasiën en Kritieken. 26 Vols. Haarlem, 1881.
Brieven. 2 Vols. Haarlem, 1890.
Brieven aan E. J. Potgieter. 3 Vols. Haarlem, 1925.
Meerkerk, J. B. - Conrad Busken Huet. Haarlem, 1911.
Naber, S. A. - Jn Vier Tijdgenooten. Haarlem, 1894.
Tielrooy, J. B. - Conrad Busken Huet et la Littérature Frangaise. Haarlem,
1923. , .. . ,
Vooys, C. G. N. de, and Staverman, W. H. - Introduction, Uit de Litterarische
Fantasiën en Kritieken van Cd. Busken Huet. Leyden, 1931.



CHAPTER VI
KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
Nothing perhaps is so alien to the literary practice of England as the type of artificial revival induced by the Dutch in the closing quarter of the nineteenth century and to which they give the name, "Beweging van Tachtig". Even when the fundamental creative urge of the English poets began, in the early Victorian period, to show signs of flagging, there was still no suggestion other than that the national tradition should be maintained and the practitioners of poetry go their own independent ways, each writing as he wished and without regard to any possible concerted movement working round fresh theories. But the life of Dutch poetry has always been far more precariously poised, and now so delicately was it suspended that either, it seemed, it must succumb altogether or make one last determined, united effort to solve the whole poetic problem anew. Speaking of Mrs Hemans and Robert Montgomery as leading luminaries, Sir Herbert Grierson tells us that "it was against poetry of this bourgeois, sentimental kind in Holland that a number of young men in the eighties made a vehement protest, declaring that poetry was not sentiment and sermons but art and passion," and he goes on to state that England itself "dispelled the influence of this inferior stuff without the necessity of an active crusade and the foundation of such a periodical as De "Nieuwe Qids to make the appeal effective." 1
1 "Lyrical Poetry from Blake to Hardy," p. 65.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Before proceeding further it is well, I think, to make clear that the terms, "Beweging van '80 en Nieuwe-Gids-Beweging, Tachtiger en Nieuwe-Gidser", are not to be looked on — as so often the case — as purely synonymous ones. "Men kan de inhoud der beweging van '80," says Dr Stuiveling, "vrijwel onbegrensd uitbreiden, door daaronder alles te verstaan wat omstreeks 1880 in Nederland bewoog of te bewegen begon; in dit geval is zij groter dan de Nietuwe Gids. Men kan ook onder de beweging van '80 een streng gelimiteerd verschijnsel verstaan, zich beperkend tot de dichtkunst; bij dit woordgebruik, waaraan ik de voorkeur geef, is de beweging van '80 kleiner dan de Nieuwe Gids, en vangt zij enkele jaren eerder aan." 1 Nor, again, should it be so strenuously imagined that all parallelism with the "Gids" movement of 1837 can be ruled out of count. "The Nieuwe Qids differs from De Qids," Professor Walch is quite justified in noting, "in that it pursues an exclusively aesthetic ideal."2 Yet, in practice, could the functions pertaining to a critical journal in 1885 have come to be diametrically the opposite of those pertaining to its corresponding number in 1837? Too long, admittedly, had Holland temporised with what Herman Robbers has somewhat witheringly termed Poetgieter's "soort gekunstelde romantiek"; but let us also be frank enough to recognize that that critic had to contend — and contend almost unaided — with many of the very circumstances and conditions that prevailed for the bolder spirits of the 'eighties. The social background alone reveals a great deal in this respect. Let us examine it for each period for a moment. At the earlier date, it is true, the Industrial Revolution was not in full swing in Holland as it was in England; yet already, it seemed, the postulates of "this prosaic modern age" had been accepted by just such a discerning mind as Potgieters — what, after all, were Jan Salie and his like
1 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt", p. 33
2 "The Encyclopedia Britannica," 14th. Edition, Vol. VII, p. 775.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
created for but to prove that beautifully picturesque ways and settings of life were growing incompatible with this "modern civilisation" and that only through a re-dedication of mankind to artistic ends could they hope to be saved from disappearing altogether? Potgieter's new vocabulary, as it happened, was one totally unsuited to any large attempt to reassert the old faith in the picturesque past, but as a critic and poet he had at least a good right to be interested in the problem.
What of 1880 in turn? Holland was now definitely in the throes of scientific application: the face of the country was being revolutionised, great riches were being created, the imagination of simple people was being strangely stirred (although it was in the nature of things, I readily concede, that this little country should be spared the most destructive phase of industrialism, despite the partial submergence of its peasantry). Positive uglification, it can be said, was still comparatively rare; and the picture Dr Stuiveling paints of conditions in the two chief cities, is, on the outside view, a far from unattractive one. "Den Haag," he sets down, "was omstreeks 1880, in veel hooger mate nog dan tegenwoordig, een stad van al en niet gepensionneerde ambtenaren, beridderlinte diplomaten, trage gerepatrieerden uit de Oost, rijke en schijnrijke adel en schijnadel, — deftig, beschouwend, cosmopolitisch, maar deftig bovenal. Amsterdam echter begon zich ir^ snel tempo te ontwikkelen tot een grote moderne handels- en industriestad, vol bezige proletariërs, op winst beluste kooplui, wagende ondernemers, beweeglijke joden, en met een economisch stevige burgerij: levend, actief, internationaal." 1 Yet, who will say that Potgieter had not been far-seeing in his day, and that this was likely to be a development in the end worthy of the country's best traditions and the Dutch people's own natural ideals? Were not there just enough of the signs in this growing "prosperity" to foreshadow "les villes tentaculaires" 1 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 17.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
of Verhaeren in the neighbouring Belgium? And what of the hardening of the social conventions, the narrowing of the moral code, that was a necessary accompaniment of the new urbanised, properous order? Could that but be a factor more and more in opposition to the cult of beauty, imagination, and liberty, so much the very soul of Romantic poetry?
That the Potgieter-esque love of art had positively to turn into something greater — into love of beauty no less — if it were to prove the inspired urge towards Holland's national salvation, there can be no point further in gainsaying. "Boven dit alles," says Robbers "uit steeg hun begeerte tot de schoonheid. Behalve door hartstochtelijk verzet tegen den geest hunner onmiddellijke voorgangers, kenmerkte zich de beweging der tachtiger in de eerste plaats door hartstochtelijk schoonheidsverlangen."1 And: "Dit was het begin:" almost bluntly confirms Verwey, "de vreugde over de schoonheid." ^ After which, along with Haantjes, W. van Lennep, Stuiveling, he proceeds to repeat ad nauseam Perk's very jejune adaptation of the Lord's Prayer, beginning: Schoonheid,
0 gij, wier naam geheiligd zij." It is all made to seem so ridiculously easy. My complaint against the critics is that they do not seek sufficiently to account for the complete phenomenon, or else view it mistakenly as some ready-made importation. Surely, for the motivation of what was a spirit of definite reaction to that which M. Georges Duhamel has termed "the sterile warehousing of so-called practical notions", we have every right to seek first within Holland itself.
Herman Robbers has some hard things to say in this connection of the literary criticism of Professors Kalff and Te Winkel and
rather more reluctantly — of Professor Prinsen. Immers,
he sets forth in his indictment, "zij geven hun essays voor wat ze zijn: persoonlijke beschouwingen, steunend op een studie, die
1 "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. II.
2 "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst, p. 29.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
allicht niet wetenschappelijk heeten mag, maar daartegenover bezield werd door liefde, door aandacht mogelijk gemaakt, vergemakkelijkt ook, waarschijnlijk door een zeker natuurtalent. Zij denken er niet aan, hun meeningen en conclusies voor vaststaande, z.g. 'definitieve critiek' uit te geven. Trouwens ook omtrent deze begrippen verschillen zij eenigszins van de wetenschappelijke historieschrijvers."1 With his own view of the function of criticism one can scarcely quarrel. "Ons aller critische beschouwing," he emphasizes, "verandert met de tijden, is aan voortdurende evolutie onderhevig." 2 One feels inclined, however, not merely to show leniency towards Professor Prinsen, but even to exempt him altogether. At this very point, in fact, he seems to take exactly the evolutionary reading of literature that is desiderated for his like, when he writes of Perk that he "sluit zich aan bij Potgieter in zijn cultus van den weiverzorgden, kunstigen vorm van zijn werk." 3 And with regard to Professors Kalff and Te Winkel, in turn, my commentary would be that, if the charge is in any way true for them, it is quite completely and absolutely so for Professor Ten Brink. His "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde" is in many ways a magnificent work, in respect both of scholarship and art, but throughout its vast length it is the author's method to keep dividing off his matter into the closest, most water-tight, sort of compartments, making it endlessly difficult to attempt to follow the course of any main literary stream. And nowhere is this annoying and artificial line of treatment so undeviatingly pursued as for the period now under review. Convenient for himself, it may be, to partition the poets off in their strict, chronological order and label them: "Jong-Holland I", "Jong-Holland II", "Jong-Holland III". 4
1 "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. 2.
2 Jbid., p. 2.
3 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 255.
4 His typical "Oude Garde en de Jongste School" is mercilessly parodied by Lodewijk van Deyssel in his "Verzamelde Opstellen," Volume II, pp. 185-188.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
But how unimaginative, how soulless, the system it enshrines! That, as it happens, is as far as the book reaches; and for the third and last category of bards there is — fortunately perhaps — but the scantiest consideration possible. Under this arbitrary method one thing alone seems to matter — and that is that the poet should contrive to complete his work neatly within the limits set, should not impinge the slightest partiele on the province of those who went before and those who must come after him. So much does the whole process savour of looking to creative writers to turn out their productions to order almost, it might be, at piece-work rates! — that, on the basis of the typical sentence, "Ons geschiedverhaal eindigt met 1880, het jaar der verschijning van Jong-Holland III",1 one might be forgiven for wondering if it does not also begin to suggest literary history to order!
If any poet has a right to be considered as a man and not as a 'Movement', it is assuredly Perk. In his work are at last to be found most of the important elements that we associate with Romantic literature — passion for nature, reverence for the dignity of individual personality, hatred of shram and hypocrisy; in him we so definitely reach towards a culminating point in the story of Romanticism in Holland that his place in the poetic succession must be a matter of more than usual concern. With only one of his contemporaries can Perk be said to have made any sort of common cause; Kloos alone seemed to him to be worth his strife: none of the others had grasped the new principles in their highest form, none seemed to sense where such revolutionary theories of art might be leading. But, to begin with, he stood out by himself; unaided, he had to decide upon his capability to appreciate a finer music. It did not take his keen mind long to decide. Unerringly, he saw that if the poetry of his country were to gain to a new and piercing sweetness of tone, it could
1 Op. cit., p. 669.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
only be by going back to England's most young and eager poets, to Shelley and Keats, whose superiority of mind and spirit, whose amazing intensity of feeling, so long neglected or abused, was now triumphing over every critical obstacle. And when in Shelley and Keats — the latter more especially — he found the exact sources of stimulation he had been seeking, it was as if a miracle had happened in Holland. Often in the past England had been called to its rescue, but never perhaps so deliberately and determinedly as at this moment. French Naturalism was in the air; "maar," says Frans Coenen, "die nieuwe Fransche geest was volstrekt niet de eenige of voornaamste stimulans van het nieuwe Holland. Er bestond een andere groep, die haar inspiratie van gansch andere zijde kreeg... ook al ten bewijze hoe hier een eigen vlam te branden aanving, die zijn voedsel overal vinden kon. Werden de prozaschrijvers, de zich meer episch voelenden, door prozaisten beïnvloed, de lyrische naturen volgden uitteraard eerst vreemde dichters, zulken die een gelijkgestemden geest tot uiting brachten. En dat waren niet de gelijktijdige Franschen, doch de begin-eeuwsche Engelschen, de dichters van de lake-poetry; Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth." 1 In the fullness of the tribute the oddness of the grouping may be overlooked; just as Dr Stuiveling, in speaking of Keats's "geniale vriend Shelley", 2 seems to use a curiously inappropriate term. The chance might be taken here, indeed, to refer to the almost invariable habit of the Dutch critics to link the names of Keats and Shelley together, as though they formed one single, compelling influence. Dr Dekker alone proves anything of an exception in this respect, and might almost, in fact, be said to swing round to the opposite extreme. "Elke bespreking van Keats en Shelley," he notes precisely enough, "moet as uitgangspunt neem dat hulle romantisie is — Shelley is die supreme uiting van die hyge naar vryheid en
1 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 15.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 23.
10



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
van die uiters individuele gevoel, Keats is die vir sinsindrukke só gevoelige dat die sang van die nagtegaal hom in hierdie koorsagtige toestand bring" - going on to quote the opening lines of the famous ode.1 This, while admirable enough in its way, leads often to two distinct and separate treatments, pursued in the accepted fashion of theses; and not after that parallel manner which would better justify his title, by showing how the old enthusiastic passion for poetry flames up afresh in each, however changed its significance in point of detail and by their individual attitudes to life.
It seems never to have struck Dr Dekker or any other Dutch critic that Perk would still be entitled to be known as the "Keats of Holland", even if he had never come to a knowledge and understanding of the young English bard. 1 do not mean by this that in their histories and characters we find a great many exact parallels. Their lives were similar mainly in being grievously short, the circumstances under which they were cut off being also 'remarkably unlike. It is Keats the senior of the two - if that can seriously be imagined — who has left all the problems. Rarely was any youthful poet so misunderstood, so unmercifully castigated, 'by the critics. How far otherwise with Perk! Was ever budding genius so fortunately situated with regard to the one great, needful friend - as distinct from squads of mere admirers? What would history not give for a Kloos alongside Keats to elucidate the brief but concentrated record of his mind and art? The affinity of Keats and Perk, then, must be found, not in any of these adventitious matters, but in the fact of their having been primary poets of an altogether rare kind, holding among their respective countrymen the subtlest sense of beauty known within their century at least. Perk's contact with Keats might have made him into a great artist, but it could not have
i "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 2.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
made him into a great poet as well, if the substance of his poetry had not come to him in the first place from the impulses of his own soul.
Perk has every right, I contend, to 'be considered as great in himself, the born poet. His country, like Britain itself, happens to be one of those eminently sane nations which can maintain its life naturally even during a dearth of great figures. But no nation can continue so indefinitely — and not least in the realm of art. Fourth and fifth carbon copies of Bilderdijk had already gone on being accepted for far too long a period. Even prophecy in Doorenboos was not enough: there had to come very soon the realization of poetry, pure poetry. It came, of course, in the person of Perk. But great events spring only from great causes, and his advent so suddenly is not comprehensible unless it is realized how far back his own literary ancestry carried — no less than to the days of ancient Greece. "Keats is zelf 'n Griek, says Dr Dekker very truly;1 and when Kloos informs us that "voelde Perk zich inwendig-eenzaam, in de literatuur van zijn tijd en zijn land,"2 the implication is very clear. With him, indeed, it can be said that for the first time since Vondel's day the poetry of Greece entered vitally into that of Holland; to his devotion to that poetry and to his intensive study of it he, undoubtedly, owed the purity of his aesthetic; no other training could possibly have imparted that self-criticism which was to make his conscious artistic endeavour as severe and exacting a task as any to which poet in the Netherlands ever subjected himself. In pursuit of this Hellenic harmony and form, it is doubtful if he considered himself a Romantic at all; and there is some justification, 1 suppose, for regarding him as the one great classical artist among the Tachtigers, in much the same way
1 "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 29.
2 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, XLV.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
as Keats himself was an independent, self-disciplined classicist. In Perk, as in Keats, also lives something of the Renaissance spirit. As convinced of the importance of his craft, he showed no direct concern with any didactic aim, and worshipped beauty for its own sake above all else. "Hier," says Dekker of his profane-seeming paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, sing n Nederlander dit uit in 'n heel ander gamma, swaarder en gedragener van toon, in 'n verhewe himne, waaruit minder die lieflikheid van die direkte sinlike bekoring spreek: 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'1 His masters, however, were as yet Dante, Petrarch, Vondel, Hooft; and these doubtless suggested to him the form in which to express himself — not the song-lyric, but the sonnet. It is a selection of considerable importance; perhaps in itself an indication that his genius, any more than Keats's, was not predominantly lyrical. The English poet, we know, wrote a number of outstanding sonnets; but it was in the ode that the full current of his soul found most free and satisfying outlet. And his, 1 think, was the more inspired choice. Of the subsequent course of the sonnet I shall have something to say later; meantime Professor Verwey's verdict may be noted. "Tegen het Sonnet, he says, "later te veel gebruikt, zijn omstreeks 1880 bezwaren genoeg ingebracht." 2 The adoption of this form it mainly was that enabled Perk to produce almost perfect work from the start. To him, as to all great poets — and not least all great sonnetteers — constant pruning and refining must have been necessary; but for one so incredibly young there is a quite startling maturity about almost everything he wrote. Perhaps, indeed, his work is too much matured by law and precept. Kloos, I think, is overadulatory in saying: "Ieder gedicht van dezen echten zanger is als een éénheid van gevoel." 3 The sonnet naturally conditioned
1 Op. cit., p. 101.
2 "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst, p. 31.
3 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, XLVI.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
the subjective use of his emotional material; but, while the elaboration of a poignant sequence as "eene idylle uit het leven," might reveal his deep sensations as a man, it also tended to an undue care and watchfulness in the artist. Perk, I definitely consider, could with advantage have shown himself less addicted to this set form, could have been more adventuresome over experimenting in other directions, and so have won probably to the realization that deep thought and emotion have many ways in which they may be used. He might well have taken over the ode from Keats, so much his idol and inspirer, since the ode, though also built on the foundation of a strong, concentrated emotion, manages to raise a structure of independent beauty. This danger of extreme subjectivity, carrying within it the very seeds of the ultimate Romantic dissolution, was one that was to strike hard at the purveyors to the feast of "De Nieuwe Gids"; and it is difficult to see how Perk can escape without a measure of onus in the matter.
Skilfully as Dr Dekker handles the case, I am not prepared to admit that his is the only — or even the best — approach to the poetry of Perk. Above all, it seems to me, if we are to seek at every turn to disentangle Perk's Platonic philosophy or the peculiarities of his aesthetic and probe back to the source of every possible partiele of influence in them of Keats and Shelley, we shall inevitably lose sight of his essential qualities as a poet capable of allowing his own thought and experience to determine what it is he wants to say. To make so much turn upon single lines and isolated ideas is to me in some ways even a meretricious method; and personally I cannot see that the value of Perk's work is truly to be increased by such tokens: 1 hope I am not being unpatriotic when I say that I would never wish him to be either so Keatsian or so Shelleyan as is made out on this peculiar declension! Why, Dr Dekker has but to see the most ordinary poetical image or piece of phraseology to unearth some exact



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
correspondence for it. Let me illustrate. In Sonnet LV of the "Mathilde" cycle, for instance, his roving eyes light upon the lines:
"In de diepste diepte ontwaren Mijn spiedende oogen 't grondelooze niet,
Waar nacht en stilte in kille omarming paren,"
and instantly he must conclude that they have something to do with "Endymion's:
"Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams The summer time away."
Again, Sonnet LXII contains the innocuous enough lines:
"Hij is: zijn armen zeegnen stilte en duister Die eeuwig woonden rond den reuzestam."
There seems not the slightest reason why a young poet of Perk's intellect should not have fashioned them without special reference to others; but, no! — such a plain assumption will not do for Dr Dekker. Nothing will satisfy him, indeed, but to produce — from "Alastor" and "A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade" respectively — lines that he conceives to be the "originals ; while to draw attention to the striking resemblances that are supposed to exist, he must needs make lavish use of italics! But not the most emphatic type obtainable, I am afraid, would ever convince me that we are dealing here with other than purely adventitious cases.
We come to Perk's "swane-sang", "Iris". But that is entirely different, for it is written in the metre of "The Cloud", and is clearly modelled upon its soaring visions:
"Ik ben geboren uit zonne-gloren
En een zucht van de ziedende zee,
Die omhoog is gestegen, op wieken van regen,
Gezwollen van wanhoop en wee:
Mijn gewaad is doorweven met parels, die beven,
Als dauw aan de roos, die ontlook,



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
Wen de dag-bruid zich baadt, en voor 't schuchter gelaat Een waaier van vlammen ontplook." 1
Apropos Shelley's poem here the late Professor W. P. Ker raised an interesting point when he noted that the measure of the 'Cloud' has an attraction for Dutch poets, and is used by one at least of the South African composers." 2 Had he, by any chance, Perk specially in mind?
Dr Dekker finding Perk "ver buite die Christendom as Shelley", 3 next begins a frantic hunt for pantheistic parallels, and does find a number admittedly, notably in Sonnet LXXXI:
"De hemel is mijn hart, en met den voet Druk ik loodzwaar den schemel mijner aard',
En nederblikkend, is mijn grimlach zoet:
"Ik zie daar onverstand en ziele-voosheid ...
Genoegen lacht — ik lach ... en, met een vaart,
Stoot ik de waereld weg in de eindeloosheid."
Curiously enough, Jhr W. van Lennep instances the same sonnet in his article, "Jacques Perk en de Religie" — but without any reference to Shelley! 4 Dr Dekker comes back to reason, however, with his final admission. "Shelley," he says, ' is ryker, dieper, forser, breër, hewiger, geesteliker — maar Perk is verwant aan hom daarin dat ook hy gejaag het naar die ideële skoonheid." 5 He is well-advised; for long after every line of Perk's has borne its last possible commentary, I am persuaded that his work in its totality will remain a living monument to the strength and beauty of that supreme ideal. Nor, that I can see,
1 For saying that he knew this poem and also "The Skylark", we have the testimony of his friend Kloos. The evidence adduced by Dekker to show that he possessed a complete knowledge of the works of Shelley is far from convincing.
2 "The Art of Poetry," p. 49.
3 "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 104.
4 Vide "De Nieuwe Gids," 1931 II, p. 567.
5 Op. cit., p. 105.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
can the fact that he was no social revolutionary and knew little of the spirit of "Alastor", "The Revolt of Islam", or "Prometheus Unbound", quietly count him out, so long as there is still to sum up all his "liefde vir die lewende skepping", the personification of Shelleyan loveliness and perfection-.
"Maar... wat doet, Morgenhemel! mij gelooven,
Dat, achter 't vallende kristal, zich baadt
Een maagd, wier blankheid blankheid gaat te boven?
Wat, dat ze op mij de fonkelblikken slaat,
En heen den watersluier heeft geschoven,
En lacht en lonkt, dat me alle rust vergaat?..
If it is true at all that the influence of Shelley upon Perk was greater than the influence upon him of Keats, it can only be, I would say, in the matter of specifics. Actually, in mind, nature, character, style, he bore much more affinity to Keats. His tastes, it is true, were less robust than those of the English poet, his mind more definitely mystical; but he was as human a being, with his feelings ever keyed up to an unusual degree of intensity. Neither, of course, dying so young, could ever hope to reach such perfect harmony of thought and feeling as he would have wished; a factor responsible doubtless for the wistful, even at times bitter, note that creeps into their work. Perk, above all, followed his English predecessor in possessing something of the same luxurious temperament, preferring to "load every rift with ore" rather than risk lapsing into abstraction and nebulosity. And this being so, one wonders why Dr Dekker would have us searching all the time for futile or simply niggling resemblances
resemblances which, when found, seem often far more imaginary
than real. For myself, I can just as easily get an anticipation of Rupert Brooke's:
"Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill"
in "Lig daar, mijn wandelstaf! Hier is de top", as 1 can discover



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
an echo of "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art , or "On first looking into Chapman's Homer", or "Ailsa Craig", in any single one of the "Mathilde sonnets!
The way I prefer to think of the relationship of Perk to Keats is the manner in which the successor poet would — had he been aware of them — assuredly have corroborated all the famous dicta of the author of the "Ode to Autumn" and Hyperion . 1 In his own country I see him, as much as the other, the frail, yet inspired and indefatigable, champion of intellectual beauty. For him beauty alone mattered; and if he had not the metrical resources nor the kindling imagination of the English poet to utter profundities of thought in quite the same felicitous way, his work was at all times haunted by an almost anguished sense of beauty — whether of the natal earth, of life, or death, or the incessant strife between them. Great images cry out to us continually from his pages; images in the highest sense Keatsian:
"De maan blinkt door den zwarten bouwval henen En laat haar zilver glijden langs de duin,
Door de Ourthe omkabbeld en gekroond met puin:
Getrotste grootheid in bemoste steenen."
"Een hooge liefde zal uw hart doordringen."
"Een gouden waterval van zonnestralen."
Always remembering Keats perhaps, it can be said that we have in Perk by far the most amazing phenomenon to date in the history of Dutch Romanticism. Beauty — never a very conspicuous ingredient in the national poetry — had been virtually overlooked since the closing years of the seventeenth century: towards the close of the nineteenth, we may boldly affirm, he contrived to lure it back. With what eager acclamation he was then greeted
1 Professor Verwey makes clear that this poem was known to him through the translation of \X/. van Lennep read during an attendance at the "Dinsdagschen Vriendenkring" of Professor Alberdingk Thijm in Amsterdam.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
can the fact that he was no social revolutionary and knew little of the spirit of "Alastor", "The Revolt of Islam", or "Prometheus Unbound", quietly count him out, so long as there is still to sum up all his "liefde vir die lewende skepping", the personification of Shelleyan loveliness and perfection-.
"Maar... wat doet, Morgenhemel! mij gelooven,
Dat, achter 't vallende kristal, zich baadt
Een maagd, wier blankheid blankheid gaat te boven?
Wat, dat ze op mij de fonkelblikken slaat,
En heen den watersluier heeft geschoven,
En lacht en lonkt, dat me alle rust vergaat?..
If it is true at all that the influence of Shelley upon Perk was greater than the influence upon him of Keats, it can only be, 1 would say, in the matter of specifics. Actually, in mind, nature, character, style, he bore much more affinity to Keats. His tastes, it is true, were less robust than those of the English poet, his mind more definitely mystical; but he was as human a being, with his feelings ever keyed up to an unusual degree of intensity. Neither, of course, dying so young, could ever hope to reach such perfect harmony of thought and feeling as he would have wished; a factor responsible doubtless for the wistful, even at times bitter, note that creeps into their work. Perk, above all, followed his English predecessor in possessing something of the same luxurious temperament, preferring to "load every rift with ore" rather than risk lapsing into abstraction and nebulosity. And this being so, one wonders why Dr Dekker would have us searching all the time for futile or simply niggling resemblances
resemblances which, when found, seem often far more imaginary
than real. For myself, I can just as easily get an anticipation of Rupert Brooke's:
"Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill"
in "Lig daar, mijn wandelstaf! Hier is de top", as I can discover



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
an echo of "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art , or "On first looking into Chapman's Homer", or "Ailsa Craig", in any single one of the "Mathilde" sonnets!
The way I prefer to think of the relationship of Perk to Keats is the manner in which the successor poet would — had he been aware of them — assuredly have corroborated all the famous dicta of the author of the "Ode to Autumn" and Hyperion . 1 In his own country I see him, as much as the other, the frail, yet inspired and indefatigable, champion of intellectual beauty. For him beauty alone mattered; and if he had not the metrical resources nor the kindling imagination of the English poet to utter profundities of thought in quite the same felicitous way, his work was at all times haunted by an almost anguished sense of beauty — whether of the natal earth, of life, or death, or the incessant strife between them. Great images cry out to us continually from his pages; images in the highest sense Keatsian:
"De maan blinkt door den zwarten bouwval henen En laat haar zilver glijden langs de duin,
Door de Ourthe omkabbeld en gekroond met puin:
Getrotste grootheid in bemoste steenen."
"Een hooge liefde zal uw hart doordringen."
"Een gouden waterval van zonnestralen."
Always remembering Keats perhaps, it can be said that we have in Perk by far the most amazing phenomenon to date in the history of Dutch Romanticism. Beauty — never a very conspicuous ingredient in the national poetry — had been virtually overlooked since the closing years of the seventeenth century: towards the close of the nineteenth, we may boldly affirm, he contrived to lure it back. With what eager acclamation he was then greeted
1 Professor Verwey makes clear that this poem was known to him through the translation of W. van Lennep read during an attendance at the "Dinsdagschen Vriendenkring" of Professor Alberdingk Thijm in Amsterdam.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
by a nation starved for poetry! Never before him had any man so made literary history. No more than grown up himself, he had come to show that Dutch poetry, after prolonged growingpains, had grown up too; that henceforward Da Costa, Beets, Bogaers, Tollens, must be put away with childish things. Even for Bilderdijk poetry had been primarily an intellectual exercise, for Potgieter largely a social art — the poet the keeper of the community's "conscience": now it was to be vindicated as a vatic art, the profoundest source of intuition about all life. "Zelden," says Professor Verwey without exaggeration, "is een herleving van de poëzie in haar oorsprong zoo onvermengd geweest." 1
How different, it is not idle to speculate, would have been the reception of Perk fifty years earlier! A dreamer, a Romantic of the highest idealism, he would assuredly have been quite beyond the powers of anyone in that age to appreciate; he would have suffered as great misunderstanding as Keats himself in the England of his day: oblivion might well have been his lot! In those early 'eighties he still seemed like some spiritual being — yet one, nevertheless, created to be enthroned in the hearts of his countrymen; the voice of a mere youth, but speaking in tones of such boundless courage and resolve as indubitably to be a permanent addition to the ranks of the very greatest poets. Never, I suppose, can there have been a literary Movement so completely inspired and consummated by youth at that of Tachtig, Chatterton, "the marvellous boy", ceased here to be the exception and became almost the rule!
Less valuable is it to speculate on what Perk might have achieved had he lived. Reddingius recognizes frankly that "revolutionair was zijn aard niet, niet bewust revolutionair als van hen, die eenige jaren na zijn dood het aanzijn zouden geven aan een beweging, waarvan Perk bij langer leven tijdgenoot, wellicht ook 1 "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst," p. II.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
deelgenoot zou zijn geworden".1 And Verwey, though one of his most prominent admirers and successors, is able to write: "Wel hadt ge gelijk, waarde vriend, toen gij opmerkte dat Jacques Perk nooit 'De Nieuwe Gids' zou hebben opgericht. De dichter die het eerst met een nieuwe verbeelding komt ziet niet het eerst haar beteekenis voor de letterkunde en de samenleving. En al ziet hij die-, het is niet gezegd dat hij de strijd ervoor begeert. Het nieuwe leven komt in hem tot deze ééne openbaring: de verbeelding. In al het andere zal hij mogelijk nog een aanhanger, zoo niet een vertegenwoordiger van het oude zijn." 2 Beyond this my own impression is that, with the aid of his imaginative power, he would have attempted a better fusion of the somewhat dissociated elements of Romanticism which he was so hurriedly called upon to assimilate. It may be, of course, that he would have caught further the taint of that morbid selfconsciousness which is the corruption of Romantic individualism. But I have the feeling that it would have been otherwise, and that he would have completed his education in Keats and Shelley; striving through the former to make the visionary scheme more concrete and vivid, and through the latter to heighten his musical genius by a lighter handling of the lyric in the more genuine song. Inseparably his name is linked with theirs: Keats, Shelley en Perk, zijn zij ook niet alle drie vergoddelijkers van de Schoonheid, alle drie zulken geweest als de goden vroeg tot zich nemen omdat ze zoo liefhebben?"3 Already, at twenty-one, he had "outsoared the shadow of our night", but also ensured that his name would endure in Holland as imperishably as theirs in England:
"He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal."
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1931 II, p. 543.
2 "Proza," I, p. 49.
■■ Verwey, "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst, p. 39.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Over the enigma of Perk many minds have lingered; but to one mind only has it ever been granted to pass beyond it. This was the mind of the equally youthful, equally mature, Willem Kloos. In the inter-relationship of the two we come undoubtedly to an association unique in the annals of Dutch letters; it forms there a parallel to the early dualism of Wordsworth and Coleridge, involving as intimately their mutual friendship and raising the whole question of their endowment as poets. Much — perhaps too much — has already been written on both of these scores, and I have no mind to deal tiresomely and exhaustively with them here. 1 would like to begin with, however, emphatically to dispose of any such fanciful notion that in Kloos we have merely a Jacques Perk grown to fame. Both, we know, were young and unformed at precisely the same time; and, being thrown into each other's company, evidenced a striking genius for poetical performance. There, externally, the resemblance between them begins and ends. Against that we may note that Perk, though endowed with much of the same exquisite sensibility, had not, beneath it, a prose mind to the same sensible degree. Nor had he the sturdy qualities of leadership of the other, unflinchingly accepting the formidable task of regeneration. Perk, in the age of Zola, actually preferred to go back to Hooft, Dante, the Greeks, not try to re-create it as a weo-Vondelian era of song. With all deliberation I say that, even without actual contact with Perk, Kloos would still have proved himself, in his own right, the unrivalled leader of the new Dutch Romantic poetry. What I am less sure about is when and in what manner he would have formulated his conception of what poetry really is. The supreme value of his personal dealings with the author of "Iris" is not that it helped to inspire "Okeanos" and the sonnets, but that it taught him to think about poetry — and to think, not vaguely and verbosely as Bilderdijk had done, not sententiously as Van Alphen and Feith, but vitally and fundamentally, on the



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
full assumption that an artist should assume a conscious attitude to his work. Sublimity there may have been in the moralising of Bilderdijk, in the sermonising of Da Costa; Kloos's part it was to show that there need be no less sublimity in the single-minded devotion of the artist to his technique. In any case, an attitude that had been admirable enough in the eighteenth century might well have grown futile in the 'eighties of the nineteenth century; so that even the critical severity of Kloos came to ring out like a peal of bells in a decidedly sultry age. And most important of all — not only was the age-long question to be correctly posed for the benefit of Holland; it was probably also to be more correctly answered than at any previous time.
In the votive task of keeping alive the memory of one young poet, Kloos was scarcely to know that he was about to raise an issue of the first magnitude for all poets. Yet, in seeking to interpret such essential poetry as was constituted by the "Mathilde" cycle, was he not bound to try to come to terms with the whole nature, art and practice of poetry? At any rate, in the critical Introduction he provided for his edition of Perk's poems in 1882, it is certain that we possess the most important document of its kind so far as the Dutch-speaking lands are concerned. "Men kan gerust zeggen," says the "Kloos-kenner" Khouw Bian Tie, "dat al zijn later werk bestaat in een gestaêg doordenken en steeds verdere verfijning van de leerstellingen, zoo vroeg reeds en waarschijnlijk meer door geniale intuitie dan door moeizame, logische redeneeringen gevonden." 1 It is no exaggeration to say that, with its various restatements, it has done for Dutch poetry what Wordsworth's famous Pref aces have done for English poetry. After fifty years it can confidently be said that its importance remains undisturbed. Its recognition by his contemporaries and successors is indeed striking in its unanimity. "Die Inleiding van Kloos," says Max Kijzer in one of the most 1 "Willem Kloos en de Dichtkunst," p. 2.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
notable tributes, "is een meesterstuk van schoone lyrische hanteering eener objectieve critiek, die onomstootelijk oude waarden vernietigt en er nieuwe, spontaan geformuleerd, voor in de plaats geeft." 1 Stuiveling well names it "het manifest der beweging van '80". 2 Unequivocally Haighton describes Kloos as "de grootste autoriteit in Nederland's geschiedenis op het stuk van de Aesthetica der Dichtkunst. Hèm stond de vereenigbaarheid van het enge met het ruime poëzie-begrip glashelder voor den geest." 3 And, while one may not feel inclined to agree with Frans Erens' particular view, one can readily appreciate the mood of admiration that prompted it: "Kloos is onze voornaamste moderne dichter en toch stel ik hem als proza-schrijver nog hooger. Niemand heeft zooals hij den Nederlandschen volzin in elkander gesmeed en er een Ciceroniaanisch cachet aan gegeven. Heeft Kloos niet zelf onlangs van Bilderdijk gezegd, dat hij het proza zijner 'Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis' noch prefereert aan zijn gedichten? Zie, zoo doe ik ook met hem. Doorenbos noemde de voorrede van de uitgave van Jacques Perk's gedichten het mooiste brok proza van die dagen." 4 When one considers Kloos' own declaration that "litteraire kritiek is geen wetenschap, waarbij men, uitgaande van de waarneming, opklimt tot begrippen, wier inhoud nauwkeurig is bepaald, maar zelve een kunst," 5 it is perhaps best of all brought home to us how remarkably complete and authoritative were to be his studies in theoretical poetics; so remarkable, indeed, as in themselves to be akin to creation.
"Wat is de Nieuwe Gids-beweging?" asked Lodewijk van Deyssel, and answered for himself by saying: "Zij is een samenstel van hooge letterkundige inzichten en vermogens, zij is de kunst-idee en de kunst-practijk, zoo als die, een veertig jaar geleden ver-
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935 II, p. 327.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 28.
3 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1938 II, p. 132.
4 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1934 I, p. 506.
5 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, IV.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
schillend naar elks persoonlijken aard en geest, in eenige jeugdige Nederlanders aanwezig was."1 And again: "Het wonder van Tachtig was, in eerste linie, het wonder van Willem Kloos." 2 Dr Van Deyssel is over-modest. His own services are not lightly to be estimated. "Wat Kloos voor de poëzie deed," rightly acknowledges Max Kijzer, "deed Van Deyssel voor het proza.
Zijn lyrisch woord is eveneens onvergankelijk." 3 Together they must be credited with having buried beyond hope of resurrection the bombastic and lachrymose imitators of the great Romantics; and, further, with having reformed the ranks of criticism and set up its standards anew. Our concern being with poetry, we might fittingly at this point quote the words of Stuiveling on the truly tremendous part played by the celebrated critical organ established for this very purpose. "De beweging van '80," he says, "als uitsluitend dus de poëtische vernieuwing, is in de Nieuwe Gids van den aanvang af slechts een onderdeel, al was de Tachtiger-bij-uitstek, Willem Kloos, redactie-secretaris en daardoor tot op zekere hoogte leider van het tijdschrift." 4 That something more than a counterblast to the conventionalised, ultra-respectable "Gids" was intended is surely demonstrated beyond all quibble in the fact that the journal has lived on and prospered, and today ^ ^ still stands at the forefront of all Dutch literary endeavour. And that its interests are even yet directed by Van Deyssel must be a matter of the deepest pride to all interested in such endeavour and development.
The praise bestowed continually by Van Deyssel upon the work of Kloos is itself beyond all praise. When, in 1938, his great co-editor passed away, no appreciation was more spontaneously given than his. "De Beweging van Tachtig, welks Aanvoerder en
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1929 I, p. 527.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1938 I, p. 411.
3 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935, II, p. 320.
4 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 33.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
ziel Willem Kloos was, heeft eene geestelijke omwenteling beteekend, waarvan wij de goede vruchten nog heden genieten. Zij heeft aan de letteren vrijheid verschaft, zich zelf te zijn, èn het fundament gebouwd, waarop een rijke bloei der taalkunst öp kon rijzen. Latere geslachten kunnen wellicht niet eens ten volle beseffen, hoe onmetelijk groot deze cultuurdaad geweest is." 1 The memory of that magnificent early Preface, leading inevitably to "De Nieuwe Gids", was to be ineffaceable. Even Verwey, with more excuse to slight a scheme of poetics which he considered himself to have outgrown, finely concedes that "in dit proza had de poëzie-vergoddelijking van de jonge dichters haar strijdbare uiting gekregen". 2
In considering now in what way Kloos guided the poetry of his country into new and hitherto unexplored channels, we might glance again for a moment at the earlier 1837 'Renaissance'. The motives of Potgieter or the vast learning of Huet can never, I hope, be called in question. But the former did, undoubtedly, defeat a large part of his object by having to support his case by masses of learned allusions couched in a most ponderous language. It is always as though we were being set a series of academie exercises from a professorial chair. And with Huet we might go so far as to suggest that this chair at times assumed the appearance of an actual pontifical throne. "Vooral in de kritiek," perspicaciously recognizes Professor Prinsen of the "Beweging van Tachtig", "openbaarde zich een groot verschil met de generatie van '37"; and when he proceeds to declare that "de intellectueele kritiek van Potgieter en Huet moest plaats maken voor de gevoelskritiek," 3 he seems to strike right at the root of the matter. For his technically ingenious exercises Potgieter claimed the name of art; but it was in the main the display merely of a
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1938 I, p. 411.
2 "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst," p. 47.
3 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 252



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
cleverness and virtuosity that had precious little real hearing upon life; there was little to connect it with the direct contemplation to be given in the 'eighties. The simple truth is that in '37 there was given for leader a man with talent, energy, artistic ideas; while in their turn the Tachtigers were unequivocally entitled to claim a man with genius — and a "daimoon". With the poetical theory of Kloos I shall but deal in outline, before going on to consider in detail its infiltration with the theories of certain English critics of poetry, particularly Shelley and Wordsworth. It has been set out succinctly by Frans Coenen: "De drie formules van de Tachtiger aesthetica, waarom zooveel te doen is geweest, luiden: Xunst is passie, vorm en inhoud zijn één, en de kunst om de kunst." 1 Van Deyssel, however, I think, does even better with his statement of the three historie slogans: 'TArt pour PArt", "De allerindividueelste Expressie van de allerindivideelste Emotie" and "Vorm en Inhoud zijn één."2 Haighton, again, makes play with the same three "grondstellingen", but places the second one third and qualifies it by using the label "voor de poëzie." 3 Khouw Bian Tie sets out to follow him along this line, but gets hopelessly entangled in trying to deal with slogans two and three as virtually one and indivisible, and in the end might well have taken the Tachtigers at their word when they maintained that they had no precise system of criticism, contenting himself with the knowledge, as Coenen is inclined to do, "dat zij heel goed wisten, wat zij in kunst zochten". 4 The statement that "kunst is passie" does, as it stands, scant justice, I think, to Kloos' real conception of poetry. "Zoo het waar is," he more fully explains in the much-cited Preface, "dat men onder poëzie moet verstaan dien volleren, dieperen gemoedstoe-
1 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 18.
2 Vide "De Nieuwe Gids," 1938 I, p. 410.
3 Vide, "Een Nieuwe Komeet aan den Literairen Hemel," p. 92.
4 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 149.
11



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
stand, welks aanleiding in alles kan gevonden worden, en die zijn uiting zoekt in lijnen, kleuren en tonen, dan doet men wellicht het best, zich aan de definitie te houden, die de fijne Leigh Hunt eens gaf: 'Poetry is imaginative passion.'" 1 Before long, of course, he was to be fascinated by other and greater English definitions, for clearly here was a poet-critic fashioned in the image of Shelley himself. There was never the slightest danger that the Kloos of the 'eighties would become a subscriber to the decadent 'Tart pour lJart" ideas of the French Varnassiens, his own "kunst om de kunst" doctrine, indeed, was advanced against these very tendencies. With Kloos it betokened no cult of form merely; art had but one primary function — the creation of beauty. And next to that he placed goodness and truth, being ever Dutchman enough to permit an underlying ethical or philosophical purpose. "Een zingend mensch," he made clear, "moraliseert niet, noch redekavelt, een zingend mensch is, blijkens zijn zingen zelf, dat uiting geeft aan een verhoogde geestesstemming, in een toestand, dat hij vóór alles ziet en voelt. Ja, zelfs als hij gedachten zegt, heeft hij die gedachten anders doordrongen dan de enkele denker doet. Ze zijn als levende, bewegende wezens voor hem geworden, die uitdrukkingsvol van geluid en van doen en van wezensnuance, komen te staan en te gaan in zijn vers." 2 Kloos' dictum that "kunst moet zijn de allerindividueelste expressie van de allerindividueelste emotie 3 is, unquestionably, the most notable of all his purely personal pronouncements about poetry. Upon its elucidation more intellectual energy, I fancy, must have been expended than upon any other statement in the entire range of Dutch literary theory; and even yet I am not certain that the golden key has been discovered by which the wonder box of the new poetics may be unlocked and its supposedly ultimate secret revealed. Critics like Dr Haighton have argued
1 Vide V.
2 "Letterkundige Inzichten en Vergezichten," Vol. I, p. 31.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
the case with considerable skill; but I cannot think that in the end they have succeeded in raising their acknowledged poetical master to a pinnacle alongside Wordsworth and Shelley (as I at least see them, Kloos' own masters in turn). What the dialectic of a Haighton does do is establish somehow that "wezenlijk voor den dichter is de uitdrukking van fijne gevoelens", and again that "natuurlijk heeft Kloos, hebben de Tachtigers, met 'individualisme' niet 'ik-zuchte' bedoeld maar: 'persoonlijkheid'", so that his standpoint is "niet in strijd met eene wèlbegrepen Gemeenschapskunst". 1
To the doctrine that "vorm en inhoud zijn één" Khouw Bian Tie, mistakenly 1 consider, attributes the highest originality on the part of Kloos. "De Vorm-en-Inhoud-gedachte," he says, "is het sluitstuk van Kloos' Theorie der Dichtkunst. Zij beteekent in de literaire critiek een nieuwe beoordeelingswijze." 2 In reality, this seems the most self-obvious, the least elaborated, of all his early sayings regarding his craft; he does no more than baldly substantiate what every great artist has always believed. "Vorm en inhoud bij poëzie," he expresses himself, "zijn één, in zooverre iedere verandering in de woorden een gelijkloopende wijziging geeft in het beeld of de gedachte, en iedere wijziging in deze eene overeenkomstige nuanceering van de stemming aanduidt." 3
Khouw Bian Tie, it seems to me, tends to understatement in the one direction and to overstatement in the other, in writing that "Kloos heeft dus geen volmaakte theorie gegeven, — maar wel heeft hij grondslagen gelegd". 4 Overstatement, in the first place, in stressing so absolutely the value of the purely aesthetic groundwork, and understatement in seeming to demand in the state-
1 Vide "De Nieuwe Gids," June, July, August, 1938.
2 "Willem Kloos en de Dichtkunst," p. 123.
3 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, VII.
4 Op. cit., p. 134.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
ments of the professor of poetics all the finality and accuracy associated with an exact science. Of two things, I think, he fails to take sufficiënt stock: that, as Van Leeuwen well notes, "dit grondprincipe van Kloos en Van Deyssel is stellig onaantastbaar", 1 and that part of the very originality of our poet-critic lies in the singularly adroit way he analyses the theories of his predecessors in the field, juxtaposes his own, and more through this loose inter-relationship than by any positive borrowing puts himself in possession of as extensive a body of doctrine as ever poet managed to assemble. It is here, assuredly, that the English critics of poetry make their entry upon the Dutch stage; and it becomes all the more difficult to understand Khouw Bian Tie's failure to seize upon this fundamental connecting-link when he has himself given us so able a study as "De 'Prefaces' van Wordsworth". 2
The poetry of Holland during the decade 1880—1890 Kloos was quick to note "nam haar voorbeeld in de Engelsche van het begin dezer eeuw". 3 It is, of course, the natural tendency of youth to see in Shelley a dazzling luminary that nothing can dim. What is not so common is for youth to extend this hero-worship of the man and poet and with steadier gaze take in the critic as well. Kloos seems actually at this time to have conceived a deeper veneration for Shelley in this later röle than in either of the former. "In Kloos se eerste krietiese werk," rightly claims Dekker, "is ook sterk invloed van Shelley se 'Defence' te bespeure."4 As usual, however, he reads too much into the comparison he institutes, and would even make the Dutch critic owe some of his own most specialised tenets — such as that vorm en inhoud bij poëzie zijn één" and that "kunst de allerindividueelste ex-
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936 II, p. 20.
2 Vide "De Nieuwe Gids," May, 1936.
3 "De Nieuwe Litterarische Geschiedenis," Vol. III, p. 32.
4 "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 113.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
pressie van de aller-individueelste emotie moet zijn" — to portions (unspecified) of "The Defence of Poetry , or to ideas not at all obviously discoverable there. Conversely, it does not seem very helpful merely to hurl at the reader Shelley's remark that poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the imagination, and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven ..." and bluntly announce that in hierdie laatste lê tog al implisiet opgeslote wat Kloos konkludeer". 1 To permit such extreme latitude as instanced here is surely to reduce supposedly critical scholarship perilously near to absurdity.
Against these methods I do not mean that we should never generalise or go out after some system of definite parallelism. Such parallelism, as it happens, can be found easily enough. Some instances might even be said to be somewhat notorious. For example, Kloos almost lends himself to the charge of plagiarism by following so exactly the arguments used by Shelley in dealing with the sensations of the child and the emotions of a savage. Again, where Shelley rounds off a passage on the separation of images by saying that "these similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world," Kloos without due discrimination paraphrases: "Iedere beeldende uitdrukking zou men moeten vasthouden door hare verschillende phasen en wijzigingen heen, en den draad der associatie nasporen, waarmede de eene zich aan de andere reit; want behalve dat wij dan de vreugde smaakten, de menschheid te zien in haar volgen en tasten, naar wat Bacon 'dezelfde voetstappen der natuur, gedrukt op de verschillende verschijnselen dezer wereld' noemt..." 2 Where Kloos undoubtedly shows himself most in line with the thought of Shelley is in his acquiescence, via Leigh Hunt, with
1 Op. cit., p. 114.
2 "Veertien Jaar Literatuur-Geschiedenis," Vol. I, p. 2.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
the statement that "poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the imagination" and in facing up honestly to the implications such a statement contains. Thus, he is under no dubiety that "kunst is niet te maken met het verstand"; but that "fantasie," as he terms it, "is de oorzaak en het middel en het wezen van alle poëzie, zoowel als van allen godsdienst, en de dichter is niet minder te beklagen, die zonder haar zijn liefde en zijn hoop meent te kunnen griffen in het harte der eeuwigheid, dan de geloovige te belachen is, die uit dogma's of abstractie's een sluier weeft, om de blindheid zijner oogen of de naaktheid van zijn gemoed te bedekken."1 Where he stops short, in turn, is in refusing to give endorsement to the famous concluding dictum that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". And clearly, I think, because in Kloos we come up against a more robust, a more substantial, type, one standing nearer to the norm of his countrymen; with a nature less dreamy and idealistic, one more warm and personal, more passionate too in the generally accepted sense;2 with a mind more sharp and precise, more egocentric as well, one less likely to be given over to the allied defects of vagueness and verbosity. These are considerations of the utmost importance, for it was round them that the whole "Tachtiger Beweging" for long swayed and surged. How radically different, for instance, would have been its course had its leader been under the almost Messianic delusion that it is the artist's primary function to help and improve mankind, confronting to that end the problems which have baffled metaphysicians and sociologists alike! Kloos would have become more truly popular, of course, had he been willing to show himself the earnest and perplexed citizen of the actual world. But Dutch poetry, it is equally certain, would then have
1 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, VI.
2 Verwey, indeed, has told us that "hij is dan toch maar de hartstochtefijkste mensch van Nederland".
*



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
remained minus a great and emancipating influence. It was simply that, spiritually, he was bound to accomplish his life in a different way. Shelley, it has been noted, was first the enthusiast, next the combatant, and finally the sufferer; restating the order for Kloos, we would have to begin with the sufferer, follow with the combatant, and end with the enthusiast; the enthusiast, however, for his new 'quadrilaterar of pantheism, mysticism, humanism, and, withal, a little scepticism, and not for the old Jachtig 'triangle' of passion, beauty, art.
When 1 first made the acquaintance of Willem Kloos, at The Hague in 1927, he was a man well on the way to seventy. I was privileged to enjoy friendship with him right up to the time of his death eleven years later; but not in all our subsequent meetings was there a thrill of pleasure to equal that first contact. 1 see him yet. He stood in that long, doublé, book-lined study in which his days were passed, just beside his innumerable English editions and the letter of Shelley's sent from Leghorn in 1819 of which he was so justifiably proud — a tense, waiting, almost sinister, figure in the shadows. Then I caught the light shining in those eyes, wild yet reflective; and I knew immediately that here was the almost traditional poet and seer. It was not Shelley any longer, of course, that I could detect in him — he was too old, too subdued, too sage-like for that; there was but one poetic figure to whom 1 feit I could truly liken him and that was the venerable, the laureated, Wordsworth. It was a purely personal fancy; but the comparison, I feel, in other respects is not without its point. The extent to which Kloos drew upon Shelley, for instance, in formulating his poetic creed has been abundantly recognized, but the almost equally large measure to which he was indebted to Wordsworth's Prefaces seems virtually to have escaped notice.
Kloos was in his nineteenth year when he first read Shelley. But this beginning was unfortunate, for he led off with "Queen



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Mab", "dat onrijpe produkt uit Shelley's jeugd". So in his disappointment he turned to Wordsworth's "kleinere gedichten", and found in his reading of these the keenest satisfaction. There can be little doubt that in the composition of his critical theory this reading stood him in the most excellent stead. Dekker, of course, cannot at any time see past Shelley, all too rashly generalising that "Shelley is vir hom die maatstaf waarnaar hij meet".1 This view, however, definitely conflicts with the extensive knowledge Kloos reveals of the poetics of Wordsworth. Readily I admit that Shelley's prose style, the music of his verse, the unconquerable nature of the man, came shortly to throw over him a magie that he never overcame, nor wished to overcome. Not in a thousand years would he have agreed with Mr T. S. Eliot in finding Shelley's ideas "repellent", and that "the man was humourless, pedantic, self-centred, and sometimes almost a blackguard". 2 Yet, on one point he would, I am certain, have been in complete agreement: and that is, when Mr. Eliot declares again that "Shelley's professed view of poetry is not dissimilar to that of Wordsworth".
Mr Eliot goes on: "The language in which he clothes it in the 'Defence of Poetry' is very. magniloquent, and with the exception of the magnificent image which Joyce quotes somewhere in 'Ulysses' ('the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness') it seems to me an inferior piece of writing to Wordsworth's great preface." 3 This particular judgment, I have the feeling, Kloos again would have been inclined to question; yet, in his own Preface he is not long started before he pauses to consider what it was that Wordsworth was aiming at eighty years earlier. "Wat Wordsworth wilde in 1800," he reflects, "was
1 Op. rit., p. 113.
2 "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," p. 89.
3 Ibid., p. 93.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
slechts de formuleering en uiterste gevolgtrekking der al vroeger werkende reactie tegen de sleur der vorige eeuw. Men had de verbeelding gestereotypeerd en daardoor verwrongen; zoo eischte de natuurlijke loop der dingen, dat men begon met alle verbeelding te veroordeelen." This is immaculate criticism. But, somewhat inconsequentially, he résumés: "Wordsworth zelf, in zijne gedichten, is gelukkig niet getrouw gebleven aan zijne theorieën, en twintig jaar later schreef Shelley zijn 'Defence of Poetry', waarin reeds wordt uitgesproken, wat in den wondervollen bloei der Engelsche literatuur van Keats en Leigh Hunt, tot Tennyson, Swinburne en Rossetti, door de besten is gevolgd en toegepast." 1 It is a most sudden transference of interest; but, fortunately, it does not keep him from switching back to Wordsworth a few moments later. And now we have a thoroughly conciliating understanding of the poet's early theory and practice. "Toch ligt de schuld eigenlijk niet daaraan, dat de onderwerpen zoo klein en zoo eng, maar dat de geesten niet ruim en niet groot genoeg zijn," he has just written, and by way of illustration submits that "de blik van een Wordsworth kan zelfs het laagste en gewoonste onsterfelijk maken".2 This, I think, comes very near to completing the vindication of "Peter Bell", "Simon Lee", "Lucy Gray". And that Kloos had little further to go towards assimilating Wordsworth's central conception of poetry is shown by the close parallelism of his own position, as expressed through his most celebrated dictum: "Kunst moet zijn de allerindividueelste expressie van de allerindividueelste emotie". There could, I think, be no more explicit realization of the resemblance between the Tachtigers, trying once more to be direct and functional in their writing, and Wordsworth's attack on the poetic diction of the eighteenth century. Khouw Bian Tie may say: "Zoowel Coleridge, Wordsworth als Shelley wijzen alle drie als het ge-
1 "Jacques Perk: Gedichten," Introduction, V, VI.
2 Jbid., VII, VIII.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
durende de kunst-schepping werkzame vermogen de Verbeelding aan. Tot een klare begripsbepaling zijn deze drie Grooten echter niet gekomen." 1 But I quite fail to understand him when, af ter admitting that "Kloos leert volkomen hetzelfde als de beide Engelschen" (Wordsworth and Shelley), he calmly concludes: "Alleen is zijn omschrijving veel treffender en scherper." 2 Nor can I see why, in the first place, he should have dragged in the name of Coleridge — surely of all English poet-critics the most unknown quantity in Holland! All that his diligence, feverish rather incisive, can in any case do is suggest the very remote possibility that Kloos in framing his "Vorm-en-Inhoud-gedachte" may have had in mind the passage in the "Biographia Literaria" in which Coleridge speaks of poetry as having a logic of its own, as severe as that of science, and of how in the truly great poets "there is a reason assignable, not only for every word but for the position of every word"!3 Is it not all against the tenability of the supposition that Kloos in his own Preface nowhere so much as mentions the name of the other?
Turning to the early poetry of Kloos, I have no desire to make out an inviolable case for it as work in every way saturated with the genius of Shelley. Merely to be able to keep crying "pure Shelley" all the time is, it seems to me, not necessarily in the highest form of tribute, and would, indeed, often enough apply to ecstatic yet rather empty lyrics of the type of: "De rassen dezer aarde zijn als droomen", "De zoete nacht, die langzaam gaat", "O, mijn gedachten vliegen heen en weder", "De mensch moet leven als een plant". We shall assuredly require to bend a long, unwieldy bow if we are going to try to make everything of the kind count as positive hits for Shelley. It is not at all how I would wish to associate them; and I shall go on being satisfied
1 Op. cit., p. 76.
2 7bid., p. 90.
3 Part I, pp. 4-5.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
with effects less palpable: a youthful note of pessimism and despair here and there, a recognizably Romantic absorption with death and decay, an intimation of peirsonal fears and doubts, a sense of unfulfilment, and occasionally of defeat, the pure lyric cry in all the ecstasy of personal joy and sorrow, unhampered by logic or narrative — with these I shall feel the poetry of Shelley, but always as reflected through the personality of Kloos, as rich and tempestuous in its way as that of his great English prototype. I shall begin to recognize the signs when I meet with:
"Nu huilt de winter in mijn hart."
"Nu kan ik niets meer zingen
Dan dat ik sterven moet."
"Ik kan niet lachen, ik kan niet weenen,
Ik ben zoo vreemd te moe;
De zomer-pracht gaat henen, —
Ik doe mijn oogen toe."
Here, it may be, the concentration is on an art not so rich and starry, and not always so sensitively introspective. But I shall advance a stage further with genuine nature pieces and sonnets of the type of: "Stads-Avond", "Hoog uit de lucht de witte Winter nadert", "De Winter heeft zijn rijk weer ingenomen", "De zon komt in de wereld". These, as musical utterances of the poet's own dreams and desires, will usually succeed in interesting me as much as in being actual transcripts of nature. And then also, at last, ambitious declamation will have quite vanished, and I shall be left with nought but the lovely description and the sweet verbal music of: "O, leven, zoet leven", De zee, de zee klotst voort in eindelooze deining", "Al liefde is als een spel van lucht en water", "O, laat mij tot uw voeten komen", "O, ik ben zoo vroolijk", "O, ik kan het niet helpen", "Licht van mijn leven", "De teerheid Uwer ziel is als een wijde", "Uw ziel, Lief, is als een diep-breede oceaan", "Uw ziel was als een bleeke zon", "De breede corridor verleedner



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
tijden". Of all such utterly melodious songs the poet has truly the right to say:
"Mijn verzen volgen 't kloppen van mijn bloed
En gaan zacht-mijmrend of met dansers-spoed."
They have their place with: "Swiftly walk over the Western wave", "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle", "On a poet's lips I slept", "1 arise from dreams of thee".
If I have cited many pieces of Kloos', 1 have done so in no random manner, but only after the most careful examination of the text. Deliberately the temptation has been avoided of making the criterion the possibility of being able to find the neat chapter and verse: after all, I take it, we are dealing in creative, and not mere translation, values. Even Dr Dekker stumbles in essaying the task in his own fashion; though to his credit, be it said, he does so by asserting a spirit more than usually venturesome. When from him we have the admission over a particular comparison that "in diepste kern het hulle iets gemeen",1 can there be any doubt that his dogmatic grasp is decidedly slackening? Nevertheless, 1 would still have his words apply to the poetry of Shelley and Kloos viewed more in its totality: only occasionally are my doubts of the Dekker method really stilled. They are, of necessity, when I read:
"O mijn gedachten vliegen heen en weder,
Als dorre blaren op den avondwind,"
where the "Ode to the West Wind" comes so obviously to the rescue. And, again, when I encounter:
"Kom Gij dan, nu ik val... Ziel van mijn Ziel,
Die niets dan droom zijt... 'k roep u aan: O, koom!"
borne straight from "Epipsychidion". But is it not possible that the Shelleyan ring may be as authentic whether or not "Prome-
1 Op. cit., p. 126.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
theus Unbound" or "The Revolt of Islam", or even "The Cloud", is expressly held in mind?
"Ik ben een God in 't diepst van mijn gedachten,"
Thus, magnificently, sings Kloos;1 and I cannot see where the more ordinary line of "Prometheus" fits the case: Yet am I a king over myself". In working along very similar lines, it is surely not such a surprising thing that Kloos should have even managed, at times, to outsoar the original — perhaps most transcendently in the octave of his great sonnet:
"Ik ben de Zoeker naar het Nooit-Behaalde,
Ik ben de Strever naar het Ware Zijn,
Ik ben de dronkene van 's Levens Wijn, Die wonderlijk-krachtig mijn spieren staalde.
Wen ik, als onverschrokken duiker, daalde Tot in de krochten van het diepste Zijn,
Waar ik dan uit meebracht een luttel grein Waarheid, die, klaar gelijk juweelen, straalde."
And, while we may wish to build up the largest correspondence possible between our poets, it must not be on the limited foundation of odd identical words, and images never sustained beyond a line or two. Af ter all, is it really an important matter if, momently, such a line in Shelley as "My soul is an enchanted boat" is handled by Kloos as "Mijn ziel is als een bootje", when neither in form nor content are the particular poems concerned related otherwise in any way? Where the imagery of the sea is in question, we have surely no right to think that a foreign poet will count for more with a Dutchman than does the spirit of Amsterdam, or the solitude of Zeeland or the dunes. How disastrous, too, if poetic raptures have to be spoiled all the time by the supposed need for prosaic preachifying about them!
1 Apropos this line Dr Th. Weevers in a lecture on "Albert Verwey and the Idea of Poetry", delivered at Bedford College, London (December I, 1938), suggested that this 'God' "dangerously resembled his deified self".



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
The wide differences between Keats and Shelley have often been noted. "Yet, notwithstanding all," Hugh Walker maintained, "those who have been influenced by Shelley have almost without exception been influenced by Keats." 1 This, as we have seen, is true of Perk in Holland. And it is so also as regards Kloos. Except this — that one might well feel inclined to question how any single poet could possibly carry any further foreign influence than what had already come to him through the writings of Shelley, both in prose and verse. It need scarcely surprise us, then, if we learn that he was the Keatsian in nothing like a corresponding measure — and certainly not in the degree at all of that other leading Jachtiger, Verwey. Mainly, indeed, he was Keats-like in so far as he had no idea of a ' mission holding the view, if he did not always practise it, that "de Dichtkunst mag geen Zeuren over oude Abstracties zijn was by nature more sensuous, held after a more normal ideal of love, and, above all, in postulating the primary, all-absording creed of:
"Confederate to one golden end —
Beauty."
Kloos' "God is de hoogste Schoonheid" is not different in essence from the immortal "Beauty is truth, truth beauty , however much less perfectly stated; and the epic fragment "Okeanos" especially is full of the gorgeous imagery of "Hyperion", with something of the same Titanic vision about it, to show how authentically the principle had been assimilated:
"De Goden zaten op hun tronen, de één Zóó ver van d'ander, in een halven kring,
Als, hier op aarde, in 't laatste licht der zon,
Alom-gezien, de steigerende toppen Der Alpen zich verheffen heinde en veer...
Een ieglijk heerscher in zijn eigen rijk En omtrek, oppermachtig en alleen,
1 "The Literature of the Victorian Era," p. 282.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
Groot met den diadeem van eigen licht En eigen duister, maar toch allen saam Eén volk, één grootheid, één heerschappij.
En schoon de ruimte tusschen troon en troon,
Den sterfling zou verscheem'ren in 't verschiet,
Tóch kon een ieglijk, zonder dat hij rees,
Den beker reiken aan wie 't naast hem zat.
En over heel den wijzen omme-trek Dier eindelooze hallen gloeide en hing Hun innerlijkste godheid, diep en stil,
Als over de aarde een zonnig lente-weder."
It was in this poem that Kloos first announced himself in unmistakable fashion. Well over half a century has passed since then, and he has long been established as a classic beyond challenge. His work has been described, discussed, appreciated, in a perpetual stream of books, pamphlets, and articles, his poetic output has been endlessly edited and re-edited, and is known today in every high-school anthology. Yet, the portrait of the poet and the effect of his poetry will always be subject to the shifting lights and shadows of this world's passing show. So, in the end, we are brought back to the one stable category — the original poetry and the original poetic doctrine; in which, I think, the main lineaments of his character and genius were always so deeply imprinted and so faithfully recorded as never to be mistaken by unsophisticated readers.
Up to the last Kloos kept his alert habit of thought, amazing a wide circle of friends and admirers both by the prodigality of his ideas and the wealth of his imagination. Yet, something of the old virtue had undoubtedly gone: "De Willem Kloos van tegenwoordig, b.v.," noted Robbers in 1922, "is niet meer wat de man van '85 was, de vijfentwintigjarige die den Nieuwen Gids stichtte."1 But, after all, what would one expect? So deepfeeling, deep-thinking a writer as Kloos, was bound to assure
1 "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. 28.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
himself of an ever-flowing and increasing inspiration; and so we come to hear much of "De metaphysische achtergrond van Kloos' Binnengedachten" — a truly mystifying amalgam of Oriental wisdom, the theosophical learning of India, the philosophical systems of Spinoza,1 Berkeley, and Kant, the pessimistic doctrine of Schopenhauer, and all of it set forth in short fourteen-lined poems of such long and complicated lines as no longer to be admissible either as sonnets or lyrics proper. 2 It is easy enough to see in this later development the will of the frustrated individual trying to compete with philosophy. But such an explanation will not really suffice. A poet may start off by being in conscious and bitter revolt against almost all that has gone before in the name of poetry, but is it seriously to be expected that he can remain in continuous insurrection against the current thinking (which, of necessity, must bear the stamp of his own mind)? Kloos is surely a case in point. If it can be said that his potentiality both as poet and leader of thought was really frustrated at all, it was not, in the main, through the subsidence of personal feeling, the suppression of temperamental idiosyncrasies, the planting of the canker of doubt and despair in his heart. Much more, I think, must it be seen as caused by the very lack of effective resistance to his amazingly successful Movement, the natural wearing down of its initial momentum, and — more diffidently would I advance this to some element of weakness in his presentation of its aesthetic creed (this last I shall have occasion to discuss in the following chapter).
1 It is a point of interest that the Jachtigers were most of all attracted by the teachings of their own great countryman. Gorter in 1895 published a translation of his "Ethica", and it was largely through the same studies that Verwey clarified his inner life during the years of sedusion which followed the severing of his connection with "De Nieuwe Gids".
2 Vide Max Kijzer, "De Metaphysische Achtergrond van Kloos' Binnengedachten."



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
In the end Kloos, I believe, did come nigh to fulfilling himself: "Ik leefde en leef uit eigen Geest alleen". But in doing so it cannot be pretended that he was any longer the Romanticist, for it is stretching our original purpose too far to allow that Romantic criticism involves no less than a survey of every branch of knowledge and of all philosophy. Something like this, I fancy, is the view of Max Kijzer. "Wanneer men nu," he rather tortuously expresses himself, "met geweld van een realist pure romantiek, duidelijker, wellicht nog gezegd, van een schrijver beeldhouwwerk wil verlangen, dan doet men principieel hetzelfde, wanneer men van de pantheïstische en mystische Binnengedachten, van deze typisch-realistische en tegelijkertijd in geheel aparten zin romantische werkstukken de schoonheidswelluidendheid en de gladde rhythmiek verwacht van 'Okeanos' of Kloos' eerste sonnetten." 1 Yet, neither on this same account would I altogether concur with Robbers' rhetorical question: "Heb ik het u niet gezegd, dat er veel romantiek was in die z.g. ultra-realistische beweging der Nieuwe Gidsers?" 2 If Kijzer, as it seems to me, shows confusion of thought over what may reasonably be called Romanticism, Robbers would shift the emphasis even before it is evident that his subject is in any sort of conscious revolt against the Romantic attitude. For myself, I do not see why the poet's reputation should be made to suffer until one critic can make belated and somewhat dubious reparation and while the other calmly proceeds to cut him off prematurely from a movement in which he was bound to become involved, however much for a time he might seem to struggle against it. For Kloos surely it could not be that realism would come to mean the direct opposite of romance. Plainly he had always much of the realist in his composition — and in precisely the sense in which we claim Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, all as realists. For him, too, it meant
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936 II, p. 381.
2 Op. cit., p. 20.
12



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
— not the averted eye of Feith, the deliberately turned back of Beets or Van Lennep — but an honest and fearless looking at the world as it is — in a word, the search for the inner truth. And more even — the faith that is implicit in such a search he uttered with more unqualified boldness than any other before or after him in the Netherlands, becoming, in so doing, the noblest laureate there for two entire centuries.
"Posthuum beroem zijn laat mij taamlijk koel." So he might write (and, ironically enough, death came but a few months after the penning of the words). But I think he must have sensed that he had made his niche secure; for myself now, so secure, indeed, that as we began with Vondel and Hooft, so might we fittingly conclude with Kloos. I have not the slightest wish to belittle the efforts of the other tachtigers, yet none that I can see has the right to be acclaimed in the same way — "the third among the sons of light"! Nor can I at all forget the influence of England at this time. That influence was a truly magnificent affair; perhaps as glorious an episode as any in the records of its literary foreign-relations. And again it was largely Kloos who made it so; not because he was necessarily the most Shelleyan or the most Keatsian of them all, but because, I think, he alone added something besides of the wisdom of Wordsworth and, certainly, because he so matchlessly in his own person and poetry combined so much of the best of England s great Romantic 'Trinity'. My own most appreciated gift from him was once some faded leaves from the grave of Shelley in Rome; fain now would I offer them back to his own; it is the kind of recognition, I feel, that would most fully have satisfied him. His friend Kijzer has it, in one place, that "voor den verstander heeft hij iets van Brahma's rust verwoord". 1 But would such "rest" as that do more than recall his decorous latter-day sageship? For final epitaph should we not rather seek back to his 1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936, II, p. 478.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE BEWEGING VAN TACHTIG"
bright, restless beginnings, for something around the Stuiveling phrase of "Tachtiger-bij-uitstek"? And if I return to Kijzer to find the full formula, it is but evidential of the comprehensiveness of the man and of the vastness of the task that awaits the critic who would assess the true core of his work and worth: "De Kloos-figuur is de spil van Tachtig, de theoretische voorvechter, de man die clairvoyant geheel doelbewust de klappen opving. Zijn magische aantrekkingskracht deed wonderen ..." 1
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935 II, p. 330.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - De Oude Garde en de Jongste School. 2 Vols. Amsterdam, 1891.
Coenen, F. - Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging. Middelburg, 1924.
Dekker, G. - Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die
Negentiende Eeu. The Hague, 1926.
Deyssel, L. van - Gedenkschriften. Amsterdam, 1924.
Donker, A. - De Episode van de Vernieuwing onzer Poëzie. Utrecht, 1929. D'Oliveira, E. - De Mannen van '80 aan het Woord. Amsterdam, 1909. Haantjes, J. - Holland in Contemporary Movements in European Literature. London, 1928.
Houwink, R. - Inleiding tot de Hedendaagsche Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Groningen, 1932.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924. Robbers, H. - De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880. Amsterdam, 1922. Stuiveling, G. - Versbouw en Ritme in de Tijd van '80. Groningen, 1934.
De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt. Amsterdam, 1935.
Verwey, A. - Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst. 5th. Edition. Amsterdam, 1921.
Winkel, J. Te - De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part III. Vol. 2. Haarlem, 1927.
PERK
Kloos, W. - Jacques Perk: Gedichten. Met Inleiding. Leiden, 1882. Jacques Perk en zijn Beteekenis in de Historie der Nederlandsche Literatuur. Amsterdam, 1909.
Nijland, J. A. - Jacques Perk. Een Studie. Amsterdam, 1906.
Perk, C. E. - Jacques Perk. Amsterdam, 1902.
KLOOS
Bian Tie, K. - Willem Kloos en de Dichtkunst. Leiden, 1931.
Kloos, W. - Verzen. 3 Vols. Amsterdam, 1902—1917.
Nieuwere Literatuurgeschiedenis. 5 Vols. Amsterdam, 1904 1914.
Letterkundige Inzichten en Vergezichten. 22 Vols. The Hague, 1928
1938.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Raaf, K. H. de - Willem Kloos. De Mensch, de Dichter, de Kriticus. Velsen, 1934.
Verwey, A. - Willem Kloos in Stille Toernooien. Amsterdam, 1901.
Wielenga, B. - Willem Kloos als Literair Profeet in Moderne Letterkunde. Kampen, 1917.



CHAPTER VII
KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
In the recognition of criticism as a customary and vital function of literature Holland had always lagged far behind England, France, Germany. Even the men of "De Gids" had seemed to act more in sorrow than in anger, and real revolutionary shocks were unknown to their campaign. Not, therefore, until the advent of the Jachtigers came truly the promise of a criticism that would be fearless, official, first-hand. "De Nieuwe-Gids-beweging," says Dr Ritter, "heeft gestalte gegeven aan een Idee: de Autonomie der Schoonheid." 1 Little wonder that something like consternation reigned; for what was this new-fangled 'Autonomie' of theirs but the most absolute of aesthetic principles — "altijd weer, altijd nog; de schoonheid als criterium bij alle objectieve kritiek," in the phrase of Van Leeuwen! 2 United thus, it can be said that for the first time since the "Golden Age" of Vondel we were given in the contributors to the "Beweging van Tachtig" an approach to a definite literary "school". Yet, let it not be misunderstood: not so much by any single common ideal were its members bound together as by an indefinable bond of sympathy, by a very wide community of impulse, as it were. And, indeed, when over half a century has passed — and with it alas! all the great first poets — when something like a stock-taking may be attempted, we can see plainly that the fine Romantic Brotherhood
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935 II, p. 361.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936 II, p. 22.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
built up then could never have hoped long to remain a complete and homogeneous whole.
The process of distintegration was inevitable, because these writers were Romantics above all, in their denial of outside authority and in turning the mind in upon itself. Their poetry was based upon an exploitation of the importance of the emotions; and what could such a process portend in the end but a riot of extreme individualism — the recognized rock upon which Romanticism must always split? The good ship "Nieuwe Gids" was no exception; and, after a brilliant launch,the usual spectacular trials, and a number of successful opening voyages, was clearly steering for the danger-zone. We shall not follow it through all its vicissitudes; but behold it foundering gallantly at last between the Scylla of "subjectivity" and the Charybdis of "objectivity". Of the occupants we can only say that they had saved themselves as best they could. Their fates were varied and interesting. None may actually have perished with the ship; yet none but suffered sensitively and severely in the violence of the precipitation. The dispersal was amazingly rapid — down was sent one to the perilous depths of French Naturalism, into the swirling waters of Socialism another, a third was claimed by the calmer, more mysterious, pools of Catholic morality, the next was swept far away, but carried with him the noble hope that he could still rebuild on a sounder, more excellent, principle, while the last man of all — the captain no less — actually contrived to remain afloat nearby, ready, it seemed, to attempt the difficult, if not actually impossible, operation of salvaging the vessel that had sailed off but lately on so proud and splendid a mission for Holland.
From the first the Tachtigers insisted fundamentally on the objective nature of their criticism. But no literary tenet, it can be said, has ever been so fiercely debated in Holland as this one. Robbers was inclined to scout the entire claim. "De waarheid



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
is," he writes, "dat volstrekte objectiviteit in de kunst natuurlijk niet bestaat. Alle groote kunst, daartegenover, is betrekkelijk objectief, d.w.z. de schrijver is zich zijn menschelijke nietigheid bewust en toont eerbied voor leven en natuur. Maar ook al beschrijft hij het hem omringende, of het in zijn verbeelding geziene, nog zoo bescheiden en nauwgezet, een kunstenaar is nu eenmaal iemand, die zich geeft, zich uitspreekt over de wereld — hetzij direct, lyrisch, hetzij episch of dramatisch, door stijl en toon, keuze van stof, compositie en honderd andere middelen — expressie van bezonken emotie geeft hij, altijd en overal." 1 And Prinsen was almost as categorical in supporting him. He quotes Kloos' own statement of his views, but comments upon it thus: "In theorie it dit prachtig. Maar in de practijk moet dit nog al eens aanleiding geven tot zeer subjectieve kritiek. De kritikus is zelf kunstenaar; en het zal hem niet mogelijk zijn zijn eigen sympathieën, zijn eigen schoonheidspassie steeds te onderdrukken. Het gevolg is dan ook geweest, dat een zelfde kunstwerk door mannen van dezelfde kritische richting zeer verschillend werd beoordeeld." ^ Van Leeuwen would also fain have shown his personal sympathy, but truth likewise compelled him to admit that the earlier position was gradually resiled from: Van de objectieve kritiek die de Tachtigers eischten, zijn we afgezakt (ik noem dat zoo!) naast het uiterst subjectieve, naar eigen baat, eigen partijbelang, eigen kerk, eigen school . 3 Kijzer revealed himself as a very special pleader for Kloos, but failed signally to effect a practical solution.4 Without the element of compromise, indeed, no solution does seem possible. Spanjaard, I fancy, must have been one of the first critics to realize this; and so his extensive reading of the case decided him to put a new inter-
1 "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. 20.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 253.
3 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936 II, p. 25.
* Vide article, "De Nieuwe Gids," November, 1936.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
pretation upon the term chiefly responsible for the deadlock. "Hebben Kloos en zijne genooten in ons land op hunne beurt," he says in a striking passage, "het vaandel ontplooid waarop óók in groote letters het devies te lezen was, niet 'Individualisme', maar: 'Individualiteit'1 But Haighton refused even to be satisfied with that amendment; and, whether or not it can be said that his argument has the full weight of logic to back it, it must be agreed that his reasoning has in it a most engaging quality. "Natuurlijk heeft Kloos, hebben de Tachtigers," he seeks to persuade us with, "met 'individualisme' niet ik-zuchte bedoeld, maar 'persoonlijkheid5 2 In effect, the aesthetic by which the Tachtigers appeared to have introduced an utterly revolutionary factor into the conception of poetry was no more than a logical, if extreme, result of Romantic individualism — that is, of the poet's licence to create his own form, expressive at every turn of his personal idiosyncrasy. Professor Prinsen once went so far as definitely to suggest that "de eenheid in deze groep was een negatie", adding: "Doch in hun eigen aard en persoonlijkheid openbaarde zich al spoedig een groot verschil. De felste revolutionnair Van Deyssel stond in zijn vlammende extase voor Zola, zijn eigen, zuiver Hollandsch naturalisme lijnrecht tegenover de aristocratische vergeestelijking en verfijning van Kloos, Gorter, Verwey, die in de verheerlijking van Keats en Shelley opgingen." 3 Yet, the significance of the final clause here is not to be lightly dismissed on account of what has gone before. Kloos, Verwey, Gorter — and, we may add, Van Eeden — were not themselves — any more than Van Deyssel with his Naturalism — to be able, respectively, to effect the divorce between Poetry and Philosophy, Poetry and Society, Poetry and Politics, Poetry and Religion; but I do maintain that while they worked within the purely
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1927 II, p. 297.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1938 II, p. 54.
3 Op. cit., p. 251.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
aesthetic scheme of Keats and Shelley — and only then — did they succeed in showing how the separate life might be an eventual possibility.
The work of Kloos in this connection I have already had occasion to consider, since — the oldest of the quartette — he was also the most early matured, the quite unmistakable leader, and the legitimate successor of Perk himself. This fact, however, need not prevent me from expressing complete agreement with Dekker when he asseverates: "Die invloed van Keats en Shelley, is bij geen een van die tagtigers so direk en so duidelik as by Verwey nie." 1 Such a development is in no sense to be wondered at. To begin with, he himself was the very definite disciple of Kloos, and Kloos at this time led naturally to Keats. What, I wonder, could be more Keatsian than his impassioned declaration:
"Ik ben een dichter en der Schoonheid zoon."
From the first he was ready to accept the canon complete. "Gehoorzaam aan den roep van mijn tijd," he writes, "zocht ook ik toen, eerst in natuur- en menschenwereld, daarna in het geheimnisvolle leven dat zich door den dichter uitte — de Schoonheid. Zoo schreef ik de mythologische gedichten in vijfvoetige jamben 'Persephone' (1882—'83) en 'Demeter' (1885)." 2 It was in the first of those short epics that he began his direct following of Keats; the beauty of "Hyperion" had filled his mind, and he was fully ready to respond. No part of the poem, however, so much impressed him as the famous opening description: "Deep, in the shady sadness of a vale"; which he superbly renders as:
"Diep tusschen steile wanden wond hun weg
Eng kronk'lend voort in telkens dieper nacht,
En immer groeide er een verwoed gedruisch,
Vanwaar zich waterval op waterval
1 "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 140.
2 "Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst," p. 76.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Onzichtbaar tusschen rotsen nederwierp;
En berggevaarten nijgden naar elkaar Het stompe voorhoofd, als twee reuzenstieren Die duiz'len van de wederzijdschen stoot,
Doch, duiz'lend, vaardig staan tot nieuwen kamp."
And he had plainly the picture of the solitary Saturn in mind
when he wrote:
"En boven waatren, scheemrende onder haar,
Zat Echo, eenzaam op 'n rotsenpunt,
In slaap gegonsd door 't grommende gebons Van katarakten, romm'lend door 't gebergt."
In very similar terms, too, he describes the Goddess Thea:
"Daar stond de donk're, dreigende Godin,
De Styx — en leunde haar geweld'ge leden In schaduw harer hallen aan 't gewelf.
Doch breed stond haar gestalte tegen 't duister,
En haar gelaat was merkbaar in den mist:
't Was als 't gelaat van een ontzachtbre Sfinx,
Uit grauwen steen gebeeld bij d'ouden Nilus,
En die, verweerd door warmte en vochten wind,
Staat in een donk'ren nacht en mistig wêer."
Riper still was the talent he brought to the composition of "Demeter". And as though to measure the new poem against "Persephone", he turned once again to the opening lines of "Hyperion"; and does, indeed, succeed in suggesting its atmosphere of gloom and silence with even more subtle effect:
"Stil zat op 't mosvlak van een grauwen steen De Moeder-Godheid der alvoedende aard,
Demeter op een open plek in 't woud.
Het ver geruisch der rossen van de Zon Week op de kimmen er in 't bosch bewoog Zich niet een blad in 't duister daar 't in hing."
Continuing, he came shortly to the solemn picture formed by Saturn and Thea:
"The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet."



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Which inspired him to pen the famous passage, beginning:
"En zij verborg 't hoofd in hare handen En zat onder de sterren in de nacht."
En al die kalme sterren rezen hoog,
En daalden."
With Keats, of course, the vision of the stars only occurs near the end of Book I, but it is obvious that it was adapted and made us of in this particular context.
It is a matter for some surprise that Verwey, who was so ^
completely captivated by "Hyperion", should have failed signally to appreciate "Endymion" and the "Ode to Autumn" (Dekker s single-line hypotheses we shall not regard as really serious proofs to the contrary), and should have taken the unfortunate example of "Isabella" in illustration of "deze poëzie van beelden zonder oorzaak". Patently he was not prepared to remain an uncritical admirer of Keats; and just as evident is it that it was the English poet's "passie der schoonheid", as expressed through his classical background and his epic style, that made the highest appeal to him. When this began to wear off, he was slightly pained indeed, and over-ready to attribute it to his "philosophy" having now developed beyond the Romantic view of life; without at all realizing that only the most sterling intellectual force and the most intense imaginative vision, and not merely vagueness of thought, could ever have served to assemble Keats' own mighty reading of the cosmic problem. Poetically, in considerable measure, the diversity of aim he came latterly to reveal proved his own undoing; making us marvel at his combining of so many forms and functions, but inclining us too often to remain struck by beauty of technique achieved at the expense of those moments of unrestrained feeling which are the finest echo of Romantic lyricism.
As with Kloos himself, Verwey all over was really much happier in his dealings with Shelley. Kijzer's words might well be adapted



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
here to link him in most graceful fashion. "Verwey", says this critic, "is zeer bekwaam als criticus. Niet altijd heeft zijn proza het elastische, fijn-gelede van Kloos, het virtuoos vlammende en bruisende van Van Deyssel. Het is echter monumentaal van stijl. Albert Verwey is de taai-architect van De Nieuwe Gids. Zijn kundige onderscheidingen van metrum, rijm en rhythme, zijn professorale vakkennis doet hem eveneens de leermeester zijn van velen die geslachten na hem kwamen." 1 And it is a really im- — portant point this, that the link should be thus doubly forged, in respect both of prose and poetry; and also that the balance should be held more evenly between these than in the case of any other Tachtiger: I have definitely the feeling that Verwey would not have been attracted so powerfully to Shelley had the latter not possessed an important body of critical doctrine, and that he himself would also have been much less great as a poet had he never learned of this body of opinion and indoctrinated t himself in it.
Right off, in one of his earliest prose studies, "Dichterlijke Taal', 2 we find Verwey giving voice to virtually the same theory as Shelley concerning the relationship of language and art. Want onwillekeurig als het kind," he says, "dat allerlei geluiden uitstoot, terwijl het iets te grijpen tracht, begon ook de mensch in zijn natuurstaat de klanken te vormen ter uiting van zijn eerste emoties." 3 And again: "Men denke zich die taal: ieder woord een gedicht, iedere zin een epos, en die zinnen samengesteld op de maat van den dans, waar zij altoos hun vreugde mee toonden." 4 So allied are these views to those expressed in the opening paragraphs of Shelley's "Defence of Poetry" that they fully prepare us for his "Dichters Verdediging" of a few years later, under which excellent
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935 II, p. 332.
2 Published originally in "De Amsterdammer" of August 10, 1884; reprinted in "De Oude Strijd", 1905.
3 "De Oude Strijd," p. 14.
4 Jbid., p. 15.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENCLISH
title he gave out his translations of Shelley's famous treatise and Sidney's "Apologie for Poetry". The Preface makes clear what prompted him to undertake this commendable task of devotion. "Had ik vroeger nu," he reflects, "Shelley's en Sidney's werk wel eens inziende, daar nooit meer dan een paar bladzijden in hun gedachtegang van gevolgd — dit was mij van dat weinige wel bij gebleven dat het ontroerdzijn door Poëzie en Schoonheid uit geen Proza — na dat van Plato — heftiger sprak dan daar. Ontroering wou 'k, niet meeningen. En ik sloeg open, eerst Shelley's werk, toen het Sidney'sche en in de ontroering die me aanwoei' — de helle inspireerende uit het eerste, de zoete bekorings-volle uit het tweede — schreef ik in hollandsche woorden de meeningen over, die voller zoete en geheimzinnige wijsheid bleeken dan ik ooit had gedroomd." The book had a wellmerited success, but it took a poet's intuition to account for the essential basis of that success. "Verwey," wrote his ie\\ow-7achticjer Van Eeden, reviewing it in "De Nieuwe Gids", "heeft een sterke originaliteit, maar sterker is in hem dat eigenaardige vermogen der poëten dat Van der Goes in een Multatuli-studie zoo juist heeft gedefinieerd, het acteer-vermogen of representatievermogen. Hij kan aannemen de grootheid van deze, de schoonheid van die, en meenen dat hij 't zelf is. Het is dan wel groot en schoon, het is ook Verwey, maar Verwey in een rol die hij bemint. Zoo heeft hij met een uniek meesterschap beurtelings de naïveteit van Marlowe, de sublimiteit van Shelley, en het beminnelijke en pittige van Sidney weten om te zetten in zijn eigen, altijd even persoonlijke taal." 1 But perhaps the man who had once written of poetry (surely then with Wordsworth in mind) that "zij ontstaat uit den drang der gevoelens, die overvloeien, wanneer zij zeer sterk worden in het hart van een dichter," 2 was always destined to fill the supreme róle of
1 1890—91 II, pp. 298-301.
2 "De Oude Strijd," p. 67.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
'Maker',1 even if only very gradually he seemed to equip himself for it.
So closely did Verwey's early verse seem to resemble Shelley's that critics were not slow in raising the charge of plagiarism against him. It is a charge for which there was little or no justification. Verwey was a versatile translator, as his "Poëzie in Europa" 2 goes to prove; but as a creative poet himself he was bound to be far more concerned to re-capture the spirit of any foreign author who attracted him than merely to render his work Uterally into Dutch. This was particularly so with regard to Shelley; for though he knew his poetry through and through, and drew freely from it in fashioning his own, he troubled to translate in full no more than three of his actual poems. These are the Iittle-known "Sunset", the rather better-known "Mont Blanc", and the quite well-known "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". Regarded primarily as translations they need not detain us — though the chance might be taken to mention that even in his matter Verwey proved himself a master interpreter. It is true that the poet sometimes appears to have had in view the giving of a translated work, as indicated by titles like "Rouw om het Jaar", "De Dood van een Jaar", "In Memoriam Patris". But the supposition never materialises. A1I these poems are, admittedly, inspired by Shelley — by his "Dirge for the Year", "Autumn: a Dirge", and "Adonais", respectively; none, however, carries more than a general suggestion about it — and, as it happens, one of them, "De Dood van een Jaar", is more reminiscent of Tennyson in his "Death of the Old Year" than it is of Shelley. Dekker, as usual, does his work thoroughly and well. But he misses the point gravely by going out of his way so often to call attention to resemblances of word or phrase that seem entirely
1 His own favoured rendering of the Greek.
3 Published in 1920. It includes translations from Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
too slight and superficial for serious consideration. This he does with some odd lines in the lament, "Bij den Dood van J. A. Alberdingk Thijm":
"Hij liep zijn tijd door als door een bosch een man:
Die knapt af takken daar en trapt 't serpent Dat sist en met juweelen oogjes straalt."
Alongside them he places these others from "The Revolt of Islam":
"Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms, repressed Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise While calmly on the sun he turned his diamond eyes."
It never seems to occur to him that the two pieces have absolutely nothing else in common — theme, construction, form, all are radically different. If he had discovered that Verwey had written here an actual Dutch "Adonais", then we would have had reason to be grateful to him. But of far more importance, as matters stand, it seems to me, is to concentrate upon the particular works of our two poets which raise unmistakably the whole question of their versification, their vocabulary, their ideas. And, reverting for a moment to Keats, is there no significance to be found in the adoption of blank verse for both "Persephone" and ' Demeter — all as though the faults and immaturities of an "Endymion" were to be blotted out in the assured success of a "Hyperion"? High above all Verwey's verse of the days of Jachtig stands "Cor Cordium"; by far the most Shelleyan of all his poems. It is Shelleyan, however, not simply in that it suggests all through a great and definite original model: far more is it so because we have in it the nearest approach to the pure lyricism of Shelley, because it does the fullest justice to his typically rhapsodical invocations and airy rhythms, because it shows his noted freedom and buoyancy at their very best, and because it rises to the highest understanding of his philosophical idealism. In this last respect, it claims most kinship, naturally, with the Platonic ideas of Epi-



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
psychidion"; in which Verwey evidently realized himself as in no other outside work. Coenen scarcely exaggerates the importance of "Cor Cordium" in the intellectual development of the youthful poet when he tells us that in it he "iets loopt te zoeken, dat hij niet aanstonds vinden kan, niet zoozeer zijn Zelf, als wel het Zelf, dat alle zeiven verbindt". This is an admirable expression of opinion; and the illuminating comparison which follows between Verwey and his leader Kloos (and which hints powerfully at their later rivalry and disagreement) is not less worth while quoting. "Kloos," he reasons, "zocht alleen zijn eigen zelf en meende dat zelfs gevonden te hebben, maar Verwey zoekt van aanbegin af naar een eenheid, die boven de eigen persoonlijkheid uit zou gaan." 1
The title of the poem was itself evolved from Shelley, and Kloos penetrated its primary purpose when he described the whole as the "Epipsychidion van zijn eigen ziel":2
"Ziel van mijn ziel! Leven, dat in mij woont,
Veelnamige Mysterie, die ik noem Mijn Ik, mijn Zelf, mijn Wezen, — die U toont
Altijd een andre, en uwen eigen doem Spreekt op u zelve en dit mijn lichaam maakt Het werktuig uwer woorden, 't instrument,
Dat gij bespeelt en maakt aan de aard bekend Uw melodieën, dat aanstonds ontwaakt
Dit menschdom heinde en veer: d roep ik aan ;
Opdat gij spreke' en van mijn lippen drijv'
Lente van zang, die over de aard zal gaan En 'k thans niet mijn maar uwe woorden schrijv' ".
"De oorsprong van Verwey's nieuwe dichterschap," seeks to explain Uyldert, "voelt hij te liggen in de erkentenis van het Leven als Eenheid van Idee en Daad, van Geest en Natuur." 3 Such a conclusion 1 cannot find to be very novel, or that it can
1 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 201.
2 "Veertig Jaar Literatuur-Geschiedenis," II, p. 126.
3 "Albert Verwey," p. 49.
13



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLlSH
be considered as removing us very far away yet from Shelley;
a poet to whom this critic renders not the scantest justice. For
myself, I would go so far as to suggest that the Verwey of 1935,
approaching near to the end of his search, would still not have
repudiated those intimations of belief of fifty years earlier, as
expressed in the superb lines:
"'k Heb u altijd gezocht en trachtte altijd Te luist'ren naar uw woorden; maar als een,
Die staat aan 't strand der zee en hoort aldoor De waatren ruischen en het wijd en zijd Breken der golven, en zijn voeten treên Krakende schelpen; — en hij nijgt het oor,
Om in 't geluid te grijpen één geluid,
Omdat, als hij het hoort, hij zal verstaan Ontzagbre wijsheid, zulke als de Natuur,
Eens in een eeuw, aan één verkorene uur,
Meegeeft, opdat die ze uitlegge en beduid'
Den grootste van die dan op aarde gaan; —
Maar vruchtloos: — zóó hoorde ik in mijne ziel,
Van dat ik kind was en der wereld droom Kleurde mijn oogen met zijn bonte beeld, —
Een heir van stemmen in mij, en ik hiel'
Mijn ooren wakker in den nacht, vol schroom Biddend, dat me üw geluid niet bleef verbeeld."
Did he, in fact, ever come any nearer finality than when he
wrote:
"Zoo zal hij schreien, die zijn Zelf vergeet,
En meer dan Zelf liefde van menschen mint,
Alsof die meer dan 's levens Leven waar'.
Daar leeft geen and're God, Gij zijt alleen.
Der wereld heil moog' einden in geween,
Hij die in ü gelooft, smaakt eeuw'ge vreugd.
U voelen is geluk, ü zoeken deugd;
U kennen was altoos der grootsten droom:
Al hun gebed, dat üw koninkrijk koom',
Want wie ü mint, bemint de wereld niet;
Werelden worden en vergaan — gij blijft:
En mét u blijft wat ge ons in 't harte drijft,
En al wat we, ü ter eer, zeggen in 't Lied."



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
He was but twenty, of course, when he composed "Cor Cordium". And if he did, indeed, ever come round to the Eliotian view that "an enthusiasm for Shelley seems to me also to be an affair of adolescence,"1 perhaps it was not altogether on different premises. For the work, the mind, the art, of the English poet he had certainly displayed an almost all-absorbing enthusiasm. Yet, had he really explored him to the full in any one of these aspects? Poems so characteristic, for instance, as "Prometheus Unbound", "The Revolt of Islam", "Alastor", "Adonais",he seems either not to have wished to handle, or not known how to do so. Over the technique of poetry, I allow, he had some right to regard himself as having been let down by his countrymen; and as a professor of poetry — in a doublé sense — was almost bound to try at least to make good the omission. So he went ahead with his study of Shelley. No complaint he made there, and seems not to have imagined that "The Defence of Poetry" might have left many problems undiscussed and unresolved. The truth is — as with Mr Eliot himself — that apostasy finally resulted not mainly on account of poetical considerations at all, but arose far more from the vexed question of beliefs. Kloos, with remarkable intuition, seemed already to point to the likely outcome of this serious division when he wrote: "De heer Verwey is een mengeling van twee temperamenten, hij is een Calvinist, door de schoonheidskoorts bezocht." 2 This explanation, of course, errs on the simple side, and is put forward with a measure of partiality not unnatural under the circumstances. But it does contain, I hold, a good modicum of truth. Dr Haantjes, however, sees the position rather otherwise, for, speaking of the change of mind and heart which carried Verwey out of "De Nieuwe-GidsBeweging" into his own "Beweging", he says: "One of these poets, however, Albert Verwey, understood at last that beauty
1 "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," p. 89.
2 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1890 I, p. 284.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
was not everything in life. He understood that being a poet did not necessarily mean abstaining from social and cultural life, but that a higher literary attitude was possible, not based on a merely poetical constitution, but on a poetical personality." 1 We doublé back on this last term — how that old "folly of Jachtig will out! But Dr Weevers in part, I think, gets round the difficulty for us. The new 'Movement' he sees as one which demanded for the poet and for his work a central position in society — the poet being a servant of life in that he expressed the vision through which men live, but being at the same time the equal, even the superior, of the alderman, the theologian, the scholar. 2 In this viewpoint we may be forgiven perhaps for seeing Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators" theory written a good deal smaller than ever intended.
What both Dr Haantjes and Dr Weevers, 1 take it, wish to be at is that Verwey had to effect some sort of compromise with the age — and that, therefore, the idol to continue with could not be one so remote, yet so dangerous, as Shelley. In this matter, the Dutch poet, I consider, was quite mistaken. And if fresh gods were needed, I cannot think that Potgieter and Goethe — in that order too — were the most inspired choices. Under their tutelege, it seems to me, the Standard of his work fluctuates in quite extraordinary fashion — there is almost as much in it to dismay as to captivate. Many of the utterances of this later Verwey, I confess, I find singularly vapid and unconvincing. Is there, I wonder, much more than a forced and shallow optimism in sentiments of this order:
"Ik ben een mensch als gij en heb gevonden
Dat alles leeft en alles waarde heeft."
How poorly they compare with the spontaneous lyric beats of:
1 In "Contemporary Movements in European Literature," p. 230.
2 Lecture delivered at Bedford College, London (December 1, 1938).



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
"De poëzie komt over me als een droom Vol sterren en een liefelijke nacht Van duister"
and:
"Mijn ziel is in mijn zangen,
Mijn zang is in mijn ziel:
Mijn lied is 't zoet verlangen,
Dat in mijn harte viel."
There has, unfortunately, been a tendency of late for Dutch critics to divide themselves off into two camps, under the respective banners of Kloos and Verwey. But partisan criticism of this type can only harm the real cause of literature, and should be strenuously resisted. What, therefore, I wish to make clear is that, while I may deplore the decline of beauty, the loss of energy and feeling, in the work of Verwey, 1 do so equally, when it is demanded, in the case of the other post-Jacbtigers. "Die kunstenaars-opvatting," may say Van Leeuwen, "kwam al naar voren in Verwey's latere periode; en na den oorlog wordt voortdurend gesproken van de 'roeping der kunst5, welke roeping dan niet meer allèèn wordt geacht schoonheid te geven." 1 But had Prinsen not already pronounced upon Kloos: "In zijn lateren kritischen arbeid, waarmee hij nog steeds in De Nieuwe Gids doorgaat, verliest hij dat direct raak op zijn doel afgaan, bepaalt hij zich te weinig tot de schoonheid of onechtheid van een werk, verliest hij soms in uitweidingen, die niets met de zaak, waarover het gaat, te maken hebben." 2 So what ought we to conclude from these statements but that parity had been about reached. And why, anyway, need we regard them as rival and opposed viewpoints? Is there not in the parallelism they offer an excellent defence of the whole "Beweging van Tachtig", as in essence lyrical, and not intellectual? And what better defence and justification could the separate poetry of Verwey itself have than to say
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1936 II, p. 21.
2 "Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde," p. 259.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
that it is the lyrical afflatus so potent in "Persephone". "Cor Cordium", and other poems written in the flush and brightness of his Keats-Shelley period that must — and shall — live on, however much the lyrical exploitation of his own personality may in the end have proved too strong for him.
Poetry apart, we only begin, I think, to realize the gap between Verwey and Kloos when we follow the statement of Stuiveling that "in Verwey verloor de Nieuwe Gids den criticus, die de grootste neiging bezat tot objectieve, wetenschappelijk gedocumenteerde beoordeeling en zich de beste literair-historische scholing eigen had gemaakt." 1 Critically, it is very obvious, he feit bound to dissociate himself from the policy of Kloos and "De Nieuwe Gids". Yet actually, even here, the severity of the difference was not so marked as it was between himself and the remaining Tachtigers. Certainly his defection implied in him a central change of outlook — a modernising of his spirit, together with the resurgence in him of the classical needs of restraint and discipline. Yet, Kloos had been his first inspirer, and was truly the one member of the group with whom he could ever have been said to hold many ideas in common. Now (however much he might wish to widen his intellectual horizon) it could never be by actively identifying himself with the Socialist movement in the manner of Gorter. Nor could he find the semblance of coherence in the communistic experiments of the individuallyminded Van Eeden;while his strongly-rooted Calvinistic inhibitions quite failed him in understanding the motives that could possibly lead this pessimistic, morbidly self-pitying poet to temporise with the Catholic church: with Kloos, indeed, he might almost have been harnessed together in a perfect team, compared with the distance that divided him from the 'Solitary' of Bussum.
Robbers, I think, sees Van Eeden starkly as he was: "De moderntweespaltige figuur, half dichter, half... blikken dominee." He 1 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 85.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
goes on: "Wat zijn uitgesproken neigingen betreft misschien humaner, christelijk-meelijdend-menschelijker dan een zijner tijdgenooten, is hij feitelijk individualistischer, klein ijdeler, zelfgenoegzamer — meer 'ego-centrisch', meer van zichzelf vervuld, dan zij allen."1 On the various occasions I was privileged to meet the late Mr Robbers, I cannot remember that the character of Dr Van Eeden ever happened to come under review; but I have a sufficiently high opinion of the integrity of this critic to accept the foregoing as a fair and impartial judgment — and particularly in so far as it constitutes a reasoned corrective to the obnoxious personal abuse that has been heaped upon the author of "De Kleine Johannes" by critics like the younger Kalff, Bakker, and by Kloos himself (who had, admittedly, many old scores to pay off). To me this whole matter can only be looked on as a decidedly sordid episode in the non-literary history of Holland.
Twice, during a stay of several months in Holland during the year 1927, I was invited by Dr Van Eeden to spend the day with him at his Thoreau-named estate of "Walden". The first visit was a particularly enjoyable affair, and I can only say that I found him all that could be desired as a host and — I must add — all that could be desired in a popularly-acclaimed poet, novelist and dramatist, willing to discuss himself, his theories, his characters, his ideas. In appearance I cannot say that he was prepossessing. But his face, though small and considerably wizened, certainly did not, on the Kalff analogy, suggest to me "den kop van een faun", with all its implied associations of "het faunachtig-onscrupuleuse". Of his early preoccupation with Communism and the Labour movement especially, he spoke freely and frankly, giving me details of the "commune" he set up in Holland itself and of his establishment of communal settlements in the United States. Incidentally, when he spoke of America, 1 learned 1 "De Nederlandsche Literatuur na 1880," p. 34.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
of his association with lipton Sinclair (who had actually stayed with him at "Walden"), and had my curiosity satisfied as to why a Dutch poet should have several shelves of his book-case filled with the works of this particular author!1 My second visit was not so happy. Religious observances were made to play a large part in it. But, despite that, 1 did on this occasion definitely mark on the face of Van Eeden "de vertwijfeling, den vlijmenden angst, de ziekelijke onrust der ziel, de geestelijke pijn van den tot starkamp gemartelde, die noch in het leven, noch in zichzelven, een betrouwbaar houvast vinden kan." 2 The consolations of conversion had not so far earned him the happiness of humanity, or changed him from a being other than distraught and perplexed. Beyond that it seems both cruel and unwise to draw the veil, and I finish there. The picture presented may not be exactly Shelleyan, but, with the earlier one, it serves, I think, to draw attention to the two elements in his work most relating him to the English poet — the ethical content of all that he himself wrote and the idea of a "mission" which obsessed him all through his life.
For the supposed unorthodoxy of his approach to Shelley, Van Eeden has been subjected to much harsh criticism. I have no doubt in my own mind, however, that these animadversions were prompted at least as much by the desire to prove that he had grossly violated the whole aesthetic canon of the Tachtigers as by any very scrupulous regard for the exact and proper way of approaching Shelley. Van Eeden's "ethiek in de kunst" simply upset the preconceived notions on the subject, and plainly would never do! Yet, much as might Van Deyssel lay it down as a
1 Three extracts from Van Eeden's works are inchtded in Upton Sinclair's "Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest". On the death of Van Eeden I received myself a letter from Upton Sinclair in Pasadena, paying tribute to him as man and writer and acknowledging the encouragement he had received, directly and indirectly, from him.
2 R. H. J. Bakker, "De Nieuwe Gids," 1929 II, p. 518.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
general principle that "sociale hervormers zijn, uit den aard der zaak, in den grond van hun wezen, anti-artistiek,"1 there was in this really no necessary proof that Van Eeden would be woefully handicapped when it came to a question of understanding the mind, the emancipating vision, if not always the art, of Shelley. Kloos andVerwey,despite their possession of a serene and intuitive sense of beauty, had been surprisingly inadequate in dealing with those aspects of the English poet which implicate him as spiritual revolutionary and Messianic visionary, so that Van Eeden is not to be blamed for taking the line that seemed most natural to himself. Nor was he slow at any time in his own defence. "Zij zeggen: Moraal in de kunst is nonsense," he countered with: "Maar Shelley, die de grootste lyricus geweest is, is voortdurend vervuld van ethisch idealisme. En ik, ik ging volkomen mee met de voorkeur, die zij. geven aan het mooie vers bóven het leelijke. Maar nooit kon ik meegaan met de negatie van al wat men moraal noemt, door hun beweging voorgestaan." 2 Such a plain avowal as this could not but be to the immense liking of Dr Dekker, and right eagerly did he seize upon it as a means of proving the traits shared in common. "Nes Shelley," he notes, "is ook Van Eeden nie in die eerste plek kunstenaar nie, maar voor alles die voorstander van religieuse, sosiale en veral van etiese ideale; ook hy het, op sy wyse, 'a passion for reforming the world'". 3 And again: "Jn digter as Van Eeden word meer deur die gedagte as deur die vorm beïnvloed."4 1 willingly agree; for, often though I have had to dissent from this critic's conclusions, denial here seems wholly vain. And why should it have been so? The answer, I think, can only be that, as positively for Van Eeden as for Verwey, was the starting-
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1891 II, p. 168.
2 Quoted by D'Oliveira, "De Mannen van '80 aan het Woord," p. 79.
3 "Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die Negentiende Eeu," p. 173.
4 Ibid., p. 174.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
point of his inspiration his almost-frenzied worship of "The Defence of Poetry". Of that work he could never speak too highly. "Want de wijsheid van Shelley in de 'Defence of Poetry' ", he writes, "gegeven is al sinds jaren grondslag en cement geweest van het gebouw der Hollandsche poëzie, en wat Verwey zelf, en ik over poëzie geschreven hebben, was voor een goed deel uitwerking of detail-leering of verdere opbouwing van de door Shelley aangegeven Ideeën." 1
Of the poetry itself his earliest reference is to "The Revolt of Islam", a work read with apparent avidity, though no direct tracé of it appears in his own work. But poems like "Prometheus Unbound", "Adonais", "Epipsychidion", seemed now at last about to come into their own. For our purpose, however, the firstnamed rules itself out of consideration through its influence having been exerted most potently upon the Shelleyan-styled "De Broederveete, Tragedie van het Recht". But "Adonais", we can say, finds excellent reflection in "Van de Passieloose Lelie". Here the Dutch poet has one of his typical premonitions of death:
"Maar eer het eeuwig zwart gordijn zal vallen groet ik de leevende gestalten allen die speelden voor mijn aangezicht."
He calls to his side "sleepende melodiën, "Liefde", "schoone gedachten", all rich in their associations with the original:
"Want als aanstonds hoog Om mijn dood lijf vlammen van liefde stijgen,
Zult gij luid klagende aan mijn lijf U klemmen."
More exactly we have a counterpart to Shelley's heraldricallydrawn picture of "the painted veil which those who live call life", in the lines:
"Wacht niet, als een tooneelscherm opgeschooven,
't verzwinden aller raadslen, 't zwart verhang
1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1891—92 I, p. 300.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Van waan verwolkt, en 't plots met vollen drang toestroomend heil uit open hemelhooven."
And to Jesus the poet speaks, much as Shelley does in the passage beginning: "One came forth of gentle worth." In Van Eeden the context reads:
"Wat hebben ze u, mijn vrind, niet aangedaan!
Het kruis was zwaar, de smaad voor liefde wreed,
Maar 't hardst kwam na: de lasterlijke hulde,
't om u gebrachte leed,
al d'ijdelheeden, in uw naam begaan!"
1890, the year in which Van Eeden severed his connection with "De Nieuwe Gids", was also that in which appeared his masterpiece, "Ellen". Somewhat grudgingly Kijzer writes that "zijn aanvechtbare lyriek uit 'Ellen', een lied van de smart, behoort nog tot het kader van De Nieuwe Gids."1 If the "Beweging van Tachtig" means a true spiritual identification with Shelley, "Ellen" must be reckoned as representing much more than the "kader" of the Movement. If he had had in mind only the bare theme of the poem, there could perhaps have been little exception taken to his words. But the fine imaginativeness of the treatment redeems the slightness of that surely; and there is always the English dedication to be kept in mind: "To that rare and exquisite human soul, whose serene harmony of beauty and sorrow inspired these verses." In the very first song the Dutch poet draws freely upon the picture of the ideal woman, as given in "Epipsychidion":
"Want anders zie 'k U, anders valt het licht Op U dan op wat om U is, daar straalt Een eigen glans, goudachtig, om U zelf,
Die schittert in mijn oogen, als op straat De fijne jachtsneeuw, 's avonds, bij hel licht."
And Verwey has fancied a great similarity in the passage in Shelley which begins "Poor captive bird! who, from the narrow cage", and Van Eeden's description of the faded rose: 1 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1935 II, p. 331.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"O bleeke roos! in 't dor droefgeestig land Kwijnend op droef geboogen stengel, — bloem!
Gevat door ruuwe handen en gekust Door lippen voor wie d'aard te heilig is Waarin Gij zijt gegroeid — zoo niet mijn tranen,
Zoo niet mijn stem het edel wit ontwijdt Dier blanke reinheid, en Uw teerheid krenkt,
Laat mij dan knielen en Uw leed beschreien En tot U opzien, zeggend wie Gij zijt!"
In many other Iines the influence of Shelley is overwhelmingly strong:
"Ik zie U aan en kan niet anders doen,
Maar ik begrijp niet wat ik zie."
"Maar U zie ik niet!
Want ik wil 't al vasthouden wat Gij zijt Met mijn twee oogen o maar zij kunnen 't niet."
"Waarom hebt Gij den Dood zoo lief, mijn Lief?"
The great fault of "Ellen", measured by Shelleyan standards, is that it is so consciously committed to morbidity in its ideas that the poet all the time is cutting himself off from immense tracts of far more rich and vital experience. Shelley himself has despondency in plenty, but even in his trembling and failing there is always a note of lyrical ecstasy — it is, in fact, one of the most characteristic notes of his entire poetic scheme. Correspondingly, Van Eeden never shows the indomitable mental energy that must conquer over all, but harps so persistently upon the single string of his personal sadness and disillusionment as to seem to be labouring under the hallucination that he can best cure the sufferings of humanity by thus relating his own. Each poet, it is obvious, finds a profound want in the nature of things; but though Van Eeden, no more than the other, is prepared to accept ordinary human values or make contact with reality, he differs greatly from him in failing to persist in an individual idealism, strengthened by the knowledge that in his poetry he is



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
free to refashion the world on the pattern of his dreams. "Ellen" proved conclusively that its author had either to attain to some final vividness of vision, or allow the strains of his music to die away in bitterness and despair. But hard as he wrought to resolve his composition into a cosmic symphony of love, he failed, and found himself well-nigh carried back to the lachrymosity of early sentimentalists like Young and Feith.
Much of this criticism applies to the whole attempt of Van Eeden to interpret Shelley. If his command of the springs of beauty was less wide than with the English poet, so also could he not bring to the task the same superb intellectual abstraction. His tendency was ever to interpret too literally and exactly; the sheer loveliness of an "Adonais", the pure defiance of a "Prometheus", were largely beyond his powers; 'the egotistical sublime' in him was always working to keep the individualities of the sense-world from fading away and allowing the gaze to be fixed undistractedly upon the 'Life of Life'. In all this, of course, we must make generous allowance for the constitutional melancholy that dogged him to the end; for he was, indeed, a man born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards. Though — let it be noted — when he can, even momentarily, shake off this depression, and when he undertakes a less devious flight than his natural inclinations urged, he is often amazingly successful; I think particularly of "De Noordewind" in which, as in the Ode to the West Wind", there is a definite interplay of the abstract and the concrete — the objects of the external world are dealt with, but only to be valued for what they suggest, not for themselves:
"Hoog wil ik stijgen met den Noordewind,
boven 't gerucht der stemmen . .
"Ik wil ééns vrij zijn, ééns oneindig vrij,
dat er geen liefde en lachen om mij is,
geen zoete stem, geen blik van vrienden-oogen,
geen weekheid en geen weemoed en geen lust."



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"'k Wil eenzaam stijgen in den Noordewind,
die in den killen nacht gestadig waait groot en onweetend."
Van Eeden's basing of his study of Shelley on extra-literary grounds will have always the supreme justification that it brought him (of all the Jachticjers) into the closest relationship with the English poet. A lesser bard than either Verwey or Kloos, his greater success in this one respect fairly entitled him to assume a critical tone towards their more restricted efforts. "Verwey," so he roundly asserts, "heeft nooit de verheevenheid van Shelley in zijn verzen gebracht".1 Again: "Voor Kloos was Shelley de idéale Dichter en hij streefde niet naar minder dan naar Shelley's verheevenheid. Maar wat bij Shelley natuur was, en zonder inspanning, als uit noodzaak bereikt werd — dat was bij Kloos een min of meer gewilde, met moeite volgehouden schijn." 2 For the shortcomings of Shelley — as their peculiar aesthetic inclined them to view the matter — both Kloos and Verwey, of course, were able to find compensation in the gold-spun artistry of Keats. But such a course was not possible to a man of Van Eeden's temperament. Sir Sidney Colvin's view that "very few judges have seemed to care equally for Keats and Shelley", 3 is perhaps substantially true for even these other Jacbtigers, but in his case it would have to be drastically amended to read that a fully Godwinised Shelley-ite was hardly to be expected to care for Keats at all! There, I think, we must be content to leave it. When Kijzer asserted that "De Nieuwe-Gids-idee" is geen wijdere dan de kunstzinnige idee van Tachtig", 4 he was really not so much setting himself up in opposition to Stuiveling's theory, as re-emphasizing that no more was its primary concern with politics, religion, or morals. On the part of Kloos and Verwey
1 "Langs den Weg," p. 25.
2 Jbid., p. 24.
3 "The Life of John Keats," p. 541.
4 "De Nieuwe Gids," 1934 II, p. 617.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
the doctrine was scrupulously observed so long as "De Nieuwe Gids" could be said to be conjoined to the Movement as originally concerted. Neither Van Eeden nor Gorter, however, could at any time give it more than an uneasy allegiance, and were in the end so irked by its tyrannical hold as to be heading more and more towards an ominously subversive position. Yet there, 1 think, any possible grouping of the two might be said to begin and end. Between the socialism of Van Eeden and the socialism of Gorter there was all the difference in the world. "Naar een soort gemeenschap, een soort communisme heeft hij gemeend te zoeken," says Robbers, noting the stages of Van Eeden's career, "maar het martelaarschap der mislukking is hem tot nieuwe zoetheid geworden; nooit heeft hij de zedelijke kracht, de nederigheid en de loyaliteit kunnen vinden, zich als een Henriette Roland Holst, een Herman Gorter, eenvoudigweg aan te sluiten bij de menigten die naar méér en een betere gemeenschappelijkeheid menigten die naar méér en een betere gemeenschappelijkheid verlangen, en daarvoor vechten." 1 The facts stated here are true enough; but the vast antithesis of the poets is only to be properly understood, I think, by studying the one common factor which could have caused them to advance to such new and widely separated positions. And that inception I can only view as having been due essentially to the agency of Shelley. Beyond that comes the deluge; for, while Van Eeden even in this first phase held little to the Romantic devotion to particulars and to the Romantic faith in the transforming power of the passion and imagination, and afterwards, in consequence, degraded his art by simulating a morbid sensibility which had no basis in experience, Gorter's prior consideration to any question of social injustice was the immersing of his soul in the pervading beauty of Keats, so that when he was swept tumultuously at last on towards the doctrines of Marx, the result was actually to foster his bias for the abstract, 1 Op. cit. p. 34.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
and to make him in the end more acutely aware than ever of the limiting distinctions of the material world — in a word perhaps, from being the creator of "Mei" he sped to become the poet of "Pan"!
Whatever doubts the critics may harbour with regard to the inherent weakness of the aesthetic of Jachtig, they are completely at one in proclaiming the supreme glory of the achievement of "Mei". For Stuiveling it is "het hoogte-punt der beweging van '80: al haar strekkingen zijn hierin samengevat op een volmaakte wijze."1 Prinsen is quite as forthright with his praise: "'Mei' (1889) is het schoonste groote werk in zuivere gaafheid onder wat door de dichters van '80 is voortgebracht." 2 Corstius grows absolutely lyrical whenever he touches upon it. "Want het oorspronkelike, het groteenheerlike van 'Mei': dat is Gorter zelf," he rhapsodises, and goes on: "De literaire stroming van zijn tijd bepaalde veel van zijn maat en zijn symboliek en soms ook zijn beeldspraak en woordenkeus, maar het gedicht zelf is de jonge Gorter in Holland ... In 'Mei' komen eindelik en volgroeid tot uiting in de taal alle ontroeringen en schoonheidsindrukken van zijn jeugd, zo lang stil opgezameld, zo dicht bijeen in zijn hart samengeperst, dat hij maar moest beginnen te schrijven en ze kwamen in de glans van zijn nieuwe taal, rijk gebeeld en genaamd eruit. Het lied van een Hollandse jongen in de natuur... Zo had zijn jeugd ze gezien, en zo had zijn ziel hun schoonheid in zich opgenomen, die in 'Mei' wordt tot een nieuwe Hollandse poëzie." 3 And the climax is surely reached when Robbers is able to speak of the poem as being "na Vondel m.i. het schoonste gedicht van langen adem, dat de nederlandsche litteratuur heeft voortgebracht".4
1 "De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt," p. 75.
2 Op. cit., p. 261.
3 "Herman Gorter: de Mens en Dichter," pp. 15-16.
4 Op. cit., p. 35.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
The foundation of Gorters training, we know, was laid in the classics and in the English poets. Nevertheless, when Coenen, commenting on this fact, proceeds to say that zijn eerste groote werk, de 'Mei',... droeg van beide factoren, het classicisme en de Engelsche natuurpoëzie",1 it seems to me that it would have been easier — and still very much in order — to inscribe the single name, not of Matthew Arnold, but of Keats!
Indisputably, "Mei" was not commenced under the auspices of "Balder Dead" but under those of "Endymion"; so much so that any serious consideration of it is bound to become a sustained comparison with the other — the measuring of Gorter, poetically and philosophically, against the English poet with whom he (of all the men of Jachtig) shows the greatest affinity in his transcendent love of beauty and his direct appreciation of nature. The passion for beauty is apparent from the very opening lines of the poem:
"Zoo wil ik dat dit lied klinkt, . . .
een eikestam
Breekt uit in twijgen en jong loover spruit Naar buiten: Hoort, er gaat een nieuwe geluid:
Een jonge veldheer staat, in 't blauw en goud Roept aan de holle poort een luid heraut."
All his life this poet had been so close and eager a watcher of nature that the sights and sounds immemorially associated with landscapes were for ever flashing upon him with vivid and unerring accuracy of detail — the cast of his imagination was as intimately related to the Dutch natural scene as Keats's to that of England. So in his own inspired fashion he sings that "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
" er is iets dat bekoort
In ieder ding, en die dat weet, hij gaat Altijd langs watren, door jong gras, en laat
1 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 88.
14



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
Zijn nog zijn voeten koel in dauw van wei.
Voor hem is 't nimmer nev'lig, maar een Mei Van kind'ren en een stroom van bloemen waar Zijn woning is."
Also, like "Endymion", "Mei" is full of the glory of the moon:
"Niets in de ruime wereld is zoo blij Als deze aarde: Cynthia als ze zit In hare nachtboot, toont het blank gebit Van lachen en de tweelingsterren staan Stil bij haar, vragend: zal ze hier langs gaan?
En er is altijd vreugde in de lucht Waar zij voorbij is en het zacht gezucht Van hare vleugels wijkt."
As much for him might the moon be a symbol of "the principle of Beauty in all things":
" Ver
Achter het Oosten wacht de maan, een zweem Van blank licht zwelt al van den diadeem."
And is personified with as telling effect — as the mother of Mei:
"Als een zwaneveer Voor een windstoot, zoo stoof Mei op en voor Zich zag ze donk're voeten, den romp door De lucht heendonkeren en hemelhoog 't Felle gezicht, dat nu voorover boog.
Het kwam omlaag en in de schittering Der moeder blonk het kind."
All Keats's own plastic skill, it might be, is brought into play in this most glorious of all descriptions:
"Het licht beving Haar borst en armen die ze open had.
En Moeder zette bukkend het vuurbad Op een berghelling en het rozeblad,
Haar kind, nam ze toen tot zich, één arm om Haar ronde knieën, één om de kolom,
Den fijnen halszuil, en ze zette zich.
Vurig lichtte de luchter, weelderig



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Drukte het kind de lippen in haar borst.
Het leek een zuigeling die niets dan dorst Heeft en met dichte ooge' uit moeder drinkt.
Ze deed ze ope' en vroeg: 'Moeder, wat blinkt Daar zoo en doet den nevelschemer zijn Als rook van brand? O blusch nu al dien schijn Van licht en laat me u in 't duister kussen.'
Haar moeder blies het vuur uit en van tusschen De bergen golfde weêr de nevel aan."
So again, as Endymion sees Glaucus, Mei sees Wodan:
"Diep heel ver achter in zat op een rots,
Klein leek die in de verte als een schots Van ijs in zee, een oud gebaard man."
And Gorter's very brook flows all the way with Keats's:
"En onder 't kreupelhout praatte een bron Stil voor zich heen, een kind, en toen hij zag Ons luist'ren, werd hij heel stil, maar een lach Ritselde nog van verd're wateren."
Metrically, too, "Mei" owes almost everything to "Endymion". It follows the general model of that poem's "heroic couplets", and it gives the same freedom "to let sentences, prolonged and articulated as freely and naturally as in prose, wind their way in and out among the rimes".1 When Balder sings, it is notable that it makes us think of exactly the same strophe in Book IV:
"Er is niet één,
Neen neen, niet één Die zooals ik haar woestenijen kent —
Zij is mijn kluis,
Mijn vaderhuis,
Mijn stad, mijn hemeltent."
But, in general, it may be said that Gorter's rhyming is not fraught with the impeccability of Keats's; and, indeed, from the measure of assonance to which he so often reduces it, he seems
1 Colvin, "The Life of John Keats," p. 208.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGL1SH
definitely to have it in mind to experiment here. A remark that applies also to his far less ordered manipulation of enjambement. Alongside "Endymion", no other poem bulks largely in the allegorical scheme of "Mei". But a number of others are given minor parts to play. Of these, fittingly, Hyperion comes first in order of importance. Most notably is this masterpiece drawn upon to enlarge the famous Moon-episode, Gorter splendidly adapting the picture at the end of Book I of "the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes":
"De Maan en Mei wier overvloedig haar De moederbuik bewolkte. In den nevel Zoog zij haast sluimerend; als door een hevel Uit een vat in een ander, stroomde melk Uit moeders tepel in de mondekelk."
But when the Dutch poet also gives us:
"Om Mei dacht hij niet meer, maar stapte door de Hemelen, schrijdend heen en weer, gekleed In een sleepmantel van geluid, die breed Achter zijn voeten aangolfde"
we seem almost to have that first great vision of proud Hyperion:
"His flaming robes streamed out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire."
For the rest, the most noteworthy fact by far, it seems to me, is that Gorter stands practically alone among his fellow-Keatsians in Holland in having drawn upon the odes and tales of romance; though even here it is no more than in occasional fancies, extended metaphors, and elusive turns of phrase that the influence is reflected. If we attempt to venture any further we tread upon very thin ice indeed. Dekker, fresh from his masterly analysis of "Mei" — a notable piece of scholarship, and perhaps his own most penetrating piece of criticism — does go out, with his customary boldness, to pin matters down; but my own courage, I am afraid, is not equal to accompanying him in the task.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Common-sense, of course, points part of the way. I do not doubt that such a poetical gem as the second verse of the "Ode to a Nightingale" must at some time have caught the eye of Gorter (as quick to see as his own Balder was blind) but I am by no means prepared to say that its wealth of associations and suggestions are rendered at all adequately by these decidedly earthy lines:
"Zoo heb ik zien staan Een monnik bij een volle donkre ton Met glazen geraad, en weg nam hij de spon Dat 't vonken spoot in bekers of de wijn De zon nog in had van den geelen Rijn."
In this instance, it seems clear to me, our learned friend has
allowed his mind to be too easily intoxicated by the inviting
sight of such words as bekers and wijn, and could Keats, I
wonder, ever have brought himself to make reference to anything
so unpoetical as a bung-hole?
The fact that "Mei" was built up so extensively upon the pattern of "Endymion", and so little upon that of the infinitely greater "Hyperion", should in itself be sufficiënt to indicate to us the writer's line of demarcation between Keats and Shelley. In this way. Though Keats was his most obvious precursor in Romanticism, and though "Mei" itself, artistically, must be taken as marking the culminating-point reached by him as the fullfledged Nieuwe- Qidser, the study of the English poet necessarily involved in his own work of composition raised anew for him the whole conception of his professed art. So "Mei" itself, though it might be the embodiment of the visionary quality of his genius, with all the ethereal colouring, all the flow of musical cadence, it borrowed from Keats, could only be as yet an incomplete expression of the poet's nature. Is there not a definite hint of disillusionment, for example, in the discovery that beauty must needs be presented as an impalpable dream only, and not as the glorious vesture which familiar things wear to the imaginative



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
eye? And in the end, therefore, the most richly-decorated of all modern Dutch allegories ceased to be a second "Endymion", and began to hint instead at greater and finer experiments and at still more revolutionary developments. Shelley, it is plain, had come upon the poet; it was as though Balder, Sampson-like, had discovered a strength greater than sight could ever have given him. So, suddenly therefore, Gorter shook off the mood in which he had despondently contemplated life; and now so extreme was his reforming impatience that nothing would satisfy him but the immediate opening-up of the new and finer vision. Henceforth he would seek the beauty, not of repose, but of energy. Beauty, he had come to see, must be in some degree a negation of fixed form; obviously, therefore, it should ally itself with freedom and social justice and, indeed, be virtually inseparable from practical helpfulness — the poet's voice must become a prophetic one, uttering, not his own sorrows, but the woes of all mankind.
That for Gorter Socialism did not work out so in practice, we owe, in my opinion, to the influence of Shelley. Sometimes, I admit, it is the politically intruded note that actually imparts to his later work a certain uniqueness of interest, as in the typical lines:
"Gij weet het, kindren, het was de Commune.
O zacht klinke de naam zooals een bloem."
In these, it might almost be said, we discover something like a twentieth-century Shelley. But what is to be made of these, in turn:
'"t Kapitalisme bouwt ons de machines,
't Kapitalisme bouwt ons de fabrieken,
wij bouwen 't kapitaal, 't kapitaal bouwt ons werkhuis —"
Could anything be more blunt, more brutal, more completely anti-



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Shelleyan? Not often, fortunately, did the abiding artist in Gorter allow himself to be betrayed into such crudity of thought and versification. However much he might condemn the art of the "Beweging van Tachtig" as mere bourgeoiskunst, and however much he might look forward to the writing of beautiful romances of revolution, informed by a new and glorious sense of the potentialities of life, far less was he changed than ever in his wildest dreams he realized. Gorter's Socialism was really like Shelley's in being ethical and emotional in origin, proceeding far more from the heart, instead of from the cold logic of the doctrinaire; and when it came to a. question of doctrine he was as much the man of strong feeling as ever. I shall not gainsay that the teachings of Socialism exercised their stimulus. But by Romantic antecedents, by manner and temperament, he was far too related to Shelley for them ever to be able to impose their limitations, and force him to wrest a meaning from facts, by grappling with them at closer quarters than the flights of his boundless lyricism would rightly allow. Such a recognition is fully made by Robbers when he writes: "Gorter nadert, van alle hollandsche poëten, den grooten Shelley het dichtst; ook in hem heeft altijd, naast den rijken, krachtigen, zinnelijken natuurdichter, de filosoof geleefd; wijsgeerig denken, misschien in even sterke mate als liefde tot de schoone natuur, waarvan de mensch een deel is, heeft hem tot het socialisme gebracht. Maar een socialistisch dichter — wanneer men zoo zou mogen noemen een, die de ontroering der duizenden naar broederschap verlangenden monumentalen vorm geven zou — zulk een socialistisch dichter is hij zeker niet." 1
Though, to begin with, the idea of beauty was urged by Gorter, as by all the Jacbtigers, with almost combative force, none of his fellows ever came in the same way to identify it with the principle of absolute freedom:
1 "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. 35.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
"O Schoonheid gij zijt niets Dan de wordende Vrijheid."
Nor did any other ever become so thoroughly Shelleyan in his pure soul-flights:
"Mijn ziel vliegt uit en waadt in eenzaamheid Door een lauw wolkenmeer van vroolijkheid."
Already the influence of the English poet had begun to creep into "Mei". So, at one time, it is "Adonais" that moves him with its parade of "dreams" and "desires" and "adorations" and "winged persuasions", as in the short passage:
"Of zijn het ook haar wonderlijke droomen Die daar in optocht langs den zeezoom komen,
De witte golven lekken hunnen voet."
At another it is "Prometheus Unbound", which provides very easily "a Train of dark forms and Shadows" for the burial of April:
"Wat is het dat die donkre mannen dragen In monnikskap en pij, hoor, hoor, ze klagen Als om een doode, die ligt op de baar."
While for the burial of Mei, in turn, the "Dirge for the Year" and "Autumn: a Dirge" are called upon; somewhat confusedly, be it said:
"En toen de twalef uren die al lang Wachtten op haar en op hun droeven plicht:
Ze hadden eene baar en het gezicht Omhoog, droegen ze haar al ver en verder."
One of the most completely imitated pictures from Shelley is that which goes to form one of the famed moonlight fantasies in "Mei":
"De vloot van sterren week weerzijds en ruim Lag daar de heerweg — als wapenheraut Stoof 't wolkje voort, het droeg de kleuren goud En wit van zijn meestres, en een bazuin Leek hij te blazen van roodgoud en bruin."



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
This is no other than an expansion of the lines in "Hellas":
"Look, Hassan, on you crescent moon, emblazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery doud."
Then, for one of his very finest natural descriptions, Gorter turns to "A Vision of the Sea" and gives us:
"De Zee werd aan een oud Grieksch land gelijk Zooals dat nu is, maar eens was het rijk Aan heelde' en tempels; nu liggen dooreen Zuilen en blokken kapiteel: de steen Verweerde in brokken en werd schaduwig."
Nor is Shelley's characteristic "circles of life-dissolving sound", though it occurs in the inferior "Rosalind and Helen", overlooked; being most subtly rendered by:
"Nu wil ik sling'ren Zilvren ringen Van liedekijnen uit mijn eenzaamheid."
The still more beautiful image in "Adonais":
"Surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest"
is also entirely in Gorter's own vein and, transferred to "Mei", reads:
"Zij lag drinken den slaap, zonder gerucht Blies zij haar adem in de koele lucht."
Only in the dizzy heights of "The Cloud", indeed, does he seem at all lost; and there, it is obvious, his cosmic imagination is not so fearlessly developed as to permit him to revel amid the elements as among play-things, and he contents himself with the comparatively homely simile:
"And 1 laugh to see them whirl and flee,
"Like a swarm of golden bees,"
which appears — again in "Mei" — as:



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
" er boven dreven
Als gouden bijen wolken bij het blauw."
Strangely enough, after all this, though Gorter had in himself and in his aspirations, more nearly than any of the other poets of Jachtig, the spirit of Shelley, it is less true for him than for them that he did most of his best work while he remained near him and within the "Nieuwe-Gids-Beweging". The paradox arises in this way — that, even when he was swept into the boiling cauldron of politics, he still believed, as many other socialists did along with him, that Shelley was his direct inspirer, and that the formless idealism of the English poet could — and should — be made to serve the ends of propaganda.1 Yet actually, in this later work, we find little of Shelley's that can be truly interpreted in the light of Socialistic formulae. The poet may have outgrown the particular incidence of the English poet's own works, but plainly he has never outgrown the idea taken over from "The Skylark" and "The Sensitive Plant", of Nature as the most supreme of all moulding and hallowing powers; so that a breath of the "Ode to the West Wind" blows through the pages of "Pan" itself:
"En met een stem als een bezuin, als Lente-
Wind, die, juichende blaast over de Aarde,
Door goud zonlicht, zoo riep hij klaatrend uit."
In Gorter we see the idea of Jachtig, come as it were, "full circle". Perhaps it had been always so ordained. "In Van Deyssel en Gorter," says Coenen incontrovertibly, "hebben wij de uiterste, de subjectieve richting van de Tachtiger Beweging voldoende gekarakteriseerd."2 Yet Kloos, Verwey, and Van Eeden were perhaps now in little better case themselves; for no ulterior consideration must force us to press the importance of the 'Movement' beyond limits that are neither useful nor reasonable. Even
1 Vide article in "De Nieuwe Tijd," 1897.
2 "Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging," p. 101.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
before the end of the nineteenth century we begin to witness the final subsidence of that great and indubitably Romantic wave which had traversed the century — and more — and of which the "Beweging van Tachtig" in Holland may be said to mark the ultimate high-level mark; and, faced once more with a collection of individual writers, must seek at last to dislimn the special ideals, hopes, dreams, illusions, which had for a brief period inspired the many tones and moods of the national poetry. There is, of course, no end to art or to the poet's endeavour to interpret phenomena to man; and we must simply face the fact that among men so strongly original as the Tachtigers, the development of life was bound to lead to some such sort of poetic impasse. In Kloos, the leader, "pure poetry" thus wilted to some extent when his mind was confronted with the insolubility of the cosmic problem. He was not the type of man, of course, to surrender easily; but even he was forced to find a way of escape. And this he did by slipping back — through a sort of tentative classicism — into the serenity and sanity of the Greek spirit. For Gorter, in turn, there supervenes the question of his Socialism. I shall not say that a prophetic mind like his was unable to find expression on the political level, but the position is vastly complicated by the necessity to decide how far a poet's political opinions must be understood before his poetry can be fully enjoyed. In Van Eeden, obviously, it was the preponderance of the religious element that occasioned the break-down, for I do not know that — like Mathew Arnold here — he ever found any considerable connection between poetry and religion.
From the fact that, in this way, the "Nieuwe-Gids" poets failed to settle the paramount question — the relationship of art to life — it might be thought that the end had been disastrous for them. Such a reading, however, would be in no sense justified. The "Beweging van Tachtig", while it may have been one of the most definite of its kind — planned, that is, before it was created



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
— was, at the same time, no mere pose on the part of Kloos and his fellows. Is not its greatest vindication just that it did not speedily peter out in the sort of "decadence" that came to surround the compilers of "The Yellow Book" a decade later? Nor can it possibly be identified with the Naturalism of the France of the period as simply "degenerate romanticism". The spirit of the poetry of the Jachticjers was Romantic through and through — in the best English sense. Against the existing fashion it sought along the dangerous road; admittedly, thereby, stressing certain aspects of creation to the detriment of others, mistrusting restraint and order, valuing intensity of experience for its own sake. Above all, Kloos claimed:
"Vrijheid van iedereen,
Van menschen en van dingen . .
And that has always been the keynote of Romantic art; the qualities and defects common to it being but the natural result of new-bound freedom and indiscipline. Shortly, it seemed, Romanticism would have run its course in Holland, as elsewhere; another transition-stage in the movement of the poetical mind would have been reached, whereby the great collective impulse known as Romanticism would be bound to give place to new mottoes and new tendencies, probably differing emphatically from those it had known.
Poetry, we can only say, has become less "poetical" — it has grown more recondite, difficult, cynical, intellectual, more suited to a modern disillusioned world. Only an odd poet here and there still writes in the old manner — Hélène Swarth, for example, almost the last of the Romantics in Holland, though never drawn into the 'Movement' (to use that regrettable and hackneyed term). And Dr Boutens I would also name; though, by the level dignity and polish of his work, and because he has not, like many of his contemporaries, neglected to his cost the lessons of discipline and artistry, he is to be best accounted a great Classical writer



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
— a writer unburdened at least by the mental agony of the postRomantic, post-War, generations.
When Dr Haantjes writes of Holland that "it certainly is not at its literary zenith now," I am much constrained to agree: though when, in prophetic vein, he proceeds to hazard that "in the future it most surely will reach this point again," 1 I confess (where poetry anyway is concerned) to a reluctant feeling of scepticism. I may be entirely wrong, of course, in thinking that the way to Romance is permanently blocked; yet, I cannot rid myself of the uneasy sensation that never again shall we witness flights of imagination, "higher still and higher" than those given us by that loose confederation of poets conveniently styled the Romantic Revivalists — and whose various vogues it is increasingly the fashion to disparage.
Without stirring up the whole vexed controversy anew, Romanticism, it may be allowed, differs markedly for each of the great European literatures. And if, in turn (as has been brightly suggested) each country gets the Romanticism it deserves, then I am glad to have been able to do something to show wherein Holland adopted — and in the main, I hope — deserved — the form which operated through the poetry of England. Throughout the fluctuations of a century, that mighty impulse from across the North Sea persisted, the dominating literary force, if any were. Previous to the Romantic Revival, poetry in Holland had admitted little variation from a tradition of aristocratie culture, which traced itself back to Latin origins — in this I include particularly the achievement of Vondel and Hooft. It is a far enough cry back to Van Winter and Van Alphen; but these mild rebels it was who, first looking to England, really opened the way for new and much-needed developments in Holland; by proving that, while the poetical tradition must live on, it can also live on in perpetual change.
1 In "Contemporary Movements in Europeans Literature," p. 242.



DUTCH POETRY AND ENGLISH
First developments, it is true, were far from being of the highest order. In poets like Feith and Bilderdijk we find a treatment that was, inevitably, a little Romantic in the bad sense. But this was due, not so much to lack of ability in the poets themselves, as to the fact that they were writing in an age when a high general Standard of poetical performance no longer existed, and in which religious dogma and moral formulism were constantly forcing them to descend to what was false in feeling and in style. The next step in Dutch Romanticism, represented by the forceful measures of Scott and the theatrically-glamorous stanzas of Byron, should have been — as elsewhere in Europe — the ne ptus ultra of the Movement, more popularly regarded. But, unfortunately, Holland did not discover a set of verse practitioners fit to vie with the early writers of the historical novel, and make this phase one of outstanding success. More, therefore, than even for England itself, it is the third and final Romantic outburst — that combining in itself a high degree of subjectivity, intense beauty worship, mystical Pantheism, and social idealism — that claims our attention and compels our admiration. Here, for the first time on the part of the poets, we find a vital dissatisfaction with all that had gone before. Bilderdijk they regarded at best as an old balladist Calvinised; Feith, they saw, had dreamed darkly in church-yards, since unable to live realities in the open air; Van Lennep and Beets they dismissed contemptuously as mere virtuosoes in verse. Their necessity was for a vigorous, living poetry, something that would release their own pent-up inner energy and turn it to new ends, providing them with finer adjustments and enabling them to harmonise a greater range of experience. And since their own country could offer nothing, they turned, as their predecessors had tried to do, to the poetry of England. But now they became real students of that poetry — and of the transforming idealism of Shelley and the exaltation of Keats in particular.



KEATS AND SHELLEY AND "DE NIEUWE GIDS"
Wholesale truth may abide in such a declaration as: "Het is met Kloos en Gorter, met Verwey en Van Eeden, ja, en ook met Hélène Swarth en Hein Boeken dat een nieuw bloeitijdperk voor onze lyriek werd ingeluid." 1 But if we are ever to understand why these should have been able to make a more rapturous response to the loveliness of the universe than since the days of Vondel and Hooft themselves, it can only be, I think, by considering closely their relationship to the particular English poets mentioned above: and this, as their humble compatriot, I have attempted to do. Now, at the end of my efforts, 1 make bold to say that Dutch poetry would be an infinitely poorer thing without a knowledge of their high precept and example: lacking this, the whole "Nieuwe-Gids-Beweging" might well have started without an enlightened constitution and so have degenerated into sheer anarchy; with it, it took over the traditions best fitted to inspire a new national Muse, and thus added a wealth of passionate thinking about life, about nature, about love, and about beauty.
1 H. Robbers, "De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880," p. 41.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brink, J. Ten - Geschiedenis der Noord-Nederlandsche Letteren in de XlXe
Eeuw. Rotterdam, 1902.
Coenen, F. - Studiën van de Tachtiger Beweging. Middelburg, 1924.
Dekker, G. - Die Invloed van Keats en Shelley in Nederland gedurende die
Negentiende Eeu. The Hague, 1926.
Donker, A. - De Episode van de Vernieuwing onzer Poëzie. Utrecht, 1929. D'Oliveira, E. - De Mannen van '80 aan het Woord. Amsterdam,
Haantjes, J. - Holland in Contemporary Movements in European Literature. London, 1928.
Houwink, R. - Inleiding tot de Hedendaagsche Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Groningen, 1932.
Kloos, W. - Veertien Jaar Literatuur-Geschiedenis. 2 Vols. 2nd. Edition.
Amsterdam, 1898.
Middendorp, H. - De Beweging van 80. Zwolle, 1925.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J. - Geïllustreerde Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1924. Robbers, H. - De Nederlandsche Litteratuur na 1880. Amsterdam, 1922. Stuiveling, G. - Versbouw en Ritme in de Tijd van '80. Groningen, 1934.
De Nieuwe Gids als Geestelijk Brandpunt. Amsterdam, 1935.
Verwey, A. - Inleiding tot de Nieuwe Nederlandsche Dichtkunst. 5th. Edition. Amsterdam, 1921.
Winkel, J. Te - De Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Part III. Vol. 2. Haarlem, 1927.
VERWEY
Erens, F. - Albert Verwey in Litteraire Wandelingen. Amsterdam, 1906. Querido, I. - Genese van Albert Verwey in Muziek, Tooneel en Literatuur.
Amsterdam, 1908.
Jn Letterkundig Leven. Part. II. Amsterdam, 1923.
Uyldert, M. - Albert Verwey. Amsterdam, 1908.
Verwey, A. - Verzamelde Gedichten. 3 Vols. Amsterdam, 1911—1912.
Stille Toernooien. Amsterdam, 1901.
Luide Toernooien. Amsterdam, 1903.
De Oude Strijd. Amsterdam, 1905.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
VAN EEDEN
Dircks, W. H. - Introduction to The Deeps of Deliverance. London, 1902.
Eeden, F. van - Jeugd-Verzen. Roermond, 1926.
Ellen. Een lied van de Smart. 7th. Edition. Amsterdam, 1920.
Van de Passielooze Lelie. 3rd. Edition. Amsterdam, 1916.
Langs den Weg. Verspreide Opstellen. Roermond, 1925.
Brieven. Fragmenten eener Briefwisseling uit de Jaren 1889 1899, uitgeven met Toestemming van den Schrijver. Amsterdam, 1907.
Feber, F. J. M. - Frederik van Eeden's Ontwikkelingsgang. 's-Hertogenbosch, 1922.
Kalff Jr., G. - Frederik van Eeden. Psychologie van den Tachtiger. The Hague,
1927.
Lang, A. - Introductory Essay to Little Johannes. London, 1895.
Padberg, H. - Frederik van Eeden. Roermond, 1925.
Poelhekke, M. A. P. C. - 7n Modernen. Nijmegen, 1899.
Tricht, H. W. van - Frederik van Eeden, Denker en Strijder. Amsterdam,
1934.
GORTER
Corstius, J. C. B. - Herman Gorter. De Mens en Dichter. Amsterdam, 1934. Deyssel, L. van - Jn Verzamelde Werken. Part V. 3rd. Edition. Amsterdam, 1920.
Gorter, H. - Mei. 5th. Edition. Amsterdam, 1916.
Verzen. 2 Vols. Bussum, 1928.
Querido, I. - Jn Geschreven Portretten. Amsterdam, 1912.
Ravesteijn, W. van - Herman Gorter, de Dichter van Pan. Een Heroïsch en
Tragisch Leven. Rotterdam, 1928.
Roland Holst-Van der Schalk, H. - In Memoriam Herman Gorter. Maastricht,
1928.
Herman Gorter. Amsterdam, 1933.
15







INDEX
Alphen, H. van, 48-56, 58, 67, 85,
117, 156, 221.
Antonides, J., 34.
Arnold, 209, 219.
Bakker, R. H. J., 199, 200 n. 2. Barnouw, A. J., 9 n. 2, 10 n. 1, 20
n., 22 n. 1, 26 n.
Beets, N., 28, 92, 93, 100-4, 105, 106-
11, 113, 115, 121, 154, 178, 222. Bellamy, J., 28, 53, 56, 59, 63.
Bian Tie, Khouw, 157, 161, 163, 164. Bilderdijk, W., 1, 4 n. 2, 48, 51, 52, 59, 60, 61, 68-87, 94, 98, 115, 117, 120, 130, 132 n. 1, 135, 154, 156, 157, 158, 169, 222.
Blair, 63, 64 Blake, 54, 58, 59.
Boeken, H., 223.
Bogaers, A., 36, 78, 92, 115, 123, 154.
Borger, E. A., 92, 116.
Boutens, P. C., 220.
Bowring, Sir J., 2, 69.
Brink, J. Ten, 4 n. 2, 13, 14, 49, 63,
64 n. 3, 65, 72, 76, 119, 143-4. Burns, 36 n. 1, 38-44, 58, 59, 112, 113, 122.
Busken Huet, C., 2, 49, 69, 129, 131-7, 160.
Byron, 1, 21, 44, 59, 60, 71, 73, 83, 84, 90, 91, 92, 93, 101, 104-13, 116,
118, 121, 134-5, 222.
Campbell, 81, 82.
Cats, Jacob, 2, 4, 25, 135.
Clercq, W. de, 38.
Coenen, F., 145, 161, 193, 209, 218.
Coleridge, 60, 64, 76, 115, 116, 122, 131, 156, 169-70.
Collins, 35, 58.
Corstius, C. C. B., 208.
Cort, F. de, 39 n., 42.
Costa, Isaac Da, 25, 28, 36, 84, 92, 104, 115, 123, 154, 157.
Cowper, 22, 58, 125.
Crabbe, 44, 129, 133.
Crashaw, 18-9.
Dekker, G., 129, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 186, 188, 191, 201, 212.
Deyssel, L. van, 143 n. 4, 158, 159, 161, 164, 185, 189, 200, 218.
Duhamel, G., 1, 142.
Eeden, F. van, 185, 190, 198-207, 218, 219, 223.
Eliot, T. S., 91 n. 1, 124, 168, 195.
Erens, Frans, 158.
Feitama, Sybrand, 2, 34.
Feith, R., 4 n. 2, 59, 60, 61-6, 68 n. 1, 85, 90, 117, 156, 178, 205, 222.
Garrod, H. W., 116.
Geel, Jacob, 94, 117-9.
Goldsmith, 60, 63 n. 2, 70, 76.
Gorter, H, 1, 176 n. 1, 185, 198, 207-18, 219, 223.
Gosse, Sir E., 13, 16-7, 69, 70.



INDEX
Gray, 34, 35, 44, 47.
Grierson, Sir H. J. C., 7, 18, 139.
Haantjes, J., 142, 195, 196, 221. Haighton, A A., 158, 161, 162, 185. Hofdijk, W. J., 12 n. 2, 40, 68 n. 2, 92, 104.
Hooft, P. C., 1, 2, 4, 5, 6-8, 25, 27, 28, 37, 41, 49, 132, 135, 148, 156, 178, 221, 223.
Huizinga, J., 2.
Huygens, C., 5.
Johnson, Samuel, 20.
Jonckbloet, W. J. A., 71.
Jonson, Ben, 10, 26, 191 n. 2.
Kalff, G., 43, 72, 76, 126, 127, 142, 143.
Kalff Jr., G., 199.
Kasteele, P. L. van de, 68.
Keats, 1, 27, 29, 73, 85, 90, 113, 119, 121, 129, 133, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 174, 177,
185, 186, 188, 192, 198, 206, 207, 209-13, 222.
Kijzer, Max, 157, 159, 176 n. 2, 177,
178, 179, 184, 188-9, 203, 206. Kinker, J., 59, 60 n., 61 n. 1.
Kloos, W., 1, 35, 37 n., 40, 49, 51 n. 1, n. 2, 119, 128, 129, 135, 144, 146, 147, 148, 156-79, 184, 185,
186, 188, 189, 193, 195, 197, 201, 206, 218, 219, 220, 223.
Koe, A. C. S. De, 48, 52.
Leeuwen, H. van, 182, 197.
Lennep, D. J. van, 94.
Lennep, J. van, 1, 92, 93, 94-100, 101, 102, 103-4, 105, 110,111-3,115,178, 222.
Lennep, W. van, 142, 151.
Longfellow, 32, 37 n., 44, 69.
McLeod, N., 1.
Macpherson, See "Ossian".
Marlowe, 10, 26, 113, 190.
Meerkerk, J. B., 128, 130, 131.
Milton, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18, 20, 27, 34, 51, 70, 71, 191 n. 2.
Nieuwland, P., 53, 56, 59.
"Ossian", 1, 49, 53, 58, 62, 63, 67, 68, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 86, 94.
Percy, Bishop, 58, 61, 62, 63, 67, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 87, 94.
Perk, J., 1, 136, 142, 143, 144, 14656, 158, 174, 186.
Poot, H. C., 28, 35-44.
Pope, 34-5, 53, 60, 70, 72, 86.
Popma, T., 104, 106, 107, 108, 112, 113, 121.
Potgieter, E. J. 1, 42, 49, 119-31, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136-7, 140, 141, 143, 154, 160, 196.
Prinsen J. Lzn., J., 5, 10, 37 n., 44, 62, 86, 116, 124, 132, 142, 143, 160, 184, 185, 197, 208.
Renwick, W. L., 27.
Robbers, H., 140, 142, 175, 177, 183, 198, 199, 215.
Roland-Holst-Van der Schalk, H., 207.
Scott, 1, 73, 82, 83, 87, 90-104, 108, 109, 113, 118, 222.
Shakespeare, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 26, 27, 32, 47, 52, 53, 56, 71, 84, 104, 130, 191 n. 2.
Shelley, 1, 51 n. 2, 55, 59, 73, 90, 113, 116, 117, 124, 129, 130, 133-4, 135, 136, 145, 149, 151, 152, 155, 161, 162, 163, 164-74, 177, 178, 185, 186, 188-96, 198, 200-7, 214-8, 222.
Sidney, 190.
Sinclair, U., 200.
Smart, J. S., 67.
Southey, 4 n. 2, 75, 81, 83.
Spenser, 7, 27, 28.



INDEX
Spitz, R. J., 5.
Staring, A. C. W., 59, 92, 115. Stuiveling, G., 140, 141, 142, 145,
158, 159, 179, 198, 206, 208. Swarth, Hélène, 220, 223.
Tennyson, 191.
Thomson, 34, 44, 45, 46, 53, 56, 64. Tieghem, P. van, 78 n. 2.
Tollens, H., 25, 28, 36, 59, 60, 62, 78, 92, 96-7, 115, 123, 154.
Uyldert, M., 193.
Verwey, A., 1, 49, 148, 153 n., 154, 155, 160, 174, 185, 186-98, 201, 203, 206, 218, 223.
Vissink, H., 82 n. 4, 96, 100, 108.
Vondel, J. van den, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8-29, 37, 39, 49, 51, 69, 71, 124, 135, 147, 148, 155, 178, 221, 223.
Walch, J. L., 11 n. 1, 140.
Weevers, Th., 173 n., 196.
Winkel, J. Te, 63, 142, 143.
Winter, N. S. van, 45-7, 221.
Wordsworth, 41, 43, 44, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 60, 63, 84, 86, 90, 98, 116, 117, 121, 125-9, 131, 145, 156, 157, 161, 163, 167, 168-70, 177, 178, 190, 191 n. 2.
Young, 39, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 205.
Zijderveld, A., 61, 62, 63 n. 2, 64, 78.