Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neighbour of Visscher’s in Amsterdam, the author of “Lucifer,” a poem from which it has been suggested that Milton borrowed. Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haberdashery with literature. Spiegel was a wealthy patron of the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine Chamber with the painfully sentimental name. Constantin Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram. Here is one:—
On Peter’s Poetry.
When Peter condescends to write,
His verse deserves to see the light.
If any further you inquire,
I mean—the candle or the fire.
Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that Holland owes the beautiful old road from The Hague to Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats built his house.
Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into cultured women of quick and sympathetic intellect. Both wrote poetry, but Tesselschade’s is superior to her sister’s. Among Anna’s early work were some additions to a new edition of her father’s Zinne-Poppen, one of her poems running thus in the translation by Mr, Edmund Gosse in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe:—
A wife that sings and pipes all day,
And never puts her lute away,
No service to her hand finds she;
Fie, fie! for this is vanity!
But is it not a heavenly sight
To see a woman take delight
With song or string her husband dear,
When daily work is done, to cheer?
Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet
To loathsome wormwood, I repeat;
Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace,
May prove a poison—out of place.
They who on thoughts eternal rest,
With earthly pleasures may be blest;
Since they know well these shadows gay,
Like wind and smoke, will pass away.