Before you will find good faith
In the bosom of a Spaniard.”
Under Napoleon the chambers of rhetoric were revived. In 1809, the concours of Ypres celebrated a “hero of the country.” In 1810, Alost called on Belgian poets to sing “The Glory of the Belgians.” A young poet named Lesbroussart won the prize in a fine poem full of the old national spirit of the race. Jenneval, the author of the “Brabançonne,” the national anthem, was killed in a battle between the Dutch and the Belgians outside Antwerp, in the revolution of 1830.
About 1844 Abbe David, and Willems, a free thinker, started literary societies, and later followed Henri Conscience and Ledeganck. Ledeganck was called the Flemish Byron, and another poet, van Beers of Antwerp, was often compared to Shelley. To the early years of free Belgium belonged also Charles de Coster, whom Verhaeren calls “the father of Belgian literature.”
Henri Conscience, the Walter Scott of Flanders, was born in 1812, when Belgium was under the rule of France. His father was a Frenchman, his mother a Fleming. He first wrote in French, but in 1830 he said, “If ever I gain the power to write, I shall throw myself head over ears into Flemish literature.” In 1830 he volunteered as a soldier in the army of Belgian patriots.
His first historical romance, “Het Wonder-Jaar,” written in Flemish, is said to have been “the foundation-stone on which arose the new Flemish school of literature.“ His two finest historical novels, ”The Lion of Flanders“ and ”The Peasants’ War,” describe the revolt of the Flemings against French despotism, for “to raise Flanders was to him a holy aim.” The net profit to the author from the first of these books was six francs!
The most artistic work that Conscience ever did, however, is found in his tales of Flemish peasant life, one of which, “’Rikke-Tikke-Tak,’” says William Sharp, “has not only been rendered into every European tongue, but has been paraphrased to such an extent that variants of it occur, in each instance as an indigenous folk-tale, in every land, from Great Britain in the west to India and even China in the east.” Conscience says of himself, “I write my books to be read by the people.... I have sketched the Flemish peasant as he appeared to me ... when, hungry and sick, I enjoyed hospitality and the tenderest care among them.”
“After a European success ranking only after that of Scott, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, and Hans Andersen, Henri Conscience is still,” wrote William Sharp in 1896, thirteen years after the great Fleming’s death, “a name of European repute; is still, in his own country, held in the highest honour and affection.”
The Walloon country provided the historians, of whom Vanderkindère was one of the ablest. Charles Potvin, born at Mons in 1818, was a Walloon journalist and prolific writer on a variety of subjects. He held the position of professor of the history of literature at the Royal Museum of Industry in Brussels, was director of the Revue de Belgique, which he founded, and was curator of the Wiertz Museum in Brussels. He was poet, writer on political subjects, historian of art and literature, critic and essayist; “a power in Belgian politics and literature, a leader of democrats and free-thinkers.” In his long life—he died in 1902—he produced a great number of works, among which were “La Belgique,“ a poem, the ”History of Civilization in Belgium,” the “History of Literature in Belgium,” and a work on “Belgian Nationality.”