The humour of the Netherlands has, in common with that of Scotland, a certain canniness and practical shrewdness, characteristic of men and nations who have bought their experience at first hand and a heavy price. But, whether for want of that touch of Celtic fire which in Scotland has leavened the solid Teuton into a thing quite unique in the world, or what else, there is a notable lack of that dryness and terseness—that expressing more than the whole by means of less than the half—which comes out in the best Scotch anecdotes and sayings. It would be an insult to a listener of average intelligence, to explain, for example, “It’s a puir shaw for Kirkintilloch.” We are not sure that—supposing that the exact equivalent to this joke existed in Dutch—the Netherlander would feel the insult deeply; we rather think he would enjoy the story the better for a half page or so of comments in addition to the full explanation. Of this nature are many jocular poems by the revered Father Cats, and the “Zinne-poppen” of Roemer Visscher and his daughter Anna.

The Netherlander likes his fun pretty obvious, and not too concentrated. And the main characteristic of the said fun is its breadth,—or rather what the Germans call Breite, for the English word by no means conveys exactly the same idea. “Long-windedness” alone does not express it; Coleridge’s “nimiety or too-muchness” (which he calls a characteristic fault in the German literary temperament) is much nearer the mark. It is long-windedness combined with infinite multiplicity of detail,—a gossipy, good-humoured, complacent triviality, which is the essence of boredom. Voss’s “Luise” (which poem we doubt whether any British person now living has read through) is a shining example of the quality. Nothing is left to the reader’s imagination—everything, and the reason for everything, is described and explained at full length, till the best ideas are swamped in floods of formless verbiage. In Holland, this kind of writing flourished most extensively in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Father Cats, already referred to, exhibits it in an excessive degree. He also shows an overpowering desire to be improving,—another point common to the Scot and the Batavian,—and the two things together made him, for two centuries, out and out the most popular writer in Holland.

As to “broad” farce, in the other sense of the word, Dutch literature possesses a good deal of it, of such extreme latitude, indeed, as to be for the most part entirely unavailable for this volume. Besides, it is not amusing. The Sotternieën, or farces, of the Middle Ages, were of an extremely rough and ready type, to say no more, though Dr Jan Ten Brink accords them the praise of “accurate observation of Flemish low life, and a real comic gift.” They mostly turn on matrimonial difficulties, in which a foolish husband gets the worst of it. More or less of the same kind, though of a somewhat higher type, were the farces (Kluchten) of what we may call the Dutch Renaissance (c. 1550–1650). They mostly turn on rough or even disgusting practical jokes; they are written in clumsy, lumbering verse, which has the effect of encouraging and intensifying the author’s natural diffuseness; in short, whatever laugh-provoking power they may once have had, most of them are now quite intolerably dull. The best known are those of Coster, Vos, Jan Starter, Hooft, Huygens (who made one excursion in this direction—Trijntje Cornelis), and, above all, Gerbrand Bredero, whose genius had not yet reached its highest point, when his short and stormy life came to an end.

Gerbrand Adriaenszen Bredero was born at Amsterdam in 1585. His father was a wealthy tradesman, at first a shoemaker, and afterwards farmer of the taxes on wines and spirits. Adriaen Bredero was a generous patron of art, and intended his son to become a painter; but the latter, though he studied for a time, and appears to have shown some degree of talent, preferred to devote himself to literature. He became a member of the chamber, In Liefde Bloeiende,[[1]] and soon formed the acquaintance of Spieghel, the didactic poet, and the genial Roemer Visscher, the scholarly author of the “Zinne-poppen” and “Brabbeling.” An unhappy love for Roemer’s younger daughter, Tesselschade, probably wrecked his life, the greater part of which was spent in noisy dissipation, alternating with intervals of deep depression. His work was both lyric and dramatic; his principal plays are the tragicomedies of “Roderick and Alphonsus” (1611), “Griane” (1612), and “The Dumb Knight” (1618), to which may be added the unfinished play “Het daghet uyt den Oosten,” the farces of the “Cow” (1612), the “Miller” and “Symen sonder Soeticheyt” (1613), and the regular comedies of “The Moor” (1615), and “The Spanish Brabanter” (1618). The last-named, his masterpiece, was intended to satirise (under the name of Jerolimo) the Chevalier Theodor Rodenburgh, his rival in literature and in a second unhappy love affair. From this bitter disappointment Bredero never recovered. He died at the age of thirty-three, after a lingering illness, tended with devoted care by his mother, and comforted by the friendship of the gentle and earnesthearted Vondel, whose religion was of a type to find easier access to the stormy soul than the gloomy Calvinism of Bredero’s relations. For further particulars of the poet’s life the reader is referred to the works of Dr Jan Ten Brink, among others an interesting historical novel (founded on contemporary documents) entitled “De Bredero’s,” which has appeared in “Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift” for 1891 and 1892. Bredero’s farces are rough, and even coarse—a defect from which his more elevated work, such as the “Spanish Brabanter,” is not free; but this is a fault common to the comic literature of all countries at that epoch. He was no scholar, and though acquainted with French, did not know Latin, a circumstance for which his writing is probably none the worse. His comedy, “Het Moortje” (“The Little Moor”), is an adaptation of a French version of Terence’s “Eunuchus,” and far inferior to the “Spanish Brabanter,” which, though not absolutely original (the plot is to a great extent taken from the Spanish novel “Lazarillo de Tormes”), is as much so as most of Shakespeare’s, and full of life and vigour. It is perhaps somewhat verbose, and the irregular kind of ballad-metre in which it is written lends itself to indefinite longueurs; but the character-painting is excellent. Indeed, Bredero’s chief merit is the strong human sympathy shown in his broad, vivid pictures of popular life. He gives us the life of the street in Amsterdam as he knew it—the beggars, the scolding wives, the money-lender, the poor gentleman with his frayed velvet doublet and rapier showing through its worn sheath, the gossiping sexton, the boys playing at marbles. It is evident that Bredero was on the right track, and, had he lived, might have produced even better work than this play,—perhaps founded a new dramatic school, which might have repeated in Holland the triumphs of our Elizabethan writers. Dr Ten Brink compares him in his riotous enjoyment of life and noisy excesses to Greene, Marlowe, and Massinger. It is difficult to extract any single scene from the “Spaansche Brabander,” far and away his best work; and, as, in fact, almost any attempt at translation could reproduce only the faults of the original, it seemed better to avoid courting inevitable failure.

English influence made itself felt in Holland during the seventeenth century in more ways than one. Huygens, who repeatedly visited England, and knew Donne, shows traces of the “Caroline” manner in his poems and epigrams. Intercourse between the two countries was frequent, and the connection, of course, became closer still with their temporary union under one sovereign. During the eighteenth century, Dutch literature appeared to be on the wane. Foreign works—English and French—were admired and read, and educated persons took a certain pride in neglecting their native language as a barbarous and uncultivated tongue. It was in a passionate impulse of patriotism that Mevrouw Betje Wolff and Mejuffrouw Aagje Deken determined to enter into competition with the universally popular Richardson, and prove to the reading public of Holland that a Dutch novel, showing Dutch characters amid the everyday surroundings of Amsterdam, Utrecht, or the Hague, might be quite as interesting as any foreign importation. The result was the publication, in 1782, of the “History of Mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart,” which ran into a third edition in 1786.

Elizabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken were two friends, affectionately spoken of by their compatriots as Betje and Aagje, who lived and wrote together, and collaborated so harmoniously that it is impossible to distinguish their respective shares in the works jointly issued by them. Elizabeth Bekker, born at Flushing, July 24, 1738, is described as “a little delicate woman, with penetrating dark eyes, twinkling with humorous mischief.” Her lively spirit maintained a hard struggle against the harsh old-fashioned Calvinism of her Zeeland home, as represented by her elder brother Laurens. It was probably to escape from this that, at twenty, she married a “dominie” of fifty-two—the Predikant Adriaen Wolff. In the quiet of the country parsonage she lived, happily enough, from 1759 to 1777, devoted to her elderly husband, and with abundant leisure for literature. During this period she wrote chiefly in verse, and published several collections of poems; but, when left a widow in 1777, she invited her friend Agatha Deken to live with her. Agatha, three years younger than her friend, was an orphan, brought up in the Amsterdam “Weeshuis,” who had been living as companion with an invalid lady named Maria Bosch, also given to poetry. The two friends first essayed themselves in prose, by publishing “Letters on Various Subjects,” in 1780, after which they gradually developed the idea of a novel in letters, after the manner of Richardson. “The History of Mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart,” in spite of its somewhat repellent epistolary form, remains capital reading to the present day. The book is not so very long-winded, considering the epoch at which it was written; the characters are clearly conceived and sympathetically drawn; and there is a delicate humour which might almost be compared with Jane Austen’s, but has a distinct flavour of its own. The portraiture of Sara’s aunt, Mejuffrouw Hofland, and the designing parasites who make her their prey—Cornelia Slimpslamp, and Brother Benjamin, the butcher’s man turned preacher—reminds us of Betje Bekker’s bitterness against the fanatical precisians (called by themselves “vromen,” or pious, and by others “fijnen,” or subtle) who had darkened her youth. “Sara Burgerhart,” published in 1782, was followed by a longer work, “Historie van den Heer Willem Leevend,” which in some respects surpasses it. In 1788 the friends left Holland, in consequence of political changes, and settled at Trevoux in Burgundy, where they remained till 1795, writing “Letters of Abraham Blankaart,” and their third novel, “Cornelia Wildschut.” Betje was robbed of her small property by a rascally man of business; and, at the time of the Terror, narrowly escaped the guillotine, being looked on as an aristocrat by the republicans of Trevoux. They returned to Holland in 1795, settled at the Hague, and set themselves to translating for a bare living. Their last years were spent amid great financial difficulties and privations, borne with their usual cheerfulness, and one cherished wish was granted them at last,—Betje died November 5, 1804, and Aagje only survived her nine days.

It is a pity that these books are not of a kind to show to advantage in extracts. To be appreciated, they must be taken in bulk, as the character-drawing, which is their chief attraction, only comes out indirectly, and point by point, in the course of the letters. Which of the two collaborators should be credited with the quiet humour—of the type recognised as peculiarly feminine—which flashes through them, is a disputed point, but it is usually attributed to Betje Wolff. Internal evidence, and especially the history of her early life, seem to point to her as having originated the character of Sara herself, the bright, lovable, merry-hearted girl, so willing to submit to loving guidance, but impatient of the gloomy restraint of Aunt Susanna’s house, which called out all that was worst in her nature. Agatha Deken, we are told, was a large, fair person, of calm aspect and portly presence—somewhat prosaic and matter-of-fact—yet the description does not exclude the possibility of a certain “pawkiness,”—and probably there is no hard and fast distinction to be drawn between the two, as regards the humorous element. And, however that may be, “Sara Burgerhart” is a charming book, and deserves to be much more widely known than it is. Lovers of “Evelina” would delight in its old-time quaintness, and even those without an especial parti-pris for the eighteenth century could not fail to appreciate the delicately finished pictures of Dutch life. Some points in this latter suggest the question whether many things which we have been accustomed to consider as purely American manners did not originate in the Dutch ancestry of the New-Yorkers. The comings and goings of the young ladies at the Amsterdam boarding-house, under the friendly (but to contemporary English notions very inadequate) supervision of the Widow Spilgoed, née Buigzaam, is one of those. Others suggest themselves to an attentive reader of the book. But this is only in passing. Decidedly, an English version of “Sara” with a loving and appreciative introduction by a capable hand, would be an addition to the pleasures of life.

It is no part of the plan of this brief sketch—which aims throughout at being suggestive rather than exhaustive—to furnish a comprehensive introduction to Dutch literature, or even to that part of it to which these pages are exclusively devoted. There is one point, however, which we must not overlook. This is not the place—and perhaps, indeed, the time has not fully come—to discuss the position which Multatuli holds, or ought to hold, in his country’s literature; but it cannot fail to strike any reader of this volume, that a large—perhaps disproportionately large—number of pages is assigned to the work of a writer cast in as un-Dutch, or even anti-Dutch, a mould as it is possible to imagine. In fact, Multatuli stands as much alone among the Dutch, as Heine does among the Germans; and, by the same token, we might add, he is their only real humorist, in the highest sense. This apartness is not to be accounted for in Douwes Dekker’s case, by difference of race; but then, he was partly the product of reaction, and there were, after all, strong race-affinities in the deeper parts of his character. He had every quality calculated to jar upon the feelings of the Amsterdam petits bourgeois of his day: he had other ideals than theirs; he would not be content to make money and abstain from shocking the neighbours; he was nervous and imaginative in a stolid and prosaic generation—lavishly extravagant in a prudent, not to say parsimonious, one; but his passionate love of freedom, his intolerance of shams, his resolute refusal to utter the shibboleths of the age or bow before the idols of the market-place, proved him of one blood with William of Orange and Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde. And, had he been as altogether isolated as he seems at first sight, he could hardly have become the force in national life that he now is. His “Max Havelaar” was like a volcanic outburst breaking up the crust of convention which had been slowly stiffening over Holland; but it gave voice to a cry which had been stifled in thousands of hearts. He spoke, and the younger generation answered him as one man. To-day, in Holland, Multatuli is a name to conjure with—a synonym for life, thought, progress, revolt against convention—for everything that may be called modernity.

He was a crude, formless, unmethodical writer. “Max Havelaar” is one of the most exasperatingly inartistic books ever written, and it must always remain matter for regret that he never seriously took in hand to complete and give artistic unity to the brilliant fragments that form the unfinished history of “Woutertje Pieterse.” But there is life and red blood in everything he wrote—and that counts for far more than dead correctness of form,—though, of course, the perfect form enshrining the vitality gives it a chance to last longer.

There is something in “Wouter” that reminds one curiously of the “Story of an African Farm.” Not that we would infer that the latter was suggested by the former—it may well be that its author was, at the time, quite unaware of Multatuli’s existence; and the agonies of isolated childhood are the same all the world over. But there are certain points of resemblance which make us think that a similar environment—the compound of dead Calvinism, Dutch pseudo-propriety, and crass ignorance—produced similar results. Though, perhaps it was natural that poor Wouter, dreaming on the bridge by the saw-mill at Amsterdam, should have less lofty visions than Waldo, dreaming on the open veldt under the stars.