The Chambers of Rhetoric reached their climax in a time of fermentation. The impatience, the feeling of uneasiness and restraint, is felt in the drama of these days, which was wholly under the control of the Chambers. The stage, that "mirror of the times," is often the first manifestation of the unquiet heaving and subsequent up-bubbling in the fluid compost of the mass that constitutes a nation. When freely developed, it is the pulse-beat of the people. And so, throughout the Netherlands, at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, we find the allegorical drama giving way to more definite and direct personations. Those cold representations of vices and virtues, of vice in its nakedness, such as to render the reading, when not absolutely tedious, distasteful, to say the least, to our modern ideas,—all such aimless productions were giving way to the conscious expression of satire. Diatribes against prevalent abuses, personal invectives scarcely veiled, were fast becoming the order of the day. It is no wonder, then, that the guilds, which had found favor formerly, should gradually be crushed, in proportion as the rulers sought to check the spirit of reform. Among the authors of this period may be mentioned Everaert and Machet. The refrain was much cultivated, and not, like the drama, for the expression of dissatisfaction. Anna Byns, an oracle with the Catholic party, wrote when the language was in its most degenerate state, under Margaret of Austria. She was styled the Sappho of Brabant, though her poems are all religious. They were translated into Latin, and were read as masterpieces till the middle of the last century.
A taste for religious writing prevailed in the Netherlands throughout the sixteenth century. William van Zuylen van Nyevelt first published a collection of the Psalms of David. These, in imitation of the French Calvinists, were sung to the most popular melodies. Zuylen found many imitators. The Catholic party composed songs in opposition to the Reformers; and we have psalms and songs by Utenhove, the painters Luc de Heere and Van Mander, by Van Haecht and Fruytiers. A long list of obscure names, if we except those of Marnix and Houwaert, is mentioned as belonging to this period,—their works mostly didactic or controversial. Houwaert, a Catholic, one of the avowed friends and partisans of the Prince of Orange, courted the Muses in the hottest days of civil strife. He published a poem, in sixteen cantos, entitled "The Gardens of the Virgins," tending to show the dangers to which the fair sex is exposed, and condemning as unreal all love not centred in God. With a remarkable fertility of composition he possesses an uncommon smoothness of versification, combined with a power, so successful in his age, of illustration from history or romance, from the sacred writings or the legendary lore of the people. The work was received in those days of trouble with unbounded enthusiasm. Brabant was thought to have given birth to a new Homer. His praises resounded in verse and song, and the young girls of Brussels crowned him with laurel.
The government of the Duke of Alva, and the succeeding years of revolution, were a period of desolation for Flanders. The Guilds of Rhetoric were dispersed; town after town was depopulated; Ghent, the loved city of Charles V., lost six thousand families; Leyden, Amsterdam, Haerlem, Gouda, afforded refuge to the emigrants. The golden age of literary activity is about to dawn in the Dutch republic. In the other provinces the national language is more and more neglected. It gives umbrage to the foreign chiefs who act as sovereigns. With it they identify all the opposition that has prevailed against them. Archduke Albert carries his condescension no farther than to address in High-German such of his subjects as can speak only Flemish. His Walloons he treats with no more civility, answering them but in Spanish or Latin. Ymmeloot, lord of Steenbrugge, a native of Ypres, endeavors in 1614 to stem the current of opposition and reawaken a love for letters. He suggests many reforms in the versification, and gives the example. He is followed by many, and Ypres becomes for a time a centre of versifiers. But the spirit of originality has flown, and the literature of Holland is enriched with the name of many a Fleming who preferred exile to the new rule.
In 1618, the General Synod of Dordrecht decreed that a new translation of the Bible should be undertaken. Two Flemings, Baudaert and Walaeus, and two Dutchmen, Bogerman and Hommius, completed it. Like the work of Luther, this tended in a great measure to fix the language, preventing the preponderance of one dialect over the other.
Foreign imitation begins to prevail in Flanders. Frederic de Conincq constructs dramas on the models of Lope de Vega, with the necessary quota of nocturnal visits, abductions, dagger-thrusts, and bravado. An action entirely Spanish is conducted in the veriest patois of Antwerp. Ogier follows in his footsteps, introducing upon the stage the coarsest language. He represents vice in its most revolting forms. His theory, as he himself explains it, is, that "it is necessary to represent vice on the stage, as the Romans formerly on certain days intoxicated their slaves and showed them to their children, in order that they might at an early age become inspired with a disgust for debauchery." Yet his comedies enjoyed the highest favor, and have been pronounced by native critics among the most remarkable and meritorious productions of the epoch. They are ever distinguished by vivacity, truth, and fidelity, in depicting the many-sided life of the people. He seems to have been a literary Ostade or Teniers, with less of ingenuousness and good-nature in the portraiture.
In the mean time the French language continues to gain ground every day. In Brussels, native authors seek in vain to oppose the encroachments of the "Fransquillon," as Godin first styles them; but, save the feeble productions of Van der Borcht, the Jesuit Poirtiers, and the Dominican Vloers, we find but translations and imitations. Moons versifies some hundreds of fables. A half-sentimental, sickly style, consisting only of praises, of self-abnegation, of pious ejaculations, prevails. It is the worst of reactions;—the country, after its first outburst, had sunk into quietude, the lethargy of inaction.
Holland, on the other hand, is active and doing. Its poets and historians are at work, the precursors of Bilderdyk and Tollens, the poet of the people. Bruges, in the eighteenth century, produces two writers of merit,—Smidts and Labare. In French Flanders, De Swaen adapts from Corneille, and publishes original dramas. Many songs are composed both in the northern and southern provinces, mostly of a religious character. Philologers seek to revive the neglected idiom with little success. But the century is blank of great names. The Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres, established at Brussels by Maria Theresa, was composed of members totally unacquainted with the Flemish. It took no notice of the language beyond publishing a few prize-memoirs in its annals. The German barons who ruled cared little for their own tongue: how should they have manifested interest in that of their Belgian subjects? The subsequent French domination was no improvement. On the 13th of June, 1803, it was decreed by the Republic,—"In a year, reckoning from the publication of this present ordinance, the public acts, in the departments once called Belgium, … in those on the left bank of the Rhine, … where the custom of drawing up acts in the language of those countries may have been preserved, are henceforth to be written in French." The Bonaparte rule was not of a nature to restore former privileges. In spite of the feeble remonstrances that were urged against such arbitrary measures, an imperial decree of 1812 enjoined that all Flemish papers should appear with a French translation.
Under the rule of King William, vigorous measures were employed to reinstate the native idiom. At first warmly seconded, Government soon met with an unaccountable opposition even from its subjects. The Dutch was combated by those connected with education. It was ridiculed by the Walloon population. Since the independence of Belgium, the mouvement flamand has been felt more than once by the would-be French rulers. In 1841, a Congress was held in Ghent, where all the members of the Government spoke in Flemish; energetic protests were addressed to the Chamber of Representatives, all with little avail. At present, though the language is nominally on a par with French, it meets with little encouragement. The philological labors of Willems entitle him to a place among the greatest of the present century; he was until his death the leader of the intellectual movement of his country.
Of later authors, we may mention the laureate Ledeganck, Henri Conscience, whose works have now been translated into English, French, German, Danish, and Swedish, Renier Snieders, Van Duyse, Dantzenberg. Modern literature seems to have taken a new flight; it is animated by the purest love of country, by an ardent desire in its authors to revive the use of their native tongue. The tendency is rather Germanic. At the Singers' Festival, held in Ghent a short time ago, the songs sung breathed a spirit of union and love for the sister languages. As a fair sample, we may quote the following:—
"Welaen, Germaen en Belg tezaem ten stryd
Voor vryheid, tael en vaderland!
De vaen van't duïtsch en vlaemsche zangverbond
Prael op't gentsch eeregoud!
Wy willen vry zyn, als de adelaer
Die stout op eigen wieken dryft,
Voor wien er slechts een koestring is, de zon.
Alom waer der Germanen tael
Zich heft en bloeid en't volk,
Daer is ons vaderland!"