true, and set aside all joke,
From oldest time he ever dealt in Smoke;
Than Smoke, no other thing he sold, or made;
Smoke all the substance of his stock in trade;
His Capital all Smoke, Smoke all his store,
'Twas nothing else; but Lovers ask no more--
And thousands enter daily at his door!
Hence it was ever, and it e'er will be
The trade most suited to his faculty:--
Fed by the vapours of their heart's desire,
No other food his Votaries require;
For, that they seek--The Favour of the Fair,
Is unsubstantial as the Smoke and air.

From these rhymes, with their home-spun philosophy, one might assume
Cats to have been merely a witty peasant. But he was a man of the
highest culture, a great jurist, twice ambassador to England, where
Charles I. laid his sword on his shoulder and bade him rise Sir Jacob,
a traveller and the friend of the best intellects. From an interesting
article on Dutch poetry in an old _Foreign Quarterly Review_ I take
an account of the aphorist: "Vondel had for his contemporary a man,
of whose popularity we can hardly give an idea, unless we say that
to speak Dutch and to have learnt Cats by heart, are almost the same
thing. Old Father Jacob Cats--(we beg to apologize for his unhappy
name--and know not why, like the rest of his countrymen, he did not
euphonize it into some well-sounding epithet, taken from Greece
or Rome--Elouros, for example, or Felisius; Catsius was ventured
upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard stuck to his
paternities)--was a man of practical wisdom--great experience--much
travel--considerable learning--and wonderful fluency. He had occupied
high offices of state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and
children's children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned
as not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his sober
and serious--but withal cheerful and happy, spirit, might still
preside. His moralities are sometimes prolix, and sometimes rather
dull. He often sweeps the bloom away from the imaginative anticipations
of youth--and in that does little service. He will have everything
substantial, useful, permanent. He has no other notion of love than
that it is meant to make good husbands and wives, and to produce
painstaking and obedient children.

"His poetry is rhymed counsel--kind, wise, and good. He calculates
all results, and has no mercy for thoughts, or feelings, or actions,
which leave b