, and succeeded in all excepting the
dramatic. He enlarged historical criticism by writing one of the finest
national histories his country possesses. He wrote a poem, "The Primitive
World," an abstruse, gloomy composition which is very much admired in
Holland. He dealt with every possible question, confounding luminous
truths with the strangest paradoxes. He even raised the national
literature, which had fallen into decadence, and left a phalanx of chosen
disciples who followed in his steps in politics, art, and philosophy.
Holland regards him not only with enthusiasm, but with fanaticism, and
there is no doubt that after Vondel he is the greatest poet of his
country. But he was possessed by a religious frenzy, a blind hatred of new
ideas, which caused him to make poetry an instrument of sects: he
introduces theology into everything, and consequently he could not attain
to that free serene region beyond which genius cannot obtain enduring
victories and universal fame.

Round these three poets, who represent the three vices of Dutch
literature--of losing themselves in the clouds, of creeping on the ground,
of entangling themselves in the meshes of mysticism--are grouped a number
of epic, comic, satiric, and lyric poets, most of whom flourished in the
seventeenth and a few in the eighteenth century. Many of them are renowned
in Holland, but none possesses sufficient originality to attract the
attention of the passing stranger.

The present condition deserves a rapid glance. Criticism by stripping
from Dutch history the veil of poetry with which the patriotism of
writers had clothed it, has placed it on the wider and more productive
plain of justice. Philological studies are held in high honor in
Holland, and almost all the sciences are represented by men of
European fame. These are facts of which no scholar is ignorant, and a
bare mention of them is sufficient.

In pure literature the most flourishing style is the novel. Holland
has had its national novelist, its Walter Scott, in Van Lennep, who
died a few years ago, a writer of historical romances which were
received with enthusiasm by all classes of society. He was an
effective painter of customs, a learned, witty writer, and a master of
the art of dialogue and description, but, unfortunately, often prolix.
He used old artifices, adopted forced solutions, and often was not
sufficiently reticent. In his last book, "The Adventures of Nicoletta
Zevenster," while admira