A translation of Vondel, from what has been said, is, accordingly, in a certain sense, a rehabilitation, a restoration to a former status that through the exigency of events has been lost. While this may be considered from some points of view but a curiosity of coincidence, it is in reality, as has been assumed, much more than that: it is a pertinent reminder of our historical beginnings, a harking back to the century that saw our birth as a province and as a city, to the mother country and to the mother tongue.
Of the literature of Holland, from the lack of opportunity, we know far too little. The translation into English of Vondel's "Lucifer" is not only in and for itself an event of more than ordinary importance in literary history, but it cannot fail to awaken among us a curiosity as to what else of supreme value maybe contained in Dutch literature, and thereby, in effect, form a veritable "open sesame" to unlock its hidden treasures.
_Professor of Germanic Philology,_ _Columbia University, New York._
When Vondel, in 1653, finished his "Lucifer," he stood, notwithstanding his sixty-six laborious years, with undiminished vigor upon one of the loftiest peaks in his towering career.
A long road lay behind him, in some places rough and steep, though ever tending upwards. What had he not experienced, what had he not endured since that day in 1605 when he contributed a few faulty strophes to a wedding feast--the first product of his art of which we have any knowledge!
After a long and wearisome war, full of brilliant feats of arms, his countrymen had, at length, closed a treaty full of glory to themselves with their powerful and superior adversary. The Republic of the United Netherlands had taken her place among the great powers of the earth. In the East and in the West floated the flag of Holland. Over far-distant seas glided the shadows of Dutch ships, _en route_ to other lands, bearing supplies to satisfy their needs, or speeding homewards freighted with riches.
Prince Maurice was dead. Frederic Henry and William II. had come and gone. De Witt, however, guided the helm of the ship of state; and as long as De Ruyter stood on the quarter-deck of his invincible "Seven Provinces" no reason existed to inspire an Englishman with a "Rule Britannia."