Vondel's Lucifer Part 6

True, as has been narrated, this had for some years been suspected from the tone of several other productions that preceded it; but then it was only a suspicion, now there was no longer a doubt.

Vondel was plainly on the high road to Rome, and it was whispered that he, having become tired of his loneliness, had been attracted by a certain Catholic widow, whose seductive charms were largely responsible for his wavering faith.

The widow here referred to is supposed to have been the fair Tesselschade, the friend of his youth, who, after ten years of wedded bliss, had at one stroke been deprived of both her eldest child and her husband, and was now living with her one remaining child, a daughter, in resigned widowhood at Alkmaar. We are now again to see this remarkable woman as the inspirer of the muse of Holland.

Barlaeus in his "Tessalica" wooed her in elegant Latin; and Vondel dedicated to her his translation of the "Electra" of Sophocles, and also his next Biblical tragedy, "Peter and Paul," which was even more decided in its Romanism than its predecessor.

Tesselschade, however, preferred her black widow's weeds to the white raiment of a bride, and continued in her retirement, alone with the memory of her happy past. Her spirit shone only the brighter in its progress through the valley of tribulation to the heights of resignation. She had been chastened by affliction and saddened by sorrow, yet she did not lose heart, but still enjoyed the society of her friends. She still took an admirable part in the drama of life.

In 1639, the French Queen Dowager, Maria de' Medici, paid a short visit to Amsterdam. Tesselschade not only sang a song before her, but also presented her with an Italian poem of her own composition. She had finished her version of the "Gerusalemme," and was now busy translating the "Adonis" of Marini.

The young poets Vos and Brandt, the poetess Alida Bruno, and others of the rising literati, sought her friendship. Tesselschade was still the Queen when the Muses went a-maying, and her sovereignty remained undisputed until the day of her death.

In 1640 appeared Vondel's Biblical tragedy, the "Brothers," which was thought by the critics to surpa.s.s all that had preceded it. It was dedicated to Vossius, whose comment upon reading it was, _Scribis aeternitati_. Grotius wrote the poet a letter, and was also loud in his praises, comparing it with the most famous tragedies of antiquity, adding significantly, "and do not forget your great epic, 'Constantine.'" By others this drama was thought to combine the tenderness of Euripides with the sublimity of Sophocles.

In the same year, also, followed two more Biblical tragedies, "Joseph in Dothan" and "Joseph in Egypt," which also occasioned much remark, and were not inferior to the best plays that had gone before.

Vondel was now universally acknowledged to be the greatest poet of the time. The ascent of Parna.s.sus, however, is not as easy as the _decensus Averni_. By years of study, constant watchfulness, and perpetual striving for self-improvement, and a prayerful devotion to his art--thus alone did he attain the summit of such achievement.

In him was seen purity of diction, clearness and terseness of expression, power of logic, richness and agreeableness of invention, and a style that was at once mellifluous and sublime.

The tragedy, "Peter and Paul," to whose open Romanism reference has already been made, was his next effort, and was soon followed by the "Epistles of the Holy Virgin Martyrs," which were twelve in number, and were dedicated to the Holy Virgin Mary, whom he called "the Queen of Heaven," and named as Mediator with her divine Son. This was a sufficient acknowledgment of his conversion to the Catholic faith to alienate many of his warmest friends. This, however, though it must have brought much grief to his sensitive heart, did not cause him to regret having made a step that he had so long been meditating.

Before beginning these "Epistles," Vondel had translated many of the epistles of Ovid that he might absorb the grace and the spirit of Ovid's epistolary style. His own effort was deemed not less graceful and spirited. Their literary merit, however, did not, in the estimation of his Protestant friends, compensate for their justification of popery.

Even Hooft, Vondel's life-long friend and brother in art, grew cold; and we find the following reference to this in one of the poet's letters to the Judge of Muiden. Vondel writes: "I wish Cornelius Tacitus a happy and a blessed New Year; and although he forbids me a harmless _Ave Maria_ at his heretical table, yet I shall nevertheless occasionally read another _Ave Maria_ for him that he may die as devout a Catholic as he now shows himself an ardent partisan." Their friendship was yet further broken by other circ.u.mstances which had their origin in the first cause of separation.

In 1645, Vondel wrote a lyric poem on a miracle which the Catholics taught had occurred at Amsterdam about the middle of the fourteenth century. This was too much for his Protestant friends, and he became the subject of innumerable lame lampoons and petty pasquinades, in which his espousal of the Catholic legend was coa.r.s.ely ridiculed.

Hooft, in a letter to Professor Barlaeus, also expressed his opinion in the following words: "Vondel seems to grow tired of nothing sooner than of rest. It seems he must have saved up three hundred guldens more, which are causing him a good deal of embarra.s.sment. And I do not know but that it might cost him even much dearer than this; for some hot-head might be tempted prematurely to lay violent hands upon him, thinking that not even a c.o.c.k would crow his regret."

These productions, however, were only the prelude to a greater work that was to follow--his "Mysteries of the Altar," which was published in the autumn of 1645.

This poem was a glorification of the Ma.s.s, and was divided into three books. Vondel, in writing this able work, was a.s.sisted by the counsel of the most learned and the most profound men in the Catholic Church. The doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and other celebrated schoolmen, and the teachings of the best modern authorities were here poetically combined, and the poet was hailed on every side as the ablest defender of the tenets of the Church of Rome.

This poem provoked a celebrated reply by Jacob Westerbaen, one of the most noted of the School of Dort, who, while praising the art of the new champion of Catholicism, at the same time attacked his doctrinal position with such piercing a.n.a.lysis and with so great display of theological dogma, that, in the opinion of the Protestants, Vondel was ingloriously vanquished. The Catholics, of course, thought differently.

Jacob, Archbishop of Mechlin, to whom Vondel's poem was dedicated, sent the author a painting with which Vondel was at first greatly pleased.

Learning, however, that it was only a bad copy, he gave it away to his sister, no longer wishing to have such a poor reward for so great an undertaking before his eyes.

A prose translation of the works of Virgil was the next thing that this indefatigable worker essayed. This version received the commendation of most of his contemporaries. Barlaeus, indeed, found fault with it, saying that it was without life and marrow; adding, cynically, that Augustus would surely not have withheld this Maro from the flames. But, then, Barlaeus was such a thorough Latinist that his own language seemed foreign to him. He would have had the translator preserve the peculiarities of the Latin at the expense of his native tongue. And, then, was he not also Vondel's rival for the hand of Tesselschade?

Praise from him surely was not to be expected. The universal opinion was that it was a difficult work excellently done. This translation was also the forerunner of a drama. "Maria Stuart" was the name of the tragedy which the bard now offered for the perusal of his countrymen.

The poet represented the unhappy Queen of Scots as perfect and without stain, while her victorious rival Elizabeth was painted in infernal black.

This subject naturally gave the proselyte occasion to display his burning zeal for Rome; and upon the publication of the play a great outcry was raised against both drama and author. Some of Vondel's enemies, indeed, were so incensed, and raised such a commotion, that the poet was brought before the city tribunal, and fined one hundred and eighty guldens; "which," says Brandt, Vondel's biographer, "seemed indeed strange to many, seeing what freedom in writing was allowed at this time, and because, also, even to the poets of antiquity more was permitted than to most others." Abraham de Wees, Vondel's publisher, however, paid the fine, being unwilling that the poet should suffer by that which brought him profit.

Hugo Grotius was now dead, but shortly before his decease he had written several pamphlets whose object it was to effect some reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant. Vondel now translated those portions of these favorable to the papacy, combining them in a polemic called "Grotius' Testament." Whereupon many said that he had now gone too far in his zeal for his adopted church; for it was claimed that upon the statements of Grotius he often put a construction not favored by the context. It was even insinuated by some that he had not acted in good faith.

Brandt himself made this intimation in a preface written by him to an edition of Vondel's collected works which was published in the year 1647. Brandt was then yet a mere youth, and was rankling with the memory of a severe and unjust reprimand that the older poet some time before had given him. He therefore acknowledges in his nave biography that he eagerly welcomed this opportunity to be revenged upon the distinguished offender, and accordingly made this dose of his gall as bitter as possible. The poet felt the insinuation keenly, and for a long time suspected Peter de Groot, the son of the great lawyer, as the perpetrator of the offending paragraph. Many years afterwards, however, the smart of the wound having departed, the real culprit confessed his sin to the then aged poet, and obtained the asked for absolution.

It was in 1641 that Vondel openly embraced the Catholic faith, though his tendency in that direction had been apparent in his poems many years before. We have already referred to the report that his love for a beautiful and wealthy widow, Tesselschade, had been the main instrument in drawing him from his Protestant moorings, and this was doubtless to some extent true. And yet it is almost certain that Vondel would have embraced the cause of Rome even without the alluring wiles of this fair enchantress.

Many of his relatives, including his brother William, belonged to that faith. Many of his dearest friends also were of that denomination. His daughter Anna, furthermore, had not only entered that church, but had also taken the veil. Moreover, he had long been drifting away from the creed of his early childhood, the Anabaptism of his parents. The severe pietism of that belief had never strongly appealed to him. True, he had espoused the cause of the Arminians, as against their enemies the Gomarists; but it was only because they were the under side, and because their cause was also the cause of civil liberty, that he had entered the lists with them.

The perpetual discord, the disunion, the bickerings, the bitterness, and the persecutions among the different Protestant sects of the period were exceedingly repulsive to him. He did not forget that under the banner of Protestantism his country had triumphed over the common foe. He did not forget that Calvin had been the herald of science and the apostle of liberty. He did not fail to remember the glories of the past. But the contemplation of that proud past only increased his abhorrence of the petty present.

Calvinism had indeed done much for Holland; but the inevitable reaction had come, and its excesses could not be justified. Calvinism had come to mean dogma; and dogma had no attraction for his poetic mind. Calvinism had become the foe of freedom; and freedom was the very breath of this flaming patriot. Calvinism had shown itself an enemy of the arts, of poetry, and of the drama; and these were as the very soul of Vondel.

How could he know that this was only a fleeting gloom, from which the sun of Calvinism would again emerge, radiant with all of its original glory? He was weary--weary of the discord, and longed for peace.

Is it to be wondered at that the poet gradually drifted, even as Cardinal Newman, into a haven that promised such longed-for rest? Is it surprising that he who had so long been chilled by the cold formalism and the frigid austerity of the dogma of the North should now find it agreeable to thaw out his soul in the glow of the religion of the South?

Then, too, the beauty of the Catholic ritual, the pomp, the grand processional, the holy days, the glorious music, the n.o.ble symmetry of the Roman architecture, the awe-inspiring antiquity of the Church, the magnificence of its domain, the splendor of its organization, allured the imagination of the poet with irresistible power; and his reason followed, a not unwilling captive.

Nor was it the hasty choice of a regretted impulse. Everything tends to show--we have traced the gradual growth in his poems--that it was a long-contemplated step from which, once taken, nothing should ever be able to remove him. It is, therefore, in Vondel that we find one of the most able and ardent champions the Church of Rome has ever had. No saint ever more truly deserved canonization than this high priest of Apollo, flaming with zeal for his adopted faith.

Vondel was a crusader born five hundred years too late--a crusader, too, a lion-hearted defender of the Cross, most of whose battles were fought beneath the brow of Mount Zion and within the very gates of Jerusalem.

Few crusaders, indeed, had fought so long and so well; few had won so many victories, had slain so many enemies, as this indomitable hero of Amsterdam.

Though bitterly opposed to the Contra-Remonstrants, he, however, helped them in decrying the growing spirit of ostentation and the vices of the day. And although he openly sided with the Remonstrants, he never joined them. But as a flower turns its head to the sun, so he, too, gradually turned towards the old belief.

At this period, when Protestants were in turn persecuting heretics and, reveling in their sudden freedom, were indulging in all sorts of fanatical excesses, Catholicism, purified, began to live again.

Furthermore, to the poetic temperament of the poet and his stern sense of justice, the bigotry of the Gomarists seemed no less odious than the more open persecutions of the Catholics of the preceding age.

It was thus that Vondel, long tossed upon a sea of doubt, sought anchorage in a harbor where winds were calm. It was thus that this great man was led to take a step which called down upon him for many years hate, aversion, and ridicule.

But in spite of all this he remained true to his new faith, and became a fervid Catholic; one ever consistent and true to his adopted church.

Here he could remain undisturbed in his reverence for antiquity, in his worship of beauty, and in his love for poetry and art. Here there was ever a labyrinth of mystery for his aspiring soul to explore. Here the plan of salvation was not reduced to the bare expression of a logical formula.

UPWARD AND ONWARD.

But we must again make brief reference to the friends of our poet, who one by one preceded him to the grave. First Reael died. Then Hooft and Barlaeus soon followed, and were both buried in the New Church at Amsterdam. Above the tomb of each Vondel wrote a short epitaph. But the keenest loss was yet to come. In 1649 Holland lost the brightest jewel in the crown of her womanhood, and Vondel, his dearest friend.

Tesselschade, after many sorrows, entered peacefully into rest.

A few years before she had had the misfortune to lose her left eye from a spark that flew out of a smithy as she pa.s.sed. She bore this sad accident with cheerfulness; but a greater calamity yet awaited her. The pride of her heart, her one remaining child, her beautiful daughter Tesselschade, was suddenly cut off in the bloom of maidenhood. The disconsolate mother struggled in vain against this terrible sorrow. A year later she followed her loved ones to the tomb. She, also, was laid away in the New Church, by the side of the dead t.i.tans of her generation who had so often made her the theme of their inspired song; where, too, Vondel himself, the greatest of them all, was eventually to lie.

For Vondel's beautiful threnody we have unfortunately no s.p.a.ce, but shall content ourselves with quoting the first strophe of Huyghens'

touching elegy:

"Here Tesselschade lies.

Let no one rashly dare To give the measure of her worth beyond compare; Her glory, like the sun's, the poet's pen defies."

Shortly after the death of his dear friend, Vondel gave up his hosiery shop in the Warmoesstraat to his son, while he himself went to live with his daughter Anna on the Cingel, on the outskirts of the city. The poet was now sixty-two years of age, and he doubtless thought to end his days in peace and studious retirement. But the battle of life for him had only just begun. He was never to know the meaning of rest.

About this time Vondel again had occasion for his tremendous invective.

We refer to his remarkable series of satires against the anti-royalists of Great Britain.