Let us pardon the deaf who speak against music, the blind who hate beauty: such persons are less enemies of society, less conspirators to destroy its consolation and its charm, than the unfortunate beings to whom nature has denied certain organs. I have had the pleasure of seeing at my country-house 'Alzire performed, that tragedy wherein Christianity and the rights of man triumph equally. I have seen Mérope's maternal love bringing tears without the aid of the love of gallantry. Such subjects move the rudest soul, as they do the most refined; and if the common people were in the habit of witnessing such spectacles of human worth, there would be fewer souls gross and obdurate. It was such exhibitions that made the Athenians a superior nation. Their workmen did not spend upon indecent farces the money which should have nourished their families; but the magistrates, during their celebrated festivals, summoned the whole nation to representations which taught virtue and the love of country. The plays which are given among us are but a feeble imitation of that magnificence; but after all, they do preserve some idea of it. They are the most beautiful education which we can give to youth, the noblest recreation after labor, the best instruction for all orders of citizens; they furnish almost the only mode of getting people together for the purpose of rendering them social beings. YES TO THEURIET ES, I will scold you till I have cured you of your indolence. You live as if man had been created only to sup; and you exist only between 10 P. M. and 2 A. M. When you are old and deserted, will it be a consolation to you to say, "Formerly I drank champagne in good company"? GREATNESS AND UTILITY From Letters on the English' HOEVER arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote prov Wince, with money to spend and a name in ac or ille, can talk about "a man like me," "a man of my quality," and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain that he is fool enough to blush for it. Yet is there not a question which is the more useful to a State,—a thickly bepowdered lord who knows exactly at what time the King rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a minister's ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives orders from his countinghouse at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of a whole globe? Nor long ago a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous question who was the greatest man, Cæsar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. He was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a powerful understanding, and in using it to enlighten one's self and all others, then such a one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man. It is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who disfigure it, that we owe our reverence! XXVI-969 You TO A LADY wonder how time ne'er subdues (Though eighty years have left their chill) My superannuated Muse. That hums a quavering measure still. In wintry wolds a tuft of bloom Will sometimes through the snowdrifts smile, Consoling nature in her gloom, But withering in a little while. A bird will trill a chirping note, Though summer's leaves and light be o'er, But melody forsakes his throat He sings the song of love no more. 'Tis thus I still my harp entune, Whose strings no more my touch obey; 'Tis thus I lift my voice, though soon That voice will silent be for aye. Tibullus to his mistress said, "I would thus breathe my last adieu, But when this world grows all remote, The hand a lover's touch bestow? Death changes, as we pass his gate, What in our days of strength we knew: Who would with joy anticipate At his last gasp love's rendezvous? And Delia, in her turn, no less Oblivious of her youth's delight. We enter life, we play our part, We die-nor learn the reason here; From out the unknown void we start, And whither bound? - God knows, my dear. Translation of Edward Bruce Hamley. JOOST VAN DER VONDEL (1587-1679) HE long life of Joost van der Vondel, Holland's greatest poet, was contemporaneous with the most brilliant period of the Dutch renaissance. As triumphant England in Elizabeth's reign brought forth mighty children, so the new-born Republic of the United Provinces in its turn gave birth to such men as Hooft and Vondel, Brederoo and Huygens. The background of Vondel's life was the city of Amsterdam, whose society, representative perhaps of the most assertive forces in Holland's intellectual and spiritual development, was expressing its intense vitality in the pursuit of literature, of art, in the heats of religious controversy, seeking in a thousand ways to give metropolitan embodiment to the new-born national consciousness. this city Vondel had come as a boy. He had been born at Cologne, November 17th, 1587; his maternal grandfather, Peter Kranken, had taken no mean rank among the poets of Brabant. His parents were Anabaptists, who moved from city to city in the pursuit of religious freedom, settling finally at Amsterdam. To Vondel, being designed for a tradesman, JooST VAN DER VONDEL received but an indifferent education; his innate love of learning drawing him, however, to independent study, he was throughout his long life a student, seeking his inspiration at the fountain-heads of culture. In 1612 he produced his first drama, Het Pascha,' the subject of which was the Exodus of the Children of Israel. After the approved Dutch model, it was written in Alexandrines, in five acts, with choral interludes between. It gave little evidence of the genius which was to produce Lucifer.' For the next eight years Vondel did no original work, being seemingly satisfied with the leisurely development of his powers. The death of Brederoo, Holland's greatest comic dramatist, left a high place vacant, which Vondel was soon to fill. In 1620 he published a second tragedy, 'Jerusalem Laid Desolate'; and in 1625 a third, which secured him his fame. 'Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence,' owed its notoriety as much perhaps to the nature of its subject as to its intrinsic merits; appearing as it did at a time when all Holland was palpitating with religious controversy. In the hero of the play, Palamedes, the people of Amsterdam recognized Barneveldt; whose support of the Arminian doctrine had led to his execution in 1618 through the powerful influence of the Calvinists, headed by Prince Maurice of Nassau. Vondel at once became popular with the highest circles in Amsterdam and Holland. The obscure tradesman obtained fame in a night. Plunging into the controversy, he now began to wage war against the Counter-Remonstrants, as the Calvinists were termed; launching at them a great number of satirical pamphlets in verse, among the most noted of which are The Harpoon,' 'The Horse-Comb,' and 'The Decretum Horrible.' ( ( In 1638 an event occurred which diverted the genius of Vondel into another channel. The Dutch Academy, founded in 1617 as in the main a dramatic guild, had later coalesced with the two noted chambers of rhetoric, the "Eglantine" and the "White Lavender.» In 1638, on the strength of these reinforcements, it erected what it had long needed, a large public theatre. On the opening night a new tragedy by Vondel was presented,—'Gysbreght van Aemstel,' founded upon incidents in early Dutch history. For many years following, Vondel wrote Scriptural pieces for the theatre in the heroic style; among them, Solomon,' Samson,' 'Adonijah,' Adam in Banishment,' and 'Noah, or the Destruction of the Old World.' In 1654 appeared his great masterpiece, Lucifer'; a tragedy of sublime conception, to which a peculiar interest is attached as being supposedly the work which suggested to Milton the subject of Paradise Lost.' Milton is known to have studied the Dutch language about the time of the production of 'Lucifer'; there are verbal correspondences between the two plays. The theory of Milton's indebtedness to Vondel has been considered by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, by Edmund Gosse, and by Mr. George Edmundson in a monograph entitled 'Milton and Vondel.' Vondel's Lucifer.' however, is concerned with the fall of Lucifer and not with the fall of Adam. The years following the production of his mightiest tragedy were full of labor and sorrow to Vondel. Reverses had come upon him; from 1658 to 1668 he was obliged to work as a clerk in a bank, a servant of hard taskmasters, who were incapable of appreciation of or reverence for his genius. In his eightieth year he was liberated from this slavery by the city of Amsterdam, from which he received a pension. Until his death in 1679 Vondel continued to write, his literary energy being seemingly inexhaustible. Among his works of this period is a rendition of the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid into |