the friend of Sir Kenelm Digby. This learned man frequently wandered in the mazes of metaphysical subtilties; and became perfectly unintelligible to his readers. When accused of this obscurity, he replied, "Either the learned understand me, or they do not. If they understand me, and find me in an error, it is easy for them to refute me; if they do not understand me, it is very unreasonable for them to exclaim against my doctrines."

This is saying all that the wit of man can. suggest in favour of obscurity! Many, however, will agree with an observation made by Gravina on the over-refinement of modern composition, that "we do not think we have attained genius, till others must possess as much themselves to understand us." Fontenelle, in France, followed by Marivaux, Thomas, and others, first introduced that subtilised manner of writing, which tastes more natural and simple reject; the source of such bitter complaints of obscurity.

LITERARY DUTCH.

PERE BOUHOURS seriously asks if a German can be a BEL ESPRIT? This concise query was answered by Kramer, in a ponderous volume, which bears for title, Vindiciæ nominis Germanici. This mode of refutation does not prove that the question was then so ridiculous as it was

considered. The Germans of the present day, although greatly superior to their ancestors, are still distant from that acmé of TASTE, which characterises the finished compositions of the French and the English authors. Nations display genius before they form taste; and in some of the productions of the modern Germans, it will be allowed that their imaginations are fertile and fervid; but perhaps the simple question of Bouhours still exists in its full force.

It was once the mode with English and French writers to dishonour them with the epithets of heavy, dull, and phlegmatic compilers, without taste, spirit, or genius; genuine descendants of the ancient Boetians.

Crassoque sub aëre nati.

Many ingenious performances have lately shown that this censure has now become unjust; and much more forcibly answer the sarcastic question of Bouhours than the thick quarto of Kramer.

Churchill finely says of genius that it is independent of situation,

And may hereafter even in HOLLAND rise.'

Vondel, whom, as Marchand observes, the Dutch regard as their Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, has a strange defective taste; the poet himself knew none of these originals, but he

wrote on some patriotic subject, the sure way to obtain popularity: the greater part of his tragedies is drawn from the Scriptures; all badly chosen and unhappily executed. In his Deliverance of the Children of Israel, one of his principal characters is the Divinity! In his Jerusalem destroyed we are disgusted with a tedious oration by the Angel Gabriel, who proves theologically, and his proofs extend through nine closely printed pages in quarto, that this destruction had been predicted by the prophets. And in the Lucifer of the same author, the subject is grossly scandalised by this haughty spirit becoming stupidly in love with Eve, and it is for her he causes the rebellion of the evil angels, and the fall of our first parents. Poor Vondel kept a hosier's shop, which he left to the care of his wife, while he indulged his poetical genius. His stocking shop failed, and his poems produced him more chagrin than glory; for in Holland even a patriotic poet, if a bankrupt, would, no doubt, be accounted by his fellow-citizens as a madman. Vondel had no other master but his genius, which, with his uncongenial situation, occasioned all his

errors.

Another Dutch poet is even less tolerable. Having written a long rhapsody concerning Pyramus and Thisbe, he concludes it by a ridiculous parallel between the death of these un

fortunate victims of love, and the passion of Jesus Christ. He says,

Om t'concluderem van onsen begrypt,
Dees Historie moraliserende,

Is in den verstande wel accorderende,

By der Passie van Christus gebenedyt.

And upon this, after having turned Pyramus into the son of God, and Thisbe into the Christian soul, he proceeds with a number of comparisons; the latter always more impertinent than the former.

I believe it is well known that the actors on the Dutch theatre are generally tradesmen, who quit their aprons at the hour of public representation. This was the fact when I was in Holland forty years ago. Their comedies are offensive by the grossness of their buffooneries. One of their comic incidents was a miller appearing in distress for want of wind to turn his mill; he had recourse to the novel scheme of placing his back against it, and by certain imitative sounds behind the scenes, the mill is soon set a-going. It is hard to rival such a depravity of taste.

I saw two of their most celebrated tragedies. The one was Gysbert Van Amstel, by Vondel',' that is Gysbrecht of Amsterdam, a warrior, who in the civil wars preserved this city by his heroism. It is a patriotic historical play, and never

fails to crowd the theatre towards Christmas, when it is usually performed successively. One of the acts concludes with a scene of a convent; the sound of warlike instruments is heard; the abbey is stormed; the nuns and fathers are slaughtered; with the aid of blunderbuss and thunder,' every Dutchman appears sensible of the pathos of the poet. But it does not here conclude. After this terrible slaughter, the conquerors and the vanquished remain for ten minutes on the stage, silent and motionless, in the attitudes in which they happened to fall! and this pantomimic pathos is received with loud bursts of applause from the audience.

The other was the Ahasuerus of Schubart, or the Fall of Haman. In the triumphal entry the Batavian Mordecai was mounted on a genuine Flanders mare, that, fortunately, quietly received her applause with a lumpish majesty resembling her rider. I have seen an English ass once introduced on our stage which did not act with this decorum. Our late actors have frequently been beasts;-a Dutch taste!

Some few specimens of the best Dutch poetry which we have had yield no evidence in favour of the national poetical taste. The Dutch poet Katz has a poem on the "Games of Children," where all the games are moralised; I suspect the taste of the poet as well as his subject is puerile. When a nation has produced no works above

VOL. II.