Jacob Cats (1577-1660), seventeenth-century poet, moralist, and statesman, was one of the leading poets in the golden age of Dutch literature. His emblem books, which reflected a stolid Calvinist philosophy, exhorted readers to virtuous and industrial lives. Enormously popular, the books became the source of many well-known maxims and proverbs, giving him the title of "Father Cats," a fond soubriquet still used by modern Dutch to describe him.

Jacob Cats was born on November 10, 1577, the youngest of four brothers in Brouwershaven, Zeeland, the southernmost province of what is now the Netherlands. After his mother's death and his father's remarriage, Cats and his three brothers were sent to live with an uncle in the same province. After attending school in Zierikzee, Cats began his legal studies at the University of Leiden, then traveled to France to earn a doctor of laws degree in Orléans. After a further...