The government of the Duke of Alva, and the succeeding years of revolution, were a period of desolation for Flanders.  The Guilds of Rhetoric were dispersed; town after town was depopulated; Ghent, the loved city of Charles V., lost six thousand families; Leyden, Amsterdam, Haerlem, Gouda, afforded refuge to the emigrants.  The golden age of literary activity is about to dawn in the Dutch republic.  In the other provinces the national language is more and more neglected.  It gives umbrage to the foreign chiefs who act as sovereigns.  With it they identify all the opposition that has prevailed against them.  Archduke Albert carries his condescension no farther than to address in High-German such of his subjects as can speak only Flemish.  His Walloons he treats with no more civility, answering them but in Spanish or Latin.  Ymmeloot, lord of Steenbrugge, a native of Ypres, endeavors in 1614 to stem the current of opposition and reawaken a love for letters.  He suggests many reforms in the versification, and gives the example.  He is followed by many, and Ypres becomes for a time a centre of versifiers.  But the spirit of originality has flown, and the literature of Holland is enriched with the name of many a Fleming who preferred exile to the new rule.

In 1618, the General Synod of Dordrecht decreed that a new translation of the Bible should be undertaken.  Two Flemings, Baudaert and Walaeus, and two Dutchmen, Bogerman and Hommius, completed it.  Like the work of Luther, this tended in a great measure to fix the language, preventing the preponderance of one dialect over the other.

Foreign imitation begins to prevail in Flanders.  Frederic de Conincq constructs dramas on the models of Lope de Vega, with the necessary quota of nocturnal visits, abductions, dagger-thrusts, and bravado.  An action entirely Spanish is conducted in the veriest patois of Antwerp.  Ogier follows in his footsteps, introducing upon the stage the coarsest language.  He represents vice in its most revolting forms.  His theory, as he himself explains it, is, that “it is necessary to represent vice on the stage, as the Romans formerly on certain days intoxicated their slaves and showed them to their children, in order that they might at an early age become inspired with a disgust for debauchery.”  Yet his comedies enjoyed the highest favor, and have been pronounced by native critics among the most remarkable and meritorious productions of the epoch.  They are ever distinguished by vivacity, truth, and fidelity, in depicting the many-sided life of the people.  He seems to have been a literary Ostade or Teniers, with less of ingenuousness and good-nature in the portraiture.

In the mean time the French language continues to gain ground every day.  In Brussels, native authors seek in vain to oppose the encroachments of the “Fransquillon,” as Godin first styles them; but, save the feeble productions of Van der Borcht, the Jesuit Poirtiers, and the Dominican Vloers, we find but translations and imitations.  Moons versifies some hundreds of fables.  A half-sentimental, sickly style, consisting only of praises, of self-abnegation, of pious ejaculations, prevails.  It is the worst of reactions;—­the country, after its first outburst, had sunk into quietude, the lethargy of inaction.