Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neighbour of Visscher’s in Amsterdam, the author of “Lucifer,” a poem from which it has been suggested that Milton borrowed.  Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haberdashery with literature.  Spiegel was a wealthy patron of the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine Chamber with the painfully sentimental name.  Constantin Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram.  Here is one:—­

On Peter’s Poetry.

    When Peter condescends to write,
    His verse deserves to see the light. 
    If any further you inquire,
    I mean—­the candle or the fire.

Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that Holland owes the beautiful old road from The Hague to Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats built his house.

Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into cultured women of quick and sympathetic intellect.  Both wrote poetry, but Tesselschade’s is superior to her sister’s.  Among Anna’s early work were some additions to a new edition of her father’s Zinne-Poppen, one of her poems running thus in the translation by Mr, Edmund Gosse in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe:—­

    A wife that sings and pipes all day,
    And never puts her lute away,
    No service to her hand finds she;
    Fie, fie! for this is vanity!

    But is it not a heavenly sight
    To see a woman take delight
    With song or string her husband dear,
    When daily work is done, to cheer?

    Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet
    To loathsome wormwood, I repeat;
    Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace,
    May prove a poison—­out of place.

    They who on thoughts eternal rest,
    With earthly pleasures may be blest;
    Since they know well these shadows gay,
    Like wind and smoke, will pass away.

Tesselschade, who was much loved by her poet friends, disappointed them all by marrying a dull sailor of Alkmaar named Albert Krombalgh.  Settling down at Alkmaar, she continued her intercourse with her old companions, and some new ones, by letter.  Among her new friends were Barlaeus, or Van Baerle, the first Latinist of the day, and Jacob Cats.  When her married life was cut short some few years later, Barlaeus proposed to the young widow; but it was in vain, as she informed him by quoting from Cats these lines:—­

    When a valved shell of ocean
      Breaks one side or loses one,
    Though you seek with all devotion
      You can ne’er the loss atone,
    Never make again the edges
      Bite together, tooth for tooth,
    And, just so, old love alleges
      Nought is like the heart’s first troth.

These are Tesselschade’s lines upon the nightingale in Mr. Gosse’s happy translation:—­