SPEECH   OP
HON.  JOHN   VAN   VOORHIS.
 

S members of The Holland Society
of New York, it is our pleasui'e, I
have no doubt, as well as our duty,
to see to it, so far as we can, that
injustice is not done to the memory
of the great men of the fatherland.
Among these men, as a poet, Joost van den Vondel
stands preeminent. Born near the close of the six¬
teenth centuiy, his life covers seventy-nine years of
the seventeenth, including that period known as the
golden age of Dutch literature.

His works, the best editions of which comprise
twenty-one volumes, have never been pubhshed in
English translations, and therefore he is little known
to those who do not read the Dutch language. Never¬
theless, he was one of the great poets of the world.
He excelled in every department: in fugitive poetry
as well as in satire, in the ode and in the epic, but
above aU in tragedy.

Longfellow says of Vondel: "He lived for immor¬
tality, and knew well that a grateful nation would