Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Textual Note
- Introduction
- 1 Doris, or the Shepherd’s Complaint
- 2 To Anna R.[oemers]
- 3 [From] Batava Tempe: That Is the Lime-avenue of The Hague
- 4 The Exiled Shepherd: To the Lord Daniel Heinsius, Knight etc.
- 5 The Character of an Ambassador
- 6 Ship’s Talk, on the Death of Prince Maurits
- 7 To the Lady Tesselschade Crombalch with My Translations from the English Poems of Dr Donne
- 8 To Barlaeus
- 9 On the Death of Tesselschade’s Eldest Daughter, and on Her Husband Thereafter Bleeding to Death
- 10 The White Moon
- 11 The Mist Descending
- 12 The First Stone of the Marksmen’s School in The Hague, Laid by Prince William of Orange, on the Day of Public Prayer, 2 December 1636
- 13 To Stella, My Dearest Wife, Now Dead
- 14 [From] The Day’s Work: The Order of the House
- 15 In Her Snow-cold Arms
- 16 Prayer for the Holy Communion
- 17 The Lake
- 18 The Holy Communion
- 19 New Year
- 20 Good Friday
- 21 Pentecost
- 22 Christmas
- 23 Easter
- 24 To Tesselschade
- 25 On the Roses of the Most Eminent Painter, Daniel Seegers
- 26 To Tesselschade, Departing
- 27 To Albert Dürer on His Engraved Picture
- 28 On the Holy Communion
- 29 Again on the Holy Communion
- 30 [From] Hofwijk
- 31 Awakening
- 32 To the Lady Luchtenburgh, with My Poems Translated from the English of Donne
- 33 Again on Painting
- 34 On the Frontispiece of Korenbloemen
- 35 On the Grave of Jacob van Campen
- 36 The Vanity of Dreams
- 37 On an Engraved Glass
- 38 On My Birthday
- 39 Consolation of the Eyes, to the Lady of St Annaland
- 40 On the Holy Communion
- 41 Stillness and Snow after Storm and High Water
- 42 My Puppy’s Epitaph
- Appendix I A Selection of Huygens’ Poems in Modern European Languages
- Appendix II A Selection of Huygens’ Writings in English
- Appendix III Huygens and English Literature
- Appendix IV Additional Poems on Painting
- Bibliography
- Index of Titles and First Lines
- Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age
Appendix III - Huygens and English Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Textual Note
- Introduction
- 1 Doris, or the Shepherd’s Complaint
- 2 To Anna R.[oemers]
- 3 [From] Batava Tempe: That Is the Lime-avenue of The Hague
- 4 The Exiled Shepherd: To the Lord Daniel Heinsius, Knight etc.
- 5 The Character of an Ambassador
- 6 Ship’s Talk, on the Death of Prince Maurits
- 7 To the Lady Tesselschade Crombalch with My Translations from the English Poems of Dr Donne
- 8 To Barlaeus
- 9 On the Death of Tesselschade’s Eldest Daughter, and on Her Husband Thereafter Bleeding to Death
- 10 The White Moon
- 11 The Mist Descending
- 12 The First Stone of the Marksmen’s School in The Hague, Laid by Prince William of Orange, on the Day of Public Prayer, 2 December 1636
- 13 To Stella, My Dearest Wife, Now Dead
- 14 [From] The Day’s Work: The Order of the House
- 15 In Her Snow-cold Arms
- 16 Prayer for the Holy Communion
- 17 The Lake
- 18 The Holy Communion
- 19 New Year
- 20 Good Friday
- 21 Pentecost
- 22 Christmas
- 23 Easter
- 24 To Tesselschade
- 25 On the Roses of the Most Eminent Painter, Daniel Seegers
- 26 To Tesselschade, Departing
- 27 To Albert Dürer on His Engraved Picture
- 28 On the Holy Communion
- 29 Again on the Holy Communion
- 30 [From] Hofwijk
- 31 Awakening
- 32 To the Lady Luchtenburgh, with My Poems Translated from the English of Donne
- 33 Again on Painting
- 34 On the Frontispiece of Korenbloemen
- 35 On the Grave of Jacob van Campen
- 36 The Vanity of Dreams
- 37 On an Engraved Glass
- 38 On My Birthday
- 39 Consolation of the Eyes, to the Lady of St Annaland
- 40 On the Holy Communion
- 41 Stillness and Snow after Storm and High Water
- 42 My Puppy’s Epitaph
- Appendix I A Selection of Huygens’ Poems in Modern European Languages
- Appendix II A Selection of Huygens’ Writings in English
- Appendix III Huygens and English Literature
- Appendix IV Additional Poems on Painting
- Bibliography
- Index of Titles and First Lines
- Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age
Summary
One index of Huygens’ continued concern with the literary life of England throughout the mid seventeenth century is the posthumous sale catalogue (made in 1688) of volumes from his library, discarded by his sons and heirs. It contains about three thousand volumes and eighty-six books of music. A surprising number of these were English literature. His English books included a first-folio Shakespeare, Donne's Satyrs and Poems (and his Sermons), Chaucer's Works, the collections of Cartwright, Randolph, Crashaw, Cowley, Carew and Waller, what the Dutch printer calls ‘Rumph Songs’ (an anonymous book of pro-Stuart popular poetry more generally known as Rump, or the Rump Ballads), John Owen's (Latin) Epigrams, Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Ben Jonson's masque The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (in manuscript), his Epigrams, a manuscript entitled English Poems of Divers Autors, and what must be nearly the entire published output of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (fourteen volumes, folio). Although Huygens made several visits to England in the course of his life, the spread of English texts which he owned would suggest that he must have kept up his English connections, and that he continued to buy English books as they came out (it is noteworthy that his library also included a Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, printed in London in 1658). Otherwise, his library reflects a wide range of interests. He owned a number of books about the House of Stuart: a reflection of a personal loyalty which stemmed from the kindness shown him by King James. Although this loyalty was strained by unhappy diplomatic dealings with the Stuarts in his middle years, his very last poems include English doggerel verses made for the amusement of Mary, wife of the King-Stadhouder William iii. In connection with Hofwijk, it is also worth noting that he owned copies of Vitruvius's De Architectura and that garden-obsessed dream-vision of the Venetian Renaissance, Poliphilo's Hypnerotomachia.
The library catalogue gives a picture of the reading of a savant and poet whose interests extended across the linguistic frontiers of early modern Europe. But Huygens also maintained personal and literary contacts with many of the authors. The most important of Huygens’ contacts with English writers will be examined individually.
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- A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687)Revised, Second Edition, pp. 257 - 276Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015