It was thus that both the Cartesian and Spinozan systems of philosophy had their birth-place on Dutch soil.  Rene Descartes sought refuge from France at Amsterdam in 1629, and he resided at different places in the United Provinces, among them at the university towns of Utrecht, Franeker and Leyden, for twenty years.  During this time he published most of his best known works, including the famous Discours de la methode.  His influence was great.  He made many disciples, who openly or secretly became “Cartesians.”  Among his pupils was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) the apostle of pantheism.  A Portuguese Jew by descent, Spinoza was born in Amsterdam and was a resident in his native city throughout life.

The fame of Holland in 17th century Europe as the chosen home of learning had thus been established by scholars and thinkers whose literary language was ordinarily Latin.  It is now time to speak of the brilliant band of poets, dramatists and stylists, who cultivated the resources of their native tongue with such success as to make this great era truly the Golden Age of Dutch Literature properly so-called.  The growth of a genuine national literature in the Netherlands, which had produced during the latter part of the 13th century a Maerlandt and a Melis Stoke, was for some considerable time checked and retarded by the influence of the Burgundian regime, where French, as the court language, was generally adopted by the upper classes.  The Netherland or Low-German tongue thus became gradually debased and corrupted by the introduction of bastard words and foreign modes of expression.  Nevertheless this period of linguistic degradation witnessed the uprise of a most remarkable institution for popularising “the Art of Poesy.”  I refer to the literary gilds, bearing the name of “Chambers of Rhetoric,” which, though of French origin, became rapidly acclimatised in the Netherlands.  In well-nigh every town one or more of these “gilds” were established, delighting the people with their quaint pageantry and elaborate ritual, and forming centres of light and culture throughout the land.  Rhyming, versifying, acting, became through their means the recreation of many thousands of shop-keepers, artisans and even peasants.  And with all their faults of style and taste, their endless effusion of bad poetry, their feeble plays and rude farces, the mummery and buffoonery which were mingled even with their gravest efforts, the “Rhetoricians” effectually achieved the great and important work of attracting an entire people in an age of ignorance and of darkness towards a love of letters, and thereby broke the ground for the great revival of the 17th century.  Amsterdam at one time possessed several of these Chambers of Rhetoric, but towards the end of the 16th century they had all disappeared, with one brilliant exception, that of the “Blossoming Eglantine,” otherwise known as the “Old Chamber.”  Founded in 1518 under the special patronage of Charles V,