twelve
years. These years laid the foundation of a character lacking in power
to love and to call forth love, and developing into an almost fierce
hypochondria, full of complaints and fears of death. In these years,
however, he acquired the information and the wonderful power of language
which appear in his sinewy verse.

One of his poems, dated 1770, has been preserved, but is principally
interesting as a first attempt. Others, written in his twentieth year,
were prize poems, and are sufficiently characterized by their
titles:--'Kunst wordt door Arbeid verkregen' (Art came through Toil),
and 'Inloed der Dichthunst op het Staets bestuur' (Influence of Poetry
on Statesmanship). When he went to Leyden in 1780 to study law, he was
already famous. His examinations passed, he settled at the Hague to
practice, and in 1785 married Katharina Rebekka Woesthoven. The
following year he published his romance, 'Elius,' in seven songs. The
romance ultimately became his favorite form of verse; but this was not
the form now called romance. It was the rhymed narrative of the
eighteenth century, written with endless care and reflection, and in
his case with so superior a treatment of language that no Dutch poet
since Huygens had approached it.

The year 1795 was the turning-point in Bilderdijk's life. He had been
brought up in unswerving faith in the cause of the house of Orange, was
a fanatic monarchist and Calvinist, "anti-revolutionary,
anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinisch, anti-liberal" (thus Da Costa),
a warm supporter of William the Fifth, and at the entrance of the French
in 1795 he refused to give his oath of allegiance to the cause of the
citizens and the sovereignty of the people. He was exiled, left the
Hague, and went to London, and later to Brunswick. This was not
altogether a misfortune for him, nor an unrelieved sorrow. He had been
more successful as poet than as husband or financier, and by his
compulsory banishment escaped his financial difficulties and what he
considered the chains of his married life. In London Bilderdijk met his
countryman the painter Schweikhardt; and with this meeting begins a
period of his life over which his admirers would fain draw a veil. With
Schweikhardt were his two daughters, of whom the younger, Katherina
Wilhelmina, became Bilderdijk's first pupil, and, excepting his
"intellectual son," Isaak da Costa, probably his only one. Besides her
great poetic gifts she possessed beauty and cha