Mr. Octave Delepierre, who since 1830 has published some ten or twelve
monographs relating to the antiquities and history of Flanders, has
presented the English public during the course of the present year
with a history of Flemish literature. With an evident predilection for
authors south of the Meuse, Mr. Delepierre has nevertheless given us
the first clear and connected account we possess of the history of
letters in the Netherlands. Without careful or minute critical
research, he has shown little that is new, nor has he sought to clear
one point that was obscure. His work is pleasant reading, interspersed
with occasional translations, though scarcely answering the requisites
of literary history in the nineteenth century. Having followed the
older work of Snellaert [_Histoire de la Litterature Flamande_.
Bruxelles. 1654.], in the latter half of the volume, page for page, he
has not even mentioned by name the authors of the last quarter of a
century.
Let us glance at that portion of literature more particularly
belonging to Flanders and Brabant.
The first expressions of the Germanic mind, the song of "Hildebrand,"
"Gudrun," the "Nibelungen," have been handed down to us in a form
which shows their origin to have been Netherlandish. The first part of
"Gudrun" is evidently so; and we find, as well in many of the older
poems of chivalry, as "Charles and Elegast," "Floris and
Blanchefloer," as in the national epos, intrinsic proofs that the
unknown authors were from the regions of the Lower Rhine.
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