A Wanderer in Holland | Page 9

English pilots when they heav'd the lead, Or what by the ocean's
slow alluvion fell Of shipwrackt cockle and the muscle-shell: This
indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety. Glad
then, as miners who have found the ore They, with mad labour, fish'd
the land to shoar And div'd as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if't
had been of ambergreece; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away; Or than those pills which
sordid beetles roul, Transfusing into them their dunghil soul. How did
they rivet, with gigantick piles, Thorough the center their new-catchèd
miles; And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking
waves still bait the forcèd ground; Building their wat'ry Babel far more
high To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky! Yet still his claim the
injur'd ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog ore their steeples plaid: As if on
purpose it on land had come To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boyl; The earth and water play at
level-coyl. The fish oft times the burger dispossest, And sat, not as a
meat, but as a guest, And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole sholes of Dutch serv'd up for Cabillau; Or, as they over the new
level rang'd For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang'd. Nature, it
seem'd, asham'd of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck
and drake.
The poor Dutch were never forgiven for living below the sea-level and

gaining their security by magnificent feats of engineering and
persistence. Why the notion of a reclaimed land should have seemed so
comic I cannot understand, but Marvell certainly justified the joke.
Later, Napoleon, who liked to sum up a nation in a phrase, accused
Holland of being nothing but a deposit of German mud, thrown there
by the Rhine: while the Duke of Alva remarked genially that the Dutch
were of all peoples those that lived nighest to hell; but Marvell's
sarcasms are the best. Indeed I doubt if the literature of droll
exaggeration has anything to compare with "The Character of
Holland".
The satirist, now thoroughly warmed to his congenial task, continues:--
Therefore Necessity, that first made kings, Something like government
among them brings; For, as with pygmees, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain, Among the blind, the
one-ey'd blinkard reigns, So rules among the drowned he that draines:
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands, But who could first
discern the rising lands; Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak; To make a bank, was
a great plot of State, Invent a shov'l, and be a magistrate.
So much for the conquest of Neptune, which in another nation were a
laudable enough enterprise. Marvell then passes on to the national
religion and the heterogeneity of Amsterdam:--
'Tis probable Religion, after this, Came next in order, which they could
not miss, How could the Dutch but be converted, when Th' Apostles
were so many fishermen? Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize. Though Herring for their
God few voices mist, And Poor-John to have been th' Evangelist, Faith,
that could never twins conceive before, Never so fertile, spawn'd upon
this shore More pregnant than their Marg'ret, that laid down For
Hans-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town. Sure when Religion did itself
imbark, And from the East would Westward steer its ark, It struck, and
splitting on this unknown ground, Each one thence pillag'd the first
piece he found: Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew, Staple

of sects, and mint of schisme grew; That bank of conscience, where not
one so strange Opinion but finds credit, and exchange. In vain for
Catholicks ourselves we bear; The universal Church is only there. Nor
can civility there want for tillage, Where wisely for their Court, they
chose a village: How fit a title clothes their governours, Themselves the
hogs, as all their subject bores! Let it suffice to give their country fame,
That it had one Civilis call'd by name, Some fifteen hundred and more
years ago, But surely never any that was so.
There is something rather splendid in the attitude of a man who can
take a whole nation as his butt and bend every circumstance to his
purpose of ridicule and attack. Our satirists to-day are contented to
pillory individuals or possibly a sect or clique. Marvell's enjoyment in
his own exuberance and ingenuity is so apparent and infectious that it
matters nothing to us whether he was fair or unfair.
The end is inconclusive, being a happy recollection that he had omitted
any reference to stoofjes, the