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Excerpt from The Humour of Holland
Here appears to be an idea abroad to the effect that the Humour of Holland could be most satisfactorily dealt with in a chapter resembling the famous one Of Snakes in Ireland. As the average English reader, in the most favour able instances, knows little more of Dutch literature than a name or two (rembrandt has introduced us to the poet Vondel, and if Southey were not so little read in these days Bilderdijk and Cats would not be so unfamiliar), the subject offers a free field to the constructive imagination. Yet even so, one would think it must be obvious that the nation which has produced a Teniers, a Jan Steen, and - in some of his moods - a Rembrandt, could not be entirely destitute of humour. The estimate of its quality may be a question of taste but - though many people practically do adopt this form of logic-we cannot make the fact of our not finding it to our liking a ground for denying its existence.
Of course, before determining what the humour of a nation is like, we need to know what is that nation's intellectual bent as a whole, and what forces have been at work to determine its character. On this point we may quote a paragraph or two from a Dutch writer, J. H. Hooijer, whom we shall meet again in the course of these pages. He is describing a village in North Holland, in the heart of the fat meadow-lands, famous for the production of Dutch cheeses.
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