'Een Beytie Hollansche'

Dutch Compositions

[p. vii]

Introduction

Boswell in the Netherlands

Seen off by Dr Johnson, James Boswell, not yet 23,^1. on 6 August 1763 embarked at Harwich on ‘the Prince of Wales packet-boat’ for the Netherlands, where he landed, at Hellevoetsluis, the following day ‘at twelve at noon’.^2. After living for nine exciting months in London, where in a rakish existence he had partly managed to ‘transform himself from a raw and romping boy into a high-bred man of pleasure’,^3. and had become the friend of Samuel Johnson, more than thirty years his senior, in August 1763 Boswell was on his way to Utrecht to continue his law studies, already begun in Scotland. As Pottle says:

The selection of Utrecht as the place for Boswell's legal education had nothing odd or unusual about it. Scots law, a totally different system from the English, makes a great deal of Roman law; and as the Dutch were the great masters of Roman law, it was usual for young men preparing for the Scots bar to complete their education in Holland. Boswell's father and grandfather (also a lawyer) had studied at Leyden; Utrecht had been selected for Boswell on the advice of Sir David Dalrymple, a common friend to Boswell and his father and a mediator of their differences. Though the main objective was the law, it was hoped that he might also improve himself generally in culture and in manners; and for this purpose Utrecht was thought to offer advantages over Leyden. (2-3)

However, it is clear that Boswell himself was not very happy about this decision. For a start he was extremely reluctant to leave London. And the final entry in his London Journal exhibits his general melancholy or depression, from which he habitually suffered, as well as the more specific causes of his gloomy departure:

THURSDAY 4 AUGUST. This is now my last day in London before I set out upon my travels, and makes a very important period in my journal. Let me recollect my life since this journal began. Has it not passed like a dream? Yes, but I have been attaining a knowledge of the world. I came to town to go into

1. He was born in Edinburgh on 29 October 1740.

2. Boswell in Holland 1763-1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, London, 1952, 4-5: where convenient all page references to this major source will be given after quotations in the text.

3. Ibid., 1: for details of Boswell's life in London, see his London Journal 1762-1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, London, 1950.

[p. viii]

the Guards. How different is my scheme now! I am now upon a less pleasurable but a more rational and lasting plan. Let me pursue it with steadiness and I may be a man of dignity. My mind is strangely agitated. I am happy to think of going upon my travels and seeing the diversity of foreign parts; and yet my feeble mind shrinks somewhat at the idea of leaving Britain in so very short a time from the moment in which I now make this remark. How strange I must feel myself in foreign parts. My mind too is gloomy and dejected at the thought of leaving London, where I am so comfortably situated and where I have enjoyed most happiness. However, I shall be happier for being abroad, as long as I live. Let me be manly. Let me commit myself to the care of my merciful Creator.^4.

With such brave resolution, then, Boswell set off.

However, once in Holland, he did not dispatch himself to Utrecht, but preferred to linger a few days in Rotterdam with Archibald Stewart, a young man of Boswell's own age or younger with whom he had not previously been so well acquainted, and who turned out to be a great support to Boswell when he needed it. From Rotterdam he went onto Leiden, where he passed another couple of days. Then, as Boswell writes to his friend John Johnson (in a letter from Utrecht, dated 23 September 1763):

I began to turn low-spirited, and set out for Utrecht. I travelled between Leyden and Utrecht nine hours in a sluggish trekschuit^5. without any companion, so I brooded over my own dismal imagination. I arrived at Utrecht on a Saturday evening. I went to the Nouveau Château d'Anvers. I was shown up to a high bedroom with old furniture, where I had to sit and be fed by myself. At every hour the bells of the great tower played a dreary psalm tune. A deep melancholy seized upon me. I groaned with the idea of living all winter in so shocking a place. I thought myself old and wretched and forlorn. I was worse and worse next day. All the horrid ideas that you can imagine, recurred upon me....I thought at length the time was come that I should grow mad. I actually believed myself so. I went out to the streets, and even in public could not refrain from groaning and weeping bitterly....Tortured in this manner, I determined to leave Utrecht, and next day returned to Rotterdam in a condition that I shudder to recollect. (5-6)

4. London Journal, 333.

5. ‘The usual way of travelling in Holland, and most parts of the United Provinces...is in Treck-scoots, or Draw-boats, which are large covered boats, not unlike the barges of the livery companies of London, drawn by a horse at the rate of three miles an hour; the fare of which does not amount to a penny a mile; and you have the conveniency of carrying a portmanteau, or provisions; so that you need not be at any manner of expence at a public house by the way. The rate of places in these boats...is fixed; wherefore there is no occasion for contending about the price...’ (Thomas Nugent, The Grand Tour, London, 1749, 41).

[p. ix]

Boswell told another friend, William Johnson Temple, in a letter from Rotterdam on 16 August 1763, that as a consequence of his initial response to Utrecht, he had taken refuge with Archibald Stewart, whom he describes as ‘a very fine fellow’:

Though volatile, he has good sense and generosity. I told him my miserable situation and begged his assistance as the most unfortunate of mortals. He was very kind, took me to his house, talked with me, endeavoured to amuse me, and contrived schemes for me to follow. (7-8)

For the next month, although he twice returned to Utrecht, he was very restless, spending more time in Leiden and Rotterdam as well as visiting Amsterdam. As he wrote to Temple from Rotterdam on 2 September:

I waver about the place of my residence. At Leyden I shall be within three hours of The Hague. I shall have the youngest Prince of Strelitz, and Mr. Gordon, Lord Aberdeen's brother, for my companions. At Utrecht I hear of no agreeable companion. Count Nassau is a man in years, though very polite. Utrecht has assemblies.^6. But I am told they are most exceedingly dull. Add to this the shocking disgust which I have taken to Utrecht. I would therefore incline for Leyden. But, then, I came over with an intention to stay at Utrecht; and Sir David Dalrymple would not be pleased if I should forsake his favourite place. (16)

So despite the attractions of noble companions in Leiden, and courtly company in The Hague, in the end Boswell was manly enough to grit his teeth, resolve to do his duty, and fulfil the promises and obligations that he had made earlier, and return to Utrecht on 15 September where he stayed for the next three months. Like any good student, or any previously irresolute student who resolves to mend his ways, he was determined to set himself a regular regimen of studies:

SATURDAY 24 SEPTEMBER. This day regular plan. Ovid till breakfast, Tacitus till eleven, dress till twelve, then either Trotz or visits; dine Plaats Royaal....Three to four, French; four to five, Greek; then coffee; then notes of law, and history, and journal, and Erskine's Institutes....Get Corpus Juris. Billiards is the only mala fama here. Make resolve against it. Write Stewart at night. Miss S.^7. is again evaporated. You see how vain a fancy. You must not marry for some years, unless Temple bids. Write

6. For ‘assemblies’, see Dutch Composition 4, and note.

7. Archibald Stewart's sister, about whom Boswell had written earlier to Temple, that she ‘is sensible, amiable, has been several winters in London, is perfectly accomplished. She is not handsome, but is extremely agreeable amd what you would call a woman of fashion. She and I were always good friends; and when I was in Scotland, she was the only woman I could think of for a wife. Stewart and I have talked much of her, and I have heard more and more of her good qualities. I begin to think that I should not let such a prize pass without knowing if I might have her’ (Boswell in Holland, 28-29).

[p. x]

him on Tuesday, long composed letter, sensible and on a subject of learning mostly. Persist firm and noble. (31)

Rather than wait until Tuesday, in fact Boswell wrote a ‘long composed letter’ to Temple the next day, full of earnest questions and reflections on how he ought to live, including a serious consideration of the moral and economic advantages of marrying Miss Stewart. He also reminded himself and Temple:

I am now at a foreign university, or rather in a foreign city where I have an opportunity of acquiring knowledge. I am at a distance from all my dissipated companions. I may attain habits of thought, study, and propriety of conduct. I am next to travel through Europe. I shall always be on my guard to persist in the proper course, and hope to return to England so confirmed in it that I shall be able to proceed through life with unaffected rectitude. (34)

To this end he continued to record admonitory memoranda for himself:

WEDNESDAY 5 OCTOBER....From this time let plan proceed: seven to eight, Ovid; eight to nine, French version; ten to eleven, Tacitus; three to four, French; four to five, Greek; six to seven, Civil Law; seven to eight, Scots; eight to ten, Voltaire. Then journal, letters, and other books....(38-39)

Apart from the Classics and his Law studies, Boswell began to practise his French writing not long after he had begun to settle down in Utrecht. As he says in his very first French Composition (dated c. 16 September):

In acquiring any language, it helps to write a great deal, because by doing so one learns spelling, without which the knowledge of a language is very imperfect. But, besides, when one writes, one must understand the grammar perfectly or make many absurd mistakes which, although they may pass unnoticed in the rapid flow of conversation, will certainly be discovered at once by the reader. For this reason I have resolved to write a little every day...(22).^8.

In all, during his stay of just over ten months in the Netherlands (about 308 days in all), Boswell wrote 232 quarto pages of French, which

8. In Boswell in Holland these exercises in French, and later in Dutch, are called ‘Themes’, presumbly following Boswell's own use of the French word ‘thème’ (see the passage quoted below from his French Composition of 31 October). However, as the OED says, the use in English of the word ‘theme’ for ‘An exercise written on a given subject, esp. a school essay; an exercise in translation...’, is ‘Now rare’, if not entirely archaic. Therefore in this edition the more usual English term, ‘composition’, for a somewhat rudimentary exercise in essay writing in one's own or in a foreign language is preferred.

[p. xi]

allowing for occasionally lapses during high days and holidays, indicates that most days he must have written at least one page of French, and sometimes two. As he himself said in one of his French Compositions on 31 October:

It is certain that I have the greatest desire to learn French, but I fear that I am not learning it quickly. Perhaps my keen desire makes me think myself worse in acquiring the language than I am. I certainly take a great deal of pains to improve. I write two pages of a theme every morning. I read for two hours in the works of Voltaire every evening. When I do not understand words perfectly, I look them up in the dictionary, and I write them down with their meanings.

He had particular incentives to improve his French, both cultural and social:

Every Wednesday I have the pleasure of passing the evening in a literary society where it is not permitted to speak a word of anything but French; and I dine at Mr. Brown's, where there are two ladies who do not speak English, and where for that reason it is always necessary to speak French. (55)^9.

The two ladies referred to are the Swiss wife of the Reverend Robert Brown, a Scotsman who was minister of the English Presbyterian Church in Utrecht with whom Boswell dined regularly in order to improve his French, and her sister. After meeting a friend of theirs, Isabella Agneta Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken, for the first time towards the end of October, Boswell had an even greater motivation for improving both his French conversation skills and his writing. He first refers to Belle de Zuylen, in a memorandum of Monday 31 October, when he rebukes himself:

Yesterday you did not at all keep to rules as you ought to do. You had sat late up and rose irregular. You went to Guiffardière at eleven and talked too foolishly and too freely. At night you were absurdly bashful before Miss de Zuylen....You put on foolish airs of a passion for Miss de Zuylen. (55)

The same day he had written a set of half-a-dozen rhyming couplets expressing his growing sentiments about his new acquaintance:

9. In respect to Boswell's regularity with his French Compositions, Pottle notes that ‘he had started with one [page], and even at this period sometimes managed only one; on other occasions he probably wrote several to make up. But his plan was to write exactly two pages each day, Sundays included’ (Boswell in Holland, 55 n.2).

[p. xii]

 

And yet just now a Utrecht lady's charms

 

Make my gay bosom beat with love's alarms.

 

Who could have thought to see young Cupid fly

 

Through Belgia's thick and suffocating sky?

 

But she from whom my heart has caught the flame

 

Has nothing Dutch about her but the name.

 

Let not an ear too delicate recoil

 

And start fastidious when I say ‘De Zoile’;

 

So mere a trifle I can change with ease:

 

Your tender niceness will ‘Zelida’ please? (54)^10.

Clearly by this time Boswell had indeed settled into Utrecht, and had developed a network of friends and acquaintances who sustained his social, cultural, and intellectual needs as well as his romantic and amorous fantasies.

Christmas and the New Year Boswell enjoyed in The Hague and Rotterdam, with a couple of days in Leiden, where he spent some time with the famous classical scholar and University Librarian, Abraham Gronovius, to whom he had first introduced himself with a letter from his father when he had first visited Leiden in August (24-25). Five months later, clearly more relaxed, Boswell recording his recent visit to Leiden, and his taking leave ‘by a short shake of the hand of Abraham Gronovius’, after which he ‘surveyed Leyden as Father's old town’, boasts (using his customary second person pronoun to address himself), ‘You have really an affection for Holland’. The next day he records:

TUESDAY 10 JANUARY. Yesterday you left Leyden early in the morning, dark and solemn, and kept up spirits well in schuit, though rainy. Arrived at Rotterdam at half after one; hearty reception by Stewart. Glad to see the house again where you endured so much....(114)

The prospect of this visit to Stewart in Rotterdam from The Hague had inspired what appears to have been Boswell's first attempt, at least his first public attempt, to write Dutch, in a letter addressed to ‘Myn Heer/De Heer Archibald Stewart/op te Schipmaaker's Haaven/Rotterdam/Met een Degen’:^11.

10. For the various forms of Belle de Zuylen's name, and Boswell's use of ‘Zelida’, see Boswell in Holland, 54 n. 1 (to which one should add that in Dutch van Zuylen is always preferred to de Zuylen).

11. ‘Archibald Stewart/at the Shipmaker's Harbour/Rotterdam/With a sword’: with this letter Boswell returned a sword he had borrowed from Stewart in August or September. The British in Rotterdam preferred to live on the Nieuwe Haven (the New Harbour) and the Haringvliet, but they also favoured the Scheepmakershaven (the Shipmakers' Harbour). For instance, Benjamin Furly lived on the Scheepmakershaven before 1709. In these districts the important Rotterdam merchants and various members of the ruling class, doctors and lawyers were to be found (see E. Groenenboom-Draai, De Rotterdamse Woelreus: De ‘Rotterdamsche Hermes’ [1720-21] van Jacob Campo Weyer-man: Cultuurhistorische verkenningen in een achttiende-eeuwse periodiek, Amsterdam, 1994, 37-38, and 378).

[p. xiii]

Myn Heer en Vrind,
Ik heb niet mar en cleyn Beytie Hollans, en Ik heb niet een Dictionarrie myn te helpen; mar Ik heb een groot lust in dat taal te schryven en Ik sal het probeeren. Mynheer kaan lauchen als hy beleeft: Waarom niet? Ik lauch ook. Te lauchen is heel goed voor de Gezontheid. Ik ben zeer verplight te mynheer voor zyn degen; en als it niet necessaar is twee degenen te hebben Ik zend it met groot plaisir. Sarah heel Vroolic is te zegen dat ik moet een scheirmess hebben, om dat ik heb myn baard gezeepen. Mar Mynheer, it is woonderlyk dat Sarah noch niet van ue huys vertrecken is. Heb Mynheer niet een andere vryster engageerd, Sall Mynheer van Lainshaw een Jong kneght van Schotland' niet gezenden? En zoo Mynheer naar Amsterdam te gaan is. Maar hy moet seeker bin Gow rug te komen, voor it sall speyt me seer, him niet te vinden in fyve daagen t'Rotterdam. Mynheer moet myn een brief schryven, maar in Hollans niet. Ik ben
Mynheer etc.
Jacobus van Auchinleck
S'Haag's
2 Jan^ry 1764.^12.

My dear Sir and Friend,
I have only a little Dutch, and I have no dictionary to help me; but I have a great desire to write in that language and I shall try to do so. You, my dear Sir, can laugh if you wish: and why not? I am also laughing. Laughing is very good for one's health. I am much obliged to you for your sword; and as it is not necessary to have two swords, I return it with great pleasure. Sarah says very merrily that I must have a razor, because I have soaped my beard. But, dear Sir, it is strange that Sarah has not yet left your house. If you have not yet engaged another girl, shall the Laird of Lainshaw^13. not send a manservant from Scotland? And so, dear Sir, you are going to Amsterdam. But you must be sure to come back quickly, since I will be very grieved not to find you in Rotterdam in five days time. Dear Sir, you must write me a letter, but not in Dutch. I am
Dear Sir, etc.,
Jacobus van Auchinleck
The Hague
2 January 1764.^14.

12. MS, Yale (L 1187): the letter is reproduced with a slightly different translation in Boswell in Holland, 111-12. For information on the Yale MS, see the ‘On the Dutch Text and the English Translation’, page xxix above.

13. James Montgomerie of Lainshaw (in Ayrshire) was Boswell's first cousin, and brother of his future wife.

14. Stewart replied to Boswell's letter with one of his own from Rotterdam, a couple of days later: ‘Your last letter, My Dear Boswell, cost me more than all the other letters you ever wrote me, as I was obliged to employ a Tovenaar or Sorcier, what the Scotch commonly Call Seco[n]d Sighted people, to Explain it to me, and he assured me it took him all his skill to Decipher it. I need not tell you how extravag[an]t these sort of People are when they know you can't do without them, which was really the present case. I shall be glad to see you 5 days hence, I mean from the date of your last Mistery’ (Boswell in Holland, 112-13).

[p. xiv]

Soon after Boswell's return to Utrecht in the middle of January 1764, he obviously began to resolve to write more Dutch. In preparation for this trial of his affection for Holland he had developed other native habits:

With the same ease that blackguards feed on tripe
Have I, James Boswell, learnt to smoke a pipe:
For I am now a very Dutchman grown,
As all at Utrecht cannot fail to own....(122)

This was written on 21 January, and at the start of the next month he announced his resolution:

Terwyl ik bin van voomemens om de hollansche taal te leeren, dat is te zeggen: Terwyl ik hebben lust te minsten een beytie te leeren zoo dat ik can met de Hollanders conversatie hebben, zoo heb ik geresolveer'd alle daag een beytie in dat taal te schryven. Als van daag is Het eerst van Februari, ik begin met de grooter plaisir tot te het begin van een maande en ook Het begin van Het voojaar.

Since I intend to learn Dutch, that is, since I want to learn at least a little, so that I can talk with Dutch people, I have resolved to write a little in that language every day. As today is the 1st February, I am beginning with the greater pleasure, since it is the beginning of the month and also the beginning of spring.^15.

Apparently Boswell had made an arrangement with Mr Brown for him to correct his Dutch compositions, although he seems to have been somewhat apprehensive of causing the clergyman too much trouble.

From this first declaration and demonstration of intent on 1 February (at what for some odd reason he identified as the beginning of spring) until about 6 March, Boswell wrote twenty quarto pages of Dutch. Thereafter, until he left for Germany and the beginning of his Grand Tour on 19 June 1764, he seems to have written no more. It is possible that, like Boswell's Dutch Journal itself,^16. the notebook in which he continued to write his Dutch Compositions is lost. It is most probable, though regrettable, that Boswell had lost interest in the exercise. He went on writing his French Compositions and wrote a number of letters in French, particularly to Madame de Spaen, to whom he confessed his ‘French [was] still very imperfect’ (194), presumably because of its

15. Cf. Boswell in Holland, 129.

16. See Frederick A. Pottle's Introduction to Boswell in Holland, ix-xi.

[p. xv]

greater usefulness in the social world in which he moved and his anticipation of further travels on the Continent.

About the time that he appears to have stopped writing his Dutch Compositions, he received news of the death of his ten-month-old natural son, Charles, who had been born to a servant shortly after Boswell's departure from Edinburgh in November 1762. As one of his Dutch Compositions tells us (no. 17) he was also troubled at this time with a bad cold. He was clearly once more very unsettled and looking forward to leaving Utrecht, and the Netherlands as a whole for new adventures. As he admitted in a letter to Temple on 23 March:

During our Christmas vacation I went to The Hague, where I passed some weeks in brilliant dissipation. I received great civilities from my Dutch relations and other people of the first distinction. Upon my return to Utrecht I found that my mind had been weakened. I had not the same vigour as before. I took a severe cold, which hurt my spirits, and some posts ago I received accounts of the death of that child of whom you have heard me talk so much....
You see a concurrence of circumstances to bring back my melancholy. You may conceive what dreary thoughts have oppressed me. You may conceive how I have extended the gloomy prospect. I have indeed been so bad as almost to despair. I wrote yesterday a letter to my worthy father and told him my situation....I have told him that I am weary of Utrecht, and that I am anxious to know his scheme for my travels.

However, he admits that already that very day he feels ‘so much better as to see that I must not yield to slight disgust’ and that he ‘must follow out the plan upon which [he] came hither, nor think of stirring till the Civil Law Lectures are ended’. He lists some of the Classical texts he has read, and, weighing up his achievement, claims:

I have advanced very well in French. I am just about finishing Voltaire's General History. I have picked up a little Dutch. I have not given such application to the Civil and Scots law as I ought to have done; however, I have done tolerably. (189-90)

Evidently Boswell, involved in an ambiguous complicated relationship with Belle de Zuylen, felt that he was on his way out, and was mentally preparing himself to leave. In these circumstances, he dropped his zeal

[p. xvi]

Diederik Jacob van Tuyll van Serooskerken (oil painting by G.J.J. de Spinny, 1756)

[p. xvii]

Belle de Zuylen (oil painting by J.J. Maurer)

[p. xviii]

to further his Dutch studies. In his last two months in Holland he travelled to Leiden and then to The Hague, for further dissipations over the Easter vacation, and visited Scheveningen a couple of times. He tried out the practical value of his Dutch in an Amsterdam bawdy-house, for some reason finding that ‘It was truly ludicrous to talk in Dutch to a whore’. But although he ‘danced with a fine lady in laced riding-clothes, a true blackguard minuet’, smoked his pipe, and ‘performed like any common sailor’, nearly quarrelling ‘with one of the musicians’, and ‘spoke plenty of Dutch’, he ‘could find no girl that elicited [his] inclinations’: ‘I was disgusted with this low confusion, came home and slept sound’ (254-55). Whatever he may have learned of value about himself and others during his time in the Netherlands, and however well he had managed to persuade himself that he had overcome his initial depression and had exerted sufficient discipline over himself to use his time productively, it is evident that Boswell was once more very uneasy. It is possible that his time in the Netherlands, especially the two periods of four months that he was fixed in Utrecht, were a necessary shock therapy that projected the irresponsible young man into maturity. As he was to admit to Temple in a letter written from Berlin later that summer:

What a gloomy winter did I pass at Utrecht! Did I not speculate till I was firmly persuaded that all terrestrial occupations and amusements could not compose felicity? Did I not imagine myself doomed to unceasing melancholy?...And yet, my friend, I am now as sound and as happy as a mortal can be. How comes this? Merely because I have had more exercise and variety of conversation....One great lesson to be learned is that man is a practical being. It is hard, but experience proves it to be true that speculation renders us miserable. Life will not bear to be calmly considered.^17.

However, earlier in his final letter to Temple from Utrecht on 17 June 1764, a day before he left for Nijmegen, and after that for Germany, Boswell signed off his Dutch adventure with a brief but authoritative and confident set of judgements about what, after ten months (and the consultation of a number of standard sources), he made of the Netherlands and the Dutch:

You have asked me for a letter on the present state of the Dutch, which I can only make out by giving you some detached observations....

17. Letter to William Johnson Temple, Berlin, 23 July 1764: Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland 1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, London, 1953, 32.

[p. xix]

The Dutch, like all other republican states, have never continued long in the same situation as to riches and felicity. But, besides the usual disadvantages of having the supreme power in a great many hands, this nation has been remarkably precarious on account of its subsisting entirely by trade, which render it absolutely dependent on foreign states. Formerly their trade was exceedingly extensive. Not only had they the sole market for several sorts of Indian merchandise, but they furnished many of the most necessary manufactures to the greatest part of Europe. Hence was the spirit of industry so universally diffused amongst this people. Hence they became so rich and so powerful. Now the case is very much altered. The English share with them the Indian trade, and the other nations manufacture for themselves. While the Dutch had the universal trade, the States loaded with exorbitant taxes the necessaries of life, knowing that the manufacturers would proportionably heighten the price of their labour, so that the nations who purchased their goods should in reality furnish the public money. When those nations began to work themselves, the States should undoubtedly have lowered their taxes, and by selling at a moderate price have prevented the progress of manufactures in other countries. But the griping disposition of the Batavian government was greater than their wisdom. The taxes continued the same, so that in a little time the other nations, where living was not so dear, were able to undersell the Dutch in some of their principal commodities. Nay, so great is the difference that French, but particularly English, cloth is sold cheaper here than cloth made in the country, although the imposts upon foreign cloth are very high. Several of the Dutch regiments are clothed with English manufacture.
In such circumstances this trading nation must be in a very bad way. Most of their principal towns are sadly decayed, and instead of finding every mortal employed, you meet with multitudes of poor creatures who are starving in idleness. Utrecht is remarkably ruined. There are whole lanes of wretches who have no other subsistence than potatoes, gin, and stuff which they call tea and coffee; and what is worst of all, I believe they are so habituated to this life that they would not take work if it should be offered to them. The Hague is a beautiful and elegant place. It is, however, by no means a Dutch town; the simplicity and plain honesty of the old Hollanders has given way to the show and politeness of the French, with this difference, that a Frenchman is [truly at] ease, whereas the Dutchman is [as y]et but a painful imitator. Luxury prevails much both at The

[p. xx]

Hague and among the rich merchants at Amsterdam.
You see, then, that things are very different here from what most people in England imagine. Were Sir William Temple to revisit these Provinces, he would scarcely believe the amazing alteration which they have undergone....The universities here are much fallen. In short, the Seven Provinces would require the powers of all the politicians that they ever had to set them right again.^18.

After this, Boswell was on his way to try to meet Frederick the Great (which he failed to do, despite all his efforts when he was in Berlin and Potsdam in July and September 1764),^19. and more successfully to interview Voltaire and Rousseau.^20. Boswell and Belle de Zuylen continued to correspond with each other for another four years.

18. Boswell in Holland, 280-82. For a fuller account of Boswell's attitude towards the Dutch in the general context of the British perspective, see C.C. Barfoot, ‘“Envy, Fear, and Wonder”: English Views of Holland and the Dutch 1673-1764’, in The Great Emporium: The Low Countries as a Cultural Crossroads in the Renaissance and the Eighteenth Century, eds C.C. Barfoot and Richard Todd, Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 1992, 207-47.

19. Boswell on the Grand Tour, 32, 41-45, 79, et passim.

20. Boswell interviewed Rousseau five times and Voltaire four times in December 1764: Ibid., 216-20, 222-24, 224-226, 247-50, 251-59, 272-74, 282, 285-86, 295-96.

Boswell and Dutch

Boswell was a man with philological and lexicological interests. For instance, his admiration and respect for Samuel Johnson was inspired by Johnson as the compiler and author of the Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Boswell was also interested in foreign languages, and had a talent for acquiring them. In the Netherlands he did his best to master French, which he used daily, and needed to speak and write fluently, since on the Continent French was the lingua franca of the upper classes. Amongst the Dutch aristocracy, without knowledge of French one had no standing; characteristically Boswell sought to enlarge his acquaintance with French by initiating a number of romantic relationships. His command of the language, both written and spoken, must have progressed rapidly in a relatively short space of time. Society appears to have been fond of the young Scot, as he was regularly invited to private balls. A letter of introduction from Sir David Dalrymple had opened up the Utrecht circle around the Count of Nassau La Lecq to Boswell; and it was this gentleman who introduced Boswell at the private ball, which opened the winter season of 1763, held at the residence of his sister-in-law, the Countess Johanna of Nassau-Beverweerd.^21.

For somebody who was above all doing his best to acquire French and who was mainly in the company of the social élite, it was not necessary to learn Dutch. In any event this was not an easy task, since there were no good grammar books, and the available dictionaries were

21. See Composition 4.

[p. xxi]

not suited to everyday conversation. Nor can it have been easy at that time to find a native speaker who was both able and willing to give someone from Britain Dutch lessons. Yet Boswell acquired an elementary command of Dutch, which undoubtedly helped him to master the basics of German, as well.^22.

As he says in his first Dutch Composition, Boswell wished to learn Dutch primarily to be able to mix and talk with ordinary Dutch people, and not just with the upper classes. Perhaps this aspiration was influenced by the example set by his father, who, during his time as a student in Leiden, had quickly learned to make himself understood in Dutch. Yet Boswell also had to conquer a certain amount of prejudice, since several influential people would have discouraged him from learning Dutch. For example, the Professor of Mathematics in Utrecht, a Florentine nobleman, announced contemptuously, and publicly, that Dutch was a language for horses. This learned man had been employed at the University of Utrecht since 1751, and made this announcement on board the schuit to Amsterdam, probably in French. Boswell describes how, had it not been for the presence of ‘a gentleman who knew him by sight’, a strong Dutchman might have thrown the professor overboard, which indicates that such disrespect could even provoke those who knew French.^23.

This derisive attitude to the native language appears to have been mostly a matter of class and position. Boswell explicitly disassociates himselffrom such a foolish prejudice, since he is proud of his own Dutch blood, and he calls Dutch an old, rich language that is certainly not inferior to French. Therefore, when speaking Dutch, he is determined to avoid French words, declaring that Dutch people no more require French words than they require French money, since both linguistically and economically they have enough wealth of their own. He also thinks it a profound shame that so much French is used in The Hague, a situation which he considers a sign of decadence. An explanation for this practice is offered him by a sensible upper-class Dutchman: The Hague is the place where foreign diplomats reside and also many French emigrants, who serve the diplomats as wigmakers, dancing masters, fencinginstructors and actors. In addition, there is an historical explanation, since Dutch law dates back to the Burgundian era, when French prevailed in the principal institutions of government. Jurists, therefore, use a terminology based on French. Boswell's unknown acquaintance was well informed, since this last point relating to the use of French in

22. Boswell spoke German with the popular poet Christian Furchtegott Gellert (1715-1769) on 4 October 1764, because Gellert's French was even worse than his Latin (Boswell on the Grand Tour, 123).

23. See Composition 3.

[p. xxii]

the law was an old and familiar complaint. As early as 1553 the Antwerp jurist Jan van den Werve, in his Tresoor der Duytscher Talen, had given his colleagues an explanation of the bastardizations then in use.^24. That this tract was needed can be seen from the fourteen editions it went through. In the seventeenth century, too, there were continual complaints about the use of language in The Hague;^25. and a century later, because of the status that French had acquired everywhere on the Continent in upper-class society, this situation had changed little.

During his stay in Utrecht the tea-parties and balls of the aristocracy, as well as the law lectures of Professor Trotz, determined Boswell's social course. As far as the lectures are concerned, Boswell does not seem to have followed any other than Trotz's. Indeed he never even registered at the University of Utrecht, for in the Album Studiosorum he is not mentioned. In fact, apart from his association with Belle de Zuylen, he did not experience many intellectual pleasures during his stay in Utrecht. Yet there was one exception: the Thursday evening meetings of a philosophical society, which he mentions in Composition 8. The Reverend Mr Brown, who apparently played an important role in this society, intended to read aloud parts from Lambert ten Kate's Aenleiding as a prelude to a discussion of ancient history and etymology. After that, on the basis of changes in their pronunciations, the origins of the separate nations were to be discussed. Nothing else is known about the Utrecht philosophical society or its members, who were undoubtedly a small group of learned enthusiasts. Composition 8 shows that it consisted of people from France and Britain, as well as from the Netherlands, and, apart from Reverend Brown and Boswell, included Baron Diederik van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Belle de Zuylen's father) and Professor Gysbert Bonnet. Indeed, it was the theologian Bonnet who first mentioned Ten Kate's work, on an occasion when Boswell was taking tea with the Van Tuylls (where, incidentally, Boswell did his best to speak a little Dutch), as it clearly showed the relationship between Dutch, Old Saxon, Icelandic and Latin. Boswell was immediately interested in the book and the professor promised to lend it to him the next day.

The Aenleiding tot de Kennisse van het Verhevene Deel der Nederduitsche Sprake (Introduction to the Knowledge of the Origins of the Dutch language)^26. had apparently penetrated to the academic world forty years after its first appearance, despite the fact that it was not written in Latin.^27. Although the great value of this book was immediately recognized, it barely played a role in professional literature abroad, precisely because it had been

24. L. van den Branden, Het Streven naar Verheerlijking, Zuivering, en Opbouw van het Nederlands in de 16de Eeuw, Arnhem, 1967, 20-21 (Kon. Vlaamse Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde, VI, 77).

25. L. Peeters, ‘Taalcultuur en stadscultuur in de zeventiende eeuw: sociolinguïstische aspecten van Vroegnieuwnederlandse taalideologie’, in L. Peeters, Taalopbouw als Renaissance-ideaal: Studies over Taalopvattingen en Taalpraktijk in de Zestiende en Zeventiende Eeuw, eds G.R. Dibbets, J. Noordegraaf and M.J. van de Wal, Amsterdam, 1990, 167-68; M. van der Wal (with C. van Bree), Geschiedenis van het Nederlands, Utrecht, 1992, 220, 222-25.

26. According to De Vooys, Ten Kate had a great aversion for a linguistic system in which people merely quarrel about spelling, and in which the grammatical forms are ordered and manufactured at random. On the other hand, Ten Kate had his eye on the ‘exalted part’ of linguistics, namely the origins of words and forms of language (C.G.N. de Vooys, ‘De taalbeschouwing van Lambert ten Kate’, in Verzamelde Taalkundige Opstellen, I [1924], 374-91, esp. 376).

27. The best introduction to this book is provided by T.A. Rompelman, ‘Lambert ten Kate als germanist’, in Mededelingen der Nederlandse Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Nieuwe Reeks, XV, Afdeling Letterkunde, 9 (1952), 245-74.

[p. xxiii]

Christiaan Hendrik Trotz (oil painting by J.M. Quinkhard, c. 1760)

Gijsbertus Bonnet (oil painting by J.J. Maurer, 1780)

[p. xxiv]

written in Dutch. The brilliant linguist Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731), the founder of comparative historical Germanic linguistics,^28. was an unmarried Amsterdam cereal merchant, who appears to have given private lessons in several different subjects. During his youth he had studied Newton's philosophy, and he was an amateur artist, painter, and singer. It is not clear whether he himself was entirely responsible for his development into a great linguist, but he certainly was original. He believed that the rules of language had to be found empirically within the language itself; and by language, he meant both the written and the spoken forms - another notion that was new. In his Aenleiding he presented his own phonetic script, and the work also includes the first Gothic grammar, the first historical grammar of the Dutch language, and an etymological dictionary. He was also interested in the affinity between the Germanic languages. especially in respect to the vowel changes they share in strong verbs (break, broke, broken) and to the stress which in Germanic tongues always falls on the first syllable of the stem. So it is no wonder that Ten Kate's book became an object of study in the Utrecht philosophical society. Boswell borrowed the book from Bonnet and subsequently showed it to the Reverend Brown, who was so delighted with it that he immediately wished to translate some parts of it into French to read aloud in the philosophical society. Since no one has yet studied the reception of Ten Kate's work, the scanty details that Boswell gives about the response of people in his small circle to it are of great importance and deserve to be widely known.

How are we to judge Boswell's command of Dutch? Composition 11 he claims to have written without the aid of a dictionary, but there his Dutch is neither better nor worse than in his other exercises. Therefore, it is still a matter of debate whether he possessed William Sewel's Dictionary (the fourth enlarged edition from 1749), and actually used it. In any case the Compositions, as we have them, appear in a rough, uncorrected form. If Mr Brown had really corrected them, as Boswell had originally planned, he would have found the job quite a taxing one. Boswell seems to have anticipated this when, in Composition 1, he expresses the hope that the poor corrector will not lose patience with his work. In Composition 12 Boswell calls Mr Brown his ‘Dutch master’, and devotes a separate essay to him, in which he jokes that only the prospect of paying ‘a fine offifty guilders to the board of the English Church’, compels him to make this effort.

Boswell's Dutch is full of anglicisms as far as spelling is concerned

28. Edgar C. Polome, ‘Lambert ten Kate's Significance for the History of the Dutch Language’, in Tijdschrift voor Nederlands en Afrikaans, 1 (1983/2), 2-14, spec. 3. See also D. Brink, ‘Lambert ten Kate as Indo-Europeanist’, in Dutch Linguistics at Berkeley, Papers Presented at the Dutch Linguistics Colloquium Held at the University of California on November 9th, 1985, Berkeley, 1986, 125-35; L. Peeters, ‘Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731) en de achttiende-eeuwse taalwetenschap’, in Traditie en Progressie, Handelingen van het 40ste Nederlands Filologencongres, The Hague, 1990, 151-60.

[p. xxv]

Previous page: View of Utrecht (by T. Verrijk, c. 1780)

[p. xxvi]

(geresolveer'd, Koopleeder's, gezeen, bevreez'd, franshe, etc.),^29. word formation (meer gelukkig als eening Scotsman),^30. word choice (een heel voltooide vrow, Neen, neen, dat can niet worden)^31. and word order (voor it sall speyt me seer, Ik dogt dat ik zoud niet minder doen als een Bezoek te Mynheer de Professeur te geeven).^32. But even without those anglicisms there remain enough puzzles. For example, what should we make of kribbig Achtbaarheyd and fatzoenlyk gemaklykeyd?^33. Or of all those different ways of spelling The Hague (S'Haag's, t' s'aags, t gage)?^34. With the grammar, too, there are, as one would expect, many mistakes. For instance, Boswell had a great deal of difficulty with personal pronouns and with verb forms (Ik weet weel dat voor 't meerderdeel men zyn [= hen] ‘Professeurs’ noemen).^35. Nevertheless these short essays (indeed little more than compositions) make fascinating reading because of their true Boswellian ring, that even in the poor Dutch is still clearly audible. His delicate touch, his self-ridicule, his humorous inward dialogues, his indignation at the injustice done to Dutch - Boswell's light-footedness and choice of themes could have taught several useful lessons to many Dutch authors of the period.

‘Trekschuit’, on the way to Leiden (by P.C. la Fargue, 1765)

29. See Compositions 1 (for the first) and 9 (for the last); the other three are in Composition 5.

30. See Composition 4.

31. See Compositions 4 and 15.

32. See the letter to Archibald Stewart (page xiii above), and Composition 6.

33. See Composition 5.

34. See the letter to Stewart, and Compositions 2 and 9.

35. See Composition 2.