Vondel, JOOST VAN DEN, a great Dutch poet, born at Cologne, November 17, 1587, kept a hosier's shop in Amsterdam, and died there, 5th February 1679. Of his thirty-three plays the most interesting is Lucifer (1654), which suggests in some points a parallel with Paradise Lost, on which a preposterous case of borrowing has been constructed by Mr Gosse (Studies in North. Lit., 1879), and still more by Mr George Edmundson (Milton and Vondel, 1885). The latter pursues his gratuitous task still further, finding in Samson Agonistes plagiarisms from a classical drama of Vondel's Samson; or Divine Vengeance.
Lennep edited his complete works (12 vols. 1850-69). See the studies by Baumgartner (Freib. 1882); Looten (Bruss. 1889); and the bibliography by Unger (Amsterdam, 1888). See also Vol. V. p. 745.