CATS, kilts, JA KOB (1577-1660). The best of the southern Dutch poets in the Golden Age of that literature, while it was being illustrated in the north by the varied genius of Vondel. Booft, and Viseher. His poetry is characteristically Dutch in being extremely prosaic, commonplace in its metres, jejeune in language, monotonous in rhythms, and platitudinous in morals. A Dutch critic, Duet, has called him bitterly. "a personi fied mediocrity, a vulgar and vulgarizing spirit," somewhat suggestive of the English Tupper. Cats was the youngest of four children, and his mother died in his infancy. He M•a adopted by an uncle, studied law in Leyden, Orleans, and Paris, and began to practice it at The Hague, where he won reputation. but lost his health. He went to England, where he found no relief• and was at last cured in Holland by an alchemist. In 1606 he moved to Middelburg, and presently mar ried Elizabeth van Valkenburg, whom he calls "a foundation for a home." Cats became active in
civic life, and wrote his Emblems of Fancy and Lore: Maiden Duty (11118) ; Inward Strife (1620) ; Manly Respectability; and Marriage. In 1621 he entered public life as pensionary of Middelburg, became pen-lonary of Dort in 1623, and curator of the University of Leyden in 1625. In this year appeared Fidelity, and in 1632 Mir ror of the Old and See' Time. In 1627 Cats went on an embassy to England, became Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1638, and Keeper of the Great Seal in 1645. These offices he resigned in 1651, and after a second embassy to England returned to literary work, in which for thirty years he had done little save the Betrothal Ring (1637). He now wrote Age and Country Life; Court Thoughts: and A Life of Eighty-tiro, growing old gracefully and keeping a joy in life to the last. His Collected Works were published in Amsterdam (19 vols., 1790-1900) and Zwolle (1856-62).