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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831)
Bilderdijk, Willem (bil’der-dīk). A celebrated Dutch poet; born at Amsterdam, Sept. 7, 1756; died on Dec. 18, 1831. He reached the highest point of his lyric genius in the ‘Miscellaneous Poems’ and patriotic pieces, notably the hymn ‘Willem Frederik’ and ‘The True Love of Fatherland.’ Of his great didactic poems most are imitations; e.g., the ‘Country Life,’ after a French original; ‘Man,’ after Pope’s ‘Essay on Man.’ His epic, ‘Destruction of the First World,’ a work not unworthy of his genius, was left uncompleted. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).