assurance of grace which breaks with the traditional Christianity
of his time and is based on ethical motives akin to those of the
German Reformers. The verses which occur in the dialogue, and the
poem which concludes it, give Volusenus a place among Scottish Latin
poets, but it is as a Christian philosopher that he attains distinction.
The dialogue was reissued at Leiden in 1637 by the Scots writer David Echlin, whose poems, with a selection of three poems from the dialogue of Volusenus, appear, with others, in the famous Amsterdam collection Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum hujus aevi, printed by Blaev in 2 vols, in 1637. Later editions of the dialogue appeared at Edinburgh in 1707 and 1751 (the latter edited by G. Wishart). All the reissues contain a short life of the author by Thomas Wilson, advocate, son-in-law and biographer of Archbishop Patrick Adamson. Supplementary facts are found in the letters and state papers of the period, and in Sadolet’s Letters.
VOLUTE (Lat. volutum, volvere, to roll up), in architecture, the spiral scroll of the capital of the Ionic order. As in the earliest example known, that of the archaic temple of Diana at Ephesus, the width of the abacus is twice that of the depth, constituting therefore a bracket-capital; it is probable that at first it consisted of an oblong block of timber, which, raised on a vertical post or column, lessened the bearing of the architrave or beam, and the first volutes or scrolls were painted on. In votive columns carrying a sphinx, as at Delphi, or statues, the oblong form of capital with largely developed volutes was long retained, but in the porticoes of the Greek temples the abacus was made square and the volute diminished in projection on each side. In the side elevation the portion of the capital which joins the two volutes is known as the cushion, and when the Ionic column was used in porticoes in the capitals of the angle columns the volute was brought out on the diagonal, so as to present the same design on front and side; this, however, at the back led to a very awkward arrangement with two half volutes at right angles to one another, which was not of much importance under the portico, but when, in the open peristyle of the Pompeian house, it faced the open court, another design was necessary, and the angle volute was employed on all four sides. A similar arrangement was devised by Ictinus for the capitals in the interior of the temple at Bassae (430 B.C.), and was employed in the semidetached columns of the raised stage at Epidaurus. The Romans adopted the angle volute in the temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome, but, except in their porticoes and as semidetached between arches, the Ionic order was rarely employed by them, and few Roman examples are known.
The architects of the Revival in the 16th century entirely misunderstood the origin and meaning of the volutes (the upper fillet of which was always carried horizontally across under the abacus in Greek and Roman work), and mistook them for horns, which they turned down into the echinus moulding.
VONDEL, JOOST VAN DEN (1587–1679), Dutch poet, was born at Cologne on the 17th of November 1587. His father, a hatter, was an exile from Antwerp on account of his Anabaptist opinions; but he returned to Holland when Joost was about ten years old, and settled in Amsterdam, where he carried on a hosiery business. Joost was the eldest son, and was expected to succeed to his father’s shop. He was early introduced to the chamber of the Eglantine, however, and devoted most of his time to poetry and study. When the elder Vondel died he married Maria de Wolff, and seems to have left the management of his affairs in her capable hands. He read the French contemporary poets, and was especially influenced by the Divine Sepmaine of Du Bartas; he made some translations from the German; he was soon introduced to the circle gathered in the house of Roemer Visscher, and with these friends began to make a close study of classical writers. His first play, Het Pascha, was printed in 1612, and proved to be the beginning of a long and brilliant literary career (see Dutch Literature). After the production of his political drama of Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence (1625), which expressed his indignation at the judicial murder of Oldenbarneveldt in 1619, Vondel had to go into hiding, but the Amsterdam magistrates eventually satisfied themselves with exacting a small fine. In the following years he issued a number of stinging satires against the extreme Calvinists, and he entered into close relationship with Hugo Grotius, another sufferer for his liberal opinions. Vondel had long been attracted by the aesthetic side of the Roman Catholic Church, and this inclination was perhaps strengthened by his friendship with Marie Tesselschade Visscher, for the Visscher household had been Catholic and liberal. Tesselschade’s husband died in 1634; Vondel’s wife died in 1635; and the ties between the two were strengthened by time. Vondel eventually showed his revolt against the Calvinist tyranny by formally embracing the Roman Catholic faith in 1640. The step was ill-received by many of his friends, and Hooft forbade him the hospitality of his castle at Muiden. In 1657 his only surviving son, who was entrusted with the hosiery business, mismanaged affairs to such an extent that he had to take ship for the East Indies, leaving his father to face the creditors. Vondel had to sacrifice the whole of his small fortune, and became a government clerk. He was pensioned after ten years' service, and died on the 5th of February 1679.
The more important of his thirty-two dramas are: Hierusalem Verwoest (“Jerusalem laid desolate”) (1620); Palamedes, of Vermoorde onnooselheyd (“Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence”) (1625); Gijsbreght van Aemstel (1637); De Gebroeders (1640), the subject of which is the ruin of the sons of Saul; Joseph in Egypten (1640); Maria Stuart, of gemartelde majesteit (1646); the pastoral of De Leeuwendalers (1648); Lucifer (1654); Salmoneus (Solomon) (1657); Jephtha (1659); Koning David in ballingschap ( King David in banishment), Koning David hersteld (“King David restored”) and Samson (1660); Batavische Gebroeders, the subject of which is the story of Claudius Civilis (1663); Adam in ballingschap (“Adam in exile”) (1664), after the Latin tragedy of Hugo Grotius. He also wrote translations from the tragedies of Seneca, Euripides and Sophocles; didactic poems, and much lyrical poetry beside what is to be found in the choruses of his dramas.
His complete works were edited by van Lennep (12 vols., 1850–1869). A bibliography (1888) was published by J. H. W. Unger, who revised van Lennep’s edition in 1888–94. Lucifer was translated into English verse by L. C. van Noppen (New York, 1898). See also E. Gosse, Studies in Northern Literature (1879); G. Edmundson, Milton and Vondel (1885), where Milton’s supposed indebtedness to Vondel is discussed; and critical studies by A. Baumgartner, S. J. (Freiburg, 1882); C. Looten (Lille, 1889), by J. A. Alberdingk Thijm (Portretten van Joost van den Vondel, 1876); and especially the chapters on Vondel (pp. 133–325) in W. J. A. Jonckbloet’s Geschiedenis der nederlandsche letterkunde (vol. iv. 1890).
VON HOLST, HERMANN EDUARD (1841–1904), German-American historian, was born at Fellin in the province of Livonia, on the 19th of June 1841. He was educated at the universities of Dorpat and Heidelberg, receiving his doctor’s degree from the latter in 1865. He emigrated to America in 1867, remaining there until 1872. He was professor of history in the newly reorganized university of Strassburg from 1872 to 1874, and at Freiburg in Baden from 1874 to 1892, and for ten years he was a member of the Baden Herrenhaus, and vice-president for four. He revisited the United States in 1878–79 and in 1884, and in 1892 he became head of the department of history at the university of Chicago. Retiring on account of ill-health in 1900, he returned to Germany and died at Freiburg on the 20th of January 1904. Both through his books and through his lectures at the university of Chicago, Von Holst exerted a powerful influence in encouraging American students to follow more closely the German methods of historical research. His principal work is his Constitutional and Political History of the United States (German ed., 5 vols., 1873–91; English trans. by Lalor and Mason, 8 vols., 1877–92), which covers the period from 1783 to 1861, though more than half of it is devoted to the decade 1850–60; it is written from a strongly anti-slavery point of view. Among his other writings are The Constitutional Law of the United States of America (German ed., 1885; English trans., 1887); John C. Calhoun (1882), in the American Statesmen Series; John Brown (1888), and The French Revolution Tested by Mirabeau’s Career (1894).
See the Political Science Quarterly, v. 677–78; the Nation, lxxviii. 65–67.
VONNOH, ROBERT WILLIAM (1858–), American portrait and landscape painter, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 17th of September 1858. He was a pupil of Boulanger and Lefebvre in Paris; became an instructor at the Cowles Art School, Boston (1884–85), at the Boston
