He did not make them blue stockings, but saw that they acquired comely and useful arts and crafts, and he rendered them unique by teaching them to swim in the canal that ran through his garden.

He also was enabled to ensure for them the company of the best poetical intellects of the time--Vondel and Brederoo, Spiegel, Hooft and Huyghens.
Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neighbour of Visscher's in Amsterdam, the author of "Lucifer," a poem from which it has been suggested that Milton borrowed.

Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haberdashery with literature.

Spiegel was a wealthy patron of the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine Chamber with the painfully sentimental name.

Constantin Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram.