Charles de Coster

The success of his Légendes flamandes (1857) was increased by the illustrations of Félicien Rops and other friends.

He was a Freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Vrais Amis de l'Union et du Progrès Réunis of the Grand Orient of Belgium, where he was initiated on 7 January 1858.

His masterpiece was The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak (1867), a 16th-century romance, which was barely read in Belgium because it didn't meet up to the conventional standard of Belgian nationalism, but became popular over the rest of the world. In the preparation for this prose epic of the Gueux he spent some ten years.

His works however were not financially profitable; in spite of his government employment he was always in difficulties; and he died in much discouragement in May 1879 at Ixelles, Brussels and was interred there in the Ixelles Cemetery.

The expensive form in which Uylenspiegel was produced made it open only to a limited class of readers, and when a new and cheap edition in modern French appeared in 1893 it was received practically as a new book in France and Belgium.

Uylenspiegel (Eulenspiegel) has been compared to Don Quixote, and even to Panurge. He is the type of the 16th-century Fleming, and the history of his resurrection from the grave itself was accepted as an allegory of the destiny of the race. The exploits of himself and his friend form the thread of a semi-historical narrative, full of racy humor, in spite of the barbarities that find a place in it. This book also was illustrated by Rops and others.