Scriverius third is the funeral oration in honour of Scaliger (1609). Of his numerous letters many are addressed to Grotius1. Petrus Scriverius of Haarlem (1576-1660), who lived at Leyden as an independent scholar, is best known as an editor of Martial (1619). He also edited the tragedies of Seneca and the works of Apuleius, but he was probably much more interested in writing his own poems and in printing repeated editions of the Basia of Joannes Secundus2. G. J. Vossius A far wider field of learning was covered by Gerard John Vossius (1577-1649), the greatest Polyhistor' of his age. Born of Dutch parentage in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg, he was educated at Dordrecht and Leyden, ultimately becoming Rector of the former in 1600 and of the latter in 1615. In 1622 he was appointed professor of Eloquence at Leyden, and, after holding that office for ten years, accepted the professorship of History at Amsterdam in 16313. Seventeen years later, at the age of 72, when he was climbing a ladder in his library, he had a fall that proved fatal, thus dying (as Reisig has phrased it) 'in the arms of the Muses'. The subjects of his most important works were Grammar, Rhetoric, and the History of Literature. His earliest literary distinction was won at Leyden in 1606, when he published a comprehensive treatise on Rhetoric, which, in the edition printed thirty years later, fills 1000 quarto pages. On its first appearance, Scaliger declared that he had learnt an infinite amount from its perusal, while Casaubon lauded its critical power and its wide erudition1. His text-book of Latin Grammar (1607) was repeatedly reprinted in Holland and Germany, while his learned and scholarly work on the same general subject, published in four volumes in 1635, under the title of Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatica, was warmly welcomed by Salmasius, and went through several editions, the latest of which appeared at Halle after the lapse of two centuries. He also wrote a treatise De Vitiis Sermonis et Glossematis Latino-barbaris in nine books. 1 Epp. et Orationes, ed. nova, 1642, portrait ib., and in Meursius, 154, and Boissard, VI 15. 2 Portrait of Scriverius in Meursius, 220, and Boissard, VI 27. 3 Meanwhile, he was offered a professorship of History at Cambridge in 1624, and was made Canon of Canterbury in 1629. 4 See also Saintsbury, ii 358. 5 Cp. Hallam, ii 2884. Four of these, published during his life-time (1645), may be briefly described as an Anti-barbarus; of the remaining five (1685), printed after his death, the most interesting part is on the verba falso suspecta, giving lists of many good Latin words that do not happen to be found in Cicero1. In the interval between these two works on Grammar, he published two important treatises on the History of Literature, entitled De Historicis Graecis (1623-4) and Latinis (1627), and a new edition of the former appeared at Leipzig as late as 1833. His treatise on Poetry (1647) was a work of wide influence. It resembles the corresponding treatise of the elder Scaliger. His interest in Art is attested by his brief Junius treatise De Graphice, while he is also the author of one of the earliest works on Mythology3. The brother of his second wife was Franciscus Junius (1589-1677), author of the De pictura veterum (1637 and 1694), and for thirty years librarian to the earl of Arundel1. Salmasius The Chair of History at Leyden, left vacant from the death of Scaliger in 1609 to the year 1631, might well have been offered to Gerard John Vossius, who had produced both of his important works on the Greek and Latin historians before the end of 1627. But in 1631 a native of another land, Claude Saumaise, was invited to fill the vacant Chair, and it cannot be regarded as an entirely accidental coincidence that in that very year Vossius resigned the professorship of Eloquence at Leyden for that of History at Amsterdam. Saumaise, or Salmasius, whose earlier career we have already noticed in connexion with the land of his birth, had produced in 1629 his great work on Solinus, but, after his appointment at Leyden, he edited authors of minor importance only, such as Scylax, Cebes, Simplicius, and Achilles Tatius, while he added 1 Cp. Hallam, ii 2874. 2 See Saintsbury, ii 359. On 3 De Origine et Progressu Idololatriae, siue de Theologia Gentili. G. J. Vossius, cp. Meursius, Ath. Bat. 267—275 (portrait ib. and in Boissard, IX n * 1; also on p. 308 supra); Blount, 680; C. Tollius (1649); H. Tollius (1778); De Crane (1820); Hallam, ii 2874 f; L. Müller, 40. 4 Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, 25; Stark, 126. Cp. Lessing's Laokoon, c. 2 and c. 29. 5 p. 285 supra. little to his reputation for learning, except by his work on usury, and his treatise disproving the existence of a separate Hellenistic dialect. Meursius Jan de Meurs, or Joannes Meursius (1579-1639), who was born near the Hague, was a student at Leyden, and, after receiving the degree of Doctor in Law at Orleans, became professor of History and of Greek in his own university (1610). During the fourteen years of his professorial activity, he printed for the first time a number of Byzantine authors; he also produced the editio princeps of the Elementa Harmonica of Aristoxenus (1616), and edited the Timaeus of Plato with the commentary and translation of Chalcidius (1617). Most of his numerous lucubrations are concerned with Greek Antiquities, including the festivals, games, and dances of Greece, and the mysteries of Eleusis. Gronovius, who has gathered many of these into his Thesaurus, describes Meursius as "the true and legitimate mystagogue to the sanctuaries of Greece'. He wrote much on the Antiquities of Athens and Attica, and the vast amount of rather confused learning that he has thus collected has been largely utilised by later writers on the same subject. His treatise on the Ceramicus Geminus was first published by Pufendorf (1663), to whom Graevius dedicated his edition of the Themis Attica of Meursius (1685). He commemorated the first jubilee of Leyden by producing, under the name of Athenae Batavae, a small quarto volume in two books, (1) a history of the Town and University with curious cuts representing incidents connected with the siege, and (2) a series of biographies of the principal professors, contributed by themselves, with lists of their works and with their portraits. The date of its publication (1625) marks a turning point in his career. The work is dedicated to the chancellor of the king of Denmark, who had lately invited him to accept the professorship of History at the Danish university of Soroë, where he passed the last fourteen years of his life. The portrait prefixed to his autobiography in the Athenae Batavae, presents us with a face marked with an exceptional alertness and keenness of expression'. 1 p. 191, and Boissard, VI 23. See also D. W. Moller's Disputatio (1693); J. V. Schramm (1715); and A. Vorst, in preface to posthumous ed. of Theophrastus, Char. 1640 (reprinted in Gronovius, Thes. x); Opera, Flor. 1741–63. |