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, v1 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. Putschius Helias Putschius of Antwerp (1580-1606) was educated at Stade, near the mouth of the Elbe, and at Leyden, where he came under the influence of Scaliger. To Scaliger, who calls him an egregius juvenis', he dedicated his comprehensive collection of Grammaticae Latinae auctores antiqui (1605), printed from manuscript sources at Heidelberg, one of the many places in Germany where he lived before that early death at Stade, which prevented his completing the notes to that great work?. Cluverius Cluverius of Danzig (1580—1623) visited Poland and Germany before he was sent to learn Law at Leyden. But he was much more attracted to the study of Geography, and, under the influence of Scaliger, he devoted himself entirely to that subject. He served as a soldier for two years in Hungary, travelled in Bohemia, and in England and Scotland, as well as in France, Germany, and Italy. He had a wide knowledge of modern languages, and the Italian Cardinals endeavoured to retain him in Rome, but he remained true to Leyden, where he ended his days in receipt of an annual stipend, which did not involve any public duties as a teacher. He produced three important works on the ancient geography of Germany (1616), Sicily, with Sardinia and Corsica (1619), and Italy (1624). The first of these, as well as his Introduction to Geography, which was published after his death, was twice reprinted3. D. Heinsius A far longer life than that of Putschius the grammarian, or Cluverius the geographer, was allotted to one who was born in or about the same year as both. Daniel Heinsius of Ghent (1580-1-1655) studied Law at Leyden, but his real interest lay in Plato and Aristotle. He found a friend in Scaliger, who bequeathed to him a number of his books, while Heinsius was deeply devoted to the memory of that great scholar, and published three orations in his honour'. His work on Greek authors, such as Hesiod and Aristotle's treatise on Poetry, was (except in the case of Theocritus) better than his work on Latin authors. He studied the treatise of Aristotle in connexion with the Ars Poëtica of Horace. His edition of the former (1611) is the only considerable contribution to the criticism and elucidation 1 Scal. Sec. s. v. 2 Life by Ritterhusius, 1608 and 1706, and by Wilcken, Lindenbrogii (1723), 82-112. 3 Cp. Meursius, Ath. Bat. 290 f, with portrait, and D. Heinsius, Oratio ix. Or. ii, iii, xxix. of the work that was ever produced in the Netherlands. It includes several satisfactory corrections of the text, a Latin translation completed in 'two or three days', and a number of original notes. In his pamphlet De Tragoediae Constitutione, published in the same year, he deals with all the essential points in Aristotle's treatise, giving proof that he has thoroughly imbibed the author's spirit, and adding illustrations from the Greek tragic poets, and from Horace and Seneca'. It was through this work that he became a centre of Aristotelian influence in Holland'. His influence extended, in France, to Chapelain and Balzac3, to Racine and Corneille'; in Germany, to Opitz'; and, in England, to Ben Jonson, who in his Discoveries (1641) borrows largely from Heinsius, without mentioning his name. He also borrows from the criticisms of Heinsius on Plautus and Terence, first printed in that scholar's edition of Horace (1612)'. His transpositions in the text of the Ars Poëtica and his verbal conjectures in the other works of Horace have been disapproved by Bentley and other critics; but his treatise De Satyra Horatiana is not without merit. His critical notes on Silius (1600), on the tragedies of Seneca (1611), and on Ovid (1629), are not much more valuable than those on Horace. Nevertheless, his criticisms were highly praised by his contemporaries and by his immediate successors'. His Latin orations are sometimes deemed to be unduly grandiloquent, but his elegiac poems have a more uniform elegance than those of Buchanan, which they closely resemble. His Juvenilia in particular are marked by a repeated preference for a polysyllabic ending to the pentameter line". He was highly honoured at home and abroad; he was made a Councillor of State by Gustavus Adolphus, and a knight of St Mark by the Republic 1 Saintsbury, ii 356 f. 2 Jonkbloet, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, 1889ʻ, iv 214 f. 3 ib. iii 60 f. Pref. to Don Sanche. Beckherrn, Opitz, Ronsard, und Heinsius, 1888. • This has been pointed out to me by Prof. Spingarn, to whom all the above references are due. 7 See esp. Spingarn's Sources of Jonson's Discoveries', in Modern Philology, ii (1905) 451-460, and M. Castelain's critical ed. (Paris, 1907). 8 L. Müller, 39. 10 Hallam, iii 51a. Blount, 698. |