The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then in England, next at Ryswick and lastly at Flushing. In 1594, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the university of Franeker to perfect himself in Greek under Henricus Schotanus. He stayed at Franeker half a year, and then settled at Leiden for the remaining sixty years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he found Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Douza, Paulus Merula and others, and was soon taken into the society of these celebrated men as their equal.
His proficiency in the classic languages won the praise of all the best scholars of Europe, and offers were made to him, but in vain, to accept honourable positions outside Holland. He soon rose in dignity at the university of Leiden. In 1602 he was made professor of Latin, in 1605 professor of Greek, and at the death of Merula in 1607 he succeeded that illustrious scholar as librarian to the university. The remainder of his life is recorded in a list of his productions. He died at the Hague on the 25th of February 1655.
The Dutch poetry of Heinsius is of the school of Roemer Visscher, but attains no very high excellence. It was, however, greatly admired by Martin Opitz, who was the pupil of Heinsius, and who, in translating the poetry of the latter, introduced the German public to the use of the rhyming alexandrine.
He published his original Latin poems in three volumes--Iambi (1602), Elegiae (1603) and Poemata (1605); his Emblemata amatoria, poems in Dutch and Latin, were first printed in 1604. In the same year he edited Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, having edited Hesiod in 1603. In 1609 he printed his Latin Orations. In 1610 he edited Horace, and in 1611 Aristotle and Seneca. In 1613 appeared in Dutch his tragedy of The Massacre of the Innocents; and in 1614 his treatise De politica sapientia. In 1616 he collected his original Dutch poems into a volume. He edited Terence in 1618, Livy in 1620, published his oration De contemptu mortis in 1621, and brought out the Epistles of Joseph Scaliger in 1627.
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