Professor At Leiden University
His proficiency in the classical 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 started lecturing, in 1603 he was appointed professor of poetics, in 1605 professor of Greek, and at the death of Merula in 1607 he succeeded that illustrious scholar as the 4th librarian of Leiden University Library. As a classical scholar Heinsius edited many Latin and Greek classical as well as patristic authors, amongst others: Hesiod (1603), Theocritus, Bion and Moschus (1603), Aristotle’s Ars poetica (1610), Clement of Alexandria (1616) and Terentius (1618). He brought out the Epistles of Joseph Scaliger in 1627.
Especially influential was his treatise De tragica constitutione (‘How to make a tragedy’, 1611). It was a personal and easily accessible version of what Aristotle had written on tragedy in his Poetics. A revised edition appeared in 1643 with a slightly different title: De constitutione tragoediae.
In 1609 he printed a first edition of his Latin orations. Ever more voluminous new editions appeared until the final edition of 1642 which comprised 35 orations. The collection ended with the ironical Laus pediculi ('In praise of the louse'), which was translated in English by James Guitard in 1634.
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