Dani

Poet and scholar, born in Gent, NW Belgium. He studied law and became professor in poetry at Leiden University, writing Latin verse, emblemata, historical works, and satire. He was the first Dutch poet to write in the classicist tradition, thus becoming a precursor of the literature of the 17th-c. His son Nicolaas (1620–81) and his grandson Nicolaas jr (1656–1718) were also literary scholars. His grandson wrote the picaresque novel Den vermakelijken avonturier (The Amusing Adventurer, 1695).

Daniel Heinsius (or Heins) (June 9, 1580 – February 25, 1655), one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance, was born at Ghent.

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.

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. 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 the 4th Librarian of Leiden University.

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 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.