BROUKHUSIUS, JANUS, or JOHN BROEKHUIZEN, a distinguished scholar in Holland, was born on the 20th November 1649, at Amsterdam, where his father was a clerk in the admiralty. He learned the Latin tongue under Hadrian Fumius, and made a prodigious progress in polite literature; but, his father dying when he was very young, he was taken from literary pursuits, and placed with an apothecary at Amsterdam, with whom he lived several years. But not liking the pestle and mortar, he went into the army, where his behaviour raised him to the rank of lieutenant-captain; and, in 1674, he was sent with his regiment to America in the fleet under Admiral de Ruyter, but returned to Holland the same year. In 1678 he was sent to the garrison at Utrecht, where he contracted a friendship with the celebrated Grævius; and here, though a person of an excellent temper, he had the mis-
fortune to be so deeply engaged in a duel, that, according to the laws of Holland, his life was forfeited; but Grænius wrote immediately to Nicholas Heinsius, who obtained his pardon from the stadtholder. Not long afterwards he became a captain of one of the companies then at Amsterdam; which post placed him in an easy situation, and gave him leisure to pursue his studies. His company being disbanded in 1697, a pension was granted him, upon which he retired to a country-house near Amsterdam, where he saw but little company, and spent his time among books. He died on the 15th December 1707, at the age of fifty-eight.
As a classical editor, he is distinguished by his labours upon Tibullus and Propertius: the latter was published in 1702, the former in 1708. He was an excellent Latin poet himself, and a volume of his poems was published at Utrecht, 1684, in 12mo; but a very noble edition of them was given by Van Hoogstraten, at Amsterdam, 1711, in 4to. His Dutch poems were also published at Amsterdam, 1712, in 8vo, by the same person, who prefixed his life, extracted from the funeral oration pronounced over him by Peter Burman. Broukhusius was also an editor of Sannazarius's and Palearius's Latin works. With regard to his Latin poems, the authors of the Journal de Trévoux have observed that his verses are written in good enough Latin, but want fire, and that the author was a poet by art, not by nature; an observation which is applicable to the bulk of modern Latin poems.