BROUKHUSIUS, or BROEKHUIZEN, JAN, a distinguished scholar, born in 1649 at Amsterdam, where his father was a clerk in the Admiralty. His father dying when he was very young, he was taken from literary pursuits, in which he had made extraordinary progress, 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 he rose 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 Grænius; and here he had the misfortune to be so deeply implicated 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; and was thus enabled to pursue his studies at his leisure. His company being disbanded in 1697, he received a pension, upon which he retired to a country-house near Amsterdam. He died in 1707, aged fifty-eight.
As a classical scholar, he is distinguished by his editions of Propertius and Tibullus, the former published in 1702, the latter in 1708. His Carmina were published at Utrecht, 1684, in 12mo; and more splendidly by Van Hoogstraaten, Amsterdam, 1711, 4to. His Dutch poems were also published at Amsterdam, 1712, 8vo, by the same person, with a life prefixed. Broekhusius also edited the Latin works of Sannazarius and Palæsius.