or Van den Drieche, John, a learned Protestant and eminent critic, was born at Oudenaarde, in Flanders, on the 28th June 1550. Being designed for the church, he learned Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Louvain; but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, they both retired to England, where the son became professor of oriental languages at Oxford. Upon the pacification of Ghent, however, they returned to their own country, and Drusius was appointed professor of the oriental languages at Leyden. From this place he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of Hebrew in the university of Franeker; an office which he discharged with great honour till his death, which happened in 1616. His works prove him to have been well skilled in Hebrew and in Jewish antiquities; and in 1600 the states-general employed him, at a salary of four hundred florins a year, to write notes on the most difficult passages in the Old Testament; but being frequently interrupted in prosecuting this undertaking, it was not published until after his death. He carried on an extensive correspondence with the learned in different countries; for, besides letters in Hebrew, Greek, and other languages, there were found amongst his papers upwards of two thousand written in Latin. He had a son, John, who died in England at the age of twenty-one, and was accounted a prodigy of learning.

Drusius, who was a man of real learning, and deserves the encomiums which Simius has bestowed on him, is also favourably mentioned by Bayle, Freher, Meursius, Foppens, Paquot, and others. Paquot states the number of the printed works and treatises of Drusius at forty-eight, and of the unprinted at upwards of twenty. Of the former more than two thirds were inserted in the collection entitled *Critici Sacri, sive Annotata doctissimorum Viro-rum in vetus et novum Testamentum*, Amsterdam, 1698, in 9 vols. folio, or London, 1660, in 10 vols. folio. Amongst the works of Drusius not to be found in this collection may be mentioned, 1. *Alphabetum Hebraicum vetus*, 1584, 4to; 2. *Tabulae in Grammaticam Chaldæicam ad usum Juventutis*, 1602, 8vo; 3. An edition of *Sulpitius Severus*, Franeker,