RHYNIUS, a distinguished Dutch poet, was born at Zwolle, in Overysel, in 1753. He studied law at Leyden, but not requiring to follow out that profession for a subsistence, he devoted most of his time to the study of art and polite literature. He rose to be burgomaster of his native town, and was afterwards appointed receiver at the Admiralty College. In 1779 he obtained a prize for a poem on the blessings of peace, and in 1781 the gold medal of the Leyden Poetical Society for a treatise on the essential characters of epic poetry. Of his tragedies the best is his Inez de Castro; and his poem of The Grave is reckoned one of the best didactic poems in the Dutch language.

Many of his occasional pieces are remarkable for purity of feeling and loftiness of moral aim. He died in 1824.