JOANNES NICOLAIUS, an elegant writer of Latin poetry, was born at the Hague in the year 1511. His descent was from an ancient and honourable family in the Netherlands; and his father, Nicolas Everts, or Everardus, who was born in the neighbourhood of Middleburg, seems to have been high in the favour of the Emperor Charles V. On what account our author was called Secundus is not known. It could not be from the order of his birth, for he was the youngest son. Perhaps the name was not given him till he became eminent; and then, according to the fashion of the age, it might have arisen from some pun, such as his being Poetarum nemini Secundus. Poetry, however, was by no means the profession which his father wished him to follow. He intended him for the law, and when he could no longer direct his studies himself, placed him under the care of Jacobus Valerius; but it does not appear that Secundus devoted much of his time to legal pursuits. Poetry, and the sister arts of painting and sculpture, had engaged his mind at a very early period. Secundus, being determined to comply as far as possible with the wishes of his father, quitted Mechelen and went to France. At Bourges he studied the civil law under the celebrated Andreas Alciatus. Having spent a year under this eminent professor, and taken his degrees, Secundus returned to Mechelen, where he remained only a very few months. In 1533 he went into Spain, with warm recommendations to the Count of Nassau and other persons of high rank; and soon afterwards he became secretary to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, in a department of business which required no other qualifications than those he possessed in a very eminent degree, a facility in writing with elegance the Latin language. It was during his residence with this cardinal that he wrote his Basia, a series of wanton poems, of which the fifth, seventh, and ninth carmina of Catullus seem to have given the hint. Secundus was not, however, a servile imitator of Catullus. His expressions seem to be borrowed rather from Tibullus and Propertius; and in the warmth of his descriptions he surpasses everything that has been written on similar subjects by Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, C. Gallus, Ovid, or Horace. In 1535 he accompanied the Emperor Charles V. to the siege of Tunis, but gained few laurels as a soldier. Having now quitted the service of the Archbishop of Toledo, Secundus was employed in the same office of secretary by the Bishop of Utrecht; and so much had he hitherto distinguished himself by the classical elegance of his compositions, that he was soon called upon to fill the important post of private Latin secretary to the emperor, who was then in Italy. This was the most honourable office to which our author was ever appointed; but before he could enter upon it, death put a stop to his career of glory. Having arrived at Saint Amand, in Tournay, he was, upon the 8th of October 1536, cut off by a violent fever, in the very flower of his age, not having quite completed his twenty-fifth year. He was interred in the church of the Benedictines, of which his patron the bishop was abbot; and his near relations erected to his memory a marble monument, with a plain Latin inscription.

The works of Secundus have gone through several editions, of which the best and most copious is that of Scriverius, Leyden, 1631. It consists of Julia, eleg. lib. i.; Amores, eleg. lib. ii.; Ad Divessos, eleg. lib. iii.; Batia, styled by the editor incomparabilis et divinis procerus liber; Epigrammata: Odarum liber unus; Epistolarium liber unus; Epistolorum liber alter, heroico carmine scriptus; Funerum liber unus; Sylca et Carminum fragmenta; Poemata nonnulla fratrum; Itineraria Secundi trias; Epistola totidem, soluta oratione. They are prefixed by commendatory notices from many eminent men, particularly Lelius Greg. Gyraldis, the elder Scaliger, and Theodore Beza.