ably received in England, particularly by Charles I. and Archbishop Laud, and a canonry at Canterbury, worth £100 a year, was conferred on its author, with the permission of non-residence. This was a compensation for the losses inflicted upon him by the Gomarists, which in one of his letters he valued at six thousand francs a year.—(See complete works, Amsterdam, 1695-1701, 6 vols., folio; Toll, Oratio de Gerh. Joh. Vossio, grammatico perfecto; Amsterdam, 1778.)—K. E.
VOSS, Johann Heinrich, an eminent German poet, translator, and Hellenist, was born at Sommersdorf, near Waren (Mecklenburg-Schwerin), on the 20th February, 1751. By his straitened circumstances he was driven to teaching, before he had completed his own education. From his hard earnings he assisted his parents, and contrived to save a small sum in order to pursue his studies. In 1772 he was invited by Boie, to whom he had sent some poems for publication in the Musenalmanach, to come to Göttingen, where Boie greatly befriended him, and provided for his support. Voss became, at the same time, a member of the philological seminary under Heyne, and of the so-called "Hainbund," of which he must be considered the chief representative. In the former capacity he soon opposed his great master, and began that literary feud against him, which only ended with the death of Heyne; in the latter he formed intimate connections with Boie (whose younger sister he afterwards married), with the brothers Stolberg, Burger, Hölty, and others. Voss thus acquired a profound knowledge of antiquity, and a great familiarity with modern poetry. In 1778 he was appointed rector of the Latin school at Otterndorf, near Cuxhaven, whence, in 1782, he was translated in the same capacity to Eutin. Here he discharged the arduous duties of his office during twenty-three years, and yet found leisure for his immortal translation of Homer, his unrivalled idyl Luise, and a number of other works, both philological and poetical. In 1805 he was called as honorary professor to Heidelberg, where till his death on the 20th March, 1826, he devoted all his time to literary labours, in which he was partly assisted by his sons, Henry and Abraham. Few men have contributed more to diffuse classical learning in Germany than Voss has done, by his solid and tasteful translations. His translation of Homer, a standard work for all times, was followed by the no less admirable Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, by Æschylus, Aristophanes, select passages from Ovid, Aratus, Hesiod, Orpheus, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace. These translations were mostly accompanied by dissertations and notes, which often opened new paths for the explanation of the respective authors. To Voss' translations from the ancients must be added that of Shakspeare's plays, undertaken in his old age, conjointly with his above-mentioned sons. Although of no common order, it has yet been superseded by that of Schlegel. The original idyls of Voss were modelled after those of Theocritus; their objects were taken from German country-life, and skilfully moulded into the classic form. The hexameter, introduced by Klopstock into German poetry, reached its perfection in the hands of Voss, and was successfully adapted by him even to the Low German idiom. Voss excelled no less as a song-writer, and his poetry, like his life, is everywhere replete with moral purpose. Last, but not least in the long list of his works, stand his "Mythological Letters," and his "Antisymbolik," which were directed against Heyne and Creuzer, and mark a decided progress in the field of mythology.—K. E.
VOSSIUS, Isaac, son of Gerard Johann, a learned critic, was born at Leyden in 1618. His youth was spent in such studies as might be expected from his father's favourite pursuits. In 1639 he prepared an edition of the Periplus of Scylax. During a tour of three years in Italy, France, and England, he gathered a goodly number of MSS., of which, at his death, he had an unexampled collection. In 1638 he went to Sweden on the invitation of Queen Christina, whom he instructed in Greek. But Saumaise (Salmasius), another of the scholarly court, treated him with great contempt, among other opprobrious terms calling him usually ex-bibliotheca, bibliopola regius, &c. When the capricious queen heard that Vossius was preparing to avenge himself, she discarded him, and he left Stockholm and retired to Holland in 1658. Afterwards he edited Pomponius Mela and some of his father's works. In 1670 Vossius came to England, having lost a pension which had been given him by the States, under a commission to write an account of the English and Dutch wars. He was made doctor of laws at Oxford, and the king in 1673 gave him a canonry at Windsor, with apartments in the castle. In this situation he remained till his death, 10th February, 1688. Isaac Vossius was scarcely behind his father in erudition, but his critical judgments are disfigured by paradoxes. His habits are said to have been dissolute, and his manners, though he moved in the best society, somewhat rude. Nor does he seem to have had any fixed religious opinions, and he refused to partake of the sacrament before his death; one characteristic argument for his compliance being, that though he would not honour God by observing the ordinance, yet he should not disgrace his canonry by his refusal. Once, when he was descanting on some extravagant history of Chinese prodigies which he credited, the king remarked to his courtiers, "This strange divine believes everything but the Bible." His large library and collection of manuscripts were purchased by the university of Leyden. His works are numerous and learned. He edited Justin, Catullus, the epistles of Barnabas and Ignatius, and published, among other treatises, "De vera ætate Mundi;" "De Septuaginta interpretibus," &c., a defence of the chronology of the Septuagint; "De Poematum cantu;" "De Sibyllinis Oraculis;" "Observationum liber," &c.—J. E.
VOUET, Simon, a distinguished French painter, was born at Paris in 1590. He visited Constantinople when still young, and then went to Italy, where he studied the works of Paul Veronese in Venice, and of Caravaggio in Rome. In the latter city he was elected president of the academy of St. Luke, and acquired so great a reputation that Louis XIII. in 1627 invited him to return to France, and appointed him his principal painter. Vouet introduced the academic taste into France, and is sometimes honoured with the title of the founder of the French school; but he had much of the machinist in his style. Most of the distinguished painters of the period of Louis XIV. were scholars of Vouet, as Le Sueur, Le Brun, Dufresnoy, Mignard, &c. He died at Paris in 1649.—R. N. W.
VULCANIUS, Bonaventure, an eminent Flemish scholar, was born at Bruges on the 30th June, 1538. His father (the Peter Vulcanius of whom frequent mention is made by Erasmus) was his first tutor, but he was afterwards sent to Louvain, where he made extraordinary progress in his studies. The celebrated Spanish cardinal, Francisco de Mendoza, at this time sent to Louvain for a young man well skilled in the learned languages. Vulcanius was at once selected from the crowd of his fellow-students, and became Mendoza's secretary and librarian. The cardinal also employed him in translating such works of the Greek Fathers as he required in the preparation of his work, De naturali nostra per dignam Eucharistiæ sumptionem cum Christo unione. After an absence of twelve years Vulcanius returned to the Low Countries; but finding everywhere tumult and confusion, in consequence of the war that was then being carried on, he went first to Cologne, then to Basle, and afterwards to Geneva. At each of these towns he published some of his writings. He latterly became professor of Greek in the university of Leyden, where he died on the 9th of October, 1614, having filled the Greek chair for the long period of thirty-two years. His funeral oration was pronounced by the celebrated Cunæus. Vulcanius appears to have been utterly destitute of religion. He is said to have flown in a passion on his death-bed, because some of his friends exhorted him to prepare for the final change. His works, which are numerous, were mostly translations from the Greek ecclesiastical writers. He was, however, author of a treatise on the Gothic tongue, and of some prefaces to classic authors. The following epigram was written by himself:—
Ter denos diem Leidæ binosque per annos
Cattigenûm pubem Grajugenûm ore loqui.
Nunc manibus pedibusque occulisque ac auribus æger,
Et senio languens lampada trado aliis.
