SECUNDUS, Joannes Nicoaius, 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 Nicoaus Everardus, who was born in the neighbourhood of Middleburg, seems to have been high in the favour of the Emperor Charles V., as he was employed by that monarch in several stations of considerable importance. We find him first a member of the grand parliament or council of Mechelen, afterwards president of the states of Holland and Zealand at the Hague, and lastly holding a similar office at Mechelen, where he died on the 5th of August 1532, aged seventy.

These various employments did not occupy the whole of Everardus’s time. Notwithstanding the multiplicity of his business, he found leisure to cultivate letters with great success, and even to act as preceptor to his own children, who were five sons and three daughters. They all took the name of Nicoaii from their father; but 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 Valeardus. This man is said to have been every way well qualified to discharge the important trust which was committed to him; and he certainly gained the affection of his pupil, who, in one of his poems, mentions the death of Valeardus with every appearance of unfeigned sorrow. Another tutor was soon provided; 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[7:20:73] his mind at a very early period; and the imagination, on which these lay hold, can with difficulty submit to the dry study of musty civilians. Secundus is said to have written verses when but ten years old; and from the vast quantity which he left behind him, we have reason to conclude that such writing constituted his principal employment. He found time, however, to carve figures of all his own family, of his mistresses, of the Emperor Charles V., of several eminent personages of those times, and of many of his intimate friends; and in the last edition of his works, published by Scriverius, at Leyden, 1631, there is a print of one of his mistresses with this inscription around it: Vatis amatoris Julia sculpta manu.

Secundus having nearly attained the age of twenty-one, and being determined, as it would seem, to comply as far as possible with the wishes of his father, quitted Mechelen, and went to France, where, at Bourges, a city in the Orleannois, he studied the civil law under the celebrated Andreas Alciatus. Alciatus was one of the most learned civilians of that age; but that which undoubtedly endeared him much more to our author, was his general acquaintance with polite literature, and more particularly his taste in poetry. Having studied 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 what 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 every thing 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. The hardships which were endured at that memorable siege were but little suited to the soft disposition of a votary of Venus and the muses; and upon an enterprise which might have furnished ample matter for an epic poem, it is remarkable that Secundus wrote nothing which has been deemed worthy of preservation. Having returned from his martial expedition, he was sent by the cardinal to Rome to congratulate the pope upon the success of the emperor’s arms, but was taken so ill on the road, that he was not able to complete his journey. He was advised to seek, without a moment’s delay, the benefit of his native air; and that happily recovered him.

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 the district of Tournay, in order to meet, upon business, with the bishop of Utrecht, 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 already mentioned. It consists of, 1. Julia, eleg. lib. i.; 2. Amores, eleg. lib. it.; 3. Ad Diversos, eleg. lib. iii.; 4. Basia, styled by the editor incomparabilis er divinus prorsus liber; 5. Epigrammata; 6. Odarum liber unus; 7. Epistolarum liber unus; 8. Epistolarum liber alter, heroico carmine scriptus; 9. Funerum liber unus; 10. Sylvie et Carminum fragmenta; 11. Poemata nonnulla fratrum; 12. Itineraria Secundi tria; 13. Epistolae totidem, soluta oratione. Of these works it would be superfluous in us to give any character, after the ample testimonies prefixed to them by Lelius Greg. Gyraldus, the elder Scaliger, Theodore Beza, and others equally celebrated in the republic of letters, who all speak of them as excellent.