Isaac Vossius and his Circle: His Life until his Farewell to Queen Christina of Sweden, 1618-1655.(Book Review)

Isaac Vossius and his Circle: His Life until his Farewell to Queen Christina of Sweden, 1618-1655. By FRANS F. BLOK (Groningen: Egbert Forsten P., 2000; pp. 520. F 125).

THE author of this handsome tome--well-bound with, shall I say 'imperial purple' or 'wine-dark'(?) covers, enhanced by golden lettering--is Dr F. F. Blok, senior reader emeritus of the now regrettably defunct Neo-Latin Institute of the University of Amsterdam. In the heyday of that aerie of Neo-Latin studies during the 1970s, he was one of several luminaries gracing it, such as C.S.M. Rademaker, P. Tuynman, and C. Heesakkers. A student of the formidable Jan Waszink at Leiden, Blok is especially known for a lifetime of thorough, responsible, and painstaking study of Dutch humanism of the seventeenth century and the so-called Republic of Letters, the best known fruits of which are his Nicolaas Heinsius in dienst van Christina of Sweden (1949) and Caspar Barlaeus (1976), as well as his greatly informative anthology of sample Neo-Latin correspondence of the seventeenth century. Originally published in Dutch in 1999, Isaac Vossius and his Circle now brings to a close Blok's series of studies on the second generation of remarkable seventeenth-century Dutch classicists that rose upon the foundations laid by such forefathers as G.J. Vossius, Daniel …