historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 3. Biography
came after a ‘repeated request’ of Boxhorn to assign this office to him. 152 Boxhorn,
then, did not always get what he wanted, and when he did, it did not
always come easily.
2. Personal life
According to his biographer and friend Jacobus Baselius, Boxhorn ‘had a long
and upright posture. And his hair, together with a grey face, gave that posture
a certain ugly dark colour’. This dark colour once led a Dutch soldier to take
Boxhorn for a Spaniard. 153 The French philosopher Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-
1720), who visited Leiden on his way back from Sweden to Paris somewhere
between 1652 and 1653, draws an unflattering picture of Boxhorn. According
to Huet, Boxhorn had a ‘harsh and livid face … dotted with red pustules, like
the face which the dictator Sulla allegedly had’. And like Sulla, Boxhorn ‘displayed
in talk a violent and savage person’. 154
Huet was not the only contemporary who made unflattering comments
on Boxhorn’s person. The German antiquarian Thomas Reinesius (1587-1667),
‘mentor’ of the so-called ‘Altdorf circle’ that criticised Boxhorn, speaks of Boxhorn’s
‘fieriness’ or ‘tempestousness’ (calor) and ‘credulity’ (credulitas). 155 On
the other hand, Lambert Barlaeus, in his funeral oration on Boxhorn’s death,
holds that Boxhorn ‘was a man with a mild and pleasant character, who was
152 Molhuysen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, Vol. 2, p. 247. ‘C. en B. benoemen
Boxhorn op zijn herhaald verzoek tot Prof. ordinarius Eloquentiae.’
153 Baselius, “Historia vitae & obitus”, xviii. ‘Statura corporis ipsi fuit longa & erecta, & quam cum
subfuscâ facie crines efficiebant qualemcunque deformem nigredinem eam candore animi sui albicantem
reddere solebat. Unde cum Bredâ captâ inter exeuntium Hispanorum spectatores & ipse esset, &
à nostrate quodam milite ipso audiente pro Hispano ob dictam nigredinem habitus, illi homini facetè
nonminus quam vere respondebat …’
154 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus (Henri du Sauzet; Amsterdam,
1718), p. 125. ‘Nec spectantes fallebat Marci Zuerii Boxhornii atrox & lurida facies, rubentibus
perspersa pustulis, qualis illa fuisse fertur Sullae Dictatoris; alloquio enim itidem asperum quippiam
& ferox praeferebat.’ Huet had visited Leiden before, probably on his outward journey to Sweden.
Huet travelled from Paris to Sweden and back again somewhere between February 1652 and May 1653.
His unflattering picture of Boxhorn may perhaps have been inspired by his affection for Salmasius.
For the dates of Huet’s journey to Sweden, his view of Boxhorn, and his affection for Salmasius, see
April G. Shelford, Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life,
1650-1720 (University of Rochester Press; Rochester, 2007), pp. 29, 38. For Sulla, see Plutarch, Fall of
the Roman Republic: Six Lives. Translated by Rex Warner with Introduction and Notes by Robin Seager
(Penguin Books; London, 1 st ed. 1958, 1972), p. 67. ‘But the terribly sharp and dominating glare of his
blue eyes was made still more dreadful by the complexion of his face in which the pale skin was covered
with angry blotches of red.’ For my translation I have greatly benefitted from the translation offered by
Daniel Droixhe in Daniel Droixhe, “Boxhorn’s Bad Reputation: A Chapter in Academic Linguistics”, in
Klaus D. Dutz (ed.), Speculum historiographiae linguisticae: Kurzbeiträge der IV. Internationalen Konferenz zur
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften (Nodus Publikationen; Münster, 1989), p. 370.
155 Droixhe, “Boxhorn’s Bad Reputation”, pp. 366-67.