I. Lodewjjk Casper

Lodewjjk Casper, a Dutch scholar, born in Leeuwarden in 1715, died in Leyden, March 14, 1785. He became professor of Greek at Franeker in 1741, and also of Grecian antiquity in 1755, and from 1766 held those two chairs together with that of Dutch history at Leyden. He edited the works of several of the classical authors, and wrote a number of critical and other treatises, a collection of which was published by Erfurdt under the title Opuscula Philologica, Critica et Oratoria (2 vols. 8vo, Leipsic, 1809).

II. Jan, A Dutch Statesman

A Dutch Statesman Jan, son of the preceding, born in Leyden about 1759, died in Haarlem, Jan. 25, 1821. He was professor of jurisprudence successively at Franeker and Utrecht, but, being an active leader of the anti-Orange party, was compelled to leave Holland in 1787. After soliciting the cooperation of France, he accompanied the French auxiliary troops under Pichegru to the Netherlands in 1794-'5, and became a member of the legislative body of the new republic and professor of public law at Leyden. In 1796 he went as ambassador to Spain. In 1810 he attempted in vain, as an envoy of King Louis Bonaparte, to dissuade Napoleon from annexing Holland to France.