JAPIX (or JAPICX, or JAPIKS), GYSBERT, a Frisian poet, of whom we are told by Dr. J. H. Halbertsma, the most emioeut living Frisian author, that his productions are masterpieces of artless nature, with wonderful power of expression, and that "for any one who has a feeling for true poetry, it is worth the trouble to learn Frisian to enjoy the beauties of Gysbert Japix." He was born at Bolaward, town of Friesland, in 1603, and was the son of a joiner named Jacob Gyaberts, from whom ho took his name, Japix being the Frisian for Jacob's, or son of Jacob. The family name was Holckama, but it does not appear to have been assumed otherwise than in official documents by either father or eon. Little is known of the biography of Gysbert till 1637, when he became schoolmaster at Bolaward, and also clerk to a congregation there, and these offices he retained to the end of his life. He was married, and had six children, five of whom he lost in succession by death; and the remaining one, Salves, whom he brought up as a surgeon, turued out so dissipated and extravagant that his father was ruined by having to pay his debts. The son died in 1666 of the plague, which ravaged Friesland a year after the great plague of London, and in a few days after his father and mother were carried off by the same epidemic.
Japix was noted during his life for his warm affection for his native tongue, the Frisian, which at that time appeared likely to disappear in a few generations before the advance of Dutch. A story is told by the biographers of Francis Junius the younger, the great philologist, that Junius, on hearing in the course of his studies in Anglo-Saxon that a language closely akin to it was still spoken in a corner of Holland, left England in search of it, and took up his residence for two or three years in Bolsward to make himself master of the idiom. The Dutch investigator J. W. de Crane has disproved some of the particulars of this story ; but it is well established that Junius made visite to Bolsward to study tho Frisian language, and that he was acquainted with Japix. Among the manuscripts which Junius bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, are copies of the principal poems of Japix, including two or three pieces which were unpublished till discovered by Halbertsma, and included in his Letterkundige Naooget.' The first edition of Gyabert's poems was issued after his death, in 1668, under the title of 'Friesche ltymlerye,' by his friend Haringhouck, a bookseller of Bolsward ; a second edition, with considerable additions in prose, edited by Gabbema, appeared in 1681. For about a century
it remained the only printed book in the modern Frisian language. When Dr. Johnson, in 1763, requested Boswell, who was then studying at Utrecht, to procure for him a specimen of Frisian, Boswell bought a Japix, and observed, in a letter on the subject, " It is the only book they have ; it is amazing that they have no translation of the Bible, no treatises of devotion, nor even any of the ballads and story-books which are so agreeable to country-people." The literature of Friesland has since considerably increased ; but it is still one of the very few European languages which have no translation of any portion of the Scriptures, though it possesses one of the ' Merchant of Venice' and 'Julius Caesar.' Japix is still, we believe, the only author iu the language who bas reached a second edition. A third edition, the must valuable and complete of all, was published by Epkema in 1821, and was followed in 1824 by a Dictionary, compiled by the editor, of the words used by Japix, many of which are now obsolete. A fourth, issued at Franeker in 1855, is accommodated by the editor (Dykstra) to the new system of Frisian orthography proposed by Halbertsma. The poems are divided into three parts, the first and second consisting of miscellaneous songs and poems, and the third of translations of some of the Psalms of David. The prose works are chiefly trans lations from the French, fragments relating to the Frisian language, and familiar letters. An animated translation of several of the poems into English was given by Sir John Bowring in 1829, in an article in the 'Foreign Quarterly Review.' The enthusiasm for the works of Japix has been wonderfully revived among the Frisians of this gene ration. In 1823 a bust of him was erected in St. Martin's church at Bolsward by public subscription, and an account of the proceedings on the occasion was published In an octavo volume, entitled ' Hulde eon Gysbert Japiks (' Homage to Gyabert Japix '), from which most of the particulars here sainted have been taken.
JAltDYN, KAREL DE, one of the best of the Dutch landscape, pastoral, and genre painters, and the most distinguished of N. Bergheen's scholars. He was a native of Amsterdam, and lived some time In Rome, where the Flemish painters gave him the nickname of Bokkebaart (goat-beard). He died at Venice in 1678, aged about forty. There are many spirited etchings by his band. (iloubraken, Groove Schotstnesaa, ; Bartsch, Peirdre-Grareur.)