After nearly two years he returned to Göttingen. With the sponsorship of Heyne, whose influence in Hannover was then at its height, and whose son-in-law he would later (1796) become, he was in June 1787 named to the faculty of the university itself as an "außerordentlicher Professor" of Philosophy. At Göttingen, such established scholars as Johann Christoph Gatterer, August Ludwig von Schlözer and Spittler were still active as historians. Now making his first appearance as a public lecturer, Heeren was careful to confine his teaching to a middle ground between History and Philology, partly out of diffidence and partly of a congenital indecisiveness. He thus avoided for some years a direct commitment to the discipline in which he would later become famous. During this period Heeren undertook with his friend Thomas Christian Tychsen a “Library of Ancient Literature and Art,” which had a short-lived existence. At the same time he initiated publication of the edition of Johannes Stobaeus's "Eclogues" that he had prepared years earlier. The first part appeared at Easter in 1792. The edition would reach its conclusion with the fourth part some nine years later. The reception given the first part was by not encouraging; the work of Thomas Gaisford and Augustus Meineke would eventually supplant the completed edition.