Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/230

Rh men, Grotius returned home. He took the degree of doctor of law at Leyden, and entered on practice as an advocate. Notwithstanding his successes in his profession, which seamed to open the most brilliant career to his ambition, he was in secret hankering after the pleasures of literature. In 1600 he edited the remains of Aratus, with the versions of Cicero, Germanicus, and Avienus. Of the Germanicus Scaliger says &quot;A better text than that which Grotius has given, it is impossible to give;&quot; but it is probable that Scaliger had himself been the reviser. Grotius vied with the Latinists of his day in the composition of Latin verses. Some lines on the siege of Ostend were greatly admired, and- spread his fame beyond the circle of the learned. He wrote three dramas in Latin : Christus Fattens ; Sophom- phaneas, on the story of Joseph and his brethren; and Adamus Exul, a production which is still remembered as having given hints to Milton. The 3ophom.pha.neas was translated into Dutch by Yondel, and into English by Francis Goldsmith (1652); the Christus Fattens into English by George Sandys (1640). In 1603 the United Provinces, desiring to transmit to posterity some account of their struggle with Spain, deter mined to appoint a historiographer. Several candidates appeared, Dominicus Bandius of course among them. But the choice of the states fell upon Grotius, though only twenty years of age, and not having offered himself for the post. There was some talk at this time in Paris of calling Grotius to be librarian of the royal library. But it was nover meant seriously. It was a ruse of the Jesuit party, wao wished to persuade the public that the opposition to the appointment of Isaac Casaubon did not proceed from theological motives, since they were ready to appoint a Protestant in the person of Grotius. His next preferment was that of advocate-general of the fi.sc for the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. This was followed by his marriage, in 1608, to Mary van Reigesberg, a lady of family in Zeeland, a woman of great capacity and noble disposition, who proved every way worthy to be the wife of Grotius. He had already passed from occupation with the classics to studies more immediately connected with his profession. In the winter of 1604 he composed a treatise entitled De jure prcedce. This treatise he did not publish, and the MS. of it remained unknown to all the biographers of Grotius till 1868, when it was brought to light, and printed at the Hague under the auspices of Professor Fruin, It discovers to us that the principles and the plan of the celebrated De jure belli, which was not composed till 1625, more than twenty years after, had already been conceived by a youth of twenty-one. It has always been a question among the biographers what it was that determined Grotius, when an exile in Paris in 1625, to that particular subject, and various explanations have been offered ; among others we have been referred to a casual suggestion of Peiresc in a letter of early date. The discovery of the MS. of the De Jure prced&amp;lt;je discloses to us the whole history of Grotius s ideas, and shows us that from youth upwards he had steadily read and meditated in one direction, that, namely, of which the famous Dejurc lelli was the mature product. In the Dejure prcedte of 1604 we have much more than the germ of the later treatise Dejure belli. Its main prin ciples, and the whole system of thought implied in the later, are anticipated in the earlier work. The arrangement even is the same. The chief difference between the two treatises is one which twenty years experience iu affairs could not but bring, the substitution of more cautious and guarded language, less dogmatic affirmation, more .allowance for exceptions and deviations. The Jus pads was an addition introduced first in the later work, an insertion which is the cause of not a little of the confused arrangement which has been found fault with in the De jure belli. We learn further from the Dejure prcedce that Grotius was originally determined to this subject, not by any speculative intellectual interest, but by a special occasion presented by his professional engagements. He was re tained by the Dutch East India Company as their advocate. The company had been formed for the peaceful purposes of commerce, but had found itsel f compelled by the aggressions of the Portuguese to repel force by force. One of their captains, Heemskirk, had captured a rioh Portuguese galleon in the Straits of Malacca. The right of a private company to make prizes was hotly contested in Holland, and denied by the stricter religionists, especially the Men- nonites, who considered all war unlawful. Grotius under took to prove that Heemskirk s prize had been lawfully captured. In doing this lie was led to investigate the grounds of the lawfulness of war in general. Such was the casual origin of a book which long enjoyed such celebrity that it used to be said, with some exaggeration indeed, that it had founded a new science. A short treatise which was printed in 1G09, Grotius says without his permission, under the title of Mare Liberum, is nothing more than a chapter the 12th of the Dejure prcedce. It was necessary to Grotius s defence of Heemskirk that he should show that the Portuguese pretence that Eastern waters were their private property was untenable. Grotius maintains that the ocean is free to all, and cannot be appropriated by any one nation. The occasional char acter of this piece explains the fact that at the time of its appearance it made no sensation. It was not till many years afterwards that the jealousies between England and Holland gave importance to the novel doctrine broached in the tract by Grotius, a doctrine which Selden set himself to refute m his Mare clausum, 1632. Equally due to the circumstances of the time was his small contribution to constitutional history entitled De antiquitate reipublicce Batavce (1610). In this he vindi cates, on grounds of right, prescriptive and natural, the revolt of the United Provinces against the sovereignty of Spain. On the death of Elias Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius, though only thirty, succeeded him as pensionary of the city of Rotterdam. Foreseeing the troubles impending from the growing theological fermentation, he made the stipulation that he should be irremovable by the municipal authorities - a stipulation certain not to be respected should it ever be wanted for his protection. In 1613 he formed one of a deputation to the court of England, for the purpose of adjusting those differences which were already beginning to arise between the two young maritime powers, and which gave rise afterwards to a naval struggle disastrous to Holland. He was received by James with every mark of distinction due to his rising reputation. He also cultivated the acquaintance of the Anglican ecclesiastics Overal and Andrewes, and was much in the society of the celebrated scholar Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had been in correspondence by letter for many years. Though the mediating views iu the great religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant, by which Grotius was afterwards known, had been arrived at by him by independent reflexion, yet it could not but be that he would be confirmed in them by finding in England a developed school of thought of the same character already in existence. How highly Casaubon esteemed Grotius appears from a letter of his to Daniel Heinsius, dated London, 13th April 1613. &quot;I cannot say how happy I esteem myself in having seen so much of one so truly great 