_London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._ ] [Illustration] GROTIUS. Hugh de Groot, or Hugo Grotius, as he is more generally designated, was born at Delft in Holland, on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1583[12]. His family was ancient and of noble extraction, both on the paternal and maternal sides. His father, John de Groot, who was Curator of the University of Leyden, was a lawyer and a poet of considerable reputation. Footnote 12: A discrepancy appears in the accounts of the different biographers of Grotius respecting the date of his birth; some fixing it in 1582, and others in 1583. The fact is only material with reference to the anecdotes of his early acquirements, and it is ascertained beyond a doubt, by a very simple circumstance. That Grotius was born on Easter Sunday, and on the 10th of April, appears in numerous passages of his letters and poems; and as Easter Sunday fell on the 10th of April in 1583, and did not fall on that day for many years before and afterwards, the date of his birth seems to be satisfactorily proved by that coincidence. See Nicolas’s Tables. The mind of Grotius was developed with unusual rapidity. In his ninth year he is said to have made extemporaneous Latin verses; in his fifteenth year he published his edition of Martian Capella, and before that time, his biographers state that he disputed twice publicly in the schools on questions of philosophy and civil law. His memory is said to have been so prodigious, that being present at the muster of a regiment on some particular occasion, he afterwards repeated accurately every name which had been called. Anecdotes of this kind are seldom to be traced to any good authority, and are frequently merely fabulous; but there is no doubt that, at a very tender age, Grotius had made extraordinary progress in the acquisition of learning. The knowledge and critical discernment displayed in his edition of Capella, which was unquestionably published in 1599, excited the astonishment of his contemporaries. Scaliger, De Thou, Lipsius, Casaubon, have characterised this work as a prodigy of juvenile learning; and those who have patience to read it at the present day will collect from the annotations, that at the age of fifteen the editor must have read critically and carefully the works of Apuleius, Albericus, Cicero, Aquila, Porphyry, Aristotle, Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny, Euclid, and many other ancient and modern authors, in different languages and on various subjects, and cannot fail to consider Grotius as a wonderful instance of early talents, industry, and acquirement. “_Reliqui viri_,” says his contemporary Heinsius, “_tandem fuêre_; Grotius _vir natus est_.” In the following year Grotius published the ‘Phenomena of Aratus,’ an astronomical poem, written originally in Greek, and translated into Latin by Cicero, when a very young man. Part of Cicero’s translation had been lost in course of time;