us and learning of one man. So great is the uncertainty of
posthumous reputation, and so liable is the fame even of the greatest
men to be obscured by those new fashions of thinking and writing which
succeed each other so rapidly among polished nations, that Grotius, who
filled so large a space in the eye of his contemporaries, is now perhaps
known to some of my readers only by name. Yet if we fairly estimate both
his endowments and his virtues, we may justly consider him as one of the
most memorable men who have done honour to modern times. He combined the
discharge of the most important duties of active and public life with
the attainment of that exact and various learning which is generally the
portion only of the recluse student. He was distinguished as an advocate
and a magistrate, and he composed the most valuable works on the law of
his own country; he was almost equally celebrated as an historian, a
scholar, a poet, and a divine; a disinterested statesman, a
philosophical lawyer, a patriot who united moderation with firmness, and
a theologian who was taught candour by his learning. Unmerited exile did
not damp his patriotism; the bitterness of controversy did not
extinguish his charity. The sagacity of his numerous and fierce
adversaries could not discover a blot on his character; and in the midst
of all the hard trials and galling provocations of a turbulent political
life, he never once deserted his friends when they were unfortunate, nor
insulted his enemies when they were weak. In times of the most furious
civil and religious faction he preserved his name unspotted, and he knew
how to reconcile fidelity to his own party, with moderation towards his
opponents. Such was the man who was destined to give a new form to the
law of nations, or rather to create a science, of which only rude
sketches and indigested materials were scattered over the writings of
those who had gone before him. By tracing the laws of his country to
their principles, he was led to the contemplation of the law of nature,
which be justly considered as the parent of all municipal law.[9] Few
works were more celebrated than that of Grotius in his own days, and in
the age which succeeded. It has, however, been the fashion of the last
half-century to depreciate his work as a shapeless compilation, in which
reason lies buried under a mass of authorities and quotations. This
fashion originated among French wits and declaimers, and it has been, I
kn