tion as that of the treatise
_Of the rights of war and peace_.

This so excellent and highly esteemed work was however severely
criticised by one of the most learned men of the last century.
Salmasius, who had been Grotius's admirer, and who in the latter part of
his life did all he could to destroy his reputation, never spoke of _The
rights of war and peace_ but with the greatest contempt: which was the
more shocking; as, in his dispute with the English on the right of
Kings, he every where copies Grotius, and when he departs from him is
sure to blunder: with which Boeclerus has justly reproached him.

We cannot deny Salmasius profound learning; but he was a man swayed by
his humour, often judged from passion and jealousy, had too high an
opinion of himself and too much contempt for others, and in fine found
fault with whatever was not his own thought, as the learned Gronovius
remarks.

He ventured to advance, some time after Grotius's death, that a
professor of Helmsted had undertaken to prove that every page of
Grotius's book contained gross blunders; and he speaks it in such a
manner as gives room to think he was of the same opinion. This Professor
was called John de Felde; he published his notes against Grotius in
1653. Had the great Salmasius been still alive, I believe, says M.
Barbeyrac, that with all his secret jealousy against the author
censured, he would have found himself greatly disappointed in his
expectations from John De Felde's project: never was any thing so
wretched. One would be surprised a Mathematician could reason so ill,
did not other much more signal examples clearly demonstrate that the
knowledge of the Mathematics does not always produce justness of thought
in matters foreign to that science. We find here a man who seeks only
for censure, and knows not what he would have: he fights with his own
shadow, and for the most part does not understand the thoughts of the
author he attacks; and when he does understand them draws the most
groundless consequences that ever were heard of. His gloomy and
unhappily subtle mind cannot bear the light which Grotius presents to
him. The embroiled ideas and distinctions of his Peripatetic philosophy
form round him a thick cloud impenetrable by the strongest rays of
truth. This is Barbeyrac's judgment of him. Felde met with some
partisans of Grotius who confuted him: Theodorus Graswinckel, Advocate,
his relation and friend, undertook his defence; and the redo