r Secretary, and I shall give
him lectures in law, which perhaps he would not have received from any
other. Let him bring with him what he has translated of the Institutes
of the Laws of Holland." Grotius soon changed his opinion; for he writes
to his brother[766], April 13, in the same year: "I would not have Peter
come here: therefore keep him with you."

The irresolution of Peter Grotius chagrined his father: "I am much
afraid, he writes to his brother[767], that he will some day smart for
his continual disobedience." Grotius told his son[768], that he must
expect no letters from him, unless he sent him the Latin translation of
the Institutes of the Laws of Holland, which he had long before enjoined
him to set about. Writing to his brother[769], he says, "I am much
afraid, that the counsels which Peter follows, and will follow
hereafter, are inconsistent with a good conscience. I am resolved to
refer the whole to God, and not intermeddle in it. I should be sorry to
have a repetition of the grief I suffer on his account."

Some time after, he was better satisfied with him, and wrote to his
brother William[770], Feb. 28, 1643, "I commend Peter highly for
applying to the bar: it is the way to acquire much useful knowledge, to
gain a character, and in time to lay up something, or to rise higher."
This is all that Grotius's letters inform us about his son: the sequel
of whose life is more interesting.

In 1652, he married, for love, an Attorney's daughter, rich and
handsome; but his mother and his other friends disliked the match. In
the year following, a powerful party wanted to get him made Greffier of
Amsterdam; but Veue Linchovius opposed him with great virulence and
violence; maintaining that such a place ought not to be given to the son
of an out-law, whose religious sentiments were erroneous. The
declamations of this hot-headed man preventing Grotius from being
nominated to the place, he bore the disappointment with great
tranquility. In 1655, he purposed to publish a complete edition of his
father's works, as appears by the privilege of the Emperor Ferdinand
III. dated Oct. 2, 1655, prefixed to his theological works. This
edition, which unfortunately he did not go on with, was to be in nine
volumes in folio. The first was to contain his _Annotations on the Old
Testament_; the second, the _Commentary on the New_; the third would
have comprehended his smaller theological pieces; the fourth, the
treatise _De Jure