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III. The pains which he was obliged to take, and the trouble he underwent at the beginning of his new settlement at Paris, did not diminish his passion for literature. April 23, 1621, he informs Vossius that the irksomeness of his solitary manner of life was relieved by his daily conversations with men of the greatest abilities.
The same scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic appears in the treatise On the Nature of the Art of Poetry of the Dutch scholar Vossius, who writes: As rhetoric is called by Aristotle the counterpart of dialect and that especially because it teaches the manner by which enthymemes may be utilized in communal matters, without a doubt poetic is also to be thought a part of logic, because it discloses the use of examples in fictitious matters.... But rhetoric and poetic seek not only to prove something, but also to delight; they seek not only understanding, but action as well.
Grotius was desirous that his son should make a voyage to the East-Indies , or, if that was too long a voyage, that he should go to the Brasils, or some other part of America, to learn what was not to be learnt at home, and might be of use to him afterwards. Vossius, in the mean time, gave ample testimonials not only of Peter's progress in the sciences, but also of his moral conduct.
If he had been a Canon of Christ Church or a Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would have left a highly respectable name to posterity; that he would have distinguished himself among the translators of the Bible, and among the Divines who attended the Synod of Dort; and that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon.
But Vossius I find, tho' he will not allow the Cranes, yet upon second Thoughts did admit of Pygmies here: For this Story of the Pygmies and the Cranes having made so much noise, he thinks there may be something of truth in it; and then gives us his Conjecture, how that the Pygmies may be those Dwarfs, that are to be met with beyond the Fountains of the Nile; but that they do not fight Cranes but Elephants, and kill a great many of them, and drive a considerable Traffick for their teeth with the Jagi, who sell them to those of Congo and the Portuguese.
For my part, I am resolved and accustomed to preserve friendship for all men, particularly Christians, although erring; and I shall never blush at it." He advances almost the same reasons to clear himself from the charge of Socinianism, in a long letter to Gerard Vossius , of which we shall make no extract to avoid repetitions. In fine, those who knew Grotius best have defended him on this head.
Grotius wrote to Vossius , when his Son set out on his return to Holland, begging of him to continue to watch over the studies of this youth; and assuring him at the same time, that the friendship, which the city of Amsterdam preserved for him, was the only reason which induced him to consent that any part of him should live in a country where he had been so ill-treated.
"He had never read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and an argument ad hominem consisted; and when he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus College, in , it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor and two or three Fellows of that learned society that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools should be able to work after that fashion with them."
That school, founded amid the storms and darkness of terrible war, was not lightly to be entered. It was already illustrated by a galaxy of shining lights in science and letters, which radiated over Christendom. His professors were Joseph Scaliger, Francis Junius, Paulus Merula, and a host of others. His fellow-students were men like Scriverius, Vossius, Baudius, Daniel Heinsius.
The happy revolution in his fortune made one in their minds, as he writes to Vossius . Immediately on his arrival at Paris in quality of Ambassador from Sweden, he was visited by six of the principal reformed Ministers, among whom were Faucher, Aubertin, Daillé, and Drelincourt.
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