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Contemporary calf. Covers quite worn and marked, upper board detached, traces of label/bookplate on front pastedown; the binding distressed, but the text sound. Translation of Burigny's 1752 Vie de Grotius. Born in Delft in 1583, Grotius was shipwrecked on his way back from Sweden (as whose ambassador he had been serving in Paris) and died in Rostock in 1645. "If Grotius's merit stirred up envy, and if his projects of reconciliation procured him hatred, the more irreconcilable as it was founded on a religious pretext, he had also a great number of friends and judicious persons for him, who did justice to his virtue and his talents. We shall not enter into a detail of all the testimonies in his favour, they would fill a large volume: we shall confine ourselves to the Elogiums of those whose suffrages deserve most attention. We have already seen, that even when a boy he was highly extolled by the greatest men of his age. Isaac Pontanus, Meursius, James Gillot, Barlæus, John Dousa, M. de Thou, the great Scaliger, Casaubon, Vossius, Lipsius, Baudius, celebrated his childhood. He justified the great hopes that were so early conceived of him, and the praises he received were an additional motive to merit the public esteem. Baudius compared him to Scaliger, who, he said, was his favourite author . . . 'If any, says he in a letter dated October 8, 1607, can form a just notion of Grotius's merit, which exceeds all that can be said of it, I am one; and I think him equal to any office. Ignorant people, who judge of virtue by years and a long beard, may object to him his youth; but in my opinion that makes for him, since in his earliest youth he possesses the prudence and ripeness of understanding of the most aged.'". Seller Inventory # 29M100352
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