Grotius had every reason to be pleased with his reception by the English monarch and his court.  Between Grotius and Casaubon, who, at this time, resided in England, an intimacy had long subsisted.  It was cemented by mutual esteem, similarity of studies, and the earnest wish of each for an amicable termination of religious differences:  each respected the antient doctrines and discipline of the church; each thought that many of the points in controversy were disputes of words; that much might be gained by mutual concessions; and that the articles, upon which there was any substantial difference, were few.  “I esteem Grotius highly,”—­Casaubon writes in a letter to the president de Thou, “on account of his other great qualities; but particularly because he judges of the modern subjects of religious controversy like a learned and good man.  In his veneration for antiquity, he agrees with the wisest men.” ...  “I heartily pray God,” says Casaubon in a letter to Grotius, “to; preserve you:  as long as I shall live, I shall hold you in the highest esteem:  so much am I taken with your piety, your probity, and your admirable learning."[005]

CHAPTER III.

THE EARLY PUBLICATIONS OF GROTIUS.

There is not, perhaps, an instance of a person’s acquiring at an age equally early, the reputation, which attended the first publication of Grotius.  It was an edition, with notes, of the work of “Martianus Mineus Felix Capella, on the Marriage of Mercury and Philology, in two books; and of the same writer’s Seven Treatises on the Liberal Arts.”  They had been often printed; but all the editions were faulty:  a manuscript of them having been put into the hands of Grotius by his father, he communicated it to Scaliger, and by his advice undertook a new edition of them.

The time, in which Capella lived, and the place of his birth, are uncertain; the better opinion seems to be, that he flourished towards the third century, resided at Rome, and attained the consular dignity.  His works are written in prose, intermixed with poetry.  His diction has some resemblance to that of Tertullian, but is much more crabbed and obscure:  none, but the ablest Latin scholars, can understand him.  The Marriage of Mercury and Philology,—­or of Speech with Learning, is not uninteresting.  His other treatises contain nothing remarkable:  that upon music, is hardly intelligible; it is printed separately in the collection of Meibomius.  With all his harshness and obscurity, Capella seems to have been much studied in the middle ages,—­some proof that there was more learning in them, than is generally supposed,—­he is so often quoted by the writers of those times, that some persons have supposed that his work was then a text book in the schools.

[Sidenote:  The early publications of Grotius.]

[Sidenote:  CHAP.  III. 1597-1610.]