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