would not shew any favour to heterodox works, in which such questions
were discussed: but the favourable reception it met with from all Europe
sufficiently made up this loss.

It will not be expected that we should make an analysis or enter into an
examination of the treatise _On the rights of war and peace_: that would
be a subject for a large work. We shall only observe that those who
would study the law of nations cannot read this book too often: they
will find in it the most agreeable learning joined to the strongest
reasoning. The whole is not equally correct: but what large work is not
liable to the same censure? Besides, we must consider that it has the
glory of being original in its kind[150], and the first treatise that
reduced into a system the most excellent and useful of all sciences.

It is divided into three books; to which is prefixed a preliminary
discourse treating of the certainty of law in general, and containing a
plan of the work.

The first book enquires into the origin of the rights of war and its
different kinds, as also the extent of the power of Sovereigns: he
explains in the second the nature and extent of those rights, whether
public or private, whose violation authorises the taking up arms: in
the third he treats of all that relates to the course of the war and the
treaties of peace which put an end to it.

The celebrated translator of Grotius and Puffendorf assures us that
Grotius took the hint of attempting a system of natural law from Lord
Bacon's works; and certainly, he adds, none was more proper for such an
undertaking. A clear head, an excellent judgment, profound meditation,
universal learning, prodigious reading, continual application to study