pleasure. He never took money for the copy, though, he tells us, some
people of good fortune were not so delicate: but he asked a hundred
books on large paper handsomely bound, to make presents to his friends;
it being unjust, he said, that while he served the public and enriched
the booksellers, he should injure his own fortune.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Ep. Gr. 3. p. 1.

[33] Ep. Caus. 1030.

[34] De Hist. Lat. lib. 3


XI. The same year, 1599, Grotius published another work which discovered
as much knowledge of the abstract sciences in particular, as the edition
of _Martianus Capella_ did of his learning in general.

Stevin, Mathematician to Prince Maurice of Nassau, had by his orders
composed a small treatise for the instruction of pilots in finding a
ship's place at sea. He formed a table of the variations of the needle,
according to the observations of Plancius, a famous geographer, and
added directions how to use it.

Grotius translated into Latin this work, which he could not have
understood without knowing the Mathematics, and particularly Mechanics;
Statics, and the art of working a ship, and of finding her place at sea,
being branches of that science.