On leaving the University he was attached to the embassy of Barneveld and
Justinus van Nassau to the court of Henry IV. Here he attracted the
attention of that monarch, who pointed him out to his courtiers as the
"miracle of Holland," presented him with a gold chain with his miniature
attached to it, and proposed to confer on him the dignity of knighthood,
which the boy from motives of family pride appears to have refused.
While in France he received from the University of Orleans, before the
age of fifteen, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in a very
eulogistic diploma. On his return to Holland he published an edition of
the poet Johannes Capella with valuable annotations, besides giving to
the public other learned and classical works and several tragedies of
more or less merit. At the age of seventeen he was already an advocate
in full practice before the supreme tribunals of the Hague, and when
twenty-three years old he was selected by Prince Maurice from a list of
three candidates for the important post of Fiscal or Attorney-General of
Holland. Other civic dignities, embassies, and offices of various kinds,
had been thrust upon him one after another, in all of which he had
acquitted himself with dignity and brilliancy. He was but twenty-six
when he published his argument for the liberty of the sea, the famous
Mare Liberum, and a little later appeared his work on the Antiquity of
the Batavian Republic, which procured for him in Spain the title of "Hugo
Grotius, auctor damnatus." At the age of twenty-nine he had completed
his Latin history of the Netherlands from the period immediately
preceding the war of independence down to the conclusion of the Truce,
1550-1609--a work which has been a classic ever since its appearance,
although not published until after his death. A chief magistrate of
Rotterdam, member of the States of Holland and the States-General,
jurist, advocate, attorney-general, poet, scholar, historian, editor of
the Greek and Latin classics, writer of tragedies, of law treatises, of
theological disquisitions, he stood foremost among a crowd of famous