the work. The prisoner began with a modest disclaimer, saying that after
the labours of Erasmus and Beza, Maldonatus and Jasenius, there was
little for him to glean. Becoming more enthusiastic as he went on, he
completed a masterly commentary on the Four Evangelists, a work for which
the learned and religious world has ever recognized a kind of debt of
gratitude to the castle of Loevestein, and hailed in him the founder of a
school of manly Biblical criticism.

And thus nearly two years wore away. Spinning his great top for
exercise; soothing his active and prolific brain with Greek tragedy,
with Flemish verse, with jurisprudence, history, theology; creating,
expounding, adorning, by the warmth of his vivid intellect; moving the
world, and doing good to his race from the depths of his stony sepulchre;
Hugo Grotius rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive. The
man is not to be envied who is not moved by so noble an example of great
calamity manfully endured.

The wife of Hoogerbeets, already advanced in years, sickened during the
imprisonment and died at Loevestein after a lingering illness, leaving
six children to the care of her unfortunate husband. Madame de Groot had
not been permitted by the prison authorities to minister to her in
sickness, nor to her children after her death.

Early in the year 1621 Francis Aerssens, Lord of Sommelsdyk, the arch
enemy of Barneveld and of Grotius, was appointed special ambassador to
Paris. The intelligence--although hardly unexpected, for the stratagems
of Aerssens had been completely successful--moved the prisoner deeply.
He felt that this mortal enemy, not glutted with vengeance by the
beheading of the Advocate and the perpetual imprisonment of his friend,
would do his best at the French court to defame and to blacken him. He