So much contradiction chagrined him greatly, and altered his temper[680]:  by seeking to establish peace among men, he lost the tranquility of his own mind, which he had preserved in his deepest adversity.  It is said he became suspicious, and peevish, and lost that politeness towards his friends, which had so advantageously distinguished him from other men of learning.  It is even reported (but by one of his enemies, indeed) that one day he abused M. du Puis in his [Grotius’s] own house, and turned him out of doors, for presuming to contradict him[681].  Yet it is evident from his letters, that he was most intimate with the two illustrious brothers, Mess. du Puis, and was under high obligations to them.  “You have always been my best friends (he writes to them, Nov. 19, 1633[682]) and almost my only ones since Rigaut went to Metz, Salmasius to Leyden, and Tilenus died.”

A letter to his brother[683], Nov. 1, 1641, clearly shews the change of his temper.  Blondius having used Reigersberg, Grotius’s friend and relation, very ill, he writes to his brother William:  “If Blondius should speak to you, tell him I have a son here, who will send him a challenge, for affronting the Senator Reigersberg.”  This menace, which seemed to be an approbation of duelling, much surprised William Grotius, who had read in the Rights of War and Peace[684], that this doctrine was clearly condemned by the gospel.  Grotius proves in another part of the same book, “That honour being nothing but the opinion we have of our distinguishing qualities, he who bears with a slight injury, thereby discovers a patience above the common; and thus, instead of lessening his honour, adds to it; and that if some people, from a wrong judgment, bestow improper epithets on this virtue and turn it into ridicule; these wrong judgments change not the nature of the thing, nor lessen its real value.  This has not only been acknowledged by the first Christians, but by the ancient Philosophers, who, as we have elsewhere shewn, ascribed an impatient resentment of insults to meanness of soul.  Should any one even publish things capable of hurting us with good men, that will not authorise us to kill him.  If there are authors who maintain the contrary, it is an erroneous opinion which clasheth even with the principles of natural law:  for killing the person who attacks our reputation is a bad way of defending it.”  Thus Grotius thought in his best days.  We have enlarged on this head, to shew into what contradiction, and excess of weakness, great men may fall.  William Grotius was no doubt astonished at his brother’s vivacity, and probably gave him some check for it; for Grotius afterwards writes to him, “What I wrote to you, relating to my son and Blondius, I did it not because I approved of such things, but because that or something worse might happen.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[640] Huetiana, S. 16. p. 46.

[641] M. Huet is mistaken:  it was not Rivetus whom Grotius meant by this verse of Catullus, but Laet.