Hugo de Groot, when thus for life immured, after having already undergone a preliminary imprisonment of nine months, was just thirty-six years of age.  Although comparatively so young, he had been long regarded as one of the great luminaries of Europe for learning and genius.  Of an ancient and knightly race, his immediate ancestors had been as famous for literature, science, and municipal abilities as their more distant progenitors for deeds of arms in the feudal struggles of Holland in the middle ages.

His father and grandfather had alike been eminent for Hebrew, Greek, and Latin scholarship, and both had occupied high positions in the University of Leyden from its beginning.  Hugo, born and nurtured under such quickening influences, had been a scholar and poet almost from his cradle.  He wrote respectable Latin verses at the age of seven, he was matriculated at Leyden at the age of eleven.  That school, founded amid the storms and darkness of terrible war, was not lightly to be entered.  It was already illustrated by a galaxy of shining lights in science and letters, which radiated over Christendom.  His professors were Joseph Scaliger, Francis Junius, Paulus Merula, and a host of others.  His fellow-students were men like Scriverius, Vossius, Baudius, Daniel Heinsius.  The famous soldier and poet Douza, who had commanded the forces of Leyden during the immortal siege, addressed him on his admission to the university as “Magne peer magni dignissime cura parentis,” in a copy of eloquent verses.

When fourteen years old, he took his bachelor’s degree, after a rigorous examination not only in the classics but astronomy, mathematics, jurisprudence, and theology, at an age when most youths would have been accounted brilliant if able to enter that high school with credit.

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,