fifteen years old, Henry the Fourth called him the Wonder of Holland: at eighteen, he obtained, as a Latin poet, a distinguished reputation. Of his classical attainments and general knowledge we need scarcely speak; they are every where felt and allowed. His very name calls up all that the imagination can conceive of greatness and true fame.

His most elaborate poem in the Dutch language, Bewijs van denwaeren Godtsdiesnt (Evidence of the true Religion,) was written during his confinement at Louvesteijn, in the year 1611. He laid the ground-work of that attention to religious duties which is so universal in Holland. The authority of his great name, always associated with Christianitywith peace with literature-with freedom and suffering and virtue has ever been a bulwark of truth and morals. Holland is at this moment disturbed by a renewal of the controversy in which Grotius and Barneveldt took the leading part; and it would seem as if the better cause has the weaker advocates. The modest epitaph which Grotius wrote for himself covers his remains at Delft:

"Grotius hic Hugo est, Batavum captivus et exul.
Legatus regni, Suecia magna, tui.”

His poetical works in his native language seem hardly worthy of his astonishing reputation. His son Pieter de Groot was a more successful Dutch

It

poet than his illustrious father. A single specimen may be allowed to intrude, if it were only that it is the production of Hugo Grotius. is the Dedication of the religious poem which we have mentioned.

Neemt naet onwaerdig aen dit werkstuk mijner handen.

"Receive not with disdain this product from my hand, O mart of all the world! O flower of Netherland! Fair Holland! Let this live, tho' I may not, with thee My bosom's queen! I show e'en now how fervently I've lov'd thee through all change-thy good and evil days

And love, and still will love, till life itself decays.

If here be aught on which thou may'st a thought bestow, Thank Him without whose aid no good from man can flow. If errors meet thy view, remember kindly then

What gathering clouds obscure the feeble eyes of men; And rather spare than blame this humble work of mine, And think Alas! 'twas made-'twas made at Louvesteijn.'*

BATAVIAN ANTHOLOGY.

Louvesteijn was the place of confinement whence his

wife liberated him.

WHY ARE PROFESSIONAL MEN INDIFFERENT

POETS?

PROFESSIONAL avocations have a deadening influence on the finer sensibilities of the mind; they destroy and annihilate our loftier aspirations, and reduce all that we perceive and feel to the dull standard of reality. Many of the great poets lived in the infancy of science, and the great ones who have lived as it was approaching maturity, have endeavoured as much as possible to blind their eyes to its progress; and to represent things as they seem, and not as they can be demonstrated to be.

Professional avocations are entirely at variance with the phantasms of imagination. It is theoretically a fine thing, (for instance,) to make the practice of law a profession, to devote our lives to the distribution of justice, to settle the differences of our neighbours, to come forward as the advocate of the oppressed, to plead the cause of the innocent, and to be the champion of those who have no earthly help. Nor is it a less fine thing to alleviate the corporeal sufferings of our fellow creatures, to smooth the pillow of sickness, to disseminate the blessing of health, and

to cause the languid and filmy eye of the dying man to look a blessing on our kind, though endeavours are unavailing. Turn the picture; and what do we behold in the actual and breathing world? The lawyer selling his eloquence to the support of any cause, and prostituting his talents for the sake of gain; while the physician measures out his kindnesses and attentions in the direct ratio of his expectations of being repaid.

It is not to be supposed that a divine, one who has made the oracles of truth his chief study, and the promulgation of them the serious business of his life, could even for a moment throw over his lines the flush of the ancient superstitions, at once so imaginative and poetical; and describe Jupiter in the conclave of Deities on the top of Olympus, instead of the everlasting and omnipresent "I AM," whose shadow Moses saw in the burning bush; and, instead of the sun and moon, which he has created, delineate Apollo with the golden bow, "the lord of poesy and light," and Diana with her woodnymphs.

It is not to be supposed that he will coincide in the opinions of a Dante, or a Homer, or promulgate their sublime, but often vague and absurd

illustrations of religion and morality; in making the princely game of war the theme of his muse, and accounting the savage valour of the combatants as the acme of perfection; or distort the doctrine of future rewards and punishments into a scheme of his own formation. His poetry must of necessity be regulated by the principles he professes, and by the views which it is his duty to inculcate.

Can it for a moment be supposed that a physician, one whose business it is to be acquainted with the weaknesses and miserable diseases to which our bodies are subject; that one whose daily occupation is the inspection of loathsome sores, and putrifying ulcers; could, in despite of his own observations, preserve, in the penetralia of his mind, a noble and unblemished image of human beauty; or that the anatomist, who has glutted over the debasing and repellent horrors of a dissecting table, where the severed limbs of his fellow creatures, "the secrets of the grave," are displayed in hideous deformity, to satisfy the hyæna-lust of knowledge, could look upon a female face with the rapture which the mind that conceived Shakspeare's Juliet must have done? or with that sense of angelic delicacy,