VOLUME XII SLICE V Greek Law to Ground-Squirrel (continued 11)

GROLMANN, KARL WILHELM GEORG VON (1777-1843), Prussian soldier, was born in Berlin on the 30th of July 1777. He entered an infantry regiment when scarcely thirteen, became an ensign in 1795, second lieutenant 1797, first lieutenant 1804 and staff-captain in 1805. As a subaltern he had become one of Scharnhorst’s intimates, and he was distinguished for his energetic and fearless character before the war of 1806, in which he served throughout, from Jena to the peace of Tilsit, as a staff officer, and won the rank of major for distinguished service in action. After the peace, and the downfall of Prussia, he was one of the most active of Scharnhorst’s assistants in the work of reorganization (1809), joined the Tugendbund and endeavoured to take part in Schill’s abortive expedition, after which he entered the Austrian service as a major on the general staff. Thereafter he journeyed to Cadiz to assist the Spaniards against Napoleon, and he led a corps of volunteers in the defence of that port against Marshal Victor in 1810. He was present at the battle of Albuera, at Saguntum, and at Valencia, becoming a prisoner of war at the surrender of the last-named place. Soon, however, he escaped to Switzerland, whence early in 1813 he returned to Prussia as a major on the general staff. He served successively under Colonel von Dolffs and General von Kleist, and as commissioner at the headquarters of the Russian general Barclay de Tolly. He took part with Kleist in the victory of Kulm, and recovered from a severe wound received at that action in time to be present at the battle of Leipzig. He played a conspicuous part in the campaign of 1814 in France, after which he was made a major-general. In this rank he was appointed quartermaster-general to Field Marshal Prince Blücher, and, after his chief and Gneisenau, Grolmann had the greatest share in directing the Prussian operations of 1815. In the decision, on the 18th of June 1815, to press forward to Wellington’s assistance (see Waterloo Campaign), Grolmann actively concurred, and as the troops approached the battle-field, he is said to have overcome the momentary hesitation of the commander-in-chief and the chief of staff by himself giving the order to advance. After the peace of 1815, Grolmann occupied important positions in the ministry of war and the general staff. His last public services were rendered in Poland as commander-in-chief, and practically as civil administrator of the province of Posen. He was promoted general of infantry in 1837 and died on the 1st of June 1843, at Posen. His two sons became generals in the Prussian army. The Prussian 18th infantry regiment bears his name.

General von Grolmann supervised and provided much of the material for von Damitz’s Gesch. des Feldzugs 1815 (Berlin, 1837-1838), and Gesch. des Feldzugs 1814 in Frankreich (Berlin, 1842-1843).

See v. Conrady, Leben und Wirken des Generals Karl von Grolmann (Berlin, 1894-1896).

GROMATICI (from groma or gruma, a surveyor’s pole), or Agrimensores, the name for land-surveyors amongst the Romans. The art of surveying was probably at first in the hands of the augurs, by whom it was exercised in all cases where the demarcation of a templum (any consecrated space) was necessary. Thus, the boundaries of Rome itself, of colonies and camps, were all marked out in accordance with the rules of augural procedure. The first professional surveyor mentioned is L. Decidius Saxa, who was employed by Antony in the measurement of camps (Cicero, Philippics, xi. 12, xiv. 10). During the empire their number and reputation increased. The distribution of land amongst the veterans, the increase in the number of military colonies, the settlement of Italian peasants in the provinces, the general survey of the empire under Augustus, the separation of private and state domains, led to the establishment of a recognized professional corporation of surveyors. During later times they were in receipt of large salaries, and in some cases were even honoured with the title clarissimus. Their duties were not merely geometrical or mathematical, but required legal knowledge for consultations or the settlement of disputes. This led to the institution of special schools for the training of surveyors and a special literature, which lasted from the 1st to the 6th century A.D. The earliest of the gromatic writers was Frontinus (q.v.), whose De agrorum qualitate, dealing with the legal aspect of the art, was the subject of a commentary by Aggenus Urbicus, a Christian schoolmaster. Under Trajan a certain Balbus, who had accompanied the emperor on his Dacian campaign, wrote a still extant manual of geometry for land surveyors (Expositio et ratio omnium formarum or mensurarum, probably after a Greek original by Hero), dedicated to a certain Celsus who had invented an improvement in a gromatic instrument (perhaps the dioptra, resembling the modern theodolite); for the treatises of Hyginus see that name. Somewhat later than Trajan was Siculus Flaccus (De condicionibus agrorum, extant), while the most curious treatise on the subject, written in barbarous Latin and entitled Casae litterarum (long a school text-book) is the work of a certain Innocentius (4th-5th century). It is doubtful whether Boëtius is the author of the treatises attributed to him. The Gromatici veteres also contains extracts from official registers (probably belonging to the 5th century) of colonial and other land surveys, lists and descriptions of boundary stones, and extracts from the Theodosian Codex. According to Mommsen, the collection had its origin during the 5th century in the office of a vicarius (diocesan governor) of Rome, who had a number of surveyors under him. The surveyors were known by various names: decempedator (with reference to the instrument used); finitor, metator or mensor castrorum in republican times; togati Augustorum as imperial civil officials; professor, auctor as professional instructors.

The best edition of the Gromatici is by C. Lachmann and others (1848) with supplementary volume, Die Schriften der römischen Feldmesser (1852); see also B. G. Niebuhr, Roman History, ii., appendix (Eng. trans.), who first revived interest in the subject; M. Cantor, Die römischen Agrimensoren (Leipzig, 1875); P. de Tissot, La Condition des Agrimensores dans l’ancienne Rome (1879); G. Rossi, Groma e squadro (Turin, 1877); articles by F. Hultsch in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgem. Encyklopädie, and by G. Humbert in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités; Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature, 58.

GRONINGEN, the most northerly province of Holland, bounded S. by Drente, W. by Friesland and the Lauwers Zee, N. and N.E. by the North Sea and the mouth of the Ems with the Dollart, and on the S.E. by the Prussian province of Hanover. It includes the islands of Boschplaat and Rottumeroog, belonging to the group of Frisian islands (q.v.). Area, 887 sq. m.; pop. (1900) 299,602. Groningen is connected with the Drente plateau by the sandy tongue of the Hondsrug which extends almost up to the capital. West, north and north-east of this the province is flat and consists of sea-clay or sand and clay mixed, except where patches of low and high fen occur on the Frisian borders. Low fen predominates to the east of the capital, between the Zuidlardermeer and the Schildmeer or lakes. The south-eastern portion of the province consists of high fen resting on diluvial sand. A large part of this has been reclaimed and the sandy soil laid bare, but on the Drente and Prussian borders areas of fen still remain. The so-called Boertanger Morass on the Prussian border was long considered as the natural protection of the eastern frontier, and with the view of preserving its impassable condition neither agriculture nor cattle-rearing might be practised here until 1824, and it was only in 1868 that the building of houses was sanctioned and the work of reclamation begun. The gradual extension of the seaward boundaries of the province owing to the process of littoral deposits may be easily traced, a triple line of sea-dikes in places marking the successive stages in this advance. The rivers of Groningen descending from the Drente plateau meet at the capital, whence they are continued by the Reitdiep to the Lauwers Zee (being discharged through a lock), and by the Ems canal (1876) to Delfzyl. The south-eastern corner of the province is traversed by the Westerwolde Aa, which discharges into the Dollart. The railway system belongs to the northern section of the State railways, and affords communication with Germany via Winschoten. Steam-tramways also serve many parts of the province. Agriculture is the main industry. The proportion of landowners is a very large one, and the prosperous condition of the Groningen farmer is attested by the style of his home, his dress and his gig. As a result, however, partly of the usual want of work on the grasslands in certain seasons, there has been a considerable emigration to America. The ancient custom called the beklem-recht, or lease-right, doubtless accounts for the extended ownership of the land. By this law a tenant-farmer is able to bequeath his farm, that is to say, he holds his lease in perpetuity.

The chief agricultural products are barley, oats, wheat, and in the north-east flax is also grown, and exported to South Holland and Belgium. On the higher clay grounds cattle-rearing and horse-breeding are also practised, together with butter and cheese making. The cultivation of potatoes on the sandgrounds in the south and the fen colonies along the Stads-Canal invite general comparison with the industries of Drente (q.v.). Hoogezand and Sappemeer, Veendam and Wildervank, New and Old Pekela, New and Old Stads-Canal are instances of villages which have extended until they overlap one another and are similar in this respect to the industrial villages of the Zaan Streek in North Holland. The coast fisheries are considerable. Groningen (q.v.) is the chief and only large town of the province. Delfzyl, which was formerly an important fortress for the protection of the ancient sluices on the little river Delf (hence its name), has greatly benefited by the construction of the Ems (Eems) ship-canal connecting it with Groningen, and has a good harbour with a considerable import trade in wood. Appingedam and Winschoten are very old towns, having important cattle and horse markets. The pretty wood at Winschoten was laid out by the Society for Public Welfare (Tot Nut van het Algemeen) in 1826.

GRONINGEN, a town of Holland, capital of the province of the same name, at the confluence of the two canalized rivers the Drentsche Aa and the Hunse (which are continued to the Lauwers Zee as the Reit Diep), 16 m. N. of Assen and 33 m. E. of Leeuwarden by rail. Pop. (1900) 67,563. Groningen is the centre from which several important canals radiate. Besides the Reit Diep, there are the Ems Canal and the Damster Diep, connecting it with Delfzyl and the Dollart, the Kolonel’s Diep with Leeuwarden, the Nord Willem’s Canal with Assen and the south and the Stads-Canal south-east with the Ems. Hence steamers ply in all directions, and there is a regular service to Emden and the island of Borkum via Delfzyl, and via the Lauwers Zee to the island of Schiermonnikoog. Groningen is the most important town in the north of Holland, with its fine shops and houses and wide clean streets, while brick houses of the 16th and 17th centuries help it to retain a certain old-world air. The ancient part of the town is still surrounded by the former moat, and in the centre lies a group of open places, of which the Groote Markt is one of the largest market-squares in Holland. Pleasant gardens and promenades extend on the north side of the town, together with a botanical garden. The chief church is the Martini-kerk, with a high tower (432 ft.) dating from 1477, and an organ constructed by the famous scholar and musician Rudolph Agricolo, who was born near Groningen in 1443. The Aa church dates from 1465, but was founded in 1253. The Roman Catholic Broederkerk (rebuilt at the end of the 19th century) contains some remarkable pictures of the Passion by L. Hendricx (1865). There is also a Jewish synagogue. The large town hall (in classical style), one of the finest public buildings, was built at the beginning of the 19th century and enlarged in 1873. The provincial government offices also occupy a fine building which received a splendid front in 1871. Other noteworthy buildings are the provincial museum of antiquities, containing interesting Germanic antiquities, as well as medieval and modern collections of porcelain, pictures, &c.; the courts of justice (transformed in the middle of the 18th century); the old Ommelanderhuis, formerly devoted to the administration of the surrounding district, built in 1509 and restored in 1899; the weigh-house (1874); the civil and military prison; the arsenal; the military hospital; and the concert hall.

The university of Groningen, founded in 1614, received its present fine buildings in classical style in 1850. Among its auxiliary establishments are a good natural history museum, an observatory, a laboratory, and a library which contains a copy of Erasmus’ New Testament with marginal annotations by Luther. Other educational institutions are the deaf and dumb institution founded by Henri Daniel Guyot (d. 1828) in 1790, a gymnasium, and schools of navigation, art and music. There are learned societies for the study of law (1761) and natural science (1830); an academy of fine arts (1830); an archaeological society; and a central bureau for collecting information concerning the province.

As capital of the province, and on account of the advantages of its natural position, Groningen maintains a very considerable trade, chiefly in oil-seed, grain, wood, turf and cattle, with Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. The chief industries are flax-spinning, rope-making, sugar refining, book printing, wool combing and dyeing, and it also manufactures beer, tobacco and cigars, cotton and woollen stuffs, furniture, organs and pianos; besides which there are saw, oil and grain mills, machine works, and numerous goldsmiths and silversmiths.

History.—The town of Groningen belonged originally to the pagus, or gouw, of Triantha (Drente), the countship of which was bestowed by the emperor Henry II. on the bishop and chapter of Utrecht in 1024. In 1040 Henry III. gave the church of Utrecht the royal domain of Groningen, and in the deed of gift the “villa Cruoninga” is mentioned. Upon this charter the bishops of Utrecht based their claim to the overlordship of the town, a claim which the citizens hotly disputed. At the time of the donation, indeed, the town can hardly be said to have existed, but the royal “villa” rapidly developed into a community which strove to assert the rights of a free imperial city. At first the bishops were too strong for the townsmen; the defences built in 1110 were pulled down by the bishop’s order two years later; and during the 12th and 13th centuries the see of Utrecht, in spite of frequent revolts, succeeded in maintaining its authority. Down to the 15th century an episcopal prefect, or burgrave, had his seat in the city, his authority extending over the neighbouring districts known as the Gorecht. In 1143 Heribert of Bierum, bishop of Utrecht, converted the office into an hereditary fief in favour of his brother Liffert, on the extinction of whose male line it was partitioned between the families of Koevorden (or Coevorden) and van den Hove. Gradually, however, the burghers, aided by the neighbouring Frisians, succeeded in freeing themselves from the episcopal yoke. The city was again walled in 1255; before 1284 it had become a member of the Hanseatic league; and by the end of the 14th century it was practically a powerful independent republic, which exercised an effective control over the Frisian Ommelande between the Ems and the Lauwers Zee. At the close of the 14th century the heirs of the Koevorden and van den Hove families sold their rights, first to the town, and then to the bishop. A struggle followed, in which the city was temporarily worsted; but in 1440 Bishop Dirk II. finally sold to the city the rights of the see of Utrecht over the Gorecht.

The medieval constitution of Groningen, unlike that of Utrecht, was aristocratic. Merchant gild there was none; and the craft gilds were without direct influence on the city government, which held them in subjection. Membership of the governing council, which selected from its own body the four rationales or burgomasters, was confined to men of approved “wisdom,” and wisdom was measured in terms of money. This Raad of wealthy burghers gradually monopolized all power. The bishop’s bailiff (schout), with his nominated assessors (scabini), continued to exercise jurisdiction, but members of the Raad sat on the bench with him, and an appeal lay from his court to the Raad itself. The council was, in fact, supreme in the city, and not in the city only. In 1439 it decreed that no one might trade in all the district between the Ems and the Lauwers Zee except burghers, and those who had purchased the burwal (right of residence in the city) and the freedom of the gilds. Maximilian I. assigned Groningen to Albert of Saxony, hereditary podestat of Friesland, but the citizens preferred to accept the protection of the bishop of Utrecht; and when Albert’s son George attempted in 1505 to seize the town, they recognized the lordship of Edzart of East Frisia. On George’s renewal of hostilities they transferred their allegiance to Duke Charles of Gelderland, in 1515. In 1536 the city passed into the hands of Charles V., and in the great wars of the 16th century suffered all the miseries of siege and military occupation. From 1581 onwards, Groningen still held by the Spaniards, was constantly at war with the “Ommelanden” which had declared against the king of Spain. This feud continued, in spite of the capture of the city in 1594 by Maurice of Nassau, and of a decree of the States in 1597 which was intended to set them at rest. In 1672 the town was besieged by the bishop of Münster, but it was successfully defended, and in 1698 its fortifications were improved under Coehoorn’s direction. The French Republicans planted their tree of liberty in the Great Market on the 14th of February 1795, and they continued in authority till the 16th of November 1814. The fortifications of the city were doomed to destruction by the law of the 18th of April 1874.

See C. Hegel, Städte und Gilden (Leipzig, 1891); Stokvis, Manuel d’histoire, iii. 496 (Leiden, 1890-1893); also s.v. in Chevalier, Répertoire des sources hist. du moyen âge (Topo-bibliographie).

GRONLUND, LAURENCE (1846-1899), American socialist, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the 13th of July 1846. He graduated from the university of Copenhagen in 1865, began the study of law, removed to the United States in 1867, taught German in Milwaukee, was admitted to the bar in 1869, and practised in Chicago. He became a writer and lecturer on socialism and was closely connected with the work of the Socialist Labor party from 1874 to 1884, then devoted himself almost exclusively to lecturing until his appointment to a post in the bureau of labour statistics. He again returned to the lecture field, and was an editorial writer for the New York and Chicago American from 1898 until his death in New York City on the 15th of October 1899. His principal works are: The Coming Revolution (1880); The Co-operative Commonwealth in its Outlines, An Exposition of Modern Socialism (1884); Ça Ira, or Danton in the French Revolution (1888), a rehabilitation of Danton; Our Destiny, The Influence of Socialism on Morals and Religion (1890); and The New Economy (1898).

GRONOVIUS (the latinized form of Gronov), JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1611-1671), German classical scholar and critic, was born at Hamburg on the 8th of September 1611. Having studied at several universities, he travelled in England, France and Italy. In 1643 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and history at Deventer, and in 1658 to the Greek chair at Leiden, where he died on the 28th of December 1671. (See also Fabretti, Raphael.) Besides editing, with notes, Statius, Plautus, Livy, Tacitus, Aulus Gellius and Seneca’s tragedies, Gronovius was the author, amongst numerous other works, of Commentarius de sestertiis (1643) and of an edition of Hugo Grotius’ De jure belli et pacis (1660). His Observationes contain a number of brilliant emendations. His son, Jakob Gronovius (1645-1716), is chiefly known as the editor of the Thesaurus antiquitatum Graecarum (1697-1702, in 13 volumes).

See J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. ii. (1908); F. A. Eckstein in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie.

GROOM, in modern usage a male servant attached to the stables, whose duties are to attend to the cleaning, feeding, currying and care generally of horses. The earliest meaning of the word appears to be that of a boy, and in 16th and 17th century literature it frequently occurs, in pastorals, for a shepherd lover. Later it is used for any male attendant, and thus survives in the name for several officials in the royal household, such as the grooms-in-waiting, and the grooms of the great chamber. The groom-porter, whose office was abolished by George III., saw to the preparation of the sovereign’s apartment, and, during the 16th and 17th centuries, provided cards and dice for playing, and was the authority to whom were submitted all questions of gaming within the court. The origin of the word is obscure. The O. Fr. gromet, shop boy, is taken by French etymologists to be derived from the English. From the application of this word to a wine-taster in a wine merchant’s shop, is derived gourmet, an epicure. According to the New English Dictionary, though there are no instances of groom in other Teutonic languages, the word may be ultimately connected with the root of “to grow.” In “bridegroom,” a newly married man, “grom” in the 16th century took the place of an older gome, a common old Teutonic word meaning “man,” and connected with the Latin homo. The Old English word was brydguma, later bridegome. The word survives in the German Bräutigam.

GROOT, GERHARD (1340-1384), otherwise Gerrit or Geert Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, a preacher and founder of the society of Brothers of Common Life (q.v.), was born in 1340 at Deventer in the diocese of Utrecht, where his father held a good civic position. He went to the university of Paris when only fifteen. Here he studied scholastic philosophy and theology under a pupil of Occam’s, from whom he imbibed the nominalist conception of philosophy; in addition he studied canon law, medicine, astronomy and even magic, and apparently some Hebrew. After a brilliant course he graduated in 1358, and possibly became master in 1363. He pursued his studies still further in Cologne, and perhaps in Prague. In 1366 he visited the papal court at Avignon. About this time he was appointed to a canonry in Utrecht and to another in Aix-la-Chapelle, and the life of the brilliant young scholar was rapidly becoming luxurious, secular and selfish, when a great spiritual change passed over him which resulted in a final renunciation of every worldly enjoyment. This conversion, which took place In 1374, appears to have been due partly to the effects of a dangerous illness and partly to the influence of Henry de Calcar, the learned and pious prior of the Carthusian monastery at Munnikhuizen near Arnhem, who had remonstrated with him on the vanity of his life. About 1376 Gerhard retired to this monastery and there spent three years in meditation, prayer and study, without, however, becoming a Carthusian. In 1379, having received ordination as a deacon, he became missionary preacher throughout the diocese of Utrecht. The success which followed his labours not only in the town of Utrecht, but also in Zwolle, Deventer, Kampen, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Gouda, Leiden, Delft, Zütphen and elsewhere, was immense; according to Thomas à Kempis the people left their business and their meals to hear his sermons, so that the churches could not hold the crowds that flocked together wherever he came. The bishop of Utrecht supported him warmly, and got him to preach against concubinage in the presence of the clergy assembled in synod. The impartiality of his censures, which he directed not only against the prevailing sins of the laity, but also against heresy, simony, avarice, and impurity among the secular and regular clergy, provoked the hostility of the clergy, and accusations of heterodoxy were brought against him. It was in vain that Groot emitted a Publica Protestatio, in which he declared that Jesus Christ was the great subject of his discourses, that in all of them he believed himself to be in harmony with Catholic doctrine, and that he willingly subjected them to the candid judgment of the Roman Church. The bishop was induced to issue an edict which prohibited from preaching all who were not in priest’s orders, and an appeal to Urban VI. was without effect. There is a difficulty as to the date of this prohibition; either it was only a few months before Groot’s death, or else it must have been removed by the bishop, for Groot seems to have preached in public in the last year of his life. At some period (perhaps 1381, perhaps earlier) he paid a visit of some days’ duration to the famous mystic Johann Ruysbroeck, prior of the Augustinian canons at Groenendael near Brussels; at this visit was formed Groot’s attraction for the rule and life of the Augustinian canons which was destined to bear such notable fruit. At the close of his life he was asked by some of the clerics who attached themselves to him to form them into a religious order, and Groot resolved that they should be canons regular of St Augustine. No time was lost in the effort to carry out the project, but Groot died before a foundation could be made. In 1387, however, a site was secured at Windesheim, some 20 m. north of Deventer, and here was established the monastery that became the cradle of the Windesheim congregation of canons regular, embracing in course of time nearly one hundred houses, and leading the way in the series of reforms undertaken during the 15th century by all the religious orders in Germany. The initiation of this movement was the great achievement of Groot’s life; he lived to preside over the birth and first days of his other creation, the society of Brothers of Common Life. He died of the plague at Deventer in 1384, at the age of 44.

The chief authority for Groot’s life is Thomas à Kempis, Vita Gerardi Magni (translated into English by J. P. Arthur, The Founders of the New Devotion, 1905); also the Chronicon Windeshemense of Johann Busch (ed. K. Grube, 1886). An account, based on these sources, will be found in S. Kettlewell, Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of Common Life (1882). i. c. 5; and a shorter account in F. R. Cruise, Thomas à Kempis, 1887, pt. ii. An excellent sketch, with an account of Groot’s writings, is given by L. Schulze in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3); he insists on the fact that Groot’s theological and ecclesiastical ideas were those commonly current in his day, and that the attempts to make him “a reformer before the Reformation” are unhistorical.

(E. C. B.)

GROOVE-TOOTHED SQUIRREL, a large and brilliantly coloured Bornean squirrel, Rhithrosciurus macrotis, representing a genus by itself distinguished from all other members of the family Sciuridae by having numerous longitudinal grooves on the front surface of the incisor teeth; the molars being of a simpler type than in other members of the family. The tail is large and fox-like, and the ears are tufted and the flanks marked by black and white bands.

GROS, ANTOINE JEAN, Baron (1771-1835), French painter, was born at Paris in 1771. His father, who was a miniature painter, began to teach him to draw at the age of six, and showed himself from the first an exacting master. Towards the close of 1785 Gros, by his own choice, entered the studio of David, which he frequented assiduously, continuing at the same time to follow the classes of the Collège Mazarin. The death of his father, whose circumstances had been embarrassed by the Revolution, threw Gros, in 1791, upon his own resources. He now devoted himself wholly to his profession, and competed in 1792 for the grand prix, but unsuccessfully. About this time, however, on the recommendation of the École des Beaux Arts, he was employed on the execution of portraits of the members of the Convention, and when—disturbed by the development of the Revolution—Gros in 1793 left France for Italy, he supported himself at Genoa by the same means, producing a great quantity of miniatures and fixés. He visited Florence, but returning to Genoa made the acquaintance of Josephine, and followed her to Milan, where he was well received by her husband. On November 15, 1796, Gros was present with the army near Arcola when Bonaparte planted the tricolor on the bridge. Gros seized on this incident, and showed by his treatment of it that he had found his vocation. Bonaparte at once gave him the post of “inspecteur aux revues,” which enabled him to follow the army, and in 1797 nominated him on the commission charged to select the spoils which should enrich the Louvre. In 1799, having escaped from the besieged city of Genoa, Gros made his way to Paris, and in the beginning of 1801 took up his quarters in the Capucins. His “esquisse” (Musée de Nantes) of the “Battle of Nazareth” gained the prize offered in 1802 by the consuls, but was not carried out, owing it is said to the jealousy of Junot felt by Napoleon; but he indemnified Gros by commissioning him to paint his own visit to the pest-house of Jaffa. “Les Pestiférés de Jaffa” (Louvre) was followed by the “Battle of Aboukir” 1806 (Versailles), and the “Battle of Eylau,” 1808 (Louvre). These three subjects—the popular leader facing the pestilence unmoved, challenging the splendid instant of victory, heart-sick with the bitter cost of a hard-won field—gave to Gros his chief title to fame. As long as the military element remained bound up with French national life, Gros received from it a fresh and energetic inspiration which carried him to the very heart of the events which he depicted; but as the army and its general separated from the people, Gros, called on to illustrate episodes representative only of the fulfilment of personal ambition, ceased to find the nourishment necessary to his genius, and the defect of his artistic position became evident. Trained in the sect of the Classicists, he was shackled by their rules, even when—by his naturalistic treatment of types, and appeal to picturesque effect in colour and tone—he seemed to run counter to them. In 1810 his “Madrid” and “Napoleon at the Pyramids” (Versailles) show that his star had deserted him. His “Francis I.” and “Charles V.,” 1812 (Louvre), had considerable success; but the decoration of the dome of St Geneviève (begun in 1811 and completed in 1824) is the only work of Gros’s later years which shows his early force and vigour, as well as his skill. The “Departure of Louis XVIII.” (Versailles), the “Embarkation of Madame d’Angoulême” (Bordeaux), the plafond of the Egyptian room in the Louvre, and finally his “Hercules and Diomedes,” exhibited in 1835, testify only that Gros’s efforts—in accordance with the frequent counsels of his old master David—to stem the rising tide of Romanticism, served but to damage his once brilliant reputation. Exasperated by criticism and the consciousness of failure, Gros sought refuge in the grosser pleasures of life. On the 25th of June 1835 he was found drowned on the shores of the Seine near Sèvres. From a paper which he had placed in his hat it became known that “las de la vie, et trahi par les dernières facultés qui la lui rendaient supportable, il avait résolu de s’en défaire.” The number of Gros’s pupils was very great, and was considerably augmented when, in 1815, David quitted Paris and made over his own classes to him. Gros was decorated and named baron of the empire by Napoleon, after the Salon of 1808, at which he had exhibited the “Battle of Eylau.” Under the Restoration he became a member of the Institute, professor at the École des Beaux Arts, and was named chevalier of the order of St Michel.

M. Delécluze gives a brief notice of his life in Louis David et son temps, and Julius Meyer’s Geschichte der modernen französischen Malerei contains an excellent criticism on his works.

GROSART, ALEXANDER BALLOCH (1827-1899), Scottish divine and literary editor, the son of a building contractor, was born at Stirling on the 18th of June 1827. He was educated at Edinburgh University, and in 1856 became a Presbyterian minister at Kinross. In 1865 he went to Liverpool, and three years later to Blackburn. He resigned from the ministry in 1892, and died at Dublin on the 16th of March 1899. Dr Grosart is chiefly remembered for his exertions in reprinting much rare Elizabethan literature, a work which he undertook in the first instance from his strong interest in Puritan theology. Among the first writers whose works he edited were the Puritan divines, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks and Herbert Palmer. Editions of Michael Bruce’s Poems (1865) and Richard Gilpin’s Demonologia sacra (1867) followed. In 1868 he brought out a bibliography of the writings of Richard Baxter, and from that year until 1876 he was occupied in reproducing for private subscribers the “Fuller Worthies Library,” a series of thirty-nine volumes which included the works of Thomas Fuller, Sir John Davies, Fulke Greville, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. The last four volumes of the series were devoted to the works of many little known and otherwise inaccessible authors. His Occasional Issues of Unique and Very Rare Books (1875-1881) is of the utmost interest to the book-lover. It included among other things the Annalia Dubrensia of Robert Dover. In 1876 still another series, known as the “Chertsey Worthies Library,” was begun. It included editions of the works of Nicholas Breton, Francis Quarles, Dr Joseph Beaumont, Abraham Cowley, Henry More and John Davies of Hereford. Grosart was untiring in his enthusiasm and energy for this kind of work. The two last-named series were being produced simultaneously until 1881, and no sooner had they been completed than Grosart began the “Huth Library,” so called from the bibliophile Henry Huth, who possessed the originals of many of the reprints. It included the works of Robert Greene, Thomas Nash, Gabriel Harvey, and the prose tracts of Thomas Dekker. He also edited the complete works of Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel. From the Townley Hall collection he reprinted several MSS. and edited Sir John Eliot’s works, Sir Richard Boyle’s Lismore Papers, and various publications for the Chetham Society, the Camden Society and the Roxburghe Club. Dr Grosart’s faults of style and occasional inaccuracy do not seriously detract from the immense value of his work. He was unwearied in searching for rare books, and he brought to light much interesting literature, formerly almost inaccessible.

GROSBEAK (Fr. Grosbec), a name very indefinitely applied to many birds belonging to the families Fringillidae and Ploceidae of modern ornithologists, and perhaps to some members of the Emberizidae and Tanagridae, but always to birds distinguished by the great size of their bill. Taken alone it is commonly a synonym of hawfinch (q.v.), but a prefix is usually added to indicate the species, as pine-grosbeak, cardinal-grosbeak and the like. By early writers the word was generally given as an equivalent of the Linnaean Loxia, but that genus has been found to include many forms not now placed in the same family.

The Pine-grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) inhabits the conifer-zone of both the Old and the New Worlds, seeking, in Europe and probably elsewhere, a lower latitude as winter approaches—often journeying in large flocks; stragglers have occasionally reached the British Islands (Yarrell, Br. Birds, ed. 4, ii. 177-179). In structure and some of its habits much resembling a bullfinch, but much exceeding that bird in size, it has the plumage of a crossbill and appears to undergo the same changes as do the members of the restricted genus Loxia—the young being of a dull greenish-grey streaked with brownish-black, the adult hens tinged with golden-green, and the cocks glowing with crimson-red on nearly all the body-feathers, this last colour being replaced after moulting in confinement by bright yellow. Nests of this species were found in 1821 by Johana Wilhelm Zetterstedt near Juckasjärwi in Swedish Lapland, but little was known concerning its nidification until 1855, when John Wolley, after two years’ ineffectual search, succeeded in obtaining near the Finnish village Muonioniska, on the Swedish frontier, well-authenticated specimens with the eggs, both of which are like exaggerated bullfinches’. The food of this species seems to consist of the seeds and buds of many sorts of trees, though the staple may very possibly be those of some kind of pine.

Allied to the pine-grosbeak are a number of species of smaller size, but its equals in beauty of plumage.1 They have been referred to several genera, such as Carpodacus, Propasser, Bycanetes, Uragus and others; but possibly Carpodacus is sufficient to contain all. Most of them are natives of the Old World, and chiefly of its eastern division, but several inhabit the western portion of North America, and one, C. githagineus (of which there seem to be at least two local races), is an especial native of the deserts, or their borders, of Arabia and North Africa, extending even to some of the Canary Islands—a singular modification in the habitat of a form which one would be apt to associate exclusively with forest trees, and especially conifers.

The cardinal grosbeak, or Virginian nightingale, Cardinalis virginianus, claims notice here, though doubts may be entertained as to the family to which it really belongs. It is no less remarkable for its bright carmine attire, and an elongated crest of the same colour, than for its fine song. Its ready adaptation to confinement has made it a popular cage-bird on both sides of the Atlantic. The hen is not so good a songster as the cock bird. Her plumage, with exception of the wings and tail, which are of a dull red, is light-olive above and brownish-yellow beneath. This species inhabits the eastern parts of the United States southward of 40° N. lat., and also occurs in the Bermudas. It is represented in the south-west of North America by other forms that by some writers are deemed species, and in the northern parts of South America by the C. phoeniceus, which would really seem entitled to distinction. Another kindred bird placed from its short and broad bill in a different genus, and known as Pyrrhuloxia sinuata or the Texan cardinal, is found on the southern borders of the United States and in Mexico; while among North American “grosbeaks” must also be named the birds belonging to the genera Guiraca and Hedymeles—the former especially exemplified by the beautiful blue G. caerulea, and the latter by the brilliant rose-breasted H. ludovicianus, which last extends its range into Canada.

The species of the Old World which, though commonly called “grosbeaks,” certainly belong to the family Ploceidae, are treated under Weaver-bird.

(A. N.)

1 Many of them are described and illustrated in the Monographie des loxiens of Prince C. L. Bonaparte and Professor Schlegel (1850), though it excludes many birds which an English writer would call “grosbeaks.”

GROSE, FRANCIS (c. 1730-1791), English antiquary, was born at Greenford in Middlesex, about the year 1730. His father was a wealthy Swiss jeweller, settled at Richmond, Surrey. Grose early showed an interest in heraldry and antiquities, and his father procured him a position in the Heralds’ College. In 1763, being then Richmond Herald, he sold his tabard, and shortly afterwards became adjutant and paymaster of the Hampshire militia, where, as he himself humorously observed, the only account-books he kept were his right and left pockets, into the one of which he received, and from the other of which he paid. This carelessness exposed him to serious financial difficulties; and after a vain attempt to repair them by accepting a captaincy in the Surrey militia, the fortune left him by his father being squandered, he began to turn to account his excellent education and his powers as a draughtsman. In 1757 he had been elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1773 he began to publish his Antiquities of England and Wales, a work which brought him money as well as fame. This, with its supplementary parts relating to the Channel Islands, was not completed till 1787. In 1789 he set out on an antiquarian tour through Scotland, and in the course of this journey met Burns, who composed in his honour the famous song beginning “Ken ye aught o’ Captain Grose,” and in that other poem, still more famous, “Hear, land o’ cakes, and brither Scots,” warned all Scotsmen of this “chield amang them taking notes.” In 1790 he began to publish the results of what Burns called “his peregrinations through Scotland;” but he had not finished the work when he bethought himself of going over to Ireland and doing for that country what he had already done for Great Britain. About a month after his arrival, while in Dublin, he died in an apoplectic fit at the dinner-table of a friend, on the 12th of June 1791.

Grose was a sort of antiquarian Falstaff—at least he possessed in a striking degree the knight’s physical peculiarities; but he was a man of true honour and charity, a valuable friend, “overlooking little faults and seeking out greater virtues,” and an inimitable boon companion. His humour, his varied knowledge and his good nature were all eminently calculated to make him a favourite in society. As Burns says of him—

“But wad ye see him in his glee, For meikle glee and fun has he, Then set him down, and twa or three Gude fellows wi’ him; And port, O port! shine thou a wee, And then ye’ll see him!”

Grose’s works include The Antiquities of England and Wales (6 vols., 1773-1787); Advice to the Officers of the British Army (1782), a satire in the manner of Swift’s Directions to Servants; A Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches and Honour (1783), a collection of advertisements of the period, with characteristic satiric preface; A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785); A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (1785-1789); Darrell’s History of Dover (1786); Military Antiquities (2 vols., 1786-1788); A Provincial Glossary (1787); Rules for Drawing Caricatures (1788); The Antiquities of Scotland (2 vols., 1789-1791); Antiquities of Ireland (2 vols., 1791), edited and partly written by Ledwich. The Grumbler, sixteen humerous essays, appeared in 1791 after his death; and in 1793 The Olio, a collection of essays, jests and small pieces of poetry, highly characteristic of Grose, though certainly not all by him, was put together from his papers by his publisher, who was also his executor.

A capital full-length portrait of Grose by N. Dance is in the first volume of the Antiquities of England and Wales, and another is among Kay’s Portraits. A versified sketch of him appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, lxi. 660. See Gentleman’s Magazine, lxi. 498, 582; Noble’s Hist. of the College of Arms, p. 434; Notes and Queries, 1st ser., ix. 350; 3rd ser., i. 64, x. 280-281; 5th ser., xii. 148; 6th ser., ii. 47, 257, 291; Hone, Every-day Book, i. 655.

GROSS, properly thick, bulky, the meaning of the Late Lat. grossus. The Latin word has usually been taken as cognate with crassus, thick, but this is now doubted. It also appears not to be connected with the Ger. gross, a Teutonic word represented in English by “great.” Apart from its direct meaning, and such figurative senses as coarse, vulgar or flagrant, the chief uses are whole, entire, without deduction, as opposed to “net,” or as applied to that which is sold in bulk as opposed to “retail” (cf. “grocer” and “engrossing”). As a unit of tale, “gross” equals 12 dozen, 144, sometimes known as “small gross,” in contrast with “great gross,” i.e. 12 gross, 144 dozen. As a technical expression in English common law, “in gross” is applied to an incorporeal hereditament attached to the person of an owner, in contradistinction to one which is appendant or appurtenant, that is, attached to the ownership of land (see Commons).

GROSSE, JULIUS WALDEMAR (1828-1902), German poet, the son of a military chaplain, was born at Erfurt on the 25th of April 1828. He received his early education at the gymnasium in Magdeburg, and on leaving school and showing disinclination for the ministry, entered an architect’s office. But his mind was bent upon literature, and in 1849 he entered the university of Halle, where, although inscribed as a student of law, he devoted himself almost exclusively to letters. His first poetical essay was with the tragedy Cola di Rienzi (1851), followed in the same year by a comedy, Eine Nachtpartie Shakespeares, which was at once produced on the stage. The success of these first two pieces encouraged him to follow literature as a profession, and proceeding in 1852 to Munich, he joined the circle of young poets of whom Paul Heyse (q.v.) and Hermann Lingg (1820-1905) were the chief. For six years (1855-1861) he was dramatic critic of the Neue Münchener Zeitung, and was then for a while on the staff of the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung, but in 1862 he returned to Munich as editor of the Bayrische Zeitung, a post he retained until the paper ceased to exist in 1867. In 1869 Grosse was appointed secretary of the Schiller-Stiftung, and lived for the next few years alternately in Weimar, Dresden and Munich, until, in 1890, he took up his permanent residence in Weimar. He was made grand-ducal Hofrat and had the title of “professor.” He died at Torbole on the Lago di Garda on the 9th of May 1902.

Grosse was a most prolific writer of novels, dramas and poems. As a lyric poet, especially in Gedichte (1857) and Aus bewegten Tagen, a volume of poems (1869), he showed himself more to advantage than in his novels, of which latter, however, Untreu aus Mitleid (2 vols., 1868); Vox populi, vox dei (1869); Maria Mancini (1871); Neue Erzählungen (1875); Sophie Monnier (1876), and Ein Frauenlos (1888) are remarkable for a certain elegance of style. His tragedies, Die Ynglinger (1858); Tiberius (1876); Johann von Schwaben; and the comedy Die steinerne Braut, had considerable success on the stage.

Grosse’s Gesammelte dramatische Werke appeared in 7 vols. in Leipzig (1870), while his Erzählende Dichtungen were published at Berlin (6 vols., 1871-1873). An edition of his selected works by A. Bartels is in preparation. See also his autobiography, Literarische Ursachen und Wirkungen (1896); R. Prutz, Die Literatur der Gegenwart (1859); J. Ethé, J. Grosse als epischer Dichter (1872).

GROSSENHAIN, a town In the kingdom of Saxony, 20 m. N. from Dresden, on the main line of railway (via Elsterwerda) to Berlin and at the junction of lines to Priestewitz and Frankfort-on-Oder. Pop. (1905) 12,015. It has an Evangelical church, a modern and a commercial school, a library and an extensive public park. The industries are very important, and embrace manufactures of woollen and cotton stuffs, buckskin, leather, glass and machinery. Grossenhain was originally a Sorb settlement. It was for a time occupied by the Bohemians, by whom it was strongly fortified. It afterwards came into the possession of the margraves of Meissen, from whom it was taken in 1312 by the margraves of Brandenburg. It suffered considerably in all the great German wars, and in 1744 was nearly destroyed by fire. On the 16th of May 1813, a battle took place here between the French and the Russians.

See G. W. Schuberth, Chronik der Stadt Grossenhain (Grossenhain, 1887-1892).

GROSSETESTE, ROBERT (c. 1175-1253), English statesman, theologian and bishop of Lincoln, was born of humble parents at Stradbrook in Suffolk. He received his education at Oxford where he became proficient in law, medicine and the natural sciences. Giraldus Cambrensis, whose acquaintance he had made, introduced him, before 1199, to William de Vere, bishop of Hereford. Grosseteste aspired to a post in the bishop’s household, but being deprived by death of this patron betook himself to the study of theology. It is possible that he visited Paris for this purpose, but he finally settled in Oxford as a teacher. His first preferment of importance was the chancellorship of the university. He gained considerable distinction as a lecturer, and was the first rector of the school which the Franciscans established in Oxford about 1224. Grosseteste’s learning is highly praised by Roger Bacon, who was a severe critic. According to Bacon, Grosseteste knew little Greek or Hebrew and paid slight attention to the works of Aristotle, but was pre-eminent among his contemporaries for his knowledge of the natural sciences. Between 1214 and 1231 Grosseteste held in succession the archdeaconries of Chester, Northampton and Leicester. In 1232, after a severe illness, he resigned all his benefices and preferments except one prebend which he held at Lincoln. His intention was to spend the rest of his life in contemplative piety. But he retained the office of chancellor, and in 1235 accepted the bishopric of Lincoln. He undertook without delay the reformation of morals and clerical discipline throughout his vast diocese. This scheme brought him into conflict with more than one privileged corporation, but in particular with his own chapter, who vigorously disputed his claim to exercise the right of visitation over their community. The dispute raged hotly from 1239 to 1245. It was conducted on both sides with unseemly violence, and those who most approved of Grosseteste’s main purpose thought it needful to warn him against the mistake of over-zeal. But in 1245, by a personal visit to the papal court at Lyons, he secured a favourable verdict. In ecclesiastical politics the bishop belonged to the school of Becket. His zeal for reform led him to advance, on behalf of the courts-Christian, pretensions which it was impossible that the secular power should admit. He twice incurred a well-merited rebuke from Henry III. upon this subject; although it was left for Edward I. to settle the question of principle in favour of the state. The devotion of Grosseteste to the hierarchical theories of his age is attested by his correspondence with his chapter and the king. Against the former he upheld the prerogative of the bishops; against the latter he asserted that it was impossible for a bishop to disregard the commands of the Holy See. Where the liberties of the national church came into conflict with the pretensions of Rome he stood by his own countrymen. Thus in 1238 he demanded that the king should release certain Oxford scholars who had assaulted the legate Otho. But at least up to the year 1247 he submitted patiently to papal encroachments, contenting himself with the protection (by a special papal privilege) of his own diocese from alien clerks. Of royal exactions he was more impatient; and after the retirement of Archbishop Saint Edmund (q.v.) constituted himself the spokesman of the clerical estate in the Great Council. In 1244 he sat on a committee which was empanelled to consider a demand for a subsidy. The committee rejected the demand, and Grosseteste foiled an attempt on the king’s part to separate the clergy from the baronage. “It is written,” the bishop said, “that united we stand and divided we fall.”

It was, however, soon made clear that the king and pope were in alliance to crush the independence of the English clergy; and from 1250 onwards Grosseteste openly criticized the new financial expedients to which Innocent IV. had been driven by his desperate conflict with the Empire. In the course of a visit which he made to Innocent in this year, the bishop laid before the pope and cardinals a written memorial in which he ascribed all the evils of the Church to the malignant influence of the Curia. It produced no effect, although the cardinals felt that Grosseteste was too influential to be punished for his audacity. Much discouraged by his failure the bishop thought of resigning. In the end, however, he decided to continue the unequal struggle. In 1251 he protested against a papal mandate enjoining the English clergy to pay Henry III. one-tenth of their revenues for a crusade; and called attention to the fact that, under the system of provisions, a sum of 70,000 marks was annually drawn from England by the alien nominees of Rome. In 1253, upon being commanded to provide in his own diocese for a papal nephew, he wrote a letter of expostulation and refusal, not to the pope himself but to the commissioner, Master Innocent, through whom he received the mandate. The text of the remonstrance, as given in the Burton Annals and in Matthew Paris, has possibly been altered by a forger who had less respect than Grosseteste for the papacy. The language is more violent than that which the bishop elsewhere employs. But the general argument, that the papacy may command obedience only so far as its commands are consonant with the teaching of Christ and the apostles, is only what should be expected from an ecclesiastical reformer of Grosseteste’s time. There is much more reason for suspecting the letter addressed “to the nobles of England, the citizens of London, and the community of the whole realm,” in which Grosseteste is represented as denouncing in unmeasured terms papal finance in all its branches. But even in this case allowance must be made for the difference between modern and medieval standards of decorum.

Grosseteste numbered among his most intimate friends the Franciscan teacher, Adam Marsh (q.v.). Through Adam he came into close relations with Simon de Montfort. From the Franciscan’s letters it appears that the earl had studied a political tract by Grosseteste on the difference between a monarchy and a tyranny; and that he embraced with enthusiasm the bishop’s projects of ecclesiastical reform. Their alliance began as early as 1239, when Grosseteste exerted himself to bring about a reconciliation between the king and the earl. But there is no reason to suppose that the political ideas of Montfort had matured before the death of Grosseteste; nor did Grosseteste busy himself overmuch with secular politics, except in so far as they touched the interest of the Church. Grosseteste realized that the misrule of Henry III. and his unprincipled compact with the papacy largely accounted for the degeneracy of the English hierarchy and the laxity of ecclesiastical discipline. But he can hardly be termed a constitutionalist.

Grosseteste died on the 9th of October 1253. He must then have been between seventy and eighty years of age. He was already an elderly man, with a firmly established reputation, when he became a bishop. As an ecclesiastical statesman he showed the same fiery zeal and versatility of which he had given proof in his academical career; but the general tendency of modern writers has been to exaggerate his political and ecclesiastical services, and to neglect his performances as a scientist and scholar. The opinion of his own age, as expressed by Matthew Paris and Roger Bacon, was very different. His contemporaries, while admitting the excellence of his intentions as a statesman, lay stress upon his defects of temper and discretion. But they see in him the pioneer of a literary and scientific movement; not merely a great ecclesiastic who patronized learning in his leisure hours, but the first mathematician and physicist of his age. It is certainly true that he anticipated, in these fields of thought, some of the most striking ideas to which Roger Bacon subsequently gave a wider currency.

See the Epistolae Roberti Grosseteste (Rolls Series, 1861) edited with a valuable introduction by H. R. Luard. Grosseteste’s famous memorial to the pope is printed in the appendix to E. Brown’s Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum (1690). A tract De phisicis, lineis, angulis et figuris was printed at Nuremberg in 1503, A French poem, Le Chastel d’amour, sometimes attributed to him, has been printed by the Caxton Society. Two curious tracts, the “De moribus pueri ad mensam” (printed by Wynkyn de Worde) and the “Statuta familiae Roberti Grosseteste” (printed by J. S. Brewer in Monumenta Franciscana, i. 582), may be from his pen; but the editor of the latter work ascribes it to Adam de Marsh. There is less doubt respecting the Reules Seynt Robert, a tract giving advice for the management of the household of the countess of Lincoln. For Grosseteste’s life and work see Roger Bacon’s Opus majus (ed. J. H. Bridges, 1897, 2 vols.) and Opera quaedam inedita (ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls Series, 1859); M. Paris’s Chronica majora (ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 1872-1883, 5 vols.); and the Lives by S. Pegge (1793) and F. S. Stevenson (1899).

(H. W. C. D.)

GROSSETO, a town and episcopal see of Tuscany, capital of the province of Grosseto, 90 m. S.S.E. of Pisa by rail. Pop. (1901) 5856 (town), 8843 (commune). It is 38 ft. above sea-level, and is almost circular in shape; it is surrounded by fortifications, constructed by Francis I. (1574-1587) and Ferdinand I. (1587-1609), which form a hexagonal enceinte with projecting bastions, with two gates only. The small cathedral, begun in 1294, is built of red and white marble alternating, in the Italian Gothic style; it was restored in 1855. The citadel was built in 1311 by the Sienese. Grosseto is on the main line from Pisa to Rome, and is also the starting-point (Montepescali, 8 m. to the N., is the exact point of divergence) of a branch line to Asciano and Siena.

The town dates from the middle ages. In 1138 the episcopal see was transferred thither from Rusellae. In 1230 it, with the rest of the Maremma, of which it is the capital, came under the dominion of Siena. By the peace of 1559, however, it passed to Cosimo I. of Tuscany. In 1745 the malaria had grown to such an extent, owing to the neglect of the drainage works, that Grosseto had only 648 inhabitants, though in 1224 it had 3000 men who bore arms. Leopold I. renewed drainage operations, and by 1836 the population had risen to 2392. The malaria is not yet entirely conquered, however, and the official headquarters of the province are in summer transferred to Scansano (1837 ft.), 20 m. to the S.E. by road.

GROSSI, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO (?-1699), one of the greatest Italian singers of the age of bel canto, better known as Siface, was born at Pescia in Tuscany about the middle of the 17th century. He entered the papal chapel in 1675, and later sang at Venice. He derived his nickname of Siface from his impersonation of that character in an opera of Cavalli. It has generally been said that he appeared as Siface in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Mitridate, but the confusion is due to his having sung the part of Mitridate in Scarlatti’s Pompeo at Naples in 1683. In 1687 he was sent to London by the duke of Modena, to become a member of the chapel of James II. He probably did much for the introduction of Italian music into England, but soon left the country on account of the climate. Among Purcell’s harpsichord music is an air entitled “Sefauchi’s Farewell.” He was murdered in 1699 on the road between Bologna and Ferrara, probably by the agents of a nobleman with whose wife he had a liaison.

See Corrado Ricci’s Vita Barocca (Milan, 1904).

GROSSI, TOMMASO (1791-1853), Lombard poet and novelist, was born at Bellano, on the Lake of Como, on the 20th of January 1791. He took his degree in law at Pavia in 1810, and proceeded thence to Milan to exercise his profession; but the Austrian government, suspecting his loyalty, interfered with his prospects, and in consequence Grossi was a simple notary all his life. That the suspicion was well grounded he soon showed by writing in the Milanese dialect the battle poem La Prineide, in which he described with vivid colours the tragical death of Prina, chief treasurer during the empire, whom the people of Milan, instigated by Austrian agitators, had torn to pieces and dragged through the streets of the town (1814). The poem, being anonymous, was first attributed to the celebrated Porta, but Grossi of his own accord acknowledged himself the author. In 1816 he published other two poems, written likewise in Milanese—The Golden Rain (La Pioggia d’oro) and The Fugitive (La Fuggitiva). These compositions secured him the friendship of Porta and Manzoni, and the three poets came to form a sort of romantic literary triumvirate. Grossi took advantage of the popularity of his Milanese poems to try Italian verse, into which he sought to introduce the moving realism which had given such satisfaction in his earliest compositions; and in this he was entirely successful with his poem Ildegonda (1814). He next wrote an epic poem, entitled The Lombards in the First Crusade, a work of which Manzoni makes honourable mention in I Promessi Sposi. This composition, which was published by subscription (1826), attained a success unequalled by that of any other Italian poem within the century. The example of Manzoni induced Grossi to write an historical novel entitled Marco Visconti (1834)—a work which contains passages of fine description and deep pathos. A little later Grossi published a tale in verse, Ulrico and Lida, but with this publication his poetical activity ceased. After his marriage in 1838 he continued to employ himself as a notary in Milan till his death on the 10th of December 1853.

His Life by Cantu appeared at Milan in 1854.

GROSSMITH, GEORGE (1847- ), English comedian, was born on the 9th of December 1847, the son of a law reporter and entertainer of the same name. After some years of journalistic work he started about 1870 as a public entertainer, with songs and recitations; but in 1877 he began a long connexion with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas at the Savoy Theatre, London, in The Sorcerer. For twelve years he had the leading part, his capacity for “patter-songs,” and his humorous acting, dancing and singing marking his creations of the chief characters in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas as the expression of a highly original individuality. In 1889 he left the Savoy, and again set up as an entertainer, visiting all the cities of Great Britain and the United States, but retiring in 1901. Among other books he wrote The Reminiscences of a Society Clown (1888); and, with his brother Weedon, The Diary of a Nobody (1894). His humorous songs and sketches numbered over six hundred. His younger brother, Weedon Grossmith, who was educated as a painter and exhibited at the Academy, also took to the stage, his first notable success being in the Pantomime Rehearsal; in 1894 he went into management on his own account, and had much success as a comedian. George Grossmith’s two sons, Laurence Grossmith and George Grossmith, jun., were both actors, the latter becoming a well-known figure in the musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre, London.

GROS VENTRES (Fr. for “Great Bellies”), or Atsina, a tribe of North American Indians of Algonquian stock. The name is said to have reference to the greediness of the people, but more probably originated from their prominent tattooing. They are settled at Fort Belknap agency, Montana. The name has also been given to other tribes, e.g. the Hidatsa or Minitari, now at Fort Berthold, North Dakota.

GROTE, GEORGE (1794-1871), English historian of Greece, was born on the 17th of November 1794, at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent. His grandfather, Andreas, originally a Bremen merchant, was one of the founders (1st of January 1766) of the banking-house of Grote, Prescott & Company in Threadneedle Street, London (the name of Grote did not disappear from the firm till 1879). His father, also George, married (1793) Selina, daughter of Henry Peckwell (1747-1787), minister of the countess of Huntingdon’s chapel in Westminster (descended from a Huguenot family, the de Blossets, who had left Touraine on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes), and had one daughter and ten sons, of whom the historian was the eldest. Educated at first by his mother, George Grote was sent to the Sevenoaks grammar school (1800-1804) and afterwards to Charterhouse (1804-1810), where he studied under Dr Raine in company with Connop Thirlwall, George and Horace Waddington and Henry Havelock. In spite of Grote’s school successes, his father refused to send him to the university and put him in the bank in 1810. He spent all his spare time in the study of classics, history, metaphysics and political economy, and in learning German, French and Italian. Driven by his mother’s Puritanism and his father’s contempt for academic learning to outside society, he became intimate with Charles Hay Cameron, who strengthened him in his love of philosophy, and George W. Norman, through whom he met his wife, Miss Harriet Lewin (see below). After various difficulties the marriage took place on the 5th of March 1820, and was in all respects a happy union.

In the meanwhile Grote had finally decided his philosophic and political attitude. In 1817 he came under the influence of David Ricardo, and through him of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. He settled in 1820 in a house attached to the bank in Threadneedle Street, where his only child died a week after its birth. During Mrs Grote’s slow convalescence at Hampstead, he wrote his first published work, the Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform (1821), in reply to Sir James Mackintosh’s article in the Edinburgh Review, advocating popular representation, vote by ballot and short parliaments. In 1822 he published in the Morning Chronicle (April) a letter against Canning’s attack on Lord John Russell, and edited, or rather re-wrote, some discursive papers of Bentham, which he published under the title Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind by Philip Beauchamp (1822). The book was published in the name of Richard Carlile, then in gaol at Dorchester. Though not a member of J. S. Mill’s Utilitarian Society (1822-1823). he took a great interest in a society for reading and discussion, which met (from 1823) in a room at the bank before business hours twice a week. From the Posthumous Papers (pp. 22, 24) it is clear that Mrs Grote was wrong in asserting that she first in 1823 (autumn) suggested the History of Greece; the book was already in preparation in 1822, though what was then written was subsequently reconstructed. In 1826 Grote published in the Westminster Review (April) a criticism of Mitford’s History of Greece, which shows that his ideas were already in order. From 1826 to 1830 he was hard at work with J. S. Mill and Henry Brougham in the organization of the new “university” in Gower Street. He was a member of the council which organized the faculties and the curriculum; but in 1830, owing to a difference with Mill as to an appointment to one of the philosophical chairs, he resigned his position.

In 1830 he went abroad, and, attracted by the political crisis, spent some months in Paris in the society of the Liberal leaders. Recalled by his father’s death (6th of July), he not only became manager of the bank, but took a leading position among the city Radicals. In 1831 he published his important Essentials of Parliamentary Reform (an elaboration of his previous Statement), and, after refusing to stand as parliamentary candidate for the city in 1831, changed his mind and was elected head of the poll, with three other Liberals, in December 1832. After serving in three parliaments, he resigned in 1841, by which time his party (“the philosophic Radicals”) had dwindled away. During these years of active public life, his interest in Greek history and philosophy had increased, and after a trip to Italy in 1842, he severed his connexion with the bank and devoted himself to literature. In 1846 the first two volumes of the History appeared, and the remaining ten between 1847 and the spring of 1856. In 1845 with Molesworth and Raikes Currie he gave monetary assistance to Auguste Comte (q.v.), then in financial difficulties. The formation of the Sonderbund (20th of July 1847) led him to visit Switzerland and study for himself a condition of things in some sense analogous to that of the ancient Greek states. This visit resulted in the publication in the Spectator of seven weekly letters, collected in book form at the end of 1847 (see a letter to de Tocqueville in Mrs Grote’s reprint of the Seven Letters, 1876).

In 1856 Grote began to prepare his works on Plato and Aristotle. Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates (3 vols.) appeared in 1865, but the work on Aristotle he was not destined to complete. He had finished the Organon and was about to deal with the metaphysical and physical treatises when he died on the 18th of June 1871, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a man of strong character and self-control, unfailing courtesy and unswerving devotion to what he considered the best interests of the nation. To colleagues and subordinates alike, he was considerate and tolerant; he was unassuming, trustworthy in the smallest detail, accurate and comprehensive in thought, energetic and conscientious in action. Yet, hidden under his calm exterior there was a burning enthusiasm and a depth of passion of which only his intimate friends were aware.

His work may best be considered under the following heads:

1. Grote’s Services to Education.—He took, as already stated, an important part in the foundation and organization of the original university of London, which began its public work in Gower Street on the 28th of October 1828, and in 1836, on the incorporation of the university of London proper, became known as University College. In 1849 he was re-elected to the council, in 1860 he became treasurer, and on the death of Brougham (1868) president. He took a keen interest in all the work of the college, presented to it the Marmor Homericum, and finally bequeathed the reversion of £6000 for the endowment of a chair of philosophy of mind and logic. The emoluments of this sum were, however, to be held over and added to the principal if at any time the holder of the chair should be “a minister of the Church of England or of any other religious persuasion.” In 1850 the senate of the university was reconstituted, and Grote was one of seven eminent men who were added to it. Eventually he became the strongest advocate for open examinations, for the claims not only of philosophy and classics but also of natural science, and, as vice-chancellor in 1862, for the admission of women to examinations. This latter reform was carried in 1868. He succeeded his friend Henry Hallam as a trustee of the British Museum in 1859, and took part in the reorganization of the departments of antiquities and natural science.

The honours which he received in recognition of these services were as follows: D.C.L. of Oxford (1853); LL.D. Cambridge (1861); F.R.S. (1857); honorary professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy (1859). By the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences he was made correspondent (1857) and foreign associate (the first Englishman since Macaulay) (1864). In 1869 he refused Gladstone’s offer of a peerage.

2. Political Career.—In politics Grote belonged to the “philosophic Radicals” of the school of J. S. Mill and Bentham, whose chief principles were representative government, vote by ballot, the abolition of a state church, frequent elections. He adhered to these principles throughout, and refused to countenance any reforms which were incompatible with them. By this uncompromising attitude, he gradually lost all his supporters save a few men of like rigidity. As a speaker, he was clear, logical and impressive, and on select committees his common sense was most valuable. For his speeches see A. Bain in the Minor Works; see also Ballot.

3. The History of Greece.—It is on this work that Grote’s reputation mainly rests. Though half a century has passed since its production, it is still in some sense the text-book. It consists of two parts, the “Legendary” and the “Historical” Greece. The former, owing to the development of comparative mythology, is now of little authority, and portions of part ii. are obsolete owing partly to the immense accumulations of epigraphic and archaeological research, partly to the subsequent discovery of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens, and partly also to the more careful weighing of evidence which Grote himself misinterpreted. The interest of the work is twofold. In the first place it contains a wonderful mass of information carefully collected from all sources, arranged on a simple plan, and expressed in direct forcible language. It is in this respect one of the few great comprehensive histories in our possession, great in scope, conception and accomplishment. But more than this it is interesting as among the first works in which Greek history became a separate study, based on real evidence and governed by the criteria of modern historical science. Further Grote, a practical man, a rationalist and an enthusiast for democracy, was the first to consider Greek political development with a sympathetic interest (see Greece: History, Ancient, section “Authorities”), in opposition to the Tory attitude of John Gillies and Mitford, who had written under the influence of horror at the French Revolution. On the whole his work was done with impartiality, and more recent study has only confirmed his general conclusions. Much has been made of his defective accounts of the tyrants and the Macedonian empire, and his opinion that Greek history ceased to be interesting or instructive after Chaeronea. It is true that he confined his interest to the fortunes of the city state and neglected the wider diffusion of the Greek culture, but this is after all merely a criticism of the title of the book. The value of the History consists to-day primarily in its examination of the Athenian democracy, its growth and decline, an examination which is still the most inspiring, and in general the most instructive, in any language. In the description of battles and military operations generally Grote was handicapped by the lack of personal knowledge of the country. In this respect he is inferior to men like Ernst Curtius and G. B. Grundy.

4. In Philosophy Grote was a follower of the Mills and Bentham. J. S. Mill paid a tribute to him in the preface to the third edition of his Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton’s Philosophy, and there is no doubt that the empirical school owed a great deal to his sound, accurate thinking, untrammelled by any reverence for authority, technique and convention. In dealing with Plato he was handicapped by this very common sense, which prevented him from appreciating the theory of ideas in its widest relations. His Plato is important in that it emphasizes the generally neglected passages of Plato in which he seems to indulge in mere Socratic dialectic rather than to seek knowledge; it is, therefore, to be read as a corrective to the ordinary criticism of Plato. The more congenial study of Aristotle, though incomplete, is more valuable in the positive sense, and has not received the attention it deserves. Perhaps Grote’s most distinctive contribution to the study of Greek philosophy is his chapter in the History of Greece on the Sophists, of whom he took a view somewhat more favourable than has been accepted before or since.

His wife, Harriet Lewin (1792-1878), was the daughter of Thomas Lewin, a retired Indian civilian, settled in Southampton. After her marriage with Grote in 1820 she devoted herself to the subjects in which he was interested and was a prominent figure in the literary, political and philosophical circle in which he lived. She carefully read the proofs of his work and relieved him of anxiety in connexion with his property. Among her writings are: Memoir of Ary Scheffer (1860); Collected Papers (1862); and her biography of her husband (1873). Another publication, The Philosophical Radicals of 1832 (privately circulated in 1866), is interesting for the light it throws on the Reform movement of 1832 to 1842, especially on Molesworth.

Bibliography.—The History of Greece passed through five editions the fifth (10 vols., 1888) being final. An edition covering the period from Solon to 403, with new notes and excursuses, was published by J. M. Mitchell and M. O. B. Caspari in 1907. The Plato was finally edited by Alexander Bain in 4 vols. See Mrs Grote’s Personal Life of George Grote, and article in Dict. Nat. Biog. by G. Croom Robertson.

(J. M. M.)

GROTEFEND, GEORG FRIEDRICH (1775-1853), German epigraphist, was born at Münden in Hanover on the 9th of June 1775. He was educated partly in his native town, partly at Ilfeld, where he remained till 1795, when he entered the university of Göttingen, and there became the friend of Heyne, Tychsen and Heeren. Heyne’s recommendation procured for him an assistant mastership in the Göttingen gymnasium in 1797. While there he published his work De pasigraphia sive scriptura universali (1799), which led to his appointment in 1803 as prorector of the gymnasium of Frankfort-on-Main, and shortly afterwards as conrector. Grotefend was best known during his lifetime as a Latin and Italian philologist, though the attention he paid to his own language is shown by his Anfangsgründe der deutschen Poesie, published in 1815, and his foundation of a society for investigating the German tongue in 1817. In 1821 he became director of the gymnasium at Hanover, a post which he retained till his retirement in 1849. In 1823-1824 appeared his revised edition of Wenck’s Latin grammar, in two volumes, followed by a smaller grammar for the use of schools in 1826; in 1835-1838 a systematic attempt to explain the fragmentary remains of the Umbrian dialect, entitled Rudimenta linguae Umbricae ex inscriptionibus antiquis enodata (in eight parts); and in 1839 a work of similar character upon Oscan (Rudimenta linguae Oscae). In the same year he published an important memoir on the coins of Bactria, under the name of Die Münzen der griechischen, parthischen, und indoskythischen Könige von Bactrien und den Ländern am Indus. He soon, however, returned to his favourite subject, and brought out a work in five parts, Zur Geographie und Geschichte von Altitalien (1840-1842). Previously, in 1836, he had written a preface to Wagenfeld’s translation of the spurious Sanchoniathon of Philo Byblius, which was alleged to have been discovered in the preceding year in the Portuguese convent of Santa Maria de Merinhao. But it was in the East rather than in the West that Grotefend did his greatest work. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had for some time been attracting attention in Europe; exact copies of them had been published by the elder Niebuhr, who lost his eyesight over the work; and Grotefend’s friend, Tychsen of Rostock, believed that he had ascertained the characters in the column, now known to be Persian, to be alphabetic. At this point Grotefend took the matter up. His first discovery was communicated to the Royal Society of Göttingen in 1800, and reviewed by Tychsen two years afterwards. In 1815 he gave an account of it in Heeren’s great work on ancient history, and in 1837 published his Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der persepolitanischen Keilschrift. Three years later appeared his Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der babylonischen Keilschrift. His discovery may be summed up as follows: (1) that the Persian inscriptions contain three different forms of cuneiform writing, so that the decipherment of the one would give the key to the decipherment of the others; (2) that the characters of the Persian column are alphabetic and not syllabic; (3) that they must be read from left to right; (4) that the alphabet consists of forty letters, including signs for long and short vowels; and (5) that the Persepolitan inscriptions are written in Zend (which, however, is not the case), and must be ascribed to the age of the Achaemenian princes. The process whereby Grotefend arrived at these conclusions is a prominent illustration of persevering genius (see Cuneiform). A solid basis had thus been laid for the interpretation of the Persian inscriptions, and all that remained was to work out the results of Grotefend’s brilliant discovery, a task ably performed by Burnouf, Lassen and Rawlinson. Grotefend died on the 15th of December 1853.

GROTESQUE, strictly a form of decorative art, in painting or sculpture, consisting of fantastic shapes of human beings, animals and the like, joined together by wreaths of flowers, garlands or arabesques. The word is also applied to any whimsical design or decorative style, if characterized by unnatural distortion, and, generally, to anything ludicrous or extravagantly fanciful. “Grotesque” comes through the French from the Ital. grottesco, an adjective formed from grotta, which has been corrupted in English to “grotto.” The commonly accepted explanation of the special use of the term “grotesque” is that this particular form of decorative art was most frequently found in the excavated ancient Roman and Greek dwellings found in Italy, to which was applied the name grotte. The derivation of grotta is through popular Lat. crupta or grupta (cf. “crypt”), from Gr. κρύπτη, a vault, κρύπτειν, to hide. Such a term would be applicable both to the buried dwellings of ancient Italy, and to a cavern, artificial or natural, the ordinary sense of the word. An interesting parallel with this origin of the word is found in that of “antic,” now meaning a freak, a jest, absurd fancy, &c. This word is the same as “antique,” and was, like “grotesque,” first applied to the fanciful decorations of ancient art.

GROTH, KLAUS (1819-1899), Low German poet, was born at Heide in Schleswig-Holstein, on the 24th of April 1819. After studying at the seminary in Tondern (1838-1841), he became a teacher at the girls’ school in his native village, but in 1847 went to Kiel to qualify for a higher educational post. Ill-health interrupted his studies and it was not until 1853 that he was able to resume them at Kiel. In 1856 he took the degree of doctor of philosophy at Bonn, and in 1858 settled as privatdocent in German literature and languages at Kiel, where, in 1866, he was made professor, and where he lived until his death on the 1st of June 1899. In his Low German (Plattdeutsch) lyric and epic poems, which reflect the influence of Johann Peter Hebel (q.v.), Groth gives poetic expression to the country life of his northern home; and though his descriptions may not always reflect the peculiar characteristics of the peasantry of Holstein as faithfully as those of F. Reuter (q.v.), yet Groth is a lyric poet of genuine inspiration. His chief works are Quickborn, Volksleben in plattdeutschen Gedichten Ditmarscher Mundart (1852; 25th ed. 1900; and in High German translations, notably by M. J. Berchem, Krefeld, 1896); and two volumes of stories, Vertelln (1855-1859, 3rd ed. 1881); also Voer de Goern (1858) and Ut min Jungsparadies (1875).

Groth’s Gesammelte Werke appeared in 4 vols. (1893). His Lebenserinnerungen were edited by E. Wolff in 1891; see also K. Eggers, K. Groth und die plattdeutsche Dichtung (1885); and biographies by A. Bartels (1899) and H. Siercks (1899.)

GROTH, PAUL HEINRICH VON (1843- ), German mineralogist, was born at Magdeburg on the 23rd of June 1843. He was educated at Freiberg, Dresden and Berlin, and took the degree of Ph.D. in 1868. After holding from 1872 the chair of mineralogy at Strasburg, he was in 1883 appointed professor of mineralogy and curator of minerals in the state museum at Munich. He carried on extensive researches on crystals and minerals, and also on rocks; and published Tabellarische Übersicht der einfachen Mineralien (1874-1898), and Physikalische Krystallographie (1876-1895, ed. 4, 1905). He edited for some years the Zeitschrift für Krystallographie und Mineralogie.

GROTIUS, HUGO (1583-1645), in his native country Huig van Groot, but known to the rest of Europe by the latinized form of the name, Dutch publicist and statesman, was born at Delft on Easter day, the 10th of April 1583. The Groots were a branch of a family of distinction, which had been noble in France, but had removed to the Low Countries more than a century before. Their French name was de Cornets, and this cadet branch had taken the name of Groot on the marriage of Hugo’s great-grandfather with a Dutch heiress. The father of Hugo was a lawyer in considerable practice, who had four times served the office of burgomaster of Leiden, and was one of the three curators of the university of that place.

In the annals of precocious genius there is no greater prodigy on record than Hugo Grotius, who was able to make good Latin verses at nine, was ripe for the university at twelve, and at fifteen edited the encyclopaedic work of Martianus Capella. At Leiden he was much noticed by J. J. Scaliger, whose habit it was to engage his young friends in the editing of some classical text. At fifteen Grotius accompanied Count Justin of Nassau, and the grand pensionary J. van Olden Barneveldt on their special embassy to the court of France. After a year spent in acquiring the language and making acquaintance with the leading men of France, Grotius returned home. He took the degree of doctor of law at Leiden, and entered on practice as an advocate.

Notwithstanding his successes in his profession, his inclination was to literature. In 1600 he edited the remains of Aratus, with the versions of Cicero, Germanicus and Avienus. Of the Germanicus Scaliger says—“A better text than that which Grotius has given, it is impossible to give”; but it is probable that Scaliger had himself been the reviser. Grotius vied with the Latinists of his day in the composition of Latin verses. Some lines on the siege of Ostend spread his fame beyond the circle of the learned. He wrote three dramas in Latin:—Christus patiens; Sophomphaneas, on the story of Joseph and his brethren; and Adamus exul, a production still remembered as having given hints to Milton. The Sophomphaneas was translated into Dutch by Vondel, and into English by Francis Goldsmith (1652); the Christus patiens into English by George Sandys (1640).

In 1603 the United Provinces, desiring to transmit to posterity some account of their struggle with Spain, determined to appoint a historiographer. The choice of the states fell upon Grotius, though he was but twenty years of age, and had not offered himself for the post. There was some talk at this time in Paris of calling Grotius to be librarian of the royal library. But it was a ruse of the Jesuit party, who wished to persuade the public that the opposition to the appointment of Isaac Casaubon did not proceed from theological motives, since they were ready to appoint a Protestant in the person of Grotius.

His next preferment was that of advocate-general of the fisc for the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. This was followed by his marriage, in 1608, to Marie Reigersberg, a lady of family in Zeeland, a woman of great capacity and noble disposition.

Grotius had already passed from occupation with the classics to studies more immediately connected with his profession. In the winter of 1604 he composed (but did not publish) a treatise entitled De jure praedae. The MS. remained unknown till 1868, when it was brought to light, and printed at the Hague under the auspices of Professor Fruin. It shows that the principles and the plan of the celebrated De jure belli, which was not composed till 1625, more than twenty years after, had already been conceived by a youth of twenty-one. It has always been a question what it was that determined Grotius, when an exile in Paris in 1625, to that particular subject, and various explanations have been offered; among others a casual suggestion of Peiresc in a letter of early date. The discovery of the MS. of the De jure praedae discloses the whole history of Grotius’s ideas, and shows that from youth upwards he had steadily read and meditated in one direction, that, namely, of which the famous De jure belli was the mature product. In the De jure praedae of 1604 there is much more than the germ of the later treatise De jure belli. Its main principles, and the whole system of thought implied in the later, are anticipated in the earlier work. The arrangement even is the same. The chief difference between the two treatises is one which twenty years’ experience in affairs could not but bring—the substitution of more cautious and guarded language, less dogmatic affirmation, more allowance for exceptions and deviations. The Jus pacis was an addition introduced first in the later work, an insertion which is the cause of not a little of the confused arrangement which has been found fault with in the De jure belli.

The De jure praedae further demonstrates that Grotius was originally determined to this subject, not by any speculative intellectual interest, but by a special occasion presented by his professional engagements. He was retained by the Dutch East India Company as their advocate. One of their captains, Heemskirk, had captured a rich Portuguese galleon in the Straits of Malacca. The right of a private company to make prizes was hotly contested in Holland, and denied by the stricter religionists, especially the Mennonites, who considered all war unlawful. Grotius undertook to prove that Heemskirk’s prize had been lawfully captured. In doing this he was led to investigate the grounds of the lawfulness of war in general. Such was the casual origin of a book which long enjoyed such celebrity that it used to be said, with some exaggeration indeed, that it had founded a new science.

A short treatise which was printed in 1609, Grotius says without his permission, under the title of Mare liberum, is nothing more than a chapter—the 12th—of the De jure praedae. It was necessary to Grotius’s defence of Heemskirk that he should show that the Portuguese pretence that Eastern waters were their private property was untenable. Grotius maintains that the ocean is free to all nations. The occasional character of this piece explains the fact that at the time of its appearance it made no sensation. It was not till many years afterwards that the jealousies between England and Holland gave importance to the novel doctrine broached in the tract by Grotius, a doctrine which Selden set himself to refute in his Mare clausum (1632).

Equally due to the circumstances of the time was his small contribution to constitutional history entitled De antiquitate reipublicae Batavae (1610). In this he vindicates, on grounds of right, prescriptive and natural, the revolt of the United Provinces against the sovereignty of Spain.

Grotius, when he was only thirty, was made pensionary of the city of Rotterdam. In 1613 he formed one of a deputation to England, in an attempt to adjust those differences which gave rise afterwards to a naval struggle disastrous to Holland. He was received by James with every mark of distinction. He also cultivated the acquaintance of the Anglican ecclesiastics John Overall and L. Andrewes, and was much in the society of the celebrated scholar Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had been in correspondence by letter for many years. Though the mediating views in the great religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant, by which Grotius was afterwards known, had been arrived at by him by independent reflection, yet it could not but be that he would be confirmed in them by finding in England a developed school of thought of the same character already in existence. How highly Casaubon esteemed Grotius appears from a letter of his to Daniel Heinsius, dated London, 13th of April 1613. “I cannot say how happy I esteem myself in having seen so much of one so truly great as Grotius. A wonderful man! This I knew him to be before I had seen him; but the rare excellence of that divine genius no one can sufficiently feel who does not see his face, and hear him speak. Probity is stamped on his features; his conversation savours of true piety and profound learning. It is not only upon me that he has made this impression; all the pious and learned to whom he has been here introduced have felt the same towards him; the king especially so!”

After Grotius’s return from England the exasperation of theological parties in Holland rose to such a pitch that it became clear that an appeal to force would be made. Grotius sought to find some mean term in which the two hostile parties of Remonstrants and Anti-remonstrants, or as they were subsequently called Arminians and Gomarists (see Remonstrants), might agree. A form of edict drawn by Grotius was published by the states, recommending mutual toleration, and forbidding ministers in the pulpit from handling the disputed dogmas. To the orthodox Calvinists the word toleration was insupportable. They had the populace on their side. This fact determined the stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, to support the orthodox party—a party to which he inclined the more readily that Olden Barneveldt, the grand pensionary, the man whose uprightness and abilities he most dreaded, sided with the Remonstrants.

In 1618 Prince Maurice set out on a sort of pacific campaign, disbanding the civic guards in the various cities of Guelders, Holland and Zeeland, and occupying the places with troops on whom he could rely. The states of Holland sent a commission, of which Grotius was chairman, to Utrecht, with the view of strengthening the hands of their friends, the Remonstrant party, in that city. Feeble plans were formed, but not carried into effect, for shutting the gates upon the stadtholder, who entered the city with troops on the night of the 26th of July 1618. There were conferences in which Grotius met Prince Maurice, and taught him that Olden Barneveldt was not the only man of capacity in the ranks of the Remonstrants whom he had to fear. On the early morning of the 31st of July the prince’s coup d’état against the liberties of Utrecht and of Holland was carried out; the civic guard was disarmed—Grotius and his colleagues saving themselves by a precipitate flight. But it was only a reprieve. The grand pensionary, Olden Barneveldt, the leader of the Remonstrant party, Grotius and Hoogerbeets were arrested, brought to trial, and condemned—Olden Barneveldt to death, and Grotius to imprisonment for life and confiscation of his property. In June 1619 he was immured in the fortress of Louvestein near Gorcum. His confinement was rigorous, but after a time his wife obtained permission to share his captivity, on the condition that if she came out, she should not be suffered to return.

Grotius had now before him, at thirty-six, no prospect but that of a life-long captivity. He did not abandon himself to despair, but sought refuge in returning to the classical pursuits of his youth. Several of his translations (into Latin) from the Greek tragedians and other writers, made at this time, have been printed. “The Muses,” he writes to Voss, “were now his consolation, and appeared more amiable than ever.”

The ingenuity of Madame Grotius at length devised a mode of escape. It had grown into a custom to send the books which he had done with in a chest along with his linen to be washed at Gorcum. After a time the warders began to let the chest pass without opening it. Madame Grotius, perceiving this, prevailed on her husband to allow himself to be shut up in it at the usual time. The two soldiers who carried the chest out complained that it was so heavy “there must be an Arminian in it.” “There are indeed,” said Madame Grotius, “Arminian books in it.” The chest was carried to the house of a friend, where Grotius was released. He was then dressed like a mason with hod and trowel, and so conveyed over the frontier. His first place of refuge was Antwerp, from which he proceeded to Paris, where he arrived in April 1621. In October he was joined by his wife. There he was presented to the king, Louis XIII., and a pension of 3000 livres conferred upon him. French pensions were easily granted, all the more so as they were never paid. Grotius was now reduced to great straits. He looked about for any opening through which he might earn a living. There was talk of something in Denmark; or he would settle in Spires, and practise in the court there. Some little relief he got through the intervention of Étienne d’Aligre, the chancellor, who procured a royal mandate which enabled Grotius to draw, not all, but a large part of his pension. In 1623 the president Henri de Même lent him his château of Balagni near Senlis (dep. Oise), and there Grotius passed the spring and summer of that year. De Thou gave him facilities to borrow books from the superb library formed by his father.