On Easter-day 1644 he reckons sixty-one years[12].

He acquaints us in his Poems[13], that he was fifteen when he went first to France: he went there in 1598; and speaking of Easter 1614 he informs us[14] he was then one-and-thirty.

From all these different calculations it is manifest that Grotius was born in 1583.
It must be owned, however, that the proof on which the President Bouhier builds his opinion, would be decisive, if there were no error in the text of a[15] letter written by Grotius to his brother, April 14, 1640, in which he says, "I have completed my fifty-eighth year:" but the other passages of Grotius just cited demonstrate that the editors of this letter, instead of _incepi_, I have begun, read _implevi_, I have completed: which Grotius could not have written without contradicting himself.
FOOTNOTES: [8] Athenae Batavae, p.205.Life of Grotius prefixed to his works.

Le Clerc, Hist.

de Hollande, l.12.t.2.See the critical Remarks on Bayle's Dict.ed.