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, a celebrated philologer, was born December 3, 1560, at Antwerp. He was the son of John Walter Gruter, burgomaster of Antwerp; who, having, among others, signed the famous petition tq the duchess of Parma, the governess of the Netherlands, which gave rise to the word Gueux (Beggars), was banished his country. He crossed the sea to Norwich in England, taking his wife (who was an English woman) and family along with him. Young Gruter was then but an infant; he had the peculiar felicity, like Cicero, of imbibing the elements of learning from his mother, Catharine Tishem; who, besides French, Italian, and English, was complete mistress of Latin, and so well skilled in Greek that she could read Galen in the original. The family found an hospitable asylum in England, where they resided several years, and at a proper age sent their son to complete his education at Cambridge. His parents, after some time, repassing the sea to Middleburg, the son followed them to Holland and, going to Leyden, studied the civil law, and took his doctor’s degree there in that faculty but, applying himself at the same time to polite literature, he became an early author, as appears by some Latin verses which he published, under the title of “Ocelli,” at twenty years of age.

, or Mercerus, a celebrated philologer, uas a native of Usez in Languedoc. He was bred to. the study of jurisprudence, which he quitted for that of the learned languages, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Chaldee; and in 1549, succeeded Vatablus in the professorship of Hebrew in the royal college at Paris. Being obliged to quit the kingdom during the civil wars, he retired to Venice, where his friend Arnoul du Ferrier resided as French ambassador; but returned with him afterwards to France, and died at Usez, his native place, in 1572. He was a little man, worn by excess of application, but with a voice which he could easily make audible to a large auditory. His literature was immense, and among the proofs of it are the following works: 1. “Lectures on Genesis, and the Prophets,” Geneva, 1598, folio. 2. “Commentaries on Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticles,” 1573, 2 vols. folio, which have been much esteemed. 3. “Tables of the Chaldee Grammar,” Paris, 1550, 4to. These are all written in Latin. He was considered as inclined to Calvinism. His son Josiah Le Mercier, an able critic, who died December 5, 1626, published an excellent edition of “Nonnius Marcellus;” notes on Aristae ­netus, Tacitus, DictysCretensis, and Apuleius’s book “De Deo Socratis,” and an “Eulogy,” on Peter Pithon; some of his letters are in Goldast’s collection. Salmasius was his son-in-law.