, a very celebrated French protestant minister, and of the same
, a very celebrated French protestant minister, and of the same family with Charles da
Moulin, was born at Vexin Oct. 18, 1568. He imbibed
the rudiments of literature at Sedan; and, when he arrived at twenty years of age, was sent to finish his education in England, where he became a member of Christ
college in Cambridge. After a residence of four years in
England, he went to Holland in the retinue of the duke
of Wirtemberg, but was shipwrecked in his passage, and
lost all his books and baggage. This occasioned his elegant poem entitled “Votiva Tabula,
” which did him great
credit, and procured him many friends. The French ambassador became one of his patrons (for Henry IV. at that time sent protestant ambassadors into protestant countries),
and recommended him to the queen- mother, by whose interest he obtained the professorship of philosophy at Leyden, then vacant. This he held for five or six years; and
among other disciples, who afterwards became celebrated,
be had Hugo Grotius. He read lectures upon Aristotle,
and disciplined his scholars in the art of disputing; of
which he made himself so great a master, that he was
enabled to enter with great spirit and success into the controversies with the catholics. Scaliger was very much his
patron; and when Du Moulin published his Logic at Ley.
den in 1596, said of the epistle prefatory, “haec epistola
non est hujus sevi.
” He taught Greek also in the divinity
schools, in which he was extremely well skilled, as appears
from his book entitled “Novitas Papismi,
” where he exposes cardinal Perron’s ignorance of that language.