Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/180

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
164
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN.

well by Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to Luther's personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and so forth, there can now nothing new be brought forward, if at the same time it is to be true. Nevertheless, the field of the Reformation history is, to speak in a figure, by no means wholly cultivated; and it does appear to me as if the inquirer even of the present day might in vain look about for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren, and children's children, down to our own times, of this great Reformer; all of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote degree, to the Reformation history, as he himself in a nearer. Thou shalt not perhaps be threshing, said I to myself, altogether empty straw, if, according to thy small ability, thou bring forward and cultivate this neglected branch of History. And so have I ventured, with the last male descendant of Luther, namely, with the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised in Dresden, and deceased there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more special Reformation history. My feeble attempt, in regard to this Reformationary Advocate, will be sufficiently rewarded, should it excite to better works on the subject; however, the little which I have succeeded in digging up and collecting with regard to him I here submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends and patrons of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 14th of November, from the mouths of six well-conditioned perorators. In the first place, shall

"Gottlieb Spiesglass, a Flachsenfinger, endeavor to show, in a Latin oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended of the Luther family. After him strives

"Friedrich Christian Krabbler, from Hukelum, in Ger-