the high school for a long time, and, to protect himself from want, became a school-teacher in Schaffhausen, yet he returned at the first favourable opportunity to his accustomed studies and under my guidance. What progress he then made, his learned lectures, his sermons before the people, and his scholastic exercises give a sufficient testimony."
This eulogy was returned with interest three years later, when Eck published the text of a disputation held by him at Bologna, for which occasion Hübmaier, like Silas Wegg, "dropped into poetry":
"O felix nimium felix Germania, quæ nunc
Doctiloquos gignis multisciosque viros.
Cleopatream priscus satis extulit umbram
Objicient doctum sæcula nostra virum.
Eckius is meus est Germano sydere natus
Illo nimirum Theutona terra nitet.
Theologus rarus, juris Sophiæque peritus
Sæpius in populum semina sacra serit.
Nodosam Logicen (si mavis) Rhetoris arma
Quæque mathematicus, Astronomusque docent
Quicquid habet Rhetor, Historia, culta poesis
Dispeream si non singula solus habet.[1]
These verses, if they contain words that would have made Quintilian stare and gasp, have at least
- ↑ Wiedemann, Dr. Johann Eck, pp. 462, 463, The lines may be rather freely englished thus: "O happy, too happy Germany, that now producest men of so great eloquence and learning! Antiquity brought forth beauty as her choicest product, our age presents the
