Silesian frontier, but Comenius and some of his friends scorned this course, and, with confidence inspired by Drabik’s prophecies, calmly awaited the development of events. They were not left long in suspense. On the the 29th of April, the Poles burst once more into the defenceless town, sacked it, and reduced it to ashes. It was with the greatest difficulty that any of the Protestants who had remained there saved their lives. Comenius succeeded in escaping to Silesia, where he took refuge with a wealthy nobleman, the Freiherr of Budova. He was once more homeless, and his worldly assets consisted of the clothes in which he stood, a few good friends, and a reputation somewhat damaged by the fanatical views to which he had committed himself.
Some days afterwards, his host sent Comenius’ amanuensis over to Lissa with an escort to see if anything had escaped the conflagration; nothing could be found, however, but a few pages of the Pansophia that he had buried before his flight. Amongst other things he had lost his library, and promissory notes to the value of 1000 thaler; though these he valued but little in comparison with his precious manuscripts, into which he had put the best part of his energy, and with which his fondest hopes were bound up. His Sylva Pansophiæ, containing “the definitions of all things”; his Dictionary of the Bohemian Language, on which he had been engaged for thirty years; his Harmony of the Evangelists; his refutations of Descartes of the Copernican theory, and his collected sermons of forty years, all had been devoured by the flames,[1] and he filled the air with his lamentations. “Had God only spared me the Sylva Pansophiæ,” he cried, “all else would have been easier to bear, but even this is destroyed.”[2] Was ever such irony? With the exception of the Bohemian dictionary, the works that were lost could have elicited little but contempt from subsequent generations. Those, on which his fame to a large extent rests, were already in the hands of half the
