in aid of the homeless exiles. From Dantzig as much as 3000 thaler was contributed to the fund, and in England it was even suggested that a grant of land should be made to them in Ireland. For Comenius, Silesia was but a temporary refuge, and on leaving it his first movements were unfortunate. His effort to settle at Frankfort on the Oder was frustrated by an outbreak of the plague, and in Hamburg, his next resting-place, the old man, worn out by the fatigues to which he had been subjected, underwent a severe illness.
As regards money he had no cause for anxiety. Laurence de Geer, the son of his former patron, came to the rescue and insisted that he should settle permanently in Amsterdam, under his immediate protection. Laurence had long been a passionate admirer of Comenius, though more from the religious and philosophical than from the educational standpoint. The hard-headed old merchant, his father, had refused to listen to Pansophic schemes and prophetic rhapsodies, and had sternly insisted that school-books and nothing else were what he wanted for his money; but the younger de Geer would place no such restriction upon his friend. Comenius might still dabble in education, if he wished; but he was to be left free to rewrite the Pansophic works that had been destroyed by the flames, and thus to complete what he regarded as the great work of his life.
As soon as he was well enough to travel, he set out with his family to Amsterdam, and here he found himself in the midst of friends. “Mr. Drury has returned to Amsterdam,” writes Hartlib to Pell, “and promises with all speed to hasten unto us, and it is very like Mr. Comenius will come along with him.”[1] But the invitation to England was not accepted. Comenius’ time was fully occupied in getting together a library to replace that lost at Lissa, and in arranging for the publication of his collected works on education, and of the prophecies of Kotter, Poniatowska, and Drabik. At the printer’s
- ↑ Lansdowne Coll. of MS. Quoted by Vaughan, ii. 423.
