in Latin and Italian under the title of Mercurius Bilinguis, and again at Basle in 1636 under the title of Mercurius Quadrilinguis, the latter edition being in Latin, German, Greek, and Hebrew.
The work carried into effect the scheme suggested by Bodinus. All the principal words in Latin were arranged in 1200 sentences. Each word, with the exception of auxiliary verbs and connecting particles, only occurred once, and, by a careful study of the whole, Latin was to be learned in an incredibly short time. As Isaac Habrecht remarked, the book was a kind of Noah's Ark, in which all the important words were grouped together, and the necessity of reading voluminous authors in order to find them was obviated.
The book was so very faulty that its undoubted success points to the very great demand that existed for a practical method of teaching beginners. Many of the most important words were altogether omitted, and others that were included were uncommon and quite unsuited for beginners. No care was taken to use the words in their root-signification, and the sentences themselves, far from possessing any educational value, were so ill-conceived[1] as to make it scarcely credible that the book had been translated into eight languages by 1629.[2]
From this work, therefore, Comenius borrowed nothing but its name, the Gate of Languages, and, indeed, his own attempt showed so much originality that it would be unfair to hint that he was indebted to his predecessors for the chief points in its construction.
The Grammar School, as Comenius found it, was as far removed as possible from the spirit of scientific observation. Boys were set to translate crabbed authors by the help of still more crabbed commentaries, and might easily acquire
