piety, and good manners. They would soon make up for lost time when the Latin text-books were completed. With this assurance de Geer had, for the moment, to be content.
But, in spite of his promise to get on with his philological works as quickly as possible, we find Comenius still busied with philosophic plans. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising to find that de Geer strongly objected to a Dr. Kozak of Bremen, whom Comenius suggested as a collaborator, since Kozak’s interests were purely scientific. At the same time an effort was made to induce the Hamburg professors, Jung and Tasse, to join him in his Pansophic work, but they refused to leave their present positions unless a high salary could be guaranteed them, and for this Comenius knew that it would be useless to ask de Geer.
It is possible that, had he been able to arrange a meeting with his patron in the summer of 1644, he would have attempted to withdraw from an engagement that he found so irksome, but travel was rendered dangerous by the war that had broken out between Sweden and Denmark in the preceding year. The claims on his time remained as numerous as ever. In this year (1644) he published a religious work, Absurditatum Echo; and, at the request of the Elbing Town Council, undertook to lecture at the Gymnasium on the Janua Rerum four times weekly, from one till three o’clock. For this he was to receive a salary of 400 florins. As if he were not already sufficiently occupied, he found himself compelled by his position as an elder in the Moravian Church to attend an Evangelical meeting at Orla in Lithuania.
It may appear like dishonesty on Comenius’ part that he so persistently dissipated his energies on other work while in de Geer’s pay for one definite purpose, but to any such accusation two very strong rejoinders may be made.
In the first place, he was undoubtedly devoting to his school-books a very great deal if not quite the whole of his time; and, in the second, he had shown to what extent he considered himself bound to carry out his engagement, by refusing two offers of a far more congenial character.
