that each people should learn its own language thoroughly, and try to preserve it pure and free from admixture with others. A thorough knowledge of any tongue can be obtained by means of translations of the Vestibulum, the Janua, and the Atrium, and the desire to introduce foreign words will be diminished as the resources of the vernacular become better known. In this respect some nations are great offenders, and particularly the Bohemians, who continually borrow foreign words and expressions although their own language is an exceptionally rich one. The best method of maintaining the purity of a language is the inception of Academies, such as the Society della Crusca at Florence, or the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft at Weimar. Some such society should exist in every country, and its first object should be to analyse the syntax and grammar of the vernacular, and to reduce them to definite rules. The conditions of those nations who are not sufficiently civilised to do this for themselves, exercises Comenius greatly. The task obviously falls to the lot of the neighbouring people. Thus, the language of the Laps must be set in order by the Swedes, Welsh by the English, and the American dialects by the Spaniards, Belgians, and English that live in America.
Such are a few of the interesting points, buried as usual beneath a mass of verbosity and repetition, that are raised in the Novissima Methodus. A short quotation from the fragment of the Vestibulum that immediately follows it in the folio edition of 1657, will show how closely the German was fitted to the Latin—
| Invitatio. | Einladung. |
| Veni puer aut quisquis es qui cupis discere Latinam linguam: quae pulchra est communisque populis et facit doctos |
Kom [her du] Knab oder wer du seyst der du begehrst zu lernen die Lateinische Sprach: welche schön ist und gemein den Völkern und macht gelehrte [Leut] |
