they are scarcely convincing. Under the old system, he says, when the beginner was introduced straight to the Janua, he had three difficulties to contend with, ignorance of the words, of their constructions, and of the objects to which many of them referred. These difficulties he hopes to overcome by adopting the order indicated. “First, rising from its roots, comes the forest of Latin words, the lexicon. Then we give you the tools for cutting this forest down, sawing the trees into planks, and fastening these together, namely, the grammar. Finally we place before you a short universal history of objects, fashioned out of all the words in Latin properly fitted together, namely, the text of the Janua.”
This is a good example of Comenius’ habit of running a fanciful illustration to death. It is quite true, as he points out, that in making any construction it is necessary to have, first the materials, and then the tools to work them into shape; but the result of his reasoning on these lines is grotesque. He places a ponderous dictionary in the child’s hand, saying, “Learn this and I will let you read Latin.” The older grammarians, with their seven genders and their multitudinous rules, never attained this pitch of absurdity.
The grammar, if not quite a model, from the modern standpoint, is yet extremely good. It is far shorter than that written in Elbing, and the rules are terse and to the point. It may interest the reader to see how Comenius introduces the prepositions that govern the ablative.
Præpositiones Ablativi.
Cum lupus nollet cedere de i via, nec ille fugere posset ab 2 eo, aut stare diu coram 3 eo, et sic fuit haud procul 4 morte, nisi pugnaret pro 5 vita: licet esset sine 6 socio (absque 7 socio) vibravit tamen hastam cum 8 impetu et transverberavit lupum, distractasque ex 9 illo exuvias ostentat, præ 10 gaudio, palam omnibus.
The edition of the Janua, that follows, is considerably
