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or reports like those of thunder or of discharges of artillery, which tell how the masses of solid ice are giving way beneath the influence of the returning warmth. And next, for the simile still holds good, the swollen river overflows its banks, and terrifies by strange portents of evil the inhabitants, unable to realise the fertility which the receding waters will leave behind them.
‘Terruit gentes, grave ne rediret
Sæculum Pyrrhæ, nova monstra questæ;
Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere montes,’
says Horace; and much, I think, is to be said in behalf of those who, like ‘Gravissimus et Excellentissimus Dominus Ortuinus Gratius,’ shrank from the new learning and its results.[1] The laugh was with Ulrich von Hütten: his own life and death were not so edifying as to make one cast in one’s lot unhesitatingly with him and his compeers.
By degrees the disturbances which ushered
- ↑ The first edition of the ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum’ appeared in 1515. See p. xxix. of preface to Rotermund’s excellent edition of the ‘Epistolæ,’ published at Hanover, in 1830.
