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COMENIUS.

(1592-1671).

1. ONE of the most hopeful signs of the improvement of education is the rapid advance in the last thirty years of the fame of Comenius, and the growth of a large literature about the man and his ideas. Twenty-three years ago, when I first became interested in him, his name was hardly known beyond Germany. In English there was indeed an excellent life of him prefixed to a translation of his School of Infancy; but this work, by Daniel Benham (London, 1858), had not then, and has not now, anything like the circulation it deserves. A much more successful book has been Professor S. S. Laurie's John Amos Comenius (Cambridge University Press), and this is known to most, and should be to all, English students of education. By the Germans and French Comenius is now recognised as the man who first treated education in a scientific spirit, and who bequeathed the rudiments of a science to later ages. On this account the great library of pedagogy at Leipzig has been named in his honour the "Comenius Stiftung."

§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a miller, who belonged to the Moravian Brethren, was born,

Early years. His first book.

at the Moravian village of Niwnic, in 1592. Of his early life we know nothing but what he himself tells us in the following passage:-"Losing both my parents while I was yet a child, I began, through the neglect of my guardians, but at sixteen years of age to taste of the Latin tongue. Yet by the goodness of God, that taste bred such a thirst in me, that I ceased not from that time, by all means and endeavours, to lat our for the repairing of my lost years; and now not only for myself, but for the good of others also. For I could not but pity others also in this respect, especially in my own nation, which is too slothful and careless in matter of learning. Thereupon I was continually full of thoughts for the finding out of some means whereby more might be inflamed with the love of learning, and whereby learning itself might be made more compendious, both in matter of the charge and cost, and of the labour belonging thereto, that so the youth might be brought by a more easy method, unto some notable proficiency in learning."* With these thoughts in his head, he pursued his studies in several German towns, especially at Herborn in Nassau. Here he saw the Report on Ratke's method published in 1612 for the Universities of Jena and Giessen; and we find him shortly afterwards writing his first book, Grammaticæ facilioris Præcepta, which was published at Prag in 1616. On his return to Moravia, he was appointed to the Brethren's school at Prerau, but (to use his own words) "being shortly after at the age of twenty-four called to the service of the Church, because that divine function challenged all my endeavours (divinumque HOC AGE præ

Preface to the Prodromus.

Troubles. Exile.

His

oculis erat) these scholastic cares were laid aside.* pastoral charge was at Fulneck, the headquarters of the Brethren. As such it soon felt the effects of the Battle of Prag, being in the following year (1621) taken and plundered by the Spaniards. On this occasion Comenius lost his MSS. and almost everything he possessed. The year after his wife died, and then his only child. In 1624 all Protestant ministers were banished, and in 1627 a new decree extended the banishment to Protestants of every description. Comenius bore up against wave after wave of calamity with Christian courage and resignation, and his writings at this period were of great value to his fellowsufferers.

§ 3. For a time he found a hiding-place in the family of a Bohemian nobleman, Baron Sadowsky, at Slaupna, in the Bohemian mountains, and in this retirement, his attention was again directed to the science of teaching. The Baron had engaged Stadius, one of the proscribed, to educate his three sons, and, at Stadius' request, Comenius wrote "some canons of a better method," for his use. We find him, too, endeavouring to enrich the literature of his mother-tongue, making a metrical translation of the Psalms of David, and even writing imitations of Virgil, Ovid, and Cato's Distichs.

In 1627, however, the persecution waxed so hot, that Comenius, with most of the Brethren, had to flee their country, never to return. On crossing the border, Comenius and the exiles who accompanied him knelt down, and

Preface to Prodromus, first edition, p. 40; second edition (1639), p. 78. The above is Hartlib's translation, see A Reformation of Schools, &c., pp. 46, 47.

Pedagogic studies at Leszna.

prayed that God would not suffer His truth to fail out of their native land.

§ 4. Comenius had now, as Michelet says, lost his country and found his country, which was the world. Many of the banished, and Comenius among them, settled at the Polish town of Leszna, or, as the Germans call it, Lissa, near the Silesian frontier. Here there was an old-established school of the Brethren, in which Comenius found employment. Once more engaged in education, he earnestly set about improving the traditional methods. As he himself says,* "Being by God's permission banished my country with divers others, and forced for my sustenance to apply myself to the instruction of youth, I gave my mind to the perusal of divers authors, and lighted upon many which in this age have made a beginning in reforming the method of studies, as Ratichius, Helvicus, Rhenius, Ritterus, Glaumius, Cæcilius, and who indeed should have had the first place, Joannes Valentinus Andreæ, a man of a nimble and clear brain; as also Campanella and the Lord Verulam, those famous restorers of philosophy;-by reading of whom I was raised in good hope, that at last those so many various sparks would conspire into a flame; yet observing here and there some defects and gaps as it were, I could not contain myself from attempting something that might rest upon an immovable foundation, and which, if it could be once found out, should not be subject to any ruin. Therefore, after many workings and tossings of my thoughts, by reducing everything to the immovable laws of Nature, I lighted upon

Preface to Prodromus, first edition, p. 40; second edition, p. 79. A Reformation, &c., p. 47.

Didactic written. Janua published. Pansophy.

my Didactica Magna, which shows the art of readily and solidly teaching all men all things."

5. This work did not immediately see the light, but in 1631 Comenius published a book which made him and the little Polish town where he lived known throughout Europe and beyond it. This was the Janua Linguarum Reserata, or "Gate of Tongues unlocked." Writing about it many years afterwards he says that he never could have imagined that that little work, fitted only for children (puerile istud opusculum), would have been received with applause by all the learned world. Letters of congratulation came to him from every quarter; and the work was translated not only into Greek, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Belgian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, but also into Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and even "Mongolian, which is familiar to all the East Indies." (Dedication of Schola Ludus in vol. i. of collected works.)

§ 6. Incited by the applause of the learned, Comenius now planned a scheme of universal knowledge, to impart which a series of works would have to be written, far exceeding what the resources and industry of one man, however great a scholar, could produce. He therefore looked about for a patron to supply money for the support of himself and his assistants, whilst these works were in progress. "The vastness of the labours I contemplate," he writes to a Polish nobleman, "demands that I should have a wealthy patron, whether we look at their extent, or at the necessity of securing assistants, or at the expenses generally."

§ 7. At Leszna there seemed no prospect of his obtaining the aid he required; but his fame now procured him invitations from distant countries. First he received a call

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