Chapter II (1)

MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES, AND IN A "WORLD OF DISESTEEM": STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY--SAMUEL HARTLIB, JOHN DURIE, AND JOHN AMOS COMENIUS: SCHEMES OF A REFORMED EDUCATION, AND PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY--MILTON'S _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, AND METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS--HIS SECOND DIVORCE TRACT, OR COMPILATION FROM BUCER--MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THE PULPIT--MILTON AND THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: THEIR ACCUSATION OF HIM IN A PETITION TO THE COMMONS--HIS _AREOPAGITICA_, OR SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING--ANGER OF THE STATIONERS, AND THEIR COMPLAINT AGAINST MILTON TO THE LORDS: CONSEQUENCE OF THE COMPLAINT--THE DIVORCE QUESTION CONTINUED: PUBLICATION OF MR. HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON, AND FARTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON BY PRYNNE, DR. FEATLEY, AND AN ANONYMOUS PAMPHLETEER--_TETRACHORDON AND COLASTERION_: THEIR REPLIES TO THE ASSAILANTS.

Ever since August 1643, when Milton had published his extraordinary _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, but more especially since Feb. 1643-4, when he had published the second and enlarged edition of it, with his name in full, and the dedication to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, his reputation with orthodox English society had been definite enough. He was one of those dreadful Sectaries! Nay he was a Sectary more odious than most; for his was a _moral_ heresy. What was Independency, what was Anabaptism, what was vague Antinomianism, compared with this heresy of the household, this loosening of the holy relation on which all civil society depended? How detestable the doctrine that, when two married people found they had made a mistake in coming together, or at least when the husband could declare before God and human witnesses his irreconcilable dissatisfaction with his wife, then it was right that the two should be separated, with liberty to each to find a new mate! True, it was an able man who had divulged this heresy, one who had brought applauses from Cambridge, who was said to have written beautiful English poems, who had served the cause of Parliament by some splendid pamphlets for Church-reformation and against Episcopacy, and who had in these pamphlets encountered even the great Bishop Hall. All this only made the doctrine more dangerous, the aberration more lamentable. This Mr. Milton must be avoided, and denounced as a Sectary of the worst kind! Some said it was all owing to the conduct of his wife, a rank Royalist, who had deserted him and gone back to her friends! If that were the case, he was to be pitied; but perhaps there were two sides to that story too!

There must have been much gossip of this kind, about Milton and his Divorce Treatise, in the booksellers' shops near St. Paul's, and even round the Parliament in Westminster, in the early months of 1644. The gossip may have affected Milton's relations with some of his former friends and acquaintances. If Bishop Hall, when he first saw the treatise, and perceived its literary ability, "blushed for his age" that so "scandalous" a thing should have appeared, and if even Howell the letter-writer, in his prison, thought it the impudent production of "a poor shallow-brained puppy," what could Milton's orthodox and reverend Smectymnuan friends--Marshall, Calamy, Young, Newcomen, and Spurstow-- think or say about it? Shocked they must have been; and, knowing Milton's temper, and with what demeanour he would front any remonstrances of theirs, they probably left him alone, and became scarcer in their visits to Aldersgate Street. It would not do to keep up the Smectymnuan connexion too visibly after what had happened. Or, if Young could not break off so easily, but would still call to see his old pupil, and to talk with old Mr. Milton about the Bread Street days, how the good man must have yearned to speak sometimes when the old gentleman was out of the way, and he and Milton were alone. "O my dear Mr. Milton, how much we are all concerned about that pamphlet! I am not going to argue it with you; I know you too well, and how little influence my reasonings could have with you now in any such matter; and it is my comfort at least to be able to tell some of my Assembly friends that, if they knew you as well as I do, they would be sure that nothing you do but is done in a great spirit and with a high intention. But, dear me! it is a terrible opinion you have broached!" To something like this Milton may have listened, more or less patiently; or he may have imagined it in Young's mind, if it was not uttered. The mutual regard between Young and his old pupil did not suffer so much from the trial but that we find Milton still willing to acknowledge publicly the connexion that had subsisted between them.

On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the outcry about Milton's treatise among the London Presbyterians, and especially among the city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton more arid more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dread the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from the first publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in "a world of disesteem" on account of it, he naturally held intercourse more and more with those who, though they may not have approved of _his_ particular heresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, were more easy in their judgments of all extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643- 4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have been chiefly among the Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the Lady Margaret Ley, that "woman of great wit and ingenuity," and her husband Captain Hobson, "a very accomplished gentleman," with both of whom he was so intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had a particular honour for him and took much delight in his company," must be left to conjecture. [Footnote: It has been in my mind whether the Captain Hobson who was the Lady Ley's husband, and whom Dagdale describes as "... Hobson of... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," can by possibility have been the same person as the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who was also a Captain in the Parliamentary Army, and who figures much in Edwards's _Gangræna_ and in other books of the time, under the express name of "Captain Hobson," as a leading Sectary, though Edwards will have it that he was originally "a tailor from Buckinghamshire" (_antè_, p. 148). The supposition seems so absurd that I hardly like to mention that I spent hours in turning over Paul Hobson's published sermons and Baptist treatises in case I might come on any confirmation of it--which I did _not_.]

From Milton's Sonnet to the Lady Margaret one may safely infer at least that she was a woman of liberal principles as well as wit. Probably her house was the resort of a good many of what would now be called the "advanced" or "strong-minded" Christians of both sexes then in London; and Milton may there have extended his acquaintance with such, and have even been an object of peculiar interest to some of one sex, as "that handsome, fair gentleman, now talking to Lady Margaret, who is a great scholar and a poet, and whose wife has left him shamefully, so that he wants to be divorced from her, and has written a book which quite proves it." Milton's acquaintance with Roger Williams, at all events, is almost certainly to be dated from Williams's visit to England in 1643-4, when he was writing his _Bloody Tenent_; and if Milton, at the same time, did not become acquainted with John Goodwin of Coleman Street, it would be a wonder.

STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY.

We must, I am sorry to say, descend lower in the society of London, in and about 1644, than the Lady Margaret Ley's drawing-room, or the level of marked men like Williams and Goodwin, if we would understand how Milton's Divorce opinion had begun to operate, and with what consequences of its operation his name was associated. The reader may remember a Mrs. Attaway, mentioned by us among both the Baptists and the Seekers, and as perhaps the most noted of all the women-preachers in London (_antè_, pp. 149, 153). She was, it seems, a "lace-woman, dwelling in Bell Alley in Coleman Street," and preaching on week-day afternoons in that neighbourhood, with occasional excursions to other parts of the city where rooms could be had. Sometimes other "preaching-women" were with her, and the gatherings, though at first of her own sex only, soon attracted curious persons of the other. From the descriptions of what passed in some of them, it would appear that, though the meetings were for worship, and there were regular discourses by Mrs. Attaway and others, free talk and criticism was permitted to all present, so that the conventicle took on sometimes the aspect of a religious debating society. Well, Mrs. Attaway, among others, had got hold of Milton's Divorce Treatise, and had been reading it. "Two gentlemen of the Inns of Court, civil and well-disposed men," who had gone "out of novelty" to hear her, afterwards told _Gangræna_ Edwards of some "discourse they had had with her." Among other passages she "spoke to them of Master Milton's _Doctrine of Divorce_, and asked them what they thought of it; saying "it was a point to be considered of, and that she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of Canaan." Edwards does not give the date of this conversation with Mrs. Attaway; and, though presumably in 1644, it may have been later. He evidently introduces it, however, in order to implicate Milton in the subsequent break-down, which he also reports, of the poor woman morally. For, if Mr. Edwards is to be believed, Mrs. Attaway did "look more into" Milton's doctrine, and at length acted upon it. Some time in 1645 she abjured her "unsanctified husband" Mr. Attaway, who, besides being unsanctified, was then absent in the army, leaving her alone in her lace-shop, and transferred herself to a man named William Jenney, an occasional preacher, who was much more sanctified, and was also on the spot. Mr. Jenney had, unfortunately, a wife already, some children by her, and one expected; but ho too had been meditating on the Divorce Doctrine, and had used his Christian liberty. Mr. Edwards had been most particular in his investigations. He had actually procured from a sure hand the copies of two letters-taken from the original letters, and compared by a minister with the originals--one of William Jenney to his wife since he went away with Mistress Attaway, the other of Mistress Attaway to William Jenney before his going away." He refrains from printing the letters _verbatim_, as they were too long; but he gives extracts. "I thought good to write to you these few lines," writes Jenney to the deserted Mrs. Jenney, Feb. 15, 1645, "to tell you that, because you have been to me rather a disturber of my body and soul than to be a meet help for me---- but I silence! And, for looking for me to come to you again, I shall never come to you again any more. I shall send unto you never no more concerning anything." If this actually was Jenney's letter, Mrs. Attaway was worth ten of him, and deserved a better second. "Dearest friend and well-beloved in the Lord," so she had begun the letter sent to him while he was still Mrs. Jenney's, and which had got into Mrs. Jenney's hands, "I am unspeakably sorry in respect of thy sufferings, I being the object that occasioned it." The sufferings were Mrs. Jenney's bastings of him because he was always with Mrs. Attaway. In good time, Mrs. Attaway goes on to say, he would be delivered from these. "When Jehoshaphat knew not what to do, he looked to the Lord. Let _us_ look to Him, believing confidently in Him with the faith of Jesus; and no question but we shall be delivered. In the mean season I shall give up my heart and affections to thee in the Lord; and, whatsoever I have or am in Him which is our Head, thou shalt command it." The event, according to Edwards, was that Mr. Jenney and Mrs. Attaway eloped together, Mrs. Attaway having persuaded Jenney that she should never die, but that, in obedience to a heavenly message, they must go to Jerusalem, and repair that city in anticipation of the bringing of all the Saints to it in ships to be sent from Tarshish. I suspect they went only to Jericho. [Footnote: This story of Mrs. Attaway is from Edwards's _Gangræna_, Part II. pp. 31, 32, 113- 115; _Fresh Discovery_, appended to Second Part of _Gangræna_, p. 9; and Third Part of _Gangræna_, pp. 25-27 and 188. See also Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. pp. l00 and 123-4.]

All this on the faith of Mr. Edwards's statements in the _Gangræna_. But really one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, dead two hundred years ago, on that sole authority. Never was there a more nauseous creature of the pious kind than this Presbyterian Paul Pry of 1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for the receipt of all sorts of secret information, by word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from the country to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealed their names.] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-like conscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did know of Milton's Divorce Doctrine, and had extracted suggestions from it suitable to her circumstances. For, indeed, the Doctrine was likely to find not a few whose circumstances it suited. Mr. Edwards's book is strewn with instances of persons who had even found out a tantamount doctrine for themselves--men who had left their wives, or wanted to do so, and wives who had left their husbands, and who, without having seen Milton's treatise, defended their act or their wish on grounds of religion and natural law. Nay, in the frenzy of inquiry which had taken possession of the English mind, everything appertaining to Marriage and the Marriage-institution was being plucked up for fundamental re- investigation. There were actually persons who were occupying themselves intently with questioning the forbidden degrees of Consanguinity and Affinity in marriage, and who had not only come to the easy conclusion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is perfectly legitimate, but had worked out a general theologico-physiological speculation to the effect that the marriage of near relatives is in all cases peculiarly proper, and perhaps the more proper in proportion to the nearness of the relationship. This, I imagine, was a very small sect. [Footnote: But, unless Edwards and Baillie were both wrong, there _was_ some such sect. See _Gangræna_, Part III. p. 187, and, more particularly, Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. pp. 100 and 122-3.]

Let us re-ascend into more pleasant air. There was one rather notable person in London, of the highly respectable sort, though, decidedly among the free opinionists, whose acquaintance Milton did make about this time, if he had not made it before, and who must be specially introduced to the reader. This was SAMUEL HARTLIB.

SAMUEL HARTLIB: JOHN DURIE: JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, AND HIS SPECULATIONS ABOUT A REFORMED EDUCATION--PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY.

Everybody knew Hartlib. He was a foreigner by birth, being the son of a Polish merchant, of German extraction, who had left Poland when that country fell under Jesuit rule, and had settled in Elbing in Prussia in very good circumstances. Twice married before to Polish ladies, this merchant had married, in Prussia, for his third wife, the daughter of a wealthy English merchant of Dantzic; and thus our Hartlib, their son, though Prussian-born and with Polish connexions, could reckon himself half-English. The date of his birth was probably about the beginning of the century, _i.e._ he may have been eight or ten years older than Milton. He appears to have first visited England in or about 1628, and from that time, though he made frequent journeys to the Continent, London had been his head-quarters. Here, with a residence in the City, he had carried on business as a "merchant," with extensive foreign correspondences, and very respectable family connexions. One of his aunts (sisters of his mother) had married a Mr. Clark, the son of a former Lord Mayor of London, and afterwards a Sir Richard Smith, Knight and Privy Councillor, and again a Sir Edward Savage. The other aunt had married a country gentleman, named Peak. A cousin of Hartlib's, the daughter of the first and wealthier aunt, Lady Smith, became the wife of Sir Anthony Irby, M.P. for Boston in the Long Parliament. But it did not require such family connexions to make Hartlib at home in English society. The character of the man would have made him at home anywhere. He was one of those persons, now styled "philanthropists" or "friends of progress," who take an interest in every question or project of their time promising social improvement, have always some iron in the fire, are constantly forming committees or writing letters to persons of influence, and altogether live for the public. By the common consent of all who have explored the intellectual and social history of England in the seventeenth century, he is one of the most interesting and memorable figures of that whole period. He is interesting both for what he did himself and also on account of the number and intimacy of his contacts with other interesting people. [Footnote: Memoir of Hartlib by H. Dircks, pp 2-6, where there are extracts from an autobiographical letter of Hartlib to Worthington, written in 1660. "The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington," edited by James Crossley, Esq., F.S.A. (Chetham Society), contains many letters from Hartlib to Worthington, between 1655 and 1662, but not this one. Mr. Crossley's Diary and Correspondence of Worthington, so far as it has gone, is one of the best edited books known to me, the footnotes being very nuggets of biographical lore; and it is to be regretted that the connected notices of Worthington, Hartlib, and Durie, postponed by Mr. Crossley until the work should be completed, have not yet appeared.]

An early friend of Hartlib, associated with him long before the date at which we are now arrived, was that John Durie of whom, and his famous scheme for a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe, we have already had to take some account (Vol. II. pp. 367-8 and 517-8). Their intimacy must have begun in Hartlib's native town of Elbing in Prussia, where, I now find, Durie was residing in 1628, as minister to the English company of merchants in the town, and where, in that very year, I also now find, Durie had the great idea of his life first suggested to him by the Swedish Dr. Godeman. [Footnote: The proof is in statements of Hartlib's own in a Tract of his published in 1641 under the title of "A Briefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants."] Among Durie's first disciples in the idea must certainly have been Hartlib; and it does not seem improbable that, when Hartlib left Prussia, in or about 1628, to settle in England, it was with an understanding that he was to be an agent or missionary for Durie's idea among the English. That he did so act, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea than Durie himself, there is the most positive evidence. Thus, in a series of letters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to the diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib. In the first of these letters, dated from Heilbron April 2/12, 1633, Durie, among other things, begs Roe "to help Mr. Hartlib with a Petition of Divines of those quarters concerning an Edition of a Body of Divinity gathered out of English authors, a work which will be exceeding profitable, but will require divers agents and an exact ordering of the work." In a subsequent letter Durie speaks of having sent Roe, "by Mr. Hartlib, whose industry is specially recommended," an important proposition made by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstiern; and in still later letters Roe is requested by Durie to show Hartlib not only Durie's letters to himself, but also letters about the progress of his scheme which he has enclosed to Roe for the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) and the Bishop of London (Laud). At this point, accordingly, July 20, 1633, there is a letter of Roe's to the Archbishop, from which it appears that Hartlib was made the bearer of Durie's letter to his Grace. Roe recommends the blessed work in which Durie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there is nothing wanting but the public declaration of his Majesty and the Church of England" in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop "to give his countenance to the bearer," described in the margin as "Mr. Hartlib, a Prussian." As Abbot was then within fifteen days of his death, nothing can have come of the application to him; and, as we already know, his successor Laud was a far less hopeful subject for Durie's idea, even though recommended by Roe and explained by Hartlib. In fact, he thought it mischievous moonshine; and, instead of giving Durie the encouragement which he wanted, he wrote to the English agent at Frankfort, instructing him to show Durie no countenance whatever. Durie felt the rebuff sorely. In England, he writes, he must depend now chiefly on Roe, who could still do much privately, apart from Laud's approbation. "Mr. Hartlib will send anything to Durie which Roe would have communicated to him in a secret way." So in June 1634; and fourteen months later (Aug. 1635) Durie, who had meanwhile removed to the Hague, again writes to Roe and again relies on Hartlib. The Dutch, he says, are slow to take up his scheme; and he can think of nothing better in the circumstances than that Roe in England should collect "all the advices and comments of the best divines of the age" on the subject, and have them printed. His very best agent in such a business would be Hartlib, "a man well known, beloved and trusted by all sides, a man exceeding painful, diligent and cordially affected to these endeavours, and one that for such works had lost himself by too much charity." On independent grounds it would be well to find him "some place suitable for his abilities, which might rid him of the undeserved necessities whereunto his public-heartedness had brought him;" but in this special employment he would be invaluable, being "furnished with the Polish, Dutch, English, and Latin languages, perfectly honest and trusty, discreet, and well versed in affairs." In the same strain in subsequent letters. Thus, from Amsterdam Dec. 7/17, Roe is thanked for having bestowed some gratuity on Hartlib, and Hartlib is described as, next to Roe, "the man in the world whom Durie loves and honours most for his virtues and good offices in Durie's cause." At the same time Durie "prays God to free Hartlib from his straits and set him a little on horseback," and adds, "His spirit is so large that it has lost itself in zeal to good things." Again, from Amsterdam Jan 25/Feb 4, 1635-6, Durie writes to Roe and encloses a letter to be sent to his (Durie's) diocesan in Hartlib's behalf. "Mr. Hartlib," Durie says to Roe, "has furnished his lordship (the diocesan) with intelligence from foreign parts for two or three years, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his lordship knows not how Hartlib has fallen into decay for being too charitable to poor scholars, and for undertaking too freely the work of schooling and education of children. If Hartlib and Roe were not in England, Durie would despair of doing any good." The diocesan referred to is probably Juxon, Bishop of London; but, two years later, we find Roe recommending Durie's business and Hartlib personally to another prelate, Bishop Morton of Durham. Writing from St. Martin's Lane, Feb. 17, 1637-8, Sir Thomas "presents the Bishop with a letter from Mr. Durie, and one from Durie to the writer, from which the Bishop may collect his state, and his constant resolution to pursue his business as long as God gives him bread to eat. Such a spirit the writer has never met, daunted with nothing, and only relying upon Providence. ... Sir Thomas in Michaelmas term sent the Bishop a great packet from Samuel Hartlib, correspondent of Durie, an excellent man, and of the same spirit. If the Bishop like his way, Hartlib will constantly write to him, and send all the passages both of learning and public affairs, no man having better information, especially _in re literariâ_." [Footnote: The quotations in this paragraph are from the late Mr. Brace's accurate abstracts of Durie's and Roe's letters (sixteen in all) given in the six volumes of Calendars of the Domestic State Papers from 1633 to 1638.]

These letters enable us to see Hartlib as he was in 1637, a Prussian naturalized in London, between thirty and forty years of age, nominally a merchant of some kind, but in reality a man of various hobbies, and conducting a general news-agency, partly as a means of income and partly from sheer zeal in certain public causes interesting to himself. His zeal in this way, and in private benevolences to needy scholars and inventors, had even outrun prudence; so that, though he could reckon his means at between 300_l_. and 400_l_. a year, [Footnote: This appears from the letter of his to Worthington, of date Aug. 3, 1660, quoted in Dircks's Memoir (p. 4), where he says, "Let it not seem a paradox to you, if I tell you, as long as I have lived in England, by wonderful providences, I have spent yearly out of my own betwixt 300_l._ and 400_l._ sterling a year."] that had not sufficed for his openhandedness. Durie's great project for a reconciliation of the Calvinists and Lutherans, and a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe on some broad basis of mutual tolerance or concession, had hitherto been his hobby in chief. He had other hobbies, however, of a more literary nature, and of late he had been undertaking too freely some work appertaining to "the schooling and education of children."

This last fact, which we learn hazily from Durie's letters and Roe's, we should have known, abundantly and distinctly, otherwise. There are two publications of Hartlib's, of the years 1637 and 1638 respectively, the first of a long and varied series that were to come from his pen. Now, both of these are on the subject of Education. "_Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia, ex Bibliothecâ S. H.: Oxoniæ, Excudebat Gulielmus Turnerus, Academia Typographus_, 1637" ("Preludes of the Endeavours of Comenius, from the Library of S. H.: Oxford, Printed by William Turner, University Printer, 1637")--such is the general title of the first of these publications. It is a small quarto, and consists first of a Preface "_Ad Lectorem_" (to the Reader), signed "Samuel Hartlibius," and then of a foreign treatise which it is the object of the publication to introduce to the attention of Oxford and of the English nation; which treatise has this separate title:--"_Porta Sapientiæ Reserata; sive Pansophiæ Christianæ Seminarium: hoc est, Nova, Compendiosa et Solida omnes Scientias et Artes, et quicquid manifesti vel occulti est quod ingenio humano penetrare, solertiæ imitari, linguae eloqui, datur, brevius, verius, melius, quam hactenus, Addiscendi Methodus: Auctore Reverendo Clarissimoque viro Domino Johanne Amoso Comenio_" ("The Gate of Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge: being a New, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak: The author that Reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius"). So far as I have been able to trace, this is the first publication bearing the name of Hartlib. Copies of it must be scarce, but there is at least one in the British Museum. There also is a copy of what, on the faith of an entry in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book called _Comenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ (Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers.] When the thing actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the date "1639" on the title-page.

The canvas becomes rather crowded; but I am bound to introduce here to the reader "that reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius," who had been winning on Hartlib's heart by his theories of Education and Pansophia, prepossessed though that heart was by Durie and his scheme of Pan-Protestantism.

He was an Austro-Slav, born in 1592, at Comnia in Moravia, whence his name Jan Amos Komensky, Latinized into Joannes Amosius Comenius. His parents were Protestants of the sect known as the Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, who traced their origin to the followers of Huss. Left an orphan in early life, he was poorly looked after, and was in his sixteenth year before he began to learn Latin. Afterwards he studied in various places, and particularly at Herborn in the Duchy of Nassau; whence he returned to his native Moravia in 1614, to become Rector of a school at Prerau. Here it was that he first began to study and practise new methods of teaching, and especially of grammatical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on that subject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Ratich, an Educational Reformer then very active in Germany. From Prerau Comenius removed in 1618 to Fulneck, to be pastor to a congregation of Moravian Brethren there; but, as he conjoined the charge of a new school with his pastorate, he continued his interest in new methods of education. Manuscripts of schoolbooks which he was preparing on his new methods perished, with his library, in a sack of Fulneck in 1621 by the Spaniards; and in 1624, on an edict proscribing all the Protestant ministers of the Austrian States, Comenius lost his living, and took refuge in the Bohemian mountains with a certain Baron Sadowski of Slaupna. In this retreat he wrote, in 1627, a short educational Directory for the use of the tutor of the baron's sons. But, the persecution waxing furious, and 30,000 families being driven out of Bohemia for their Protestantism, Comenius had to migrate to Poland It was with a heavy heart that lie did so: and, as he and his fellow-exiles crossed the mountain-boundary on their way, they looked back on Moravia and Bohemia, and, falling on their knees, prayed God not to let His truth fail utterly out of those hinds, but to preserve a remnant in them for himself. Leszno in Poland was Comenius's new refuge. Here again he employed himself in teaching; and here, in a more systematic manner than before, he pursued his speculations on the science of teaching and on improved methods for the acquisition of universal knowledge. He read, he tells us, all the works he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors or contemporaries, such as Ratich, Ritter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Cæcilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreæ, and also the philosophical works of Campanella and Lord Bacon; but he combined the information so obtained with his own ideas and experience. The results he seems mainly to have jotted down, for future use, in various manuscript papers in his Slavic vernacular, or in German, or in Latin; but in 1631 he was induced by the curators of the school at Leszno to send to the press in Latin one book of a practical and particular nature. This was a so-called "_Janua Linguarum Reserata_," or "Gate of Languages Opened," propounding a method which he had devised, and had employed at Leszno, for rapidly teaching Latin, or any other tongue, and at the same time communicating the rudiments of useful knowledge. The little book, though he thought it a trifle, made him famous. "It happened, as I could not have imagined possible," he himself writes, "that that puerile little work was received with a sort of universal applause by the learned world. This was testified by very many persons of different countries, both by letters to myself congratulating me earnestly on the new invention, and also by translations into the various popular tongues, undertaken as if in rivalry with each other. Not only did editions which we have ourselves seen appear in all the European tongues, twelve in number--viz. Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German. Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian; but it was translated, as we have learnt, into such Asiatic tongues as the Arabic, the Turkish, the Persian, and even the Mongolian."

The process which Comenius thus describes must have extended over several years. There are traces of knowledge of him, and of his _Janua Linguarum Reserata_, in England as early as 1633. In that year a Thomas Home, M.A., then a schoolmaster in London, but afterwards Master of Eton, put forth a "_Janua Linguarum_" which is said by Anthony Wood to have been taken, "all or most," from Comenius. An actual English translation or expansion of Comenius's book, by a John Anchoran, licentiate in Divinity, under the title of "The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened: or else A Summary or Seed-Plot of all Tongues and Sciences," reached its "fourth edition much enlarged" in 1639, and may be presumed to have been in circulation, in other forms, some years before. But the great herald of Comenius and his ideas among the English was Samuel Hartlib. Not only may he have had to do with the importation of Comenius's _Janua Linguarum_ and the recommendation of that book to such pedagogues as Home and Anchoran; but he was instrumental in extracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to it were in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of his reserved and more general theories and intentions in the field of Didactics. The story is told very minutely by Comenius himself.

The _Janua Linguarum Reserata_ was only a proposed improvement in the art of teaching Language or Words; and ought not a true system of education to range beyond that, and provide for a knowledge of Things? This was what Comenius was thinking: he was meditating a sequel to his popular little book, to be called "_Janua Rerum Reserata" or "Gate of Things Opened," and to contain an epitome or encyclopædia of all essential knowledge, under the three heads of Nature, Scripture, and the Mind of Man. Nay, borrowing a word which had appeared as the title of a somewhat meagre Encyclopædia of the Arts by a Peter Laurenbergius, Comenius had resolved on _Pansophia_, or _Pansophia Christiana_ ("Universal Wisdom," or "Universal Christian Wisdom"), as a fit alternative name for this intended _Janua Rerum_. But he was keeping the work back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be persuaded to let the announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become so dear a friend to Comenius that he could refuse _him_ nothing. Whether there had been any prior personal acquaintance between Hartlib and Comenius, by reason of their German and Slavic connexions, I cannot say. But, since the publication of the _Janua Linguarum_, Hartlib had been in correspondence with Comenius in his Polish home; and, by 1636, his interest in the designs of Comenius, and willingness to forward them, had become so well known in the circle of the admirers of Comenius that he had been named as one of the five chief Comenians in Europe, the other four being Zacharias Schneider of Leipsic, Sigismund Evenius of Weimar, John Mochinger of Dantzic, and John Docemius of Hamburg. Now, Hartlib, having heard of the intended _Janua Rerum_ or _Pansophia_ of Comenius, not only in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming works, but also, more particularly, from some Moravian students passing through London, had written to Comenius, requesting some sketch of it. "Being thus asked," says Comenius, "by the most intimate of my friends, a man piously eager for the public good, to communicate some idea of my future work, I did communicate to him in writing, in a chance way, what I had a thought of prefixing some time or other to the work in the form of a Preface; and this, beyond my hope, and without my knowledge, was printed at Oxford, under the title of _Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia_." Here we have the whole secret of that publication from the Oxford University press, in 1637, which was edited by Hartlib and announced as being from his Library. It was not a reprint of anything that had already appeared abroad, but was in fact a new treatise by the great Comenius which Hartlib had persuaded the author to send him from Poland and had published on his own responsibility. He had apologized to Comenius for so doing, on the ground that the publication would "serve a good purpose by feeling the way and ascertaining the opinions of learned and wise men in a matter of such unusual consequence." Comenius was a little nettled, he says, especially as criticisms of the Pansophic sketch began to come in, which would have been obviated, he thought, if he had been allowed quietly to develop the thing farther before publication. Nevertheless, there the book was, and the world now knew of Comenius not only as the author of the little _Janua Linguarum_, but also as contemplating a vast _Janua Rerum_, or organization of universal knowledge on a new basis.--In fact, the fame of Comenius was increased by Hartlib's little indiscretion. In Sweden especially there was an anxiety to have the benefit of the counsels of so eminent a theorist in the business of education. In 1638 the Swedish Government, at the head of which, during the minority of Queen Christina, was the Chancellor Oxenstiern, invited Comenius to Sweden, that he might preside over a Commission for the revision and reform of the schools there. Comenius, however, declined the invitation, recommending that the work should be entrusted to some native Swede, but promising to give his advice; and, at the same time (1638), he began to translate into Latin, for the behoof of Sweden and of other countries, a certain _Didactica Magna_, or treatise on Didactics at large, which he had written in his Bohemian Slavic vernacular nine years before. Hartlib had an early abstract of this book, and this abstract is part of the _Comenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ which he edited in London in the same year, and published in duodecimo in 1639. [Footnote: Bayle's Dictionary: Art. _Coménius (Jean-Amos)_; "Geshichte der Pädagogik," by Karl von Raumer (Stuttgart, 1843), Zweither Theil, pp. 46-49; "Essays on Educational Reformers," by Robert Hebert Quick (1868), pp. 43-47; Wood's Ath. III. 366, and II. 677. The general sketch of Comenius in Bayle, and those by Raumer and Mr. Quick, are very good; but details in the text, and especially the particulars of Hartlib's early connexion with Comenius, have had to be culled by me from the curious autobiographical passages prefixed to or inserted in Comenius's various writings as far as 1642. These form Part I. of his large Folio, _Opera Didactica Omnia_, published by him at Amsterdam in 1657; and the passages in that Part which have supplied particulars for the text will be found at columns 3-4, 318, 326,403,442--444,454-459. Comenius, like most such theoretic reformers, had a vein of egotism, and a strong memory for details respecting the history of his own ideas and their reception.]

What, after all, were the new notions propounded from Poland, with such universal European effort, by this Protestant Austro-Slav, Comenius, and sponsored in England by the Prussian Hartlib? We shall try to give them in epitome. Be it understood, however, that the epitome takes account only of those works of Comenius which were written before 1639, without including the mass of his later writings, some of which were to be even more celebrated.