Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/81

 EDUCATION AND THE OLDER HUMANISTS 69 Students from far and near nocked in hundreds to his lecture-halls, and countless is the number of those in whom he inspired not only a love of study, but enthu- siasm also for the noble but most difficult vocation of teaching. The strong power of attraction in this man lay pre- eminently, as with Agricola, in his lofty and pious character, his strong moral rectitude, his beautiful simplicity and modesty, his virgin purity of mind. ' By the beauty of his piety Hegius was as a shining light unto the people ; by the compass of his learning and the greatness of his genius he was foremost among the ranks of the learned.' Thus wrote his pupil, Johannes Butzbach, in his ' Wanderbuchlein,' in which he records with such simplicity and freshness the impressions and experiences of his school-days at De venter. He paints Hegius as a thoroughgoing German of the good old stock, simple, honest, and loving, a very father to his pupils, particularly to those of small means, to whom he gave away what he received from the well-to-do. He himself retained his thirst for learning to an extreme old age. In the last years of his life he undertook a journey to Sponheim in order to make acquaintance with the magnificent library of the Abbot Trithemius ; and on his return he recounted to his assembled pupils, 2,200 in number, with what unbounded pleasure he had contemplated all this immense collection of books, and how the reality had even surpassed his expectations. At an advanced age he joined the priesthood. When he died, on December 27, 1498, the poor of Deventer, amongst whom he had secretly and gradually doled out the whole of his considerable fortune, followed