Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/104

 de Geer seems to have given him unlimited credit. Indeed, his literary renown was so great, that a profit was actually expected from the sale of the Didactic Works, and with this his patron offered to finance a new translation of the Bible into Polish.

It is impossible to say if the magnificent folio, in which the Didactic Works appeared, sold as well as was anticipated. The edition must have been a small one, as the book was very rare a few years after Comenius’ death. To the modern student it is invaluable on account of the numerous autobiographical notices of the author that it contains; but there is no doubt that it can have done little to further Comenius’ renown as a theoretic educationist. The school-books, that appear in chronological order, were already well known, and their collected mass is so great that it quite swamps the Great Didactic. Had this work been published separately it could scarcely have failed to go through several editions, and might have been the means of rescuing the Comenian method from the oblivion into which it afterwards fell.

In itself the volume is a fine one, over 1000 folio pages in length, well printed and well bound. Under the title The Complete Didactic Works of J. A. Comenius, it comprises works written, in Part I., between 1627 and 1642; in Part II., between 1642 and 1650; in Part III., between 1650 and 1654; in Part IV., between 1654 and 1657.

With the contents of the first three parts the reader is already acquainted. Part IV., which is comparatively short, consists of works written in Amsterdam. A collection of sentences based on the Vestibulum, arranged in alphabetical order and entitled Vestibuli Auctarium, is the only section of it that forms an essential part of the Comenian series of school-books. It is dedicated to a Dr. Rulice of Amsterdam, with whom Comenius was in daily