Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/18

 It was under the Rectorship of Wolfgang Ficinus that Comenius matriculated in March 1611. Of his residence at the University we unfortunately know very little; but he can scarcely have remained there for two years without coming under the influence of John Henry Alsted, and the similarity of their views and dispositions renders it probable that the two men were brought into very close contact. Although only twenty-six years old, Alsted had already a very considerable reputation, and in point of attainments was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men of his time. His industry was so great that his contemporaries christened him Sedulitas, an anagram on the Latinised form of his name. As an etymologist he took a high place, as a writer on Didactic he ranks historically with Ratke as the immediate forerunner of Comenius, and his Encyclopædia Scientiarum Omnium, published at Herborn in 1630, proves him to have been a master in every branch of learning. The range of knowledge was limited, and to write with authority de omni scibili was not the impossibility that it now is, but a glance through the pages of this Encyclopædia shows that its author obtained a marvellous grip of every subject that he studied, and had a very unusual power of co-ordinating the mass of erudition that he possessed. Nor did his many-sidedness end here. His Triumphus Biblicus, in which he attempts to lay the foundation of all positive knowledge in the literal interpretation of Scripture, displays an aspect of his character that we do not meet in the Encyclopædia, and gives evidence of a mind imbued with the most intense mysticism.

Of the exact nature of the intercourse between Comenius and Alsted we have no direct information, but, as Alsted was in the habit of maintaining the closest relations with his pupils and is afterwards found in correspondence with Comenius, we may take it for granted