Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/61

 Bishop Wilkins, at the request of the Royal Society, brought out an elaborate scheme of a similar nature in 1668. Wilkins’ scheme does not deal with the relations of sounds to things. “The first thing in such an institution,” he says, “is to assign several letters and sounds for the forty genuses.“ This is done arbitrarily, and on this substratum the language is built up. It was to be written in a kind of shorthand, the signs for which are rather clumsily chosen. The universal language must have been one of the topics of conversation between Wilkins and Comenius, and it is difficult to say which, if either, borrowed it from the other.

Parliament now sat again, but had too much work on its hands to devote any attention to Comenius, and told him to wait. In the meantime he was assured that the intention was to give over to him some college with its income for the carrying into effect of his schemes. In London the Savoy or Chelsea College, and in the country Winchester College, were suggested as suitable institutions, so that, as Comenius remarks, “nothing seemed more certain than that the scheme of the great Verulam, of opening in some part of the world a universal college, whose one object should be the advancement of the sciences, would be carried into effect.”

But trouble had broken out in Ireland, and in England it was evident that affairs were working up to civil war. Comenius soon perceived that amid so much turmoil there was little chance of these suggestions bei carried into practice, and began to think of returning home. His position was unpleasant. On the strength of Hartlib’s invitation and assurance that funds would be forthcoming, he had given up his post in Lissa. Hopes of universal colleges and pecuniary support were now vanishing into thin air, and he found himself with baffled expectations,