Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/77

 Hungary, and preferred to print this version in Part III. of the Folio. The grammar for the Janua, under the title Januae Linguarum novissima clavis, Grammatica Latino-Vernacula, he gives in full, because, though also revised in Hungary, the two works are practically distinct. The grammar written at Elbing proved too long for young boys (it occupies over 100 folio pages), and is more suited to the master than to the pupil, while that written in Hungary is much shorter.

Following the grammar are some Annotationes super Grammaticam novam Janualem; additional information for teachers and hints as to the spirit in which the grammar should be used. “This is a grammar that I have given you,” he says, in a few concluding words, “but one that is to serve as a prelude to logic, rhetoric, and the sciences themselves. Do we wish to train up boys so that they may always remain boys? Nay, it is to higher things that they must be advanced.” The Lexicon Januale is not printed in the folio, since an edition of it was brought out by Thomas Gölz at Frankfort in 1656, while the publication of the Atrium was hindered by Comenius’ call to Hungary in 1650.

We thus see that the series of works composed for de Geer consisted of a philosophic treatise on Language, its nature, its functions, and the laws to be observed in teaching it, followed by a set of graduated reading-books and lexicons based on these laws. The Methodus Novissima deserves special notice, more indeed than can be given to it here. Its scope is not so wide as that of the Great Didactic, since it deals primarily with language, but in breadth of thought it is fully equal to it. Its great drawback is its bulk (it is half as long again as the Great Didactic). As a writer Comenius lacked the instinct of limitation, and in the Methodus, as in much that he wrote, allowed his pen to run away with him.

The work contains thirty chapters, and these fall naturally under seven heads.

I. cc. i.–iv.Theory of Language.—Philosophic dis-