thus deprived of an important source of information.[1] In 1665 death took from him his wife, his friend Dr. Rulice, and his patron Laurence de Geer, and, though the place of the latter was, to a certain extent, supplied by his brother Gerard, who continued to support him in comfort, he must have led but a forlorn existence, an exile from his native land, and the survivor of most of his friends. In his loneliness he devoted himself to his metaphysical writings with all the energy that a feeble old man, whose life had been a perpetual hoping against hope, could muster. His Janua Rerum appears to have been completed in 1666, though, if this was identical with a work of the same name that he mentions previously as being in print,[2] it is impossible to say. The only edition known was published at Leyden in 1681.[3] Of this treatise it suffices to say that it is a deductive metaphysic, totally unlike the Janua Rerum that he anticipated in his younger days, and that it bears no trace of Bacon’s influence. The same may be said of his Pansophic writings, some of which were completed in the same year. Under the title of A general deliberation for the improvement of the human race[4] were comprised six parts, named respectively, Panegersia, Panaugia, Pantaxia or Pansophia, Panpadia, Panglottia, and Panorthosia, concluded by a seventh consisting of a general exhortation. If the first two were published during Comenius’ lifetime, the editions must have been limited to a few copies, as Buddaeus, in 1702, had to edit the Panegersia from the original manuscript,[5] and of the Panaugia there only exists one copy—in the museum at Prague.[6] The Panegersia excited the admiration of Herder,[7] but it is unnecessary
- ↑ Hartlib had been in ill-health for some time, and probably died in this year.
- ↑ In his letter to the bookseller Montanus (Van den Berge) in 1661.
- ↑ ‘Janua Rerum reserata, hoc est Sapientia prima (quam vulgo metaphysicam vocant). Authore J. A. Comenio. Lugduni Batavorum; apud heredes Jacobi Heeneman. Anno 1681.’
- ↑ ‘De rerum humanaruni emendatione consultatio catholica.’
- ↑ There is a manuscript copy of the Panegersia in the British Museum.
- ↑ Kvacsala.
- ↑ ‘Briefen zur Beförderung der Humanität,’ No. 41.
