Hubert Thomas, who was secretary to the Elector Palatine, and a friend, as we have seen, of Grünthler and his wife, has written[127] that a professor's chair of the Greek language was offered to Olympia by the Elector, at the same time that he appointed her husband to one of medicine. He speaks of "Doctor Andreas Grünthler, whose wife Olympia, to describe her justly, should be called Sappho of Lesbos;" and goes on to say, that "Both of them were invited by our prince to be the ornaments of his University; he to be professor of medicine, she to teach the Greek language, which she hath hitherto deferred doing, on account of ill health." M. Bonnet thinks, that this offer of a Greek professorship must be deemed a mistake and rejected as incredible, because Olympia does not speak of it in her letters to the brothers Sinapi and Curione. These letters contain, he argues, even the smallest details of her life, and would not therefore have omitted a circumstance of such importance. But these letters, though containing many a little incident which happened to be in the mind of the writer at the moment, do not in any wise purport to give a journal, or even a general view of the history of her life. And even if they were of this nature, it appears to me far more easy to imagine reasons why Olympia may never have mentioned this offer, than to suppose that the Elector's secretary, writing annals at the time the events were passing,—(for the word "hactenus" in the passage quoted, "quod hactenus distulit (Olympia) morbo comprehensa," joined to the date of her death, show that the passage must have been written within a year, at least, of the circumstances recorded) could either have been mistaken, or have written wilfully what was false. Olympia knew but too well that she would never be able to avail herself of such a proposal. Her health and strength had been too much shattered. Probably enough, her reminiscences of public lecturing, and the applause of large auditories, may have made the idea of again presenting herself to such an ordeal altogether distasteful to her present tone of mind and feeling, even had her health permitted her to hope that she might ever again be physically able to do so. And she may have felt, that to give the physical reason for refusing to her kind friends, was to sadden them needlessly by dwelling on a subject which, in all her letters, she touches as lightly as possible; while to assign such a moral reason as has been suggested, would probably give rise to troublesome remonstrances and persuasions. Besides, we have no apparent means of knowing that she did not mention this circumstance to some one, or to all of these friends. Curione's title–page to her works expressly tells us that we have in that volume the writings of Olympia, "quæ hactenus inveniri potuerunt." Many of her letters may have been, and in all probability were, lost. To set aside, therefore, the direct assertion