§ 60. But though parts of the book may on first reading have gratified the youth of the seventeenth century, a great deal of it gave scanty information about difficult subjects, such as physiology, geometry, logic, rhetoric, and that too in the driest and dullest way. Moreover, in his first version (much modified at Saros-Patak) Comenius following the Jesuit boasts that no important word occurs twice; so that the book, to attain the end of giving a perfect stock of Latin words, would have to be read and re-read till it was almost known by heart; and however amusing boys might find an account of their toys written in Latin the first time of reading, the interest would somewhat wear away by the fifth or sixth time. We cannot then feel much surprised on reading this “general verdict,” written some years later, touching those earlier works of Comenius: “They are of singular use, and very advantageous to those of more discretion (especially to such as have already got a smattering in Latin), to help their memories to retain what they have scatteringly gotten here and there, and to furnish them with many words which perhaps they had not formerly read or so well observed; but to young children (whom we have chiefly to instruct, as those that are ignorant altogether of most things and words), they prove rather a mere toil and burden than a delight and furtherance.” (Chas. Hoole’s preface to his trans. of _Orbis Pictus_, dated “From my school in _Lothbury_, London, Jan. 25, 1658.”) § 61. The “_Janua_” would, therefore, have had but a short-lived popularity with teachers, and a still shorter with learners, if Comenius had not carried out his principle of appealing to the senses, and adopted a plan which had been suggested, nearly 50 years earlier, by a Protestant divine, Lubinus,[87] of Rostock. The artist was called in, and with Endter at Nürnberg in 1657 was published the first edition of a book which long outlived the _Janua_. This was the famous _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, which was used for a century at least in many a schoolroom, and lives in imitations to the present day. Comenius wrote this book on the same lines as the _Janua_, but he goes into less detail, and every subject is illustrated by a small engraving. The text is mostly on the opposite page to the picture, and is connected with it by a series of corresponding numbers. Everything named in the text is numbered as in the picture. The artist employed must have been a bold man, as he sticks at nothing; but in skill he was not the equal of many of his contemporaries; witness the pictures in the Schaffhausen _Janua_ (Editio secunda, SchaffhusI, 1658), in Daniel’s edition of the _Janua_, 1562, and the very small but beautiful illustrations in the _Vestibulum_ of “Jacob Redinger and J. S.” (Amsterdam, 1673). However, the _Orbis Pictus_ gives such a quaint delineation of life 200 years ago that copies with the original engravings keep rising in value, and an American publisher