Reuchlin, or Capnio (as he who was one of the lights of his generation was misnamed and misnamed himself,) who had with his other great and eminent merits that of restoring or rather introducing into Germany the study of Hebrew, revived the lost art of comedy. If any one had preceded him in this revival, Macropedius was ignorant of it, and by the example and advice of this great man he was induced to follow him, not only as a student of Hebrew, but as a comic writer. Hrosvitha indeed, a nun of Gandersheim in Saxony, who lived in the tenth century and in the reign of Otho II. composed six Latin comedies _in emulation_ of Terence, but in praise of virginity; and these with other of her poems were printed at Nuremberg in the year 1501. The book I have never seen, nor had De Bure, nor had he been able (such is its rarity) to procure any account of it farther than enabled him to give its title. The name of Conrad Celtes, the first German upon whom the degree of Poet Laureate was conferred, appears in the title, as if he had discovered the manuscript; _Conrado Celte inventore_. De Bure says the volume was _attribué au même Conradus Celtes_. It is rash for any one to form an opinion of a book which he has never examined, unless he is well acquainted with the character and capacity of its author; nevertheless I may venture to observe that nothing can be less in unison with the life and conversation of this Latin poet, as far as these may be judged of by his acknowledged poems, than the subjects of the pieces published under Hrosvitha's name; and no reason can be imagined why if he had written them himself, he should have palmed them upon the public as her composition. It is remarkable that Macropedius when he spoke of Reuchlin's comedies should not have alluded to these, for that he must have seen them there can be little or no doubt. One of Reuchlin's is said to have been imitated from _la Farce de Pathelin_, which under the title of the Village Lawyer has succeeded on our own stage, and which was so deservedly popular that the French have drawn from it more than one proverbial saying. The French Editor who affirms this says that Pathelin was printed in 1474, four years before the representation of Reuchlin's comedy, but the story is one of those good travellers which are found in all countries, and Reuchlin may have dramatised it without any reference to the French drama, the existence of which may very probably have been unknown to him, as well as to Macropedius. Both his pieces are satirical. His disciple began with a scriptural drama upon the Prodigal Son, Asotus is its title. It must have been written early in the century, for about 1520 he laid it aside as a juvenile performance, and faulty as much because of the then comparatively rude state of learning, as of his own inexperience.