About this time, there was a German Jesuit, named Jacob Masen or Masenius, who was a professor of rhetoric in Cologne, and died in 1681. Among his manuscripts found after his death were three volumes, the first of which was a treatise on general literature, the second a collection of lyrics, epics, elegies etc., and the third a number of dramas. In the second manuscript was an epic entitled "Sarcotis." The world would never have known anything about "Sarcotis" had not a Scotchman, named Lauder, succeeded in finding it, somewhere, about 1753, i. e. seventy-two years after Masen's death. He ran it through the press immediately, to prove that Milton had copied it in his "Paradise Lost." Whereupon all England rose in its wrath to defend its idol. Lauder was convicted of having intercalated in the "Sarcotis," a Latin translation of some of the lines of "Paradise Lost," and had to hide himself in some foreign land to expiate his crime against the national infatuation. Four years later (1757), Abbé Denouart published a translation of the genuine text of "Sarcotis." The poem was found to be an excellent piece of work, and like "Paradise Lost," its theme was the disobedience of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from Paradise, the disasters consequent upon this sin of pride. Whether Milton ever read "Sarcotis" is not stated. Frederick von Spee is another Jesuit poet. He was born at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine on February 25, 1591, entered the Society in 1610, and studied, taught and preached for many years like the rest of his brethren. An attempt to assassinate him was made in 1629. He was in Treves, when it was stormed by the imperial forces in 1635, witnessed all its horrors, and died from an infection which he caught while nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospital. It was only in the stormy period of his life that he wrote in verse. Two of his works, the "Goldenes Tugendbuch," and the "Trutznachtigal" were published after his death. The former was highly prized by Leibniz as a book of devotion. The latter, which has in recent times been repeatedly reprinted and revised, occupies a conspicuous place among the lyrical collection of the seventeenth century. His principal work, however, the one, in fact, which gave him a world-wide reputation, (a result he was not aiming at, for the book was probably published without his consent), is the "Cautio Criminalis," which virtually ended the witchcraft trials. It is written in exquisite Latin, and describes with thrilling vividness and cutting sarcasm the horrible abuses in the prevailing legal proceedings, particularly the use of the rack. The moral impression produced by the work soon put a stop to the atrocities in many places, though many a generation had to pass before witch-burning ceased in Germany.