Jacob Behmen

onversations of his learned friends; and then he will take some astrological or alchemical expression of AGRIPPA, or PARACELSUS, or some such outlaw, and will, as with his awl and rosin-end, sew together a sentence, and hammer together a page of the most incongruous and unheard- of phraseology, till, as we read Behmen's earlier work especially, we continually exclaim, O for a chapter of John Bunyan's clear, and sweet, and classical English! The Aurora was written in a language, if writing and a language it can be called, that had never been seen written or heard spoken before, or has since, on the face of the earth. And as our students learn Greek in order to read Homer and Plato and Paul and John, and Latin in order to read Virgil and Tacitus, and Italian to read Dante, and German to read Goethe, so William Law tells us that he learned Behmen's Behmenite High Dutch, and that too after he was an old man, in order that he might completely master the Aurora and its kindred books. And as our