Mercury strongly illustrates the theory _de vi minimorum_. Divide five
grains into fifty doses, and they may poison you irretrievably. I don't
believe in all that Hahnemann says; but he is a fine fellow, and, like most
Germans, is not altogether wrong, and like them also, is never altogether
right.
* * * * *
Six volumes of translated selections from Luther's works, two being from
his Letters, would be a delightful work. The translator should be a man
deeply imbued with his Bible, with the English writers from Henry the
Seventh to Edward the Sixth, the Scotch divines of the 16th century, and
with the old racy German.[1]
Hugo de Saint Victor, Luther's favourite divine, was a wonderful man, who,
in the 12th century, the jubilant age of papal dominion, nursed the lamp of
Platonic mysticism in the spirit of the most refined Christianity.[2]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was fond of pressing this proposed publication:--"I can
scarcely conceive," he says in the Friend, "a more delightful volume than
might be made from Luther's letters, especially those that were written
from the Warteburg, if they were translated in the simple, sinewy,
idiomatic, _hearty_ mother tongue of the original. A difficult task I
admit, and scarcely possible for any man, however great his talents in
other respects, whose favourite reading has not lain among the English
writers from Edward the Sixth to Charles the First." Vol. i. p. 235. n.--
ED.]
[Footnote 2:
This celebrated man was a Fleming, and a member of the Augustinian society
of St. Victor. He died at Paris in 1142, aged forty-four. His age
considered, it is sufficient praise for him that Protestants and Romanists
both claim him for their own on the subject of transubstantiation.--ED.]
_June_ 9. 1832.