de
the most difficult things comprehensible. He had a wonderful creative
power, and pre-eminent facility in the use of language; when he took
his pen, his spirit seemed to emancipate itself: one perceives in his
sentences the cheerful warmth that animated him, and they overflow with
the magic creations of the heart. This power is very visible in his
attacks upon individual opponents, and was closely allied to rudeness,
which caused much perplexity to his admiring cotemporaries. He liked
also to play with his opponents: his fancy clothed them in a grotesque
mask, and he rallied, derided, and hit at this fantastic figure, in
expressions by no means measured, and not always very becoming. But the
good humour which shone out from the midst of these insults had
generally a conciliatory effect, though not upon those whom they
touched. Scarcely ever do we perceive any small enmities, but
frequently inexhaustible kindness of heart. Sometimes forgetting the
dignity of the reformer, he played antics like a German peasant child,
or rather like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he buffeted his
adversaries! now with the blows of an angry giant's club, now with the
rod of a buffoon. He delighted in transforming their names into
something ridiculous; thus they were known in the Wittenberger's circle
by the names of beasts and fools: Eckius became Dr. Geek,[31]
Murner[32] was called Katerkopf[33] and Krallen; Emser, who had his
crest (the head of a horned goat) engraved on every controversial
writing, was insulted by being changed into Bock;[34] the Latin name of
the apostate Humanitarian, Cochlaeus, was translated back into German,
and Luther greeted him as Schnecke (the snail) with impenetrable
armour, and--it grieves one to say--sometimes as Rotzloeffel.[35] Still
more annoying, and even shocking in the eyes of his cotemporaries, was
the vehement recklessness with which he broke forth against hostile
princes; the Duke George of Saxony, cousin to his own sovereign, was
the only one he was occasionally obliged to spare. The profligate
despotism of Henry VIII. of England was abhorrent to the soul of the
German reformer, who abused him terribly, and he dealt with Henry of
Brunswick as a naughty school-boy. It cannot, we fear, be denied that
it was this alloy to the moral dignity of his character that acted as
the salt, which made his writings so irresistible to the earnest
Germans of the sixteenth century.

In the autumn of 1517, he had a c