Note 925 — Chapter X

Melchior Adam, after highly praising Wolf’s translation of Demosthenes, proceeds to boast of the Greek learning of Germany, which, rather singularly, he seems to ascribe to this translation: Effecit ut ante ignotus plerisque Demosthenes, nunc familiariter nobiscum versetur in scholis et academiis. Est sanè quod gratulemur Germaniæ nostræ, quod per Wolfium tantorum fluminum eloquentiæ particeps facta est. Fatentur ipsi Græci, qui reliqui sunt hodie Constantinopoli, præ cæteris eruditi, et Christianæ religionis amantes, totum musarum chorum, relicto Helicone, in Germaniam transmigrâsse. (Vitæ Philosophurum.) Melchior Adam lived in the early part of the seventeenth century, when this high character was hardly applicable to Germany; but his panegyric must be taken as designed for the preceding age, in which the greater part of his eminent men flourished. Besides this, he is so much a compiler that this passage may not be his own.