Note 416 — Chapter XIII · (continued 2)

None but an expert can have any idea of the “speed with which Luther wrote. He was a born stenographer.” It should be noted “that the haste with which he wrote is far less noticeable in the manuscripts which have been preserved than in the writings themselves with their countless defects. Outside a small circle there are but few to-day who could fall under the magical influence of Luther’s writings, and not weary of listening to the monotonous song of the ‘Wittenberg nightingale’” (K. A. Meissinger, in a review of Ficker’s edition of the Commentary on Romans, “Frankfurter Ztng.,” 1910, No. 300). The expression “Wittenberg nightingale” occurs, as is well known, in a poem by Luther’s Nuremberg admirer, Hans Sachs.