the same spirit that I have written, and grant me indulgence, for in the space of three hours it certainly was not vouchsafed unto me to write more elaborately and more fully.
ΓΟ ΞΞΕΝ CES in the Zwingli Correspondence show that Zwingli wrote at least two Dialogues which were passed among his friends in manuscript, and which were perhaps intended by him for publication. But there is no evidence that they were ever put in print, at all events no copy either in manuscript or print is extant. Of the nature of the first we cannot even conjecture. In the letter of Johannes Dingnauer to Zwingli, dated Dec. 6, 1514, occur these words: ‘But what the learned among us think of your Dialogue, and especially that unique most learned specimen of all learned men, Erasmus of Rotterdam, you will hear when we meet.” (In Schuler and {Schulthess ed., vii., 9; in Egli, Finsler and Koehler ed., vii., 20 sq.) Five years later we have several allusions to a Dialogue entitled ”The Pest,” and which was suggested by Zwingli’s experiences with that scourge. The first reference occurs in the letter of Kaspar Hedio to Zwingli, dated Dec. 10, 1519: “The second question that you ask relates to The Pest. The word pest was of evil significance till you made it a word to which a good meaning can be attached, for the pest which wretchedly distresses miserable mortals is indeed bad, but ‘The Pest of Zwingli is good.” (In Schuler and Schulthess ed., vii., 100; in Egli, Finsler and Koehler ed., vii., 237 sq.). The second reference is in Zwingli’s letter to Oswald Myconius, dated Dec. 31, 1519: “As to my Pest about which you wanted to be informed (in your second letter, I think)—I
wish that it and every sickness mentioned in it were extinct. When Hedio wrote me he said that Nepos was going to write to me about it; as yet no one has written, neither Nepos, nor his son-in-law, nor his father-in-law. He was at Rhe-nanus’s in Selestadt. I hear that it is eommonly reported that the learned approve it but fear for me because it is too bitter. But I could have wished that it [the plague itself] had been sweeter to me at the time when it was slaying me. For what are called ‘plagues’ therein by me have no less an evil effect upon me than that one which threatened to send me to Orcus.” (In Schuler and Schulthess ed., vii., 103 sq.; in Egli, Finsler and Koehler ed., vii, 245.) The last allusion to this lost production is in the letter of James Nepos to Zwingli, dated April 17, 1520: “1 had sent your Dialogue, most cultured Master, by the lame bookseller before I went to see my friends. Send it back, if you think best (as I said to you in person). I will see that it is put into print.” Nepos was a proofreader of Froben, the great printer of Basel. (In Schuler and Schulthess ed., vii., 130; in Egli, Finsler and Koehler ed., vii., 301.)
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