Second Commentary on the Doctrine of Abstinence

so that readers may be able to judge more weightily and justly concerning the nature and condition of the deeds performed. Furthermore, he paints everything in, as it were, vivid colors, and skillfully and ingeniously expresses his thoughts elegantly, eloquently, and sublimely. By the very variety of matters—than which nothing more refreshes and delights the mind—he keeps the minds of his readers so attentive and fixed that they burn with an altogether eager desire, beyond the mere beginnings of the facts and the explanations of the undertakings, to know immediately also their progressions and outcomes. Finally, he seems to have discovered what can be achieved by the highest artifice in restricting and contracting the history of the Brandenburg house, which is quite copious, since not rarely he pronounces on a matter, or even with a single word, with a more fortunate care than others are accustomed to speak, even having applied great flourishes and curling irons of words. Why more? That he holds an exceedingly excellent place among recent writers who have acquired authority and grace for their books by the elegance and abundance of their speech, and simultaneously by the selection of their subject matter, let the SOCIETY OF SCIENCES speak—the happy judge of true erudition, which flourishes in Berlin under the protection of the most excellent Musagetes, the MOST POWERFUL KING OF THE PRUSSIANS, where the writing mentioned above was heard and received with incredible applause, and even inserted into the second volume of their proceedings. How eagerly, moreover, these Brandenburg commentaries have been read by others, let