Count De Maistre somewhere says that during the last century a reputation was made much in the same manner as you make a shoe, "Au dernier siècle, on faisait une réputation comme on fait un soulier."
The manufacturing process indicated by De Maistre was known and practised long before the last century, and is even at the present time by no means to be counted among the lost arts. This very day the reader may look around him and easily find numerous specimens of the peculiar industry here described. And going back two hundred years, we may, out of many cases, select that of a learned, laborious, self-sacrificing and pious man, who, driven to a premature grave by ingratitude, neglect, and calumny, has been falsely handed down to posterity as untruthful, dishonest, brutal, and grossly immoral. His transmitted reputation was not the reflection of his deeds. It was manufactured of shreds and patches. Dying in the disgrace caused by the displeasure of the prime minister of a powerful monarch, it would have been remarkable, indeed, had any one at that day so forgotten himself as to become the advocate of a cause hopelessly lost. And so his enemies had a clear field.
Writers of history and biography of the years immediately succeeding took their word, and subsequent biographers and historians had merely to repeat what their predecessors had said. His story is fraught with more than one moral, and the impressive vindication of his character after the silence of two centuries has something in it that seems higher than mere human agency.
John Michael Wansleben was born at Sommerda, near Erfurth, November 1st, 1635. His father was the Lutheran minister of the place. At a proper age he was sent to the University of Erfurth, and afterward completed his studies at the University of Königsberg in 1656. He held for a short time a position as private tutor, and entered the army of the Elector of Brandenburg in 1657, serving as a private soldier through the campaign of that year.
With some idea of embracing a commercial career, he then visited Schleswig, Amsterdam, Glückstadt, and Hamburg, but without result, and returned to Erfurth in 1658. Job Ludolf, a distinguished savant of Erfurth, was then in the meridian of his fame. Ludolf had been sent to Rome in 1649, to make search for the memoirs of John Magnus, Archbishop of Upsal, a man noted for his learning and piety, who, after an unsuccessful struggle against the kingly power of Gustavus Vasa, and the introduction of Lutheranism into Sweden, retired to Rome, where he died. Ludolf, failing to find the memoirs he sought, remained some time in Rome, occupied in the study of the Ethiopian tongue. He was, unquestionably, a man of remarkable acquirements, and was in his day credited with knowing twenty-five languages.
Vansleb[102] attracted the attention of Ludolf, and was received by him partly as a pupil, partly as an assistant, specially devoting himself, by Ludolf's direction, to the study of the Ethiopian language. In 1661, when he was thought sufficiently advanced, Ludolf sent him to London to supervise the publication of his Ethiopian dictionary. Vansleb performed his task, and the dictionary was published the same year. At this time, the English polyglot edition (six vols. folio) of the Bible, by Walton, Bishop of Chester, was in course of publication. There was in that day no dearth of imitators of Cardinal Ximenes. Although bearing the name of Walton, it was the work of several learned men, and its oriental versions were copied from the Bible of Le Jay, (Paris.) Distinguished among its collaborators was Edmund Castell, Canon of Canterbury, an oriental scholar, who afterward published his Lexicon Heptaglotton, the fruit of eighteen hours' daily labor for a period of seventeen years.[103] Castell met with Vansleb, and engaged him as his assistant, taking him into his house and admitting him to his table. For three years and a half Vansleb labored with Castell, who thus mentions him in the preface to his Lexicon: "In ethiopicis per idem tempus operam impendebat suam D. M. Wanslebius, qui ad perpoliendum in eisdem ingenium in varias orientis oras, longa atque periculosa suscepit itinera."[104]
Returning to Germany, Vansleb found that Ludolf, as the tutor of the young princes of Saxony, had obtained great credit and influence with Duke Ernest, surnamed the Pious. Ludolf had long cherished the singular project of bringing about an alliance between some German prince and the King of Ethiopia, (modern Abyssinia,) and by dint of long conferences on the subject with the duke, had succeeded in enlisting Ernest's enthusiastic interest in his plan. This it was:
An ardent champion of what is called Luther's Reformation, he was assiduous in seeking for it moral support wherever it could possibly be found. He imagined that he saw a certain degree of conformity between Lutheranism and the Coptic rite, and the idea of the appearance of antiquity the new religion would receive from a union with one of the oldest oriental churches was more than enough to awaken his warmest enthusiasm. Ludolf, moreover, hoped, through superior German civilization, that Protestantism would be enabled to exercise a decided influence upon the retrograde population of Abyssinia.
The duke fully entered into all these views with the most sanguine hopes.