a person with the disease. Works Hutten was more open in the expression of his opinions than any other man, probably, of his age. He did much to prepare the way for the Reformation and to promote it. He was a master of the Latin language, and excelled in satirical and passionate invective. His literary life is generally divided into three periods: (1) Period of Latin poems (1509–16); (2) period of letters and orations (1515–17); (3) period of dialogues and letters in Latin and German (1517–23). In all he published some 45 different works. His chief works were his Ars versificandi (The Art of Prosody, 1511); the Nemo (1518); a work on the Morbus Gallicus (1519); the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his four Ciceronian Orations, his Letters and the Phalarismus) also in 1519; the Vadismus (1520); and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many poems in Latin and German. Letters of Obscure Men His most noteworthy contribution to literature was his portion of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (Letters of Obscure Men). At first the cloister world, not discerning its irony, welcomed the work as a defence of their position against Johann Reuchlin; though their eyes were soon opened by the favor with which the learned world received it. The Epistolæ were eagerly bought up; the first part (41 letters) appeared at the end of 1515; early in 1516 there was a second edition; later in 1516 a third, with an appendix of seven letters; in 1517 appeared the second part (62 letters), to which a fresh appendix of eight letters was subjoined soon after. How far Hutten was the parent of this celebrated work was long a matter of dispute. Hutten, in a letter addressed to Richard Croke, denied that he was the author of the book, but there is no doubt as to his connexion with it. Erasmus was of opinion that there were three authors, of whom Crotus Rubianus was the originator of the idea, and Hutten a chief contributor. D. F. Strauss concluded that Hutten had no share in the first part, but that his hand is clearly visible in the second part, which Strauss attributed—along with the more serious and severe tone of that bitter portion of the satire—in the main to Hutten. Holborn, however, citing the later scholarship of Bömer, regards the matter of