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Updated: June 8, 2025
For one person who read his delightful "Labyrinth," there were thousands who nearly knew the "Janua" by heart. The reason was obvious. The "Labyrinth" was a religious book, and was suppressed as dangerous by Catholic authorities; but the "Janua" was only a harmless grammar, and could be admitted with safety anywhere.
Not only may he have had to do with the importation of Comenius's Janua Linguarum and the recommendation of that book to such pedagogues as Home and Anchoran; but he was instrumental in extracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to it were in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of his reserved and more general theories and intentions in the field of Didactics.
And more than once has he given vent to reflections like these: "For him who does not believe as I do from the bottom of my heart that death is a transition from one existence to another, and that we are justified in holding out to the worst of criminals in his dying hour the comforting assurance, mors janua vitae I say that for him who does not share that conviction the joys of this life must possess so high a value that I could almost envy him the sensations they must procure him."
Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering others from that folly which has embittered my own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER from the dreary mansions of wretchedness and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully constructed, as to fly open for the reception of strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of adamant to such as are within them: Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.
Hearing that through the blunder of an illiterate undertaker the motto on Kenyon's hatchment in Lincoln's Inn Fields had been painted 'Mors Janua Vita, instead of 'Mors Janua Vitæ, he exclaimed, "Bless you, there's no mistake; Kenyon's will directed that it should be 'Vita, so that his estate might be saved the expense of a diphthong."
The gate of Italy, I said in speaking of her, and indeed it is one of the derivations of her name Genoa, Janua the gate, founded, as the fourteenth-century inscription in the Duomo asserts, by Janus, a Trojan prince skilled in astrology, who, while seeking a healthy and safe place for his dwelling, sailed by chance into this bay, where was a little city founded by Janus, King of Italy, a great-grandson of Noah, and finding the place such as he wished, he gave it his name and his power.
Above it was a statue of the Madonna and Child, and on either side were two angels with swords and stars. Underneath was written, in great letters: JANUA COELI. Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon which the sunlight streamed, three palm trees, and a second door which was shut. Above this second door was written: "Les dames n'entrent pas ici."
Jeremy Taylor mourns with him "the strangely hopeful child," who without Comenius's "Janua" and without congruous syntax was fulfilling, had they known it, an appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too flattering to the estate of man.
Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win. 'But I thought you were dead, I put in. 'MORS JANUA VITAE, he smiled.
I conjecture that it may have been customary to set up an image or symbol of Janus at the principal door of the house in order to place the entrance under the protection of the great god. A door thus guarded might be known as a janua foris, that is, a Januan door, and the phrase might in time be abridged into janua, the noun foris being understood but not expressed.
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