Chapter 5

The wild winds weep,And the night is a-cold;Come hither, Sleep,And my griefs unfold:But lo! the morning peepsOver the eastern steep;And the rustling birds of dawnThe earth do scorn.Lo! to the vaultOf paved heaven,With sorrow fraughtMy notes are driven:They strike the ear of nightMake weep the eyes of day;They make mad the roaring windsAnd with tempests play.Like a fiend in a cloudWith howling woe,After night I do croudAnd with night will go;I turn my back to the east,From whence comforts have increas'd;For light doth seize my brainWith frantic pain.

2LUISMUÑOZ. VIDA DELP. L.DEGRANADA.

AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE FORM OF THE HUMAN LEG SUGGESTED BY A PHYSICIAN. THE DOCTOR'S CURE OF A BROKEN SHIN AND INVENTION OF A SHIN-SHIELD.

Res fisci est, ubicunque natat.Whatsoever swims upon any water, belongs to this exchequer.

JEREMYTAYLOR.Preface to the Duct. Dub..

Some Dr. Moreton is said to have advanced this extraordinary opinion in a treatise upon the beauty of the human structure, that had the calf of the leg been providentially set before, instead of being preposterously placed behind, it would have been evidently better, for as much as the shin-bone could not then have been so easily broken.

I have no better authority for this than a magazine extract. But there have been men of science silly enough to entertain opinions quite as absurd, and presumptuous enough to think themselves wiser than their Maker.

Supposing the said Dr. Moreton has not been unfairly dealt with in this statement, it would have been a most appropriate reward for his sagacity if some one of the thousand and one wonder-working Saints of the Pope's Calendar had reversed his own calves for him, placed them in front, conformably to his own notion of the fitness of things, and then left him to regulate their motions as well as he could. TheGastrocnemiusand theSolæuswould have found themselves in a new and curious relation to theRectus femorisand the twoVasti, and the anatomical reformer would have learnt feelingly to understand the term of antagonizing muscles in a manner peculiar to himself.

The use to which this notable philosopher would have made the calf of the leg serve, reminds me of a circumstance that occurred in our friend's practice. An old man hard upon threescore and ten, broke his shin one day by stumbling over a chair; and although a hale person who seemed likely to attain a great age by virtue of a vigorous constitution, which had never been impaired through ill habits or excesses of any kind, the hurt that had been thought little of at first became so serious in its consequences, that a mortification was feared. Daniel Dove was not one of those practitioners who would let a patient die under their superintendencesecundum artem, rather than incur the risque of being censured for trying in desperate cases any method not in the regular course of practise: and recollecting what he had heard when a boy, that a man whose leg and life were in danger from just such an accident, had been saved by applying yeast to the wound, he tried the application. The dangerous symptoms were presently removed by it; a kindly process was induced, the wound healed, and the man became whole again.

Dove was then a young man; and so many years have elapsed since old Joseph Todhunter was gathered to his fathers, that it would now require an antiquarian's patience to make out the letters of his name upon his mouldering headstone. All remembrance of him (except among his descendants, if any there now be) will doubtless have past away, unless he should be recollected in Doncaster by the means which Dr. Dove devised for securing him against another such accident.

The Doctor knew that the same remedy was not to be relied on a second time, when there would be less ability left in the system to second its effect. He knew that in old age the tendency of Nature is to dissolution, and that accidents which are trifling in youth, or middle age, become fatal at a time when Death is ready to enter at any breach and Life to steal out through the first flaw in its poor crazy tenement. So, having warned Todhunter of this, and told him that he was likely to enjoy many years of life, if he kept a whole skin on his shins, he persuaded him to wear spatterdashes, quilted in front and protected there with whalebone, charging him to look upon them as the most necessary part of his clothing, and to let them be the last things which he doffed at night, and the first which he donn'd in the morning.

The old man followed this advice; lived to the great age of eighty-five, enjoyed his faculties to the last; and then died so easily, that it might truly be said he fell asleep.

My friend loved to talk of this case; for Joseph Todhunter had borne so excellent a character through life, and was so cheerful and so happy, as well as so venerable an old man, that it was a satisfaction for the Doctor to think he had been the means of prolonging his days.

VIEWS OF OLD AGE. MONTAGNE, DANIEL CORNEILLE, LANGUET, PASQUIER, DR. JOHNSON, LORD CHESTERFIELD, ST. EVREMOND.

What is ageBut the holy place of life, the chapel of easeFor all men's wearied miseries?MASSINGER.

Montagne takes an uncomfortable view of old age.Il me semble, he says,qu'en la vieillesse, nos ames sont subjectes à des maladies et imperfections plus importunes qu'en la jeunesse. Je le disois estant jeune, lors on me donnoit de mon menton par le nez; je le dis encore à cette heure, que mon poil gris me donne le credit. Nous appellons sagesse la difficulté de nos humeurs, le desgoust des choses presentes: mais à la verité, nous ne quittons pas tant les vices, comme nous les changeons; et, à mon opinion, en pis. Outre une sotte et caduque fierté, un babil ennuyeux, ces humeures espineuses et inassociables, et la superstition, et un soin ridicule des richesses, lors que l'usage en est perdu, j'y trouve plus d'envie, d'injustice, et de malignité. Elle nous attache plus de rides en l'esprit qu'au visage: et ne se void point d'ames ou fort rares, qui en vieillissant ne sentent l'aigre, et le moisi.

Take this extract, my worthy friends who are not skilled in French, or know no more of it than a Governess may have taught you,—in the English of John Florio, Reader of the Italian tongue unto the Sovereign Majesty of Anna, Queen of England, Scotland, &c. and one of the gentlemen of her Royal privy chamber, the same Florio whom some commentators upon very insufficient grounds, have supposed to have been designed by Shakespere in the Holofernes of Love's Labour's Lost.

“Methinks our souls in age are subject unto more importunate diseases and imperfections than they are in youth. I said so being young, when my beardless chin was upbraided me, and I say it again, now that my gray beard gives me authority. We entitle wisdom, the frowardness of our humours, and the distaste of present things; but in truth we abandon not vices so much as we change them; and in mine opinion for the worse. Besides a silly and ruinous pride, cumbersome tattle, wayward and unsociable humours, superstition, and a ridiculous carking for wealth, when the use of it is well nigh lost. I find the more envy, injustice and malignity in it. It sets more wrinkles in our minds than in our foreheads, nor are there any spirits, or very rare ones, which in growing old taste not sourly and mustily.”

In the same spirit, recollecting perhaps this very passage of the delightful old Gascon, one of our own poets says,

Old age doth give by too long space,Our souls as many wrinkles as our face;

and the same thing, no doubt in imitation of Montagne has been said by Corneille in a poem of thanks addressed to Louis XIV., when that King had ordered some of his plays to be represented during the winter of 1685, though he had ceased to be a popular writer,

Je vieillis, ou du moins, ils se le persuadent;Pour bien écrire encor j'ai trop long tems écrit,Et les rides du front passent jusqu' à l'esprit.

The opinion proceeded not in the poet Daniel from perverted philosophy, or sourness of natural disposition, for all his affections were kindly, and he was a tender-hearted, wise, good man. But he wrote this in the evening of his days, when he had

out lived the dateOf former grace, acceptance and delight,

when,

those bright stars from whenceHe had his light, were set for evermore;

and when he complained that years had done to him

this wrong,To make him write too much, and live too long;

so that this comfortless opinion may be ascribed in him rather to a dejected state of mind, than to a clear untroubled judgement. But Hubert Languet must have written more from observation and reflection than from feeling, when he said in one of his letters to Sir Philip Sidney, “you are mistaken if you believe that men are made better by age; for it is very rarely so. They become indeed more cautious, and learn to conceal their faults and their evil inclinations; so that if you have known any old man in whom you think some probity were still remaining, be assured that he must have been excellently virtuous in his youth.”Erras si credis homines fieri ætate meliores; id nam est rarissimum. Fiunt quidem cautiores, et vitia animi, ac pravos suos affectus occultare discunt: quod si quem senem novisti in quo aliquid probitatis superesse judices, crede eum in adolescentiâ fuisse optimum.

Languet spoke of its effects upon others. Old Estienne Pasquier in that uncomfortable portion of hisJeux Poëtiqueswhich he entitlesVieillesse Rechignéewrites as a self-observer, and his picture is not more favourable.

Je ne nourry dans moy qu'une humeur noire,Chagrin, fascheux, melancholic, hagard,Grongneux, despit, presomptueux, langard,Je fay l'amour au bon vin et au boire.

But the bottle seems not to have put him in good humour either with others or himself.

Tout la monde me put; je vy de telle sort,Que je ne fay meshuy que tousser et cracher,Que de fascher autruy, et d'autruy me fascher;Je ne supporte nul, et nul ne me supporte.Un mal de corps je sens, un mal d'esprit je porte;Foible de corps je veux, mais je ne puis marcher;Foible de esprit je n'oze à mon argent toucher,Voilà les beaux effects que la vieillesse apporte!O combien est heureux celuy qui, de ses ansJeune, ne passe point la fleur de son printans,Ou celuy qui venu s'en retourne aussi vite!Non: je m'abuze; ainçois ces maux ce sont appasQui me feront un jour trouver doux mon trespas,Quand il plaira a Dieu que ce monde je quitte.The miserable life I lead is such,That now the world loathes me and I loathe it;What do I do all day but cough and spit,Annoying others, and annoyed as much!My limbs no longer serve me, and the wealthWhich I have heap'd, I want the will to spend.So mind and body both are out of health,Behold the blessings that on age attend!Happy whose fate is not to overliveThe joys which youth, and only youth can give,But in his prime is taken, happy he!Alas, that thought is of an erring heart,These evils make me willing to departWhen it shall please the Lord to summon me.

The Rustic, in Hammerlein's curious dialoguesde Nobilitate et Rusticitate, describes his old age in colours as dark as Pasquier's;plenus dierum, he says,ymmo senex valde, id est, octogenarius, et senio confractus, et heri et nudiustercius, ymmo plerisque revolutionibus annorum temporibus, corporis statera recurvatus, singulto, tussito, sterto, ossito, sternuto, balbutio, catharizo, mussico, paraleso, gargariso, cretico, tremo, sudo, titillo, digitis sæpe geliso, et insuper (quod deterius est) cor meum affligitur, et caput excutitur, languet spiritus, fetet anhelitus, caligant oculi et facillant1articuli, nares confluunt, crines defluunt, tremunt tactus et deperit actus, dentes putrescunt et aures surdescunt; de facili ad iram provocor, difficili revocor, cito credo, tarde discedo.

1Facillantis here evidently the same asvacillant. For the real meaning offacillothe reader is referred to Du Cange in v. or to Martinii Lexicon.

The effects of age are described in language not less characteristic by the Conte Baldessar Castiglione in his Cortegiano. He is explaining wherefore the old man is always “laudator temporis acti;” and thus he accounts for the universal propensity;—gli anni fuggendo se ne portan seco molte commodità, e tra l' altre levano dal sangue gran parte de gli spiriti vitali; onde la complession si muta, e divengon debili gli organi, per i quali l' anima opera le sue virtù. Però de i cori nostri in quel tempo, come allo autunno le fogli de gli arbori, caggiono i soavi fiori di contento; e nel loco de i sereni et chiari pensieri, entra la nubilosa e turbida tristitia di mille calamità compagnata, di modo che non solamente il corpo, ma l' animo anchora è infermo; ne de i passati piaceri reserva altro che una tenace memoria, e la imagine di quel caro tempo della tenera eta, nella quale quando ci troviamo, ci pare che sempre il cielo, e la terra, e ogni cosa faccia festa, e rida intorno à gli occhi nostri e nel pensiero, come in un delitioso et vago giardino, fiorisca la dolce primavera d' allegrezza: onde forse saria utile, quando gia nella fredda stagione comincia il sole della nostra vita, spogliandoci de quei piaceri, andarsene verso l' occaso, perdere insieme con essi anchor la lor memoria, e trovar(come disse Temistocle)un' arte, che a scordar insegnasse; perche tanto sono fallaci i sensi del corpo nostro, che spesso ingannano anchora il giudicio della mente. Però parmi che i vecchi siano alla condition di quelli, che partendosi dal porto, tengon gli occhi in terra, e par loro che la nave stia ferma, e la riva si parta; e pur è il contrario; che il porto, e medesimamente il tempo, e i piaceri restano nel suo stato, e noi con la nave della mortalità fuggendo n' andiamo, l' un dopo l' altro, per quel procelloso mare che ogni cosa assorbe et devora; ne mai piu pigliar terra ci è concesso; anzi sempre da contrarii venti combattuti, al fine in qualche scoglio la nave rompemo.

Take this passage, gentle reader, as Master Thomas Hoby has translated it to my hand.

“Years wearing away carry also with them many commodities, and among others take away from the blood a great part of the lively spirits; that altereth the complection, and the instruments wax feeble whereby the soul worketh his effects. Therefore the sweet flowers of delight vade2away in that season out of our hearts, as the leaves fall from the trees after harvest; and instead of open and clear thoughts, there entereth cloudy and troublous heaviness, accompanied with a thousand heart griefs: so that not only the blood, but the mind is also feeble, neither of the former pleasures retaineth it any thing else but a fast memory, and the print of the beloved time of tender age, which when we have upon us, the heaven, the earth and each thing to our seeming rejoiceth and laugheth always about our eyes, and in thought (as in a savoury and pleasant garden) flourisheth the sweet spring time of mirth: So that peradventure, it were not unprofitable when now, in the cold season, the sun of our life, taking away from us our delights beginneth to draw toward the West, to lose therewithall the mindfulness of them, and to find out as Themistocles saith, an art to teach us to forget; for the senses of our body are so deceivable, that they beguile many times also the judgement of the mind. Therefore, methinks, old men be like unto them that sailing in a vessel out of an haven, behold the ground with their eyes, and the vessel to their seeming standeth still, and the shore goeth; and yet is it clean contrary, for the haven, and likewise the time and pleasures, continue still in their estate, and we with the vessel of mortality flying away, go one after another through the tempestuous sea that swalloweth up and devoureth all things, neither is it granted us at any time to come on shore again; but, always beaten with contrary winds, at the end we break our vessel at some rock.”

2‘Vade’ is no doubt the true word here. The double sense of it,—that is, tofade, or togo away,—may be seen in Todd's Johnson and in Nares' Glossary. Neither of them quote the following lines from the Earl of Surrey's Poems. They occur in his Ecclesiastes.

We, that live on the earth, draw toward our decay,Our children fill our place awhile, and then they vade away.

And again,

New fancies daily spring, which vade, returning mo.

“Why Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “a man grows better humoured as he grows older. He improves by experience. When young he thinks himself of great consequence, and every thing of importance. As he advances in life, he learns to think himself of no consequence, and little things of little importance, and so he becomes more patient and better pleased.” This was the observation of a wise and good man, who felt in himself as he grew old, the effect of Christian principles upon a kind heart and a vigorous understanding. One of a very different stamp came to the same conclusion before him;Crescit ætate pulchritudo animorum, says, Antonio Perez,quantum minuitur eorundem corporum venustas.

One more of these dark pictures. “The heart” says Lord Chesterfield, “never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head, (which by the way, very seldom is the case) really reform, in a more advanced age, from a consciousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt; such a conversion would only be thought prudential and political, but never sincere.”

It is remarkable that Johnson, though, as has just been seen, he felt in himself and saw in other good men, that the natural effect of time was to sear away asperities of character

Till the smooth temper of their age should beLike the high leaves upon the Holly Tree,

yet he expressed an opinion closely agreeing with this of Lord Chesterfield. “A man, he said, commonly grew wicked as he grew older, at least he but changed the vices of youth, head-strong passion and wild temerity, for treacherous caution and desire to circumvent.” These he can only have meant of wicked men. But what follows seems to imply a mournful conviction that the tendency of society is to foster our evil propensities and counteract our better ones: “I am always, he said, on the young people's side when there is a dispute between them and the old ones; for you have at least a charm for virtue, till age has withered its very root.” Alas, this is true of the irreligious and worldly-minded, and it is generally true because they composed the majority of our corrupt contemporaries.

But Johnson knew that good men became better as they grew older, because his philosophy was that of the Gospel. Something of a philosopher Lord Chesterfield was, and had he lived in the days of Trajan or Hadrian, might have done honour to the school of Epicurus. But if he had not in the pride of his poor philosophy shut both his understanding and his heart against the truths of revealed religion, in how different a light would the evening of his life have closed.

Une raison essentielle, says the Epicurean Saint Evremond,qui nous oblige à nous retirer quand nous sommes vieux, c'est qu'il faut prevenir le ridicule où l'age nous fait tomber presque toujours.And in another place he says,certes le plus honnéte-homme dont personne n'a besoin, a de la peine a s'exempter du ridicule en vieillissant.This was the opinion of a courtier, a sensualist, and a Frenchman.

I cannot more appositely conclude this chapter than by a quotation ascribed, whether truly or not, to St. Bernard.Maledictum caput canum et cor vanum, caput tremulum et cor emulum, canities in vertice et pernicies in mente: facies rugosa et lingua nugosa, cutis sicca et fides ficta; visus caligans et caritas claudicans; labium pendens et dens detrahens; virtus debilis et vita flebilis; dies uberes et fructus steriles, amici multi, et actus stulti.

FURTHER OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING OLD AGE. BISHOP REYNOLDS. OPINION OF THE DOCTOR CONCERNING BEASTS AND MEN. M. DE CUSTINE. THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. WORDSWORTH. SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

In these reflections, which are of a serious, and somewhat of a melancholy cast, it is best to indulge; because it is always of use to be serious, and not unprofitable sometimes to be melancholy.

FREEMAN'SSERMONS.

“As usurers,” says Bishop Reynolds, “before the whole debt is paid, do fetch away some good parts of it for the loan, so before the debt of death be paid by the whole body, old age doth by little and little, take away sometimes one sense sometimes another, this year one limb, the next another; and causeth a man as it were to die daily. No one can dispel the clouds and sorrows of old age, but Christ who is the sun of righteousness and the bright morning star.”

Yet our Lord and Saviour hath not left those who are in darkness and the shadow of death, without the light of a heavenly hope at their departure, if their ways have not wilfully been evil,—if they have done their duty according to that law of nature which is written in the heart of man. It is the pride of presumptuous wisdom (itself the worst of follies) that has robbed the natural man of his consolation in old age, and of his hope in death, and exacts the forfeit of that hope from the infidel as the consequence and punishment of his sin. Thus it was in heathen times, as it now is in countries that are called christian. When Cicero speaks of those things which depend upon opinion, he says,hujusmodi sunt probabilia; impiis apud inferos pœnas esse præparatas; eos, qui philosophiæ dent operam, non arbitrari Deos esse.Hence it appears he regarded it as equally probable that there was an account to be rendered after death; and that those who professed philosophy would disbelieve this as a vulgar delusion, live therefore without religion, and die without hope, like the beasts that perish!

“Ifthey perish,” the Doctor, used always reverently to say when he talked upon this subject. Oh Reader, it would have done you good as it has done me, if you had heard him speak upon it, in his own beautiful old age! “Ifthey perish,” he would say. “That the beasts die without hope we may conclude; death being to them like falling asleep, an act of which the mind is not cognizant! But that they live without religion, he would not say,—that they might not have some sense of it according to their kind; nor that all things animate, and seemingly inanimate did not actually praise the Lord, as they are called upon to do by the Psalmist, and in theBenedicite!”

It is a pious fancy of the good old lexicographist Adam Littleton that our Lord took up his first lodging in a stable amongst the cattle, as if he had come to be the Saviour of them as well as of men; being by one perfect oblation of himself, to put an end to all other sacrifices, as well as to take away sins. This, he adds the Psalmist fears not to affirm speaking of God's mercy. “Thou savest,” says he, “both man and beast.”

The text may lead us further than Adam Littleton's interpretation.

“Qu'on ne me parle plus deNATURE MORTE, says M. de Custine, in his youth and enthusiasm, writing from Mont-Auvert;on sent ici que la Divinité est partout, et que les pierres sont pénétrées comme nous-mêmes d'une puissance créatrice! Quand on me dit que les rochers sont insensibles, je crois entendre un enfant soutenir que l'aiguille d'une montre ne marche pas, parce qu'il ne la voit pas se mouvoir.”

Do not, said our Philosopher, when he threw out a thought like this, do not ask me how this can be! I guess at every thing, and can account for nothing. It is more comprehensible to me that stocks and stones should have a sense of devotion, than that men should be without it. I could much more easily persuade myself that the birds in the air, and the beasts in the field have souls to be saved, than I can believe that very many of my fellow bipeds have any more soul than, as some of our divines have said, serves to keep their bodies from putrefaction. “God forgive me, worm that I am! for the sinful thought of which I am too often conscious,—that of the greater part of the human race, the souls are not worth saving!”—I have not forgotten the look which accompanied these words, and the tone in which he uttered them, dropping his voice toward the close.

We must of necessity, said he, become better or worse as we advance in years. Unless we endeavour to spiritualize ourselves, and supplicate in this endeavour for that Grace which is never withheld when it is sincerely and earnestly sought, age bodilizes us more and more, and the older we grow the more we are embruted and debased: so manifestly is the awful text verified which warns us that “unto every one which hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.” In some the soul seems gradually to be absorbed and extinguished in its crust of clay; in others as if it purified and sublimed the vehicle to which it was united.Viget animus, et gaudet non multum sibi esse cum corpore; magnam oneris partem sui posuit.1Nothing therefore is more beautiful than a wise and religious old age; nothing so pitiable as the latter stages of mortal existence—when the World and the Flesh, and that false philosophy which is of the Devil, have secured the victory for the Grave!

1SENECA.

“He that hath led a holy life,” says one of our old Bishops, “is like a man which hath travelled over a beautiful valley, and being on the top of a hill, turneth about with delight, to take a view of it again.” The retrospect is delightful, and perhaps it is even more grateful if his journey has been by a rough and difficult way. But whatever may have been his fortune on the road, the Pilgrim who has reached the Delectable Mountains looks back with thankfulness and forward with delight.

And wherefore is it not always thus? Wherefore, but because as Wordsworth has said,

The World is too much with us, late and soonGetting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

“Though our own eyes,” says Sir Walter Raleigh, “do every where behold the sudden and resistless assaults of Death, and Nature assureth us by never failing experience, and Reason by infallible demonstration, that our times upon the earth have neither certainty nor durability, that our bodies are but the anvils of pain and diseases, and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares, sorrows and passions; and that when we are most glorified, we are but those painted posts against which Envy and Fortune direct their darts; yet such is the true unhappiness of our condition, and the dark ignorance which covereth the eyes of our understanding, that we only prize, pamper, and exalt this vassal and slave of death, and forget altogether, or only remember at our cast-away leisure, the imprisoned immortal Soul, which can neither die with the reprobate, nor perish with the mortal parts of virtuous men; seeing God's justice in the one, and his goodness in the other, is exercised for evermore, as the everliving subjects of his reward and punishment. But when is it that we examine this great account? Never, while we have one vanity left us to spend! We plead for titles till our breath fail us; dig for riches whilst our strength enableth us; exercise malice while we can revenge; and then when time hath beaten from us both youth, pleasure and health, and that Nature itself hateth the house of Old Age, we remember with Job that ‘we must go the way from whence we shall not return, and that our bed is made ready for us in the dark.’ And then I say, looking over-late into the bottom of our conscience, which Pleasure and Ambition had locked up from us all our lives, we behold therein the fearful images of our actions past, and withal this terrible inscription that ‘God will bring every work into judgement that man hath done under the Sun.’

“But what examples have ever moved us? what persuasions reformed us? or what threatenings made us afraid? We behold other mens tragedies played before us; we hear what is promised and threatened; but the world's bright glory hath put out the eyes of our minds; and these betraying lights, with which we only see, do neither look up towards termless joys, nor down towards endless sorrows, till we neither know, nor can look for anything else at the world's hands.—But let us not flatter our immortal Souls herein! For to neglect God all our lives, and know that we neglect Him; to offend God voluntarily, and know that we offend Him, casting our hopes on the peace which we trust to make at parting, is no other than a rebellious presumption, and that which is the worst of all, even a contemptuous laughing to scorn, and deriding of God, his laws and precepts.Frustrà sperant qui sic de misericordiâ Dei sibi blandiuntur;they hope in vain, saith Bernard, which in this sort flatter themselves with God's mercy.”

EVOLVEMENTS. ANALOGIES. ANTICIPATIONS.

I have heard, how trueI know not, most physicians as they growGreater in skill, grow less in their religion;Attributing so much to natural causes,That they have little faith in that they cannotDeliver reason for: this Doctor steersAnother course.MASSINGER.

I forget what poet it is, who, speaking of old age, says that

The Soul's dark mansion, battered and decayed,Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;

a strange conceit, imputing to the decay of our nature that which results from its maturation.

As the ancients found in the butterfly a beautiful emblem of the immortality of the Soul, my true philosopher and friend looked, in like manner, upon the chrysalis as a type of old age. The gradual impairment of the senses and of the bodily powers, and the diminution of the whole frame as it shrinks and contracts itself in age, afforded analogy enough for a mind like his to work on, which quickly apprehended remote similitudes, and delighted in remarking them. The sense of flying in our sleep, might probably, he thought, be the anticipation or forefeeling of an unevolved power, like an aurelia's dream of butterfly motion.

The tadpole has no intermediate state of torpor. This merriest of all creatures, if mirth may be measured by motion, puts out legs before it discards its tail and commences frog. It was not in our outward frame that the Doctor could discern any resemblance to this process; but he found it in that expansion of the intellectual faculties, those aspirations of the spiritual part, wherein the Soul seems to feel its wings and to imp them for future flight.

One has always something for which to look forward, some change for the better. The boy in petticoats longs to be drest in the masculine gender. Little boys wish to be big ones. In youth we are eager to attain manhood, and in manhood matrimony becomes the next natural step of our desires. “Days then should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom;” and teach it they will, if man will but learn, for nature brings the heart into a state for receiving it.

Jucundissima est ætas devexa jam, non tamen præceps; et illam quoque in extremâ regulâ stantem, judico habere suas voluptates; aut hoc ipsum succedit in locum voluptatum, nullis egere. Quam dulce est, cupiditates fatigasse ac reliquisse!1This was not Dr. Dove's philosophy: he thought the stage of senescence a happy one, not because we outgrow the desires and enjoyments of youth and manhood, but because wiser desires, more permanent enjoyments, and holier hopes succeed to them,—because time in its course brings us nearer to eternity, and as earth recedes, Heaven opens upon our prospect.

1SENECA.

“It is the will of God and nature,” says Franklin, “that these mortal bodies be laid aside when the soul is to enter into real life. This is rather an embryo state, a preparation for living. A man is not completely born until he be dead. Why, then, should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals, a new member added to their happy society? We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance, and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent, that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way.”

“God,” says Fuller, “sends his servants to bed, when they have done their work.”

This is a subject upon which even Sir Richard Blackmore could write with a poet's feeling.

Thou dost, O Death, a peaceful harbour lieUpon the margin of Eternity;Where the rough waves of Time's impetuous tideTheir motion lose, and quietly subside:Weary, they roll their drousy heads asleepAt the dark entrance of Duration's deep.Hither our vessels in their turn retreat;Here still they find a safe untroubled seat,When worn with adverse passions, furious strife,And the hard passage of tempestuous life.Thou dost to man unfeigned compassion show,Soothe all his grief, and solace all his woe.Thy spiceries with noble drugs abound,That every sickness cure and every wound.That which anoints the corpse will only proveThe sovereign balm our anguish to remove.The cooling draught administered by thee,O Death! from all our sufferings sets us free.Impetuous life is by thy force subdued,Life, the most lasting fever of the blood.The weary in thy arms lie down to rest,No more with breath's laborious task opprest.Hear, how the men that long life-ridden lie,In constant pain, for thy assistance cry,Hear how they beg and pray for leave to die.For vagabonds that o'er the country roam,Forlorn, unpitied and without a home,Thy friendly care provides a lodging-room.The comfortless, the naked, and the poor,Much pinch'd with cold, with grievous hunger more,Thy subterranean hospitals receive,Assuage their anguish and their wants relieve.Cripples with aches and with age opprest,Crawl on their crutches to the Grave for rest.Exhausted travellers that have undergoneThe scorching heats of life's intemperate zone,Haste for refreshment to their beds beneathAnd stretch themselves in the cool shades of death.Poor labourers who their daily task repeat,Tired with their still returning toil and sweat,Lie down at last; and at the wish'd for closeOf life's long day, enjoy a sweet repose.Thy realms, indulgent Death, have still possestProfound tranquillity and unmolested rest.No raging tempests, which the living dread,Beat on the silent regions of the dead:Proud Princes ne'er excite with war's alarmsThy subterranean colonies to arms.They undisturbed their peaceful mansions keep,And earthquakes only rock them in their sleep.

Much has been omitted, which may be found in the original, and one couplet removed from its place; but the whole is Blackmore's.

LEONE HEBREO'S DIALOGI DE AMORE.—THE ELIXIR OF LIFE NO OBSTACLE TO DEATH.—PARACELSUS.—VAN HELMONT AND JAN MASS.—DR. DOVE'S OPINION OF A BIOGRAPHER'S DUTIES.

There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors!

OLDFORTUNATUS.

In Leone Hebreo's Dialogi de Amore, one of the interlocutors says, “Vediamo che gli huomini naturalmente desiano di mai non morire; lagual cosa è impossibile, manifesta, e senza speranza.” To which the other replies, “Coloro chel desiano, non credeno interamente che sia impossibile, et hanno inteso per le historie legali, che Enoc, et Elia, et ancor Santo Giovanni Evangelista sono immortali in corpo, et anima: se ben veggono essere stato per miracolo: onde ciascuno pensa che à loro Dio potria fare simil miracolo. E però con questa possibilita si gionta qualche remota speranza, laquale incita un lento desiderio, massimamente per essere la morte horribile, e la corruttione propria odiosa à chi si vuole, et il desiderio non è d' acquistare cosa nuova, ma di non perdere la vita, che si truova; laquale havendosi di presente, è facil cosa ingannarsi l'huomo à desiare che non si perda; se ben naturalmente è impossibile: chel desiderio di ciò è talmente lento, che può essere di cosa impossibile et imaginabile, essendo di tanta importantia al desiderante. Et ancora ti dirò chel fondamento di questo desiderio non è vano in se, se bene è alquanto ingannoso, però chel desiderio dell' huomo d'essere immortale è veramente possibile; perche l'esentia dell' huomu, (come rettamente Platon vuole) non è altro che la sua anima intellettiva, laquale per la virtu, sapientia, cognitione, et amore divino si fa gloriosa et immortale.”

Paracelsus used to boast that he would not die till he thought proper so to do, thus wishing it to be understood that he had discovered the Elixir of life. He died suddenly, and at a time when he seemed to be in full health; and hence arose a report, that he had made a compact with the Devil, who enabled him to perform all his cures, but came for him as soon as the term of their agreement was up.

Wherefore indeed should he have died by any natural means who so well understood the mysteries of life and of death. What, says he, is life?Nihil meherclè vita est aliud, nisi Mumia quædam Balsamita conservans mortale corpus à mortalibus vermibus, et eschara cum impressâ liquoris salium commisturâ.What is Death?Nihil certe aliud quam Balsami dominium, Mumiæ interitus, salium ultima materia.Do you understand this, Reader? If you do, I do not.

But he is intelligible when he tells us that Life may be likened to Fire, and that all we want is to discover the fuel for keeping it up,—the true Lignum Vitæ. It is not against nature, he contends, that we should live till the renovation of all things; it is only against our knowledge, and beyond it. But there are medicaments for prolonging life; and none but the foolish or the ignorant would ask why then is it that Princes and Kings who can afford to purchase them, die nevertheless like other people. The reason says the great Bombast von Hohenheim is that their physicians know less about medicine than the very boors, and moreover that Princes and Kings lead dissolute lives. And if it be asked why no one except Hermes Trismegistus has used such medicaments; he replies that others have used them, but have not let it be known.

Van Helmont was once of opinion that no metallic preparation could contain in itself the blessing of the Tree of Life, though that the Philosopher's stone had been discovered was a fact that consisted with his own sure knowledge. This opinion however was in part changed, in consequence of some experiments made with an aurific powder, given him by a stranger after a single evening's acquaintance;(vir peregrinus, unius vesperi amicus:)these experiments convinced him that the stone partook of what he calls Zoophyte life, as distinguished both from vegetative and sensitive. But the true secret he thought, must be derived from the vegetable world, and he sought for it in the Cedar, induced, as it seems, by the frequent mention of that tree in the Old Testament. He says much concerning the cedar,—among other things, that when all other plants were destroyed by the Deluge, and their kinds preserved only in their seed, the Cedars of Lebanon remained uninjured under the waters. However when he comes to the main point, he makes a full stop, saying,Cætera autem quæ de Cedro sunt, mecum sepelientur: nam mundus non capax est.It is not unlikely that if his mysticism had been expressed in the language of intelligible speculation, it might have been found to accord with some of Berkeley's theories in theSiris. But for his reticence upon this subject, as if the world were not worthy of his discoveries, he ought to have been deprived of his two remaining talents. Five he tells us he had received for his portion, but because instead of improving them, he had shown himself unworthy of so large a trust, he by whom they were given had taken from him three. “Ago illi gratias, quod cum contulisset in me quinque talenta, fecissemque me indignum, et hactenus repudium coram eo factus essem, placuit divinæ bonitati, auferre à me tria, et relinquere adhuc bina, ut me sic ad meliorem frugem exspectaret. Maluit, inquam, me depauperare et tolerare, ut non essem utilis plurimis, modò me salvaret ab hujus mundi periculis. Sit ipsi æterna sanctificatio.”

He has however informed posterity of the means by which he prolonged the life of a man to extreme old age. This person whose name was Jan Mass, was in the service of Martin Rythovius, the first Bishop of Ypres, when that prelate, by desire of the illustrious sufferers, assisted at the execution of Counts Egmond and Horn. Mass was then in the twenty-fifth year of his age. When he was fifty-eight, being poor, and having a large family of young children, he came to Van Helmont, and entreated him to prolong his life if he could, for the sake of these children, who would be left destitute in case of his death, and must have to beg their bread from door to door. Van Helmont, then a young man, was moved by such an application, and considering what might be the likeliest means of sustaining life in its decay, he called to mind the fact that wine is preserved from corruption by the fumes of burnt brimstone; it then occurred to him that the acid liquor of sulphur,acidum sulfuris stagma, (it is better so to translate his words than to call it the sulphuric acid,) must of necessity contain the fumes and odour of sulphur, being, according to his chemistry, nothing but those fumes of sulphur, combined with, or imbibed in, its mercurial salt. The next step in his reasoning was to regard the blood as the wine of life; if this could be kept sound, though longevity might not be the necessary consequence, life would at least be preserved from the many maladies which arose from its corruption, and the sanity, and immunity from such diseases, and from the sufferings consequent thereon, must certainly tend to its prolongation. He gave Mass therefore a stone bottle of the distilled liquor of sulphur, and taught him also how to prepare this oil from burnt sulphur. And he ordered him at every meal to take two drops of it in his first draught of beer; and not lightly to exceed that; two drops, he thought, contained enough of the fumes for a sufficient dose. This was in the year 1600; and now, says Helmont, in 1641, the old man still walks about the streets of Brussels. And what is still better,(quodque augustius est,)in all these forty years, he has never been confined by any illness, except that by a fall upon the ice he once broke his leg near the knee; and he has constantly been free from fever, remaining a slender and lean man, and always poor.

Jan Mass had nearly reached his hundredth year when this was written, and it is no wonder that Van Helmont, who upon a fantastic analogy had really prescribed an efficient tonic, should have accounted by the virtue of his prescription for the health and vigour, which a strong constitution had retained to that extraordinary age. There is no reason for doubting the truth of his statement; but if Van Helmont relied upon his theory, he must have made further experiments; it is probable therefore that he either distrusted his own hypothesis, or found upon subsequent trials that the result disappointed him.

Van Helmont's works were collected and edited by his son Francis Mercurius, who styles himselfPhilosophus per Unum in quo Omnia Eremita peregrinans, and who dedicated the collection as a holocaust to the ineffable Hebrew Name. The Vita Authoris which he prefixed to it relates to his own life, not to his father's, and little can be learnt from it, except that he is the more mystical and least intelligible of the two. The most curious circumstances concerning the father are what he has himself communicated in the treatise entitled his Confession, into which the writer of his life in Aikin's Biography seems not to have looked, nor indeed into any of his works, the articles in that as in our other Biographies, being generally compiled from compilations, so as to present the most superficial information, with the least possible trouble to the writer and the least possible profit to the reader,—skimming for him not the cream of knowledge, but the scum.

Dr. Dove used to say that whoever wrote the life of an author without carefully perusing his works acted as iniquitously as a Judge who should pronounce sentence in a cause without hearing the evidence; nay he maintained, the case was even worse, because there was an even chance that the Judge might deliver a right sentence, but it was impossible that a life so composed should be otherwise than grievously imperfect, if not grossly erroneous. For all the ordinary business of the medical profession he thought it sufficient that a practitioner should thoroughly understand the practice of his art, and proceed empirically: God help the patients, he would say, if it were not so! and indeed without God's help they would fare badly at the best. But he was of opinion that no one could take a lively and at the same time a worthy interest in any art or science without as it were identifying himself with it, and seeking to make himself well acquainted with its history: a Physician therefore, according to his way of thinking ought to be as curious concerning the writings of his more eminent predecessors, and as well read in the most illustrious of them, as a general in the wars of Hannibal, Cæsar, the Black Prince, the Prince of Parma, Gustavus Adolphus, and Marlborough. How carefully he had perused Van Helmont was shown by the little landmarks whereby after an interval of—alas how many years,—I have followed him through the volume,—haud passibus æquis.

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