“O thrice holy Sobriety, so useful to man by the services thou renderest him! Thou prolongest his days, by which means he may greatly improve his understanding. Thou moreover freest him from the dreadful thoughts of death. How greatly is thy faithful disciple indebted to thee, since by thy assistance he enjoys this beautiful expanse of the visible world, which is really beautiful to such as know how to view it with a philosophic eye, as thou hast enabled me to do!... O truly happy life which, besides these favours conferred on an old man, hast so improved and perfected him that he has now a better relish for his dry bread than he had formerly for the most exquisite dainties. And all this thou hast effected by acting rationally, knowing that bread is, above all things, man’s proper food when seasoned by a good appetite.... It is for this reason that dry bread has so much relish for me; and I know from experience, and can with truth affirm, that I find such sweetness in it that I should be afraid of sinning against temperance were it not for my being convinced of the absolute necessity of eating of it, and that we cannot make use of a more natural food.”
The fourth and last of his appearances in print was a “Letter to Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia,” written at the age of ninety-five. It describes in a very lively manner the health, vigour, and use of all his faculties of mind and body, of which he had the perfect enjoyment. He was far advanced in life when his daughter, his only child, was born, and he lived to see her an old woman. He informs us, at the age of ninety-one, with much eloquence and enthusiasm of the active interest and pleasure he experienced in all that concerned the prosperity of his native city: of his plans for improving its port; for draining, recovering, and fertilizing the extensive marshes and barren sands in its neighbourhood. He died, having passed his one hundredth year, calmly and easily in his arm-chair at Padua in the year 1566.[104] His treatises, forming a small volume, have been “very frequently published in Italy, both in the vernacular Italian and in Latin. It has been translated into all the civilised languages of Europe, and was once a most popular book. There are several English translations of it, the best being one that bears the date 1779. Cornaro’s system,” says the writer in the English Cyclopædia whom we are quoting, “has had many followers.” Recounting his many dignities and honours, and the distinguished part he took in the improvement of his native city, by which he acquired a great reputation amongst his fellow-citizens, the Italian editor of his writings justly adds:—
“But all these fine prerogatives of Luigi Cornaro would not have been sufficient to render his name famous in Europe if he had not left behind him the short treatises upon Temperance, composed at various times at the advanced ages of 85, 86, 91, and 95. The candour which breathes through their simplicity, the importance of the argument, and the fervour with which he urges upon all to study the means of prolonging our life, have obtained for them so great good fortune as to be praised to the skies by men of the best understanding. The many editions which have been published in Italy, and the translations which, together with an array of physiological and philological notes, have appeared out of Italy, at one time in Latin, at another in French, again in German, and again in English, prove their importance. These discourses, in fact, enjoyed all the reputation of a classical book, and, although occasionally somewhat unpolished, as ‘Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda,’ they have sufficed to inspire (riscaldare) a Lessio, a Bartolini, a Ramazzini, a Cheyne, a Hufeland, and so many others who have written works of greater weight upon the same subject.”
Addison (Spectator 195) thus refers to him:—
“The most remarkable instance of the efficacy of temperance towards the procuring long life is what we meet with in a little book published by Lewis Cornaro, the Venetian, which I the rather mention because it is of undoubted credit, as the late Venetian Ambassador, who was of the same family, attested more than once in conversation when he resided in England.... After having passed his one hundredth year he died without pain or agony, and like one who falls asleep. The treatise I mention has been taken notice of by several eminent authors, and is written with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion, and good sense as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety. The mixture of the old man in it is rather a recommendation than a discredit to it.”
In fact he has exposed himself, it must be confessed, to the taunts of the “devotees of the Table” often cast at the abstinents, that they are too much given to parading their health and vigour, and certainly if any one can be justly obnoxious to them it is Luigi Cornaro.
XII.
SIR THOMAS MORE. 1480–1535.
DURING part of the period covered by the long life of Cornaro there is one distinguished man, all reference to whose opinions—intimately though indirectly connected as they are with dietary reform—it would be improper to omit—Sir Thomas More. His eloquent denunciation of the grasping avarice and the ruinous policy which were rapidly converting the best part of the country into grazing lands, as well as his condemnation of the slaughter of innocent life, commonly euphemised by the name of “sport,” are as instructive and almost as necessary for the present age as for the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Son of Sir John More, a judge of the King’s Bench, he was brought up in the palace of the Cardinal Lord Chancellor Morton, an ecclesiastic who stands out in favourable contrast with the great majority of his order, and, indeed, of his contemporaries in general. In his twenty-first year he was returned to the House of Commons, where he distinguished himself by opposing a grant of a subsidy to the king (Henry VII.). In 1516 he published (in Latin) his world-famed Utopia—the most meritorious production in sociological literature since the days of Plutarch. In 1523 he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, and again he displayed his courage and integrity in resisting an illegal and oppressive subsidy bill, by which he was not in the way to advance his interests with Henry VIII. and his principal minister, Wolsey. Seven years later, however, upon the disgrace of the latter personage, Sir Thomas More succeeded to the vacant Chancellorship, in which office he maintained his reputation for integrity and laborious diligence. When the amorous and despotic king had determined upon the momentous divorce from Catherine, he resigned the Seals rather than sanction that equivocal proceeding; and soon afterwards he was sent to the Tower for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. After the interval of a year he was brought to trial before the King’s Bench, and sentenced to the block (1535). In private life and in his domestic relations he exhibits a pleasing contrast to the ordinary harsh severity of his contemporaries. In learning and ability he occupies a foremost place in the annals of the period.