Parr’s was a much longer life than Reuben’s, Judah’s, Issachar’s, Abner’s, Simeon’s, Dan’s, Zebulon’s, Levi’s, or Naphthali’s. Dr. Harvey’s account of the post mortem examination is extremely interesting. The quaint lines of Taylor, the water poet, as he was styled, I cannot omit:—
“Good wholesome labor was his exercise,
Down with the lamb, and with the lark would rise;
In mire and toiling sweat he spent the day,
And to his team he whistled time away:
The cock his night-clock, and till day was done,
His watch and chief sundial was the sun.
He was of old Pythagoras’ opinion,
That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion;
Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig,
Milk, buttermilk, and water, whey and whig.
Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy,
He sometimes sipp’d a cup of ale most nappy,
Cider or perry, when he did repair
T’a Whitsun ale, wake, wedding or a fair;
Or, when in Christmas time he was a guest
At his good landlord’s house, among the rest.
Else he had very little time to waste,
Or at the alehouse huff-cap ale to taste.
His physic was good butter, which the soil
Of Salop yields, more sweet than candy oil.
And garlic he esteemed, above the rate
Of Venice treacle or best Mithridate.
He entertained no gout, no ache he felt,
The air was good and temperate, where he dwelt;
While mavises and sweet-tongued nightingales
Did sing him roundelays and madrigals.
Thus, living within bounds of nature’s laws
Of his long, lasting life may be some cause.
From head to heel, his body had all over
A quickset, thickset, nat’ral, hairy cover.”
Isaac lived to the age of 180, or five years longer than his father Abraham. I now propose to enter one or more well-known old stagers, of modern times, who will beat Isaac, by five lengths. Mr. Easton, of Salisbury, England, a respectable bookseller, and quoted, as good authority by Turner, prepared a more extensive list than Haller, of persons, who had died aged from 100 to 185. His work was entitled Human Longevity—1600 of his cases occurred, within the British Isles, and 1687 between the years 1706 and 1799. He sets down three between 170 and 185, giving their names and other particulars.
Mr. Whitehurst’s tables contain several cases, not in Mr. Easton’s work, from 134 years to 148. Some twenty other cases are stated, by Turner, from 130 to 150. I refer, historically, to the case of Jonathan Hartop, not because of the very great age he attained, but for other reasons of interest: “1791.—Died, Jonathan Hartop, aged one hundred and thirty-eight, of the village of Aldborough, Yorkshire. He could read to the last, without spectacles, and play at cribbage, with the most perfect recollection. He remembered Charles II., and once travelled to London, with the facetious Killegrew. He ate but little; his only beverage was milk. He had been married five times. Mr. Hartop lent Milton fifty pounds, which the bard returned, with honor, though not without much difficulty. Mr. Hartop would have declined receiving it; but the pride of the poet was equal to his genius, and he sent the money with an angry letter, which was found, among the curious possessions of that venerable old man.”
On the 4th of July, 1846, I visited Dr. Ezra Green, at his residence, in Dover, N. H. He showed me a couple of letters, which he had received, a short time before, from Daniel Webster and Thomas H. Benton, congratulating him, on having completed his one hundredth year, on the 17th of the preceding June, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker’s Hill, and remarked, that those gentlemen had not regarded the difference, between the old style and the new. He told me, that in 1777, he had been a surgeon, in the Ranger, with John Paul Jones. Upon my taking out my glasses, to read a passage in a pamphlet, to which he called my attention, he told me he had never used spectacles, nor felt the need of any such assistance, in reading. Dr. Green died, in 1847.
He graduated, at Harvard, in 1765. At the time of his death, every other member of his own class, numbering fifty-four, was dead.
Previously to 1765, two thousand and seventy-five individuals are named, upon the catalogue. They were all dead at the time of his decease, though he died so recently, as 1847. Yet, from the year, when he graduated, to 1786, a period of twenty years, of seven hundred and seventy-three graduates, fifteen only appear, upon the catalogue of 1848, without the fatal star. One of the fifteen, Harrison Gray Otis, has recently died, leaving three survivors only, in his class of 1783, Asa Andrews, J. S. Boies, and Jonathan Ewins. Another of the fifteen has also recently died, being the oldest graduate, Judge Timothy Farrar, of the class of 1767. The oldest living graduate of Harvard is James Lovell, of the class of 1776.
I send my communication to the press, as speedily as possible, lest he also should be off, before I can publish.