DR. CADOGAN. A REMARKABLE CASE OF HEREDITARY LONGEVITY. REMARKS ON THE ORDINARY TERM OF HUMAN LIFE.
Live well, and then how soon so e'er thou die,
Thou art of age to claim eternity.
RANDOLPH.
Dr. Cadogan used to say that the life of man is properly ninety years instead of three-score and ten; thirty to go up, thirty to stand still, and thirty to go down.
Who told him so? said Dr. Dove; and who made him better informed upon that point than the Psalmist?
Any one who far exceeded the ordinary term, beyond which “our strength is but labour and sorrow,” was supposed by our philosopher, to have contracted an obstinate habit of longevity in some previous stage of existence. Centenaries he thought must have been ravens and tortoises; and Henry Jenkins, like Old Parr, could have been nothing in his preceding state, but a toad in a block of stone or in the heart of a tree.
Cardinal D'Armagnac, when on a visitation in the Cevennes, noticed a fine old man sitting upon the threshold of his own door and weeping; and as, like the Poet, he had
—not often seen
A healthy man, a man full-grown
Weep in the public roads, alone,
he went up to him, and asked wherefore he was weeping? The old man replied he wept because his father had just beaten him. The Cardinal who was amazed to hear that so old a man had a father still living, was curious enough to enquire what he had beaten him for: “because,” said the old man, “I past by my grandfather without paying my respects to him.” The Cardinal then entered the house that he might see this extraordinary family, and there indeed he saw both father and grandfather, the former still a hale though a very aged man; the latter unable to move because of his extreme age, but regarded by all about him with the greatest reverence.