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.
CHAPTER CLXXXIII.
VIEWS OF OLD AGE. MONTAGNE, DANIEL CORNEILLE, LANGUET, PASQUIER, DR. JOHNSON, LORD CHESTERFIELD, ST. EVREMOND.
What is age
But the holy place of life, the chapel of ease
For 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.”