NUMBER XLIII. SATURDAY, JULY 9th, 1808. Ex hac vitâ ita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo. CICERO. I HAVE been lately reading Cicero's celebrated tract de Senectute, with the greater interest, because I want but a few years of that era, which the Romans, technically enough, held to be the commencement of old age.* Let this eloquent and persuasive writer allege to the contrary what he may, old age must, to the Human Animal, be irksome and oppressive in some degree. It is allied to Decrepitude: a decline from the prime perfection of his faculties, and life; a withering of the bloom and lustre of his days; a dreary approach to and foretaste of that Death, from which, in despite of Eloquence, our instincts will recoil; and which must be an Evil; since GOD inflicts it as a punishment for Sin. How much less cheering than that of Tully, is the character which we find given of old age, by a Forty-seven. Writer, whose knowledge of Human Nature those only will dispute, who are ignorant of Mankind! Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda ; vel quod Perhaps, as the prose writer may have presented us with a flattering resemblance of Senility, the poet, on the other hand, has given a caricature. Be this granted; and it still will follow that the portrait which Tully has exhibited is no just likeness. Old Age (observes this latter,) less bereaves us of sensual pleasures, than it exempts us from voluptuous pursuits;-those grand impediments to Reason, and to Virtue. The observation is not destitute of weighty truth. But if Age allays our relish, and quenches our desires, is not this by paralysing our sensibilities and faculties to a dull obtuseness? It is to the weakness of, our bodies, not the vigour of our minds, that we are indebted for the privileges which are thus extolled; and which may be compared with that insensibility to pain (or pleasure,) which is produced by a fractured skull; or a concussion of the * Horace. brain. The drowsy Senior enjoys the lethargick prerogatives of decay; and is almost as enviably disencumbered of sensuality, as the Dust to which he is about-shortly—to return. A period of life so full of comforts, as Cicero represents the declining one to be, we might expect would be rather tasted,-or, as the French express it, savouré,—than encountered as a lingering chronical disease. Whatever might be a man's sentiments in an earlier stage of life, Death, one should suppose, would be peculiarly undesirable, at a period of existence so felicitously tranquil and mature as this; -and as for the tædet cali convexa tueri,-any feeling like Ennui, or satiety of life,—this, though imaginable at the age of Dido, or in an imberbis Juvenis, surrounded with the annoying perplexities of Youth, is a sentiment, which every Nestor must have long survived! Yet hear, upon these subjects, in the same tract upon Old Age, the very Tully already cited; the fond Eulogist of Decay!-Pugnandum, tanquam contra morbum, sic contra senectutem. Again, Quid igitur timeam (exclaims the aged Cato,) si aut non miser post mortem, aut beatus etiam futurus sum? Qua (mors) aut plané negligenda est, si omnino extinguit animum; aut etiam optanda, si aliquo eum deducit, ubi sit futurus æternus. Conglutinatio inveterata facilé divellitur. Itâ fit ut illud breve vitæ reliquum nec avidé appe tendum senibus, nec sine causâ deserendum sit. Qua (mors) mihi quidem tam jucunda est, (still the sentiment of Cato Major, in his old age,) ut quó proprius ad mortem accedam, quasi terram videre videar, aliquandoque in portum ex long ì navigatione esse venturus. Lastly, Satietas vitæ tempus maturum mortis affert. Thus we find enumerated amongst the consolations of old age, that surfeit of life which causes dissolution to appear remedial; smoothing the frowns of Death; or even, as he approaches, converting them to smiles. Indeed so operative is this comfortably disgusting Satiety pronounced to be, that from one of the quotations which I have given, it may be collected that even assuming Death to extend its destructive efficacy to the Soul, and terminate as well our spiritual as corporeal career, still the happy old man's comforts shall not dissuade him from being contented to resign the privileges of decrepitude, and even dotage; and lying "in cold obstruction,"* to barter their enjoyments for that total annihilation, or Repos eternel, which (concurring with the least enlightened of their Pagan Predecessors,) the late Philosophers of France held Death to merely be. -Nay, all happy as he is, if the Senior does not abridge the period of his own felicity, he seems * Shakspeare, deterred, not by tasting his senile pleasures with proportionate enjoyment,—not by "the dread of something after death; "The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn but by a recollection of that comparatively unimpressive veto,† which forbids Man, injussu imperatoris, id est DEI, de præsidio et statione vitæ decedere. Thus weak and inconsistent must even a Tully be, when, at variance with Holy Writ, he represents as one of the happiest periods of Human Life, a caducity arising from the approach and influences of that death, imposed by GOD upon our race, as a penalty for disobedience; and of which OUR REDEEMER purchased the remission with his blood. Indeed Cicero, in this (on the whole justly) admired tract, descends to what strikes me as mere sophistry, upon occasion. He represents Mankind as wishing for old-age; and when they have attained it, reproaching with its irksomeness, this object of their desires. Senectus, quam ut adipiscantur omnes optant; eandem accusant adeptam. But who is,-who ever has been-desirous of old age? Who ever wished to act the sad "last scene of all, "The second childishness, and mere oblivion, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing?" * Shakspeare. + Of Pythagoras. + Shakspeare. |