Curiosities of Literature (Vol. 1-3). Disraeli Isaac
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greatly diverted him from his studies; but a remarkable disappointment respecting a contested estate disgusted him with these rustic occupations: resolved to attach himself to regular studies, and literary society, he sold his farms, and became the most learned antiquary and lawyer.
Colbert, the famous French minister, almost at sixty, returned to his Latin and law studies.
Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before his death. The Marquis de Saint Aulaire, at the age of seventy, began to court the Muses, and they crowned him with their freshest flowers. The verses of this French Anacreon are full of fire, delicacy, and sweetness.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were the composition of his latest years: they were begun in his fifty-fourth year, and finished in his sixty-first.
Ludovico Monaldesco, at the extraordinary age of 115, wrote the memoirs of his times. A singular exertion, noticed by Voltaire; who himself is one of the most remarkable instances of the progress of age in new studies.
The most delightful of autobiographies for artists is that of Benvenuto Cellini; a work of great originality, which was not begun till "the clock of his age had struck fifty-eight."
Koornhert began at forty to learn the Latin and Greek languages, of which he became a master; several students, who afterwards distinguished themselves, have commenced as late in life their literary pursuits. Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil, knew little of Latin or Greek till he was past fifty; and Franklin's philosophical pursuits began when he had nearly reached his fiftieth year.
Accorso, a great lawyer, being asked why he began the study of the law so late, answered, beginning it late, he should master it the sooner.
Dryden's complete works form the largest body of poetry from the pen of a single writer in the English language; yet he gave no public testimony of poetic abilities till his twenty-seventh year. In his sixty-eighth year he proposed to translate the whole Iliad: and his most pleasing productions were written in his old age.
Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in extreme old age: there is a device said to be invented by him, of an old man represented in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it; the inscription Ancora imparo!—Yet I am Learning!
We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with Erasmus and men of letters of that period, De Ratione Studii, by Joachim Sterck, otherwise Fortius de Ringelberg. The enthusiasm of the writer often carries him to the verge of ridicule; but something must be conceded to his peculiar situation and feelings; for Baillet tells us that this method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practical knowledge and hard experience: at a late period of life he had commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings. His work has been compared to the sounding of a trumpet.
Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology for writing verses in his old age, by showing how many poets amused themselves notwithstanding their grey hairs, and wrote sonnets or epigrams at ninety.
La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, Io credo ch'io farò Sonnetti venti cinque anni, o trenta, pio che io sarò morto.—"I think I may make sonnets twenty-five, or perhaps thirty years, after I shall be dead!" Petau tells us that he wrote verses to solace the evils of old age—
—— Petavius æger
Cantabat veteris quærens solatia morbi.
Malherbe declares the honours of genius were his, yet young—
Je les posseday jeune, et les possède encore
A la fin de mes jours!
SPANISH POETRY.
Pere Bouhours observes, that the Spanish poets display an extravagant imagination, which is by no means destitute of esprit—shall we say wit? but which evinces little taste or judgment.
Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley—trivial points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evident that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the time of Marino in Italy; but the warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vulcanian forge.
Lopez de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says, "That the sea joyfully advances to gather her tears; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts them into pearls."
"Y el mar como imbidioso
A tierra por las lagrimas salia,
Y alegre de cogerlas
Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas."
Villegas addresses a stream—"Thou who runnest over sands of gold, with feet of silver," more elegant than our Shakspeare's—"Thy silver skin laced with thy golden blood," which possibly he may not have written. Villegas monstrously exclaims, "Touch my breast, if you doubt the power of Lydia's eyes—you will find it turned to ashes." Again—"Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness;" much like our "None but himself can be his parallel."
Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by the epithet of The Wonderful, abounds with these conceits.
He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred thousand other nightingales in her breast, which alternately sang through her throat—
"Con diferancia tal, con gracia tanta,
A quel ruysenor llora, que sospecho
Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho,
Que alterno su dolor por su garganta."
Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a few years of life, but many ages of beauty.
"Muchos siglos de hermosura
En pocos anos de edad."
Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more beautiful from its age; it would be only a superannuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have but few charms.
In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the title of the Duke of Streams, and the Viscount of Rivers—
"Mançanares, Mançanares,
Os que en todo el aguatismo,
Estois Duque de Arroyos, Y Visconde de los Rios."
He did not venture to call it a Spanish Grandee, for, in fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream; and as Quevedo wittily informs us, "Mançanares is reduced, during the summer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of hell." Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads itself over the neighbouring fields; for this reason Philip the Second built a bridge eleven hundred feet long!—A Spaniard passing it one day, when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, archly remarked, "That it would be proper that the bridge should be sold to purchase water."—Es menester, vender la puente, par comprar agua.
The following elegant translation of a Spanish madrigal of the kind here criticised I found in a newspaper, but it is evidently by a master-hand.
On the green margin of the land,
Where Guadalhorce winds his way,
My lady lay:
With golden key Sleep's gentle hand
Had closed her eyes so bright—
Her eyes, two suns of light—
And bade his balmy dews
Her rosy cheeks suffuse.