VOL. XXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ^5 



any heavy misfortunes, or always lived in poverty or discontent ; it is no wonder, 

 if, in spight of all this, he attains to old age: but then, he will probably lose 

 the clearness of his head, the fixed attention of his mind, the brightness of 

 his parts, which he might be formerly noted for. If a man has never had any 

 of these disadvantages to struggle with, but has all along been blessed with the 

 contrary ; then, he being bred up to a profession, and always following it, his 

 judgment in it still increases, and his hand one would think should be more 

 nimble and ready, and the man a better painter, musician or orator than ever : 

 and why not a better poet too ? For if Mr. Dryden (though he was said to be 

 unhealthy at last) would have taken as much pains, or had been allowed time to 

 his mind for revising his latter poems, as in some of his former, they might 

 have been as well, if not better received. I do not see that it is old age that 

 does a man this diskindness, but rather, that it is the accidents that too 

 often attend it, which yet many are free from to the very last. 



Supposing then, that Raphael, or Vandyke, or the late H. Purcell, or 

 Alessandro Stradella, should have continued their practice of painting and 

 music, till they grew old, from the accidents attending which, suppose them, 

 as a great many other people, to be very free ; might we not then have justly 

 expected from them, even greater wonders than they had ever before performed. 

 I will not say that an old general is fitter to be trusted than a young one ; or 

 that the late Mareschal Schomberg, at his death, was a better soldier, notwith- 

 standing his age, than the present kings of Sweden and Poland : but rather, 

 that the study of divinity, or of the laws, seems as nice and copious as those of 

 painting and music. Now the old and sage men of those professions are every 

 where most regarded, they are found to have the ripest judgments, and they 

 are deservedly employed in the most weighty affairs appertaining to their pro- 

 fessions. And it has been seen, as before said, that some painters and musi- 

 cians have not at all failed as they grew old, but kept that great reputation to the 

 last, which they had before acquired. 



On the whole, it seems to me, that there is a gradual and sensible alteration 

 in the appearance of things, and especially in the scripture or hand-writing of 

 MSS. Now these ought to be considered with respect to the particular places 

 where they were written. Every country is supposed to have remaining in it, 

 the greatest variety and most considerable monuments of its own characters ; 

 unless they are known to have been carried away to other places. And there- 

 fore, if any man be desirous of considering the letters of any language that has 

 been confined to any one particular region or province ; it is but going thither, 

 and it is ten to one, if he be diligent, but he may satisfy his curiosity very well. 



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