YOUTH VERSUS AGE 



who won what Mommsen described as "the greatest 

 conflict and most glorious victory in all history," was 

 following with small success the business of a tanner at 

 thirty-five, though of course it must be recalled that 

 he had earlier had a military education. Von Moltke, 

 planner and executor of the most brilliant and cataclys- 

 mic campaigns of modern times, would have passed 

 away unknown to fame had he died at seventy; he 

 first found his opportunity in those "doubtful years" 

 beyond three score and ten. 



In all these cases, it will be observed, it was the pre- 

 sentation of new opportunities, due to external condi- 

 tions, that gave rise to the new lines of action that led the 

 actors on to successful achievement. To a certain 

 extent the same thing is true of Columbus, who made 

 his memorable voyage at fifty-six, and of Magellan, 

 who traversed the strait that bears his name, on that 

 first daring voyage of circumnavigation, at fifty. Co- 

 lumbus would have started much earlier could he have 

 found the means, and Magellan would not have started 

 at all but for the new impulse to exploration that the 

 discovery of the New World had developed. But 

 examples are not lacking of men whose new line of ac- 

 tivity, entered on after middle life, depended entirely 

 on their own volition. 



Thus John Milton, private secretary to Oliver Crom- 

 well and political polemist, decided at forty-seven to 

 write an epic poem; and ten years later produced 

 " Paradise Lost." Richardson, one of the fathers of the 

 English novel, first turned his attention to fiction-writing 

 after he was fifty. Scott turned rather late in life from 



