OF HUMAN LIFE. 225 



and the fciences and arts would have been great 

 <c lofers, if their votaries had fhortened their lives by 

 96 thefe ten years.'* 



We are taught by experience, that any man of a 

 good conftitution, may, by a temperate way of life, 

 proportionate to his temperament and organization, 

 keep his machine in play a hundred and more years : 

 will it then be pronounced a thing utterly impoffible, 

 by certain medicines, adapted to our nature, to pre- 

 vent the torpifying or induration of the fibres, and thus 

 to prolong for feveral centuries^ the life of man ? At 

 this queflion, I fee a fmile of companion arifing on 

 the countenance of my reader — not the philofophical 

 reader, for he has learnt to examine — but on the 

 countenance of the reader, who has drawn a circle 

 round his limited knowledge, in the fixt delign of hold- 

 ing all that lies without it, for folly, chimera, and im~ 

 poffibility. However, even thefe, I hope, will not 

 read the following narrative without finding it at leail 

 entertaining. 



Perhaps fuch an artificial prolongation of human 

 life may not be impoffible, though no politive exam- 

 ple be known of a man who has attained to an age of 

 feveral centuries. All that is related of the long lives 

 of fome Alchymifts, as well as what we are told by the 

 count of Lamberg concerning the Marquis dAymar*, 

 who was 350 years old when the count made his ac- 

 quaintance at Venice : all thefe ftories favour too much 

 of the fabulous, and are too deficient in proofs^ to al- 



* Memorial d-un Mondain* torn. i. p. 117, 

 vol. i, a 



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