326 
LEWIS CORN ARO. 
feet vigour* my taste so very acute, that 1 have a better relish for the 
plainest food now, than I had for the choicest delicacies, when for- 
iiierly immersed in a life of luxury. Nay, to let you see what a portion 
of fire and spirit I have still left within me, know, that I have this 
very year written a comedy, full of innocent mirth and pleasantry; 
and, if a Greek poet was thought so very healthy and happy, for 
writing a tragedy at the age of seventy-three, why should not I be 
thought as healthy and as happy, who have written a comedy when I 
am ten years older? In short, that no pleasure whatever may be want- 
ing to my old age, I please myself daily with contemplating that im- 
mortality, which I think I see in the succession of my posterity. For 
every time I return home, I meet eleven grand children, all the off- 
spring of one father and mother ; all in fine health ; all, as far as I 
can discern, apt to learn, and of good behaviour, I am often amused 
by their singing, nay, i often- sing with them, because my voice is 
louder and clearer noiv than ever it was in my life before. These 
are the delights and comforts of my old age ; from which, I presume, 
it appears, that the life I spend is not a dead, morose, and melancholy 
life, but a living, active, pleasant life, which I would not change with 
the robustest of those youths w ho indulge and riot in ail the luxury of 
the senses, because I know them to be exposed to a thousand diseases 
and a thousand kinds of deaths. I, on the contrary, am free from all 
such apprehensions, — from the apprehension of disease, because I 
have nothing for disease to feed upon ; from the apprehension of death, 
because I have spent a life of reason. Besides, death, I am persuaded, 
is not yet near me. 1 know that, barring accidents, no violent dis- 
ease can touch me. 1 must be dissolved by a gentle and gradual 
decay, when the radical humour is consumed like oil in a lamp, which 
affords no longer life to the dying taper. But such a death as this 
cannot happen of a sudden. To become unable to w'alk and reason, 
to become blind, deaf, and bent to the earth, from all which evils I 
am far enough at present, must take a considerable portion of time : 
and I verily believe, that this immortal soul, which still inhabits my 
body with so much harmony and complacency, will not easily depart 
from it yet. I verily believe that I have many years to live, many 
years to enjoy the world, and all the good that is in it — by virtue of 
that strict sobriety and temperance, which I have so long and so reli- 
giously observed ; friend as I am to reason, but foe to sense.’’ 
His wife, who survived him, lived also to nearly the same age. Sir 
John Sinclair, in his “Code of Health and Longevity,” mentions the 
edition of 1779 as the best English translation of Cornaro’s works. 
There are four discourses on one subject, penned at different times ; 
the first, already mentioned, which he wrote at the age of eighty-three, 
in which he declares war against every kind of intemperance. The 
second was composed three years after, and contains directions for 
repairing a bad constitution. The third he wrote when he w'as ninety- 
one, entitled “ An earnest Exhortation to a Sober Life and the last 
is a letter to Barbaro, patriarch of Aquileia, written when he was 
ninety-five, which contains a lively description of the health, vigour, 
and perfect use of his faculties, which he had the happiness of einjoy- 
ing at that advanced period of life. . 
