7 JANUARY 1882, Page 22

OLD AGE.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—Bearing well in mind the advice given in the tenth num- ber of your ancestor who flourished under Queen Anne, and is not yet forgotten, I always have your " speculations " "punc- tually served up" at the Saturday matutinal meal. Yet though I treat those speculations with respect, I cannot always agree with them ; and this is written to express some dissent from an article, otherwise one of the best, even of yours, on those ethical and social questions which we never tire of discussing. I refer to your article on "Youth and Age" (p. 1681, et seq.), and would wish to ask whether it is a fact of common general ex- perience that we feel our great emotions as much in age as in youth ? Much, no doubt, is a matter of individual character, but I fancy that with many, at least, "When youth has done its tedious, vain expense

Of passions that for ever ebb and flow,"

there comes a sense of equanimity, which is itself the result of the loss of the early poignancy of our emotions. It helps us, if at all, to understand their meaning rather by memory than by present force. Who, having but once seen it, can forget Plato's picture of the venerable Cephalus, in the family circle, seated in a cushioned chair, and bearing a garland on his head? (I., "Republic.") He had rebuked those who are impatient of old age, and he relates some sayings of Sophocles :—" For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom ; when the passions release their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the control not of one mad master only, but of many." On this passage see also remarks of Mr. Jowett (Introduction to "Republic," p. 7), where this characteristic Greek view is contrasted "with the exaggeration of Cicero, in his work on old age."

Here, too, it may be noted that Plato does not justify your "indictment against literature." I could, I believe, quote many moderns who also would not plead guilty. Let one suffice,—Mr. Browning, in the last speech of shrewd Ogniben, the Pope's Legate :—" Youth, with its beauty and grace, would seem bestowed on us for some such reason as to make us partly endurable till we have time for really becoming so of ourselves, without their aid; when they leave us."—(" A Soul's Tragedy.") I think, upon the whole, that in this trial of literature your indictment would hardly succeed in securing a conviction.—

I am, Sir, &c., GEORGE WHALE. Denholm, Shooter's Hill, January 2ad.