Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in extreme old age: there is a device said to be invented by him, of an old man represented in a _go-cart_, with an hour-glass upon it; the inscription _Ancora imparo!_--YET I AM LEARNING! We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with Erasmus and men of letters of that period, _De Ratione Studii_, by Joachim Sterck, otherwise Fortius de Ringelberg. The enthusiasm of the writer often carries him to the verge of ridicule; but something must be conceded to his peculiar situation and feelings; for Baillet tells us that this method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practical knowledge and hard experience: at a late period of life he had commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings. His work has been compared to the sounding of a trumpet. Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology for writing verses in his old age, by showing how many poets amused themselves notwithstanding their grey hairs, and wrote sonnets or epigrams at ninety. La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, _Io credo ch'io farò Sonnetti venti cinque anni, o trenta, pio che io sarò morto_.--"I think I may make sonnets twenty-five, or perhaps thirty years, after I shall be dead!" Petau tells us that he wrote verses to solace the evils of old age-- ---- Petavius æger Cantabat veteris quærens solatia morbi. Malherbe declares the honours of genius were his, yet young-- Je les posseday jeune, et les possède encore A la fin de mes jours! SPANISH POETRY. Pere Bouhours observes, that the Spanish poets display an extravagant imagination, which is by no means destitute of _esprit_--shall we say _wit_? but which evinces little taste or judgment. Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley--trivial points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evident that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the time of Marino in Italy; but the warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vulcanian forge. Lopez de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says, "That the sea joyfully advances to gather her tears; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts them into pearls." "Y el mar como imbidioso A tierra por las lagrimas salia, Y alegre de cogerlas Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas."