When St. Anselm, at the age of seventy-six, lay down in his last illness, and one of the Priests who stood around his bed said to him, it being then Palm Sunday, “Lord Father, it appears to us, that, leaving this world, you are about to keep the Passover in the Palace of your Lord!” the ambitious old theologue made answer,—“_et quidem, si voluntas ejus in hoc est, voluntati ejus non contradico. Verum si mallet me adhuc inter vos saltem tamdiu manere, donec quæstionem quam de animæ origine mente revolvo, absolvere possem, gratiosus acciperem, eo quod nescio, utrum aliquis eam, me defuncto, sit absoluturus._ If indeed this be his will, I gainsay it not. But if He should chuse rather that I should yet remain among you at least long enough to settle the question which I am revolving in my mind concerning the origin of the Soul, I should take it gratefully; because I do not know whether any one will be able to determine it, after I am dead.” He added, “_ego quippe, si comedere possem, spero convalescere; nam nihil doloris in aliqua parte sentio, nisi quod lassescente stomacho, ob cibum quem capere nequit, totus deficio._[1]—If I could but eat, I might hope to recover, for I feel no pain in any part, except that as my stomach sinks for lack of food, which it is unable to take, I am failing all over.” [Footnote 1: EADMER.] The Saint must have been in a most satisfactory state of self-sufficiency when he thus reckoned upon his own ability for disposing of a question which he thought it doubtful whether any one who came after him would be able to solve. All other appetite had forsaken him; but that for unprofitable speculation and impossible knowledge clung to him to the last; so strong a relish had he retained of the forbidden fruit; Letting down buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up![2] So had the Saint lived beyond the allotted term of three-score years and ten, and his hand was still upon the windlass when the hand of death was upon him. One of our old Dramatists[3] represented a seven years apprenticeship to such a craft as sufficient for bringing a man to a just estimate of it:—