“Methinks our souls in age are subject unto more importunate diseases and imperfections than they are in youth. I said so being young, when my beardless chin was upbraided me, and I say it again, now that my gray beard gives me authority. We entitle wisdom, the frowardness of our humours, and the distaste of present things; but in truth we abandon not vices so much as we change them; and in mine opinion for the worse. Besides a silly and ruinous pride, cumbersome tattle, wayward and unsociable humours, superstition, and a ridiculous carking for wealth, when the use of it is well nigh lost. I find the more envy, injustice and malignity in it. It sets more wrinkles in our minds than in our foreheads, nor are there any spirits, or very rare ones, which in growing old taste not sourly and mustily.” In the same spirit, recollecting perhaps this very passage of the delightful old Gascon, one of our own poets says, Old age doth give by too long space, Our souls as many wrinkles as our face; and the same thing, no doubt in imitation of Montagne has been said by Corneille in a poem of thanks addressed to Louis XIV., when that King had ordered some of his plays to be represented during the winter of 1685, though he had ceased to be a popular writer, _Je vieillis, ou du moins, ils se le persuadent; Pour bien écrire encor j'ai trop long tems écrit, Et les rides du front passent jusqu' à l'esprit._ The opinion proceeded not in the poet Daniel from perverted philosophy, or sourness of natural disposition, for all his affections were kindly, and he was a tender-hearted, wise, good man. But he wrote this in the evening of his days, when he had out lived the date Of former grace, acceptance and delight, when, those bright stars from whence He had his light, were set for evermore; and when he complained that years had done to him this wrong, To make him write too much, and live too long; so that this comfortless opinion may be ascribed in him rather to a dejected state of mind, than to a clear untroubled judgement. But Hubert Languet must have written more from observation and reflection than from feeling, when he said in one of his letters to Sir Philip Sidney, “you are mistaken if you believe that men are made better by age; for it is very rarely so. They become indeed more cautious, and learn to conceal their faults and their evil inclinations; so that if you have known any old man in whom you think some probity were still remaining, be assured that he must have been excellently virtuous in his youth.” _Erras si credis homines fieri ætate meliores; id nam est rarissimum. Fiunt quidem cautiores, et vitia animi, ac pravos suos affectus occultare discunt: quod si quem senem novisti in quo aliquid probitatis superesse judices, crede eum in adolescentiâ fuisse optimum._