Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1874-07-09
A Pr0yerb Reviewed.

writing series of sunny essays to show
that many popular proverbs, passing cur
rent, and used often as unanswerable ar
guments in favor of Ger ain course of
action, are, as fact, fallacious and un-
true; and certain it is that many of these
accepted maxims viii not bear very
close analysis.
Is it true, for instance, that "whom the
gods love die youngg" This is very
consoling proverb for the young mother
who has lost a child "too beautiful to
lives" to the father who sees his bright
and promising son, who has borne away
college prizes and entered upon what
seemed about to become a brilliant ca
reer, fade away under the dread wasting
of consumption. But the proverb is
often applied to persons of genius; and
the rhetorical writer or author, ut ering
a panegyric upon dead youthful talent,
seems often to prove, by its mere state
ment, that mental superiority has really
brought about, too early, physical disso-
luton. Dumas the younger, speaking
lately over the grave of the young and
gifted actress, Mile. Desclee, reasserted
the idea in his eloquent way. But is it
justified by fact?
We would not be Gradgrindian; when,
however, a misconception is likely to
arise, and a singular doctrine of the rela-
tons between the mind and the physical
system is involved, it is at least interest
ing to dwell on its probable truth or
falsity. M. Dumas may, indeed, cite
many instances in which young men and
women of undoubted genius have died
young; but cannot many more instances
of genius living TO a green old age be
found? Shelley died young; but then
he was drowned-his mind did not har-
| row up his nerves and exhaust the phys
ical vitality Chatterton died young; but
| he poisoned himself. Byron's early death
is easily accounted for by the self-in-
| ilicted poison of eternal gin and-wa in
the middle of the night, and by excuses
of dissipation SO inveteratc that it is n
wonder he did not kill himself in the
twenties instead of the thirties. Youths
of genius were beheaded during the Ter
! ror; this, surely, was not the exhaustion
of the vital tissues by an Unsuitable
| brain.
The record on the other hand is q
very full one. Homer lived to old age,
and was old when he hawked the heXam-
etres of the Had" through the ORR
entail cities. Dante reached the reason
| ably mature age of fifty-six. Virgil lived
TO nearly fifty. Milton died at siXty-six,
| and Shakespeare at fifty Still more
| striking instances of genius reaching
| venerable years appear in Voltairc, who
was eightyfour; Humboldt, who was
ninety; ChauCer, who was seventy-two;
| Dryden, who was seventy; Sam Johnsoni
| who was seventyfve. Political geniuses
| have not, as a rule, been less long-lived.
| There were Lyndhurst and Brougham,
| the rival champions of Wings and Tories,
one of whom exceeded ninety, and the
other came within a couple of years of it.
Our own greatest trio of statesmen
| Webster Clay and Calhoun--all nearly
attained to the allotted three -score-years-
and-ten, Calhoun, the youngest, dying
at sixty-eight, Webster dying at seventy
and Clay at seventy-fye The great
painters who died at full age are quite
as numerous, the greatest of ali, Raphael,
being the most striking exception. Titan
lived to the arch-patriarchal years of
ninety-nine; Michael Angelo arrived at
ninety; Leonardo dc Vinci passed
seventy; and Tintoretto died at the age of
eightytwo
In our own day the maxim "Whom the
| gods love die young" is contradicted by
a number of remarkable instances. Vic
tor Hugo is as hale and rosy at seventy
two as if he had not been engaged in the
throcs Of the most exhaustng mental
labor for forty years; Theirs and Guizot,
the one seventy-six and the other eighty
six, are still "men of the time" in u very
literal and active sense while the En-
glsh premier and his rival, Gladstone,
have both passed their sixty-ffth year.
The fact is, that early death is mainly
matter of physical endowment; rarely is
1t that a rcmorselessly active mind frets
the body into the grave. The mental
action which affects health injuriously
being common to small as well as large
brains has apparently no relation to the
degree of intellectual force.-ArpLet0ns'
J0urndt