The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-10-02
THE AGE OF THIRIY-SEYEN
MANY DEPTHS or DISIING UISHED
 MEN
At That Age or Thereabouts-Thirsy seven Called on That Account u Fatal Age for Men of Genius.

d lldH IS lOuhlHS loIWdlu to o A"N"A
 period, an observation which may have suggested Seneca's remark that
 though we complain of the shortness Of
 time, we have really more time than
 we know what to do with. A trllle or sixteen centuries or so after seneca Locke took up the same theme in the second book of his essay, and demon- strated to mankind that their ideas or time are to be ascribed to the success sion of ideas in the mind; a notion, however, which was propounded before was it not?-by that ingenious | Frenchman, Malebranche. The obvious conclusion is that fitness of days, Whlch | is the cherished hope of men, is more
 surely attained by cultivating an ac- i tive mind than by tarrying long years III
 this vale of tears. A man of varied ln- ] tellectual activities who dies at thirty 1 seven, for instance, may end hls oayS | with a far livelier impression or haVlnS | lived long than man who has passed | sixty years of his life at the plough tall | This contrast is suggested by Lord Bea- | consfield's famous remark that thirty seven is a fatal age for men Of genus,
 remark which contains more truth | than is revealed by the one or two cele- l brated instances which inevitably recur
 to the mind of the average reader. for, | without entering into a dlscussloh ol l the theory of climacterics, 1t IS easy to
 show from experience alone that Loru
 Beaconsfed's observation is supported by crowd of positive instances when 1 constitute curiously striking testimony
 to the truth, and little miscellaneous
 reading will furnish us with the h. | stances.
 The annals of literature probably con-
 tain more such examples than those or
 any other sphere in which men gain dis
 tinction Burns. for instance, was thlr-
 ty-seven when he died. Byron was in
 his thirty seventh year. William Col
 lins, too. on whose odes posterity has
 bestowed more praise than his-contem-
 porares, and justly so, was i'll his thir-
 ty-seventh year. Falconer, the storm-
 tossed mariner-poet, was scarcely more,
 though, perhaps, he does not come
 strictly within the category. Thomas
 Paruell does, for he was thirty-seven;
 and Toplady, of Rock of Ages fame,
 does also, for he died at thirty-seven. l RODeft ldnlldHtl, Nilp NGtloiit thc 'A
 vine afflatus from his hero Burns, died,
 like his hero at thrtyiseVen, or, at
 least, in his thirty-seVenth year; ana
 Louvet, of the French revolution, Who
 if not indeed a genius, was hailed as
 genius on the strength of that dreadtui'
 "chevalier de Faublas," he too exhaust | ed the oil in his lamp of life at the early
 age of thirty-seven. Another minor
 light in French literature, John Joseph
 Wade, whose chief claim on our remem-
 brance is that he first utilized the racy
 language of the Parisian canaille m
 writing for the comic stage, died at the
 same age Our list includes Shakerley
 Marmion the comic dramatist, who died
 in 1639 and who, had he lived would
 have found his occupation gone for the
 next twenty years. It includes also
 Hugh Kelly. whose comedy, "A Word
 to the Wise" which was damned by the
 playhouse public in ITO, was, as Bozzy
 tells us, produced at Coyent Garden
 for one night in 1777 for the benefit of
 Kelly's widow and children, with a
 prologue by none other than the great
 Samuel Johnson-alWays as willing to write a prologue or a preface as cat
 is to steal milk It includes, moreover
 a gifted writer of our own time, Philip Bourke Marston.
 Another age and country furnish the example of Simon Frederick Hahn, the
 prodigious Hanoverian who, at ter years of age knew more about history mathematics, and the ancient languages
 than most of us know all our lives, and who, at fourteen. delivered q Latin ora tion before the University of Halle, whc : was counsellor librarian and historic grapher to the Elector of Hanover, and having found time to do and to be al this, yet died at thirty-seven, in 1729 A woman of distinction also falls with } in our category, Laetit1a Elizabeth Lan- don, and two others-Charlotte Brontt l and Maria Cummns, the author o / "The Lamplighter'' escape it by l a year Carlyle's celebrated friend Sterling, only struggled past the fata thirty-seven for one year Our las : example among literary persons must be Pushkine, Russia's poet who wa: killed in duel in 1887, at the fatal age ? our last but one rather, for 1t is wortl I mention that Otto Loth, the German I Orier .alist, who catalogued the Arabian
 manuscripts at the India office anC I | who enueu q He or Dllillanl plonllSt l less than twenty years ago, was thirty - seven.
 . Music, also, has it's striking instancee S Mendelssohn evades us, as Sterins l does, by year; Chopin also. But Mo 3 zart was thirty-seven when he ceased . l to weave his high immortal melodies ' Purcell, too, the assiduous master O . sweet sound imuposing or joyous, de' . at thirty-seven; and the annals of tn e stage remind us that Rachel, who, as S child, sang for bread in the streets o l Lyons, and, as woman conquered tW V continents by the force of dramatic pas a sion, closed her checkered story at tn - same age, thirty-seven. Among paint e CTS. Raphael himself is one instance |. Raphael died at thrty-seven; and wa e it one of life's little ironies that Eus = tache Lesueur, who was called "Th S French Raphael" should die at tn h same age?
 S The curiosties of biography. shoul, s such a work ever be compiled, migh s well include chapter on the fatal thir r. ty-seven, and moderate degree of la = bor would reveal many more example e to justify such a chapter. It Woul Il naturally extend beyond the ranks c s. genius and would embrace the mere ce a | 1ebrities It would include Marie An