be pursued without interruption. It would
therefore be more to the purpose to say, Man cannot be for ever
young. In the stream of human existence, different things have their
appropriate period. The knowledge of languages can perhaps be most
effectually acquired in the season of nonage.

At riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and
another man to another. This man is a mathematician; a second studies
music; a third painting. This man is a logician; and that man an orator.
The same person cannot be expected to excel in the abstruseness of
metaphysical science, and in the ravishing effusions of poetical genius.
When a man, who has arrived at great excellence in one department of art
or science, would engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the
freshness of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by
the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly displayed. It
is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the organs of speech,
in the latter of which we find the tender fibres of the child easily
accommodating themselves to the minuter inflections and variations of
sound, which the more rigid muscles of the adult will for the most part
attempt in vain.

If again, by the maxim, Ars longa, vita brevis, it is intended to
signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in reality
all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that, as St. Paul
says, we must "not count ourselves to have already attained; but that,
forgetting the things that are behind, it becomes us to press forward
to the prize of our calling,"--this also is true. But this is only
ascribable to the limitation of our faculties, and that even the shadow
of perfection which man is capable to reach, can only be attained by
the labour of successive generations. The cause does not lie in the
shortness of human life, unless we would include in its protracted
duration the privilege of being for ever young; to which we ought
perhaps to add, that our activity should never be exhausted, the
freshness of our minds never abate, and our faculties for ever retain
the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the morning of
life, when every thing was new, when all that allured or delighted us
was seen accompanied with charms inexpressible, and, as Dryden expresses
it(10), "the first sprightly running" of the wine of life afforded a
zest never after to be hoped for.

(10) Aurengzebe.