himself to regular studies, and
literary society, he sold his farms, and became the most learned
antiquary and lawyer.

Colbert, the famous French minister, almost at sixty, returned to his
Latin and law studies.

Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before
his death. The Marquis de Saint Aulaire, at the age of seventy, began to
court the Muses, and they crowned him with their freshest flowers. The
verses of this French Anacreon are full of fire, delicacy, and
sweetness.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were the composition of his latest years:
they were begun in his fifty-fourth year, and finished in his
sixty-first.

Ludovico Monaldesco, at the extraordinary age of 115, wrote the memoirs
of his times. A singular exertion, noticed by Voltaire; who himself is
one of the most remarkable instances of the progress of age in new
studies.

The most delightful of autobiographies for artists is that of Benvenuto
Cellini; a work of great originality, which was not begun till "the
clock of his age had struck fifty-eight."

Koornhert began at forty to learn the Latin and Greek languages, of
which he became a master; several students, who afterwards distinguished
themselves, have commenced as late in life their literary pursuits.
Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil, knew little of Latin or
Greek till he was past fifty; and Franklin's philosophical pursuits
began when he had nearly reached his fiftieth year.

Accorso, a great lawyer, being asked why he began the study of the law
so late, answered, beginning it late, he should master it the sooner.

Dryden's complete works form the largest body of poetry from the pen of
a single writer in the English language; yet he gave no public testimony
of poetic abilities till his twenty-seventh year. In his sixty-eighth
year he proposed to translate the whole Iliad: and his most pleasing
productions were written in his old age.

Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in extreme old age:
there is a device said to be invented by him, of an old man represented
in a _go-cart_, with an hour-glass upon it; the inscription _Ancora
imparo!_--YET I AM LEARNING!

We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with Erasmus and
men of letters of that period, _De Ratione Studii_, by Joachim Sterck,
otherwise Fortius de Ringelberg. The enthusiasm of the writer often
carries him to the verge of ridicule; but something must be conceded to
his pecu