th thy benignant name
These shores of Sky."

"On another occasion," says Mrs. Thrale, in the "Anecdotes," "I can
boast verses from Dr. Johnson. As I went into his room the morning of
my birthday once and said to him, 'Nobody sends me any verses now,
because I am five-and-thirty years old; and Stella was fed with them
till forty-six, I remember.' My being just recovered from illness and
confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out
suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation
whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention
towards it half a minute before:

"Oft in danger, yet alive,
We are come to thirty-five;
Long may better years arrive,
Better years than thirty-five.
Could philosophers contrive
Life to stop at thirty-five,
Time his hours should never drive
O'er the bounds of thirty-five.
High to soar, and deep to dive,
Nature gives at thirty-five.
Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five;
And all who wisely wish to wive
Must look on Thrale at thirty-five."

"'And now,' said he, as I was writing them down, 'you may see what it
is to come for poetry to a dictionary-maker; you may observe that the
rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly.' And so they do."

Byron's estimate of life at the same age, is somewhat different:

"Too old for youth--too young, at thirty-five
To herd with boys, or hoard with good threescore,
I wonder people should he left alive.
But since they are, that epoch is a bore."

Lady Aldborough, whose best witticisms unluckily lie under the same
merited ban as Rochester's best verses, resolved not to pass
twenty-five, and had her passport made out accordingly till her death
at eighty-five. She used to boast that, whenever a foreign official
objected, she never failed to silence him by the remark, that he was
the first gentleman of his country who ever told a lady she was older
than she said she was. Actuated probably by a similar feeling, and in
the hope of securing to herself the benefit of the doubt, Mrs. Thrale
omitted in the "Anecdotes" the year when these verses were addressed
to her, and a sharp controversy has been raised as to the respective
ages of herself and Dr. Johnson at the time. It is thus summed up by
one of the combatants