GOLDEN YEARS.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 September 1922, Page 3

GOLDEN YEARS.

(Sydney Herald). Some fifteen years ago a well-known writer declared that all Hie best work of the world is done by those whose age lies between their twenty-fifth an i fortieth years—the •‘fifteen golden years of plenty, in which (here is always a balance in the mental hank and the credit is still good.” The recent publication of two hooks would seem :o give this generalisation of Sir AVili ant Osirr’s a complete rebuttal, were it not. notorious that no generalisation can over he proved or disproved owing to the number of exceptions to its rule that invariably occur. The two books in question are, first, the new volume of poems which Air Thomas Hardy—the doyen of British writers—has just issued at the age of eighty-two; and, second, the’biography of William do

Alorgan and his wife, a perusal o) which reminds us that it was not until he had attained his sixty-fifth year t 1 at the author of “Joseph Ysnco” pi minced that first of a wonderful scries. So far as Air Hardy’s poems are concerned, the value of their evidence is greatly discounted, of course, by the fact that many of them were written many years before the leaf ot his long life had begun tu show the “s re aiid yellow” of its autumn. Air de -Morgan's case is a much stronger

argument against the theory advam-al liv Sir William Osier, a theory which, it niav he said at once, lips been debated mostly by many great men, and with very different ( nclusions. Dr Johnson, in a letter to Airs 'lhralo, lor example, declared in that dogmatic way of Lis, which is probably much pleasanter to read of than it cooM

have been to encounter that “life docßnes from the age of thirty-live, thus r.ut-Oslering Osier: while fir William Robertson Nicoll quotes Ajaraulay to show that that other great degnmtist actually asserted on one occasion that “no great work of imagination has ever keen produced under the

age of thirty or thirty-five years, and the instances are few in which any have been produced under the age of forty.” And Sir Robertson Nicoll himself seems inclined to agree with 1

So there at once tie lists are set. the champions “mounted for the hot in counter.”

I A great mass of evidence is available for each side, and a brief scrutiny o; it reveals some interesting facts. As against Macaulay and the author r r “The Round of the Clock” may be adduced—among a host of others—Corneill’, who produced "The Cul” at thirty: Yictor Hugo, with his “Notre Dame” at twenty-nine; Goethe, with “Werther” at twenty-live; Dickens with “Pickwick” at the same age, and Byron, who awoke t„ find liimslf Bi-

llions through the instrumentality of I “Childc Harold’s Pilgrimage” at • twenty-four. Burns. Shelley. and Keats all attained immortality under j the age of thirty-five; Thackeray and ! Fielding wore just that age when thee I wrote “A'anity Fair” and “Joseph

Andrews” respectively; and Mer’difh ' was thirty-one when lie published "T 1 ” Ordeal of Rielnml Feverel.” And, above all these, there is tin"great name of Shakespeare, who wrote the first ol his plays at twenty-seven, and most of them before he was forty. The leaders in innnv otln'r spheres ol action—ail. science, industry, politics, or war—who

have produced the fine flower of thcr genius while yet less than midway through the “allotted span” are legion. Blit the lists of those who entile to greatness “on the shady side" are probably as full. Defoe was fifty-eight when “Robinson Crusoe” was horn : Locke produced his “Essay on the Human Understanding”—to the perplexity of many a human understanding sine?—at the same age; Swift wrote. “Gulliver’s Travels” at fifty-nine, an ’ j AYnlton his “(oiupleat Angler” o' j sixty. Cervantes, Dumas, Scott, -Milton, Rabelais, Lamb, Montaigne, I. :-i con, and other giants cl the literary world were over forty when they here their first great works; and the linin'’ of many another who gained in middle nee and alter it distinction in the fields of statecraft and industry, and in the camp, the study, and the factory, must rise at once to the memory of everyone. Honours, then, arc easy, and U-’ dogmatists on either side are equally wrong. !

But wliat, after all, does the argument matter:' AA’liat would it preiit the world to “place” the exact dividing line—if such there were—whereat the powers of human life begin to fail. A mail is hut as old as 1 1 is capacities ; I e may he it “slippered pantaloon” at twenty-one and a foemnn worthy of the stoutest steel at ninety-nine.

Call him not old whose visionary brain Holds o’er the past its undivided reign. For him is vain the envious seasons roll Wlm bears eternal summer on bis soul. So sung Oliver Wendell Holmes, liimslf a splendid specimen of the tvuciiis words described. "AVitli the ancients is wisdom, and in length ol days understanding,” says an aidliorilv whom even Sir .J. M. Barrie and Ids Mt Ci.-unachie will hardly venture to dispute. And in his “Night Thoughts’' Young is of the same mind. "The man of wisdom is tie man of years.” T rue, but only ball' a truth. The man of youth may be as wise as th‘•revest and most reverend signor of He. m all, and bis understanding may

le longer than bis (lavs. What doe:, i matter about age? l/ate- are illusory !-t Lings. I t is not only “women an.l music,” as Goldsmith asserted, t'e' | •'should never be dated. Or Huu ’ need be dated to privo t-lieir wort. ; The old wine of wisdom may lie lound in new bottles as well ns in those tua. bear the heaviest festoons of eohw ii. True enough it is again, as Hardy liirn--1 self writes: — ! As newer comers crowd the fore I We drop behind ; We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind. . . . But the lines are not a complete cpii tome of the facts. There is room at j th(‘ lore for the aged, too, as he who ! wrote them has proved so well. Room I enough, even unto the very end ; if the man l:o worthy. No. there is no season especially aureaito. . Kadi year or any •vciir t!i<‘ jrli»nr.i msiy conn*, and' fir* | idlest liIV may burgeon into gol'l i * * (veil ;-s tin* u:< i*ns/-du\vn ol tin* sun.’