NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 77, 11 September 1878, Page 3

NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN.

Socrates, at an extreme old age, learned to play on musical instruments. Cato, at eighty years of age, began to study the Greek language. Plutarch, when between seventy and eighty, commenced the study of Latin. Boccacio was thirty-five years of age when he commenced his studies in light literature; yet he became one of the greatest masters of the Tuscan dialect Dante and Petrarch being the other two. Sir Henry Spelman neglected the sciences in his youth, but commenced the study of them when he was between fifty and sixty years of age. After this time he became a most learned antiquarian and lawyer. Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before his death. Ludovico Monaldesco, at the great age of one hundrrd and fifteen years, wrote the memoirs of his own times. Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil was unacquainted with Latin and Greek till he was past fifty. Franklin did not fully commence his philosophical pursuits till he had reached his fiftieth year. Dryden, in his sixty-eighth year, commenced the translation of the-'lliad, his most pleasing production. Thousands of examples of men who commenced a new study, either for livelihood or amusement, at an advanced age could be cited. But every one familiar with the biography of distinguished men, will recollect individval cases enough to convince him that none but the sick ami indolent will ever say, “I am too old to learn.”