NOT TOO OLD AT FORTY.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 2, 26 March 1920, Page 14

NOT TOO OLD AT FORTY.

Men have been demobolised recently in large numbers, and are returning from rnilitary service to commence civilian life again, and many of them are conscious that they are several years older than when they joined the army, and in not a few instances have attained to middle age. The prospect of success now largely depends upon the spirit with which they enter upon their new duties, and it may. be helpful for them to know that many men won their way to distinction and did their most valuahle work after they had reached middle age. No one has so deeply influeneed the course of history as Julius Caesar, for it is to him that we owe the Roman Empire, and all that that Empire has meant to Western civilisation, ineluding all our inlieritance from the Old World. He isone of the world's greatest men. But until he was forty years of age his name was overshadowed by that of Pompey, and he was a politieian rather than a soldier. It was not till he was forty-two that he became a general and was given the command of the armies in "Gaul, by . which he is best known. John Bunyan was forty-four before he received a licence to preach, and was forty-seven when he produced the first part of his admired religious allegory, the "Pilgrim's Progress." The now worldfamous Salvation Army was founded by General Booth out of the East-end Christian Mission when he was forty-nine, a Mission which he started when he was thirty-six.

When Oliver Cromwell was thirty-eight he was actually contemplating emigrating to America as a farmer, and he was fortythree when he raised a troop of horse in Cambridge, and forty-five when he led his men at the Battle of Marston Moor. That monarch of the art of violin making, Stradivarius, had reached his fiftieth year before his hand and eye had acquired supreme skill and freedom, and he produced his best instruments when he was between fifty-six and eighty years of age ; for the violins made during these years have all the graee and boldness of a Greek frieze drawn by a master's hand. Handel was forty-eight before he published any of his great works, and was fifty-six when the "Messiah," the grandest and most popular of his oratorios, appeared. There have been men who have done brilliantly at a much earlier age, men like Pitt, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty-three and Prime Minister at twenty-four, and Robert Burns, who wrote the "Cottar's Saturday Night" at twenty-seven, and whose life ended at thirty-seven ; but the minds of the majority of men attain their full power only by slow degrees, and many are the distinguished authors whose monumental works did not appear till they had reached middle age. Dryden and Scott were not known as authors until each was in his fortieth year. Thomas Carlyle was thirty-nine before he p.ublished "Sartor Resartus," and fortythree when he produced his "French Revolution. " Richard Hooker was fortyone when h:s famous "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" were first pubilshed. Dr Samuel Johnson was thirty-eight when he announced the plan of his Dictionary of the English Language, and was fortysix when, after an heroic struggle agamsi pennry, he succeeded in pnblishing the work.