we say now, "obliged to go to," and which he so evidently enjoyed.[1]
He is careful, however, to remind his readers that old age, to be really either happy or venerable, must not be the old age of the mere voluptuary or the debauchee; that the grey head, in order to be, even in his pagan sense, "a crown of glory," must have been "found in the way of righteousness." Shakespeare might have learned from Cicero in these points the moral which he puts into the mouth of his Adam—
It is a miserable old age, says the Roman, which is obliged to appeal to its grey hairs as its only claim to the respect of its juniors. "Neither hoar hairs nor wrinkles can arrogate reverence as their right. It is the life whose opening years have been honourably spent which reaps the reward of reverence at its close."
In discussing the last of the evils which accompany old age, the near approach of death, Cicero rises to something higher than his usual level. His Cato will not have death to be an evil at all; it is to him the escaping from "the prison of the body,"—the "getting the sight of land at last after a long voyage, and coming into port." Nay, he does not admit that death is
- ↑ "A clergyman was complaining of the want of society in the country where he lived, and said, 'They talk of runts' (i.e., young cows). 'Sir,' said Mr Salusbury, 'Mr Johnson would learn to talk of runts;' meaning that I was a man who would make the most of my situation, whatever it was."—Boswell's Life. Cicero was like Dr Johnson.
