| Citation |
RAG.780.145
10 Aug 1780:21 (295)
Without Temperance, there is no true Happiness. . . [7
paragraphs] A man who loves the arts and sciences is never
idle; all his moments are employed, and wheresoever he goes,
he always carries what will agreeably amuse him. The
sciences are formed for all stages of life, and the older a
man is the more necessary they are. In youth they serve for
amusement, at years of maturity for a companion, and in old
age for a comforter. . . [12 lines] Thus did Newton,
Boerhaave, and Beausobre pass their old age, and thus the
illustrious Fontenelle. The greatest men among the ancients
improved their understanding to the last. Sophocles
composed tragedies till he was exceeding old; and it is said
that he was not less than an hundred when he wrote Oedipus.
His children, finding that the application he gave to his
plays made him neglect his family affairs, commenced a suit
of lunacy against him; but Sophocles made no other defence
than the reciting the tragedy of Oedipus, which he had just
finished, before proper judges of the drama; and, having
then asked them whether they thought the play was the
composition of a man that had lost his reason, he was
acquitted of the charge.
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