[Footnote A:  See “Curiosities of Literature,” on “The progress of old age in new studies.”]

But the delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.  The revolutions of modern chemistry kindled the curiosity of Dr. Reid to his latest days, and he studied by various means to prevent the decay of his faculties, and to remedy the deficiencies of one failing sense by the increased activity of another.  A late popular author, when advanced in life, discovered, in a class of reading to which he had never been accustomed, a profuse supply of fresh furniture for his mind.  This felicity was the delightfulness of the old age of GOETHE—­literature, art, and science, formed his daily inquiries; and this venerable genius, prompt to receive each novel impression, was a companion for the youthful, and a communicator of knowledge even for the most curious.

Even the steps of time are retraced, and we resume the possessions we seemed to have lost; for in advanced life a return to our early studies refreshes and renovates the spirits:  we open the poets who made us enthusiasts, and the philosophers who taught us to think, with a new source of feeling acquired by our own experience.  ADAM SMITH confessed his satisfaction at this pleasure to Professor Dugald Stewart, while “he was reperusing, with the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient Greece, and Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table.”

  Dans ses veines toujours un jeune sang bouillone,
  Et Sophocle a cent ans peint encore Antigone.

The calm philosophic Hume found that death only could interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous self-dialogue with Charon.  “Happily,” said this philosopher, “on retiring from the world I found my taste for reading return, even with greater avidity.”  We find GIBBON, after the close of his History, returning with an appetite as keen to “a full repast on Homer and Aristophanes, and involving himself in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato.”  Lord WOODHOUSELEE found the recomposition of his “Lectures on History” so fascinating in the last period of his life, that Mr. Alison informs us, “it rewarded him with that peculiar delight, which has been often observed in the later years of literary men; the delight of returning again to the studies of their youth, and of feeling under the snows of age the cheerful memories of their spring."[A]

[Footnote A:  There is an interesting chapter on Favourite Authors in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii., to which the reader may be referred for other examples.—­ED.]