, 'Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth,' ii. 94.]

[Footnote 1317: A friend of Lord Palmerston has communicated to us the following
anecdote. Asking him one day when he considered a man to be in the prime
of life, his immediate reply was, "Seventy-nine!" "But," he added, with
a twinkle in his eye, "as I have just entered my eightieth year, perhaps
I am myself a little past it."]

[Footnote 1318: 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.]

[Footnote 1319: Coleridge's advice to his young friends was much to the same
effect. "With the exception of one extraordinary man," he says, "I have
never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy
or happy without a profession: i.e., some regular employment which does
not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so
far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and
intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three
hours of leisure, unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward
to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realise
in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks
of compulsion.... If facts are required to prove the possibility of
combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent
employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon, among the ancients--of
Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or [13to refer at once to later and
contemporary instances] Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the
question."--BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, Chap. xi.]

[Footnote 1320: Mr. Ricardo published his celebrated 'Theory of Rent,' at the
urgent recommendation of James Mill [13like his son, a chief clerk in the
India House], author of the 'History of British India.' When the 'Theory
of Rent' was written, Ricardo was so dissatisfied with it that he wished
to burn it; but Mr. Mill urged him to publish it, and the book was a
great success.]

[Footnote 1321: The late Sir John Lubbock, his father, was also eminent as a
mathematician and astronomer.]

[Footnote 1322: Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains and care men
put themselves to, to become rich, was answered by one in the company
that he did like the fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain.
Thereupon Thales had a mind, for the jest's sake, to show them the
contrary; and having upon this occasion for once made a muster of all
his wits, wholly to employ them in the service of profit, he set a