OF FRENCH SOCIETY. 55 invest it with the peaceful attributes of calmness and resignation, they in- vented the means of making old age hise itself, as it were, in youthful images, not only by indulging in light reading, but loose composition. One of themwas so successfully boiled in Medea's kettle, that his eulogist triumphantly tells us he translated Ariosto, and published tales exhibiting pictures of voluptuousness without indecency ; and these boasted exploits are adduced as adding fresh laurels to a being on the very verge of eternity ! Bear a celebrated academician immor- talise one of the diseased confraternity in his public oration ! In illustrating the character of his friend, who died in extreme old age, he describes this period as " a season when ingenious trifling is peculiarly graceful ; a period in which men might give themselves up to levity with the least scruple- and the most success. It is in old age," says the orator, "that the mind is disabused on D
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