_Feelings of Age_ (Vol. vii., p. 429.).--A.C. asks if it "is not the
general feeling, that man in advancing years would not like to begin life
again?" I fear not. It is a wisdom above the average of what men possess
that made the good Sir Thomas Browne say:
"Though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live
twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, or
begin again the thread of my dayes: not upon Cicero's ground--because I
have lived them well--but for fear I should live them worse. I find my
growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed
affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my
confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many
then, because I was a child, and, because I commit them still, I am yet
an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the
days of dotage, and stand in need of AEson's bath before threescore."
The annotator refers to _Cic._, lib. xxiv. ep. 4.:
"Quod reliquum est, sustenta te, mea Terentia, ut potes, honestissime.
Viximus: floruimus: non vitium nostrum, sed virtus nostra, nos
afflixit. Peccatum est nullum, nisi quod non una animam cum ornamentis
amisimus."--Edit. Orell., vol. iii. part i. p. 335.
However, it seems probable that Sir Thomas meant that this sentiment is
rather to be gathered from Cicero's writings,--not enunciated in a single
sentence.