Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/58

54 and natural philosopher," was a person of splendid physique "who outstripped all the youth of the city in feats of strength and horsemanship," and who was "zealous in labor above all men, with a strength more than human."

Michelangelo was almost as ascetic in his habits as a monk and he labored with "furious" intensity, with chisel and brush, up to his seventieth year, when he still had energy left to plan and carry forward such great architectural works as St. Peter's. Even in his last year he is described as "healthy above all things," notwithstanding the storm and stress of adverse circumstances against which he had to contend throughout life.

It was said of Titian that his death from plague came (at the age of ninety-nine) as a surprise to his friends, since he lived "a life so strong and resisting that it seemed able to withstand all the assaults of time."

Rubens lived sparingly and was devoted to horseback riding. Despite bodily care he suffered from attacks of gout, so common in that age. It was not, however, until in his fifty-seventh year, when his attacks became more severe, that he had to adopt the use of the mahl stick in painting, a utensil which few painters have sufficient nerve control to do without at any time. The fact that "not the remotest trace of approaching old age, not the slightest failing of mind or skill, can be detected even in his latest works" testifies that he had not declined up to his sixty-third year.

Of Turner, the last of this sextette of artists, we know that his health was perfectly sound, that he walked his twenty miles or more a day with ease, often sketching as he walked. He could work fifteen hours at a stretch without weariness, and his digestion was so vigorous that all extremes of living were alike to him. He "worked harder and produced more than any artist of whom we have any record." As Hamerton said, "Man is an intelligence served by organs and few intelligences have been better or more regularly served than Turner. His nervous system was so sound that he could work anywhere and everywhere." At the age of sixty-seven he had an illness, but it was not until seventy that we "are sure that he declined as an artist, . . . when his health and with it, in a degree, his mind, failed suddenly." Among musicians we have no trouble in selecting the greatest. All others stand on a lower plane than Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Those who mark the physical imperfections of men of genius will at once say that Bach was blind and Beethoven deaf. Bach did become blind at sixty-eight, after such severe use as perhaps no other eyes ever received, and Beethoven (strange fate) did become deaf, his affliction beginning at twenty-eight years. This terrible defect undoubtedly