Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/151

 the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—'Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great Julius Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?—Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and Peter Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man's estate.—And Baldus himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,—If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,