long he was subject to attacks of asthma, which, after suffering every
form of disease, he says that he considers to be the worst. At one time
his personal sufferings weighed so heavily on his spirits that nothing
save a regard for his father's wishes prevented him from suicide: and
later in life he was only withheld from seeking the deliverance of death
by the tender affection of his wife Paulina. He might have used with
little alteration the words of Pope, that his various studies but served
to help him

"Through _this long disease, my life_."

The recovery from this tedious illness is the only allusion which Seneca
has made to the circumstances of his childhood. The ancient writers,
even the ancient poets, but rarely refer, even in the most cursory
manner, to their early years. The cause of this reticence offers a
curious problem for our inquiry, but the fact is indisputable. Whereas
there is scarcely a single modern poet who has not lingered with
undisguised feelings of happiness over the gentle memories of his
childhood, not one of the ancient poets has systematically touched upon
the theme at all. From Lydgate down to Tennyson, it would be easy to
quote from our English poets a continuous line of lyric songs on the
subject of boyish years. How to the young child the fir-trees seemed to
touch the sky, how his heart leaped up at the sight of the rainbow, how
he sat at his mother's feet and pricked into paper the tissued flowers
of her dress, how he chased the bright butterfly, or in his tenderness
feared to brush even the dust from off its wings, how he learnt sweet
lessons and said innocent prayers at his father's knee; trifles like
these, yet trifles which may have been rendered noble and beautiful by a
loving imagination, have been narrated over and over again in the songs
of our poets. The lovely lines of Henry Vaughan might be taken as a type