FATAL FIFTY-SIX.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XIX, 8 May 1897, Page 567

FATAL FIFTY-SIX.

renowned characters who died at that age. Among the men and women of genius there seems to be a strange fatality connected with the age of fifty-six (says the Atlanta Constitution), some of the most renowned characters of the world have died on reaching that limit, including Dante, the Italian poet; Hugh Capet, King of France ; Henry VIII., King of England ; Henry IV, Emperor of Germany ; Paganini, Italian violinist ; Alexander Pope, English poet ; George Sala, English Orientalist; Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome ; Frederick 1., King of Prussia ; John Hancock, American statesman ; Maria Louisa, Empress of France ; Phillip Massenger, English dramatist ; Saladin, the great Sultan of Egypt ; Robert Stephenson, English engineer ; Scipio Africanus, Roman General ; Helvetius, French philosopher and author ; Henry 11., the first of the Plantagenet line ; the elder Pliny, Roman naturalist and author ; Julius Caesar; Charles Kingsley, English author ; Juan Prim, Spanish General and statesman ; HenryKnox, American Revolutionary General ; Thomas Mifflin, American patriot ; Von Tromp, Dutch Admiral ; Abraham Lincoln; Marryat. the novelist ; George Whitefield, English founder of Calvinistic Methodism ; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Queen Elizabeth ; Johann Gasper Sperzheim, German physician and phrenologist, and Frederick II , Emperor of Germany.