Four and thirty years since, Sir Humphry Davy wrote:“The English as a
nation are preëminently active, and the natives of no other country
follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And as
human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished
men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and
die, before they have attained the period naturally marked out for the
end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and
even philosophers, offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion:
whatever burns, consumes; ashes remain. Before the period of youth is
passed, gray hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the
civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the
men of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath
or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.” If these
characteristics were applicable to English life a third of a century
since, how much has their fitness been strengthened by the rapidity of
action, the excitement, and want of repose adding to the wear and tear
of existence, since that period.
That the Englishman is one of the most noble species of the genus to
which he belongs, seems to be generally conceded. The poet Southey
expressed the opinion of more thinkers than himself when he said that
the Englishman is the model or pattern man, at least of all the species
at present existing. But even those who are most thoroughly convinced of
this must admit that he has his peculiarities—foremost among which is
his nationality; and one of the most striking peculiarities of that
nationality is pride. Another potent element in the English character is
its practical worth,—this word “practical” being the shibboleth by which
we love to recognise ourselves; as the Greeks delighted to picture
themselves as more wise, the French as more polite, than other nations.
Our genius has a most real, concrete, and altogether terrestrial
tendency: there seems to be a considerable majority of Sadducees among
us, or, as Plato calls them, “uninitiated persons, who believe in
nothing but what they can lay hold of with their hands. These men will
make railways, telegraphs, and tunnels, and build crystal palaces, and
collect mechanical products from the ends of the earth, and exhibit in
every possible shape and variety the sublime of what is mechanical and
material; but for the supersensual ideas, they will have none of
them.”[90]
Nevertheless, if we look through the history of the world’s genius, we
shall find its greatest successes to lie in the practical. Homer begged;
Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt
assassinated,—and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same
time, Raffaelle, Michel Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds,
Titian, Shakspeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius
they combined practical prudence. This is the grand secret of success.
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Footnote 90:
Professor Blackie; _Edinburgh Essays_, 1856.
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