ENERGY and force of character are among the first requisites essential
to success in business. A man may possess a high degree of refinement,
large stores of knowledge, and even a well-disciplined mind; but if he
is destitute of this one principle, which may be termed resolution of
soul, he is like a watch without a mainspring—beautiful, but
inefficient, and unfit for service.
Never do too much at a time, is a good practical maxim. Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton gives the following history of his literary habits: Many
persons, seeing me so much engaged in active life, and as much about the
world as if I had never been a student, have said to me, “When do you
get time to write all your books? How on earth do you contrive to do so
much work?” I shall surprise you by the answer I make. The answer is
this: “I contrive to do so much by never doing too much at a time. A
man, to get through work well, must not overwork himself; or, if he do
too much to-day, the reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be
obliged to do too little to-morrow. Now, since I began really and
earnestly to study, which was not till I had left college, and was
actually in the world, I may perhaps say I have gone through as large a
course of general reading as most men of my time. I have travelled much,
and I have seen much; I have mixed much in politics, and the various
business of life; and, in addition to all this, I have published
somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much
research. And what time, do you think, as a general rule, I have devoted
to study—to reading and writing? Not more than three hours a day; and
when Parliament is sitting, not always that. But then, during those
hours, I have given my whole attention to what I was about.”
Sir Benjamin Brodie says that “humility leads to the highest
distinction, because it leads to self-improvement.” He adds—and the
advice cannot be too often repeated—”study your own characters;
endeavour to learn and supply your own deficiencies; never assume to
yourself qualities which you do not possess; combine all this with
energy and activity, and you cannot predicate of yourselves, nor can
others predicate of you, at what point you may arrive at last.”
Among the empiric arts of gaining notoriety, that by engraved portraits
has led to some curious results. When the late John Harrison Curtis, the
aurist, came to town to seek his fortune, he had his portrait engraved
in large handsome style, and offered the same to a printseller to
publish. He demurred, as the original was unknown; but recommended
Curtis to leave his prints at the different printshops “on sale, or
return.” The sudden appearance in the shop-windows of a large portrait
of the great unknown led to the question, “Who is _this_ Mr. Curtis?”
The repeated inquiries laid the foundation of his fortune, and led to
his living in good style for many years in Soho-square, and numbering
royalty and nobility among his patients; but he outlived his
professional reputation, and died in reduced circumstances.
Silence, says Boyle, discovers Wisdom and conceals Ignorance; and ’tis a
property that is so much belonging to Wise Men, that even a Fool, when
he holdeth his peace, may pass for one of that sort.
It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and another thing to be
able to draw a straight one. It is not quite so easy to do a good thing
as those imagine who never try.
One of Sir Thomas Wyat’s common sayings was, that there were three
things which should always be strictly observed: “Never to play with any
man’s unhappiness or deformity, for that is inhuman; nor on superiors,
for that is saucy and undutiful; nor on holy matters, for that is
irreligious.”
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt
the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into
everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.[127]
One very common error misleads the opinion of mankind,—that,
universally, authority is pleasant, submission painful. In the general
course of human affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer the truth.
Command is anxiety; obedience, ease.[128]
Lamartine has well observed: “Travelling is summing up a long life in a
few years; it is one of the strongest exercises a man can give his heart
and his mind. The philosopher, the politician, the poet, should all have
travelled much. Changing the moral horizon is to change thought.”
“Begin at the Beginning” is an excellent maxim. The laborious pursuit of
first principles brings its own reward. To begin at the beginning in the
sciences, as well as in matters of fact, is the nearest and safest road
to the end. Even sensible men are too commonly satisfied with tracing
their thoughts a little way backwards, and they are, of course, soon
perplexed by a profounder adversary. In this respect, most people’s
minds are too like a child’s garden, where the flowers are planted
without their roots. It may be said of morals and of literature, as
truly as of sculpture and painting, that, to understand the outside of
human nature, we should be well acquainted with the inside.
Such is the Waywardness of Fate, that one man sucks an orange, and is
choked by a pip; another swallows a penknife, and lives: one runs a
thorn into his hand, and no skill can save him (a fact of recent date);
another has a shaft of a gig passed completely through his body, and
recovers: one is overturned on a smooth common, and breaks his neck;
another is tossed out of a gig over Brighton cliff, and survives: one
walks on a windy day, and meets death by a brickbat; another is blown up
into the air, like Lord Hatton, in Guernsey Castle, and comes down
uninjured. The escape of this nobleman was indeed a miracle. An
explosion of gunpowder, which killed his mother, wife, some of his
children, and many other persons, and blew up the whole fabric of the
castle, lodged him and his bed on a wall overhanging a tremendous
precipice. Perceiving a mighty disorder (as he might expect), he was
going to step out of his bed to know what was the matter, which, if he
had done, he would have been irrecoverably lost; but, in the instant of
this moving, a flash of lightning came and showed him the precipice,
whereupon he lay still till people came and took him down.[129]
There is an almost prophetic meaning in the following passage from
Berkeley’s “Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain,” written
soon after the affair of the South-Sea Scheme: “All projects for growing
rich by sudden extraordinary methods, as they operate violently on the
passions of men, and encourage them to despise the slow moderate gains
that are to be made by an honest industry, must be ruinous to the
public; and even the winners themselves will at length be involved in
the public ruin.”
Theodore Hook was one of the most experienced exponents of the Town Life
of his day: in habits, a bachelor, notwithstanding his industry as a man
of letters, he saw more of the outside world than the majority of idle
men. He has left many of these experiences in his novels, which, as
pictures of life, are valuable.
Thus, in _Gilbert Gurney_, he gives this admirable bit of club
criticism: “People who are conscious of what is due to themselves never
display irritability or impetuosity; their manners insure civility—their
own civility secures respect: but the blockhead or the coxcomb, fully
aware that something more than ordinary is necessary to produce an
effect, is sure, whether in clubs or coffee-houses, to be the most
fastidious and factious of the community, the most overbearing in his
manners towards his inferiors, the most restless and irritable among his
equals, the most cringing and subservient before his superiors.” No man
could utter such criticism with more complete safety from being answered
with a _Tu quoque_.
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Footnote 127:
Swift.
Footnote 128:
Paley.
Footnote 129:
_New Monthly Magazine._
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