THE TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM.
The labor we delight in physics pain.--SHAKESPEARE.
The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives
himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else are
comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his
daily life and practise, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may
be, has taken possession of him.--LOWELL.
Let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. Let us ever glory in
something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would
ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our
life.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.
In the Galérie des Beaux Arts in Paris is a beautiful statue conceived
by a sculptor who was so poor that he lived and worked in a small
garret. When his clay model was nearly done, a heavy frost fell upon
the city. He knew that if the water in the interstices of the clay
should freeze, the beautiful lines would be distorted. So he wrapped
his bedclothes around the clay image. In the morning he was found
dead, but his idea was saved, and other hands gave it enduring form in
marble.
"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important
question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be
unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject
before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of
surrounding objects."
"A bank never becomes very successful," says a noted financier, "until
it gets a president who takes it to bed with him." Enthusiasm gives
the otherwise dry and uninteresting subject or occupation a new meaning.
As the young lover has finer sense and more acute vision and sees in
the object of his affections a hundred virtues and charms invisible to
all other eyes, so a man permeated with enthusiasm has his power of
perception heightened and his vision magnified until he sees beauty and
charms others cannot discern which compensate for drudgery, privations,
hardships, and even persecution. Dickens says he was haunted,
possessed, spirit-driven by the plots and characters in his stories
which would not let him sleep or rest until he had committed them to
paper. On one sketch he shut himself up for a month, and when he came
out he looked as haggard as a murderer. His characters haunted him day
and night.
"Herr Capellmeister, I should like to compose something; how shall I
begin?" asked a youth of twelve who had played with great skill on the
piano. "Pooh, pooh," replied Mozart, "you must wait." "But you began
when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said
the great composer, "but I never asked anything about it. When one has
the spirit of a composer, he writes because he can't help it."
Gladstone said that what is really desired is to light up the spirit
that is within a boy. In some sense and in some degree, in some
effectual degree, there is in every boy the material of good work in
the world; in every boy, not only in those who are brilliant, not only
in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those
who are dull, or who seem to be dull. If they have only the good will,
the dulness will day by day clear away and vanish completely under the
influence of the good will.
Gerster, an unknown Hungarian, made fame and fortune sure the first
night she appeared in opera. Her enthusiasm almost hypnotized her
auditors. In less than a week she had become popular and independent.
Her soul was smitten with a passion for growth, and all the powers of
heart and mind she possessed were enthusiastically devoted to
self-improvement.
All great works of art have been produced when the artist was
intoxicated with the passion for beauty and form which would not let
him rest until his thought was expressed in marble or on canvas.
"Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Malibran when a critic
expressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up three
octaves from low D; "I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it
everywhere,--when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last
I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on."
"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says
Emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the
Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean
beginning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an
example. They did they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an
idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought
like men and conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped,
miserably fed, but they were temperance troops. There was neither
brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa
and Spain on barley. The Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck more
terror into those who saw it than another man's sword."
It was enthusiasm that enabled Napoleon to make a campaign in two weeks
that would have taken another a year to accomplish. "These Frenchmen
are not men, they fly," said the Austrians in consternation. In
fifteen days Napoleon, in his first Italian campaign, had gained six
victories, taken twenty-one standards, fifty-five pieces of cannon, had
captured fifteen thousand prisoners, and had conquered Piedmont.
After this astonishing avalanche a discomfited Austrian general said:
"This young commander knows nothing whatever about the art of war. He
is a perfect ignoramus. There is no doing anything with him." But his
soldiers followed their "Little Corporal" with an enthusiasm which knew
no defeat or disaster.
"There are important cases," says A. H. K. Boyd, "in which the
difference between half a heart and a whole heart makes just the
difference between signal defeat and a splendid victory."
"Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, "want
of frigates would be found written on my heart."
The simple, innocent Maid of Orleans with her sacred sword, her
consecrated banner, and her belief in her great mission, sent a thrill
of enthusiasm through the whole French army such as neither king nor
statesmen could produce. Her zeal carried everything before it. Oh!
what a great work each one could perform in this world if he only knew
his power! But, like a bitted horse, man does not realize his strength
until he has once run away with himself.
"Underneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher
Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the
public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around!" Turn
where you will in London, you find noble monuments of the genius of a
man who never received instruction from an architect. He built
fifty-five churches in the city and thirty-six halls. "I would give my
skin for the architect's design of the Louvre," said he, when in Paris
to get ideas for the restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
His rare skill is shown in the palaces of Hampton Court and Kensington,
in Temple Bar, Drury Lane Theater, the Royal Exchange, and the great
Monument. He changed Greenwich palace into a sailor's retreat, and
built churches and colleges at Oxford. He also planned for the
rebuilding of London after the great fire, but those in authority would
not adopt his splendid idea. He worked thirty-five years upon his
master-piece, St. Paul's Cathedral. Although he lived so long, and was
exceedingly healthy in later life, he was so delicate as a child that
he was a constant source of anxiety to his parents. His great
enthusiasm alone seemed to give strength to his body.
Indifference never leads armies that conquer, never models statues that
live, nor breathes sublime music, nor harnesses the forces of nature,
nor rears impressive architecture, nor moves the soul with poetry, nor
the world with heroic philanthropies. Enthusiasm, as Charles Bell says
of the hand, wrought the statue of Memnon and hung the brazen gates of
Thebes. It fixed the mariner's trembling needle upon its axis, and
first heaved the tremendous bar of the printing-press. It opened the
tubes for Galileo, until world after world swept before his vision, and
it reefed the high topsail that rustled over Columbus in the morning
breezes of the Bahamas. It has held the sword with which freedom has
fought her battles, and poised the axe of the dauntless woodman as he
opened the paths of civilization, and turned the mystic leaves upon
which Milton and Shakespeare inscribed their burning thoughts.
Horace Greeley said that the best product of labor is the high-minded
workman with an enthusiasm for his work.
"The best method is obtained by earnestness," said Salvini. "If you
can impress people with the conviction that you feel what you say, they
will pardon many shortcomings. And above all, study, study, study!
All the genius in the world will not help you along with any art,
unless you become a hard student. It has taken me years to master a
single part."
There is a "go," a zeal, a furore, almost a fanaticism for one's ideals
or calling, that is peculiar to our American temperament and life. You
do not find this in tropical countries. It did not exist fifty years
ago. It could not be found then even on the London Exchange. But the
influence of the United States and of Australia, where, if a person is
to succeed, he must be on the jump with all the ardor of his being, has
finally extended until what used to be the peculiar strength of a few
great minds has now become characteristic of the leading nations.
Enthusiasm is the being awake; it is the tingling of every fiber of
one's being to do the work that one's heart desires. Enthusiasm made
Victor Hugo lock up his clothes while writing "Notre Dame," that he
might not leave the work until it was finished. The great actor
Garrick well illustrated it when asked by an unsuccessful preacher the
secret of his power over audiences: "You speak of eternal verities and
what you know to be true as if you hardly believed what you were saying
yourself, whereas I utter what I know to be unreal and untrue as if I
did believe it in my very soul."
"When he comes into a room, every man feels as if he had taken a tonic
and had a new lease of life," said a man when asked the reason for his
selection, after he, with two companions, had written upon a slip of
paper the name of the most agreeable companion he had ever met. "He is
an eager, vivid fellow, full of joy, bubbling over with spirits. His
sympathies are quick as an electric flash."
"He throws himself into the occasion, whatever it may be, with his
whole heart," said the second, in praise of the man of his choice.
"He makes the best of everything," said the third, speaking of his own
most cherished acquaintance.
The three were traveling correspondents of great English journals, who
had visited every quarter of the world and talked with all kinds of
men. The papers were examined and all were found to contain the name
of a prominent lawyer in Melbourne, Australia.
"If it were not for respect for human opinions," said Madame de Staël
to M. Mole, "I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for
the first time, while I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a
man of genius whom I had not seen."
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the
production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator
of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have
originated.
"One moonlight evening in winter," writes the biographer of Beethoven,
"we were walking through a narrow street of Bonn. 'Hush!' exclaimed
the great composer, suddenly pausing before a little, mean dwelling,
'what sound is that? It is from my Sonata in F. Hark! how well it is
played!'
"In the midst of the finale there was a break, and a sobbing voice
cried: 'I cannot play any more. It is so beautiful; it is utterly
beyond my power to do it justice. Oh, what would I not give to go to
the concert at Cologne!' 'Ah! my sister,' said a second voice; 'why
create regrets when there is no remedy? We can scarcely pay our rent.'
'You are right,' said the first speaker, 'and yet I wish for once in my
life to hear some really good music. But it is of no use.'
"'Let us go in,' said Beethoven. 'Go in!' I remonstrated; 'what should
we go in for?' 'I will play to her,' replied my companion in an
excited tone; 'here is feeling,--genius,--understanding! I will play
to her, and she will understand it. Pardon me,' he continued, as he
opened the door and saw a young man sitting by a table, mending shoes,
and a young girl leaning sorrowfully upon an old-fashioned piano; 'I
heard music and was tempted to enter. I am a musician. I--I also
overheard something of what you said. You wish to hear--that is, you
would like--that is--shall I play for you?'
"'Thank you,' said the shoemaker, 'but our piano is so wretched, and we
have no music.'
"'No music!' exclaimed the composer; 'how, then, does the young
lady--I--I entreat your pardon,' he added, stammering as he saw that
the girl was blind; 'I had not perceived before. Then you play by ear?
But where do you hear the music, since you frequent no concerts?'
"'We lived at Bruhl for two years; and, while there, I used to hear a
lady practicing near us. During the summer evenings her windows were
generally open, and I walked to and fro outside to listen to her.'
"Beethoven seated himself at the piano. Never, during all the years I
knew him, did I hear him play better than to that blind girl and her
brother. Even the old instrument seemed inspired. The young man and
woman sat as if entranced by the magical, sweet sounds that flowed out
upon the air in rhythmical swell and cadence, until, suddenly, the
flame of the single candle wavered, sank, flickered, and went out. The
shutters were thrown open, admitting a flood of brilliant moonlight,
but the player paused, as if lost in thought.
"'Wonderful man!' said the shoemaker in a low tone; 'who and what are
you?'
"'Listen!' replied the master, and he played the opening bars of the
Sonata in F. 'Then you are Beethoven!' burst from the young people in
delighted recognition. 'Oh, play to us once more,' they added, as he
rose to go,--'only once more!'
"'I will improvise a sonata to the moonlight,' said he, gazing
thoughtfully upon the liquid stars shining so softly out of the depths
of a cloudless winter sky. Then he played a sad and infinitely lovely
movement, which crept gently over the instrument, like the calm flow of
moonlight over the earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage
in triple time--a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of
fairies upon the lawn. Then came a swift agitated ending--a
breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and
uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its
rustling wings, and left us all in emotion and wonder. 'Farewell to
you,' he said, as he rose and turned toward the door. 'You will come
again?' asked the host and hostess in a breath. 'Yes, yes,' said
Beethoven hurriedly, 'I will come again, and give the young lady some
lessons. Farewell!' Then to me he added: 'Let us make haste back,
that I may write out that sonata while I can yet remember it.' We did
return in haste, and not until long past the dawn of day did he rise
from his table with the full score of the Moonlight Sonata in his hand."
Michael Angelo studied anatomy twelve years, nearly ruining his health,
but this course determined his style, his practice, and his glory. He
drew his figures in skeleton, added muscles, fat, and skin
successively, and then draped them. He made every tool he used in
sculpture, such as files, chisels, and pincers. In painting he
prepared all his own colors, and would not let servants or students
even mix them.
Raphael's enthusiasm inspired every artist in Italy, and his modest,
charming manners disarmed envy and jealousy. He has been called the
only distinguished man who lived and died without an enemy or
detractor. Again and again poor Bunyan might have had his liberty; but
not the separation from his poor blind daughter Mary, which he said was
like pulling the flesh from his bones; not the need of a poor family
dependent upon him; not the love of liberty nor the spur of ambition
could induce him to forego his plain preaching in public places. He
had so forgotten his early education that his wife had to teach him
again to read and write. It was the enthusiasm of conviction which
enabled this poor, ignorant, despised Bedford tinker to write his
immortal allegory with such fascination that a whole world has read it.
Only thoughts that breathe in words that burn can kindle the spark
slumbering in the heart of another.
Rare consecration to a great enterprise is found in the work of the
late Francis Parkman. While a student at Harvard he determined to
write the history of the French and English in North America. With a
steadiness and devotion seldom equaled he gave his life, his fortune,
his all to this one great object. Although he had, while among the
Dakota Indians, collecting material for his history, ruined his health
and could not use his eyes more than five minutes at a time for fifty
years, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the high purpose formed
in his youth, until he gave to the world the best history upon this
subject ever written.
After Lincoln had walked six miles to borrow a grammar, he returned
home and burned one shaving after another while he studied the precious
prize.
Gilbert Becket, an English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a
slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the
confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair
daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the
devoted girl determined to follow him. She knew but two words of the
English language--_London_ and _Gilbert_; but by repeating the first
she obtained passage in a vessel to the great metropolis, and then she
went from street to street pronouncing the other--"Gilbert." At last
she came to the street on which Gilbert lived in prosperity. The
unusual crowd drew the family to the window, when Gilbert himself saw
and recognized her, and took to his arms and home his far-come princess
with her solitary fond word.
The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth
sees no darkness ahead,--no defile that has no outlet,--it forgets that
there is such a thing as failure in the world, and believes that
mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the
liberator of truth and energy and beauty.
Of what use was it to forbid the boy Handel to touch a musical
instrument, or to forbid him going to school, lest he learn the gamut?
He stole midnight interviews with a dumb spinet in a secret attic. The
boy Bach copied whole books of studies by moonlight, for want of a
candle churlishly denied. Nor was he disheartened when these copies
were taken from him. The painter West began in a garret, and plundered
the family cat for bristles to make his brushes.
It is the enthusiasm of youth which cuts the Gordian knot age cannot
untie. "People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," says Charles
Kingsley; "that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back to
with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that
they ever lost it."
How much the world owes to the enthusiasm of Dante!
Tennyson wrote his first volume at eighteen, and at nineteen gained a
medal at Cambridge.
"The most beautiful works of all art were done in youth," says Ruskin.
"Almost everything that is great has been done by youth," wrote
Disraeli. "The world's interests are, under God, in the hands of the
young," says Dr. Trumbull.
It was the youth Hercules that performed the Twelve Labors.
Enthusiastic youth faces the sun, it shadows all behind it. The heart
rules youth; the head, manhood. Alexander was a mere youth when he
rolled back the Asiatic hordes that threatened to overwhelm European
civilization almost at its birth. Napoleon had conquered Italy at
twenty-five. Byron and Raphael died at thirty-seven, an age which has
been fatal to many a genius, and Poe lived but a few months longer.
Romulus founded Rome at twenty. Pitt and Bolingbroke were ministers
almost before they were men. Gladstone was in Parliament in early
manhood. Newton made some of his greatest discoveries before he was
twenty-five. Keats died at twenty-five, Shelley at twenty-nine.
Luther was a triumphant reformer at twenty-five. It is said that no
English poet ever equaled Chatterton at twenty-one. Whitefield and
Wesley began their great revival as students at Oxford, and the former
had made his influence felt throughout England before he was
twenty-four. Victor Hugo wrote a tragedy at fifteen, and had taken
three prizes at the Academy and gained the title of Master before he
was twenty.
Many of the world's greatest geniuses never saw forty years. Never
before has the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an
opportunity as he has to-day. It is the age of young men and young
women. Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the
passive bow.
But if enthusiasm is irresistible in youth, how much more so is it when
carried into old age! Gladstone at eighty had ten times the weight and
power that any man of twenty-five would have with the same ideals. The
glory of age is only the glory of its enthusiasm, and the respect paid
to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid
influence of an enfeebled body. The "Odyssey" was the creation of a
blind old man, but that old man was Homer.
The contagious zeal of an old man, Peter the Hermit, rolled the
chivalry of Europe upon the ranks of Islam.
Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, won battles at ninety-four, and refused a
crown at ninety-six. Wellington planned and superintended
fortifications at eighty. Bacon and Humboldt were enthusiastic
students to the last gasp. Wise old Montaigne was shrewd in his
gray-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of
gout and colic.
Dr. Johnson's best work, "The Lives of the Poets," was written when he
was seventy-eight. Defoe was fifty-eight when he published "Robinson
Crusoe." Newton wrote new briefs to his "Principia" at eighty-three.
Plato died writing, at eighty-one. Tom Scott began the study of Hebrew
at eighty-six. Galileo was nearly seventy when he wrote on the laws of
motion. James Watt learned German at eighty-five. Mrs. Somerville
finished her "Molecular and Microscopic Science" at eighty-nine.
Humboldt completed his "Cosmos" at ninety, a month before his death.
Burke was thirty-five before he obtained a seat in Parliament, yet he
made the world feel his character. Unknown at forty, Grant was one of
the most famous generals in history at forty-two. Eli Whitney was
twenty-three when he decided to prepare for college, and thirty when he
graduated from Yale; yet his cotton-gin opened a great industrial
future for the Southern States. What a power was Bismarck at eighty!
Lord Palmerston was an "Old Boy" to the last. He became Prime Minister
of England the second time at seventy-five, and died Prime Minister at
eighty-one. Galileo at seventy-seven, blind and feeble, was working
every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks. George
Stephenson did not learn to read and write until he had reached
manhood. Some of Longfellow's, Whittier's, and Tennyson's best work
was done after they were seventy.
At sixty-three Dryden began the translation of the "Aeneid." Robert
Hall learned Italian when past sixty, that he might read Dante in the
original. Noah Webster studied seventeen languages after he was fifty.
Cicero said well that men are like wine: age sours the bad and improves
the good.
With enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is
silvered, even as the Gulf Stream softens the rigors of northern Europe.
"How ages thine heart,--towards youth? If not, doubt thy fitness for
thy work."