APPLICATION AND PERSEVERANCE.
“Rich are the diligent, who can command
Time, nature’s stock! and could his hour-glass fall,
Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand,
And, by incessant labour, gather all.”—_D’Avenant_.
“Allez en avant, et la foi vous viendra!”—_D’Alembert_.
THE greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means, and
the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of every day, with
its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity for
acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths provide
the true worker with abundant scope for effort and room for
self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies along the old highway
of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work
in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.
Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so
blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that
fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves
are on the side of the best navigators. In the pursuit of even the
highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the
most useful—such as common sense, attention, application, and
perseverance. Genius may not be necessary, though even genius of the
highest sort does not disdain the use of these ordinary qualities. The
very greatest men have been among the least believers in the power of
genius, and as worldly wise and persevering as successful men of the
commoner sort. Some have even defined genius to be only common sense
intensified. A distinguished teacher and president of a college spoke of
it as the power of making efforts. John Foster held it to be the power
of lighting one’s own fire. Buffon said of genius “it is patience.”
Newton’s was unquestionably a mind of the very highest order, and yet,
when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary discoveries,
he modestly answered, “By always thinking unto them.” At another time he
thus expressed his method of study: “I keep the subject continually
before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and
little into a full and clear light.” It was in Newton’s case, as in
every other, only by diligent application and perseverance that his great
reputation was achieved. Even his recreation consisted in change of
study, laying down one subject to take up another. To Dr. Bentley he
said: “If I have done the public any service, it is due to nothing but
industry and patient thought.” So Kepler, another great philosopher,
speaking of his studies and his progress, said: “As in Virgil, ‘Fama
mobilitate viget, vires acquirit eundo,’ so it was with me, that the
diligent thought on these things was the occasion of still further
thinking; until at last I brooded with the whole energy of my mind upon
the subject.”
The extraordinary results effected by dint of sheer industry and
perseverance, have led many distinguished men to doubt whether the gift
of genius be so exceptional an endowment as it is usually supposed to be.
Thus Voltaire held that it is only a very slight line of separation that
divides the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould. Beccaria was
even of opinion that all men might be poets and orators, and Reynolds
that they might be painters and sculptors. If this were really so, that
stolid Englishman might not have been so very far wrong after all, who,
on Canova’s death, inquired of his brother whether it was “his intention
to carry on the business!” Locke, Helvetius, and Diderot believed that
all men have an equal aptitude for genius, and that what some are able to
effect, under the laws which regulate the operations of the intellect,
must also be within the reach of others who, under like circumstances,
apply themselves to like pursuits. But while admitting to the fullest
extent the wonderful achievements of labour, and recognising the fact
that men of the most distinguished genius have invariably been found the
most indefatigable workers, it must nevertheless be sufficiently obvious
that, without the original endowment of heart and brain, no amount of
labour, however well applied, could have produced a Shakespeare, a
Newton, a Beethoven, or a Michael Angelo.
Dalton, the chemist, repudiated the notion of his being “a genius,”
attributing everything which he had accomplished to simple industry and
accumulation. John Hunter said of himself, “My mind is like a beehive;
but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, it is yet full of order
and regularity, and food collected with incessant industry from the
choicest stores of nature.” We have, indeed, but to glance at the
biographies of great men to find that the most distinguished inventors,
artists, thinkers, and workers of all kinds, owe their success, in a
great measure, to their indefatigable industry and application. They
were men who turned all things to gold—even time itself. Disraeli the
elder held that the secret of success consisted in being master of your
subject, such mastery being attainable only through continuous
application and study. Hence it happens that the men who have most moved
the world, have not been so much men of genius, strictly so called, as
men of intense mediocre abilities, and untiring perseverance; not so
often the gifted, of naturally bright and shining qualities, as those who
have applied themselves diligently to their work, in whatsoever line that
might lie. “Alas!” said a widow, speaking of her brilliant but careless
son, “he has not the gift of continuance.” Wanting in perseverance, such
volatile natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent and
even the dull. “Che va piano, va longano, e va lontano,” says the
Italian proverb: Who goes slowly, goes long, and goes far.
Hence, a great point to be aimed at is to get the working quality well
trained. When that is done, the race will be found comparatively easy.
We must repeat and again repeat; facility will come with labour. Not
even the simplest art can be accomplished without it; and what
difficulties it is found capable of achieving! It was by early
discipline and repetition that the late Sir Robert Peel cultivated those
remarkable, though still mediocre powers, which rendered him so
illustrious an ornament of the British Senate. When a boy at Drayton
Manor, his father was accustomed to set him up at table to practise
speaking extempore; and he early accustomed him to repeat as much of the
Sunday’s sermon as he could remember. Little progress was made at first,
but by steady perseverance the habit of attention became powerful, and
the sermon was at length repeated almost verbatim. When afterwards
replying in succession to the arguments of his parliamentary opponents—an
art in which he was perhaps unrivalled—it was little surmised that the
extraordinary power of accurate remembrance which he displayed on such
occasions had been originally trained under the discipline of his father
in the parish church of Drayton.
It is indeed marvellous what continuous application will effect in the
commonest of things. It may seem a simple affair to play upon a violin;
yet what a long and laborious practice it requires! Giardini said to a
youth who asked him how long it would take to learn it, “Twelve hours a
day for twenty years together.” Industry, it is said, _fait l’ours
danser_. The poor figurante must devote years of incessant toil to her
profitless task before she can shine in it. When Taglioni was preparing
herself for her evening exhibition, she would, after a severe two hours’
lesson from her father, fall down exhausted, and had to be undressed,
sponged, and resuscitated totally unconscious. The agility and bounds of
the evening were insured only at a price like this.
Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great
results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance
in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that “to know _how to
wait_ is the great secret of success.” We must sow before we can reap,
and often have to wait long, content meanwhile to look patiently forward
in hope; the fruit best worth waiting for often ripening the slowest.
But “time and patience,” says the Eastern proverb, “change the mulberry
leaf to satin.”
To wait patiently, however, men must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is an
excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the character.
As a bishop has said, “Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity;” so are
cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of practical wisdom. They are the
life and soul of success, as well as of happiness; perhaps the very
highest pleasure in life consisting in clear, brisk, conscious working;
energy, confidence, and every other good quality mainly depending upon
it. Sydney Smith, when labouring as a parish priest at Foston-le-Clay,
in Yorkshire,—though he did not feel himself to be in his proper
element,—went cheerfully to work in the firm determination to do his
best. “I am resolved,” he said, “to like it, and reconcile myself to it,
which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up
complaints by the post of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such
like trash.” So Dr. Hook, when leaving Leeds for a new sphere of labour
said, “Wherever I may be, I shall, by God’s blessing, do with my might
what my hand findeth to do; and if I do not find work, I shall make it.”
Labourers for the public good especially, have to work long and
patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of immediate recompense or
result. The seeds they sow sometimes lie hidden under the winter’s snow,
and before the spring comes the husbandman may have gone to his rest. It
is not every public worker who, like Rowland Hill, sees his great idea
bring forth fruit in his life-time. Adam Smith sowed the seeds of a
great social amelioration in that dingy old University of Glasgow where
he so long laboured, and laid the foundations of his ‘Wealth of Nations;’
but seventy years passed before his work bore substantial fruits, nor
indeed are they all gathered in yet.
Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely changes
the character. “How can I work—how can I be happy,” said a great but
miserable thinker, “when I have lost all hope?” One of the most cheerful
and courageous, because one of the most hopeful of workers, was Carey,
the missionary. When in India, it was no uncommon thing for him to weary
out three pundits, who officiated as his clerks, in one day, he himself
taking rest only in change of employment. Carey, the son of a
shoe-maker, was supported in his labours by Ward, the son of a carpenter,
and Marsham, the son of a weaver. By their labours, a magnificent
college was erected at Serampore; sixteen flourishing stations were
established; the Bible was translated into sixteen languages, and the
seeds were sown of a beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey
was never ashamed of the humbleness of his origin. On one occasion, when
at the Governor-General’s table he over-heard an officer opposite him
asking another, loud enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once been
a shoemaker: “No, sir,” exclaimed Carey immediately; “only a cobbler.”
An eminently characteristic anecdote has been told of his perseverance as
a boy. When climbing a tree one day, his foot slipped, and he fell to
the ground, breaking his leg by the fall. He was confined to his bed for
weeks, but when he recovered and was able to walk without support, the
very first thing he did was to go and climb that tree. Carey had need of
this sort of dauntless courage for the great missionary work of his life,
and nobly and resolutely he did it.
It was a maxim of Dr. Young, the philosopher, that “Any man can do what
any other man has done;” and it is unquestionable that he himself never
recoiled from any trials to which he determined to subject himself. It
is related of him, that the first time he mounted a horse, he was in
company with the grandson of Mr. Barclay of Ury, the well-known
sportsman; when the horseman who preceded them leapt a high fence. Young
wished to imitate him, but fell off his horse in the attempt. Without
saying a word, he remounted, made a second effort, and was again
unsuccessful, but this time he was not thrown further than on to the
horse’s neck, to which he clung. At the third trial, he succeeded, and
cleared the fence.
The story of Timour the Tartar learning a lesson of perseverance under
adversity from the spider is well known. Not less interesting is the
anecdote of Audubon, the American ornithologist, as related by himself:
“An accident,” he says, “which happened to two hundred of my original
drawings, nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology. I shall
relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm—for by no other name can I
call my perseverance—may enable the preserver of nature to surmount the
most disheartening difficulties. I left the village of Henderson, in
Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for several
years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to my drawings
before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden box, and gave them
in charge of a relative, with injunctions to see that no injury should
happen to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned,
after having enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired
after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was
produced and opened; but reader, feel for me—a pair of Norway rats had
taken possession of the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed
bits of paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly a thousand
inhabitants of air! The burning beat which instantly rushed through my
brain was too great to be endured without affecting my whole nervous
system. I slept for several nights, and the days passed like days of
oblivion—until the animal powers being recalled into action through the
strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my notebook, and my
pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened.
I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before; and,
ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was
again filled.”
The accidental destruction of Sir Isaac Newton’s papers, by his little
dog ‘Diamond’ upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by which the
elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment destroyed, is a
well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is said that the loss
caused the philosopher such profound grief that it seriously injured his
health, and impaired his understanding. An accident of a somewhat
similar kind happened to the MS. of Mr. Carlyle’s first volume of his
‘French Revolution.’ He had lent the MS. to a literary neighbour to
peruse. By some mischance, it had been left lying on the parlour floor,
and become forgotten. Weeks ran on, and the historian sent for his work,
the printers being loud for “copy.” Inquiries were made, and it was
found that the maid-of-all-work, finding what she conceived to be a
bundle of waste paper on the floor, had used it to light the kitchen and
parlour fires with! Such was the answer returned to Mr. Carlyle; and his
feelings may be imagined. There was, however, no help for him but to set
resolutely to work to re-write the book; and he turned to and did it. He
had no draft, and was compelled to rake up from his memory facts, ideas,
and expressions, which had been long since dismissed. The composition of
the book in the first instance had been a work of pleasure; the
re-writing of it a second time was one of pain and anguish almost beyond
belief. That he persevered and finished the volume under such
circumstances, affords an instance of determination of purpose which has
seldom been surpassed.
The lives of eminent inventors are eminently illustrative of the same
quality of perseverance. George Stephenson, when addressing young men,
was accustomed to sum up his best advice to them, in the words, “Do as I
have done—persevere.” He had worked at the improvement of his locomotive
for some fifteen years before achieving his decisive victory at Rainhill;
and Watt was engaged for some thirty years upon the condensing-engine
before he brought it to perfection. But there are equally striking
illustrations of perseverance to be found in every other branch of
science, art, and industry. Perhaps one of the most interesting is that
connected with the disentombment of the Nineveh marbles, and the
discovery of the long-lost cuneiform or arrow-headed character in which
the inscriptions on them are written—a kind of writing which had been
lost to the world since the period of the Macedonian conquest of Persia.
An intelligent cadet of the East India Company, stationed at Kermanshah,
in Persia, had observed the curious cuneiform inscriptions on the old
monuments in the neighbourhood—so old that all historical traces of them
had been lost,—and amongst the inscriptions which he copied was that on
the celebrated rock of Behistun—a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some
1700 feet from the plain, the lower part bearing inscriptions for the
space of about 300 feet in three languages—Persian, Scythian, and
Assyrian. Comparison of the known with the unknown, of the language
which survived with the language that had been lost, enabled this cadet
to acquire some knowledge of the cuneiform character, and even to form an
alphabet. Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson sent his tracings home
for examination. No professors in colleges as yet knew anything of the
cuneiform character; but there was a ci-devant clerk of the East India
House—a modest unknown man of the name of Norris—who had made this
little-understood subject his study, to whom the tracings were submitted;
and so accurate was his knowledge, that, though he had never seen the
Behistun rock, he pronounced that the cadet had not copied the puzzling
inscription with proper exactness. Rawlinson, who was still in the
neighbourhood of the rock, compared his copy with the original, and found
that Norris was right; and by further comparison and careful study the
knowledge of the cuneiform writing was thus greatly advanced.
But to make the learning of these two self-taught men of avail, a third
labourer was necessary in order to supply them with material for the
exercise of their skill. Such a labourer presented himself in the person
of Austen Layard, originally an articled clerk in the office of a London
solicitor. One would scarcely have expected to find in these three men,
a cadet, an India-House clerk, and a lawyer’s clerk, the discoverers of a
forgotten language, and of the buried history of Babylon; yet it was so.
Layard was a youth of only twenty-two, travelling in the East, when he
was possessed with a desire to penetrate the regions beyond the
Euphrates. Accompanied by a single companion, trusting to his arms for
protection, and, what was better, to his cheerfulness, politeness, and
chivalrous bearing, he passed safely amidst tribes at deadly war with
each other; and, after the lapse of many years, with comparatively
slender means at his command, but aided by application and perseverance,
resolute will and purpose, and almost sublime patience,—borne up
throughout by his passionate enthusiasm for discovery and research,—he
succeeded in laying bare and digging up an amount of historical
treasures, the like of which has probably never before been collected by
the industry of any one man. Not less than two miles of bas-reliefs were
thus brought to light by Mr. Layard. The selection of these valuable
antiquities, now placed in the British Museum, was found so curiously
corroborative of the scriptural records of events which occurred some
three thousand years ago, that they burst upon the world almost like a
new revelation. And the story of the disentombment of these remarkable
works, as told by Mr. Layard himself in his ‘Monuments of Nineveh,’ will
always be regarded as one of the most charming and unaffected records
which we possess of individual enterprise, industry, and energy.
The career of the Comte de Buffon presents another remarkable
illustration of the power of patient industry as well as of his own
saying, that “Genius is patience.” Notwithstanding the great results
achieved by him in natural history, Buffon, when a youth, was regarded as
of mediocre talents. His mind was slow in forming itself, and slow in
reproducing what it had acquired. He was also constitutionally indolent;
and being born to good estate, it might be supposed that he would indulge
his liking for ease and luxury. Instead of which, he early formed the
resolution of denying himself pleasure, and devoting himself to study and
self-culture. Regarding time as a treasure that was limited, and finding
that he was losing many hours by lying a-bed in the mornings, he
determined to break himself of the habit. He struggled hard against it
for some time, but failed in being able to rise at the hour he had fixed.
He then called his servant, Joseph, to his help, and promised him the
reward of a crown every time that he succeeded in getting him up before
six. At first, when called, Buffon declined to rise—pleaded that he was
ill, or pretended anger at being disturbed; and on the Count at length
getting up, Joseph found that he had earned nothing but reproaches for
having permitted his master to lie a-bed contrary to his express orders.
At length the valet determined to earn his crown; and again and again he
forced Buffon to rise, notwithstanding his entreaties, expostulations,
and threats of immediate discharge from his service. One morning Buffon
was unusually obstinate, and Joseph found it necessary to resort to the
extreme measure of dashing a basin of ice-cold water under the
bed-clothes, the effect of which was instantaneous. By the persistent
use of such means, Buffon at length conquered his habit; and he was
accustomed to say that he owed to Joseph three or four volumes of his
Natural History.
For forty years of his life, Buffon worked every morning at his desk from
nine till two, and again in the evening from five till nine. His
diligence was so continuous and so regular that it became habitual. His
biographer has said of him, “Work was his necessity; his studies were the
charm of his life; and towards the last term of his glorious career he
frequently said that he still hoped to be able to consecrate to them a
few more years.” He was a most conscientious worker, always studying to
give the reader his best thoughts, expressed in the very best manner. He
was never wearied with touching and retouching his compositions, so that
his style may be pronounced almost perfect. He wrote the ‘Epoques de la
Nature’ not fewer than eleven times before he was satisfied with it;
although he had thought over the work about fifty years. He was a
thorough man of business, most orderly in everything; and he was
accustomed to say that genius without order lost three-fourths of its
power. His great success as a writer was the result mainly of his
painstaking labour and diligent application. “Buffon,” observed Madame
Necker, “strongly persuaded that genius is the result of a profound
attention directed to a particular subject, said that he was thoroughly
wearied out when composing his first writings, but compelled himself to
return to them and go over them carefully again, even when he thought he
had already brought them to a certain degree of perfection; and that at
length he found pleasure instead of weariness in this long and elaborate
correction.” It ought also to be added that Buffon wrote and published
all his great works while afflicted by one of the most painful diseases
to which the human frame is subject.
Literary life affords abundant illustrations of the same power of
perseverance; and perhaps no career is more instructive, viewed in this
light, than that of Sir Walter Scott. His admirable working qualities
were trained in a lawyer’s office, where he pursued for many years a sort
of drudgery scarcely above that of a copying clerk. His daily dull
routine made his evenings, which were his own, all the more sweet; and he
generally devoted them to reading and study. He himself attributed to
his prosaic office discipline that habit of steady, sober diligence, in
which mere literary men are so often found wanting. As a copying clerk
he was allowed 3_d._ for every page containing a certain number of words;
and he sometimes, by extra work, was able to copy as many as 120 pages in
twenty-four hours, thus earning some 30_s._; out of which he would
occasionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his means.
During his after-life Scott was wont to pride himself upon being a man of
business, and he averred, in contradiction to what he called the cant of
sonneteers, that there was no necessary connection between genius and an
aversion or contempt for the common duties of life. On the contrary, he
was of opinion that to spend some fair portion of every day in any
matter-of-fact occupation was good for the higher faculties themselves in
the upshot. While afterwards acting as clerk to the Court of Session in
Edinburgh, he performed his literary work chiefly before breakfast,
attending the court during the day, where he authenticated registered
deeds and writings of various kinds. On the whole, says Lockhart, “it
forms one of the most remarkable features in his history, that throughout
the most active period of his literary career, he must have devoted a
large proportion of his hours, during half at least of every year, to the
conscientious discharge of professional duties.” It was a principle of
action which he laid down for himself, that he must earn his living by
business, and not by literature. On one occasion he said, “I determined
that literature should be my staff, not my crutch, and that the profits
of my literary labour, however convenient otherwise, should not, if I
could help it, become necessary to my ordinary expenses.”
His punctuality was one of the most carefully cultivated of his habits,
otherwise it had not been possible for him to get through so enormous an
amount of literary labour. He made it a rule to answer every letter
received by him on the same day, except where inquiry and deliberation
were requisite. Nothing else could have enabled him to keep abreast with
the flood of communications that poured in upon him and sometimes put his
good nature to the severest test. It was his practice to rise by five
o’clock, and light his own fire. He shaved and dressed with
deliberation, and was seated at his desk by six o’clock, with his papers
arranged before him in the most accurate order, his works of reference
marshalled round him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay
watching his eye, outside the line of books. Thus by the time the family
assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough—to use
his own words—to break the neck of the day’s work. But with all his
diligent and indefatigable industry, and his immense knowledge, the
result of many years’ patient labour, Scott always spoke with the
greatest diffidence of his own powers. On one occasion he said,
“Throughout every part of my career I have felt pinched and hampered by
my own ignorance.”
Such is true wisdom and humility; for the more a man really knows, the
less conceited he will be. The student at Trinity College who went up to
his professor to take leave of him because he had “finished his
education,” was wisely rebuked by the professor’s reply, “Indeed! I am
only beginning mine.” The superficial person who has obtained a
smattering of many things, but knows nothing well, may pride himself upon
his gifts; but the sage humbly confesses that “all he knows is, that he
knows nothing,” or like Newton, that he has been only engaged in picking
shells by the sea shore, while the great ocean of truth lies all
unexplored before him.
The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally remarkable
illustrations of the power of perseverance. The late John Britton,
author of ‘The Beauties of England and Wales,’ and of many valuable
architectural works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston, Wiltshire.
His father had been a baker and maltster, but was ruined in trade and
became insane while Britton was yet a child. The boy received very
little schooling, but a great deal of bad example, which happily did not
corrupt him. He was early in life set to labour with an uncle, a
tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under whom he bottled, corked, and binned
wine for more than five years. His health failing him, his uncle turned
him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the fruits of his five
years’ service, in his pocket. During the next seven years of his life
he endured many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his
autobiography, “in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a week,
I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter evenings,
because I could not afford a fire.” Travelling on foot to Bath, he there
obtained an engagement as a cellarman, but shortly after we find him back
in the metropolis again almost penniless, shoeless, and shirtless. He
succeeded, however, in obtaining employment as a cellarman at the London
Tavern, where it was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the
morning until eleven at night. His health broke down under this
confinement in the dark, added to the heavy work; and he then engaged
himself, at fifteen shillings a week, to an attorney,—for he had been
diligently cultivating the art of writing during the few spare minutes
that he could call his own. While in this employment, he devoted his
leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls, where he read books
by snatches which he could not buy, and thus picked up a good deal of odd
knowledge. Then he shifted to another office, at the advanced wages of
twenty shillings a week, still reading and studying. At twenty-eight he
was able to write a book, which he published under the title of ‘The
Enterprising Adventures of Pizarro;’ and from that time until his death,
during a period of about fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in
laborious literary occupation. The number of his published works is not
fewer than eighty-seven; the most important being ‘The Cathedral
Antiquities of England,’ in fourteen volumes, a truly magnificent work;
itself the best monument of John Britton’s indefatigable industry.
London, the landscape gardener, was a man of somewhat similar character,
possessed of an extraordinary working power. The son of a farmer near
Edinburgh, he was early inured to work. His skill in drawing plans and
making sketches of scenery induced his father to train him for a
landscape gardener. During his apprenticeship he sat up two whole nights
every week to study; yet he worked harder during the day than any
labourer. In the course of his night studies he learnt French, and
before he was eighteen he translated a life of Abelard for an
Encyclopædia. He was so eager to make progress in life, that when only
twenty, while working as a gardener in England, he wrote down in his
note-book, “I am now twenty years of age, and perhaps a third part of my
life has passed away, and yet what have I done to benefit my fellow men?”
an unusual reflection for a youth of only twenty. From French he
proceeded to learn German, and rapidly mastered that language. Having
taken a large farm, for the purpose of introducing Scotch improvements in
the art of agriculture, he shortly succeeded in realising a considerable
income. The continent being thrown open at the end of the war, he
travelled abroad for the purpose of inquiring into the system of
gardening and agriculture in other countries. He twice repeated his
journeys, and the results were published in his Encyclopædias, which are
among the most remarkable works of their kind,—distinguished for the
immense mass of useful matter which they contain, collected by an amount
of industry and labour which has rarely been equalled.
The career of Samuel Drew is not less remarkable than any of those which
we have cited. His father was a hard-working labourer of the parish of
St. Austell, in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons
to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took
delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel,
the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing
truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning
three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was
apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much
hardship,—living, as he used to say, “like a toad under a harrow.” He
often thought of running away and becoming a pirate, or something of the
sort, and he seems to have grown in recklessness as he grew in years. In
robbing orchards he was usually a leader; and, as he grew older, he
delighted to take part in any poaching or smuggling adventure. When
about seventeen, before his apprenticeship was out, he ran away,
intending to enter on board a man-of-war; but, sleeping in a hay-field at
night cooled him a little, and he returned to his trade.
Drew next removed to the neighbourhood of Plymouth to work at his
shoemaking business, and while at Cawsand he won a prize for
cudgel-playing, in which he seems to have been an adept. While living
there, he had nearly lost his life in a smuggling exploit which he had
joined, partly induced by the love of adventure, and partly by the love
of gain, for his regular wages were not more than eight shillings a-week.
One night, notice was given throughout Crafthole, that a smuggler was off
the coast, ready to land her cargo; on which the male population of the
place—nearly all smugglers—made for the shore. One party remained on the
rocks to make signals and dispose of the goods as they were landed; and
another manned the boats, Drew being of the latter party. The night was
intensely dark, and very little of the cargo had been landed, when the
wind rose, with a heavy sea. The men in the boats, however, determined
to persevere, and several trips were made between the smuggler, now
standing farther out to sea, and the shore. One of the men in the boat
in which Drew was, had his hat blown off by the wind, and in attempting
to recover it, the boat was upset. Three of the men were immediately
drowned; the others clung to the boat for a time, but finding it drifting
out to sea, they took to swimming. They were two miles from land, and
the night was intensely dark. After being about three hours in the
water, Drew reached a rock near the shore, with one or two others, where
he remained benumbed with cold till morning, when he and his companions
were discovered and taken off, more dead than alive. A keg of brandy
from the cargo just landed was brought, the head knocked in with a
hatchet, and a bowlfull of the liquid presented to the survivors; and,
shortly after, Drew was able to walk two miles through deep snow, to his
lodgings.
This was a very unpromising beginning of a life; and yet this same Drew,
scapegrace, orchard-robber, shoemaker, cudgel-player, and smuggler,
outlived the recklessness of his youth and became distinguished as a
minister of the Gospel and a writer of good books. Happily, before it
was too late, the energy which characterised him was turned into a more
healthy direction, and rendered him as eminent in usefulness as he had
before been in wickedness. His father again took him back to St.
Austell, and found employment for him as a journeyman shoemaker. Perhaps
his recent escape from death had tended to make the young man serious, as
we shortly find him attracted by the forcible preaching of Dr. Adam
Clarke, a minister of the Wesleyan Methodists. His brother having died
about the same time, the impression of seriousness was deepened; and
thenceforward he was an altered man. He began anew the work of
education, for he had almost forgotten how to read and write; and even
after several years’ practice, a friend compared his writing to the
traces of a spider dipped in ink set to crawl upon paper. Speaking of
himself, about that time, Drew afterwards said, “The more I read, the
more I felt my own ignorance; and the more I felt my ignorance, the more
invincible became my energy to surmount it. Every leisure moment was now
employed in reading one thing or another. Having to support myself by
manual labour, my time for reading was but little, and to overcome this
disadvantage, my usual method was to place a book before me while at
meat, and at every repast I read five or six pages.” The perusal of
Locke’s ‘Essay on the Understanding’ gave the first metaphysical turn to
his mind. “It awakened me from my stupor,” said he, “and induced me to
form a resolution to abandon the grovelling views which I had been
accustomed to entertain.”
Drew began business on his own account, with a capital of a few
shillings; but his character for steadiness was such that a neighbouring
miller offered him a loan, which was accepted, and, success attending his
industry, the debt was repaid at the end of a year. He started with a
determination to “owe no man anything,” and he held to it in the midst of
many privations. Often he went to bed supperless, to avoid rising in
debt. His ambition was to achieve independence by industry and economy,
and in this he gradually succeeded. In the midst of incessant labour, he
sedulously strove to improve his mind, studying astronomy, history, and
metaphysics. He was induced to pursue the latter study chiefly because
it required fewer books to consult than either of the others. “It
appeared to be a thorny path,” he said, “but I determined, nevertheless,
to enter, and accordingly began to tread it.”
Added to his labours in shoemaking and metaphysics, Drew became a local
preacher and a class leader. He took an eager interest in politics, and
his shop became a favourite resort with the village politicians. And
when they did not come to him, he went to them to talk over public
affairs. This so encroached upon his time that he found it necessary
sometimes to work until midnight to make up for the hours lost during the
day. His political fervour become the talk of the village. While busy
one night hammering away at a shoe-sole, a little boy, seeing a light in
the shop, put his mouth to the keyhole of the door, and called out in a
shrill pipe, “Shoemaker! shoe-maker! work by night and run about by day!”
A friend, to whom Drew afterwards told the story, asked, “And did not you
run after the boy, and strap him?” “No, no,” was the reply; “had a
pistol been fired off at my ear, I could not have been more dismayed or
confounded. I dropped my work, and said to myself, ‘True, true! but you
shall never have that to say of me again.’ To me that cry was as the
voice of God, and it has been a word in season throughout my life. I
learnt from it not to leave till to-morrow the work of to-day, or to idle
when I ought to be working.”
From that moment Drew dropped politics, and stuck to his work, reading
and studying in his spare hours: but he never allowed the latter pursuit
to interfere with his business, though it frequently broke in upon his
rest. He married, and thought of emigrating to America; but he remained
working on. His literary taste first took the direction of poetical
composition; and from some of the fragments which have been preserved, it
appears that his speculations as to the immateriality and immortality of
the soul had their origin in these poetical musings. His study was the
kitchen, where his wife’s bellows served him for a desk; and he wrote
amidst the cries and cradlings of his children. Paine’s ‘Age of Reason’
having appeared about this time and excited much interest, he composed a
pamphlet in refutation of its arguments, which was published. He used
afterwards to say that it was the ‘Age of Reason’ that made him an
author. Various pamphlets from his pen shortly appeared in rapid
succession, and a few years later, while still working at shoemaking, he
wrote and published his admirable ‘Essay on the Immateriality and
Immortality of the Human Soul,’ which he sold for twenty pounds, a great
sum in his estimation at the time. The book went through many editions,
and is still prized.
Drew was in no wise puffed up by his success, as many young authors are,
but, long after he had become celebrated as a writer, used to be seen
sweeping the street before his door, or helping his apprentices to carry
in the winter’s coals. Nor could he, for some time, bring himself to
regard literature as a profession to live by. His first care was, to
secure an honest livelihood by his business, and to put into the “lottery
of literary success,” as he termed it, only the surplus of his time. At
length, however, he devoted himself wholly to literature, more
particularly in connection with the Wesleyan body; editing one of their
magazines, and superintending the publication of several of their
denominational works. He also wrote in the ‘Eclectic Review,’ and
compiled and published a valuable history of his native county, Cornwall,
with numerous other works. Towards the close of his career, he said of
himself,—“Raised from one of the lowest stations in society, I have
endeavoured through life to bring my family into a state of
respectability, by honest industry, frugality, and a high regard for my
moral character. Divine providence has smiled on my exertions, and
crowned my wishes with success.”
The late Joseph Hume pursued a very different career, but worked in an
equally persevering spirit. He was a man of moderate parts, but of great
industry and unimpeachable honesty of purpose. The motto of his life was
“Perseverance,” and well, he acted up to it. His father dying while he
was a mere child, his mother opened a small shop in Montrose, and toiled
hard to maintain her family and bring them up respectably. Joseph she
put apprentice to a surgeon, and educated for the medical profession.
Having got his diploma, he made several voyages to India as ship’s
surgeon, {115} and afterwards obtained a cadetship in the Company’s
service. None worked harder, or lived more temperately, than he did,
and, securing the confidence of his superiors, who found him a capable
man in the performance of his duty, they gradually promoted him to higher
offices. In 1803 he was with the division of the army under General
Powell, in the Mahratta war; and the interpreter having died, Hume, who
had meanwhile studied and mastered the native languages, was appointed in
his stead. He was next made chief of the medical staff. But as if this
were not enough to occupy his full working power, he undertook in
addition the offices of paymaster and post-master, and filled them
satisfactorily. He also contracted to supply the commissariat, which he
did with advantage to the army and profit to himself. After about ten
years’ unremitting labour, he returned to England with a competency; and
one of his first acts was to make provision for the poorer members of his
family.
But Joseph Hume was not a man to enjoy the fruits of his industry in
idleness. Work and occupation had become necessary for his comfort and
happiness. To make himself fully acquainted with the actual state of his
own country, and the condition of the people, he visited every town in
the kingdom which then enjoyed any degree of manufacturing celebrity. He
afterwards travelled abroad for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of
foreign states. Returned to England, he entered Parliament in 1812, and
continued a member of that assembly, with a short interruption, for a
period of about thirty-four years. His first recorded speech was on the
subject of public education, and throughout his long and honourable
career he took an active and earnest interest in that and all other
questions calculated to elevate and improve the condition of the
people—criminal reform, savings-banks, free trade, economy and
retrenchment, extended representation, and such like measures, all of
which he indefatigably promoted. Whatever subject he undertook, he
worked at with all his might. He was not a good speaker, but what he
said was believed to proceed from the lips of an honest, single-minded,
accurate man. If ridicule, as Shaftesbury says, be the test of truth,
Joseph Hume stood the test well. No man was more laughed at, but there
he stood perpetually, and literally, “at his post.” He was usually
beaten on a division, but the influence which he exercised was
nevertheless felt, and many important financial improvements were
effected by him even with the vote directly against him. The amount of
hard work which he contrived to get through was something extraordinary.
He rose at six, wrote letters and arranged his papers for parliament;
then, after breakfast, he received persons on business, sometimes as many
as twenty in a morning. The House rarely assembled without him, and
though the debate might be prolonged to two or three o’clock in the
morning, his name was seldom found absent from the division. In short,
to perform the work which he did, extending over so long a period, in the
face of so many Administrations, week after week, year after year,—to be
outvoted, beaten, laughed at, standing on many occasions almost alone,—to
persevere in the face of every discouragement, preserving his temper
unruffled, never relaxing in his energy or his hope, and living to see
the greater number of his measures adopted with acclamation, must be
regarded as one of the most remarkable illustrations of the power of
human perseverance that biography can exhibit.