Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

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 3d.

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 30s.; 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 Encyclopaedia. 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 notebook, “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 Encyclopaedias, 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 hardworking 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