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

employment in the civil

service, but failed. He was however informed that a surgeon’s

assistant’s commission was open to him. But he was no surgeon, and

knew no more of the profession than a child. He could however

learn. Then he was told that he must be ready to pass in six

months! Nothing daunted, he set to work, to acquire in six months

what usually required three years. At the end of six months he

took his degree with honour. Scott and a few friends helped to fit

him out; and he sailed for India, after publishing his beautiful

poem ‘The Scenes of Infancy.’ In India he promised to become one

of the greatest of oriental scholars, but was unhappily cut off by

fever caught by exposure, and died at an early age.

 

The life of the late Dr. Lee, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge,

furnishes one of the most remarkable instances in modern times of

the power of patient perseverance and resolute purpose in working

out an honourable career in literature. He received his education

at a charity school at Lognor, near Shrewsbury, but so little

distinguished himself there, that his master pronounced him one of

the dullest boys that ever passed through his hands. He was put

apprentice to a carpenter, and worked at that trade until he

arrived at manhood. To occupy his leisure hours he took to

reading; and, some of the books containing Latin quotations, he

became desirous of ascertaining what they meant. He bought a Latin

grammar, and proceeded to learn Latin. As Stone, the Duke of

Argyle’s gardener, said, long before, “Does one need to know

anything more than the twenty-four letters in order to learn

everything else that one wishes?” Lee rose early and sat up late,

and he succeeded in mastering the Latin before his apprenticeship

was out. Whilst working one day in some place of worship, a copy

of a Greek Testament fell in his way, and he was immediately filled

with the desire to learn that language. He accordingly sold some

of his Latin books, and purchased a Greek Grammar and Lexicon.

Taking pleasure in learning, he soon mastered the language. Then

he sold his Greek books, and bought Hebrew ones, and learnt that

language, unassisted by any instructor, without any hope of fame or

reward, but simply following the bent of his genius. He next

proceeded to learn the Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan dialects.

But his studies began to tell upon his health, and brought on

disease in his eyes through his long night watchings with his

books. Having laid them aside for a time and recovered his health,

he went on with his daily work. His character as a tradesman being

excellent, his business improved, and his means enabled him to

marry, which he did when twenty-eight years old. He determined now

to devote himself to the maintenance of his family, and to renounce

the luxury of literature; accordingly he sold all his books. He

might have continued a working carpenter all his life, had not the

chest of tools upon which he depended for subsistence been

destroyed by fire, and destitution stared him in the face. He was

too poor to buy new tools, so he bethought him of teaching children

their letters,—a profession requiring the least possible capital.

But though he had mastered many languages, he was so defective in

the common branches of knowledge, that at first he could not teach

them. Resolute of purpose, however, he assiduously set to work,

and taught himself arithmetic and writing to such a degree as to be

able to impart the knowledge of these branches to little children.

His unaffected, simple, and beautiful character gradually attracted

friends, and the acquirements of the “learned carpenter” became

bruited abroad. Dr. Scott, a neighbouring clergyman, obtained for

him the appointment of master of a charity school in Shrewsbury,

and introduced him to a distinguished Oriental scholar. These

friends supplied him with books, and Lee successively mastered

Arabic, Persic, and Hindostanee. He continued to pursue his

studies while on duty as a private in the local militia of the

county; gradually acquiring greater proficiency in languages. At

length his kind patron, Dr. Scott, enabled Lee to enter Queen’s

College, Cambridge; and after a course of study, in which he

distinguished himself by his mathematical acquirements, a vacancy

occurring in the professorship of Arabic and Hebrew, he was

worthily elected to fill the honourable office. Besides ably

performing his duties as a professor, he voluntarily gave much of

his time to the instruction of missionaries going forth to preach

the Gospel to eastern tribes in their own tongue. He also made

translations of the Bible into several Asiatic dialects; and having

mastered the New Zealand language, he arranged a grammar and

vocabulary for two New Zealand chiefs who were then in England,

which books are now in daily use in the New Zealand schools. Such,

in brief, is the remarkable history of Dr. Samuel Lee; and it is

but the counterpart of numerous similarly instructive examples of

the power of perseverance in self-culture, as displayed in the

lives of many of the most distinguished of our literary and

scientific men.

 

There are many other illustrious names which might be cited to

prove the truth of the common saying that “it is never too late to

learn.” Even at advanced years men can do much, if they will

determine on making a beginning. Sir Henry Spelman did not begin

the study of science until he was between fifty and sixty years of

age. Franklin was fifty before he fully entered upon the study of

Natural Philosophy. Dryden and Scott were not known as authors

until each was in his fortieth year. Boccaccio was thirty-five

when he commenced his literary career, and Alfieri was forty-six

when he began the study of Greek. Dr. Arnold learnt German at an

advanced age, for the purpose of reading Niebuhr in the original;

and in like manner James Watt, when about forty, while working at

his trade of an instrument maker in Glasgow, learnt French, German,

and Italian, to enable himself to peruse the valuable works on

mechanical philosophy which existed in those languages. Thomas

Scott was fifty-six before he began to learn Hebrew. Robert Hall

was once found lying upon the floor, racked by pain, learning

Italian in his old age, to enable him to judge of the parallel

drawn by Macaulay between Milton and Dante. Handel was forty-eight

before he published any of his great works. Indeed hundreds of

instances might be given of men who struck out an entirely new

path, and successfully entered on new studies, at a comparatively

advanced time of life. None but the frivolous or the indolent will

say, “I am too old to learn.” {31}

 

And here we would repeat what we have said before, that it is not

men of genius who move the world and take the lead in it, so much

as men of steadfastness, purpose, and indefatigable industry.

Notwithstanding the many undeniable instances of the precocity of

men of genius, it is nevertheless true that early cleverness gives

no indication of the height to which the grown man will reach.

Precocity is sometimes a symptom of disease rather than of

intellectual vigour. What becomes of all the “remarkably clever

children?” Where are the duxes and prize boys? Trace them through

life, and it will frequently be found that the dull boys, who were

beaten at school, have shot ahead of them. The clever boys are

rewarded, but the prizes which they gain by their greater quickness

and facility do not always prove of use to them. What ought rather

to be rewarded is the endeavour, the struggle, and the obedience;

for it is the youth who does his best, though endowed with an

inferiority of natural powers, that ought above all others to be

encouraged.

 

An interesting chapter might be written on the subject of

illustrious dunces—dull boys, but brilliant men. We have room,

however, for only a few instances. Pietro di Cortona, the painter,

was thought so stupid that he was nicknamed “Ass’s Head” when a

boy; and Tomaso Guidi was generally known as “Heavy Tom” (Massaccio

Tomasaccio), though by diligence he afterwards raised himself to

the highest eminence. Newton, when at school, stood at the bottom

of the lowest form but one. The boy above Newton having kicked

him, the dunce showed his pluck by challenging him to a fight, and

beat him. Then he set to work with a will, and determined also to

vanquish his antagonist as a scholar, which he did, rising to the

top of his class. Many of our greatest divines have been anything

but precocious. Isaac Barrow, when a boy at the Charterhouse

School, was notorious chiefly for his strong temper, pugnacious

habits, and proverbial idleness as a scholar; and he caused such

grief to his parents that his father used to say that, if it

pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might

be Isaac, the least promising of them all. Adam Clarke, when a

boy, was proclaimed by his father to be “a grievous dunce;” though

he could roll large stones about. Dean Swift was “plucked” at

Dublin University, and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford

“speciali gratia.” The well-known Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Cook {32}

were boys together at the parish school of St. Andrew’s; and they

were found so stupid and mischievous, that the master, irritated

beyond measure, dismissed them both as incorrigible dunces.

 

The brilliant Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy, that he

was presented to a tutor by his mother with the complimentary

accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce. Walter Scott was

all but a dunce when a boy, always much readier for a “bicker,”

than apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Professor

Dalzell pronounced upon him the sentence that “Dunce he was, and

dunce he would remain.” Chatterton was returned on his mother’s

hands as “a fool, of whom nothing could be made.” Burns was a dull

boy, good only at athletic exercises. Goldsmith spoke of himself,

as a plant that flowered late. Alfieri left college no wiser than

he entered it, and did not begin the studies by which he

distinguished himself, until he had run half over Europe. Robert

Clive was a dunce, if not a reprobate, when a youth; but always

full of energy, even in badness. His family, glad to get rid of

him, shipped him off to Madras; and he lived to lay the foundations

of the British power in India. Napoleon and Wellington were both

dull boys, not distinguishing themselves in any way at school. {33}

Of the former the Duchess d’Abrantes says, “he had good health, but

was in other respects like other boys.”

 

Ulysses Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, was

called “Useless Grant” by his mother—he was so dull and unhandy

when a boy; and Stonewall Jackson, Lee’s greatest lieutenant, was,

in his youth, chiefly noted for his slowness. While a pupil at

West Point Military Academy he was, however, equally remarkable for

his indefatigable application and perseverance. When a task was

set him, he never left it until he had mastered it; nor did he ever

feign to possess knowledge which he had not entirely acquired.

“Again and again,” wrote one who knew him, “when called upon to

answer questions in the recitation of the day, he would reply, ‘I

have not yet looked at it; I have been engaged in mastering the

recitation of yesterday or the day before.’ The result was that he

graduated seventeenth in a class of seventy. There was probably in

the whole class not a boy to whom Jackson at the outset was not

inferior in knowledge and attainments; but at the end of the race

he had only sixteen before him, and had outstripped no