The Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise
9781465677365
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“If that boy were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain, he would find the road to fame and riches!” the tutor of Sir William Jones was accustomed to say of his illustrious pupil. His observation of the great quality ofperseverance, evinced in every act of study prescribed to his scholar, doubtless impelled the teacher to utter that remarkable affirmation. A discernment of high genius in young Jones, with but little of the great quality we have named, would have led Dr. Thackeray to modify his remark. It would have been couched in some such form as this: “If that boy had as much perseverance as genius, he would find the road to fame and riches, even if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain.” But, had the instructor regarded his pupil as one endowed with the most brilliant powers of mind, yet entirely destitute of perseverance, he would have pronounced a judgment very widely different from the first. “Alas, for this boy!” he might have said, “how will these shining qualities, fitfully bursting forth in his wayward course through life, displaying their lustre in a thousand beginnings which will lead to nothing, leave him to be regarded as an object of derision where he might have won general admiration and esteem, and cast him for subsistence on the bounty or pity of others, when he might have been a noble example of self-dependence!” Let the reflection we would awaken by these introductory sentences be of a healthy character. It is not meant that celebrity or wealth are the most desirable rewards of a well-spent life; but that the most resplendent natural powers, unless combined with application and industry, fail to bring happiness to the heart and mind of the possessor, or to render him useful to his brother men. It is sought to impress deeply and enduringly on the youthful understanding, the irrefragable truth that, while genius is a gift which none can create for himself, and may be uselessly possessed, perseverance has enabled many, who were born with only ordinary faculties of imagination, judgment, and memory, to attain a first-rate position in literature or science, or in the direction of human affairs, and to leave a perpetual name in the list of the world’s benefactors. Has the youthful reader formed a purpose for life? We ask not whether he has conceived a vulgar passion for fame or riches, but earnestly exhort him to self-enquiry, whether he be wasting existence in what is termed amusement, or be daily devoting the moments at his command to a diligent preparation for usefulness? Whether he has hitherto viewed life as a journey to be trod without aims and ends, or a grand field of enterprise in which it is both his duty and interest to become an industrious and honourable worker? Has he found, by personal experience, even in the outset of life, that time spent in purposeless inactivity or frivolity produces no results on which the mind can dwell with satisfaction? And has he learned, from the testimony of others, that years so misspent bring only a feeling of self-accusation, which increases in bitterness as the loiterer becomes older, and the possibility of “redeeming the time” becomes more doubtful? Did he ever reflect that indolence never yet led to real distinction; that sloth never yet opened the path to independence; that trifling never yet enabled a man to make useful or solid acquirements? If such reflections have already found a place in the reader’s mind, and created in him some degree of yearning to make his life not only a monument of independence, but of usefulness, we invite him to a rapid review of the lives of men among whom he will not only find the highest exemplars of perseverance, but some whose peculiar difficulties may resemble his own, and whose triumphs may encourage him to pursue a course of similar excellence.
