第42章 WORK.(12)

(12) Southey expresses the opinion in 'The Doctor', that the character of a person may be better known by the letters which other persons write to him than by what he himself writes.

(13) 'Dissertation on the Science of Method.'

(14) The following passage, from a recent article in the PALL MALLGAZETTE, will commend itself to general aproval:- "There can be no question nowadays, that application to work, absorption in affairs, contact with men, and all the stress which business imposes on us, gives a noble training to the intellect, and splendid opportunity for discipline of character. It is an utterly low view of business which regards it as only a means of getting a living. A man's business is his part of the world's work, his share of the great activities which render society possible. He may like it or dislike it, but it is work, and as such requires application, self-denial, discipline. It is his drill, and he cannot be thorough in his occupation without putting himself into it, checking his fancies, restraining his impulses, and holding himself to the perpetual round of small details--without, in fact, submitting to his drill. But the perpetual call on a man's readiness, sell-control, and vigour which business makes, the constant appeal to the intellect, the stress upon the will, the necessity for rapid and responsible exercise of judgment --all these things constitute a high culture, though not the highest. It is a culture which strengthens and invigorates if it does not refine, which gives force if not polish--the FORTITER INRE, if not the SUAVITER IN MODO. It makes strong men and ready men, and men of vast capacity for affairs, though it does not necessarily make refined men or gentlemen."(15) On the first publication of his 'Despatches,' one of his friends said to him, on reading the records of his Indian campaigns: "It seems to me, Duke, that your chief business in India was to procure rice and bullocks." "And so it was," replied Wellington:

"for if I had rice and bullocks, I had men; and if I had men, Iknew I could beat the enemy."

(16) Maria Edgeworth, 'Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth,' ii. 94.

(17) A friend of Lord Palmerston has communicated to us the following anecdote. Asking him one day when he considered a man to be in the prime of life, his immediate reply was, "Seventy-nine!""But," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "as I have just entered my eightieth year, perhaps I am myself a little past it."(18) 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.

(19) Coleridge's advice to his young friends was much to the same effect. "With the exception of one extraordinary man," he says, "I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession: i.e., some regular employment which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realise in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion.... If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon, among the ancients--of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or (to refer at once to later and contemporary instances) Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."--BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, Chap. xi.

(20) Mr. Ricardo published his celebrated 'Theory of Rent,' at the urgent recommendation of James Mill (like his son, a chief clerk in the India House), author of the 'History of British India.'

When the 'Theory of Rent' was written, Ricardo was so dissatisfied with it that he wished to burn it; but Mr. Mill urged him to publish it, and the book was a great success.

(21) The late Sir John Lubbock, his father, was also eminent as a mathematician and astronomer.

(22) Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to, to become rich, was answered by one in the company that he did like the fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain. Thereupon Thales had a mind, for the jest's sake, to show them the contrary; and having upon this occasion for once made a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ them in the service of profit, he set a traffic on foot, which in one year brought him in so great riches, that the most experienced in that trade could hardly in their whole lives, with all their industry, have raked so much together.

--Montaignes ESSAYS, Book I., chap. 24.

(23) "The understanding," says Mr. Bailey, "that is accustomed to pursue a regular and connected train of ideas, becomes in some measure incapacitated for those quick and versatile movements which are learnt in the commerce of the world, and are indispensable to those who act a part in it. Deep thinking and practical talents require indeed habits of mind so essentially dissimilar, that while a man is striving after the one, he will be unavoidably in danger of losing the other." "Thence," he adds, "do we so often find men, who are 'giants in the closet,' prove but 'children in the world.'"--'Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,' pp.251-3.

(24) Mr. Gladstone is as great an enthusiast in literature as Canning was. It is related of him that, while he was waiting in his committee-room at Liverpool for the returns coming in on the day of the South Lancashire polling, he occupied himself in proceeding with the translation of a work which he was then preparing for the press.