THE ENGLISH CHARACTER.
Four and thirty years since, Sir Humphry Davy wrote:“The English as a nation are preëminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die, before they have attained the period naturally marked out for the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and even philosophers, offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion: whatever burns, consumes; ashes remain. Before the period of youth is passed, gray hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the men of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.” If these characteristics were applicable to English life a third of a century since, how much has their fitness been strengthened by the rapidity of action, the excitement, and want of repose adding to the wear and tear of existence, since that period.
That the Englishman is one of the most noble species of the genus to which he belongs, seems to be generally conceded. The poet Southey expressed the opinion of more thinkers than himself when he said that the Englishman is the model or pattern man, at least of all the species at present existing. But even those who are most thoroughly convinced of this must admit that he has his peculiarities—foremost among which is his nationality; and one of the most striking peculiarities of that nationality is pride. Another potent element in the English character is its practical worth,—this word “practical” being the shibboleth by which we love to recognise ourselves; as the Greeks delighted to picture themselves as more wise, the French as more polite, than other nations.
Our genius has a most real, concrete, and altogether terrestrial tendency: there seems to be a considerable majority of Sadducees among us, or, as Plato calls them, “uninitiated persons, who believe in nothing but what they can lay hold of with their hands. These men will make railways, telegraphs, and tunnels, and build crystal palaces, and collect mechanical products from the ends of the earth, and exhibit in every possible shape and variety the sublime of what is mechanical and material; but for the supersensual ideas, they will have none of them.”[[90]]
Nevertheless, if we look through the history of the world’s genius, we shall find its greatest successes to lie in the practical. Homer begged; Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt assassinated,—and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same time, Raffaelle, Michel Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Shakspeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius they combined practical prudence. This is the grand secret of success.
[90]. Professor Blackie; Edinburgh Essays, 1856.