WILLIAM GIFFORD,
In the early circumstances of his life, is a still more striking exemplar of the virtue of perseverance. He was left an orphan at thirteen years of age, was sent to sea for a twelvemonth, and was then taken home by his godfather, who had seized upon whatever his mother had left, as a means of repaying himself for money lent to her, and was now constrained to pay some attention to the boy, by the keen remonstrances of his neighbours. He was sent to school, and made such rapid progress in arithmetic that, in a few months, he was at the head of the school, and frequently assisted his master. The receipt of a trifle for these services raised in him the thought of one day becoming a schoolmaster, in the room of a teacher in the town of Ashburton, who was growing old and infirm. He mentioned his scheme to his godfather, who treated it with contempt, and forthwith apprenticed him to a shoemaker. His new master subjected him to the greatest degradation, made him the common drudge of his household, and took from him the means of pursuing his favourite study of arithmetic.
“I could not guess the motives for this at first,” he says—for his narrative is too remarkable at this period of his struggles, to be told in any other than his own language—“but at length discovered that my master destined his youngest son for the situation to which I aspired. I possessed, at this time, but one book in the world, it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure, but it was a treasure locked up, for it supposed the reader to be well acquainted with simple equations, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master’s son had purchased ‘Fenning’s Introduction;’ this was precisely what I wanted; but he carefully concealed it from me, and I was indebted to chance alone for stumbling upon his hiding-place. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights, successively; and, before he suspected that his treatise was discovered, had completely mastered it. I could now enter upon my own, and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource, but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent.”
He essayed the composition of rhyme, and the rehearsal of his verses secured him a few pence from his acquaintances. He now furnished himself with pens, ink, and paper, and even bought some books of geometry and of the higher branches of algebra; but was obliged to conceal them, and to pursue his studies by continued caution. Some of his verses, however, were shown to his master, and were understood to contain satirical reflections upon his oppressor. His books and papers were seized upon, by way of punishment; and he was reduced to the deepest despair. “I look back,” he says, in his own admirable narrative, “on that part of my life which immediately followed this event with little satisfaction: it was a period of gloom, and savage unsociability: by degrees I sunk into a kind of corporeal torpor; or, if roused into activity by the spirit of youth, wasted the exertion in splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated the few acquaintances compassion had left me.”
The heart revolts at the brutal injustice which drove Gifford’s young nature thus to harden itself into gloomy endurance of his lot, by “savage unsociability;” but a mind like his could not take that stamp for life. His disposition grew again buoyant, and his aspirations began to rekindle, as the term of his bondage grew shorter. Had he found no deliverance till it had legally expired, it may be safely affirmed that he would then have forced his way into eminence by self-assisted efforts; but an accidental circumstance emancipated him a year before the legal expiry of his apprenticeship. Mr. Cookesley, a philanthropic surgeon, having learnt from Gifford himself the facts of his hard history, through mere curiosity awakened by hearing some of his rhymes repeated, started ‘A subscription for purchasing the remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling him to improve himself in writing and English grammar.’ Enough was collected to satisfy his master’s demand, he was placed at school with a clergyman, made his way into the classics, displayed such diligence that more money was raised to continue him in his promising course; and in two years and two months from the day of his liberation, he was considered by his instructor to be fit for the University, and was sent to Exeter College, Oxford.
Perseverance! what can it not effect? It enabled Gifford to surmount difficulties arising from the most vulgar and brutifying influences, and to make his way triumphantly into an intellectual region of delectable enjoyment. From a boy neglected and degraded—from a youth baffled and thwarted in his aims at a higher state of existence than that of merely living to labour in order to eat, drink, and be clothed—from one fastening his desire upon knowledge, only to be scorned and mocked, and treated as a criminal where he was meriting applause—from a poor pitiable straggler longing for mental breathing-room, amid the coarse conversation he would undoubtedly hear from his master, and those who were his associates, and sinking for some period into sullen despair with his hardship, that like an untoward sky seemed to promise no break of relieving light—he becomes a glad and easier student; is enabled not merely ‘to improve himself in writing and English grammar,’ but, in six-and-twenty months, becomes a converser, in their own noble language, with the great spirits of Rome and Greece: and enters the most venerable arena of learning in Britain, to become a rival in elegant scholarship with the young heirs to coronets and titles, and to England’s widest wealth and influence. What a change did those ancient halls of architectural grandeur, with all their associations of great intellectual names, present for the young and ardent toiler who, but six-and-twenty months before, had bent over the last from morning to night, shut out from all that could cheer or elevate the mind, and surrounded with nought but that which tended to disgust and degrade it!
Nor did the career of the young disciple of perseverance, when arrived at his new and loftier stage of struggle, discredit the foresight of those who had assisted him. His first benefactor died before Gifford took his degree, but he was enabled by the generosity of Lord Grosvenor to pursue his studies at the University to a successful issue. After some absence on the continent, as travelling tutor to the nobleman just mentioned, he entered on his course as an author, and gained some distinction; but won his chief celebrity, as well as most substantial rewards, while Editor of the “Quarterly Review”—an office he held from the commencement of that periodical, 1809, till his death, on the last day of 1826, when he had reached the age of seventy-one. In the performance of this critical service he had a salary of one thousand a year; and it is a noble conclusion to the history of this successful scholar of Perseverance, that true-hearted gratitude led him to bequeath the bulk of his fortune to Mr. Cookesley, the son of his early benefactor.
The superiority of genius to difficulties, and the certainty with which it achieves high triumphs through longer or shorter paths of vicissitude, might be shown from the memoirs of Erasmus, and Mendelsohn, and Goldsmith, and Holcroft, and Kirke White, and others, almost a countless host. Early poverty may be said, however, to stimulate the children of Genius to exertion; and its influence may be judged to weaken the merit of their perseverance, since their triumphs may be dated from deep desire to escape from its disadvantages. That such a feeling has been participated by many, or all, of the illustrious climbers after literary distinction, it may not be denied; though the world usually attributes more to its workings in the minds of men of genius than the interior truth, if known, would warrant: the strong necessity to create—the restless power to embody their thinkings—these deep-seated springs of exertion in intellectual men, if understood, would afford a truer solution of their motives for beginning, and the determination to excel for continuing their course, than any mere sordid impulses with which they are often charged. Let us turn to a celebrated name, around which no irksome influences of poverty gathered, either at the outset of his life, or in his progress to literary distinction. His systematic direction of the knowledge acquired by inquiries as profound as they were diversified, and his application of the experience of life, alike to the same great end, afford an admirable spectacle of the noblest perseverance, and of memorable victory over the seductions of ease and competence.