And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk?
Lord Chatham, writing to his nephew, January 12, 1754, says: Vitanda est improba Syren, Desidia, I desire may be affixed to the curtains of your bedchamber. If you do not rise early, you can never make any progress worth mentioning. If you do not set apart your hours of reading, if you suffer yourself or any one else to break in upon them, your days will slip through your hands unprofitably and frivolously, unpraised by all you wish to please, and really unenjoyed by yourself.
Harford relates of Dr. Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury:
Of his literary labours and self-denying life, writes a clergyman, “few can have any conception. I was frequently admitted to see him on business, even as early as six in the morning, when, rather than detain me, he has seen me in his dressing-room. Often he kindly remarked, ‘Your time is not your own, and is as precious to you as mine; scruple not to send to me when you really want to see me.’ On one of my early morning visits, about eight o’clock, in the winter, I found him seated in his greatcoat and hat, writing at a table, in a room without a carpet, the floor covered with old folios, and his candles only just extinguished. ‘I have been writing and reading,’ he said, ’since five o’clock.’ At another time I breakfasted with him one morning, by appointment, at his hotel in town; and found him at eight o’clock, about Christmas, writing by candlelight; the whole room being strewed with old books, collected from various places in the metropolis. The untiring perseverance with which he prosecuted his researches for evidence on any particular subject is inconceivable.”
Sir Astley Cooper, in one of his Lectures to his pupils, used to say: “The means by which I preserve my own health are: temperance, early rising, and sponging my body every morning with cold water,—a practice I have pursued for thirty years; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital in the severest winter-nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold. An old Scotch physician, for whom I had a great respect, and whom I frequently met professionally in the City, used to say, as we were entering the patient’s room, ‘Weel, Mister Cooper, we ha’ only twa things to keep in meend, and they’ll sarve us for here and herea’ter: one is always to have the fear of the Laird before our ees, that ’ill do for herea’ter; and the t’other is to keep your booels open, and that will do for here.’”
William Cobbett, who had great contempt for conventionalities, was an early riser from his boyhood,—when his first occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and the rooks from the peas; when he trudged with his wooden bottle and his satchel, and was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles; when he weeded wheat, and had a single horse at harrowing barley; drove the team, or held the plough—which employments he apostrophises as “Honest pride, and happy days!” He tells us that to the husbanding well of his time he owed his extraordinary promotion in the army. He says: “I was always ready: if I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine; never did any man or any thing wait one moment for me. Being at an age under twenty years, raised from Corporal to Sergeant-Major at once, over the heads of thirty Sergeants, I naturally should have been an object of envy and hatred; but the habit of early rising really subdued these passions; because every one felt that what I did he had never done, and never could do. Before my promotion, a clerk was wanted to make out the morning report of the regiment. I rendered the clerk unnecessary; and long before any other man was dressed for the parade, my work for the morning was all done, and I myself was on the parade, walking, in fine weather, for an hour perhaps. My custom was this: to get up in summer at daylight, and in winter at four o’clock; shave, dress, and even to the putting of the sword-belt over my shoulder, and having the sword lying on the table before me, ready to hang by my side. Then I ate a bit of cheese, or pork, and bread. Then I prepared my report, which was filled up as fast as the companies brought me in the materials. After this I had an hour or two to read, before the time came for my duty out of doors, unless when the regiment, or part of it, went out to exercise in the morning. When this was the case, and the matter was left to me, I always had it on the ground in such time as that the bayonets glistened in the rising sun; a sight which gave me delight, of which I often think, but which I should in vain endeavour to describe. When I was commander, the men had a long day of leisure before them: they could ramble into the town or into the woods; go to get raspberries, to catch birds, to catch fish, or to pursue any other recreation; and such of them as chose and were qualified, to work at their trades. So that here, arising solely from the early habits of one very young man, were pleasant and happy days given to hundreds.”
Elsewhere Cobbett addresses this advice “to a lover:” “Early rising is a mark of industry; and though, in the higher situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other respects: for it is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the dew, never beholds the rising sun, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to the breakfast-table, and there chews about without appetite the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a month or two without being disgusted; but that is ample allowance of time. And as to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and never was there yet an early-rising wife who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit: at first she will be indulged without bounds; to make change afterwards will be difficult; it will be deemed a wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection; a quarrel must ensue, or the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his labour snored and lounged away. And is this being rigid? is it being harsh? is it being hard upon women? Is it the offspring of the frigid severity of the age? It is none of these: it arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of their lives, weight and consequence, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.”
When Cobbett had become a public writer, he constantly inveighed against those who
O’er books consumed the midnight oil.