When I came home from school at the holidays, and when complaints were preferred against me in letters from my school-master, my father, even while he affected to scold me for my negligence, flattered me in the most dangerous manner by adding—aside to some friend of the family—“My Basil is a strange fellow!—can do any thing he pleases—all his masters say so—but he is a sad idle dog—all your men of genius are so—puts off business always to the last moment—all your men of genius do so. For instance, there is ——, whose third edition of odes I have just published—what an idle dog he is! Yet who makes such a noise in the world as he does?—put every thing off till to-morrow, like my Basil—but can do more at the last moment than any man in England—that is, if the fit seizes him—for he does nothing but by fits—has no application—none—says it would ‘petrify him to a dunce.’ I never knew a man of genius who was not an idle dog.”
Not a syllable of such speeches was lost upon me: the idea of a man of genius and of an idle dog were soon so firmly joined together in my imagination, that it was impossible to separate them, either by my own reason or by that of my preceptors. I gloried in the very habits which my tutors laboured to correct; and I never was seriously mortified by the consequences of my own folly till, at a public examination at Eton, I lost a premium by putting off till it was too late the finishing a copy of verses. The lines which I had written were said by all my young and old friends to be beautiful. The prize was gained by one Johnson, a heavy lad, of no sort of genius, but of great perseverance. His verses were finished, however, at the stated time.
“For dulness ever must be regular!”
My fragment, charming as it was, was useless, except to hand about afterward among my friends, to prove what I might have done if I had thought it worth while.
My father was extremely vexed by my missing an opportunity of distinguishing myself at this public exhibition, especially as the king had honoured the assembly with his presence; and as those who had gained premiums were presented to his majesty, it was supposed that their being thus early marked as lads of talents would be highly advantageous to their advancement in life. All this my father felt, and, blaming himself for having encouraged me in the indolence of genius, he determined to counteract his former imprudence, and was resolved, he said, to cure me at once of my habit of procrastination. For this purpose he took down from his shelves Young’s Night Thoughts; from which he remembered a line, which has become a stock line among writing-masters’ copies:
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
He hunted the book for the words Procrastination, Time, To-day, and To-morrow, and made an extract of seven long pages on the dangers of delay.
“Now, my dear Basil,” said he, “this is what will cure you for life, and this you must get perfectly by heart, before I give you one shilling more pocket-money.”
The motive was all powerful, and with pains, iteration, and curses, I fixed the heterogeneous quotations so well in my memory that some of them have remained there to this day. For instance—
“Time destroyed
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heav’n invites,
Hell threatens.
We push Time from us, and we wish him back.
Man flies from Time, and Time from man too soon;
In sad divorce this double flight must end;
And then where are we?
Be wise to-day, ‘tis madness to defer, &c.
Next day the fatal precedent will plead, &c.
Lorenzo—O for yesterdays to come!
To-day is yesterday return’d; return’d,
Full powered to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn,
And reinstate us on the rock of peace.
Let it not share its predecessor’s fate,
Nor, like its elder sisters, die a fool.
Where shall I find him? Angels! tell me where:
You know him; he is near you; point him out;
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow?
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flow’rs?
Your golden wings now hov’ring o’er him shed
Protection: now are wav’ring in applause
To that blest son of foresight! Lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow! Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backward with a smile.”