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.
GIBBON,
The author of the unrivalled “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” was born to considerable fortune. He left the University at eighteen, after great loss of time, as he tells us in his instructive autobiography, and with what was worse, habits of expense and dissipation. His father being under distressing anxiety on account of his son’s irregularities, and, afterwards, from what he deemed of greater moment, young Gibbon’s sudden avowal of conversion to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, placed him abroad, under the strict care of a Protestant minister. Gibbon began to awake to reflection; and, without prescription from his new guardian, voluntarily entered on severe study. He diligently translated the best Roman writers, turned them into French, and then again into Latin, comparing Cicero and Livy, and Seneca and Horace, with the best orators and historians, philosophers and poets, of the moderns. He next advanced to the Greek, and pursued a similar course with the treasures of that noble literature. He afterwards commenced an inquiry into the Law of Nations, and sedulously perused the treatises of Grotius, Puffendorf, Locke, Bayle, and Montesquieu, the acknowledged authorities on that great subject. He mentions three books which absorbed more than the usual interest he felt in whatever he read: “Pascal’s Provincial Letters,” the “Abbe de la Bléterie’s Life of the Emperor Julian,” and “Giannone’s Civil History of Naples:” the character of these works shadows forth the grand design which was gradually forming in his mind.
Yet without method, without taking care to store up this various knowledge in such a mode that it might not be mere lumber in the memory, he speedily discerned that even years spent in industrious reading would be, comparatively, of little worth. He, therefore, began to digest his various reading in a common-place book, according to the method recommended by Locke. The eager and enthusiastic student—for such he had now become—by this systematic arrangement of his knowledge under heads, perceived his wants more distinctly, and entered into correspondence for the solution of historic difficulties, with some of the most illustrious scholars of his time, among whom were Professors Crevier of Paris, Breittinger of Zurich, and Matth. Gesner of Göttingen. From each of these learned men he received such flattering notice of the acuteness of his inquiries, as proved how well he had employed the time and means at his command. His first work, written in French, the “Essay on the Study of Literature,” was produced at three-and-twenty, after his laborious reading of the best English and French, as well as Latin and Greek authors.
A transition was now made by him, from retired leisure to active life. His father was made major of the Hampshire Militia, himself captain of grenadiers, and the regiment was called out on duty. He had to devote two years and a half to this employ, and expresses considerable discontent with his “wandering life of military servitude;” but thus judiciously tempers his observations: “In every state there exists, however, a balance of good and evil. The habits of a sedentary life were usefully broken by the duties of an active profession.”... “After my foreign education, with my reserved temper, I should long have continued a stranger to my native country, had I not been shaken in this various scene of new faces and new friends; had not experience forced me to feel the characters of our leading men, the state of parties, the forms of office, and the operation of our civil and military system. In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments and the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation.... The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.”
Let the young reader observe how, even when a purpose is not as yet distinctly formed, the leading events of life, as well as study, may be made by the regal mind to bend and contribute to the realising of one. Our great paramount duty is to husband time well, to let not an hour glide uselessly, to go on extending our range of knowledge, and resolving to act our part well, even while we are in uncertainty as to what our part may be. The seed well sown, the germs well watered, and a useful harvest must result, though neither we, nor any who look on, for a while, may be able to prophesy of the quality or abundance of the grain, seeing it is but yet in its growth. “From my early youth I aspired to the character of an historian,” says Gibbon; “while I served in the militia, before and after the publication of my ‘Essay,’ this idea ripened in my mind.”