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36 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
These records of the Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise have been written with the view to inspire the youthful reader with a glow of emulation, and to induce him to toil and to advance in the peaceful achievements of science and benevolence, remembering the adage, “Whatever man has done, man may do.”...
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SIR WILLIAM JONES.—DR. SAMUEL LEE.
SIR WILLIAM JONES.—DR. SAMUEL LEE.
“If that boy were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain, he would find the road to fame and riches!” the tutor of Sir William Jones was accustomed to say of his illustrious pupil. His observation of the great quality of perseverance , evinced in every act of study prescribed to his scholar, doubtless impelled the teacher to utter that remarkable affirmation. A discernment of high genius in young Jones, with but little of the great quality we have named, would have led Dr. Thackeray to mod
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SIR WILLIAM JONES,
SIR WILLIAM JONES,
Happily, had early admonitions of perseverance from his mother, in whose widowed care he was left at three years old; and who, “to his incessant importunities for information, which she watchfully stimulated,” says his biographer, Lord Teignmouth, “perpetually answered, ‘Read, and you will know,’” His earnest mind cleaved to the injunction. He could read any English book rapidly at four years of age; and, though his right eye was injured by an accident at five, and the sight of it ever remained
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DR. SAMUEL LEE,
DR. SAMUEL LEE,
Now Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, being the son of a poor widow, who was left to struggle for the support of two younger children, was apprenticed to a carpenter, at twelve years of age, after receiving a merely elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic in the charity-school of the village of Longmore, in Shropshire. His love of books became fervent, and the Latin quotations he found in such as were within his reach kindled a desire to penetrate the
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SHAKSPEARE,
SHAKSPEARE,
The most highly endowed of human intelligences, was under as great necessity of learning the vocabulary of the English tongue as the very commonest mind. He, like all other men, however inferior to him in understanding or imagination, was born without any innate knowledge of things, or their natures, words, or the rules for fashioning them in order, or combining them with grace and harmony, eloquence and strength. Every author of the first class was in the same predicament mentally at birth; the
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SPENSER,
SPENSER,
Was not less an exemplar of diligence than of skill in the architecture of verse. The mere task-work of constructing three thousand eight hundred and fifty-four stanzas, comprising forty-four thousand six hundred and sixty-eight lines, would have wearied out the industry of any mind whose powers were not indefatigable. He died, too, before his magnificent design was complete, or the elaborate monument of his fame might have been still more colossal. Superiority to mental indolence, so manifest i
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JOHNSON,
JOHNSON,
Afterwards so famous as the great arbiter of literary criticism, is found leaving college without a degree, and, from sheer poverty, at the age of twenty-two. The sale of his deceased father’s effects, a few months after, affords him but twenty pounds, and he is constrained to become an usher in a grammar school in Leicestershire. In the next year he performs a translation of “Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia” for a Birmingham bookseller, returns to Lichfield, his birth-place, and publishes proposals
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WILLIAM GIFFORD,
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 arithmet
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GIBBON,
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 churc
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ANTONIA CANOVA,
ANTONIA CANOVA,
The greatest of modern sculptors, was born in a mud-walled cabin of an Alpine valley within the Venetian territories; and remained in the care of Pasino, his grandfather, who was a stone-cutter, till his twelfth year. Pasino, evermore employing enticement and tenderness rather than compulsion began to instruct the child in drawing, as soon as his little hand could hold a pencil; and even taught him to model in clay at an early age. At nine years old, however, he was set to work at stone-cutting;
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CHANTREY,
CHANTREY,
The most eminent of our sculptors, was another noble example of successful perseverance. From a boy, accustomed to drive an ass laden with sand into Sheffield, he rose to the highest honours of an exalted profession; a large proportion of the persons of rank and distinction in his own time sat to him for busts and statues: he was knighted, and, like Canova, left considerable wealth at his death, to be devoted through future time to the encouragement of Art. His father, who was a small farmer in
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SALVATOR ROSA,
SALVATOR ROSA,
One of those high names which are everlasting monuments of the success with which true genius bids defiance to the hostilities of poverty and envy might be claimed, with pride and fondness, by either of the sister arts of Poetry and Music, were it not that his greatest triumphs were won in Painting. The wildness and sublimity of his canvas had their types in the scenery of his birth-place—the ancient and decayed villa of Renella, within view of Mount Vesuvius, and near to Naples. His father was
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BENJAMIN WEST,
BENJAMIN WEST,
An American Quaker by birth, was the youngest of a family of ten children, and was nurtured with great tenderness and care; a prophecy uttered by a preacher of the sect having impressed his parents with the belief that their child would, one day, become a great man. In what way the prophecy was to be realised they had formed to themselves no definite idea; but an incident, which occurred in young West’s sixth year, led his father to ponder deeply as to whether its fulfilment were not begun. Benj
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HANDEL.
HANDEL.
The time may come when Music will be universally recognised as the highest branch of Art; as the most powerful divulger of the intellect’s profoundest conceptions and noblest aspirations; as the truest interpreter of the heart’s loves and hates, joys and woes; as the purest, least sensual, disperser of mortal care and sorrow; as the all-glorious tongue in which refined, good, and happy beings can most perfectly utter their thoughts and emotions. Perhaps this cannot be till the realm of the physi
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GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL,
GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL,
The first of the four highest names in Music, was the son of a physician of Halle, in Lower Saxony, and was designed by his father for the study of the civil law. The child’s early attachment to music—for he could play well on the old instrument called a clavichord before he was seven years old—was, therefore, witnessed by his parent with great displeasure. Unable to resist the dictates of his nature, the boy used to climb up into a lonely garret, shut himself up, and practise, chiefly when the
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SIR HUMPHREY DAVY,
SIR HUMPHREY DAVY,
The son of a wood carver of Penzance, was apprenticed by his father to a surgeon and apothecary of that town, and afterwards with another of the same profession, but gave little satisfaction to either of his masters. Natural philosophy had become his absorbing passion; and, even while a boy, he dreamt of future fame as a chemist. The rich diversity of minerals in Cornwall offered the finest field for his empassioned inquiries; and he was in the habit of rambling alone for miles, bent upon his ye
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SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT,
SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT,
Was a poor barber till the age of thirty, and then changed his trade for that of an itinerant dealer in hair. Nothing is known of any early attachment he had for mechanical inventions; but, about four years after he had given up shaving beards, he is found enthusiastically bent on the project of discovering the “perpetual motion,” and, in his quest for a person to make him some wheels, gets acquainted with a clockmaker of Warrington, named Kay. This individual had also been for some time bent on
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THE REV. EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, D.D.,
THE REV. EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, D.D.,
Must be mentioned as the meritorious individual who completed the discovery of cotton manufacture, by the invention of the power-loom. His tendency towards mechanical contrivances had often displayed itself in his youth; but his love of literature, and settlement in the church, led him to lay aside such pursuits as trifles, and it was not till his fortieth year that a conversation occurred which roused his dormant faculty. His own account of it must be given, not only for the sake of its strikin
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JAMES WATT,
JAMES WATT,
Was the son of a small merchant of Greenock, and, on account of his weakly state when a child, was unable at first to enjoy the advantages of school tuition, and was therefore taught chiefly at home. When but six years old he was frequently caught chalking diagrams and solving problems on the hearth; and at fourteen he made a rude electrical machine with his own hands. His aunt, it is related, often chided him for indolence and mischief when he was found playing with the tea-kettle on the fire,
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COLUMBUS,
COLUMBUS,
Starts before the mind with the enunciation of the sentence just quoted. He whose indomitable perseverance carried his mutinous sailors onward—and onward—across the dreary Atlantic, in a frail bark, until fidelity to his own convictions issued in the magnificent proof of their verity, the discovery of the new world. But our space demands that we pass to the incomparable name which towers, alone, above that of James Watt, in the world’s list of the scientific benefactors of mankind; and, perhaps,
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SIR ISAAC NEWTON,
SIR ISAAC NEWTON,
It is so well known, as scarcely to need repeating here, displayed his wondrous and incontrollable tendency for scientific inquiry in boyhood. In him, too, as in the minds of almost all philosophical discoverers, was evinced the faculty for mechanical contrivance, as well as acuteness for demonstration. The anecdotes of his boyish invention, of his windmill with a mouse for the miller, his water-clock, carriage, and sun-dials, and of his kites and paper lanterns, are familiar. His mother having
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SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL,
SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL,
Newton’s greatest successor in astronomical discovery, may claim an equality with him, as a true and noble disciple of perseverance. The son of a poor Hanoverian musician, he was brought over to England, with his father, in the band of the Guards. The father returned to Hanover, but young Herschel remained, and at the age of twenty began to seek his fortune in this country. After many difficulties, wanderings from place to place, as a teacher of music in families, and a few slight glimpses of fa
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REAUMUR,
REAUMUR,
May be instanced as one of the most industrious toilers for the advancement of useful science, though he does not take rank with the unfolders of sublime truths. During a life of seventy-five years he was incessantly engaged in endeavouring to add something to the compass of human knowledge and convenience. At one time he is found pursuing an investigation into the mode of formation and growth of shells, endeavouring to account for the progressive motion of the different kinds of testaceous anim
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THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE,
THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE,
By a life of virtue and usefulness, merits the epithet to which his birth by courtesy entitled him. He was the youngest son of the first Earl of Cork, and after being educated at Eton was sent out to travel on the continent. A residence at Florence at the time of Galileo’s death, and the almost universal conversation then caused by the discoveries of that great philosopher, seem to have induced Boyle’s first attention to science. On returning to this country he very soon joined a knot of scienti
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SIR THOMAS GRESHAM,
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM,
The younger son of Sir Richard, who was a knight, alderman, sheriff, and Lord Mayor of London, and a prosperous merchant, had the twofold example set him by his father, of an intelligent pursuit of trade, and of public spirit and munificence. He was sent to Cambridge, distinguished himself in study, and might, undoubtedly, have risen to reputation in one of the learned professions; but, by his father’s wish, he turned his attention to business, and was admitted a member of the Mercers’ Company a
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JAMES LACKINGTON,
JAMES LACKINGTON,
The son of a journeyman shoemaker and of a weaver’s daughter, passed his early years amidst circumstances which must have enduringly impressed him with the miseries of vice and poverty. His father was a selfish and habitual drunkard, and his mother frequently worked nineteen or twenty hours out of the four-and-twenty to support her family. He was the eldest child of a numerous family, and was put two or three years to a dame’s school; but was less intent on learning than on “getting on in the wo
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JOHN HOWARD,
JOHN HOWARD,
Inheriting a handsome competence from his father, whom he lost while young, went abroad early, and in Italy acquired a taste for art. He made purchases of such specimens of the great masters as his means would allow, and embellished therewith his paternal seat of Cardington, in Bedfordshire. His first wife, who had attended him with the utmost kindness during a severe illness, and whom, though much older than himself, he had married from a principle of gratitude, died within three years of their
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CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION.
Work, and the true nobility of being devoted to it, distinguished every exemplar recorded in our sketch; and no name of eminence or excellence can be selected in human annals who has ever used the phrase, which can only console idiots, that “he is perfectly happy, for he has nothing to do, and nothing to think about!” “Nothing to do!” in a world whose elements are, as yet, but partially subdued by man, and whose happiness can be augmented so incalculably by the perfecting of his dominion over Na
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INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
Without Enterprise there would have been no civilization, and there would now be no progress. To try, to attempt, to pass beyond an obstacle, marks the civilized man as distinguished from the savage. The advantage of passing beyond a difficulty by a single act of trial has offered itself, in innumerable instances, to the savage, but in vain; it has passed him by unobserved, unheeded. Nay, more: when led by the civilized man to partake of the advantages of higher life, the savage has repeatedly r
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GENERAL PUTNAM,
GENERAL PUTNAM,
Who signalised his courage in the struggles with the French on the continent of North America about the middle of the last century, removed after the war to the State of Connecticut. The wolves, then very numerous, broke into his sheepfold, and killed seven fine sheep and goats, besides wounding many lambs and kids. The chief havoc was committed by a she-wolf, which, with her annual litter of whelps, had infested the neighbourhood. The young were generally destroyed by the vigilance of the hunte
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LIEUT. EVAN DAVIES,
LIEUT. EVAN DAVIES,
Which occurred while the British army was lying at Agoada, near Goa, 1809. A report was one morning brought to the cantonment that a very large tiger had been seen on the rocks near the sea. About nine o’clock a number of horses and men assembled at the spot where it was said to have been seen, when, after some search, the animal was discovered to be in the recess of an immense rock; dogs were sent in in the hope of starting him, but without effect, having returned with several wounds. Finding i
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Equally early with their contests with wild animals primeval men would have had to encounter peril, and to overcome difficulty in the fulfilment of the natural desire possessed by some of them to visit new regions of the earth. Even if the theory be true which is supported by hundreds of learned volumes, that man’s first habitation was in the most agreeable and fertile portion of Asia, by the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the native characteristic of enterprise would impel some among the fi
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
He who first committed himself to the perils of the great waters must have been peculiarly distinguished among men for his intrepidity. Modern adventure on the wide ocean, or in comparatively unknown seas, is not accompanied with that uncertainty and sense of utter desolation which must have filled the mind of early adventurers when driven out of sight of land by the tempest; but neither the discovery of the compass nor the many other aids to safety possessed by modern navigators free their ente
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
One path of Enterprise belongs distinctly to modern adventurers—the search after interesting remains of antiquity, and investigation of their present actual condition. Such enterprises of discovery have often their source in a love of Art, which can only exist in the most cultivated minds. In other instances they arise from a laudable desire to verify ancient history, and thus serve the highly important purpose of confirming that branch of human knowledge which has hitherto depended simply on th
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
With the progress of civilization, Enterprise took more diversified forms. First, man was summoned to display this commanding quality of mind in the subjugation or destruction of the stronger and fiercer animals; then he had to enter on the perilous adventure into strange regions by land, and the hazardous transit of the ocean, in search of still more unknown countries. We have just glanced at another department of enterprise—the search for antiquities; and the subject was placed in this order b
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CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION.
To describe, even by a single sentence each, the great enterprises of England—her harbours, bridges, canals, railways, mines, manufactures, shipping—would occupy volumes. Suffice it to say that our country has become more and more the land of Enterprise. This, indeed, must be the grand characteristic of the civilised world, universally, if the old and evil passion for war be not renewed. In bygone ages the only path to prosperity for nations was supposed to be war. Nations seemed to think that w
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