Chapter 11

SELF-CULTURE—FACILITIES AND DIFFICULTIES. Sir W. Scott and Sir B. Brodie on self-culture—Dr. 314–359 Arnold’s spirit—Active employment salutary—Malthus’s advice to his son—Importance of physical health—Hodson, of “Hodson’s Horse”—Dr. Channing—Early labour—Training in use of tools—Healthiness of great men—Sir Walter Scott’s athletic sports—Barrow, Fuller, Clarke—Labour conquers all things—Words of Chatterton, Ferguson, Stone, Drew—Well-directed labour—Opinions of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fowell Buxton, Dr. Ross, F. Horner, Loyola, and Lord St. Leonards—Thoroughness, accuracy, decision, and promptitude—The virtue of patient labour—The mischievous effects of “cramming” in labour-saving processes and multifarious reading—The right use of knowledge—Books may impart learning, but well-applied knowledge and experience only exhibit wisdom—The Magna Charta men—Brindley, Stephenson, Hunter, and others, not book-learned yet great—Self-respect—Jean Paul Richter—Knowledge as a means of rising—Base views of the value of knowledge—Ideas of Bacon and Southey—Douglas Jerrold on comic literature—Danger of immoderate love of pleasure—Benjamin Constant: his high thinking and low living—Thierry: his noble character—Coleridge and Southey—Robert Nicoll on Coleridge—Charles James Fox on perseverance—The wisdom and strength acquired through failure—Hunter, Rossini, Davy, Mendelssohn—The uses of difficulty and adversity—Lyndhurst, D’Alembert, Carissimi, Reynolds, and Henry Clay on persistency—Curran on honest poverty—Struggles with difficulties: Alexander Murray, William Chambers, Cobbet—The French stonemason turned Professor—Sir Samuel Romilly as a self-cultivator—John Leyden’s perseverance—Professor Lee: his perseverance and his attainments as a linguist—Late learners: Spelman, Franklin, Dryden, Scott, Boccaccio, Arnold, and others—Illustrious dunces: Generals Grant, Stonewall Jackson, John Howard, Davy, and others—Story of a dunce—Success depends on perseverance