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Page 42
Take a man of another stamp, and observe how he met the first blows of
Fortune. Thomas Carlyle had dwelt on a lonely moorland for six years.
He came to London and employed himself with feverish energy on a book
which he thought would win him bread, even if it did not gain him
fame. Writing was painful to him, and he never set down a sentence
without severe labour. With infinite pains he sought out the history
of the French Revolution and obtained a clear picture of that
tremendous event. Piece by piece he put his first volume together and
satisfied himself that he had done something which would live. He
handed his precious manuscript to Stuart Mill, and Mill's servant lit
the fire with it. Carlyle had exhausted his means, and his great work
was really his only capital. Like all men who write at high pressure,
he was unable to recall anything that he had once set down, and, so
far as his priceless volume went, his mind was a blank. Years of toil
were thrown away; time was fleeting, and the world was careless of the
matchless historian. The first news of his loss stunned him, and, had
he been a weak man, he would have collapsed under the blow. He saw
nothing but bitter poverty for himself and his wife, and he had some
thoughts of betaking himself to the Far West; but he conquered his
weakness, forgot his despair in labour, and doggedly re-wrote the
masterpiece which raised him to instant fame and caused him to be
regarded as one of the first men in Britain. In the whole wide history
of human trials I cannot recall a more shining instance of fortitude
and triumphant victory over obstacles. Let those who are cast down by
some petty trouble think of the lonely, poverty-stricken student
bending himself to his task after the very light of his life had been
dimmed for a while.
There is nothing like an array of instances for driving home an
argument, so I mention the case of a man about whom much debate goes
on even to this day. Napoleon starved in the streets of Paris; one by
one he sold his books to buy bread; he was without light or fire on
nights of iron frost, and his clothing was too scanty to keep out the
cold. He arrived at that pass which induces some men to end all their
woes by one swift plunge into the river; but he was not of the
despairful stamp, and he stood his term of misery bravely until the
light came for him. Leave his splendid, chequered career of glory and
crime out of reckoning, and remember only that he became emperor
because he had courage to endure starvation; that lesson at least from
his career can harm no one. Choose the example of a woman, for
variety's sake. George Eliot was quite content to scrub furniture,
make cheese and butter, and sweep carpets until she arrived at ripe
womanhood. She felt her own extraordinary power; but she never repined
at the prospect of spending her life in what is lightly called
domestic drudgery. The Shining Ones oftenest walk in lowly places and
utter no sound of mourning. She was nearing middle age before she had
an opportunity of gaining that astonishing erudition which amazed
professed students, and, had she not chanced to meet Mr. Spencer, our
greatest philosopher, she would have lived and died unknown. She never
questioned the decrees of the Power that rules us all, and, when she
suddenly took her place as one of the first living novelists, she
accepted her fame and her wealth humbly and simply. Till her last day
she remembered her bitter years of frustration and failure, and the
meanest of mortals had a share of her holy sympathy; she gained her
unexampled conquest by resolutely treading down despair, and her brave
story should cheer the many girls who find life bleak and joyless.
George Eliot was prepared to bear the worst that could befall her, and
it was her frank and gentle acceptance of the facts of life that
brought her joy in the end. We must also remember such people as
Arkwright, Stephenson, Thomas Edwards the naturalist, and Heine the
poet. Arkwright saw his best machinery smashed again and again; but
his bull-dog courage brought him through his trouble, and he
surmounted opposition that would have driven a weakling to exile and
death. Stephenson feared that he would never conquer the great morass
at Chat Moss, and he knew that, if he failed, his reputation would
perish. He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor
Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he
received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and
old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came;
but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven
years in his "mattress grave;" he was torn from head to foot by the
pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid
of the other had to be raised in order that he might see those who
visited him. Let those who have ever felt the aching of a single tooth
imagine what it must have been to suffer the same kind of pain over
the whole body. Surely this poor tortured wretch might have been
pardoned had he esteemed his life a failure! His spirit never flagged,
and he wrote the brightest, lightest mockeries that ever were framed
by the wit of man; his poems will be the delight of Europe for years
to come, and his memory can no more perish than that of Shakspere.
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