Character Part 28

[Footnote 2017: 'Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romily,' vol. i. p. 41.]

[Footnote 2018: It is a singular circ.u.mstance that in the parish church of St.

Bride, Fleet Street, there is a tablet on the wall with an inscription to the memory of Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., who died in 1759, of a broken heart, seven days after the decease of a beloved wife--CHAMBERS' BOOK OF DAYS, vol. ii. p. 539.]

[Footnote 2019: Mr. Frank Buckland says "During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honour of editing, my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this often till the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking, and the wife to rest her weary hand. Not only with her pen did she render material a.s.sistance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate ill.u.s.trations and finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken fossils; and there are many specimens in the Oxford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape from a ma.s.s of broken and almost comminuted fragments."]

[Footnote 2020: Veitch's 'Memoirs of Sir William Hamilton.']

[Footnote 2021: The following extract from Mr. Veitch's biography will give one an idea of the extraordinary labours of Lady Hamilton, to whose unfailing devotion to the service of her husband the world of intellect has been so much indebted: "The number of pages in her handwriting," says Mr.

Veitch,--"filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted, bristling with proportional and syllogistic formulae--that are still preserved, is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the press, and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest spirit of love and devotion. She had a power, moreover, of keeping her husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely against a sort of energetic indolence which characterised him, and which, while he was always labouring, made him apt to put aside the task actually before him--sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the difficulty of reducing to order the immense ma.s.s of materials he had acc.u.mulated in connection with it. Then her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and refreshed him, and never more so than when, during the last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken, and his spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is, that Sir William's marriage, his comparatively limited circ.u.mstances, and the character of his wife, supplied to a nature that would have been contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no reward but in the doing of it, and that might never have been made publicly known or available, the practical force and impulse which enabled him to accomplish what he actually did in literature and philosophy. It was this influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption in his world of rare, n.o.ble, and elevated, but ever-increasingly unattainable ideas. But for it, the serene sea of abstract thought might have held him becalmed for life; and in the absence of all utterance of definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."]

[Footnote 211: 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']

[Footnote 212: Joseph Lancaster was only twenty years of age when [21in 1798: he opened his first school in a spare room in his father's house, which was soon filled with the dest.i.tute children of the neighbourhood. The room was shortly found too small for the numbers seeking admission, and one place after another was hired, until at length Lancaster had a special building erected, capable of accommodating a thousand pupils; outside of which was placed the following notice:--"All that will, may send their children here, and have them educated freely; and those that do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." Thus Joseph Lancaster was the precursor of our present system of National Education.]

[Footnote 213: A great musician once said of a promising but pa.s.sionless cantatrice--"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"--BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

[Footnote 214: Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]

[Footnote 215: A cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet, raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch!

See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating FOURPENCE to purchase a little coals. I have not them to give him!" The cavalier, Sousa quaintly relates, in his 'Life of Camoens,' closed his heart and his purse, and quitted the room. Such were the grandees of Portugal!--Lord Strangford's REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF CAMOENS, 1824.]

[Footnote 216: See chapter v. p. 125.]

[Footnote 217: A Quaker called on Bunyan one day with "a message from the Lord,"

saying he had been to half the gaols of England, and was glad at last to have found him. To which Bunyan replied: "If the Lord sent thee, you would not have needed to take so much trouble to find me out, for He knew that I have been in Bedford Gaol these seven years past."]

[Footnote 218: Prynne, besides standing in the pillory and having his ears cut off, was imprisoned by turns in the Tower, Mont Orgueil [21Jersey], Dunster Castle, Taunton Castle, and Pendennis Castle. He after-wards pleaded zealously for the Restoration, and was made Keeper of the Records by Charles II. It has been computed that Prynne wrote, compiled, and printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.]

[Footnote 219: He also projected his 'Review' in prison--the first periodical of the kind, which pointed the way to the host of 'Tatlers,' 'Guardians,'

and 'Spectators,' which followed it. The 'Review' consisted of 102 numbers, forming nine quarto volumes, all of which were written by De Foe himself, while engaged in other and various labours.]

[Footnote 2110: A pa.s.sage in the Earl of Carlisles Lecture on Pope--'Heaven was made for those who have failed in this world'--struck me very forcibly several years ago when I read it in a newspaper, and became a rich vein of thought, in which I often quarried, especially when the sentence was interpreted by the Cross, which was failure apparently."--LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERTSON [21of Brighton], ii. 94.]

[Footnote 2111:

"Not all who seem to fail, have failed indeed; Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain: For all our acts to many issues lead; And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain, Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain, The Lord will fashion, in His own good time, [21Be this the labourer's proudly-humble creed,]

Such ends as, to His wisdom, fitliest chime With His vast love's eternal harmonies.

There is no failure for the good and wise: What though thy seed should fall by the wayside And the birds s.n.a.t.c.h it;--yet the birds are fed; Or they may bear it far across the tide, To give rich harvests after thou art dead."

POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE, 1848.]

[Footnote 2112: "What is it," says Mr. Helps, "that promotes the most and the deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning; it is not the conduct of business; it is not even the impulse of the affections. It is suffering; and that, perhaps, is the reason why there is so much suffering in the world. The angel who went down to trouble the waters and to make them healing, was not, perhaps, entrusted with so great a boon as the angel who benevolently inflicted upon the sufferers the disease from which they suffered."--BREVIA.]

[Footnote 2113: These lines were written by Deckar, in a spirit of boldness equal to its piety. Hazlitt has or said of them, that they "ought to embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius."]

[Footnote 2114: Reboul, originally a baker of Nismes, was the author of many beautiful poems--amongst others, of the exquisite piece known in this country by its English translation, ent.i.tled 'The Angel and the Child.']

[Footnote 2115: 'Cornhill Magazine,' vol. xvi. p. 322.]

[Footnote 2116: 'Holy Living and Dying,' ch. ii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2117: Ibid., ch. iii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2118: Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. x. p. 40.]