Chapter III: Part 3

When at Oxford, he formed for himself a scheme of studies: Mondays and Tuesdays were allotted for the Classics; Wednesdays to logic and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to oratory and poetry, but chiefly to composition in those arts; and the Sabbath to divinity. It appears by his diary, also, that he gave great attention to mathematics. Full of business as he now was, he found time for writing by rising an hour earlier in the morning, and going into company an hour later in the evening: he had generally from ten to twelve hours in the day which he could devote to study: and thus he became alike familiar with the literature of his day, as well as with that of past ages.

Dr. Philip Doddridge attributes the production of his various writings to his rising early; adding, “the difference between rising at five and seven o’clock in the morning for the space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to his life.”

Through life, Gibbon the historian was a very early riser. Before the first volume of his _Decline and Fall_ had given him celebrity, six o’clock was his usual hour of rising: fashionable parties and the House of Commons brought him down to eight.

The day of the profound German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was begun early. Precisely at five minutes before five o’clock, winter or summer, Lampe, Kant’s servant, who had formerly served in the army, marched into his master’s room with the air of a sentinel on duty, and cried aloud in a military tone, “Mr. Professor, the time is come.” This summons Kant invariably obeyed without one moment’s delay, as a soldier does the word of command—never, under any circumstances, allowing himself a respite, not even under the rare accident of having passed a sleepless night. As the clock struck five, Kant was seated at the breakfast-table, where he drank what he called _one_ cup of tea, and no doubt he thought it such; but the fact was, that, in part from his habit of reverie, and in part also for the purpose of refreshing its warmth, he filled up his cup so often, that in general he is supposed to have drunk two, three, or some unknown number. Immediately after, he smoked a pipe of tobacco; during which operation he thought over his arrangements for the day, as he had done the evening before during the twilight.

Thomson, who has advocated early rising more eloquently than any other writer, was himself an indolent man; he usually lay in bed till noon, and his principal time for composition was midnight. One of his early pictures is:

When from the opening chambers of the east,
The morning springs, in thousand liveries drest,
The early larks their morning tribute pay,
And in shrill notes salute the blooming day.
* * * *
The crowing cock and chattering hen awakes
Dull sleepy clowns, who know the morning breaks.
In his Golden Age of Innocence—
The first fresh dawn then waked the gladdened race
Of uncorrupted man, nor blushed to see
The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam,
Then, his charming Summer morn:
Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,
And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour,
To meditation due, and sacred song?
For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half
The fleeting moments of too short a life,—
Total extinction of the enlightened soul!
Or else to feverish vanity alive,
Wildered, and tossing through distempered dreams!
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than Nature craves; when every muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk?

Lord Chatham, writing to his nephew, January 12, 1754, says: _Vitanda est improba Syren, Desidia_, I desire may be affixed to the curtains of your bedchamber. If you do not rise early, you can never make any progress worth mentioning. If you do not set apart your hours of reading, if you suffer yourself or any one else to break in upon them, your days will slip through your hands unprofitably and frivolously, unpraised by all you wish to please, and really unenjoyed by yourself.

Harford relates of Dr. Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury:

Of his literary labours and self-denying life, writes a clergyman,
“few can have any conception. I was frequently admitted to see him
on business, even as early as six in the morning, when, rather than
detain me, he has seen me in his dressing-room. Often he kindly
remarked, ‘Your time is not your own, and is as precious to you as
mine; scruple not to send to me when you really want to see me.’ On
one of my early morning visits, about eight o’clock, in the winter,
I found him seated in his greatcoat and hat, writing at a table, in
a room without a carpet, the floor covered with old folios, and his
candles only just extinguished. ‘I have been writing and reading,’
he said, ’since five o’clock.’ At another time I breakfasted with
him one morning, by appointment, at his hotel in town; and found him
at eight o’clock, about Christmas, writing by candlelight; the whole
room being strewed with old books, collected from various places in
the metropolis. The untiring perseverance with which he prosecuted
his researches for evidence on any particular subject is
inconceivable.”

Sir Astley Cooper, in one of his Lectures to his pupils, used to say: “The means by which I preserve my own health are: temperance, early rising, and sponging my body every morning with cold water,—a practice I have pursued for thirty years; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital in the severest winter-nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold. An old Scotch physician, for whom I had a great respect, and whom I frequently met professionally in the City, used to say, as we were entering the patient’s room, ‘Weel, Mister Cooper, we ha’ only twa things to keep in meend, and they’ll sarve us for here and herea’ter: one is always to have the fear of the Laird before our ees, that ’ill do for herea’ter; and the t’other is to keep your booels open, and that will do for here.’”

William Cobbett, who had great contempt for conventionalities, was an early riser from his boyhood,—when his first occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and the rooks from the peas; when he trudged with his wooden bottle and his satchel, and was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles; when he weeded wheat, and had a single horse at harrowing barley; drove the team, or held the plough—which employments he apostrophises as “Honest pride, and happy days!” He tells us that to the husbanding well of his time he owed his extraordinary promotion in the army. He says: “I was always ready: if I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine; never did any man or any thing wait one moment for me. Being at an age under twenty years, raised from Corporal to Sergeant-Major at once, over the heads of thirty Sergeants, I naturally should have been an object of envy and hatred; but the habit of early rising really subdued these passions; because every one felt that what I did he had never done, and never could do. Before my promotion, a clerk was wanted to make out the morning report of the regiment. I rendered the clerk unnecessary; and long before any other man was dressed for the parade, my work for the morning was all done, and I myself was on the parade, walking, in fine weather, for an hour perhaps. My custom was this: to get up in summer at daylight, and in winter at four o’clock; shave, dress, and even to the putting of the sword-belt over my shoulder, and having the sword lying on the table before me, ready to hang by my side. Then I ate a bit of cheese, or pork, and bread. Then I prepared my report, which was filled up as fast as the companies brought me in the materials. After this I had an hour or two to read, before the time came for my duty out of doors, unless when the regiment, or part of it, went out to exercise in the morning. When this was the case, and the matter was left to me, I always had it on the ground in such time as that the bayonets glistened in the rising sun; a sight which gave me delight, of which I often think, but which I should in vain endeavour to describe. When I was commander, the men had a long day of leisure before them: they could ramble into the town or into the woods; go to get raspberries, to catch birds, to catch fish, or to pursue any other recreation; and such of them as chose and were qualified, to work at their trades. So that here, arising solely from the early habits of one very young man, were pleasant and happy days given to hundreds.”

Elsewhere Cobbett addresses this advice “to a lover:” “Early rising is a mark of industry; and though, in the higher situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other respects: for it is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the dew, never beholds the rising sun, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to the breakfast-table, and there chews about without appetite the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a month or two without being disgusted; but that is ample allowance of time. And as to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and never was there yet an early-rising wife who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit: at first she will be indulged without bounds; to make change afterwards will be difficult; it will be deemed a wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection; a quarrel must ensue, or the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his labour snored and lounged away. And is this being rigid? is it being harsh? is it being hard upon women? Is it the offspring of the frigid severity of the age? It is none of these: it arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of their lives, weight and consequence, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.”

When Cobbett had become a public writer, he constantly inveighed against those who

O’er books consumed the midnight oil.

In country or in town, at Barn Elms, in Bolt-court, or at Kensington, he wrote his Registers early in the morning: these, it must be admitted, had force enough; for he said truly, “Though I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the intense people on the other side of the Channel call _eloquence_, I bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression.” This he owed, doubtless, to his industry, early rising, and methodical habits.

Daniel Webster, the famous American statesman, unlike most men of his day, usually went to bed by nine o’clock, and rose very early in the morning. General Lynian had heard Webster say, that while in Washington, there were periods when he shaved and dressed himself for six months together by candlelight. The morning was his time for study, writing, thinking, and all kinds of mental labour: from the moment when the first streak of dawn was seen in the east, till nine or ten o’clock in the forenoon, scarcely a moment was lost; and it was then that his work was principally done. Persons who occasionally called upon him as early as ten in the morning, and found him ready to converse with them, wondered when he did his work; for they knew that he did work, yet they rarely, if ever, found him, like other men of business, engaged. The truth was, that when their day’s work began, his ended; and while they were indulging in their morning dreams, Webster was up, looking “quite through the deeds of men.” This habit, followed from his youth, enabled him to make those remarkable acquisitions of knowledge on all subjects, and afforded him so much leisure to devote to his friends.

The college-life of Albert, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria, presents us with some of the beneficial results of the habit of early rising. The people of England were not a little surprised, at first, to hear that the Queen and the royal Consort were seen walking together at a very early hour on the morning of the very day after their marriage. But, while at Bonn, Prince Albert was particularly distinguished from the other students of the same rank for the salutary habit of getting up early, one which he had uniformly persevered in from his boyhood: therefore, it is very natural that he should have adhered to it after he had come of age, whether in England or in any other country, and be likely to do so all the days of his life. At Bonn, the prince generally rose about half-past five o’clock in the morning, and never prolonged his repose after six. From that hour up to seven in the evening, he assiduously devoted his whole time to his studies, with the exception of an interval of three hours, which he allowed himself for dinner and recreation. At seven he usually went out, and paid visits to those individuals or families who were honoured with his acquaintance.[22]

To these instances of the remarkable labours which have been accomplished by rising early, it can scarcely be considered necessary to add any thing to enforce the benefits to be derived from the practice. Nevertheless, something has been said on the other side. An able essayist has urged that most people who get up unusually early find that there is nothing to do when they are dressed. There are comparatively few mornings in the year when it is pleasant to take an hour’s walk before breakfast in the country. Then, if the early riser stays within doors, the sitting-rooms are not ready for his reception. Among the physical inconveniences, this writer shows that the early riser, if not tormented with a consequent headache, is often troubled with a feeling of sleepiness and heaviness through the latter part of the day; and, as far as time goes, he is apt to lose afterwards much more, while he in some way or other compensates himself for his activity, than he gained by the extra hour we are supposing him to have had early in the morning. Then, the moral effect on the early riser, it is said, is to cause in him an exuberant feeling of conscious goodness: he has performed a feat which raises him, by his moral self-approval, above ordinary people, who merely come down to breakfast. There is some truth in all this, which, however, we think to be the exception rather than the rule; for if early rising be the general practice in a house, these minor inconveniences will soon disappear. The above writer is inclined to allow that the objections to early rising may too exclusively rest on exceptional cases. He admits, with great fairness, in favour of the practice, that “if the spare hour can be turned to serious profit, so much the better. Coming at the beginning of the day, it finds the mind tranquil, sanguine, and fresh. The time it gives is likely to be free from interruptions; and the good effect of the study will tell more powerfully than when it has, as it were, the whole day in its grasp, than if it were merely slipt in among the other thoughts and occupations of busier hours. Health, too, is said to profit by early rising; and so many people have stated this as a fact, that it may perhaps be taken for granted.”[23]

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Footnote 21:

See _School-days of Eminent Men_, by the Author of the present volume.
Second edition, 1862.

Footnote 22:

_History of the University of Bonn._

Footnote 23:

_Saturday Review_, March 26, 1859.

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THE ART OF EMPLOYING TIME.

The Aristotelian philosopher has well expressed its value by saying, “Nothing is more precious than time; and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.”

Again:

The time of life is short:
To spend that shortness basely, were too long
If life did ride upon a dial’s point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.

Fuller has this quaint instruction upon our present topic: “Lay down such rules to thyself, of observing stated hours for study and business, as no man shall be able to persuade thee to recede from. For when thy resolutions are once known, as no man of ingenuity will disturb thee, so thou wilt find this method will become not only more practicable, but of singular benefit in abundance of things.

“He that loseth his morning studies, gives an ill precedent to the afternoon, and makes such a hole in the beginning of the day, that all the winged hours will be in danger of flying out thereat: think how much work is behind; how slow thou hast wrought in thy time that is past; and what a reckoning thou shouldst make, if thy Master should call thee this day to thine account.

“There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to spend his time. He is restless in his thoughts, unsteady in his counsels, dissatisfied with the present, solicitous for the future.

“Be always employed; thou wilt never be better pleased than when thou hast something to do. For business, by its motion, brings heat and life to the spirits; but idleness corrupts them like standing water.

“Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which if thou procrastinatest, thou losest; which loss is lost for ever.”

Dr. South, in one of his nervous Discourses, speaking of the uncertainty of the present, says: “The sun shines in his full brightness but the very moment before he passes under a cloud. Who knows what a day, what an hour may bring forth? He who builds upon the present, builds upon the narrow compass of a point; and where the foundation is so narrow, the superstructure cannot be high and strong too.”

Sir William Jones, the profound scholar, of whom it was said that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury-plain he would nevertheless find the road to fame and riches, left among his manuscripts the following lines on the management of his time, which he had written in India, on a small piece of paper:

_Sir Edward Coke:_

Six hours in sleep, in law’s great study six;
Four spend in prayer—the rest on nature fix.

_Rather:_

Seven hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven;
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.

Dr. Johnson has moralised on Money and Time as “the heaviest burdens of life;” adding, “the unhappiest of mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use. To set himself free from these incumbrances, one hurries to Newmarket; another travels over Europe; one pulls down his house, and calls architects about him; another buys a seat in the country, and follows his hounds over hedges and through rivers; one makes collections of shells; and another searches the world for tulips and carnations.”

Elsewhere Johnson has these pertinent remarks: “Among those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external circumstances could place in their way,—amidst the tumults of business, the distresses of poverty, or the dissipation of a wandering and unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus was one continued peregrination: ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city and from kingdom to kingdom by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him, he yet found means, by unshaken constancy and a vigilant improvement of those hours which in the midst of the most restless activity will remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition could have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined to his knowledge of the world such application to books, that he will stand for ever in the first rank of literary heroes. Now, this proficiency he sufficiently discovers, by informing us that the _Praise of Folly_, one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy, lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horseback should be tattled away, without regard to literature.”

These are two memorable instances of the employment of minute portions of time. We are told of Queen Elizabeth, that, except when engaged by public or domestic affairs, and the exercises necessary for the preservation of her health and spirits, she was always employed in either reading or writing, in translating from other authors, or in compositions of her own; and that, notwithstanding she spent much of her time in reading the best writings of her own and former ages, yet she by no means neglected that best of books, the Bible; for proof of which, take the Queen’s own words: “I walk many times in the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I pluck up the godlisome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high seat of memory by gathering them together; that so, having tasted their sweetness, I may the less perceive the bitterness of life.” Her piety and great good sense were undeniable.

The Chancellor of France, D’Aguesseau, finding that his wife always kept him waiting a quarter of an hour after the dinner-bell had rung, resolved to devote the time to writing a book on jurisprudence; and putting the subject in execution, in course of time produced a work in four quarto volumes. His literary tastes greatly distinguished him from the mass of mere lawyers.

He whose mind the world wholly occupies imagines that no time can be spared for divine duties. But many circumstances in the lives of good men inform him that he is mistaken. The wise statesman, the sound lawyer, the eminent merchant, the skilful physician, the most profound mathematician, astronomer, or general student, will rise up in judgment against the man who endeavours to excuse the observance of his religious duties under the plea of learned or professional employment. Addison, Hale, Thornton, Boerhaave, Bacon, Boyle, Newton, Locke, and many others, prove that while the most important of worldly studies and occupations employed their outward attention, _God rested at their hearts_. The Ethiopian treasurer read Isaiah in his chariot, and Isaac meditated in the fields. The friends of the good Hooker, when they went to visit him at his parsonage, found him with a book in his hand, tending his own sheep. In short, the true Christian will neither want place nor opportunity for devotion, nor for the cultivation of those useful and general talents which may contribute to the benefit or happiness of man.

Lord Woodhouselee, in his _Life of Lord Kames_, has well remarked, that the professional occupations of the best-employed lawyer or the most distinguished judge cannot fill up every interval of his time. The useful respite of vacation, the hours of sickness, the surcease of employment from the infirmities of age,—all necessarily induce seasons of languor, against which a wise man would do well to provide a store in reserve, and an antidote and cordial to cheer and support his spirits. In this light the pursuits of science and literature afford an unbounded field and endless variety of useful occupations; and even in the latest hours of life the reflection on the time thus spent, and the anticipation of an honourable memorial in after ages, are sources of consolation of which every ingenuous mind must fully feel the value. How melancholy was the reflection uttered on his deathbed by one of the ablest lawyers and judges of the last age, but whose mental stores were wholly limited to the ideas connected with his profession, “_My life has been a chaos of nothing!_”

Sir Matthew Hale, one of the most upright judges that ever sat upon the English bench, was of a benevolent and devout, as well as righteous disposition; and in addition to his great legal works, found time to write several volumes on natural philosophy and divinity. His _Contemplations Moral and Divine_, written two centuries since, retain their popularity to this day. Bishop Burnet, his biographer, tells us that “his whole life was nothing else but a continual course of labour and industry; and when he could borrow any time from the public service, it was wholly employed either in philosophical or divine meditation.” ... “He that considers the active part of his life, and with what unwearied diligence and application of mind he despatched all men’s business that came under his care, will wonder how he could find time for contemplation; he that considers, again, the various studies he passed through, and the many collections and observations he made, may as justly wonder how he could find any time for action. But no man can wonder at the exemplary piety and innocence of such a life so spent as this was, wherein, as he was careful to avoid every evil word, so it is manifest _he never spent an idle day_.”

At every turn we are defeated through want of due regard to this preciousness of time. “In early life we lay long plans of conduct. After a considerable interval, we find most of our plans unexecuted; we then begin to reflect that if they _are_ to be accomplished, a far smaller portion of our time than we had originally allotted to them can be employed in their execution, and, what is perhaps more fatal to our schemes, that portion is uncertain. An awful thought for those who have in their possession many of the chief blessings of life, and are approaching, by a rapid progress, that mortal bourn from whence no traveller returns.”[24]

How much of our time would be saved by the cultivation of the habit of being content to be ignorant of certain subjects! Nothing can be more beneficial to the mind than this habit; since it has thereby a more free and open access to matters of the highest importance.

How much of our time is wasted in paying visits of insincerity! Boileau being one day visited by an indolent person of rank, who reproached him with not having returned his former call; “You and I,” replied the satirist, “are upon unequal terms: I lose my time when I pay you a visit; you only get rid of yours when you pay me one.”

One of the most familiar methods of taking note of time is by what are usually termed family parties. When these are given on public holidays, the effect is doubtless beneficial. Southey has well remarked: “Festivals, when duly observed, attach men to the civil and religious institutions of their country: it is an evil, therefore, when they fall into disuse.” They do more,—in reminding us of the fewer anniversaries we have to witness.

Boyle has these wholesome reflections upon _profuse talkers_: he tells us “that easiness of admitting all Kind of Company, provided men have boldness enough to intrude into ours, is one of the uneasiest Hardships (not to say Martyrdoms) to which Custom has expos’d us, and does really do more Mischief than most Men take notice of; since it does not only keep impertinent Fools in countenance, but encourages them to be very troublesome to Wise Men. The World is pester’d with a certain sort of Praters, who make up in Loudness what their Discourses want in Sense; and because Men are so easie natur’d as to allow the hearing to their Impertinencies, they presently presume that the things they speak are none; and most Men are so little able to discern in Discourse betwixt Confidence and Wit, that to any that will but talk loud enough they will be sure to afford answers. And (which is worse) this readiness to hazard our Patience, and certainly lose our Time, and thereby incourage others to multiply idle words, of which the Scripture seems to speak threateningly, is made by Custom an Expression, if not a Duty, of Civility; and so even a Virtue is made accessory to a Fault.

“For my part, though I think these Talkative people worse publick Grievances than many of those for whose prevention or redress Parliaments are wont to be assembled and Laws to be enacted; and though I think their Robbing us of our time a much worse Mischief than those petty Thefts for which Judges condemn Men, as a little Money is a less valuable good than that precious Time, which no sum of it can either purchase or redeem; yet I confess I think that our great Lords and Ladies, that can admit this sort of Company, deserve it: For if such Persons have but minds in any measure suited to their Qualities, they may safely, by their Discountenance, banish such pitiful Creatures, and secure their Quiet, not only without injuring the Reputation of their Civility, but by advancing that of their Judgment.”

Sir John Harrington, the epigrammatic poet in the reign of Elizabeth, and a dangler at her court, appears, by the following confession, from his _Breefe Notes and Remembrances_, to have been a disappointed man: “I have spente my time, my fortune, and almost my honestie, to buy false hope, false friends, and shallow praise;—and be it remembered, that he who casteth up this reckoning of a courtlie minnion, will sette his summe like a foole at the ende, for not being a knave at the beginninge. Oh, that I could boaste, with chaunter David, _In te speravi Domine!_”

Many ill-regulated persons thoughtlessly waste their own time simultaneously with that of others. Lord Sandwich, when he presided at the Board of Admiralty, paid no attention to any memorial that extended beyond a single page. “If any man,” he said, “will draw up his case, and will put his name to the bottom of the first page, I will give him an immediate reply: where he compels me to turn over the page, he must wait my pleasure.”

George III., though always willing and ready for business, disliked (as who does not?) long speeches out of season; and grievously lamented the well-informed but verbose and ill-timed eloquence of his minister, Grenville. “When,” such were the King’s own words to Lord Bute, “he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for one hour more.”

Paley had an ingenious mode of economising his time, and keeping off these time-wasters. The Earl of Ellenborough is in possession of the only original portrait of the Doctor, which was painted for the earl’s father by Romney. Paley was painted with the fishing-rod, by his own particular desire; not because he cared much about fishing, but because while he was so occupied he could keep intruders at a distance, and give his mind to uninterrupted thought. He kept people away, not because they disturbed the fish, but because they disturbed him. _He composed his works while he seemed to fish._[25]

Sterne, in one of his fascinating Letters, writes: “Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen: the days and hours of it more precious, my dear Jenny, than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more. Every thing presses on; whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see, it grows gray; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.”

Thomson’s habit of composition while he lay in bed has been mentioned. We knew a reverend vicar who usually composed his sermon in bed, and committed it to paper next morning. Dr. Wallis, who nearly two centuries ago was professor of geometry at Oxford, attained the power of making arithmetical calculations “without the assistance of pen and ink, or aught equivalent thereunto,” to such an extent, that he extracted the square root of three down to twenty places of decimals. We must indeed suppose him to have had originally some peculiar aptitude for such calculations; but he describes himself to have acquired it by practising at night and in the dark, when there was nothing to be seen, and nothing to be heard, that would disturb his attention. It is in such uninterrupted intervals that we best learn to think; and Sir Benjamin Brodie[26] acknowledges that in these ways he had not unfrequently derived ample compensation for the wearisome hours of a sleepless night.

Division of time is the grand secret of successful industry. Lockhart, in his _Life of Scott_, shows how effectually the illustrious subject of his memoir found opportunity for unequalled literary labour, even while enjoying all the amusements of a man of leisure. “Sir Walter rose by five o’clock, lit his own fire when the season required one, and shaved and dressed with great deliberation; for,” says his biographer, “he was a very martinet as to all but the mere coxcombries of the toilet, not abhorring effeminate dandyism itself so cordially as the slightest approach to personal slovenliness, or even those ‘bed-gown and slipper tricks,’ as he called them, in which literary men are so apt to indulge. Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o’clock, all his papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay watching his eye just beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) ‘to break the neck of the day’s work.’ After breakfast a couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to say, ‘his own man.’ When the weather was bad, he would labour incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on horseback by one o’clock at the latest; while, if any more distant excursion had been proposed overnight, he was ready to start on it by ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study forming, as he said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness.”

Sir Walter Scott, writing to a friend who had obtained a situation, gave him this excellent practical advice: “You must be aware of stumbling over a propensity, which easily besets you from the habit of not having your time fully employed; I mean what the women very expressively call _dawdling_. Your motto must be _Hoc age_. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, and never before it. When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front does not move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand is not instantly, steadily, and readily despatched, other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion. Pray mind this: this is a habit of mind which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent, especially when their time is not regularly filled up, and left at their own arrangement. But it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion. I must love a man so well, to whom I offer such a word of advice, that I will not apologise for it, but expect to hear you are become as regular as a Dutch clock,—hours, quarters, minutes, all marked and appropriated. This is a great cast in life, and must be played with all skill and caution.”

Coleridge observes: “It would, indeed, be superfluous to attempt a proof of the importance of Method in the business and economy of active or domestic life. From the cotter’s hearth, or the workshop of the artisan, to the palace or the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent, is, that _every thing is in its place_. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, he is like clockwork. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise undistinguishable lapse of time. But the man of methodical industry and honourable pursuits does more: he realises its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organises the hours, and gives them a soul; and that the very essence of which is to fleet away, and ever more _to have been_, he takes up into his own permanence, and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, are thus methodised, it is less truly affirmed, that he lives in time, and that time lives in him. His days, months, and years, as the stops and punctual marks in the records of duties performed, will survive the wreck of worlds, and remain extant when time itself shall be no more.”[27] This is admirable reasoning.

A great deal has been said against routine and red tape, or rather the abuse of the latter; but its proper use has much to do with success. Curran, when Master of the Rolls, once said to Grattan, “You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers;” though another version of the anecdote has, “_tie up your thoughts_.” This was the fault and misfortune of Sir James Mackintosh: he never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware; but the accurate number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manufactured articles to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of existence.

The tying-up thoughts corresponds with Fuller’s aphorism, “Marshall thy thoughts into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and perched up in bundles, than when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable.” This is the plan adopted by lawyers upon their tables. The Duke of Wellington had a table upon which his papers were thus arranged; and, during his absence for any length of time, a sort of lid was placed upon the table and locked, so as to secure the papers without disturbing their arrangement.

The Duke of Wellington is also known to have been an early riser; the advantages of which were illustrated throughout his long life. His service of the Sovereigns and the public of this country for more than half a century,—in diplomatic situations and in councils, as well as in the army,—has scarcely a parallel in British history. His Despatches are the best evidence of his well-regulated mind in education. No letters could ever be more temperately or more perspicuously expressed than those famous documents. They show what immense results in the aggregate were obtained by the Duke, solely in virtue of habits which he had sedulously cultivated from his boyhood—early rising, strict attention to details, taking nothing ascertainable for granted, unflagging industry, and silence, except when speech was necessary, or certainly harmless. His early habit of punctuality is pleasingly illustrated in the following anecdote: “I will take care to be punctual at five to-morrow morning,” said the engineer of New London Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke’s request that he would meet him at that hour the following morning. “Say a quarter before five,” replied the Duke, with a quiet smile; “I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so; and I learned that lesson when a boy.”

Whoever has seen “the Duke’s bedroom” at Apsley-house, and its plain appointments, will not regard it as a chamber of indolence. It was, a few years since, narrow, shapeless, and ill-lighted; the bedstead small, provided only with a mattress and bolster, and scantily curtained with green silk; the only ornaments of the walls were an unfinished sketch, two cheap prints of military men, and a small portrait in oil: yet here slept the Great Duke, whose “eightieth year was by.” In the grounds and shrubbery he took daily walking exercise, where with the garden-engine he was wont to enjoy exertion; reminding one of General Bonaparte at St. Helena, “amusing himself with the pipe of the fire-engine, spouting water on the trees and flowers in his favourite garden.”

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Footnote 24:

Brewster’s _Meditations for the Aged_.

Footnote 25:

Communication to _Notes and Queries_, 3d series, No. 47.

Footnote 26:

_Psychological Inquiries_, part ii. 1862. The Author died in the
autumn of 1862, at his beautiful retreat, Broome Park (formerly
Tranquil Dale), at the foot of the fine range of the Betchworth Hills,
in Surrey. In the _Inquiries_ are some interesting traces of the work
having been written in the tranquillity of Broome, and its picturesque
characteristics of noble cedars, elms, and chestnuts, stream and sheet
of water, and mineral spring. In the opening pages, “the fresh air and
quiet of his residence in the country” evidently refers to Broome; and
throughout the volume are occasional references to the geniality of
the place for the group of philosophers who keep up the mode of
dialogue. Sir Benjamin Brodie was some time President of the Royal
Society; and it may be worthy of notice, that his two volumes of
“Inquiries,” in their thoughtful tone and reflective colour, bear some
resemblance to the two volumes produced in the retirement of his
illustrious predecessor in the Chair of the Royal Society—Sir Humphry
Davy; but with this difference,—that Sir Benjamin Brodie’s Researches
are of more practical application than the speculative Dialogues of
our great chemical philosopher, Davy.

Footnote 27:

Coleridge, however, was a better preacher than practitioner of what he
so urgently recommends. When in his younger days he was offered a
share in the _London Journal_, by which he could have made two
thousand pounds a year, provided he would devote his time seriously to
the interest of the work, he declined,—making the reply, so often
praised for its disinterestedness, “I will not give up the country,
and the lazy reading of old folios, for two thousand times two
thousand pounds; in short, beyond three hundred and fifty pounds a
year, I consider money a real evil.” The “lazy reading of old folios”
led to laziness, the indolent gratification of mind and sense.
Degenerating into an opium-eater, and a mere purposeless theoriser,
Coleridge wasted time, talents, and health; came to depend, in old
age, on the charity of others; and died at last, with every one
regretting, even his friends, that he had done nothing worthy of his
genius. The world is full of men having Coleridge’s faults, without
Coleridge’s abilities; men who cannot, or will not, see beyond the
present; who are too lazy to work for more than a temporary
subsistence, and who squander, in pleasure or idleness, energy and
health, which ought to lay up a capital for old age.

----------------------------

TIME AND ETERNITY.

Sir Thomas More, when a youth, painted for his father’s house in London a hanging with nine pageants, with verses over each. There were Childhood, Manhood, Venus and Cupid, Age, Death, and Fame. In the sixth pageant was painted the image of Time, and under his feet was lying the picture of Fame that was in the sixth pageant. And over this seventh pageant was (spelling modernised):

TIME.

I whom thou seest with horologe in hand
Am named Time, the lord of every hour:
I shall in space destroy both sea and land.
O simple Fame, how darest thou man honour,
Promising of his name an endless flower!
Who may in the world have a name eternal,
When I shall in process destroy the world and all?

In the eighth pageant was pictured the image of Lady Eternity, sitting in a chair under a sumptuous cloth of state, crowned with an imperial crown. And under her feet lay the picture of Time that was in the seventh pageant. And above this eighth pageant was written as follows:

ETERNITY.

Me needeth not to boast: I am Eternity,
The very name signifieth well
That mine empire infinite shall be.
Thou mortal Time, every man can tell,
Art nothing else but the mobility
Of sun and moon changing in every degree;
When they shall leave their course, thou shalt be brought,
For all thy pride and boasting, unto naught.

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Life, and Length of Days.

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LIFE—A RIVER.

PLINY has compared a River to Human Life; and Sir Humphry Davy was a hundred times struck with the analogy, particularly among mountain scenery. A full and clear River is the most poetical object in nature; and contemplating this, Davy wrote: “The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant; it is more beautiful than useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately barge;—in this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion; and at last, as it were, becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters.”

Again, Life is often compared to a River, because one year follows another, and vanishes like the ripples on its surface. A flood, without ebb, bears us onward; “we can never cast anchor in the river of life,” as Bernardin de St. Pierre finely and profoundly observes.

But the comparison can be still further developed. “It is taking a false idea of life,” says Cuvier, “to consider it as a single link, which binds the elements of the living body together, since, on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly. These elements,” he adds, “do not for an instant preserve the same relations and connexions; or, in other words, the living body does not for an instant keep the same state and composition.”

But this is only the new enunciation of a very old idea in science. Long before Cuvier, Leibnitz said, “Our body is in a perpetual flux, like a river; particles enter and leave it continually.” And long before Leibnitz, physiologists had compared the human body to the famous ship of Theseus, which was always the same ship, although, from having been so often repaired, it had not a single piece with which it was originally constructed. The truth is, that the idea of the continued renovation of our organs[28] has always existed in science; but it is also true that it has always been disputed.

M. Flourens has proved by direct experiment that the mechanism of the development of the bones consists essentially in a continual irritation of all the parts composing them. But it is the change of _material_; for its _form_ changes very little. Cuvier has further developed this fine idea:

In living bodies no molecule remains in its place; all enter and
leave it successively: life is a continued whirlpool, the direction
of which, complicated as it is, remains always constant, as well as
the species of molecules which are drawn into it, but not the
individual molecules themselves; on the contrary, the actual
material of the living body will soon be no longer in it; and yet it
is the depository of the force which will constrain the future
material in the same direction as itself. So that the form of these
bodies is more essential to them than the material, since this
latter changes unceasingly, while the other is maintained.

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Footnote 28:

One may well say of a given individual, that he lives and is the same,
and is spoken of as an identical being from his earliest infancy to
old age, without reflecting that he does not contain the same
particles, which are produced and renewed unceasingly, and die also in
the old state, in the hair and in the flesh, in the bone and in the
blood,—in a word, in the whole body.—_Plato; The Banquet._

----------------------------

THE SPRING-TIME OF LIFE.

The Spring-time of Life,—the meeting-point of the child and the man,—the brief interval which separates restraint from liberty,—has a warmth of life, which Dr. Temple thus pictures with glowing eloquence. “To almost all men this period is a bright spot to which the memory ever afterwards loves to recur; and even those who can remember nothing but folly,—folly, of which they have repented, and relinquished,—yet find a nameless charm in recalling such folly as that. For indeed even folly at that age is sometimes the cup out of which men quaff the richest blessings of our nature,—simplicity, generosity, affection. This is the seed-time of the soul’s harvest, and contains the promise of the year. It is the time for love and marriage, the time for forming life-long friendships. The after-life may be more contented, but can rarely be so glad and joyous. Two things we need to crown its blessings,—one is, that the friends whom we then learn to love, and the opinions which we then learn to cherish, may stand the test of time, and deserve the esteem and approval of calmer thoughts and wider experience; the other, that our hearts may have depth enough to drink largely of that which God is holding to our lips, and never again to lose the fire and spirit of the draught. There is nothing more beautiful than a manhood surrounded by the friends, upholding the principles, and filled with the energy of the spring-time of life. But even if these highest blessings be denied, if we have been compelled to change opinions and to give up friends, and the cold experience of the world has extinguished the heat of youth, still the heart will instinctively recur to that happy time, to explain to itself what is meant by love and what by happiness.”[29]

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Footnote 29:

_Education of the World._

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THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF LIFE.

It is a saying of Southey’s, “that, live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back to them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”