On The Qualifications Necessary For Success
It is curious to consider the diversity of men's talents,and the caus of their failure or success, which are not less numerous and contradictory than their pursuits in life.Fortune does not always smile on merit:-'the race is not to the swift,nor the battle to the strong':and even where the candidate for wealth or honours succeeds,it is as often,perhaps,from the qualifications which he wants as from tho which he posss;or the eminence which he is luck y enough to attain,is owing to some faculty or acquirement,which neither he nor any body el suspected.There is a balance of power in the human mind,by which defects frequently assist in furthering our views,as superfluous excellences are converted into the nature of impediments;and again,there is a continual substitution of one talent for another,through which we mistake the appearance for the reality,and judge(by implication)of the means from the end.So a Minister of State wields the Hou of Commons by his manner alone;while his friends and his foes are equally at a loss to account for his influence,looking for it in vain in the matter or style of his speeches.So the air with which a celebrated barrister waved a white cambrick handkerchief pasd for eloq uence.So the buffoon is taken for a wit.To be thought wi,it is for the most part only necessary to em so;and the noisy demagogue is easily translated,by the popular voice,into the orator and patriot.Qualities take their colour from tho that are next them,as the camele
on borrows its hue from the nearest object;and unable otherwi to grasp the phantom of our choice or our ambition,we do well to lay violent hands on something el within our reach,which bears a general remblance to it;and the impression of which,in proportion as the thing itlf is cheap and worthless,is likely to be gross,obvious,striking, and effectual.The way to cure success,is to be more anxious about obtaining than about derving it;the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds,or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.He who is determined not to be satisfied with any thing short of perfection,will never do any thing at all,either to plea himlf or others.The question is not what we ought to do,but what we can do for the best.An excess of modesty is in fact an excess of pride,and more hurtful to the individ ual,and less advantageous to society,than the grosst and most unblushing vanity-
Aspiring to be Gods,if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels,men rebel.
If a celebrated artist in our own day had staid to do justice to his principal figure in a generally admired painting,before he had exhibited it,it would never have en the light.He has pasd on to other things more within his power to accomplish,and more within the competence of the spectators t
o understand.They e what he has done,which is a great deal-they could not have judged of,or given him credit for the ineffable idea in his own mind,which he might vainly have devoted his whole life in endeavoring to embody.The picture,as it is,is good enough for the age and for the public.If it had been ten times better,its merits would have been thrown away:if it had been ten times better in the more refined and lofty conception of character and ntiment,and had failed in the more palpable appeal to the ns and prejud ices of the vulgar,in the usual'appliances and means to boot,'it would never have done.The work might have been praid by a few,a very few,and the artist himlf have pined in penury and neglect.-Mr.Wordsworth has given us the esnce of poetry in his works,without the machinery,the apparatus of poetical diction,the theatrical pomp,the conventional ornaments;and we e what he has made of it.The way to fame,through merit alone,is the narrowest,the steepest,the longest,the hardest of all others-(that it is the most certain and
lasting,is even a doubt)-the most sterling reputation is,after all,but a species of imposture.As for ordinary cas of success and failure,they depend on the slightest shades of character or turn of accident-'some trick not worth an egg'-
There's but the twinkling of a star
Betwixt a man of peace and war;
A thief and justice,fool and knave,
A huffing officer and a slave;
A crafty lawyer and pick-pocket,
A great philosopher and a block head;
A formal preacher and a player,
A learn'd physician and manslayer.
Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things,for no other reason than becau they are qualified for nothing el.Negative merit is the passport to negative success.In common life,the narrowness of our ideas and appetites is more favorable to the accomplishment of our designs,by confining our attention and ambition to one single object,than a greater enlargement of comprehension or susceptibility of taste,which(as far as the trammels of custom and routine of business are concerned)only operate as diversions to our ensuring the mainchance;and,even in the pursuit of arts and science,a dull plodding fellow will often do better than one of a more mercurial and fiery cast-the mere unconsciousness of his own deficiencies,or of anything beyond what he hims
elf can do,reconciles him to his mechanical progress,and enables him to perform all that lies in his power with labor and patience.By being content with med iocrity,he advances beyond it; whereas the man of greater taste or genius may be suppod to fling down his pen or pencil in despair,haunted with the idea of unattainable excellence,and ends in being nothing,becau he cannot be everything at once.Tho even who have done the greatest things,were not always perhaps the greatest men.To do any given work,a man should not be greater in himlf than the work he has to do;the faculties which he has beyond this,will be faculties to let,either not ud,or ud idly and unprofitably,to hinder,not to help.To do any one thing best,there should be an exclusiveness,a concentration,a bigotry,a blind ness of attachment to that one object;so that the widest range of knowledge and most diffusive subtlety of intellect will not uniformly produce the most beneficial results;-and the performance is very frequently in the inver ratio,not only of the pretensions,as we might superficially conclude,but of the real capacity.A part is greater than the whole:and this old saying ems to hold true in moral and intellectual questions also-in nearly all that relates to the mind of man,which cannot embrace the whole,but only a part.
I do not think(to give an instance or two of what I mean)that Milton's mind was(so to speak) greater than the Paradi Lost;it was just big enough to fill that mighty mould,the shrine contained the Godh
ead.Shakespeare's genius was,I should say,greater than any thing he has done,becau it still soared free and unconfined beyond whatever he undertook-ran over,and could not be 'constrained by mastery'of his subject.Goldsmith,in his Retaliation,celebrates Burke as one who was kept back in his dazzling,wayward career,by the supererogation of his talents-
Though equal to all things,for all things unfit,
Too nice for a statesman,too proud for a wit.
Dr.Johnson,in Boswell's Life,tells us that the only person who conversation he ever sought for improvement was George Psalmanaz ar:yet who knows any thing of this extraordinary man now,but that he wrote about twenty volumes of the Universal History-invented a Formosan alphabet and
vocabulary-being a really learned man,contrived to pass for an impostor,and died no one knows how or where!The well known author[William Godwin]of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice, in conversation has not a word to throw at a dog;all the stores of his understanding or genius he rerves for his books,and he has need of them,otherwi there would be hiatus in manuscriptis.He says little,and that little were better left alone,being both dull and nonnsical;his talk is as flat as a pancake,there is no leaven in it,he has not dough enough to make a loaf and a cake;he has no idea
of any thing till he is wound up,like a clock,not to speak,but to write,and then he ems like a person rin from sleep or from t马远
he dead.The author of the Diversions of Purley,on the other hand, besides being the inventor of the theory of grammar,was a politician,a wit,a master of conversation, and overflowing with an interminable babble-that fellow had 白萝卜的英文
cut and come again in him,and
'Tongue with a garnish of brains;'
but it only rved as an excu to cheat posterity of the definition of a verb,by one of tho conversational rus de guerre by which he put off his guests at Wimbledon with some teazing equivoq ue which he would explain the next time they met-and made him die at last with a nostrum in his mouth!The late Professor Porson was said to be a match for the Member for Old Sarum [William Pitt]in argument and raillery:饭麸粿
-he was a profound scholar,and had wit at will-yet what did it come to?His jests have evaporated with the marks of the wine on the tavern table;the page of Thucyd ides or Aeschylus,which was stamped on his brain,and which he could read there with equal facility backwards or forwards,is contained,after his death,as it was while he lived,just as well in the volume on the library shelf.The man[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]of perhaps the greatest ability now living is the one who has not only done the least,but who is actually incapable of ever doing any thing worthy of him-unless he had a hundred hands to write with,and a hundred mouths to utter all th
at it hath entered into his heart to conceive,and centuries before him to embody the endless volume of his waking dreams.Cloud rolls over cloud;one train of thought suggests and is driven away by another;theory after theory is spun out of the bowels of his brain,not like the spider's web, compact and round,a citadel and a snare,built for mischief and for u;but,like the gossamer, stretched out and entangled without end,clinging to every casual object,flitting in the idle air,and glittering only in the ray of fancy.No subject can come amiss to him,and he is alike attracted and alike indifferent to all-he is not tied down to any one in particular-but floats from one to another, his mind every where find ing its level,and feeling no limit but that of thought-now soaring with its head above the stars,now treading with fairy feet among flowers,now winnowing the air with winged words-passing from Duns Scotus to Jacob Behmen,from the Kantean philosophy to a conundrum,and from the Apocalyp to an acrostic-taking in the whole range of poetry,paining, wit,history,politics,metaphysics,criticism,and private scandal-every question giving birth to some new thought,and every thought'discourd in eloq uent music,'that lives only in the ear of fools,or in the report of abnt friends.Set him to write a book,and he belies all that has been ever said about him-
Ten thousand great ideas filled his mind,
But with the clouds they fled,and left no trace behind.
Now there is_________,who never had an idea in his life,and who therefore has never been prevented by the fastid ious refinements of lf-knowled ge,or the dangerous ductions of the Mu, from succeed ing in a number of things which he has attempted,to the utmost extent of his dulness, and contrary to the advice and opinion of all his friends.He has written a book without being able to spell,by dint of asking questions-has painted draperies with great exactness,which have pasd for
finished portraits-daubs in an unaccountable figure or two,with a back-ground,and on due deliberation calls it history-he is dubbed an Associate after being twenty times black-balled,wins his way to the highest honours of the Academy,through all the gradations of discomfiture and disgrace,and may end in being made a foreign Count!And yet(such is the principle of distributive justice in matters of taste)he is just where he was.Non ex quovis lingo fit Mercurius.Having once got an idea of_________,it is impossible that any thing he can do should ever alter it-though he were to paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo,no one in the cret would give him credit for it,and 'though he had all knowledge,and could speak with the tongues of angels,'yet without genius he would be nothing.The original sin of being what he is,renders his good works and most meritorious efforts null and void.'You cannot gather grapes of thorns,nor figs of thistles.'Nature still prevails over art.You loo
k at_________,as you do at a curious machine,which performs certain puzzling operations,and as your surpri ceas,gradually unfolds other powers which you would little expect -but do what it will,it is but a machine still;the thing is without a soul!
Respice finem,is the great rule in all practical pursuits:to attain our journey's end,we should look little to the right or to the left;the knowledge of excellence as often deters and distracts,as it stimulates the mind to exertion;and hence we may e 我的格言
some reason,why the general diffusion of taste and liberal arts is not always accompanied with an increa of individ ual genius.
As there is a degree of dulness and phlegm,which,in the long run,sometimes succeeds better than the more noble and aspiring impuls of our nature(as the beagle by its sure tracing overtakes the bounding stag),so there is a degree of animal spirits and showy accomplishment,which enables its posssors'to get the start of the majestic world,'and bear the palm alone.How often do we e vivacity and impertinence mistaken for wit;fluency设计岗位职责
for argument;sound for n;a loud or musical voice for elo quence!Impudence again is an equivalent for courage;and the assumption of merit and the posssion of it are too often considered as one and the same thing.On the other hand,simplicity of manner reduces the person who cannot so far forego his native disposition as by any effort to shake it off,to perfect insignificance in the eyes of the vulgar,who,if you do not em to doubt your o
wn pretensions,will never question them;and on the same principle,if you do not try to palm yourlf on them for what you are not,will never be persuaded you can be anything.Admiration,like mock ing,is catching:and the good opinion which gets abroad of us begins at home.If a man is not as much astonished at his own acquirements,as proud of and as delighted with the bauble,as others would be if put into sudden posssion of it,they hold that true dert and he must be strangers to each other:if he entertains an idea beyond his own immed iate profession or pursuit,they think very wily he can know nothing at all:if he does not play off the quack or the coxcomb upon them at every step,they are confident he is a dunce and a fellow of no pretensions.It has been sometimes made a matter of surpri that Mr.Pitt did not talk politics out of the Hou;or that Mr.Fox converd like anyone el on common subjects;or that Walter Scott is fonder of an old Scotch ditty or antiquarian record,than of listening to the prais of the Author of Waverley.On the contrary,I cannot conceive how anyone who feels conscious of certain powers,should always be laboring to convince others of the fact;or how a person,to whom their exerci is as familiar as the breath he draws,should think it worth his while to convince them of what to him must em so very simple, and at the same time,so very evident.I should not wonder,however,if the author of the Scotch Novels laid an undue stress on the prais of the Monastery.We nur the ricketty child,and prop up our want of lf-confidence by the opinion of friends.A man(unless he is a fool)is never vain,but when he stands in need of the tribu te of adulation to strengthen the hollowness of his pretensions;nor
conceited,but when he can find no one to flatter him,and is obliged cretly to pamper his good opinion of himlf,to make up for the want of sympathy in others.A damned author has the highest n of his own merits,and an inexpressible contempt for the judgment of his contemporaries;in the same manner that an actor who is hisd or hooted from the stage,creeps into exquisite favour with himlf,in proportion to the blind ness and injustice of the public.A pro-writer,who has been verely handled in the Reviews,will try to persuade himlf that there is nobody el who can write a word of English:and we have en a poet of our time,who works have been much,but not(as he though)sufficiently admired,undertake formally to prove,that no poet,who derved the name of one,was ever popular in his life-time,or scarcely after his death!
There is nothing that floats a man sooner into the tide of reputation,or oftener pass current for genius,than what might be called constitutional talent.A man without his,whatever may be his worth or real powers,will no more get on in the world than a leaden Mercury will fly into the air;as any pretender with it,and with no one quality beside to recommend him,will be sure either to blunder upon success,or will t failure at defiance.By constitutional talent I mean,in general,the warmth and vigor given to a man's ideas and pursuits by his bodily stamina,by mere physical organization.A weak mind in a sound body is better,or at least more profitable,than a sound mind in a weak and cra
zy conformation.How many instances might I quote!Let a man have a quick circulation,a good digestion,the bulk,and thews,and sinews of a man,and the alacrity,the unthinking confidence inspired by the;and without an atom,a shadow of the mens divinior,he shall strut and swagger and vapor and jostle his way through life,and have the upper-hand of tho who are his betters in everything but health and strength.His jests shall be echoed with loud laughter, becau his own lungs begin to crow like chanticleer,before he has uttered them;while a little hectic nervous humorist shall stammer out an admirable conceit that is damned in the doubtful delivery-vox faucibus haesit.-The first shall tell a story as long as his arm,without interruption, while the latter stops short in his attempts from mere weakness of chest:the one shall be empty and noisy and successful 什么化雨
in argument,putting forth the most common-place things'with a confident brow and a throng of words,that come with more than impudent sauciness from him,'while the latter shrinks from an obrvation'too deep for his hearers,'into the delicacy and unnoticed retirement of his own mind.The one shall never feel the want of intellectual resources,becau he can back his opinions with his person;the other shall lo the advantages of mental superiority,ek to anticipate contempt by giving offence,court mortification in despair of popularity,and even in the midst of public and private admiration,extorted slowly by incontrovertible proofs of gen爱的妇产科2
ius,shall never get rid of the awkward,uneasy n of personal weakness and insignificance,contracted by early and long-continued habit.What imports the inward t
o the outward man,when it is the last that is the general and inevitable butt of rid icule or object of admiration?-It has been said that a good face is a letter of recommendation.But the finest face will not carry a man far,unless it is t upon an active body,and a stout pair of shoulders.The countenance is the index of a man's talents and attainments: his figure is the criterion of his progress through life.We may have en faces that spoke'a soul as fair-
'Bright as the children of yon azure sheen'-
yet that met with but an indifferent reception in the world-and that being supported by a couple of spind le-shanks and a weak stomach,in fulfilling what was expected of them,
'Fell flat,and shamed their worshippers.'
