The Recreations of A Country Parson | Page 9

often sensible, though slow and in this world, plain plodding common
sense is very likely in the long run to beat erratic brilliancy. The
tortoise passes the hare. I owe an apology to Lord Campbell for even
naming him on the same page on which stands the name of dunce: for
assuredly in shrewd, massive sense, as well as in kindness of manner,
the natural outflow of a kind and good heart, no judge ever surpassed
him. But I may fairly point to his career of unexampled success as an
instance which proves my principle. See how that man of parts which
are sound and solid, rather than brilliant or showy, has won the Derby
and the St. Ledger of the law: has filled with high credit the places of
Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor. And contrast his
eminently successful and useful course with that of the fitful meteor,
Lord Brougham. What a great, dazzling genius Brougham
unquestionably is; yet his greatest admirer must admit that his life has
been a brilliant failure. But while you, thoughtful reader, in such a
retrospect as I have been supposing, sometimes wonder at the decent
and reasonable success of the dunce, do you not often lament over the
fashion in which those who promised well, and even brilliantly, have
disappointed the hopes entertained of them? What miserable failures
such have not unfrequently made! And not always through bad conduct
either: not always, though sometimes, by taking to vicious courses; but
rather by a certain want of tact and sense, or even by just somehow
missing the favourable tide. You have got a fair living and a fair
standing in the Church; you have held them for eight or ten years; when

some evening as you are sitting in your study or playing with your
children, a servant tells you, doubtfully, that a man is waiting to see
you. A poor, thin, shabbily-dressed fellow comes in, and in faltering
tones begs for the lean of five shillings. Ah, with what a start you
recognise him! It is the clever fellow whom you hardly beat at college,
who was always so lively and merry, who sang so nicely, and was so
much asked out into society. You had lost sight of him for several years;
and now here he is, shabby, dirty, smelling of whisky, with bloated face
and trembling hand: alas, alas, ruined! Oh, do not give him up. Perhaps
you can do something for him. Little kindness he has known for very
long. Give him the five shillings by all means; but next morning see
you go out, and try what may be done to lift him out of the slough of
despond, and to give him a chance for better days! I know that it may
be all in vain; and that after years gradually darkening down you may
some day, as you pass the police-office, find a crowd at the door, and
learn that they have got the corpse of the poor suicide within. And even
when the failure is not so utter as this, you find, now and then, as life
goes onward, that this and that old acquaintance has, you cannot say
how, stepped out of the track, and is stranded. He went into the Church:
he is no worse preacher or scholar than many that succeed; but
somehow he never gets a living. You sometimes meet him in the street,
threadbare and soured: he probably passes you without recognising you.
O reader, to whom God has sent moderate success, always be
chivalrously kind and considerate to such a disappointed man!
I have heard of an eminent man who, when well advanced in years, was
able to say that through all his life he had never set his mind on
anything which he did not succeed in attaining. Great and little aims
alike, he never had known what it was to fail. What a curious state of
feeling it would be to most men to know themselves able to assert so
much! Think of a mind in which disappointment is a thing unknown! I
think that one would be oppressed by a vague sense of fear in regarding
one's self as treated by Providence in a fashion so different from the
vast majority of the race. It cannot be denied that there are men in this
world in whose lot failure seems to be the rule. Everything to which
they put their hand breaks down or goes amiss. But most human beings
can testify that their lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of
middling thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average

endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is a
modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of