Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English AuthorsHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
Hubbard, Elbert
Authors, English -- Homes and haunts -- Great Britain; English literature -- History and criticism
That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
for use—you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the
last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
any other name I can recall.
Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.
At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
felt.
In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.
It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, "I am a
friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
out of it."
Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.
Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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