The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally remarkable illustrations of the power of perseverance. The late John Britton, author of 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' and of many valuable architectural works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston, Wiltshire. His father had been a baker and maltster, but was ruined in trade and became insane while Britton was yet a child.
The boy received very little schooling, but a great deal of bad example, which happily did not corrupt him. He was early in life set to labour with an uncle, a tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under whom he bottled, corked, and binned wine for more than five years.
His health failing him, his uncle turned him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in his pocket. During the next seven years of his life he endured many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot to Bath, he there obtained an engagement as a cellarman, but shortly after we find him back in the metropolis again almost penniless, shoeless, and shirtless. He succeeded, however, in obtaining employment as a cellarman at the London Tavern, where it was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the morning until eleven at night. His health broke down under this confinement in the dark, added to the heavy work; and he then engaged himself, at fifteen shillings a week, to an attorney, - for he had been diligently cultivating the art of writing during the few spare minutes that he could call his own. While in this employment, he devoted his leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls, where he read books by snatches which he could not buy, and thus picked up a good deal of odd knowledge. Then he shifted to another office, at the advanced wages of twenty shillings a week, still reading and studying. At twenty-eight he was able to write a book, which he published under the title of 'The Enterprising Adventures of Pizarro;' and from that time until his death, during a period of about fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in laborious literary occupation. The number of his published works is not fewer than eighty-seven; the most important being 'The Cathedral Antiquities of England,' in fourteen volumes, a truly magnificent work; itself the best monument of John Britton's indefatigable industry.
London, the landscape gardener, was a man of somewhat similar character, possessed of an extraordinary working power. The son of a farmer near Edinburgh, he was early inured to work. His skill in drawing plans and making sketches of scenery induced his father to train him for a landscape gardener. During his apprenticeship he sat up two whole nights every week to study; yet he worked harder during the day than any labourer. In the course of his night studies he learnt French, and before he was eighteen he translated a life of Abelard for an Encyclopaedia. He was so eager to make progress in life, that when only twenty, while working as a gardener in England, he wrote down in his note-book, "I am now twenty years of age, and perhaps a third part of my life has passed away, and yet what have I done to benefit my fellow men?" an unusual reflection for a youth of only twenty. From French he proceeded to learn German, and rapidly mastered that language.
Having taken a large farm, for the purpose of introducing Scotch improvements in the art of agriculture, he shortly succeeded in realising a considerable income. The continent being thrown open at the end of the war, he travelled abroad for the purpose of inquiring into the system of gardening and agriculture in other countries. He twice repeated his journeys, and the results were published in his Encyclopaedias, which are among the most remarkable works of their kind, - distinguished for the immense mass of useful matter which they contain, collected by an amount of industry and labour which has rarely been equalled.
The career of Samuel Drew is not less remarkable than any of those which we have cited. His father was a hard-working labourer of the parish of St. Austell, in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood.
Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much hardship, -living, as he used to say, "like a toad under a harrow." He often thought of running away and becoming a pirate, or something of the sort, and he seems to have grown in recklessness as he grew in years. In robbing orchards he was usually a leader; and, as he grew older, he delighted to take part in any poaching or smuggling adventure. When about seventeen, before his apprenticeship was out, he ran away, intending to enter on board a man-of-war; but, sleeping in a hay-field at night cooled him a little, and he returned to his trade.
