The Discipline of Experience : Part 5

Character
by Samuel Smiles

(Page 16 of 19)

The case of Flinders the navigator, who suffered a six years' imprisonment in the Isle of France, was one of peculiar hardship. In 1801, he set sail from England in the INVESTIGATOR, on a voyage of discovery and survey, provided with a French pass, requiring all French governors (notwithstanding that England and France were at war) to give him protection and succour in the sacred name of science. In the course of his voyage he surveyed great part of Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and the neighbouring islands. The INVESTIGATOR, being found leaky and rotten, was condemned, and the navigator embarked as passenger in the PORPOISE for England, to lay the results of his three years' labours before the Admiralty.

On the voyage home the PORPOISE was wrecked on a reef in the South Seas, and Flinders, with part of the crew, in an open boat, made for Port Jackson, which they safely reached, though distant from the scene of the wreck not less than 750 miles. There he procured a small schooner, the CUMBERLAND, no larger than a Gravesend sailing-boat, and returned for the remainder of the crew, who had been left on the reef. Having rescued them, he set sail for England, making for the Isle of France, which the CUMBERLAND reached in a sinking condition, being a wretched little craft badly found. To his surprise, he was made a prisoner with all his crew, and thrown into prison, where he was treated with brutal harshness, his French pass proving no protection to him.

What aggravated the horrors of Flinders' confinement was, that he knew that Baudin, the French navigator, whom he had encountered while making his survey of the Australian coasts, would reach Europe first, and claim the merit of all the discoveries he had made. It turned out as he had expected; and while Flinders was still imprisoned in the Isle of France, the French Atlas of the new discoveries was published, all the points named by Flinders and his precursors being named afresh. Flinders was at length liberated, after six years' imprisonment, his health completely broken; but he continued correcting his maps, and writing out his descriptions to the last. He only lived long enough to correct his final sheet for the press, and died on the very day that his work was published!

Courageous men have often turned enforced solitude to account in executing works of great pith and moment. It is in solitude that the passion for spiritual perfection best nurses itself. The soul communes with itself in loneliness until its energy often becomes intense. But whether a man profits by solitude or not will mainly depend upon his own temperament, training, and character. While, in a large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still harder: for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is the torment of small ones.

It was in prison that Boetius wrote his 'Consolations of Philosophy,' and Grotius his 'Commentary on St. Matthew,' regarded as his masterwork in Biblical Criticism. Buchanan composed his beautiful 'Paraphrases on the Psalms' while imprisoned in the cell of a Portuguese monastery. Campanella, the Italian patriot monk, suspected of treason, was immured for twenty-seven years in a Neapolitan dungeon, during which, deprived of the sun's light, he sought higher light, and there created his 'Civitas Solis,' which has been so often reprinted and reproduced in translations in most European languages. During his thirteen years' imprisonment in the Tower, Raleigh wrote his 'History of the World,' a project of vast extent, of which he was only able to finish the first five books. Luther occupied his prison hours in the Castle of Wartburg in translating the Bible, and in writing the famous tracts and treatises with which he inundated all Germany.

It was to the circumstance of John Bunyan having been cast into gaol that we probably owe the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He was thus driven in upon himself; having no opportunity for action, his active mind found vent in earnest thinking and meditation; and indeed, after his enlargement, his life as an author virtually ceased. His 'Grace Abounding' and the 'Holy War' were also written in prison. Bunyan lay in Bedford Gaol, with a few intervals of precarious liberty, during not less than twelve years; and it was most probably to his prolonged imprisonment that we owe what Macaulay has characterised as the finest allegory in the world.

All the political parties of the times in which Bunyan lived, imprisoned their opponents when they had the opportunity and the power. Bunyan's prison experiences were principally in the time of Charles II. But in the preceding reign of Charles I., as well as during the Commonwealth, illustrious prisoners were very numerous. The prisoners of the former included Sir John Eliot, Hampden, Selden, Prynne (a most voluminous prison-writer), and many more. It was while under strict confinement in the Tower, that Eliot composed his noble treatise, 'The Monarchy of Man.' George Wither, the poet, was another prisoner of Charles the First, and it was while confined in the Marshalsea that he wrote his famous 'Satire to the King.' At the Restoration he was again imprisoned in Newgate, from which he was transferred to the Tower, and he is supposed by some to have died there.

The Commonwealth also had its prisoners. Sir William Davenant, because of his loyalty, was for some time confined a prisoner in Cowes Castle, where he wrote the greater part of his poem of 'Gondibert': and it is said that his life was saved principally through the generous intercession of Milton. He lived to repay the debt, and to save Milton's life when "Charles enjoyed his own again." Lovelace, the poet and cavalier, was also imprisoned by the Roundheads, and was only liberated from the Gatehouse on giving an enormous bail. Though he suffered and lost all for the Stuarts, he was forgotten by them at the Restoration, and died in extreme poverty.

Besides Wither and Bunyan, Charles II. imprisoned Baxter, Harrington (the author of 'Oceana'), Penn, and many more. All these men solaced their prison hours with writing. Baxter wrote some of the most remarkable passages of his 'Life and Times' while lying in the King's Bench Prison; and Penn wrote his 'No Cross no Crown' while imprisoned in the Tower. In the reign of Queen Anne, Matthew Prior was in confinement on a vamped-up charge of treason for two years, during which he wrote his 'Alma, or Progress of the Soul.'

About the Author

Born in Haddington, Smiles was the eldest of eleven children. He left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to a doctor, eventually enabling him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying and after graduating he campaigned for parliamentary reform, contributing articles to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and the Leeds Times.