The late Dr. Olynthus Gregory, in addressing the Deptford Mechanics’ Institution at their first anniversary, took the opportunity of mentioning various men in humble circumstances (some of whom he had been able to assist), who, by means of energy, application, and self-denial, had been able to accomplish great things in the acquisition of knowledge.  Thus he described the case of a Labourer on the turnpike road, who had become an able Greek scholar; of a Fifer, and a Private Soldier, in a regiment of militia, both self-taught mathematicians, one of whom became a successful schoolmaster, the other a lecturer on natural philosophy; of a journeyman Tin-plate worker, who invented rules for the solution of cubic equations; of a country Sexton, who became a teacher of music, and who, by his love of the study of musical science, was transformed from a drunken sot to an exemplary husband and father; of a Coal Miner (a correspondent of Dr. Gregory’s), who was an able writer on topics of the higher mathematics; of another correspondent, a labouring Whitesmith, who was also well acquainted with the course of pure mathematics, as taught at Cambridge, Dublin, and the military colleges; of a Tailor, who was an excellent geometrician, and had discovered curves which escaped the notice of Newton, and who laboured industriously and contentedly at his trade until sixty years of age, when, by the recommendation of his scientific friends, he was appointed Nautical Examiner at the Trinity House; of a ploughman in Lincolnshire, who, without aid of men or books, discovered the rotation of the earth, the principles of spherical astronomy, and invented a planetary system akin to the Tychonic; of a country Shoemaker, who became distinguished as one of the ablest metaphysical writers in Britain, and who, at more than fifty years of age, was removed by the influence of his talents and their worth, from his native country to London, where he was employed to edit some useful publications devoted to the diffusion of knowledge and the best interests of mankind.

Students of Art have had to practise self-denial in many ways.  Quentin Matsys, having fallen in love with a painter’s daughter, and determined to win her.  Though but a blacksmith and a farrier, he studied art so diligently, and acquired so much distinction, that his mistress afterwards accepted the painter whom she had before rejected as the blacksmith.  Flaxman, however, married his wife before he had acquired any distinction whatever as an artist.  He was merely a skilful and promising pupil.  When Sir Joshua Reynolds heard of his marriage, he exclaimed, “Flaxman is ruined for an artist!” But it was not so.  When Flaxman’s wife heard of the remark, she said, “Let us work and economize; I will never have it said that Ann Denbam ruined John Flaxman as an artist.”  They economized accordingly.  To earn money, Flaxman undertook to collect the local rates; and what with art and industry, the patient, hard-working, thrifty couple, after five years of careful saving, set out for Rome together.  There Flaxman studied and worked; there he improved his knowledge of art; and there he acquired the reputation of being the first of English sculptors.