This matter of other people’s learning and accomplishments has been worrying me for some time. I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or to do in half a dozen life-times. To begin with, unless these people chance to be obvious invalids like Stevenson or Tchehov, they are always tremendous athletes with surprising strength, powers of endurance, and so forth.
很长一段时间以来，我从未理解别人的知识和成就。只要您随意阅读任何重要人物的传记，就总会发现他的知识和才华，即使我活了六岁，我也永远都不想学习和去做。首先，除了遇到像史蒂文森或契kh夫这样的明显残疾的人之外，他们一直都是顶尖的运动员，他们拥有惊人的力量和耐力。
They could all walk and run and climb our heads off, even when they were seventy. Then they all have the gift of tongues. You never catch a glimpse of them sitting down to learn a new language, not even running an eye over its irregular verbs, yet it is admitted that they speak any number with an astonishing fluency and purity of accent. They never
confine themselves to one science, but are inevitably masters of several. The big book of Nature they know by heart. Only the other day I was reading an account of a great novelist, a most sophisticated and subtle person, and was told that he knew the name and habits and history of every wild flower and plant and tree and bird in the country. Nor is that all.
There is not one of these bigwigs who is not (I quote the customary phrases) a sensitive and accomplished musician, or an extraordinarily fine amateur water-colourist, or the possessor of a magnificent prose style. We are always told that, had circumstance been different, their talents were such that they need only have given their serious attention to one or other of these arts to have procured for themselves lasting and perhaps world-wide reputation. So runs the legend of the eulogists.
即使他们已经七十多岁了，当他们走路，跑步和越过山脉时，我们也无法跟上他们的步伐。其次，他们大多数是语言天才。您从未见过他们坐下来学习一种新语言，甚至还没有见过他们浏览不规则动词列表。但是每个人都认为他们不仅可以流利而且可以说纯净的语音随意说几种语言。他们通常精通一些学科，并且不仅限于一门科学。他们记住了大自然的伟大成就。不久前，我读到了一位杰出小说家的事迹。他是一个非常老练的人。
据说他熟悉该国每朵野花，草，树和鸟的名字，习性和生活史。此外，请原谅我使用一些公式来描述这些大人物，都是受启发的音乐大师，精湛的业余水彩画家或漂亮的造型师。更令我们惊讶的是，如果他们的处境不同，只要他们凭自己的才干认真地从事这种或那种艺术，他们肯定会在未来获得不朽的声誉，甚至享誉全球。这些对它们的描述确实令人惊讶。
I am baffled. How is it done? I ask the question again, my voice rises to a scream of envy and vexation. Consider what is involved in this matter (so lightly touched upon and dismissed) of music or water-colour painting or fine writing, what years of serious application, of drudgery at the keyboard, the easel, or the writing-desk. It is one thing to strum on the piano, as you and I do, faking the left-hand passages as we go along, or to daub a few patchy
water colours, or to paste on to clumsy prose some old spangles of rhetoric, and it is quite another thing to be an accomplished musician or artist or writer. If the first were meant, I could understand it; but the second —— and as a mere recreation, too! And then to add the athleticism, the sciences, the tongues, the natural history! I am bewildered and crushed. The very idle rumour of fellow-creatures so wonderfully gifted makes me dwindle in my own estimation to the size of a gnat.
但是我很困惑。他们该怎么做？我想再问这个问题，即使嫉妒和困扰也是如此。我们应该仔细考虑音乐，水彩画或精美文章的含义（这一点被他们轻视或忽略了）。花很多年时间专注于键盘，努力在画架或办公桌上完成任务。就像您和我一样，随心所欲地弹钢琴，同时用左手插入即兴的通行证，或者不管颜色的协调性如何，随意画几笔然后浸入水彩画，或者在句子中粘贴一些闪烁的句子。粗俗的散文陈词滥调是一回事。
成为一名成功的音乐家，画家或作家是另一回事。如果提到前者，我可以理解。但是如果提到后者呢？-它仍然只是业余消遣！更不用说他们必须从事运动，学习各种科学，学习各种语言或自然历史！这使我感到困惑并钦佩我。这就是让我看起来越来越小，像蚊子一样小的原因。他们有如此惊人的才能！就像传说中所说的那样。
（部分素材来源于网络，侵删）
大家对这篇文章是怎么看的呢？欢迎评论区留言交流。