A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 373 



high degree of native ability, but it is practically impossible to estimate 

 how far that ability would have carried him had he been the son of 

 an ordinary citizen; it might be maintained that a successful merchant, 

 ship-owner, schoolmaster or tradesman requires as much sagacity and 

 mental alertness as even the most successful sovereign; by eliminating 

 those individuals in whom the accident of birth counts for so much, 

 we put this insoluble question out of court. I am surprised to find how 

 few persons of obviously preeminent ability are excluded by this rule, 

 and how many whom, at first, one would imagine it excludes, 

 it really allows to pass, especially in the case of sons born before the 

 father was created a peer. In order to avoid any scandalous omissions, 

 I have thought it well to rule in all those sons of peers whose ability has 

 clearly been of a kind which could not be aided by position and 

 influence; thus I have included the third Earl of Shaftesbury, for it 

 cannot be held that the possession of an earldom tends to aid a man in 

 becoming a philosopher. It has, however, very rarely indeed been 

 necessary to accord this privilege; I have always refrained from accord- 

 ing it in the case of soldiers and statesmen. 



Having eliminated those whose position in the world has clearly 

 been influenced by the accident of birth, it remained to eliminate 

 those whose place in the world, as well as in the 'Dictionary,' was 

 comparatively small. After some consideration I decided that, generally 

 speaking, those persons to whom less than three pages were allotted 

 were evidently not regarded by the editors, and could scarcely be 

 generally regarded, as of the first rank of eminence. Accordingly, I 

 excluded all those individuals to whom less than that amount of space 

 was devoted. When this was done, however, I found it necessary to 

 go through the 'Dictionary' again, treating this rule in a somewhat more 

 liberal manner. I had so far obtained some 700 names, but I had 

 excluded many persons of undoubtedly very eminent ability and 

 achievement; Hutton, the geologist, and Jane Austen, the novelist, for 

 instance, could scarcely be omitted from a study of British genius. 

 It was evident that persons with eventful lives had a better chance of 

 occupying much space than other persons of equal ability with 

 uneventful lives. Moreover, I found that a somewhat rigid adherence 

 to the rule I had laid down had sometimes resulted in groups that 

 were too small and too ill-balanced to be useful for study. In the 

 case of musical composers, for instance, while those of recent times, 

 of whom much is known, were dealt with at length, the earlier 

 musicians, of whom little is known, though their eminence is much 

 greater, were excluded from my list. On the other hand, a certain 

 number of persons had been included because, though of quite ordinary 

 ability (like Bradshaw, the regicide), they happened by accident to 

 have played a considerable part in history. In going through the 



