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The Museum Gazette 



Mr. Wright, in another place, speaks of " poor Crabbe's 

 animated face and revolving hat." This referred to a son of 

 the poet. The expression " revolving hat " would imply a 

 remarkably round head. Very few persons could wear their 

 hats put on sideways, that is, with front and back over their 

 ears ; in still fewer would that hat have any tendency to turn 

 round on the head. Crabbe's hat is said never to have been 

 in its right place. He was an able man, but not a genius. 



Mr. Sydney Lee, in his excellent essays on Great English- 

 men, has written, respecting Shakespeare and Genius : 



" The difference between the results of his endeavours and 

 those of his fellows was due to the magic and involuntary work- 

 ing of genius, which, since the birth of time, has exercised as 

 large a charter as the wind to blow on whom it pleases. 

 Speculation or debate as to why genius bestowed its fullest 

 inspiration on Shakespeare, this youth of Stratford-on-Avon, 

 is as futile a speculation as debate about why he was born 

 into the world with a head on his shoulders at all, instead of, 

 say, a block of stone. It is enough for prudent men and 

 women to acknowledge the obvious fact that genius, in an 

 era of infinite intellectual energy, endowed Shakespeare, the 

 Stratford-on-Avon boy, with its richest gifts " (p. 260). 



We by no means wholly follow Mr. Lee in his despairing 

 verdict as to the impossibility of explaining the occurrence of 

 Genius. Like all other bodily endowments, the transcendent 

 mental capacity to which that name is given is doubtless 

 the result of descent. What is wanted is a knowledge of 

 the facts. Nothing comes by chance. Genius undoubtedly 

 arises only in races and communities of high general culti- 

 vation, and it would be a pity to adopt as a creed that it 

 comes as the wind comes. We shall have something to say 

 at a future time as to the descent of Shakespeare and some 

 other men of genius. For the present we must be content 

 to suggest in the mildest possible terms that as regards 

 the development of poetic genius, the brachycephalic head 

 appears to have some advantages. 



