Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/381

Rh 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 according 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