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Hereditary Genius
107
Grenville. Besides this, he had the Temple blood. His pedigree, which
is given in the appendix to this chapter, does scant justice to his
breed. The Fox pedigree is also very remarkable in its connection
with the Lords Holland and the Napier family. But one of the most
conspicuous is that of the Marquess of Wellesley, a most illustrious
statesman, both in India and at home, and his younger brother, the
great Duke of Wellington. It is also curious, from the fact of the
Marquess possessing very remarkable gifts as a scholar and critic.
They distinguished him in early life and descended to his son, the late
Principal of New Inn Hall, at Oxford, but they were not shared by his
brother. Yet, although the great Duke had nothing of the scholar or
art-critic in him, he had qualities akin to both. His writings are terse
and nervous, and eminently effective. His furniture, equipages, and
the like were characterised by unostentatious completeness and
efficiency under a pleasing form.
I do not intend to go seriatim through the many names mentioned in
my appendix. The reader must do that for himself, and he will find it
well worth his while to do so; but I shall content myself here with
throwing results into the same convenient statistical form that I have
already employed for the Judges, and arguing on the same bases that
the relationships of the Statesmen abundantly prove the hereditary
character of their genius.
In addition to the English statesmen of whom I have been speaking,
I thought it well to swell their scanty numbers by adding a small
supplementary list, taken from various periods and other countries. I
cannot precisely say how large was the area of selection from which
this list was taken. I can only assure the reader that it contains a
considerable proportion of the names, that seemed to me the most
conspicuous among those that I found described at length, in ordinary
small biographical dictionaries.
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