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8
Hereditary Genius
whom the world honours for their ability. The catalogue of names is 2,500,
and a full half of it consists of American and Continental celebrities. It is
well I should give in a foot-note¹ an analysis of its contents, in order to
show the exhaustive character of its range. The numbers I have prefixed to
each class are not strictly accurate, for I measured them off rather than
counted them, but they are quite close enough. The same name often
appears. under more than one head.
On looking over the book, I am surprised to find how large a proportion of
the “Men of the Time” are past middle age. It appears that in the cases of
high (but by no means in that of the highest) merit, a man must outlive the
age of fifty to be sure of being widely appreciated. It takes time for an able
man, born in the humbler ranks of life, to emerge from them and to take his
natural position. It would not, therefore, be just to compare the numbers of
Englishmen in the book with that of the whole adult male population of the
British isles; but it is necessary to confine our examination to those of the
celebrities. who are past fifty years of age, and to compare their number
with that of the whole male population who are also above fifty years. I
estimate, from examining a large part of the book, that there are about 850
of these men, and that
1
Contents of the” Dictionary of Men of the Time,” Ed. 1865:— 62 actors, singers, dancers,
&c.; 72 agriculturists; 71 antiquaries, archaeologists, numismatists, &c.; 20 architects; 120
artists (painters and designers); 950 authors; 400 divines; 43 engineers and mechanicians; 10
engravers ; 140 lawyers, judges, banisters, and legists; 94 medical practitioners, physicians,
surgeons, and physiologists; 39 merchants, capitalists, manufacturers, and traders; 168 military
officers; 12 miscellaneous; 7 moral and metaphysical philosophers, logicians; 32 musicians and
composers; 67 naturalists, botanists, zoologists, &c.; 36 naval officers; 40 philologists and
ethnologists; 60 poets (but also included in authors); 60 political and social economists and
philanthropists; 154 men of science, astronomers, chemists, geologists, mathematicians, &c.;
29 sculptors; 64 sovereigns, members of royal families, &c. ; 376 statesmen, diplomatists,
colonial governors, &c.; 76 travellers and geographers.
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