roubling themselves about the other parts of the body, so I must
be allowed to give my more particular attention to the signs and
indications of the souls of men; and while I endeavour by these means
to portray their lives, I leave important events and great battles to be
described by others."

Things apparently trifling may stand for much in biography as well as
history, and slight circumstances may influence great results. Pascal
has remarked, that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face
of the world would probably have been changed. But for the amours of
Pepin the Fat, the Saracens might have overrun Europe; as it was his
illegitimate son, Charles Martel, who overthrew them at Tours, and
eventually drove them out of France.

That Sir Walter Scott should have sprained his foot in running round
the room when a child, may seem unworthy of notice in his biography; yet
'Ivanhoe,' 'Old Mortality,' and all the Waverley novels depended upon
it. When his son intimated a desire to enter the army, Scott wrote to
Southey, "I have no title to combat a choice which would have been my
own, had not my lameness prevented." So that, had not Scott been lame,
he might have fought all through the Peninsular War, and had his breast
covered with medals; but we should probably have had none of those works
of his which have made his name immortal, and shed so much glory upon
his country. Talleyrand also was kept out of the army, for which he had
been destined, by his lameness; but directing his attention to the study
of books, and eventually of men, he at length took rank amongst the
greatest diplomatists of his time.

Byron's clubfoot had probably not a little to do with determining his
destiny as a poet. Had not his mind been embittered and made morbid by
his deformity, he might never have written a line--he might have been
the noblest fop of his day. But his misshapen foot stimulated his mind,
roused his ardour, threw him upon his own resources--and we know with
what result.

So, too, of Scarron, to whose hunchback we probably owe his cynical
verse; and of Pope, whose satire was in a measure the outcome of his
deformity--for he was, as Johnson described him, "protuberant behind
and before." What Lord Bacon said of deformity is doubtless, to a great
extent, true. "Whoever," said he, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn;