Great Men
(Social status of).
Arkwright (Sir Richard), a barber.
Beaconsfield (Lord), a solicitor’s clerk.
Bloomfield, a cobbler, son of a tailor.
Bunyan, a travelling tinker.
Burns, a gauger, son of a ploughman.
CÆdmon, a cowherd.
Cervantes, a common soldier.
Clare, a ploughman, son of a farm labourer.
Claude Lorraine, a pastrycook.
Cook (Captain), son of a husbandman.
Cunningham (Allan), a stonemason, son of a peasant.
Defoe, a hosier, son of a butcher.
Demosthenes, son of a cutler.
Dickens, a newspaper reporter; father the same.
Eldon (Lord), son of a coal-broker.
Faraday (Michael), a bookbinder.
Ferguson (James), the astronomer, son of a day-labourer.
Franklin, a journeyman printer, son of a tallow-chandler.
Hargreaves, the machinist, a poor weaver.
Hogg, a shepherd, son of a Scotch peasant.
Homer, a farmer’s son (said to have begged his bread).
Horace, son of a manumitted slave.
Howard (John), a grocer’s apprentice, son of a tradesman.
Kean (Edmund), son of a stage-carpenter in a minor theatre.
Jonson (Ben), a bricklayer.
Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, son of a small farmer
Lucian, a sculptor, son of a poor tradesman.
Monk (General), a volunteer.
Opie (John), son of a poor carpenter in Cornwall.
Paine (Thomas), a stay-maker, son of a Quaker.
Porson (Richard), son of a parish clerk in Norfolk.
Richardson, a bookseller and printer, son of a joiner.
Shakespeare, son of a wool-stapler.
Stephenson (George), son of a fireman at a colliery.
Watt (James), improver of the steam engine, son of a block-maker.
Washington, a farmer.
⁂ And hundreds more.