If Sir Walter Scott had not sprained his foot in running round the room when a child, the world would probably have had none of those works which have made his name immortal.  When his son intimated a desire to enter the army, Sir Walter Scott wrote to Southey, “I have no title to combat a choice which would have been my own, had not my lameness prevented.”  In the same way, the effects of a fall when about a year old rendered Talleyrand lame for life, and being, on this account, unfit for a military career, he was obliged to renounce his birthright in favour of his second brother.  But what seemed an obstacle to his future success was the very reverse, for, turning his attention to politics and books, he eventually became one of the leading diplomatists of his day.  Again, Josiah Wedgwood was seized in his boyhood with an attack of smallpox, which was followed by a disease in the right knee, some years afterwards necessitating the amputation of the affected limb.  But, as Mr. Gladstone, in his address on Wedgwood’s life and work delivered at Burslem, Oct. 26th, 1863, remarked, the disease from which he suffered was, no doubt, the cause of his subsequent greatness, for “it prevented him from growing up to be the active, vigorous English workman, but it put upon him considering whether, as he could not be that, he might not be something else, and something greater.  It drove him to meditate upon the laws and secrets of his art.”

Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident.  Being removed from school on account of his health, it appears that a cold caught in the summer of 1660 while bathing, which produced a rheumatic affection of the joints, accompanied by other ailments.  He became unable to walk to school, and he finally left in May, 1662.  His self-training now began, and Sacroborco’s “De Sphaera” was lent to him, with the perusal of which he was so pleased that he forthwith commenced a course of astronomic studies.  Accordingly, he constructed a rude quadrant and calculated a table of the sun’s altitudes, pursuing his studies, as he said himself, “under the discouragement of friends, the want of health, and all other instructors, except his better genius."[54]

Alluding to accidents as sometimes developing greatness, Mr. Smiles remarks that Pope’s satire was in a measure the outcome of his deformity; and Lord Byron’s club foot, he adds, “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.  But his misshapen foot stimulated his mind, roused his ardour, threw him upon his own resources, and we know with what result.”

Again, in numerous other ways, it has been remarked, accidents have taken a lucky turn, and, if not being the road to fortune, have had equally important results.  The story is told of a young officer in the army of General Wolfe who was supposed to be dying of an abscess in the lungs.  He was absent from his regiment on sick leave, but resolved to join it when a battle was expected, “for,” said he, “since I am given over I had better be doing my duty, and my life’s being shortened a few days matters not.”  He received a shot which pierced the abscess and made an opening for the discharge, the result being that he recovered and lived to eighty years of age.