420

PERSONAL

ERASMUS DARWIN, M. D., F. R. S. Born at Elston, near Newark, 12th Dec., 1731, Died at the Priory, near Derby, 10th April, 1802.

Of the rare union of Talents
which so eminently distinguished him
as a Physician, a Poet and Philosopher
His writings remain

a public and unfading testimony.
His Widow

has erected his monument

in memory of

the zealous benevolence of his disposition,
the active humanity of his conduct,

and the many private virtues which adorned his character. -INSCRIPTION ON TOMB, Breadsall Church.

Five or six times in my life I have seen him angry, and have heard him express that anger with much real, and more apparent vehemence, more than men of less sensibility would feel or show. But then the motive never was personal. When Dr.

Darwin beheld any example of inhumanity or injustice, he never could refrain his indignation; he had not learnt, from the school of Lord Chesterfield, to smother every generous feeling.-EDGEWORTH, RICHARD LOVELL, 1802, Monthly Magazine.

I think all those who knew him, will allow that sympathy and benevolence were the striking features. He felt very sensibly for others, and, from his knowledge of human nature, he entered into their feelings and sufferings in the different circumstances of their constitution, character, health, sickness, and prejudice. In benevolence, he thought that almost all virtue consisted. He despised the monkish abstinences and the hypocritical

pretentions which so often impose on the world. The communication of happiness and the relief of misery were by him held as the only standard of moral merit. Though he extended his humanity to every sentient being, it was not like that of some philosophers, so diffused as to be of no effect; but his affection was there warmest where it could be of most service to his family and his friends, who will remember the constancy of his attachment and his zeal for their welfare.-KEIR, JAMES, 1802, Letter to Robert Darwin, May 12.

He was somewhat above the middle size, his form athletic, and inclined to corpulence; his limbs too heavy for exact proportion. The traces of a severe smallpox; features, and countenance, which, when they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional appendage, a large full-bottomed wig, gave, at that early period of life, an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health, and the earnest of good humour, a sunny smile, on entering a room, and on first accosting his friends, rendered, in his youth, that exterior agreeable, to which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious. He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable impression it made might not always be pleasant to individual self-love. Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of intellect, he became, early in life, sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always revenged it by sarcasm

of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of sallies of egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree, that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of colloquial despotism were discernible in unworn existence, they increased as it advanced, fed by an ever-growing reputation within and without the pale of medicine. -SEWARD, ANNA, 1804, Memoir of the Life of Dr. Darwin, p. 1.

We all hastened to the window to see Dr. Darwin, of whom we had heard so much, and whom I was prepared to honor and venerate, in no common degree, as the restorer of my mother's health. What, then, was my astonishment at beholding him, as he slowly got out of the carriage! His figure was vast and massive; his head was almost buried on his shoulders, and he wore a scratch-wig, as he called it, tied up in a little bobtail behind.-SCHIMMELPENNICK, MARY ANNE, 1859, Life, ed. Hankin, p. 205.

Equally eminent as philanthropist, physician, naturalist, philosopher, and poet, is far less known and valued by posterity than he deserves, in comparison with other persons who occupy a similar rank. It is true that what is perhaps the most important of his many-sided endowments, namely his broad view of the philosophy of nature, was not intelligible to his contemporaries; it is only now, after the lapse of a hundred years, that by the labours of one of his descendants we are in a position to estimate at its true value the wonderful perceptivity, amounting almost to divination, that he displayed in the domain of biology. For in him we find the same indefatigable spirit of research, and almost the same biological tendency, as in his grandson; and we might, not without justice, assert that the latter has succeeded to an intellectual inheritance, and carried out a programme sketched forth and left behind by his grand-father.-KRAUSE, ERNST, 1879, The Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin, tr. Dallas, p. 132.

His correspondence with many distinguished men was large; but most of the letters which I possess or have seen are uninteresting, and not worth publication. Medicine and mechanics alone aroused him to write with any interest. . . . Judging

from his published works, letters, and all that I have been able to gather about him, the vividness of his imagination seems to have been one of his pre-eminent characteristics. This led to his great originality of thought, his prophetic spirit both in science and in the mechanical arts, and to his over-powering tendency to theorise and generalise. Nevertheless, his remarks, hereafter to be given, on the value of experiments and the use of hypotheses show that he had the true spirit of a philosopher. That he possessed uncommon powers of observation must be admitted. The diversity of the subjects to which he tended is surprising. But of all his characteristics, the incessant activity or energy of his mind was, perhaps, the most remarkable.-DARWIN, CHARLES, 1879, The Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin by Krause, tr. Dallas, Preliminary Notice, pp. 27, 48.

THE BOTANIC GARDEN

1781

My father has just returned from Dr. Darwin's, where he has been nearly three weeks. He saw the first part of Dr. Darwin's "Botanic Garden;" £900 was what his bookseller gave him for the whole!-EDGEWORTH, MARIA, 1792, Letters, vol. I, p. 21.

I wish I could let you have a look at this fashionable style of English book, as I have it before me in large quarto bound in morocco. It weighs exactly five and a half pounds, as I know by having convinced myself of this yesterday. Now as our pocket-books weigh about as much in halfounces, we may, in this respect, also be as one to thirty-two compared with the English, unless indeed we on our part were able to counterbalance one such fashionable English giant with thirty-two pocketbooks. It is splendidly printed on smooth paper, embellished with crazy, allegorical engravings by Fuseli, and in addition to this every now and again adorned with illustrations the subjects of which are taken from botany, antiquarian research, incidents and love-affairs of the day; it has introductions, tables of contents, notes below the text and notes at the end of the text, in which physics, geography, botany, manufacture and commerce, but more especially the names of dead and living celebrities are admirably set forth, so that from ebb and flood down to the sympathetic

Here, therefore,

you have the plan of a poem! Such must be the appearance presented by a didactic. poem which is not only to teach but to instruct. You will now be able to imagine that a goodly variety of descriptions, of allegories and of similes is to be found. roaming about in this book, and that there is not a vestige of poetic feeling to link the poem together. The versification, it seems to me, is not bad, and many passages possess a rhetorical turn peculiar to the metre. In part, the details remind one of many of those English poets whose works are of didactic and narrative order.

How pleased the English blasé world will be with certain passages when it sees so much theoretical matter-of which it has for long heard faint whisperings-sung aloud to it in the well-known rhythm! I have only had the book in the house since last night, and, in truth, find it beneath my expectation, for I am really in favour of Darwin.—GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG, 1798, Letter to Schiller, Jan. 26; Correspondence Between Schiller and Goethe, tr. Schmitz, vol. II, pp. 26, 27.

Darwin's book would probably have little success in Germany. The Germans like sentiment, and the more trifling it is the more generally welcome it is; but this play of the fancy with ideas, this realm of allegory, this cold intellectuality and learning disguised in verse, could not be attractive to any but the English in their present state of frostiness and unconcern. The work, however, shows what function. is wont to be attributed to poetry, and is a new and brilliant triumph to the philistines over their poetical adversaries. Otherwise I do not think the subject-matter inadmissible and wholy inappropriate for poetical treatment. The miscarriage, in this case, I consider altogether the poet's fault. If one were, at the very outset, to relinquish all idea of giving so-called instruction, and merely endeavoured to bring nature, in its rich variety, movement, and co-operation, within reach of the imagination, and set forth all the products of nature with a certain love and reverencepaying regard to the independent existence. of every one and so forth-then a lively interest in the various subjects could not fail to be awakened -SCHILLER, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDERICH, 1798, Letter to

Schiller and Goethe, tr. Schmitz, vol. II, p. 29.

Only a few years have elapsed, since the genius of the author of "The Botanic Garden" first burst on the public notice in all its splendour. The novelty of his plan. -an imposing air of boldness and originality in his poetical as well as philosophical speculations and a striking display of command over some of the richest sources of poetical embellishment, were sufficient to secure to him a large share of approbation, even from the most fastidious readers, and much more than sufficient to attract the gaze and the indiscriminating acclamations of a herd of admirers and imitators. Yet, with all these pretentions to permanent fame, we are much deceived, if we have not already observed, in that of Dr. Darwin the visible symptoms of decay.-THOMSON, T., 1803, The Temple of Nature, Edinburgh Review, vol. 1, p. 491.

This poem ought not to be considered more than as a capriccio, or sport of fancy, on which he has expended much labour to little purpose. It does not pretend to anything like correctness of design, or continuity of action. It is like a picture of Breughel's where every thing is highly coloured, and every thing out of order.CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of English Poets, p. 265.

When we enter "The Botanic Garden" of Darwin, we find that we have been enticed back into the wilderness of didactic verse: while this masterly versifier exemplifies also, almost everywhere, one of the most common of poetical errors; namely, the attempt to make poetry describe minutely the sensible appearances of corporeal objects, instead of being content with communicating the feelings which those objects awaken.-SPALDING, WILLIAM, 1852-82, A History of English Literature, p. 356.

The section on manures, or the food of plants, is the sole part that interests the agriculturist, and it is much too refined for the grossness of the farmer's application of the articles. No new fact was elicited and established, but much light was cast on the processes that had been adopted.--DONALDSON, JOHN, 1854, Agricultural Biography.