weakest part. He said he had no particular objection to any part. He added:

"If I must criticise, I should say, we do not want to know what Darwin believes and is convinced of, but what he can prove." I agreed most fully and truly that I have probably greatly sinned in this line, and defended my general line of argument of inventing a theory and seeing how many classes of facts the theory would explain. I added that I would endeavour to modify the "believes" and "convinceds." He took me up short: "You will then spoil your book, the charm of it is that it is Darwin himself." He added another objection, that the book was too teres atque rotundus-that it explained everything, and that it was improbable in the highest degree that I should succeed in this. I quite agree with this rather queer objection, and it comes to this that my book must be very bad or very good. . . .

...

I have heard, by a roundabout channel, that Herschel says my book" is the law of higgledy-piggledy." What this exactly means I do not know, but it is evidently very contemptuous. If true this is a great blow and discouragement.

J. D. Hooker to C. Darwin. Kew [1859].

DEAR DARWIN,-You have, I know, been drenched with letters since the publication of your book, and I have hence forborne to add my mite.* I hope now that you are well through Edition II., and I have heard that you were flourishing in London. I have not yet got half-through the book, not from want of will, but of time-for it is the very hardest book to read, to full profits, that I ever tried-it is so cram-full of matter and reasoning.† I am all the more glad that you have published in this form, for the three volumes, unprefaced by this, would have choked any Naturalist of the nineteenth century, and certainly have softened my brain in the operation of assimilating their contents. I am perfectly tired of marvelling at the wonderful amount of facts you have brought to bear, and your skill in marshalling them and throwing them on the enemy; it is also extremely clear as far as I have gone, but very hard to fully appreciate. Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often fancy that I must have been very

* See, however, p. 211.

† Mr. Huxley has made a similar remark:-"Long occupation with the work has led the present writer to believe that the Origin of Species is one of the hardest of books to master."-Obituary Notice, Proc. R. Soc. No. 269, p. xvii.

stupid not to have more fully followed it in MS. Lyell told me of his criticisms. I did not appreciate them all, and there are many little matters I hope one day to talk over with you. I saw a highly flattering notice in the English Churchman, short and not at all entering into discussion, but praising you and your book, and talking patronizingly of the doctrine! . . . Bentham and Henslow will still shake their heads, I fancy.

Ever yours affectionately.

C. D. to T. H. Huxley. Down, Dec. 28th [1859].

MY DEAR HUXLEY,-Yesterday evening, when I read the Times of a previous day, I was amazed to find a splendid essay and review of me. Who can the author be? I am intensely curious. It included an eulogium of me which quite touched me, though I am not vain enough to think it all deserved. The author is a literary man, and German scholar. He has read my book very attentively; but, what is very remarkable, it seems that he is a profound naturalist. He knows my Barnacle-book, and appreciates it too highly. Lastly, he writes and thinks with quite uncommon force and clearness; and what is even still rarer, his writing is seasoned with most pleasant wit. We all laughed heartily over some of the sentences. Who can it be? Certainly I should have said that there was only one man in England who could have written this essay, and that you were the man. But I suppose I am wrong, and that there is some hidden genius of great calibre. For how could you influence Jupiter Olympus and make him give three and a half columns to pure science? The old fogies will think the world will come to an end. Well, whoever the man is, he has done great service to the cause, far more than by a dozen reviews in common periodicals. The grand way he soars above common religious prejudices, and the admission of such views into the Times, I look at as of the highest importance, quite independently of the mere question of species. If you should happen to be acquainted with the author, for Heaven-sake tell me who he is?

My dear Huxley, yours most sincerely.

There can be no doubt that this powerful essay, appearing in the leading daily Journal, must have had a strong influence on the reading public. Mr. Huxley allows me to quote from a letter an account of the happy chance that threw into his hands the opportunity of writing it :

"The Origin was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the

Times writers at that day, in what I suppose was the ordinary course of business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist, and, at a later period, editor of Once a Week, was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Whereupon he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.

"I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the Times to make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences.

"When the article appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the first paragraph!

"As the Times some years since referred to my connection with the review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the publication of this little history, if you think it worth the space it will occupy."

"You are the greatest revolutionist in natural history of this century, if not of all centuries."-H. C. Watson to C. Darwin, Nov. 21, 1859.

1860.

THE second edition, 3000 copies, of the Origin was published on January 7th; on the 10th, he wrote with regard to it, to Lyell :

:

C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, January 10th [1860].

*

It is perfectly true that I owe nearly all the corrections to you, and several verbal ones to you and others; I am heartily glad you approve of them, as yet only two things have annoyed me; those confounded millions of years (not that I think it is probably wrong), and my not having (by inadvertence) mentioned Wallace towards the close of the book in the summary, not that any one has noticed this to me. I have now put in Wallace's name at p. 484 in a conspicuous place. I shall be truly glad to read carefully any MS. on man, and give my opinion. You used to caution me to be cautious about man. I suspect I shall have to return the caution a hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt, be a grand discussion; but it will horrify the world at first more than my whole volume; although by the sentence (p. 489, new edition †) I show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other animals. It is in fact impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only vaguely) on man.

* This refers to the passage in the Origin of Species (2nd edit. p. 285) in which the lapse of time implied by the denudation of the Weald is discussed. The discussion closes with the sentence: "So that it is not improbable that a longer period than 300 million years has elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary period." This passage is omitted in the later editions of the Origin, against the advice of some of his friends, as appears from the pencil notes in my father's copy of the 2nd edition. In the first edition, the passages occur on p. 488.

With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance can be included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts, and speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an uncommonly curious subject.

A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent: "What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring for it at the Railway Station !!! at Waterloo Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a very remarkable book!!!"

C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, 14th [January, 1860].

I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review on my book! I thought it * a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and my kind and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and noble things you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the Gardeners' Chronicle; but now I admire it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks..

Asa Gray to J. D. Hooker. Cambridge, Mass.,

January 5th, 1860.

MY DEAR HOOKER,-Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my

*Gardeners' Chronicle, 1860. Sir J. D. Hooker took the line of complete impartiality, so as not to commit the editor, Lindley.