and very many consultation letters from both the Faculty, and from others." Dr. Darwin adds in a postscript, "I do not recollect any other of your objections, but I thought them all easily answeredyour syllogism amused me much."

Brown, nine days later, again readily replies, with courteous intimation : It gave me pleasure to hear of the general approbation which your work had

with !" 'But," says Dr. Welsh, no answer seems to have been returned to this masterly letter, and here the correspondence terminated."

On the whole, from what of this correspondence is given, one is led to believe that Brown, if young, was admirably self-controlled; while, on the contrary, for his part, Darwin, then within five years of his death in his seventy-first year, was, in some degree, unguardedly violent and rude. The biographer, in regard to both combatants, seems to sum up thus: "I know not if, in the history of philosophy, there is to be found any work exhibiting an equal prematurity of talents and attainments; in a controversial point of view its interest is greatly diminished, from the lower estimation in which the theory of his opponent is now generally held." And we here, in 1893, can only admire how Fortune, in truth, does turn her wheel. Herr Dr. Krause, in 1879, chronicles the existence of a special society for the rehabilitation and diffusion of the views of the elder and greater Darwin (him of the Zoonomia, to wit!), while Brown's book is as good as null-or, indeed, if only for its extraordinary punctuation, worse!

CHAPTER IV.

DR. ERASMUS DARWIN.

IT is not, of course, in contemplation to write the life of Dr. Darwin here, but only to signalise such traits in connection therewith as may prove illustrative on the general theme. It is still worth while knowing, however, that, born in 1731, Dr. Erasmus died in 1802, when he was in his seventy-first year. He was twice married. His first wife, wedded in 1757 when she was only eighteen, he being twenty-six, died in 1770. His second wife, a rich and beautiful widow, he married in. 1781, he being fifty and she thirty-four. But, in the interval of eleven years, it seems to be said that he had two illegitimate children. Of the five legitimate children spoken of-to at least some of them he seems, as a father, to have been at times harsh and unjust. Charles appears almost even to resent as much in his own father's reference, that of Dr. R. W., and the reader may still have in mind the difficulty with Miss Seward, as concerns the son who is supposed to have committed suicide. To that son, Erasmus, Charles himself says that Dr. Darwin "was not always kind;" while to Dr. R. W., "he acted in his youth harshly, imperiously, and not always justly." He must be allowed to have had at least the family pride in his children, for he is at the expense of publishing certain

literary productions of his sons, as he calls them, "Mr." Charles and" Dr. R. W." Darwin; and for this last he bestirs himself to get F.R.S., writing in that reference to the great Josiah Wedgewood the following somewhat knacky letter: "When I want anything to be done. (says an old tutor of mine), I look out for a man who does the most business of his own; for if I can prevail on him to undertake it, it is sure to be done soon and well! Hence I apply to you." (A Group of Englishmen, p. 253.) I fancy, on the whole, Dr. Darwin always was knacky-knacky even with his own overbearing

arbitrariness!

Dr. Erasmus Darwin had evidently all his life his profession at heart, and never any liking to have its returns interfered with. So it was that he feared poetry might imperil medicine; and it was only in the year of his marriage with the widow that he allowed the first part of the Botanic Garden to appear. One authority points to this lady's jointure of £600 per annum as the determining consideration here. He himself made then an annual thousand by his practice, and had at least no occasion to be mercenary, though, doubtless, as said, he was not quite easy about the effect of his poetry. Charles Darwin is somewhat inclined to defend his grandfather in the imputation that has money in regard ; but Dr. Erasmus, really, seems always, on the whole, to have encouraged in himself a very prudent and proper respect for what held of the purse. Referring to Zoonomia, he writes to his son that he thinks of publishing it "in hopes of selling it;" and we have already seen how concerned he was that Dr. Thomas Brown (not then Dr.) should know how much improved a professional reputation his Zoonomia had brought him. In fact, Dr. Erasmus is always pretty well seen to have had in mind the ordinary forethought that a practice

brings. He is lucky enough at the start to save a local magnate from the sentence of death pronounced upon him by the leading practitioner, who actually, in consequence, is obliged to pack up and leave the neighbourhood. He was bold and determined in his treatment, sparing neither his lancet nor his digitalis; the former of which he regrets, on his death-bed, not to have had, himself, more of (he calls it in Zoonomia, ii. 197, “the anchor of hope"); while, for its part, the latter (digitalis) is again and again praised by him, and his own receipt for the infusion of it carefully detailed (Botanic Garden, ii., Note). Miss Seward is full of the relative particulars in these matters. The local magnate saved was Mr. Inge of Thorpe, a gentleman of family, fortune, and consequence, then attended by the celebrated Dr. Wilks of Willenthal. Dr. Wilks, for many years the established medical authority of Lichfield, had pronounced the case of Mr. Inge hopeless, and even left it as such. And it was now that the intervention of Dr. Erasmus Darwin "gave the dying patient back to existence, to health, prosperity, and all that high reputation which Mr. Inge afterwards possessed as a public magistrate." No wonder that Wilks took himself off, and left the field to Erasmus, who exhibited "strength of mind and fortitude unappalled!" "The perpetual success which attended this great man's deviations from the beaten track, enabled him," Miss Seward calmly intimates, "to shake all mists from his reputation, as the lion shakes to the air the dewdrops on his mane!" He seems to have had a browbeating, peremptory way with his patients, that not unfrequently infused into them. even awe. Other practitioners have been heard of with some such similar, but, doubtless, much more exag1 This is worth looking at in these days when digitalis has come again so much to the front.

gerated bearing; the contemptuousness with which they affect to regard their patients, or even, walking round them, to look them through and through (ending, perhaps, with a spit !), would appear to strike these latter almost with a sense of omniscience. Erasmus comforted a brother practitioner who stammered (he stammered himself) by assuring him that his impediment in speech would "not at all injure him, but rather on the contrary-by attracting notice." It has a relevant medical interest here to be told that a "Dr. K. supported his business by perpetual boastings;" and to be coordinately assured that "the world is not governed by the clever men, but by the active and energetic." We learn from the narrative that Dr. Erasmus gained for himself not a little wonder in the eyes of Miss Seward and Lady Northesk by declaiming to them about the restoration to health to be produced in the latter by the transfusing into her veins of the willingly sacrificial blood of the former-only it was unfortunate that there was no possibility of his procuring a necessary instrument that would be delicate enough! I suppose it is characteristic of Erasmus, too, that, towards the end of Zoonomia, when he is explaining why there are more boys than girls born, an art of "Calipædia" is announced as "privately communicable!"

Dr. Erasmus was the head of the Lichfield Botanical Society, and in its name sent "various observations" to the "periodical publications" of the day. The Lichfield Botanical Society, made by himself, consisted of Boothby, Jackson, and himself! This Jackson seems to have been a forlorn creature- a Proctor in the Cathedral jurisdiction," " of the lowest possible origin, and wholly uneducated," with "habits of ebriety," etc.,-in short, a sort of unholy "Holy Willie"!

Miss Seward is tolerably particular about Dr. Darwin's