DARWINIANISM. PART I. THE WORKMEN. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. "RUDGE immortalised the name of Darwin through introduction to the Flora of the genus Darwinia." To read, in the Conversations - Lexicon, date, 1844, article, "Darwin (Erasmus)," these words nowadays, is to be surprised by a variety of reflections-by this reflection among others, that it would be the enthusiastic Rudge himself who, were he in case to read, would probably be the most surprised-surprised to find that, as facts are, it is Rudge (himself), not Darwin, he has well," immortalised!" Of course, in 1893, it is Charles, not Erasmus, we think of as having immortalised the name Darwin; but, to speak extravagantly, had there been no Charles, would not the ascription to Rudge of immortalising the name through a new genus in the Flora-would not this ascription to Rudge have still been relevant down, on the whole, to 1879 ? It was in that year, namely, that there appeared in England that translation of Dr. Ernst Krause's Essay on the Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin, which, according to the declaration of Mr. Francis Darwin, is a "glorifying of the older Evolutionist." Now, was it not for the first time then, after many years, that that glorifying took place, and till it took place, must it not be acknowledged that, as has been said, Charles apart, the allegation of the German Conversations-Lexicon remained true for Rudge? Without Charles, to Rudge alone would have remained the credit of having immortalised the name Darwin. And this solely by introduction into the Flora of the new genus Darwinia! No doubt, it is quite certain that, in his own day, Dr. Erasmus Darwin acquired a widespread and enormous reputation; but it is equally certain that that reputation collapsed and vanished almost as suddenly as it rose. Of his various works, edition had followed edition, not only in England, but even in America; while on the Continent, in France, Germany, Italy, translations had appeared. He preceded Scott, Byron, Moore as a poet of a thousand guineas the canto. Miss Seward, in her Life of him, published in 1804, talking the language of the time, speaks of the Botanic Garden as “a magnificent poem," and of its author as on a level with "Pope, and Swift, and Gray, and Johnson." In fact, she says, " neither Pope nor Gray could have executed the poem so well;" Dr. Darwin is "not inferior to Ovid," and "the Botanic Garden will live as long as the Metamorphoses." "Its successive pictures alternately possess the sublimity of Michael Angelo, the correctness. and the elegance of Raphael, with the glow of Titian, at times the strength of Salvator Rosa, and at others the softness of Claude!" (What a fine familiarity is this with names a familiarity quite uncommon !) Samuel Johnson honoured Erasmus with his hatred, and Dr. He Coleridge coined for him the verb to "Darwinise." drew refutations from a Dugald Stewart and an Archdeacon Paley; and Dr. Thomas Brown laid the ground for his own reputation in a volume to disprove him. Thomas Campbell published his Pleasures of Hope in 1799 they ran through four editions in a twelvemonth; but there can be little doubt that the resounding roll—“ Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of time!"-of those marvellous Sarmatian numbers is scarcely more than a well-caught reverberation from the laborious succussions of Dr. Darwin's theatrical sheet tin. John Dennis complained that the rascals had stolen his thunder; and no less a larceny of his tin (din) Erasmus might have brought home to Thomas! So far, we have the tide at the flood; but it was already at ebb as early as 1809, when Lord Byron appeared with his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In that poem Darwin is regarded as but little better than another Cottle or another Stott; a note in it exclaims that "the neglect of the Botanic Garden is some proof of returning taste," while in the text, "false glare," "gilded cymbals," "native brass," "pompous chime," "tinsel," are alone declared to constitute the contents of it, and he, its author, is but "flimsy Darwin," a " mighty master of unmeaning rhyme." By and by, Professor Craik names his verses a sort of "pin-making;" while Mr. Lewes, later, characterises his " tawdry reputation," in its "tawdry splendour," as "equally noisy and fleeting." In short, judge after judge appears vieing with each other in reprobation and contempt, till, on the part of 1 "Boeotian Cottle- Oh, Amos Cottle !-Phoebus! what a name, the public, conclusion there could be none but that Dr. Erasmus Darwin, convicted in his verse of the confused images and vacant resonance of mere repercussion and rebound, as previously, in his prose, only of "the crude and visionary metaphysics of the half-informed multitude who "-it is Dugald Stewart speaks-" follow the medical trade," had, after having excited "a degree of interest in the literary world, wholly disproportionate to his merits" (Dr. Welsh in Memoir of Brown), been definitively remitted and consigned to his primitive obscurity and prescriptive oblivion. In the later Darwinian literature it is not difficult to detect tokens of a hurt sense of this on the part of the family. It is not to be supposed, indeed, that any rightfeeling scions of the stem could have remained in equanimity under the idea that he, who had been their envied honour as a gem, should be the source of but half a smile for the future as no more than proved and convicted paste. Charles, for his part, even in the midst of his own great reputation, cannot but think again and again of his grandfather, in regard to whom he says once: "Throughout his letters I have been struck with his indifference to fame and the complete absence of all signs of any over-estimation of his own abilities, or of the success of his works." When we think, however, of the rough sufficiency and rude imperiousness of the man, of which his coarse reception of Dr. Thomas Brown may furnish some proof, one feels more disposed to respect in Mr. Darwin his family piety than his knowledge of character. His own son (Charles's), indeed, would seem to have experienced the same suggestion here, for his comment-the comment of Mr. Francis Darwin appended to the above words, is, "Yet we get no evidence in Erasmus of the intense modesty and simplicity that marked Charles Darwin's whole nature." |