in! Crawford * writes to me that his notice will be hostile, but that he will not calumniate the author.' He says he has read my book, at least such parts as he could understand.'† He sent me some notes and suggestions (quite unimportant), and they show me that I have unavoidably done harm to the subject, by publishing an abstract. . . . I have had several notes from

-, very civil and less decided. Says he shall not pronounce against me without much reflection, perhaps will say nothing on the subject. X. says he will go to that part of hell, which Dante tells us is appointed for those who are neither on God's side nor on that of the devil."

But his friends were preparing to fight for him. Huxley gave, in Macmillan's Magazine for December, an analysis of the Origin, together with the substance of his Royal Institution lecture, delivered before the publication of the book.

Carpenter was preparing an essay for the National Review, and negotiating for a notice in the Edinburgh free from any taint of odium theologicum.

C. D. to C. Lyell. Down [December 12th, 1859].

I had very long interviews with which perhaps you would like to hear about.. I infer from several expressions that, at bottom, he goes an immense way with

us....

...

He said to the effect that my explanation was the best ever published of the manner of formation of species. I said I was very glad to hear it. He took me up short: "You must not at all suppose that I agree with you in all respects." I said I thought it no more likely that I should be right in nearly all points, than that I should toss up a penny and get heads twenty times running. I asked him what he thought the

John Crawford, orientalist, ethnologist, &c., b. 1783, d. 1868. The review appeared in the Examiner, and, though hostile, is free from bigotry, as the following citation will show: "We cannot help saying that piety must be fastidious indeed that objects to a theory the tendency of which is to show that all organic beings, man included, are in a perpetual progress of amelioration and that is expounded in the reverential language which we have quoted."

† A letter of Dec. 14, gives a good example of the manner in which some naturalists received and understood it. "Old J. E. Gray of the British Museum attacked me in fine style: You have just reproduced Lamarck's doctrine, and nothing else, and here Lyell and others have been attacking him for twenty years, and because you (with a sneer and laugh) say the very same thing, they are all coming round; it is the most ridiculous inconsistency, &c. &c.'"

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 Horschel 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 diferent 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. xvij.

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 roview 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.

66

"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."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES'-REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS-ADHESIONS AND ATTACKS.

"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 millious* 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.