198 WRITING OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, [ch. xi. 



My good dear friend, forgive me. This is a trumpery 

 letter, influenced by trumpery feelings. 



Yours most truly. 

 I will never trouble you or Hooker on the subject again. 



C. D. to C. Lyell Down, 26th [June 1858]. 



My dear Lyell Forgive me for adding a P.S. to 

 make the case as strong as possible against myself. 



Wallace might say, " You did not intend publishing an 

 abstract of your views till you received my communication. 

 Is it fair to take advantage of my having freely, though un- 

 asked, communicated to you my ideas, and thus prevent me 

 forestalling you?" The advantage which I should take 

 being that I am induced to publish from privately knowing 

 that Wallace is in the field. It seems hard on me that I 

 should be thus compelled to lose my priority of many years' 

 standing, but I cannot feel at all sure that this alters the 

 justice of the case. First impressions are generally right, 

 and I at first thought it would be dishonourable in me now 

 to publish. 



Yours most truly. 



P.S. I have always thought you would make a first- 

 rate Lord Chancellor ; and I now appeal to you as a Lord 

 Chancellor. 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Tuesday night [June 29, 1858]. 



My dear Hooker I have just read your letter, and 

 see you want the papers at once. I am quite prostrated,* 

 and can do nothing, but I send Wallace, and the abstract f 

 of my letter to Asa Gray, which gives most imperfectly only 

 the means of change, and does not touch on reasons for 

 believing that species do change. I dare say all is too late. 

 I hardly care about it. But you are too generous to sacri- 

 fice so much time and kindness. It is most generous, most 

 kind. I send my sketch of 1844 solely that you may see 

 by your own handwriting that you did read it. I really 

 cannot bear to look at it. Do not waste much time. It is 

 miserable in me to care at all about priority. 



* After the death, from scarlet fever, of his infant child. 



t " Abstract" is here used in the sense of " extract ; " in this sense also it 

 occurs in the Linnean Journal, where the sources of my father's paper are de- 

 scribed. 



