170 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xn 



He put everyone at his ease, and talked and laughed in 

 the gayest way, with lively banter and raillery that had a 

 pleasant flavour of flattery, and touches of humour; but he 

 always showed deference to his guests and a desire to bring 

 any stranger into the conversation. I can well understand 

 that anyone who had only met him under such circumstances 

 might be led to disbelieve the accounts of his ill-health. . . . 



There is one other subject I should like to touch upon, 

 and that is the very hackneyed subject of his loss of interest 

 in poetry and art. I think in this way an unfair slur has 

 been cast upon the influence of the study of natural history; 

 this is no doubt to a great extent due to a want of realization 

 of the state of his health and of his nature. 



When he first returned from the voyage on the Beagle, 

 he was entirely overwhelmed with the various duties con- 

 nected with the publication of his journal. ... In a very 

 few years' time his health failed, and he retired in 1842 to 

 Down. He then began the routine of life which continued 

 for 40 years. Every morning he worked to the very 

 end of his tether 3 so that he would often have to say 

 in the middle of a sentence: "I am afraid I must leave 

 off now." . . . 



As regards his imagination, I think that scenery, the 

 beauty of flowers, and music and novels were sufficient to 

 satisfy it. I remember he onee said to me with a smile 

 that he believed he could write a poem on Drosera, on 

 which he was then working. I think he could never have 

 written the last paragraph or two of the Origin of Species 

 or the passage in the letter to my mother from Moor Park, in 

 which he mentions that he fell asleep in the park and awoke 

 to a chorus of birds, with squirrels in the trees and the laugh 

 of a woodpecker, and he added that he did not care a 

 penny how the birds or the beasts were made I think 

 he could never have written either of those two passages 

 without a deep sense of the beauty and the poetry of the 

 world and of life. As regards his interest in art, I think 

 he did keep it up to a certain extent. I remember that 

 at the end of his sofa on which he used to lie, he had a 



