POETRY AND SCIENCE 45 



We shall not, then, look for poetic quotations in the " Variation." If 

 Virgil is cited, it will be only in connection with the choice of seed 

 corn; and if Homer is mentioned, it will be only because there is no 

 mention of Callus hanJciva either in the " Iliad " or in the " Odyssey." 

 Nor shall we look for poetic excerpts in the " Origin," that wonder of 

 compressed argumentation. But we may fairly turn to the " Natural- 

 ist's Voyage," and to the " Expression of the Emotions," and to the 

 *' Descent of Man." And if we do, our search will be rewarded. 



When, for instance, Darwin is describing in the " Voyage " the 

 feasting of the Indian troops at Bahia Blanca, he not only gives a 

 description which is itself reminiscent of Virgil, but he quotes, in the 

 most natural manner possible, the very words — 



Nam simul expletus dapibus, vinoque sepultus 

 Cervicem inflexam posuit, jacuitque per antrum 

 Immensus, saniem eructans, ac frusta cruenta 

 Per somnum commixta mero — 



in which Virgil in the third book of the " ^neid " describes the gorg- 

 ing of Polyphemus. And when he is surveying the desert behind Port 

 Desire, on the Patagonian coast, he says : 



All was stillness and desolation. Yet in passing over these scenes, without 

 one bright object near, an ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly 

 excited. One asked how many ages the plain had thus lasted, and how many 

 more it was doomed to continue. 



None can reply — all seems eternal now. 

 The wilderness has a mysterious tongue. 

 Which teaches awful doubt. 



It is only fair to say that the passage from Virgil occurs in the first 

 draught of the " Voyage," which appeared in 1839 (when Darwin was 

 thirty) as part of Fitz-Eoy's work. But then it is also fair to say 

 that the passage from Shelley's " Mont Blanc " occurs for the first time 

 in the edition of 1845. 



The " Descent of Man " was published in 1871, when its author was 

 sixty-two. In it he quotes from Tennyson's " Idylls of the King " 

 (1859) the words of Guinevere — 



Not ev'n m inmost thought to think again 

 The sins that made the past so pleasant to us — 



and, in the second edition (1874), Hookham Frere's rhymed version 

 (1872) of Theognis, Fragment X. The quotation from the Greek poet 

 Xenarchus — " Happy the Cicadas live, since they all have voiceless 

 wives " — bears witness, perhaps, rather to Darwin's sense of humor 

 than to his love of poetry. 



