46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The " Expression of the Emotions " came out in 1872, wlien Darwin 

 was sixty-three. Here he cites from " King Henry VIII." Norfolk's 

 account of Wolsey's " strange commotion/' and from " King Henry V." 

 the king's picture of warlike anger. The former passage is correctly 

 given; the latter is printed with some curious omissions, which are not 

 indicated; probably it was written down from memory. The book 

 contains, further, quotations from '^ King Richard II.," " King Henry 

 IV.," pt. i., " King Henry VI.," pt. ii., the " Merchant of Venice," 

 "King John," "Julius Cjesar," the "Winter's Tale," "Titus An- 

 dronicus," " Eomeo and Juliet " and " Hamlet." Not a bad list for 

 a man who, four years later, was to declare that he has " tried lately 

 to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated 

 me ! " Here Shakespeare is neither dull nor intolerable, but endowed 

 with " wonderful knowledge of the human mind." And it must be 

 understood that the passages quoted are not taken, haphazard, from a 

 Shakespeare concordance. I have worked through the thirty-seven 

 plays myself, with a view to emotive psychology, and I know what the 

 possibilities of quotation are. Darwin's passages are selected, and I 

 have little doubt that they were remembered first and looked up after- 

 wards. Darwin quotes, again, from Somerville's " Chase " the lines — 



And with a courtly grin, the fawning hound 

 Salutes thee cow'ring, his wide op'ning nose 

 Upward he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes 

 Melt in soft blandishments, and humble joy — 



which may pass for poetry. He quotes the "laughter, holding both 

 his sides " from Milton's " L'Allegro " ; he quotes twice from Worsley's 

 rhymed version of the " Odyssey " ; he refers to the laughter of the 

 gods in the first book of the " Iliad " ;^ and he quotes twice from the 

 " ^neid " of Virgil. 



I hope that these illustrations of Darwin's use and knowledge of 

 poetry are enough, if not to prove my point, at any rate to give it 

 plausibility. It is, perhaps, not wholly superfluous to add that the 

 absence of certain apt quotations from Darwin's pages is adequately 

 explained by the circumstance that the poets are post-Darwinians. I 

 have found more than once, in discussing this question, that even 

 highly educated persons may be a trifle hazy in their dates. 



When, on the other hand, we ask whether Darwin would have 

 retained his poetic sense by weekly readings, the answer must be doubt- 

 ful. If he had read with any overt intention of refreshing the intel- 



^ So I have always interpreted the rather puzzling passage at the beginning 

 of chapter VIII. My colleague, Dr. L. L. Forman, suggests, however, that 

 Darwin may have confused the Greek with the Norse gods. If this is the case, 

 the reference is probably to some prose work upon Norse mythology. 



