72 CHARLES DARWIN. 



through modification of pre-existing types, he did in a dim and 

 crude fashion set forth the theory of evolution itself. Erasmus 

 Darwin gave us conjecture coming near the truth, and suggestion 

 fertile and brilliant. Charles Darwin went beyond this, and made 

 suggestion and conjecture unassailable fact, abundantly proven by 

 investigation and experiment. Not that Erasmus did not conduct 

 experiments. He defined a fool as "a man who never tried an 

 experiment in his life ; " but he lacked the patience and persist- 

 ence, as well as the keen reasoning faculty of Charles, and hence 

 he apologized "for many conjectures not supported by accurate 

 investigation or conclusive experiments." Charles Darwin spent 

 28 years over <9;z^ experiment, which removed him to a fair distance 

 from his grandfather's definition of a fool, and then gave his great 

 theory to the world supported by cumulative proof, the result of 

 untiring, and we may say unequalled observation and experience. 



We must not dwell longer here. I have said this much to 

 show the part Erasmus Darwin played in the " conditioning cir- 

 cumstances " that were to bring about the work of his greater 

 grandson. 



In 1786, nearly a century ago, Robert Darwin, the third son of 

 Erasmus, settled as a physician at Shrewsbury. He was a F.R.S., 

 and to gain that honour he must have had something worthy of 

 his name in the way of intellect ; but, according to his son's esti- 

 mate of him, which we may be quite sure- was a generous one, 

 " he did not possess a scientific mind, but he was incomparably the 

 most acute observer that I ever knew." This power seems to have 

 found exercise mainly in the domain of medicine. In 1796 

 Robert Darwin married Susannah, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, 

 the famous potter, and there, in quaint old Shrewsbury, at a house 

 called The Mount, he settled down for fifty years of prosperous 

 and useful life. There, in the Unitarian Chapel, two years later, 

 Coleridge preached his sermon from the text, "He went up into a 

 mountain apart to pray ; " a sermon to hear which Hazlitt came 

 through fog and mud from his house at Wem, and said it was 

 " like the music of the spheres ! " Robert Darwin was to be 

 envied the society of such men, for Coleridge and Hazlitt were 

 both friends of the Wedgwood and Darwin families. At The 

 Mount; on February the 12th, 1809, Charles Darwin was born. 



