ERASMUS DARWIN. 261 



EKASMUS DAEWIN. 



In the pubKshed address of the President of the British Association, 

 at the meettag for 1874, we read that the late Sir Benjamin Brodie had 

 often called his (Professor Tyudall's) attention to the fact that at the end 

 of the last century the philosopher and poet, Erasmus Darwin, who may 

 be especially claimed by the Midlands as their own, was the forerunner 

 of those biologists of the present epoch who have wrought so great a 

 change in vital dynamics. How far this is true may be worth enquiring 

 into, as weU as profitable, and we shall probably come to the same 

 conclusion as Sir Benjamin, but at the same time be far fi'om beheviug 

 that the doctrine of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest, and 

 the Origin of Species by such simple means, is not the offspring of the 

 thought of our own days. The older philosox3her was, indeed, the 

 precui'sor of the illustrious biologists of our present times, as he was the 

 progenitor of the greatest of them ; but it will be seen that in some cases 

 the old and modern theories are just the antitheses of each other. Still 

 it remains a subject of interest to observe philosophers of the last and 

 present centuries, with such relationship, pursuing the investigation of 

 the same identical subjects, whether we attribute the circumstance to 

 the hereditary transmission of the same tastes, a subject well dwelt upon 

 in the writings of both, or simply to the force of precept and example. 



TiU the year 1781 Erasmus Darwin, M.D., F.E.S., (though he 

 had been previously a short time stationed at Nottingham,) was in 

 practice at Lichfield, but he afterwards resided in Derby. To judge from 

 the " Zoonomia," and from what his literary fi-iend, Miss Seward, tells us, 

 his practice must have been pretty extensive. Indeed, he was an example 

 showing that the life of even a rm'al disciple of Esculapius, from the 

 natiu-al tendency of his art and of scientific pursuits to mutual diffusion, 

 need not, nay, should not be alienated from the latter ; and such an 

 alluring tendency of science towards medicine is happy, for the liaison is 

 not always profitable in the vulgar sense. Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer, 

 was in the " sere and yellow leaf " when Dr. Darwin left Lichfield. 

 They had met, but what was the sentence of the Colossus upon the 

 "Botanic Gai'den," published aboutthree years before Johnson's death, we 

 are not in a position to say. There was no deficiency of other society in 

 and around the httle city, such as Darwin estimated, and such as could 

 estimate him — ^Watt, Boultou, Edgeworth, Day, Wedgwood, Briudley, 

 Dr. Small, (of Birmingham,) and others. No doubt it was at Lichfield, 

 where, taking advantage of some natural capabilities presented by a 

 parcel of land which he had purchased, he had formed a little botanical 

 paradise, that he composed his poems. He was instrumental, too, with 

 Sir B. Boothbey and Mr. Jackson in pubhshing there part of the works 

 of Linnseus.* 



It has been observed that Darwin was entitled to be caUed " the 

 poet of art and science," but " whose taste for philosophy, perhaps, in 

 some measure, si^oUed the poet, whilst his powers of imagination were 



* A Miss Jackson, of the same city, published a botanical volume, with nnmerous 

 drawings of plants, which are far from contemptible. 1840 : Longmans and Co. 



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