236 LIFE OF DARWIN 



At last, five years and a half after his death, the 

 long expected Memoir has made its appearance. The 

 task of preparing it was undertaken by his son, Mr. 

 Francis Darwin, who, having for the last eight years 

 of his father's life acted as his assistant, was specially 

 qualified to put the world in possession of a true 

 picture of the inner life of the great naturalist. Most 

 biographies are too long, but, in the present case, the 

 three goodly volumes will be found to contain not 

 a page too much. The narrative is absorbingly in- 

 teresting from first to last. The editor, with excellent 

 judgment, allows Darwin himself, as far as possible, 

 to tell his own story in a series of delightful letters, 

 which bring us into the very presence of the earnest 

 student and enthusiastic explorer of Nature. 



Charles Darwin came of a family which from the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century had been settled 

 on the northern borders of Lincolnshire. Several of his 

 ancestors had been men of literary taste and scientific 

 culture, the most noted of them being his grandfather, 

 Erasmus Darwin, the poet and philosopher. His 

 father was a medical man in large practice at Shrews- 

 bury, and his mother, a daughter of Josiah Wedge- 

 wood of Etruria. Some interesting reminiscences are 

 given of the father, who must have been a man of 

 uncommon strength of character. He left a large 

 fortune, and thus provided for the career which his son 

 was destined to fulfil. Of his own early life and later 

 years, Darwin has left a slight but most interesting 

 sketch in an autobiographical fragment, written late in 

 life for his children, and without any idea of its ever 

 being published. From this outline we learn that he 



