INTRODUCTORY. 5 



No : Charles Darwin was relatively perfect ; but it was 

 not for either modesty or simplicity that we can com- 

 mend Erasmus. Miss Seward and Mrs. Schimmel- 

 penninck, in their respective characterisations, may 

 possibly, in some degree, have erred both; but "it is 

 extremely probable," candidly admits Mr. Francis Darwin 

 here, " that the faults which they exaggerate were to 

 some extent characteristic of the man, and this leads me 

 to think that Erasmus had a certain acerbity or severity 

 of temper which did not exist in his grandson the two 

 men were of a different type." Mr. Francis Darwin is 

 evidently an expert in character ; but one almost inclines 

 to the idea that it was Charles's own innocency of 

 nature which neutralised or arrested any such force in 

 him. It is not exactly knowledge of character one sees 

 in Mr. Darwin when he comes to give us his views say 

 of such men as Carlyle and Buckle. He hits the mark, 

 however, when he speaks of his grandfather's " over- 

 powering tendency to theorise and generalise." But, 

 again, considering, on the part of both Charles and his 

 brother Erasmus, their eager welcome of Dr. Ernst 

 Krause in his rehabilitation of Dr. Darwin, and their 

 own necessary endorsement of the decision of Dr. 

 Krause that the work of the grandfather is, point by 

 point, only continued in the grandson, one is apt to 

 speculate when Charles avows that, " on reading the 

 Zoonomia a second time, after an interval of ten or 

 fifteen years, he was disappointed, the proportion of 

 speculation being so large to the facts given " when 

 Charles avows this, I say, one is apt, with the whole 

 context before one, to speculate on amiableness and 

 innocency even under a look of proper pride. Nay, is it 

 not the same half pride and whole innocency we see 

 when, in his Life of Erasmus, he tells us with a smile 

 that Byron called his grandfather " a mighty master of 



