8 DARWINIANISM. 



l>e received with caution ; " and as for the insinuation 

 that Miss Seward wanted to have married the doctor 

 herself, that surely is too small a gossip for our revered 

 naturalist, even at second hand ! What seems brought 

 forward really as the " calumny " on Miss Seward's part 

 is her statement that Dr. Erasmus Darwin, when he heard 

 of the suicide of his second son (also an Erasmus), shall 

 have exclaimed, " Poor insane coward ! " Hereupon 

 legally summoned (always a very terrible trial to any 

 outsider, let him or her be guilty, or let him or her be 

 innocent), legally summoned, Miss Seward did retract this 

 exclamation ! She repeats, however, that whatever re- 

 gard and sensibility in his son's reference Dr. Erasmus 

 may have shown in his family, " he seemed to have a 

 pride in concealing (it) from the world." " In justice to 

 his memory, she is desirous to correct the misinformation 

 she has received." All the circumstances of the affair 

 are fully narrated in this way by Charles Darwin himself 

 in the Life of the grandfather ; and I know not that we 

 nowadays would make so much of the exclamation in 

 question, even if true. 



" Dr. Erasmus Darwin had an overpowering tendency," 

 writes Charles Darwin, " to theorise and generalise ; " and 

 this is almost the theme, we may say, that Dr. Krause 

 gets himself to expound and expand. 



