34 DARWINIANISM. 



correspondence, which, after all, seems to have continued 

 a little longer, but we may venture to use for inference 

 an expression or two in later letters on the part of Dr. 

 Darwin, as, " I shall mention those of your objections 

 which I can recollect you would write English well if 

 you would lay aside the nonsense of metaphors 

 metaphors, in an argumentative philosophical treatise, 

 are a disgrace." This of December 20, seems in reply 

 to Dr. Brown of the 5th; and on the 28th Brown's pen 

 is again at work. "You accuse me," he says, "of 

 descending to personalities ; " but he emphatically denies 

 any personality which might not be called such simply 

 as " confuting an opinion," and as tantamount then to 

 the assertion " that the author of that opinion is wrong." 

 And, no doubt, that for Brown is true. The hit about 

 metaphors Brown takes meekly. He is " conscious that 

 there was a superabundance of metaphors in the papers 

 sent," they being " the first taken." " I have always 

 found it best," he explanatorily adds, " not to chill the 

 ardour of composition by pausing to correct, but to wait 

 till the whole be finished, and then to prune whatever 

 is luxuriant ! " He is staunch to the loyalty of his 

 objections : " I should be guilty of an attempt to deceive 

 the world, if I were to profess a belief to which my 

 conscience could not assent ; " and he is indignant that 

 Darwin should hint that " truth was not his object in 

 publishing," and that he had been " actuated by senti- 

 ments of personal ill-will." Darwin seems really to 

 have thought the latter allegation true; for, duly t< 

 impress Brown with a sense of the importance of the 

 personage he (Brown) was addressing, he intimates in the 

 couise of his surrejoinder of the 12th of the following 

 month what has very much the look of being only 

 lugged in : " My second volume has brought me many 

 patients from even London and distant parts of England, 



