DR. THOMAS BROWN AND DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 35 



and very many consultation letters from both the 

 Faculty, and from others." Dr. Darwin adds in a 

 postscript, " I do not recollect any other of your 

 objections, but I thought them all easily answered 

 your syllogism amused me much." 



Brown, nine days later, again readily replies, with 

 courteous intimation : " It gave me pleasure to hear of 

 the general approbation which your work had met 

 with ! " " But," says Dr. Welsh, " no answer seems to 

 have been returned to this masterly letter, and here the 

 correspondence terminated." 



On the whole, from what of this correspondence is 

 given, one is led to believe that Brown, if young, was 

 admirably self-controlled ; while, on the contrary, for his 

 part, Darwin, then within five years of his death in his 

 seventy-first year, was, in some degree, unguardedly 

 violent and rude. The biographer, in regard to both 

 combatants, seems to sum up thus : " I know not if, in 

 the history of philosophy, there is to be found any work 

 exhibiting an equal prematurity of talents and attain- 

 ments ; in a controversial point of view its interest is 

 greatly diminished, from the lower estimation in which 

 the theory of his opponent is now generally held." And 

 we here, in 1893, can only admire how Fortune, in 

 truth, does turn her wheel. Herr Dr. Krause, in 1879, 

 chronicles the existence of a special society for the 

 rehabilitation and diffusion of the views of the elder and 

 greater Darwin (him of the Zoonomia, to wit!), while 

 Brown's book is as good as null or, indeed, if only for 

 its extraordinary punctuation, worse ! 



