74 DARWINIANISM. 



further exemplification of the taste for natural history, 

 proceeds to relate " took much pleasure in watching 

 the habits of birds, and even made notes on the subject ; " 

 but when he adds this, " In my simplicity I remember 

 wondering why every gentleman did not become an 

 ornithologist" we are once more remitted, it may be, to 

 the charm of terminology, but not alone. 



The simplicity which we see (with whatever ingenuity) 

 to predominate in the little collector, continued to be 

 the characteristic of the later schoolboy. " I must have 

 been a very simple little fellow when I first went to 

 school," says Mr. Darwin ; and then he tells us how his 

 " false friend Garnett " tricked him about the hat and 

 the cakes. He could hardly have been less simple at 

 seventeen, when at every bird lie shot, his other two false 

 friends cried out, " You must not count that one, I fired 

 at the same time ! " 



For his chemistry with his brother he was nick- 

 named Gas the headmaster publicly rebuked him for 

 wasting his time on such useless subjects ! " He called 

 me," says Mr. Darwin, " very unjustly, a poco curantc, 

 and as I did not understand what he meant, it seemed 

 to me a fearful reproach." Evidently Candide had not 

 been one of the books he read ; and, as usual, the cate- 

 gory " unjustly " went to his heart. 



At this school of Dr. Butler's, where he remained 

 for seven years till 1825, Darwin's success was small. 

 " The school as a means of education to me," he says, 

 " as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, 

 except a little ancient geography and history, was simply 

 a blank." And then he adds, " During my whole life 

 I have been singularly incapable of mastering any 

 language." He could learn by heart, he says, with 

 " great facility, forty or fifty lines " of verse of a morn- 

 ing ; but every one of them was " forgotten in forty-eight 



