CHARLES DAHWfif. 137 



the propitiatory hen. Further, in fact, in the same 

 novel, all about the Dobsons is in a similar vein, and 

 excellent. It is curious that the very creatrix of all 

 these characters spoke with disgust of the like of them 

 in others. Moulder, the immortal Moulder, she actually 

 shudders at. Yet, even with the Proudies (of course it 

 is not meant to ignore or disparage here other admirable 

 serious characters and purposes), is it certain that there 

 is anything better in all Trollope than Dockwrath with 

 Mr. Moulder and his fellow-bagmen in the Commercial 

 Eoom of the Bull Inn, Leeds ? I am sure, when one is 

 dull, just to brighten one, one can go back to that scene 

 again and again, though one fails, excellent as it is, to go 

 through the whole novel (Orley Farm) even for a second 

 time. Doubtless, it was only becoming in Miss Evans to 

 play propriety and give herself the air of the " femme 

 savante," when it was such a disgusting brute as that 

 drunken bagman that was in front of her. 



But as regards Mr. Darwin in a general literary 

 reference, the summing up of his own, most candid and 

 most accomplished, son, Mr. Francis, is, no doubt, the 

 right one. " Charles Darwin," he says (i. 6), " had not 

 the literary temperament which made Erasmus (the 

 grandfather) a poet as well as a philosopher ; " and 

 (p. 125), "I do not think that his literary tastes and 

 opinions were on a level with the rest of his mind." In 

 fact, so far as what was concerned was a matter of 

 reading or intellectual operation alone, then Mr. Darwin's 

 own verdict on himself is the true one (ii. 150): 

 " Facts compel me to conclude that my brain was never 

 formed for much thinking." He, surely, had himself in 

 his eye when he exclaimed to Fox, " Geology is a capital 

 science to .begin with, as it requires nothing but a little 

 reading, thinking, and hammering." It was not by 

 reading, at all events, but practically, that he himself was 



