160 DARWIN I ANISM. 



spondents, say in receipt of single or only a few letters, 

 after the publication of the Origin (some of which letters 

 as explanatory are of less or more consequence) ; but still 

 the four men named remain Mr. Darwin's chief corre- 

 spondents, with the addition of only one other as critic- 

 ally important as themselves, namely, Mr. Huxley. It is 

 to these men that Mr. Darwin, in the thinking of his 

 book, in the writing of his book, and in the fortune of his 

 book, confides all that is nearest and dearest to the very 

 centre of his soul. Especially is it Lyell, Hooker, and 

 Asa Gray that he would win over to his theory all 

 through, if it is Mr. Huxley who becomes far and away his 

 most powerful propugnator in the end. Mr. Darwin's 

 letters to Sir Joseph Hooker are much more numerous 

 than those to the others ; and many of them are, in the 

 interest of explanations to the one theory that is con- 

 cerned, very valuable. But Asa Gray and especially 

 Lyell were the stubbornest to move ; and it is, conse- 

 quently, in what is said to them that we shall find the 

 material that is relatively the most important. It is 

 only, however, on the value of the support of these men 

 that we are engaged at present ; and it is fully in the 

 consciousness of that value that Mr. Darwin writes to 

 them. 



The letters to Hooker, in number more than the 

 double even of those to Lyell, which latter greatly ex- 

 ceed those to any other correspondent, glow ever with 

 the warmest and sincerest feelings of the most intimate 

 affection. There is affection in the letters to Lyell, too ; 

 but it is tempered with the admiration that is due to the 

 greatest living geologist and withal the writer's master. 

 With Dr. Asa Gray Mr. Darwin commences to corre- 

 spond perhaps a year and a half later than his intimacy 

 with Hooker fairly began, which itself was several years 

 subsequent to that with Lyell ; but between the two men, 



