WHAT CONDITIONED THE WORK AND ITS SUCCESS. 201 



the part of the great majority of men who deal in print. 

 The arch little rogue that was present in the man had it 

 now in his power to glut himself at will on excitement at 

 last ; arid so far as there is excitement in ambition, it is 

 to be said that the love of excitement remained with the 

 man himself. He claims for himself (i. 103) a pure 

 love for natural science, but adds, " This pure love has, 

 however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed 

 by my fellow naturalists." " I was also ambitious/' he 

 confesses elsewhere (i. 65), " to take a fair place among 

 scientific men." On receiving a letter to the effect that 

 this consummation was to be his, " I clambered over the 

 mountains with a bounding step," he cries (i. 66), "and 

 made the volcanic rocks resound with my geological 

 hammer so ambitious I was." One can see the pride, 

 too, with which he tells his children at full of the 

 success of his books. There is confession in this (i. 393) : 

 " I am glad you have shown a little bit of ambition about 

 your Journal, for you must know that I have often abused 

 you for not caring more about fame, though, at the same 

 time, I must confess, I have envied and honoured you for 

 being so free of this 'last infirmity of, etc.'" And a still 

 stronger avowal is this (i. 94) : "I wish I could set less 

 value on the bauble fame, either present or posthumous, 

 than I do." Again, when he says (i. 102), in reference to 

 the success of works abroad as constituting a standard of 

 fame, " Judged by this standard, my name ought to last 

 for a few years," one may be apt to feel that there is a 

 longing of the soul here only all the deeper for the 

 suppression in the expression. At the same time it is 

 just in this suppression of expression that one can under- 

 stand into what a man the arch little rogue grew grew 

 into a new excitement that was itself grown grown 

 from the excitement of wile into the intoxication of 

 science and scientific renown. 



