HUMOBESQUES 78 



' je pose quelquefois pour M. Scheffer comme Jesus Christ, 

 et quelquefois aussi pour le diable ! ' If you don't laugh I 

 will hate you. 



The same light touch enlivens the description of a burglary 

 at Kew, when ' a nice young man who introduced himself to 

 the maids ' made off with the contents of the plate-basket, 

 so that ' I have had tears, groans, hysterics, Police inspectors 

 and all the other evidences of civilisation in the house.' But 

 strange to say, the ' nice young man ' overlooked a ' lovely 

 teapot,' Darwin's gift, and various solid but unattractive 

 articles. 



I am disgusted at their not taking the candlesticks, which 

 are of no use to me a bit, and at their assuming your teapot 

 to be plated ! or they surely would have taken it so ' there 

 is no pleasing some people ' you will say. (May 5, 1862.) 



An epigrammatic piece of characterisation is that of J. E. 

 Gray, the anatomist and zoological keeper at the British 

 Museum. Gray had a loose-tongued habit, if any one came 

 under his criticism, of heaping reckless abuse upon him, quite 

 without foundation and often self-contradictory. On one 

 of these occasions Hooker tells Darwin how he took him to 

 task (May 13, 1863). 



I pitched into him hot and strong, and made him eat all 

 his assertions. I think I made him heartily ashamed of 

 himself. I never heard such a slanderer in my whole life. 

 I suppose it is because he so overdoes it that he makes so 

 few real enemies thereby. 



And on the 24th he expands his judgment. 



Dr. Gray is really not malignant ... he has all the at- 

 tributes of malignancy except malignance there then ! or 

 rather, he talks like a malignant man without feeling in the 

 least malignant. I never knew Gray to do an action that 

 sprang from an unkind motive or feeling. He abounds in 

 all the active attributes of unkindness and malignancy 

 without being either in heart. 



