12 LIFE OF 



under the Commonwealth. The third William Darwin 

 (born 1655), whose mother was a daughter of Erasmus 

 Earle, serjeant-at-law, 1 married the heiress of Robert 

 Waring, of Wilsford, Notts, who also inherited the manor 

 of Elston, near Newark, in that county, which still 

 remains in the family. Robert Darwin, second son of 

 this William Darwin, succeeded to the Elston estate, and 

 was described by Stukeley, the antiquary, as " a person of 

 curiosity," an expression conveying high commendation. 

 His eldest son, Robert Waring Darwin, studied botany 

 closely, and published a "Principia Botanica," which 

 reached a third edition ; but his youngest son, Erasmus, 

 born 1731, was destined to become the first really famous 

 man of the family. 



Erasmus Darwin's personal characteristics, his medical 

 talents, and his poetic writings were such as to over- 

 shadow, for his own generation, his scientific merit. We 

 have not space here to describe his career and his works, 

 which has been so well done by his grandson, and by 

 Ernst Krause ("Erasmus Darwin," 1879). Horace 

 Walpole regarded his description of creation in "The 

 Botanic Garden" (part i., canto i, lines 103-114) as the 

 most sublime passage in any language he knew : and 

 The Edinburgh Review (vol. ii., 1803, p. 501) says of his 

 " Temple of Nature" : " If his fame be destined in any- 

 thing to outlive the fluctuating fashion of the day, it is on 

 his merit as a poet that it is likely to rest ; and his reveries 



1 This is the Erasmus Earle who forms the subject of " A Lawyer's 

 Love Letters," in The National Review, February, 1887. Letters 

 of his are also printed in the Tenth Report of the Historical MSS. 

 Commission. 



