68 THE PERSONALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN 



ever since that grand review in the Times and the battle 

 royal at Oxford up to the present day/ * 



Not less important than Darwin's attitude 

 towards his friends was his bearing towards 

 opponents, a bearing admirably described in 

 George Henry Lewes's review of Animals and 

 Plants under Domestication in the Pall Mall 

 Gazette : 



'We must call attention to the rare and noble calmness 

 with which he expounds his own views, undisturbed by the 

 heats of polemical agitation which those views have excited, 

 and persistently refusing to retort on his antagonists by 

 ridicule, by indignation, or by contempt. Considering the 

 amount of vituperation and insinuation which has come from 

 the other side, this forbearance is supremely dignified.' 



' Nowhere has the author a word that could wound the 

 most sensitive self-love of an antagonist ; nowhere does he, 

 in text or note, expose the fallacies and mistakes of brother 

 investigators . . . but while abstaining from impertinent 

 censure, he is lavish in acknowledging the smallest debts 

 he may owe ; and his book will make many men happy.' 11 



The charming spirit in which Darwin sent a 

 copy of the Origin to the great American natura- 

 list, Louis Agassiz, is an excellent example of 

 his bearing towards those whom he knew to be 

 antagonistic : 



' As the conclusions at which I have arrived on several 

 points differ so widely from yours, I have thought (should 

 you at any time read my volume) that you might think that 

 I had sent it to you out of a spirit of defiance or bravado ; 

 but I assure you that I act under a wholly different frame of 



1 April 11, 1880. Life and Letters, iii. 241. 



1 Pall Mall Gazette of Feb. 10, 15, and 17, 1868. The above- 

 quoted passages are well selected by Mr. Francis Darwin. See 

 Life and Letters, iii. 76, 77. 



