6 THE DARWIN FAMILY. 



Erasmus ; but in his features there is no traceable resem- 

 blance to those of his grandfather. Nor, it appears, had 

 Erasmus the love of exercise and of field-sports, so cha- 

 racteristic of Charles Darwin as a young man, though he 

 had, like his grandson, an indomitable love of hard mental 

 work. Benevolence and sympathy with others, and a great 

 personal charm of manner, were common to the two. Charles 

 Darwin possessed, in the highest degree, that "vividness of 

 imagination" of which he speaks as strongly characteristic 

 of Erasmus, and as leading " to his overpowering tendency 

 to theorise and generalise." This tendency, in the case 

 of Charles Darwin, was fully kept in check by the deter- 

 mination to test his theories to the utmost. Erasmus 

 had a strong love of all kinds of mechanism, for which 

 Charles Darwin had no taste. Neither had Charles Darwin 

 the literary temperament which made Erasmus a poet as 

 well as a philosopher. He writes of Erasmus : * " Through- 

 out his letters I have been struck with his indifference 

 to fame, and the complete absence of all signs of any 

 over-estimation of his own abilities, or of the success of his 

 works." These, indeed, seem indications of traits most 

 strikingly prominent in his own character. Yet we get no 

 evidence in Erasmus of the intense modesty and simplicity 

 that marked Charles Darwin's whole nature. But by the 

 quick bursts of anger provoked in Erasmus, at the sight of 

 any inhumanity or injustice, we are again reminded of him. 



On the whole, however, it seems to me that we do not know 

 enough of the essential personal tone of Erasmus Darwin's 

 character to attempt more than a superficial comparison ; and 

 I am left with an impression that, in spite of many resem- 

 blances, the two men were of a different type. It has been 

 shown that Miss Seward and Mrs. Schimmelpenninck have 

 misrepresented Erasmus Darwin's character.! It is, however, 

 extremely probable that the faults which they exaggerate 

 * 'Life of Erasmus Darwin,' p. 68. f Ibid. pp. 77, 79, &c. 



