Ch. XIL] OOTOBEB 1859, TO DECEMBER 1859. 219 



in 1 Crawford * writes to me that his notice will be hostile, 

 but that ■ he will not calumniate the author.' He says he has 

 read my book, * at least such parts as he could understand.' f 

 Ho sent me some notes and suggestions (quite unimportant), and 

 they show me that I have unavoidably done harm to the subject, 

 by publishing an abstract .... I have had several notes from 



i , very civil and less decided. Says he shall not pronounce 



against me without much reflection, perhaps will say nothing on 

 the subject. X. says he will go to that part of hell, which 

 Dante tells us is appointed for those who are neither on God's 

 side nor on that of the deviL" 



But his friends were preparing to fight for him. Huxley 

 gave, in Macmillan's Magazine for December, an analysis of the 

 Origin, together with the substance of his Eoyal Institution 

 lecture, delivered before the publication of the book. 



Carpenter was preparing an essay for the National Beview, 

 and negotiating for a notice in the Edinhurgh free from any 

 taint of odium theologicum. 



C. D. to C. Lyell. Down [December 12th, 1859]. 



* . . I had very long interviews with , which perhaps 



you would like to hear about. ... I infer from several 

 expressions that, at bottom, he goes an immense way with 

 us 



He said to the effect that my explanation was the best ever 

 published of the manner of formation of species. I said I was 

 very glad to hear it. He took mo up short : " You must not 

 at all suppose that I agree with you in all respects." I said I 

 thought it no more likely that I should be right in nearly all 

 points, than that I should toss up a penny and get heads 

 twenty times running. I asked him what he thought the 



* John Crawford, orientalist, ethnologist, &c, b. 1783, d. 1868. The 

 review appeared in the Examiner, and, though hostile, is free from 

 bigotry, as the following citation will show : " We cannot help saying 

 that piety must be fastidious indeed that objects to a theory the 

 tendency of which is to show that all organic beings, man included, are 

 in a perpetual progress of amelioration and that is expounded in the 

 reverential language which we have quoted." 



f A letter of Dec. 14, gives a good example of the manner in which 

 Borne naturalists received and understood it. " Old J. E. Gray of the 

 British Museum attacked me in fine style : ' You have just reproduced 

 Lamarck's doctrine, and nothing else, and here Lyell and others have 

 been attacking him for twenty years, and because you (with a sneer and 

 laugh) say the very same thing, they are all coming round ; it is the moat 

 ridiculous inconsistency, &c. &c.' " 



