146 Life atid Letters of Francis Galton 



12th day of my rigid confinement thereto). As I hnd been extremely ill, the Doctor 

 came 4 times in two days (fever and touch of delirium). I am in a great hurrj' for the 

 post. Shall not be with you before the 18th as I have some thing.s to do in London ; 

 we are free for 5 — 7 weeks beginning on the 12th. Shall begin lectures again on Monday 

 next. Fras. Galton. 



A letter of Dec. 8th discusses continuing to read with O'Brien 

 for the following term : 



" Next term he tells me that I had better go over the early part of Maths, with him, 

 where he would certainly be of the greatest use to me with reference to my approaching 

 examination. For though I believe that T know these subjects very well in the way that 

 I was taught them, yet a Cambridge gloss makes much difference in the marks 



" P.S. I forgot to say that I am getting on well. Shall not I think dissect in 

 London, but give up my time to Maths, and Classics." 



The next day a letter is sent, showing that Francis had been up 



and about far too soon : 



Wednesday dth, 1840. 



Trin. Coll. Cambridge. 



Please, bed made, warming pan in trim, plenty of hot and cold water by seven and 

 a half o'clock Saturday Evening 12th. 



Too ill for London, in bed again, cold in lecture room this morning, get out again 

 tomorrow. Fras. Galton. 



Of the influence of this serious illness of Galton in his first term at 

 Cambridge upon his work we have little direct information. He un- 

 doubtedly worked too hard, and this probably contributed to his ultimate 

 breakdown. But his mind must have been very active during all this 

 period, and it is singular how closely his lines of thought even in little 

 details followed ancestral tendencies. Francis Galton began — exactly as 

 his grandfather Erasmus Darwin had done — to design simple mechanical 

 contrivances, and Erasmus's Commonplace Book with one page covered 

 with mechanisms and the next with medical lore might well have been 

 the product of Francis himself. Nay, the very rhyming aptitudes of 

 Erasmus were reiterated in Francis during the whole of his Cambridge 

 career. Long and short poems occur not infrequently among his papers, 

 and without the facility of Erasmus, he had still considerable power of 

 producing a sonorous line. It would not be possible to say that the 

 true instinct of the creative poet was behind the versification of either ; 

 Galton probably realised this as I have not come across any poetry 

 later than 1844. 



Already in November Francis had been writing to his father 

 about hot oil lamps : he was interested in the question of the best 



