34 CHARLES DARWIN 



by sixteen. His cousin, Francis Gallon, another grand- 

 son of Erasmus Darwin, and joint inheritor of the dis- 

 tinctive family biological ply, was born at the same 

 date as Alfred Russell Wallace, thirteen years after 

 Charles Darwin. In such a goodly galaxy of workers 

 was the Darwinian light destined to shine through the 

 middle of the century, as one star excelleth another in 

 glory. 



Charles Darwin was the second son : but nature 

 refuses doggedly to acknowledge the custom of primo- 

 geniture. His elder brother, Erasmus, B, man of mute 

 and inarticulate ability, with a sardonic humour alien 

 to his race, extorted unwonted praise from the critical 

 pen of Thomas Carlyle, who ' for intellect rather pre- 

 ferred him to his brother Charles.' But whatever spark 

 of the Darwinian genius was really innate in Erasmus 

 the Less died with him unacknowledged. 



The boy was educated (so they call it) at Shrews- 

 bury Grammar School, under sturdy Sam Butler, after- 

 wards Bishop of Lichfield ; and there he picked up so 

 much Latin and Greek as was then considered absolutely 

 essential to the due production of an English gentleman. 

 Happily for the world, having no taste for the classics, he 

 escaped the ordeal with little injury to his individuality. 

 His mother had died while he was still a child, but his 

 father, that ' acute observer,' no doubt taught him to 

 know and love nature. At sixteen he went to Edin- 

 burgh University, then rendered famous by a little knot 

 of distinguished professors, and there he remained for two 

 years. Already at school he had made himself notable 

 by his love of collecting the first nascent symptom of the 

 naturalist bent. He collected everything, shells, eggs, 



