60 THE PERSONALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN 



beyond it he took great interest and felt intense 

 delight in poetry and music, and to a less extent 

 in pictures. Thus on the voyage of the Beagle, 

 when it was only possible to take a single volume 

 on an expedition, he always chose Milton. Later 

 on in life, he says that his mind underwent a 

 change. He found poetry intolerably dull and 

 could not endure to read a line of it ; he also 

 almost lost his taste for pictures and much of his 

 former exquisite pleasure in fine scenery, while 

 music set him thinking too energetically for his 

 comfort. This alteration, described with charac- 

 teristic candour and simplicity, but with too great 

 modesty, has often been the subject of comment, 

 and Darwin's life has in this respect been pointed 

 to as an example to be avoided. Yet it is easy to 

 understand how the change came on, and why it 

 is only a superficial reading of the facts which 

 can find anything in the illustrious naturalist's 

 career but the finest example for man to look 

 up to and attempt to imitate. 



Darwin's weakness of health came on between 

 the return from the voyage in 1836 and the 

 removal from London to Down in 1842, the 

 very period at which, as he tells us, his aesthetic 

 tastes began to alter. 



The ill health seems to have increased rapidly 

 towards the close of this period. Thus he wrote 

 as late as Jan. 20, 1839, of being * fond of talking ' 

 and ' scarcely ever out of spirits V while the letters 



1 More Letters, i. 29. 



