380 Darwin and Geology 



arrived at the age of thirty, no less than eleven editions of the 

 Principles were called for in his lifetime. With the most scrupulous 

 care, Lyell, devoting all his time and energies to the task of collecting 

 and sifting all evidence bearing on the subjects of his work, revised 

 and re-revised it ; and as in each edition, eliminations, modifications, 

 corrections, and additions were made, the book, while it increased in 

 value as a storehouse of facts, lost much of its freshness, vigour and 

 charm as a piece of connected reasoning. 



Darwin undoubtedly realised this when he wrote concerning the 

 Principles, "the first edition, my old true love, which I never 

 deserted for the later editions 1 ." Huxley once told me that when, 

 in later life, he read the first edition, he was both surprised and 

 delighted, feeling as if it were a new book to him 2 . 



Darwin's generous nature seems often to have made him ex- 

 perience a fear lest he should do less than justice to his " dear old 

 master," and to the influence that the Principles of Geology had in 

 moulding his mind. In 1845 he wrote to Lyell, " I have long wished, 

 not so much for your sake, as for my own feelings of honesty, to 

 acknowledge more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geo- 

 logically owe you. Those authors, however, who like you, educate 

 people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, I should 

 think, have full justice done them except by posterity, for the mind 

 thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent 3 ." 

 In another letter, to Leonard Horner, he says: "I always feel as 

 if my books came half out of Lyell's brain, and that I never 



1 M. L. n. p. 222. 



2 I have before me a letter which illustrates this feeling on Huxley's part. He had 

 lamented to me that he did not possess a copy of the first edition of the Principles, when, 

 shortly afterwards, I picked up a dilapidated copy on a bookstall ; this I had bound and 

 sent to my old teacher and colleague. His reply is characteristic : 



October 8, 1884. 

 My Deab Judd, 



You could not have made me a more agreeable present than the copy of the first 

 edition of Lyell, which I find on my table. I have never been able to meet with the 

 book, and your copy is, as the old woman said of her Bible, "the best of books in the best 

 of bindings." 



Ever yours sincerely, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 

 I cannot refrain from relating an incident which very strikingly exemplifies the affection 

 for one another felt by Lyell and Huxley. In his last illness, when confined to his bed, 

 Lyell heard that Huxley was to lecture at the Royal Institution on the "Results of the 

 Challenger expedition"': he begged me to attend the lecture and bring him an account 

 of it. Happening to mention this to Huxley, he at once undertook to go to Lyell in 

 my place, and he did so on the morning following his lecture. I shall never forget 

 the look of gratitude on the face of the invalid when he told me, shortly afterwards, 

 how Huxley had sat by his bedside and "repeated the whole lecture to him." 

 s L. L. i. pp. 337—8. 



