K.] MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. 267 



unjust and unbecoming. Language of this strength 

 requires justification, and on that ground I add the 

 remarks which follow. 



The Quarterly Reviewer opens his essay by a careful 

 enumeration of all those points upon which, during the 

 course of thirteen years of incessant labour, Mr. Darwin 

 has modified his opinions. It has often and justly been 

 remarked, that what strikes a candid student of Mr. 

 Darwin's works is not so much his industry, his know- 

 ledge, or even the surprising fertility of his inventive 

 genius ; but that unswerving truthfulness and honesty 

 which never permit him to hide a weak place, or gloss 

 over a difficulty, but lead him, on all occasions, to point 

 out the weak places in his own armour, and even some- 

 times, it appears to me, to make admissions against 

 himself which are quite unnecessary. A critic who 

 desires to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works 

 with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their 

 defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse 

 suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested 

 themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr. Darwin's 

 self-denying aid. 



Now this quality of scientific candour is not so com- 

 mon that it needs to be discouraged ; and it appears to 

 me to deserve other treatment than that adopted by the 

 Quarterly Reviewer, who deals with Mr. Darwin as an 

 Old Bailey barrister deals with a man against whom he 

 wishes to obtain a conviction, per fas aut nefas, and 

 opens his case by endeavouring to create a prejudice 

 against the prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his 

 eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly 

 Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine 

 of natural selection without an oblique and entirely 

 unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. " To 

 Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's 



