14 MR. W. E. DARWIN. 



When he first returned from the voyage on the " Beagle " 

 he was entirely overwhelmed with the various duties connected 

 with the publication of his journal, revising his collections 

 and many other things of the kind, and he had no time for 

 relaxation of any kind. In a very few years' time his health 

 failed, and he retired in 1842 to Down. He then began the 

 routine of life which continued for 40 years. Every morning 

 he worked to the very end of his tether, so that he would 

 often have to say in the middle of a sentence : " I am afraid 

 I must leave off now." His work lasted for one and a-half 

 to three hours; after that he had no strength left for any 

 intellectual work during the day except a short time in the after- 

 noon and evening, devoted to struggling with his old enemy, 

 German, or some other scientific work he wanted to read ; 

 almost everything else was read aloud to him by my mother, 

 who was the reader and the chooser. 



As regards his imagination, I think that scenery, the 

 beauty of flowers, and music and novels were sufficient to 

 satisfy it. I remember he once said to me with a smile 

 that he believed he could write a poem on Drosera, on 

 which he was then working. I think he could never have 

 written the last paragraph or two of the " Origin of Species " 

 or the passage in the letter to my mother from Moor Park, in 

 which he mentions that he fell asleep in the park and awoke 

 to a chorus of birds, with squirrels in the trees and the laugh 

 of a woodpecker, and he added that he did not care a 

 penny how the birds or the beascs were made I think 

 he could never have written either of those two passages 

 without a deep sense of the beauty and the poetry of 

 the world and of life. As regards his interest in art, I 

 think he did keep it up to a certain extent. I remember that 

 at the end of his sofa on which he used to lie, he had a 

 picture which he had bought himself and which he much 

 enjoyed looking at : he also criticised very acutely a certain 

 engraving. He used to laugh at modern decorative art 

 and always preferred simple forms and pure colours. 

 I remember once when he was staying with me at 

 Southampton and when I and my wife were out of the house 

 he went through the living-rooms and collected all the pieces 



