184 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAR IV. 



long delayed sending you these verses, remember that I have 

 not been, like other of your friends, sailing on the blue Medi- 

 terranean, or drinking in inspiration from the bright eyes of 

 noble Greek ladies, or dancing with Barcelona dames ; but had 

 to gather what spirit of poetry I could from the reading of trea- 

 tises on Heat or questions in Algebra ; to which were added, 

 grief and sickness about me, to hinder the muse. So that, when 

 I came to my rude rhyming anvil, and strove to hammer into 

 shape the crude ore that lay in my brain, I could never get the 

 metal raised to the red-heat necessary to its being wrought ; or 

 my hand refused its cunning, and I threw the tools away. Thus 

 verse was slowly added to verse in capricious fashion, the 

 second last being written first ; and it was not till the pleasure 

 of writing my essay awoke in me some quickness of thought, 

 that I could get my ideas rendered into rhyme. 



" As you may be curious to know what led me to take so odd 

 a subject, I shall very hastily tell you how it happened. One 

 afternoon, last spring, after a long day's work in the Laboratory, 

 at London, I set off to a little village in Essex, to pay a visit to 

 the fair young Quakeress, whose portrait John brought from 

 London. When I was departing, she brought me two snow- 

 drops, the first that had flowered, and placed them in my left 

 button-hole ; and so we parted. As I had some eight miles to 

 walk home, the snowdrops in my bosom, and a speculative 

 head on my shoulders, I fell to thinking of the flowers, and 

 wondering whether all plants are equally old, or may not have 

 been added in successive tribes, as occasion demanded (see 

 Lyell's ' Geology') ; and as I pondered, some angel, like the one in 

 the story, whispered in my ear the ' theory' which I have just 

 dedicated to you. 



" It has lain in some cobweb corner of my brain ever since ; 

 only a single verse being framed, which came into my head one 

 day when walking to church, but remained brotherless, waiting 

 for some angel like you to make the other unrhymed thoughts 

 bud and blow, and so take away its loneliness. When I got 

 home that night, however (it was the 13th February 1839), I 

 put the flowers carefully by; and, being somewhat given to 

 symbol- worship, I folded them up and laid them among my 



