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CHAPTEK XVIII. 



PER CONTEA. 



" The evil that men do lives after them " * is happily 

 not so true as that the good lives after them, while 

 the ill is buried "with their bones, and to no one does 

 this correction of Shakespeare's unwonted spleen apply- 

 more fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was some- 

 what thus that we treated his books even while he 

 was alive; the good, descent, remained with us, while 

 the ill, the deification of luck, was forgotten as 

 soon as we put down his work. Let me now, there- 

 fore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful task of 

 dwelling on the defects of Mr. Darwin's work and 

 character, for the more pleasant one of insisting upon 

 their better side, and of explaining how he came to be 

 betrayed into publishing the " Origin of Species " with- 

 out reference to the works of his predecessors. 



In the outset I would urge that it is not by any 

 single book that Mr. Darwin should be judged, I do 

 not believe that any one of the three principal works on 

 which his reputation is founded will maintain with 



* As these pages are on the point of going to press, I see that the 

 writer of an article on Liszt in the Athenceum makes the same emen- 

 dation on Shakespeare's words that I have done. 



