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.” 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’. 
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*.” 
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 
1M. L. 1. 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 Dear Jupp, 
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.” 
3 L, L. 1. pp. 337—8. 
