134 



REMINISCENCES. 



power of judging of a man's trustworthiness to be of much 

 value. 



He had a keen feeling of the sense of honour that ought 

 to reign among authors, and had a horror of any kind of lax- 

 ness in quoting. He had a contempt for the love of honour 

 and glory, and in his letters often blames himself for the 

 pleasure he took in the success of his books, as though he 

 were departing from his ideal — a love of truth and careless- 

 ness about fame. Often, when writing to Sir J. Hooker what 

 he calls a boasting letter, he laughs at himself for his conceit 

 and want of modesty. There is a wonderfully interesting 

 letter which he wrote to my mother bequeathing to her, in 

 case of his death, the care of publishing the manuscript of his 

 first essay on evolution. This letter seems to me full of the 

 intense desire that his theory should succeed as a contribu- 

 tion to knowledge, and apart from any desire for personal 

 fame. He certainly had the healthy desire for success which 

 a man of strong feelings ought to have. But at the time of 

 the publication of the ' Origin ' it is evident that he was over- 

 whelmingly satisfied with the adherence of such men as Lyell, 

 Hooker, Huxley, and Asa Gray, and did not dream of or 

 desire any such wide and general fame as he attained to. 



Connected with his contempt for the undue love of fame, 

 was an equally strong dislike of all questions of priority. The 

 letters to Lyell, at the time of the ' Origin,' show the anger he 

 felt with himself for not being able to repress a feeling of dis- 

 appointment at what he thought was Mr. Wallace's forestall- 

 ing of all his years of work. His sense of literary honour 

 comes out strongly in these letters ; and his feeling about 

 priority is again shown in the admiration expressed in his 

 1 Recollections ' of Mr. Wallace's self-annihilation. 



His feeling about reclamations, including answers to at- 

 tacks and all kinds of discussions, was strong. It is simply 

 expressed in a letter to Falconer (1863?), "If I ever felt 

 angry towards you, for whom I have a sincere friendship, I 

 should begin to suspect that I was a little mad. I was very 

 sorry about your reclamation, as I think it is in every case a 



