ALFRED R. WALLACE.
Sept. 6, 1881.
Wallace's remarkable gifts as a lecturer are less widely known than his lucid and admirable style as a writer. Though Sir Wm. Barrett has heard a great number of eminent scientific men lecture, he considers that few could approach him for the simplicity, clearness and vigour of his exposition, which commanded the unflagging attention of every one of his hearers. Mr. Frederic Myers, no mean judge [pg 202] of literary merit, once said he thought Wallace one of the most lucid English writers and lecturers of his time. Prof. Barrett was anxious to induce Wallace to lecture in Dublin, and brought the matter before the Science Committee of the Royal Dublin Society, which arranges a course of afternoon lectures by distinguished men every spring. The Committee cordially supported the suggestion that Wallace should be invited to lecture, and the invitation was accepted. During his visit to Dublin, Wallace stayed with Prof. Barrett at Kingstown, and was busily engaged in revising the proof-sheets of his book on "Land Nationalisation" (1882).
In "My Life" (Vol. II., p. 334) Wallace says that among the eminent men whose "first acquaintance and valued friendship" he owed to a common interest in Spiritualism was Frederic Myers, whom he met first at some séances in London about the year 1878.
F.W.H. MYERS TO A.R. WALLACE
Leckhampton House, Cambridge. April 12, 1890.
My dear Wallace,—I will read your pamphlet[62] most carefully; will write and tell you how it affects me; and will in any case send it on with your letter and a letter of my own to Sir John Gorst, whom I know well, and whom I agree with you in regarding as the most acceptable member of the Government.
If I am converted, it will be wholly your doing. I have read much on the subject—Creighton, etc., and am at present strongly pro-vaccination; at the same time, there is no one by whom I would more willingly be converted than yourself.
I am glad to take this opportunity of telling you something about my relation to one of your books. I write now from bed, having had some influenzic pneumonia, now going off. For some days my temperature was 105 and I was very restless at night, anxious to read, but in too sensitive and [pg 203] fastidious a state to tolerate almost any book. I found that almost the only book which I could read was your "Malay Archipelago" (of course I had read it before). In spite of my complete ignorance of natural history there was a certain charm about the book, both moral and literary, which made it deeply congenial in those trying hours. You have had few less instructed readers, but very few can have dwelt on that simple manly record with a more profound sympathy.