"I can see daylight through my work, and am now finally correcting my chapters for the press; and I hope in a month or six weeks to have proof-sheets. I am weary of my work. It is a very odd thing that I have no sensation that I overwork my brain; but facts compel me to conclude that my brain was never formed for much thinking. We are resolved to go for two or three months, when I have finished, to Ilkley, or some such place, to see if I can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly has been wretched of late, and has incapacitated me for everything. You do me injustice when you think that I work for fame; I value it to a certain extent; but, if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to make out truth."
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down, March 28th [1859].
My dear Lyell,—If I keep decently well, I hope to be able to go to press with my volume early in May. This being so, I want much to beg a little advice from you. From an expression in Lady Lyell's note, I fancy that you have spoken to Murray. Is it so? And is he willing to publish my Abstract?[155] If you will tell me whether anything, and what has passed, I will then write to him. Does he know at all of the subject of the book? Secondly, can you advise me whether I had better state what terms of publication I should prefer, or first ask him to propose terms? And what do you think would be fair terms for an edition? Share profits, or what?
Lastly, will you be so very kind as to look at the enclosed title and give me your opinion and any criticisms; you must remember that, if I have health, and it appears worth doing, I have a much larger and full book on the same subject nearly ready.
My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of the size of your first edition of the Elements of Geology.
Pray forgive me troubling you with the above queries; and you shall have no more trouble on the subject. I hope the world goes well with you, and that you are getting on with your various works.
I am working very hard for me, and long to finish and be free and try to recover some health.
My dear Lyell, ever yours.
P.S.—Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c. &c., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.
Or had I better say nothing to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis.