Down, Beckenham, Kent.
My Dear Balfour,
I thank you heartily for the present of your grand book, and I congratulate you on its completion. Although I read almost all of Vol. I, I do not feel that I am worthy of your present, unless indeed the fullest conviction that it is a memorable work makes me worthy to receive it.
* * * * *
Once again accept my thanks, for I am proud to receive a book from you, who, I know, will some day be the chief of the English Biologists.
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
Charles Darwin."
The loss of him was a manifold loss. He is mourned, and will long be mourned, for many reasons. Some miss only the brilliant investigator; others feel that their powerful and sympathetic teacher is gone; some look back on his memory and grieve for the charming companion whose kindly courtesy and bright wit made the hours fly swiftly and pleasantly along; and to yet others is left an aching void when they remember that they can never again lean on the friend whose judgment seemed never to fail and whose warm-hearted affection was a constant help. And to some he was all of these. At the news of his death the same lines came to the lips of all of us, so fittingly did Milton's words seem to speak our loss and grief—
"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."