Lives of the English Poets / From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives

by Henry Francis Cary

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ERASMUS DARWIN.

Erasmus, the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin, Esq. by his wife Elizabeth Hill, was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of December 1731. He was educated at the Grammar school of Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, under the Rev. Mr. Burrows, and from thence sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Dr. Powell, afterwards Master of the College, to whose learning and goodness, Mason, another of his pupils, has left a testimony in one of his earliest poems.

After proceeding Bachelor in Medicine at Cambridge, Darwin went to Edinburgh, in order to pursue his studies in that science to more advantage. When he had been there long enough to entitle him to the degree of Doctor in Medicine, he quitted Edinburgh, and began his practice at Nottingham, but soon after (in 1756) removed to Lichfield. In the following year he married Mary, daughter of Charles Howard, Esq. a proctor in the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield. He was very soon distinguished for his professional skill. The first case which he treated with so much success as to attract the public notice, was that of a young man of fortune, who, being in a fever, was given over by his ordinary physician, but whom Darwin restored, probably by one of those bold measures from which others would have shrunk, but to which he wisely had recourse whenever a desperate malady called for a desperate cure. His patient, whose name was Inge, was, I believe, the same whom Johnson, in his life of Ambrose Phillips, has termed a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. Part of the wealth that now flowed in upon him, from an extensive and opulent circle, was employed with that liberality which in this country is perhaps oftener exercised by men of his profession than by those of any other.

At Lichfield, he formed an intimacy with several persons, who afterwards rose to much distinction. Of these, the most remarkable were Mr. Edgeworth, whose skill in mechanics made him acceptable to Darwin; Mr. Day, a man remembered to more advantage by his writings, than by the singularities of his conduct; and Anna Seward, the female most eminent in her time for poetical genius. The manner in which the first of these introduced himself shall be told in his own words, as they convey a lively description of Darwin's person and habits of life at this time. "I wrote an account to the Doctor of the reception which his scheme" (for preventing accidents to a carriage in turning) "had met with from the Society of Arts. The Doctor wrote me a very civil answer; and though, as I afterwards found out, he took me for a coach-maker, he invited me to his house: an invitation which I accepted in the ensuing summer. When I arrived at Lichfield, I went to inquire whether the Doctor was at home. I was shewn into a room where I found Mrs. Darwin. I told her my name. She said the Doctor expected me, and that he intended to be at home before night. There were books and prints in the room, of which I took occasion to speak. Mrs. Darwin asked me to drink tea, and I perceived that I owed to my literature the pleasure of passing the evening with this most agreeable woman. We talked and conversed upon various literary subjects till it was dark; when Mrs. Darwin seeming to be surprised that the Doctor had not come home, I offered to take my leave; but she told me that I had been expected for some days, and that a bed had been prepared for me: I heard some orders given to the housemaid, who had destined a different room for my reception from that which her mistress had upon second thoughts appointed. I perceived that the maid examined me attentively, but I could not guess the reason. When supper was nearly finished, a loud rapping at the door announced the Doctor. There was a bustle in the hall, which made Mrs. Darwin get up and go to the door. Upon her exclaiming that they were bringing in a dead man, I went to the hall. I saw some persons, directed by one whom I guessed to be Doctor Darwin, carrying a man who appeared to be motionless. 'He is not dead,' said Doctor Darwin. 'He is only dead drunk. I found him,' continued the Doctor, 'nearly suffocated in a ditch: I had him lifted into my carriage, and brought hither, that we might take care of him to-night.' Candles came; and what was the surprise of the Doctor and of Mrs. Darwin, to find that the person whom he had saved was Mrs. Darwin's brother! who, for the first time in his life, as I was assured, had been intoxicated in this manner, and who would undoubtedly have perished had it not been for Doctor Darwin's humanity. During this scene I had time to survey my new friend, Doctor Darwin. He was a large man, fat, and rather clumsy; but intelligence and benevolence were painted in his countenance: he had a considerable impediment in his speech, a defect which is in general painful to others; but the Doctor repaid his auditors so well for making them wait for his wit or his knowledge, that he seldom found them impatient. When his brother was disposed of, he came to supper, and I thought that he looked at Mrs. Darwin as if he was somewhat surprised when he heard that I had passed the whole evening in her company. After she withdrew, he entered into conversation with me upon the carriage that I had made, and upon the remarks that fell from some members of the Society to whom I had shewn it. I satisfied his curiosity; and having told him that my carriage was in the town, and that he could see it whenever he pleased, we talked upon mechanical subjects, and afterwards on various branches of knowledge, which necessarily produced allusions to classical literature; by these, he discovered that I had received the education of a gentleman. 'Why! I thought,' said the Doctor, 'that you were a coach-maker!' 'That was the reason,' said I, 'that you looked surprised at finding me at supper with Mrs. Darwin. But you see, Doctor, how superior in discernment ladies are even to the most learned gentlemen: I assure you that I had not been in the room five minutes before Mrs. Darwin asked me to tea!'"

These endeavours to improve the construction of carriages were near costing him dear; nor did he desist till he had been several times thrown down, and at last broke the pan of the right knee, which occasioned a slight but incurable lameness. The amiable woman, of whom Mr. Edgeworth has here spoken, died in 1770. Of the five children whom she brought him, two were lost in their infancy. Charles, the eldest of the remaining three, died at Edinburgh, in 1778, of a disease supposed to be communicated by a corpse which he was dissecting, when one of his fingers was slightly wounded. He had obtained a gold medal for pointing out a test by which pus might be distinguished from mucus; and the Essay in which he had stated his discovery was published by his father after his death, together with another treatise, which he left incomplete, on the Retrograde Motions of the Absorbent Vessels of Animal Bodies in some Diseases. Another of his sons, Erasmus, who was a lawyer, in a temporary fit of mental derangement put an end to his existence, in 1799. Robert Waring, a physician, now in high reputation at Shrewsbury, is the only one of these children who survived him.

A few years before he quitted Lichfield, in consequence of a second marriage, he attempted to establish a Botanical Society in that city; but his only associates were the present Sir Brooke Boothby, and a proctor whose name was Jackson. Of this triumvirate, Miss Seward, who knew them well, tells us that Jackson admired Sir Brooke Boothby, and worshipped and aped Dr. Darwin. He became a useful drudge to each in their joint work, the translation of the Linnaean system of vegetation into English from the Latin. His illustrious coadjutors exacted of him fidelity to the sense of their author, and they corrected Jackson's inelegant English, weeding it of its pompous coarseness. Darwin had already conceived the design of turning the Linnaean system into a poem, which, after he had composed it, was long handed about in manuscript; and, I believe, frequently revised and altered with the most sedulous care. The stage on which he has introduced his fancied Queen of Botany, and her attendants from the Rosicrusian world, has the recommendation of being a real spot of ground within a mile of the place he inhabited. A few years ago it retained many traces of the diligence he had bestowed on it, and has probably not yet entirely lost them. Of this work, called the Botanic Garden, which he retained till he thought there was no danger of his medical character suffering from his being known as a poet, he published, in 1789, the second part, containing the Loves of the Plants, first; believing it to be more level to the apprehension of ordinary readers. It soon made its way to an almost universal popularity. With the lovers of poetry, the novelty of the subject, and the high polish, as it was then considered, of the verse, secured it many favourers, and the curiosity of the naturalist was not less gratified by the various information and the fanciful conjectures which abounded in the notes. The first part was given to the public in three years after.

In 1795 and 1796, appeared the two volumes of Zoonomia, or Laws of Organic Life, the produce of long labour and much consideration. What profit a physician may derive from this book I am unable to determine; but I fear that the general reader will too often discover in it a hazardous ingenuity, to which good sense and reason have been sacrificed. When the writer of these pages, who was then his patient, ventured to intimate the sensuality of one part of it to its author, he himself immediately referred to the passage which was likely to have raised the objection; and, on another occasion, as if to counteract this prejudice in the mind of one whose confidence he might be desirous of obtaining, he recommended to him the study of Paley's Moral Philosophy.

In 1781, he married his second wife, the widow of Colonel Pole, of Radburne, near Derby, with whom he appears to have lived as happily as he had done with his first. By her persuasion, he was induced to pass the latter part of his days at Derby. Here his medical practice was not at all lessened; and he had a second family to provide for out of the emolument which it brought him. His other publications were a Tract on Female Education, a slight performance, written for the purpose of recommending a school kept by some ladies, in whose welfare his relation to them gave him a warm interest; and a long book in 1800, on the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening, which he entitled Phytologia.

On Lady Day, 1802, he took possession of an old house, called the Priory, which had belonged to his son Erasmus, and was situated at a short distance from Derby; and on the 17th of the next month, while he was writing to his friend, Mr. Edgeworth, the following letter, he was arrested by the sudden approach of death.