During the seven years that elapsed after the death of Lyell, I saw Darwin from time to time, for he loved to hear 'what was doing' in his 'favourite science.' On board the Beagle, before he had met the man whose life and work were to be so closely linked with his own, he was in the habit of specially treasuring up any 'facts that would interest Mr Lyell'; in middle life he declared that 'when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes[152]'; and never, I think, did we meet after the friend was gone, without the oft repeated query, 'What would Lyell have said to that?'
These reminiscences of the past, in which I have ventured to indulge, may not inappropriately conclude with a reference to the last interview I was privileged to have with him, who was 'the noblest Roman of them all!' On the occasion of his last visit to London, in December, 1881, Charles Darwin wrote asking me to take lunch with him at his daughter's house, and to have 'a little talk' on geology. Greatly was I surprised at the vigour which he showed on that afternoon, for, contrary to his usual practice, he did not interrupt the conversation to retire and rest for a time, though I suggested the desirability of his doing so, and offered to stay. His brightness and animation, which were perhaps a little forced, struck me as so unusual that I laughingly suggested that he was 'renewing his youth.' Then a slight shade passed over his countenance—but only for a moment—as he told me that he had 'received his warning.' The attack, to which his son has alluded, as being the prelude to the end[153], had occurred during this visit to town; and he intimated to me that he knew his heart was seriously affected. Never shall I forget how, seeing my concern, he insisted on accompanying me to the door, and how, with the ever kindly smile on his countenance, he held my hand in a prolonged grasp, that I sadly felt might perhaps be the last. And so it proved.
And now all the world is united in the conviction which Darwin so modestly expressed concerning his own career, 'I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting myself to science!'
For has not that devotion resulted in a complete reform of the Natural-History Sciences! The doctrine of the 'immutability of species'—like that of 'Catastrophism' in the inorganic world—has been eliminated from the Biological sciences by Darwin, through his steadily following the clues found by him during his South American travels; and continuity is now as much the accepted creed of botanists and zoologists as it is of geologists. As a result of the labours of Darwin, new lines of thought have been opened out, fresh fields of investigation discovered, and the infinite variety among living things has acquired a grander aspect and a special significance. Very justly, then, has Darwin been universally acclaimed as 'the Newton of Natural History.'
NOTES
In the following references, L.L.L. indicates the "Life and Letters of Sir Charles Lyell" by Mrs K. Lyell (1881), D.L.L. the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin" by F. Darwin (1887), M.L.D. "More Letters of Charles Darwin" edited by F. Darwin and A. C. Seward (1903), and H.C.E. Huxley's "Collected Essays."
[1] The Darwin-Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), p. 10.
[2] Darwin and Modern Science (1909), pp. 152-170.
[3] Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. I. lines 111-2.