Miss Seward, after stating that professional generosity distinguished Dr. Darwin's medical practice at Lichfield, farther says, that "diligently also did he attend to the health of the poor in that city, and afterwards at Derby, and supplied their necessities by food, and all sorts of charitable assistance. In each of those towns, his was the cheerful board of almost open-housed hospitality, without extravagance or pride; deeming ever the first unjust, the latter unmanly. Generosity, wit and science, were his household gods."[93] She again states that when he removed from Lichfield to Derby, "his renown, as a physician, still increased as time rolled on, and his mortal life declined from its noon. Patients resorted to him more and more, from every part of the kingdom, and often from the continent. All ranks, all orders of society, all religions, leaned upon his power to ameliorate disease, and to prolong existence. The rigid and sternly pious, who had attempted to renounce his aid, from a superstition that no blessing would attend the prescriptions of a sceptic, sacrificed, after a time, their superstitious scruples to their involuntary consciousness of his mighty skill." Mr. Mathias, though he severely criticizes some of Dr. Darwin's works, yet he justly calls him "this very ingenious man, and most excellent physician, for such he undoubtedly was."
From scattered passages in Miss Seward's Life of him, one can easily trace the delight he took (notwithstanding his immense professional engagements,) in the scenery of nature and gardens;—witness his frequent admiration of the tangled glen and luxuriant landscape at Belmont, its sombre and pathless woods, impressing us with a sense of solemn seclusion, like the solitudes of Tinian, or Juan Fernandes, with its "silent and unsullied stream," which the admirable lines he addresses to the youthful owner of that spot so purely and temperately allude to:—
O, friend to peace and virtue, ever flows
For thee my silent and unsullied stream,
Pure and untainted as thy blameless life!
Let no gay converse lead thy steps astray,
To mix my chaste wave with immodest wine,
Nor with the poisonous cup, which Chemia's hand
Deals (fell enchantress!) to the sons of folly!
So shall young Health thy daily walks attend,
Weave for thy hoary brow the vernal flower
Of cheerfulness, and with his nervous arm
Arrest th' inexorable scythe of Time.
So early, and indeed throughout his whole life, did Dr. Darwin enforce the happy consequences of temperance and sobriety; from his conviction of the pernicious effects of all kinds of intemperance on the youthful constitution. He had an absolute horror of spirits of all sorts, however diluted. Pure water was, throughout the greater part of his temperate life, his favourite beverage. He has been severely censured (no doubt very justly so), for some of his religious prejudices. Old Walter Mapes, the jovial canon of Salisbury, precentor of Lincoln, and arch-deacon of Oxford, in the eleventh century, considered water as fit only for heretics.
One may again trace his fondness for the rich scenery of nature, when he in 1777 purchased a wild umbrageous valley near Lichfield, with its mossy fountain of the purest water. This spot he fondly cultivated. The botanic skill displayed by him on this spot, did not escape the searching eye of Mr. Loudon, for in p. 807 of his Encyclop. of Gardening, he pays a deserved compliment to him.[94] Miss Seward wrote some lines on this favoured valley, and these are part of them:
O! may no ruder step these bowers profane,
No midnight wassailers deface the plain;
And when the tempests of the wintry day
Blow golden autumn's varied leaves away,
Winds of the north, restrain your icy gales,
Nor chill the bosom of these hallow'd vales.
His attachment to gardens, induced him to honour the memory of Mr. Mason, by lines once intended for his monument; and he was suggesting improvements at the priory at Derby (and which he had just described the last morning of his life in a sprightly letter to a friend), when the fatal signal was given, and a few hours after, on the 18th of April, 1802, and in his sixty-ninth year, he sunk into his chair and expired. "Thus in one hour (says his affectionate biographer) was extinguished that vital light, which the preceding hour had shone in flattering brightness, promising duration; (such is often the cunning flattery of nature), that light, which through half a century, had diffused its radiance and its warmth so widely; that light in which penury had been cheered, in which science had expanded; to whose orb poetry had brought all her images; before whose influence disease had continually retreated, and death so often "turned aside his levelled dart!"[95] That Dr. Darwin, as to his religious principles or prejudices, displayed great errors of judgment in his Zoonomia, there can be no doubt. An eminent champion of Christianity, truly observed, that Dr. Darwin "was acquainted with more links in the chain of second causes, than had probably been known to any individual, who went before him; but that he dwelt so much, and so exclusively on second causes, that he too generally seems to have forgotten that there is a first." For these errors he must long since have been called to his account, before one who can appreciate those errors better than we can. Though the Accusing Spirit must have blushed when he gave them in, yet, let us hope, that the Recording Angel, out of mercy to his humane heart, and his many good and valuable qualities, may have blotted them out for ever.
Rev. William Gilpin, who, as Mr. Dallaway, in his Observations on the Arts, observes, "possesses unquestionably the happy faculty to paint with words;" and who farther highly compliments him in his supplementary chapter on Modern Gardening, annexed to his enriched edition of Mr. Walpole's Anecdotes. The Topographer says he "describes with the language of a master, the artless scenes of uncultivated nature." Mr. Walpole in his postscript to his Catalogue of Engravers, after premising, that it might, perhaps, be worth while "to melt down this volume and new cast it," pays this tribute to him: "Were I of authority sufficient to name my successor, or could prevail on him to condescend to accept an office which he could execute with more taste and ability; from whose hands could the public receive so much information and pleasure as from the author of the Essay on Prints, and from the Tours, &c.? And when was the public ever instructed by the pen and pencil at once, with equal excellence in the style of both, but by Mr. Gilpin?"
Had Mr. Gilpin written nothing more than his "Lectures on the Catechism," that alone would have conferred on him the name of a meritorious writer. His allusion to Plato, his reflections on the Last Judgment, his animated address to youth, and his conclusion of his sixteenth lecture, must strike deep into the heart of every reader. His "Sermons preached to a Country Congregation," prove him a pious, charitable, and valuable man.[96]