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272 BOOKS ( CIL!.P, XI:lll
Russell's Modern Europe; about the Ostrogoths, of
whom Calverley was abysmally ignorant. It ran thus
" They hunted the boar in the shining parterre and the:
trim pleasure-ground where effeminacy was wont Ul
saunter and indolence to loll." Butler printed the sen
tence with bear instead of boar, wholly unconscious of the
incongruity of Bruin and a trim pleasure-ground I
Some mention should be made of the greatest, stiffest,
most full-of-body books that I have grappled with. In.
Science, Darwin's Origin of Speciea, the only book, if I
remember right, that I had ever heard of in Lord Acton's
list of the hundred best. I was profoundly impressed,
and remained so, despite some uneasy mutterings in the
scientific camp which penetrated to the hosts of the
Philistines, till Arnold Lunn, son of my old friend Sir
.Henry,lent me two volumes on Darwin by Samuel Butlel'
One he wrote most respectfully ; for the other he dipped
his pen deep in gall. What made him change his tone 1
cannot say, except that he seems to have thought Darwin
had dealt uncandidly with his criticism. He charged the
great man with fathering a theory which was borrowed
from his uncle Erasmus, Lamarck, and Buffon ; and
further, with having cut out the word " my " before
" theory '' in some passages, not all. in consequence of his
(Butler's) poignant thrusts. An ·eminent scientific man.
told me Butler might have gained more attention if he
had written in a more gentlemanly tone. This, I confess,·
seems to me a lame defence in the mouth of a man of
Science. If the charges_, cannot be rebutted, then iaf
so. If they can be, why should they not be, with or
without vituperation ! If the latter element is wanted, I
never heard that scientific men were, as a body, incapable·
of applying it. .
For scientific facts I ff!!U' I must admit dependence on
popular works of various kinds, including lectures. For
Natural History, Kearton's lantern slides, Theodore Wood,'
E. B. Poulton, Headley at Haileybury, and M. D. Hill
at Eton ; and some of the admirably written articles in.