Born at Elston Hall, Notts, 12 Dec. 1731. At Chesterfield School, 1741–50; to St. John’s Coll., Camb., 1750; Exeter Scholar; B.A., 1754. To Edinburgh to study medicine, 1754. M.B., Cambridge, 1755. Settled in practice in Nottingham, Sept. 1756; removed to Lichfield, Nov. 1756. Married Mary Howard, Dec. 1757; she died, 1770. Married Mrs. Chandos-Pole, 1781; lived, first at her estate, Radbourne Hall; subsequently at Derby, and Breadsall Priory, near Derby. Died suddenly, at Breadsail Priory, 18 April 1802. Buried in Breadsall Church. Works: “Loves of the Plants” (anon., pt. ii. of “Botanic Garden”), 1789; “Economy of Vegetation” (anon., pt. i. of “Botanic Garden”), 1792; “Zoonomia,” 1794–96; “A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools,” 1797; “Phytologia,” 1800. Posthumous: “The Temple of Nature,” 1803; “Collected Poems,” 1807. He edited: C. Darwin’s “Experiments establishing a Criterion, etc.,” 1780. Life: by A. Seward, 1804; by E. Krause, trans, by W. S. Dallas, 1879.

Personal

  Five or six times in my life I have seen him angry, and have heard him express that anger with much real, and more apparent vehemence, more than men of less sensibility would feel or show. But then the motive never was personal. When Dr. Darwin beheld any example of inhumanity or injustice, he never could refrain his indignation; he had not learnt, from the school of Lord Chesterfield, to smother every generous feeling.

  I think all those who knew him, will allow that sympathy and benevolence were the striking features. He felt very sensibly for others, and, from his knowledge of human nature, he entered into their feelings and sufferings in the different circumstances of their constitution, character, health, sickness, and prejudice. In benevolence, he thought that almost all virtue consisted. He despised the monkish abstinences and the hypocritical pretentions which so often impose on the world. The communication of happiness and the relief of misery were by him held as the only standard of moral merit. Though he extended his humanity to every sentient being, it was not like that of some philosophers, so diffused as to be of no effect; but his affection was there warmest where it could be of most service to his family and his friends, who will remember the constancy of his attachment and his zeal for their welfare.

  He was somewhat above the middle size, his form athletic, and inclined to corpulence; his limbs too heavy for exact proportion. The traces of a severe small-pox; features, and countenance, which, when they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional appendage, a large full-bottomed wig, gave, at that early period of life, an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health, and the earnest of good humour, a sunny smile, on entering a room, and on first accosting his friends, rendered, in his youth, that exterior agreeable, to which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious. He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable impression it made might not always be pleasant to individual self-love. Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of intellect, he became, early in life, sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always revenged it by sarcasm of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of sallies of egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree, that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of colloquial despotism were discernible in unworn existence, they increased as it advanced, fed by an ever-growing reputation within and without the pale of medicine.

  We all hastened to the window to see Dr. Darwin, of whom we had heard so much, and whom I was prepared to honor and venerate, in no common degree, as the restorer of my mother’s health. What, then, was my astonishment at beholding him, as he slowly got out of the carriage! His figure was vast and massive; his head was almost buried on his shoulders, and he wore a scratch-wig, as he called it, tied up in a little bobtail behind.

  Equally eminent as philanthropist, physician, naturalist, philosopher, and poet, is far less known and valued by posterity than he deserves, in comparison with other persons who occupy a similar rank. It is true that what is perhaps the most important of his many-sided endowments, namely his broad view of the philosophy of nature, was not intelligible to his contemporaries; it is only now, after the lapse of a hundred years, that by the labours of one of his descendants we are in a position to estimate at its true value the wonderful perceptivity, amounting almost to divination, that he displayed in the domain of biology. For in him we find the same indefatigable spirit of research, and almost the same biological tendency, as in his grandson; and we might, not without justice, assert that the latter has succeeded to an intellectual inheritance, and carried out a programme sketched forth and left behind by his grandfather.

  His correspondence with many distinguished men was large; but most of the letters which I possess or have seen are uninteresting, and not worth publication. Medicine and mechanics alone aroused him to write with any interest…. Judging from his published works, letters, and all that I have been able to gather about him, the vividness of his imagination seems to have been one of his pre-eminent characteristics. This led to his great originality of thought, his prophetic spirit both in science and in the mechanical arts, and to his over-powering tendency to theorise and generalise. Nevertheless, his remarks, hereafter to be given, on the value of experiments and the use of hypotheses show that he had the true spirit of a philosopher. That he possessed uncommon powers of observation must be admitted. The diversity of the subjects to which he tended is surprising. But of all his characteristics, the incessant activity or energy of his mind was, perhaps, the most remarkable.

The Botanic Garden, 1781

  My father has just returned from Dr. Darwin’s, where he has been nearly three weeks…. He saw the first part of Dr. Darwin’s “Botanic Garden;” £900 was what his bookseller gave him for the whole!

  I wish I could let you have a look at this fashionable style of English book, as I have it before me in large quarto bound in morocco. It weighs exactly five and a half pounds, as I know by having convinced myself of this yesterday. Now as our pocket-books weigh about as much in half-ounces, we may, in this respect, also be as one to thirty-two compared with the English, unless indeed we on our part were able to counterbalance one such fashionable English giant with thirty-two pocket-books. It is splendidly printed on smooth paper, embellished with crazy, allegorical engravings by Fuseli, and in addition to this every now and again adorned with illustrations the subjects of which are taken from botany, antiquarian research, incidents and love-affairs of the day; it has introductions, tables of contents, notes below the text and notes at the end of the text, in which physics, geography, botany, manufacture and commerce, but more especially the names of dead and living celebrities are admirably set forth, so that from ebb and flood down to the sympathetic ink, everything can be readily perceived and understood…. Here, therefore, you have the plan of a poem! Such must be the appearance presented by a didactic poem which is not only to teach but to instruct. You will now be able to imagine that a goodly variety of descriptions, of allegories and of similes is to be found roaming about in this book, and that there is not a vestige of poetic feeling to link the poem together. The versification, it seems to me, is not bad, and many passages possess a rhetorical turn peculiar to the metre. In part, the details remind one of many of those English poets whose works are of didactic and narrative order. How pleased the English blasé world will be with certain passages when it sees so much theoretical matter—of which it has for long heard faint whisperings—sung aloud to it in the well-known rhythm! I have only had the book in the house since last night, and, in truth, find it beneath my expectation, for I am really in favour of Darwin.

  Darwin’s book would probably have little success in Germany. The Germans like sentiment, and the more trifling it is the more generally welcome it is; but this play of the fancy with ideas, this realm of allegory, this cold intellectuality and learning disguised in verse, could not be attractive to any but the English in their present state of frostiness and unconcern. The work, however, shows what function is wont to be attributed to poetry, and is a new and brilliant triumph to the philistines over their poetical adversaries. Otherwise I do not think the subject-matter inadmissible and wholly inappropriate for poetical treatment. The miscarriage, in this case, I consider altogether the poet’s fault. If one were, at the very outset, to relinquish all idea of giving so-called instruction, and merely endeavoured to bring nature, in its rich variety, movement, and co-operation, within reach of the imagination, and set forth all the products of nature with a certain love and reverence—paying regard to the independent existence of every one and so forth—then a lively interest in the various subjects could not fail to be awakened.

  Only a few years have elapsed, since the genius of the author of “The Botanic Garden” first burst on the public notice in all its splendour. The novelty of his plan—an imposing air of boldness and originality in his poetical as well as philosophical speculations—and a striking display of command over some of the richest sources of poetical embellishment, were sufficient to secure to him a large share of approbation, even from the most fastidious readers, and much more than sufficient to attract the gaze and the indiscriminating acclamations of a herd of admirers and imitators. Yet, with all these pretentions to permanent fame, we are much deceived, if we have not already observed, in that of Dr. Darwin the visible symptoms of decay.

  This poem ought not to be considered more than as a capriccio, or sport of fancy, on which he has expended much labour to little purpose. It does not pretend to anything like correctness of design, or continuity of action. It is like a picture of Breughel’s where every thing is highly coloured, and every thing out of order.

  When we enter “The Botanic Garden” of Darwin, we find that we have been enticed back into the wilderness of didactic verse: while this masterly versifier exemplifies also, almost everywhere, one of the most common of poetical errors; namely, the attempt to make poetry describe minutely the sensible appearances of corporeal objects, instead of being content with communicating the feelings which those objects awaken.

  The section on manures, or the food of plants, is the sole part that interests the agriculturist, and it is much too refined for the grossness of the farmer’s application of the articles. No new fact was elicited and established, but much light was cast on the processes that had been adopted.

  Strangely enough, in spite of her correct taste, Mrs. Barbauld was quite fascinated by Darwin’s “Botanic Garden” when it first appeared, and talked of it with rapture; for which I scolded her heartily.

  Nothing is done in passion and power; but all by filing, and scraping, and rubbing, and other painstaking. Every line is as elaborately polished and sharpened as a lancet; and the most effective paragraphs have the air of a lot of those bright little instruments arranged in rows, with their blades out, for sale. You feel as if so thick an array of points and edges demanded careful handling, and that your fingers are scarcely safe in coming near them. Darwin’s theory of poetry evidently was, that it was all a mechanical affair—only a higher kind of pin-making. His own poetry, however, with all its defects, is far from being merely mechanical. The “Botanic Garden” is not a poem which any man of ordinary intelligence could have produced by sheer care and industry, or such faculty of writing as could be acquired by serving an apprenticeship to the trade of poetry. Vicious as it is in manner, it is even there of an imposing and original character; and a true poetic fire lives under all its affectations, and often blazes up through them. There is not much, indeed, of pure soul or high imagination in Darwin; he seldom rises above the visible and material; but he has at least a poet’s eye for the perception of that, and a poet’s fancy for its embellishment and exaltation. No writer has surpassed him in the luminous representation of visible objects in verse; his descriptions have the distinctness of drawings by the pencil, with the advantage of conveying, by their harmonious words, many things that no pencil can paint. His images, though they are for the most part tricks of language rather than transformations or new embodiments of impassioned thought, have often at least an Ovidian glitter and prettiness, or are striking from their mere ingenuity and novelty.

  Now the book I mean shows us the scientific faculty and the poetic faculty—and no weak faculties either—working along together, not merged, not chemically united, not lighting up matters like a star,—with the result, as seems to me, of producing the very funniest earnest book in our language. It is “The Loves of the Plants,” by Dr. Erasmus Darwin.

  For all Wordsworth’s exultant prophecy on the harmony of Poetry and Science, it cannot be said that any very assuring illustration of the circumstance has happened before his date or since. The “Botanical Garden” of Erasmus Darwin looms almost tragically alone, like the forlorn desert image of Shelley’s famous sonnet, as a warning, if not a menace, to all travellers in this demesne.

Zoönomia, 1794–96

  If, however, the doctrines of the “Zoonomia” are not always infallible, it is a work which must spread the fame of its author over lands and seas, to whatever clime the sun of science has irradiated and warmed. The “Zoonomia” is an exhaustless repository of interesting facts, of curious experiments in natural productions, and in medical effects; a vast and complicated scheme of disquisition, incalculably important to the health and comforts of mankind, so far as they relate to objects merely terrestrial; throwing novel, useful, and beautiful light on the secrets of physiology, botanical, chemical, and aerological.

  The second part of the Zoonomia is occupied with an enumeration of diseases, classified on the above principles, illustrated by brief reports of cases, and with suggestions as to their medical treatment. All diseases are morbid motions, and are divided into four classes, as those motions are irritative, sensitive, voluntary, or associative. The four classes are divided into eleven orders, founded on the increased, diminution, or inversion of the motion. The eleven orders are divided into forty-one genera, thirty-seven of which are founded on the part of the system affected, the other four on the fundamental classification. Nothing could have a more admirable simplicity upon paper; and we must pardon those who hailed it with the enthusiastic faith that the Newton of morbid physiology had appeared in Erasmus Darwin…. Dr. Darwin’s theory of evolution was closely connected with his scheme of classifying diseases; the most signal defect of that scheme was the failure to recognize any other differences than differences of degree. There was no sharpness of definition anywhere. It is, I confess, patent to every eye that some disorders in the human system have this indefinite character. There seems to be no dividing line between the highest state of health and complete disorganization and prostration; the one runs into the other more gradually than the oaks into the chestnuts. But, on the other hand, there are, certainly, some diseases which are sharply defined. The modern microscope, modern chemical reagents, and the modern spirit of experimental science are producing indisputable results in this field. The revulsion from Darwin’s method of classifying diseases will, we think, be followed by revulsion from its method of classifying organic beings.

  Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all these organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I imagine, quite instinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like over-seeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and understand—being guided by the common use of language, rather than by any theories concerning brain and nervous system.

  The “Zoonomia” is largely devoted to medicine, and my father thought that it had much influenced medical practice in England; he was of course a partial, yet naturally a more observant judge than others on this point. The book when published was extensively read by the medical men of the day, and the author was highly esteemed by them as a practitioner.

General

  Milton is harmonious to me, and I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poems.

  Meantime the matter and diction seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated into the language of poetry. On this last point, I had occasion to render my own thoughts gradually more and more plain to myself, by frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin’s “Botanic Garden,” which, for some years, was greatly extolled, not only by the reading public in general, but even by those, whose genius and natural robustness of understanding enabled them afterwards to act foremost in dissipating these “painted mists” that occasionally rise from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus. During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted a friend in a contribution for a literary society in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have compared Darwin’s work to the Russian palace of ice, glittering, cold, and transitory.

  Dr. Darwin has splendidly exemplified the effects of his own theory, which certainly includes much truth, but not the whole truth. Endued with a fancy peculiarly formed for picture-poetry, he has limited verse almost within the compass of designing and modelling with visible colours and palpable substances. Even in this poetic painting, he seldom goes beyond the brilliant minuteness of the Dutch school of artists, while his groups are the extreme reverse of theirs, being rigidly classical. His productions are undistinguished by either sentiment or pathos. He presents nothing but pageants to the eye, and leaves next to nothing to the imagination; every point and object being made out in noonday clearness, where the sun is nearly vertical, and the shadow most contracted. He never touches the heart, nor awakens social, tender, or playful emotions.

  All optic nerve.

  As a poet, his “Botanic Garden” by its tawdry splendor gained him a tawdry reputation; as a philosopher his “Zoonomia, or, Laws of Organic Life,” gained him a reputation equally noisy and fleeting.

  The poet-laureate of botany.

  Almost every single work of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by at least a chapter in the works of his ancestor; the mystery of heredity, adaptation, the protective arrangement of animals and plants, sexual selection, insectivorous plants, and the analysis of the emotions and sociological impulses; nay, even the studies on infants are to be already discussed in the writings of the elder Darwin. But at the same time we remark a material difference in their interpretation of nature. The elder Darwin was a Lamarckian, or, more properly, Jean Lamarck was a Darwinian of the older school, for he has only carried out further the ideas of Erasmus Darwin, although with great acumen; and it is to Darwin therefore that the credit is due of having first established a complete system of the theory of evolution.

  He was a poet, in his day a very popular poet, whose works went through many editions. His stately verses are repugnant to modern taste, and it is hard to imagine them ever becoming popular again. Yet this is in a great measure due to the fact that they are written in a language which is wholly gone by, and which in the ears of those educated in this post-Wordsworthian age sounds stilted and pompous. Byron called the author of the “Loves of the Plants” a “mighty master of unmeaning rhyme,” but this is unfair. His poetry is anything but unmeaning. It is at times even eloquent. The chief defect that would be found with it nowadays (leaving out of view the Johnsonese vocabulary and style) would be that it is rather rhetorical than poetical.

  Unfortunately for his lasting fame, Dr. Darwin was much given to writing poetry; and this poetry, though as ingenious as everything else he did, had a certain false gallop of verse about it which has doomed it to become since Canning’s parody a sort of warning beacon against the worse faults of the post-Augustan decadence in the ten-syllabled metre. Nobody now reads the “Botanic Garden” except either to laugh at its exquisite extravagances, or to wonder at the queer tinsel glitter of its occasional clever rhetorical rhapsodies. But in his alternative character of philosophic biologist, rejected by the age which swallowed his poetry all applausive, Erasmus Darwin is well worthy of the highest and deepest respect, as a prime founder and early prophet of the evolutionary system. His “Zoonomia,” “which, though ingenious, is built upon the most absurd hypothesis”—as men still said only thirty years ago—contains in the germ the whole theory of organic development as understood up to the very moment of the publication of the “Origin of Species.”

  The antithesis to Edmund Waller is Erasmus Darwin…. He was, indeed, an extraordinary being, and if verve, knowledge, a brilliant vocabulary, and boundless intellectual assurance could make any man a poet, Darwin might have been one. But he has no imagination, and almost every fault of style. When he desires to seem glowing, his verses have the effect of ice; his very versification, for which he was once greatly admired, is so monotonous and so exasperatingly antithetical, that it reads like a parody of the verse of the earlier classicists. His landscapes, his sketches of character, his genre-pieces, his bursts of enthusiasm, are all of them ruined by his excessive insincerity of style, his lack of genuine vivacity, and his unceasing toil and tumidity of phrase. In his abuse of personation, as in many other qualities, he is the typical helot of eighteenth-century poetry, and the great temporary success of his amazing poem led to the final downfall of the school. To rival the hortus siccus of Darwin was more than the most ambitious of grandiose poetasters could hope to do.

  Darwin’s poetry would be forgotten were it not for Canning’s parody. He followed the model of Pope, just passing out of favour, for his versification, and expounded in his notes the theory that poetry should consist of word-painting. He had great facility of language, but the effort to give an interest to scientific didacticism in verse by elaborate rhetoric and forced personification was naturally a failure. Darwin would not have shrunk from Coleridge’s favourite phrase, “Inoculation, heavenly maid.” Yet it is remarkable that Darwin’s bad poetry everywhere shows a powerful mind…. The permanent interest in his writings depends upon his exposition of the form of evolutionism afterwards expounded by Lamarck. He caught a glimpse of many observations and principles, afterwards turned to account by his grandson, Charles Darwin; but though a great observer and an acute thinker, he missed the characteristic doctrine which made the success of his grandson’s scheme.