Darwin, Charles - Theodore Baird (essay date 1946)

Theodore Baird (essay date 1946)

SOURCE: "Darwin and the Tangled Bank," in American Scholar, Vol. 15, No. 4, Autumn, 1946, pp. 477-86.

[In the following essay, Baird comments on Darwin's use of metaphorical language in describing his responses to nature.]

Details of the scene can be filled in. They were both very great men. Carlyle was eighty. On his latest birthday he had been much honored. From Prussia came a decoration—"The Star . . . is really very pretty . . . hung with a black ribbon, with silver edges. . . . Had they sent me a 1/4 lb. of good Tobacco the addition to my happiness had probably been . . . greater!" From America and Harvard came an honorary LL.D., and Disraeli, beginning his letter, "A Government should recognize intellect," offered him the Grand Cross of the Bath.

Darwin was sixty-six, and the Origin had been published for sixteen years. At home and abroad learned societies had delighted in...

[The entire page is 3676 words long]

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