[From the _Press_, 20 December, 1862.]
F. So you have finished Darwin? Well, how did you like him?
C. You cannot expect me to like him. He is so hard and logical, and he
treats his subject with such an intensity of dry reasoning without giving
himself the loose rein for a single moment from one end of the book to
the other, that I must confess I have found it a great effort to read him
through.
F. But I fancy that, if you are to be candid, you will admit that the
fault lies rather with yourself than with the book. Your knowledge of
natural history is so superficial that you are constantly baffled by
terms of which you do not understand the meaning, and in which you
consequently lose all interest. I admit, however, that the book is hard
and laborious reading; and, moreover, that the writer appears to have
predetermined from the commencement to reject all ornament, and simply to
argue from beginning to end, from point to point, till he conceived that
he had made his case sufficiently clear.
C. I agree with you, and I do not like his book partly on that very
account. He seems to have no eye but for the single point at which he is
aiming.
F. But is not that a great virtue in a writer?