I
therefore feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should
please you, however full of errors.
The first dialogue on the ORIGIN which I wrote in the PRESS called
forth a contemptuous rejoinder from (I believe) the Bishop of
Wellington - (please do not mention the name, though I think that at
this distance of space and time I might mention it to yourself) I
answered it with the enclosed, which may amuse you. I assumed
another character because my dialogue was in my hearing very severely
criticised by two or three whose opinion I thought worth having, and
I deferred to their judgment in my next. I do not think I should do
so now. I fear you will be shocked at an appeal to the periodicals
mentioned in my letter, but they form a very staple article of bush
diet, and we used to get a good deal of superficial knowledge out of
them. I feared to go in too heavy on the side of the ORIGIN, because
I thought that, having said my say as well as I could, I had better
now take a less impassioned tone; but I was really exceedingly angry.
Please do not trouble yourself to answer this, and believe me,
Yours most sincerely,
S. Butler.
This elicited a second letter from Darwin:-
Down, Bromley, Kent.
October 6.
My dear Sir, - I thank you sincerely for your kind and frank letter,
which has interested me greatly. What a singular and varied career
you have already run. Did you keep any journal or notes in New
Zealand? For it strikes me that with your rare powers of writing you
might make a very interesting work descriptive of a colonist's life
in New Zealand.
I return your printed letter, which you might like to keep. It has
amused me, especially the part in which you criticise yourself. To
appreciate the letter fully I ought to have read the bishop's letter,
which seems to have been very rich.
You tell me not to answer your note, but I could not resist the wish
to thank you for your letter.
With every good wish, believe me, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely,
Ch. Darwin.
It is curious that in this correspondence Darwin makes no reference
to the fact that he had already had in his possession a copy of
Butler's dialogue and had endeavoured to induce the editor of an
English periodical to reprint it. It is possible that we have not
here the whole of the correspondence which passed between Darwin and
Butler at this period, and this theory is supported by the fact that
Butler seems to take for granted that Darwin knew all about the
appearance of the original dialogue on the ORIGIN OF SPECIES in the
PRESS.
