Erasmus Darwin, Man of Ideas and Inventor of WordsAuthor(s): D. G. King-HeleReviewed work(s):Source: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Jul., 1988), pp. 149-180Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531355 .Accessed: 31/03/2012 17:23

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 42, 149-I80 (1988) Printed in Great Britain

ERASMUS DARWIN, MAN OF IDEAS AND INVENTOR OF WORDS

BY D. G. KING-HELE, F.R.S.

3 Tor Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7BX, U.K.

[Plate I]

R Erasmus Darwin, F.R.S. (173 -1802), probably achieved more in a greater range of intellectual disciplines than anyone since his time.

Yet he is relatively little known, because the very variety of his talents has ensured that his total achievement is consistently underrated in our age of specialization. He also had the misfortune to possess the same surname as his grandson Charles, with the result that Erasmus's own illuminating exposition of biological evolution (as we now call it) is difficult to discern behind the glare created by Charles's shining light.

Erasmus Darwin's ideas on biological evolution drew heavy criticism, especially from the religious: it was a preview, 60 years early, of the furore created by the Origin of Species. Erasmus had formidable critics: indeed the most persistent was S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), often called the greatest of English critics (I)*. Even the possibility that species might change 'in course of generations' was dismissed by Coleridge: 'this is Darwinizing with a vengeance' (2). And Coleridge poured scorn on the theory 'ofMan's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state' (3), or being descended from 'some lucky species of Ape or Baboon'. Instead, Coleridge believed 'the History I find in my Bible', that 'Man first appeared with all his faculties perfect and in full growth' (4). He was insulted at the idea of humankind evolving by blind chance and natural causes, and angry at the Creator being cast off like worn-out clothes.

So Coleridge was no friend to Erasmus Darwin over his evolutionary biology, and he was just as critical of 'the Darwinian school of poetry' with its emphasis on glittering rhyming couplets: 'I absolutely nauseate Darwin's Poem', he wrote in 1796 (5). Yet Coleridge was much indebted to Darwin in poems like the Ancient Mariner (6), and he did partly repay that debt when he called Darwin 'the most inventive of philosophical men' and 'the first literary character in Europe' (7), a double distinction in science and literature that no subsequent scientist-poet has deserved.

In this article I shall quickly run through some of the ideas and achievements that evoked Coleridge's reluctant double tribute, and also marry the two halves of it to show how Darwin was a 'most inventive...

* Numbers in this form refer to entries in the notes at the end of the cext.

[ I49 1

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literary character', with a rare ability to coin words that have entered the English language, as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Erasmus Darwin (figure I) was born at Elston in Nottinghamshire, the youngest child of an early-retired lawyer. After three years at Cambridge University and two at the Edinburgh medical school, he began his career as a physician in 1756 at the cathedral city of Lichfield, then still better known than its growing neighbour Birmingham. By luck, or skill (or both), Darwin cured a patient given up by other doctors; and after this flying start he never looked back. Over the years his medical reputation in the Midlands of England grew to legendary proportions. But it was hard work, and he spent much of his life bumping over the vile roads in his carriage en route to the rich patients who provided his livelihood. Local people he usually treated free.

Darwin married Mary Howard in 1757, but she died in 1770, leaving him with three young sons. In 1781 he married again and moved from Lichfield, spending the remaining 2I years of his life in and near Derby (8). It was here that the legends began to accumulate: 'it is well known that Dr Darwin's influence and example have sobered the county of Derby' (9), wrote Anna Seward, who was regarded by many (including herself) as England's premier poetess. If that is hard to swallow, here is an independent opinion, from the country's most popular novelist, Maria Edgeworth: 'he persuaded most of the gentry in his own and the neighbouring counties to become water-drinkers' (Io). Over-indulgence in alcohol was a major health risk for the wealthy, and in 1783 Darwin instructed the fifth Duke of Devonshire to 'obstinately persevere' in reducing his customary potation to 'about half'. 'I know in this kind of disease', he says, 'health is not to be bought at any other price' (ii). When he dealt with a Duke so firmly, perhaps he frightened the lesser gentry into submission? Frivolous though it is, this example is symptomatic of Darwin's great reputation as a physician. He had himself once been partial to wine, but an early attack of gout persuaded him to abandon Bacchus, though 'his affection for Venus was retained to the last period of his life' (I2).

Darwin's career as a doctor can be called honourable, admirable and successful, within the limited resources of I8th-century medicine. His success probably sprang from his keen observation of symptoms, his kind and cheerful manner, and his early recognition that, with the exception of opium, 'all the boasted nostrums only take up time' (13) and were at best placebos allowing the body's defences time to combat the disease. He believed in good eating-'eat or be eaten' was one of his sayings-and a reservoir of fat did help patients to survive the blood- letting and poisonous drugs that many of them demanded. Darwin

FIGURE I. Erasmus Darwin at the age of 38, in the portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby. By kind

permission of the Master and Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge.

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successfully took his own prescription: he was a large and powerful man, distinctly overweight by modem norms, but never ill himself, once he had conquered gout by temperance.

Darwin's inventiveness in science declared itself in his first year at Lichfield, through his experiments with steam engines, which led to his well-argued scientific paper on 'the ascent of Vapour'. This was published (14) in the Philosophical Transactions in 1757, and Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1761 at the age of 29, the first of five generations of Darwins who were Fellows continuously until 1962 (15).

By 1761 Darwin had met Benjamin Franklin, F.R.S. (I706-90), who was already famous for 'snatching the lightning from the heavens', but not yet for 'snatching the sceptre from tyrants'. If Darwin needed any impetus towards untrammelled thinking, the wide-ranging ingenuity of his American friend would have served as a spur.

In the early I760s Darwin was busy experimenting with the expansion of gases, in collaboration with his closest friend, Matthew Boulton (I728-I809, F.R.S. 1785), the far-seeing entrepreneur who was later to be regarded as 'the first manufacturer of England'. Boulton was in the process of expanding his metal manufacturing by building a new works and extending his range of products to include ornaments in silver, ormolu and tortoiseshell. Boulton supplied flasks and accurate thermo- meters, with which Darwin playfully promised to make the dis- covery that 'the Specific Gravity of the Air should be as the Absolute Gravity (shew'd by the Barometer) and as the Heat (shew'd by Boulton's Thermometer) ... that is as one and inversely as the other' (I6). If you allow the temperature T to be absolute, you have there the ideal gas law between pressure p and density p in the form p = p/(RT), at least 20 years before the earliest date given in 'official' histories of science (I7).

Darwin was as inventive in engineering as in science and in 1764 he designed a steam-carriage, which he urged Boulton to help him construct: 'The machine can not fail of Success! Eureka!... If you chuse to be a Partner with me in the Profit, and Expense and Trouble, let me know; as I am determined to execute it, if you approve of it' (18). But Boulton was overstretched in setting up his new manufactory at Soho, and would not risk embarking on what would have been the first steam- car.

It was probably Boulton's enterprise in manufacturing that lured Darwin, with three partners, to establish an ironworks, a slitting-mill near Wychnor, about I765. His partners were the pioneer, industrialist Samuel Garbett (1717-1805), the papermaker and novelist Robert Bage

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(I728-I801), and a Lichfield merchant, John Barker (ca. I720-8I). The mill operated for about 15 years with Barker as manager, but it was not a financial success: Darwin learnt that being an entrepreneur was not his metier (I9).

In 1765 the Scottish-born Dr William Small (1735-75) returned from America with Franklin, who commended him to Boulton as a doctor and a friend. Small began practice in Birmingham and proved to be the ideal go-between for the over-busy Boulton and Darwin. Soon he became the 'favourite friend' of both, and the three were meeting frequently to discuss science and technology. From these meetings grew the Lunar Society of Birmingham, as it is usually known, though 'the Lunar group' gives a better impression of its informality.

Several friends of Darwin were soon drawn into the group. One of these was Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95, F.R.S. 1783), who was engaged in promoting the Grand Trunk Canal, in the hope of transporting his pottery unsmashed (20). Another was a student friend of Darwin, James Keir (1735-1820, F.R.S. 1785), who became one of the chief pioneers of the chemical industry (21). A third was an engineer from Glasgow, who came to Birmingham to visit Garbett and was introduced by him to Darwin and Small: this was James Watt (1736-1819, F.R.S. 1785), who in 1767 confided the secret of his improved engine to the steam enthusiast Darwin. They remained close friends for 35 years and Darwin's head of steam was a great help to the self-doubting Watt, who wrote: 'It will be my pride, while I live, that I have enjoyed the friendship of such a man' (22).

Darwin's designs for steam-carriages arose from his work in im- proving the comfort, efficiency and safety of horse-drawn carriages. He travelled about iooo0 miles a year on his medical rounds, and his many innovations in carriage design were often tested out for several years. Those innovations covered springing, wheel design, traction and steering. One example was the design of a complex mechanism to make both the front wheels turn about the same centre (instead of remaining parallel), and to ensure that the centre lay on the line of the back axle. Re-invented later by Ackermann, this method of steering was used in modern cars until the I930S (23).

Darwin's carriage designs came to the notice of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817, F.R.S. 1781), a rich young man looking for a role (24). With the inventor's consent, he took over and publicized Darwin's designs and won himself gold and silver medals from the Society of Arts in I768-69. Darwin feared for his medical practice if he was known to be a 'mad inventor': 'I do not court this kind of Reputation, as I believe it might injure me' (25). Edgeworth also joined

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the Lunar group and helped Darwin in perfecting his 'horizontal windmill', a vertical-axis machine that they believed was more efficient than the conventional type. After ten years of tests on models Darwin's windmill was installed at Wedgwood's manufactory at Etruria, where it was used for grinding colours for 13 years until displaced by steam (26). Similar designs have returned to favour recently for power generation.

The 'Lunaticks', as they sometimes called themselves, met informally to discuss recent advances in science and technology, and also their own theories and inventions. Several of Darwin's inventions probably arose out of their talk. Someone would say 'It can't be done', and Darwin would take up the challenge. This seems likely to have been the origin of his speaking-machine, of which unfortunately no drawings have survived. Dating from 1771-72, this 'organ' (as they called it) was a mechanical device with bellows, leather tongues, reeds and pipes. A 'contract' exists in which Boulton promises to pay Darwin 10ooo for a machine 'capable of pronouncing the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and Ten Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue' (27). Duly witnessed by Keir and Small, the document shows the jokey attitude of the Lunar group, because religious ritual was a bete noire to Darwin. However, he did construct the machine, which pronounced the words mama, papa, map and pam 'with so great nicety as to deceive all who heard it unseen'. The mechanism relied on a theory of phonetics that Darwin developed in consultation with Franklin (28). The organ created a sensation at the time; but 'my other occupations prevented me from proceeding in the further construction of this machine' (29).

During the 1770s Darwin's fertile imagination gave rise to a stream of inventions. Most of them only reached the stage of designs on paper, but some were fully engineered. The most important of these was a copying- machine on the pantograph principle, but arranged so that the primary pen could be used with very little restriction, while being faithfully followed by the secondary. One of Darwin's letters in the British Library has the machine copy with it: his handwriting is not noticeably different from normal and, as figure 2 shows, the copy is so good that it is not obvious which is the original (30). Unfortunately Darwin's polygrapher has been lost: in 1779 he dismantled it and sent it to his friend, Charles Greville, who he hoped would patent and exploit the invention. But Greville let Darwin down on this occasion, probably because he was too much in debt to promote an invention and was soon to be preoccupied in educating and promoting his protege'e, Emma Hart (3 ). The copier, though less attractive than the 'uncopied grace' of Emma, still made its mark indirectly. Darwin had previously lent it to James Watt, who immediately tried to do better-and succeeded: 'I have fallen on a way

I54

of copying chemically, which beats your bigrapher hollow', he wrote (32). As Darwin's machine made a perfect copy, Watt's technique was better only because it could be used after the document was written. So Darwin provoked Watt into inventing the office copying method that endured for a century.

Other engineered inventions of Darwin's include an improved drill plough for sowing seed more uniformly, an 'electrical doubler' well known in its day, a ferry-boat drawn by chains, and many improved oil lamps. Dozens of designs that never got further than sketches on paper appear in his manuscript Commonplace Book at the Darwin Museum at Down House in Kent. There is a canal lift, with a water-filled box to take the barge and another to balance it, like the lift installed in I875 at Anderton, near Northwich in Cheshire (and many later lifts). He made numerous designs for what he hoped would be improvements in spinning machines, after inspecting Arkwright's mill at Matlock. He sketched a multi-bladed steam turbine, an automated water-closet, a lever-type weighing machine, a continuous-flow rotary pump, a surveying machine, several meteorological instruments, such as an airflow meter, automated ventilators for greenhouses, and many more, of which I shall mention three that were 200 years ahead of their time.

The first of the three is a sketch of an 'artificial bird' with flapping wings, powered by a compressed-air bottle, as in some modern guided missiles. The mechanism of the wing flapping has been analysed by Clive Hart who says, 'it deserves a special place in the history of aviation', being the first description of a model with both 'a power plant and the intended flight cycle for the wings' (33). The second of the three is a sketch of what is apparently a rocket motor with hydrogen and oxygen as propellants. This dates from 1779, not long after the discovery of oxygen, and Darwin had unknowingly specified the propellants used in the main engine of the Space Shuttle. The third sketch is of a multi- mirror telescope (1779), a design that is now becoming popular after its successful debut in the Whipple Telescope at Mount Hopkins in Arizona in 1979 (34).

These multifarious inventions are impressive; but it must be

FIGURE 2. The first page of Darwin's letter to Charles Greville of 12 December 1778, and the copy made with his polygrapher (British Library Add. MS 42071, folios 48 and 51; reproduced by permission of the British Library). This may be the earliest example of a document of which a perfect mechanical copy exists. It is difficult to be sure which is the 'original'; there are two extra commas in folio 51, but these might have been added later; folio 48, though more faded, is perhaps more likely to be the original, as the writing extends closer to the right-hand edge. See note 30 for a transcript.

FIGURE 2. For description see opposite.

remembered that many of them were forgotten, and Darwin probably made a greater impact indirectly, through his energizing of the Lunar group and his optimism in promoting new technology, such as Watt's improved steam engines, Keir's industrialized chemistry and Wedgwood's new ceramic materials. After Darwin's departure to Derby in 1781 the Lunar group turned away from technology as they (willingly) centred their attention on the chemical researches of a new recruit, Joseph Priestley, F.R.S. (I733-I804) (35).

At Lichfield in the I770s Darwin's life was intensely social, not only in the Lunar group but also in the Lichfield literary circle presided over by Dr Thomas Seward, canon-residentiary of the cathedral and editor of the Elizabethan playwrights, and his poetical daughter, Anna, soon to be known as 'the Swan of Lichfield'. The circle also encompassed Brooke Boothby (1744-1824), a country gentleman who was a confidant of Rousseau, and Edgeworth's eccentric friend Thomas Day (1748-89), who went on to write a book that sold well for a century, Sandford and Merton.

It was not until the mid-I77os that Darwin developed a real passion for botanical science. Energetic as ever, he bought some land a mile or so west of Lichfield and constructed there a natural botanic garden, with streams, waterfalls and lawns as a setting for specimen plants and shrubs (36). Anna Seward wrote some verses about the garden, and these later served as the starting point for Darwin's own long poem, The Botanic Garden, though the poem's subject matter grew far beyond its title.

Darwin's enthusiasm for botany, and for Linnaeus, drew him into an ambitious project for translating into English the most important botanical works of Linnaeus. With this aim in mind he formed the Lichfield Botanical Society. Outwardly the Society was a flop: it never had more than two other members, Brooke Boothby, who was a dilettante in botany, and William Jackson (1734/35-98), a proctor at Lichfield Cathedral who 'worshipped and aped Dr Darwin', according to Anna Seward (37). Even this minimal grouping broke up when Darwin left Lichfield in 1781 (and Boothby left soon after). Scientific travellers who came to Lichfield in the later I780s in the hope of attending a meeting of the Botanical Society were laughed at by the knowing locals.

Darwin was shy of being visible as an author, and the Lichfield Botanical Society, though a misnomer, served him well as an anonymous cover for the translations. Darwin began the work of translation after his second marriage in 1781, when he moved to Radburn Hall, deep in the country west of Derby. The relative isolation gave him the chance to develop his scholarly talents, and he spent six years working on the

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translations: it was his major task outside his medical practice. Two translations were made, of the Systema Vegetabilium and of the Genera Plantarum, each running to about Iooo pages.

The work began with some months of 'market research'. In September 1781 Darwin began to send out letters asking the leading British botanists their opinions on the best editions to translate and on the problem of vocabulary. Darwin wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S. (1743-1820), on 13 September, to Professor Carl Linnaeus the younger on 14 September, and apparently to about 40 other botanists within a month or two.

The letter to Sir Joseph Banks, who had been President of the Royal Society for three years (and remained so for another 39 years), keeps up the pretence that the translation was to be the work of a Society:

They hope you will give them leave to prefix the inclosed dedication of their work to you-and should esteem themselves much honour'd if you would favour them through me with any remarks on their design, or if you should think it can be translated on any better plan; and if you think such a translation may be of utility towards propagating the knowledge of Botany; as your opinion will much

encourage or retard the progress of the work. (38)

Darwin sent a specimen of the translation, and wrote a second letter on 29 September, telling Banks about the favourable comments already received from botanists. Darwin continues:

The design of the translators is to form such a language from the english, as Linneus has done from the latin; and as the english language bears compound words better than the latin, they hope to express the meaning of Linneus...with more precision in english, than could be done in latin; so the words awl-pointed, for acuminatum, and bristle-pointed for cuspidatum are more expressive than the latin-words. And so end-hollowed for retusum; end-notch'd for emarginatum; edge-hollow'd for sinuatum; scollop'd for repandum; wire-creeping for sarmentosus; and many others, express the meaning according to his own definitions, better than the latin language was capable of. (39)

Darwin goes on to discuss the relative merits of eggshape and eggshaped, and many other minutiae: 'Of these niceties of language I will endeavour to get the opinion of Dr Johnson', he says, and he duly did so, though they were on rather frosty terms because Johnson, the visiting sage of Lichfield, had sometimes upstaged the resident sage.

Banks responded favourably to Darwin's proposals and generously offered to lend books from his fine botanical library. Darwin took up this offer, which was probably crucial in allowing the work to be completed; he was also able to tell Banks that 'above 20 botanical Gentlemen and Ladies' had replied to his letters, with varied opinions on the verbal niceties, 'but all of them much applauding the design' (40).

After this successful market research the heavy work of translation 6-2

proceeded during the next few years. The indications are that it was done by Darwin alone, as the translation appears quite uniform, and only he was possessed of the complex principles of translation and of the new vocabulary. Boothby and Jackson probably checked and proof-read his work. The translation was issued in parts between 1783 and 1785, and published as a book in 1785, but with the date 1783 on the title-page, appropriate to the first part (4I).

Darwin discusses the problems of translation in his preface: 'We were afraid of rendering our work difficult to the english reader, if we introduced many innovations, or did much violence to our vernacular tongue; or of making it unintelligible to the latin Botanist, if we were too parsimonious in the engraftment or transplantation of exotic terms. We hope we have steered between these two extremes.' By and large, Darwin succeeded in this aim, and most of his choices have stood the test of time. Sometimes he resisted anglicization: 'we have retained the words calyx for flower-cup; corol for blossom; stamen for chive; pistil for pointal; pericarp for fruit-vessel.... ' On other occasions he preferred an English version: 'thus corolla is translated corol, petalum Petal, anthera Anther, panicula Panicle, verticillus Verticil.' This choice was governed by the need for compound words like five-petal'd (as he spells it). Darwin also tried to construct suitable diminutives, 'as leaf leaflet, stalk stalklet, valve valvelet', and so on. Even more difficult were the 'numerous compound words constructed by our author in so artful a manner'. Darwin emphasized in the preface of the second translation 'the general difficulty of the undertaking, in which almost a new language was to be formed'; and in the preface to the System of Vegetables he calls this 'the Gorgon feature that had hitherto frozen the designs, or blasted the progress of all who looked upon this giant Naturalist, and deterred them from the encounter'. Darwin was not so deterred, and he also persevered in face of the sheer drudgery of the work. He needed to be a philologist as well as a botanist, and in his preface he thanks 'that great master of the English tongue Dr Samuel Johnson, for his advice in the formation of the botanic language' (42).

The System of Vegetables begins with a table defining 674 botanic terms, which are the basis of the vocabulary used throughout the book. A short example is: '6I8 Nidulant (nidulantia) seeds spread through the pulp'. The list is a translation of Elmgren's Termini Botanici (1762), and it is followed by two alphabetical catalogues of plants. Then come 1 plates illustrating the shapes of leaves, stems, flowers, etc. Plate I shows 62 shapes of leaf, from orbicular, roundish and egg'd to scollop'd, tooth'd and saw'd: the treatment is thorough and ingenious and, although not all the words have caught on, that is because ordinary

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language does not call for such discipline in defining shapes. There is a difference here between common and garden language.

After nearly Ioo pages of these preliminaries, we reach page I, where the catalogue of plants really starts, with a definition of the vegetable kingdom, a key to the sexual system of Linnaeus, and a 'list of contents'. The 1444 detailed entries begin on page 52 with Canna (one male, one female):

I. CANNA. Corol. 6-parted, erect; lip 2-parted, revolute. Style lanced, growing to the corol. Calyx 3-leaved.

The varieties are then listed. And so it continues. On page 320 we reach no. 514, which is Cassia (ten males, one female):

514. CASSIA. Cal. 5-leaved. Petals 5. Anthers, 3 highest barren; 3 lowest beak'd. Legume.

Volume I runs to 424 pages, and the listing goes on through volume II, which ends on page 896, but has an unnumbered Appendix giving English and Scottish names.

The System of Vegetables won a warm welcome from botanists and reviewers, and so Darwin was encouraged to continue with the second translation, of the Genera Plantarum, published in 1787 as The Families of Plants, and again running to o000 pages. In the preface he says: 'The Botanical Society at Lichfield are happy to have gained the approbation of the ingenious in Botany by their [previous] translation. Thus encouraged, they have continued their labours' (43). The verbal principles are the same in this second translation, so there is no need for detailed comment here.

Darwin's new vocabulary was ingenious and necessary, but might have been quite still-born. In fact, although the infant mortality rate was well up to I8th-century standards, a fair proportion of the words did gradually work their way into general botanical use. Their place of birth has been forgotten, however, because the System of Vegetables, despite its initial success, soon passed out of mind with the decline in the use of the Linnaean system after 1830. By the i86os, when work began on the Oxford English Dictionary, the System of Vegetables was virtually unknown and was not among the books chosen for citation in the Dictionary, though there are a few rather random citations from The Families of Plants. Consequently, the 'first uses' of many of the words coined by Darwin are only picked up by the O.E.D. at later dates; and I have sent in 50 words, nearly all culled from pages xv-xl of the System of Vegetables, which are earlier than any of the usages cited in the O.E.D. and have the same definitions. There may, of course, be still earlier

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instances, but this will not be known until the revised version of the O.E.D. eventually appears, incorporating the information from the three million slips that have been sent in over the years (44). With this caveat, I shall define a 'new word' in the System of Vegetables as a word that is recognized in the O.E.D. and has the same spelling and meaning as Darwin's, but is not recorded as in use until after 1783.

All the new words are, of course, botanical, but some are in general use, like bract, floret, leaflet, stemless and vernation; also the plurals anthers and stamens were, it seems, previously written as antherae and stamina. Most of the new words are fairly obscure to non-botanists; however, half of them are in wide enough use to appear in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (I976 edition), and these include ament, aril, axillary, cyme, flosculous, glume, pome, raceme, spathe, stipe and verticil-the full list is given in a note (45). There are also oo00 or more words invented by Darwin that have not come into use, for example, egg'd (egg-shaped), two'd (two lobed), coadjoined (many joined together) and murex'd (sprinkled with awl-shaped points). There are further words with spellings slightly different from Darwin's, for example the adjectives glomerate and decussate, which he writes as glomorate and decussated respectively.

It is not surprising that the first literal translation of Linnaeus should generate so many new English botanical words, though it is a little surprising that the thorough and scholarly O.E.D. should have missed them all. A fair proportion of the words are mere adaptations from the Latin. Also it is obvious that botany, with its insistent demands for exact description, is a hot-bed for the generation of words as well as worms.

His long years of inventing new words left an indelible mark on Darwin's mind and, as we shall see later, the habit of coining words remained with him when he came to write the poems that astonished the literary world in the I790s.

For the moment, however, we are still in the I78os, with Darwin completing his Linnaean translations, and also returning to research in physical science. He had moved to a house in the centre of Derby in 1783, and in the same year he founded the Derby Philosophical Society, which flourished under his presidency and was to last for 70 years (46). One of his motives in forming the Society was to build up a good library: he could not use Banks as a British Lending Library too often. Darwin's main contributions to physical science in the I78os were in chemistry, geology, atmospheric physics and meteorology.

The chemical story is curious, because Darwin was not really a chemist; he did very little 'research', yet he made one, or possibly two, crucial contributions. The 'possible' contribution concerns the nature of

water, generally regarded as an element before 1780. On 6 January 1781 Darwin sent Watt his 'apology for absence' from a Lunar meeting; as reparation, he divulged a 'secret', namely 'that water is composed of aqueous gas, which is displaced from its earth by oil of vitriol' (47). This extremely obscure remark could be read as implying that water is not an element and that hydrogen is one of its components. Be that as it may, the 'Lunaticks' were intrigued, and Priestley began his many experiments on sparking hydrogen with oxygen (to use the modern terms), which, via controversy involving Watt, Cavendish, Lavoisier and Priestley, led to water as H20 (48). Darwin's role here is arguable, but his other service to chemistry is clear. His separation from the Lunar group led to 'independent thinking', and by about 1787 he had discarded the phlogiston theory and adopted the 'French heresy' of Lavoisier, in which 'dephlogisticated air' was re-named 'oxygen' and phlogiston was declared unreal. These ideas were bitterly opposed by Priestley, and by Darwin's old friends Keir and Watt, who all knew more about chemistry than he did. To go against his friends was hard, but he carried it off with good humour. All this might have been a private matter, but Darwin proclaimed his views in The Botanic Garden, which the literary world took as its guide to science. According to the O.E.D. the first positive published occurrences of the words oxygen, hydrogen and azote in English are in The Botanic Garden: even if there are earlier usages in lesser- known books, it was Darwin's initiative that did most to popularize the 'new chemistry' in Britain. (The words are, of course, not invented but merely transcribed from the French.)

Darwin's interest in geology began in the I76os when he went on

expeditions to the caves of the Peak District with the geologist John Whitehurst, F.R.S. (1713-88), and the mining engineer Anthony Tissington, F.R.S. (I703-76). 'I have been into the Bowels of old Mother Earth, and seen Wonders and learnt much curious Knowledge in the Regions of Darkness' (49), he told Boulton in I767. Darwin's wide circle of friends also included James Hutton (1726-97), and their geological correspondence in the I780s seems to have been both extensive and wickedly humorous, though not many of the letters have survived. Geology is dominant among the notes to The Botanic Garden, and Darwin steers a middle course between the extremes of vulcanism and sedimentary theory. In all this, Darwin may only have been a mouthpiece for Hutton; but if so, he certainly presented the results more clearly than his master. For example, Darwin recognizes the important role of volcanic lava and states that 'the central parts of the Earth consist of a fluid lava', explaining the behaviour of the compass by proposing 'that part of this fluid is iron', which is not far from the modern view of a fluid outer core rich in iron (50).

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Darwin's most important specialized contribution to geology was his detailed explanation of'artesian wells' published in the Philosophical Transactions (5I). He bored a well in his own garden, and gave the now-familiar explanation of such wells in terms of permeable and

impermeable strata. Darwin also wrote about the hot springs at Matlock and Buxton, rightly concluding that their warmth derived from heat deep in the Earth and not from chemical reactions, as was widely believed (52).

Darwin's best work in physics was on the behaviour of nearly saturated gases under the action of heat. His first paper for the Royal Society in 1757 was on this subject, and he continued experimenting, presenting his conclusions in a classic paper published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1788, where he formulates the principle of adiabatic expansion, as it is now called, and then goes on to show how the

principle governs the main process by which clouds form (53). He made many experiments to show that whenever air is allowed to expand into a region of lower pressure without addition of heat, its temperature falls. This is the first clear statement of the principle of adiabatic expansion: as a familiar modern example, air let out of an inflated tyre cools as it escapes. The application to clouds is immediate: 'Heat appears to be the

principal cause of evaporation ', he says, so 'the privation of heat may be esteemed the principal cause of devaporation' (53). (Devaporation, meaning the change from invisible vapour to cloud droplets, is another coined word that seems preferable to our ambiguous word condensation.) When 'a stratum of air' is 'released from a part of the superincumbent pressure', he says, it expands and cools, so that the 'vapour becomes condensed and is precipitated in showers' (53).

Darwin made several other contributions to meteorology and upper- atmosphere physics, which were largely forgotten, and then reform- ulated independently later. He had the idea of weather maps, suggesting that the 'weather tables in distant parts of Europe' should be 'collected and compared' (54). He tried to analyse the weather by examining the changes in wind direction, and had a wind vane on the top of his house, which actuated a pointer on the ceiling of his study, an early example of remote operation. He made good use of the observations by seizing on the existence and importance of what are now called warm and cold fronts. 'Certain it is that in change of the wind from north-east to south-west the air becomes instantly warm, before it can have moved half over this island', he wrote in 1777 (55). The importance of weather fronts was not realized until the I920s; but today the weather maps he foresaw are often dominated by the fronts he so clearly defined.

Darwin also ventured into the upper atmosphere, and he devised a 'model atmosphere' with three layers, of which the highest, above

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60 km, was the region where fireballs and the aurora appeared, and where 'it seems probable that the common air ends, and is surrounded by an atmosphere of inflammable gas [hydrogen] tenfold rarer than itself' (56). Belief in this hydrogen exosphere, as it is now called, waxed and waned several times in the 20th century, and was not fully established until the I960s (57).

The night airglow seen so clearly by astronauts is usually regarded as a 20th-century discovery, but Darwin seems to have observed it, and certainly explained it correctly as due to 'the phosphorescent quality of almost all bodies', which 'thus absorb light during the sun-shine, and continue to emit it again for some time afterwards' (58).

At the beginning of 1789 Darwin was 57 and, from what we have seen, might have been described as fertile in mechanical invention, scholarly and assiduous in botany, of high repute in physical science, and of course supreme as a physician in the English midland counties.

In April 1789 this image changed abruptly, with the publication of his

poem The Loves of the Plants, where Darwin humanizes the pistils and stamens, and presents this sexual activity in human analogies. It was the second and more frivolous part of his long poem The Botanic Garden. The first and longer part, which appeared in 1792, is wider and deeper, covering most of the Earth sciences and astronomy: its generous panoply of'notes' make up a virtual encyclopedia of science as seen in I790. The first part has a rather unsuitable title, The Economy of Vegetation; also the date on the title-page is 1791, though publication was about June 1792. To complete the paradoxes, the poem was anonymous; but Darwin's

authorship was soon discovered (59). Darwin's poem had extraordinary success. On the strength of these

2000 glittering couplets, backed by scientific notes running to I00000

words, Darwin became the most famous English poet of the I790s, thought by many to be the equal of Milton or Shakespeare. Coleridge wrote in I80I: 'I have myself met with persons who professed themselves idolatrous admirers of Milton, and yet declared it to be their opinion that Dr Darwin was as great a poet' (60). Darwin himself remained unimpressed by the literary furore. At the height of his fame he told an old friend, 'I sold a work called "The Botanic Garden" for 9oo0 to Johnson the bookseller near St Paul's, it is a poem; perhaps you may borrow it from some circulating library' (6I).

The poem had grown piecemeal over the years. The title The Botanic Garden arose from the intention to write about his garden at Lichfield. Then the long grind of translating Linnaeus sparked the idea of 'translating' the material tongue-in-cheek into verse: hence The Loves of the Plants, which was at least half written by I784. The success of this poem induced Darwin to stuff out The Economy of Vegetation with all

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the science that interested him most about the Earth and its flora and fauna.

Today it seems strange to many people that such great success should have come to a poem that structurally can only be called a scientific ragbag. Why was it? One reason was that the subject was perceived as original: no one had ever written a report on the progress of science in a form so palatable to the literary world. (Nor has anyone done so since.) Non-scientific readers could lap up the verses quite enjoyably, and then dip into the notes as they wished, feeling at the end that they had become knowledgeable-or, at least, more knowledgeable-in science. It gave them a good opinion of themselves and was a fashionable thing to do. As a result, the view of science held by literary people was Darwin- biased: the scientific assumptions of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and other Romantic poets owed much to Darwin (62). An obvious example is Wordsworth's confidence in the humanization of flowers:

And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. (63)

Wordsworth was 19 when The Loves of the Plants appeared: he eagerly accepted Darwin's humanization of the plants, and also his style of rhyming couplets. It was this rather gaudy style, and not the humanization, that Wordsworth later rejected, when he said he had been 'under an injurious influence from the dazzling manner of Darwin' (64).

Darwin's 'chronicle of the lustful flowers' was also popular simply because it was sensational: he is exposing (or pretending to expose) the sensations of plants as they pursue their sexual antics. And the very idea of plants having sensations and sexual desires created quite a stir. Horace Walpole wrote: 'you will agree with me that the author is a great poet... I send you the most delicious poem upon earth...all is the most lovely poetry'. Anna Seward called it 'a brilliant little world of Genius and its creations'. William Cowper in his review said that 'his descriptions are luminous as language selected with the finest taste can make them, and meet the eye with a boldness of projection unattainable by any hand but that of a master' (65). The Loves of the Plants was thought fit for ladies because the plants, though humanized, were still plants. Or were they?

The first plant in Darwin's list, just as in the System of Vegetables, is Canna (one male, one female):

First the tall CANNA lifts his curled brow Erect to heaven, and plights his nuptial vow.

Even this is a little risque, but his aim was to amuse rather than to instruct, and the comic humanization of plant sex-life becomes even more

pointed when several females try to lure one male, as with Lychnis (ten males and five females):

Each wanton beauty, trick'd in all her grace, Shakes the bright dew-drops from her blushing face; In gay undress displays her rival charms, And calls her wondering lovers to her arms.

But the science is not forgotten, and with Cassia (ten males, one female) Darwin restrains himself from exploiting the orgiastic possibilities, and instead presents scientific facts that were more important than he ever knew.

Where vast Ontario rolls his brineless tides, And feeds the trackless forests on his sides, Fair CASSIA trembling hears the howling woods, And trusts her tawny children to the floods. Cinctured with gold while ten fond brothers stand, And guard the beauty on her native land, Soft breathes the gale, the current gently moves, And bears to Norway's coasts her infant-loves. (66)

This needs to be read in conjunction with Darwin's note, where he explains that 'the seeds are black, the stamens gold-colour. This is one of the American fruits, which are annually thrown on the coasts of Norway; and are frequently in so recent a state as to vegetate, when properly taken care of'. He gives the Gulf Stream the credit for

transporting the seeds. This scenario is important scientifically in evolution, showing how species could be dispersed: Charles Darwin spent much time trying to prove that seeds could survive several weeks in water, having forgotten the facts and references given here by his grandfather.

Another reason for Darwin's success was his heightened language, glittering with ornamentation. This pleased readers at the time, but later and cooler critics condemned his 'gorgeous diction'. Coleridge said: 'Dr Darwin laboured to make his style fine and gaudy, by accumulating and applying all the sonorous and handsome-looking words in our language' (67). Examples are easy to find: words Darwin used more than twice as often (per Iooo lines) as Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats or Byron include azure, beauty, blush, bright, charm and crystal; and Darwin used glittering and lustre more than 8 times more frequently than any of the other poets mentioned (68).

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The invention of new words was part of this heightening of language in The Botanic Garden; there are two in the description of Cassia. Because of the poem's great popularity, nearly all the words have entered the language.

I first became aware of this word-making from seeing so many citations from The Botanic Garden in the Oxford English Dictionary. I also came across words in Darwin's poem for which the citations in the O.E.D. are all later. A transparent example is the first quotation for pillowy in the O.E.D., from Sotheby's Oberon (1798):

Soft on the pillowy moss he seats his bride.

But one of Darwin's brides, 'the beauteous Aegle',

Sinks on the pillowy moss her drooping head,

in The Economy of Vegetation (I79I). Sotheby was accused of'Darwin- ianism' by Jeffrey (69), and these two lines nicely prove the point. As before, I shall treat as 'new words' any words used by Darwin for which the earliest citation in the O.E.D. is by Darwin, or later, and the meaning is the same as his. So far, by random checking, I have found 51 such words in The Botanic Garden, including 9 compound words; 23 of the 5 are cited as 'first uses' in the O.E.D.-a much better success rating than in the System of Vegetables.

The most fertile areas in The Botanic Garden for the growth of new words were its pastoral scenery, science and sheer luxury. Why not start in a flower garden on a summer day? There you recline on pillowy moss beside a pansied bank, watching butterflies jostle in aurelian splendour and savouring the scents of a hundred flowers borne on the wafting wing of a susurrant breeze too gentle to excite the Eolian lyre standing in the open uncurtained window, or to rimple the smooth surface of the nearby lake with its pine-capt island-and this convoluted sentence has ten of Darwin's words (pillowy, pansied, aurelian, wafting, susurrant, Eolian, uncurtained, rimple, pine-capt, convoluted). If that scene is too soporific for you, imagine yourself as a round-the-world sailor in savage southern seas. Though horizoned by towering waves, their troughs cauldroned in bubbling foam, you believe your tight and well keeled boat will repel the insurgent seas; so you relax by thinking of the blubbery whales gliding far below you, or the peaceful water of a brineless lake by night, moon- bright and undimpled by any wrinkling wind. (There are nine more here: horizoned, cauldroned, keeled, insurgent, blubbery, brineless, moon-bright, undimpled, wrinkling.) Scientifically, the lake's pure water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, the air above it is four- fifths nitrogen, or azote as Darwin would call it, and this azotic gas is

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unpolluted by nitrous gas (or nitrogen oxides as we now say); but who can be so drily scientific when day breaks over the lake to reveal sun- illumined snow-clad mountain peaks? (Seven more: hydrogen, oxygen, azote, azotic, nitrous gas, sun-illumined, snow-clad.) Climbing the mountains, you find a scene worthy of the Arabian Nights in an ornamented cave where a richly robed priestess is seated on a sopha. This sopha'd seer wears a white robe cinctured with a belt of scintillating jewels, and a gauzy veil shields her from the gaze of the male novices as they approach reverently, all with heads unturbaned, as if she was a halo'd saint, over a floor tesselated with coloured and tintless tiles between walls noduled with iridescent lazuli. (Eleven more: sopha'd, cinctured, scintillating, gauzy, unturbaned, halo'd, tesselated, tintless, noduled, iridescent, lazuli.) If you find this too precious and want something earthier, you could load up your rubbish, including that renovated lead-lined coffin (which you won't need yet), and car it all to the dump, returning freightless. (Four more: renovated, lead-lined, car, freightless.)

These silly sentences are intended as a relatively painless way of sampling the majority of the words; but we should also visit a few of them in their original habitats, rather than caged in a word-zoo. Darwin first uses gauzy in Canto I of The Loves of the Plants in his picture of Anemone, whose petals open when the wind blows. In Darwin's over- dramatized version (which inspired the title-page of Blake's Book of Thel), Zephyr

Tears with rude kiss her bosom's gauzy veil, And flings the fluttering kerchief to the gale.

Just as dramatic is the opium-dream sequence in Canto II, beginning with Papaver (poppy) 'sopha'd on silk', while

Faint o'er her couch in scintillating streams Pass the thin forms of Fancy and of Dreams.

Although scintillating is listed in Ash's Dictionary (I775), the O.E.D. does not have any pre-Darwinian examples of its actual use. The words lazuli and tesselate arise in a single couplet:

Light piers of lazuli the dome surround, And pictured mochoes tesselate the ground. (70)

Brineless and cinctured are in the story of Cassia, already quoted. Two words, convoluted and iridescent, come in so naturally that no one

would guess they were newly born. When the young Hercules is attacked by two snakes coiling round him,

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Their gasping throats with clenching hands he holds; And Death untwists their convoluted folds.

The rainbow colours of sunlit dew provide the iridescence:

Shake into viewless air the morning dews, And wave in light their iridescent hues.

Another word that it is surprising to find in the list is uncurtained, although this is in Ash's Dictionary. Darwin uses it in a nice metaphor for leafless branches, when he asks the zephyrs of spring to

rock the uncurtain'd cradle of the year. (71)

That must be the last curtain-call for the actors in this word-play, but the full cast is given in a note (72).

I have myself crawled out on a leafless branch by quoting all these

examples, and there is no foliage to hide me if someone cuts off the branch by producing earlier uses of the words. However, even if some of the examples are pre-empted, I have many more in reserve, to repair the losses. Also, I have refrained from mentioning some 'first uses' in scientific books, like the noun inebriate (1794); some technical compound phrases like gold-leaf electrometer (1791); plant names, such as Cannabis (1791); numerous compound adjectives, such as love-lighted (1791), or eye-tipped (1789), referring to the horns of a snail; and various arguable usages, such as airless (in the sense 'devoid of air', like the Moon, rather than 'stuffy'), or historic, in the sense 'historically important' (both I79I).

After his surprising conquest of the literary world and his half- intentional tour de force in inventing words, Darwin turned to more serious subjects and completed a biological-medical book that had been more than 20 years in the making. It was called Zoonomia, and was published in two huge volumes in 1794 and 1796. Ever-confident, Darwin hoped that he had succeeded in propounding 'the laws of animal life', and the new book raised his reputation even higher in the literary world: Wordsworth and Coleridge treated Zoonomia as their biological bible in the I79os (73). The medical world was impressed too: the book was hailed by Dr Thomas Beddoes as 'perhaps the most original work ever composed by mortal man', which would 'place the Author among the greatest of mankind, the founders of sciences' (74). But there were many critics among the medical men, too; and a weighty critique appeared in the form of a s6o-page book, Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin, by Thomas Brown, who was only I8 when he began it. The appearance of this book, only two years after volume II of

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Zoonomia, was a tribute to Darwin's fame; but the criticism of his medical and philosophical ideas by this callow and unqualified antagonist was galling for Darwin, especially because many of Brown's objections were themselves fallacious. Darwin was deeply committed to his system of medicine-the main work of his life. 'The admirers of Dr Darwin, and perhaps himself, seem to have expected that these volumes would form a new era in physiology and medicine; but no such event followed' (75). So wrote Dr John Aikin 20 years later.

One feature of Zoonomia caused immediate offence, his sketch of

biological evolution (as we now call it). The British Critic complained that Darwin had discarded 'all the authority of revelation' in favour of 'the sports of his own imagination'. These 'sports' had their origin in 1767, when Josiah Wedgwood asked Darwin to identify some huge fossil bones unearthed during the cutting of the Harecastle Tunnel for the Grand Trunk Canal. Darwin was baffled, and jokingly suggested they were from 'a Patagonian ox' (76). Within a year or two he came to believe that species were not fixed but gradually 'improved' as time went on. In I770 he adopted the motto E conchis omnia, or 'everything from shells', to go with his family arms of three scallop shells; and he had the motto painted on his carriage, until Dr Seward, ever alert to his

irreligious tendencies, pierced him with rapier-verse. Darwin, said the canon,

renounces his Creator, And forms all sense from senseless matter. Great wizard, he by magic spells Can all things raise from cockle shells. (77)

After this wounding publicity Darwin had to paint out the motto on his carriage, but he could not paint it out of his mind; and now, after 24 years of suppression, he was bold enough to risk publicizing his views. In the chapter 'Of Generation' at the end of volume I of Zoonomia, he draws attention to the great changes produced in animals naturally, 'as in the production of the butterfly with painted wings from the crawling caterpillar; or of the respiring frog from the subnatant tadpole'; and also

'by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in carrying burthens or running races'. He notes that monstrosities, or mutations as we should now say, are often inherited: 'Many of these enormities of shape are propagated, and continued as a new variety at least, if not as a new species of animal' (78). These examples, and many others he gives, show that variations can and do arise, and may be inherited.

What are the controlling forces? If air and water are available, 'the

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three great objects of desire, which have changed the forms of many animals by their exertions to gratify them, are those of lust, hunger and security'. Apropos 'those of lust', Darwin explains how the males of many species, such as boars, stags, cocks and quails, have developed 'weapons to combat each other' for the purpose of'exclusive possession of the females':

The final cause of this contest amongst the males seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species, which should thence become improved.

The spur of hunger, Darwin says, 'has diversified the forms of all species of animals'. Each has adapted to its means of acquiring food: the hard noses of swine, the rough tongues of cattle, the varied beaks of birds, and so on. The third objective, the need of animals for security, 'seems much to have diversified the forms of their bodies and the colour of them'; some animals have acquired swiftness of foot, or wings, to escape; others have developed hard shells, protective camouflage and so on.

Such changes, which sometimes (as with pigeons and dogs) have come within a few hundred years, give him a confident belief in evolution:

Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...

This rhetorical sentence goes on for several lines more, but there is no question mark at the end. Modern science confirms Erasmus's vague timescale of several hundred million years, as against the 5800 years allowed by his contemporary Bible-bound critics, and the 40 million years within which Charles Darwin was confined. Erasmus also stresses, later in his rhetorical sentence, that evolution proceeds 'by its own inherent activity', and the gradual realization that this meant 'without divine intervention' brought down on Darwin's head the wrath of the godly, who were numerous and powerful.

That wrath was typified by Coleridge, as we have seen; but other critics worldwide were just as scathing. Washington Irving, in his satiric History of New York (I809), saddles Darwin with the idea 'that the whole human species are accidentally descended from a remarkable family of monkies' (79), and the black comedy of German romantic agony, The Night Watches of Bonaventura (1804) blames Darwin for preaching that 'Man as man owes his existence to a species of ape on the Mediterranean Sea' (80). Joseph Priestley, from his enforced exile in America, wrote

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indignantly that Darwin 'must have meant to insinuate... that lions, horses and others...may have arisen from animals of different kinds, in the lowest state of organization...; and if there be any such thing as atheism, this is certainly it' (8I). In England the most influential assault was in 1798 by George Canning (a future Prime Minister) and others, in the openly political magazine, the Anti-Jacobin. Their satire The Loves of the Triangles includes a burlesque theory of evolution in which the primitive living filament 'would begin to ramify' into vegetables; these 'by degrees detached themselves from the surface of the earth, and supplied themselves with wings or feet'. Other vegetables 'by a stronger effort of volition, would become men...their tails would gradually rub off, by sitting in their caves or huts' (82). In 1798 England was bracing itself for a French invasion, and Darwin was treated as an intellectual terrorist trying to sabotage the established order presided over by the Creator, who was well known to be on Britain's side. In such a climate, Darwin had no hope of prevailing.

Instead he continued writing his massive treatise on plant life, Phytologia, published in I8oo. It is a much better book than Zoonomia, with many insights into plant physiology and nutrition. The most important of these is his nearly complete description of photosynthesis: Darwin goes much further than Ingenhousz, who showed in 1779 that sunlit plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Though Darwin does not produce the neat summary,

carbon dioxide + water + light energy -+ oxygen + sugar, he does specify each item individually, as the following quotations show:

This carbonic gas [carbon dioxide] is the principal food of plants.... Next to carbonic acid the aqueous acid, if it may be so called, or water, seems to afford the principal food of vegetables.... When vegetable leaves are exposed to the sun's light, they seem to give up oxygen gas....The wonderful effect of vegetable digestion in producing sugar may be deduced from the great product of the sugar cane. (83)

Darwin also picked on the essential plant nutrients, an impressive feat, because most of the processes were not worked out until half a century later. He first seizes on 'the azote, or nitrogen', which 'seems much to contribute to the food or sustenance of vegetables', and specifies its absorption through trapping in the soil or through the formation of ammonia ('volatile alkali'). He also points to the role of nitrates in plant nutrition. His second necessary element is carbon, an obvious choice in view of the carbon dioxide uptake. His third essential nutrient is phosphorus, and he goes on to advocate a search for calcium phosphate

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in Britain. As Sir John Russell remarks in his book on the history of agricultural science, 'This is the earliest statement by a British scientist I have seen that nitrogen and phosphate are essential for the growth of plants' (84).

There are many other good ideas in Phytologia. In the chapter on watering and drainage he points out the virtues of artesian wells, and for

drainage he recommends his horizontal windmill and an ingenious 'water machine' for pumping, with detailed drawings of both. There are also several pages of drawings and instructions for his improved drill plough, in the chapter on aeration of the soil. His long chapter on plant diseases has some imaginative pesticides, such as biological control of aphids by the syrphid fly and biological warfare against rats. His numerous ideas for boosting food and timber production include the afforestation of 'unfertile mountains' with 'pines, Scotch fir', a policy that was to be keenly pursued in Britain during the 20th century.

Phytologia also has bright ideas about plant physiology. Darwin emphasized the individuality of buds (85) and the sameness of asexual reproduction, in contrast to 'sexual or amatorial generation', which produces 'new varieties or improvements', with some of the young plants being 'superior to the parent in the qualities we wish to possess'. So, he concludes, 'sexual reproduction is the chef d'oeuvre, the master- piece of nature' (86). He explains how ingeniously plants disperse their seeds, and he digresses into zoology to suggest artificial insemination for farm animals. He believes that plants 'breathed' though minute pores, and tested the idea by carefully covering leaves with oil, which killed them. The pores (stomata) were officially discovered 30 years later.

At the end of Phytologia Darwin offers a wider perspective with his philosophy of organic happiness, covering animals, vegetables and some minerals. First, he looks realistically at the struggle for existence:

Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words, 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!

Where shall we find a benevolent idea to console us amid so much apparent misery? (87)

To this question he gives an optimistic answer. The most active animals have a greater capacity for pleasure, and these are the animals most likely to survive. So the evolutionary struggle for existence is really a maximization of organic pleasure. Because so many geological strata, such as limestone and coal, are the remains of animal or vegetable life, these strata can be regarded as 'monuments of the past felicity of organized Nature'.

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Darwin seems to have been impressed (88) by Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), as was his grandson 40 years later. Erasmus emphasizes 'the survival of the fittest' (to use the later catch-phrase) more strongly in Phytologia than in Zoonomia, and most of all in his second long poem The Temple of Nature (1803), which is in my view his finest achievement as a writer. Its original title was The Origin of Society, which shows its affinity with the Origin of Species: however, Erasmus goes further than Charles by trying to explain not only how animals originated and evolved, but also how the human animals sometimes manage to cooperate to produce society. The title was changed after Darwin's death by his publisher Joseph Johnson. This is not surprising, as Johnson had already been imprisoned once for selling an irreligious pamphlet (89); but only the title-page is changed, and 'Origin of Society' appears as the 'running head' on all even-numbered pages.

The Temple of Nature is in rhyming couplets and has 1928 lines, divided into four cantos. The first canto, 'Production of life', begins with a lifeless ocean. Then,

Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves, Organic Life began beneath the waves... Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth.

Three more couplets suffice to summarize the subsequent course of evolution:

First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing. (9o)

'Vast shoals' of tiny sea creatures with shells, when they died, formed the strata of coral, chalk and limestone. Then, 'after islands or continents were raised above the primeval ocean, great numbers of the most simple animals would attempt to seek food at the edges or shores of the new land' and 'might thence gradually become amphibious'. Thus

Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs, And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues. (9I)

The change from water to air is seen today, he says, in creatures having both gills and lungs, and in the birth of the human infant.

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Canto II, 'Reproduction of life', goes into more detail on sexual physiology. At first, Darwin thought, reproduction was asexual:

Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells.... Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds. (92)

This sameness is relieved by sex, which Darwin very much approves of, because it greatly enhances organic happiness and (eventually) improves the species. He then dreams up a scene that appealed to Shelley, an amusing pageant of life's creatures following Love's triumphal car: all of them, including the 'love-lorn' tigress, 'the enamour'd Flowers' and 'the feather'd nations' overhead, 'hail the Deities of Sexual Love' (93).

Canto III, 'Progress of the mind', balances the physicality of canto II. Most animals depend on weapons, armour or fleetness of foot, he says, but humans depend on hand, eye and brain. He propounds a philosophy of art and science, based on 'the fine power of Imitation', which also underlies speech and language. Instincts, he says, 'link the reasoning reptile to mankind', and he praises 'the seraph, Sympathy', who 'charms the world with universal love' (94).

Canto IV, 'Of good and evil', starts with a lurid picture of the struggle for existence in all realms of Nature. The wolf savages 'the guiltless lamb'. The eagle 'rends the inoffensive dove'.

The lamb and dove on living nature feed, Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed.

And the downtrodden plants are themselves engaged in vicious war:

Yes! smiling Flora drives her armed car Through the thick ranks of vegetable war; Herb, shrub, and tree, with strong emotions rise For light and air, and battle in the skies; Whose roots diverging with opposing toil Contend below for moisture and for soil.

In the oceans, too, 'the grim monarch of insatiate Death' reigns supreme. So, he concludes,

Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display!

175

From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great Slaughter-house the warring world! (95)

Human ills are plentiful too: slavery, war, disease, hunger and 'the curst spells of Superstition'. But good and evil are nicely balanced, because we enjoy the pleasure of consciousness, the delights of natural scenery, the warmth of sunshine, the fragrance of flowers, the taste of fruits, the charms of music, painting and all the imaginative arts, and the intellectual satisfactions of science and scholarship; above all, we may 'drink the raptures of delirious love'.

Darwin ends with his philosophy of organic happiness. The proliferation of acorns, aphids and every other life-form 'would each o'erpeople ocean, air and earth'; and so would 'human progenies if unrestrained'.

But war and pestilence, disease, and dearth, Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth.

As he sees it, 'every pore of Nature teems with life', and every speck of life enjoys itself to the limit of its capabilities, thus adding to the sum of organic happiness. Even the mountains of limestone, being the remains of creatures that once enjoyed life,

Are mighty Monuments of past Delight.

And so to the triumphant conclusion:

Should round the globe, how Reproduction strives With vanquish'd Death-and Happiness survives. (96)

Not everyone will respond favourably to this hymn of evolutionary progress. The reviewer in the British Critic in 1804 was so incensed to see Darwin usurping the role reserved for God that his review was cut off in its prime: 'We are full of horror, and will write no more' (97). Today, Darwin's prescient celebration of evolutionary biology embedded in an optimistic philosophy of life is perhaps more appealing, at least to those scientists who began their careers inspired by the idea of science as progress.

In The Temple of Nature Darwin has an explanation for the origin of language; but he refrains from originating many new words, and I have found only three clear instances. Perhaps others were struggling to be born, but remained at a placental stage: the other two might be found, also clearly italicized, at Florence, in a statued gallery where some of the statues were unlabelled. This poor harvest of three dull words shows that the language of The Temple of Nature was relatively unornamented:

176

Darwin's aim was to expound his evolutionary theme, not to dress everything in gaudy phrases. It is a poem dense with concentrated thinking, a reminder that 'few men have so much exercised their Minds' (98).

Erasmus Darwin's half-conscious feat of adding more than Ioo words to the English language has gone unnoticed, but it would not have surprised his contemporaries. The obituarist in the Monthly Magazine was no admirer-as shown by his rude remark that Darwin's stomach 'possessed a strong power of digestion'-but he did acknowledge that 'no man...had a more imperial command of words' (99). That command included the power to generate what Dryden called 'some newnesses of English' (Ioo), and Darwin's creations as a wordsmith add another gem to his many-jewelled crown of achievement (o10).

NOTES

(i) See R. Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, vol. 2 (Cape, 1955), pp. 15I-I52.

(2) 'Notes on Stillingfleet by S. T. Coleridge', The Athenaeum, no. 2474 (1875), p. 423.

(3) S. T. Coleridge, Letter to W. Wordsworth, 30 May I8I5. Collected Letters (ed. E. L. Griggs), vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 1956-71), p. 574.

(4) S. T. Coleridge, Select Poetry and Prose (ed. S. Potter) (Nonesuch Press, 1971), pp. 469-470.

(5) S. T. Coleridge, Collected Letters, vol. I (I3 May 1796), p. 216.

(6) See D. G. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets (Macmillan Press, 1986), ch. 5.

(7) S. T. Coleridge, Collected Letters, vol. I (27 Jan. 1796, 6 Feb. 1797), pp. 177, 305.

(8) The fullest biography of Darwin is D. G. King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution: the life and genius of Erasmus Darwin (Faber, I977).

(9) Anna Seward, Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (Johnson, 1804), p. 5. (IO) R. L. Edgeworth & Maria Edgeworth, Memoirs (1820), vol. 2 (Shannon, Irish

University Press, 1969), p. 82.

(I ) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin (ed. D. G. King-Hele) (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 13I.

(12) Monthly Magazine 13 (I802), 458. (13) Letters ofJosiah Wedgwood (ed. K. E. Farrer), vol. 2 (Manchester, Morton, 1974),

p. 55I (I2 Dec. I779). (I4) Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 50 (1757), 250-254. (15) This is by far the longest son-follows-father sequence in the annals of the Royal

Society, and the components are also unusually long: Erasmus was a Fellow for 41 years, his son Robert for 60 years, his son, Charles, for 42 years, his sons George, Francis and Horace for 33, 43 and 25 years respectively, and George's son, Charles, for 40 years.

(I6) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 17 (I July 1763).

I77

(17) A date between 1787 and I8oi is usually given, but the evaluation of the gas constant R came later.

(I8) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin (1764?), pp. 29-30. (I9) For details of the ironworks see J. Gould, 'The Lichfield canal and the Wychnor

ironworks', Trans. South Staffs. Arch. Hist. Soc. 23 (1983), 09- II7.

(20) For the story of Wedgwood, see Barbara Wedgwood & Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle (Studio Vista, I980).

(2I) For Keir, see J. L. Moilliet & B. M. D. Smith, A Mighty Chemist:James Keir of the Lunar Society (privately printed, I983), or B. M. D. Smith & J. L. Moilliet, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 22 (1967), I44-I54.

(22) J. P. Muirhead, The Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions ofJames Watt, vol. 2 (Murray, 1854), p. 279.

(23) For further details see D. G. King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution, ch. 4; W. J. Burke, Rudolph Ackermann (New York, New York Public Library, 1935); and E. Tompkins, The History of the Pneumatic Tyre (Eastland Press, I98I).

(24) For Edgeworth, see D. Clarke, The Ingenious Mr Edgeworth (Oldbourne, I965), and R. L. Edgeworth & Maria Edgeworth, Memoirs (I820), 2 vols (Shannon, Irish University Press, 1969).

(25) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 54 (4 Feb. I769).

(26) See D. G. King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution, pp. 79-8I, I28-I30.

(27) From manuscript at the Darwin Museum, Down House, Kent.

(28) See The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, pp. 63-65. (29) E. Darwin, The Temple of Nature (I802), Additional Note XV, 'Analysis of

articulate sounds'.

(30) The text of the first page of the letter to Greville reproduced in figure 2, as given in The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 94, is as follows:

Lichfield Dec 12 -78

Dear Sir, I can assure you at my few vacant hours I have incessantly labour'd at the completion

of the Polygrapher in its triple capacity, and hope as my time is so much otherwise

employ'd, that you will indulge me with a few weeks longer. And I flatter myself I shall be able to send you one that will perform all its parts to considerable perfection.

In the letter I am now writing to you I have quite the free use of one pen, so as to write quite as easily to myself, and as well as I can write without the machine.

Darwin's was not the first such machine. Sir William Petty (F.R.S. I663) invented a pantograph-type copying machine in 1648: see The Advice of W.P. to Mr Samuel Hartlibfor the Advancement of some particular parts of Learning (London, 1648). But I am not aware of any products from it that have been preserved. Hartlib himself devised a chemical method (I655) and Sir Christopher Wren, F.R.S., used a pantograph copier for drawing objects: Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond.

4 (1669), 898-899. A writing machine was patented by Henry Mill in 1714, but no details are known. Various 'writing dolls' and similar automata were constructed in the I750S. After using Darwin's copier in 1779, James Watt invented his own method of copying writing chemically. The first commercially successful pantograph-type copier was that of M. I. Brunel (1796), followed soon after by the 'Polygraph' ofJ. I. Hawkins, manufactured in the U.S.A. by C. W. Peale and rated by Thomas Jefferson as 'one of the greatest inventions of this

178

age'. For further details, see S. A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson and his Copying Machines (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, I984); M. H. Adler, The Writing Machine (Allen and Unwin, 1973); and W. B. Proudfoot, The Origin of Stencil Duplicating (Hutchinson, 1972).

(3I) See Norah Lofts, Emma Hamilton (M.Joseph, 1978), ch. I. (32) J. P. Muirhead, note 22, p. II5.

(33) C. Hart, J. Aeronaut. 89 (1985), I7-20. (34) See Telescopesfor the 198os (ed. G. Burbidge & A. Hewitt) (California, Annual

Reviews, I98I), pp. 63-I28. (35) See R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford University Press,

1963), pt Iv.

(36) The recently established 'Darwin Walk' encircling Lichfield may soon be modified to include the garden.

(37) For Jackson, see The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, pp. I I-I I I. (38) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. o09. (39) Ibid., p. II3.

(40) Ibid., p. 117. In the book Darwin acknowledges the help of 33 named botanists.

(4I) The title-page, reduced to its essentials, reads: 'A System of Vegetables ... translated from the thirteenth edition ... of the Systema Vegetabilium of the late Professor Linneus...by a Botanical Society, at Lichfield. Lichfield: printed by John Jackson, for Leigh and Sotheby ... London, 1783'.

(42) Quotations in this paragraph are from the System of Vegetables, preface, pages iii- xi, with one excerpt from The Families of Plants, preface, page xviii.

(43) The title-page of the second translation, much abbreviated, reads: ' The Families of Plants... translated from the last edition of the Genera Plantarum ... by a Botanical Society at Lichfield. Lichfield: printed by John Jackson. Sold by J. Johnson, St Paul's Churchyard, London ... I787'.

(44) Plans for the O.E.D. in the near future are summarized by E. Weiner in Times Lit. Suppl., 30 May 1986, p. 591, and The Bookseller, 25 January 1986, p. 332.

(45) The 50 botanical words are: ament, appressed, aril, awnless, axillary, bract, bracted, calycled, calyptre, corcle, corol, corollet, cyme, daedal, decursive, equitant, fascicled, floret, flosculous, glume, involucre, involucred, leaflet, lobed, nerveless, nidulant, peduncled, petioled, pome, raceme, retroflected, retrofracted, rostel, semicolumnar, silicle, silique, spathe, spinescent, stalklet, stemless, stipe, stiped, stipule, stipuled, toothlet, umbellet, valvelet, veinless, vernation, verticil. One of these, corol (for corolla), is recorded as obsolete in the O.E.D. The date of the words is 1783, when the list of botanic terms was first published. A few of the words, such as nerveless, also have non-botanical meanings. Of the 50 words, 24 are in common enough use to be included in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1976).

(46) For the Derby Philosophical Society see E. Robinson, Ann. Sci. 9 (I953), 359-367.

(47) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. I04. (48) See Doctor of Revolution, pp. 141-I43. (49) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 44 (29 July I767). (50) E. Darwin, The Botanic Garden (ohnson, 1791), pt I, note vi. See also D. G.

King-Hele, Vistas Astron. 27 (1984), 63-75. (5I) E. Darwin, 'An account of an artificial Spring of Water', Phil. Trans. R. Soc.

Lond. 75 (1785) I-7.

I79

(52) E. Darwin, 'Of the Medicinal Waters of Buxton and Matlock'. In J. Pilkington, A View of the Present State of Derbyshire (Derby, Drewry, 1789), pp. 256-275.

(53) E. Darwin, 'Frigorific experiments on the mechanical expansion of air...', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 78 (1788), 43-52.

(54) The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 271 (I4 Dec. I794). (55) E. Darwin, MS Commonplace Book, p. 45. (56) E. Darwin, The Botanic Garden, pt I, note I, p.2. (57) See, for example D. G. King-Hele, 'A View of Earth and Air', Phil. Trans. R.

Soc. Lond. A 278 (I975), 67-o109. (58) E. Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791), pt II, canto iv, line 45, note.

(59) The Loves of the Plants appeared in I789 as' The Botanic Garden, Part II, containing The Loves of the Plants, a Poem with Philosophical Notes... Lichfield: printed by J. Jackson. Sold by J. Johnson, St Paul's Church Yard, London, 1789'. The Botanic Garden complete came out in 1792 as' The Botanic Garden; a Poem in Two Parts. Part I containing The Economy of Vegetation, Part II, The Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes. London. Printed for J. Johnson, St Paul's Church Yard, I79I'. Usually the third edition of The Loves of the Plants (I79I) is bound in with the first edition of The Economy of Vegetation, and this may be regarded as the definitive text.

(60) S. T. Coleridge, Collected Letters, vol. 2, p. 738. (61) Letter to Richard Dixon, 25 Oct. 1792. The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 225. (62) See D. G. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, ch. 2-6.

(63) W. Wordsworth, 'Lines written in early Spring', lines II-I2, in Lyrical Ballards

(I798). (64) W. Wordsworth, Poetical Works (ed. E. de Selincourt & H. Darbishire), vol. 3

(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940-49), p. 442. (65) H. Walpole, Letters, vol. 14 (I905), pp. 124, 125, 126. A. Seward, Memoirs of the

Life of Dr Darwin, p. 376. W. Cowper, Analytical Review 4 (I793), 29-36. (66) The three quotations are from Loves of the Plants (3rd edn) canto I, lines 39-40

and 113-116, and canto III, lines 413-420. (67) S. T. Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism (ed. T. M. Raysor), vol. 2 (Constable,

1930), p. 66. Coleridge did not notice the newly coined words because they were

already part of his own vocabulary. (68) See D. G. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, p. 248. (69) F. Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review 4, 297 (July I804). (70) Quotations in this paragraph are from Loves of the Plants (I789 edn) canto I, lines

287-288, canto ii, lines 269-270, and canto iv, lines 305-306. (71) Quotations in this paragraph are from The Economy of Vegetation, canto I, lines

305-306, and canto iv, lines 45I-452 and 418. (72) The 'new words', with an asterisk if they are cited as 'first uses' in the O.E.D.,

are: assurgent (noun)*, aurelian (adj.)*, azote*, azotic, blubbery*, brineless*, car

(verb)*, cauldron (verb)*, cincture (verb)*, conchoid, convoluted, Eolian

(= Aeolian), ferny (in shape)*, freightless*, gauzy, halo'd, horizon (verb)*, hydrogen*, ice-bolt*, immense (noun)*, inemulous*, insurgent (adj.), iridescent, keeled, lapelled*, lazuli*, lead-lined, love-illumined*, moon-bright, nitrous gas, noduled*, oxygen (first positive use), pansied, pillowy, pine-capt, renovated

(adj.), revolant*, rimple (verb)*, scintillating, snow-capt, snow-clad, sopha'd*, sun-illumined, susurrant*, tesselate, tintless, uncurtained, undimpled, un- turbaned, wafting (adj.), wrinkling (adj.)*.

(73) See D. G. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, ch. 4 and 6.

i8o

(74) J. E. Stock, Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Beddoes (Murray, I8II), pp. I3I, 133.

(75) J. Aikin, General Biography (Io vols, 1799-1815), vol. IO, p. 304. (76) Letter to J. Wedgwood, 2 July I767. The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, p. 43.

Previous quotation from British Critic 5 (I795), II3-122.

(77) From MS. at William Salt Library, Stafford. See also Gentleman's Magazine 54 (1784), 87, and Anna Seward, Letters, vol. 6 (Constable, I8II), p. I36.

(78) These quotations, and those in the next two paragraphs, are from E. Darwin, Zoonomia, vol. I (Johnson, 1796), pp. 504-509.

(79) [W. Irving] A History of New York, vol. I (1809), p. 37. (80) The Night Watches of Bonaventura (translator G. Gillespie) (Edinburgh University

Press, 1972), p. I37. For the authorship of this book see L. Katritzky, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 39 (1984), 4I-50.

(8I) Trans. Am. phil. Soc. 6 (1804), 119-129.

(82) Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin (ed. C. Edmonds) (Willes, 1854), pp. 127-I28.

(83) E. Darwin, Phytologia (Johnson, I8oo), pp. I88-I93. (84) J. Russell, History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain (Allen and Unwin, 1966),

p. 63. (85) See C. Darwin, The Life of Erasmus Darwin (Murray, 1879), pp. III-I112.

(86) E. Darwin, Phytologia, pp. 103-II5. (87) Ibid., p. 556. (88) See M. McNeil, Under the Banner of Science: Erasmus Darwin and his Age

(Manchester University Press, 1987), pp. 39-41, IIo-II8. (89) For Johnson, see G. P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: a Liberal Publisher (University of

Iowa Press, 1979). (90) E. Darwin, The Temple of Nature (Johnson, 1803), canto I, lines 233-234,

247-248, 297-302.

(9I) Ibid., canto I, line 327, note; and lines 333-334. (92) Ibid., canto ii, lines 89-90, I07-IIO.

(93) Ibid., canto ii, lines 405, 410. Shelley's Queen Mab and Triumph of Life have links with this scene: see D. G. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, ch. 8.

(94) Ibid., canto Ill, lines 432, 467, 478. Similar concepts figure in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

(95) Ibid., canto iv, lines 21-22, 41-46, 63-66. (96) Ibid., canto iv, lines 373-374, 450, 451-452. (97) British Critic 23 (1804), I74. (98) W. B. Stevens on Darwin, Io January I794. Journal of the Rev. William Bagshaw

Stevens (ed. G. Galbraith) (Oxford, Clarendon Press, I965), p. 126.

(99) Monthly Magazine 13, 459, 462 (June 1802). (Ioo) J. Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal (London, Hindmarsh, I692), preface. (IOI) (Note added in proof.) Darwin's word-coining was noticed in his own day, by

William Cowper. In the manuscript notes for his review of The Botanic Garden, part I (published in Analytical Review I5 (I793), 287-293), Cowper remarks: 'many words unseen before either in Prose or Verse, but often beautifully expressive and never inharmonious'. (From MS inserted in a copy of The Botanic Garden at Cambridge University Library, class-mark Syn. 4.79.13.)