"In the latter part of his life he was rarely seen among his workinen, sometimes not twice in a year, and, even when he was in town, gave his directions by little notes. His principal workman was hard of hearing; and Richardson felt a nervous irritation, which made it not easy for him to bear any thing of hurry or personal altercation. little pensions during his life; one third of his fortune to his wife, and the rest to be divided equally among his daughters; recommend. ing, however, his daughter Anne to her mother's peculiar care, from the weak state of her health and spirits. Yet this object of his tender anxiety was the survivor of the whole family. She is said to "His will shews the same equi- have possessed an excellent and table, friendly, and beneficent dis-cultivated understanding, true position, which was apparent in his piety, sensibility, resignation, and life; legacies to a tribe of relations, strength of mind."" to whom, it appears, he had given SHORT ACCOUNT of E. DARWIN. [From Miss SEWARD'S MEMOIRS of his LIFE.] 26 R. Erasmus Darwin was the son of a private gentleman, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire. He came to Lichfield to practise physic in the autumn of the year 1756, at the age of twenty-four; bringing high recommendations from the university of Edinburgh, in which he had studied, and from that of Cambridge, to which he belonged. "He was some what 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 selflove. 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 the 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 evergrowing Ꭰ Ꮞ growing reputation within and without the pale of medicine. "Extreme was his scepticism to human truth. From that cause he often disregarded the accounts his patients gave of themselves, and rather chose to collect his information by indirect inquiry and by cross-examining them, than from their voluntary testimony. That distrust and that habit were pro bably favourable to his skill in discovering the origin of diseases, and thence to his preeminent success in effecting their cure, but they impressed his mind and tinctured his conversation with an apparent want of confidence in mankind, which was apt to wound the ingenuous and confiding spirit, whether seeking his medical assistance, or his counsel as a friend,. Perhaps this proneness to suspicion mingled too much of art in his wisdom. "In 1757, he married miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming and lovely young lady of eighteen. A mind, which had native strength; an awakened taste for the works of imagination; ingenuous sweetness; delicacy animated by sprightliness, and sustain ed by fortitude, made her a capable, as well as fascinating companion, even to a man of talents so illustrious.--To her he could, with confidence, commit the important task of rendering his children's minds a soil fit to receive, and bring to fruit, the stamina of wisdom and science. "Mrs. Darwin's own mind, by nature so well endowed, strengthened and expanded in the friend ship, conversation, and confidence of so beloved, so revered a precepBut alas! upon her early youth, and a too delicate constitution, the frequency of her maternal tor. situation, during the first five years of her marriage, had probably a baneful effect. The potent skill, and assiduous cares of him, before whom disease daily vanished from the frame of others, could not expel it radically from that of her he loved. It was however kept at bay thirteen years. "Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely regretted by all, who knew how to value her excellence, and passionately regretted by the selected few, whom she honoured with her personal and confidential friendship. The year after his marriage, Dr. Darwin purchased an old half timbered house in the cathedral vicarage, adding a handsome new front, with venetian windows, and commodious apartments. This front looked towards Beacon-street, but had no street annoyance, being separated from it by a narrow, deep, dingle, which, when the doctor purchased the premises, was overgrown with tangled briars and knot-grass. In antient days it was the receptacle of that water, which moated the Close in a semicircle, the other half being defended by the Minster pool. A fortunate opening between the opposite houses and this which has been described, gives it a prospect, sufficiently extensive, of pleasant and umbrageous fields. Across the dell, between his house and the street, Dr. Darwin flung a broad bridge of shallow steps with chinese paling, descending from his halldoor to the pavement. The tan gled and hollow bottom he cleared into lawny smoothness, and made a terrace on the bank, which stretched in a line, level with the floor of his apartments, planting the steep de clivity with lilacs and rose-bushes; while he screened his terrace from the summer sun, by all that higher grew, • Of firm and fragrant leaf. Then swiftly the gaze of passengers, and the session of the modern languages. His address was gracefully spirited, and his conversation eloquent. He danced, he fenced, and winged his arrows with more than philosophic skill; yet did not the consciousness of these lighter endowments abate his ardour in the pursuit of knowledge. гове Acanthus, and each odorous, bushy shrub, " To fence the verdant wall.' "The last gentleman who purchased this house and its gardens, has detroyed the verdure and plantations of that dell, for the purpose of making a circular coach-road from the street to the hall-door; a sacrifice of beauty to convenience, and one of many proofs, that alteration and improvement are not always synonymous terms. To this rus in urbe, of Darwinian creation, resorted, from its early rising, a knot of philosophic friends, in frequent visitation. The rev. Mr. Michell, many years deceased. He was skilled in astronomic science, modest and wise. The ingenious Mr. Kier, of West Bromich, then captain Kier. Mr. Boulton, known and respected wherever mechanic philosophy is understood. Mr. Watt, the celebrated improver of the steam engine. And, above all others in Dr. Darwin's personal regard, the accomplished Dr. Small, of Birmingham, who bore the blushing honours of his talents and virtues to an untimely grave. "About the year 1765, came to Lichfield, from the neighbourhood of Reading, the young and gay philosopher, Mr. Edgeworth, a man of fortune, and recently married to a miss Ellars of Oxfordshire. The fame of Dr. Darwin's various talents allured Mr. E. to the city they graced. Then scarcely two-and-twenty, and with an exterior yet more juvenile, he had mathematic science, mechanic ingenuity, and a competent portion of classical learning, with the pos After having established a friendship and correspondence with Dr. Darwin, Mr. Edgeworth did not return to Lichfield till the summer of the year 1770. With him, at that period, came the late Mr. Day, of Bear-hill, in Berkshire. These young men had been fellowstudents in the university of Ox. ford. Mr. Day was also attracted by the same celebrated abilities, which, five years before, had drawn his friend into their sphere. He was then twenty-four, in possession of a clear estate, about twelve hundred pounds per annum. "During the course of the year 1780, died colonel Pole. Dr. Darwin, more fortunate than Petrarch, whose destiny his own had resembled in poetic endowment and hopeless love, then saw his adored Laura free, and himself at liberty to court her favour, whose coldness his muse had recorded; to drink softer effusion from those eyes,' which duty and discretion had rendered repulsive. He soon, however, saw her surrounded by rivals, whose time of life had nearer parity with her own, yet in its summer bloom, while his age nearly approached its half century; whose fortunes were affluent and patrimonial; while his were professional; who were jocund bachelors, while he had children for whom he must provide. "Colonel Pole had numbered twice the years of his fair wife. His temper was said to have been peevish peevish and suspicious, yet not beneath those circumstances had her kind and cheerful attentions to him grown cold or remiss. He left her a jointure of six hundred pounds per annum; a son to inherit his estate, and two female children amply portioned. Mrs. Pole, it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher. He is not vory fond of churches, I believe, and if he would go there for my sake, I shall scarcely follow him. He is too old for me.' Nay, madam, what are fifteen years on the right side?' She replied, with an arch smile, I have had so much of that right side!' "The confession was thought inauspicions to the doctor's hopes; but it did not prove so; the triumph of intellect was complete. Without that native perception and awakened taste for literary excellence, which the first charming Mrs. Darwin possessed, this lady became tenderly sensible of the flattering difference between the attachment of a man of genius, and wide celebrity, and that of young fox-huiting esquires; dashing militaries, and pedantic gowns men; for she was said to have spe cimens of all these classes in her train. They could speak their own passion, but could not immortalize her charms. However benevolent, friendly, and sweet-tempered, she was not perhaps exactly the woman to have exclaimed with Akenside, Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven! The living fountain in itself contains "Yet did her choice support his axiom when she took Dr. Darwin for her husband. Darwin, never handsome, or personally graceful, with extremely impeded utterance; with hard features on 2 rough surface; older much in appearance than in reality; lame and clumsy! and this, when half the wealthy youth of Derbyshire were said to have disputed the prize with him. "But it was not without some stipulations, apparently hazardous Pole was persuaded to descend to his pecuniary interest, that Mrs. from her Laura-eminence to wifehood, and probably to silence for ever, in the repose of possession, those tender strains, which romantic love and despair, and afterwards the stimulating restlessness of doubtful hope, had occasionally awakened. "During that visit to Dr. Darwin, in which Mrs. Pole had brought her sick children to be healed by his skill, she had taken a dislike to Lichfield, and decidedly said, nothing could induce her to live there. His addresses did not subdue that resolve. "After so long and prosperous a residence, to quit that city, central in the Mercian district, from whence his fame had diffused itself through the circling counties, seemed a great sacrifice; but the philosopher was too much in love to hesitate one moment. He married Mrs. Pole in 1781, and removed directly to Derby. His reputation and the unlimited confidence of the public followed him him to the metropolis, or to any thither, and would have followed provincial town, to which he might have chosen to remove. "Why he constantly, from time to time, withstood solicitations from countless families of rank and opulence, to remove to London, was never exactly understood by the writer of these memoirs. She knows that the most brilliant prospects of success in the capital were opened to him, from various quarters, early on his residence at Lichfield, and that his attention to them was perpetually requested by eminent people. Undoubtedly those prospects acquired added strength and lustre each year beneath the ever-widening spread of his fame. Conscious of his full habit of body, he probably thought the established custom of imbibing changed and pure air by almost daily journies into the country, essential to his health; perhaps to the duration of his life. In all sion to that perpetual travelling, a gentleman once humorously directed a letter Dr. Darwin upon the road.' When himself wrote to Dr. Franklin, complimenting him on having united philosophy to modern science, he directed his letter merely thus, Dr. Franklin, America;' and said, he felt inclined to make a still more flattering superscription. Dr. Franklin, the World. His letter reached the sage who first disarmed the lightning of its fatal power, for the answer to it arrived, and was shown in the Darwinian circles; in which had been questioned the likelihood of Dr. Franklin ever receiving a letter of such general superscription as the whole western empire. Its safe arrival was amongst the triumphs of genius combined with exertion, they make the world their country.' "From the time of Dr. Darwin's marriage and removal to Derby, his limited biographer can only trace the outline of his remaining existence; remark the dawn and expansion of his poetic fame, and comment upon the claims which secure its immortality. The less does she regret this limitation, as Mr. Dewhurst Bilsbury, his pupilin infancy, his confidential friend, and frequent companion through ripened youth, is now writing at large the life of Dr. Darwin, who once more became a happy husband, with a second family of children springing fast around him. To those children the miss Poles, as themselves grew up to womanhood, were very meritoriously attentive and attached. The eldest miss Pole married Mr. Bromley, and is said to be happy in her choice of a worthy and amiable man. The second miss Pole gave her lovely self to Mr. John Gisborne, younger brother to the celebrated moralist and poet of that name. "Sunday, the eighteenth of April, 1802, deprived Derby and its vicinity, and the encircling counties, of Dr. Darwin; the lettered world of his genius. During a few preceding years he had been subject to sudden and alarming disorders of the chest, in which he always applied the lancet instantly and freely; he had repeatedly risen in the night and bled himself. It was said that he suspected angina pectoris to be the cause of those his sudden paroxysms, and that it would produce sudden death. The conversation which he held with Mrs. Darwin and her friend, the night before he died, gave colour to the report. In the preceding year he had a very dangerous illness. originated from a severe cold caught by obeying the summons of a patient in Derby, after he had himself taken strong medicine. It |