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Medicine and Books

George Saintsbury, who appreciated good poetry and fine wine, wrote in 1914 of Erasmus Darwin: "Time is not likely to destroy and may rather increase, the credit due to Darwin's scientific pioneership: its whirligig is never likely to restore the faintest genuine taste for his pseudo-poetry."' This was a brave scientific forecast for a literary critic to make, for Charles Darwin had written in his autobiography: "I had previously read the Zoonomia of my grandfather, in which similar views (to those of Lamarck) are maintained, but without producing any effect on me. On reading it a second time after an interval of 10 or 15 years, I was much disappointed, the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts given." In a short 45 years the whirligig was to bring Erasmus more scientific credit than his grandson had given him. C D Darlington in his book Darwin's Place in History gave Erasmus an approving chapter headed "The Great Precursor."2 There can be no dispute about poetic taste but in the decade before Saintsbury's article was written German studies of Darwin's poetry had appeared, and in 1936 J V Logan published an admirable Princeton dissertation on The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin.3 In 1973 facsimile reprints of The Botanic Garden and The Temple of Nature appeared. Despite Saintsbury's prognosis, Erasmus Darwin had reached the foothills of Parnassus.