Charles Darwin; his life and work / by Charles Frederick Holder.

  • Charles Frederick Holder
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Charles Darwin; his life and work / by Charles Frederick Holder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    years of age ; yet his paper, which was on the com- mon Flustra, or sea-mat, attracted no Httle attention, and M^as the first in an ever increasing series that gave him in later years a world-wide reputation. While this was Darwin's first public appearance as a naturalist, he had long been an ardent collector. When but nine years of age he was the happy pos- sessor of a collection of seals, franks, coins, and minerals which were the admiration of his young friends and acquaintances. Our hero was born at Shrewsbury in 1809, and began his school-boy life at a day-school, later, in 1818, attending the large establishment of Dr. Butler, a mile from the old homestead. This school, like many of the time, was a strictly classical institution, where the young mind was regaled with ancient geography and history almost exclusively. The lessons, so he tells us, were learned by heart, with interminable verses,—a feature much esteemed by educators of the day, and were mastered in boyish fashion by a combination of the talent of the school. He was singularly deficient in language, yet pos- sessed, like other members of his family, a remarkable memory, so that, as he writes in his quaint Autobi- ography : Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day ; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer whilst I was in morning chapel; but this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse was forgotten in forty-eight hours. Our young hero, while manly and thoughtful, was simple-hearted, and often a victim to the deceptions
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