The papers in re Wallace have arrived, and I lose no time in assuring you that all my “might, amity, and authority,” as Essex said when that sneak Bacon asked him for a favour, shall be exercised as you wish.

On December 11 he sends Darwin the draft of a memorial on the subject, and on the 28th suggests that the best way of moving the official world would be for Darwin himself to send the memorial, with a note of his own, to Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury:—­]

Mr. G. can do a thing gracefully when he is so minded, and unless I greatly mistake, he will be so minded if you write to him.

[The result was all that could be hoped.  On January 7 Darwin writes:—­“Hurrah! hurrah! read the enclosed.  Was it not extraordinarily kind of Mr. Gladstone to write himself at the present time?...I have written to Wallace.  He owes much to you.  Had it not been for your advice and assistance, I should never have had courage to go on.”

The rest of the letter to Darwin of December 28 is characteristic of his own view of life.  As he wrote four years before (see above), he was no pessimist any more than he was a professed optimist.  If the vast amount of inevitable suffering precluded the one view, the gratuitous pleasures, so to speak, of life preclude the other.  Life properly lived is worth living, and would be even if a malevolent fate had decreed that one should suffer, say, the pangs of toothache two hours out of every twenty-four.  So he writes:—­]

We have had all the chicks (and the husbands of such as are therewith provided) round the Christmas table once more, and a pleasant sight they were, though I say it that shouldn’t.  Only the grand-daughter left out, the young woman not having reached the age when change and society are valuable.

I don’t know what you think about anniversaries.  I like them, being always minded to drink my cup of life to the bottom, and take my chance of the sweets and bitters.

[The following is to his Edinburgh friend Dr. Skelton, whose appreciation of his frequent companionship had found outspoken expression in the pages of “The Crookit Meg.”]

4 Marlborough Place, November 14, 1880.

My dear Skelton,

When the “Crooked Meg” reached me I made up my mind that it would be a shame to send the empty acknowledgment which I give (or don’t give) for most books that reach me.

But I am over head and ears in work—­time utterly wasted in mere knowledge getting and giving—­and for six weeks not an hour for real edification with a wholesome story.

But this Sunday afternoon being, by the blessing of God, as beastly a November day as you shall see, I have attended to my spiritual side and been visited by a blessing in the shape of some very pretty and unexpected words anent mysel’. [The passage referred to stands on page 72 of “The Crookit Meg,” and describes the village naturalist and philosopher, Adam Meldrum, “who in his working hours cobbled old boats, and knew by heart the plays of Shakespeare and the ’Pseudodoxia Epidemica’ of Sir Thomas Browne.”