Ɛpsilon

To Ernst Krause   26 December 1880

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)

Dec. 26th 1880

My dear Sir

Since I wrote to you my sons have been looking into Mr. Butler’s ‘Unconscious Memory’; & they inform me that he refers to your quotation from Buffon & another passage in ‘Erasmus Darwin’ (pp 147, 134 of the English Translation) as having apparently been taken from his ‘Evol. Old & New’ (pp 119 & 21).1 My sons say, after examining the passages carefully, that your quotations & the remark as to Coleridge have the appearance of having been taken from Mr. B.’s book.2 I have not looked into the question myself, but I think that if you publish anything as to the matter in Kosmos, it would be well for you to give a clear explanation on this point.—

You will understand that I am not taking any public notice of Mr. Butler’s attack on myself, & I would ask you to be kind enough to confine anything you may write on the matter as much as possible to the part you have yourself taken in the Life of Erasmus D.—3

Pray excuse me for troubling you, but I thought that it might be useful to you to hear the impression of my sons in relation to the above points.—

Believe me, my dear Sir | yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
See letter to Ernst Krause, [12 December 1880]. Samuel Butler’s Unconscious memory contained a chapter in which Butler accused CD and Krause of making unacknowledged reference to Butler’s earlier work, Evolution, old and new (Butler 1880, pp. 58–79; Butler 1879).
2
Both Krause and Butler refer to an article in the Athenæum, 27 March 1875, p. 423, as the source for remarks by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (see Erasmus Darwin, p. 134, and Butler 1879, p. 21). The quotation from Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, on pigs is not given a source in Erasmus Darwin, p. 147, but is cited in Butler 1879, p. 120, as ‘Tom. v. p. 104, 1755’ (a reference to Buffon et al. 1749–1804, 5: 104).
3
Krause and CD co-authored Erasmus Darwin; Krause’s section was a revised version of an earlier article (Krause 1879a).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.4 say,] interl
2.1 public] above del ‘public’
2.3 possible] above del ‘possible’
3.2 of] above del ‘we’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12939,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12939