Ɛpsilon

To John Murray   21 January 1882

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

Jan 21. 1882—

My dear Mr Murray

I am much obliged for the Quarterly. I have read the few first pages of the article on my worm-book, which are highly complimentary, indeed more than complimentary. If the Reviewer is a young man & a worker in any branch of Biology, he will assuredly sooner or later write differently about evolution.1 Literally I cannot name a single youngish worker who is not as deeply convinced of the truth of Evolution as I am, though there are many who do not believe in natural selection having done much,—but this is a relatively unimportant point. Your reviewer is in the position of the men who stuck up so long & so stoutly that the sun went round the earth.

There are several other articles which I shall be glad to read, especially that on Lyell.— I liked the book so much that I was quite sorry when I finished it. Nevertheless in my opinion, it could have been greatly improved if about 100 pages had been struck out of each volume.2

Pray believe me | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin

1
The article on Earthworms appeared in the Quarterly Review for January 1882, pp. 179–202; the author was Henry Wace (Wellesley index). He remarked: ‘we still remain convinced of the prematureness … of what is commonly … styled the Darwinian theory of Evolution. But this difference of opinion … is no obstacle to our entertaining the highest admiration for those researches themselves’ (Quarterly Review, January 1882, p. 179).
2
Charles Lyell’s sister-in-law Katharine Murray Lyell had published a selection of his letters in two volumes in November 1881 (K. M. Lyell ed. 1881). The book was reviewed in the Quarterly Review for January 1882, pp. 96–131.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.7 but] above del ‘though’
1.7 relatively] interl after del ‘very’
1.8 the position] ‘the’ interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13632,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13632