Ɛpsilon

To Friedrich Max Müller   5 January 1875

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

Jan. 5th 1875

My dear Sir

I have just read the few first pages of your article in the Contemporary, & I hope that you will permit me to say that neither I nor my son ever supposed that you were the author of the Review in the Quarterly.—1 You are about the last man in England to whom I shd have attributed such a review. I know that it was written by Mr. Mivart, and the utterly false & base statements contained in it in relation to my son, are worthy of the man.2 My son wishes me to add that you have imputed to him a good many criticisms, that are in reality Prof. Whitney’s, & is sorry that you shd. think that he ventured to criticize your writings on his own account.3

I remain | My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
Max Müller had written a paper titled ‘My reply to Mr. Darwin’ (Max Müller 1875) for the January 1875 issue of the Contemporary Review, in answer to George Howard Darwin’s paper defending CD’s views on language (G. H. Darwin 1874). Müller noted that George’s defence had been inspired partly by comments in an anonymous article in the Quarterly Review ([Mivart] 1874), and denied that he was the author of that article.
2
On St George Jackson Mivart’s review and CD’s response to it, see Correspondence vol. 22, Appendix V.
3
G. H. Darwin 1874 was a discussion of William Dwight Whitney’s essay review of Friedrich Max Müller’s ‘Lectures on Mr. Darwin’s philosophy of language’ (Whitney 1874). CD had attempted but failed to have Whitney 1874 republished in the Contemporary Review (letter from J. T. Knowles, 4 August 1874).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

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Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9802,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9802