WCP2460

[1]¹

Kew

Jan[uar]^y. 18. [18]93

Private

Dear Mr Wallace,

I am very sorry to hear that you are not very well. But with such weather it is scarcely to be wondered at. It was the [most] kind of you to be at the pains to write me so charming a letter.

In one way I sympathize with you. I am getting on in years, alas, myself and to my astonishment I find that I am growing perfectly indifferent to [2] any thing but the daily [interest] of my absorbing work. As to any thing one can do to science & its advancement I seem to Pusey still thundering in one’s illeg ^ears as he used to do at Oxford, ‘securus judicat orbis terrarum’.²

I hope you won’t think one impertinent if I say that when were at Kew last summer I could not help feeling in how many ways you reminded me of Mr Darwin.

[3]

Your letter reminds me that man. When we used to stay with him Frank Balfour³ & I were quite abashed by the consideration & deference with which he treated us. In F. B.’s case there was sane ground for it. But I know it made me feel a very shabby impostor.

I am afraid the splendid modesty of the big men will be a rarer commodity in the future. No doubt many of the younger ones know an immense deal. But I doubt if [4] many of them will ever exhibit the grasp of great principles which we owe to you and your splendid band of contemporaries.

Believe me| Yours sincerely | W. T. Thiselton Dyer.[signature]