Erasmus Darwin

The grandfather of Charles Darwin, named Erasmus, is pretty famous in his own right.  Erasmus was a physician by trade; also a philosopher and poet.  He was born, and lived in, the same town as Samuel Johnson; Lichfield.  Erasmus died on April 18^th, 1802.

The connection to Sir Walter Scott for today involves Darwin’s writing, and a controversy over some lines he “borrowed” from fellow Lichfieldian Anna Seward.  The issue is described in Ernst Krause’s “Erasmus Darwin".

‘The whole case is unintelligible, and in some respects looks more like highway robbery than simple plagiarism. Mr. Edgeworth [Richard, the father of Scott’s friend Maria Edgeworth], in a letter (Feb. 3, 1812) to Sir Walter Scott, says that he had expressed surprise to Dr. Darwin at seeing Miss Seward's lines at the beginning of his poem, and that Dr. Darwin replied : " It was a compliment  which he thought himself bound to pay to a " lady, though the verses were not of the same  tenor as his own." But this seems a lame excuse, and it is an odd sort of compliment to take the verses without any acknowledgment. Perhaps he thought it fair play, for Edgeworth goes on to say that " Miss Seward's ' Ode  to Captain Cook ' stands deservedly high  in public opinion. Now to my certain knowledge most of the passages which have been selected in the various reviews of the work were written by Dr. Darwin. I knew him well, and it was as far from his temper and habits, as it was unnecessary to his acquirements, to beg, borrow, or steal from any person on earth." These passages at any rate show how true and ardent a friend Edgeworth was to Dr. Darwin long after his death…’

Monody - On the Death of David Garrick

MONODY



ON THE DEATH OF DAVID GARRICK, ESQ.


Prize Poem at Bath-Easton.


Dim sweeps the shower along the misty vale,
And Grief's low accents murmur in the gale.
O'er the damp vase, Horatio, sighing, leans,
And gazes absent on the faded scenes.


Soft melancholy shades each sprightly grace,
That wont to revel o'er his Laura's face,
When, with sweet smiles, the garlands gayshetwin'd,
And each light spray her roseate ribbons bind.


Dropt from her hand the scattered myrtles lie;
And lo ! dark cypress meets the earnest eye!
For lifeless Garrick sighs from Genius breathe,
And weeping Beauty culls the funeral wreath. ...
 
Monody, the beginning of which is shown above, was published in "The Poetical Works of Anna Seward...", by Anna Seward; edited by Sir Walter Scott.  It memorializes fellow Lichfieldian David Garrick on his death, which occurred on January 20, 1779. 
 
Evidently Seward held warmer feelings for Garrick than for the more famous son of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson.  Seward was the source of several erroneous or misleading anecdotes about Johnson, which James Boswell spent significant time vetting.
 
By Johnson's account, and by most others', Garrick was one of the most talented and generous individuals a person could come across.  As related in Anna Bird Stewart's "Enter David Garrick", Garrick exhibited acting talent at an early age.  He brought a natural style of acting to the stage, once he finally began acting professionally, changing the profession profoundly.  Garrick put Shakespeare's Stratford on the map, through his acting, and by his development of the Stratford Shakespeare festival.  Garrick was also noted for his social gatherings, and behind the scenes supported a great many people financially.
 

Columbus Leaves the New World

'...Agreeably to your advice, I have actually read over Madoc a second time, and I confess have seen much beauty which escaped me in the first perusal. Yet (which yet, by the way, is almost as vile a monosyllable as but] I cannot feel quite the interest I would wish to do. The difference of character which you notice, reminds me of what by Ben Jonson and other old comedians were called humours, which consisted rather in the personification of some individual passion or propensity, than of an actual individual man. Also, I cannot give up my objection, that what was strictly true of Columbus becomes an unpleasant falsehood when told of some one else. Suppose I was to write a fictitious book of travels, I should certainly do ill to copy exactly the incidents which befell Mungo Park or Bruce of Kinnaird. What was true of them would incontestably prove at once the falsehood and plagiarism of my supposed journal. It is not but what the incidents are natural—but it is their having already happened, which strikes us when they are transferred to imaginary persons. Could any one bear the story of a second city being taken by a wooden horse?...'

The text above was taken from a letter Walter Scott sent to the English poet Anna Seward, taken from John Gibson Lockhart's "Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott".  The main topic was MacPherson's Ossian poem fraud.  Scott evokes Christopher Columbus, and the events during his travels as unfit for repackaging in fiction. 

What were some of Columbus' adventures?  On the day he departed the New World to return to Spain, January 15, 1493, he considers many circumstances in his journal, as translated by Cecil Jane.  'He [Columbus] says that he wished to depart, because now there is no profit in remaining, owing to those disagreements which had occurred; he must mean the dispute with the Indians...that all the abundance of gold was in the district of the town of La Navidad...there would be difficulties in the island of Carib, because that people is said to eat human flesh...and to the island of Matinano, which is said to be entirely peopled by women without men, and to see both, and to take some, as he says...'