With cordial thanks for your splendid notice of my book.
Believe me, my dear Lyell, your affectionate disciple, CHARLES DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, September 23rd [1859].
My dear Fox,
I was very glad to get your letter a few days ago. I was wishing to hear about you, but have been in such an absorbed, slavish, overworked state, that I had not heart without compulsion to write to any one or do anything beyond my daily work. Though your account of yourself is better, I cannot think it at all satisfactory, and I wish you would soon go to Malvern again. My father used to believe largely in an old saying that, if a man grew thinner between fifty and sixty years of age, his chance of long life was poor, and that on the contrary it was a very good sign if he grew fatter; so that your stoutness, I look at as a very good omen. My health has been as bad as it well could be all this summer; and I have kept on my legs, only by going at short intervals to Moor Park; but I have been better lately, and, thank Heaven, I have at last as good as done my book, having only the index and two or three revises to do. It will be published in the first week in November, and a copy shall be sent you. Remember it is only an Abstract (but has cost me above thirteen months to write!!), and facts and authorities are far from given in full. I shall be curious to hear what you think of it, but I am not so silly as to expect to convert you. Lyell has read about half of the volume in clean sheets, and gives me very great kudos. He is wavering so much about the immutability of species, that I expect he will come round. Hooker has come round, and will publish his belief soon. So much for my abominable volume, which has cost me so much labour that I almost hate it. On October 3rd I start for Ilkley, but shall take three days for the journey! It is so late that we shall not take a house; but I go there alone for three or four weeks, then