'On this day I began reading Darwin's "Zoonomia", w'ch I had lately proposed in the Book Society.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'[Anna Seward's] training was not necessarily less rigorous for being informal and solitary. Seward scoffed at a male contemporary who claimed never to have read or studied poetry. "If Shakespeare's talents were miracles of uncultured intuition, we feel, that neither Milton's, Pope's, Akenside's, Gray's or Darwin's were such, but that poetic investigation, and long familiarity with the best writers in that line, cooperated to produce their excellence".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Horace Walpole (as 'Thelyphthorus') to Mary Berry, 28 April 1789: 'I send you the most delicious poem upon earth [Erasmus Darwin, "The Botanic Garden"] [...] This is only the Second Part; for like my king's eldest daughter in the Hieroglyphic Tales, the First part is not yet born yet. No matter, I can read this over and over again for ever'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Unknown
Mary Berry to Horace Walpole [1789]: 'A thousand thanks for the "Botanic Garden." the first thirty lines, which I have just read, are delicious, and make me quite anxious to go on'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Unknown
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, ... Darwin's "Botanic Garden"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, March 1828:
'I send you three notices of my poem [An Essay on Mind] [...] They are the only ones I have
[italics]seen[end italics] [...] The flat contradiction between the Eclectic Review & Literary
Gazette, with respect to [italics]Akenside[end italics], will amuse you [...] I was put out of
humour for at least ten minutes, by the charge of my having imitated Darwin. I never could
[italics]bear[end italics] Darwin! I have tried his Botanic Garden four or five times, & never
could get thro' above twenty pages!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 12 July 1795, 'How wonderfully must the brain be organized to form all these sensations in a twentieth part of the time I wrote them in. how can motion be thought? & yet how can thought be any thing else? is it not as difficult to conceive colour as nothing but motion — & this is demonstrated by Darwin. — & what consequence is it what it is! all useful knowledge is easily acquired.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'[Byron] was reading an article by [Erasmus] Darwin on Diseased Volition (a semi-anticipation of Freud) and pointed out to her [Anne Isabella, his wife] a passage upon the patient's making a mystery of the diseased association, "which if he could be persuaded to divulge, the effect would cease." Acting upon this hint from Darwin, and from him, she led him on to speak of his infirmity [i.e. his club foot]. He came to talk familiarly of his "little foot" (as he called it) and said that some allowance must surely be made to him on the Day of Judgment, that he had often wanted to revenge himself on Heaven for it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Unknown
'[Byron] was reading an article by [Erasmus] Darwin on Diseased Volition (a semi-anticipation of Freud) and pointed out to her [Anne Isabella, his wife] a passage upon the patient's making a mystery of the diseased association, "which if he could be persuaded to divulge, the effect would cease." Acting upon this hint from Darwin, and from him, she led him on to speak of his infirmity [i.e. his club foot]. He came to talk familiarly of his "little foot" (as he called it) and said that some allowance must surely be made to him on the Day of Judgment, that he had often wanted to revenge himself on Heaven for it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Byron Print: Unknown
