He wrote:
I, and everyone else who then met him at my house, were struck, as
no one could fail to be, by his rare urbanity, his social charm,
his modesty, his unobtrusive strength, his courtesy in explaining
matters with which he was himself familiar but those he conversed
with were not; and his abounding interest, not only in almost
every branch of Science, but in human knowledge in all its phases,
especially new ones. He was a many-sided scientific man, and had a
vivid sense of humour. He greatly enjoyed anecdote, as
illustrative of character. During those days he talked much on the
fundamental relations between Science and Philosophy, as well as
on the connection of Poetry with both of them. When he left Dundee
he went to Kenmore, that he might ascend Ben Lawers in search of
some rare ferns.
In 1872 I saw him, after meeting Thomas Carlyle and Dean Stanley
at Linlathen, when Darwin's theory was much discussed, and when
our genial host--Mr. Erskine--talked so dispassionately but
decidedly against evolution as explanatory of the rise of what was
new. A little later in the same year Matthew Arnold discussed the
same subject with some friends at the Athenaeum Club, defending the
chief aim of Darwin's theory, and enlarging from a different point
of view what Wallace had done in the same direction.
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