success there, he removed in the autumn of 1756, his twenty-fifth year,
to Lichfield, where he was more fortunate; for a few weeks after his
arrival, to use the words of Miss Seward, 'he brilliantly opened his
career of fame.' A young gentleman of family and fortune lay sick of a
dangerous fever. A physician who had for many years possessed the
confidence of Lichfield and the neighbourhood attended, but at length
pronounced the case hopeless, and took his leave. Dr. Darwin was then
called in, and by 'a reverse and entirely novel kind of treatment' the
patient recovered."[137]

Of Dr. Darwin's personal appearance Miss Seward says:--

"He was somewhat above the middle size; his form athletic, and inclined
to corpulence; his limbs were too heavy for exact proportion; the traces
of a severe smallpox disfigured features and a countenance which, when
they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than
sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional
appendage--a large full-bottomed wig--gave at that early period of life
an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the
earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and on first
accosting his friends, rendered in his youth that exterior agreeable, to
which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious.

"He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in
jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable
impression it made might not be always pleasant to individual self-love.
Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of
intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in
argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen
edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity,
even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would
rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present
their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of
colloquial despotism were discernible in _unworn_ existence, they
increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and
without the pale of medicine."[138]

I imagine that this portrait is somewhat too harshly drawn. Dr. Darwin's
taste for English wines is the worst trait which I have been able to
discover in his character. On this head Miss Seward tells us that "he
despised the prejudice which deems foreign wines more