was 'scarlet fever raging in his family, to which
an infant son had succumbed on the previous day, and a daughter was ill
with diphtheria[114].' Darwin at once wrote hurriedly to Lyell enclosing
the essay and saying:

'I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS.
sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better
short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my
chapters. Please return me the MS., which he does not say he
wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and
offer to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it
may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if it ever have
any value, will not be deteriorated, as all the labour consists
in the application of the theory. I hope you will approve of
Wallace's sketch, that I may tell him what to say[115].'

And Wallace--what was the line taken by him in the unfortunate
complication that had thus arisen? From the very first his action was
all that is generous and noble. Not only did he, from the first,
entirely acquiesce in the course taken by Lyell and Hooker, but, writing
in 1870, when the fame of Darwin's work had reached its full height, he
said:--

'I have felt all my life and I still feel, the most sincere
satisfaction that Mr Darwin had been at work long before me, and
that it was not left for me to attempt to write _The Origin of
Species_. I have long since measured my own strength and know
well that it would be quite unequal to that task. For abler men
than myself may confess, that they have not that untiring
patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using,
large masses of facts of the most varied kind,--that wide and
accurate physiological knowledge,--that acuteness in devising
and skill in carrying out experiments,--and that admirable style
of composition, at once clear, persuasive and
judicial,--qualities which in their harmonious combination mark
out Mr Darwin as the man, perhaps of all men now living, best
fitted for the great work he has undertaken and
accomplished[116].'

And fifty years after the joint publication of the theory of Natural
Selection to the Linnean Society he said:

'_I_ was then (as often since) the "young man in a hurry," _he_'
(Darwin) 'the painstaking and patient student, seeking ever the
full demonstration of the truth he had discovered, ra