evolent readers of some of Mr. Darwin's recent
speculations. He rejects, and on the same grounds which Mr. Darwin
declares to be conclusive, the hypothesis that the blackness is the
immediate effect of the climate; and he points out, what is important in
regard to 'sexual selection,' that a negro may admire a flat nose as we
admire an aquiline; though, of course, he diverges into extra-scientific
questions when discussing the probable effects of the curse of Ham, and
rather loses himself in a 'digression concerning blackness.' We may
fancy that this problem pleased Sir Thomas rather because it appeared to
be totally insoluble than for any other reason; and in spite of his
occasional gleams of scientific observation, he is always most at home
when on the border-land which divides the purely marvellous from the
region of ascertainable fact. In the last half of his book, indeed,
having exhausted natural history, he plunges with intense delight into
questions which bear the same relation to genuine antiquarianism that
his phoenixes and salamanders bear to scientific inquiry: whether the
sun was created in Libra; what was the season of the year in Paradise;
whether the forbidden fruit was an apple; whether Methuselah was the
longest-lived of all men (a main argument on the other side being that
Adam was created at the perfect age of man, which in those days was
fifty or sixty, and thus had a right to add sixty to his natural years);
what was the nature of St. John the Baptist's camel's-hair garment; what
were the secret motives of the builders of the Tower of Babel; whether
the three kings really lived at Cologne,--these and many other profound
inquiries are detailed with all imaginable gravity, and the interest of
the inquirer is not the less because he generally comes to the
satisfactory and sensible conclusion that we cannot possibly know
anything whatever about it.

The 'Inquiry into Vulgar Errors' was published in 1646, and Sir Thomas's
next publication appeared in 1658. The dates are significant. Whilst all
England was in the throes of the first civil war, Sir Thomas had been
calmly finishing his catalogue of intellectual oddities. This book was
published soon after the crushing victory of Naseby. King, Parliament,
and army, illustrating a very different kind of vulgar error, continued
to fight out their quarrel to the death. Whilst Milton, whose genius was
in some way most nearly akin to his own, was raising his voice