e of events following
the publication of Darwin's great work, he having the advantage of being
one of the chief actors in those events. There is a striking parallelism
between the manner that the _Principles of Geology_ had been received
thirty years earlier, and the way that the _Origin of Species_ was met,
both by Darwin's scientific contemporaries and the reading public.

At the outset, as we have already intimated, Lyell and Darwin were
equally fortunate, in that each found a critic, in one of the chief
organs of public opinion, who was at the same time both competent and
sympathetic. The story of the lucky accident by which this came about in
Darwin's case has been told by Huxley himself[136].

'The _Origin_ was sent to Mr Lucas, one of the staff of the
_Times_ writers at that time, in what was I suppose the
ordinary course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent
journalist, ... was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a
babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal
with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get
him out of the difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly,
explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally
to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it
with two or three paragraphs of his own.'

'I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of
giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of
the _Times_, to make any difficulty about conditions; and being
then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I
think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr
Lucas who duly prefixed his opening sentences[137].'

Many journalists, however, were less conscientious than Mr Lucas, and
most of the other early notices of the book were pretty equally divided
between undiscriminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish
reprobations of its 'wickedness.'

It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong advice given to him by
Lyell, and did not attempt to reply to the adverse criticisms; for the
only effect of these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the
circulation of the book.

Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger of exciting prejudice
against his work by definitely applying the theory of Natural Selection
to the case of man--simply remarking, in order to avoid the charge of
concealing his views