From Hensleigh Wedgwood [before 29 September 1857]1
Dear Charles
I do not see that it is at all important to your argument, or rather illustration that the series connecting the unlike relations should be lost in all the other European languages than that in which they may be found. You might consider that language alone and then Head & chief would afford a good illustration in addition to Bishop & the numerals. These are all admitted by every one. Head, OE. heved, AS heafod, G. haupt Goth. haubith Lat capit (is) It. capo Fr. chef E. chief. If we had only E, It & Fr remaining nobody would have guessed it possible that head & chief could be different forms of the same word.
Perhaps one or two striking instances as this & bishop afford a better illustration than a longer series of less decisive ones—2
I have often thought that there is much resemblance between language & geology in another way. We all consider English a very mixed language because we can trace the elements into Latin, German &c. but I see much the same sort of thing in Latin itself & I believe that if we were but acquainted with the previous state of things we should find all languages made up of the debris of former tongues just as every geological formation is the grinding down of former continents.3
I am going to Hartfield4 tomorrow to meet Fanny.5 Mrs Gaskell cannot have them till the 9th which will allow a tidy visit at H—6
Adieu | H. W.
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn 1857. The life of Charlotte Brontë. 2 vols. London.
Hopkins, Annette Brown. 1952. Elizabeth Gaskell: her life and work. London: John Lehmann.
Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Wedgwood, Barbara and Wedgwood, Hensleigh. 1980. The Wedgwood circle, 1730–1897: four generations of a family and their friends. London: Studio Vista.
Summary
Suggests CD use the common origin of the French "chef" and the English "head" or "évêque" and "bishop" to illustrate the parallels between extinction and transitional forms in language and palaeontology [see Natural selection, p. 384].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2070
- From
- Hensleigh Wedgwood
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 48: A80–1
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp ††
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2070,” accessed on 15 August 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2070.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6