Life of Sedgwick:

Abstract

BETTER late than never! Geologists have waited for seventeen years for a life of Sedgwick, though the biographies of Murchison, Lyell, and Darwin, two of whom survived him, have all been published. The delay, as is admitted in the preface, requires some explanation: whether that is really furnished may be doubted. This at least is clear, that it has not been due to Mr. Clark, since he only undertook his portion of the work, and that the major one, in 1886. The delay is the more to be regretted because not a few of those who could remember Sedgwick in the days of his full vigour have passed away, and, as Mr. Clark observes, “a number of interesting letters which he is known to have written, and which were long carefully preserved, have either been destroyed or cannot now be traced. These remarks apply specially to the earlier years.” Still, Mr. Clark has had at his disposal a large amount of material, from which he has drawn a picture no less vivid than accurate—as we feel sure those who knew the original will admit—of a man of remarkable genius and almost unique personality. He has told us the story of Sedgwick's life, he has woven into it Sedgwick's letters, and the result is a book which is worthy to be classed with the two best biographies, at any rate of recent date, of distinguished sons of Cambridge—those of Charles Kingsley and Charles Darwin.

I. The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Prebendary of Norwich, Woodwardian Professor of Geology, 1818-73.

ByJohn Willis Clark Thomas McKenny Hughes Two Volumes. (Cambridge: University Press, 1890.)