Besides a love of music, he had certainly at this time a love of fine literature; and Mr. Cameron tells me that my father took much pleasure in Shakespeare readings carried on in his rooms at Christ's. He also speaks of Darwin's "great liking for first-class line engravings, especially those of Raphael Morghen and Müller; and he spent hours in the Fitzwilliam Museum in looking over the prints in that collection."
My father's letters to Fox show how sorely oppressed he felt by the reading for an examination. His despair over mathematics must have been profound, when he expresses a hope that Fox's silence is due to "your being ten fathoms deep in the Mathematics; and if you are, God help you, for so am I, only with this difference, I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain." Mr. Herbert says: "He had, I imagine, no natural turn for mathematics, and he gave up his mathematical reading before he had mastered the first part of algebra, having had a special quarrel with Surds and the Binomial Theorem."
We get some evidence from my father's letters to Fox of his intention of going into the Church. "I am glad," he writes,[76] "to hear that you are reading divinity. I should like to know what books you are reading, and your opinions about them; you need not be afraid of preaching to me prematurely." Mr. Herbert's sketch shows how doubts arose in my father's mind as to the possibility of his taking Orders. He writes, "We had an earnest conversation about going into Holy Orders; and I remember his asking me, with reference to the question put by the Bishop in the Ordination Service, 'Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit, &c.,' whether I could answer in the affirmative, and on my saying I could not, he said, 'Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take orders.'" This conversation appears to have taken place in 1829, and if so, the doubts here expressed must have been quieted, for in May 1830, he speaks of having some thoughts of reading divinity with Henslow.
The greater number of his Cambridge letters are addressed by my father to his cousin, William Darwin Fox. My father's letters show clearly enough how genuine the friendship was. In after years, distance, large families, and ill-health on both sides, checked the intercourse; but a warm feeling of friendship remained. The correspondence was never quite dropped and continued till Mr. Fox's death in 1880. Mr. Fox took orders, and worked as a country clergyman until forced by ill-health to leave his living in Delamere Forest. His love of natural history was strong, and he became a skilled fancier of many kinds of birds, &c. The index to _Animals and Plants_, and my father's later correspondence, show how much help he received from his old College friend.