What strikes me is how this flavor of letter seems to have persisted & afflicted just about every (somewhat) popular writer — so clearly sincere, vulnerable yet authoritative, and prescriptive in a way that is both object-level terrible & uncomfortably intimate in what it reveals
Whitwell Elwin's recommendation that Darwin's "Origin of Species" be revamped to focus on pigeons: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2457A.xml … … "Every body is interested in pigeons." Easy to laugh, but the letter has some sensible observations, though misses the big picture. Taste is tough.
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What saves it, I think, is that while it is written authoritatively and prescriptively, as you say, it does not impose itself on Darwin. I read it as saying: "you have asked for my opinion, and here it is, in unapologetic truth and sincerity. But I may be wrong."
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Given the mention of Lyell, I assume Elwin is reviewing a copy of _Origin_ in more or less its first edition form. Most readers think it has an incredible amount of material on pigeons already, did Darwin have even more material he could've added?!
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It's the pre-publication manuscript. The suggestion is to remove most of the theory, and to leave (or expand on) the pigeon bits.
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