Darwin modelled his own writing on Humboldt’s, fusing scientific writing with poetic description to such an extent that his journal of the Beagle voyage became remarkably similar in style and content to the Personal Narrative. So much so that his sister complained after receiving a first part of his journal in October 1832 ‘that you had, probably from reading so much of Humboldt, got his phraseology’, and ‘the kind of flowery french expressions which he uses’. Others were more complimentary and told Darwin later how delighted they were with his ‘vivid, Humboldt-like pictures’.
