[1] He was the eldest son of Robert Darwin of Elston (1682–1754), a lawyer, and his wife Elizabeth Hill (1702–1797).
He had a strong taste for poetry, like his youngest brother Erasmus, as I infer from the later having dedicated an MS. volume of juvenile poems to him, with the words, "By whose example and encouragement my mind was directed to the study of poetry in my very early years".
Robert also cultivated botany, and, when an oldish man, he published his Principia Botanica.
Darwin] declared that he believed it was published because his old uncle could not endure that such fine calligraphy should be wasted.
But this was hardly just, as the work contains many curious notes on biology — a subject wholly neglected in England in the last century.