Wrong. The question of the eye was around long before he published. He knew he had to give an answer to it. His answer was total rhetoric like the rest of the Origins. He did not prove its descent, there is no proof of it even now. This is his explanation:
He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths.
He was even more slippery than Clinton!