ca. xih.J REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS, 1860. 255 



which they offered their congratulations to the winners in 

 the combat." * 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Monday night [July 2nd, 1SG0]. 



My dear Hooker, I have just received your letter. 

 I have been very poorly, with almost continuous bad head- 

 ache for forty-eight hours, and I was low enough, and 

 thinking what a useless burthen I was to myself and all 

 others, when your letter came, and it has so cheered me ; 

 your kindness and affection brought tears into my eyes. 

 Talk of fame, honour, pleasure, wealth, all are dirt compared 

 with affection ; and this is a doctrine with which, I know, 

 from your letter, that you will agree with from the bottom 

 of your heart. . . . How I should have liked to have wan- 

 dered about Oxford with you, if I had been well enough ; 

 and how still more I should have liked to have heard you 

 triunrphing over the Bishop. I am astonished at your suc- 

 cess and audacity. It is something unintelligible to me 

 how any one can argue in public like orators do. I had no 

 idea you had this power. I have read lately so many hos- 

 tile views, that I was beginning to think that perhaj^s I was 



wholly in the wrong, and that was right when he said 



the whole subject would be forgotten in ten years ; but now 

 that I hear that you and Huxley will fight publicly (which 

 I am sure I never could do), I fully believe that our cause 

 will, in the long-run, prevail. I am glad I was not in Ox- 

 ford, for I should have been overwhelmed, with my [health] 

 in its present state. 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. [July I860.] 



... I have just read the Quarterly. f It is uncommonly 

 clever ; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, 



* See Professor Newton's interesting Early Days of Darwinism in Afac- 

 millan's Magazine, Feb. 18S8, where the battle at Oxford is briefly de- 

 scribed. 



t Quarterly Review, July 18G0. The article in question was by Wilber- 

 force, Bishop of Oxford, and was afterwards published in his Essays Contrib- 

 uted to the Quarterly Review. 1874. In the Life and Letters, ii. p. 182, Mr. 

 Huxley has given some account of this article. ' I quote a few lines : " Since 

 Lord Brougham assailed Dr. Young, the world has seen no such specimen of 

 the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable 

 production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of rea- 

 soners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to 

 scorn as a ' flighty ' person, who endeavours ' to prop up his utterly rotten 

 fabric of guess and* speculation,' and whose ' mode of dealing with nature ' is 



