718 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY. 



univer.sity educ«ation, Huxley' had a reniarkabl}^ g-ood knowledg-e of 

 Latin. lie was fond of Spinoza, and every once in a while; in the 

 course of our ohats, he would exclaim, '"Come, now, let's see what old 

 Benedict has to say aboufitl There's no better man." Then he would 

 take the book from its shelf, and while we both looked on the page he 

 would give voice to his own comments in a broad liberal paraphrase 

 that showed his sound and scholar-like ap])rociation of every point in 

 the Latin text. A spirited and racv version it would have been had 

 he ever undertaken to translate Spinoza. So I rememl)er saying once, 

 but he replied: "'We must leave it for young Fred Pollock, whom I 

 think you have seen; he is shy and doesn't say much, but I can tell 

 you, whatever he does is sure to be amazingly good." They who are 

 familiar with Sir Frederick Pollock's noble book on Spinoza, to say 

 nothing of his other works, will recognize the truth of the prophecy. 



Huxley had also a mastery of French, Italian, and German, and 

 perhaps of some other modern languages. Angelo Ileilprin says that 

 he found him studying Russian, chietly in order to acquire a thorough 

 familiarit}' with the work of the great anatomist, Kovalevsky. How 

 far he may have carried that study I know not; but his son tells us 

 that it was also in middle life that he l)egan Greek, in order to read at 

 first hand Aristotle and the New Testament. To read Aristotle with 

 critical discernment requires an extremely good knowledge of Greek; 

 and if Huxley got so far as that, we need not l)e surprised at heai-ing 

 that he could enjoy the Homeric poems in the original. 



I suppose there ^vere few topics in the heavens or on earth that did 

 not get overhauled at that little library fireside. At one time it would 

 be politics, and my friend would thank God that, whatever mistakes 

 he might have made in life, he had never bowed the knee to either of 

 those intolerable humbugs, Louis Napoleon or Benjamin Disraeli. 

 Without admitting that the shifty Jew deserved to be placed on quite 

 so low a plane as Hortense Beauharnais's feeble son, we can easily see 

 how distasteful he w'ould be to a man of Huxley's earnest and whole- 

 souled directness. But antipathy to Disraeli did not in this case mean 

 fondness for Gladstone. In later years, when Huxlc}- was having his 

 great controversy with Gladstone, we find him writing: ""Seriously, it 

 is to me a grave thing that the destinies of this country should at 

 present be seriously influenced by a man who, whatever he may ])e in 

 the afl^airs of wdiich I am no judge, is nothing but a copious shuffler in 

 those which I do understand." In 1878 there occurred a brief passage 

 at arms between Gladstone and Herbert Spencer, in which the great 

 statesman's intellect looked amusingly small and commonplace in con- 

 trast with the giant mind of the philosopher. The defeated party was 

 left with no resources except rhetorical artifice to cover his retreat, 

 and his general aspect was foxy, not to sav Jesuitical. At least so 

 Huxle}' declared, and I thoroughh^ agreed with him. Yet surely it 



