134 Notes and Comment 



and earnest, so that one could not but enjoy talking with him. 

 There was a discussion on George Eliot's humility. Huxley 

 thought her a humble woman, despite a dogmatic manner of 

 assertion that had come upon her latterly in her writings." 

 Of Tennyson's conversation Huxley said: "Doric beauty is its 

 characteristic perfect simplicity, without any ornament or any- 

 thing artificial." He spoke also of " the insight into scientific 

 method " shown in Tennyson's In Memoriam, and pronounced it 

 " equal to that of the greatest experts." 



26, 15-16. Between the darkness before and . . . after: 

 between birth and death. 



26, 19. Lucretius (97-55 B.C.). Nothing definite is known 

 of the life of Lucretius. His great work On the Nature of 

 Things (De Rerum Natura) consists of six books, the philosophy 

 of which is that all forms of life are due to the chance com- 

 bination of an infinite number of atoms moving in an infinite 

 void. His descriptions are marked by wonderful accuracy 

 and beauty. Lowell, in his Essay on Chaucer, calls the begin- 

 ning of Lucretius's poem " the one sunburst of purely poetic 

 inspiration which the Latin language can show." 



ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 

 (See Introduction xxi-xxii) 



28, 6. The very spot: St. Martin's Hall, in Long Acre 

 Street, near Drury Lane, London. Defoe says that the first 

 victims were two Frenchmen, who " died of the plague in Long 

 Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane." 



28, 13-14. The History of the Plague Year. Daniel Defoe 

 (i66i?-i73i) is best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe 

 (1719), but his Journal of the Plague Year (1722) entitled 

 History of the Plague in the second edition is equally realistic 

 and minute in its details. 



29, 16-17. Of the Republicans, or of the Papists. The 

 Republicans, the party of Cromwell and Milton, wished to 

 abolish monarchy. The Papists were thought to be plotting for 

 the re-establishment of the Catholic faith. 



30, 2. The Rochesters and Sedleys: John Wilmot (1647- 

 1680), the second Earl of Rochester, and Sir Charles Sedley 

 (1639-1701), noted wits and dramatists in the reign of Charles 

 II. 



