i88o CIVIL LIST PENSION FOR WALLACE j^ 



of to-day must be based, to a great extent, upon natural 

 science. 



This autumn several letters passed between him and 

 Darwin. The latter, contrary to his usual custom, wrote a 

 letter to Nature, in reply to an unfair attack which had 

 been made upon evolution by Sir Wyville Thomson in his 

 Introduction to The Voyage of the Challenger (see Darwin, 

 Life and Letters, iii. 242), and asked Huxley to look over 

 the concluding sentences of the letter, and to decide whether 

 they should go with the rest to the printer or not. " My 

 request," he writes (Nov. 5), ' will not cost you much 

 trouble i.e. to read two pages for I know that you can 

 decide at once." Huxley struck them out, replying on the 

 I4th, ' Your pinned-on paragraph was so good that, if I had 

 written it myself, I should have been unable to refrain from 

 sending it on to the printer. But it is much easier to be 

 virtuous on other people's account ; and though Thomson 

 deserved it and more, I thought it would be better to re- 

 frain. If I say a savage thing, it is only ' pretty Fanny's 

 way ' ; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten." 



The rest of this correspondence has to do with a plan of 

 Darwin's, generous as ever, to obtain a Civil List pension for 

 the veteran naturalist, Wallace, whose magnificent work for 

 science had brought him but little material return. He 

 wrote to consult Huxley as to what steps had best be taken ; 

 the latter replied in the letter of November 14 : 



The papers in re Wallace have arrived, and I lose no time in 

 assuring you that all my " might, amity, and authority," as 

 Essex said when that sneak Bacon asked him for a favour, shall 

 be exercised as you wish. 



On December n he sends Darwin the draft of a 

 memorial on the subject, and on the 28th suggests that 

 the best way of moving the official world would be for 

 Darwin himself to send the memorial, with a note of his own, 

 to Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister and First 

 Lord of the Treasury : 



Mr. G. can do a thing gracefully when he is so minded, and 

 unless I greatly mistake, he will be so minded if you write 

 to him. 



