232 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xiv 



In the meantime, my wife (who has been laid up with bron- 

 chitic cold ever since we came home) and I have had as much 

 London as we can stand, and are off to-morrow to Eastbourne 

 again, but to more sheltered quarters. 



I hope Lady Hooker and you are thriving. Don't conceal 

 the news from her, as my wife is always accusing me of doing. 

 Ever yours, T. H. HUXLEY. 



To MR. W. F. COLLIER 



4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Jan. 24, 1889. 



Many thanks for your kind letter. I have as strong an 

 affection for Jack as if he were my own son, and I have felt 

 very keenly the ruin we involuntarily brought upon him by our 

 poor darling's terrible illness and death. So that if I had not 

 already done my best to aid and abet other people in disregarding 

 the disabilities imposed by the present monstrous state of the 

 law, I should have felt bound to go as far as I could towards 

 mending his life. Ethel is just suited to him. ... Of course I 

 could have wished that she should be spared the petty annoy- 

 ances which she must occasionally expect. But I know of no 

 one less likely to care for them. 



Your Shakespere parable * is charming but I am afraid 

 it must be put among the endless things that are read in to the 

 " divine Williams " as the Frenchman called him. 



There was no knowledge of the sexes of plants in Shake- 

 spere's time, barring some vague suggestion about figs and dates. 

 Even in the i8th century, after Linnaeus, the observations of 

 Sprengel, who was a man of genius, and first properly explained 

 the action of insects, were set aside and forgotten. 



I take it that Shakespere is really alluding to the " enforced 

 chastity' of Dian (the moon). The poets ignore that little 

 Endymion business when they like ! 



I have recovered in such an extraordinary fashion that I 

 can plume myself on being an " interesting case," though I am 

 not going to compete with you in that line. And if you look 



* The second part of the latter replies to the question whether 

 Shakespeare had any notion of the existence of the sexes in plants 

 and the part played in their fertilisation by insects, which, of course, 

 would be prevented from visiting them by rainy weather, when he 

 wrote in the Midsummer Night" 1 s Dream 



The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eve, 

 And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, 

 Lamenting some enforced chastity. 



