A BKOTHEKLY GIFT 183 



Lon't see the connection myself. Perhaps the D.D. thinks 

 that Chaucer wrote the latter. I have prescribed for him 

 a course of the ' Miller's ' and ' Keeve's ' tales with analyses. 



A pleasanter echo came from the Himalayas after more 

 than twenty years. 



To Charles Darwin 



November 1873. 



I am in a state of temporary inflation — a book just 

 published on the military operations in Sikkim says of my 

 Travels : ' Never was the officer commanding a force 

 favoured with a fuller, more able, or more lucid report of a 

 country and its inhabitants than I was by the study of Dr. 

 Hooker.' I wonder whether Leonard 1 will ever display 

 such military sagacity and acumen as this Commander-in- 

 Chief ; and he has his reward by being made ' Keeper of 

 Crown Jewels,' a sort of Lady's Maid Extraordinary, you 

 will say. 



The serious illness of his friend Huxley gave occasion for 

 drawing the links of friendship yet closer. Consistent over- 

 work had led to a breakdown, aggravated by the black misery 

 of acute dyspepsia. In 1872 a trip to Egypt improved matters, 

 but much of the good was undone by renewed overwork, coupled 

 with the worry of a wholly gratuitous lawsuit. On his move 

 into a new house, a rascally neighbour pretended that his 

 property was damaged by certain building operations. His 

 efforts at blackmail were contemptuously thrown out in the 

 Courts, but, as he was a man of straw, no costs could be re- 

 covered from him, and Huxley found himself heavily mulcted 

 for being in the right. 



His friends were deeply concerned at the threat of a renewed 

 breakdown ; and Darwin, in whom generosity and delicacy 

 went hand in hand, organised a joint gift from eighteen such 

 friends, as ' to an honoured and much loved brother,' which 

 should enable him to rest, free from every care, until 

 he had won back to health. (See ' Life of T. H. Huxley/ 

 chap, xxvi.) 



1 His third son, now Major Darwin, R..E. 



