254 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X 



I see a report that Owen is sinking. Poor old man ; 

 it seems queer that just as I am hoist to the top of my 

 tree he should be going underground. But at 88 life 

 cannot be worth much. 



To Mr. W. F. Collier 



Cors-y-Gedol Hotel, Barmouth "Water, 

 Aug. 31, 1892. 



Accept my wife's and my hearty thanks for your kind 

 congratulations. When I was a mere boy I took for motto 

 of an essay, " What is honour ? "W^ho hath it ? He that 

 died o' Wednesday," and although I have my full share 

 of ambition and vanity, I doubt not, yet Falstaffs 

 philosophical observation has dominated my mind and 

 acted as a sort of perpetual refrigerator to these passions. 

 So I have gone my own way, sought for none of these 

 things and expected none — and it would seem that the 

 deepest schemer's policy could not have answered better. 

 We must have a new Beatitude, " Blessed is the man who 

 expecteth nothing," without its ordinary appendix. 



I tell Jack 1 I have worked hard for a dignity which 

 will enable me to put down his aristocratic swaggering. 



It took some time, hovrever, to get used to the 

 title, and it was October before he wrote : — 



The feeling that " The Eight Honble." on my letters 

 is a piece of chaff is wearing off, and I hope to get used 

 to my appendix in time. 



The "very quaint" ceremony of kissing hands is 

 described at some length in a letter to Mrs. Huxley 

 from London on his way back from Osborne : — 



^ His son-in-law, Hon. John Collier. 



