280 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP, XII 



Although this scheme was never carried out, yet 

 it was constantly before Huxley's mind during the 

 two years left to him. If Death, who had come so 

 near eight years before, would go on seeming to forget 

 him, he meant to use these last days of his life in an 

 effort to illuminate one more portion of the field of 

 knowledge for the world at large. 



As the physical strain of the Romanes Lecture and 

 his liability to loss of voice warned him against any 

 future attempt to deliver a course of lectures, he 

 altered his design and prepared to put the substance 

 of these Lectures to Working-Men into a Bible History 

 for young people. And indeed, he had got so far 

 with his preparation, that the latter heading was 

 down in his list of work for the last year of his life, 

 1895. But nothing of it was ever written. Until 

 the work was actually begun, even the framework 

 upon which it was to be shaped remained in his mind, 

 and the copious marks in his books of reference were 

 the mere guide-posts to a strong memory, Avhich 

 retained not words and phrases, but salient facts and 

 the knowledge of where to find them again. 



I find only two occasions on which he wrote to the 

 Times this year ; one, when the crusade was begun to 

 capture the Board Schools of London for sectarianism, 

 and it was suggested that, when on the first School 

 Board, he had approved of some such definite 

 dogmatic teaching. This he set right at once in the 

 following letter of April 28, with which may be com 

 pared the letter to Lord Farrer of November 6, 1894 



