XV 



LOVE OF ART 387 



nothing for which he vouched in his teaching, and 

 was always ready to repeat for himself the experi- 

 ments of others, which determined questions of 

 interest to him. The citations, analyses, maps, with 

 which he frequently accompanied his reading, were 

 all part of the same method of acquiring facts and 

 setting them in order within his mind. So careful, 

 indeed, was he in giving nothing at second hand, 

 that one of his scientific friends reproached him 

 with wasting his time upon unnecessary scientific 

 work, to which competent investigators had already 



given the stamp of their authority. "Poor ," 



was his comment afterwards, "if that is his own 

 practice, his work will never live." On the literary 

 side, he was omnivorous — consuming everything, as 

 Mr. Spencer put it, from fairy tales to the last volume 

 on metaphysics. 



Unlike Darwin, to whom scientific research was 

 at length the only thing engrossing enough to make 

 him oblivious of his never-ending ill-health, to the 

 gradual exclusion of other interests, literary and 

 artistic, Huxley never lost his delight in literature or 

 in art. He had a keen eye for a picture or a piece 

 of sculpture, for, in addition to the draughtsman's and 

 anatomist's sense of form, he had a strong sense of 

 colour. To good music he was always susceptible.^ 

 He played no instrument ; as a young man, however, 



■* To one breaking in upon him at certain afternoon hoxirs in 

 his room at South Kensington, "a whiff of the pipe" (writes 

 Professor Howes), ' ' and a snatch of some choice melody or a 

 Bach's fugue, were the not infrequent welcome. " 



