388 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. 



he used to sing a little, but his voice, though true, 

 was never strong. But he had small leisure to devote 

 to art. On his holidays he would sometimes sketch 

 with a firm and rapid touch. His illustrations to 

 the Cruise of the Rattlesnake show what his untrained 

 capacities were. But to go to a concert or opera was 

 rare after middle life ; to go to the theatre rarer still, 

 much as he appreciated a good play His time was 

 too deeply mortgaged ; and in later life, the deafness 

 which grew upon him added a new difficulty. 



In poetry he was sensitive both to matter and 

 form. One school of modern poetry he dismissed as 

 "sensuous caterwauling": a busy man, time and 

 patience failed him to wade through the trivial dis- 

 cursiveness of so much of Wordsworth's verse ; thus 

 unfortunately he never realised the full value of a 

 poet in whom the mass of ore bears so large a propor- 

 tion to the pure metal. Shelley was too diffuse to 

 be among his first favourites ; but for simple beauty, 

 Keats; for that, and for the comprehension of the 

 meaning of modern science, Tennyson ; for strength 

 and feeling. Browning as represented by his earlier 

 poems — these were the favourites among the moderns. 

 He knew his eighteenth -century classics, but knew 

 better his Milton and his Shakespeare, to whom he 

 turned with ever-increasing satisfaction, as men do 

 who have lived a full life. 



His early acquaintance with German had given 

 him a lasting admiration of the greatest representa- 

 tives of German literature, Goethe above all, in 



