40 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 



CH. 



On the death of Professor Busk (as he later 

 became), in 1886, Sir John wrote to his widow : 

 " 1 need not say how grieved I am at the sad 

 news, and how I sympathise with you all. 

 Busk's friendship has been one of the great 

 privileges of my life, and to his example and 

 advice I have been deeply indebted. It is an 

 immense thing to have known anyone with such 

 a noble nature, so able, so good and so unselfish. 

 ... I shall always cherish his memory." 



He was, indeed, singularly fortunate in his 

 friends, and had a generous capacity for recognis- 

 ing that great good fortune. A brother of Lord 

 Avebury, one of the nearest to himself in 

 age, assured me that Lord Avebury owed to 

 the great Charles Darwin even a larger debt in 

 the respect of character formation than in the 

 encouragement and direction of his mental gifts. 



The reader will hardly fail to perceive the 

 peculiar danger to which his circumstances and 

 abilities laid him open, as a very young man. 

 He was early taken from the discipline and com- 

 panionship of school, and brought into the 

 society of his elders. His father was something 

 of a martinet, belonging rather to the old- 

 fashioned school of parents, and holding himself 

 much aloof from his children, though giving 

 them all encouragement in their cricket, riding, 

 and so on. They gave him ready and unquestion- 

 ing obedience, but it is hardly to be thought 

 that there was warm sympathy or real friend- 

 ship between them. The mother, on the other 

 hand, bestowed on her eldest son a degree of 

 admiration and worship which can seldom be 



