November 22, 1900] 



NATURE 



93 



have been glad to have criticised. I was therefore for many 

 years in close and intimate association with him. 



Huxley showed from early youth a determination, in the 

 words of Jean Paul Richter, *' to make the most that was pos- 

 sible out of the stuff," and this was a great deal, for the 

 material was excellent. He took the wise advice to consume more 

 oil than wine, and, what is better even than midnight oil, he 

 made the most of the sweet morning air. 



In his youth he was a voracious reader, and devoured every- 

 thing he could lay his hand on, from the Bible to Hamilton's 

 '* Essay on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned." He tells us 

 of himself that when he was a mere boy he had a perverse 

 tendency to think when he ought to have been playing. 



Considering how preeminent he was as a naturalist, it is rather 

 surprising to hear, as he has himself told us, that his own desire 

 was to be a mechanical engineer. " The only part," he said, 

 " of my professional course which really and deeply interested 

 me was physiology, which is the mechanical engineering 

 of living machines; and, notwithstanding that natural 

 science has been my proper business, I am afraid there 

 is very little of the genuine naturalist in me ; I never collected 

 anything, and species work was a burden to me. What I cared 

 for was the architectural and engineering part of the business ; 

 the working out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands 

 and thousands of diverse living constructions, and the 

 modifications of similar apparatus to serve diverse ends." 



In 1846 Huxley was appointed naturalist to the expedition 

 which was sent to the East under Captain Owen Stanley in the 

 Rattlesnake and good use indeed he made of his opportunities. 

 It is really wonderful, as Sir M. Foster remarks in his excellent 

 obituary notice in the Royal Society's Proceedings, how he could 

 have accomplished so much under such difficulties. 



" Working," says Sir Michael Foster, "amid a host of diffi- 

 culties, in want of room, in want of light, seeking to unravel the 

 intricacies of minute structure with a microscope lashed to secure 

 steadiness, cramped within a tiny cabin, jostled by the tumult 

 of a crowded ship's life, with the scantiest supply of books of 

 reference, with no one at hand of whom he could take counsel 

 on the problems opening up before him, he gathered for himself 

 during those four years a lar^e mass of accurate, important 

 and, in most cases, novel observations, and illustrated them with 

 skilful, pertinent drawings." 



The truth is that Huxley was one of those all-round men who 

 would have succeeded in almost any walk in life. In literature 

 his wit, his power of clear description and his admirable style 

 would certainly have placed him in the front rank. 



He was as ready with his pencil as with his pen. Every one 

 who attended his lectures will remember how admirably they 

 were illustrated by his blackboard sketches, and how the dia- 

 grams seemed to grow line by line almost of themselves. Drawing 

 was, indeed, ajoy tohim.and when I have been sitting with him at 

 Roj-al Commissions or on committees, he was constantly making 

 comical sketches on scraps of paper or on blotting-books which, 

 though admirable, never seemed to distract his attention from 

 the subject on hand. 



Again, he was certainly one of the most effective speakers of 

 the day. Eloquence is a great gift, although I am not sure 

 that the country might not be better governed and more wisely 

 led if the House of Commons and the country were less swayed 

 by it. There is no doubt, however, that, to its fortunate possessor, 

 eloquence is of great value, and if circumstances had thrown 

 Huxley into political life, no one can doubt that he would 

 have taken high rank among our statesmen. Indeed, I believe 

 his presence in the House of Commons would have been of 

 inestimable value to the country. Mr. Hutton, of iht Spectator — 

 no mean judge — has told us that in his judgment "an abler and 

 more accomplished debater was not to be found even in the 

 Hf'use of Commons." His speeches had the same quality, 

 the same luminous style of exposition, with which his printed 

 books have made all readers in America and England familiar. 

 Vet it had more than that. You could not listen to him with- 

 out thinking more of the speaker than of his science, more of 

 the solid, beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, more 

 of his manly simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge 

 and his long services. His Friday evening lectures at the Royal 

 Institution rivalled those of Tyndall in their interest and 

 brilliance, and were always keenly and justly popular. 

 Yet, he has told us that at first he had almost every fault a 

 speaker could have. After his first Royal Institution lecture he 

 received an anonymous letter recommending him never to try 



NO. 1 62 I, VOL. 63] 



again, as whatever else he might be fit for, it was certainly not 

 for giving lectures. It is also said that after one of his first lec- 

 tures, " On the relations of Animals and Plants," at a surburban 

 Athenaeum, a general desire was expressed to the Council that 

 they would never invite that young man to lecture again. Quite 

 late in life he told me, and John Bright said the same thing, 

 that he was always nervous when he rose to speak, though it 

 soon wore off when he warmed up to his subject. 



No doubt easy listening on the part of the audience means 

 hard working and thinking on the part of the lecturer, and, 

 whether for the cultivated audience at the Royal Institution or 

 for one to working men, he spared himself no piins to make 

 his lectures interesting and instructive. There used to be an 

 impression that Science was something up in the clouds, too 

 remote from ordinary life, too abstruse and too difficult to be 

 interesting ; or else, as Dickens ridiculed it in Pickwick, too 

 trivial to be worthy of the time of an intellectual being. 



Huxley was one of the foremost of those who brought our 

 people to realise that science is of vital importance in our life, 

 that it is more fascinating than a fairy tale, more thrilling than 

 a novel, and that any one who neglects to follow the triumphant 

 march of discovery, so startling in its marvellous and unex- 

 pected surprises, so inspiring in its moral influence and its 

 revelations of the beauties and wonders of the world in which we 

 live and the universe of which we form an infinitesimal, but to 

 ourselves at any rate, an all important part, is deliberately re- 

 jecting one of the greatest comforts and interests of life, one oi 

 the greatest gifts with which we have been endowed by Provi- 

 dence. 



But there is a time for all things under the sun, and we can- 

 not fully realise the profound interest and serious responsibilities 

 of life unless we refresh the mind and allow the bow to unbend. 

 Huxley was full of humour, which burst out on most unexpected 

 occasions. I remember one instance during a paper on the 

 habits of spiders. The female spider appears to be one of the 

 most unsociable, truculent and bloodthirsty of her sex. Even 

 under the influence of love, she does but temporarily suspend 

 her general hatred of all living beings. The courtship varies in 

 character in different species, and is excessively quaint and 

 curious ; but at the close the thirst for blood which has Ijeen 

 temporarily overmastered by an even stronger passion, bursts out , 

 with irresistible fury, she attacks her lover and, if he be not on 

 the watch and does not succeed in making his escape, ends by 

 destroying and sucking him dry. In moving a vote of thanks to 

 the author, Huxley ended some interesting remarks by the ob- 

 servation that this closing scene was the most extraordinary 

 form of marriage settlements of which he had ever heard. 



He seemed also to draw out the wit of others. At the York 

 " Jubilee " meeting of the British Association, he and I strolled 

 down in the afternoon to the Minster. At the entrance we met 

 Prof. H. J. Smith, who made a mock movement of surprise. 

 Huxley said "you seem surprised to see me here." " Well," 

 said Smith hesitatingly, "not exactly, but it would have been 

 on one of the pinnacles, you know." 



His letters were full of fun Speaking of Siena in one of his 

 letters, contained in Mr. Leonard Huxley's excellent Life of 

 his father, he says : "The town is the quaintest place imagin- 

 able, built of narrow streets on several hills to start with, and then 

 apparently stirred up with a poker to prevent monotony of effect." 



And, again, writing from Florence : — 



" We had a morning at the Uffizii the other day, and came 

 back with minds enlarged and backs broken. To-morrow we 

 contemplate attacking the Pitti, and doubt not the result will 

 be similar. By the end of the week our minds will probably be 

 so large, and the small of the back so small, that we should 

 probably break if we stayed any longer, so think it prudent to 

 be off to Venice." 



By degrees public duties and honours accumulated on him more 

 and more. He was Secretary, and afterwards President, of the 

 Royal Society, President of the Geological and of the Ethnolo- 

 gical Societies, Hunterian Professor from 1863 to 1870, a Trustee 

 of the British Museum, Dean of the Royal College of Science, 

 President of the British Association, Inspector of Fisheries, 

 Member of Senate of the University of London, Member of no 

 less than ten Royal Commissions, in addition to which he gave 

 many lectures at the Royal Institution and elsewhere, besides, 

 of course, all those which formed a part of his official duties. 



In 1892 he was made a Member of the Privy Council, an 

 unwonted but generally welcome recognition of the services 

 which science renders to the community. 



