EDINBURGH LECTURES 125 



him. The strain on the attention of each lecture is so great as 

 to be equal to an ordinary day's work. I feel quite exhausted 

 after them. And then to master his language is something 

 dreadful. But, with all these drawbacks, I would not miss 

 them, even if they were ten times as difficult. They are some- 

 thing glorious, sublime. . . . Huxley is still very difficult to 

 follow, and I have been four times in his lectures completely 

 stuck and utterly helpless. But he has given us eight or nine 

 beautiful lectures on the frog.' " 



For comparison with the above, the writer can only 

 offer his personal experience of one course of regular 

 lectures (1879-80). These were perhaps less com- 

 pressed than those given in Edinburgh, and in any 

 case were perfectly easy to follow, though to reap full 

 benefit from them a good deal of previous reading was 

 necessary. Note-taking, however, was an exceedingly 

 difficult matter, even in shorthand, owing to Huxley's 

 great fluency and his habit of illustrating the subject by 

 means of rapid blackboard sketches, without ceasing to 

 speak. Such terms as "glorious" and "sublime" are 

 somewhat out of place. " Lucid " and " incisive " would 

 be nearer the mark. No particular knowledge of Greek 

 was necessary in 1879, whatever may have been the case 

 in 1875. 



For some years the anti-vivisectionists had been making 

 their voices heard both in and out of season. Huxley 

 among others had quite undeservedly earned the reputa- 

 tion of being perfectly callous to the sufferings of animals 

 employed for physiological experiment. As a matter of 

 fact he was extremely tender-hearted where animals were 

 concerned, and expressly refrained from entering upon 

 investigations involving vivisection. But this was a very 

 different matter from denying the necessity for expert 

 research in directions where the benefit of mankind was 

 involved. 



