VI 
REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 
THE recent publication of an admirable memoir of 
Huxley, by his son Leonard,’ has awakened in me old 
memories of some of the pleasantest scenes I have 
ever known. The book is written in a spirit of charm- 
ing frankness, and is thickly crowded with details not 
one of which could well be spared. A notable feature 
is the copiousness of the extracts from familiar letters, 
in which everything is faithfully reproduced, even to 
the genial nonsense that abounds, or the big, big D 
that sometimes, though rarely, adds its pungent flavour. 
Huxley was above all things a man absolutely simple 
and natural; he never posed, was never starched, or 
prim, or on his good behaviour ; and he was nothing if 
not playful. A biography that brings him before us, 
robust and lifelike on every page, as this book does, is 
surely a model biography. A brief article, like the 
present, cannot even attempt to do justice to it, but I 
am moved to jot down some of the reminiscences and 
reflections which it has awakened. 
My first introduction to the fact of Huxley’s exist- 
ence was in February, 1861, when I was a sophomore 
at Harvard. The second serial number of Herbert 
Spencer’s “ First Principles,” which had just arrived 
from London, and on which I was feasting my soul, 
1 “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley.” By his son, Leonard 
Huxley. In two volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1goo. 
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