REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 225 
England upon whose judgment he relied; if he could 
convince those three, he could afford to wait for the 
rest. The three were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley, and 
he convinced them. How sturdily Huxley fought 
Darwin’s battles is inspiring to remember. Darwin 
rather shrank from controversy, and, while he welcomed 
candid criticism, seldom took any notice of ill-natured 
attacks. On one occasion, nevertheless, a somewhat 
ugly assault moved Darwin to turn and rend the assail- 
ant, which was easily and neatly done in two pages at 
the end of a scientific paper. Before publishing the 
paper, however, Darwin sent it to Huxley, authorizing 
him to omit the two pages if he should think it best. 
Huxley promptly cancelled them, and sent Darwin a 
delicious little note, saying that the retort was so excel- 
lent that if it had been his own he should hardly have 
had virtue enough to suppress it; but although it was 
well deserved, he thought it would be better to refrain. 
“Tf I say a savage thing, it is only ‘pretty Fanny’s 
way’; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten.” 
There was a friend worth having! 
There can be little doubt, I think, that, without a 
particle of rancour, Huxley did keenly feel the gaudzum 
certaminis. He exclaimed among the trumpets, Ha! 
ha! and was sure to be in the thickest of the fight. 
His family seemed to think that the “Gladstonian 
dose” had a tonic effect upon him. When he felt too 
ill for scientific work, he was quite ready for a scrim- 
mage with his friends the bishops. Not caring much 
for episcopophagy (as Huxley once called it), and feel- 
ing that controversy of that sort was but a slaying of 
the slain, I used to grudge the time that was given to 
it and taken from other things. In 1879 he showed 
2Q 
