8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



But what between the incessant pressure of work and 

 an inborn aversion to letter-writing, I become a worse 

 and worse correspondent the longer I live, and unless I 

 can find one or two friends who will [be] content to bear 

 with my infirmities and believe that however long before 

 we meet, I shall be ready to take them up again exactly 

 where I left off, I shall be a friendless old man. 



As for your old Goethe, you are mistaken. The 

 Scripture says that " a living dog is better than a dead 

 lion," and I am a living dog. By the way, I bought 

 Cotta's edition of him the other day, and there he stands 

 on my bookcase in all the glory of gilt, black, and marble 

 edges. Do you know I did a version of his Aphorisms 

 on Nature into English the other day. 1 It astonishes 

 the British Philistines not a little. When they began to 

 read it they thought it was mine, and that I had suddenly 

 gone mad ! 



But to return to your affairs instead of my own. 1 

 received your volume on the Arthropods the other day, 

 but 1 shall not be able to look at it for the next three 

 weeks, as I am in the midst of my lectures, and have an 

 annual address to deliver to the Geological Society on the 

 18th February, when, I am happy to say, my tenure of 

 office as President expires. 



After that I shall be only too glad to plunge into your 

 doings and, as always, I shall follow your work with the 

 heartiest interest. But I wish you would not take it 

 into your head that Darwin or I, or any one else thinks 

 otherwise than highly of you, or that you need " re- 

 establishing " in any one's eyes. But I hope you will 

 not have finished yoiir work before the autumn, as they 

 have made me President of the British Association this 

 year, and I shall be very busy with my address in the 

 summer. The meeting is to take place in Liverpool on 

 the 14th September, and I live in hope that you will be 



1 For the first number of Mature, November 1869. 



