TO 



EDWIN RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S., LL.D., 



JODRELL PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 



IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, 



AND HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



Dear Lankester, 



No one who reads this book will require to be told 

 that there were many points of vital importance upon which your 

 convictions and those of the subject of this biography were dia- 

 metrically opposed. Yet you respected him and he admired you, 

 and of all our friends you were the earliest to urge me to under- 

 take this labour of love. I desire to inscribe your name on this 

 first page of my book, not merely because of those pleasant 

 relations which have so long existed between your family and 

 mine, but as a hint to such readers as may come to the perusal 

 of it with opinions strongly biassed in one direction or in another, 

 that it is wise to " condemn not all things in the Council of 

 Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dort." You, at least, in 

 reading this life of your old acquaintance, will be pleased where 

 you can share his beliefs, and interested in the attitude of his 

 mind where you wholly disagree with him. 

 Believe me to be 



Yours very sincerely, 



Edmund Gosse. 



October^ 1890. 



