170 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



Thomas Bell, who was on the committee, was deputed to 

 ask Mr. Van Voorst who would be a suitable person to 

 write such a book. " Why not your cousin, Mr. Gosse ? " 

 was the reply, and Bell at once assented. With his 

 ordinary diffidence, however, Philip Gosse was far from 

 ready to believe that he was competent to fulfil the task, 

 and it was with difficulty that he could be persuaded to 

 undertake it. 



At this point Philip Gosse's career as a man of letters 

 may properly be said to open. He had reached his thirty- 

 fourth year not only without distinction, but without 

 gaining any confidence in his own powers. His practical 

 training had been excellent, but he needed to be pushed 

 into active literary work. At last the impetus had been 

 given, and henceforward to write for the public became 

 the natural and obvious thing for him to do. He had no 

 sooner accepted the commission which the Society offered 

 him, than the plan of his work assumed form in his mind. 

 He entered upon it with a timidity which soon gave way 

 to enthusiasm, and he pursued it expeditiously with ever- 

 increasing zeal and interest. In this and future relations 

 with the Society my father invariably met with great 

 consideration and courtesy. He had scrupulously felt 

 obliged to let the committee know that he was a noncon- 

 formist, but they desired that that matter might never 

 again be alluded to. For the two volumes of the Intro- 

 duction to Zoology, the Society paid him £170. It 

 was composed in less than a year, without interfering in 

 any way with the author's other pursuits. It was therefore 

 the cause of valuable augmentation to his small means of 

 subsistence. 



The preparation of these volumes took Gosse a great 

 deal to the Natural History Department of the British 

 Museum, and he began to form acquaintanceships which 



