THE MAN 19 



men who loom large in the public eye, he had to 

 make enforced acquaintance with that aggravated 

 variety of the species known as the crank. Circle- 

 squares and earth-flatteners pestered him with pam- 

 phlets; four-paged letters praying for his conversion, 

 or, more often, for his damnation, as an atheist of the 

 most mischievous type, were sent to him ; bulky 

 manuscripts, crammed with mad theories, which he 

 was asked to revise and get published, were left at his 

 house. Sometimes the comic side of the matter 

 appealed to him, as witness this note to his friend Sir 

 John Donnelly : — 



I had a letter from a fellow yesterday morning who 

 must be a lunatic, to the effect that he had been read- 

 ing my essays, thought I was just the man to spend a 

 month with, and was coming down by the five o'clock 

 train, attended by his seven children and his mother- 

 in-law ! 



Frost being over, there was lots of boiling water 

 ready for him, but he did not turn up ! 



Wife and servants expected nothing less than as- 

 sassination ! l 



The entry in his journal, " i860 will show," had 

 deeper significance than Huxley dreamed when he 

 made it. In 1858, he had delivered a lecture on the 

 origin of the vertebrate skull, in which he demolished 

 a theory propounded by Oken, supported by Goethe, 



1 II. 372. 



