1854 HIS FRANKNESS 161 



And had I thought right to do so, I felt sure that you 

 would have fully appreciated my motives, and that it 

 would have done no injury to our friendship. 



But as I told the Council I did not think this a case 

 where either of you had any right to be excluded by the 

 other. I told them that had Forbes been first named, 

 I should have thought it injudicious to bring you forward, 

 and that, as you were named, I for my own part should 

 not have brought forward Forbes as a candidate ; that 

 therefore while willing to speak up to any extent for 

 Forbes' positive merits and deserts, I would carefully be 

 understood to give no opinion as to your and his relative 

 standing. 



They did not take much by my speech therefore either 

 way, more especially as I voted for both of you. 



I hate doing anything of the kind " unbeknownst " to 

 people, so there is the exact history of my proceedings. 

 If I had been able to come to the clear conclusion that 

 the claims of either of you were strongly superior to those 

 of the other, I think I should have had the honesty and 

 moral courage to " act accordin','' but I really had not, 

 and so there was no part to play but that of a sort of 

 Vicar of Bray. Ever yours faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



Forbes' reply was a letter which Huxley, after his 

 friend's death, held " among his most precious posses- 

 sions." It appeared without names in the obituary 

 notice of Forbes in the Literary Gazette for November 

 25, 1854, as an example of his unselfish generosity : 



I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and 

 had I been placed as you have been, would have done 

 exactly the same. . . . Your way of proceeding was as 

 true an act of friendship as any that could be performed. 

 As to myself, I dream so little about medals, that the 

 notion of being on the list never entered my brain, even 



VOL. I M 



