.J- LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxn 



was a beastly fog, out of which I bolted home as fast as pos- 

 sible. 



I shall have to give up these escapades. They knock me up 

 for a week afterwards. And really it is a pity, just as I have 

 got over my horror of public speaking, and find it very amusing. 

 But I suppose I should gravitate into a bore as old fellows do, 

 and so it is as well I am kept out of temptation. 



I will try to remember what I said at the Nature dinner.* 

 I scolded the young fellows pretty sharply for their slovenly 

 writing. 



There will be a tenth vol. of Essays some day, and an Index 

 rerum. Do you remember how you scolded me for being too 

 speculative in my maiden lecture on Animal Individuality forty 

 odd years ago? "On revient toujours," or, to put it another 

 way, " The dog returns to his etc. etc." 



So I am deep in philosophy, grovelling through Diogenes 

 Laertius — Plutarch's Placita and sich — and often wondering 

 whether the schoolmasters have any better ground for maintain- 

 ing that Greek is a finer language than English than the fact 

 that they can't write the latter dialect. 



So far as I can see, my faculties are as good (including 

 memory for anything that is not useful) as they were fifty years 

 ago, but I can't work long hours, or live out of fresh air. Three 

 days of London bowls me over. 



I expect you are in much the same case. But you seem to be 

 able to stoop over specimens in a way impossible to me. It is 

 that incapacity has made me give up dissection and microscopic 

 work. I do a lot on my back, and I can tell you that the latter 

 posture is an immense economy of strength. Indeed, when' my 

 head was troublesome, I used to spend my time either in active 

 outdoor exercise or horizontally. 



The Stracheys were here the other day, and it was a great 

 pleasure to us to see them. I think he has had a very close 

 shave with that accident. There is nobody whom I should more 

 delight to honour — a right good man all round — but I am not 

 competent to judge of his work. You are, and I do not see why 

 you should not suggest it. I would give him a medal for being 

 R. Strachey, but probably the Council would make difficulties. 



By the way, do you see the Times has practically climbed 

 down about the R.S. — came down backwards like a bear, growl- 



* A brief report of this speech is to be found in the British Medical 

 Journal for December 8, 1894, p. 1262. 



