xxiv LOVE OF ART 



443 



he vouched in his teaching, and was always ready to repeat 

 for himself the experiments of others, which determined 

 questions of interest to him. The citations, analyses, maps, 

 with which he frequently accompanied his reading, were all 

 part of the same method of acquiring facts and setting them 

 in order within his mind. So careful, indeed, was he in 

 giving nothing at second hand, that one of his scientific 

 friends reproached him with wasting his time upon un- 

 necessary scientific work, to which competent investigators 

 had already given the stamp of their authority. " Poor 



• ," was his comment afterwards, " if that is his own 



practice, his work will never live." On the literary side, 

 he was omnivorous — consuming everything, as Mr. Spencer 

 put it, from fairy tales to the last volume on metaphysics. 



Unlike Darwin, to whom scientific research was at 

 length the only thing engrossing enough to make him 

 oblivious of his never-ending ill-health, to the gradual ex- 

 clusion of other interests, literary and artistic, Huxley never 

 lost his delight in literature or in art. He had a keen eye 

 for a picture or a piece of sculpture, for, in addition to the 

 draughtsman's and anatomist's sense of form, he had a 

 strong sense of colour. To good music he was always sus- 

 ceptible.* He played no instrument ; as a young man, 

 however, he used to sing a little, but his voice, though 

 true, was never strong. But he had small leisure to devote 

 to art. On his holidays he would sometimes sketch with 

 a firm and rapid touch. His illustrations to the Cruise of 

 the Rattlesnake show what his untrained capacities were. 

 But to go to a concert or opera was rare after middle life ; 

 to go to the theatre rarer still, much as he appreciated a 

 good play. His time was too deeply mortgaged ; and in 

 later life, the deafness which grew upon him added a new 

 difficulty. 



In poetry he was sensitive both to matter and form. 

 One school of modern poetry he dismissed as " sensuous 



* To one breaking in upon him at certain afternoon hours in his 

 room at South Kensington, "a whiff of the pipe" (writes Professor 

 Howes), " and a snatch of some choice melody or a Bach's fugue, were 

 the not infrequent welcome." 



