120 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vin 



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 ac- 

 cordin'," 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 possessions." 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 friend- 

 ship 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 when asleep. If it ever comes I shall 

 be pleased and thankful ; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing 

 to break my equanimity. Indeed, I would always like to see it 

 given not as a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and 

 this it is assuredly in Hooker's case. Government people are 

 so ignorant that they require to have merits drummed into their 

 heads by all possible means, and Hooker's getting the medal 

 may be of real service to him before long. I am in a snug, 

 though not an idle, nest, — he has not got his resting-place yet. 

 And so, my dear Huxley, I trust that you know me too well to 

 think that I am either grieved or envious, and you. Hooker, 

 and I are much of the same way of thinking. 



It is interesting to record the same scrupulosity over 

 the election to the Registrarship of the University of Lon- 

 don in 1856, when, having begun to canvass for Dr. Latham 



