A PRIVY COUNCILLOR 227 



" I began to think that Lord Salisbury had thought better of 

 it — (I should not have been surprised at all if he had), and was 

 going to leave me a P.P.C. instead of a P.C. when the announce- 

 ment appeared yesterday. 



" This morning, however, I received his own letter (dated 

 the 1 6th), which has been following me about. A very nice 

 letter it is too — he does the thing handsomely while he is about 

 it. 



" Well, I think the thing is good for science ; I am not such 

 a self humbug as to pretend that my vanity is not pleasantly 

 tickled ; but I do not think there is any aspect of the affair more 

 pleasant to me, than the evidence it affords of the strength of 

 our old friendship. Because, with all respect for my noble friends, 

 deuce a one would ever have thought of it, unless you had not only 

 put it — but rubbed it — into their heads " (Life, ii, pp. 323-4). 



And again, to Hooker (same date) : — 



" You will have seen that I have been made a P.C. If I had 

 been offered to be made a police constable 1 could not have been 

 more flabbergasted than I was when the proposition came to me 

 a few weeks ago. . . . The Archbishopric of Canterbury is 

 the only object of ambition that remains to me" (Life, ii, 

 P- 324)- 



The already thinned ranks of the x Club were still 

 further diminished by the deaths of T. A. Hirst in 

 February, and Tennyson in October. Huxley attended 

 the funeral of the latter in Westminster Abbey, and 

 afterwards wrote some verses by way of farewell, published 

 in the Nineteenth Century for November. We find from 

 Mr. Wilfrid Ward's reminiscences that : — 



"Tennyson he considered the greatest English master of 

 melody except Spenser and Keats" (Life, ii, p. 338). 



And in a letter to Tyndall (dated October 15, 1892), 

 Tennyson is described as : — 



" . . . . the first poet since Lucretius who has understood the 

 drift of science " (loc. cit.). 



