Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 29

I send you by this post three of my working men's lectures now in course of delivery. As you will see by the prefatory notice, I was asked to allow them to be taken down in shorthand for the use of the audience, but I have no interest in them, and do not desire or intend that they should be widely circulated.

Sometime hence, may be, I may revise and ill.u.s.trate them, and make them into a book as a sort of popular exposition of your views, or at any rate of my version of your views.

There really is nothing new in them nor anything worth your attention, but if in glancing over them at any time you should see anything to object to, I should like to know.

I am very hard worked just now--six lectures a week, and no end of other things--but as vigorous as a three-year old. Somebody told me you had been ill, but I hope it was fiction, and that you and Mrs. Darwin and all your belongings are flouris.h.i.+ng.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In reply, Darwin writes on December 10:--

I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with perfect safety and truth...

Touching the "Natural History Review," "Do inaugurate a great improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap blessings on your head."

And again, December 18:--

I have read Numbers 4 and 5. They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down Number 4 with this reflection, "What is the good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad I may as well shut up shop altogether.

These lectures met with an annoying amount of success. They were not cast into permanent form, for he grudged the time necessary to prepare them for the press. However, he gave a Mr. Hardwicke permission to take them down in shorthand as delivered for the use of the audience. But no sooner were they printed, than they had a large sale. Writing to Sir J.D. Hooker early in the following month, he says:]

I fully meant to have sent you all the successive lectures as they came out, and I forward a set with all manner of apologies for my delinquency. I am such a 'umble-minded party that I never imagined the lectures as delivered would be worth bringing out at all, and I knew I had no time to work them out. Now, I lament I did not publish them myself and turn an honest penny by them as I suspect Hardwicke is doing.

He is advertising them everywhere, confound him.

I wish when you have read them you would tell me whether you think it would be worthwhile for me to re-edit, enlarge, and ill.u.s.trate them by and by.

[And on January 28 Sir Charles Lyell writes to him:--

I do grudge Hardwicke very much having not only the publisher's but the author's profits. It so often happens that popular lectures designed for a cla.s.s and inspired by an attentive audience's sympathy are better than any writing in the closet for the purpose of educating the many as readers, and of remunerating the publisher and author. I would lose no time in considering well what steps to take to rescue the copyright of the third thousand.

As for the value of the work thus done in support of Darwin's theory, it is worth while quoting the words of Lord Kelvin, when, as President of the Royal Society in 1894, it fell to him to award Huxley the Darwin Medal:--

To the world at large, perhaps, Mr. Huxley's share in moulding the thesis of NATURAL SELECTION is less well-known than is his bold unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had been made public.

And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling in the problems of the "might have been," would find a congenial theme in the inquiry how soon what we now call "Darwinism" would have met with the acceptance with which it has met, and gained the power which it has gained, had it not been for the brilliant advocacy with which in its early days it was expounded to all cla.s.ses of men.

That advocacy had one striking mark: while it made or strove to make clear how deep the new view went down, and how far it reached, it never shrank from trying to make equally clear the limit beyond which it could not go.]

CHAPTER 1.16.

1860-1861.

[The letters given in the following chapters ill.u.s.trate the occupations and interests of the years 1860 to 1863, apart from the struggle over the species question.

One of the most important and most engrossing was the launching of a scientific quarterly to do more systematically and thoroughly what had been done since 1858 in the fortnightly scientific column of the "Sat.u.r.day Review." Its genesis is explained in the following letter:--]

July 17, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

Some time ago Dr. Wright of Dublin talked to me about the "Natural History Review," which I believe to a great extent belongs to him, and wanted me to join in the editors.h.i.+p, provided certain alterations were made. I promised to consider the matter, and yesterday he and Greene dined with me, and I learned that Haughton and Galbraith were out of the review--that Harvey was likely to go--that a new series was to begin in January, with Williams and Norgate for publishers over here--that it was to become an English and not a Hibernian concern in fact--and finally, that if I chose to join as one of the editors, the effectual control would be pretty much in my own hands. Now, considering the state of the times, and the low condition of natural history journalisation (always excepting quarterly "Mic. Journal") in this country this seems to me to be a fine opening for a plastically minded young man, and I am decidedly inclined to close with the offer, though I shall get nothing but extra work by it.

To limit the amount of this extra work, however, I must get co-editors, and I have written to Lubbock and to Rolleston (also plastically minded young men) to see if they will join. Now up to this point you have been in a horrid state of disgust, because you thought I was going to ask you next. But I am not, for rejoiced as I should be to have you, I know you have heaps of better work to do, and hate journalism.

But can you tell me of any plastic young botanist who would come in all there glory and no pay, though I think pay may be got if the concern is properly worked. How about Oliver?

And though you can't and won't be an editor yourself, won't you help us and pat us on the back?

The tone of the "Review" will be mildly episcopophagous, and you and Darwin and Lyell will have a fine opportunity if you wish it of slaying your adversaries.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Several of his elder friends tried to dissuade him from an undertaking which would inevitably distract him from his proper work. Sir Charles Lyell prophesied that all the work would drift to the most energetic member of the staff, and Huxley writes to Hooker, August 2, 1860:--]

Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I a.s.sured him that I MUST waste myself w.i.l.l.y-nilly, and that the "Review"

was only a save-all.

The more I think of it the more it seems to me it ought to answer if properly conducted, and it ought to be of great use.

[The first number appeared in January 1861. Writing on the 6th, Huxley says:--]

It is pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have had from Lyell and Darwin about the Review. They make me quite hopeful about its prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able to do better than our first number.

[It was not long, however, before Lyell's prophecy began to come true.

In June Huxley writes:--]

It is no use letting other people look after the journal. I find unless I revise every page of it, it goes wrong.

[But in July 1863 he definitely ceased to contribute:--]

I did not foresee all this crush of work [he writes], when the "Review"

was first started, or I should not have pledged myself to any share in supplying it. [Moreover, with the appointment of paid editors that year, it seemed to him] that the working editors with the credit and pay must take the responsibility of all the commissariat of the "Review" upon their shoulders.

Two years later, in 1865, the "Review" came to an end. As Mr. Murray, the publisher, remarked, quarterlies did not pay; and this quarterly became still more financially unsound after the over-worked volunteers, who both edited and contributed, gave place to paid editors.

But Huxley was not satisfied with one defeat. The quarterly scheme had failed; he now tried if he could not serve science better by returning to a more frequent and more popular form of periodical. From 1863 to 1866 he was concerned with the "Reader," a weekly issue (The committee also included Professor Cairns, F. Galton, W.F. Pollock, and J.

Tyndall.); but this also was too heavy a burden to be borne in addition to his other work. However, the labour expended in these ventures was not wholly thrown away. The experience thus gained at last enabled the present Sir Norman Lockyer, who acted as science editor for the "Reader," to realise what had so long been aimed at by the establishment of "Nature" in 1869.

Apart from his contributions to the species question and the foundation of a scientific review, Huxley published in 1860 only two special monographs ("On Jacare and Caiman," and "On the Mouth and Pharynx of the Scorpion," already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read "Further Observations on Pyrosoma" at the Linnean Society, and was busy with paleontological work, the results of which appeared in three papers the following year, the most important of which was the Memoir called a "Preliminary Essay on the Arrangement of the Devonian Fishes," in the report of the Geological Survey, "which," says Sir M. Foster, "though ent.i.tled a Preliminary Essay, threw an entirely new light on the affinities of these creatures, and, with the continuation published later, in 1866, still remains a standard work."

The question of the admission of ladies to the learned societies was already being mooted, and a letter to Sir Charles Lyell gives his ideas thus early not only on this point, but on the general question of women's education.]

March 17, 1860.

My dear Sir Charles,