a book, whereupon he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.

      “I was too anxious to seize on the opportunity thus offered of
     giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of
     the Times to make any difficulty about conditions; and being
     then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I
     think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr.
     Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences.  When the article
     appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship.  The
     secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my
     aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement
     from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends,
     that they knew it was mine from the first paragraph.”  “As the
     Times some years since referred to my connection with the
     review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the
     publication of this little history.”

This review was one of the few favourable notices, and naturally it delighted Darwin greatly.  He wrote to Hooker about it:  “Have you seen the splendid essay and notice of my book in the Times?  I cannot avoid a strong suspicion that it is by Huxley; but I have never heard that he wrote in the Times.  It will do grand service.”  On the same day, writing to Huxley himself, he said of the review: 

“It included an eulogium of me which quite touched me, although I am not vain enough to think it all deserved.  The author is a literary man and a German scholar.  He has read my book attentively; but, what is very remarkable, it seems that he is a profound naturalist.  He knows my barnacle book and appreciates it too highly.  Lastly, he writes and thinks with quite uncommon force and clearness; and, what is even still rarer, his writing is seasoned with most pleasant wit.  We all laughed heartily over some of the sentences....  Who can it be?  Certainly I should have said that there was only one man in England who could have written this essay, and that you were the man; but I suppose that I am wrong, and that there is some hidden genius of great calibre; for how could you influence Jupiter Olympus and make him give you three and a half columns to pure science?  The old fogies will think the world will come to an end.  Well, whoever the man is, he has done great service to the cause.”

The essay in the Times was followed shortly afterwards by a “Friday Evening Discourse” in 1860 on “Species, Races, and their Origin,” in which Huxley, addressing a cultivated audience, laid the whole weight of his brilliant scientific