I think, originally [writes Huxley, l.c.] there was some vague notion of associating representatives of each branch of science; at any rate, the nine who eventually came together could have managed, among us, to contribute most of the articles to a scientific Encyclopaedia.

[They included leading representatives of half a dozen branches of science:—­mathematics, physics, philosophy, chemistry, botany, and biology; and all were animated by similar ideas of the high function of science, and of the great Society which should be the chief representative of science in this country.  However unnecessary, it was perhaps not unnatural that a certain jealousy of the club and its possible influence grew up in some quarters.  But whatever influence fell to it as it were incidentally—­and earnest men with such opportunities of mutual understanding and such ideals of action could not fail to have some influence on the progress of scientific organisation—­it was assuredly not sectarian nor exerted for party purposes during the twenty-eight years of the club’s existence.]

I believe that the x [continues Huxley] had the credit of being a sort of scientific caucus, or ring, with some people.  In fact, two distinguished scientific colleagues of mine once carried on a conversation (which I gravely ignored) across me, in the smoking-room of the Athenaeum, to this effect, “I say, A., do you know anything about the x Club?” “Oh, yes, B., I have heard of it.  What do they do?” “Well, they govern scientific affairs, and really, on the whole, they don’t do it badly.”  If my good friends could only have been present at a few of our meetings, they would have formed a much less exalted idea of us, and would, I fear, have been much shocked at the sadly frivolous tone of our ordinary conversation.

[The x club is probably unique in the smallness of its numbers, the intellectual eminence of its members, and the length of its unchanged existence.  The nearest parallel is to be found in “The Club.” (Of which Huxley was elected a member in 1884.  Tyndall and Hooker were also members.) Like the x, “The Club” began with eight members at its first meeting, and of the original members Johnson lived twenty years, Reynolds twenty-eight, Burke thirty-three, and Bennet Langton thirty-seven.  But the ranks were earlier broken.  Within ten years Goldsmith died, and he was followed in a twelvemonth by Nugent, and five years later by Beauclerk and Chamier.  Moreover, the eight were soon increased to twelve; then to twenty and finally to forty, while the gaps were filled up as they occurred.

In the x, on the contrary, nearly nineteen years passed before the original circle was broken by the death of Spottiswoode.  From 1864 to Spottiswoode’s death in 1883 the original circle remained unbroken; the meetings “were steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks began to thin; and one by one, geistige Naturen such as those for which the poet so willingly paid the ferryman, silent but not unregarded, took the vacated places.”