So I am working away at my draft—­from the point of view of an aesthetic jeweller.

As soon as I get it into such a condition as will need only verbal trimming, I should like to have it set up in type.  For it is a defect of mine that I can never judge properly of any composition of my own in manuscript.

Moreover (don’t swear at this wish) I should very much like to send it to you in that shape for criticism.

The Life will be an easy business.  I should like to get the book out of hand before Christmas, and will do so if possible.  But my lectures begin on Tuesday, and I cannot promise.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

October 21, 1878.

My dear Morley,

I have received slips up to chapter 9 of Hume, and so far I do not think (saving your critical presence) that there will be much need of much modification or interpolation.

I have made all my citations from a 4-volume edition of Hume, published by Black and Tait in 1826, which has long been in my possession.

Do you think I ought to quote Green and Grose’s edition?  It will be a great bother, and I really don’t think that the understanding of Hume is improved by going back to eighteenth-century spelling.

I am at work upon the Life, which should not take long.  But I wish that I had polished that off at Penmaenmawr as well.  What with lecturing five days a week, and toiling at two anatomical monographs, it is hard to find time.

As soon as I have gone through all the eleven chapters about the Philosophy—­I will send them to you and get you to come and dine some day—­after you have looked at them—­and go into it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

Science Schools, South Kensington, October 29, 1878.

My dear Morley,

Your letter has given me great pleasure.  For though I have thoroughly enjoyed the work, and seemed to myself to have got at the heart of Hume’s way of thinking, I could not tell how it would appear to others, still less could I pretend to judge of the literary form of what I had written.  And as I was quite prepared to accept your judgment if it had been unfavourable, so being what it is, I hug myself proportionately and begin to give myself airs as a man of letters.

I am through all the interesting part of Hume’s life—­that is, the struggling part of it—­and David the successful and the feted begins rather to bore me, as I am sorry to say most successful people do.  I hope to send the first chapter to press in another week.

Might it not be better, by the way, to divide the little book into two parts?

Part 1.—­Life, Literary and Political work,
Part 2.—­Philosophy,

subdividing the latter into chapters or sections? please tell me what you think.

I have not received the last chapter from the printer yet.  When I do I will finish revising, and then ask you to come and have a symposium over it.