Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

P.S.—­Macmillan has a lien on “The Hand.”  I gave part of the lecture in another shape at Glasgow two years ago and M. had it reported for his magazine.  If he is good and patient he will get it in some shape some day!

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., November 5, 1878.

My dear Morley,

“Davie’s” philosophy is now all in print, and all but a few final pages of his biography.

So I think the time has come when that little critical symposium may take place.

Can you come and dine on Tuesday next (12) at 7?  Or if any day except Wednesday 15th, next week, will suit you better, it will do just as well for me.  There will be nobody but my wife and daughters, so don’t dress.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

P.S.—­Will you be disgusted if in imitation of the “English Men of Letters” I set agoing an “English Men of Science.”  Few people have any conception of the part Englishmen have played in science, and I think it would be both useful and interesting to bring the truth home to the English mind.

I had about three thousand people to hear me on Saturday at Manchester, and it would have done you good to hear how they cheered at my allusion to personal rule.  I had to stop and let them ease their souls.

Behold my P.S. is longer than my letter.  It’s the strong feminine element in my character oozing out.  “Desinit in piscem” though, and a mighty queer fish too.

4 Marlborough Place, January 12, 1879.

Dear Lecky,

I am very much obliged for your suggestion about the note at page 9.  I am ashamed to say that though the eleven day correction was familiar enough to me, I had never thought about the shifting of the beginning of the year till you mentioned it.  It is a law of nature, I believe, that when a man says what he need not say he is sure to blunder.  The note shall go out.

All I know about Sprat is as the author of a dull history of the Royal
Society, so I was surprised to meet with Hume’s estimate of him.

No doubt about the general hatred of the Scotch, but you will observe that I make Millar responsible for the peace-making assurance.

What you said to me in conversation some time ago led me to look at Hume’s position as a moralist with some care, and I quoted the passage at page 206 that no doubt might be left on the matter.

The little book threatened to grow to an undue length, and therefore the question of morals is treated more briefly than was perhaps desirable.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Early in November I find the first reference to a proposed, but never completed, “English Men of Science” series in the letter to Mr. Morley above.  The following letters, especially those to Sir H. Roscoe, with whom he was concerting the series, give some idea of its scope:—­]