I have just been put on Senate of University of London [a Crown nomination].  I tried hard to get Lord Granville to let me off—­in fact I told him I could not attend the meetings except now and then, but there was no escape.  I must have a talk with you about what is to be done there.

Item: 

There is a new Fishery Commission that I also strongly objected to, but had to cave in so far as I agreed to attend some meetings in latter half of September.

[On this occasion Lord Granville had written back:—­

11 Carlton House Terrace, July 28, 1883.

My dear Professor Huxley,

Clay, the great whist player, once made a mistake and said to his partner, “My brain is softening,” the latter answered “Never mind, I will give you ten thousand pounds down for it, just as it is.”

On that principle and backed up by Paget I shall write to Harcourt on
Monday.

Yours sincerely,

Granville.

The Commission of course cut short the stay at Milford, and on
September 12, he writes:—­]

We shall leave this on Friday as my wife has some fal-lals to look after before we start for the north on Monday.

The worst of it is that it is not at all certain that the Commission will meet and do any work.  However I am pledged to go, and I daresay that Brechin Castle is a very pleasant place to stay in.

[Lastly, he was thinking over the obituary notice of Darwin which he had undertaken to write for the Royal Society—­though it did not appear till 1888—­that on F. Balfour being written by Sir M. Foster.]

Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, August 27, 1883.

My dear Foster,

I do not see anything to add or alter to what you have said about Balfour, except to get rid of that terrible word “urinogenital,” which he invented, and I believe I once adopted, out of mere sympathy I suppose.

Darwin is on my mind, and I will see what can be done here by and by.  Up to the present I have been filing away at the Rede Lecture.  I believe that getting things into shape takes me more and more trouble as I get older—­whether it is a loss of faculty or an increase of fastidiousness I can’t say—­but at any rate it costs me more time and trouble to get things finished—­and when they are done I should prefer burning to publishing them.

Haven’t you any suggestions to offer for Anniversary address?  I think the Secretaries ought to draw it up, like a Queen’s speech.

Mind we have a talk some day about University of London.  I suppose you want an English Sorbonne.  I have thought of it at times, but the Philistines are strong.

Weather jolly, but altogether too hot for anything but lying on the grass “under the tegmination of the patulous fage,” as the poet observes.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The remaining letters of this year are for the most part on Royal Society business, some of which, touching the anniversary dinner, may be quoted:—­]