Quick of comprehension and of action, he would stand no nonsense.  The would-be teacher who, wholly unfitted by nature for educational work, was momentarily dismissed, realised this, let us hope to his advantage.  And the man suspected of taking notes of Huxley’s lectures for publication unauthorised, probably learned the lesson of his life, on being reminded that, in the first place, a lecture was the property of the person who delivered it, and, in the second, he was not the first person who had mistaken aspiration for inspiration.

Though candid, Huxley was never unkind...

Huxley never forgot a kindly action, never forsook a friend, nor allowed a labour to go unrewarded.  In testimony to his sympathy to those about him and his self-sacrifice for the cause of science, it may be stated that in the old days, when the professors took the fees and disbursed the working expenses of the laboratories, he, doing this at a loss, would refund the fees of students whose position, from friendship or special circumstances, was exceptional.

As for his lectures and addresses to the public, they used to be thronged by crowds of attentive listeners.

Huxley’s public addresses (writes Professor Osborn) always gave me the impression of being largely impromptu; but he once told me:  “I always think out carefully every word I am going to say.  There is no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true, or which you would regret afterwards.”

Mr. G.W.  Smalley has also left a striking description of him as a lecturer in the seventies and early eighties.

I used always to admire the simple and business-like way in which Huxley made his entry on great occasions.  He hated anything like display, and would have none of it.  At the Royal Institution, more than almost anywhere else, the lecturer, on whom the concentric circles of spectators in their steep amphitheatre look down, focuses the gaze.  Huxley never seemed aware that anybody was looking at him.  From self-consciousness he was, here as elsewhere, singularly free, as from self-assertion.  He walked in through the door on the left, as if he were entering his own laboratory.  In these days he bore scarcely a mark of age.  He was in the full vigour of manhood and looked the man he was.  Faultlessly dressed—­the rule in the Royal Institution is evening costume—­with a firm step and easy bearing, he took his place apparently without a thought of the people who were cheering him.  To him it was an anniversary.  He looked, and he probably was, the master.  Surrounded as he was by the celebrities of science and the ornaments of London drawing-rooms, there was none who had quite the same kind of intellectual ascendancy which belonged to him.  The square forehead, the square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing dark eyes, the impression of something more than strength