I can’t understand Peterborough nohow.  However, so far as the weakness of the flesh would permit me to abstain from smiting him and his brother Amalekite, I have tried to turn the tide of battle to matters of more importance.

The pith of my article is the proposition that Christ was not a Christian.  I have not ventured to state my thesis exactly in that form—­fearing the Editor—­but, in a mild and proper way, I flatter myself I have demonstrated it.  Really, when I come to think of the claims made by orthodox Christianity on the one hand, and of the total absence of foundation for them on the other, I find it hard to abstain from using a phrase which shocked me very much when Strauss first applied it to the Resurrection, “Welthistorischer Humbug!”

I don’t think I have ever seen the portrait you speak of.  I remember the artist—­a clever fellow, whose name, of course, I forget—­but I do not think I saw his finished work.  Some of these days I will ask to see it.

I was pretty well finished after the wedding, and bolted here the next day.  I am sorry to say I could not get my wife to come with me.  If she does not knock up I shall be pleasantly surprised.  The young couple are flourishing in Paris.  I like what I have seen of him very much.

What is the “Cloister scheme”? [It referred to a plan for using the cloisters of Westminster Abbey to receive the monuments of distinguished men, so as to avoid the necessity of enlarging the Abbey itself.] Recollect how far away I am from the world, the flesh and the d—.

Are you and Mrs. Knowles going to imitate the example of Eginhard and Emma?  What good pictures you will have in your monastery church!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[And again, a few days later:—­]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne; March 15, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am sending my proof back to Spottiswoode’s.  I did not think the manuscript would make so much, and I am afraid it has lengthened in the process of correction.

You have a reader in your printer’s office who provides me with jokes.  Last time he corrected, where my manuscript spoke of the pigs as unwilling “porters” of the devils, into “porkers.”  And this time, when I, writing about the Lord’s Prayer, say “current formula,” he has it “canting formula.”  If only Peterborough had got hold of that!  And I am capable of overlooking anything in a proof.

You see we have got to big questions now, and if these are once fairly before the general mind all the King’s horses and all the King’s men won’t put the orthodox Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[After the article came out he wrote again to Mr. Knowles:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., April 14, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am going to try and stop here, desolate as the house is now all the chicks have flown, for the next fortnight.  Your talk of the inclemency of Torquay is delightfully consoling.  London has been vile.