If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your original work, I should not be a true friend either to science or yourself if I said a word against your leaving us.
But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.
Ever yours very sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
If you recommend —, of course I shall be very glad to support him in any way I can. But at present I am rather disposed to d—n anyone who occupies your place.
[The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel (November 13, 1868), with reference to the proposed translation of his "Morphologie" by the Ray Society:—]
We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text, as the job will be a long and a tough one. My wife (who sends her best wishes and congratulations on your fatherhood) will do the bits of Goethe's poetry, and I will look after the prose citations.
Next as to the text itself. The council were a little alarmed at the bulk of the book, and it is of the utmost importance that it would be condensed to the uttermost.
Furthermore, English propriety had taken fright at rumours touching the aggressive heterodoxy of some passages. (We do not much mind heterodoxy here, if it does not openly proclaim itself as such.)
And on both these points I had not only to give very distinct assurances, such as I thought your letters had entitled me to give; but in a certain sense to become myself responsible for your behaving yourself like a good boy!