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.