Moreover, by diligently excluding any expression of opinion on the part of the writers of the compilation, I thought that nobody could possibly suspect me of assuming the position of an authority even on the subjects with which I may be supposed to be acquainted, let alone those such as physics and chemistry, of which I know no more than any one of the public may know.
Therefore your remarks came upon me to-night with the sort of painful surprise which a man feels who is accused of the particular sin of which he flatters himself he is especially NOT GUILTY, and "roused my corruption" as the Scotch have it. But there is no need to say anything about that, for you were generous and good as I have always found you. Only I pray you, if hereafter it strikes you that any doing of mine should be altered or amended, tell me yourself and privately, and I promise you a very patient listener, and what is more a very thankful one.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[Tyndall replied with no less frankness, thanking him for the friendly promptitude of his letter, and explaining that he had meant to speak privately on the matter, but had been forestalled by the subject coming up when it did. And he wound up by declaring that it would be too absurd to admit the power of such an occasion "to put even a momentary strain upon the cable which has held us together for nine and twenty years."
At the very end of the year, George Eliot died. A proposal was immediately set on foot to inter her remains in Westminster Abbey, and various men of letters pressed the matter on the Dean, who was unwilling to stir without a very strong and general expression of opinion. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had urged him to join in memorialising the Dean, Huxley replied as follows:—]
4 Marlborough Place, December 27, 1880.
My dear Spencer,
Your telegram which reached me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inasmuch as I had just been talking with Morley, and agreeing with him that the proposal for a funeral in Westminster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should attend George Eliot to her grave.
It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with less provocation), with the raking up of past histories, about which the opinion even of those who have least the desire or the right to be pharisaical is strongly divided, and which had better be forgotten.