Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Nobody sees that the lecture is a very orthodox production on the text (if there is such a one), "Satan the Prince of this world."
I think the remnant of influenza microbes must have held a meeting in my corpus after the lecture, and resolved to reconquer the territory. But I mean to beat the brutes.
"I shall be interested," [he writes to Mr. Romanes,] "in the article on
the lecture. The papers have been asinine." This was an article which
Mr. Romanes had told him was about to appear in the "Oxford Magazine".
And on the 30th he writes again.]
Many thanks for the "Oxford Magazine". The writer of the article is about the only critic I have met with yet who understands my drift. My wife says it is a "sensible" article, but her classification is a very simple one—sensible articles are those that contain praise, "stupid" those that show insensibility to my merits!
Really I thought it very sensible, without regard to the plums in the pudding.
[But the criticism, "sensible" not merely in the humorous sense, which he most fully appreciated was that of Professor Seth, in a lecture entitled "Man and Nature." He wrote to him on October 27:—]
Dear Professor Seth,
A report of your lecture on "Man and Nature" has just reached me. Accept my cordial thanks for defending me, and still more for understanding me.