I had hoped that my difficulties in dealing with an overtight scabbard stud, as we sat down to dinner on Saturday had inconvenienced no one but myself, until it flashed across my mind after I had parted from you that, as you had observed them, it was only too probable that I had the misfortune to keep you waiting.
I have been in a state of permanent blush ever since, and I feel sure you will forgive me for troubling you with this apology as the only remedy to which I can look for relief from that unwonted affliction.
I am, dear Lord Rosebery, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[All through the spring he had been busy completing the chapter on Sir Richard Owen's work, which he had been asked to write by the biographer of his old opponent, and on February 4 tells Sir J.D. Hooker:—]
I am toiling over my chapter about Owen, and I believe his ghost in
Hades is grinning over my difficulties.
The thing that strikes me most is, how he and I and all the things we fought about belong to antiquity.
It is almost impertinent to trouble the modern world with such antiquarian business.
[He sent the manuscript to Sir M. Foster on June 16; the book itself appeared in December. The chapter in question was restricted to a review of the immense amount of work, most valuable on its positive side, done by Owen (compare the letter of January 18, 1893.); and the review in "Nature" remarks of it that the criticism is "so straightforward, searching, and honest as to leave nothing further to be desired."
Besides this piece of work, he had written early in the year a few lines on the general character of the nineteenth century, in reply to a request, addressed to "the most illustrious children of the century," for their opinion as to what name will be given to it by an impartial posterity—the century of Comte, of Darwin or Renan, of Edison, Pasteur, or Gladstone. He replied:—]