Autobiography and Selected EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Autobiography and Selected Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
[Footnote 43: Aladdin's lamps: a reference to the story of the Wonderful
Lamp in the Arabian Nights. The magic lamp brought marvelous good
fortune to the poor widow's son who possessed it. Cf. also Lowell's
Aladdin:--
When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend or a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!]
[Footnote 44: "When in heaven the stars": from Tennyson's Specimens of a
Translation of the Iliad in Blank Verse.]
[Footnote 45: "increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate":
Bacon's statement of his purpose in writing the Advancement of
Learning.]
[Footnote 46: For example, etc.: could the sentence beginning thus be
written in better form?]
[Footnote 47: Rumford (1738-1814): Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an
eminent scientist. Rumford was born in America and educated at Harvard.
Suspected of loyalty to the King at the time of the revolution, he was
imprisoned. Acquitted, he went to England where he became prominent in
politics and science. Invested with the title of Count by the Holy Roman
Empire, he chose Rumford for his title after the name of the little
New Hampshire town where he had taught. He gave a large sum of money to
Harvard College to found the Rumford professorship of science.]
[Footnote 48: eccentric: out of the centre.]
A LIBERAL EDUCATION (1868)
[Footnote 49: A Liberal Education: from Science and Education; also
published in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews.]
[Footnote 50: Ichabod: cf. 1 Sam. iv, 21.]
[Footnote 51: senior wranglership: in Cambridge University, England,
one who has attained the first class in the elementary division of the
public examination for honors in pure and mixed mathematics, commonly
called the mathematical tripos, those who compose the second rank of
honors being designated senior optimes, and those of the third order
junior optimes. The student taking absolutely the first place in the
mathematical tripos used to be called senior wrangler, those following
next in the same division being respectively termed second, third,
fourth, etc., wranglers. Century Dictionary.]
[Footnote 52: double-first: any candidate for the degree of Bachelor of
Arts in Oxford University who takes first-class honors in both classics
and mathematics is said to have won a double-first.]
[Footnote 53: Retzsch (1779-1857): a well-known German painter and
engraver.]
[Footnote 54: Test-Act: an English statute of 1673. It compelled all
persons holding office under the crown to take the oaths of supremacy
and of allegiance, to receive the sacrament according to the usage
of the Church of England, and to subscribe to the Declaration against
Transubstantiation.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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