After getting through the winter successfully I have had the ill-fortune to be seized with influenza. I believe I must have got it from the microbes haunting some of the three hundred doctors at the Virchow dinner. [On the 16th March.] I had next to no symptoms except debility, and though I am much better I cannot quite shake that off. As usual with me it affects my voice. I hope this will get right before this day month, but I expect I shall have to nurse it. I do not want to interfere with any of your hospitable plans, and I think if you will ensure me quiet on the morning of the 18th (I understand the lecture is in the afternoon) it will suffice. After the thing is over I am ready for anything from pitch and toss onwards. [Two more letters dated before the 18th of May touch on the circumstances of the lecture. One is to his son-in-law, John Collier; the other to his old friend Tyndall, the last he ever wrote him, and containing a cheery reference to the advance of old age.] Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 9, 1893. My dear Jack, ...M-- is better, and I am getting my voice back. But may St. Ernulphus' curse descend on influenza microbes! They tried to work their way out at my nose, and converted me into a disreputable Captain Costigan-looking person ten days ago. Now they are working at my lips. For the credit of the family I hope I shall be more reputable by the 18th. I hope you will appreciate my dexterity. The lecture is a regular egg-dance. That I should discourse on Ethics to the University of Oxford and say all I want to say, without a word anybody can quarrel with, is decidedly the most piquant occurrence in my career... Ever yours affectionately, Pater. To Professor Tyndall. P.S. to be read first. Eastbourne, May 15, 1893. My dear Tyndall, There are not many apples (and those mostly of the crab sort) left upon the old tree, but I send you the product of the last shaking. Please keep it out of any hands but your wife's and yours till Thursday, when I am to "stand and deliver" it, if I have voice enough, which is doubtful. The sequelae of influenza in my case have been mostly pimples and procrastination, the former largely on my nose, so that I have been a spectacle. Besides these, loss of voice. The pimples are mostly gone and the procrastination is not much above normal, but what will happen when I try to fill the Sheldonian Theatre is very doubtful. Who would have thought thirty-three years ago, when the great "Sammy" fight came off, that the next time I should speak at Oxford would be in succession to Gladstone, on "Evolution and Ethics" as an invited lecturer? There was something so quaint about the affair that I really could not resist, though the wisdom of putting so much strain on my creaky timbers is very questionable. Mind you wish me well through it at 2.30 on Thursday.