I do not feel sure of coming to the Harvey affair after all. But if I do, it will be alone, and I think I had better accept the hospitality of the college; which will by no means be so jolly as Shelford, but probably more prudent, considering the necessity of dining out. The fact is, my dear friend, I am getting old. I am very sorry to hear you have been doing your influenza also. It's a beastly thing, as I have it, no symptoms except going flop. 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. I really have been unable to understand what my critics have been dreaming of when they raise the objection that the ethical process being part of the cosmic process cannot be opposed to it. They might as well say that artifice does not oppose nature, because it is part of nature in the broadest sense. However, it is one of the conditions of the "Romanes Lecture" that no allusion shall be made to religion or politics. I had to make my omelette without breaking any of those eggs, and the task was not easy. The prince of scientific expositors, Faraday, was once asked, "How much may a popular lecturer suppose his audience knows?" He replied emphatically, "NOTHING." Mine was not exactly a popular audience, but I ought not to have forgotten Faraday's rule. Yours very faithfully, T.H. Huxley. [A letter of congratulation to Lord Farrer on his elevation to the peerage contains an ironical reference to the general tone of the criticisms on his lecture:--] Hodeslea, June 5, 1893. CI DEVANT CITOYEN PETION (autrefois le vertueux), You have lost all chance of leading the forces of the County Council to the attack of the Horse-Guards.