'I asserted--and I repeat--that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would rather be a _man_--a man of restless and versatile intellect--who not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice[138].' The violent attack on Darwin's views by the once-famous Bishop of Oxford was outdone, a few years later, by an even more absurd outburst on the part of Benjamin Disraeli, who--after stigmatising Darwinism as the question 'Is man an ape or an angel?'--declared magniloquently to the episcopal chairman, 'My Lord, I am on the side of the angels!' But in spite of attacks like these and numerous bitter pasquinades and comic cartoons--perhaps to some extent in consequence of them--Darwin's views became widely known and eagerly discussed, so that the circulation of the _Origin of Species_ went up by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, as Huxley said, 'years had to pass away before misrepresentation, ridicule and denunciation, ceased to be the most notable constituents of the multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press.' Among his contemporary men of science Darwin could at first count few converts. Hooker, whose candid and valuable criticisms of his friend's work had been continued up to the very end during its composition, did an eminent service to the cause of Evolution by publishing, almost simultaneously with the _Origin of Species_, his splendid memoir on _The Flora of Australia, its Origin, Affinities, and Distribution_, in which similar views were, not obscurely, indicated. Of Lyell, Darwin's other friend and counsellor, Huxley justly says: 'Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the antitransmutationists (who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious _caveat_. Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite honour[139].' Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural Selection--but not without some important reservations--these, however, did not prevent him from becoming its most ardent and successful champion. Darwin used to acknowledge Huxley's great service to him in undertaking the defence of the theory--a defence which his own hatred of controversy and the state of his health made him unwilling to undertake--by laughingly calling him 'my general agent!' while Huxley himself in replying to the critics, declared that he was 'Darwin's bulldog.'