Huxley Memorial Lecture

Abstract

MR. ALDOUS HUXLEY gave the Huxley Memorial Lecture at the Imperial College of Science on May 4 and took as his subject “T. H. Huxley as a Man of Letters”. The lecture, which is published as a pamphlet by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., price Is. net, was a careful, thoroughly sound, and highly stimulating treatment of the subject. Mr. Huxley based his account mainly on what his grandfather had said himself about his own methods and ideals in writing, and followed this up by analysing in detail several typical specimens of Huxley's writing. It was well worth doing, and sent one back with increased pleasure to the reading of other passages of that incomparable scientific master of good English. He is everywhere vigorous, true, and terse, and it is useful, though not surprising, to learn from what Mr. Aldous Huxley tells us, that the excellent finished product was not only the result of a clear and able mind but also of long, determined, and painful practice. Huxley talked about it in some detail to several correspondents, telling Hooker in 1860 how he found it constantly more and more difficult to finish things satisfactorily (which meant that his standard was always becoming higher), and apologising to Varigny, his French translator, for the condensed and idiomatic English, “which must present many difficulties to a translator”. “Sometimes”, he says, “I write an essay half a dozen times before I get it into the proper shape. But and here was one of the great secrets of his success—“the fact is that I have a great love and respect for my native tongue and take great pains to use it properly.”