only forces him to exert his powers of vivifying the subject by happy illustration or humorous side-lights, or sometimes by outbursts of hearty pugnacity, and now and then by the eloquent passages, the more effective because under strict control, which reveal his profound sense of the vast importance of the questions at issue. He had one disadvantage as compared with Swift. If Swift wanted a fact, he had not many scruples about inventing it, whereas Huxley's most prominent intellectual quality was his fidelity to fact, or to what he was firmly convinced to be fact. This brings me to some characteristics strikingly revealed in these volumes. Huxley claims that he had always been animated by a love of truth combined with some youthful ambition. The claim, I think, is indisputable. Yet a love of truth must be considered, if I may say so, as rather a regulative than a substantive virtue. Abstract truth is a rather shadowy divinity, though a most essential guide in pursuing any great inquiry. It presupposes an interest in philosophy or science or history, and then prescribes the right spirit of research. Huxley was not one of the rare men to whom abstract speculation is a sufficient delight in itself. He was most emphatically
