Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/204

 serious matters which gives a charm to his casual phrases. Sometimes it shows itself in a bit of friendly 'chaff.' When Matthew Arnold has appropriated—unconsciously, let us hope—an umbrella at the Athenæum, Huxley slyly exhorts him to consider what that excellent prelate, Arnold's favourite Bishop Wilson, would have advised in a case of covetousness. An excellent example of grave logic conveyed in an apologue is the letter in answer to Cardinal Manning's defence of indiscriminate charity. Huxley had told an Irish carman to drive fast, and the man set off at a hand-gallop. 'Do you know where you are going?' cried Huxley. 'No, yer honner, but anny way I'm driving fast!' A phrase in a letter to Mrs. Clifford dashes out a quaint comment upon human nature. 'Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice, with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset; and when they can do exactly as they please, are very hard to drive.' This, says Mr. Leonard Huxley, sounds like a bit of his conversation, and in a very interesting description Sir Spencer Walpole remarks on that manifestation of his powers. Huxley, he says, could always put his finger on