Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/216

 zeal. If you call me a bigot or a fool, it is flat blasphemy. Huxley might plead that he was not bound to use the gloves when his opponent struck with naked fists. No one has a right to object to plain speaking; and the cases in which Huxley's plain speaking is edged with scorn are always cases in which he is charging his antagonists (as I, at least, think on very strong grounds) with want of candour. Refusal to withdraw a disproved personal allegation, or an attempt to evade the issue under a cloud of irrelevant verbiage, roused his rightful indignation. 'Thou shalt not multiply words in speaking' was, he observes, an old Egyptian commandment, specially congenial to him, and most provokingly neglected by a conspicuous antagonist. A plain speaker may be pardoned for resenting attempts to evade plain issues under clouds of verbiage. His pugnacity remained to the end; a challenge to a controversy acted as a tonic, and 'set his liver right at once.' But he cannot fairly be accused of a wanton love of battle. Forced by health and circumstance to refrain from scientific research, Huxley had taken up with all available energy the old problems of religious belief. He read the latest authorities upon Biblical criticism with singular freshness of interest and keenness of