were two letters he received when he began lecturing, and which he
kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled "Good Advice." One was
from a "working man" of his Monday evening audience in Jermyn Street,
in 1855; the other, undated, from Mr. Jodrell, a great benefactor of
science, who had heard him at the Royal Institution. These warned him
against his habits of lecturing in a colloquial tone, which might suit
a knot of students gathered round his table, but not a large audience;
of running his words, especially technical terms, together, and of
pouring out unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed. These early faults
were so glaring that one institute in St. John's Wood, after hearing
him, petitioned "not to have that young man again." He worked hard
to cure himself, and the later audiences who flocked to his lectures
could never have guessed at his early failings. The flow was as clear
and even as the arrangement of the matter was lucid; the voice was
not loud, but so distinct that it carried to the furthest benches.
No syllable was slurred, no point hurried over. All this made for
the lucid and comprehensible; well-chosen language and fine utterance
shaped a perfect vehicle of thought. But it was the lucidity of the
thought itself, thus expressed, that gave his lectures their quality.
A clever and accomplished lady once, in intimate conversation, asked
Mrs. Huxley what the reason could be that every one praised her
husband so highly as a lecturer. "I can't understand it. He just lets
the subject explain itself, and that's all." Profound, if unintended,
compliment. It was his power of seeing things clearly, stripped of
their non-essentials, that enabled him to make others see them
clearly also. Nor did he forget the saying of that prince of popular
expositors, Faraday, who, when asked, "How much may a popular lecturer
suppose his audience knows?" replied emphatically, "Nothing." This
same faculty, no doubt, was that which enabled him to write such
admirable elementary text-books--a task which he regarded as one of