of a book, can recite the whole word for word, whether prose or verse.
Single phrases embodying a notable image would remain with him, and
remain ready for use as allusive colour or pointed epigram. Many of
these were Biblical phrases, for he knew his Bible well, and admired
not only the grandeur of thought to be found enshrined in it, but its
magnificence as a treasure-house of our English tongue. And, apart
from many scientific terms of his invention, he coined divers words
and phrases which have enriched our language, such as "Agnostic,"
"the ladder from the gutter to the university," the descriptions of
Positivism as "Catholicism without Christianity," and the Salvation
Army methods as "Corybantic Christianity."

His working day began soon after nine, for he was never one of those
people who can do hours of work before breakfast. The working day,
however, regularly went on until midnight, and, as has been mentioned,
was often prolonged by late reading.

The speed with which his mind worked to see through complex questions
and spring swiftly to a conclusion was such that he contrived to do
four ordinary men's work in a single lifetime. But this swiftness of
reaching a conclusion, so useful at most times, was liable sometimes
to betray him. If, however, he found that he had made a mistake, he
was ready to confess the fact. The most celebrated instance of this
was the story of _Bathybius_. In 1868, while soundings were being made
in connection with the laying of the Atlantic cable, certain specimens
of mud were dredged up. The mud was sticky, owing to the presence of
innumerable lumps of a transparent gelatinous substance. This was
in fine granules, which possessed neither a nucleus nor a covering
membrane. Scattered through it were calcareous coccoliths. Such
were the facts; what inference was to be drawn? The only thing this
substance resembled was one of the many simple forms of oceanic life
recently found and described by the great zoologist Haeckel.

I conceive [wrote Huxley] that the granulate heaps and the
transparent gelatinous matter in which they are embedded
represent masses of protoplasm. Take away the cysts which
characterize the _Radiolaria_, and a dead _Sphaerozoum_ would
very nearly represent one of this deep-sea "Urschleim," which
must, I think, be regarded as a new form of those simple
animated beings which have recently been so well described by
Haeckel in his _Mono