special
studies he was chiefly known as a vigorous champion of Darwinism and a
something more than vigorous aggressor in the cause of Agnosticism (a
word which he himself did much to spread), attacking supernaturalism of
every kind, and (though disclaiming materialism and not choosing to call
himself an atheist) unceasingly demanding that all things should submit
themselves to naturalist criticism. A great number of brilliant essays
and lectures were composed by him on different parts of what may be
called the debateable land between science, philosophy, and theology.
And one of his most characteristic and masterly single studies was a
little book on Hume, contributed to the series of "English Men of
Letters" in 1879.

This varied, copious, and brilliant polemic may or may not have been
open in substance to the charge which the bolder and more thoroughgoing
defenders of orthodoxy brought against it, that it committed the logical
error of demanding submission on the part of supernaturalism to laws and
limits to which, by its very essence, supernaturalism disclaimed
allegiance. But the form of it was excellent. Mr. Huxley had read much,
and had borrowed weapons and armour from more than one Schoolman and
Father as well as from purely profane authors. He had an admirable
style, free alike from the great faults of his contemporaries,
"preciousness" and slipshodness, and a knack of crisp but not too
mannered phrase recalling that of Swift or, still more, of Bentley. It
has been said, with some truth as well as with some paradox, that a
literary critic of the very first class was lost in him, at the salvage
only of some scientific monographs, which like all their kind will be
antiquated some day, and of some polemics which must suffer equally from
the touch of time.

CHAPTER XI

DRAMA

At no period, probably, in the history of English literature, from the
sixteenth century until that with which we are now dealing, would it
have been possible to compress the history of the drama during a hundred
years into the space which it is here proposed to give it. If we were
dealing with the works of living men the historian might be justly
charged with arrogant incompetence in not taking more notice of them.
But, fortunately, that is not the case; and the brevity of the treatment
is equally compatible with a belief that the plays of the present day
are masterpieces, and with a suspicion that they are not. As to the past
we