To T. H. Huxley   21 September [1871]¹

My dear Huxley

Your letter has pleased me in many ways to a wonderful degree.² I laughed over Mivart’s³ soul till my stomach was contracted into a ball, but that is a horrid sensation which you will not know.— What a wonderful man you are to grapple with those old metaphiso-divinity books. It quite delights me that you are going to some extent to answer & attack Mivart. His book, as you say, has produced a great effect: yesterday I perceived the reverberations from it even from Italy.⁴ It was this that made me ask Chauncey Wright to publish at my expence his article, which seems to me very clever, though ill-written.⁵ He has not knowledge enough to grapple with Mivart in detail. I think there can be no shadow of doubt that he is author of the article in Q. Review, in which he shows such scorn & spite towards me: this has mortified me, as he professed warm friendship towards me.⁶ Did you notice how coolly he assumes, without consulting my authorities, that I had mistaken the malar bone & premaxilla.—⁷ I wrote to Italy, & have received a fresh paper on Subject.⁸ I am preparing a new Edit. of Origin, & shall introduce a new chapter in answer to miscellaneous objections, & shall give up greater part to answer Mivart’s cases of difficulty of incipient structures being of no use; & I find it can be done easily.—⁹ He never states his case fairly & makes wonderful blunders. I have just had through great kindness of A. Agassiz abstract of his unpublished observations on the pedicellariæ of Echinodermata, showing beautifully their gradation & useful development.—¹⁰ I shall confine myself to details, & not enter on any general discussion with Mivart.— His Genesis at first appeared to me very formidable, on the principle of aggregation; but after maturely considering all that he has said, I never before in my life felt so convinced of the general truth of the Origin.— The pendulum is now swinging against one side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; & no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction, as you did at the first commencement. God forgive me for writing so long & egotistical a letter; but it is your fault, for you have so delighted me; I never presumed that you would have time to say a word in defence of the cause which you have so often defended. It will be a long babble, after we are dead & gone, as we may infer from Malthus even yet not being understood.¹¹ Great is the power of misrepresentation.

Give my love to all your family, including the dear little upcast or downcast fellow.¹² | Ever yours | C. Darwin