me, but my conscience would not allow it, so that I found myself in small lodgings at an English watering place with nothing to do all day long but to answer a number of accumulated letters and to read The Times, which always follows me. What was I to do? Doctors ought to know that to a man accustomed to work enforced rest is quite as irritating and depressing as travaux forcés. In self-defence I at last hit on a very simple expedient. I began to write what could be written without a single book, and taking paper, pen and ink—these I had never forsworn—I jotted down some recollections of former years. The fancy took me, and I said with Goethe:—
Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten—
and after a day or two I was so absorbed in my work, if work it could be called, that I said again with Goethe:—
Ihr drängt euch zu! Nun gut, so mögt ihr walten.…
Of course I had to leave many a gap in my sketch of Auld Lang Syne. Dates, even names, would now and then leave me in the lurch, and as I had no means of verifying anything, I had to wait till I was settled again among my books and letters and papers at home. But though I corrected some glaring anachronisms and some mistaken names, I
