Volume 1

Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1903-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    59/234 page 53
    French rubbish of novels read, a German book, etc. Nothing read, nothing thought, nothing done.” Reading was only relatively less, and out-of-door life far greater than usual. Later he says, “ I do not read much.” “ I cannot be healthy anywhere under the sun.” (47.) “What a pity a man cannot sleep, and so live something like other men. . . . My sleep was a sleep as of hospitals, of men in a state of asphyxia, a confused tumult, a shifting from headache to headache.” {Ibid.) “ No man was lately busier, and few sicklier, than I now am. Work is not possible for me except in a red-hot element which wastes the life out of me. I have still three weeks of the ugliest labor (correcting proofs), and shall be fit for a hospital then.” (48.) “ The lassitude that always followed the publication of a book.” (Froude.) “ Past and Present ” was completed in February, 1843, and after six months of resting and touring he had, at Scotsbrig, in August, “no appetite for writing, for speaking, or in short, doing anything but sitting still as a stone.” (48.) “ These were times when Carlyle was like a child and a very naughty one.” “ His work would not go, . . . his task seemed impossible.” (Froude, after the return to Chelsea in October.) “ The dinner hour was changed to the middle of the day to improve the biliary condition. No result came. He walked about the streets to distract himself.” “ So it was, is, and must be with every serious man when he is first starting upon any great literary work.” (49.) “ Above a hundred museum headaches.” (49.) “ My progress in * Cromwell * is frightful. I am no day absolutely idle, but the confusions that lie in my way require far more force of energy than I can muster on most days, and I sit, not so much working as painfully looking on work.” (49.) “Lack of sleep and dull headache. Very stupid.” (49.) “ As a preliminary ” (to finishing “ Cromwell,” and getting
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3