Note 3 — Chapter XI · WHAT MANNER OF MAN
Reading edition
He loved music, was a good judge of it, and composed it readily and well. He loved flowers as all other things beautiful—of course, being an artist born and the instinct ineradicable in him! That charming poem of his, “The Flowers of Heidelberg”3 was written in the intervals between his pursuits of the most advanced discoveries and driest facts in ophthalmology, surgery, ethnology, entomology, anthropology, and the penning of some of the fiercest passages of condensed wrath to be found in any language. It is likely that he saw nothing grotesque in these abrupt transitions; perfectly sincere men have little time for such nice questionings. If we regard the making of poetry as the serious business of his soul, which it was, his chief intellectual relaxation was chess, of which, by the time of his second visit to Madrid, he had become a notable player.4