AULD LANG SYNE [Illustration: F. Max Müller] AULD LANG SYNE BY THE RT. HON. PROFESSOR F. MAX MÜLLER AUTHOR OF THE “SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE,” ETC. _WITH A PORTRAIT_ New York CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK PREFACE What are you to do when you are sent away by your doctor for three or four weeks of perfect rest? You are made to promise that you will lie perfectly fallow, take no books and allow no proofsheets to reach you. A very eminent German professor, the late Dr. Neander, the famous Church historian, solved the difficulty in his own way. He had faithfully promised his physician that he would take no books with him to Karlsbad, but had at last, as a great favour, obtained permission to take at least one work with him on his journey. On the morning of his departure the doctor wished to say good-bye to his patient, and calling at his door saw a cart laden with heavy folios. “But, dear professor,” he said, with considerable surprise and displeasure, “you had promised me to take no books with you.” “Yes, doctor,” the professor replied, “but you allowed me one work, so I thought I might take the Fathers with me to Karlsbad.” I might have done the same, if I had taken the “Rig Veda” only, or the Sacred Books of the East with 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....