When the state of his health permitted, he assiduously practised drawing and etching.

"Now as formerly," he wrote to Oeser, "art is almost my chief occupation." But he also found time for wide excursions into the fields of general literature.

Before leaving Leipzig he had exchanged with Langer "whole baskets-full" of German poets and critics for Greek authors, and these (though his knowledge of Greek remained to the end elementary) he must have read in a fashion.

Latin authors he read were Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, and Pliny.

Among the moderns Shakespeare and Moliere already held the place in his estimation which they always retained.