"
The grammar here is all wrong, but observe the profound goodness of
the writer; he hides nothing he knows that bereaved mother wants to
know about her Frank, her boy; and he tells her everything essential
with rude and noble tenderness, just as though the woman's sorrowing
eyes were on his face. It is a beautiful letter, bald as it is, and I
commend the style to writers on all subjects, even though a
schoolmaster could pick the syntax to pieces.
II.
ON WRITING ONESELF OUT.
Lord Beaconsfield once compared his opponents on the Treasury Bench to
a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were
full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all
sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait,
supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political
pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men;
and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah,
poor Blank seems to have written himself out!" I have occasionally
alluded to this most distressing topic, but I have never discussed it
fully.
The subject of brain-exhaustion has a very peculiar interest for the
public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose
which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad
models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by
some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering
land are also due to the purblind weakness of the exhausted man.
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