" To
outsiders the advice may seem like a piece of grotesque fun; but those
who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very
easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves
him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will
read eagerly for a few days or weeks in order to get up a subject; but
the pure delight in literature for its own sake has left him, and he
is as decidedly prosaic a tradesman as his own hosier. Such a man soon
joins the written-out division, and, unless he travels much or has a
keenly humorous eye for the things about him, he runs a very good
chance of becoming an intolerable bore. He forgets that the substance
of his brain is constantly fading, and that he needs not only to
replenish the physical substance of the organ by constant care, but to
replenish all his dwindling stores of knowledge, ideas, and even of
verbal resources. Among the older authors there were some who offered
melancholy spectacles of mental exhaustion; and the practised reader
knows how to look for particular features in their work, just as he
looks for Wouvermans' white horse and Beaumont's brown tree.
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