lmaster 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. The
wrought-out writer is not permitted to cease from work; he goes on
droning out his fixed quantity of mortal dreariness day by day and
week by week until his mind spins along a particular groove, and he
probably repeats himself every day of his life without being aware
that he is anything but brilliantly original. I am obliged to study
many novels, and I know many most successful workers who at this
present time are turning out the same fiction under varied names with
monotonous regularity. They are not quite like an old hand whom I knew
long ago, who used to promote the characters in novelettes of his own
and turn them on to the market again and again; the effusions of this
genius were not of sufficient importance to attract attention from
folk with clear memories, and I believe that he escaped detection in a
miraculous way. His untitled country gentleman became a baronet, the
injured heroine was similarly moved up on the social scale, and the
noble effort came forth with a fresh name, while the knowing old
impostor chuckled in his garret and pouched his pittance. I believe
the funny soul has passed away; but really there are many very
pretentious persons who do little more than vary his methods
unconsciously. Poor James Grant delighted many a schoolboy, and
perhaps his best work was never quite so much appreciated as it ou