That also is a mode, we need not say of
intoxication, but of insobriety. Thus also a man walks in a strong
sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial
meditations. And whether he be really so clever or so strong as he
supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera while it lasts.
The influence of this giddy air displays itself in many secondary
ways. A certain sort of laboured pleasantry has already been
recognised, and may perhaps have been remarked in these papers, as
a sort peculiar to that climate. People utter their judgments with
a cannonade of syllables; a big word is as good as a meal to them;
and the turn of a phrase goes further than humour or wisdom. By
the professional writer many sad vicissitudes have to be undergone.
At first he cannot write at all. The heart, it appears, is unequal
to the pressure of business, and the brain, left without
nourishment, goes into a mild decline. Next, some power of work
returns to him, accompanied by jumping headaches. Last, the spring
is opened, and there pours at once from his pen a world of blatant,
hustling polysyllables, and talk so high as, in the old joke, to be
positively offensive in hot weather. He writes it in good faith
and with a sense of inspiration; it is only when he comes to read
what he has written that surprise and disquiet seize upon his mind.
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