Root damage is a common problem of overbrushing.

The 40-year-old is happy to put his body on the line in other ways, swapping a mug of tea for a fan’s double pint of lager and messily necking it in one.

… Curmudgeons among Books, are as discoverable as those among Bags; and … they may lose more Honour and Credit, than gain Wisdom or Happiness, by the fruitless Amassment and Imprisonment of either.

Some traces of lonely-heartedness we find in all his poems, and shall probably find them to the end, although less intensely saddening than in his Threnody of Night and Morning.