which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every
semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to
his conscience, "You have made me wretched."

'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has wished to
be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex
observers and _prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes_
through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as I told you, at
one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the former
delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till
the whole system was laid bare.

'He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did
lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value,
considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import
from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he
adapts them, with such consummate skill.

'Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better
colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to over-
act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip off.

'In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
_he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
except to a very few_; and his constant desire of creating a sensation
makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even
though accompanied _by some dark and vague suspicions_.