a commanding influence on a wicked and perverse generation.

And this view of the man is rather confirmed by his own
"Confessions,"--a singularly attractive book, yet from which, after the
perusal of the long catalogue of his sorrows, joys, humiliations,
triumphs, ecstasies and miseries, glories and shame, one rises with
great disappointment, since no great truths, useful lessons, or even
ennobling sentiments are impressed upon the mind to make us wiser or
better. The "Confessions" are only a revelation of that sensibility,
excessive and morbid, which reminds us of Byron and his misanthropic
poetry,--showing a man defiant, proud, vain, unreasonable, unsatisfied,
supremely worldly and egotistic. The first six Books are mere annals of
sentimental debauchery; the last six, a kind of thermometer of
friendship, containing an accurate account of kisses given and
received, with slights, huffs, visits, quarrels, suspicions, and
jealousies, interspersed with grand sentiments and profound views of
life and human nature, yet all illustrative of the utter vanity of
earth, and the failure of all mortal pleasures to satisfy the cravings
of an immortal mind. The "Confessions" remind us of "Manfred" and
"Ecclesiastes" blended,--exceedingly readable, and often
unexceptionable, where virtue is commended and vice portrayed in its
true light, but on the whole a book which no unsophisticated or
inexperienced person can read without the consciousness of receiving a
moral taint; a book in no respect leading to repose or lofty
contemplation, or to submission to the evils of life, which it
catalogues with amazing detail; a book not even conducive to innocent
entertainment. It is the revelation of the inner life of a sensualist,
an egotist, and a hypocrite, with a maudlin although genuine admiration
for Nature and virtue and friendship and love. And the book reveals one
of the most miserable and dissatisfied men that ever walked the earth,