a still more intense degree, alive to their censure. Even the
strange, perverse pleasures which he felt in painting himself
unamiably to the world did not prevent him from being both
startled and pained when the world took him at his word; and,
like a child in a mask before a looking-glass, the dark
semblance which he had half in sport, put on, when reflected
back upon him from the mirror of public opinion, shocked even
himself.

"Thus surrounded by vexations, and thus deeply feeling them,
it is not too much to say, that any other spirit but his own
would have sunk under the struggle, and lost, perhaps,
irrecoverably, that level of self-esteem which alone affords a
stand against the shocks of fortune. But in him,--furnished as
his mind was with reserves of strength, waiting to be called
out,--the very intensity of the pressure brought relief by the
proportionate reaction which it produced. Had his
transgressions and frailties been visited with no more than
their due portion of punishment, there can be little doubt
that a very different result would have ensued. Not only would
such an excitement have been insufficient to waken up the new
energies still dormant in him, but that consciousness of his
own errors, which was for ever livelily present in his mind,
would, under such circumstances, have been left, undisturbed
by any unjust provocation, to work its usual softening and,
perhaps, humbling influences on his spirit. But,--luckily, as
it proved, for the further triumphs of his genius,--no such
moderation was exercised. The storm of invective raised around
him, so utterly out of proportion with his offences, and the
base calumnies that were everywhere heaped upon his name, left