He was was narcissistic, irresponsible, good-humored, impetuous, captivating, Machiavellian; he could be mendacious and arrogant one moment, shockingly frank and self-effacing the next. He underwent drastic swings from gloom to euphoria and back again, and more than once demonstrated his ability (in the words of his latest biographer) to “confess spiritual despair at midday; and dine out brilliantly at midnight.” He truthfully called himself “a dreaming & therefore, an indolent man,” yet he was also a tireless hiker and mountain climber and a passionate, prolific writer (though not a productive poet) whose collected works fill more than two dozen capacious, closely printed volumes. He frequently expressed a powerful self-loathing, but rarely exhibited self-discipline. He had a genius for winning the friendship of intelligent and wealthy people, for making himself the beneficiary of their affection and largesse, and for disrupting their lives entirely; though he was supported, during most of his adult life, by a generous patron of the china-manufacturing Wedg wood family, he seems eternally to have been in debt, and habitually cadged money from friends (and, on at least one occasion, broke off correspondence in righteous indignation when a loan didn’t materialize). He made a virtual career of planning new household arrangements, relocations, and ambitious literary projects, but was congenitally almost incapable of applying himself steadily to a long-term project. A comment, made in 1796 by his lifelong friend Charles Lamb, that “I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your plans of fife, veering about