rhyming, and his verse is not
entirely without merit. He had been greatly influenced by Swinburne and
Robert Browning. He was grossly, but not unintelligently, imitative. As
you flip through the pages you may well read a stanza which, if you
came across it in a volume of Swinburne's, you would accept without
question as the work of the master. '_It's rather hard, isn't it, Sir,
to make sense of it?_' If you were shown this line and asked what poet
had written it, I think you would be inclined to say, Robert Browning.
You would be wrong. It was written by Aleister Crowley.

At the time I knew him he was dabbling in Satanism, magic and the occult.
There was just then something of a vogue in Paris for that sort of thing,
occasioned, I surmise, by the interest that was still taken in a book of
Huysmans's, _La Bas_. Crowley told fantastic stories of his experiences,
but it was hard to say whether he was telling the truth or merely pulling
your leg. During that winter I saw him several times, but never after I
left Paris to return to London. Once, long afterwards, I received a
telegram from him which ran as follows: 'Please send twenty-five pounds
at once. Mother of God and I starving. Aleister Crowley.' I did not do
so, and he lived on for many disgraceful years.

I was glad to get back to London. My old friend had by then rooms in Pall
Mall, and I was able to take a bedroom in the same building and use his
sitting-room to work in. _The Magician_ was published in 1908, so I
suppose it was written during the first six months of 1907. I do not
remember how I came to think that Aleister Crowley might serve as the
model for the character whom I called Oliver Haddo; nor, indeed,
how I came to think of writing that particular novel at all. When, a
little while ago, my publisher expressed a wish to reissue it, I felt
that, before consenting to this, I really should read it again. Nearly
fifty years had passed since I had done so, and I had completely
forgotten it. Some authors enjoy reading their old works; some cannot
bear to. Of these I am. When I have corrected the proofs of a book, I
have finished with it for good and all. I am impatient when people insist
on talking to me about it; I am glad if they like it, but do not much
care if they don't. I am no more interested in it than in a worn-out
suit of clothes that I have given away. It was thus with disinclination
that I began to read _The Magician_. It held my interest, as two