He did not reach the top, but got nearer to it than
anyone had done before.
Crowley was a voluminous writer of verse, which he published sumptuously
at his own expense. He had a gift for 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.
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