He was obviously more free under the veil--free from the
liability of having to answer for the views of life or history
suggested in his stories; but besides this, what was of more
importance to him, the slight disguise stimulated his sense of humour,
and gratified the whimsical, boyish pleasure which he always had in
acting an imaginary character. He used to talk of himself as a sort of
Abou Hassan--a private man one day, and acting the part of a monarch
the next--with the kind of glee which indicated a real delight in the
change of parts, and I have little doubt that he threw himself with
the more gusto into characters very different from his own, in
consequence of the pleasure it gave him to conceive his friends
hopelessly misled by this display of traits, with which he supposed
that they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thus
besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy,
and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the
disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a
mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers.
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