By making him out to seem to be more than he was, he gave him an inflated sense of his own importance. Now, of course, this is not necessarily in itself a bad thing to have: such people are often motivated to get things done, and often those things are worth doing. After all, for a writer to put pen to paper in the first place he must believe that he has someting to say that it is important for other people to hear. Since a precise sense of one's own importance is rare, this is more likely to arise out of an exaggerated sense of importance.

Robin Waterfield