(JfitgUsil) Mm of Hfttfis 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MOELEY 
 
 DE QUINCEY 
 
DE QUINCEY 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID MASSON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO, LIMITED 
 ST. MAKTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1909 
 
First Edition 1881 
 
 Reprinted 1885, 1888, 1902, 1909 
 
 Library Edition 1902 
 
 Pocket Edition 1909 
 

 /-/y^ 
 
 r'f' 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 For matters of fact in the following pages the chief 
 authorities are the collective edition of De Quincey's 
 works in sixteen volumes, published by Messrs. A, & C. 
 Black of Edinburgh, and the Life of De Quincey in two 
 volumes by Mr. H. A. Page (London, John Hogg & Co., 
 1877). This last, the only extensive and complete Life of 
 De Quincey in the language, contains a large quantity of 
 biographical information supplied to Mr. Page by the 
 family of De Quincey, and by friends and correspondents 
 of his, much of it in the form of interesting letters and 
 papers never before made public. Such information had 
 long been desired in vain; and till the appearance of 
 Mr. Page's work little more was known about De 
 Quincey's life than had been revealed by himself in the 
 autobiographical portions of his writings. While, how- 
 ever, Mr. Page's work and those autobiographical writings 
 of De Quincey have been th'e main authorities for facts 
 and dates, there have been miscellaneous gleanings from 
 other quarters. The chronological list of De Quincey^s 
 magazine-writings drawn up by Mr. H. G. Bohn, and 
 inserted in the article " Quincey, De " in his edition of 
 Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, has been of much 
 use ; and among smaller memoirs consulted I may mention 
 the article on De Quincey in the current edition 
 
 O s^ r^- V> -? ^ 
 
vi PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written by ]\Ir. J. R. 
 Findlay, one of the most intimate friends of De Quincey 
 in his last years. At various points a little independent 
 research has been found necessary, chiefly in the form of 
 an inspection of the old volumes of the magazines and 
 other periodicals in which De Quincey's papers originally 
 appeared. For the rest, I have some advantage in having 
 myself met and conversed with De Quincey, so as to 
 retain a perfect recollection of his appearance, voice, and 
 manner, and in being familiar with the scenes amid 
 which he spent the last nine-and-twenty years of his life. 
 
 Edinburgh, 
 
 A2igust, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pakeniage, Ixfanxy, and Childhood ..... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Boyhood axd Changes of School, with a Tour ix 
 
 Ireland 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Vagrancy in North Wales and in London . . .28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Mainly at Oxford, with Visits to London and the Lakes 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Bachelor Life at the Lakes . . . . . . 45 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Married Life at the Lakes: Prostration under Opi uji : 
 
 Provincial Editorship ....... 59 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Partly in London, Partly at the Lakes, Partly in Edin- 
 burgh : The " Confessions" and other Articles in the 
 "London Magazine," and First Articles in "Black- 
 wood" .......... 70 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 : MoKP: CONTRTBI 
 
 WOOD," WITH Articles in "Tait's Magazine" . , 86 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Wholly in Edinburgh : Moke Contributions to " Black- 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lasswade and Edinburgh, with Visits to Glasgow.- More 
 
 Contributions to "Blackwood" and " Tait " . . 96 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Lasswade, and No. 42 Lothian Street, Edinburgh : The 
 
 Collected Works : Last Days of De Quincey . , 112 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 De Quincey's Writings : General Characteristics . . 135 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 De Quincey's Writings : Classification and Review . 159 
 
 I. Descriptive, Biographical, and Historical . . 160 
 
 11. Speculative, Didactic^ and Critical . . . 171 
 
 III. Imaginative Writings and Prose Poetry . . 185 
 
 INDEX ............ 201 
 
DE QUINCEY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 
 
 1785—1796. 
 
 De Quincey took some pains to explain that his family 
 was not, as the form of the name might suggest, a recent 
 French importation into England, but had come in with 
 the Conquest. Genealogists, indeed, find that the first of 
 the English De Quinceys was a certain companion of the 
 Conqueror, named Eichard, probably of ]!^orwegian descent, 
 though hailing more immediately from the village or dis- 
 trict of Quince in French Is^ormandy. His descendants 
 became great personages in England, reaching their highest 
 in one or two De Quinceys who were Earls of Winchester 
 in the thirteenth century. De Quincey, while dwelling 
 with fondness on these associations with his name, admits 
 that the Earls of Winchester and their shadowy crusading 
 retinue *' suddenly came to grief," and that most of the 
 English De Quinceys for many generations before his own 
 time had been very insignificant and obscure persons. 
 With other English families of like origin, they had 
 dropt the aristocratic prefix De ; in addition to which 
 
 B 
 
2 /;, ■ ; ' : ' -D^ QUTNCJ^.Y [chap. 
 
 they had consented, in the easy old days of optional 
 spelling, to be Quincys or Qidncies or Quinceys, just as 
 it might please their neighbours. 
 
 It seems to have been De Quincey himself, though he 
 does not mention the matter, who resuscitated the prefix 
 De (which he always wrote, however, with the small d 
 and not with the capital) in his particular branch of the 
 family. His father, at all events, called himself Thomas 
 Quincey. This father of De Quincey must have been a 
 rather interesting man. He is described by his son as 
 having been " literary to the extent of having written a 
 book ;" which book has been identified by very recent 
 research with an anonymous octavo volume or pamphlet 
 published in London in 1775, and entitled A Short Tour 
 in the Midland Counties of England, i^er formed in the 
 Summer of 111 '2 : together with an Account of a Similar 
 Excursion undertaken September 1774. The greater part 
 of the contents of the volume had previously appeared in 
 five successive instalments in the Gentleman's Magazine 
 for May, June, July, August, and September, 1774, under 
 the title " A Tour in the Midland Counties of England, 
 
 performed in the summer of 1772. (By T Q ) ;" 
 
 and the separate publication, as a preface explains, was 
 occasioned partly by the author's resentment of the liberties 
 that had been taken with the original text by the editor 
 of the magazine, and partly by a desire to improve the 
 piece into " a less soporific potion for the mental taste of 
 his friends." Though in the form of brief business-like 
 notes, the performance is altogether very creditable. The 
 jottings give the author's observations of the state of 
 farming, draining, manufactures, mining industry, &c., in 
 the district traversed, with hints of decided opinions of 
 his own on several vexed economic questions. There is 
 
1.] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 3 
 
 an eye also for the picturesque in scenery, and for archi- 
 tectural beauties or defects in towns, churches, and country 
 seats ; and the style is that of a well-educated man, accus- 
 tomed to write English. Once or twice the language rises 
 towards the poetic, and once there is an admiring quota- 
 tion from Beattie's Minstrel, the first part of which had 
 recently appeared. At the time of this first and only 
 literary venture of De Quincey's father he cannot have 
 been more than three-and-twenty years of age ; and one 
 infers, from the matter of the performance, that he was 
 then residing in London, in some commercial occupation 
 which took him occasionally on a circuit northwards. 
 There is a suggestion of previous acquaintance with 
 Lincolnshire, and of some special connexion wdth that 
 county. There would be little difficulty, we suppose, in 
 investigating these antecedents of the interesting T. Q. 
 of 1774 ; meanwhile what concerns us here is that 
 within about five years from that date he is found settled 
 in Manchester as a rising merchant, with his town-house 
 or place of business in Fountain Street, and with extensive 
 transactions and correspondence, especially with Portugal, 
 America, and the West Indies. He had then married a 
 Miss Penson, a lady of very good family connexions, two 
 brothers of whom, younger than herself, went out soon 
 afterwards to Bengal as officers in the service of the East 
 India Company. Of this marriage there were born, 
 between 1779 and 1792, eight children in all, four of them 
 sons and four daughters. Our De Quincey, the fifth 
 child and the second son, was born on the 15th of August, 
 1785, when his father was about thirty-three years of age, 
 and his mother about three years younger. 
 
 The memoirs of De Quincey have been wonderfully 
 unanimous in the statement that he was born at a country 
 
4 DE QUINCEY. [chak. 
 
 house of his father's, called Greenhay, in what was then 
 a perfectly rustic neighbourhood, about a mile out of 
 Manchester. The statement is a blunder. De Quincey 
 himself distinctly informs us that he was born in Man- 
 chester, though he passed the whole of his childliood, after 
 the first few^ weeks of his existence, in a rural seclusion 
 near the town. He informs us further that this suburban 
 seclusion, the habitual abode of the fannly after his birth, 
 as distinct from the town- house or place of business which 
 his father continued to keep up in Fountain Street, was 
 first in " a pretty rustic dwelling " called The Farm, and 
 not till about 1791 or 1792 in the larger country-house of 
 Greenhay, which his father had then just built and 
 equipped at an expense of about 6000/. The name 
 Greenhay, he adds, was then an invention of his mother's, 
 partly in recognition of the vicinity of a hamlet called 
 Greenhill, and partly to signify, by revival of the old 
 English word hay, meaning hedge or hedge-row (same as 
 the French haie), that the domicile was characteristically 
 a country mansion, with lawns and gardens, sequestered 
 within gates and a verdant ring-fence. The priority of 
 " The Farm " to " Greenhay " is indubitable. 
 
 In the life of De Quincey even such a trifle is worth 
 noting. In no autobiography do the recollections of 
 mere infancy and childhood occupy so much space, or 
 count for so much, as in his. Accordingly, while the 
 general impression he conveys of himself from his second 
 or third year onwards is that of a very diminutive, shy, 
 sensitive, and dreamy child, moving about, when out of 
 doors, always on green turf or in garden-walks, and with- 
 in doors always among young brothers and sisters in a 
 house of wealthy and even luxurious elegance, the 
 actual incidents of his infancy and childhood which he 
 
I.] PAEENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 5 
 
 has embalmed for us so carefully in such marvellous prose 
 have to be distributed between the two habitations above 
 named, once visible on the rustic margin of Manchester, 
 but now engulfed in its brick and uproar. It was at 
 " The Farm " that he had the " remarkable dream of terrific 
 grandeur about a favourite nurse," which proved to him 
 afterwards that his dreaming tendencies had been constitu- 
 tional ; it was here that the first sense of pathos had come 
 over him, in watching, very early in spring, the appearance 
 of some crocuses ; and it was here that he had his first 
 experiences of death in a household. Of his three sisters 
 older than himself, Jane, the second in age, died before 
 he was two years old ; and he could remember the whisper 
 that ran through the housCj muffled so as not to reach his 
 mother, of some harsh treatment of the dying sufferer by 
 one of the female servants. Then, four years later, came 
 the death of the eldest sister, Elizabeth, the gentlest and 
 best beloved, his instructress and constant companion, 
 whose image, and the signs of whose noble intellectual 
 promise in her face and forehead, thougli she had not 
 attained her tenth year, were to dwell with him, like a 
 visionary guardianship from the spiritual world, through 
 all the future years of his own life. Who can forget the 
 pages in which he tells of the trance of reverie and 
 delirium which fell upon him that bright midsummer day, 
 when he had stolen alone into the chamber where the 
 little corpse lay, and, in the flood of sunshine that streamed 
 into the chamber from the cloudless sky without, there 
 seemed suddenly to moan forth a solemn wind, " a wind 
 that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thou- 
 sand centuries," rising and swelling till the eye partook of 
 the magic of the ear, and the billows of unearthly music 
 seemed to tend to a shaft that ran upwards in quest of 
 
6 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 the throne of God 1 All these incidents, in their literal 
 original, or in the transfiguration given to them by poetic 
 memory, have to be referred to the period when " Green- 
 hay " was yet to come ; and, when we do enter that house, 
 in the year 1792, it is with the knowledge of a new fact 
 in the family history. De Quincey, then in his seventh 
 year, had seen, he tells us, so little of his father that, if 
 the two had met anywhere by chance, they would not 
 have known each other. The merchant, though in the 
 prime of his manhood, had long been the prey of a 
 pulmonary consumption ; and for several years he had 
 been in the habit, for the benefit of his health, while 
 attending to his foreign and colonial business transactions, 
 of residing as much as possible in Lisbon or Madeira, or 
 in some of the West India Islands, with but occasional 
 visits to England. But, one day, when the house of 
 Greenhay was still somewhat of a novelty, and the mother 
 had gone to meet her invalid husband at the port where 
 he was expected, it was known to the children that their 
 father was coming home. He was coming home, in fact, 
 to die. For hours, in the summer evening, the children 
 and servants had been on the lawn before the house, 
 listening for the sound of wheels in the winding lane that 
 led from the main road ; and it was not till near midnight 
 that the horses' heads emerged from the gloom, the carriage 
 then approaching the house at a hearse-like pace, and 
 the white pillows on which the invalid was propped 
 catching the eye of the child and striking his imagination 
 with a ghastly effect. For several weeks the invalid 
 languished on a sofa, his quietest and most dreamy child 
 admitted to him in his waking hours more than the rest, 
 and standing beside him with the rest when he died. 
 By the father's death, the family, consisting of the 
 
I.] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 7 
 
 mother and six children, the last posthumously born, was 
 left poorer than it had been, but still in clear possession 
 of 1600/. a year. The allowance for each of the four sons 
 was to be 150/. a year, and that for each of the two sur- 
 viving daughters 100/. a year, while the rest seems to 
 have been left at the disposal of the mother. In the 
 guardianship of the children till they came of age there 
 were associated with the mother four selected friends of 
 the father, living in or near Manchester ; but the real 
 management for the time w^as with the mother. De 
 Quincey's mentions of his mother are uniformly respectful 
 and reverent, with just a shade of critical remark on that 
 side of her character which ruled her relations to himself. 
 Of stately social ways and refined tastes, and of even 
 rare natural endowments, she was, De Quincey says, 
 though in no sense professedly a literary woman, yet 
 emphatically "an intellectual woman," whose letters 
 among her friends, if they could have been collected and 
 published, would have been found hardly inferior, for the 
 racy grace of their idiomatic English, to those of Lady 
 ]\rary AYortley ]\Iontagu. But there was, he hints, a 
 touch too much of Roman firmness or hardness in her, 
 w^hich, especially after her friendship with Hannah More 
 and other notables of the Clapham Evangelical Sect had 
 confirmed her in their rigid views of religion, disqualified 
 her for the peculiarly sympathetic treatment required by 
 at least one of her sons. The present writer knew a 
 venerable lady who, in her youth, had seen much of De 
 Quincey's mother ; and her account tallied closely with 
 De Quincey's own. Indeed, this venerable lady, being 
 herself a strict religionist of the antique evangelical type, 
 retained to the last an opinion of De Quincey which she 
 had probably caught from colloquies with his mother con- 
 
8 DE QUIXCEY. [chap. 
 
 ceriiing him in his most dubious days. A stately woman, 
 every inch a lady, moving in the best county circles, and 
 with her feet on the Rock of Ages, — such was, and always 
 had been, De Quincey's mother ; as for the son, celebrity 
 or no celebrity, what was he but a waif 1 
 
 For four years after the death of De Quincey's father, 
 or from 1792 to 1796, the widow continued to live at 
 Greenhay, with her orphan children about her, doing her 
 best for their education. We hardly know when De 
 Quincey began to read, and write ; but, from all he tells 
 us of the years of his life that have now been sketched, 
 one infers that, with perhaps too little music or other 
 kindred recreation in the house, reading had been abso- 
 lutely unrestricted for him and his sisters, and that he 
 had been always with one of them when he could, or in a 
 quiet corner by himself, conning some delicious piece of 
 juvenile verse or prose. Dr. Johnson and Cowper were 
 then the English authors of greatest recent repute ; but, 
 in addition to the Bible, it is of Mrs. Barbauld's books 
 and the Arabian Nights that we hear as first fascinating 
 the De Quincey children and moving them to questions. 
 In one very suggestive chapter, treating of the power of 
 individual passages in books to find out the minds fitted 
 for their reception, De Quincey cites as an instance in his 
 own case the effect upon him, in his childhood, of the 
 opening passage in the story of Aladdin. That there 
 should be a magician dwelling in the depths of Africa, 
 and aware of an enchanted lamp, imprisoned somewhere 
 in a subterranean chamber, which could be found out only 
 by the child predestined for the adventure, and that this 
 magician, by putting his ear to the ground and listening 
 to the sounds of the footsteps of all the human beings 
 living on the globe^ should know for certain that the 
 
I.] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 9 
 
 predestined finder of tlie lamp was a little boy then 
 running about, thousands of miles off, in the streets of 
 Bagdad, was a revelation of the universal connexions of 
 things which gave rise to no end of pondering. This 
 from the Arabian Nig Jits, and an anecdote of noble 
 revenge picked out of a historical miscellany, were, we are 
 given to understand, the passages of literature that had 
 fastened most strongly on the little De Quincey at the 
 time when his sister Elizabeth was still alive to share his 
 enthusiasms. At the date at which we have now arrived, 
 however, there was a change of circumstances. The boy 
 had come to an age wdien home-teaching and miscellaneous 
 voluntary reading were to be supplemented by something 
 more regular, in the shape of daily lessons under a tutor 
 conveniently near. The tutor chosen was the Kev. S. H., 
 one of tlie guardians of the children by their father's will, 
 and then curate of a church in the part of Manchester 
 called Salford. To the house of this Mr. S. H., about 
 two miles from Greenhay, the little fellow was to trudge 
 daily for his lessons in the morning, returning in the 
 afternoon. This would not have mattered much if he had 
 remained still the eldest boy in the Greenhay household. 
 But, since the father's death, there had come to live at 
 Greenhay, and to partake in the lessons from Mr. S H. at 
 Salford, Master William De Quincey himself, the very 
 top of the family, full tw^elve years of age, or about five 
 years older than Thomas. Hitherto Thomas had known 
 little or nothing of this senior brother of his, who had 
 been for some time with his father in Lisbon, and then, 
 proving unmanageable, had been sent to the Grammar 
 School of Louth in Lincolnshire. But now he was to 
 know enough. Never was such a boy as this William 
 De Quincey, such a boisterous, frank, pugilistic, clever. 
 
10 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 inventive, not imlikeable, but wholly unendurable, son of 
 eternal racket. " His genius for mischief amounted to 
 inspiration,'" reports his principal victim. For no sooner 
 had he arrived than he had taken possession of the house 
 and all in it like a whirlwind, and poor little Thomas, as 
 the next living thing under him, had been collared by 
 him at once for his fag and spaniel. 
 
 It is not for nothing that Da Quincey heads the long 
 chapter of more than eighty pages in which he treats of 
 the time of his subjection to the despotism of his stormy 
 elder brother with the words Introduction to the World of 
 Strife. Digressive as that chapter is, one receives from it 
 a unity of general impression corresponding to the title. 
 One can see that, during the three years and a half of 
 which so much fun is made in the retrospect, the nervous 
 little creature who had been linked to such a steam-engine 
 of a brother was in the main very miserable. It was not 
 merely that his brother had picked a quarrel with the boys 
 of a cotton-factory on the skirts of Manchester, just at the 
 point where the road from Greenhay entered the town by 
 a particular bridge, and that once or twice every day, as 
 they went and came between Greenhay and their tutor's 
 house in Salford, there had to be a battle at this spot 
 between them and some of the factory-boys, every recur- 
 rence of which threw the little creature into new terror. 
 It was that his very thoughts and imaginations were no 
 longer his own, but were dictated to him and shaped for 
 him by the energies of his companion. The war with the 
 factory-boys itself, for example, became a double torment 
 by being idealized by his brother into a great enterprise 
 in which he was commander-in-chief, with absolute powers, 
 while Thomas was the responsible second. For his 
 conduct in the campaign from day to day in this character 
 
I.] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 11 
 
 of responsible second was not only incessantly discussed 
 by the commander-in-chief in their colloquies along the 
 road, but was the subject of merciless comment in bulletins 
 and gazettes published by the commander-in-chief for the 
 benefit of Mrs. Evans, the housekeeper at Greenhay, and 
 the rest of the world there. Now he was promoted to be 
 major-general, as having done pretty well ; now he was 
 under arrest for cowardice and was to be drummed out of 
 the army ; again, restored to his rank by the intercession 
 of a distinguished lady (Mrs. Evans), he received also the 
 Order of the Bath ; and once he was in danger of being 
 hanged for treacherous correspondence with the enemy. 
 IS'or was this aD. Besides being commander-in-chief in 
 the war with the factory-boys, his brother was king of an 
 imaginary kingdom called Tigrosylvania ; and poor De 
 Quincey, to accommodate him in his j^apoleonic pro- 
 pensities to invasion, was obliged to be king of another 
 imaginary kingdom called Gombroon. Then not only 
 was Gombroon liable to invasion by the Tigrosylvanians, 
 but the wretched government of Gombroon and the low 
 state of civilization among the Gombroonians became a 
 subject of perpetual sarcasm on the part of the Tigro- 
 sylvanian monarch. The lowest depth of De Quincey's 
 degradation in the matter was when his brother, having 
 been reading an extract from Monboddo, informed him 
 gravely that he had ascertained that the Gombroonians 
 were still in the primitive condition of mankind, not 
 having advanced so far as even to acquire those sedentary 
 habits the continuance of which through ages would 
 remove their tails, and advised him to issue an edict 
 requiring them all to sit for at least six hours every day, — 
 which, he said, though it could not do much, would make 
 a besinniner. It was the same in all the other relations 
 
12 DE QUINCEY. [chap 
 
 between the imperious young sultan of the family and his 
 junior brothers and sisters. In his pyrotechnics for their 
 amusement, his lectures to them on chemistry and natural 
 philosophy, his dramatic recitations, he was always lord- 
 paramount, and they were his thralls. Of De Quincey 
 himself his opinion, frankly intimated from the first, was 
 that he was physically contemptible, and mentally an idiot, 
 though with some good moral qualities. Of the truth of 
 this opinion, communicated so authoritatively, De Quincey 
 says he had at first no doubt. It coincided with that idea 
 of himself into which he had settled in those moping days 
 of childish melancholy and reverie which his brother's 
 arrival in Greenhay had disturbed ; and he would have 
 been only too glad if " that solid foundation of utter 
 despicableness " to which he had learned to trust had 
 been left unshaken. On the whole, he thinks, it was 
 perhaps well that it was shaken. Left to himself with 
 his other young brothers and sisters, he might have moped 
 on till the taint of consumption had been developed in 
 him ; and his vehement elder brother's discipline had acted 
 as a rough febrifuge. 
 
 Meanwhile the lessons with the Rev. Mr. S. H. had 
 been sufficiently profitable. A conscientious man, though 
 decidedly dull, he had grounded De Quincey well in 
 Latin, and entered him in Greek ; and there had been, 
 moreover, a special excrescence from the tutorship, which, 
 though irksome, had been beneficial. Mr. H. had a 
 stock of three hundred and thirty sermons, each about 
 sixteen minutes long, which, at the rate of two sermons 
 every Sunday, served as spiritual nutriment for his con- 
 gregation for a cycle of three years. The De Quincey 
 family having to come in their carriage from Greenhay to 
 church, it was only the forenoon sermon that the boy 
 
I.] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 13 
 
 heard ; but of this he was expected regularly to give in a 
 correct abstract in the course of the week. As the tutor 
 did not allow notes to be taken, the exercise of memory 
 was of lasting benefit. To these results of the tutorship 
 add the results of the continued readings of the boy 
 through the three years and a half, whether in connexion 
 with the lessons or independently. As before, he dwells 
 on individual passages that had impressed him. One 
 passage that sank into him with a mystic sense of power 
 was the phrase in the book of Daniel, *' Belshazzar the 
 king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords." 
 Another instance is even more remarkable. Xo reader of 
 De Quincey but must have observed how frequent and 
 important a word in his vocabulary is the word Fariah, 
 meaning '• social outcast," and what a hold had been taken 
 of his imagination by the idea that an immense proportion 
 of the men and women of the world, in all ages and all 
 lands, had belonged to the class of Pariahs, the socially 
 outcast for one reason or another, the despised, the un- 
 respectable, the maltreated and downtrodden. Well, this 
 idea, if his own dating is to be trusted, had been fixed in him 
 irrevocably even in the present early period of his life. 
 It was implanted in him first by the ineffable feeling of 
 sublimity which he attached to those lines in the Epilogue 
 to the second book of the Fables of Phaedrus where that 
 Latin fabulist, who had himself been a slave, exulted in 
 the recollection that his predecessor, the Greek slave ^sop, 
 had triumphed by his genius over the circumstances of 
 his birth : — 
 
 ^sopi ingenio statuara posuere Attici, 
 Servuraque collocarunt aeterna in basi, 
 Patere honoris scirent ut cunctis viam, 
 Nee generi tribui sed virtuti gloriam.* 
 
 i De Quincey quotes only the first two lines of these foui- 
 
14 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 But it was not from this passage alone, nor from mere 
 literature, that he derived the idea in its full extension. 
 It chanced that in the house of a certain reverend gen- 
 tleman there were two twin girls, his daughters, who were 
 deaf and scrofulous and reputed to be all but idiots, and 
 whom therefore their mother, ashamed of them and dis- 
 liking them, kept as much out of sight as possible, using 
 them as menial drudges, and cruel to them otherwise, 
 while the father, whatever he may have thought, did not 
 interfere. The acute boy, prying about the house, and 
 coming to know and pity the girls, had laid the case to 
 heart. Were not these girls also Pariahs, and were there 
 not other concealed varieties of Pariahs in Christian 
 England ? 
 
 It had been arranged by the guardians that the elder 
 brother, who had shown a talent for drawing, should go 
 into training for the profession of an artist by becoming 
 pupil to the distinguished London landscape-painter and 
 Royal Academician, De Loutherbourg. As the parting 
 with his brother was to be a new starting-point in De 
 Quincey's life, he remembered it well, the more by token 
 of an incident of the very last morning of his brother's 
 stay at Greenhay. It was a splendid June morning before 
 breakfast, and all the six children were together in the 
 grounds in front of the house, from Sultan William, now 
 in his sixteenth year, down to the youngest. William 
 was full of frolic, with the two girls laughing and dancing 
 beside him, and the baby Henry near in the nurse's arms ; 
 
 translating them " A colossal statue did the Atheniayis raise to 
 jEsop, and a poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting 
 pedestal." The rest may run " This they did in acknowledgment 
 of the fact that the path of honour is open to all, and that gloi^y 
 belongs not to birth hut to ivorth." 
 
1] PARENTAGE, INFANCY, AND CHILDHOOD. 15 
 
 Richard, called familiarly " Pink," the next to De Quincey 
 in age, was wheeling round on his heel at some distance ; 
 while De Quincey himself was standing close to the edge 
 of a brook which bounded the grounds on that part 
 where they were not protected from the lane by a railing 
 and the gates. Suddenly there was a vast uproar in the 
 lane, the noise of a shouting and running mob coming 
 nearer and nearer, explained at last by the appearance of 
 a great dog, much ahead of his pursuers, and panting and 
 foaming at the mouth. The dog tried the gates, which 
 were fortunately shut ; then stood for a moment on the 
 edge of the brook directly opposite to De Quincey. as if 
 meditating a leap across ; and then, amid the scare of the 
 children, all except the intrepid William, who taunted and 
 challenged the dog to come over, broke away again along 
 the lane, followed by the long hullabaloo of men and boys, 
 with guns, sticks, and pitchforks. It was a mad dog 
 from a barracks, which had already that morning bitten 
 two horses. He led his pursuers a chase of many miles 
 before he was killed. One of the two horses he had bitten 
 died afterwards of hydrophobia. What if he had leaped 
 the brook 1 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BOYHOOD AND CHANGES OF SCHOOL, WITH A TOUR IN 
 IRELAND. 
 
 1796—1802. 
 
 Some time in 1796, De Quincey's mother having made up 
 her mind to live at Bath, the establishment at Greenhay 
 was broken up, and the house and grounds were sold. 
 After being boarded for a wliile in Manchester, for con- 
 tinuation of the lessons under Mr. S. H., De Quincey 
 followed his mother to Bath, and was entered at the 
 Grammar School of the town, then presided over by a 
 Mr. Morgan, an excellent classical scholar. He w^as then 
 in his twelfth year, and was to have as one of his school- 
 fellows his brother Richard, already mentioned by his 
 nickname of " Pink," about four years younger than him- 
 self, and a boy of exquisite beauty, and of a sweet gentle- 
 ness that made him the most absolute contrast to the 
 terrible William. Of that young liurricane and all his 
 problematical capabilities De Quincey had seen the last. 
 He died of typhus fever soon after he had become pupil 
 to the Academician De Loutherbourg. 
 
 De Quincey remained at the Bath Grammar School 
 about two years. From the first he had the reputation 
 of a little prodigy in it, especially in Latin, and most 
 especially for Latin verse-making. In tliis accomplishment 
 he had such success that the head-master used to parade 
 
CH. II.] CHANGES OF SCHOOL. 17 
 
 his exercises publicly by way of reproach to the stiff 
 Latinity of the boys of the first form, most of whom were 
 five or six years older. On the other hand, he was at 
 first somewhat backward in Greek, — on which account he 
 had been placed under the second of the Bath School 
 masters, rather than with the more advanced boys under 
 Mr. ^lorgan himself. For some time there was a cabal 
 among these advanced boys against the little interloper 
 who was snatching from them the honours in Latin. On 
 the whole, however, he was comfortable enough, and was 
 rapidly attaining an unusual flicility in speaking and 
 writing Greek, when an accident led to his removal from 
 the school. The most exact account of this accident is 
 found in a boyish letter of his own, which chances to 
 have survived. It is dated March 12, 1799, and was 
 addressed to his sister Mary, then at a school in Bristol. 
 " This day six weeks," are his words, " as we were up saying 
 *' [repeating our lessons], Mr. M. was called out, and so 
 " forsooth little, or rather hig, Mounseer Collins [one of 
 " the undermasters] must jump into the desk. It hap- 
 " pened that little Harman minor wanted his hat, which 
 " hung up over Collins' head. AVilbraham asked for the 
 " cane to reach it him, which Collins refused ; and at the 
 " same time, to give a little strength, I suppose, to his 
 " refusal, and to enforce his authority as a master, en- 
 " deavoured to hit him on the shoulder (as he says) : but 
 " how shall I relate the sequel 1 On poor Ego did it fall. 
 *' Say, Muse, what could inspire the cane with such a dire- 
 " ful purpose ? But not on my shoulder, on my i^ate, it 
 " feU, — unhappy pate, worthy of a better fate ! " The 
 blow on the head, thus playfully described, seemed serious 
 at the time. For some weeks De Quincey lay in his 
 mother's house in Bath, attended by physicians and under 
 
 C 
 
18 DE QUINCEY. [chap 
 
 severe regimen. In the weeks of his gradual recovery his 
 mother read to him steadily till he could resume reading 
 for himself. Among tlie books thus read he mentions 
 Sir William Jones's Asiatic Researches^ Milner's Church 
 History, Johnson's Ramhler, Hoole's Translations of 
 Ariosto and Tasso, with the notable addition of Paradise 
 Lost, which had come to him, strangely enough, in Bent- 
 ley's giotesque edition. At the same time he and his 
 brother Pink had lessons in French. 
 
 Although the head-master and others interested in Bath 
 Grammar School tried to get back their little prodigy, the 
 mother would not consent. She sent him and his brother 
 Pink to a private school at Winkfield, in Wiltshire, " of 
 which the chief recommendation lay in the religious 
 character of the master." Here he remained about a year, 
 not thinking much of " old Spencer," the master, but a 
 great favourite with the Miss Spencers, and with the thirty 
 or forty boarders. Fifty years afterwards, two of his 
 schoolfellow^s, clergymen of the Church of England, could 
 remember him at Spencer's as a most obliging and com- 
 panionable little fellow, willing to help any of the boys in 
 their Latin or Greek, and a leader in their amusements, to 
 wdiich he would always give a literary turn. He divided 
 the boys for their mimic fights into Greeks and Trojans, 
 taking the part of Ulysses himself ; and, in his capacity of 
 contributor-in- chief to a journal carried on by the boys 
 and the Miss Spencers, he replied in pungent English 
 verses to a challenge by the boys of a neighbouring school. 
 It was remembered also that, when his mother came to 
 visit the school, and the boys talked of her as a friend of 
 Hannah More, he would tell them with pride that his 
 mother was quite as clever as Hannah. 
 
 Hardly more than a year had been spent at Winkfield 
 
n.J ACQUAINTANCE WITH LORD WESTPOHT. 19 
 
 when the connexion with that school was brought to an 
 end by an invitation to De Quincey of a kind which his 
 mother did not see fit to refuse. During the time of the 
 convalescence at Bath, in the spring of 1799, an acquaint- 
 ance had sprung up between De Quincey and young Lord 
 Westport, the only child of John-Denis, third Earl of 
 Altamont of the Irish peerage, afterwards Marquis of Sligo. 
 The boy, whom De Quincey represents as ahnost exactly 
 of his own age, but whom the peerage books represent as 
 considerably yoimger, had been then in the neighbourhood 
 of Bath, with his tutor, Mv. Grace. He and his tutor had 
 been asked to Mrs. De Quincey's house ; and now, after 
 more than a year, during which his young lordship had 
 been at Eton, there came the invitation we speak of. It 
 was an invitation to join Lord Westport at Eton and 
 accompany him in a long holiday on his father's estates 
 in county ]Mayo in the West of Ireland. Arrangements 
 having been duly made, De Quincey did set out for Eton 
 in the summer of 1800, to begin a ramble and round of 
 visits in England and Ireland, which extended over four 
 or five months, 
 
 Eton itself was a good beginning. That classic town, 
 as all the world ought to know, is really part and parcel 
 of AVindsor, within whose royal precincts is Frogmore, a 
 seat of royalty subsidiary to Windsor Castle. !N'ow, as 
 George III. and his Queen, with the princesses, were at 
 Frogmore in the summer of 1800, and as Lord Westport 
 not only had the run of Frogmore grounds, but was 
 specially known to the royal family, as the son and 
 heir- apparent of the Earl of Altamont, and as grandson 
 by his mother of the lately deceased Earl Howe, the 
 famous Admiral, what was to prevent De Quincey, in 
 such good company, from having an interview with his 
 
20 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 Majesty himself I This, he tells us, actually occurred. 
 The King, recognizing Lord Westport in one of the 
 Frogmore walks, stopped him and talked with him a 
 little, and then, turning to his companion, whose name 
 he had somehow already heard, asked whether he too 
 was at Eton, and whether his father was alive, and 
 whether his mother thought of sending him to Eton, — a 
 capital school, none better ! — and whether his family was 
 of French Huguenot descent. To all which De Quincey 
 returned, he says, brief and modest answers, only throwing 
 a little energy into his repudiation of any recent French 
 origin, and informing his Majesty that the English De 
 Quinceys were as old as the Conquest, and were men- 
 tioned in the very earliest of English books, Kobert of 
 Gloucester's Metrical Chronlde. " I know, I know," said 
 the King with a smile, as if he remembered such a book 
 in his library, but did not like to commit himself on 
 the subject with such a knowing little shrimp ; and the 
 interview ended, the two boys stepping backward a few 
 paces and bowing profoundly, while his Majesty moved 
 away. This, however, was not De Quincey's last sight 
 of the King. He had the honour of being invited, with 
 Lord Westport, to one or two of the fetes which the 
 Queen was then giving at Frogmore, and did attend one 
 of them, — in a travelling dress, as his mother heard with 
 horror, till he explained to her in a letter that his travel- 
 ling-dress was a very good one, '' much better than what 
 Lord Westport had on," and that in such a crush it 
 did not matter. The stay at Eton was broken by a run 
 to London. It was De Quincey's first sight of the great 
 metropolis, and he is punctual in dating it as in the 
 month of May. 
 From Eton, where De Quincey, as he informed his mother 
 
II.] TOUR IN IRELAND. 21 
 
 very penitentially, could not avoid going once to a 
 play in Windsor Theatre to oblige Lord Westport, the 
 two lads, with the tutor, began their journey for Ireland 
 on the 18th of July. Travelling through North Wales, 
 they reached Holyhead, where the tutor was to leave 
 them. At that place the tutor, who had taken mysterious 
 offence at something or other, and apparently begun to 
 have doubts about l)e Quincey, ceased to speak with 
 either of the lads, but duly saw them aboard the packet 
 that was to take them to Dublin. The passage of thirty 
 hours, the arrival in Dublin, the first impressions of that 
 city, and the various incidents and pleasures of the fort- 
 night or so passed there, are described at considerable 
 length in the subsequent autobiographic record. It was 
 an unusually interesting time in the History of Ireland, 
 for it was the time of the completion in the Irish Parlia- 
 ment of the Bill for the Union of Ireland with Great 
 Britain. Introduced to his friend's father, the Earl of 
 Altamont, "" a very fat man, and so lame that he is obliged 
 to have two servants to support him whenever he stirs," 
 De Quincey had access to all the sights and demonstra- 
 tions of the crisis. He was present at the splendid cere- 
 mony of the installation of the Knights of St. Patrick ; 
 and he was present in the last sittings of the Irish House 
 of Peers, when the Union Act was passed. He saw the 
 Lord Lieutenant Cornwallis, Lord and Lady Castlereagh, 
 and other great public persons ; and he saw the surgings 
 in the streets of excited Irish mobs. From such per- 
 sonal reminiscences of his Dublin visit he deviates into a 
 general essay on the social and political state of Ireland 
 at the time, with particular accounts of the two recent 
 Irish Rebellions, &c. ; and it is when we are extricated 
 from these that we find him at last, about the 20th 
 
22 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 of August, at Lord Altamont's seat of Westport in Con- 
 naught. There, in a big house, with but a slovenl_y 
 collection of books in it, but with wild Irish scenery 
 round about for excursions, wild Irish horses to ride, 
 and wilder Irish grooms to study, he spent some weeks 
 pleasantly enough, coaching Lord Westport at odd 
 moments, it would seem, in Greek and Latin. 
 
 One starry experience dwelt with him all the while. In 
 that part of his journey from Dublin to Connaught which 
 had been performed on the Grand Canal, leading from 
 Dublin to TuUamore, there had been among his fellow- 
 passengers in the canal-boat the widowed Countess of 
 Errol, in deep mourning, and her sister Miss Blake. Both 
 ladies were of Irish birth, and both were young, beautiful, 
 and accomplished. Introduced by Lord Westport, De 
 Quincey was for a time in Elysium. Mentioning the 
 rencontre in a letter to his mother at the time, all that 
 he says is that " in the canal-boat was a Miss Blake, a 
 sister of the present Countess Dowager of Errol," and that 
 they "formed an acquaintance and talked about the 
 English poets for the whole afternoon." It is in the 
 Autobiography that we learn the whole truth. Miss 
 Blake, with her soft eyes and soft Irish voice, her Irish 
 gaiety and affluence in talk, had impressed him as 
 he had never been impressed before. "From this 
 day," he says, " I was an altered creature, never again 
 relapsing into the careless irrefiective mind of child- 
 hood." 
 
 Returning from Ireland to England in October 1800, 
 the two friends parted at Birmingliam ; and one ob- 
 serves it as rather curious that Lord Westport is liardly 
 heard of again in De Quincey's history, whether under 
 the title of Earl of Altamont, which he could assume by 
 
11.] AT LAXTON. 23 
 
 courtesy before the year closed, in consequence of his 
 father's promotion to the Marquisate of Sligo, or under 
 that of Marquis of Sligo, which was his own from 1809 
 to 1845. Meanwhile we are not quite done with De 
 Quincey's ramble. From Birmingham, as instructed by a 
 letter from his mother, he went to Laxton in North- 
 amptonshire, where his elder sister already was. It was 
 the seat of I-ord and Lady Carbery, the latter of whom, in 
 her unmarried condition as Miss AYatson, a wealthy heiress, 
 had long been an intimate young friend of his mother's. 
 A Lord and Lady Massey were also staying at Laxton, 
 and Lord Carbery himself arrived from Ireland ; and, as 
 there was a fine library in the house, with all the appur- 
 tenances of luxurious culture, a month or two of rest in 
 such English seclusion were very acceptable after so 
 much rough Irish locomotion. Lady Carbery, a hand- 
 some woman of about six and twenty, was abundantly 
 kind to the boy, both for his mother's sake and his own. 
 She arranged that he should have daily lessons in riding, 
 to which he submitted, with no very effective result ; she 
 called him her " Admirable Crichton," and taxed all his 
 resources of acquired knowledge ; and in one department 
 she became his grateful pupil. Having imbibed the sen- 
 timents of the Evangelical School of Eeligion, with 
 Hannah More and Mrs. De Quincey for her exemplars, 
 but having a strong and inquiring intellect, she had 
 begun a systematic study of Theology, and had come to 
 be vexed by the question whether the authorized 
 English version of the Bible could be relied on as pre- 
 senting the exact doctrinal truth on all points. Her 
 young adviser having assured her that on some points it 
 could not, she felt as if her salvation might depend on 
 her having a Greek New Testament and a Parkhurst's 
 
24 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 Greek Lexicon beside her ; and De Quincey, having en- 
 couraged the idea, had the pleasure of setting her agoing 
 in her Greek studies. Altogether he was very happy at 
 Laxton, and there can hardly be a pleasanter picture than 
 that of the high-minded young matron of the mansion, 
 a kind of English variety of Goethe's "Fair Saint," 
 looking after her youthful guest, on the one hand, as a 
 feeble boy that needed superintendence, and on the other 
 hand finding instruction for hours in listening to his 
 suggestive, eloquent, and prematurely learned talk. 
 
 The effects upon De Quincey's mind of his long ramble, 
 with the varied glimpses it had given him of the actual 
 world, and especially of an aristocratic section of it, had 
 been, he says, something extraordinary. The rate of his 
 intellectual expansion, he says, was no longer like the 
 movement of the hour hand of a watch, whose advance, 
 though certain, is matter of inference, but was like the 
 visible pace of the seconds' hand. One may question 
 whether a matter-of-fact person would not rather have 
 described the effects of his tour and its incidents as per- 
 turbing and unsettling. 
 
 Experience seems to have decided that, in the majority 
 of cases, the wisest plan for parents and guardians in the 
 education of a boy is to find out the best established 
 routine of public schooling for boys in his circumstances, 
 and to keep to that inflexibly through all its stages for 
 the usual period. This seems to have been De Quincey's 
 own belief. Of the two schools he had been at he 
 greatly preferred Bath Grammar School ; it had been 
 against his will that he had been removed from it ; and 
 in his letters to his mother from Ireland he had argued 
 earnestly for a return to that school, if to any, till he 
 should be thought of age for the University. In any 
 
n.] MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 25 
 
 case, he objected to being sent to another private school, 
 like that at AVinkfield. " I was at the head of the 
 "school the whole time I was there, ^o one but myself 
 " could make verses and all those kinds of things ; but 
 " then I had no one to contend with, nor anything higher 
 "to asjDire to. The consequence w^as that my powers en- 
 "tirely flagged; my mind became dormant in comparison 
 " with what it was at the Bath Grammar School." These 
 remonstrances were so far attended to that, when he left 
 Lady Carbery's at Laxton, the arrangement of his mother 
 and guardians was that he should not be sent again to 
 any private school, but should go for three years to the 
 Grammar School of his native town of Manchester. 
 Their chief reason was a pecuniary one. Among the en- 
 dowments of Manchester Grammar School were certain 
 exhibitions by which boys who had been regularly at the 
 school for three full years could be sent to Brasenose 
 College, Oxford, with 40/. or 50Z. a year guaranteed them 
 for seven years. AVith 507. a year added to his patrimo- 
 nial inheritance of 150/., De Quincey would be able, in 
 his nineteenth year, to go to Oxford in proper gentlemanly 
 style, with an annual 200/. for his expenses. 
 
 With sighs and forebodings, De Quincey did go to 
 Manchester Grammar School, some time late in 1800, for 
 his three years of drudgery. His account of the school, 
 and of the head master, Mr. Lawson, in whose house he 
 w^as boarded, is far from unfriendly on the whole. Mr. 
 Lawson, though in his declining years, and not quite at 
 ease with his own head boys in their higher Greek read- 
 ings, M-as kind, conscientious, and exemplary ; the school 
 was an ancient and rich one, with historical traditions and 
 good appliances and accommodations ; the discipline was 
 maintained entirely by moral means, which was rather 
 
26 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 rare at that time ; and the boarders, with whom De 
 Quincey had principally to associate, were mostly Lanca- 
 shire youths of good manners and principles, with a col- 
 lective amount of knowledge and ability among them, 
 especially in English literature, which rather surprised the 
 new comer at first. He had a pleasant little room at the 
 top of the house, and books at will by a subscription to 
 the Manchester library. But there were objections. He 
 does not positively include among these the fact that 
 many of the day-boys in the school were sons of artisans, 
 some of them even having " sisters that were menial 
 servants ;" but he mentions the fact ; and he admits 
 generally that the whole atmosphere of Manchester, where 
 he could not stir out of doors without being " nosed by a 
 factory, a cotton-bag, a cotton-dealer, or something else 
 allied to that detestable commerce," had become insuffer- 
 ably uncongenial. It was, however, the monotony of the 
 school life itself that put him out of spirits, — the sight 
 day after day of the same bare white- washed walls, the 
 dull repetition from day to day of petty linguistic tasks 
 that had no stimulus for him now, and were far beneath 
 his capacity. Above all, the total deprivation of physical 
 exercise inflicted on Mr. Lawson's boarders by his absurd 
 system of regulating their hours from morning to evening, 
 with " callings- over " even in the intervals for meals and 
 rest, had a ruinous effect on De Quincey's health. For some 
 time he had been enabled to bear up against the com- 
 plicated miseries by accidental compensations. Lady Car- 
 bery had been in Manchester for some months, with a 
 portion of her household, just after his entry into the new 
 school ; a venerable old clergyman of the town, of Sweden- 
 borgian views, and author of various Swedenborgian tracts, 
 had taken a fancy for the extraordinary lad and his con- 
 
II.] MANCHESTER GEAMMAH SCHOOL. 27 
 
 versation, and liked him to call ; and, in one or two runs 
 to Liverpool, an acquaintance had been struck up with 
 the club of I'derati of which that town could then boast, 
 and of which Roscoe, and Dr. Currie, the biographer of 
 Burns, were the chiefs. But, after a year and a half at 
 the school, the prospect of another year and a half became 
 intolerable. In a letter to his mother, still extant, he 
 pleads most pitifully for his immediate removal. He 
 enumerates, and emphasises in italic words, his five indi- 
 vidual causes of complaint, and then rolls them all in 
 characteristic fashion into one collective sixth. How could 
 a person be happy, he asks, or even simply easy, " in a 
 " situation which deprives him of health, of society, of 
 " amusement, of liberty, of congeniality of pursuits, and 
 ^' which, to complete the precious picture, admits of no 
 " variety ? " Even this pitiful pleading was of no avail, 
 and De Quincey was driven to a desperate resolution. 
 He resolved to run away. After brooding over the 
 resolution for some time, and procuring the necessary 
 funds from Lady Carbery, who, knowing nothing of her 
 young friend's purpose, sent him lOZ, in answer to his 
 application by letter for 57., he carried it into effect by 
 slipping out of Mr. Lawson's house early one morning in 
 July 1802. He had an English poet in one pocket, and 
 an odd volume of Euripides in the other. He was then 
 close on seventeen years of age. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 VAGRANCY IN NORTH WALES AND IN LONDON. 
 
 1802—1803. 
 
 De Quincey's first intention, when he had made up his 
 mind to run away from Manchester School, was to wander 
 towards the district of the English Lakes. The magnet 
 that attracted him thither was Wordsworth, some of whose 
 poems he had recently read. to be in the neighbour- 
 hood of that man, to see the house in which he dwelt, the 
 scenes amid which he moved ; perhaps to catch a glimpse 
 of himself ! Alive, however, to the absurdity of any such 
 approach to Wordsworth in the character of a runaway 
 schoolboy, and also to the duty of some communication 
 first of all with his mother, he had determined to run the 
 risks involved in the latter course. As his mother had 
 by this time got tired of Bath, and transferred herself to 
 a house in Chester, called the Priory, the communica- 
 tion was not difficult. Two days of walking carried him 
 over the forty miles that separated Manchester from 
 Chester; and, after some hovering about the house, of 
 which he gives a whimsical account, the meeting took 
 place. His mother, with her notions and habits of de- 
 corum, looked upon the occurrence, he says, " much as 
 she would have done upon the opening of the seventh seal 
 in the Revelations ;" but it chanced that another relative 
 was at hand who took a lighter view of the affair. This 
 
CH. III.] VAGRANCY IN NORTH WALES. 29 
 
 was his uncle, Colonel Thomas Penson, his mother's only 
 surviving brother, home from India on a three-years' fur- 
 lough, and quartered for the time, with his horses and 
 Bengalee servants, at the Priory. Colonel Penson, a 
 kindly man of the world, saw nothing unnatural in the 
 desire of a youth to elope from the tedium of school ; and, 
 by his advice, it was arranged that De Quincey, if he did 
 not choose to remain at the Priory, should have a guinea 
 a -week allowed him for a while, with liberty to wander 
 about and enjoy himself on that basis. 
 
 From July to November 1802 we see him wandering 
 about Kortli Wales, from town to town, from village to 
 village, from country-inn to country-inn, having various 
 little adventures and picking up random new acquaintances 
 by the way, all the while making his guinea a week go as 
 far as it could, and hitting on ingenious devices for that 
 end. The chief was that of alternating, according to 
 whim and weather, between the more expensive style of 
 living, at the rate of about half-a-guinea a day, necessary 
 if he went to the better inns, and the incredibly cheap 
 living then possible in Wales if one lodged in the cottages 
 of the hospitable and unsophisticated Welsh peasantry, or 
 snatched a meal somewhere in a long walk and bivouacked 
 through the night among ferns and furze. It was, he 
 says, a most pleasant existence, an existence of breezy 
 freedom, with perpetual delight from the mountain 
 scenery, the sylvan nooks, the rushing brooks, the pic- 
 turesque evening groups of the villagers gathered round 
 their harpers. But the sting of some unsatisfied craving, 
 the fatal longing in his nature to break away from the 
 customary and respectable and to dare the forbidden and 
 indefinite, carried him suddenly out of those Welsh 
 solitudes. He would give up his guinea a week, cut that 
 
30 DE (^)giNCEY. [chap. 
 
 remaining bond between him and his mother and guar- 
 dians, and bury himself in the world of London. There 
 he would find books and society ; there he would find he 
 knew not what; there he would find at least, — so he had 
 heard, — Jew money-lenders, who might be willing to 
 advance him 200Z. on his expectations. 
 
 It was late in November 1802 when, having borrowed 
 twelve guineas from two lawyer friends in Oswestry, De 
 Quincey, after eight-and-twenty hours on the coach from 
 Shrewsbury, was deposited in the streets of London. 
 Here what months he passed, what months of wild, 
 haggard, Bohemian roaming and staggering from worse to 
 worse ! He had lost no time in applying to a Jew money- 
 lender, named Dell ; but Dell was never himself to be 
 seen in such cases, and the negotiation had to be with 
 Dell's devil or legal factotum. This was a low attorney, 
 called Brunell. who had for his place of business a house 
 in Greek Street, Soho, at the corner of Soho Square, with 
 precautionary chains on the doors, and loopholes through 
 which those who knocked could be surveyed before they 
 were admitted. As we read the description of this house 
 in Greek Street, with all its rooms unoccupied and unfur- 
 nished, save Mr. Brunell's own sanctum, and some den for 
 his athletic clerk, Pyment, and of Mr. Brunell's arrivals 
 in it every morning from no one knew where, and his dis- 
 appearances in the evening, when his sanctum was care- 
 fully locked and the empty house was left in the sola 
 keeping of a poor little wretch of a girl, ten years of age, 
 who slept on straw as near as she could to the street-door, 
 we feel as if we were in the midst of a novel by Dickens. 
 With Brunell himself De Quincey became very familiar 
 by frequent visits, and found him, disreputable tliough he 
 was, a very kindly person, and with a wonderful passion 
 
III.] VAGRANCY IN LONDON. 31 
 
 for literature and knowledge, the survival from some 
 happier time when he had hopes of another career than 
 that of a devil for money-lenders. But Brunell could do 
 nothing himself in the matter of the advance, for there 
 was the invisible Dell in the background. The policy of 
 Dell, in such cases, was that of delay, — delay for the 
 necessary investigations, for whetting the appetite of the 
 applicant, and for exacting charges for papers^ stamps, 
 and one knows not what. Thus the lad, though living as 
 parsimoniously as he could in lodgings, was brought to his 
 last guinea, and it was an act of charity when Brunell 
 consented to let him use the house in Greek Street as his 
 sleeping asylum at nights. There, sharing a floor in the 
 void tenement with the little wretch of a servant-girl, to 
 whom his advent was a godsend, as a deliverance from her 
 terrors of loneliness, he did sleep, night after night, for 
 some indefinite period, glad to pick up stray crusts in the 
 morning from Brunell's breakfast-table. But, his presence 
 in the house during the day being undesirable, he had to 
 be oft' every morning, to " sit in the parks or elsewhere," 
 or prowl about the streets as he chose. And what streets 
 he thus came to know, and what eternal circuits among 
 the same streets ! Regent Street then was not ; and his 
 main range was the great thoroughfare of Oxford Street, 
 with the streets to the north of it as far as the ^ew Road, 
 and the maze of streets on the other or southern side as 
 far as the line of Coventry Street and Piccadilly. With- 
 in those bounds he was a peripatetic through days of 
 which he kept no reckoning, and often late at nights, till 
 the watchmen began to recognise his figure, and would 
 sometimes rouse him roughly as he sat on door-steps. As 
 was natural, he became acquainted with other peripatetics, 
 the " street- walkers " in another sense. With this class 
 
32 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 of unfortunates, and with not a few individuals among 
 them, he tells us, his relations were intimate enough, 
 though all in perfect innocence. One in chief he could 
 never forget. Oh ! that Ann of Oxford Street, the poor 
 girl of sixteen, whose simple and sad history he had come 
 to know, whose goodness of heart shone out even in her 
 degradation, with whom it had become his daily habit to 
 go about by appointment, and who had once saved his 
 life, when he had fainted from exhaustion, by running 
 for wine and stimulants and fetching them for him out of 
 her own scanty money ! 
 
 A favourable impression had been at last produced on 
 Dell by proofs of De Quincey's former intimacy with Lord 
 Altamont and the Marquis of Sligo. If Mr. De Quincey 
 could fortify his own mere personal security by getting 
 Lord Altamont to be his co-security, Mr. Dell would not 
 mind lending him 200/. or even 300/. A casual encounter 
 with an old family friend in Albemarle Street having at 
 the same time provided De Quincey with a little ready 
 cash, he bade Ann farewell for a day or two, and took the 
 coach for Eton to broach the matter to Lord Altamont. 
 Unfortunately his lordship had just left Eton for Cam- 
 bridge ; and all that De Quincey could effect was a 
 provisional arrangement with another young nobleman at 
 Eton, which he thought might answer Mr. Dell's purpose. 
 When he returned to London, Ann was gone ! He never 
 saw her or heard of her more. All his life afterwards that 
 girl was to be in his tlioughts. Ah ! poor Ann of Oxford 
 Street, what had become of her 1 Had she gone into some 
 ruffianly keeping and might she be still alive ; or had that 
 cough which he had observed in her done its merciful work, 
 and was her young frame at rest, though but in a pauper's 
 grave, in some dank corner of a London church vard ? 
 
HI.] VAGRAXCY IX LOXDOX. 33 
 
 Is all this true, or was Do Quiiicey romancing? llo 
 was himself aware that there might be some such sus- 
 picion ; and, when, immediately after tlie first publicatioji 
 of his Confessions, some of his critics were taking them 
 for ingenious iiction, he was very serious in his efforts to 
 undeceive them. lie had not told the whole truth about his 
 London vagrancy, he said, because that was impossible, but 
 he had told nothing but the truth. Sucli an assurance 
 ought itself to count for something ; but there is more. In 
 early private letters of De Quincey, published by ^Ir. Page, 
 we have the means of checking portions of his subsequent 
 autobiographical writings ; and, as in all cases where this 
 check can be applied the correspondence between the 
 original memorials and the later narrative is strikingly 
 exact, a slight occasional haziness of date excepted, the 
 rest of the narrative is entitled to the benefit of the fact. 
 In short, though there may be a little mingling of the 
 Diehtun'j with the Wahrheit, De Quincey's account of his 
 days of London wretchedness may be accepted as authentic. 
 And why not ? True, it could only have been a most odd, 
 unpractical, little creature that could have got himself into 
 such conditions, or that, once in them, could not have 
 extricated himself. But are there not such queer young 
 eccentrics in the world even now, creatures of cleverness 
 touched with some craze or peculiarity wliich makes them 
 a puzzle to their friends, and which, while incapacitating 
 them for the most obvious acts of reasonableness natural to 
 ordinary people, leads them sometimes to acts at which 
 ordinary people stare ? That eccentricity of De Quincey 
 which was to be a life-long characteristic, and even that form 
 of eccentricity which was to be peculiarly his in afterdife, — 
 a constant shy timorousness, a perpetual looking backward 
 over his shoulder for some terrible danger that he had 
 
84 DE QUINCEY. [ch. in. 
 
 escaped, but that was still dogging him, — seems to have 
 been first developed in those days of his strange London 
 experiences in his eighteenth year. When Carlyle knew 
 him long afterwards, and when his small stature, boyish 
 face, gentle demeanour, and beautiful silvery talk, were the 
 most obvious things about him to first observation, some- 
 thing more, Carlyle thought, was physiognomically dis- 
 cernible. " Eccovi I look at him : this child has been in 
 Hell." 
 
 The proposed substitute for Lord Altamont's guarantee 
 of co-security not being satisfactory to Mr. Dell, De Quincey 
 was at the extreme of despair, when, by some unexplained 
 concatenation of circumstances, he was discovered and 
 reclaimed by his friends. He went back to Chester, to 
 reside for some time with his mother in the Priory. His 
 Indian uncle was still there, and it was some tetchy but 
 well-intentioned remark of this good gentleman in a 
 moment of argument that induced De Quincey to close 
 with a shabby offer made by his guardians, to the effect 
 that he might go to the University if he liked, but should 
 not have a farthing more than lOOZ. a year. On this 
 allowance, in the autumn of 1803, as nearly as the date 
 can be guessed, he went to Worcester College, Oxford. 
 
CHAPTER lY. 
 
 MAINLY AT OXFORD, WITH VISITS TO LONDON AND THE 
 LAKES. 
 
 1803—1809. 
 
 Of De Quincey's Oxford life very little is known. There 
 is a casual hint from himself that he had made a mistake 
 in his choice of a college. Had he gone to Brasenose, as 
 would have happened if he had remained for the necessary 
 time at Manchester Grammar School, he would have had 
 a smooth and properly arranged introduction to the 
 academic life, whereas in Worcester College he was an 
 isolated stranger, left to shift for himself. All that the 
 head of the college, Dr. Cotton, could afterwards remember 
 of him was summed up in a few sentences. " During the 
 " period of his residence," says Dr. Cotton, "he was 
 •• generally known as a quiet and studious man. He did 
 " not frequent wine parties, though he did not abstain 
 '' from wine ; and he devoted himself principally to the 
 " society of a German, named Schwartzburg, who is said 
 " to have taught him Hebrew. He was remarkable even 
 " in those days for his rare conversational powers, and for 
 " his extraordinary stock of information upon every subject 
 " that was started." Altogether, though he had some 
 acquaintances in different colleges, and was known among 
 them as a very uncommon person, he seems rather to 
 
36 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 have crept through the University quietly than to have 
 made any stir in it, keeping much by himself, and reading 
 prodigiously in lines of his own. This recluseness was 
 not owing to the extreme necessity of economy which his 
 guardians had tried to impose upon him when they fixed 
 his allowance at only 100/. a year. That had been evaded, 
 he tells us, by the relenting of his Jewish friend in 
 London, who did at last advance him the sum for which 
 there had been so much negotiation. He could thus 
 afford himself all that was needed to make Oxford student- 
 ship fairly comfortable, including books, a run to London 
 now and then, and a visit, in vacation-time, to friends in 
 Liverpool or elsewhere. 
 
 The lessons from the German Schwartzburg were of 
 some consequence. They were not in Hebrew merely. 
 Though he had received some general notions of German 
 liiterature, and especially some tempting information about 
 Jean Paul Eichter, Hippel, Hamann, and other little- 
 known German writers, from an accomplished young 
 German, named I)e Haren, with whom he had formed a 
 friendship in his Welsh wanderings, it was at Oxford, and 
 under Schwartzburg, that lie first set himself seriously 
 to the study of German. The German Philosophy, as 
 well as the German Literature, attracted him thence- 
 forward. 
 
 Of even greater importance was the systematic attention 
 he now began to bestow on English Literature. Though 
 from his childhood his sensibilities had been powerfully 
 affected by " the greatness of our own literature," and though 
 his readings in English poets and prose-writers had been 
 extensive and varied, it was at Oxford that he first felt 
 the necessity of organizing his knowledge of English 
 Literature, and regarding it no longer as a mere splendid 
 
IV.] AT OXFORD. 37 
 
 phenomenon or sky of so many liundreds of scattered 
 stars of ditierent degrees of brilliancy, but as a vast and 
 vital whole tliat could bo grasped in a History. Thence- 
 forward, while Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, and others of 
 his favourites among the older writers, were dearer and 
 more distinct to him than ever individually, he could 
 contemplate that great flow of the national thought through 
 successive centuries, which, though it seemed to eddy 
 round those individualities as so many independent and 
 inserted marvels, had really caused them and stationed 
 them where they were, and which, after its farther, and 
 in his eyes less interesting, course through the eighteenth 
 century, was now again becoming glorious in Wordsworth 
 and his disciples. It was on this last portion of the long 
 history of English Literature, the portion contemporary 
 with himself, that De Quincey fastened his regard with the 
 enthusiasm of a personal concern. He had by this time 
 put himself in correspondence with "Wordsworth, express- 
 ing his admiration and indebtedness, and had received at 
 least two letters of reply, intimating that the poet was not 
 indifferent to the recognition of such a hopeful young 
 admirer, and would be glad to see him at a convenient 
 opportunity. More recently, he had been making inquiries 
 after Coleridge, whom he had known first by his Ancient 
 Mariner, published with Wordsworth's L}jrical Ballads 
 in 1798, but to whom he was now drawn also by interest 
 in his prose-writings. As De Quincey had already con- 
 cluded with himself that it would never be in the element 
 of verse that his own genius could accomplish anything 
 considerable in literature, if he should ever accomplish 
 anything at all, the fact that Coleridge was a prose writer 
 and philosopher, as well as a poet, seems to have whetted 
 
38 DE QUINCEY. L^hap. 
 
 the desire for an immediate meeting with him, if only in 
 preparation for the more formidable and less accessible 
 Wordsworth. He was therefore much disappointed at 
 finding, in 1805, that Coleridge had left the Lakes, and 
 had gone to Malta as Secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the 
 Governor of that island. 
 
 One other fact of De Quincey's days of Oxford student- 
 ship is expressly recorded by himself. It was then that he 
 first began to take opium. His first experience of the 
 drug was on a dull rainy Sunday in the spring or autumn 
 of 1804, when, being on one of his visits to London, and 
 having suffered for a week or two from neuralgia, he took 
 the advice of a friend and purchased a phial of the tinc- 
 ture of opium at a druggist's shop in Oxford Street, near 
 " the stately Pantheon." The eff'ect, when he took the 
 first dose in his lodgings, was divine ; and from that 
 moment De Quincey was an experimenter in opium,— 
 never without a supply of the drug beside him in one or 
 other of its forms, whether in the solid cakes or sticks of 
 the dried substance, as imported from Turkey, Egypt, 
 Persia, or India, or in the prepared red-brown liquid 
 known as laudanum. Nay more, from that moment he 
 was the apologist for opium, skilled, or fiincying himself 
 skilled, in all its eff'ects, and distinguishing its negative 
 effects in the mere relief of pain from its positive effects as 
 an intellectual stimulant and exhilarant. He suggests, 
 indeed, that, in continuing the use of the drug after its 
 first service to him in an attack of neuralgia, he had hit 
 by blind instinct on the specific for the pulmonary con- 
 sumption to which he was liable by inheritance from his 
 father. The reports of medical authorities, from an in- 
 vestigation of all the evidence, are rather to the effect that 
 the constitutional disease from which he suffered was a 
 
IV.] AT OXFORD. 39 
 
 slow or intermittent ulceration of the stomach, brought on 
 perhaps by bad and insufficient food during his time of 
 vagrancy in "Wales and London, and that his perseverance 
 in the use of opium was due originally to his accidental 
 experience of its effects in allaying those " gnawing pains 
 in the stomach " of which, from that time of his vagrancy, 
 he complained always or periodically. Enough of a 
 disagreeable subject. What concerns us at present is that 
 De Quincey avers most solemnly that, though he took 
 opium at Oxford from 1804 onwards, it was still in such 
 moderation that he could have broken off the habit. He 
 was not yet, nor for some years to come, a slave to opium 
 but confined himself to a carefully praecalculated opium- 
 debauch, as he calls it, about once in three weeks. The 
 probability is that the indulgence added to his queerness 
 among the Oxonians, his liking for solitary reverie, and his 
 carelessness of academic routine and distinction. 
 
 De Quincey, it seems, did go up for his written exami- 
 nation for the degree of B.A. The fact is attested by 
 one of his old schoolfellows at Winkfield, who had gone 
 to Lincoln College while De Quincey was in residence in 
 Worcester College. Dr. Goodenough of Christ Church, 
 says this authority, was wonderfully struck with De 
 Quincey's performance, and told the Worcester College 
 people that they had sent up the cleverest man he had 
 ever encountered, and that, if he did as well in his viva 
 voce as he had done on paper, he would carry all before 
 him. But De Quincey, in a fit of shyness, or having taken 
 some offence, never presented himself for his viva voce, 
 remained without his degree, and indeed disappeared from 
 Oxford for some time. The date is not given, but it seems 
 to have been in 1807. His name remained on the books 
 of his college till 1810 ; but, as we have his own distinct 
 
40 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 statement that his time of residence was from 1803 to 
 1808, we have to suppose only a year of effective con- 
 nexion with the University after 1807, and that broken 
 by absences. He lilced to be in London, where he now 
 counted Charles Lamb in the number of his acquaintances, 
 and where he delighted in going to the Opera to hear 
 Grassini sing, and in rambling among the markets on Satur- 
 day nights ; and ho had entered himself, or was about to 
 enter himself, as a member of the Middle Temple, with 
 a view to eating his terms for the Bar. His mother 
 meanwhile having shifted her domicile from Chester to 
 a house and estate called AVesthay, in Somersetshire, about 
 twelve miles from Bristol, which had been purchased for 
 her by her Lidian brother at a cost of 12,000/., there were 
 visits also to that part of the West of England, with 
 renewed confabulations with Hannah More and her set. 
 What is of especial importance in I)e Quincey's biography, 
 however, at this time of the close of his residence at 
 Oxford, is that he is found then indubitably in possession 
 Df a good deal of money. Ho^v this had come about we 
 are not informed ; but, as he had attained his majority in 
 1806, we are to fancy either that he had then been put 
 at comparative ease by becoming master of his own funds, 
 or that there had been some new and enlarged transaction 
 with the Jews, converting the whole futurity of those 
 funds into a present capital. As De Qiiincey speaks of 
 his transactions with the Jews as pretty continuous, or as 
 repeated from time to time, in his earlier life, the latter 
 supposition is likely enough. 
 
 The improvement of De Quincey's pecuniary circum- 
 stances in and from the year 1807 connects itself more 
 particularly witli one interesting absence of his from Oxford 
 in the latter half of that year. Having gone into Somerset- 
 
ir.] MEETING WITH COLERIDGE. 41 
 
 shire in the course of the summer, and having heard that 
 Coleridge had returned from abroad, and was then quartered 
 among friends at Nether Stowey in that county, he went 
 in search of the great man. He did not find him at 
 Xether Stowey, but came upon him in the town of Bridge- 
 water, where he was staying, with his wife, and his three 
 young children, Hartley, Derwent, and Sara, in the house 
 of a certain family of Chubbs, well-to-do descendants of 
 Chubb the Deist. It was a memorable meeting. The 
 " noticeable man with large grey eyes," now not more 
 than thirty-five years of age, but, as De Quincey observed, 
 with flabby and unhealthy white cheeks and confused and 
 abstracted gait, received his young visitor very courteously, 
 and had several conversations with him, by himself and 
 in company. Though the elder opium-eater and the 
 younger opium-eater w^ere thus together, no confidences 
 were exchanged on that subject, save that once, when 
 laudanum was casually mentioned by De Quincey, it was 
 with an emphasis of horror that Coleridge warned him to 
 have nothing to do with that drug. The talk, or rather 
 Coleridge's monologue, was on all things and sundr}^, and 
 De Quincey was amazed, even beyond expectation, by its 
 range and gorgeousness. His veneration for Coleridge 
 becam.e a kind of filial affection ; and, when, a few weeks 
 after, Coleridge went with his family to Bristol and their 
 acquaintance was renewed there, it M'as with delight that 
 De Quincey found he could do the sage a slight piece of 
 service. Mrs. Coleridge and the children were bound for 
 the Lakes, to be domiciled, as before, with Southey at Greta 
 Hall, Keswick; but, as Coleridge was arranging for a course 
 of lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts, to be delivered 
 at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, London, he 
 could not accomi)any them. De Quincey off'ered to be 
 
42 DE QDINCEY. [chap. 
 
 their escort ; and in October 1807 the party set out from 
 Bristol by post-chaise. Travelling by stages, and with 
 some little stay at Liverpool, they reached the Lake 
 Country by a route which required them to take Words- 
 worth's cottage at Grasmere as their resting-place before 
 going on to Southey's at Keswick. Twice had De Quincey 
 been on the verge of this poetic paradise before, but both 
 times he had retreated with a nervous shrinking at the 
 last moment from the idea of presenting himself to 
 Wordsworth. Xow, however, in his character of convoy 
 to Mrs. Coleridge, rather than in that of Wordsworth's 
 occasional correspondent in past years, he did behold the 
 epoch-making man, received a grasp of welcome from his 
 hand at his own door, and became his temporary guest. 
 For two days he was in the cottage, along with Mrs. 
 Coleridge and her children, happy in the society of Words- 
 worth, his wife, and his sister Dorothy, and making his 
 observations of the three ; and on the third day there 
 began that excursion of all the seniors of the party over 
 the hills in a cart, which, while it deposited Mrs. Coleridge 
 at her destination in Southey's house, gave De Quincey 
 his first introduction also to that other famous Lakist. 
 All this was in November 1807 ; before the end of which 
 month De Quincey was back in Bristol, to hear of the 
 completion of another piece of kindness he had been 
 meditating for Coleridge. The profound dejection of 
 Coleridge, the state of "cheerless despondency" into 
 which he had fallen, and out of which his splendid talks 
 were evidently but leaps and refuges of despair, had struck 
 his young friend ; and, having ascertained by inquiries 
 that the main immediate cause was hopeless distress in 
 money-matters, De Quincey had been in private commu- 
 nication with Cottle, the Bristol bookseller, on the subject. 
 
iv.l IN LONDON AND AT THE LAKES. 43 
 
 He wanted to give Coleridge 500/., a sum which all 
 Cottle's representations, with questions whether he was 
 serious, wliether he could afford it, whether he was of age, 
 &c., could not persuade him to reduce below 300/. That 
 sum Coleridge did accept, having been told nothing more 
 by Cottle at the time than that " a young man of fortune 
 who admired his talents " wanted to make him a present. 
 Coleridge's formal receipt for the money, which the book- 
 seller thought it right to take for his own exoneration, is 
 dated November 12, 1807. 
 
 Though De Quincey includes the year 1808 in the time 
 of his Oxford residence, the records show him to have 
 been much in London through parts of that year. Cole- 
 ridge was one of his attractions. He heard some of the 
 sage's lectures at the Royal Institution, and regretted that, 
 from Coleridge's own carelessness in preparation and the 
 wretched state of his health, they were so nearly a break- 
 down ; he saw much of Coleridge in his uncomfortable 
 temporary chambers in the ofhce of the Courier newspaper 
 in the Strand ; and in his calls on Coleridge at these cham- 
 bers he met Sir Humphry Davy, Godwin, and other new 
 faces. Later in the year he is found still, or again, in 
 London, in lodgings in Litchfield Street and ISTorthumber- 
 land Street, Marylebone, eating his terms, one has to 
 suppose, and seeing Lamb and Hazlitt, and sauntering at 
 nights among the markets, and not failing at the opera for 
 many nights in succession. In November of the same 
 year he paid a second visit to Wordsworth at the Lakes ; 
 and he remained there till February 1809, when he 
 returned to London. Wordsworth, at the time of this 
 second visit of De Quincey, had been busy with that 
 series of political letters in the Courier newspaper which 
 he converted into more complete form in his pamphlet, 
 
44 DE QUINCE Y. [ch. iv. 
 
 published ^May 1809, Concerni7ig the Relations of Great 
 Britain, Spain, and Portugal, as affected hy the Conven- 
 tion of Cintra. It was De Quincey, after his return to 
 London, who saw this pamphlet through the press, adding 
 an appendix of notes, which AVordsworth described as 
 "done in a masterly manner." The service was gratefully 
 acknowledged also by Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy. A 
 letter of hers is extant in which she thanks De Quincey 
 warmly for having saved her brother so much anxiety, 
 says he had been a treasure to them both, and hopes 
 that he may soon be at Grasmere to refresh himself 
 after the troubles of his task. 
 
 Dorothy AVordsworth's hope in this letter points to an 
 arrangement of some importance that had been come to 
 between De Quincey and the AVordsworths. This was 
 that De Quincey should leave London, Oxford, and all 
 his other troublesome entanglements in the south, and 
 should come to reside permanently at the Lakes, as the 
 tenant of the very cottage in whicli Wordsworth had lived 
 from 1799 to 1807, but which he had recently quitted 
 for the somewhat larger house, called Allan Bank, about a 
 mile distant. Through the latter months of 1809 the talk 
 among the inhabitants of the quiet valley of Grasmere 
 was of the young gentleman who was coming to live 
 among them in ]\Ir. Wordsworth's old cottage, and of 
 Miss Wordsworth's careful activity in ordering carpets 
 and other furnishings, and getting the cottage ready for 
 his arrival. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 BACHELOR LIFE AT THE LAKES. 
 1809—1816 
 
 Ix November 1809, De Quincey, at the age of twenty- 
 four, took possession of his pretty cottage at Town- 
 end, Grasmere, and became one of the so-called Lakists, 
 For seven and twenty years this cottage was to be in 
 his tenancy, and for more than twenty of these it was 
 to be his headquarters and nominal home, the place 
 where he resided constantly wlien he w^as at rest, or 
 to which he always returned from any of his frequent 
 divagations. 
 
 Strange that a district of England which had been 
 sleeping unknown in its native beauties and grandeurs 
 from time immemorial, over wliose mountains the snow 
 had come and gone silently for a thousand winters, and 
 whose valleys had laughed again in equal privacy into 
 shower and sunshine through tlie thousand alternating 
 summers, should have been suddenly evoked into celebrity 
 by the genius of one man. But so it had happened. 
 Wordsworth w^as making the Lake -District, and the call 
 ,had gone forth to come and behold it. Ho ! all ye that 
 are tourists and in quest of the picturesque, try this dis- 
 trict in the proper season ; all ye that have made a little 
 money, and desire to settle somewhere, in peace and 
 
46 DE QUIXCEY. [chap. 
 
 meditative comfort, for the rest of your lives, examine 
 these valleys and the skirts of these lakes for the suitable 
 spots ; all ye that are sons of the muses in the higher 
 sense, not tied by hard necessity to the vicinity of a 
 printing-press, in London, or Edinburgh, or any other city, 
 but at liberty to select an abode where you may possess 
 your souls in quiet and combine high thinking with plain 
 living, — Mr. Wordsworth uses and jecommends no beve- 
 rages stronger than milk or tea ; but stronger may be im- 
 ported if indispensable, and there are inns on the roads, — 
 come and have cottages here, and spend hours every day 
 in the open air, communing with Nature herself, as she 
 is to be found, pure and unsophisticated, in Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland scenery ! By the year 1809 the re- 
 sponse had been considerable. Tourists had been be- 
 coming numerous enough to suggest to Wordsworth the 
 rudiments of what afterwards took form as his Guide to 
 the Lakes ; new residents from among the class of retired 
 business-men were appearing by degrees ; and, though 
 fewer sons of the muses were in circumstances to accept 
 the invitation than might have liked to do so, a sprinkling 
 of such was to be counted. 
 
 Wordsworth himself, now in his fortieth year, and 
 settled at Grasmere since 1799, had just, as we have seen, 
 migrated from his previous cottage to Allan Bank, only 
 a mile distant, which was to be his residence till the spring 
 of 1811, when he transferred himself to Grasmere Par- 
 sonage, there to remain till 1813, when he removed to his 
 final and most famous residence of Rydal Mount. Southey, 
 the industrious Southey, four years younger than Words- •• 
 worth, had been established for some years at Greta Hall, 
 Keswick, in the Cumberland portion of the Lake District, 
 and at least thirteen miles from Wordsworth. It was a 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFE AT THE LAKES 47 
 
 convenient distance between two men whose mutual respect 
 obliged them to occasional intercourse, but whose styles of 
 genius and habits of literary work were so different as 
 to cause some degree of mutual repulsion. Coleridge, 
 Southey's brother-in-law, who had been a Lakist in pre- 
 vious years, and quartered for some time, with his family, 
 in Southey's house, had, as we have seen, broken away 
 from the Lakes for a while, gone abroad, gone to 
 ^Somersetshire, but again gravitated to the mill-horse 
 round of London. Having sent his wife and children 
 back to Southey's, however, he had at length followed 
 them himself, to try the Lakes once more ; and, from late 
 in 1809 to the middle of 1810, Coleridge was to be again 
 a denizen of the district, moving between Southey's at 
 Keswick and Wordsworth's at Grasmere, but on the whole 
 preferring to be with Wordsworth. Here, through that 
 time, he was to be engaged in bringing out his periodical 
 called The Friend, which was printed at Penrith, and the 
 bad management of which was to bring the whole con- 
 cern to bankruptcy in the twenty-ninth number. Three 
 other literary notabilities of the Lake District, at the time 
 of De Quincey's advent there, deserve especial mention. 
 One was Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, now 
 seventy-two years of age, but with seven years of life still 
 before him, living at his mansion of Cal garth Park, on Win- 
 dermere, eight miles south from Grasmere, and altogether 
 the leading personage in the society of the region, from 
 his ecclesiastical rank and great wealth, his hospitality 
 and conversational ability, and the recollection of his 
 extraordinary series of publications. A much humbler 
 man, but loved beyond expression by all his intimate 
 friends, was Charles Lloyd, living at Brathay, about half- 
 way between Calgarth and Grasmere, originally a Quaker, 
 
48 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 but now a kind of Lakist Rousseau, revealing philosophic 
 powers that had not been guessed from his published 
 poems. The time was yet some years distant when this line 
 intellect, overclouded by a growing lunacy, was to be 
 withdrawn from Brathay to die abroad. Finally, a recent 
 comer into the Lake District, proprietor since 1807 of 
 Elleray, also on Windermere, about a mile from Calgarth, 
 was a young Scoto-Oxonian of whom the world was to 
 hear more than of either Bishop Watson or Charles 
 Lloyd. This was John Wilson, afterwards known as 
 Professor Wilson and "Christopher North." He was 
 almost exactly of De Quincey's own age, or but three 
 months older ; but what a contrast between them physi- 
 cally, — De Quincey one of the smallest and feeblest- 
 looking of mortals, hardly more than five feet high, while 
 Wilson was one of the most magnificent young athletes 
 that ever attracted men's or women's eyes in street or on 
 heather. His stature close on six feet, his frame pro- 
 portioned into the very ideal of a Hercules- Apollo of the 
 Scandinavian or yellow-haired type, masking immensity of 
 strength under the litheness of a leopard, he carried also 
 one of the noblest and most poetic of heads ever set on 
 beautifully square human shoulders. Then, what a repu- 
 tation he had brought with him from Oxford, where, 
 strangely enough, he had been a gentleman-commoner of 
 Magdalen College all the time of De Quincey's residence 
 in the University, though they had never then met ! 
 While De Quincey had been creeping through the Uni- 
 versity, a bookish opium-eating recluse, Wilson had been 
 the most observed man of all the colleges, not more for his 
 magnificent physique and his unapproachable applications 
 of it in pugilistic matches, leaping matches, and all other 
 kinds of University sports, than for his universal sociabiHty, 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFK AT THE LAKES. 49 
 
 exiihorance of iLumour, easy triumphs in the classics and 
 whatever else he cared to compete in, and 23romises of 
 some unusual form of literary etfulgence not yet distinctly 
 featured. With this kind of reputation preceding him 
 from Oxford, it was as if he had bounded into the Lake 
 District, rather than merely settled in it ; and already 
 the splendid young Mr. AVilson of Elleray, to whom his 
 father, a Paisley manufacturer, had left a clear fortune of 
 50,000/., was known not only to all his neighbours that 
 were likely to think of that matter, but also to every 
 boatman, every innkeeper, every crack wrestler or boxer, 
 every band of gipsies or other vagrants, over the whole 
 region. 
 
 In this mere enumeration there is already implied a 
 good deal of De Quincey's life through the six or seven 
 years at present under notice. The mile of road from 
 his own cottage to Wordsworth's house of Allan Baidv 
 was his familiar walk morning and evening from the first, 
 for the sake of Wordsworth's society, and also of Cole- 
 ridge's, so long as Coleridge, busy in bringing out his 
 Friend, remained Wordsworth's guest. As many as 500 
 books at a time from the very considerable library which 
 De Quincey had in his cottage, a large j^ortion of it con- 
 sisting of German books, w^ould, he tells us, bo in 
 Wordsworth's house in those days for Coleridge's use, — 
 Wordsworth's own library being the most wretched thing 
 that ever went by that name, a mere litter of tattered 
 odd volumes on a few shelves. The distance from 
 Southey, Avhose library was the chief distinction of his 
 house, ])revented such frequent intercourse with him as 
 with the Wordsworths ; nor was De Quincey ever bound 
 to Southey by any very close intimacy. He did occasio- 
 nally visit at Greta Hall, however, and was able, " in a 
 
50 DE QUINCE \\ [chap. 
 
 qualified sense," to call Southey his friend; and we find 
 Southey, in a letter to a correspondent in 1810, making 
 mention of ])e Quincey in rather memorable terms. " De 
 Quincey," he says, 'is a singular man, but better in- 
 formed than any person almost that I ever met at his 
 age." Tliat De Quincey was among the numerous 
 visitors of the great Bishop Watson at Calgarth Park, and 
 thus came to know that celebrity personally, is no mere 
 guess. " This dignitary,*" he tells us, " I knew myself 
 as much as I wished to know him : he was interesting ; 
 yet also not interesting ;" and he goes on to sketch for 
 us his portrait of the somewhat pompous and worldly, 
 yet kindly, jovial, candid, and strong-headed septuagena- 
 rian, whom, pluralist and sinecurist though he had been 
 all his life, and all but avowedly at his own table a 
 Socinian and free-thinker, the Whigs had wished to make 
 Archbishop of York. At Brathay De Quincey was a 
 constant visitor, sometimes in solitary conversation for 
 hours with the philosophic Charles Lloyd himself, some- 
 times at one of Lloyd's well-attended dinner parties, 
 sometimes looking on at one of those evening parties of 
 young people that Lloyd liked to see gathered at his 
 house. It had been at one of these evening parties at 
 Lloyd's, apparently in the year 1808, that De Quincey 
 had first seen Wilson, — dancing radiantly and inde- 
 fatigably, and chiefly with a Miss Jane l^enny, "the 
 leading belle of the Lake Country ;" but it was in Words- 
 worth's house that the first formal introduction took 
 place. It was Wordsworth himself, when De Quincey 
 entered his room one morning and found a stranger with 
 him, that pronounced the words of introduction, " Mr. 
 Wilson of Ellera]/,'' in his usual deep tones. From the 
 time of this introduction the two were fast friends, some 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFE AT THE LAKES. 51 
 
 unusually strong elective affinity attaching the magnificent 
 master of Elleray to his puny neighbour. There was 
 talk between them of a tour together to Spain, the 
 Mediterranean, and the East ; and, though that came to 
 nothing, they contrived to be together as much as pos- 
 sible, whenever Wilson was at Elleray, and not, as hap- 
 pened pretty often, away in Edinburgh on the business 
 of his nominal preparation for the Scottish Bar. It must 
 have been a sight to see the two together in one of 
 Wilson's fishing expeditions among the Lakes, or in their 
 joint rambles over the hills, the little De Quincey trudging 
 side by side with his majestic comrade. But De Quincey 
 was a capital walker, never satisfied without his ten or 
 fifteen miles daily in the open air. Even in that matter, 
 therefore, he and Wilson were well enough matched ; 
 while it may be doubted whether in the subtle, scholarly, 
 whimsical, and deeply reasoned bits of brain-product which 
 the smaller man gave to the larger in the course of their 
 walks, in exchange for the laughs and wild immethodic 
 chaunts which prophesied the future Christopher, the 
 larger man may not have had the better bargain. AVhen 
 Wilson was not at Elleray, or even when he was there, 
 De Quincey delighted much in long, aimless walks by 
 himself, especially nocturnal walks. 
 
 More and more, it seems, after 1810, when Coleridge 
 took his final departure from the Lakes, there had been a 
 gradual waning of the friendship between De Quincey and 
 Wordsworth. They were still much together; Words- 
 worth still consulted De Quincey about his poems, or 
 lines in his poems ; and De Quincey's admiration of the 
 hero in his poetic character remained unabated. But, 
 whether because Wordsworth, in his self-absorption, 
 found De Quincey's companionship unnecessary^ or be- 
 
52 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 cause De Quincey felt his nerves jarred by Wordsworth's 
 habitual austerity and masculine hardness, certain it is 
 that there came at length to be some degree of mutual 
 alienation. This was recompensed in part by the fidelity 
 of Dorothy Wordsworth's liking for De Quincey and by 
 the growing attachment to him of Wordsworth's children. 
 The Wordsworth children were never tired of talking of 
 " Kinsey," and the presents he brought them. " Kinsey ! 
 Kinsey ! what a' bring Katy from London *? " were the 
 parting words of one of them, his favourite little Kate 
 Wordsworth, as he was going away for a while. He 
 remembered the words and quoted them in a letter which 
 he wrote to Dorothy Wordsworth on hearing of the young 
 thing's death in his absence, June 4, 1812. His grief 
 over the death of this child passed all that is common in 
 that kind of experience. 
 
 Only a part of the life of a man, even at the Lakes, can 
 consist in walks and talks out-of-doors with friends, or in 
 visits to the houses of neighbours. Much of it, all the 
 best of it, must consist in what he does by himself within 
 the four walls that enclose him when lie is not dependent 
 on others. Have we any glimpse of De Quincey and his 
 occupations in his solitary bachelorhood in his pretty, 
 rose- embowered, cottage at Grasmere 1 We have ; and it 
 ought to be quoted. It is the passage where, overleaping 
 the interval from his Oxford life, he presents himself as 
 he was in 1812, two hundred and fifty miles away from 
 Oxford, and buried among mountains: — 
 
 And what am I doing amongst the mountains? Taking 
 opium. Yes; but what else.P Why, reader, in 1812, the year 
 we are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, I 
 have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, or the writings 
 of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how, and in what manner 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFE AT THE LAKES. 53 
 
 do I live? in short, what class or description of men do I 
 belong to ? I am at this period, — viz., in 1812, — living in a 
 cottage ; and with a single female servant (Jion\ soit qui mat y 
 fense), who, amongst mj neighbours, passes by the name of 
 my "housekeeper.'' And, as a scholar and a man of learned 
 education, I may presume to class myself as an unworthy 
 member of that indefinite body called gentlemen. Partly on 
 the ground I have assigned, — partly because, from having 
 no visible calling or business, it is rightly judged that I 
 must be living on my private fortune, — I am so classed by 
 my neighbours; and, by the courtesy of modern England, 
 I am usually addressed on letters, &c., Esquire. . . . Am I 
 married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On Satur- 
 day nights. And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever 
 since " the rainy Sunday," and " the stately Pantheon," and 
 " the beatific druggist " of 1804 ? Even so. And how do I 
 find my health after all this i)pium-eating ? in short, how do I 
 do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader. In fact, if I dared 
 to say the real and simple truth (though, in order to satisfy the 
 theories of some medical men, I ought to be ill), I was never 
 better in my life than in the spring of 1812 ; and I hope sin- 
 cerely that the quantity of claret, port, or " London particular 
 Madeira," which, in all probability, you, good reader, have 
 taken, and design to take, for every term of eight years during 
 your natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was 
 disordered by all the opium I had taken (though in quantity 
 such that I might well have bathed and swum in it) for the 
 eight years between 1804 and 1812. 
 
 Translated into stricter biographical language, this 
 means, in the first jolace, that De Quincey had been a 
 hard student during his residence at the Lakes, burning 
 the midnight oil a good deal over his books of all sorts, 
 but especially over the later German transcendentalists. 
 Nothing is said of that other exercise which is the sole 
 salvation of any man situated as De Quincey M^as, and 
 without which reading and reverie are but an Epicurean 
 waste of spirit, — Sictnsd production of some kind or other, 
 
54 DE QUINCE Y. [chap, 
 
 by a wide-awake exertion of one's own faculties, out of the 
 stuff of one's readings and reveries. We may, however, 
 if we choose, suppose piles of papers on his tahle, if only 
 in the form of abstracts of the books read, and comments 
 and criticisms on them for his own edification. Of this 
 we are less certain than of the other fact of which the 
 extract assures us. He had brought the habit of opium- 
 taking to the Lakes with him ; and an indispensable 
 article on his table, on one night of the week at least, 
 when he was seated by himself, and the shutters were 
 shut, and the candles lit, and the fire burning brightly, 
 was the opium decanter ! 
 
 De Quincey's intimations on this subject are perfectly 
 plain. Through the eight years preceding 1812 he had, 
 he says, persisted uninterruptedly in the use of opium, 
 with a gradual increase both in the frequency of his doses 
 and of the quantity of each, but still, — so he could flatter 
 himself, — with no signs of permanent injury. But, within 
 a year, he goes on to say, the case was *altered. The year 
 1813, he intimates, was a fatal one in his history. Tliere 
 had been some calamity of a private kind, causing him 
 great distress. What it was he does not say ; but it seems 
 to have been some serious catastrophe in his pecuniary 
 affairs. This may be inferred from a letter to him from 
 his uncle. Colonel Penson, sent from Futtygur in India, 
 and dated 16th July, 1813. "I have heard that your 
 " affairs are not prosperous," the letter begins, " though 
 " of the nature or extent of your misfortunes I have no 
 " information. Yet, as it has pleased God to bless me 
 •' beyond either hope or expectation since I left England, 
 '• I feel that in requesting your acceptance of the enclosed 
 " I am not violating," &c. What tlie good uncle enclosed 
 was a handsome draft for his nephew's help. It may 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFE AT TEE LAKES. 55 
 
 have been to the same unfortunate crisis in De Quincey's 
 affairs that there had been reference in c note sent him by 
 Wordsworth some months before, when lie was away on 
 one of his rambles from Grasmere. The main purpose 
 was to inform him of the death of another of AYords- 
 worth's children, little Tommy, w^ho had been a pet of Do 
 Quincey's ; but the note ends, " Most tenderly and 
 lovingly, Avith heavy sorrow for you, my dear friend, I 
 remain yours, W. Wordsworth." AVhether the calamity 
 was of the kind here suggested or not, it had very im- 
 portant effects on De Quincey's health, and, through them, 
 on his dealings with opium. " I was attacked," he says, 
 " by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all re- 
 " spects the same as that which had caused me so much 
 " suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of the 
 " old dreams. Xow, then, it was, — viz., in the year 
 " 1813, — that I became a regular and confirmed (no 
 " longer an intermitting) opium-eater." He explains 
 what he means by informing us that from this time the 
 use of the drug increased and increased upon him till it 
 reached the monstrous allowance of 320 grains of solid 
 opium, or 8000 drops of laudanum, per day. It may 
 convey a more exact idea if we add that 8000 drops 
 would fill about seven ordinary wine-glasses. 
 
 That this exchange of the practice of a periodical or 
 intermittent opium-debauch for the character of a con- 
 firmed and daily opium-eater, was accompanied by some 
 speedy experience of those opium-horrors of which he has 
 left us such vivid descriptions, may be taken for granted. 
 It is to a later period, however, that he refers hie full 
 experience of those opium-horrors ; and what we should 
 gather from his brief accounts of himself for the year or 
 two immediately following 1813 is rather that he was not 
 
56 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 yet in the stage of that most awful experience of the effects 
 of opium, but simply under an increasing cloud of gloom, 
 with a torpor of the intellectual faculties. The recorded 
 incidents of those years are very few, and relate chiefly to 
 some rambles away from the Lakes. Several times, as we 
 are told, he was in llondon ; and every year, it appears, 
 he was for some time in Somersetshire or elsewhere in the 
 West of England, visiting his mother and her friends. It 
 was in one of those visits to Somersetshire, in 1814, and 
 at Hannah More's house, that he met Mrs. Siddons, then 
 retiring from the stage in her fifty-ninth year, and was 
 amused by an animated debate which he heard between 
 the two ladies on the points of Calvinism, till Hannah 
 More's ladylike tact changed the subject and wiled Mrs, 
 Siddons into her charming recollections of Johnson and 
 Garrick. But a more memorable visit than any to Somer- 
 setshire was that which he paid to Edinburgh, for the first 
 time, in the winter of 1814-15. 
 
 Wilson, who had been a married man since 1811, when 
 the fore-mentioned Miss Jane I^enny, the belle of the 
 Lake District, became his wife, had been coming and 
 going as before between Edinburgh and Elleray. He had 
 also published his Isle of Palms and other poems ; he Avas 
 about to be called to the Edinburgh Bar ; and, being still 
 in the enjoyment of his large patrimonial fortune, though 
 very soon to lose it by the misconduct of a relative, he 
 was now, in his thirtieth year, a shining figure in Edin- 
 burgh society. Twice or thrice he had tried to bring De 
 Quincey with him from the Lakes ; but not till now had 
 he succeeded. The months of the winter of 1814-15 
 which De Quincey did spend in Edinburgh were a sub- 
 ject of brilliant recollection long afterwards. Of Scott 
 and Jeffrey he seems to have seen nothing, or nothing 
 
v.] BACHELOR LIFE AT THE LAKES. 57 
 
 more than their physiognomies in the streets or the Par- 
 liament House ; but the group of less-known but rising 
 men that was gathered round Wilson and his brothers, 
 forming the Young Edinburgh of that date, was sufficiently 
 interesting in itself. There was Sir William Hamilton, 
 in his twenty-seventh year, already nominally a Scottish 
 advocate, but really an omnivorous scholar, and, as the 
 world came in time to know, the nearest approach to an 
 Aristotle redivivus in the British Logic and Metaphysics 
 of his generation. There was Sir William's younger 
 brother, Thomas Hamilton, known afterwards as the 
 author of Cyril Thornton, a novel of considerable merit. 
 There was Scott's friend, William Allan the painter, 
 afterwards Sir William Allan and President of the Eoyal 
 Scottish Academy. There w^as a certain Robert Pierce 
 Gillies, of the Scottish Bar, more of an invalid than the 
 rest of the group, but versatile in literature, full of literary 
 gossip, and noted in those days for the " all but princely " 
 style of his hospitalities. Finally, not to mention others 
 then walking the Parliament House as budding barristers, 
 afterwards to be judges or big-wigs of some kind, there 
 was John Gibson Lockhart, yet only in his twenty-first 
 year, and not to be called to the Bar till two years hence, 
 but already beginning to be recognised on the verge of the 
 Young Edinburgh set for his literary promise and his 
 scorpion readiness in sting and caricature. In the circle 
 of tliese, with Wilson's house as the centre, De Quincey 
 moved during his stay in Edinburgh, welcome among 
 them from the first, and leaving among them no ordinary 
 impression. Mr. R. P, Gillies has commemorated particu- 
 larly the effects of his conversation. "The talk might be 
 " of ' beeves,' and he could grapple with them, if expected 
 " to do so 1 but his musical cadences were not in keeping 
 
58 DE QUINCEY. [ch. v. 
 
 " with such work, and in a few minutes (not without 
 •' some strictly logical sequence) he would escape at will 
 " from beeves to butterflies, and thence to the soul's im 
 " mortality, to Plato, and Kant, and Schelling, and 
 " Fichte, to Milton's early years and Shakespeare's Son- 
 " nets, to Wordsworth and Coleridge, to Homer and 
 " x^schylus, to St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Basil, and St. 
 " Chrysostom." As yet, it is to be remembered De 
 Quincey had not published a line of his own. 
 
 For incidents in De Quincey's bachelor life at the 
 Lakes after his return from Edinburgh we search in vain, 
 unless we may count among them his famous, but un- 
 dated, adventure with the ]\Ialay. He was sitting in his 
 room in his cottage one day when he was informed that 
 there was a strange dark man in the kitchen. Going to 
 the rescue of the alarmed girl who had admitted the man, 
 he found him to be a poor Malay tramp, in a turban and 
 dingy white trousers, whom some accident had brought 
 into those parts. He had some food and rest ; and, at his 
 departure, De Quincey, who could not understand a word 
 he said, but guessed that as an Asiatic he might be no 
 stranger to opium, presented him with some. The Malay, 
 after looking at the piece given him, "enough to kill 
 some half-dozen dragoons together with their horses," im- 
 mediately bolted the whole at one mouthful. De Quincey 
 felt anxious for some days ; but, as he never heard that 
 a dead ]\[alay had been f(jund on the roads thereabouts, 
 he became satisfied that no harm had been done. 
 
CHAPTER VT. 
 
 5IARRIED LIFE AT THE LAKES : PROSTRATION' UNDER OPIUM 
 PROVINCIAL EDITORSHIP. 
 
 1S16— 1S21. 
 
 AVe have had a picture from De Qiiincey himself of his 
 life in his cottage at Grasmere in the year 1812. Here is 
 a companion picture, also by himself, uf his life in the 
 same cottage in 1816-17 : — 
 
 Lot there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles 
 ft-om any town ; no spacious valley, but about two miles long by 
 three-quarters of a mile in average width, — the benefit of which 
 provision is that all families resident within its circuit will com- 
 prise, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your 
 eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the 
 mountains be real mountains, between 3t>_H3 and 4<X^3 feet 
 high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has 
 it) •• a cottage with a double coach-house;"' let it be, in fact (for 
 I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered 
 with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of 
 flowei-s upon the walls, and clustering around the windows. 
 through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn ; be- 
 ginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with j ismine. 
 Let it. however, 7iot be spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but 
 winter in its sternest shape. . . . But here, to save myself the 
 trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, 
 and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do 
 not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained ; but, 
 
60 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his 
 services will not be required except for the inside of the house. — 
 Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more 
 than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat 
 ambitiously styled, in my family, the drawing-room ; but, being 
 contrived " a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, 
 termed the library ; for it happens that books are the only 
 article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours. 
 Of these I have about 5000, collected gradually since my 
 eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can 
 into this room. Make it populous with books ; and, further- 
 more, paint me a good fire, and furniture plain and modest, 
 befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the 
 fire paint me a tea-table ; and (as it is clear that no creature can 
 come to see me on such a stormy night) place only two cups 
 and saucers on the tea-tray ; and, if you know how to paint such 
 a thing, symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea- 
 pot, — eternal a parte ante and a parte post; for I usually 
 drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. 
 And, as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out, for 
 one's self, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table. 
 Paint her arms like Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's; but 
 
 no, dear M ! not even in jest let me insinuate that thy 
 
 power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable 
 as mere personal beauty., or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles 
 lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass, then, my 
 good painter, to something more within its power ; and the next 
 article brought forward should naturally be myself, — a picture 
 of the Opium-eater, with his " little golden receptacle of the 
 pernicious drug'' lying beside him on the table. As to the 
 opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that ; you may 
 paint it, if you choose ; but I apprise you that no " little " 
 receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was 
 at a distance from the " stately Pantheon " and all druggists 
 (mortal or otherwise). No : you may as well paint the real 
 receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much 
 like a sublunary wine-decanter as possible. In fact, one day, 
 by a series of happily conceived experiments, I discovered that 
 
VI.] MxVERTED LIFE AT THE LAKES. 61 
 
 it ^vas a decanter. Into this you may put a quart of ruby- 
 coloured laudanum ; that, and a book of German metaphysics 
 placed by its side, will sufficiently attest ray being in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The fair tea- maker of this passage, styled " dear 
 
 M ," was De Quincey's wife, whom he married in the 
 
 end of 1816. She was a Margaret Simpson, daughter of 
 a small Westmoreland farmer, living at a place called 
 " The Xab," near De Quincey's cottage, and sometimes 
 confounded now with that cottage by tourists, the rather 
 because De Quincey alternated a good deal between the 
 two after his marriage. At the date of the marriage the 
 bride was eighteen years of age, De Quincey being thirty- 
 one. For a while before the event, and in anticipation of 
 it, De Quincey had, as he tells us, " suddenly a 'id without 
 any considerable effort," reduced liis daily allowance of 
 opium from 320 grains or 8000 drops to 40 grains or 1000 
 drops. The effect had been magical. The " cloud of 
 profoundest melancholy " which had rested on his brain 
 passed away ; his mind could think as healthily as ever 
 before ; he could read Kant again, or any other hard 
 writer, with clear intelligence. And so for a while after 
 the marriage, till he could count about a year altogether 
 of parenthetic peace and happiness in this portion of his 
 life. " It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the 
 " manner of jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated, in 
 '' the gloomy umbrage of opium." For, as he goes 
 on to inform us, his restriction of himself to the 
 diminished allowance was but temporary ; and from some 
 time in ISlTj on through 1818, and even into 1819, he 
 was agahi under the full dominion of the fell agent, 
 rising once more to his 8000 drops per diem, or even some- 
 times to 12,000 drops. This, accordingly; was the time 
 
62 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 of that most intimate and tremendous experience of the 
 opium-horrors in his own case which he has described in 
 part of his Co7ifessions. 
 
 His description fully bears out the accepted belief, 
 confirmed so strikingly by the similar case of Coleridge, 
 that one inevitable effect of opium-eating is paralysis of 
 the will. With his intellectual apprehensions of duty as 
 keen as ever, he could propose or execute nothing ; he was 
 as powerless as an infant for any practical effort. Every- 
 thing was neglected or procrastinated ; the domestic eco- 
 nomy, so far as it depended on himself, might have gone 
 to wreck ; letters, however urgent, lay about unanswered. 
 Further, there was a paralysis of that very physical 
 craving which, if gratified, might have furnished so far a 
 counteractive to the opium. While he had always before 
 needed and liked long walks, and while his sole chance now 
 lay in enormous exercise of that kind, he sank into a state 
 of hopeless sedentariness. Add to all this the protracted, 
 ever- varying, never-ceasing nightmare of his opium-dreams. 
 On this subject he has left us many pages, blending records 
 of his own dreams with such a science or philosophy of 
 opium- dreaming in general as perhaps no other man ever 
 attempted. Biographically, the following is the substance : 
 — That faculty of day-dreaming, of projecting optical images 
 or fancies out of one's own mind into the air, which is con- 
 stitutionally strong in some, and which had been unusually 
 strong in De Quincey from his infancy, was now intensified 
 by his opium-eating into an ungovernable propensity. 
 Especially at night, as he lay awake in bed, his thoughts 
 translated themselves into visions which could not be 
 dismissed, or visions would come of themselves, in the 
 form of " vast processions " and " friezes of never-ending 
 stories " painted on the darkness. This morbid activity of 
 
vi.j PKOSTRATION UNDER OPIUM. 63 
 
 the faculty of visual creation pursued him into sleep. It 
 seemed as if a theatre were " suddenly opened and lighted 
 up " within his brain, for the performance, regularly as 
 sleep came, of nightly extravaganzas and phantasmagories. 
 AYliat had troubled the phantasy already by day would 
 reappear in the night with wonderful transmutations and 
 expansions, or any subject that had been thought of by day 
 would present itself at night in amazing dream-scenery and 
 allegory. But, on the whole, the resources of material for 
 the repeated nightly pageant seemed boundless. What 
 should come, or whence it came, was incalculable. It 
 was as if among the specific potencies of opium was that 
 of searching out whatever was stored up and dormant any- 
 how in the most secret intricacies of the nervous organism, 
 unlocking all doors, compelling all the hoarded photographic 
 impressions of all that had happened in the life of a 
 human being from the hour of birth to yesterday, all that 
 had <:jone into oblivion with himself and was known to 
 God only, to flash out again, and become real and signifi- 
 cant once more in the dreamy revel. But it was also as if, 
 with all this recovery of the forgotten actual, the bounds 
 of ordinary sense-experience were burst, and the world of 
 the dreams was not tlie human world, but some other, 
 infernal or supernal. The sense of space, and latterly the 
 sense of time, were strangely affected. One moved, or 
 hung, or sank, in measureless chasms, unshored astronomical 
 abysses, or depths without a star ; minutes shot out into 
 years, or centuries were shrivelled into minutes. When 
 the dream-scenery was most earthly, tliere was never any 
 comfort in it, but always a sense of misery, dread, struggle 
 and battle, eternal pursuit of something, or eternal flight 
 from some unescapable enemy. He gives specimens of 
 some of the dreams that were most frec^uent or most 
 
64 DE QUINCEY. [cnAP. 
 
 hideous. Sometimes, in some recollection of the Malay, 
 the dream-imagery was Oriental, Egypt adding her horrors 
 to those of China and Hindostan, and all three yielding a 
 monstrous jumble of things animate and inanimate, amid 
 which he was compelled to move and suffer, seeking refuge 
 in vain in pagodas and their most secret rooms, or chased 
 for ages through tropical forests, or buried in caves with 
 mummies and sphinxes and all the abominations of the 
 ibis and the crocodile. At other times, though the dream- 
 scenery at first might be Oriental or Alpine, or of grave- 
 yards in some quiet valley, it would turn at last into 
 multitudinous and lamp-lit Londo]i, with its mazes and 
 labyrinths of streets, and through those mazes and labyrinths 
 he would himself be wandering round and round, amid 
 legions of ruffianly faces, groping in vain for the lost Ann 
 of Oxford Street. 
 
 To wake day after day at noon from such night-mare 
 miseries and be aware of his wife and children standing 
 by him, and to know that, when the day waned, it would 
 only be to plunge him again into the hideous tumult of 
 his other or opium-generated existence, became an agony 
 unsufferable. He sbrank from the approach of sleep, and 
 longed to sleep no more. His condition in his waking 
 hours was that of a " suicidal despondency ;" there seemed 
 no exit from his wretchedness but suicide or lunacy. At 
 last, however, — just when the reader is tired of the 
 monotony of so much misery, and pity is passing into 
 something like disgust, especially in recollection of the 
 young wife and mother who had to be the nurse of her 
 opium-besotted husband, and indeed when one has been 
 taking refuge from the necessity of such disgust in the 
 fancy that matters were not so bad as they are described, 
 and that some of the more hideous opium-dreams were 
 
VI.] PROSTKATION UNDER OPIUM. 65 
 
 subsequent constructions of literary genius, in which 
 fiction was piled upon remembered fact, — ^just at this point 
 one is able to leave the ugly sea of storm and confusion, 
 and to set foot on a landing-place. This we do in the 
 year 1819. There had, indeed, been a gleam of returning 
 hope in the previous year. In the very thickest depth of 
 De Quincey's mental obscuration, when he could attend to 
 nothing, and had abandoned a certain great pliilosophical 
 work, '^ De Emendations Humani Intelledus" ^,v\\\q\i he 
 had projected in imitation of Spinoza, he had been roused 
 by the receipt, from a friend in Edinburgh, of a copy of 
 Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy, then recently 
 published. The book fascinated him ', he could read and 
 enjoy it ; he admired the author prodigiously ; Eicardo 
 seemed to him the first man who had shot light and 
 order into what had hitherto been but a " dark chaos of 
 materials." He was moved even to write, or to dictate to 
 his wife, thoughts that grew out of his reading. There 
 had thus grown in his hands the manuscript of a book or 
 pamphlet entitled " Prolegomena to all Future Systems of 
 Political Economy.'" The book had been actually adver- 
 tised, and arrangements made for printing it, when the 
 opium-torpor again fell upon him, and the manuscript was 
 left incomplete. Xow, however, in 1819, he shook him- 
 self free with more effect. The circumstances are left 
 shadowy ; and it does not seem that it was then, or till a 
 while later, that he achieved what he calls his " triumph," 
 or release for a good while together from his thraldom to 
 opium. Enough is told, however, to show that, notwith- 
 standing all the exertions of his gentle wife, the res 
 angusta domi had become so severe in the cottage at 
 Grasmere that even the opium-torpor ^-had to relax its 
 hold and permit the master of the household to rise and 
 
 F 
 
66 DE QUINCBY. [chap, 
 
 look about Mm. By some immense elfort, De Quincej' 
 had moderated his dependence on the drug, and was 
 looking about him in something like restored capacity for 
 work, when, — 0, bathos from the projected " De Emenda- 
 tione Hamani Intelledus " and the " Prolegomena to all 
 Future Systems of Political Economy " ! — he was caught 
 by the Westmoreland Tories and converted into the editor 
 of their local newspaper. 
 
 The Westmoreland Gazette had been started in 1818, 
 during the general election of that year, when Mr. 
 Brougham had the first of his three unsuccessful contests 
 for the great northern county. It was started at Kendal, 
 on funds raised by gentlemen who were *' friends to the 
 Constitution," to oppose the " infamous levelling doc- 
 trines" of Mr. Brougham, and of the local Whig organ 
 called the Kendal Chronicle. An editor had been procured 
 from London, but had turned out a failure ; and about the 
 middle of 1819 the editorship was offered to De Quincey. 
 They had offered him a salary of 160/. a year; but, as 
 this was to be for the performance of all the duties, and 
 as that involved residence in Kendal, De Quincey pre- 
 ferred an arrangement by which he was to pay a sub-editor 
 to do the drudgery at Kendal, keeping the surplus for 
 himself for his leading articles and supervising editorship 
 from Grasmere. The sub-editor whom he engaged would 
 not take less than two guineas a week, leaving but 50Z. \^s. 
 for his chief ; but the proprietors handsomely made up 
 this sum to 54Z. 12.s., or a complete guinea a week. Of 
 all this De Quincey sent a detailed account, in very hope- 
 ful terms, to his uncle in India, informing the colonel at 
 the same time that he had engagements with Blachcood's 
 Magazine and tlie Qiuirterly Review, which would bring 
 him 180Z. a year more, and concluding with a request 
 
VI.] PROVINCIAL EDITORSHIP. 67 
 
 to be allowed to draw upon the colonel for 500/., " say 
 150/. now, and the other 350/. in six or eight months 
 hence." This would re-establish him for life, he said, 
 and he looked forward to a removal to London, to resume 
 his training for the profession of the law. 
 
 The specimens given by Mr. Page, from the files of the 
 Westmoreland Gazette, of De Quincey's leading articles 
 and notices to correspondents during his time of editor- 
 ship, confirm Mr. Page's general conclusion that he " was 
 not born for a successful newspaper editor." Perhaps the 
 most characteristic of the quoted specimens is an article 
 in which, in answer to remonstrances that he was flying 
 over the heads of his readers, he expounds his ideas of 
 provincial editorship in general and of the prospects of the 
 Westmoreland Gazette in particular. " The editor " he 
 says " can assure his readers that his own personal friends 
 " in most of the Universities, especially in the three 
 "weightiest, — Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, — are 
 "quite competent in number and jDOwer to float the 
 " Gazette triumphantly into every section and division of 
 " those learned bodies." Nor was this all. AVhile not 
 neglecting the demands of his humbler constituents of 
 Westmoreland, he could not forget that well-educated and 
 learned readers were numerous in the county. For their 
 sakes, he is proud to intimate that he " has received 
 " assurances of support from two of the most illustrious 
 " men in point of intellectual pretensions that have ap- 
 "peared for some ages," — whether Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, or Wordsworth and South ey, is not quite 
 obvious. But even this is not all, " The editor will go 
 " a step further. He will venture to affirm that, even 
 " without the powerful aid here noticed (to which he 
 " might have added a promise of co-operation from LondoD, 
 
68 DE QUINCE r. [chap. 
 
 " the four great commercial towns of the second class, many 
 " of the third class, and so downwards, as also occasion- 
 " ally from Paris and Vienna, from Canada, and from 
 " Hindostan, &c.), — even without the powerful aid here 
 "noticed, he could singly and unsupported secure to the 
 " Gazette one feature of originality which would draw 
 " upon it a general notice throughout Great Britain." 
 Was not German Literature a yet unworked mine of 
 wealth, an absolute Potosi ; and might not the editor say 
 without vanity, since his part would be only that of 
 selecting and translating, that no journal in the kingdom 
 could draw on this mine so easily, or exhibit such nuggets 
 from it weekly, as the Westmorelcmd Gazette ? — All this 
 for a guinea a- week to the editor at Grasmere, with two 
 guineas a week for the grimy cormorant drudging for him 
 in some public-house at Kendal ! There is something 
 like evidence, however, that the cormorant was dismissed, 
 and that De Quincey took up his quarters for some time 
 at Kendal, uniting the functions of editor and sub-editor, 
 and, it is to be hoped, their salaries. There is one letter from 
 him to his wife, at all events, dated ^' Commercial Inn, 
 11 o'clock on Thursday night," which presents him as 
 then in Kendal by himself, before a table covered with 
 printer's proofs, and very heavy-hearted at being away 
 from Grasmere. He has been vexed particularly by news 
 of the illness of his little child Margaret. " God bless 
 her, poor little lamb ! " he ejaculates affectionately, adding 
 that, if his wife cannot come to Kendal to-morrow, he 
 will try to be at Grasmere next week. 
 
 After all, De Quincey seems to have done not badly in 
 his editorship, even by the standard of the Tory gentle- 
 men of Westmoreland. If the local circulation was 
 not large, the matter administered was probably more 
 
VI.] PllOYINCIAL EDITORSHIP. 69 
 
 acceptable to the country folks than that of Coleridge's 
 Friend. One thing the editorship had done for De 
 Quincey himself. It had given ]dm a liking for the sight 
 of printer's proofs. Accordingly, his editorship of the 
 Westmoreland Gazette having come to an end some time 
 in 1820, or been converted, by understanding with the 
 proprietors, into a mere contributorship thenceforward, he 
 was on the outlook for other literary employment. ]S^ot 
 unnaturally, his thoughts turned first to Edinburgh, where 
 his friend Wilson, now Professor of Moral Philosophy, 
 had since 1817 been the lord of Blachicood's Magazine, 
 and he and Lockhart and a band of daring young Tories 
 about them had made that magazine at once a terror and 
 a new splendour in the island, and where there was 
 no lack of other literary possibilities and openings. 
 The engagement on Blackwood mentioned by De Quincey 
 to his uncle in 1819 had, it would appear, turned out a 
 quasi-engagement only; and in the end of 1820 he is 
 found in Edinburgh in person, examining chances on the 
 spot. In a letter to his wife thence, dated Dec. 9, 
 1820, he speaks of the cordial reception he has had 
 among his old Edinburgh friends. IS^othing definite, how- 
 ever, seems to have come of the visit. Wilson, one cannot 
 doubt, did his best ; but there may have been difficulties. 
 And so, not yet an actual contributor to Blackicood, but 
 only a potential contributor, De Quincey was back 
 at his hom.e in the Lakes early in 1821. It was in 
 London, and not in Edinburgh, that he was first to appear 
 as a writer in Magazines. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PARTLY IN LONDON, PARTLY AT THE LAKES, PARTLY IN 
 EDINBURGH : THE " CONFESSIONS " AND OTHER ARTICLES 
 IN THE " LONDON MAGAZINE," AND FIRST ARTICLES IN 
 " BLACKWOOD." 
 
 1821—1830. 
 
 The metropolitan magazine of chief note in those days 
 was The London Magazine. It had been established in 
 January 1820, with Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, and Co., for 
 the publishers, and the Aberdonian Mr. John Scott for 
 editor; but, in July 1821, after the death of Scott in his 
 unfortunate duel, it passed into the hands of Messrs. 
 Taylor and Hessey, who were thenceforward themselves 
 the editors. And very good editors they were. Aiming 
 high, and having retained the best of the contributors in 
 Scott's time and added others, they had already, in 1821, 
 a sufficiently remarkable staff about them, whom they 
 kept in good humour and a kind of stimulated unity of 
 endeavour, not only by what was then considered liberal 
 pay, but also by an excellent monthly dinner, for talk 
 and wit-combat, at the expense of the firm. Keats, who 
 had contributed verses to the earlier numbers, had died in 
 February 1821 ; but Charles Lamb, at the age of forty- 
 six, and under his newly adopted signature of "Elia," 
 was obliging ^lessrs. Taylor and Hessey, and the world, 
 with fresh specimens of his charming Essays. Among 
 
en. Ml. J THE LONDON MAGAZINE. 71 
 
 the other contributors were, or were to be, Ilazlitt, John 
 Hamilton Reynolds, the stalwart Allan Cunningham, 
 the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, John Poole, George Darley, 
 Bryan Waller Procter, and Thomas Hood. This last, in- 
 deed, at the age of twenty-three, was a kind of assistant- 
 editor. There was also a certain shabby-genteel and 
 bejewelled effeminate, named Thomas Griffith Wain- 
 vvright, whose department was the Fine Arts, and who, 
 under the signature of " Janus Weathercock," wrote most 
 of the articles on great painters and engravers, and criti- 
 cisms of contemporary pictures. He was to die in 
 Australia long afterwards as a convict who had been 
 transported for forgery, but who was known also, by 
 evidence irresistible, as the murderer, by poison, of two 
 young ladies, boarders in his house, on whose lives he had 
 speculated for a total of 18,000?, by scattered investments 
 in different insurance-offices. 
 
 It is curious to look over the old volumes of the London 
 Magazine now, and to observe the papers in them that 
 have become classic. It was in the number for September 
 1821, or about two months after Messrs. Taylor and 
 Hessey had become proprietors, that there appeared a 
 paper of twenty pages entitled Confessions of an Opinm- 
 Eater, heinrj an Extract from flie Life of a Scholar. That 
 there were unusual expectations of popularity for this 
 piece is proved by the appended editorial note ( *? by 
 young Hood), stating that " the remainder of this very 
 interesting article will be given in the next number." 
 Accordingly, the number for October 1821 leads off 
 with Part II. of the Confessions in 27 pages. It con- 
 tains, moreover, a notice from the author explanatory of 
 the dates in the First Part, and another editorial paragraph 
 of congratulation over tlie new contributor. " We are 
 
72 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 " not often in the habit of eulogizing our own work," says 
 the paragraph ; " but we cannot neglect the opportunity 
 '' which the following explanatory note gives us of calling 
 '^ the attention of our readers to the deep, eloquent, and 
 " masterly pajxT wliich stands first in our present number." 
 The Co?2fessio/is, in fact, were widely read, and roused 
 much curiosity. The cry, on all hands, was for more of 
 the same extraordinary matter. That was not so easy ; 
 but in the number for December 1821 there appeared a 
 letter from the Opium-Eater, signed " X.Y.Z./' courteously 
 rebuking Mr. James Montgomery for his scepticism as to 
 the authenticity of the Co7ifessions, and promising a Third 
 Part in time. Meanwhile, in the same number, the public 
 had from the new author, signing himself " Grasmeriensis 
 Teutonizans," a paper On the Writings of John Paul 
 Frederick Richter, including a translated specimen. Then, 
 for a whole year, there was a break, the promise of a con- 
 tinuation of the Confessions hanging unfulfilled, and the 
 readers of the magazine having to content themselves with 
 other fare, the best morsel of which was Charles Lamb's 
 "Dissertation on Eoast Pig" in September 1822. In 
 that year, 1822, however, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey had 
 the pleasure of bringing out the Confessions of an English 
 Opium-Eater in a separate little duodecimo volume, the 
 author's name still suppressed. They would fain still 
 have had the promised continuation in their magazine, 
 and apologized to their readers for not having been able to 
 fulfil that engagement. By way of comjDensation, they 
 were glad to publish, through the years 1823 and 1824, 
 everything that De Quincey chose to give them, taking 
 care that it should be known that the articles were by 
 " The English Opium-Eater." 
 
 In January 1823 were begun Letters to a Young Man 
 
VII.] THE LONDON MAGAZINE. 73 
 
 ■whose Education has heeu neglected^ continued in the 
 numbers for February, March, May, and June ; in the 
 April number, which these " Letters " had skipped, ap- 
 peared a sketch of Herder under the title The Death of a 
 German Great Man ; and, not to mention less important 
 contributions straggling through the numbers of the year, 
 the September number contained the first instalment, and 
 the October and November numbers two more instalments, 
 of the series of papers entitled generally Notes from the 
 Pocket-Booh of a late Opinm-Eater, and sub-titled indi- 
 vidually "Walking Stewart," '' Malthus, "On the Knock- 
 ing at the Gate in Macbeth," " English Dictionaries," &c. 
 In December 1823 an Ausicer of the Opium- Eater to Mr. 
 Hazlitfs Letter respecting Mr. Mcdthus, and a paper On 
 Malthus s Measure of Value, made the public further aware 
 of the Opium-Eater's pretensions in Political Economy. — 
 The year 1824 was not less prolific. The January number 
 for that year gave the first part of the Opium-Eater's 
 Historico- Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicru- 
 I cians and Freemasons.^ continued in February and March 
 and not concluded till June ; the February number gave 
 also Analects from John Paul Ricliter, in the form of five 
 more translated specimens of that author ; the March num- 
 ber gave, as an additional specimen of Richter, his Dream 
 upon the Universe ; and in various numbers from March 
 to July there were further instalments of Notes from the 
 Pocket-Book of a late Opium-Eater. Thus we arrive at 
 the months of August and September 1824, made 
 memorable by a special contribution from the Opium- 
 Eater. Another British pioneer of German Literature had 
 recently appeared in Mr. Thomas Carlyle, ten years younger 
 than De Quincey, and of limited reputation as yet. His 
 translati(ni of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister had just been 
 
74 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 published anonymously in Edinburgh ; and, having 
 been recommended to the London Magazine by Edward 
 Irving, he was breaking up, to be sent from Scotland, for 
 anonymous publication in that magazine, his Life of 
 Schiller, then in manuscript. The first portion of the 
 Life had ai:)peared in the number for October 1823; 
 the second portion had appeared in the number for January 
 1824, along with the first instalment of De Quincey's 
 Eosicrucian Inquiry ; the third had appeared in July 
 1824 (Carlyle then on his first visit to London) ; and the 
 remainder came out in August and September. It was 
 rather hard that in those very two numbers there should 
 appear De Quincey's article on Goethe, founded on his 
 feUow-contributor's Translation of Wllhelm Meider. In 
 the main, it is true, the article was an onslaught on Goethe 
 himself, an attempt to drag him down from the eminence 
 claimed for him by his translator and others, and to repre- 
 sent him as a tedious and immoral old impostor ; but the 
 translator came in for a share of the blame. He. was 
 taken to task for his Scotticisms, his mistakes in the • 
 German, and generally for the stiffness and awkwardness 
 of his English prose. Altogether the critique was, as 
 Carlyle has owned, a rather annojang log of offence thrown 
 across his path at that moment. After the article on 
 Goethe, De Quincey's contributions to the magazine in 
 1824 were Walladmor : Analysis of a German Novel, 
 and a translation of Kant's Idea of a Universal History 
 on a Cosm,oj)olitical Plan, both in the October number, 
 and a paper entitled Falsification of the History of Eng- 
 land, which appeared in the number for December. 
 
 The connexion of De Quincey with the London 
 Magazine seems to have ceased after 1824, in consequence 
 of arrangements about that time by Messrs. Taylor and 
 
VII.] LIFE IN LONDON. 75 
 
 Hessey for quitting the proprietorsiiip. But others were 
 on the alert for anything from the pen of " The Opium- 
 Eater." Mr. Charles Knight, who had started his 
 " Knight's Quarterly Magazine " in 1823, and who counted 
 the brilliant young Macaulay and the brilliant y oung Praed on 
 his staff, had obtained at least one article from De Quincey, 
 and had become personally acquainted with him in July 
 
 1824, with a view to more. But a good deal of De Quincey's 
 time in the year 1825 w^as taken up with a wretched 
 piece of literary Inisiness into which he had been lured by 
 his own analysis of the German novel WaUadmor in the 
 London J/«[/a^(!';?e of October 1824. The said WaUadmor 
 was a German fabrication, in the shape of a pretended 
 " New Romance by the Author of Waverley," brought out 
 at Leipsic at a time when there was a lull in the produc- 
 tion of those real AVaverley Novels without which German 
 readers, as well as British, found life insipid. Germany 
 was deceived from end to end by the three-volume substi- 
 tute for the absent reality. The first copy imported into 
 England haviiig come into De Quincey's hands, he had 
 scribbled his article on it for the magazine as rapidly as 
 he could, with the unfortunate effect that, having hit on 
 some passages of merit and translated them, he was 
 commissioned by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey to translate 
 the whole. When he became better acquainted with the 
 rubbish, he Avould gladly have been free from the task ; 
 but, as that could not be, he took his revenge by treating 
 the affair as a practical joke. He so cut and carved 
 the original, and De Quinceyfied it by insertions and 
 compressions, as to be able to bring out, in the course of 
 
 1825, an English WaUadmor in two volumes, with a 
 prefixed " dedication " of elaborate banter. 
 
 And so, from 1821 to 1825, or between De Quincey's 
 
76 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 thirty-seventh and his forty -first year, we have the first 
 burst of his magazine articles and cognate puhhcations. 
 If he had come late into the field of literature, he had 
 come into it at last with one advantage. There had 
 been immense, if unintended, preparation ; De Quincey's 
 articles, like George Eliot's novels afterwards, had not 
 to be spun out of a vacuum. There can be no doubt, 
 however, that De Quincey's sudden leap into celebrity was 
 due in great part to the peculiar nature of the articles by 
 which he had chosen to introduce himself. There was 
 something almost staggering in the act of self-exposure by 
 which a man consented that he should be known as " The 
 Opium-Eater," not figuratively or fictitiously, as some at 
 first supposed, but with the most positive assurances that 
 his revelations were real excerpts from his own life. The 
 signature of " The Opium-Eater " to any article whatever 
 became thenceforward an attraction. ISTot that this would 
 have lasted long had there not been recompense in super- 
 lative measure in the articles themselves. But who could 
 deny that there was such recompense'? Here, evidently, 
 was no common writer, no dullard or hack, but a new man 
 of genius, a new power in English Prose Literature. 
 There was proclamation of the fact in a quarter whence a 
 favourable verdict was then of some value. As early as 
 October 1823 "The Opium-Eater" had been made to 
 figure as a colloquist in Wilson's Nodes AmhrosiancB ; 
 and again, in October 1825, there was a passage in the 
 Nodes praising De Quincey as "a man of a million." 
 This, of course, was kindness on Wilson's part ; but it was 
 no exaggeration of the current opinion. , 
 
 What meanwhile, through the four years of his growing 
 celebrity, had De Quincey himself been doing ? Though 
 Grasmere was still his nominal headquarters (where indeed 
 
VII.] I LIFE IN LONDON. 77 
 
 his books and papers had by this time overflowed his own 
 cottage at Townend, and invaded his father-in-law's cottage 
 of Eydal Xab, if not a third cottage adjacent), the clear 
 inference from the records is that from 1821 to 1825 he 
 resided chiefly in London. There is a very interesting note 
 on the subject, though with some exaggeration of the fact, 
 in Bohn's edition of Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. 
 "The Confessions,'" Mr. Bohn says, " were written in a 
 •' little room at the back of Mr. H. G. Bohn's premises, 
 " No. 4, York Street, Covent Garden, where Mr. De 
 " Quincey resided, in comparative seclusion, for several 
 " years. He had previously lived in the neighbourhood 
 " of Soho Square, and for some years was a frequent 
 " visitor to the shop of Mr. Bohn's father, then the 
 " principal dealer in German books. The writer remembers 
 " that he always seemed to speak in a kind of whisper." 
 From De Quincey's own reminiscences we gather some 
 other particulars. It was during the time of his connexion 
 with the London Magazine that he came thoroughly to 
 know Lamb and his sister and saw most of them. They 
 were excessively kind to him, insisting on his coming 
 from his solitary lodgings as often as possible to dine and 
 spend the evening with them ; and he describes some of 
 those quiet evenings with the Lambs very tenderly and 
 prettily, testifying the increase of his regard for the good 
 brother and sister the more he knew of their heroic 
 relations to each other, and of their real benevolence. 
 He does not seem to have been frequently at the monthly 
 dinners given by jNIessrs. Taylor and Hessey to their 
 magazine staff, and at which Lamb, as the chief of the wits 
 round the table, always stuttered and sparkled at his 
 brightest. Barry Cornwall could remember De Quincey's 
 appearance at only one of those dinners, when " the 
 
78 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 expression of his face was intelligent, but cramped and 
 somewhat peevish," and when he " was self-involved and 
 did not add to the cheerfulness of the meeting." This 
 may have been at the particular dinner of November 1821 
 at which, as De Quincey tells us himself, he met Mr. 
 Wainwright among the company, did not like him, and 
 rather wondered why Lamb paid him so much attention. 
 Walks with Hazlitt and little angry discussions with him, 
 and glimpses of young Talfourd and other lights rising or 
 risen on the skirts of Messrs. Taylor and Hessey's literary 
 group, are also to be imagined. The sub-editorial calls at 
 his lodgings by young Thomas Hood, on the " frequent 
 and agreeable duty " of dunning him for copy, must not 
 be forgotten. Then it was, as Hood liked to remember in 
 after-years, that he used to find De Quincey '' in the midst 
 of a German Ocean of Literature," his room flooded and 
 plugged with books, and that, invited sometimes to stay, 
 he would listen with amazement to the strange tenant of 
 the rooms far into the small hours. He still retained a 
 memento of those visits, he adds, in the original manuscript 
 of one of De Quincey's papers, exhibiting the stain of " a 
 large purplish ring " where the tumbler of laudanum 
 negus had rested on it. Eor, in his London solitude, and 
 apparently in 1823-4, the author of the Confessions, who 
 had signified that the days of his opium-eating were past, 
 had again succumbed. What with this relapse into his 
 old habit, what with the constant depression of his ill- 
 health, he was again very wretched ; and the picture we 
 have to form of him in those days from all the preserved 
 memorials is the very reverse of that which would have 
 been natural in any other case of such suddenly attained 
 literary distinction. Not as a lion in general society or as 
 a frequenter of club-dinners, or even as a man at home of 
 
^"•J LIFE IN LONDON. 79 
 
 his own accord in the houses of a few select friends, is 
 the De Quincey of 1821 — 1825 to be figured, but rather 
 as the confirmed and incurable eccentric, the incarnation 
 of shy nervousness, that he was to be for all the rest of his 
 life. He avoided intercourse with his fellow-creatures as 
 much as he could, and was happy, if he was ever happy, 
 only in solitary afternoon walks about Covent Garden and 
 the Strand, where he could observe passers-by and look into 
 shop-windows, or in longer rambles at night out into un- 
 known suburbs, whence he could return, by silent circuits 
 of roads, to his own book-blocked room and the laudanum 
 negus. 
 
 iS'ow, as afterwards, friends and admirers who desired 
 his intimacy had, as it were, to break in upon him. 
 We do hear of one or two such friendly inroads on his 
 comfortless privacy. Thus, in the summer of 1824, 
 Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill sought him out, and roused 
 him not a little. More effective still seems to have been 
 Mr. Charles Knight's acquaintanceship Avith him, begun, 
 as we have seen, in the interests of " Knight's Quarterly 
 Magazine." i\Ir. Knight, six years younger than De 
 Quincey, and ardent in literature in those days with even 
 more than the usual ardour of a young publisher, liked 
 nothing better than to get De Quincey to dine with him, 
 or stay with him a while, in his house in Pall Mall East. 
 " ! for an hour of De Quincey ! " he wrote years after- 
 wards, in recollection of those evenings in comparison with 
 any he had spent in the interval ; and he has handed doAvn 
 several anecdotes illustrative of the incredible helplessness 
 of the little guest whom he and his household so liked to 
 shelter. One day in 1825, i\Ir. Knight, returning from 
 Windsor, found that De Quincey, whom he had left in 
 his house in Pall Mall East, had d(3parted abruptly, leaving 
 
80 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 word that he had gone home to Westmoreland. Knowing 
 that he had intended to go thither, and had only been 
 waiting for a remittance from his mother to " satisfy 
 some clamorous creditors " before he went, Mr, Knight 
 thought nothing of the matter. In a few days, however, 
 he heard that De Qiiincey was still in town and in a 
 dreadful difficulty. Following the clue to his whereabouts, 
 he found him in a miserable lodging on the Surrey side of 
 the river, his " dreadful difficulty " being that the expected 
 remittance had reached him in the form of a large draft 
 on a London bank payable at twenty-one days' sight, and 
 that he had been informed, on going to Lombard Street, 
 that the draft could not be cashed till the time was up. 
 Too shy to return to Mr. Knight's house and explain why 
 he had come back, he had gone, for accommodation for the 
 twenty-one days, into a hiding-hole where he was really not 
 safe from being robbed ; and it was wuth surprise, as well 
 as delight, that he received Mr. Knight's assurance that the 
 difficulty about the draft was not insuperable, and he 
 might have the cash at once. 
 
 Mr. Knight's anecdote fits in but too well with other 
 proofs that one of the causes of De Quincey's moping and 
 evasive habits through the time of his London life was 
 excruciating pecuniary embarrassment. And no wonder. 
 The calculation even now is that a writer for magazines 
 and reviews can hardly, by his utmost industry, unless he 
 is also on the staff of a newspaper, or is exceptionally 
 retained by a fixed engagement, as Southey and Macaulay 
 were, make more than 250?. a year. On that hypothesis 
 it is not difficult to compute that all De Quincey's earnings 
 between 1821 and 1825, by the London Magazine or what- 
 ever else, must have been a poor provision for the expenses 
 of himself in London and of his family at Grasmere. Tn 
 
vii.] LIFE IN LONDON. 81 
 
 fact, however it happened, he was so much in debt, and 
 so hard pressed for money, as to be on this account also 
 desperately miserable. "At this time," he had written 
 to Professor Wilson in Edinburgh on the 24th of February, 
 1825, "I am quite free from opium; but it has left the 
 '' liver, the Achilles' heel of almost every human fabric, 
 " subject to affections which are tremendous for the weight 
 " of wretchedness attached to them. To fence with these 
 " with the one hand, and with the other to maintain the 
 " war with the wretched business of hack-author, with 
 " all its horrible degradations, is more than I am able 
 " to bear. At this moment I have not a place to hide 
 " my head in. Something I meditate, — I know not what 
 '" . . . With a good publisher and leisure to premeditate 
 " what I write, I might yet liberate myself : after which, 
 " having paid everybody, I would slink into some dark 
 " corner, educate my childreji, and show my face in the 
 *' v/orld no more." He adds that he may be addressed 
 either "to the care of Mrs. De Quincey, Rydal Xab, 
 Westmoreland," or "to the care of M. D. Hill, Esq., 11, 
 King's Bench Walk, Temple," but that the latter address 
 might be the better, because he would rather not be 
 tracked too precisely at present. Perhaps it was the ^' large 
 draft " of Mr. Knight's anecdote that cleared the way for the 
 desired return to Westmoreland. ISTot at this point only 
 in De Quincey's biography has the reader to suspect 
 "remittances from his mother" of which there is no 
 distinct record. 
 
 De Quincey was certainly back in Westmoreland before 
 the end of 1825, and in circumstances tolerably easy after his 
 late London experience. " Thank God you are not now 
 domineered over by circumstances, and may your noble 
 nature never more be disturbed but by its own workings ! " 
 
 G 
 
82 DE QUII^CEY. [chap. 
 
 we find Wilson writing to him from Edinburgh on the 12th 
 JSTovember in that year. The letter, which begins " My 
 dear Plato," speaks of promised contributions by De 
 Quincey to a forthcoming volume of miscellanies which 
 Wilson and Lockhart had projected, under the name 
 of " Janus, or the Edinburgh Literary Almanac." It 
 also adverts to Lockhart's commencing editorship of the 
 Quarterly Ilevieiv, and to the interest De Quincey may 
 have in that event. ''He knows your great talents, 
 and will, I know, act in the most gentlemanly spirit to 
 all contributors " ; and why should not De Quincey be 
 thinking of a noble article on Kant for the new editor ? 
 
 Though " Janus " had to appear in the beginning of 
 1826 without De Quincey 's hand in it, Wilson's letter 
 prepares us for the next important stage in his literary life. 
 This was his connexion, through Wilson, ^vith Blaclc- 
 woofTs Magazine. It began by the publication in the 
 number of that magazine for November 1826 of the first 
 portion of an article on Lessing, entitled Lessing's Laocoon, 
 translated with Notes. The second portion appeared in 
 the number for January 1827, and was followed in 
 February 1827 by The Last Days of Immaniiel Kant 
 and the famous essay On Murder considered, as one of the 
 Fine Arts; and in March 1827 appeared the paper 
 entitled Toilette of the Hehreiu Lady. After an interval, 
 i.e. in August 1830, there was another paper on Kant, 
 entitled Ka7it in his Miscellaneous Essays. 
 
 The connexion with Blackicood very naturally drew 
 De Quincey himself once more to Edinburgh. Accordingly, 
 through the years 1827, 1828, and 1829, we find him 
 quite as much in Edinburgh as at Grasmere. He was, of 
 course, no stranger tliere, but moved about familiarly 
 among such surviving friends of his former visits as were 
 
VII. J BETWEEN GRASMERE AND EDINBURGH. 83 
 
 still resident in the city. AVilson was his mainstay, tlie 
 man who had known him longest and understood him 
 best, and whose own joviality of disposition made it 
 easier for him than it would have been for most to tolerate 
 the eccentricities of such a weird little son of genius and 
 opium. Wilson's house in Gloucester Place Avas at De 
 Quincey's disposal when he liked ; and one of the best 
 sketches of De Quincey is that by Wilson's daughter, 
 Mrs. Gordon, in her life of her father, where she gives her 
 recollections of the Opium-Eater's troublesome irregularities 
 of habit in the house, the cook's difficulties with him and 
 profound reverence for him, and all the while Wilson's 
 magnanimous laugh at the whole concern. It Avas at this 
 time too, and indirectly through Wilson, that Carlyle first 
 saw something of De Quincey personally. They met, I 
 think, at the house of one of Wilson's friends ; after which 
 there were calls from De Quincey at Comely Bank, where 
 Carlyle and his wife had their Edinburgh home between 
 their marriage in 1826 and their removal to the Dumfries- 
 shire solitude of Craigenputtock in 1828. At first, De 
 Quincey, remembering his review of Carlyle's Translation 
 of Wilhelin Meister, was obviously ill at ease ; but, that 
 matter left unmentioned, the meetings seem to have been 
 pleasant enough on both sides. That Carlyle's interest in 
 De Quincey, at all events, was far from small at this 
 time is proved by his long letter from Craigenputtock, of 
 December 11, 1828, inviting De Quincey to visit him 
 and his wife there. " Our warmest welcome, and such 
 solacements as even the desert does not refuse," Carlyle 
 writes, " are at any time and at all times in store for one 
 we love so well " ; and, after a humorous description of 
 a possible colony or social college of like-minded spirits 
 on the moors round Craigenputtock, there is the compli- 
 
54 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 raentary addition, " Would you come hither and be king 
 over us, then indeed we had made a fair beginning, and 
 the Bog School might snap its lingers at the Lake School.'" 
 N'earer the end of the letter came these significant 
 words, " Believe it, you are well loved here, and none 
 feels better than I what a spirit is for the present eclipsed 
 in clouds. For the present it can only be : time and 
 chance are for all men ; that troublous season will end." 
 Evidently De Quincey's troubles of various kinds were 
 clinging to him in Edinburgh, and Carlyle knew all. 
 
 The pecuniary trouble, for one, had not ceased. It was 
 a great thing, doubtless, to be a writer in Blackwood; 
 but a few articles in that magazine in the course of four 
 years could not do much toward the support of the man 
 of letters in Edinburgh and of his wife and young ones 
 in the Yale of Grasmere. There was income, doubtless, 
 from other sources, — perhaps from periodicals in London ; 
 perhaps from newspapers ; and certainly from the Edin- 
 burgh Literary Gazette, a weekly periodical then of some 
 note in Edinburgh, to which De Quincey contributed 
 occasionally through 1828, 1829, and 1830. But the 
 deficit altogether must have been serious and growing. 
 "What was the remedy 1 Poor as the pastures in Edin- 
 burgh were, they were better than were likely to be found 
 anywhere else. His chief existing engagements were 
 there ; and nowhere else did farther engagements seem so 
 easy. Why, then, keep up two households, or pretences 
 of a household, one in Edinburgh and one in Westmore- 
 land? Why should not Mrs. De Quincey and her 
 children leave their native vale and be domiciled with 
 De Quincey permanently in Edinburgh ? Both De 
 Quincey and his wife were adverse to the idea of leaving 
 (Irasmere j but at length, in 1830, apparently on the spur 
 
VII.] REMOVAL TO EDINBURGH. 85 
 
 of some new offer of literary engagement in Edinburgh, the 
 resolution was taken. It was precipitated by the advice 
 of the excellent and sensible Dorothy Wordsworth. In a 
 long letter of Dorothy's to De Quincey, giving him an 
 account of a visit she had paid to his cottage just after 
 her return to Rydal ]\Iount from a tour, she tells him she 
 had found his wife well, but " with something of sadness 
 in her manner " when she spoke of the likelihood of his 
 detention in Edinburgh by a certain new engagement of 
 which she had heard vaguely. Dorothy's reply, she in- 
 forms De Quincey, had been "Why not settle there, for 
 the time at least that this engagement lasts ? Lodgings 
 are cheap in Edinburgh, and provisions and coals not 
 dear." Mrs. De Quincey, having acquiesced, had asked 
 Dorothy to write on the subject to De Quincey ; and 
 hence her letter. She there repeats her advice in greater 
 detail, with all delicacy but very practically. The first 
 step taken in the direction of the advice seems to have 
 been the removal of the elder children from Grasmere 
 to Edinburgh; but in 1830 Mrs. De Quincey and the 
 younger children followed. The cottage in Grasmere was 
 nominally retained as De Quincey's for some years more ; 
 but from 1830 Edinburgh,, and Edinburgh all but alone, 
 was to contain him and his, and their united fortunes, so 
 long as he remained in the world. He was then forty- 
 five years of age, and his wife about two and thirty. 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 WHOLLY IN EDINBURGH : MORE CONTRIBUTIONS TO " BLACK- 
 WOOD," WITH ARTICLES IN " TAIT's MAGAZINE." 
 
 1830-1840. 
 
 Edinburgh from 1830 to 1840 was a very excellent place 
 of residence. The indestructible natural beauties of her 
 site and surroundings, the extraordinary combination of 
 dense and antique picturesqueness with modern elegance 
 and spaciousness in the plan and architecture of her 
 streets and slopes, and the wealth of her interesting tradi- 
 tions from the past, were not her only recommendations. 
 A pleasant and varied social activity still characterized 
 her as the metropolis of Scotland, and an unusual number 
 of persons of greater or less note individually moved 
 among her 130,000 or 150,000 inhabitants. Her greatest 
 man, it is true, was lost to her in 1832, when Scott died, 
 and heads could no longer be turned to look at his vene- 
 rated figure as he limped along Princes Street. But 
 Jeffrey remained. Lord Advocate of Scotland from 1830 
 to 1834, and thenceforward a Judge with the title of Lord 
 Jeffrey, only ex-editor of the Edinhurgh Review now, and 
 not writing much more, but still the literary pride of the 
 Edinburgh AVhigs. Wilson, on the other hand, as the 
 " Christopher iSTorth " of Blackwood and the eloquent and 
 adored University Professor, was in his most exuberant 
 prime, Scott's successor, so far as there was one, in the 
 
en. Vdi.] EDINBUHGH BETWEEN 1830 AND 18 lu. 87 
 
 literary chief sliip of Eilinlnirgli Toryism, and the observed 
 of all observers, Whig or Tory, for his lion-like gait and 
 gesture, wild yellow hair, and frec^iient white hat. Then, 
 among Jeffrey's colleagues or subordinates in the Parlia- 
 ment House, or Wilson's associates in tlie University, or 
 belonging to both fraternities, or distributed in divers 
 posts and professions through the city, what a miscellany 
 of other local celebrities ! Among the lawyers, on the 
 bench or rising to it, were Moncreiff, Cockburn, Patrick 
 Eobertson, Rutherfurd, Ivory, and ^Murray. Among the 
 University Professors, in one or other of the faculties, 
 were Sir William Hamilton (first in the chair of History, 
 and after 1S3G in that of Logic and Metaphysics), Dr. 
 Chalmers (brought to Edinburgh in 1828 as Professor of 
 Theology), Dunbar, Pillans, Welsh, Macvey l!^apier, 
 Jameson, Hope, Monro tertius, Sir Charles Bell, Pulteney 
 Alison, Syme, Christison, and (from 1835) George ]Moir. 
 Conspicuous in science or in medicine out of the Univer- 
 sity were Dr. Abercrombie, Sir David P>rewster, Andrew 
 and George Combe, and others. McCrie, the biographer 
 of Knox, was alive for part of the time ; before the ten 
 years were out Candlisli and Guthrie were in their 
 Edinburgh pulpits ; and those who preferred milder or 
 Episcopalian pastorship could '' sit under " the Rev. E. B, 
 Ramsay, afterwards Dean Ramsay, or the Rev. Robert 
 Morehead. There was a flourishing Edinburgh theatre, 
 with the accomplished j\Ir. IMurray as manager and one 
 of the actors, and with Mackay as the non-such in 
 " Bailie Nicol Jarvie," " Caleb Balderstone,'* and other 
 comic characters in the dramas from Scott's novels. 
 Among resident representatives of the Fine Arts were 
 Sir William Allan, Watson Gordon, Harvey, Duncan, and 
 the recluse and abstruse David Scott ; and amons resi- 
 
88 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 dent, or all but resident, representatives of literature not al- 
 ready mentioned, most of them lawyers and in training for 
 legal posts or professorships, were Thomas Thomson, Sir 
 Thomas Dick Lauder, David Laing, Charles Kirkpatrick 
 Sharpe, David Macbeth Moir, Henry Glassford Bell, 
 Archibald Alison, William and Eobert Chambers, Ferrier, 
 Spalding, Thomas Aird, Hill Burton, John Thomson 
 Gordon, and William Edmonstoune Aytoun. Lady Nairne, 
 the woman of finest lyric genius Scotland has produced, 
 unless Lady Wardlaw may be compared with her, was 
 living in the near vicinity, her claims to authorship 
 of any kind as yet undivulged ; and the best-known 
 literary ladies of Edinburgh were Miss Ferrier and Mrs. 
 Johnstone. The chief newspapers w^ere the Scotsman, 
 edited by Mr. Charles Maclaren, and the Caledonian 
 Mercury, edited by Dr. James Browne ; and the two 
 editors had fought a duel. An event of real importance 
 was the foundation of Chambers's Edinhurgh Journal by 
 Messrs. William and Eobert Chambers in 1832, super- 
 seding the previous literary weeklies of the city, and 
 setting the example of cheapness for all future British 
 periodicals. The Eeform Bill, agitation for some time, 
 and then the other agitations that grew out of that, pro- 
 vided political hot water in abundance for the ten years ; 
 and in no community was the supply kept at a higher 
 temperature. If you lived in Edinburgh between 1830 
 and 1840, you must be a Whig or a Tory; on one or 
 other of those two stools you were compelled to sit, as by 
 a law of human existence ; they would not permit you to 
 try both, or to stand, or to walk about. Further, as the 
 mere mention of the name of Dr. Chalmers will have 
 suggested, that was the time of this great man's energetic 
 leadership in the ecclesiastical politics of Scotland, and of 
 
VIII. J IN EDINBURGH. 89 
 
 the beginnings of that ecclesiastical strife which, mani- 
 festing itself more tiercely from year to year in the annual 
 General Assemblies of the Kirk in Edinburgh, had its 
 final issue in 1843 in the disruption of the Scottish 
 Establishment. 
 
 Such was the Edinburgh within Avliich the English 
 eccentric and visionary was enclosed from his forty -sixth 
 year to his fifty-sixth. We know now what to think of 
 him in his relations to the community in which he had 
 sought refuge. If we set aside Dr. Chalmers, a really 
 great man, cast in nature's largest mould, but not specially 
 a man of letters, and if we set aside also Sir William 
 Hamilton, as less the man of letters than the scholastic 
 thinker, then in all Edinburgh, after Scott's death, 
 with due exception for the uncombed strength and bar- 
 baric word- splendours of Christopher Xortli, the most 
 important intellectual figure was the shy little English 
 stranger. It was De Quincey that the real lovers of 
 literature in Edinburgh ought to have sought out^ if they 
 wanted to put the very rarest they had amongst them on 
 a pedestal in front of the Eegister House, to be publicly 
 saluted and gazed at. They did nothing of the kind. It 
 was not known to the vast majority of the inhabitants of 
 Edinburgh that anybody of the name of De Quincey was 
 living among them ; and even the young lovers of litera- 
 ture that knew a little about him all but invariably mis- 
 spelt his name when they wrote it or printed it. The 
 reasons are pretty obvious. jMerely as an Englishman, 
 De Quincey was somewhat out of his element. He was 
 in Edinburgh, but not of Edinburgh, a little put out by 
 the Scottish " Saichsith.," as he used to write it jocularly, 
 and by cognate observances (though in this he had native 
 sympathizers), and not in touch with any part of the 
 
90 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 municipal tumult around him. But much more was his 
 social insignificance owing to the fact that he was simply 
 De Quincey. By temperament and habit he was a creature 
 evasive of all publicity, a " fantastical duke of dark 
 corners " ; and he had seen too many specimens of literary 
 eminence already, in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others, 
 to have much passion left for such new literary acquain- 
 tanceships as Edinburgh might afford. In fact, he did 
 not care very much where he was, if only people would 
 not ask him out to diimer, but would leave him alone 
 with his books, his manuscripts, and his opium. 
 
 The literary industry of De Quincey through the ten 
 years is represented mainly by the list of his continued 
 contributions to Blackwood, and by a series of contribu- 
 tions to another Edinburgh monthly, called Taifs Maga- 
 zine. In Blackicood for 1831 appeared Dr. Parr and 
 Ms Contemporaries, or WMggism in its Relations to 
 Literature ; in the same magazine, under the title of Tiie 
 Coisars, there was begun, in October 1832, a series of 
 articles on Roman History which extended over four sub- 
 sequent numbers ; in [N'ovember 1832 appeared the article 
 entitled Charlemagne; and in April 1833 appeared The 
 Revolution of Greece. There was then an interruption of 
 four years ; but in July 1837 appeared the long narrative 
 paper called Revolt of tlie Tartars ; which was followed 
 in 1838 by Household Wreck and Modern Greece, and in 
 1839 by Casuistry and Dinner, Reed and Reputed. The 
 j^ear 1840 was marked by the production of the series of 
 papers entitled The Essenes, the articles entitled Alleged 
 Plagiarisms of Coleridge and Modern Superstition, and 
 the series on Style and Rhetoric. — Meanwhile De Quincey 
 had been contributing also to Tail, a magazine which had 
 been started bv an Edinburgh bookseller in 1832 on 
 
viir.] -BLACKWOOD" AND -TAJT." 91 
 
 advanced Wliig principles in politics, but perfectly oi)en 
 and nnfettered in all literary respects. It was in February 
 1834, just at the time of the break with BJacJxicood noted 
 above, that Tait began to astonish its readers by Sh etches 
 of Life and Manners from the Autobiography of an Eny- 
 Jisli Opium- Eater. The series ran on, sometimes with 
 explanatory sub-titles, tlirough the rest of 1834 and 
 through 1835 and 1836; and, even after the connexion 
 with Blackwood was resumed in 1837, Tatt was able 
 to entertain its readers for three years moi'e with new 
 instalments of the same. The Sketches, indeed, extend- 
 ing over about thirty articles in all, contain that Auto- 
 biography of De Quiucey the republished portions of 
 which in the English edition of his Collected Works form, 
 together with TJiC Coffcssions, the most frequently read 
 volumes of the collection. Xo portions of the series 
 attracted greater attention at the time, or excited more 
 wrath in certain quarters, than the digressions upon the 
 recently dead Coleridge and the still living AVordsworth 
 and Southey. Carlyle has told us how Southey in parti- 
 cular, when he first met him, flamed up on the mention 
 of De Quincey's name, averring that it would be but a 
 proper service to good manners if some one were to go to 
 Edinburgh and thrash the little wretcli ; and we hear 
 elsewhere of the otfence taken also by the ^Vordsworths 
 and by members of the Coleridge family. Yet, as Carlyle 
 seems to have thought, the complaints were excessive. 
 The amount of personal gossip in the papers was much less 
 than we have been accustomed to since ; the '' vivisec- 
 tion," what little there was of it, was avowedly for scientific 
 purposes ; and no one could deny the generosity of the 
 general estimates. The admiration expressed for Cole- 
 ridc{e and AVordsworth all in all, indeed, went bevond 
 
92 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 what the world even then was willing to accord ; and it 
 may be doubted whether we have yet in our literature 
 any more interesting accounts of the philosopher and the 
 poet than those admiring, but sharp-sighted, papers. They 
 and the rest of the articles in the same series were, at all 
 events, most acceptable when they appeared in the pages 
 of Tait. There were, however, contributions of an in- 
 dependent kind to the same pages, the most important 
 being A Tory's Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and 
 Radicalism, in 1835 and 1836. The average amount of 
 De Quincey's contributions to the two magazines jointly 
 through the ten years was about six articles every year. 
 During the same period he wrote the articles Goethe, 
 Pope, Shakespeare, and Schiller, for the seventh edition 
 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, edited by Mr. Macvey 
 Napier ; and there may have been other contributions to 
 minor periodicals. Moreover, during the same period 
 he had produced one of the only two specimens of his 
 powers given to the world originally in the book form. 
 This was his Klosterheim, or the Masque, a romance, 
 published by Blackwood, in a duodecimo volume, in 1832. 
 De Quincey's domestic life in Edinburgh through a 
 period of such marked literary industry is involved in 
 considerable obscurity. We learn incidentally that he 
 was a guest in Wilson's house in Gloucester Place for some 
 time continuously in 1830-31 ; we hear of a largish 
 furnished house or set of apartments in Great King 
 Street taken by him for himself and his family in 1831 ; 
 and we hear further that there were removals to Forres 
 Street, still in the New Town, and to the village of Dud- 
 dingston, an outskirt of the Old Town, at the back of 
 Arthur Seat. Perhaps there were other shiftings and 
 burrowings. In general, all that is clear is that there was 
 
viti.] DOMESTIC LIFE IN EDINBURGH. 93 
 
 a succession of domiciles, with always one room in each 
 where, amidst a chaos of books and papers on the floor, 
 chairs, and tables, the indefatigable little scholar could 
 pursue his studies, penning his articles, one after another, 
 in his peculiarly neat small hand, on the little bit of space 
 kept free for the purpose on the table at which he princi- 
 pally sat. For additional particulars we are indebted to 
 the recollections of one of his daughters and to some of 
 the preserved family letters. They present De Quincey 
 to us very touchingly in some of his family relations. 
 The gentlest of human beings, incapable of a word that 
 could wound the feelings of any one near him, and indeed 
 morbidly humble and deferential in his style of address to 
 persons of every rank, though the uniform ornateness of 
 his English caused a kind of awe of him among Scottish 
 servants, he watched his children and moved among them 
 with a doting attention, in which there was much of the 
 edifying, while there was nothing of the authoritative. 
 They grew up in a kind of wondering regard for their 
 father and his ways, insensibly imbibing refinement from 
 the little atmosphere of high tastes which, with whatever 
 appurtenances of disorder and discomfort, his bookish and 
 studious habits kept around them, and receiving an edu- 
 cation of no ordinary kind from his supervision of their 
 lessons and his discursive fireside talk. The earliest re- 
 collections of the daughter who has been mentioned were 
 of evenings when, to still her crying in the nursery, her 
 father would fetch her in his arms into his own warm 
 room, place her in a chair for the supreme delight of 
 " sitting up with papa," and, after petting her with sips of 
 well-sugared coffee, give her a book and paper-cutter with 
 which to amuse herself while he went on with his writing. 
 He instructed her, she remembered, even thus early, in 
 
94 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 tlie art of cutting the leaves of books without making 
 ragged edges. Of his eldest son, William, he was the 
 sole tutor, bestowing on the task of his education all 
 that " care and hourly companionship " could do, and with 
 such effect that the boy could show, at the age of sixteen, 
 in proof of his scholarship, " not merely an Etonian skill 
 in the management of Greek metres," but also an original 
 commentary on Suetonius. Of the opium-eating mean- 
 while all we know is that, though found indispensable, it 
 had been, for the most part, brought within bounds. 
 
 Three family bereavements fell with heavy effect amid 
 the occupations and changes of residence of those ten 
 years. The first was the death by fever, in 1833, of De 
 Quincey's youngest son, Julius, in the fifth year of his 
 age. The next was the death, in 1835, at the age of not 
 quite eighteen, of the above-mentioned eldest son, William, 
 — " my first-born child, the crown and glory of my life," 
 as the poor father wrote afterwards. Then, in 1837, came 
 the death of the wife and mother herself, the poor Margaret 
 Simpson from Grasmero, whose lot it had been to marry 
 this strange man of genius one and twenty years before, 
 and to accompany him thus far. One can suppose that 
 hers had not been the easiest or the happiest of lives. 
 " Delicate health and family cares," says her daughter, 
 " made her early witlidraw from society ; but she seems 
 to have had a powerful fascination for the few friends she 
 admitted to her intimacy." One of these used to tell the 
 daughters that he had " never seen a more gracious or a 
 more beautiful lady " ; and it was a standing form of 
 rebuke to them by an old Scotch charwoman, who had 
 been much in the house, and continued to usurp some 
 dominion over them, that none of them would ever be 
 the brave woman that their motlier was. That is all we 
 
VIII.] DEATH OF HIS WIFE. 95 
 
 know of the dalesman's daiigliter from Grasmere who 
 died among alien folk in Edinburgh at the age of about 
 thirty-nine, save that they buried her in the West Church- 
 yard, or Churchyard of St. Cuthbert's, beside the children 
 that had gone before her. 
 
 There can hardly have been a more helpless widower- 
 hood than that of De Quincey, left in his fifty-second year 
 with six children, the eldest a girl yet in her teens. For 
 two or three years our vision of him and his in their domes- 
 tic conditions in Edinburgh is an absolute blur, save that 
 we learn that in 1838 he took a lodging for himself at 
 Ko. 42, Lothian Street, that he might have a separate place 
 for his books and literary labours. Eut necessity had de- 
 veloped a beautiful power of prudence and self-help among 
 the orphans ; and the eldest girl, Margaret, and the next 
 to her in age, Horace, putting their young heads together, 
 struck out a plan. AVith their father's consent, they took 
 a cottage called Mavis Bush, near Lasswade, about seven 
 miles out of Edinburgh, where they and the four younger 
 ones could live more quietly and economically than in the 
 town, and to which their father could retreat when he 
 wanted retirement. This was in 1840 ; from which date, 
 on through all the rest of De Quincey's life, the cottage 
 at Lasswade is to be conceived as his chief abode, though 
 without prejudice to the possibility of other refuges and 
 camping-grounds, as the whim occurred to him, in Edin- 
 burgh or elsev/here. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 LASSWADE AND EDINBURGH, WITH VISITS TO GLASGOW : 
 MORE CONTRIBUTIONS TO " BLACKWOOD " AND " TAIT." 
 
 1840—1849. 
 
 The name " The Cottage at Lass wade " is somewhat mis- 
 leading. Lasswade is a village of some extent, reached 
 most directly from Edinburgh by the road through the 
 suburb called I^ewington and thence over the heights of 
 Liberton and Liberton church, and is situated very prettily 
 and picturesquely on the river Esk, at a point w^liere that 
 river has just left the still more picturesque and celebrated 
 beauties of Hawthornden and the glen of Eoslin. But 
 Mavis Bush Cottage, now styled in the County Directory 
 " De Quincey Villa," is not in Lasswade, but about a mile 
 and a half beyond it, near the foot of a bye-road which 
 descends, by a steep and winding declivity, to that 
 hollow of the Esk which contains Polton INIills and the 
 small Polton railway-station. Though too deep-sunk in 
 the hollow for much cheerfulness of immediate outlook, 
 it is a snug enough little cottage, with its face direct to 
 the road and its bit of garden-ground behind, and with a 
 few other houses about it, above or beneath, on the same 
 slope. The country round is beautifully hilly, with varied 
 and pleasant walks, especially pathways by the sides of the 
 river or up and down its overhanging and well-wooded 
 banks. The interior of the cottage, when lit up in the 
 
CH. IX.] THE COTTA.GE AT LASSWADE. 97 
 
 evenings, must have been invitingly cosy in its plain 
 elegance in the days when it was I)e Quincey's. '' Our 
 dwelling," he writes to ?^Iiss Mitford in 18-42, " is a little 
 " cottage, containing eight rooms only, one of which (the 
 " largest), on what is called in London the first floor, is 
 *' used as a drawing-room, and one, about half the size, on 
 " the ground floor, as a dining-room, but for a party of ten 
 "people at most." He goes on to explain that there were 
 two servants, and that communication with the post-office 
 at Lass wade was intermittent and difficult. 
 
 For the present we are concerned only with the first 
 nine years of De Quincey's tenancy of this cottage at 
 Lasswade or Polton, i.e. with the period between 1840 
 and 184:9, bringing him from his fifty-sixth year to his 
 sixty-fifth. And, first of all, as has been already stipulated, 
 the conception of him as located at Lasswade during those 
 nine years has to be corrected by the fact that he was there 
 only when he chose. Freak, or the supposed necessities 
 of his literary work, occasioned pretty frequent removals 
 from Lasswade to lodgings in Edinburgh and elsewhere. 
 How many different rooms in various places he thus occu- 
 pied in the course of the nine years no one has ascertained ; 
 but, as each in turn was " snowed up " by an accumula- 
 tion of the books and papers he was using for the time, 
 and as, in his morbid terror lest these should be lost, it 
 was usual for him, in leaving any lodging, to entrust the 
 accumulated deposit to the landlady, he is known to 
 have had sometimes the rents of '* at least four separate 
 sets of lodgings " all running on simultaneously. It may 
 be well to collect the particulars of his movements, from 
 Lasswade and back to it, through the nine years, so far as 
 the records will serve. 
 
 While most of those with whom he had relations were in 
 
 H 
 
98 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 Edinburgh, there was an attraction also to Glasgow in an 
 acquaintanceship he had formed with two of the Professors 
 of Glasgow University. These were Mr. J. P. Nichol, 
 Professor of Astronomy, a man of fine genius, and the 
 modest and scholarly Mr. E. L. Lushington, Professor 
 of Greek. Accordingly, for perhaps the greater part of 
 the two years from March 1841 to June 1843, De Quincey 
 was in Glasgow as the guest of one or the other of these 
 two friends, or in lodgings beside them. His first Glasgow 
 lodgings were in the High Street, opposite to the Old 
 College ; but they were exchanged for rooms at 79 
 Renfield Street. These last were retained and paid for 
 until as late as 1847. From his return from Glasgow in 
 June 1843, he seems, with the exception of a plunge now 
 and then into some unascertainable lodging in Edinburgh, 
 to have resided steadily at Lasswade. And not without 
 reason. His eldest son Horace, having gone into the army 
 as an officer in the 26th Cameronians, had died in China, of 
 malarious fever, in the end of 1842, after having served in 
 the Chinese campaign under Sir Hugh Gough ; his third 
 son, Paul Frederick, had gone out to India as an officer in 
 the 70th Queen's regiment ; and his second son, Francis, 
 was in Manchester for the time, as clerk in a commercial 
 house. The three daughters being thus all of the family 
 left at Lasswade, De Quincey was bound to be with them 
 as much as possible. ISTothing can be prettier than his 
 account to Miss Mitford of their life there together and 
 his description of his daughters. " They live," he says, 
 " in the most absolute harmony I have ever witnessed. 
 " Such a sound as that of dissension in any shade or 
 " degree I have not once heard issuing from their lips, 
 " And it gladdens me beyond measure that all day long I 
 '' hear from their little drawing-room intermitting sounds 
 
IX.] LASS WADE, EDINBURGH, AND GLASGOW. 99 
 
 *' of gaiety and laughter, the most natural and spontaneous. 
 " Three sisters more entirely loving to each other, and 
 " more unaffectedly drawing their daily pleasures from 
 '' sources that will always continue to lie in their power, 
 " viz. books and music, I have not either known or heard 
 " of." So through 1844, 1845, and 1846, but with the 
 variation caused in the household by the return, in 1845, 
 of the son Francis from Manchester, to exchange his 
 prospects in commerce for the study of Medicine at the 
 University of Edinburgh. The exchange was not without 
 its difficulties, for the young man had to walk from Lass- 
 wade to Edinburgh every day to attend the classes ; but it 
 gave De Quincey the pleasant additional occupation of 
 inquiring into his son's progress and coaching him for some 
 of his examinations. Then there were pleasant acquain- 
 tanceships with some of the Lasswade neighbours, with 
 drives now and then of the father and daughters to town 
 together, and the still more frequent reception of friends 
 and admirers of De Quincey who made their way to 
 Lasswade to pay him their respects. In 1847 there was 
 another long absence in Glasgow, extending from January 
 to October. During part of the time his daughters were 
 on a visit, the first in their lives, to their father's surviving 
 relatives in the West of England ; and some letters of 
 his show a lively interest in their reported movements 
 amid the scenes and persons that had been so familiar to 
 himself in his earlier days, and a special pleasure in the 
 fact that they had met ]\Ir. Walter Savage Landor. 
 Through 1848 and 1849 all the family were together again 
 at Lasswade, with no other break in the routine there than 
 might be caused by De Quincey's incurable passion for 
 hiding himself at his option now and then in some 
 Edinburgh lodging. 
 
100 DE QUINCEY. [chap, 
 
 An important matter all this while, as in every pre- 
 ceding period of De Qumcey's existence, had been the 
 state of his health. It may be doubted whether the 
 majority of those interested in him have had any adequate 
 conception of that extreme fragility of body, that com- 
 plexity of bodily pains and ailments, with which, even 
 apart from the opium, he had to contend all his life. 
 Connected with his main malady, — that malady into 
 which all his inherited or acquired ailments had coalesced 
 and settled from an early stage of his youth, and which 
 the medical authorities are disposed to define as "gastro- 
 dynia " or severe gastric neuralgia, accompanied by " a 
 low inflammatory condition of the mucous coat of the 
 stomach, proceeding at times to ulceration," — there was a 
 specific inability to live by the ordinary forms of nutri- 
 ment. His teeth had gone ; he '' did not know what it 
 was to eat a dinner"; his message in 1847 to an old 
 schoolfellow, by way of jocular apology for never having 
 renewed their old acquaintance by letter, was that he had 
 not once dined " since shaking hands with him in the 
 eighteenth century." A little soup, tea, cocoa, cofi'ee, or 
 other fluid, with a sop of bread, or more rarely an inch or 
 two of mutton or hare, kept to the extreme of tenderness, 
 and cut finically for easy mastication, formed De Quincey's 
 diet. In the management even of this there was inces- 
 sant cause of nervous irritation. Add the glooms and 
 phrenzies growing out of the indulgence in opium to 
 which he had so long been habituated. In this matter 
 there had been ups and downs within our present period, 
 according to the varying degrees of his sufl'ering from his 
 independent malady, but also according to the fluctuations 
 of his reasonings for and against the drug. The chief 
 crisis, marked as such by De Quincey himself in a kind 
 
IX.] "BLACKWOOD" AND "TAIT'' CONTINUED. 101 
 
 of diary of notes and jottings at the time, liad been in the 
 year 1844. In some new access of accnmnlated wretched- 
 ness, mental and physical, when a horror of the most 
 hideons blackness seemed once more to be " travelling 
 over the disc of his life," he had rioted again with the 
 fiend and exulted in 5000 daily drops of the liquid 
 damnation. The rebound towards self-retrieval, as it is 
 chronicled in his jottings, had cost him efforts incredible. 
 He had experimented in reductions of the dose and even 
 in the torture of total abstinence ; and, his feet having 
 failed him for his ordinary pedestrian exercise in the roads 
 between Lasswade and Edinburgh, he had compelled him- 
 self to shuffle round and round the garden of his Lasswade 
 cottage in a measured circuit of forty-four yards, so as 
 to accomplish in that way his ten miles a day. Un- 
 expectedly, these efforts had succeeded ; and, with an 
 allowance ranging from 100 drops a day upwards, he had 
 recovered in 1844 the faculty of living on. In 1848 there 
 had been another crisis, but less formidable ; and from 
 that date, we are given to understand, his ^wTestlings with 
 opium were at an end. Having ascertained the very 
 minimum of the drug on which existence was endurable 
 in his own case, he kept to that as much as possible 
 through the rest of his life, and saw no use in troubling 
 himself w^ith further experimentation. 
 
 De Quincey's literary labours during the nine years 
 had still been chiefly in contributions to Blackwood and 
 Tait. To Blackicood his chief contributions had been as 
 follows: — In 1841, The Secret Societies of Asia, Plato's 
 Repuhlic, Traits and Tendencies of German Literature (T), 
 Homer and the Homeridm (three parts) ; in 1842, Philo- 
 sophy of Herodotus, The Pagan Oracles, Cicero, Ricardo 
 made Easy (three parts), Benjamin of Tudela (i) ; in 
 
102 DE QUINCEY. L^hav. 
 
 18-i4, Greece under the Romans; in 1845, Coleridge and 
 Opium- Eating^ and Sus2nria de Profundis, being a Sequel 
 to the Confessions of an Opium-Eater (three successive 
 articles, with sub- titles) ; and, in 1849, The English Mail - 
 Coach, and The Vision of Sudden Death. To Tait there 
 seem to have been no contributions between 1841 and 
 1845 ; but in this latter year the series in that magazine 
 was renewed in an article on Woi'dsivorth's Poetry, fol- 
 lowed by another On the Temperance Movement, and by 
 several papers under the general title of Notes on Gil- 
 fillan!s Gallery of Literary Portraits. These last, treating 
 of Godwin, Hazlitt, Shelley, Keats, &c., were continued 
 into 1846, — in which year also appeared two papers on 
 The Antigone of Sophocles, occasioned by a dramatic per- 
 formance at Edinburgh by Miss Helen Faucit, two on 
 Christianity considered as an Organ of Political Move- 
 ment, one entitled Glance at the Works of Mackintosh, 
 and one entitled System of the Heavens as revealed hy 
 Lord Posse's Telescope. To these succeeded, in 1847, 
 Notes on Wcdter Savage Landor, Joan of Arc (two papers), 
 Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteentlt Century, 
 Milton versus Southey and Landor, Orthographic Muti- 
 neers, The Spanish Military Nun (three papers), and two 
 papers on Protestantism, completed by a third in Feb- 
 ruary 1848. AYhen we add that De Quincey had some 
 connexion during a portion of the nine years with 
 a Glasgow newspaper, and that his Logic of Political 
 Economy (now^ included in his Collected AVorks) was 
 first published in separate book-form by Messrs. Black- 
 wood in 1844, it will be seen that his literary industry 
 through the period had continued very vigorous indeed. 
 Through the greater part of the nine years the chief 
 
IX.] HIS EDINBURGH ECCENTEICITIES. 103 
 
 stimulus, as before, had been actual need of money ; but, 
 towards the end of the period there had been a consider- 
 able abatement of the urgency of this particular motive by 
 the falling-in of legacies from his uncle, his mother, 
 or other relatives. Particulars are not given ; but one 
 infers, from hints in the published family letters, that the 
 year 1847 was a marked turning-point of relief for the 
 brain-worn veteran in this respect. 
 
 The brain- worn veteran ! The phrase does not imply 
 that there were yet any signs in him of mental decrepitude. 
 On the contrary, as the titles of some of the articles in the 
 last paragraph will have suggested, the sexagenarian De 
 Quincey was still in the full perfection of his wonderful 
 powers. "Whatever might have been the case seventeen 
 years before, when he first settled permanently in Edin- 
 burgh, it would have been no wonder now if the com- 
 munity of that city had learnt to think of him as one of 
 the few worthiest among them digito monstrari as he 
 passed in their streets. It had not come quite to that 
 length in De Quincey's case, — the peculiar nature of his 
 celebrity not making him liable to any such rush of 
 popular and day-light recognition as gathered round 
 Wilson or Chalmers, but coupling him rather with such 
 a similar recluse and late burner of the lamp as the philo- 
 sophic Hamilton. Still, for all in Edinburgh who had 
 any special passion for literature, or thought they had, De 
 Quincey from 1845 onwards was most emphatically one 
 of the " characters " of the place. He was talked of and 
 gossiped about at dinner-tables and tea-tables, and to 
 see him, even by stratagem, was worth an effort. As 
 it was the chance of the present writer to be in the 
 vicinity for a part of the precise time mentioned (from 
 
104 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 December 1844 to May 1847), he will here set down, as 
 authentically as he can, first what he then heard, and 
 next what trifle he saw, of the little local wonder. 
 
 The rumours about De Quincey were invariably to the 
 effect that his eccentricity, his difference from other 
 mortals, passed all bounds of belief or conception. The form 
 of his eccentricity generally reported first was the absolute 
 uncertainty of his Avhereabouts at that particular time, 
 arising from his evasiveness on the subject of his lodgings 
 when he was last seen, or intimation from him that, having 
 changed his lodgings, he vvas in the distressing predicament 
 of having an adversary in pursuit of him in the shape of 
 a former landlady. This suspiciousness of being pursued 
 had become an ingrained habit of De Quincey's mind, and 
 accounted for much of his conduct. It connected itself 
 with his astounding incompetence in money-matters. In 
 that department of practice the abstract political econo- 
 mist, so profound in Ricardo, was helpless as an infant. 
 He gave away money right and left when he had it, and 
 was then the prince of almoners for sorners and beggars ; 
 but he was constantly running aground himself. The 
 reports of him in this respect agreed pretty uniformly in 
 the idea that his difficulties did not necessarily arise from 
 want of money, but only, or often, from want of a particu- 
 lar sum required at a particular moment and inability in 
 all ordinary processes for converting the potential into the 
 actual. jMr. Hill Burton gives an Edinburgh illustration 
 of about our present date which reminds one of Mr. 
 Charles Knight's story of the bank-draft in London in the 
 year 1825. One night very late, he tells us, De Quincey, 
 arriving at a friend's door, and having obtained admission 
 with difficulty, explained, with all the skill and pathos of 
 his beautiful rhetoric, that it was absolutely essential he 
 
ix.J HIS EDINBUEGH ECCENTRICITIES. 105 
 
 should be provided at once with 7^'. Gd. On perceiving 
 surprise on his friend's face, he proceeded to explain that 
 he had a document in his possession the transference of 
 which to his friend's care would probably obviate his 
 hesitation ; and then, after rummaging in his pockets, and 
 fetching a miscellany of small articles out of them, he 
 produced at last a crumpled piece of paper, wdiich he 
 tendered as security. It w^as a 50/. note : and his friend's 
 impression was that, if he had kept the note in exchange 
 for the 7s. 6d., he ^vould have heard no more of the 
 transaction, and indeed that, before coming to his door, 
 De Quincey had been trying to negotiate the exchange at 
 a series of shops, and had failed only through extreme 
 scepticism on the part of the shopkeepers. From these 
 reports of the mysteriousness of De Quincey's usual wdiere- 
 abouts, and his tendency to come to light only occasionally 
 in the straits of some dilemma, it was a natural inference 
 that a meeting with him in any ordinary social way was not 
 a matter of easy arrangement. A promise from him, you 
 were told, Avas of no use : the party might meet,, expecting 
 him ; but, ten to one, De Quincey would not be there. 
 There w^as, however, a science of the ways and means of 
 getting at De Quincey; in wliich science, according to 
 experts, the method of surest efficacy was to commission 
 some one to find him out and l)ring him. Then, if pre- 
 caution made escape impossible, he would come meekly 
 and unresistingly. But in wliat guise would he come 1 
 What a question for endless speculation this was may be 
 guessed from Mr. Hill Burton's account of his appearance 
 at one important dinner-party, to which he had been lured 
 by such deep-laid pretences that he came without convoy. 
 '• The festivities of the afternoon are far on wdien a 
 ■' commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other 
 
106 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 '' stray animal had forced liis way in. The instinct of a 
 " friendly guest tells him of the arrival : he opens the door 
 " and fetches in the little stranger. What can it he ? A 
 " street-boy of some sort 1 His costume, in fact, is a boy's 
 " duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, 
 " and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the 
 " fragments of a particoloured belcher handkerchief; on 
 " his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a 
 " stormy winter-night; and the trousers ! — some one sug- 
 " gests that they are mere linen garments blackened with 
 " writing-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been 
 •' at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be the 
 " theory of such a costume 1 The simplest thing in the 
 " world, — it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest 
 " at hand. Had chance thrown to him a court single- 
 " breasted coat, with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top- 
 " boots, in these he would have made his entry." Dressed 
 in whatever fashion, he was still De Quincey, and you 
 were glad to have him. For as to the magic of his talk, 
 its sweet and subtle ripple of anecdote and suggestion, its 
 witching splendour when he rose to his highest, the reports 
 were unanimous and enthusiastic. No conceivable intel- 
 lectual treat, you were told, was equal to a fortunate evening 
 with De Quincey. Only, you were pretty sure to hear, 
 there might be one drawback. Whether from the stimulus 
 of opium or not, he was apt to be at his best when it was 
 rapidly becoming to-morrow^ and his companions had to 
 think of going. Having got your De Quincey, you might 
 thus find yourself face to face with the problem how to get 
 rid of him. Generally it solved itself by his going at last 
 with the rest, steering himself no one knew whither 
 through the starlight or darkness ; but sometimes, you 
 were told, on polite inducement, he would remain where 
 
IX.] A PERSONAL REMIXISCENCE. 107 
 
 he was, and then the visit of an evening might extend 
 itself to unknown dimensions. 
 
 Such were the reports one heard about De Quincey 
 before seeing him. ]\[y own few ghmpses of him, I am 
 bound to add, did not present him to me in any such 
 extreme of helplessness as the reports had prepared me to 
 expect. Here are the facts, as I have already printed 
 them elsewhere : — " The first time I saw De Qumcey was 
 " most pleasantly one evening in a room high up in one 
 '• of the tall houses of the Old Town. He came in charge 
 " of a strong, determined man, who took all the necessary 
 " trouble. There were but few present, and all went on 
 " nicely. In addition to the general impression of 
 " diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the 
 " peculiar beauty of his head and forehead, rising dis- 
 " proportionately high over his small wrinkly visage and 
 " gentle deep-set eyes. In his talk, which was in the 
 " form of really harmonious and considerate colloquy, and 
 " not at all in that of monologue, I remember chiefly two 
 " incidents. The birthday of some one present having been 
 " mentioned, De Quincey immediately said ' O, that is the 
 " anniversary of the battle of So-and-So' ; and he seemed 
 " ready to catch as many birthdays as might be thrown 
 " him on the spot, and almanack them all round in a 
 " similar manner from his memory. The other incident 
 " was his use of a phrase very beautiful in itself, and 
 " which seemed characteristic of his manner of thinking. 
 " Describing some visionary scene or other, he spoke of it 
 " as consisting of ' discs of light and interspaces of gloom'; 
 " and I noticed that, with all the fine distinctness of the 
 " phrase, both optical and musical, it came from him with 
 " no sort of consciousness of its being out of the way in 
 " talk, and with no reference whatever to its being 
 
108 DE QUINCEY. Tchap. 
 
 " appreciated or not by those around him, but simply 
 " because, whoever might be listening, he would be thinking 
 " as De Quincey. That evening passed ; and, though I 
 " saw him once or twice again, it is the last sight of him 
 " that I remember next best. It must have been, I think, 
 " in 1846, on a summer afternoon. A friend, a stranger 
 " in Edinburgh, was walking with me in one of the 
 " pleasant, quiet country lanes near the town. Meeting 
 " us, and the sole moving thing in the lane besides our- 
 " selves, came a small figure, not untidily dressed, but with 
 " his hat pushed up far in front over his forehead, and 
 " hanging on his hind-head, so that the back rim must 
 " have been resting on his coat-collar. At a little distance 
 " I recognised it to be De Quincey ; but, not considering 
 " myself entitled to interrupt his meditations, I only 
 " whispered the information to my friend, that he might 
 " not miss what the look at such a celebrity was worth. 
 "So we passed him, giving him the wall. Xot un- 
 " naturally, however, after he passed, we turned round for 
 " the pleasure of a back view of the wee intellectual 
 " wizard. Whether my whisper and our glances had 
 " alarmed him, as a ticket-of-leave man might be rendered 
 " uneasy in his solitary walk by the scrutiny of two passing 
 " strangers, or whether he had some recollection of me 
 " (which was likely enough, as he seemed to forget no- 
 " thing), I do not know ; but we found that he too had 
 " stopped and was looking round at us. i\pparently 
 " scared at being caught doing so, he immediately wheeled 
 " round again, and hurried his pace towards a side- turning 
 " from the lane, into which he disappeared, his hat still 
 " hanging on the back of his head. That was my last 
 " sight of De Quincey." 
 
 Those walks of De Quincey in the environs of Edin- 
 
ix.j HIS KAMBLES ABOUT EDINBURGH. 109 
 
 burgh ought to linger still among the memories of the 
 legend-loving town. The particular walk just mentioned 
 was in daylight, and the meeting was in the quiet lane or 
 road by which, avoiding the great Dean Road, one wends 
 towards the Corstorphines and Craigcrook. Jeffrey was 
 then alive, and resident at Craigcrook ; but it is quite im- 
 possible that De Quincey had been calling on Jeffrey. 
 His walks were in all directions, for his own purposes of 
 exercise or recreation only, and at his own sweet will. 
 By preference also, and in the proportion of many to one, 
 the longest of them were nocturnal. It is strange yet to 
 think of the little figure in those weary wanderings of his 
 round and through the city evening after evening, now on 
 his way from Lasswade inwards over the darkening heights 
 and hollows to the Old Town, now along the glittering 
 chasm of Princes Street or the gloomier regularity of George 
 Street, now down by the northern suburbs to the levels 
 of the Firth at Granton, now by a daring meander east- 
 wards to the deserted ghastliness of Leith Pier and the 
 skeleton array of masts and shipping, and always, or often, 
 with the penance of the returning zigzag somehow to 
 Lasswade and the cottage on the Esk. It was his custom, 
 we are told, in these nocturnal rambles, and chiefly for his 
 convenience in certain intricate labyrinths of pathway 
 about the Esk, with a foot-bridge or two in them, to carry 
 a small lantern, with the means of lighting it when he 
 chose. What a trial to the nerves of the hardiest belated 
 tramp, or other night-bird, with any dread of the super- 
 natural, to have come upon De Quincey in such a spot, 
 striking his match by a bush, or advancing through the 
 trees with his bull's-eye ! He himself was perfectly fear- 
 less of night-bird or demon. Night was his natural 
 element ; what could it bring forth that should alarm 
 
110 DE QUINCEY. [CHAP. 
 
 him ? Sometimes, we are informed, though without pro- 
 duction of the evidence, he would not care to return home 
 at all, but would lie down for rest and shelter anywhere. 
 Edinburgh, therefore, in preserving her legends about the 
 De Quincey who honoured her with so much of his life, has 
 to remember, it seems, unless rumour has been too inven- 
 tive, that not only were his footsteps familiar with every 
 mile of road round her, but sometimes he would bivouac 
 in a wayside wood in her neighbourhood, or on a spur of 
 the Braids or the Pentlands, canopied only by the con- 
 stellations. 
 
 The danger is that, in dwelling so much on the eccen- 
 tricities of De Quincey, it should be forgotten that all the 
 while the cottage at Lass wade was really his home. It 
 was there that he would have been detained always by 
 those dearest to him; and it was there, in fact, with all 
 allowance for his wanderings and fugitations, that he did 
 spend most of his time. Very soon, if left to himself, he 
 would have taken possession of every room in the house, 
 one after another, and " snowed up " each with his papers; 
 but, that having been gently prevented, he had one room to 
 work in all day and all night to his heart's content. The 
 evenings, or the intervals between his daily working-time 
 and his nightly working- time or stroll, he generally 
 spent in the drawing-room with his daughters, either 
 alone or in company with any friends that chanced 
 to be with them. At such times, we are told, he was 
 unusually charming. " The newspaper was brought out, 
 " and he, telling in his own delightful way, rather than 
 " reading, the news, would, on questions from this one or 
 '' that one of the party, often including young friends of 
 " his children, neighbours, or visitors from distant places, 
 " illuminate the subject with such a wealth of mem^ories. 
 
IX.] EVENINGS AT LASSWADE. Ill 
 
 " of old stories, of past or present experiences, of humour, 
 " of suggestion, even of prophecy, as by its very wealth 
 " makes it impossible to give any taste of it," The 
 description is by one of his daughters ; and she adds a 
 touch which is inimitable in its fidelity and tenderness. 
 " He was not," she says, " a reassuring man for nervous 
 '' people to live with, as those nights were exceptions on 
 *' which he did not set something on fire, the commonest 
 " incident being for some one to look up from book or 
 " work to say casually, Papa, your hair is on fire ; of 
 " which a calm Is it, my love ? and a hand rubbing out 
 " the blaze was all the notice taken." The music, which 
 was so frequently a part of those indoor pleasures, and the 
 variations of the character of the evenings now and then 
 by the presence of distinguished visitors, British or 
 American, may easily be imagined. What has chiefly to 
 be borne in mind, we repeat, is that, at the centre of all 
 De Quincey's Bohemian roamings, real and reputed, there 
 was this home of warmth and comfort for him on the 
 banks of the Esk, and that it may be seen by those who 
 feel an interest in him to this day. The quickest way is 
 to take the rail from Edinburgh to the Polton station ; but 
 the best is to go to Easswade, and thence to walk the mile 
 and a half extra that bring one to the spot. 
 
CHAPTEK X. 
 
 LASSWADE, AND NO. 42 LOTHIAN STREET, EDINBURGH : 
 THE COLLECTED WORKS : LAST DAYS OF DE QUINCEY. 
 
 1849—1859. 
 
 In 1845 there had been started, by Mr. James Hogg, 
 an enterprising Edinburgh bookseller, a new cheap perio- 
 dical, called Hogg^s Weekly Instructor. The periodical 
 had been going on for three years, and had entered on a 
 "new series" in 1848. It was in the autumn of 1849, 
 when some accident had caused the removal of the print- 
 ing-offices to temporary premises in the suburb of Edin- 
 burgh called Canonmills, that Mr. Hogg, attending to some 
 matters there, was told that a stranger wanted to speak to 
 him. " Going down," says Mr. Hogg, " I was confronted 
 '' by a noticeably small figure, attired in a capacious gar- 
 " ment, which w^as much too large, and which served the 
 " purpose of both undercoat and overcoat." It was, in 
 fact, De Quincey, who had come to offer an article for 
 the Instructor. Mr. Hogg, having ascertained who his 
 visitor was, very naturally accepted the article at once ; 
 whereupon it was produced from an inner pocket of the 
 capacious great-coat, and handed to Mr. Hogg, but not till 
 De Quincey had produced from the same pocket a small 
 handbrush and carefully brushed the manuscript. Finding 
 he had come all the way from Lasswade, Mr. Hogg asked 
 him how he was to get back. He would walk, as usual. 
 
CH. X.] CONNEXION WITH MK. HOGG. 113 
 
 he said. It was now about six o'clock, and he would be 
 home before nine. 
 
 This call on Mr. Hogg at Canonmills turned out of no 
 small importance in De Qiiincey's biography. Whether 
 it had been occasioned by any knowledge on De Quincey's 
 part that his connexion with Blackwood and Tait was 
 coming to an end, or merely by a wish to have a weekly 
 periodical also at hand for the reception of smaller odds 
 and ends from his pen, certain it is that from 1849 the 
 new connexion all but superseded every other. There are 
 no known contributions by De Quincey to Blachioood 
 after 1849; his only known contribution to Tait after 
 that date was a paper in three instalments, in 1851, en- 
 titled Lord Carlisle on Pope ; and, though The North 
 British Review is said to have counted De Quincey 
 among its contributors, his literary exertions in any such 
 quarter v/ere but asides from his occupations for Mr. 
 Hogg. Xot, of course, that these occupations consisted in 
 mere contributorship to Hogg's Instructor. That perio- 
 dical, whether under its original name, which it retained 
 till 1856, or under the more appalling name of Titan, 
 which it adopted in 1857, did indeed receive bright occa- 
 sional contributions from De Quincey. The most notable 
 were a short sketch of Professor Wilson in 1850, an 
 article on Sir William Hamilton in three portions in 
 1852, a paper on California in 1852, and one on China 
 in 1857. But what were a few stray articles in an Edin- 
 burgh weekly for the last ten years of such a life as De 
 Quincey's ? How had it come to pass, in fact, that a 
 man for whose articles all editors and all publishers in the 
 British Islands, had they been really deep in their craft, 
 ought to have been competing, had found it necessary-, in 
 his sixty-fifth year, to pay that call at Canonmills with a 
 
 I 
 
114 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 manuscript in his pocket, and solicit, almost as a mendi- 
 cant, the acceptance of it for the columns of a struggling 
 Edinburgh weekly ? That mystery resolves itself into the 
 more general mystery of the origin of stupidity ; but the 
 call at Canonmills had at least one result more fortunate 
 than the opening for De Quincey of another small source 
 of wages by periodical -writing in his old age. Mr. Hogg, 
 having to see his new contributor again and again, con- 
 ceived a possible expansion of their connexion. Why 
 should he not bring out, under De Quincey 's own editorial 
 supervision, a collective edition of De Quincey's Works 1 
 True, it had been announced that the scheme had been 
 already entertained in some quarters and given up as hope- 
 less ; true, it was the uniform representation to Mr. Hogg 
 by his brothers in business that, if he did begin the enter- 
 prise with De Quincey's consent, it would break down 
 after a volume or two, through De Quincey's unpunctuality 
 and incapacity for continuous labour. "1 will risk it," 
 said Mr. Hogg to himself; and he did. It seems to have 
 been in 1850 that the resolution was taken, though the 
 preparations were not begun till some time later. 
 
 Meanwhile the same idea had occurred to the American 
 publishing firm of Messrs. Ticknor and Fields of Boston. 
 In America, almost always in advance of the mother- 
 country in such matters, it had been perceived long ago 
 that De Quincey was one of the chief English Classics. 
 There had been popular American reprints already of in- 
 dividual pieces of his -, and it was Mr. Eields himself that 
 now undertook the task of seeking out liis scattered 
 articles in British periodicals and collecting and arranging 
 them in proper form. For this first American edition of 
 De Quincey's works, begun in 1851, and completed in 
 1855 in twenty volumes, the publisliers obtained some 
 
X.] THE COLLECTED WORKS. 115 
 
 assistance fi-om De Qiiincey while it was in progress ; and 
 it is remembered to their credit that they made him a 
 participator in the profits to a handsome extent. The 
 Boston edition of the works, however, was not to interfere 
 with Mr. Hogg's projected Edinburgh edition ; which, 
 indeed, was to differ from the Boston edition very con- 
 siderably. Less comjDlete in some respects, inasmuch as 
 De Quincey was to omit from it articles that are kept 
 in the Boston edition, and was to diminish the bulk of 
 the matter on certain subjects by fusing separate articles 
 in some cases into one, it was, on the other hand, to be 
 more perfect, in so far as it was to receive the author's 
 own revision throughout, with modifications and exten- 
 sions in the course of the revision. 
 
 To get rid of that matter at once, it may be stated 
 that, when the first volume of the Edinburgh edition did 
 appear in 1853, it appeared as the first volume of a series 
 the general title of v/hich was to be Selections Grave and 
 Gay, from icritings iniblished and iinpuhlUhed, hy Tliomas 
 De Quincey, and that this general title was maintained 
 till the issue of the fourteenth volume of the series (the 
 last to which it was carried by Mr. Hogg) in 1860. On 
 the whole, it is to be regretted now that De Quincey did 
 not, for this edition, simply collect his writings, and pub- 
 lish them in the chronological order of their first appear- 
 ance or their composition, with a note of date and place 
 to each. Next best would have been an assortment of 
 the papers into sets of volumes according to a classifi- 
 cation of their subjects, Xo one was more capable of 
 such a classification than De Quincey ; but, unfortu- 
 nately, he had no complete preserved collection of his 
 printed papers by him, or of the periodicals containing 
 them. The American edition, coming over to him in sue- 
 
116 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 cessive volumes, was his greatest help ; but, till it was 
 complete, and sometimes even then, he had to rummage 
 for his old papers, or employ Mr. Hogg to rummage for 
 him, hurriedly squeezing together what was readiest at 
 intervals, to make up a volume when the press became 
 ravenous. Hence the most provoking jumble in the con- 
 tents of the fourteen volumes, — mixed kinds of matter in 
 the same volume, and dispersion of the same kinds of 
 matter over volumes wide apart, and yet all with a pre- 
 tence of grouping and with factitious sub-titles invented 
 for the separate volumes on the spur of the moment. 
 Much of this has been remedied in the later issues of the 
 same Edinburgh edition by Messrs. A. and C. Black, who 
 acquired the property in 1862. Two volumes have been 
 added by Messrs. Black to the previous fourteen, and 
 other alterations have been made by them, justifying the 
 exchange of the title Selections Grave and Gay^ &c., for 
 the more comprehensive title De Qauicey's Works. 
 
 The new labour of bringing out the Collected Works 
 occasioned a change in De Quincey's domiciliary arrange- 
 ments. It may be remembered that from 1838 to 1840, 
 or just after his wife's death and before the happy notion 
 of the cottage at Lasswade, his Edinburgh lodging or 
 working headquarters had been at No. 42 Lothian Street. 
 There seems reason for believing that, thougli he had 
 been in a variety of lodging-places in the interval, he had 
 always preferred this. At all events, in 1852, when 
 he was in the throes of the first volume of the 
 Collected AVorks, there was a return to iN""©. 42 Lothian 
 Street, and this time, as it turned out, for so permanent a 
 tenancy that no house in Edinburgh now can compete 
 with that in the interest of its associations with De 
 Quincey. 
 
X.] No. 42 LOTHIAN STREET. 117 
 
 Lothian Street, the stranger to Edinburgh may he in- 
 formed, is a dense street of shops and rather dingy 
 houses, in the Okl Town, close to the University ; and 
 Xo. 42, like most of the other houses, is what is called 
 in Edinburgh "a common stair." In other words, it is a 
 tenement entered from the street by an arched passage, 
 from which a stone staircase ascends to the several half- 
 tlats into which the whole is divided, each with its in- 
 dependent door and door-bell. There are six such half- 
 flats above the ground-floor ; and that in which De 
 Quincey had his rooms was the left half-flat on the second 
 floor. The half-flat was then, as it had been at the time 
 of De Quincey's first familiarity with it, in the occupation 
 of a widowed Mrs. AVilson and her sister Miss Stark. 
 They were two most worthy persons, who had come to 
 have some appreciation of the extraordinary character of 
 their lodger ; and they were from this time forward to 
 take the most exemplary charge of him. It is an addi- 
 tional satisfaction to know that, soon after they had taken 
 charge of him, and chiefly by ]\Ir. Hogg's friendly exer- 
 tions, he was disentangled from all his supposed perplexi- 
 ties with other landladies and lodging-house keepers. 
 Mr. Hogg's statements on this point, a vital one in De 
 Quincey's biography, are worth remembering. — Having, 
 with some difficulty, obtained the necessary information 
 from him, and permission to act in his name, Mr. Hogg 
 did find that deposits of papers had been left by him in 
 various places. In the main, however, he found that De 
 Quincey's dread that he could be pursued on account of 
 claims so arising was a mere hallucination. Two former 
 landladies came of their own accord, and Avith perfect 
 good nature, to deliver up to Mr. Hogg, without any 
 claim whatever, papers of the strange little gentleman 
 
118 DE QUINCEY. [chap 
 
 who had lodged with them ; in a third case, where a 
 claim for house-room was presented, which troubled De 
 Quincey for some time, it was so clearly exorbitant that 
 it might have been quashed at once but for De Quincey's 
 anxiety about the safety of his papers; and the most 
 flagrant case of all was one in which a whole family 
 trafficked on their possession of papers of De Quincey's as 
 a means of extorting money from him, though not pro- 
 fessing that he owed them a farthing. They played on 
 his fears for his papers, doling them out in parcels, and 
 sometimes sending him "bogus-packets," made up of 
 anything ; they pleaded abject poverty, and appealed to 
 his pity ; and at least once they got up a death in the 
 family, that he might have the pleasure of contributing to 
 the funeral expenses. The note sent to De Quincey on 
 this occasion, and forwarded by him to Mr. Hogg, is a 
 curiosity. " Mr. De Quincey, sir," it begins, " in accord- 
 " ance with your request, I have made out the enclosed 
 " items, money for which I would want for my mother's 
 " funeral. She is to be buried to-morrow, and would like 
 " things settled as early as possible to-day." Mr. Hogg 
 having taken the wretches in hand, they were brought 
 under some sort of control ; but there is a trace of trouble 
 from tliem to as late as 1855. — Two more of Mr. Hogg's 
 stories about De Quincey relate to the same matter of his 
 ubiquitously- scattered papers. Once, in a hotel in the 
 High Street, into which he had taken De Quincey for re- 
 fuge and a basin of soup during a thunder-shower, the 
 waiter, after looking at De Quincey, said " I think, sir, I 
 have a bundle of papers which you left here some time 
 ago "; and, sure enough, a bundle was produced, w^hich 
 De Quincey had left there about a year before. Another 
 time, having gone to Glasgow once more on a visit to 
 
X.] No. 42 LOTHIAN STREET. 119 
 
 Professor Lushington, and having taken two tea-chests of 
 papers with him, he had been obHged, by some refractori- 
 ness on the part of the porter, to leave them at a book- 
 seller's shop on their way to the Professor's house. This 
 he remembered perfectly ; but, as he had taken no note 
 of the name of the bookseller, or the number of the shop, 
 or even of the name of the street, Mr. Hogg found him 
 quite rueful on the subject after his return to Edinburgh. 
 A letter to a friend and a round of inquiries among the 
 Glasgow^ booksellers made all right ; and Mr. Hogg had 
 the pleasure of pointing out to him the two recovered 
 boxes as they lay in his office, and asking Avhat was to be 
 done with them. '' Send them to Lothian Street," was 
 the answer ; and thither they Avere accordingly sent, an 
 addition to the vast aggregate of books, periodicals, and 
 newspapers, in mounds on the floor and in tiers along 
 the walls, already crammed into his rooms, and vexing 
 the orderly souls of INlrs. Wilson and Miss Stark. 
 
 A worrying, and yet most amusing, business it was for 
 Mr. Hogg to keep De Quincey, in those rooms, or in his 
 occasional adjournments to Lasswade, to his great task of 
 bringing out, wdth due punctuality, the successive volumes 
 of his Collected AVorks. It was one long struggle between 
 De Quincey and the printing-press. A message-boy, named 
 Eoderick, was kept always ready at the one end, to be shot 
 to Lothian Street or Lasswade for coj^y when the supply 
 failed ; at the other end was De Quincey himself, groaning 
 and working. His preserved notes to Mr. Hogg, excusing 
 his failures and delays, are pathetically characteristic. 
 " My non-performances after circumstantial notice have 
 " been so many," he says in one, " that I can hardly hope 
 " for any credit when I tell you that on Monday I shall 
 " be in Lothian Street with the MS. all ready for the 
 
120 DE QUIKCEY. [chap. 
 
 " press." The excuse on this occasion was his " nervous 
 sufferings "; but another time it is trouble about some 
 unpaid taxes, and consequent "agitation at the prospect of 
 utter ruin past all repair.'" Again, it is uncertainty 
 whether certain papers are already in the printer's hands 
 or are still in his own possession, with a desire to be sure 
 on the point, so as to be saved, if possible, " a process of 
 stooping " in search of them, from which he could " hardly 
 recover for a fortnight." Once it is owing to "lumbago"; 
 once to his having fallen asleep inopportunely ; another 
 time to partial delirium from " want of sleep and opium 
 combined "; another time, to distraction from " having 
 been up and writing all night," with the addition " I have 
 just set fire to my hair." Once the delay is due to " a 
 process of whitewashing or otherwise cleaning ceilings, 
 &c.," which has been going on in the house, and to the 
 unfortunate fact that most of the papers needed at the 
 moment " had been placed within a set of drawers against 
 which is now reared the whitewasher's scaffolding "; and 
 several times it is owing to consideration for Miss Stark, 
 who is not in the best of health, and has too much to do. 
 Miss Stark, in fact, had become indispensable to him, not 
 only buying for him all the articles he wanted, articles of 
 apparel included, but also receiving and returning messages 
 for him, and sorting and numbering his slips of copy, and 
 so minutely cognisant of his daily dealings and difficulties 
 with the press that she began to fancy she was herself a 
 kind of literary lady.^ It is curious to observe, amid all 
 
 ^ Miss Stark is still alive, and in the same No. 42 Lothian 
 Street ; and I have had the pleasure of seeing her, and hearing her 
 talk of De Quincey, in the very rooms which he occupied. She 
 remembers that he usually wrote on papers which he held iu his 
 left hand, near his eyes, and not at a table, and also that he had 
 
X.] No. 42 LOTHIAN STREET. 121 
 
 this confusion, the indefatigable and painstaking laborious- 
 ness of the little workman, his fiistidious care for accuracy, 
 and his delicate regard for the feelings and interests of 
 other people. His notes of excuse are themselves models 
 of superfluous precision ; and his instructions to the 
 compositors for corrections of the press and for the proper 
 reading of his manuscript are elaborately over-cautious. 
 He is unhappy sometimes at the thought that the 
 compositors, whose time is their fortune, may be standing 
 idle through his fault ; and once he is miserable till he 
 has explained to Mr. Hogg by two letters in succession 
 that the boy Koderick is not to blame for a certain mis- 
 understanding, but had delivered his message with Spartan 
 strictness. Xor, in the long-run, as Mr. Hogg vouches, 
 did De Quincey fail in any essential of his undertaking. 
 In the accounts between them he was equally scrupulous, 
 and indeed morbidly afraid of any beneht to himself by a 
 casual error. It was not long before Mr. Hogg found that 
 a cheque made him uneasy, and that he would always 
 rather have a little cash on account. From another source 
 we learn that he did not like the greasy Scotch one-pound 
 notes, but preferred the medallions of her jNIajesty's head 
 in gold, silver, or copper. 
 
 While Xo. 42 Lothian Street was De Quincey's 
 established abode and workshop from 1852 onwards, it 
 was at Lasswade, as before, that he was mainly or solely 
 to be seen by visitors. The domestic economy there, how- 
 ever, did not remain unchanged. In 1853 there was the 
 first break in the household by the marriage of his eldest 
 
 a peculiar way of notcliing each slip of manuscript when he had 
 done with it. He had a secret meaning in the practice, which he 
 promised to tell her ; but he never did. She does not remember 
 that he went out much at nights, or indeed during the day, except 
 for transit to Lasswade. 
 
322 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 daughter, Margaret, to Mr. Eobert Craig, the son of a 
 highly-respected neighbour, and the removal of the married 
 pair to Ireland. In 1851 the two younger daughters were 
 away from Lasswade for some time, on a visit to their 
 married sister in her new home ; and in 1855 the elder of 
 these, Florence, went out to India, to become the wife of 
 Colonel Baird Smith, an engineer officer of high distinc- 
 tion, whose name and services are still brilliant in our 
 Indian annals. As by that time the medical son Francis 
 had become a duly- qualified physician and gone out to 
 Brazil, De Quincey seems to have felt some compunction 
 afterwards in leaving his single remaining daughter, 
 Emily, so much alone at Lasswade. There were pathetic 
 signs of this, Mrs. Baird Smith informs us, in the in- 
 creased frequency thenceforward of his affectionate notes 
 and letters from Lothian Street to Lasswade when he 
 could not come himself ; and her explanation of the whole 
 matter is : — " He really could not manage his work farther 
 " from the press, and nothing which would have been 
 " natural in other cases, such as my sister's removing into 
 " Edinburgh, would have answered with him." Indeed, 
 though Miss De Quincey's most natural home was still the 
 pretty place on the Esk to which she had been accustomed 
 from her childhood, and where, rather than in Edinburgh, 
 she had pleasant neighbourly ties, she was inevitably 
 absent from it a good deal, after 1855, on visits elsewhere, 
 more especially to her sister, Mrs. Craig, in Ireland. In 
 one such visit, in the autumn of 1857, De Quincey himself 
 actually accompanied her, — the arrival just then of his 
 youngest son, Paul Frederick, on furlough from his 
 regiment in India, having suggested the journey and made 
 the travelling arrangements easier. Even with such an 
 escort, it was something of an adventure for De Quincey 
 
X.] No. -42 LOTHIAN STREET. 123 
 
 in his seventy-third year ; but all was managed to his 
 mind ; and there was a new fund of delight for him 
 through the rest of his life in the fact that he had made 
 out this visit to his eldest daughter in her Irish home, 
 and had seen the two little ones that were to remember 
 him as their grandfatlier. From that date there was to be 
 no similar interruption of his usual habits, but only, 
 whenever his youngest daughter was at Lasswade, the 
 customar}^ alternation between the familiar cottage there 
 and his own crib in Lothian Street. Even after he had 
 passed his seventieth year he retained so much of his 
 pedestrian vigour that the distance of seven miles between 
 the two places was nothing 'to him if he were in the 
 humour, and younger men were surprised at the ease with 
 wdiich he preceded them up one of the braes of the Esk. 
 Latterly, however, there was an increasing feebleness, 
 bringing his rambles more and more within bounds, and 
 sometimes confining him to his Lothian Street rooms for 
 weeks together. A tendency to somnambulism, which 
 showed itself now and then, was a new cause of trepida- 
 tion on his account to Mrs. Wilson and IMiss Stark, already 
 sufficiently in dread of nightly accident to him and his 
 papers from his extreme shortsightedness and perpetual 
 contact with fire and lighted candles. On the other hand, 
 one is glad to find, he was in his latter years comparatively 
 free from the pains and miseries of his constitutional 
 malady. The testimony to this fact is concurrent from 
 several quarters ; and the medical hypothesis now is that 
 the " lesion of the stomach " which had been the prime 
 cause of his sufferings, and the explanation of his abnormal 
 consumption of opium, had somehow begun to heal itself, 
 by a kind of natural induration, as old age came on. 
 
 The De Quincey of the ten years from 1849 to 1859, 
 
124 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 the De Quincey whose vohiminous Collected Works were 
 appearing simultaneously in a British edition and an 
 American edition, was naturally an object of even keener 
 social curiosity than the De Quincey of earlier and less 
 rounded-off celebrity. He was thought of as a surviving 
 chief of a former generation^ whom one must make haste 
 to see, if he were ever to be seen at all. For the Edin- 
 burgh people generally, however, to see De Quincey was 
 no more easy matter now than it had been before. His 
 elusiveness of all ordinary social gatherings had increased 
 rather than diminished ; and from that network of great 
 dinner-parties and great evening assemblies which brings 
 all Edinburgh together, over and over again, every season 
 from November to May, he was still allowed to escape by 
 a unanimous vote in favour of his intractable singularity. 
 So long as Wilson lived, it was never the fault of that 
 heartiest and most hospitable of men if he lost sight of 
 De Quincey for any considerable while, or were not applied 
 to first for any act of friendship, or of guardianship in a 
 difficulty, that De Quincey might need. But Wilson died 
 in April, 1854, at the age of sixty-nine, leaving his weaker- 
 bodied friend, then of the same age, to live on for nearly six 
 years more of lingering Edinburgh independence. Among 
 friends of De Quincey's who saw most of him in his 
 later years, before Wilson's death or after, were INIr. 
 Robert Chambers, Mr. Hill Burton, Mr. Alexander Russel 
 of the Scotsman, and Mr. J. R. Findlay. Those were still 
 the days too of the pleasant little supper-parties of Mrs. 
 Crowe in Darnaway Street, remembered yet by some, and 
 certainly by the present writer, as among the most 
 excellent and best-managed things of the kind ever known 
 in Edinburgh or elsewhere. By the kindly tact of the 
 hostess, one was always sure to meet at her table, in the 
 
X.J EDINBURGH REMINISCENCES. 125 
 
 easiest and friendliest fashion, from half-a-dozen to ten or 
 twelve of the men and women best worth knowing, on 
 literary or other grounds, among the residents in Edin- 
 burgh or the last week's arrivals. As I write, there rise 
 up in my memory the genial old Su' William Allan and 
 his niece, Mr. and Mrs. George Combe (the latter a 
 daughter of ^Irs. Siddons, and with a flash of her mother's 
 dramatic power in her at unexpected moments), the good 
 Robert Chambers, Dr. Samuel Brown, David Scott, Miss 
 Eigby, Mrs. Stirling of Hill Street, the American Miss 
 Cushman, the Italian Euffini, and the Greek Mousabines. 
 That is a mixed recollection from 1846 ; and it must have 
 been considerably after that date, as I calculate, but while 
 some of those named may have been still among the 
 contuhernales, that De Quincey was first drawn into the 
 friendly circle. The following anecdote of one of his ap- 
 pearances there is, therefore, only at secondhand : — To 
 suit some of the gentlemen, there had been produced on 
 this occasion, by special grace of the English hostess, 
 materials for the savage Scottish observance called whisky- 
 toddy. In those days the orthodox instrumient for mixing 
 the ingredients in the tumbler and conveying them thence 
 to the glass was a " toddy-ladle," generally of silver, but 
 preferably of wood. Mrs. Crowe having apologized for the 
 absence of those articles and the substitution of mere tea- 
 spoons, De Quincey's politeness was moved to hyperbole. 
 " 0. don't mention it, Mrs. Crowe," he said ; " don't 
 mention it ; for, if there is one thing in this world that I 
 abominate more than any other, it is those execrable 
 toddy-ladles." There must be De Quinceyana a thousand 
 times better than this from some of the little nodes in 
 Darnaway Street and elsewhere from 1849 onwards, if 
 one could get at them. But almost all De Quincey's 
 
126 DE QUINCEY, [chap. 
 
 fellow-guests at such little gatherings are gone, as well as 
 himself. 
 
 Any rare appearances, such as have been noted, of De 
 Quincey at the table of an Edinburgh friend between 
 1849 and 1859 connect themselves, of course, with the 
 Edinburgh focus of his little ellipse, — i.e. with Lothian 
 Street. The more formal calls of visitors from a distance, 
 British or American, were still almost invariably at Lass- 
 wade, and naturally became fewer and fewer after the 
 marriages of two of his daughters and the absences of 
 the third made his own occasions for being there less 
 frequent. Miss ]\Iartineau visited him in 1852, while all 
 his daughters were still with him. She went away charmed 
 by the exceptionally sweet audibility of his voice as it 
 reached her through her ear-trumpet, and she lived to 
 write a posthumous estimate of him, which might have 
 been written more w^orthily. Mr. Fields, his American 
 publisher, visited him about the same time, and could not 
 afterwards say enough of his gentleness and courtesy of 
 manner and the delights of his conversation. Another 
 American, who visited him in 1854, transmits an anecdote 
 which is worth more than general eulogium. The talk at 
 the table had begun to veer round somehow to the subject 
 of Scotland and the Scotch, when I)e Quincey, as if 
 waking from a reverie, observed to the visitors that, as 
 the servant who waited was a Scotch girl, he would be 
 particularly obliged if they would reserve anything severe 
 they had to say about the Scottish religion for moments 
 when she should be out of the room. By far the best 
 account, however, of a visit to De Quincey at Lasswade in 
 his later years is one by the Eev. Francis Jacox. The 
 visit, which was in July 1852, extended over some days, 
 and included walks with De Quincey, as well as conver- 
 
X.] REMINISCENCES BY MR. JACOX. 127 
 
 sations with him in the cottage. Impressed, as everybody 
 was, with De Quincey's wonderful courtesy, the " sensitive 
 considerateness " of his style of address to all about him, 
 ]Mr. Jacox was particularly struck by the absence in him 
 of that habit of monologue which is the usual fault of 
 men celebrated for conversational powder. He was as 
 willing to listen as to talk. Xaturally, however, most of 
 the talk was left to hhii. There were times of torpor or 
 dreaminess when he seemed incapable of anything; but a 
 cup of coffee, or some less visible stimulus, would rouse 
 him like magic. Then his talk would range over all 
 possible topics, from the gayest and lightest to the highest. 
 ]\rr. Jacox took note of some of his judgments in literary 
 matters. He talked most affectionately of Wilson, who 
 was then broken down in health. In speaking of Sir 
 William Hamilton and his metaphysics his strain rose to 
 nearly its higliest mood, but with a reserve on behalf of 
 the later thinker Ferrier, as perhaps the subtler, if not so 
 learned and comprehensive. He had read Isaac Taylor's 
 works, but did not care much about them. With Miss 
 Edgeworth's novels he had much fault to find ; Dickens 
 he praised only cum grano, but preferred unhesitatingly 
 to Thackeray, on account of his more genial humanity ; 
 and against Thackeray's merits, Mr. Jacox thought, he 
 was mulishly obdurate. He would not admire Emerson and 
 Hawthorne to the proper pitch, but had not then read the 
 best of Hawthorne. He showed very considerable curiosity 
 about ]\Iaurice and Kingsley, and Christian Socialism, and 
 inquired very particularly about ]Mr. G. H. Lewes and his 
 London doings and employments. He said that music 
 was a necessity of his daily life, and that, if he ever 
 visited London again, the opera would be his principal 
 attraction. For the theatres in general he had little good 
 
J 28 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 to say, and declared that he could hardly conceive of a 
 performance of a Shakespearian tragedy that should be 
 other than a profanation in his eyes ; but he spoke with 
 cordial admiration of Miss Helen Faucit as he had seen 
 her recently in Edinburgh in the part of Antigone. When 
 such conversations with De Quincey were out-of-doors, 
 in the country -roads about Lasswade, Mr. Jacox observed 
 that they were always beset or followed by beggars, and 
 that De Quincey gave something at once to every appli- 
 cant, and always deferentially and wdth apology. The 
 last walk Mr. Jacox had with him was in seeing him so 
 far on his way back, on an evening, from Edinburgh to 
 Lasswade. While they were in Princes Street, De 
 Quincey showed a nervous anxiety lest any gesture of 
 himself or his companion should be construed by a cab- 
 man as an offer of a fare, and so bring him off the rank. 
 Some horrible experience seemed to be in his mind, and 
 he expressed his dread of "the overbearing brutality of 
 those men," The walk, so far as it was a joint concern, 
 ended at a point in the Meadows, where De Quincey 
 insisted that Mr. Jacox should turn back. Mr. Jacox 
 then bade him farewell, but watched his receding figure 
 as it disappeared up the lane, called Lovers' Loan, leading 
 from the Meadows to the rest of his long route over height 
 and hollow to Lasswade. He had opened a book of 
 Hawthorne's, which ^Ir. Jacox had given him, and was 
 reading it. 
 
 What more is to be known about De Quincey in his 
 last years is to be derived chiefly from those letters to his 
 daughters which, as has been mentioned, became touch- 
 ingly frequent after the family had been dispersed. Mr. 
 Page has been able to publish a number of specimens, 
 and they have a very lively interest. It cannot be said, 
 
X.] HIS LAST YEARS. 129 
 
 indeed, that they admit us much to that " inner heart " of 
 De Qiiincey the real nature of which so puzzled those 
 \yho knew him best. With all his startling outside eccen- 
 tricities, and even the glaring candours of his opium con- 
 fessions, he remained an impenetrable being. Wilson 
 himself could never explain him. What dark little core 
 of a soul did his eccentricities conceal ; or was there no 
 real core of moral personality at all, but only a strange 
 bunch or conformation of sensitive and intellectual nerves, 
 over which the phenomena of the world could creep with 
 the certainty of a keen response, and that could secrete 
 thoughts and phantasies ? The second supposition is ir- 
 reconcilable with known facts. We have had signs 
 already, and the writings furnish more in abundance, 
 that the gentle, timid^ shrinking, abnormally sensitive and 
 polite little man was no more without his hard little bit 
 of central self than other people, and that this might be 
 found out on occasion. He had a very considerable fund 
 of prejudice, temper, opinionativeness, animosity, pugna- 
 city, on which he could draw when he liked ; and sharp 
 enough claws could be put forth from underneath the 
 velvet. He had also, we need not doubt, his deeper 
 hours and reveries of self-communing wdien De Quincey 
 was alone with De Quincey, and more came out and was 
 discoursed between them than friend or enemy could ever 
 know. This mystery of the real De Quincey, however, 
 has to be prosecuted through the whole biography and by 
 means of the sum-total of the materials, and receives little 
 elucidation from the private letters. 
 
 But, though these letters tell us little about De Quincey 
 intrinsically that we should not have known otherwise, 
 they let us see some traits of his character in the light 
 of a peculiarly pleasant familiarit}'. Their fatherly and 
 
130 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 grandfatherly fondness is really beautiful. We see the 
 old man, late at night, in Lothian Street, amid his books 
 and papers, stopping his work and pushing it aside, that 
 he may shut his eyes and think for a while of his three 
 girls, and of the little Eva and Johnny in the Irish home 
 of one of them. The arrival of the post with letters 
 from his daughters is the event of the twenty-four hours 
 within which it occurs, and he likes nothing better than 
 to prattle back to them by the next post. Here, how- 
 ever, his difficulties, excuses, and explanations, are often 
 comically absurd. Now he fears he has mislaid the 
 letters just received ; now he has but a single sheet of 
 note-paper left, or has to write on a sheet of wretchedly 
 coarse note-paper from a packet he had fortunately bought 
 at the last shop he could find open on a Saturday night ; 
 now, — let his daughters exult with him ! — he has 
 " sprung a mine of envelopes " underneath the litter on 
 his table, and will be at ease on that score for some time. 
 Worst of all, it is quite uncertain whether the letter he 
 is writing will ever be despatched ; for he knows he has 
 written one already, which he cannot now find, and this 
 one may disappear in like fashion, unless fate is propi- 
 tious. When a letter did emerge from such throttling 
 chances in its origin, it was pretty sure to be worth re- 
 ceiving. AYith affectionate messages to the recipient and 
 those about her, there might be chat about the progress 
 of the Collected Edition of the Works, or about some in- 
 cident in De Quincey's last walk or in the Lothian Street 
 menage ; but in most cases the letter turned itself into a 
 playful little dissertation, a la De Quincey, on some point 
 of etymology or literature casually suggested. Once there 
 was a minute account of a dream in which himself and 
 two of his dauGfhters wore the figures, with an illustrative 
 
X.] HIS LAST YEARS. 131 
 
 diagram to assist them in conceiving it exactly. That 
 De Quincey took no ordinary interest in the current 
 public news of the day we know independently ; but the 
 letters furnish additional proofs, We hear in them of 
 second editions of the newspapers sent out for w^hen any- 
 thing of special moment was going on ; and the amount of 
 attention to the trial of Palmer in 1856 and to another 
 famous case in 1857 answers to what we should ex- 
 pect from the author of the essay on " Murder considered 
 as one of the Fine Arts." ]S"othing, however, seems to 
 have interested De Quincey so much, or roused him so 
 nearly to a paroxysm of personal excitement, as the Indian 
 Mutiny of 1857-8. The fact that his daughter, Mrs. Baird 
 Smith, and his son Paul Frederick, w^ere then in India, 
 and subsequently his pride in the share which fell to his 
 son-in-law, Colonel Baird Smith, in the exertions for the 
 suppression of the Mutiny, brought the tremendous story 
 home to him, and made the impression of it the last great 
 experience of his life. 
 
 Through the years of labour over the edition of the 
 Collected Works De Quincey had been amusing himself 
 with fresh literary projects. Mr. Hogg, after noting it as 
 one of the peculiarities of his conversation that sometimes 
 he would propound the most absurd things, and maintain 
 them so gravely that it was impossible to say whether he 
 was merely quizzing you and himself or might not be 
 really in earnest, applies the remark especially to his per- 
 sistence in bringing forward certain schemes of publishing 
 adventure. While some of these alarmed Mr. Hogg by 
 threatening interruption to the main labour, there was 
 one which would not have been so chimerical in itself 
 had time been left for it. This was a project of a new 
 History of England in twelve volumes. After he was 
 
132 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 seventy he still harped on the project to Mr. Hogg, and 
 longed for the conclusion of the Collective Edition, that 
 he might begin the new work. He could finish it, he 
 thought, in four years. 
 
 The autumn of 1859 had come, and the thirteenth 
 volume of the Collected Works had been issued, and the 
 fourteenth and last volume was all but ready for the 
 press, when it became evident that De Quincey's work in 
 the world was over. His life had gone to the extreme 
 extent for which it had been wound up, and it was 
 no definite malady, but the mere weakness of old age, 
 that made him take to his bed. His youngest daughter, 
 summoned from Ireland, where she had been on a visit to 
 her sister, found him too feeble to bear removal to Lass- 
 wade, and remained with him in Lothian Street. Dr. 
 Warburton Begbie, an Edinburgh physician of the highest 
 celebrity at that day, was called in on the 22nd of 
 October. He visited his patient latterly twice-a-day, 
 finding him sometimes rallying so much as to be able to 
 sit up or recline on a sofa, eager about what was in the 
 day's newspapers, and trying to read them himself, or 
 turning over the leaves of a new book. The perfect 
 tranquillity of the patient, his anxiety not to give 
 trouble, and the clearness with which he discussed the 
 medical treatment of his case and the action of the reme- 
 dies employed, especially with reference to the effects 
 that might have been left on his constitution by opium, 
 impressed Dr. Begbie greatly. There were, however, times 
 of swooning and sleepy delirium, from which he seemed 
 to awake with surprise. On such occasions his dreams 
 seemed always to be of children. On Sunday the 4th of 
 December the a2:»proach of death was so manifest that it 
 was thought right to telegraph for Mrs. Craig, the only 
 
X.] LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH. 133 
 
 other of his children then within reach. She arrived 
 in time to be recognised and welcomed ; and on the 
 morning of Thursday, the Stli of December, the two 
 daughters standing by the bedside, and the physician 
 with them, De Quincey passed away. He had been in 
 a doze for some hours ; and, as it had been observed 
 that in his waking hours since the beginning of his 
 illness he had reverted much to the incidents of his 
 childhood and talked especially of his father, regretting 
 that he had known so little of him, so in this hnal 
 doze his mind seemed to be wandering among the same 
 old memories. " My dear, dear mother : then I was 
 greatly mistaken," he was heard to murmur; and his 
 very last act was to throw up his arms and utter, as if 
 with a cry of surprised recognition, " Sister ! Sister ! 
 Sister ! " The vision seemed to be that of his sister 
 EHzabeth, dead near Manchester seventy years before, and 
 now waiting for him on the banks of the river. 
 
 De Quincey, at the time of his death, was seventy-four 
 years and four months old. There were obituary notices 
 in the newspapers, but not nearly so numerous or loud 
 and elaborate as those which came out on the death of 
 Macaulay, at the age of fifty-nine, twenty days later in 
 the same month. Xor can I find that there was any great 
 attendance at De Quincey 's funeral. He was buried in 
 the West Churchyard of Edinburgh, beside his wife and 
 two of their children ; and on a tablet on a rather ruinous 
 part of one of the walls of that churchyard, at the end of 
 the bustling Princes Street and close under the Castle 
 Rock, one may read now this epitaph: — Sacred to the 
 Memory of Thomas De Qnincey, who was horn at Green- 
 hay, near Manchester, Aiujud loth, 1785, a)id died in 
 Edinhwrgli, December Sth, 1859, and of Margaret, hisicife, 
 
134 DE QUINCE Y. [cii. x. 
 
 who died August 7th, 1837. The epitaph, it will be observed, 
 preserves the blunder of most of the biographers as to the 
 place of De Quincey's birth. What does it matter, or the 
 poorness altogether of the monument 1 Scott, whose monu- 
 ment is the central object of the city, and the finest ever 
 reared anywhere in the world to a man of letters, was a 
 native of Edinburgh ; "Wilson, the noble bronze statue of 
 whom attracts the eye in Princes Street, a little to the west 
 of the Scott monument, was an Edinburgh citizen by adop- 
 tion ; De Quincey, through three-fourths of his literary 
 life belonging by accident to Edinburgh, was in no sense 
 an Edinburgh man, and could expect no corresponding 
 posthumous honours. Xot one in two thousand of the in- 
 habitants of Edinburgh at this moment knows w^here he 
 is buried, or that he is buried in Edinburgh at all ; and 
 not once in a year does any one of the select hundred 
 who may be aware of the fact and the place think of 
 visiting the humble grave. Again what does it matter? 
 De Quincey's real constituency consists of all those, any- 
 where over the English-speaking world, who care for De 
 Quincey's writings. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 DE QUINCEY's writings : GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 One obvious distinction of De Quincey from most of the 
 other chiefs of English Literature is that the writings by 
 which he holds his high rank consist almost entirely of 
 papers contributed to periodicals. Various books which 
 he projected remained projects only ; and, with the excep- 
 tion of his Logic of Political Economy, now included 
 among his collected works, and his novel called Kloster- 
 heim, of which there has been no English reprint, all the 
 products of his pen during the forty years of his literary 
 life appeared originally in the pages of magazines or other 
 serials. Just as Shakespeare may be described, in an off- 
 hand manner, as the author of about thirty-seven plays, 
 so may De Quincey be said to have taken his place in our 
 Literature as the author of about 150 magazine articles. 
 
 Another obvious characteristic of De Quincey's writings 
 is their extreme multifariousness. They range over an 
 extraordinary extent of ground, the subjects of which 
 they principally treat being themselves of the most 
 diverse kinds, while their illustrative references and 
 allusions shoot through a perfect wilderness of mis- 
 cellaneous scholarship. This multifariousness of his 
 matter is, in fact, but a manifestation of that peculiar 
 personal character which chanced in his case to be brought 
 into the business of literature. " For my own part, with- 
 
136 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 " out breach of truth or modesty," he says in one place, 
 " I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the 
 " life of a philosopher : from my birth, I was made an 
 " intellectual creature ; and intellectual in the highest 
 " sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my 
 " schoolboy days." Again, in another place, he says : — " I 
 " have passed more of my life in absolute and unmitigated 
 " solitude, voluntarily, and for intellectual purposes, than 
 " any person of my age whom I have ever either met with, 
 " heard of, or read of." A stress, not intended by De 
 Quincey himself, may be laid on the word intellectual in 
 these passages. To hardly any one so little as to him 
 could there have been applied in his youth that observa- 
 tion which Goethe applied with such remarkable prescience 
 to Carlyle in the year 1827, when he defined him as "a 
 moral force of great importance," and added that, precisely 
 on account of this depth of the moixd in his constitution, 
 it was impossible to foresee all that he would produce and 
 effect. No one could have said of I)e Quincey, at any 
 time of his life, that his strength lay in any predominance 
 of the moral element in his nature. On the contrary, 
 though severe enough in some of his criticisms on conduct, 
 and owning a distinct aesthetic preference for whatever is 
 lovely and of good report, he was defective in original 
 moral impetus or vehemence to a degree beyond the average. 
 It is no mere figure from grammar to say that few men 
 have come into the world, or have gone through it, with a 
 more meagre outfit of the imperative mood. It was because 
 he was so weak in this mood that we may call him so 
 specifically, in his own language, '' an intellectual creature." 
 His main interest in life was that of universal curiosity, 
 sheer inquisitiveness and meditativeness about all things 
 whatsoever. Hence his early passion for the acquisition 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 137 
 
 of book-knowledge, and the fact that before his twenty- 
 fifth year he had read so mucli and so variously as to be 
 even then more entitled to the name of polijldstor than 
 almost any of his English contemporaries. Add that other 
 store of knowledge which he had acquired by the exercise 
 of a most subtle and insinuating faculty of observation upon 
 human life and character around him, the ^^ quicquid aguni 
 homines " in all its varieties of " votura, fimor, Ira, vohqotas, 
 gauclia, discursus " ; and add moreover a preternaturally 
 tenacious memory ; and it will be seen with what an 
 unusual stock of materials De Quincey came to the craft 
 of magazine authorship, AVhen he did so in his thirty- 
 fifth year^ it was under the compulsion of circumstances. 
 He would rather not have adopted the craft ; he would 
 rather have gone on still as a private student and observer, 
 with the chance of some outcome in laboured book-form 
 at his own leisure ; but, once harnessed to the periodical 
 printiug-press, he was at no loss for matter. His command 
 of German greatly increased in those days his range into 
 the unhackneyed and uncommon ; but, Avithout that help, 
 his extensive readings in the classics, in mediaeval Latin, 
 and in our earlier and less-known English authors, would 
 have sufficed, in the grasp of a memory so retentive as 
 his, to impart to his writings much of that polyhistoric 
 character, that multifariousness of out-of-the-way learning, 
 which w^e discern in them. 
 
 It is an important advance to be able to add that De 
 Quincey's writings, so miscellaneous in their collective 
 range, are all, or almost all, of high quality. There are 
 differences among them in this respect ; but there is hardly 
 one that does not, in the stereotyped phrase of reviewers, 
 " well repay perusal." Eemembering this high general 
 level of goodness through such a numerous series of articles, 
 
138 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 and remembering the super-excellent goodness of not a 
 few, admirers of De Quincey are in the habit of saying 
 among themselves plaintively " Ah ! there is no such 
 writing nowadays ! " and have actually put the excla- 
 mation into print. This is, in part, only the natural 
 exaggeration of loyalty to an old favourite ; and it forgets, 
 in the first place, what a quantity of very bad magazine- 
 writing there was in the days when De Quincey was at 
 his most brilliant in that business, and also what a quantity 
 of excellent writing there is in our magazines and reviews 
 at present. But, in a rough way, the complaint seems to 
 hit a truth. With some exceptions, there does seem to 
 be less of real mental exertion, less of notion that real 
 mental exertion is called for, in the magazine-writing and 
 review-writing of the present time than there was in the 
 palmy old days when De Quincey, Carlyle, Macaulay, and 
 some others, were doing their best in our monthlies and 
 quarterlies, and making their living by that species of 
 labour. Anything does, — any kind of useful, or, as they 
 are beginning to call it, " informatory," printed matter, or 
 any compost of rough proximate ideas on a subject, or any 
 string of platitudes, repeating what nobody ever did not 
 know, if tinselled sufficiently into pretty sentences, j^ot 
 unfrequently, when you have read the article of greatest 
 celebrity in the current number of a periodical, you find 
 that there has been no other motive to it than a theftuous 
 hope to amuse an hour for you after dinner by serving up to 
 you again the plums from some book which you and every 
 one else have read three weeks or a month before, the 
 entire drift of the article otherwise, and the whole substance 
 of its connecting paragraphs, not betraying the possession, 
 or at least the expenditure, of one quarter of an ounce of 
 real or original brain. It is experience such as this that 
 
xi.J GENEEAL CHAKACTEEISTICS. 139 
 
 makes one, so hastily, a laudator temporis acfi in periodical 
 literature as in other matters, and drives one back to De 
 Quincey's sixteen volumes or to any similar collection, 
 •with such angry forgetfulness of the fact that these collec- 
 tions themselves are but the solid monuments remaining 
 from amid acres of vanished rubbish. The forgetfulness 
 is ^vrong, but the result for readers may happen to be 
 beneficial. De Quincey's sixteen volumes of magazine articles 
 are full of brain from beginning to end. At the rate of 
 about half a volume a day, they would serve for a month's 
 reading, and a month continuously might be worse expended. 
 There are few courses of reading from which a young man of 
 good natural intelligence would come away more instructed, 
 charmed, and stimulated, or, to express the matter as 
 definitely as possible, with his mind more stretched. 
 Good natural intelligence, a cerTam~1iiiehess of fibre, and 
 some amount of scholarly education, have to be pre- 
 supposed, indeed, in all readers of De Quincey. But, even 
 for the fittest readers, a month's complete and continuous 
 course of De Quincey would be too much. Better have him 
 on the shelf, and take down a volume at intervals for one or 
 two of the articles to which there may be an immediate 
 attraction. An cA^ening with De Quincey in this manner 
 will always be profitable. 
 
 Xot only was it De Quincey's laudable habit to put 
 brain into all his articles, but it so chanced that the brain 
 he had at his disposal was a brain of no common order. 
 Let us get rid, however, of the disagreeable word brain, 
 and ask, in more manly and less physiological fashion, what 
 were the chief characteristics of De Quincey's peculiar mind 
 and genius. At the basis of all, as we have seen, was his 
 learning, his Avealth of miscellaneous and accurate know- 
 ledge. On that topic enough has been said ; and we advert 
 
140 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 to it again only because it is well to remember that, what- 
 ever else De Quiucey was, he was at all events a scholar 
 and polyhistor. 
 
 But what was he besides ? He was distinguished from 
 most modern specimens of the g&nxi^ iDolyliistor by the pos- 
 session, in the first place, of a singularly independent, clear, 
 subtle, exact, and penetrating intellect. The independence 
 of his intellect is in itself remarkable. No one was less 
 disposed to take common opinions on trust, no one more 
 keenly sceptical in his general judgments, no one more 
 ready to challenge a popular or even a scholastic tradition on 
 any subject, reinvestigate the evidence, and persist in get- 
 ting at the root of the matter for himself. His strength in 
 this quality has been called love of paradox, and sometimes 
 it does go to that length. As he himself explained, however, 
 a paradox is properly not something incredible, but only 
 something beyond the bounds of present belief ; and it is 
 remarkable how often, when he is followed in one of his 
 so-called paradoxes, he turns out to be right. Sometimes, 
 when this happens, one finds that it was the mere exercise 
 of shrewd common sense, a rapid deductive perception 
 from the first of wliat must be the case in the circumstances, 
 that enabled him to challenge the common opinion ; but 
 more frequently it is his historical knowledge that serves 
 him, his power of marshalling facts inductively and 
 interpreting their relations. But, even when he fails to 
 convince, he always instructs, always suggests something 
 that remains in the mind and goes on working, never leaves 
 a question exactly as it was. One is reminded in reading 
 him of Goldsmith's saying about Burke's conversation 
 in contrast with Johnson's. Admiring Johnson's extra- 
 ordinary powers in that way as much as any man, but 
 irritated by Bos well's perpetual harping on the theme, 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 141 
 
 " Is he like Burke, sir, who winds into a subject like a 
 serpent ? " Goldsmith was once moved to ask. Now, 
 this serpeiitine insinuation of himself into the heart of a 
 subject, rather than Johnson's direct and broadside style 
 of attack upon a subject externally, was De Quincey's 
 usual method. He generally knows his conclusion from the 
 first, and sometimes announces it dogmatically at the out- 
 set ; but, whether for inquiry towards his conclusion or for 
 proof of it after it has been announced, his habit is to 
 choose a point of entry, and thence, by subtle and intricate 
 windings, to reach the centre, where the concurrent trains 
 will meet, and all will become clear. His windings have 
 often the appearance of wilful digressions, and digressive- 
 ness is the fault with which he is most commonly charged. 
 It was perhaps the same labyrinthine habit, or at all events 
 the tendency to long-spun threads of reasoning, that 
 Carlyle had in view when he applied the epithet " wire- 
 drawn " to some of De Quincey's mental products. His 
 digressions, however, to use his own phrase, have a wonderful 
 knack of revolving to the point whence they set out, and 
 generally with a fresh freight of meaning to be incorporated 
 at that point ; and, so far as one might acquiesce in the 
 description of some of I>e Quincey's mental products as 
 "wire-drawn," it is in cases where one might agree with 
 Carlyle that the kind of matter dealt with was not Avorth 
 so much manipulation, and that simple assumption or 
 asseveration, or decision by a toss-up, would have saved 
 time and answered all practical purposes. Very rarely, 
 however, will one of De Quincey's subtlest ingenuities 
 be voted useless by any reader who does come qualified 
 with the due amount of preliminary interest in the kind 
 of matter discussed, — so much pleasure is there in observ- 
 ing the ingenuity itself, and so certain is it, as has been 
 
142 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 already said, that some germ of future thought will be 
 left if the immediate result has been disappointing. Then 
 f with what a passion for scientific exactness does De 
 Quincey treat everything, and in what a state of finished 
 clearness at the end he leaves every speculation of his, 
 so far as it may have been carried ! His numerical 
 divisions and subdivisions, so unusual in literary papers, 
 are themselves signs of the practised thinker^ refusing to 
 part with any of the habits or devices of scientific analysis 
 wherever they will help him. In short, very seldom has 
 there been such a combination of the purely logical 
 intellect with so much of scholarly erudition. 
 
 De Quincey 's intellect, while keenly analytic and exact, 
 was also very rich and inventive. The distinction will 
 be understood by remembermg the essays and disquisitions 
 of Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Burke, or 
 Coleridge, in contrast with those of such thinkers as 
 Locke, Bishop Butler, David Hume, James Mill, or Sir 
 William Hamilton. That the distinction does not coincide 
 with that into the two opposed philosophical schools will 
 have appeared from the mixture of names. Xeither does 
 it connect itself with any distinction of emotional tempera- 
 ments among thinkers, as into the cool and the fervid. 
 There may be a fervid thinker whose manner of thinking 
 is of the plain and straightforward sort ; and there may 
 be a cool thinker whose manner of thinking, while equally 
 scientific and precise, is at the same time rich and inven- 
 tive. Nor does Bacon's distinction between lumen sicciim 
 or dry light, and lumen liumidum, or light drenched in 
 the affections and customs, correspond exactly with what 
 is meant ; nor does the ordinar}^ distinction between the 
 non-poetic and the poetic, though that comes nearer. The 
 distinction is purely one of intellectual manner, and may 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 143 
 
 be seen where there is identity in the substance of the 
 thought to be expressed. Some writers, knowing what 
 they mean to say beforehand, say it nakedly and rigidly, 
 with nothing additional or subsidiary ; others, meaning the 
 same tiling, and equally knowing what they mean before- 
 hand, cannot put it forth without putting forth also a 
 good deal more that has been generated in the very act 
 of thinking it out, and that, while organically related to 
 it, may be independently interesting. De Quincey belongs, 
 in the main, to the latter class. As he had a teeming 
 memory, so he had, as he tells us himself, " an electric 
 aptitude for seizing analogies," or, as he again expresses it 
 more fully, " a logical instinct for feeling in a moment the 
 secret analogies or parallelisms that connect things else 
 apparently remote." Hence that quality of his thought 
 which we have called richness or inventiveness. In the 
 act of thinking anything, metonymies, metaphors, anec- 
 dotes, illustrations historical or fantastic, start up in his 
 mind, become incorporate with his primary thought, and 
 are, in fact, its language. It will not do to call this, 
 as some have proposed, the literary mode of treating a 
 subject, and to call the bleaker mode the strictly scientific ; 
 for the former may be as strictly scientific, as valid and 
 eff"ective logically, as the latter. It would not be difficult, 
 at all events, were a specimen passage of exposition or 
 reasoning produced from a modern English writer of the 
 more arid and rigid order, to produce from De Quincey, if 
 the same topic should be really within his province and 
 he should chance to have treated it, a parallel passage in 
 his richer style beating his rigid brother's out of sight for 
 logical precision and clearness, perfection of impression on 
 the pure understanding. Nevertheless, as it is the richer 
 and more inventive style of writing that succeeds best in 
 
144 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 producing what, while serving the purposes of philoso- 
 phical or scientific exposition, will take rank also distinc- 
 tively as a piece of literature, there is no harm in saying 
 that De Quincey's intellect was in the main of the literary 
 order. In most of his papers it is professedly as a man of 
 letters, remembering the aims and objects of literature 
 proper, and seeking to touch the general human heart, that 
 he handles philosophical or other speculative problems. 
 Hence those egotisms, those frequent Montaigne-like con- 
 fidences between himself and his readers as he proceeds, 
 which, as part of his passion for introducing whatever of 
 general human interest can be made relative to a subject 
 or can brighten and illustrate it, give to his most abstract 
 dissertations such a character of individuality or De 
 Quinceyism. There are cases, his greatest admirers must 
 admit, in which the subsidiary swallows up the primary, 
 and the captain's luggage all but sinks the ship and cargo. 
 For example, it is rather provoking to a short temper, in a 
 paper on Sir A¥illiam Hamilton and his Philosophy, to 
 find the exordium consisting of a long complaint about the 
 postal difficulties between Lasswade and Edinburgh, and 
 the same subject and others equally irrelevant recurring 
 ad lihitum throughout, while poor Sir William is kept 
 waiting in a corner and is fetched out of it only at 
 intervals. The only excuse in such cases is that De Quincey 
 seems to have understood it to be bargained between him- 
 self and his readers that, whatever title he gave to a paper, 
 he was to be the sole judge of what it should turn out to 
 be, provided the sum-total should be sufficiently amusing. 
 Very rarely, however, is any such excuse needed. While 
 it does seem to have been a canon with De Quincey, in 
 the preparation of his articles, that the sum-total of each 
 should be interesting by some means or other, and while 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 145 
 
 very often an article is not quite what would have been 
 expected from the title, it is astonishing how habitually, 
 in the hurry of magazine-writing, he contrived to redeem 
 and justify his title, keep his real subject in hand through 
 all seeming involutions and digressions, return with artistic 
 fidelity to the key-note, and leave all at the end, as we 
 have said, in a state of finished clearness. 
 
 There was in De Quincey's genius, as all know, a very 
 considerable vein of humour. A sense of fun follows him 
 into his most serious disquisitions, and reveals itself in 
 freaks of playfulness and jets of comic fancy ; and once or 
 twice, as in his Murder considered as one of the Fine 
 ArtSj he breaks into sheer extravagance or wild and pro- 
 tracted rollick. Even then it cannot be said that his 
 humour is of the largest-hearted kind, so dependent is it on 
 deliberate irony, a Petronian jostling of the ghastly with 
 the familiar, or the express simulation of lunacy. In its 
 display on the smaller scale, as diifused through his 
 writings, it is generally good-natured and kindly. It is 
 not to be denied, however, that there was an ingredient of 
 the mischievous or Mephistophelic in De Quincey's tem- 
 per, which could show itself occasionally under the guise 
 of his usually gentle humour. He could never have been 
 " a good hater," his equipment of moral energy being 
 too languid for that ; but there are parts and passages of 
 his writings that leave the impression of a something 
 which it would be difficult to distinguish from spite and 
 malevolence. 
 
 Humour and pathos, we have been told, are twins and 
 inseparable. However that may be, De Quincey's en- 
 dowment in pathos was certainly not less than his 
 endowment in humour. From his earliest infancy, as we 
 saw, a sense of the manifold miseries of life had been 
 
 L 
 
146 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 impressed upon liim by his own experience and obser- 
 vation, and had settled in him into a kind of brooding 
 melancholy. Kot only such common calamities as 
 bereavement, disease, physical pain, poverty, oppression, 
 misconstruction, contempt, but the rarer and more secret 
 forms of anguish tliat belong to peculiar temperaments 
 and fatal shocks of circumstance, had been meditated by 
 him, with the diligence of a constitutional bias to that 
 sombre field of study, and with continued aids from his 
 own troubles, till he had become a master in the whole 
 science of sorrow. In particular, that early discovery which 
 had first made the word Pariah so significant to him, the 
 discovery of the omnipresence of inherited and unre- 
 garded misery, in specks or in masses, on the skirts of 
 smiling society, or actually within its bosom, had accom- 
 panied him all his life long, till the word Fariali had 
 become, as we noted, one of the most indispensable 
 words in his vocabulary, and the corresponding notion one 
 of his forms of thought. In his personal behaviour, 
 feeble as it was practically, this recollection of the 
 miserable and dismal on all sides of him, this incessant 
 wandering of his thoughts to the slave, the pauper, the 
 lazar, the criminal, the street-outcast, and the maniac, 
 had shown itself in a kind of constant anti-Pharisaism, 
 a constant self-humiliation and pity for the abject. 
 Why should he abhor, why should he condemn, why 
 should he stand aloof, why should he refuse alms, or 
 institute very rigid inquiries before giving : what was he 
 himself that he should be punctilious ? This mood, and 
 the theme which occasioned it, he carried into his writings. 
 There too one finds a habitual recollection of the variety 
 and immensity of suffering difi'used through life ; and 
 there too the inclination of the teaching, in the matter of 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 147 
 
 the ways and means of dealing with crime and misery, is 
 always towards what is commonly called " the senti- 
 mental," bnt some wonld call " the Christian." Hence 
 also, in part, the freqnent tendency to the lyrical and 
 plaintive in the cast of De Quincey's language. 
 
 There was yet a grander source of this tendency to the 
 lyrical in his feeling for the mysterious and sublime. It 
 was a saying of his own that he could not live without 
 mystery. Xo man that is worth much can. If all 
 humanity could be rolled into one soul, to think and feel 
 as such, then, all those activities and necessities having 
 been abolished which arise from the very fact that it is 
 distributed or disparate, into what mood could it settle 
 and be absorbed but that of wondering speculation into 
 its own origin 1 On this very account, is not this mood, 
 which may be called the metaphysical mood, the most 
 essentially and specifically human of all moods? Most 
 people have no time for it ; they have too much to do ; 
 but he is hardly a man who does not fall into it some- 
 times ; and it is nursed in some into abnormal intensity 
 by constitutional aptitude and by habits of solitude. De 
 Quincey was one of these. He was wrapt in a general 
 religious wonder; he went through the world, one may 
 say, in a fit of metaphysical musing. But not only was 
 he occupied, as all such minds are, with the great objects 
 of religious contemplation in its most abstract reaches 
 towards the invisible, and with the standing metaphysical 
 problems connected with those objects ; his sense of 
 mystery fastened also on all those elementary sublimities 
 in nature or life which, by their pre-eminent power over 
 the human imagination, seem like the chief irruptions of 
 the invisible and supernatural into the sphere of man. 
 The thunder and the lightning, the sun in the heavens, 
 
148 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 the nocturnal sky, the quiet vastness of a mountain-range, 
 the roar of the unresting ocean, the carnage of a great 
 battle-field, the stealthy ravage of a pestilence, the tramp 
 of a multitude in insurrection, a Joan of Arc heroic and 
 death-defying before her judges, Ciesar at the Rubicon 
 when the world hung on his decision and there came 
 upon him the phrenzy to cross, — such were the physical 
 grandeurs, and such the facts and moments of historic 
 majesty, with which De Quincey's mind delighted to com- 
 mune, as if seeing in them the clearest messages from in- 
 finitude and the most startling intimations of the inter- 
 mingling of the demoniacal with the divine. . Yet another 
 descent, however, and we find his passion for mystery 
 taking relief even in the wizardly and necromantic. 
 Among the passages of his early reading which had struck 
 him with an effect so extraordinary that he could account 
 for it only by supposing that they had wakened special 
 affinities in his constitution, he mentions particularly the 
 opening scene in Macbeth : — 
 
 A Desert Place. Thunder and Lightning. Enter three 
 
 Witches. 
 First Witch. When shall we three meet again, 
 
 In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? 
 Second Witch. When the hurly-burly's done, 
 
 When the battle's lost and won. 
 Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. 
 
 It would be difficult for any one not to carry away some- 
 thing of the feeling of this passage, and hundreds of 
 thousands have done so; but what we observe in De 
 Quincey is that he carried away the feeling and retained 
 it in that form of a permanent tenet which it seems to 
 have held in Shakespeare's own creed : viz., in the form 
 of a postulate for the imagination, if not for the reason, of 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 149 
 
 the interference in human affairs of other and more occult 
 agencies than are dreamt of in the ordinary philosophy. 
 Xo one, indeed, could be more humorously pungent on 
 all superstitions of the witchcraft order than De Quincey 
 was. He took special pleasure in showing how, by the 
 application of mathematics and physical tests, the most 
 pretentious of those superstitions, such as Astrology, could 
 be blasted into nonsense. But this does not prevent our 
 detecting in him a lurking fondness for some personal 
 variety of the doctrine of a possible interfusion of the non- 
 human or quondam-human with the known life of the 
 present. Perhaps the best name for this variety of the affec- 
 tion for the mysterious in De Quincey's mind is Druidism 
 or the Druidic element. It is a more common element in 
 British genius, and perhaps a more respectable, than is 
 generally supposed. It reveals itself in De Quincey in 
 his fondness for noting dreams, omens, casual symbolisms, 
 marvellous coincidences, anticipations or prophecies of 
 death, and the like, and also in his liking for such subjects 
 of historical investigation as secret societies. Freemasonry, 
 Rosicrucianism, and the Pagan Oracles. 
 
 To be noted, finally, in this enumeration of De Quincey's 
 characteristics, is the prominence in his genius of the 
 special faculty of poetic imagination. Though involved 
 partly in what has just been said as to the strength of his 
 feeling for the mysterious and sublime, and also in what 
 was formerly said as to the richness and inventiveness of 
 his manner of thinking on any subject, this remark is 
 reaUy independent. The feeling for the mysterious and 
 sublime is a natural cause of poetic conception, and a 
 habit of poetic conception will contribute, with other 
 things, to richness or literary charm in the treatment of a 
 subject ; but the poetic faculty, in its distinct and special 
 
150 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 form, is the faculty of continuous constructive dreaming, 
 of " bodying forth the forms of things unknown," of 
 turning meanings and feeHngs into actual ^^ shapes," 
 i. e. into visual and representative phantasies. In what 
 large measure De Quincey possessed this faculty, and how 
 conscious he was that the specimens of it he had left 
 might be one of his distinctions among English prose- 
 writers, are as generally known as the fact of his opium- 
 eating, and are indeed often connected with that fact in 
 recollections of him. 
 
 In an essay on " The Genius of De Quincey" Mr. Shad- 
 worth Hodgson, who knew" him personally, vouches that 
 no description of him could surpass for exactness that 
 provided beforehand by the poet Thomson in the stanza 
 of his Castle of Indolence in which he introduces the 
 bard Philomelus : — 
 
 He came, the bard, a little Druid wight 
 Of withered aspect ; but his eye was keen, 
 With sweetness mixed. In russet brown bedight, 
 As is his sister of the copses green, 
 He crept along, unpromising of mien. 
 Gross he who judges so ! His soul was fair, 
 Bright as the children of yon azure sheen. 
 True comeliness, which nothing can impair. 
 Dwells in the mind : all else is vanity and glare. 
 
 The quotation is a happy one, and entitles Mr. Hodgson 
 to our thanks. By this time, however, w^e ought to know 
 our little Druid wight somewhat more intimately than by 
 his external appearance. It remains only to say something 
 about his English style. 
 
 In no case is there better proof or illustration than in 
 De Quincey's of the important principle of the radical 
 identity of style and thought, the impossibility of 
 separating them in ultimate theory, and the mischief of 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 151 
 
 the common habit of conceiving otherwise. In writing 
 or speaking, it is not as if you first obtained your thought, 
 and then looked about for a mantle in which to dress it, 
 and might choose the mantle coarse or fine, loose or tight, 
 green or purple. The mantle itself, every fibre of it, is a 
 fabrication of thinkings and feelings, coming into existence 
 by the very action and motion of that main thought or 
 feeling which you call the core or substance, and organically 
 united with it, and partaking of all its qualities. To 
 change your style is to change your mode of thinking ; nay, 
 to change the kind of matter that you will allow to come 
 into your mind. All those characteristics of De Quincey's 
 mind that have been enumerated reproduce themselves, 
 therefore, as characteristics of his style, and may be ob- 
 served and studied afresh under that name. Hence too 
 an excellency in him that ought to be found in every 
 writer who ranges over any considerable variety of sub- 
 jects, — to wit, a versatility of style, a change in the 
 character of the wording and the syntax, from the simple 
 and plain to the richer and more involved, answering to 
 every change in the matter, mood, or purpose. To write 
 always in an easy conversational style means never to 
 allow anything to come into the mind that could not be 
 generated in the course of easy conversation with a friend 
 or two, — which, as friends now go, would be hard news 
 for philosophy, poetry, and a few other things that are 
 considered not unimportant ; to try to write always like 
 Goldsmith or Charles Lamb means to beg to have your 
 mind taken back and remelted into the precise mould o\ 
 Goldsmith's or Charles Lamb's, — which might be an ex- 
 change m your favour, but is impossible ; to write always 
 in good old Saxon English and eschew Latin and Greek 
 words means to abstain from traffic with all objects and 
 
152 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 notions that have come into the cognisance of the English 
 intellect since the time of King Harold, or else to make 
 yourself a scarecrow and laughing-stock, and forswear 
 some of the noblest glories of your composite nationality, 
 by rigging yourself up in imagined equivalents from the 
 vocabulary of Cedric and Gurth the swineherd. All the 
 same, while there ought to be this expectation of variety 
 in the style of a writer, according to his subject and pur- 
 pose, it remains true that every writer has, on the whole, 
 a style of his own. He is discernible from others by his 
 style, just as, and just because, he is discernible from 
 others by the total contour of that combination of mental 
 qualities which is called his genius. Like most other tra- 
 ditional and time-honoured distinctions, the distinction 
 between thought and style is practically valuable ; it is 
 indeed indispensable in criticism ; but the reason is that 
 the study of a writer's style is, in fact, one way, and the 
 most obvious way, of becoming minutely acquainted with 
 his mental resources and processes. Style is mental 
 behaviour from moment to moment ; and, if it involves 
 such a thing as a self-imposed rule or rhythm, then that 
 rule or rhythm is itself a function of the mind that imposes 
 it, contents included as well as habits. 
 
 The style of De Quincey, as might be expected, is pre- 
 vailingly intellectual. There is nothing tempestuous in 
 it ; we are not hurried along by any excess of rage or 
 other animating passion. Even when his pathos or his 
 feeling of the mysterious and sublime is at its highest^ and 
 the strain accordingly becomes most lyrical, we are aware 
 of the presence of a keen intellectual perceptiveness, an 
 artistic self-possession, a power of choosing and reasoning 
 among different means towards a desired effect. It is a 
 beautiful style, uniquely De Quincey's, the characteristic 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 153 
 
 of which, in its more level and easy specimens, is intellec- 
 tual nimble ness, a light precision and softness of spring, 
 while in the higher specimens, where the movement 
 becomes more involved and intricately rhythmical, there 
 is still the same sense of a leisurely intellectual instinct, 
 rather than glow and rapture, as regulating the feat. If 
 one could fancy such a thing as a flow of ivj^ or other 
 foliage, rich, soft, and glancing, but not too dense, advanc- 
 ing quietly over a surface and covering it equably, but 
 with a power of shooting itself rapidly to selected points 
 and pinnacles, that might be an image of De Quincey's 
 language overspreading a subject. It moves quietly, en- 
 folding all it meets with easy grace, and leaving a vesture 
 pleasantly soft and fine, rather than gaudily-varied or 
 obtrusive ; but it can collect itself into rings of overgrowth, 
 or shoot into devices and festoons. Very often, when the 
 subject is simple, when it is an ordinary piece of descrip- 
 tion or explanation that is on hand, the phrasing is 
 familiar and colloquial, with short and simple sentences to 
 coiTespond, though even then with a scholarly tact for 
 neatness and accuracy, a quest of liveliness and elegance, 
 and a wonderful power of alighting on the exact word that 
 is fittest. The tendency of De Quincey, however, as all 
 know, is to subjects of a recondite order, and to the recon- 
 dite in all subjects ; and hence what is usually remembered 
 as De Quincey's style is that style of more stately com- 
 plexity, with long evolutions and harmonies of sentence, 
 and free resort to all the wealth of the Latin element in 
 our tongue, of which his more elaborate writings are 
 examples. On this subject of the " elaborate " style a 
 quotation from himself, reflecting on the style of Hazlitt 
 and Charles Lamb, may be relevant : — 
 
 Hazlitt was not eloquent, because he was discontinuous. No 
 
154 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 man can be eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, 
 capricious, and (to borrow an impressive word from Coleridge) 
 non-sequacious. Eloquence resides not in separate or fractional 
 ideas, but in the relations of manifold ideas, and in the mode of 
 their evolution from each other. It is not indeed enough that 
 the ideas should be man}', and their relations coherent ; the 
 main condition lies in the hey of the evolution, in the law of 
 the succession. The elements are nothing without the atmo- 
 sphere that moulds, and the dynamic forces that combine. Now, 
 Hazlitt's brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of 
 phrase or image, which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintilla- 
 tion tor a moment, but spread no deep sutFusions of colour, and 
 distribute no masses of mighty shadow. A flash, a solitary flash, 
 and all is gone. . . . Hazlitt's thoughts were of the same 
 fractured and discontinuous order as his illustrative images, — 
 seldom or never self-diffusive ; and that is a sufficient argument 
 that he had never cultivated philosophic thinking, . . . We are 
 bound to acknowledge that Lamb thought otherwise on this 
 point, manifesting what seemed to us an extravagant admiration 
 of Hazlitt, and perhaps even in part for that very glitter which 
 we are denouncing ; at least he did so in conversation with our- 
 selves. But, on the other hand, as this conversation travelled 
 a little into the tone of a disputation, and our frost on this 
 point might seem to justify some undue fervour by way of 
 balance, it is very possible that Lamb did not speak his absolute 
 and dispassionate judgment. And yet again, if he did, may 
 we, with all reverence for Lamb's exquisite genius, have per- 
 mission to say that his own intellect sinned by this very habit 
 of discontinuity ? . , . He himself, we fear, not bribed by in- 
 dulgent feelings to another, not moved by friendship, but by 
 native tendency, shrank from the continuous, from the sus- 
 tained, from the elaborate. The elaborate, indeed, without 
 which much truth and beauty must perish in germ, was by 
 name the object of his invectives. The instances are many, in 
 his own beautiful essays, where he literally collapses, literally 
 sinks away from openings suddenl}' offering themselves to 
 flights of pathos or solemnity in direct prosecution of his own 
 theme. On any such summons, where an ascending impulse 
 
XI.] GENEKAL CHARACTERISTICS. 155 
 
 and an untired pinion were required, lie refuses himself (to use 
 military language) invariably. The least observing reader of 
 Elia cannot have failed to notice that his most felicitous 
 passages always accomplish their circuit in a few sentences. 
 The gyration within which his sentiment wheels,, no matter of 
 what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. It does 
 not prolong itself, it does not repeat itself, it does not propagate 
 itself. . . . We ourselves, occupying the very station of polar 
 opposition to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the 
 one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission 
 in Lamb's nature at an early stage of our acquaintance. Not 
 the famed Regulus, with his eyelids torn away, and his un- 
 curtained eyeballs exposed to the noontide glare of a Cartha- 
 ginian sun, could have shrieked with more anguish of recoil 
 from torture than we from certain sentences and periods in 
 which Lamb perceived no fault at all. Pomp, in our appre- 
 hension, was an idea of two categories ; the pompous might be 
 spurious, but it might also be genuine. It is well to love the 
 simple, — ice love it ; nor is there any opposition at all between 
 that and the very glory of pomp. But, as we once put the case 
 to Lamb, if, as a musician, as the leader of a mighty orchestra, 
 you had this theme offered to you, — " Belshazzar the king gave 
 a great feast to a thousand of his lords," — or this, " And on a 
 certain day Marcus Cicero stood up, and in a set speech rendered 
 thanks to Caius Ctesar for Quintus Ligarius pardoned and 
 Marcus Marcellus restored," — ^surely no man would deny that 
 in such a case simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully 
 absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the positive 
 part. 
 
 A great deal of De Quincey's best and most characteristic 
 writing is in the stately and elaborate_style here described, 
 the style of sustaihedT^spIendour, of prolonged wheeling 
 and soaring, as distinct from the style of crackle and brief 
 glitter, of chirp and short flight. This is precisely on 
 account of the exalted and intricate nature of his meaning 
 and feeling in those cases ; and, if some readers there fall 
 off from him or dislike him, it is because they themselves 
 
156 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 are deficient in wing and sinew. For those who do adhere 
 to him and follow him in his passages of more involved 
 and sustained eloquence, there are few greater pleasures 
 possible in modern English prose. However magnificent 
 the wording, there is always such an exact fit between it 
 and the amount and shape of the under-fluctuating thought 
 that suspicion of inflation or bombast anywhere never 
 occurs to one. The same presence everywhere of a vigilant 
 intellect appears in the perfect logical articulation of 
 sentence with sentence and of clause with clause ; while 
 the taste of the technical artist appears equally in the 
 study of minute optical coherence in the imagery and in 
 the fastidious care for fine sound. In this last quality of 
 style, — to which, in its lowest degree, Bentham gave the 
 name of pronunciahility , insisting most strenuously on 
 its importance in all writing, — De Quincey is a master. 
 Such was the delicacy of his ear, however, that mere 
 pronunciability was not enough for him, and musical beauty 
 had to be superadded. Once, writing of Father Newman, 
 and having described him as " originally the ablest son of 
 Puseyism, but now a powerful architect of religious 
 philosophy on his own account," he interrupts himself to 
 explain that he might have ended the sentence more 
 briefly by substituting for the last nine words the single 
 phrase "master-builder," but that his ear could not 
 endure " a sentence ending with two consecutive trochees, 
 and each of those trochees ending with the same syllable 
 e?\" He adds, " Ah reader ! I would the gods had made 
 / thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the 
 thousandth part of my labours in the evasion of caco- 
 phony." The last phrase, " the evasion of cacophony," 
 is an instance of another of De Quincey^s verbal habits in 
 his more elaborate writing, — his deliberate choice now and 
 
XI.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 157 
 
 then of an unusually learned combination of Latin or 
 Greek or other polysyllabic words. Often, as in the pre- 
 sent instance, it is a whim of mere humour or self-irony. 
 Often, however, it is i'rom a desire to be exact to his 
 meaning and to leave that meaning indissolubly associated 
 with the word or phrase that does most closely express it. 
 Occasionally, as when he speaks of " the crepuscular ante- 
 lucan worship " of the Essenes, or of a sentence as being 
 liable to "a whole nosology of malconformations," or of 
 the importance attached to the mystery of baptism among 
 our forefathers as " shown by the multiplied ricochets 
 through which it impressed itself upon their vocabulary," 
 it will depend on the temper and the intellectual alertness 
 of the reader at the moment whether the phrase is accepted 
 or voted needlessly quaint and abstruse ; but most of his 
 Latinisms or other neologisms do recommend themselves 
 as at once luminous and tasteful, and it is hardly to 
 them that exception is taken by his most severe critics. 
 They object rather to certain faults to which he is liable 
 in those portions of his writings where he affects the brisk 
 and popular. By a kind of reaction from his other extreme 
 of stateliness, he is then apt to be too familiar and collo- 
 quial, and to help himself to slang and kitchen-rhetoric. 
 He will speak of a thing as " smashed," — which is too 
 violent for the nerves of those who cannot bear to see a 
 thing " smashed," but prefer that it should be " broken in 
 pieces " or " reduced to fragments"; he will interject such 
 an exclamation as " crimini ! ", — which is unpardonable 
 in sedate society ; he will take the Jewish historian 
 Josephus by the button, address him as " Joe " through a 
 whole article, and give him a black eye into the bargain, 
 — which is positively profane. In most such cases one 
 does not see why De Quincey should not have the same 
 
158 DE QUINCEY. [ch. xi. 
 
 liberty as Swift or Thackeray ; but it must be admitted 
 that sometimes the joke is feeble and the slang unplea- 
 sant. In excuse one has to remember that a magazine- 
 writer is often driven to shifts. And, slips of taste in the 
 vocabulary discounted, how many magazine-writers will 
 compete with De Quincey in the accuracy, the disciplined 
 accuracy, of his grammar? His pointing in itself is a 
 testimony to the logical clearness of his intellect; and I have 
 found no single recurring fault of syntax in his style, un- 
 less it be in his sanction of a very questionable use of the 
 English participle. " ISTo Christian state could be much 
 in advance of another, swpposing that Popery opposed no 
 barriers to free communication," is an example of a fre- 
 quent construction with De Quincey, which I wish he had 
 avoided. As he has not, the benefit of his authority may 
 be claimed for that apparent slovenliness of an unrelated 
 or misrelated participle which, by some fiction of an elliptical 
 case-absolute, or of transmutation of the participial form 
 into a conjunction or adverb, passes as consistent with the 
 free genius of our uninflected language. But it jars on a 
 classic sense of grammar, and is wholly unnecessary.^ 
 
 ^ For a minute and instructive study of the mechanism of De 
 Quincey's style, I may refer to Professor Minto's Manual of 
 English Prose Literature. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DE QUINCEY'S writings : CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 
 
 How are De Quincey's writings to be classified 1 His own. 
 classification, propounded in the General Preface to the 
 edition of his Collected Works, was to the effect that they 
 might be distributed roughly into three sorts, — first, those 
 papers of fact and reminiscence the object of wdiich was 
 primarily to amuse the reader, though they might reach 
 to a higher interest, e. g, the Autohiograpkic Sketches; 
 secondly, essays proper, or papers addressing themselves 
 purely or primarily to "the understanding as an insulated 
 fiiculty," e. g. The Essenes, The Ccesars, and Cicero ; and, 
 third! I/, that "far higher class of compositions "' which 
 might be considered as examples of a very rare kind of 
 "impassioned prose," e. g. large portions of The Confessions 
 oj an Opium-Eater and the supplementary Suspiria de 
 Profundis. This classification, though not quite the same 
 as Bacon's division of the " parts of learning " (by which 
 he meant "kinds of literature ") into History or the 
 Literature of ^lemory, Philosophy or the Literature of 
 Reason, and Poetry or the Literature of Imagination, is 
 practically equivalent. Hence, as Bacon's classification is 
 the more scientific and searching, and also the most familiar 
 and popular, we shall be pretty safe in adopting it, and 
 dividing De Quincey's writings into : — (I.) Writings of 
 Reminiscence, or Descriptive, Biographical, and Historical 
 
160 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 AYritings; (II.) Speculative, Didactic, and Critical Writings ; 
 (III.) Imaginative Writings and Prose-Poetry. It is 
 necessary, above all things, to premise that in De Quincey 
 the three sorts of writing shade continually into each 
 other. Where this difficulty of the constant blending of 
 kinds in one and the same paper is not met by the obvious 
 preponderance of one of the kinds, it may be obviated by 
 naming some papers in more divisions than one. With 
 that understanding, we proceed to a classified synopsis of 
 De Quincey's literary remains : — 
 
 I. DESCRIPTIVE, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND HISTORICAL. 
 
 The writings of this class may be enumerated and 
 subdivided as follows : — 
 
 I. AuTOBiOGEAPHic : — Specially of this kind are The Con- 
 fessions of an English Ojpium-Eater 2iw^ i\iQ Autobiographic 
 
 Sketches; but autobiographic matter is dispersed through 
 other papers. 
 
 II. BioGBAPHic Sketches of Persons known to the 
 Author : — Some such are included in the autobiographic 
 writings ; but distinct papers of the kind are Recollections of 
 the Lake Poets, or Sketches of Coleridge, Wordsioorth, and 
 Southey, and the articles entitled Coleridge and Opium- 
 Eating, Charles Lamb, Professor Wilson, Sir William 
 Hamilton, Walking Stewart, Note on Sazlitt, and Dr. Parry 
 or Whiggism in its Relations to Literature. All these papers 
 are partly critical. Several papers of the same sort that ap- 
 peared in magazines have not been reprinted in the Collective 
 British Edition. 
 
 III. Othee Biogeaphic Sketches : — Shakespeare (in 
 Vol. XV.), Milton (in Vol. X.), Pope (in Vol. XV.), Richard 
 Bentley, Percy Bysshe Shelley^ The Marquis Wellesley, Last 
 Days of Lmmanuel Kant (a digest from the German), Lessing, 
 Herder, Goethe (in Vol. XV.), Schiller. These also include 
 criticism with biography. 
 
 IV. HisTOEiCAL Sketches and Desceiptions : — Homer 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 161 
 
 and the Homeridcs, Philosophy of Herodotus^ Toilette of the 
 Hebrew Lady (archaeological), The Ccesars (in six chapters, 
 forming the greater part of Vol. IX.), Charlemagne, Revolt of 
 the Tartars, The Revolution, of Greece, Modern Greece, 
 Ceylon, China (a little essay on the Chinese character, with 
 illustrations), Modern Superstition, Anecdotage, French and 
 English Manners, Account of the Williams Murders (the 
 postscript to " Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts "). 
 In the same sub-class we would include the two important 
 papers entitled Rhetoric and Style ; for, though to a con- 
 siderable extent critical and didactic, they are, despite their 
 titles, chiefly surveys of Literary History. 
 
 V. Historical Speculations and Researches : — In this 
 class may be included Cicero, The Casuistry of Roman Meals, 
 Greece under the Romans, Judas Iscariot, The JEssenes, The 
 Pagan Oracles, Secret Societies, mstorico-Critical Inquiry 
 into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, ^lius 
 Lamia. 
 
 The two Autobiographic volumes and the volume of 
 Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsw.orth, and Southey, 
 are among the best-known of De Quincey's writings. 
 Among the other biographic sketches of persons known to 
 him Charles Lanih, WalJting Sfeicart, and Dr. Parr are 
 those of the highest merit, — the last very severe and 
 satirical, but full of interest and of marked ability. Of the 
 other biographic sketches the ablest and most interesting 
 by far is Richard Bentley, a really splendid specimen of 
 biography in miniature. The Encyclopaedia article on 
 Sliakespeare, though somewhat thin, deserves notice for 
 the perfection of its proportions as a summary of what is 
 essential in our information respecting Shakespeare's life. 
 It is not yet superannuated. The similar article on Pop)e 
 is interesting as an expression of De Quincey's generous 
 admiration all in all of a poet whom he treats very severely 
 in detail in some of his critical papers ; and it is rare 
 
 M 
 
162 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 to meet so neat and workmanlike a little curiosity as 
 the paper on The Marquis Wellesley. Of the personal 
 sketches of eminent Germans, that entitled The Last Days 
 of Immanuel Kant, though it is only a translated digest 
 from a German original, bears the palm for delicious rich- 
 ness of anecdote and vividness of portraiture. De Quincey's 
 credit in it, except in so far as he shaped and changed and 
 infused life while translating (which was a practice of his), 
 rests on the fact that he was drawn to the subject by his 
 powerful interest in Kant's philosophy, and conceived the 
 happy idea of such a mode of creating among his country- 
 men a personal atiection for the great abstract thinker. 
 Some of the other German sketches, especially Leasing 
 and Herder, have the same special merit of being early 
 and useful attempts to introduce some knowledge of 
 German thought and literature into England ; but tlie 
 Goethe, on all accounts, is discreditable. It exhibits 
 De Quincey at about his very worst ; for, though raising 
 the estimate of Goethe's genius that had been announced 
 in the earlier critical paper on his " Wilhelm Meister," it 
 retains something of the malice of that paper. 
 
 When we pass to the papers of historical description, 
 it is hardly a surprise to find that it is De Quincey's 
 tendency in such papers to run to disputed or momentous 
 '•'points" and concentrate the attention on those. A 
 magazine paper did not afford breadth of canvas enough for 
 complete historical representation under such titles as he 
 generally chose, ^o exception of tlie kind, indeed, can be 
 taken to \i\B, Revolt of the Tartars, which is a noble effort 
 of historical painting, done with a sweep and breadth of 
 poetic imagination entitling it, though a history, to rank 
 also among his prose-phantasies. Nor does tlie remark 
 apply to the Account of the Williams Murders, which 
 
xir.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 163 
 
 beats for ghastly power an}^ thing else known in Xewgate 
 Calendar literature. But the tendency to " points " is 
 shown in most of the other papers in the same sub-class. 
 Among these The Philosophy of Herodotus may be men- 
 tioned for its singularly fine appreciation of the Grecian 
 father of Histor}^, and Modern Greece for its amusing 
 and humorous instructiveness. Rhetoric and 8tyle are 
 among De Quincey's greatest performances ; and, though in 
 them too, considered as sketches of Literary History, the 
 strength runs towards points and specialities, the titles 
 declare that beforehand and indicate what the specialities 
 are. The Ccesars is, undoubtedly, his most ambitious attempt, 
 all in all, in the historical department ; and he set great 
 store by it himself; but it cannot, I think, take rank 
 among his highest productions. There are striking passages 
 and suggestions in it ; but the general effect is too hazy, 
 many of the parts are hurried, and none of the characters 
 of the Emperors stands out with convincing distinctness 
 after that of Julius Csesar. 
 
 Few authors are so difficult to represent by mere extracts 
 as Dft Quincey, so seldom does he complete a matter within 
 a short space. The following, however, may pass as 
 specimens of him in the descriptive and historical depart- 
 ment. The second is excellent and memorable : — 
 
 FiEST Sight of De. Pare. 
 
 Nobody announced hira ; and we were left to collect his name 
 from his dress and his conversation. Hence it happened that 
 for some time I was disposed to question with myself whether 
 this might not be Mr. Bobus even (little as it could be supposed 
 to resemble him), rather than Dr. Parr, so much did he coti- 
 tradict all my rational preconceptions. " A man," said I, " who 
 has insulted peoj)le so outrageously ought not to have done this 
 in single reliance upon his professional protections: a brave man, 
 
164 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 and a man of honour, would here have carried about with him, 
 in his manner and deportment, some such language as this, — 
 ' Do not think that I shelter myself under mj gown from the 
 natural consequences of the affronts I offer : mortal combats I 
 am forbidden, sir, as a Christian minister, to engage in; but, 
 as I find it impossible to refrain from occasional licence of 
 tongue, I am very willing ttf fight a few rounds in a ring with 
 any gentleman who fancies himself ill-used.' " Let me not be 
 misunderstood ; I do not contend that Dr. Parr should often, or 
 regularly, have offered this species of satisfaction. But I do 
 insist upon it, — that no man should have given the very highest 
 sort of provocation so wantonly as Dr. Parr is recorded to have 
 done, unless conscious that, in a last extremity, he was ready, 
 like a brave man, to undertake a short turn-up, in a private 
 room, with any person whatsoever whom he had insulted past 
 endurance. A doctor who had so often tempted (which is a kind 
 way of saying had merited) a cudgelling ought himself to have 
 had some ability to cudgel. Dr. Johnson assuredly would have 
 acted on that principle. Had volume the second of that same 
 folio with which he floored Osburn happened to lie ready to the 
 prostrate man's grasp, nobody can suppose that Johnson would 
 have disputed Osburn' s right to retaliate ; in which case a regu- 
 lar succession of rounds would have been established. Con- 
 siderations such as these, and Dr. Parr's undeniable reputation 
 (granted even by his most admiring biographers) as a sangui- 
 nary flagellator through his long career of pedagogue, had 
 prepared me,— nay, entitled me, — to expect in Dr. Parr a huge 
 carcase of a man, fourteen stone at the least. Hence, then, my 
 surprise, and the perplexity I have recorded, when the door 
 opened, and a little man, in a most plebeian wig, . . . cut his 
 way through the company, and made for a fauteuil standing 
 opposite the fire. Into this he lunged; and then forthwitli, 
 without preface or apology, began to open his talk upon the 
 room. Here arose a new marvel, and a greater. If I had 
 been scandalized at Dr. Parr's want of thews and bulk, con- 
 ditions so indispensable for enacting the part of Sam Johnson, 
 much more, and with better reason, was I now petrified with 
 his voice, utterance, gestures, demeanour Conceive, reader, 
 
xii.J CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 165 
 
 by way of counterpoise to the fine classical pronunciation of Dr. 
 Johnson, an infantine lisp, — the worst I ever heard, — from the 
 lips of a man above sixty, and accompanied with all sorts of 
 ridiculous grimaces and little stage gesticulations. As he sat 
 in his chair, turning alternately to the right and to the left, 
 that he might distribute his edification in equal proportions 
 amongst us, he seemed the very image of a little French 
 gossiping abbe. Yet all that I have mentioned was, and seemed 
 to be, a trifle by comparison wdth the infinite pettiness of his 
 matter. Nothing did he utter but little shreds of calumnious 
 tattle, the most ineffably silly and frivolous of all that was then 
 circulating in the Whig salons of London against the Regent. 
 ... He began precisely in these words : " Oh ! I shall tell you" 
 (laying a stress upon the word shall, which still further aided 
 the resemblance to a Frenchman) "a sto-hee " (lispingly for 
 stor}') '• about the Pince Wegent " (such was his nearest ap- 
 proximation to Prince Regent). "Oh, the Pince Wegent! — 
 the Pince Wegent! — what a sad Pince Wegent!" And so 
 the old babbler went on, sometimes wringing his hands in 
 lamentation, sometimes flourishing them with French grimaces 
 and shrugs of shoulders, sometimes expanding and contracting 
 his fingers like a fan. After an hour's twaddle of this scan- 
 dalous description, suddenly he rose, and hopped out of the 
 room, exclaiming all the way " Oh, lohat a Pince 1 — Oh, 
 what a Wegent I Is it a Wegent, is it a Pince, that you call 
 this man ? Oh, lohat a sad Pince ! Did anybody ever 
 hear of such a sad Pince! — such a sad Wegent — such a sad, 
 sad Pince Wegent ? Oh, what a Pince 1" &c., da capo. Not 
 without indignation did I exclaim to myself, on this winding 
 up of the scene, " And so this, then, this lithping slander- 
 monger, and retailer of gossip fit rather for washerwomen 
 over their tea than for scholars and statesmen, is the champion 
 whom his part}'' would propound as the adequate antagonist 
 of Samuel Johnson! Faugh !",... Such was my first inter- 
 view with Dr. Parr ; such its issue. And now let me explain 
 my drift in thus detailing its circumstances. Some people will 
 say the drift was doubtless to exhibit Dr. Parr in a dis- 
 advantageous light, — as a petty gossiper and a man of mean 
 
166 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 personal appearance. No, by no means. Far from it. I, that 
 write this paper, have myself a mean personal appearance ; and 
 I love men of mean appearance. . . . Dr. Parr, therefore, lost 
 nothing in my esteem by showing a meanish exterior. Yet 
 even this was worth mentioning, and had a value in reference 
 to my present purpose. I like Dr. Parr ; I may say even that 
 I love him, for some noble qualities of heart that really did 
 belong to him, and were continually breaking out in the midst 
 of his singular infirmities. But this, or a far nobler moral 
 character than Dr. Parr's, can offer no excuse for giving a 
 false elevation to his intellectual pretensions, and raising him 
 to a level which he will be found incapable of keeping 
 when the props of partial friendship are withdrawn. — Works, 
 V. 36-43. 
 
 SuMMAKY View of the History of Greek Literature. 
 
 There were two groups or clusters of Grecian wits, two 
 deposits or stratifications of the national genius ; and these 
 were about a century apart. What makes them specially 
 rememberable is the fact that each of these brilliant clusters 
 had gathered separately about that man as their central pivot 
 who, even apart from this relation to the literature, was other- 
 wise the leading spirit, of his age. . . . Who were they ? The 
 one was Pericles, the other was Alexander of Macedon. 
 Except Themistocles, who may be ranked as senior to Pericles by 
 one generation (or thirty-three years), in the whole deduction of 
 Grecian annals no other public man, statesman, captain-general, 
 administrator of the national resources, can be mentioned as 
 approaching to these two men in splendour of reputation, or 
 even in real merit. Pisistratus was too far back ; Alcibiades, 
 who might (chronologically speaking) have been the son of 
 Pericles, was too unsteady and (according to Mr. Coleridge's 
 coinage) " unreliable," or perhaps, in more correct English, too 
 " uni'elyujwnahle.'^ Thus far our parpose prospers. No man 
 can pretend to forget two such centres as Pericles for the 
 elder group, or Alexander of Macedon (the " strong he-goat" of 
 Jewish prophecy) for the junior. Round these two foci, in two 
 different but adjacent centuries, gathered the total starry 
 
xn.J CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 167 
 
 heavens, the galaxy, the Pantheon of Grecian intellect. . . . 
 That we may still more severely search the relations in all 
 points between the two systems, let us assign the chronological 
 locus of each, because that will furnish another element 
 towards the exact distribution of the chart representing the 
 motion and the oscillations of human genius. Pericles had a 
 very long administrntion. He was Prime Minister of Athens 
 for upwards of one entire generation. He died in the year 
 429 before Christ, and in a very early stage of that great 
 Peloponnesian war which was the one sole intestine war for 
 Greece, affecting every nook and angle in the land. Now, in 
 this long public life of Pericles, we are at liberty to fix on any 
 year as his chronological locus. On good reasons, not called for 
 in this place, we fix on the year 444 before Christ. This is too 
 remarkable to be forgotten. Four, four, four, what in some 
 games of cards is called a "■ prial " (we presume, by an elision of 
 the first vowel, for parial), forms an era which no man can 
 forget. It was the fifteenth year before the death of Pericles, 
 and not far from the bisecting year of his political life. Now, 
 passing to the other system, the locus of Alexander is quite as 
 remarkable, as little liable to be forgotten when once indicated, 
 and more easily determined, because selected from a narrower 
 range of choice. The exact chronological locus of Alexander is 
 333 years before Christ. Everybody knows how brief was the 
 career of this great man : it terminated in the year 323 before 
 Christ. But the annus mirabilis of his public life, the most 
 effective and productive year throughout his oriental anabasis, 
 was the year 333 before Christ. Here we have another " prial," 
 a prial of threes, for the locus of Alexander, if properly cor- 
 rected. Thus far the elements are settled, the chronological 
 longitude and latitude of the two great planetary systems into 
 which the Greek literature breaks up and distributes itself: 
 444 and 333 are the two central years for the two systems ; 
 allowing, therefore, an interspace of 111 years between the foci 
 of each. . . . Passing onwards from Pericles, you find that all 
 the rest in his system were men in the highest sense creative, 
 absolutely setting the very first example, each in his particular 
 walk of composition ; themselves without previous models, and 
 
168 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 yet destined every man of them to become models for all after- 
 generations ; themselves without fathers or mothers, and yet 
 having all posterity for their children. First come the three men 
 divini spiritus, under a heavenly afflatus, ^schylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides, the creators of Tragedy out of a village mummery ; 
 next comes Aristophanes, who breathed the breath of life 
 into Comedy ; then comes the great philosopher, Anaxagoras, 
 who first theorized successfully on man and the world. Next 
 come, whether great or not, the still more/awow.? philosophers, 
 Socrates, Plato, Xenophon ; then comes, leaning upon Pericles, 
 as sometimes Pericles leaned upon him, the divine artist, 
 Phidias ; and behind this immortal man walk Herodotus and 
 Thucydides. What a procession to Eleusis would these men 
 have formed ! what a frieze, if some great artist could arrange 
 it as dramatically as Chaucer has arranged the Pilgrimage to 
 Canterbury ! . . . Now, let us step on a hundred years forward. 
 We are now within hail of Alexander, and a brilliant consistory 
 of Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded. There are 
 now exquisite masters of the more refined comedy ; there are, 
 again, great philosophers, for all the great schools are repre- 
 sented by able successors ; and, above all others, there is the one 
 philosopher who played with men's minds (according to Lord 
 Bacon's comparison) as freely as ever his princely pupil with 
 their persons, — there is Aristotle. There are great orators ; 
 and, above all others, there is that orator whom succeeding 
 generations (wisely or not) have adopted as the representative 
 name for what is conceivable as oratorical perfection, — there is 
 Demosthenes. Aristotle and Demosthenes are in themselves 
 bulwarks of power ; many hosts lie in those two names. For 
 artists, again, to range against Phidias, there is Lysippus the 
 sculptor, and there is Apelles the painter ; for great captains 
 and masters of strategic art, there is Alexander himself, with a 
 glittering cortege of general officers, well qualified to wear the 
 crowns which they will win, and to head the dynasties which 
 they will found. Historians there are now, as in that former 
 age; and, upon the whole, it cannot be denied that the "turn- 
 out " is showy and imposing. . . . Before comparing the second 
 "deposit'' (geologically speaking) of Grecian genius with the 
 
xii.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 169 
 
 first, let us consider what it was (if anything) that connected 
 them. Here, reader, we would wish to put a question. Saving 
 your presence, Did you ever see what is called a dumb-bell P 
 We have ; and know it by more painful evidence than that of 
 sight. You, therefore, reader ! if personally cognisant of 
 dumb-bells, we will remind, iE not, we will inform, that it is a 
 cylindrical bar of iron or lead, issuing at each end in a globe of 
 the same metal, and usually it is sheathed in green baize. . . . 
 Now, reader, it is under this image of the dumb-bell that we 
 couch our allegory. Those globes at each end are the two 
 sj'stems or separate clusters of Greek literature ; and that 
 cylinder which connects them is the long man that ran into each 
 system, binding the two together. Who was that? It was 
 Isocrates. Great we cannot call him in conscience ; and there- 
 fore, by way of compromise, we call him lonff, which, in one 
 sense, he certainly was ; for he lived through four-and-twenty 
 Olympiads, each containing four solar years. He narrowly 
 escaped being a hundred years old ; and, though that did not 
 carry him from centre to centre, yet, as each system might be 
 supposed to protend a radius each way of twenty years, he had, 
 in fact, a full personal cognisance (and pretty equally) of the 
 two systems, remote as they were, which composed the total 
 world of Grecian genius. . . . Now then, reader, you have 
 arrived at that station from which you overlook the whole of 
 Greek literature, as a few explanations will soon convince you. 
 Where is Homer .^ where is Hesiod ? you ask; where is 
 Pindar.^ Homer and Hesiod lived 1000 years B.C., or, by the 
 lowest computation, near 900. For anything that we know, they 
 may have lived with Tubal Cain. At all events, they belong to 
 no power or agency that set in motion the age of Pericles, or that 
 operated on that age. Pindar, again, was a solitary emanation 
 of some unknown influences, at Thebes, more than five hundred 
 years before Christ. He may be referred to the same age as 
 Pythagoras. These are all that can be cited before Pericles. 
 Next, for the ages after Alexander, it is certain that Greece 
 Proper was so much broken in spirit by the loss of her autonomy, 
 dating from that era, as never again to have rallied sufficiently 
 to produce a single man of genius, — not one solitary writer who 
 
170 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 acted as a power upon the national mind. Callimachus was 
 nobody, and not decidedly Grecian. Theocritus, a man of real 
 genius in a limited way, is a Grecian in that sense only ac- 
 cording to which an Anglo-American is an Englishman. 
 Besides that, one swallow does not make a summer. Of any 
 other writers, above all others of Menander, apparently a man 
 of divine genius, we possess only a few wrecks ; and of 
 Anacreon, who must have been a poet of original power, we do 
 not certainly know that wo have even anj^ wrecks. Of those 
 which pass under his name not merely the authorship, but the 
 era, is very questionable indeed. Plutarch and Lucian, the 
 unlearned reader must understand, both belong to post-Christian 
 ages. And, for all the Groek emigrants who may have written 
 histories, such as we now value for their matter more than for 
 their execution, one and all, they belong too much to Roman 
 civilization that we should ever think of connecting them with 
 native Greek literature. Poly bins in the days of the second 
 Scipio, Dion Cassius and Appian in the acme of Roman civility, 
 are no more Grecian authors because they wrote in Greek than 
 the Emperors Marcus Antoninus and Julian were other than 
 Romans because, from monstrous coxcombry, they chose to 
 write in Greek their barren memoranda. — Works, X. 242-255. 
 
 It would be hopeless to seek to represent by extracts, 
 even in this inadequate fasliion, that very characteristic 
 portion of De Quincey's writings of the generally historical 
 kind which we have called his Historical Speculations and 
 Researches. They must be read in their integrity. The 
 Casuistry of Rfjman Meals, Cicero, Judas Iscariot, The 
 Essenes, and 'The Pagan Oracles, may be especially recom- 
 mended. They are admirable specimens of his boldness 
 and acuteness in questioning received historical beliefs, 
 and of his ingenuity in working out novelties or paradoxes. 
 The drift of Tlie Gasuistrij of Roman Meals is that the 
 Romans, and indeed the ancients generally, had no such 
 regular meal early in the day as our modern breakfast, 
 and that a whole coil of important social conse- 
 
xii.] CLASSIFICATION AND RKVIEW. 171 
 
 ijueiices depended on that one fact. In his Cicero he 
 propounds a view of liis own as to the character of the 
 famous Koman orator and wit and his function in the 
 struggle between Ca3sar and Ponipey. The paradox in 
 Judas Iscariot is that Judas was not the vulgar traitor of 
 the popular conception, but a headstrong fanatic, who, 
 having missed the true spiritual purport of Christ's mission, 
 and attached himself to Christ in the expectation of a 
 political revolution to be effected by Christ's assumption 
 of a temporal kingship or championship of the Jewish 
 race, had determined to precipitate matters by leaving 
 Christ no room for hesitation or delay. In The Essenes 
 the attempt is to show that there was no real or inde- 
 pendent sect of that name among the Jews, all the 
 confusion to the contrary having originated in a rascally 
 invention of the historian Josephus. In Tlw Pagan Oracles 
 there is a contradiction of the tradition of a sudden 
 paralysis of the Pagan ritual on the first appearance 
 of Christianity, and a castigation of the early Christian 
 writers for having invented the pious lie. 
 
 II. SPECULATIVE, DIDACTIC, AXD CRITICAL. 
 
 While a speculative and critical element is discernible 
 in almost all the papers now dismissed as in the main 
 biographical or historical, and while some of the historical 
 papers were regarded by De Quincey himself as typical 
 examples of the speculative essay, it is of a different set of 
 his papers that our classiiication obliges us to take account 
 under the present heading. They also fall into sub- 
 divisions : — 
 
 I. Metaphysical, Psychological, and Ethical : — In this 
 subdivision, itself composite, but answering to what passes 
 under the name of Philosophy in a general sense, may be 
 
172 DE QUmCEY. [chap. 
 
 included the following : — System of the Heavens as revealed 
 hy Lord Rosse's Telescopes ; various papers or portions of 
 papers relating to Kant, e. g. part of the Letters to a Young 
 Man whose Education has been neglected, the paper entitled 
 Kant in his Miscellaneous JEssays, and the translation of 
 Kant's Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical 
 Plan ; the scraps entitled Dreaming and The Palimpsest of 
 the Human Brain, in the " Sequel to the Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater" (Vol. XVI.); some of the scraps in the 
 "Notes from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium-Eater," e. g. 
 On Suicide ; and the articles entitled Plato's Pepuhlic, Glance 
 at the Works of Mackintosh, Casuistry, On War, National 
 Temperance Movements, Presence of Mind ^ and The Jugger- 
 naut of Social Life. 
 
 II. Theological : — Protestantism, Miracles as Subjects of 
 Testimony, On Christianity as an Organ of Political Move- 
 ment, and Memorial Chronology on a 7ietv and more appre- 
 hensible system. This last, included in Vol. XVI., is an 
 unfinished paper, posthumously published from the author's 
 manuscript ; and it contains little more than a clever and 
 humorous introduction, in the form of an address to a young 
 lady, with the beginning of what was intended to be a piece of 
 Biblical Criticism. 
 
 III. English Politics : — A Tory's Account of Toryism^ 
 Whiggism, and Radicalism', On the Political Parties of 
 Modern England; Falsification of English History. 
 
 IV. Political Economy : — Logic of Political Economy ; 
 Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy; the 
 scraps entitled Malthus and Measure of Value in the " Notes 
 from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium-Eater " ; and the article 
 entitled California. 
 
 V. LiTEEAEY Theoey AND Ckiticism : — The large essays 
 entitled Rhetoric and Style may be here noted again ; and 
 there may be associated with them, as expositions of general 
 literary theory, the Letters to a Young Man whose Education 
 has been neglected, and the article entitled Language (which, 
 despite the title, is really on Style). The more special articles 
 of the same sort form a numerous series. Arrantjed in the 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND KEVIEW. 173 
 
 chronological order of their subjects, they are as follows : — 
 Theorii of Greek Tragedy, The Antigone of Sophocles, and 
 The Thehan Sphinx ; On the Knocking at the Gate in Mac- 
 beth ; the short critical paper entitled Jtfi/i'o?^ (inVol. YI.), and 
 the other entitled Milton versus Southey and Landor (in 
 Vol. XI.) ; the review entitled Schlossers Literary History^ 0/ 
 the Eighteenth Century; the two critical articles on Pope, 
 entitled Alexander Pope (in Vol. VIII.) and Lord Carlisle on 
 Pope {m Vol. XII.); the article Oliver Goldsmith (slightly 
 biographical, but chiefly critical) ; the paper on Carlyle's Trans- 
 lation of Wilhelra Meister, reprinted under the title Goethe 
 Refected in his Novel of Wilhelni Meister^ v^'iih. omission of 
 the remarks on the translator (in Vol. XII.) ; the sketch John 
 Paul Frederick Itichter, prefixed to the translated" Analects 
 from Richter '" (in Vol. XIII.) ; the essay On Wordsworth's 
 Poetry; the Notes on Godwin and Foster, the slight little 
 paper entitled John Feats, and the Notes on Walter Savage 
 Landor. To these may be added Orthographic Mutineers, 
 The Art of Conversation, the scrap Walladmor, and one or 
 two of the scraps called " Notes from the Pocket-Book of a 
 Late Opium-Eater." 
 
 To the harder varieties of speculative Philosophy, it 
 will be observed, De Quincey has contributed less of an 
 original kind than might have been expected from his 
 known private passion for metaphysical studies. If we 
 except his System of the Heavens, which hints metaphy- 
 sical ideas in the form of a splendid cosmological vision, 
 and his Palimpsest of the Human Brain, which is full of 
 psychological suggestion, he seems to have satisfied him- 
 self in this department by reports from Kant and recom- 
 mendations of Kant to English attention. The accuracy 
 of some of his statements about Kant, and indeed of his 
 knowledge of Kant, has been called in question of late ; 
 but it remains to his credit that, in a singularly bleak and 
 vapid period of the native British philosophizing, he had 
 
174 DE QUmCEY. [chap. 
 
 contracted such an admiration, all in all, for the great 
 German transcendentalist. His translation of Kant's Idea 
 of a Universal Histoi'i/ v^i^s a feat in itself. That essay- 
 remains to this day the clearest argument for the possi- 
 bility of a Science of History since Yico propounded the 
 Scienza Nuova ; and to have perceived the importance of 
 such an essay in the year 1824 was to be in possession of 
 a philosophical notion of great value long before it was 
 popular in Britain. That De Quincey contented him- 
 self so much with mere accounts of Kant personally, and 
 literary glimpses of the nature of his speculations, may 
 have been due to the fact that original philosophizing of 
 the metaphysical and psychological kinds was not wanted 
 in magazines and would not pay. He made amends, how- 
 ever, as our list will have shown, by a considerable quan- 
 tity of writing on subjects of Speculative Ethics. His 
 best essay of this kind is that entitled Casuistry. It was 
 a favourite idea of De Quincey's that Moral Philosophy 
 in recent times, especially in Protestant countries, has run 
 too much upon generalities, avoiding too much those very 
 cases of constant recurrence in life about which difficulties 
 are likely to arise in practical conduct. Accordingly, in 
 this essay, there is a discussion of duelling and the laws 
 of honour, the legitimacy of suicide, proper behaviour to 
 servants, the limits of the rule of veracity, &c., &c., all 
 with lively historical illustrations. In the paper On War 
 the necessary permanence of that agency in the world is 
 asserted strongly, and a certain character of nobleness and 
 beneficence claimed for it. There is less of dissent from 
 current philanthropy in the article on Temperance Move- 
 ments ; but it will not give entire satisfaction. The article 
 on Plato's UejDuhUc is a virulent attack upon a philosopher 
 towards whom we should have expected to see De Quincey 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND EEVIEW. 175 
 
 standing in an attitude of discipleship and venera- 
 tion. This is owing chiefly to De Quincey's disgust witli 
 the moral heresies, in the matter of marriage and the like, 
 on which Plato so coolly professes to found his imaginary 
 commonwealth ; and it is possible that, had he been 
 treating Plato in respect of the sum-total of his philoso- 
 phic and literary merits, we should have had a much 
 more admiring estimate. As it is, one has to pity De 
 Quincey rather than Plato in this unfortunate interview. 
 He looks as petulant and small in his attack on Plato as 
 he did in his attack on Goethe. 
 
 The expressly theological papers of De Quincey, with 
 passages innumerable through his other writings, show 
 that he took his stand on established Christian orthodoxy. 
 He avowed his belief in a miraculous revelation from 
 God to mankind, begun and continued in the history of 
 the Jewish race, and consummated in the life of Christ 
 and in the diffusion of ("Christianity iDy the Apostles. As 
 a reasoned piece of Christian apologetics his answer to 
 Hume's argument, entitled Miracles as Subjects of Testi- 
 mony, does not seem to have won much regard from 
 theologians, and, though very subtle, is certainly deficient 
 in the homely quality which Hobbes called bite. His 
 own religious faith, indeed appears to have been very 
 much of the nature of an inherited sentiment, independent 
 of reasoning, and which he would not let reasoning 
 disturb. In one respect, too, his theology w^as of what 
 many theologians now would call a narrow and old- 
 fashioned kind. There is no trace in him of that notion 
 of a universal religious inspiration among the nations, and 
 so of a certain respectability, greater or less, in all mytho- 
 logies, which has been fostered by the modern science 
 of religions. On the contrary, Christianity is witii him 
 
176 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 the single divine revelation in the world, and he thinks 
 and speaks of the Pagan religions, in the style of the old- 
 fashioned theology, as simply false religions, horrid re- 
 ligions, inventions of the spirit of evil. How this is to be 
 reconciled with his wide range of historical sympathy, 
 and especially with his admiration of the achievements 
 of the Greek intellect and the grandeur of the Eoman 
 character, it might be difficult to say. Probably it v/as 
 because he distinguished between those noble and ad- 
 mirable developments which human nature could work 
 out for itself, and which therefore belong to humanity as 
 such, and the more rare and spiritual possibilities which 
 he believed actual revelation had woven into the web of 
 humanity, and which were to be regarded as gifts from the 
 supernatural. At all events, the matter stands as has 
 been stated. In the same way, Mahometanism figures in 
 his regard as of little worth, monotheistic certainly and 
 therefore superior to the Pagan creeds, but a spurious 
 religion and partly stolen. Further, De Quincey's Chris- 
 tianity declares itself as deliberately of the Protestant 
 species. With much respect for Roman Catholicism, he 
 yet repudiates it as in great measure a corruption of the 
 original system, which original system he finds reproduced 
 in the Protestantism of the sixteenth century. His article 
 entitled Protestantism is an exposition of his views in that 
 matter, and is altogether a very able and important paper. 
 If he has seemed narrow hitherto in his philosophy of 
 religion, here, once within the bounds of his Protestantism, 
 and engaged in defining Protestantism, he becomes broad 
 enough. " The self-sufficingness of the Bible and the right 
 of private judgment " are, he maintains, " the two great 
 characters in which Protestantism commences," and tlie 
 doctrines by which it distinguishes itself from the Church 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 177 
 
 of Rome. J)Ouiid up in these doctrines, he maintains, is 
 the duty of absolute religious toleration ; and by this 
 principle of absolute religious toleration, the right of 
 the individual to think, jjrint, and publish what he 
 pleases, he abides with exemplary fidelity through all 
 his writings, even while in skirmish with the free-thinkers 
 for whom he has the strongest personal disgust. But 
 this is not all. He abjures Bibliolatry, or that kind 
 of respect for the letter of the iJible which is founded 
 on the notion of verbal inspiration, denying it to be 
 a necessary tenet of Protestantism, or to be possible 
 indeed for any scholarly understanding. It is not only, 
 he maintains, that the notion of literal or verbal inspira- 
 tion is broken down at once by recollection of the cor- 
 ruptions of the original text of the Scriptures, their various 
 readings, and the fact that it is only in translations that 
 the Scriptures exist for the masses of mankind in all 
 countries. He addresses himself more emphatically to 
 the alleged palpable errors in the substance and teachings 
 of the Bible, its violations of history and chronology, its 
 inconsistencies with modern science. Here he refuses at 
 once that method of reconciling science with Scripture 
 which proceeds by torture of texts into meanings different 
 from those which they bore to the Hebrews or the 
 Greeks who first read them. His bold principle is that 
 Science and the Bible cannot be reconciled in such 
 matters, and that the desire to reconcile them indicates a 
 most gross and carnal misconception of the very idea of a 
 divine revelation. The principle may be given in his own 
 words : — 
 
 It is an obligation resting upon the Bible, if it is to be con- 
 sistent with itself, that it should refuse to teach science ; and, 
 if the Bible ever had taught any one art, science, or process of 
 
 N 
 
178 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 life, it would have been asked, Is a divine mission abandoned 
 suddenly for a human mission ? By what caprice is this one 
 science taught, and others not? Or these two, suppose, and 
 not all? But an objection even deadlier would have followed. 
 It is clear as is the purpose of daylight that the whole body of 
 the arts and sciences comprises one vast machinery for the 
 irritation and development of the human intellect. For this 
 end they exist. To see God, therefore, descending into the 
 arena of science, and contending, as it were, for his own prizes? 
 by teaching science in the Bible, would be to see him inter- 
 cepting from their self-evident destination (viz., man's in- 
 tellectual benefit) his own problems by solving them himself. 
 No spectacle could more dishonour the divine idea, could more 
 injure man under the mask of aiding him. The Bible must 
 not teach anything that man can teach himself. 
 The revelation of the Old and New Testaments is to be 
 regarded, then, according to De Quincey, as a leaven of 
 truths purely moral and spiritual, sent into the world by 
 miracle precisely because man could never have found 
 them out for himself, with a careful abstinence from any 
 mixture of matter of ordinary knowledge in advance of 
 what was already existent, and therefore with an adop- 
 tion of all existing historical and scientific phrases and 
 traditions. Hence Bihliolatry, in the sense of a belief in 
 the immaculate correctness of the language and statements 
 of the Bible on all subjects whatsoever, was no tenet of 
 genuine Christianity, secure as every Christian ought to 
 be that, whatever changes of conception on such subjects 
 as the antiquity of the human race, or the system of the 
 physical universe, might come with the progress of the 
 human intelligence, the' supernatural leaven would im- 
 pregnate them as they came, and go on working. In this 
 doctrine, of which Do Quincey seems to have meditated a 
 particular application in his unfinished papers entitled 
 " Memorial Chronology" he was substantially at one witli 
 
xir.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 179 
 
 Coleridge and AVordsworth. He was at one with them, 
 too, in his affection for Church-Establishments. In re- 
 markable difference from his favourite Milton, who 
 regarded the incorporation of Church and State as the 
 cause of the vitiation of the supernatural leaven in the 
 world, and scowled back with hatred on the Emperor Con- 
 stantine as the beginner of that mischief, De Quincey 
 confessed to a special kmdness for Constantine, precisely 
 because that Emperor had conceived the idea of converting 
 Christianity into a political agency. It was Constantine 
 who had carried Christian teaching into effect in such 
 institutions as hospitals and public provision for the 
 poor ; and the prospects of the world for the future were 
 bound up with the possible extensions of the political 
 influence of Christianity in similar directions. That is 
 the subject of the essay entitled On Christianity as an 
 Organ of Political Movement. In short, De Quincey 
 is to be remembered, in his religious relations, as a 
 staunch Church-of-England man of the broad school, 
 not given to High-Church sacerdotalism, though with 
 an aesthetic liking in his own case for a comely 
 ritual. 
 
 In politics De Quincey was an English Tory. In the 
 two papers entitled A Tory's Account of Toryism, 
 Whiggism, and Radicalism, and On the Political Parties 
 of Modern England, he avows his partisanship. Toryism 
 asserts itself also in the article on Dr. Parr, and tinges 
 some of the other papers. It is interesting, indeed, to 
 observe how much of the "John Bull element," as 
 Mr. Page calls it, there was, all in all, in the feeble little man. 
 His patriotism was of the old type of the days of Pitt and 
 Nelson. He exulted in the historic glories of England 
 and her imperial ascendency in so many parts of the 
 
180 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 globe, and would have had her do battle for any punctilio of 
 honour, as readilj" as for any more visible interest, in her 
 dealings with foreigners. He had a good deal of the old 
 English anti-Gallican prejudice ; and, though he has done 
 justice, over and over again, to some of the finer charac- 
 teristics of the French, the total eifect of his remarks 
 on the French, politically and intellectually, is irritating 
 to the admirers of that great nation. He knew them only 
 through books or by casual observation of stray French- 
 men he met ; for he was never out of the British Islands, 
 and never experienced that sudden awakening of a positive 
 affection for the French which comes infallibly from even 
 a single visit to their lightsome capital. On the other 
 hand, though Scotland was his home for so large a part of 
 his life, he seems never to have contracted the least 
 sympathy with anything distinctively Scottish. Even 
 his Toryism was specially English or South-British. But, 
 like all other parts of his creed, his Toryism was of a 
 highly intellectual kind, with features of its own. In 
 such questions, for example, as that of the continuance 
 of flogging and other brutal forms of punishment in the 
 army and navy and elsewhere, he parted company with 
 the ordinary mass of Tories, leaving his curse with them in 
 that particular, and went with the current of Radical 
 sentiment and opinion. How far he was carried, by 
 his candour of intellect and depth and accuracy of scholar- 
 ship, from the ordinary rut of party commonplace, may 
 be judged also from his little paper entitled Falsification 
 of English History. It is a gallant little paper, and one 
 of the best rebukes in our language to that systematic 
 vilification of the Puritan Revolution, the English 
 Commonwealth, and the Reign of Cromwell, which has 
 come down in the Anglican mind as an inheritance from 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 181 
 
 the Kestoration, and still vulgarises so much of our 
 scholarship and our literature. 
 
 The Dialogues of tlie Three Templars and the Logic of 
 Political Economy are De Quincey's chief contributions to 
 the literature of Economic Science. As to the literary 
 deftness of the essay and the treatise there is no doubt. 
 For cutting lucidity of exposition and beauty of style they 
 are to be envied by most writers on Political Economy. 
 This seems to have been felt by Mr. John Stuart Mill, 
 who mentions De Quincey with respect, and uses quota- 
 tions from him thankfully, in parts of his standard work. 
 The question rather is whether De Quincey has any title, 
 such as he himself seemed to claim, to the character of an 
 original thinker in the matter of the sciuice. Mr. Mill's 
 language in one place appears to negative this claim, 
 though very gently ; and the question has been reopened, 
 in De Quincey's interest, by Mr. Shadworth Hodgson in an 
 essay entitled " De Quincey as Political Economist." 
 Enough here on that matter. 
 
 If De Quincey surpasses himself anywhere in his 
 didactic papers, it is in those that concern Literary Theory 
 and Criticism, IsTo English writer has left a finer body of 
 disquisition on the science and principles of Literature 
 than will be found in De Quincey's general papers en- 
 titled Rhetoric, Style, and Language, and his Letters to a 
 Young Man, together with his more particular articles 
 entitled Theory of Greek Tragedy, The Antigone of 
 Sophocles, Milton, Milton versus Southey and Landor, 
 Alexander Pope, Lord Carlisle on Pope, Sclilossers Lite- 
 rary History of the Eighteenth Century, and On Words- 
 worth's Poetry. There, or elsewhere in De Quincey, will 
 be found the last word, so far as there can be a last word, 
 on some of the most important questions of style or 
 
182 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 literary art, and a treatment of literary questions throwing 
 back into mere obsolete ineptitude the literary theories of 
 such masters of the eighteenth century as Addison and 
 Johnson, and of such of their successors as the acute 
 Jeffrey and the robust but coarse-grained Whately. 
 Goethe, the greatest literary critic that ever lived, was more 
 comprehensive and universally tolerant ; but De Quincey 
 was facile princeps, to the extent of his touch, among 
 the English critics of his generation. He acknowledged 
 that he had received some of his leading ideas in literary 
 art from Wordsworth originally ; but whatever he derived 
 from Wordsworth was matured by so much independent 
 reflection, and so modified by the peculiarities of his own 
 temperament, that the result was a system of precepts 
 differing from Wordsworth's in not a few points. 
 
 One of the best known of De Quincey's critical maxims 
 is his distinction, after Wordsworth, between the Literature 
 of Knowledge, which he would call Literature only by 
 courtesy, and the Literature of Power, which alone he 
 regarded as Literature proper. My belief is that the dis- 
 tinction has been overworked in the form in which De 
 Quincey put it forth, and that it would require a great 
 deal of re- explication and modification to bring it into 
 defensible and permanent shape. As it would be un- 
 pardonable, however, to omit this De Quinceyism in a 
 sketch of De Quincey's opinions, here is one of the 
 passages in which he expounds it : — 
 
 The Liteeatuee of Knowledge and the Liteeatuee of 
 
 POWEE. 
 
 In that great social organ which, collectively, we call Literature, 
 there may be distinguished two separate ofiices that may blend 
 and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, 
 and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICi\TION AND REVIEW. 183 
 
 literature of knoioledge, and, secondly, the literature o[ poiver. 
 The function of the first is to teach ; the function of the second 
 is to move : the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. 
 The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding ; the 
 second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher under- 
 standing or reason, but always through aff'ections of pleasure 
 and sympathy. Remotely, it may travel towards an object 
 seated in wliat Lord Bacon calls dry light ; but, proximatelj', 
 it does and must operate, else it ceases to be a literature of 
 power, in and through that humid light which clothes itself in 
 the mists and glittering iris of human passions, desires, and 
 genial emotions. Men have so little reflected on the higher 
 functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should 
 describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give 
 information. But this is a paradox only in the sense which makes 
 it honourable to be paradoxical. Whenever we talk in ordinary 
 language of seeking information or gaining knowledge, we 
 understand the words as connected with something of absolute 
 novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy 
 a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely 
 novel to the meanest of minds : it exists eternally by way of 
 germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the highest, needing 
 to be developed, but never to be planted. To be capable of 
 transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that 
 ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing 
 than truth, — namely, ^oiyer, or deep sympathy with truth. . . . 
 Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated and con- 
 tinually called out into exercise by the great phenomena of 
 infancy, or of real life as it moves through chance and change, 
 or of literature as it recombines these elements in the mimicries 
 of poetry, romance, &c., it is certain that, like any animal 
 power or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensi- 
 bilities would gradually drop and dwindle. It is in relation to 
 these great moral capacities of man that the literature of power, 
 as contradistinguished from that of knowledge, lives and has its 
 field of action. It is concerned with what is highest in man ; 
 for the Scriptures themselves never condescended to deal, by 
 suggestion or co-operation, with the mere discursive under- 
 
184 DE QUINCE Y. [chap. 
 
 standing : when speaking of man in his intellectual capacity, 
 the Scriptures speak not of the understanding, but of " the under- 
 standing heart,"' — making the heart, i. e. the great intuitive (or 
 non-discursive) organ, to he the interchangeable formula for 
 man in his highest state of capacity for the infinite. Traged}^ 
 romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore to man's mind 
 the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of mercy, of retribution, 
 which else (left to the support of daily life in its realities) would 
 languish for want of sufficient illustration. . . . Hence the pre- 
 eminency overall authors that merely teach of the meanest that 
 moves, or that teaches, if at all, indirectly by moving. The 
 very highest work that has ever existed in the literature of 
 knowledge is but a provisional work, a book upon trial and 
 sufferance, and quamdiu bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be 
 even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, let its 
 teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is 
 superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of 
 power, surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable 
 amongst men. For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton 
 was a book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of 
 its progress it would have to fight for its existence, — first, as 
 regards absolute truth ; secondly, when that combat was over, as 
 regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And, as soon 
 as a La Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the founda- 
 tions laid by this book, effectually he throws it out of the 
 sunshine into decay and darkness ; by weapons even from this 
 book he superannuates and destroys this book, so that soon the 
 name of Newton remains as a mere nominis iimhra, but his 
 book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. 
 Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of 
 ^schylus, the Othello or King Lear, the Samlet or 
 Macbeth, or the Paradise Lost, are not militant, but 
 triumphant for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they 
 speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate 
 into new incarnations. To reproduce the7n in new forms or 
 variations, even if in some things they should be improved, 
 would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine is properly super- 
 seded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not super- 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 185 
 
 seded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of 
 Michael Angelo. — Works, viii. 5 — 9. 
 
 III. IMAGINATIVE WRITINGS AND PROSE POETRY. 
 
 In this class may be reckoned the following : — 
 
 I. Humorous Extravaganzas : — The paragon in this kind 
 is, of course. Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts. 
 There are, however, occasional passages of frolicsome invention 
 through the other papers ; and the entire paper Sortilege and 
 Astrology may be taken as ?ijeu d^ esprit of the same sort. 
 
 II. Incidents of Eeal Life and Passages of History 
 TREATED IMAGINATIVELY : — In addition to the poetic versions 
 of incidents from real life that are interwrought with the 
 expressl}' autobiographic writings, there ought to be mentioned 
 specially the paper entitled Early Memorials of Grasmere. 
 It is the story of the loss of two peasants, a husband and his 
 wife, among the hills, during a snowstorm in the Lake District, 
 in the year 1807. In the same group, on grounds of literary 
 principle, may be reckoned the story called The Spanish Mili- 
 tary Nun and the paper entitled Joan of Arc. As has been 
 already hinted, The Revolt of the Tartars might rank in the 
 same high company. 
 
 III. Novelettes and Eomances : — Chief among these is 
 De Quincey's one-volume novel or romance, Klosterheim, 
 published in 1832, and unfortunately not included in the 
 edition of his collected works, nor accessible at present in any 
 form, to any of her Majestj^'s subjects, except by importation of 
 an American reprint. In connexion with this independent 
 attempt in prose-fiction, we may remember the short story or 
 novelette called The Avenger (reprinted in vol. xvi. from 
 Blackwood's Magazine of 1838) and Walladmor, the pseudo- 
 Waverley Novel of 1824, which De Quincey translated from 
 the German. There are, besides, some novelettes from the 
 German, reprinted in the collective edition. 
 
 IV. Prose Phantasies and Lyrics : — Although De Quincey 
 ranked the whole of his Confessions as properly an example of 
 that " mode of impassioned prose " in which he thought there 
 had been few or no precedents in English, it is enough here to 
 
186 DE QUINCE Y. [chak 
 
 remember those parts of the Confessions which may be dis- 
 tinguished as "dream phantasies." To be added, under our 
 present heading (besides passages in the Autobiographic 
 Sketches), are The Daughter of Lebanon, the extraordinary 
 paper in three parts called The English Mail Coach, and the 
 little cluster of fragments called Suspiria de Profundis (i. e., 
 "Sighs from the Depths "), being a Sequel to the Confessions 
 of an English Opium-Eater. In fact, however., only three of 
 the six fragments there gathered under the common name of 
 "Suspiria '' are either " lyrics" or *' phantasies," the rest being 
 critical or psychological. The three entitled to a place here are 
 those entitled Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, Savannah- 
 la-Mar, and Memorial Suspiria. 
 
 The celebrity of the essay On Murder considered as 
 one of the Fine Arts is not surprising. The ghastly 
 originality of the conception, the humorous irony with 
 which it is sustained by stroke after stroke, and the mad 
 frenzy of the closing scene, where the assembled club 
 of amateurs in murder, with Toad-in-the-hole leading 
 them, drink their toasts and sing their chorus in honour 
 of certain superlative specimens of their favourite art, 
 leave an impression altogether exceptional, as of pleasure 
 mixed illegitimately with the forbidden and horrible. 
 For a lighter and more genial specimen of De Quincey 
 in his whimsical vein, Sortilege and Astrology may 
 be cordially recommended. To pass from such papers 
 to Early Memorials of Grasmere, The Spanish Mili- 
 tary Nun, and Joan of Arc, gives one a fresh idea 
 of the versatility of his powers. The first, describing 
 winter among the English Lakes, and telling the tragic 
 story of George and Sarah Green, and of the bravery 
 of their little girl left in charge of the cottage to 
 which they were never to return alive, has all the 
 mournful beauty of a commemorative prose-poem. The 
 
XII. J CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 187 
 
 second, which is a narrative, from historical materials, 
 of the adventures of a daring Spanish girl, in man's 
 disguise, first in Spain and then in the Spanish parts 
 of the new world, in the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, is in De Quincey's most characteristic style 
 of mingled humour and earnestness, and has all the 
 fascination of one ol the best of the Spanish picaresque 
 romances. I'he paper on Joan of Arc, though brief, is 
 nobly perfect. " What is to be thought of her ? What 
 " is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills 
 "• and forests of Lorraine, that, like the Hebrew shepherd 
 " boy from the hills and forests of Judea, rose suddenly 
 " out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious 
 " inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station 
 " in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at 
 " the right hand of kings ?" Opening in this strain 
 of poetic solemnity, the paper maintains the same high 
 tone throughout ; and, if it does not leave the question 
 answered by enshrining the image of the Maid of Orleans 
 in a sufficient vision of glory, there is no such answer in 
 the English language. 
 
 De Quincey included in his collected works two short 
 tales of clever humour, called The Incog iilto, or Count 
 FifzJium, and The King of Hayti, and a third, called The 
 Dice, a short story of devilry and black art, describing 
 the first as " translated from the German of Dr. Schultze," 
 and the other two merely as *' from the German." 
 Passing these and a fourth tale, called The Fatal Marks- 
 man, which is somewhat in the style of the third, and 
 seems also to be from the German i though that is not 
 stated), we have, as the single original novelette of De 
 Quincey among the collected works, the strange piece 
 called Tiie Avenger. It is a story, wholly fantastic and 
 
188 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 sensational, but quite in De Quincey's vein, of a series of 
 appalling and mysterious murders supposed to happen in 
 a German town in the year 1816, and of the astounding 
 discovery at last that they have all been the work of a cer- 
 tain magnificent youth, Maximilian Wyndham, of mixed 
 English and Jewish descent, and of immense wealth, who 
 had come to reside in the town, in the house of one of 
 the University professors, with high Eussian credentials 
 and universal acceptance among the citizens. He had 
 come thither nominally to complete his studies, but really 
 in pursuit of a secret scheme of vengeance upon those of 
 the inhabitants who had been concerned in certain deadly 
 injuries and dishonours done to his family, and especially 
 to his Jewish mother. The story does not aj^pear to have 
 been much read ; and admirers of De Quincey may judge 
 from this description of it whether it is worth looking 
 up. It may be even more necessary to give some account 
 of Klosterheim, or the Masque. 
 
 As originally published by Blackwood in 1832, it was 
 a small prettily-printed volume of 305 pages, without De 
 Quincey 's name after the title, but only the words " By 
 the English Opium-Eater." It would make about half a 
 volume in the collective edition of the works, were it 
 included there. 
 
 The scene of the story is an imaginary German city, 
 Klosterheim, with its forest-neighbourhood ; and the time 
 is the winter of 1633, with part of the year 1634, or just 
 at that point of the great Thirty Years' War when, after the 
 death of Gustavus-Adolphus, his Swedish generals are 
 maintaining the war against the Imperialists, and all 
 Germany is in confusion and misery with the marchings 
 and counter-marchings, the ravagings and counter-ravagings, 
 of the opposed armies. The Klosterheimers, as good 
 
xii.j CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 189 
 
 Catholics, are mainly in sympathy with the Imperialists, 
 but are in the peculiar predicament of being subject to a 
 gloomy and tyrannical Landgrave, who, though a bigoted 
 Roman Catholic, has reasons of his own for cultivating the 
 Swedish alliance, and is in fact in correspondence with the 
 Swedes. A leading spirit among them, and especially 
 among the University students, is a certain splendid 
 soldier-youth, Maximilian, a stranger from a distance. So, 
 when the Klosterheimers are in excitement over the ap- 
 proach to their city', through the forest, of a travelling mass 
 of pilgrims, under Imperialist convoy, all the way from 
 Vienna, and over the chances that the poor pilgrims may be 
 attacked and cut to pieces by a certain brutal Holkerstein, 
 the head of a host of marauders who prowl through the 
 forest, who but this Maximilian is the man to execute the 
 general desire of Klosterheim by evading the orders of the 
 cruel Landgrave and carrying armed aid to the pilgrims 1 
 Well that he has done so ; for in the midst of the pilgrim- 
 cavalcade, and the chief personage in it, is his own lady-love, 
 the noble Paulina, a relative of the Emperor, and entrusted 
 by him with despatches. The lovers meet ; and, save for 
 a night-alarm, in the course of which the portmanteau of 
 secret despatches is abstracted by robbers from Lady 
 Paulina's carriage, there is no accident till the pilgrims are 
 close to Klosterheim. There, in the night-time, Holkerstein 
 and his host of marauders do fall upon them. There is a 
 dreadful night -battle ; and, though the marauding host is 
 beaten off, chiefly by the heroic valour of Maximilian, it 
 is but a wreck of the pilgrim -army that enters Klosterheim 
 on the morrow, — and then alas ! without Maximilian 
 among them. He has been carried away by the marauders, 
 a wounded prisoner. The residue of the poor pilgrims 
 are dispersed through the city somehow for hospitality, 
 
190 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 and the doleful Lady Paulina takes up her abode in the 
 great abbey, close to the Landgrave's palace. Then, for 
 a while, we are among the Klosterheimers, and called 
 upon to pity them. For the gloomy Landgrave, always a 
 tyrant, now revels in acts of tyranny and cruelty utterly 
 indiscriminate and capricious, maddened by the goad of 
 some new motive, which is not explained, but which we 
 connect with intelligence he has obtained from the ab- 
 stracted imperial despatches. There are arrests of students 
 and citizens ; all are in consternation ; no one knows what 
 will happen next. Suddenly, however, a counter-agency 
 is at work in Klosterheim, baffling and bewildering the 
 Landgrave and his wily Italian minister Adorni. This is 
 a certain mysterious being, whether human or supernatural 
 no one can tell, who calls himself " The Masque," and 
 seems omnipresent and resistless. He appears when and 
 where he likes, passes through bolts and bars, leaves 
 messages to the Landgrave nailed up in public places, and 
 defies his police. Houses are entered j citizens disappear, 
 sometimes with signs of scuffle and bloodshed left in 
 their rooms ; and, as these victims of " The Masque " are 
 not exclusively from the ranks of the Landgrave's par- 
 tisans, it becomes doubtful whether the mysterious being 
 has any political purpose, or is a mere demon of general 
 malignity. But, evidently, the Landgrave is his main 
 mark ; and it is in the palace of the Landgrave that he 
 makes his presence and his power most daringly felt. 
 How, for example, lie appeared there at a great masked 
 ball, to which exactly twelve hundred persons had been 
 invited by numbered tickets ; how, when the twelve 
 hundred had been, by arrangement, counted off in the 
 hall, and aggregated apart, he was seen in majestic and 
 solitary composure, leaning against a marble column, and 
 
xii.l CLASSIFICATION AND KEVIEW. 191 
 
 it seemed as if the Landgrave and Adorni had but to 
 give the word to their myrmidons to clutch him ; but 
 how there was nothing of that expected catastrophe, but 
 only a scornful disappearance of the awful figure, as if in 
 cloud or smoke, after some words from his hollow voice 
 which left the Landgrave trembling : — for all this, and 
 much more, there must be application inside the little 
 volume itself. In reading it, you are as if in the heart of 
 one of Mrs. Eadclift'e's novels, with the usual para- 
 phernalia of cloaks, nodding plumes, ghostly sounds, 
 labyrinthine corridors and secret passages, pictures of 
 ancestors on the walls, and the rest of it ; and you long to 
 be out of such a curiosity-shop of jumbled incredibilities, 
 and to know the denouement. Tliat does not come till 
 after new episodes of danger to Lady Paulina, new coils 
 of marvel round the mysterious " Masque," and a second 
 great assembly in the palace, with a vast mechanism of 
 new preparations by the infuriated Landgrave for the dis- 
 comfiture of his adversary. Let these be supposed ; and 
 let it be supposed that the 6th of September, 1634, has 
 passed, and that the Swedes have been routed and the 
 Imperialists triumphant in the great battle of Nordlingen. 
 What need then for further mystery ? The hour has 
 come for that revolution in Klosterheim which the Em- 
 peror himself had devised from Vienna, and manipulated 
 in the secret despatches he had sent by the Lady Paulina. 
 All is revealed in a crash. Maximilian is the true Land- 
 grave, the hitherto undivulged son of the last good Land- 
 grave ; and the present usurper had come to his power by 
 the murder of Maximilian's father, and maintained it by 
 other crimes. In the crash of this revelation the gloomy 
 usurper sinks, the last blow to the wretched man being 
 the death of his daughter by a mistake of his own murderous 
 
192 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 order for the execution of the Lady Paulina. Maximilian 
 marries Paulina ; there are other more minute solutions 
 and surprises ; and the Klosterheimers, under their new- 
 Landgrave, are again a happy people. But who was 
 the mysterious " Masque " ? Who but Maximilian him- 
 self? Trap-doors and subterranean passages, his own 
 dexterity, and collusion with the requisite number of 
 citizens and students, and with an old seneschal of the 
 tyrant, had done the whole business ; and the only blood 
 really shed in the course of it had been that of the poor 
 seneschal, betrayed by accident, and stabbed by his 
 master. 
 
 Such is De Quincey's one-volume romance, a poor 
 performance, doubtless for the sake of a little money, 
 about the time when he settled in Edinburgh. Was 
 he ashamed of it afterwards, that he did not reprint 
 it ? There was no necessity for that ; for, though the 
 story does not show the craft of a Sir Walter Scott, it is 
 by no means bad of its preposterous kind. The style, at 
 all events, is remarkably careful, with a marble beauty of 
 sentence that makes one linger as one reads. 
 
 There remains to be noticed, in the last place, that very 
 special portion of De Quincey's writings of the imagi- 
 native order for which he claimed distinction above the 
 rest, as illustrating " a mode of impassioned prose " but 
 slightly represented before in English Literature. It 
 may be questioned, however, whether the pieces for which 
 he claimed this distinction are described most exactly by 
 the phrase "impassioned prose." Their peculiarity is 
 not so much that they are impassioned in any ordi- 
 nary sense as that they are imaginative or poetical 
 after a very definite and rather rare sort. It w^as one of 
 the distinctions of De Quincey's intellect that it could 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 193 
 
 pass from that ordinary or discursive exercise of itself 
 which consists in expounding, reasoning, or investigating, 
 to that poetic exercise of itself which consists in the 
 formation of visions or phantasies ; and it did, in fact, so 
 pass on those occasions more particularly when it was 
 moved by pathos or by the feeling of the mysterious and 
 awful. What is most observable, therefore, in the pieces 
 under notice is that they exhibit the operation of those 
 two constitutional kinds of emotion upon De Quincey's 
 intellectual activity, transmuting it from the common or 
 discursive mode to that called poetic imagination. Inas- 
 much as it is the implicated feeling or sentiment that 
 moves the intellectual process, and inasmuch as there are 
 marks of this in the rhythmical or lyrical character of the 
 result, there is no great harm in calling that result im- 
 passioned prose, especially if we keep to the limitation 
 stipulated by De Quincey's own phrase, " a mode of im- 
 passioned prose " ; but it is better, all in all, to define the 
 writings under consideration as examples of a peculiar 
 " mode of imaginative prose," and, if further definition is 
 wanted of this peculiar mode of prose poetry, to call it 
 Prose Phantasy and Lyric, ox Lyriccd Prose Phantasy. De 
 Quincey was consciously and deliberately an artist in this 
 form of prose-poetry, and has left specimens of it that 
 have very few parallels in English. One ought to re- 
 member, however, how much he must have been influenced 
 by the previous example of Jean Paul Eichter. Of his 
 admiration of the famous German before he had himself 
 begun his career of literature there is proof in his article 
 on Eichter published in the London Magazine in Decem- 
 ber 1821, just after the appearance of his Confessions in 
 their firct form in the same ^Magazine; and one observes 
 that among the translated "analects" from Eichter which 
 
 o 
 
194 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 accompanied or followed that article, and were intended 
 to introduce Eichter to the English public, were The 
 Happy Life of a Parish Priest in Sweden and the 
 Dream upon the Universe, both of them specimens of 
 Richter's peculiar art of prose-phantasy. There can be no 
 doubt that Richter's example in such pieces influenced 
 De Qaincey permanently. But, though he may have learnt 
 something from Richter, he was an original master in the 
 same art. 
 
 One might go back here on his Joan of Arc, and some of 
 the other writings of which account has been already 
 taken, and claim for them, or for parts of them, fresh 
 recognition in our present connexion. But let us confine 
 ourselves to the writings to which De Quincey seems to 
 have pointed more especially, and which have been already 
 enumerated. 
 
 To the famous passages of "dream-phantasy" in the 
 Opium Confessions we need not re-advert farther than to 
 say that, extraordinary as they are as a whole, one may 
 fairly object to parts of them, as to some of the similar 
 dream-phantasies in Richter, that they fail by too much 
 obtrusion of artistic self-consciousness in their construction, 
 and sometimes also by a swooning of the power of clear 
 and consecutive vision in a mere piling and excess of 
 imagery and sound. The stroke on the mind at the time 
 is not always equal to the look of the apparatus for inflict- 
 ing it ; and the memory does not retain a sufficient scar. 
 ISTo such objection can be urged against The Daughter of 
 Lebanon, a fine visionary lyric of seven pages, figuring an 
 early and miraculous conversion to Christianity in the 
 person of an ideal girl of Damascus. Xor would any of 
 De Quincey's readers give up the first two sections of 
 Tlie English Mail Coach, subtitled "The Glory of 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 195 
 
 Motion" and ''The A^ision of Sudden Death." There is 
 nothing in Jean Paul quite h'ke these. 
 
 In the first we are back in tlie old days between Tra- 
 falgar and AVaterloo. Drawn up at the General Post 
 Othce in Lombard Street, and waiting for the hour to 
 start, we see His ^Majesty's mails, — carriages, harness, 
 horses, lamps, the dresses of driver and guard, all in 
 the perfection of English equipment, and, if there has 
 been news that day of a great victory, then the laurels, 
 the oak leaves, the flowers, the ribbons, in addition. Seat- 
 ing ourselves beside the driver on one of the mails, we 
 begin our journey of three hundred miles along one of the 
 great roads, north or west, leaving Lombard Street at a 
 quarter past eight in the evening. How, once out into 
 the country, we shoot along, horses at gallop, the breeze in 
 our faces, hedges and trees and fields and homesteads 
 rushing past ns in the darkness which we and our lamps 
 are cleaving like a fiery arrow ! How, at every stopping- 
 station, there are the lights and bustle at the inn-door, and 
 the laurels and other bedizenments we carry are seen ere 
 we have well stopped, and we shout " Badajoz" or " Sala- 
 manca " in explanation, or whatever else may have been 
 the last victory, and the hostlers and other inn-folk take 
 up the huzza, and it is one round of congratulation and 
 hand-shaking while we stay ! But, punctually to the 
 minute, having changed horses, and left the news pal- 
 pitating in that neighbourhood, we are on again, horses at 
 gallop, coach-lamps burning, and we beside the driver on 
 the front seat, conscious that we are carrying the same 
 news with us to neighbourhoods still ahead ! On, on, 
 stage after stage, in the same fashion, still cleaving the 
 darkness, the horse-hoofs always audible and the coach- 
 lamps always burning, till the darkness yields to a silver 
 
196 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 glimmer and the glimmer to the glare of day ! — Such is 
 the series of sensations De Quincey has contrived to give 
 us in his prose-poem called " The Glory of Motion." In 
 the sequel, entitled " The Vision of Sudden Death," 
 we are still on the same night journey by coach, or rather 
 on one later night journey on the northern road between 
 sixty and seventy years ago, with the difference that the 
 glory of motion is now turned into horror. Prosaically 
 described, the paper is a recollection of a fatal accident by 
 collision of the mail, in a very dark part of the road, with a 
 solitary vehicle containing two persons, one of them a 
 woman ; but it is for the paper itself to show what the 
 incident becomes in De Quincey's hands. — It passes into 
 a third paper, still under the same general title of The 
 English Mail Coach ; which third paper, indeed, bears the 
 extraordinary subtitle of " Dream-Fugue, founded on the 
 preceding theme of Sudden Death." I cannot say that 
 this " dream-fugue," which is offered as a lyrical finale to 
 the little series, in visionary coherence with the preceding 
 pieces, accomplishes its purpose very successfully. It is 
 liable to the objection which may be urged, as we have 
 said, against other specimens of De Quincey in the peculiar 
 art of dream-phantasy. The artifice is too apparent, and 
 the meaning is all but lost in a mere vague of music. 
 
 Of the three scraps of the Suspiria that are entitled 
 to rank among the lyrical prose-phantasies, viz., Levana 
 and Oar Ladies of Sorroiv, Savannah-la-Mar,Sii]d Memorial 
 Susplria, only the first is of much importance. But that 
 scrap, written in De Quincey's later life, is of as high 
 importance as anything he ever wrote. It is perhaps the 
 highest and finest thing, and also the most constitutionally 
 significant, in all De Quincey. Fortunately, the essential 
 core of it can be quoted entire. All that it is necessary 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 197 
 
 to premise is that '• Levana " was the Eoman Goddess of 
 Education, the divinity who was supposed to " lift up " 
 every newly-born human being from the earth in token 
 that it should live, and to rule the influences to which it 
 should be subject thenceforth till its character should be 
 fully formed : — 
 
 The Theee Ladies of Soerow. 
 
 I know tnem thoroughly, and have walked in all their king- 
 doms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household ; 
 and their paths are wide apart ; but of their dominion there is 
 no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and some- 
 times about myself. Do they talk, then ? 0, no ! Mighty 
 phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They 
 may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in 
 human hearts, but amongst themselves there is no voice nor 
 sound ; eternal silence reigns in t/ieir kingdoms. They spoke 
 not, as they talked with Levana ; they whispered not : they 
 sang not ; though oftentimes methought they might have sung : 
 for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered 
 by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose 
 servants they are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that 
 perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by 
 changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted 
 in darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. 
 They wheeled in mazes ; / spelled the steps. They telegraphed 
 from afar ; Z read the signals. jTAe^y conspired together; and 
 on the mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were 
 the symbols ; mine are the words. 
 
 What is it the sisters are ? AVhat is it that they do ? Let 
 me describe their form and their presence : if form it were that 
 still fluctuated in its outline, or presence it were that for ever 
 advanced to the front or for ever receded amongst shades. 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater JLachrymarum, Our 
 Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, 
 calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice 
 was heard of lamentation, — Rachel weeping for her children, 
 and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethle- 
 
198 DE QUINCEY. [chap. 
 
 hem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of 
 innocents, and the little feet were stiffened for ever, which, heard 
 at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of 
 love in household hearts that were not anmarked in heaven. 
 Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns ; often- 
 times rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. 
 She wears a diadem round her head. And 1 knew by childish 
 memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when sheheard 
 the sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs, and when she 
 beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the eldest, 
 it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open 
 every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all 
 last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so 
 often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight 
 years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations 
 of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads 
 with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great 
 reward. In the spring time of the year, and whilst her own 
 spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind 
 father mourns for ever over her ; still he dreams at midnight 
 that the little guiding hand is locked within his own ; and still 
 he awakens to a darkness that is now within a second and a 
 deeper darkness. This Mater Laclirymarum also has been 
 sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the 
 Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter, not less pious, that 
 vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a dark- 
 ness not less profound. By the power of the keys it is that Our 
 Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of 
 sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges 
 to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she 
 is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us 
 honour with the title of Madonna. 
 
 The second sister is called Mater Susj^iriorum, Our Lady of 
 Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the 
 winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever 
 seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle ; no man could read 
 their story ; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, 
 and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
 eyes ; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for 
 
XII.] CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW. 199 
 
 ever, for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans 
 not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, 
 is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against 
 heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of 
 Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
 aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meek- 
 ness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is 
 in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the 
 twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places 
 that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when 
 the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of 
 the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Medi- 
 terranean galleys ; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, 
 blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off 
 England ; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever upon 
 a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of 
 some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can 
 now be availing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, 
 or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that 
 at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as 
 he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but 
 for him a stepmother, — as he points with the other hand to the 
 Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and 
 sequestered ; every woman sitting in darkness, without love to 
 shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the 
 heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy 
 affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having 
 been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like 
 sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients ; every nun defrauded of 
 her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will 
 judge ; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected ; outcasts 
 by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace : — all 
 these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key, bul 
 she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents 
 of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the 
 very highest walks of man she finds chapels of her own ; and 
 even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, 
 carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly 
 have received her mark upon their foreheads. 
 
200 DE QUINCE Y. [ch. xii. 
 
 But the third sister, wno is also the youngest— ! Hush ! 
 Avhisper whilst we talk of Aer ! Her kingdom is not large, or 
 else no flesh should live ; but within that kingdom all power is 
 hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond 
 the reach of sight. She droops not ; and her eyes, rising so 
 high, might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are. 
 they cannot be hidden ; through the treble veil of crape which 
 she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for 
 matins or for vespers, for noon of da}' or noon of night, for 
 ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. 
 She is the defter of God. She is also the mother of lunacies and 
 the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power, but 
 narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only 
 those in whom a profoimd nature has been upheaved by central 
 convulsions, in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks 
 under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from 
 within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but 
 still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and 
 stealthily. But this youngest sister moves \vith incalculable 
 motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key ; 
 for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at 
 which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater 
 Tenehrarumy Our Lady of Darkness. 
 
 This is prose-poetry ; but it is more. It is a permanent 
 addition to the mythology of the human race. As the 
 Graces are three, as the. Fates are three, as the Furies are 
 three, as the Muses were originally three, so may the 
 varieties and degrees of misery that there are in the world, 
 and the proportions of their distribution among mankind, 
 be represented to the human imagination for ever by De 
 Quincey's Three Ladies of Sorrow and his sketch of their 
 figures and kingdoms. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 Abercrombie, Dr., 87 
 
 Account of the Williams Murders, 
 
 161, 162 
 Adorui, Italian Minister, 190, 191 
 Aird, Thomas, 88 
 Alison, Archibald, 88 
 Alison, Professor Pulteney, 87 
 Allan Bank, Wordsworth's house 
 
 at Grasmere, 44, 46, 49 
 Allan, Sir William, 57, 87, 125 
 Altamont, Earl of, 19, 21, 22, 32, 
 
 34 
 Ann of Oxford Street, 32, 64 
 Answer of the Opium-Eater to Mr. 
 
 Hazlitfs Letter respecting Mr. 
 
 Malth us, contribution to London 
 
 Magazine, 73 
 Antigone of Sophocles, contrilm- 
 
 tion to TcuVs Magazine, 102, 
 
 173, 181 
 Arabian Nights, 8, 9 
 Autobiographic Sketches, 159, 186 
 Avenger, The, 185, 187 
 Avtoun, William Edraouston'e, 88 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 37, 142, 159, 183 i 
 Baird Smith, Colonel, 131 | 
 
 Baird Smith, Mrs, (Florence De 
 
 Qnincey), 131 I 
 
 Baldwin, Cradock and Co., Messrs., 
 
 publisliers of London Magazine, 
 
 70 
 Ball. Sir Alexander, Governor of 
 
 Malta, 38 
 Barbauld, Mrs., 8 
 Bath Grammar School, 16-18, 24, 
 
 25 I 
 
 Begbie, Dr. Warburton, De 
 Quincey's physician, 132 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles, 87 
 
 Bell, Henry Glassford, 88 
 
 Black, IMessrs. A. and C, 116 
 
 Blackwood, Messrs., 102 
 
 Blackicood's Magazine, De Quin- 
 cey's contributions to, 66, 69, 
 82, 84, 86, 90, 91, 101, 113, 
 186, 188 
 
 Blake, Miss, sister to Countess of 
 Errol, 22 
 
 Bohn, Mr., 77 
 
 Brathay, 50 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, 87 
 
 Bridgewater, meeting with Cole- 
 ridge at, 41 
 
 Bristol, De Qnincey and Coleridge 
 at, 41, 42 
 
 Brougham, Mr., 66 
 
 Brown, Dr. Samuel, 125 
 
 Browne, Dr. James, editor of 
 Ccdedvnian Mercury, 88 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 37, 142 
 
 Brunell, Mr., 30, 31 
 
 Cojsars, The, contribution to Black- 
 icood's Magazine, 90, 159, 163 
 
 Ccdedonian Mercury, The, 88 
 
 Calgarth Park, residence of Bishop 
 Watson, 47, 50 
 
 California, contribution to Hogg's 
 Lnstructor, 113, 172 
 
 Candlish, Dr., 87 
 
 Carbery, Lady, 23, 26, 27 ' 
 
 Carbery, Lord, 23 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 74, 91, 136, 
 
 201 
 
202 
 
 DE QUmCEY. 
 
 138, 141 ; observation on De 
 
 Quincey, 34 ; translation of 
 
 Wiihelm Meister, 73, 173 ; 
 
 letter of invitation to De 
 
 Quincey, 83, 84 
 Gary, Eev. Henry Francis, 71 
 Castle of Indolence, quotation 
 
 from, 150 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 21 
 Ceylon, 161 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., 87, 88, 89, 103 
 Chambers, Robert, 88, 124, 125 
 Chambers, William, 88 
 Chambers's Edmhurgh Journal, 
 
 88 
 Charlemagne, contribution to 
 
 Blackioood's Magazine, 90 
 Chester, De Quincey at, 28, 34, 
 
 40 
 China, contribution to Titan, 113 
 Christison, Professor, 87 
 Christopher North, 51 
 Chubb family, descendants of 
 
 Chubb the Deist, 41 
 Cicero, contribution to Blackwood's 
 
 Magazine, 101, 159, 170, 171 
 Clapham Evangelical Sect, 7 
 Cockburn, Lord, 87 
 Coleridge, Derwent, 41 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 41 
 Coleridge, Mrs., 41, 42 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 43, 47, 
 
 49, 62, m, 69, 91, 142, 154, 
 
 161, 166, 179 ; De Quincey's 
 
 interest in, 37 ; Secretary to 
 
 Sir Alexander Ball, 38 ; meeting 
 
 with De Quincey, 41 ; departure 
 
 from the Lakes, 51 
 Coleridge, Sara, 41 
 Coleridge, Alleged Plagiarisms of, 
 
 contribution to Blackwood's 
 
 Magazine, 90 
 Collins, Mounseer, undermaster at 
 
 Bath Grammar School, 17 
 Combe, Andrew, 87 
 Combe, George, 87, 125 
 Confessions of an English Opitim- 
 
 Eater, The, 33, 62, 71, 72, 77, 
 
 78, 91, 159, 193, 194 
 
 Convention of Cintra, Words- 
 worth's pamphlet, 44 
 
 Cornwall, Barry, remembrances of 
 De Quincey, 77, 78 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, 21 
 
 Cottle, Mr., Bristol bookseller, 42, 
 43 
 
 Cotton, Dr., head of Worcester 
 College, Oxford, 35 
 
 Courier, The, 43 
 
 Cradock, Mr., 70 
 
 Craig, Mr. Robert, 122 
 
 Craig, Mrs. (Margaret De Quincey), 
 122, 132 
 
 Crowe, Mrs., 124,. 125 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, 71 
 
 Currie, Dr., biographer of Burns, 27 
 
 Cushman, Miss, 125 
 
 Darley, George, 71 
 
 Daughter of Lebanon, The, 186, 194 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, 43 
 
 Death of a German Great Man, 
 
 The, contribution to London 
 
 Magazine, 73 
 De Emendatione Humani Intel- 
 
 lectus, 65, 66 
 De Haren, friendship with De 
 
 Quincey, 36 
 De Loutherbourg, landscape painter 
 
 and Royal Academician, 14, 16 
 De Quincey, origin of name, 1 ; 
 
 resuscitation of prefix, 2 
 De Quincey, Elizabeth, 5, 9, 133 
 De Quincey, Emily, 122 
 De Quincey, Florence, 122 
 De Quincey, Francis, 98, 99, 122 
 De Quincey, Henry, 14 
 De Quincey, Horace, 95 ; death, 
 
 of, 98 
 De Quincey, Jane, 5 
 De Quincey, Julius, 94 
 De Quincey, Margaret (daughter"), 
 
 68, 95 ; her marriage to Mr. 
 
 Robert Craig, 122 
 De Quincey, Margaret (wife of De 
 
 Quincey), 81, 84, 85, 133; 
 
 death of, 94 
 De Quince J', Mary, 17 
 
INDEX. 
 
 203 
 
 De Quincey, Mrs. (De Quiucey's 
 mother), 19. 23 
 
 De Quincey, Paul Frederick, 98, 
 122, 131 
 
 De Quincey, Richard, first of the 
 English De Quiuceys, 1 
 
 De Quincey, Richard ("Pink"), 
 15, 16, 18 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, birth and 
 childhood, 3-9 ; his opinion of 
 his mother, 7 ; boyhood, 10, 
 11 ; enters Bath Grammar 
 School, 16 ; accident at school, 
 17 ; at Winkfield School, 18 ; 
 acqiiaintance with Lord West- 
 port, 19 ; meeting ■with George 
 III., 20 ; tour in Ireland, 21 ; 
 introduction to Countess of 
 Errol, 22 ; journeyings in Eng- ! 
 land, 22, 23 ; assists Lady Car- | 
 bery in the study of Greek, I 
 24 ; at Manchester Grammar I 
 School, 25 - 27 ; walks from \ 
 Manchester to Chester, 28 ; j 
 rambles in North Wales, 29 ; | 
 wanderings in London, 30-32 ; 
 friendship with Ann of Oxford 
 Street, 32 ; eccentricity, 33 ; 
 discovered and reclaimed by 
 friends, 34 ; life at Oxford, 35 ; 
 studies, 36 ; correspondence 
 with Wordsworth, 37 ; first 
 use of opium, 38 ; goes up for 
 his B.A. at Oxford, 39 ; meeting 
 with Coleridge, 41 ; visits the 
 Lakes with Coleridge family, 42 ; 
 meetings with Wordsworth, 42, 
 43 ; gift to Coleridge, 43 ; 
 frequent visits to London, 43 ; 
 writes appendix of notes to 
 Wordsworth's Convention of 
 Cintra, 44 ; at Townend, Gras- 
 mere, 45 ; his library, 49 ; de- 
 scription of Bishop Watson, 50 ; 
 introduction to " Mr. Wilson of 
 Elleray," 50 ; waning of friend- 
 ship with Wordsworth, 51 ; 
 grief at Kate Wordsworth's 
 death, 52 ; notes concerning 
 
 himself, 52, 53 ; pecuniary 
 troubles, 54, 80, 84 ; becomes 
 a confirmed opium-eater, 55; 
 meeting with Mrs. Siddons, 56 ; 
 leaves the Lakes for Edinburgh, 
 
 56 ; meetings with celebrities, 
 
 57 ; returns to the Lakes, 58 ; 
 adventure with a Malay tramp, 
 
 58 ; life at Grasmere, 59 ; mar- 
 riage with Margaret Simpson, 
 61 ; efi'ects of opium - eating, 
 62, 63, 65 ; editorship of West- 
 moreland Gazette, 66, 69 ; his 
 ideas of provincial editorship, 
 67 ; letter to his wife, 68 ; 
 Confessions and other works 
 published in London Magazine, 
 72-75 ; his leap into celebrity, 
 76 ; life in London, 77, 78 ; 
 acquaintance with Charles 
 Knight, 79 ; returns to West- 
 moreland, 81 ; contributions to 
 Blacku'ood's Magazine, 82, 90, 
 101 ; meeting with Carlyle, 83 ; 
 removal to Edinburgh, 85 ; con- 
 tributions to TaAt's Magazine, 
 90, 91, 101 ; publication of 
 Klosterheim, or the Masque, 92 ; 
 home life, 93, 110 ; family 
 bereavements, 94 ; life at Lass- 
 wade, 95-97 ; residence in 
 Glasgow, 98 ; description of his 
 daughters, 98 ; ill-health, 100 ; 
 legacies, 103 ; literary celebrity 
 in Edinburgh, 103 ; eccentrici- 
 ties, 104, 105 ; his conversa- 
 tional power, 106 ; descriptions 
 of, 107, 108, 111 ; nightly rambles 
 in Edinburgh, 109 ; connection 
 with Hoggs Instructor, 112, 
 113; first American edition of his 
 works, 114, 115 ; Hogg's Edin- 
 burgh edition, 115, 116 ; at 
 42 Lothian Street, Edinburgh, 
 116-121 ; his landladies, 117, 
 118 ; dealings and difficulties 
 with the press, 119-121 ; charac- 
 teristics, 121 n., 136, 137 ; 
 marriage of his daughters. 122 ; 
 
204 
 
 DE QUmCEY. 
 
 visits his eldest daughter in | 
 Ireland, 122 ; aversion to society, 
 
 124 ; supper-parties in Darna- 
 way Street, Edinburgh, 124, | 
 
 125 ; anecdote by an American | 
 visitor, 126 ; visit from Eev. 
 Francis Jacox, 126-128 ; charac- 
 ter as revealed in letters to his 
 daughters, 128-130 ; interest in 
 public events, 131 ; literary 
 'projects, 131 ; last illness, 132 ; 
 death and burial, 133 ; charac- 
 teristics of his -writings, 135- 
 158 ; his observations on him- 
 self, 136 ; love of paradox, 140 ; 
 traits of his intellect, 142 ; 
 humour of his genius, 145 ; lean- 
 ing towards the metaphysical, 
 147, 148 ; Druidic element, 149 ; 
 poetic imagination, 149 ; Mr. 
 Shadworth Hodgson's reminis- 
 cences, 150 ; style and language 
 in composition, 151-158 ; quota- 
 tion on the "elaborate" style, 
 153 ; classification and review of 
 writings, 159-200 ; his estimate 
 of Plato, 175 ; theological 
 papers, 175 ; his religious belief 
 and relations, 176-179 ; his 
 politics and patriotism, 179 ; 
 his antipathies, 180 ; contribu- 
 tions to economic science, 181 ; 
 his distinction between the 
 Literature of Knowledge and 
 the Literature of Power; 182- 
 185; his "impassioned prose," 
 192, 193 
 
 De Quincey, writings of — I. De- 
 scriptive, biographical, and his- 
 torical, 160-163; II. Specula- 
 tive, didactic, and critical, 
 171, 173-182 ; IIL Imaginative 
 writings and prose poetry, 185- 
 187 
 
 De Quincey, William (brother), 9, 
 14, 15 ; death of, 16 
 
 De Quincey, William (son), 94 
 
 "De Quincey Villa," 96 
 
 "De Quincey, The Genius of," 
 
 essay by Mr. Shadworth Hodg- 
 son, 150 
 
 Dell, Mr., the money-lender, 30, 
 31, 32, 34 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 127 
 
 Dream upon the Universe, contri- 
 buted to London Magazine, 73, 
 194 
 
 "Dream-Fugue," 196 
 
 Dreaming, 172 
 
 Dunbar, Professor, 87 
 
 Duncan, Thomas, K.S.A., 87 
 
 Edge worth. Miss, 127 
 
 Edinburgh, 56, 69, 82, 83-85, 89, 
 96 et seq., 128 ; De Quincey at 
 Great King Street, 92 ; at 42 
 Lothian Street, 95, 116 et seq. ; 
 supper - parties at Darnaway 
 Street, 124 ; De Quincey's 
 burial-place in, 133 
 
 Edinburgh edition of De Quincey's 
 works, 115, 116 
 
 Edinburgh in 1830-40, 86 
 
 Edinburgh Literary Gazette, 84 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 86 
 
 Eliot, George, 76 
 
 Elleray, 48-51, 56 
 
 "Elleray, Mr. Wilson of," 50 
 
 Emerson, 127 
 
 Encyclopcedia Britannica, articles 
 by De Quincey in, 92 
 
 England, Falsification of the 
 History of, 74, 172, 180 
 
 England, History of, projected by 
 De Quincey, 131 
 
 England, Short Tour in the Mid- 
 land Counties of, Thomas 
 Quincey's work, 2 
 
 " English Dictionaries," 73 
 
 English Mail-Coach, The, contri- 
 bution to Blackivood' s Magazine, 
 186, 194, 196 
 
 Errol, Countess of, 22 
 
 Essenes, The, contribution to Black- 
 wood's Magazine, 90, 159, 170 
 
 Eton, 19, 20, 32 
 
 Evans, Mrs., housekeeper at 
 Greenhay, 11 
 
IXDEX. 
 
 205 
 
 Falsification of English History, 
 74, 172, 180 
 
 "Farm, The," 4, 5 
 
 Faueit, Miss Helen, 102, 128 
 
 Ferrier, James F., metaphysician, 
 127 
 
 Ferrier, Miss, 88 
 
 Fiehls, Mr., 114 ; his anecdote 
 of De Quincey, 126 
 
 Findlay, Mr. J. R., 124 
 
 Friend, The, Coleridge's periodi- 
 cal, 47, 49, 69 
 
 Gentleman s Magazine, 2 
 
 George III., 19 
 
 Gillies, Mr. R. P. , 57 
 
 Glasgow, De Quincey's visits to, 
 98, 118 
 
 "Glory of Motion, The," 194-196 
 
 Godwin, De Quincey's introduc- 
 tion to, 43, 102 
 
 Goethe, De Quincey's article on, 
 74, 92, 175 
 
 Goethe Reflected in his Novel of 
 Wilhelni Meister, 173 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 173 
 
 Goodenough, Dr., of Christ Church, 
 39 
 
 Gordon, John Thomson, 88 
 
 Gordon, Mrs., daughter of Pro- 
 fessor Wilson, 83 
 
 Gordon, Watson, 87 
 
 Gough, Sir Hugh, 98 
 
 Grace, Mr., tutor to Lord West- 
 port, 19 
 
 Grasmere, 42, 47, 52 ; removal 
 from, 85 
 
 " Grasmeriensis Teutonizans," 72 
 
 Grassini, 40 
 
 Greece, The Revolution of, con- 
 tribution to Blackicood' s Maga- 
 zine, 90 
 
 " Greek Literature, Summary View '■ 
 of the History of," 166-170 \ 
 
 Greenhay, De Quincey's country | 
 house, 4, 6, 8-11, 14, 16 
 
 Greenhill, connection with Green- 
 hay, 4 
 
 Greta Hall, 41, 46, 49 
 
 Guide to the Lakes, 46 
 Guthrie, Dr., 87 
 
 Hamann, German author, 36 
 
 Hamilton, Thomas, author of 
 Cyril Thornton, 57 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 57, 87, 
 89, 103, 127, 142, 144 ; article 
 on, by De Quincey, contributed 
 to TiTAX, 113 
 
 Happy Life of a Parish Priest in 
 Sioeden, 194 
 
 Harman minor, at Bath Grammar 
 School, 17 
 
 Harvey, Sir George, R.S.A., 87 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 127 
 
 Hazlitt, 43, 71, 78, 153, 154 
 
 Herder, contribution to The 
 London Magazine, 73 
 
 Hessey, Mr., co- proprietor and 
 editor of The London Magazine, 
 70 et seq. 
 
 Hill, Mr. Matthew Davenport, 79, 
 81 
 
 Hill Burton, Mr., 88, 104, 124 ; 
 his account of De Quincey at 
 a dinner-party, 105, 106 
 
 Hippel, German author, 36 
 
 Historical - Criticcd Inquiry into 
 the Origin of the Rosicrucians 
 and Freemasons, contribution 
 to The London Magazine, 73 
 
 Hodgson, Mr. Shadworth, 181 ; 
 compares De Quincey with bard 
 Philomelus, 150 
 
 Hogg, Mr. James, 114 et seq., 131, 
 132 ; starting of his periodical, 
 112, 113 
 
 Hogg's Weekly Instructor, 112, 113 
 
 Homer and the Homeridce, con- 
 tribution to Black^oood's Maga- 
 zine, 101, 160 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 71, 78 
 
 Hoole, John, 18 
 
 Hope, Professor, 87 
 
 Household Wreck, contribution to 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 90 
 
 Howe, Earl, the famous Admiral, 19 
 
 Hume, David, 142, 175 
 
206 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Ireland, De Quincey's visits to, 
 21 et seq., 122 ; Act of Union 
 passed, 21 
 
 Irving, Edward, 74 
 
 Isle of Palms, poem by Professor 
 Wilson, 56 
 
 Ivory, Lord, 87 
 
 Jacox, Kev. Francis, his visit to 
 
 De Quincey, 126-128 
 Jameson, Professor, 87 
 " Janus, or the Edinburgh Literary 
 
 Almanac," 82 
 Jeffrey, Lord, 56, 86, 109, 182 
 Joan of Arc, contribution to Tait's 
 
 Magazine, 102, 186, 194 
 Johnson, Dr., 8, 18, 56, 140, 164, 
 
 182 
 Johnstone, Mrs., 88 
 Jones, Sir William, 18 
 Judas Iscariot, 161, 170, 172 
 
 Kant, 52, 61, 74, 82, 17-3, 174 
 Kant, Immaniiel, The Last Days 
 
 of, contribution to BlackwoocC s 
 
 Magazine, 82, 160 
 Keats, 70, 102 
 Keats, John, 173 
 Kendal, De Quincey at, 68 
 Kendal Chronicle, ^^ 
 Keswick, De Quincey's visit to, 42 
 King Lear, 184 
 Kingsley, 127 
 Klosterheim, 188 g^ seq. 
 Klosterheim, or the Masque, 92, 
 
 135, 186, 188 
 Knight, Mr. Charles, 75, 79 e^ seq., 
 
 104 
 Knight's Quarterly Magazine, 75, 
 
 79 
 
 Laing, David, 88 
 
 Lake District, De Quincey's visit 
 
 to, 45 et seq. 
 Lamb, Charles, 40, 43, 70, 72, 77, 
 
 78, 151, 153 et seq., 160 
 Lamb, Charles, 160, 161 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 99 
 Ijangiiage, 172, 181 
 
 ! Laocoon, Lessing's, contribution 
 to Blackwood's Magazine, 82 
 
 Lasswade, 95, 97 et seq., 109 et 
 seq., 116, 119 et seq., 126, 144 
 
 "Lasswade, The Cottage at," 96 
 
 Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick, 88 
 
 Lawson, Mr., Headmaster of Man- 
 chester G-rammar School, 25-27 
 
 Laxton, De Quincey at, 23-25 
 
 Lessing, biographic sketch, 160- 
 162 
 
 Letters to a Young Man lohose 
 Education has been neglected, 
 contribution to London Maga- 
 zine, 72, 73, 172, 181 
 
 Levana and Our Ladies of Sorroiv, 
 \ 186, 196, 197 
 ; Lewes, Mr. G. H., 127 
 
 Lisbon, De Quincey's father at, 
 6, 9 
 
 Liverpool, De Quincey at, 36, 42 
 
 Llandaif, Bishop of, 47 
 
 Lloyd, Charles, 47, 48, 50 
 
 Locke, 142 
 
 Lockhart, John Gibson, 57, 69, 82 
 
 Logic of Political Economy, 102, 
 135, 'l72, 181 
 
 London, De Quincey's first visit to, 
 20 ; his life.there, 30 et seq., 56 ; 
 incident of the bank draft, 80, 
 104 
 
 London Magazine, 70, 71, 74 et 
 seq., 193 
 
 Louth (Lincolnshire), Grammar 
 School of, 9 
 
 Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, 
 77 
 
 Lushington, Professor E. L., 98, 
 119 
 
 Macaulay, 75, 80, 133, 138 
 Macbeth, quotation from, 148 
 Mackay, Mr., actor, 87 
 Maclaren, Mr. Charles, editor of 
 
 the Scotsman, 88 
 M'Crie, Rev. Dr. Thomas, 87 
 Manchester, 3-10, 16 ; Grammar 
 
 School at, 25, 35 
 Martineau, Miss, 126 
 
INDEX. 
 
 207 
 
 "Masque, The," 190, 191 
 
 IMassey, Lord and Lady, 23 
 
 Mater LachnjDiarum, 197, 198 
 
 Mater Suspiriorum, 198 
 
 Mater Tenebranim, 200 
 I Maurice, F. D., 127 
 I Memorial Chronology on a neiv 
 ' and more apprehensible system, 
 
 I 172, 178 
 
 Mill, James, 142 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 181 
 
 Miliier, Joseph, 18 
 
 31instrel (Beattie's), 3 
 
 Minto, Professor, 158 
 I Mitford, Miss, De Quincey's letter 
 ! to, 97 et seq. 
 
 i Moder7i Superstition, contribution 
 ' to Blackwood's Magazine, 90 
 
 ■ Moir, David Macbeth, 88 
 
 Moir, George, 87 
 
 Moncreitf, Lord, 87 
 
 Monro tertius, 87 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 7 
 
 Montgomery, Mr. James, 72 
 
 More, Hannah, 7, 18, 23, 40, 56 
 
 Morehead, Rev. Robert, 87 
 
 Morgan, Mr., Headmaster of Bath 
 Grammar School, 16, 17 
 
 Mousabines, 125 
 
 Murder considered as one of the 
 Fine Arts, contribution io Black- 
 wood's Magazine, 82, 145, 186 
 
 Murray, Mr., manager of Edin- 
 burgh theatre, 87 
 
 Murray, Sir John Archibald, 87 
 
 "Nab, The," Margaret Simpson's 
 home before marriage with De 
 Quincey, 61 
 
 Nairne, Lady, 88 
 
 Napier, Macvey, 87, 92 
 
 Nether Stowey, 41 
 
 Newman, Father, 156 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, reference to his 
 Principia, 184 
 
 Nichol, Professor J. P., 98 
 
 Nodes Amhrosiance, 76 
 
 North British Revieio, 113 
 
 North, Christopher, 48, 49, 86, 89 
 
 Notes from the Pocket-Book of a 
 late Ojnum-Eater, contribution 
 to London Magazine, 73 
 
 "On the Knocking at the Gate in 
 
 Macbeth," 73, 173 
 " Opium-Eater, The," 72, 75, 76, 
 
 83, 188 
 Othello, 184 
 Oxford, De Quincey goes to, 34 ; 
 
 his life at, 35 ; studies, 36 ; 
 
 close of his residence at, 39, 40 
 Oxford Street, Ann of, 32, 64 
 
 Page, Mr., publisher of De Quincey's 
 
 early letters, 33, 67, 128, 179 
 Paradise Lost, Bentley's edition, 
 
 18 
 "Pariah," De Quincey's freqiient 
 
 use of the term, 13, 14, 146, 199 
 Paulina, Lady, 189 et seq. 
 Penney, Miss Jane, 50, 56 
 Penson, Colonel Thomas (De 
 
 Quincey's uncle), 29, 54 
 Penson, Miss, married to Thomas 
 
 Quincey, 3 
 Phsedrus, Fables of, quotation 
 
 from the second book, 13 
 Philomelus, De Quincey compared 
 
 with, 150 
 Pillans, Professor, 87 
 "Pink," nickname of Richard De 
 
 Quincey, 15, 16, 18 
 Political Parties of Modern Eng- 
 land, 179 
 Polton, 96, 97 
 Poole, John, 71 
 Pop)e, De Quincey's article in 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, 92 
 Praed, 75 
 
 Presence of Mind, 172 
 Principia, reference to Sir Isaac 
 
 Newton's, 184 
 Priory, The, house of De Quincey's 
 
 mother at Chester, 28, 29, 34 
 Procter, Bryan Waller, 71 
 Prolegomena to all Future Systems 
 
 of Political Economy, 65, 66 
 Pyment, Mr., 30 
 
208 
 
 DE QUmCEY. 
 
 Quarterly Review^ 66, 82 
 Quincey, origin of the name, 1, et 
 
 seq. 
 Quincey, Thomas (father of De 
 
 Quincey), 2 ; death of, 6 
 
 Ramsay, Dean, 87 
 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 71 
 Rhetoric, 90, 163, 172, 181 
 Rhydal Mount, Wordsworth's 
 
 residence, 46, 85 
 Rhydal Nab, 77, 81 
 Ricardo, 65, 104 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 36, 193 et seq. 
 Rigby, Miss, 125 
 Robert of Gloucester, his Metrical 
 
 Chronicle, 20 
 Robertson, Patrick, 87 
 Rome, Church of, 176, 177 
 Roscoe, William, 27 
 Rosicrucian Inquiry, 74 
 Ruffini, 121 
 Russell, Mr. Alexander, editor of 
 
 The Scotsman, 124 
 Rutherfurd, Lord, 87 
 
 S. H., the Rev., 9, 12, 16 
 St. Patrick, Knights of, 21 
 Schiller, article in Encyclopcedia 
 
 Britannica, 92, 160 
 Schwartzburg, student with De 
 
 Quincey at Oxford, 35, 36 
 Scotsman, The, 88, 124 
 Scott, David, 87, 125 
 Scott, Mr. John, editor of London 
 
 Magazine, 70 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 56, 86, 89 
 Shakespeare, article in Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica, 92 
 Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, 88 
 Shdley, Percy Bysshe, 102, 160 
 Siddons, Mrs., 56, 125 
 Simpson, Margaret, wife of De 
 
 Quincey, 61 ; death of, 94 
 Sligo, Marquis of, 19, 23, 32 
 Smith, Colonel Baird, 122 
 Southev, 41, 42, 46 et seq., 67, 
 
 80, 91 
 Spalding, Professor, 88 
 
 Spencer, Misses, 18, 19 
 
 Spencer, Mr., Master at Winkfield 
 
 School, 18 
 Stark, Miss, 117, 119, 120 et seq. 
 Stirling, Mrs., 125 
 Suicide, 172 
 Syme, Professor, 87 
 
 Tail's Magazine, De Quincey's 
 
 contributions to, 90, 91, 92, 
 
 101, 102, 113 
 Talfourd, Sir Thomas, 78 
 Taylor, Isaac, 127 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 37, 142 
 Taylor, Mr., co - proprietor and 
 
 editor of the London Magazine^ 
 
 70 et seq. 
 Temperance Movements, 174 
 Thackeray, 127, 158 
 Theory of Greek Tragedy, 181 
 Thomson, quotation from the 
 
 Castle of Indolence, 150 
 Thomson, Thomas, 88 
 Ticknor and Fields, Messrs., 114 
 Titan {Hogg's Instructor), 113 
 Townend, 77 
 
 Union Act, passing of, 21 
 Universcd History on a Cosmo- 
 political Plan, contribution to 
 London Magazine, 74, 174 
 
 Vico, Giovanni Battista, 174 
 
 Wainwright, Thomas Griffith, 71, 
 
 78 
 Wales, De Quincey's rambles in, 
 
 29 
 Walking Stewart, 73 
 Wardlaw, Lady, 88 
 Watson, Bishop, 47, 48, 50 
 Watson, Miss, 23 
 " Weathercock, Janus, " Wain- 
 
 wright's nom de plume, 71 
 Wellesley, Marquis, 160, 162 
 Welsh, Professor, 87 
 Westhay, 40 
 
 Westmoreland, 67, 80, 81, 84 
 Westmoreland Gazette, &Q et seq. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 209 
 
 Westport, Lord, 19 et seq. 
 
 Wilhebii Meister, Carlyle's trans- 
 lation of, 73, 74, 83 ; Dc 
 Quincey's paper on, 162, 173 
 
 Wilson, Professor (C'hristoi)lier 
 North), 48 ct seq., 56, 57, 69, 
 81 et seq., 92, 103, 123, 127 ; 
 gentleman - commoner at Mag- 
 dalen College, Oxford. 48 ; his 
 Nodes Amhrosiame, 76 ; death 
 of, 124 ; statue of, 134 
 
 Wilsuii, Professor, contribntion 
 to Titan, 113, 160 
 
 Wilson, Mrs., 117 
 
 Winchester, Earls of, 1 
 
 Winkfield, 18, 25, 39 
 
 Worcester College, Oxford, 34, 
 
 85, 39 
 Wordsworth, 28, 37, 38, 43 et seq., 
 
 55, 67, 90, 91, 179, 182; his 
 
 cottage at Grasmere, 42 ; re- 
 j miniscences of, 161 
 ' Wordsworth, Dorothy, 42, 44, 52, 
 
 85 
 Wordsworth, Kate, 52 
 Wordsworth, Thomas, son of the 
 
 poet, 55 
 Wyudham, Maximilian, 188 etseq. 
 
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