:s MINIATURE SERIES 
 
 F GREAT WRITERS 
 
 DE QUINCEY 
 
 H. S. SALT
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MNIVERSn OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 DE QUINCEY
 
 Miniature Series of Great Writers 
 
 Edited by G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. 
 
 Pott 8vo, Illustrated, to be had in cloth 
 or limp leather. 
 
 COLERIDGE. ByRiCHARDGARNETT,C.B.,LL.D. 
 SHAKESPEARE. By ALFRED EWEN. 
 CHAUCER. By REV. W. TUCKWELL, M.A. 
 DE QUINCEY. By HENRY S. SALT. 
 
 In Preparation. 
 
 JOHNSON. By JOHN DENNIS. 
 BROWNING. By SIR F. T. MARZIALS, C.B. 
 MILTON. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. By J. H. W. LAING, M.D. 
 GOLDSMITH. By ERNEST LANG BUCKLAND, 
 
 M.A. 
 
 MACAULAY. By RICHARD GARNETT.C.B., Litt.D. 
 XENOPHON. By E. C. MARCHANT, M.A. 
 HORACE. By REV. W. TUCKWELL. 
 DICKENS. By W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE. 
 DEFOE. By A. WHERRY. 
 
 LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS.
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 From a portrait taken about 1850.
 
 Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers 
 
 DE OUINCEY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY S. SALT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS 
 1904
 
 CHISWICK 1'KKSS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCKRY LANK, LONDON.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE 9 
 
 DE QUINCEY'S LIFE n 
 
 His WORKS 36 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WRITINGS . . 62 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER . 86 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST 107 
 
 INDF.X . . .... ... no
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE 
 PAGE 
 
 DE QUINCEY. FROM A PORTRAIT TAKEN 
 ABOUT 1850 Frontispiece 
 
 DE QUINCEY, cetat. 17 16 
 
 GRASMERE 28 
 
 FACSIMILE OF PART OF DE QUINCEY'S 
 
 ARTICLE ON COLERIDGE .... 48 
 
 DE QUINCEY'S COTTAGE AT GRASMERE 
 
 (DOVE COTTAGE) IOQ
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT is the purpose of this little book subject 
 to the requirements of the series of which it 
 forms a part to present the chief features of 
 De Quincey's character in a more harmonious, 
 more sympathetic, and therefore more human 
 aspect than that in which he is commonly re- 
 garded. For though his mastery as a writer has 
 long been fully acknowledged, there is still, it 
 would seem, a widespread misunderstanding of 
 him as a man. It is the misfortune of some 
 authors, or perhaps in some measure their fault, 
 that undue prominence is given to one special 
 incident in their lives; as, for example, in Tho- 
 reau's case, where his two-year sojourn at Walden 
 has been so magnified in some readers' minds 
 that they see him merely as " the hermit." In 
 like manner the exaggerated idea of De Quincey 
 as always and everywhere " the opium-eater " 
 a title of which, it must be admitted, he himself 
 made excessive use for literary purposes has 
 warped the public view of him, by emphasizing 
 too strongly one particular element of weakness, 
 and at the same time concealing or minimizing 
 the other elements of strength. 
 
 While, therefore, we must fully recognize the 
 9
 
 io PREFACE 
 
 part which opium played in De Quincey's life, 
 and those consequent failings which he himself 
 so unsparingly revealed, we must also note that 
 he was much more than an opium-eater that 
 his opium-eating, in fact, was merely an incidental 
 blemish in a long and honourable career. " I 
 may affirm," he wrote, " 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." Nor was this all; for what 
 is especially praiseworthy in De Quincey, yet 
 has not received one half of its due meed of 
 praise, is that together with his high gift of 
 imagination, great literary powers, and deep in- 
 sight into that mystic part of man's nature which 
 few other writers have fathomed, he was endowed 
 with most tender human sympathies and a sensi- 
 bility in some respects far in advance, not only 
 of his own age, but of that in which we now 
 make bold to pass our confident judgments on 
 him, nearly half-a-century after his death. 
 
 I have incorporated in the third chapter the 
 substance of an article entitled " Some Thoughts 
 on De Quincey " which I published nearly twenty 
 years ago. 
 
 H. S. S,
 
 DE QUINCEY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 DE QUINCEY'S LIFE 
 
 IT has been said by De Quincey himself of 
 the chronological method of biography that 
 "one is so certain of the man's having been 
 born, also of his having died, that it is dismal to 
 be under the necessity of reading it." But in his 
 own case such assurances are perhaps not alto- 
 gether unneeded, for it might otherwise be 
 doubted whether so strange a personality had 
 not come, as Shelley was fabled to have come, 
 from another planet from whatever star is the 
 birthplace of profound reverie and meditation. 
 Let it be stated, therefore, that Thomas De 
 Quincey, the master-dreamer of the nineteenth 
 century, was born prosaic fact at Manchester, 
 on August i5th, 1785, the fifth child 1 of a well- 
 to-do merchant who traced his ancestry to the 
 Normans. Of his parents it is enough to say 
 this, that the father was a man of high integrity 
 
 1 Some doubt has been thrown on the exact order of 
 succession. There were eight children in all. 
 ii
 
 12 DE QUINCEY 
 
 and cultured taste; the mother (whose maiden 
 name was Penson) an intellectual woman of sin- 
 cere but unsympathetic character, evangelical, 
 conscientious, respected, and unbeloved. 
 
 It was not, however, in Manchester itself, but 
 in its near neighbourhood, that De Quincey spent 
 his childhood, first in a rustic dwelling called 
 " The Farm," and then at " Greenhay," a country 
 house built by his father, and at that time still 
 outside the spreading circle of the city. 1 Here, 
 in one or the other of these quiet retreats, he 
 felt the earliest impressions of the glory of life 
 and the pathos of life's withdrawal that ever- 
 lasting contrast which has been so marvellously 
 depicted by him. 2 " Living in the country," he 
 says, " I was naturally first laid hold of by rural 
 appearances or incidents. The very earliest feel- 
 ings that I recall of a powerful character were 
 connected with some clusters of crocuses in the 
 garden. Next I felt a passion of grief in a pro- 
 found degree for the death of a beautiful bird, a 
 kingfisher, which had been taken up in the garden 
 with a broken wing. That occurred before I was 
 two years of age. Next I felt, no grief at all, but 
 awe the most enduring, and a dawning sense of 
 the infinite, which brooded over me more or less 
 after that time." Let the student of De Quincey 
 mark well that " dawning sense of the infinite," 
 for therein lies the clue to a full understanding 
 of his genius and writings. 
 
 1 The statement made in several biographies, and in 
 his epitaph, that he was born at Greenhay, is an error. 
 3 See pp. 63, 64.
 
 HIS LIFE 13 
 
 Very impressive are the glimpses which are 
 given us into this early home, where he, "the 
 shyest of children," was growing up " with three 
 innocent little sisters for playmates," while their 
 father's absence abroad, under the impending 
 doom of consumption, dimly overshadowed the 
 household, and quickened the sensibilities of 
 children who were "constitutionally touched with 
 pensiveness." The exact dates of the " Infant 
 Experiences " recorded in his Autobiography are 
 open to some doubt; not so the fact that the 
 dreaming tendency was alive in him at an extra- 
 ordinarily tender age, together with that pathetic 
 sense of human suffering under oppression, which 
 to most children is a word of little meaning. " If 
 there was one thing in this world," he says, in 
 reference to some rumoured ill-treatment of a 
 sister who died in infancy, "from which, more 
 than any other, nature had forced me to revolt, 
 it was brutality and violence," a saying amply 
 verified in the whole story of his life. With his 
 chapter on " The Affliction of Childhood," in 
 which is related the death of his eldest sister, 
 Elizabeth, to whom he was devotedly attached, 
 and the wondrous trance which befell him as he 
 stood by her body under the pomp of a high 
 summer noon, every student of his writings is 
 familiar; as also with the scarcely less memor- 
 able description of his father's midnight home- 
 coming that picture of " the sudden emerging 
 of horses' heads from the deep gloom of the 
 shady lane," and the "mass of white pillow 
 against which the dying patient was reclining."
 
 14 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Then the scene shifts from these mystic fore- 
 bodings to the hard actualities of life. After the 
 death of their father, the charge of the children 
 devolved upon four guardians, and at the age of 
 eight the dreamy sensitive boy was sent to a 
 day-school in Salford in company with an elder 
 brother, William, who had hitherto proved so 
 unmanageable that, in order to preserve the quiet 
 of Greenhay, he had been relegated to the more 
 congenial atmosphere of a public school. In a 
 chapter on his " Introduction to the World of 
 Strife," De Quincey has left us an inimitable 
 picture of the turmoil into which he was plunged 
 by the caprices of this pugilistic scapegrace, 
 whose "genius for mischief amounted to inspira- 
 tion," and of how he bore an unwilling part in a 
 long-protracted warfare which they waged against 
 the boys of a neighbouring factory, a contest 
 which was none the less oppressive to the spirits 
 of the timid child because he had to uphold the 
 character of a major-general. At last, with the 
 sale of GrSenhay in 1796, and the break-up of 
 the family home, this irksome military service 
 came to an end, and he was sent, together with 
 his younger brother, " Pink," to Bath Grammar 
 School, where his remarkable talents, and sur- 
 prisingly early grasp of the Greek and Latin 
 languages, soon began to assert themselves. But 
 this, again, was a cause of unexpected trouble 
 to him, for the elder boys, resenting his prowess 
 in Latin verses, admonished him, under the 
 threat of " annihilation," to " write worse for the 
 future," thus involving in new disquietude one
 
 HIS LIFE 15 
 
 to whom " peace was the clamorous necessity of 
 his nature." 
 
 What is said from time to time of some early- 
 ripened genius, that he was "born a philosopher," 
 is scarcely an exaggeration in De Quincey's case ; 
 and what is even rarer, his was a precocity almost 
 wholly free from priggishness. His childhood 
 over, we see him for a period at Bath; then for 
 a year at another school at Winkfield, in Wilt- 
 shire; next, in the summer of 1800, spending a 
 long holiday in Ireland with his young friend 
 Lord Westport, at a time when the passing of 
 the Act of Union was causing a great stir in. 
 Irish society and then he suddenly emerges 
 on us, from the state of pupilage, a full-blown 
 scholar, thinker, and conversationist. "That 
 boy," said one of his teachers, " could harangue 
 an Athenian mob, better than you or I could 
 address an English one." "In me," says De 
 Quincey himself, "though naturally the shyest 
 of human beings, intense commerce with men 
 of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, 
 had availed to dissipate all arrears of mauvaise 
 honte; I could talk upon innumerable subjects"; 
 and accordingly we find him, when visiting his 
 mother's friend, Lady Carbery, in his sixteenth 
 year, holding learned dissertations with her on 
 all sorts of topics, from Herodotus to theology. 
 
 No wonder, then, that a youth thus possessed 
 of a passion for speculating " upon great intel- 
 lectual problems" was weary of school tasks 
 which had become tedious and childish to him, 
 and of what he calls " the odious spectacle of
 
 i6 DE QUINCEY 
 
 schoolboy society," or that he resented his 
 guardians' decision to send him (with an eye to 
 one of the school " Exhibitions ") to Manchester 
 Grammar School, where he was entered in 1800 
 himself a no less accomplished Grecian than 
 the headmaster. It was this that led to what he 
 calls the "fatal error" of his life, and made him 
 ever after regard the very name of "guardian" 
 with abhorrence; for early one morning in July, 
 1802, he carried into effect a carefully-laid plan 
 and absconded from Manchester, thus throwing 
 himself, while still in his seventeenth year, "a 
 hopeless vagrant upon the earth." 
 
 By the terms of his father's will, the boy was 
 entitled, on coming of age, to an income of ^150 
 a year; but how, as a fugitive and rebel, was he 
 to tide over the four remaining years of his 
 minority? Through the good offices of his uncle, 
 Colonel Penson, it was arranged that he should 
 for the present be free to roam as he willed, a 
 guinea a week being allowed him; under which 
 strange compromise he instinctively steered his 
 course for the mountains of North Wales, where 
 during four summer months he lived a vagabond 
 life, often sleeping in the open air, until con- 
 fronted by the approach of winter. Then sud- 
 denly, even at the cost of forfeiting his modest 
 weekly allowance, he came to " a fierce resolu- 
 tion " to throw himself into the unknown laby- 
 rinth of London. 
 
 There followed that mysterious episode in De 
 Quincey's life where his experiences, as narrated 
 in his "Confessions," appear like the phantas-
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 JEtat. 17.
 
 HIS LIFE 17 
 
 magoria of a dream, yet were in real fact under- 
 gone by him the sojourn of the friendless youth 
 in London; the long waiting on the Jewish 
 moneylenders; the delays, disappointments and 
 privations; the nightly refuge in the empty house 
 in Greek Street, with one starveling child as a 
 companion; the weary pacing of the endless miles 
 of streets; the friendship with the " pariah " Ann, 
 immortalized by him in one of his most tenderly 
 beautiful passages; and then the sudden unex- 
 plained reconciliation and return to his friends. 1 
 If the reason be asked of his submission to these 
 hardships when a word spoken might have freed 
 him, we can but point to that subtle and elusive 
 element in his nature, which, itself unaccount- 
 able, is our only means of accounting for many 
 of his actions. It is clear, however, that this 
 period of wandering, in Wales first, and then in 
 London, with all that the contrast implied for, 
 like other imaginative thinkers, he was powerfully 
 drawn in two seemingly diverse directions, by the 
 spell of the wild mountains on the one hand, and 
 by the spell of the crowded city on the other 
 had a most important formative effect upon his 
 character. It was his sojourn in the wilderness, 
 his "novitiate," his apprenticeship in serious 
 thought, and it "peopled his mind with memorials 
 of human sorrow and strife too profound to pass 
 away for years." 
 
 At the end of 1803, having now arrived at an 
 
 1 As the incidents referred to are fully described in 
 the "Confessions of an Opium-Eater," summarized in 
 Chapter IV, they are but briefly mentioned at this point.
 
 i8 DE QUINCEY 
 
 understanding with his relatives, De Quincey 
 entered his name at Worcester College, Oxford. 
 He came there, he tells us, " in solitary self-de- 
 pendence," and it was as a solitary retiring spirit 
 that hewas known to his fellow-students (by whom 
 his "fervent youth" was little suspected), one who 
 dressed with negligence and avoided social gather- 
 ings, yet was even then rumoured to be a master 
 of profound and multifarious learning. His 
 passion for reading was in truth, in his own words, 
 so " absolutely endless " that all else was sacri- 
 ficed to it; and his studies embraced not only 
 the Greek and Latin languages, but also a wide 
 field of English literature and German meta- 
 physics. He could not enter a great library with- 
 out pain at heart, to think that to him the vast 
 bulk of such treasures must perforce remain un- 
 read. It was reasonable to suppose that so in- 
 satiable a scholar would reap the highest honours 
 that his university had to confer. What actually 
 happened, when the crisis came, was that De 
 Quincey, true to his elusive instinct, after aston- 
 ishing the examiners by his performances in Latin, 
 unaccountably absented himself from the sub- 
 sequent viva voce in Greek, and once again 
 vanished into space. This was in 1807, but 
 his name remained on the College books till 
 1810. 
 
 And now there arose for De Quincey a far 
 stronger and more lasting influence than that of 
 Oxford his twenty years' association with Gras- 
 mere and the English Lakes. Even from child- 
 hood the thought of the Lake District had been
 
 HIS LIFE 19 
 
 to him " a secret fascination," the very names of 
 the hills and dales having a magic for his ear; 
 and when to this attraction was added the spell 
 of Wordsworth's poetry, of which he was one of 
 the very earliest readers, he was irresistibly drawn 
 towards a place which had thus a double message 
 for him. Twice during his residence at Oxford 
 he had started on pilgrimage to Grasmere, having 
 received a kindly invitation from Wordsworth, 
 and twice his heart had failed him and he had 
 turned back from the very threshold of the valley; 
 but at last, in 1807, he found himself in the 
 poet's presence and became a frequent guest in 
 the family. A " dim presentiment," too, he had 
 of a still closer connection with Grasmere; and 
 this was fulfilled two years later, when, the Words- 
 worths having moved to another house, he 
 succeeded them, with Dorothy Wordsworth's 
 assistance, in Dove Cottage, which thenceforth 
 remained to him the home and centre of his 
 dearest hopes and most sacred recollections. It 
 should be pointed out that De Quincey was a 
 " Lakist " in a truer sense by a deeper and more 
 instinctive attachment than any of the so-called 
 Lake poets, excepting Wordsworth himself. 
 
 Since coming of age in 1806, De Quincey had 
 been in no want of funds, and he had used the 
 ampler means now at his disposal (it is surmised 
 that he had converted his annuity into ready 
 money) for spending considerable time in 
 London, Bath, Bristol, and elsewhere, and enjoy- 
 ing the acquaintance of literary men of mark, 
 such as Coleridge, Lamb, Godwin, Talfourd, and
 
 20 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Hazlitt. In the Lake District his circle of friends 
 included not only Wordsworth and Coleridge, to 
 the latter of whom he had given substantial proof 
 of his regard in the form of a handsome gift of 
 money, but also Southey, Charles Lloyd, and 
 John Wilson ("Christopher North"), who had 
 been his contemporary, though then unknown to 
 him, at Oxford, and was now to be his most 
 intimate companion. Of children he was always 
 a lover; and the young Wordsworths were as 
 devotedly attached to him as he to them. He 
 has recorded how deeply he was affected by the 
 death of little Kate Wordsworth in 1812. 
 
 The life among the mountains was, of all lives, 
 the most congenial to his tastes. Immersed in 
 his books, which filled and over-filled his cottage, 
 he read deeply and more deeply in various 
 branches of literature, interrupting his studies at 
 times by expeditions with Wilson or the Words- 
 worths to other parts of the district, or in solitary 
 nocturnal rambles (for he was an indefatigable 
 walker) through the silent glens, where he loved 
 " to trace the course of the evening through its 
 household hieroglyphics" in the window-lights 
 of remote dwellings, or to hear church clocks 
 proclaiming the hours of the night " under the 
 brows of mighty hills." A still more powerful tie 
 was to bind him to Grasmere in 1816, when he 
 married Margaret Simpson, a girl of eighteen, the 
 daughter of a neighbouring dalesman. She ap- 
 pears to have possessed, in a remarkable degree, 
 that gracious beauty which is characteristic of the 
 women of Lakeland, and to have been no less to
 
 HIS LIFE 21 
 
 De Quincey than what he calls her, in a pathetic 
 retrospect, an " angel of life." 
 
 But while we picture him in this his " year of 
 brilliant water," at the height of his intellectual 
 powers, and living the philosophic life amid the 
 most sympathetic surroundings, we must also 
 look back a few years in order to realize what 
 strong counteracting influence had been building 
 itself up side by side with his happiness, and 
 laying a remorseless grasp on his mind. It was 
 during his Oxford days, under stress of severe 
 neuralgia, that he had first " tampered with 
 opium"; and though he was not for some years 
 a victim to the habit, he continued to use the 
 drug, partly because it afforded him relief from a 
 painful ulceration of the stomach, the result, it 
 is supposed, of his privations in London, and 
 partly because it brought a serener ecstasy, an 
 "abyss of divine enjoyment," to those day-dreams 
 and reveries to which from childhood he ha<d been 
 addicted. Then, by degrees, the penalty had to 
 be paid in that paralysis of will, terrific dream- 
 imagery, and other morbid symptoms so luridly 
 pictured in his "Confessions." We are not to 
 regard him as wholly or continuously disabled by 
 this curse; what he lost was not the use of his 
 higher faculties which indeed were in some ways 
 rendered still more poignant and vivid but the 
 assured, equable, and unbroken use of them ; he 
 had conjured up a power which enriched him and 
 impoverished him at the same time. " Opium," 
 he remarks, in commenting on the parallel case 
 of Coleridge, " gives and takes away. It defeats
 
 22 DE QUINCEY 
 
 the steady habit of exertion ; but it creates spasms 
 of irregular exertion. It ruins the natural power 
 of life; but it developes preternatural paroxysms 
 of intermitting power." Thenceforth, in all his 
 doings, he had to reckon with this inexorable 
 fact. 
 
 Yet it was out of this very discomfiture that he 
 snatched his greatest triumph. After several years 
 of marriage, with children growing up around him, 
 his patrimony exhausted, and the opium-habit 
 unsubdued, it became pressing that he should 
 earn money by his pen. At first it was to 
 journalism that he turned, and in 1819 we find 
 him installed at Kendal as editor of the Tory 
 local paper, the "Westmorland Gazette"; then, 
 two years later, he betook himself to London and, 
 by Talfourd's introduction, joined the staff of the 
 leading periodical of that day, the " London 
 Magazine," where, in September and October, 
 1821, appeared two memorable articles "The 
 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." 
 
 The immediate and signal success of De 
 Quincey's self-revelations, which were republished 
 in the form of a small volume in 1822, determined 
 the whole future course of his life, and gave him, 
 in his character of " The English Opium-Eater," 
 a free entry into the foremost literary journals 
 and society of men of letters. For three years he 
 was himself a contributor to the " London Maga- 
 zine," and on friendly terms with the able band of 
 writers whom the publishers had gathered around 
 them, notably with Lamb, Hazlitt, and Thomas 
 Hood, who was acting as sub-editor. And now.
 
 HIS LIFE 23 
 
 at this climax in his career, it may be well if we 
 pause to consider what manner of man he seemed, 
 who was beginning to be spoken of by critics and 
 readers as a new and shining light in literature. 
 De Quincey was short in stature and insigni- 
 ficant in appearance ("I have myself a mean 
 personal appearance," he wrote, " and I love men 
 of mean appearance "), and it was not until he 
 was launched into speech that his rare nature 
 made itself felt; his gentleness, humility, and 
 extreme deference of manner might at first have 
 suggested that he was less qualified to talk than 
 to listen. But his voice all accounts are at one 
 in describing that as something wholly out of the 
 common ; it was so silvery, spiritual, and winning. 
 " His voice was extraordinary," says one who 
 knew him, "it came as if from dreamland; but 
 it was the most musical and impressive of voices." 1 
 Nor was there any doubt as to the potent charm 
 of his conversation among those privileged to hear 
 it; and it was not always to be heard. Here is 
 Hood's account: 
 
 When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call 
 on Mr. De Quincey, and I have found him at home, 
 quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of 
 literature in a storm, flooding all the floor, the 
 tables ; billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging 
 open on such occasions I have willingly listened 
 by the hour, whilst the philosopher, standing with 
 his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be 
 less speaking than reading from " a handwriting on 
 the wall." 
 
 1 "Memoirs of a Literary Veteran," by R. F. Gillies.
 
 24 DE QUINCEY 
 
 " I had formed to myself the idea," says 
 Richard Woodhouse, another member of the 
 " London Magazine " circle, " of a tall, thin, pale, 
 gentlemanly-looking, courtier-like man; but I 
 met a short sallow-looking person of a very 
 peculiar cast of countenance, and apparently 
 much an invalid. His demeanour was very gentle, 
 modest, and unassuming; and his conversation 
 fully came up to the idea I had formed of what 
 would be that of the writer of those articles." 
 
 In De Quincey, as in Shelley, there was some- 
 thing of "the eternal child"; something, too, of 
 the child's diffidence and helplessness in worldly 
 matters and things remote from the intellectual 
 life in which he had his being. Carlyle's picture 
 of him is worth quoting, of course with the 
 necessary reservation for the Carlylean gall: 
 
 He was a pretty little creature, full of wire-drawn 
 ingenuities ; bankrupt enthusiasms, bankrupt pride ; 
 with the finest silver-toned low voice, and most 
 elaborate gently-winding courtesies and ingenuities 
 in conversation. You would have taken him, by 
 candlelight, for the beautifullest little Child; blue- 
 eyed, blonde-haired, sparkling face had there not 
 been something too which said, " Eccovi, this Child 
 has been in Hell." 
 
 This daemonic, inscrutable aspect of De 
 Quincey, indicated by Carlyle's remark, was the 
 outward sign of the profound intellectual abstrac- 
 tion in which he lived so much of his life. He 
 was not, indeed, as other men are; for whereas 
 they are concerned mostly with the world of sense, 
 the world which for him had the greater interest
 
 HIS LIFE 25 
 
 and reality was the world of ideas. In particular, 
 the dreaming faculty was, as we have seen, innate 
 in him; it was not the product of opium-eating, 
 though it was quickened and heightened by 
 opium to an altogether abnormal and morbid 
 degree; and that it was consciously fostered and 
 developed by him is apparent from the avowed 
 object of his greatest work " to reveal something 
 of the grandeur which belongs potentially to 
 human dreams." If it be remembered, then, that 
 he regarded "the sense of sympathy with the 
 invisible " (sensus infiniti] as " the great test of 
 man's grandeur," and that, as he points out, the 
 faculty of dreaming "is the one great tube through 
 which man communicates with the shadowy," we 
 shall the better understand that however wide the 
 range of his learning, however keen his logic and 
 trenchant his humour and in his case the 
 imaginative and the logical qualities were never 
 far apart he was primarily a dreamer of dreams, 
 and that this was the cause of the strange aloof- 
 ness and self-absorption that were noticeable in 
 his manner. 
 
 These peculiarities on De Quincey's part may 
 in some measure explain his gradual estrange- 
 ment from Wordsworth; while he, on the other 
 side, had been so repelled by a certain hardness 
 and intellectual arrogance in Wordsworth's char- 
 acter, that, though still remaining a profound 
 admirer of his poetic genius, he despaired of 
 any "equal friendship" between them. 1 De 
 
 1 Another and more potent cause of disunion was the 
 neglect with which the Wordsworths (Dorothy excepted)
 
 26 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Quincey's relation to the respectabilities of 
 Grasmere was not unlike that of Thoreau to 
 the respectabilities of Concord the attitude of 
 a detached and amused observer and it may 
 be guessed that his avowed shortcomings in 
 moral enthusiasm and practical enterprise must 
 have caused him to be looked upon with some 
 misgiving as a wolf in the Wordsworthian fold. 
 "At my time of life," he confessed (six and 
 thirty years), "it cannot be supposed that I 
 have much energy to spare; and therefore let 
 no man expect to frighten me, by a few hard 
 words, into embarking any part of it upon des- 
 perate adventures of morality." This must have 
 been a hard saying for Grasmere to read ; yet De 
 Quincey, as we shall see, was very far from being 
 a mere lotus-eater or indifferentist ; on the con- 
 trary, his benevolence was one of the most 
 marked features of his character, and he was 
 much ahead of contemporary thought in those 
 humane sympathies enlarged and deepened by 
 his personal experience of suffering which are 
 of the very essence of morals. 
 
 It is not surprising, then, that from the date of 
 his plunge into authorship, De Quincey's life at 
 Grasmere was never renewed on quite the same 
 footing as before. There were frequent absences 
 for business purposes in London, and later in 
 Edinburgh, where, through the influence of his 
 friend Professor Wilson, he had a growing literary 
 
 treated Mrs. De Quincey. See " The Century Maga- 
 zine," April, 1891, " The Wordsworths and De Quincey," 
 by H. A. Page.
 
 HIS LIFE 27 
 
 connection, and became, from 1826 onward, a 
 regular contributor to " Blackwood's Magazine." 
 Finally, in 1830, when a series of new engage- 
 ments were detaining him in Scotland, it was 
 decided, at the suggestion of Dorothy Words- 
 worth, who on more than one occasion had thus 
 acted as a sort of providence for the household, 
 to remove his family from Grasmere to Edin- 
 burgh, where he spent the remaining years of 
 his life. 
 
 It must be pointed out, however, that Edin- 
 burgh never became to him in any sense the 
 home and inspiration that Grasmere had been. 
 A brilliant intellectual centre it might be, but it 
 was not for that reason that he sought it, nor 
 did he ever mingle in its society. He came there 
 a stranger, in middle age, when his children, now 
 eight in number, were needing more and more 
 to be provided for; and Edinburgh was simply 
 a convenient place of residence where he could 
 write his many magazine articles and get them 
 published on the spot. His home was still the 
 little rose-covered cottage at Grasmere, which, 
 in his " Confessions," and elsewhere, he has so 
 incomparably described; 1 and it is pathetic to 
 
 1 See p. 100. It is to be regretted that, in the present 
 exclusive dedication of Dove Cottage as a Wordsworthian 
 temple, Da Quincey's longer, closer, and in some ways 
 more interesting and sympathetic connection with the 
 house should have been wholly ignored. He is represented 
 there by a single portrait, which in the official catalogue 
 is classed under " Portraits of the Guests who have slept 
 in Dove Cottage " that is to say, he is commemorated 
 not as one who occupied the cottage for twenty years, and
 
 28 DE QUINCEY 
 
 find him, long years afterwards, referring to it 
 as still " unspeakably endeared " to his heart. 
 " Even now," he says, " I rarely dream through 
 four nights running that I do not find myself 
 (and others besides) in some one of those rooms, 
 and most probably the last cloudy delirium of 
 approaching death will re-install me in some 
 chamber of that same humble cottage." 
 
 He had not been long at Edinburgh when a 
 series of bereavements befell him, his youngest 
 son dying in 1833, and his eldest son, "the 
 crown and glory of his life," in 1835. Two years 
 later took place the death of his wife, that 
 " woman of steady mind, tender and deep in 
 her excess of love," whose gracious presence and 
 helpful sympathy are the subject of a few brief 
 but heartfelt references in his writings. Thus 
 left a widower, he was indebted during the re- 
 mainder of his days to the affectionate care of 
 his daughters for that attention and aid in 
 worldly matters which he above all men needed. 
 
 The earlier phase of De Quincey's work at 
 Edinburgh consisted almost entirely in the writ- 
 ing of magazine articles; of volumes he published 
 two only a story named " Klosterheim " (1832), 
 and his "Logic of Political Economy" (1844). 
 Of his vast output as an essayist only the lead- 
 ing works can here be mentioned. To " Black- 
 wood," for instance, where there had already 
 appeared, among other things, his grimly humor- 
 ous sally on " Murder considered as one of the 
 
 wrote a description of it which will last as long as English 
 literature, but as a casual guest of the Wordsworths !
 
 HIS LIFE 29 
 
 Fine Arts" (1827), he contributed his bio- 
 graphical studies of Kant and Dr. Samuel Parr, 
 followed by his historical sketches of "The 
 Caesars " and " The Revolt of the Tartars," the 
 essays on " Style " and " Rhetoric," " The Philo- 
 sophy of Herodotus," and later the famous 
 " Suspiria de Profundis " and " The English Mail 
 Coach " ( 1 849). During a portion of the same 
 period (1834- 1 836) he was publishing in "Tail's 
 Magazine" his widely-read "Autobiography of 
 an English Opium-Eater," and later his Lake 
 reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and 
 Southey, to whose families he gave great offence 
 (in his character of the enfant terrible of Gras- 
 mere) by certain pointed anecdotes and criticisms. 
 In "Tail" also appeared "Joan of Arc" and 
 " The Spanish Military Nun," one of the most 
 brilliant and characteristic of his narratives. 
 Then, in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," he 
 was the author, between 1830 and 1840, of 
 lengthy and important articles on Goethe, Pope, 
 Schiller, and Shakespeare; and at a yet later 
 period he contributed to " Hogg's Instructor " 
 and other magazines. Altogether it might puzzle 
 those who persist in regarding De Quincey as a 
 mere enfeebled visionary, to account for the rich 
 literary and intellectual harvest of the autumn of 
 his life. 
 
 The opium habit, to free himself from which, 
 as narrated in his "Confessions," he had made 
 strenuous and painful efforts, still kept its hold 
 on him ; but, by the discovery of an irreducible 
 minimum in his recourse to the drug, he arrived
 
 30 DE QUINCEY 
 
 at a sort of compromise with the foe, under 
 which, with the aid of his long daily (or nightly) 
 walk, he contrived to maintain a certain measure 
 of health. It was his firm belief corroborated 
 to some extent by medical opinion that his use 
 of opium, in spite of the terrible sufferings which 
 he had incurred through over-indulgence, had 
 been the means of warding off a tendency to 
 consumption inherited from his father, and thus 
 of prolonging his life. 
 
 For a time De Quincey had no fixed abode 
 in Edinburgh, but from 1840 onward he and his 
 daughters rented a cottage at Lasswade, a village 
 situated seven miles distant on the river Esk. 
 He still continued, however, to make frequent 
 sojourns in the town, and many laughable tales 
 are told of his strange adventures in the lodging- 
 houses patronized by him, where, in some cases, 
 his unbusinesslike habits, his ignorance of money 
 matters, and his extreme kindness, made him an 
 easy prey to schemers. 1 It is of this declining 
 period, when his weaknesses and eccentricities 
 
 1 Quite the best instance of these impostures is the letter 
 addressed to De Quincey by some persons with whom he 
 had lodged, who (as Mr. Hogg tells us) " went so far as 
 to try and touch his feelings by feigning death in the 
 family " : 
 
 " Mr. De Quincey, Sir, In accordance with your re- 
 quest 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 at four o'clock, and would like things 
 settled as early as possible to-day. " 
 
 It will be seen that what was here lost in grammar was 
 gained in truth.
 
 HIS LIFE 31 
 
 were naturally increased, that the most numerous 
 records have been preserved; a fact for which 
 some allowance ought to be made in any general 
 estimate of his character. Latterly, his most fre- 
 quented residence was at 42, Lothian Street, 
 where he was well and faithfully cared for. 
 
 His personal appearance, in 1852, was de- 
 scribed by Mr. J. R. Findlay as follows: 
 
 He was a very little man (about 5 feet 3 or 4 
 inches); his countenance the most remarkable for 
 its intellectual attractiveness that I have ever seen. 
 His features, though not regular, were aristo- 
 cratically fine, and an air of delicate breeding per- 
 vaded the face. His forehead was unusually high, 
 square, and compact. 
 
 Mr. Findlay also describes the weird, shrunken 
 appearance of De Quincey, as he would glide, 
 furtively and dreamily, "with an oddly deferential 
 air," through the streets of Edinburgh, his clothes 
 " having a look of extreme age, and also of hav- 
 ing been made for a person somewhat larger than 
 himself." 
 
 To Miss Mitford, in like manner, he appeared 
 as " so neglected that he looks like an old beggar, 
 of manners so perfect that they would do honour 
 to a prince, and of conversation unapproached 
 for brilliancy "; while Mr. James Hogg, who was 
 closely associated with him towards the end, was 
 impressed by "the gentle, refined fastidious 
 manner . . . the soft rhythmical utterance, as 
 if the procession of words had been duly mar- 
 shalled, all fit for duty. However fantastic the
 
 32 DE QUINCEY 
 
 thought that was uttered, the exquisite cadence 
 lent a singular charm to the most grotesque 
 idea." 
 
 It has been said by Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, 
 in his able essay on "The Genius of De Quincey," 
 that he was almost perfectly described in the 
 following stanza from Thomson's " Castle of In- 
 dolence " : 
 
 He came, the bard, a little Druid wight, 
 Of withered aspect ; but his eye was keen, 
 With sweetness mix'd. 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. 
 
 Such were the external impressions made by 
 De Quincey on those who were fortunate enough 
 to know him; but his inner thoughts and deeper 
 self remained, as ever, a mystery. That the 
 dreaming faculty was still keenly alive in him, 
 even in these closing days of bereavement and 
 solitude, may be judged from a passage in one 
 of his latest essays. "As regards myself," he 
 says, " touch but some particular key of laughter 
 and of echoing music, sound but for a moment 
 one bar of preparation, and immediately the 
 pomps and glories of all that has composed for 
 me the delirious vision of life re-awaken for tor- 
 ment; the orchestras of the earth open simul- 
 taneously to my inner ear; and in a moment I 
 behold, forming themselves into solemn pomps
 
 HIS LIFE 33 
 
 and processions, and passing over sad phantom 
 stages, all that chiefly I have loved, or in whose 
 behalf chiefly I have abhorred and cursed the 
 grave all that should not have died, yet died 
 the soonest." 
 
 But while he assiduously avoided the literary 
 circles of Edinburgh, and an introduction to him 
 was a thing to be obtained only by much per- 
 tinacity, or even by craft, it must not be supposed 
 that De Quincey was so absorbed in his day- 
 dreams as to be lacking in the domestic affec- 
 tions. On the contrary, his letters to his daughters 
 during his closing years are one of the most 
 pleasing features in his biography, and show him, 
 in the midst of his labours in Lothian Street, 
 filled with the most tender and anxious solicitude 
 for the members of his now scattered family 
 for his sons were following their professions 
 abroad, and two of his daughters were married. 
 From the tone of these letters, as indeed from 
 all his writings, one gathers that, though self- 
 centred in thought, De Quincey was always moved 
 by a most watchful sympathy and consideration 
 for those who were nearest to him; with all its 
 great and varied qualities, his nature above every- 
 thing was a loving and lovable one. 
 
 From what has been said of his intense mental 
 abstraction, and his desultory habits in practical 
 life, it will be readily understood that methodical 
 work even on the subjects which he had most 
 at heart was out of the question for him; and 
 we can therefore well believe that, on an occa- 
 sion when he was urged to make a collection of 
 c
 
 34 DE QUINCEY 
 
 his scattered writings, his reply was as follows: 
 " Sir, the thing is absolutely, insuperably, and 
 for ever impossible." And certainly to one who 
 had published some hundred and fifty magazine 
 articles, of which he had mostly lost the copies; 
 whose manuscripts, such at least as had not been 
 left behind in Edinburgh hotels or lodgings dur- 
 ing his frequent flittings from house to house, 
 were kept in a large bath, his literary reservoir, 
 " filled to the brim by papers of all sorts and 
 sizes"; and who seldom passed an evening 
 without setting something on fire, usually his 
 own hair it might well seem impossible to at- 
 tempt the issue of a collected edition of his 
 works. Yet this impossibility, thanks to the en- 
 terprise of two publishing firms, Messrs. Ticknor 
 and Fields, of Boston, and Mr. James Hogg, of 
 Edinburgh (the idea having occurred independ- 
 ently to both), was successfully accomplished, 
 the American edition, under Mr. Fields' manage- 
 ment, appearing between the years 1851 and 
 1855, and the English edition between 1853 
 and 1860. The production of the latter series 
 was supervised by the author himself super- 
 vised by Mr. Hogg with what intervening de- 
 lays, hindrances, losses, misplacements, promises 
 and non-performances, the student of De Quin- 
 cey's character may easily imagine. 
 
 It was while he was engaged on this work, 
 and when the fourteenth and last volume was 
 shortly forthcoming, that it became evident that 
 De Quincey's life was drawing to an end, not 
 from any specific illness, but from a slow decay
 
 HIS LIFE 35 
 
 of his physical strength. A record of his last 
 days, written by the physician who attended 
 him, bears witness, like all other records, to his 
 unfailing gentleness and benignity: his last words 
 were an expression of thanks to those around 
 him, " uttered with touching sweetness and radi- 
 ant expression." He died at his lodgings in 
 Lothian Street, in his seventy-fifth year, on De- 
 cember 8th, 1859. " On the simple uncurtained 
 pallet," says a friend who hastened to the house 
 on hearing a rumour of De Quincey's death, 
 "the tiny frame of this great dreamer lay stretched 
 in his last long dreamless sleep. Attenuated to 
 an extreme degree, the body looked infantile in 
 size a very slender stem for the shapely and 
 massive head that crowned it." l 
 
 He was buried beside his wife in the West 
 Churchyard of Edinburgh. One cannot but feel 
 that a fitter resting-place for both of them would 
 have been in the vale of Grasmere; in which con- 
 nection his own words, written many years earlier, 
 come to mind : " I have particular fancies about 
 the place of my burial : having lived chiefly in a 
 mountainous region, I rather cleave to the con- 
 ceit that a grave in a green churchyard, amongst 
 the ancient and solitary hills, will be a sublimer 
 and more tranquil place of repose for a philo- 
 sopher." 
 
 1 " Personal Recollections of Thomas de Quincey," by 
 J. R. Findlay.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HIS WORKS 
 
 HOSOEVER approaches De Quincey's 
 works with a view to "classifying" them 
 will at least convince himself of one hard fact 
 that they for the most part defy classification; 
 nor, indeed, is this at all surprising, when one 
 remembers the conditions under which they were 
 originally produced. From the year 1821, when 
 he first became an author, to 1851, when the 
 American collected edition began to appear, De 
 Quincey was sending forth in quick succession a 
 series of brilliantly versatile articles, covering an 
 immense field of thought, and written under 
 continuous pressure as contributions to maga- 
 zines, a mode of publication which, as he points 
 out in his Preface to the first Edinburgh edition, 
 " by its harsh, peremptory punctuality, drives a 
 man into hurried writing." Hence, though he 
 assures us that he had never faltered in his pur- 
 pose of republishing most of what he had written, 
 the difficulties that stood in the way of such re- 
 publication were very great, and he quickly 
 realized, as his editors have realized since, that 
 such thirty-years' output of heterogeneous papers 
 3 6
 
 HIS WORKS 37 
 
 can in no possible way be satisfactorily grouped 
 and tabulated under a few general headings. 
 "The difficulty," he says, "is prodigiously 
 aggravated when the separate parts, that are 
 suddenly and unexpectedly required to cohere 
 into a systematic whole, arose originally upon 
 casual and disconnected impulses, without any 
 view to final convergement, or any reference 
 whatever to a central principle." 
 
 The starting-point of all subsequent classifica- 
 tion, or attempted classification, of De Quincey's 
 writings, was the edition issued in fourteen 
 volumes at Edinburgh, 1853-1860, under his own 
 supervision, and entitled " Selections Grave and 
 Gay, from Writings Published and Unpublished, 
 by Thomas De Quincey." But it is quite possible 
 that this collection would never have been made, 
 had not the American edition preceded it; and 
 his indebtedness to Boston in this respect is 
 playfully acknowledged by the author. " It is 
 astonishing," he says, " how much more Boston 
 knows of my literary acts and purposes than I do 
 myself. Were it not through Boston, hardly the 
 sixth part of my literary undertakings would ever 
 have reached posterity." As it was, with the 
 American edition to draw upon, and a number 
 of articles at hand, culled from " Tail," " Black- 
 wood," and other periodicals, he was enabled, 
 under the stimulus of the friendly importunities 
 of his publisher, to carry the scheme into effect, 
 and in his Preface he has given what he calls " a 
 rude general classification " of the contents. 
 
 In the first division he places that portion of
 
 38 DE QUINCEY 
 
 his work he instances the " Autobiographical 
 Sketches" which is designed primarily to amuse, 
 but occasionally reaches a higher level and passes 
 into " an impassioned interest." 
 
 Secondly, he groups together under the general 
 name of " Essays," those papers (a very large and 
 varied class) which appeal mainly to the under- 
 standing, e.g., the speculative article on "The 
 Essenes" and the historical sketch of "The 
 Caesars." 
 
 Thirdly, as a far higher class, he ranks the 
 impassioned prose of the " Suspiria de Profundis " 
 and the "Confessions of an Opium-Eater" in 
 other words, his " literature of power." 
 
 Such was the synthesis laid down by De 
 Quincey in his Preface of 1853; but, as might 
 have been foreseen, it proved far more applicable 
 in theory than in practice. For in the later col- 
 lecting and editing, as in the original writing, of 
 his essays, he was hampered not only by ill-health, 
 but by many other obstacles caused largely by his 
 own unbusinesslike habits, and was compelled to 
 work not as his sense of logical fitness prompted 
 him, but as the exigencies of the moment dictated. 
 His papers, as he expressed it, were " written 
 under one set of disadvantages, and revised under 
 another." Hence, as Professor Masson has ob- 
 served, there resulted " the most provoking 
 jumble in the contents 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 pretence 
 of grouping, and with factitious sub-titles invented
 
 HIS WORKS 39 
 
 for the separate volumes on the spur of the 
 moment." 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of De Quincey's failure 
 to give effect to his own principle of classification, 
 that principle ought to carry more weight with 
 students of his writings than any later arrangement 
 can do, for with all his defects of temperament 
 and disadvantages of situation, he may be pre- 
 sumed to have known best what it was that he 
 intended; so that it is to be regretted that later 
 editors have made confusion worse confounded 
 through attempting to improve on the author's 
 edition by introducing newand different classifica- 
 tions of their own. Nor is it only in regard to the 
 grouping of the works that these variations have 
 arisen; for his chief editor, not content with re- 
 arranging De Quincey's works, and in some cases 
 altering their titles, has included in the edition of 
 1889-1890 a good deal of material which had 
 appeared in magazine articles prior to 1853, but 
 had been omitted in some cases deliberately 
 by De Quincey from the collected edition. All 
 admirers of De Quincey are greatly indebted to 
 Professor Masson for his long and invaluable ser- 
 vices both as biographer and editor, and for the 
 light he has thrown on a large number of passages 
 in his author's life and writings; but it may be 
 doubted whether the liberties thus taken, in 
 practically reconstructing De Quincey's work, are 
 not somewhat excessive. That some of the 
 articles discarded by De Quincey in 1853 contain 
 matter of great interest will be generally acknow- 
 ledged; but it would have been easy to include
 
 40 DE QUINCEY 
 
 these in the revised edition as an appendix, 
 without breaking up the whole structure. Nor 
 can it be pleaded in favour of the later arrange- 
 ment that its violation of the author's own scheme 
 is justified by its freedom from the faults of its 
 predecessor; for unfortunately so impossible is 
 it to " classify " De Quincey at all it is occa- 
 sionally open to much the same criticism on the 
 score of its incongruous elements. Could De 
 Quincey himself have done worse than make 
 Charlemagne and Joan of Arc hobnob with 
 Charles Lamb and Dr. Samuel Parr in one and 
 the same cover, under the common title of 
 " Biographical Sketches "? 
 
 In this little book, therefore, since an attempt 
 has to be made, not indeed to catalogue De 
 Quincey's writings for that would be an under- 
 taking too ambitious for a series which calls itself 
 " miniature " but to give a clear and succinct 
 impression of their most salient features, we 
 shall, as far as possible, follow the principle out- 
 lined by De Quincey himself; that is, we shall 
 briefly refer to the most important of the works 
 under the three heads of (i) those designed pri- 
 marily to amuse the reader; (2) those addressed 
 purely to the understanding; (3) those that may 
 be classed as prose poems or "impassioned 
 prose." It must be premised, of course, that the 
 three kinds of writing often overlap in the same 
 essay, and that it is only in a general sense that 
 it is possible thus to present them in separate 
 form.
 
 HIS WORKS 41 
 
 I. Autobiographical and Biographical Sketches 
 and Reminiscences, Miscellaneous Articles, 
 Tales, etc. 
 
 The "Autobiographic Sketches," which formed 
 the first volume of the collected edition of 1853, 
 were based on articles contributed to "Tail's 
 Magazine" (1834-1836) under the title of 
 " Sketches of Men and Manners from the Auto- 
 biography of an English Opium-Eater," With 
 these were incorporated portions of the " Sus- 
 piria de Profundis," from " Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine " (1845), and "A Sketch from Childhood," 
 which appeared in " Hogg's Weekly Instructor " 
 (1851, 1852); all of which were treated by the 
 author as raw material to be worked up anew 
 with such omissions and additions as seemed fit. 
 Together with the autobiographical passages in 
 the " Confessions of an Opium-Eater," these 
 sketches cover the early period of his life, from 
 his "Infant Experiences" to his admission at 
 Worcester College, Oxford; there is also an in- 
 teresting paper on "Oxford," omitted by De 
 Quincey, but reprinted by Professor Masson, 
 which carries the record a step further. De 
 Quincey himself describes the Autobiography as 
 " pretending to little beyond that sort of amuse- 
 ment which attaches to any real story, thought- 
 fully and faithfully related "; but he adds that the 
 narrative rises at times " into a far higher key " 
 as in the well-known rhapsody on " The Afflic- 
 tion of Childhood " (originally part of the " Sus- 
 piria"), one of the most characteristic and im-
 
 42 DE QUINCEY 
 
 passioned of his efforts. Of the remaining chap- 
 ters, two at least deserve special reference the 
 one entitled " Introduction to the World of 
 Strife," in which he tells, in his most delightful 
 fashion, the story of his enforced military service 
 under that supreme tyrant of the nursery, his 
 elder brother William; and the other devoted to 
 the adventures of his younger brother " Pink," 
 whose ill-usage at the hands of one of the brutal 
 schoolmasters too common at that time, was in 
 part the cause of De Quincey's strong and often- 
 repeated detestation of corporal punishments. 
 
 Closely allied to the " Autobiography" are the 
 "Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets," 
 including the singularly beautiful " Early Memo- 
 rials of Grasmere," a record of the tragedy which 
 befell a small household in the upland solitude 
 of Easedale, through one of those heavy snow- 
 storms which not infrequently cause loss of life 
 on the fells. De Quincey's picture of the death 
 of the parents, and of the heroism of the forsaken 
 children, has the rare merit of fidelity; it is a 
 true mountain-idyll, which has caught something 
 of the high grandeur and serenity of the moun- 
 tains themselves. The essays on Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and Southey are all good specimens 
 of that favourite class of writing in which De 
 Quincey " retraced fugitive memorials " of cele- 
 brated men known to him either personally or 
 by repute, and which was well adapted to his 
 " scenical " style of biography and rather de- 
 sultory methods of work. " In genial moments," 
 he says, "the characteristic remembrances ot
 
 HIS WORKS 43 
 
 men expand as fluently as buds travel into blos- 
 soms "; but he goes on to speak of the dangers 
 which lurk in such reminiscences of saying what 
 may be taken amiss, for " seldom is your own 
 silent retrospect of close personal connections 
 with distinguished men altogether happy." De 
 Quincey's sketches of the three Lake poets are 
 in the main very appreciative; but, as already 
 hinted, they contained criticism which caused 
 no little resentment among the parties concerned. 
 Among the other Lake reminiscences, by far the 
 most remarkable piece of writing is the essay on 
 Charles Lloyd. 1 
 
 Then there is what has been called De Quin- 
 cey's " Portrait Gallery," which might be made 
 to include a number of his short, poignant mono- 
 graphs, undertaken, perhaps, in the first instance, 
 with no very ambitious intent, yet masterpieces, 
 many of them, in the art of vivid portraiture, 
 and sometimes rising to the "impassioned in- 
 terest " of a higher aim. Especially is this true 
 of his article on " Walking Stewart " (" London 
 Magazine," 1823), which, indeed, is far more 
 than a sketch of a " sublime visionary," and itself 
 deserves to be ranked among dream-writings of 
 the foremost class. Very striking, again, are the 
 pen-portraits of Charles Lamb and William Haz- 
 litt, among contemporaries with whom De Quin- 
 cey had been familiar, while of those known to 
 him through the medium of books and hearsay, 
 Shelley stands out conspicuous as the subject of 
 
 1 See pp. 78, 79.
 
 44 DE QUINCEY 
 
 the most generous and sympathetic tribute. The 
 most important of the other members of the 
 "Gallery" are Professor Wilson, Sir William 
 Hamilton, John Foster, W. S. Landor, the 
 Marquess Wellesley and John Keats. 
 
 Among De Quincey's miscellaneous writings 
 there are a few whose dominant tone of humour 
 seems to assign them to this category of works 
 intended primarily to amuse; and the chief of 
 these is, of course, that elaborate and well-sus- 
 tained, yet withal sparkling piece of phantasy, 
 his "Murder considered as one of the Fine 
 Arts." Published originally in two separate articles 
 (" Blackwood," February, 1827, and November, 
 1839), it was revised and amplified in the col- 
 lected works by the addition of a Postscript 
 (1854) which gives a detailed and serious account 
 of the dreadful " Williams murders " which had 
 created a deep public sensation in December, 
 1811. To understand De Quincey's whimsical 
 treatment of so terrible a subject, it is necessary 
 to remember, first, that like Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 and certain other imaginative writers, he was a 
 born psychologist in cases of a mysterious or 
 morbid kind, and that the "Newgate Calendar" 
 had so strong an attraction for him that he is 
 said, as editor of the " Westmorland Gazette," 
 to have filled its columns with reports of murder- 
 trials; and secondly that, through his keen per- 
 ception of the proximity of contrary ideas, the 
 whimsical always lay close to the terrible in his 
 mind. Thus his extravaganza of " Murder con- 
 sidered as one of the Fine Arts," was, indeed, as
 
 HIS WORKS 45 
 
 he describes it, but " a foam-bubble of gaiety," 
 yet it floats on the surface of very deep and 
 ominous waters ; for it was De Quincey's avowed 
 object in writing the paper, and in giving it a 
 fantastic form, "to graze the brink of horror 
 and of all that in actual realization would be 
 most repulsive." 
 
 His paradox, then, is this that murder, like 
 other practices, has its " scenical " and aesthetic 
 features, and (when all deductions have been 
 made for the promptings of morality and com- 
 passion) may even be the legitimate subject of 
 art. "Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and 
 shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indis- 
 pensable to attempts of this nature. . . . We dry 
 up our tears, and have the satisfaction, perhaps, 
 to discover that a transaction which, morally 
 considered, was shocking, and without a leg to 
 stand upon, when tried by the principles of 
 Taste turns out to be a very meritorious per- 
 formance." Thus, in his serio-comic lecturing 
 capacity, he first leads us " through the great 
 gallery " of murder cases ; then, as an habitue, 
 introduces us to one of the meetings of the 
 Society of Connoisseurs in Murder; and finally, 
 in his Postscript, gives us that thrillingly realistic 
 account of the performances of Mr. Williams, 
 the great "artist " in homicide, which even Edgar 
 Poe himself has not surpassed. Whether De 
 Quincey's fanciful treatment of this oppressively 
 horrible theme is justified by its artistic success, 
 it is useless here to speculate. What is certain is 
 that " Murder considered as one of the Fine
 
 46 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Arts" is one of the most distinctive of his 
 writings, and that an appreciation of it may be 
 taken as a pretty sure touchstone for determining 
 whether a reader has a sympathetic understand- 
 ing of the author's peculiar temperament. 
 
 Two other humorous essays must at least be 
 briefly mentioned, viz. : " Coleridge and Opium- 
 Eating" and "Sortilege and Astrology." That 
 De Quincey's youthful admiration for Coleridge, 
 to whose " Ancient Mariner," more than to any 
 other work, he attributed the unfolding of his 
 mind, remained in all essential points unshaken, 
 is proved by his description of him, in this very 
 essay of 1845, as " an astonishing man," who, 
 " besides being an exquisite poet, a profound 
 political speculator, a philosophic student of 
 literature through all its chambers and recesses, 
 was also a circumnavigator of the most pathless 
 waters of monasticism and metaphysics"; yet 
 there was also something in Coleridge's character 
 which prompted De Quincey to pass, in that sly 
 way of his, from veneration to banter. The spice 
 of mischief which may be detected in some of 
 his anecdotes about Coleridge, especially when 
 opium is the theme, was doubtless due to the 
 annoyance which he felt at the strictures passed 
 by Coleridge himself a confirmed opium-eater 
 on a fellow-sufferer under the drug. 
 
 " Sortilege and Astrology " is a pure piece oi 
 rollicking humour throughout, written in aid of 
 a literary institution at Glasgow. It narrates how, 
 for this philanthropic purpose, the author drew 
 by lot several papers from a large bath in his
 
 HIS WORKS 47 
 
 study, which, " having been superseded (as re- 
 gards its original purpose) by a better, yielded 
 a secondary service as a reservoir for MSS.," 
 and how after fishing up successively a four-year- 
 old invitation to dinner, two unpaid bills, and a 
 lecture on procrastination by "an ultra-moral 
 friend," there was finally drawn a sheet of blank 
 paper, destined to be the receptacle for the essay 
 on Astrology, an account of a consulting visit 
 paid by him, during his wanderings in North 
 Wales, to a retired local astrologer named "Pig- 
 in-the-dingle." As a specimen of De Quincey's 
 reckless, free and easy style of humour, " Sorti- 
 lege and Astrology " is of the best. 
 
 Lastly, under this first division of his writings, 
 we come to the Tales, which were mostly adapta- 
 tions from the German or French. There is no 
 need to say much of " Walladmor," a half-serious, 
 half-jocular version of a German parody of Walter 
 Scott, published in two volumes in 1825, or of 
 " Klosterheim" (1832), a romantic and sombre 
 story of German life, which has little merit ex- 
 cept a certain measured elegance of phrasing; 
 still less need we dwell on such studies in the 
 grotesque as "The Avenger," "The Incognito,' 
 "The Dice," "The King of Hayti" and "The 
 Fatal Marksman," which are poor indeed as 
 compared with the masterpieces of Poe or Haw- 
 thorne. But there is one of De Quincey's tales 
 which takes rank with the very best of his achieve- 
 ments, and that is "The Spanish Military Nun." 
 The genesis of the story is as follows. There 
 was published in 1847 (as Professor Masson has
 
 48 DE QUINCEY 
 
 pointed out), in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," 
 an article entitled " Catalina de Erauso," based 
 on certain early and, as it seems, authoritative 
 memoirs of a famous Spanish adventuress of the 
 seventeenth century, and it was from this quarter 
 that De Quincey's material was derived. His 
 " Spanish Military Nun," first published in three 
 instalments in "Tail's Magazine" in 1847, was 
 a free translation from the " Revue des Deux 
 Mondes," in which, as was his wont, he did not 
 scruple to adapt the records to his liking, and 
 to re-tell the roving nun's adventures in his own 
 characteristic style, with the result that the some- 
 what coarse female free-lance of the original 
 memoirs reappears in an idealized form. The 
 true value, however, of De Quincey's work lies 
 less in his version of the heroine's character 
 than in the intense zest and vividness which he 
 has breathed into the ancient tale. Nowhere 
 else does he show such grip, such succinctness, 
 such rapidity of narrative, as in the swift and 
 brilliant series of pictures which unfolds the his- 
 tory of his " Kate "; as a tour deforce and finished 
 piece of workmanship, it stands unique among 
 his writings. The reader's interest is unbroken 
 from the early escape of the child-adventuress 
 from the convent of San Sebastian to the moment 
 of her last mysterious disappearance on the shore 
 of Vera Cruz; every chapter is alive with restless 
 energy and humour, yet over all there broods a 
 high and calm spirit of trustfulness, as in the 
 wonderful passage which describes the nun's 
 solitary descent of the " mighty staircase " of the
 
 * ft 
 
 f 
 
 V- 
 
 TSJ i \ r 
 
 ii^
 
 HIS WORKS 49 
 
 Andes. The sum and spirit of the story may be 
 gathered from its closing words: 
 
 And here is the brief upshot of all. This nun 
 sailed from Spain to Peru, and she found no rest 
 for the sole of her foot. This nun sailed back from 
 Peru to Spain, and she found no rest for the agita- 
 tions of her heart. This nun sailed again from 
 Spain to America, and she found the rest which 
 all of us find. But where it was, could never be 
 made known to the father of the Spanish camps, 
 that sat at Madrid, nor to Kate's spiritual father, 
 that sat in Rome. Known it is to the great Father 
 of All, that once whispered to Kate on the Andes; 
 but else it has been a secret for more than two cen- 
 turies; and to man it remains a secret for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 II. Essays, (i) Historical, Biographical, 
 Critical. 
 
 Under the general title of "Essays," De 
 Quincey suggests the grouping of those papers 
 comprising, of course, the greater portion of his 
 works which " address themselves purely to the 
 understanding as an insulated faculty, or do so 
 primarily." He instances his historical sketch ot 
 " The Caesars," and what he says of it may be 
 taken as typical of his essays as a whole. " This, 
 though hastily written, and in a situation where 
 I had no aid from books, is yet far from being 
 what some people have supposed it a simple 
 recapitulation, or resume, of the Roman Im- 
 peratorial History. It moves rapidly over the 
 ground, but still with an exploring eye, carried 
 right and left into the deep shades that have
 
 50 DE QUINCEY 
 
 gathered so thickly over the one solitary road 
 traversing that part of history. Glimpses of 
 moral truth, or suggestions of what may lead to 
 it; indications of neglected difficulties, and oc- 
 casionally conjectural solutions of such difficul- 
 ties these are what this Essay offers." 
 
 The same is true, and in a far higher degree, 
 of those very fine historical studies, " The Revolt 
 of the Tartars" and "Joan of Arc." De Quin- 
 cey's method, it must be premised, is what he 
 himself described as " scenical," that is, it pro- 
 ceeds " upon principles of selection, presuppos- 
 ing in the reader a general knowledge of the great 
 cardinal incidents, and bringing forward into 
 especial notice those only which are susceptible 
 of being treated with distinguished effect." In 
 the " flight eastwards of a principal Tartar na- 
 tion across the boundless steppes of Asia " the 
 tragic exodus of a whole people fro m Russian to 
 Chinese territory, which took place in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century he had a subject 
 which appealed strongly to his imagination, and, 
 as was his habit in such cases, he made a poet's 
 use of his material, with the result that, whatever 
 question there may be as to its correctness in 
 dates and details, there can be none as to the 
 grand spectacular effect of the story of the flight 
 and pursuit as narrated by him " the fugitive 
 vassals " in front, and in the rear " the gloomy 
 vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery." It 
 is a theme which, in De Quincey's hands, in- 
 evitably passes at times into the sphere of the 
 " impassioned."
 
 HIS WORKS 51 
 
 So too in his sketch of "Joan of Arc," a splendid 
 vindication which has perhaps more claim to be 
 ranked among the prose poems than in the 
 colder category of the historical. It has points 
 of comparison with the " Spanish Military Nun," 
 but it is more ardent and devotional in tone, 
 and here, as in the " Revolt of the Tartars," the 
 humorous element, by a sure instinct, is alto- 
 gether dropped. Of the other historical sketches 
 the most considerable is "Charlemagne." 
 
 Turning to the biographical and critical essays, 
 we find prominent those on Shakespeare, Mil- 
 ton and Pope. The good fame of Shakespeare 
 and Milton is jealously championed against de- 
 tractors of every school, Dr. Johnson in particu- 
 lar being sharply taken to task for his disparage- 
 ment of Milton. Towards Pope the attitude is 
 that of a severe but not unfriendly critic; and it 
 is here that De Quincey propounds his well-known 
 distinction between the " literature of know- 
 ledge " and the " literature of power." His treat- 
 ment of Oliver Goldsmith, to whom one of his 
 essays is devoted, is far more sympathetic than 
 of Pope; and in the sketch entitled "Richard 
 Bentley " the long feud of the famous scholar 
 with the Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 is vividly described. The article on " Words- 
 worth's Poetry" is one of the few instances in 
 which De Quincey detached criticism from bio- 
 graphy and wrote a formal " examination of any 
 man's writings." 
 
 In German literature De Quincey's studies 
 covered a wide field. He contributed lives of
 
 52 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Schiller and Goethe to the " Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica,"and averyhostile critique of Goethe's 
 " Wilhelm Meister " to the " London Magazine." 
 He was also the author of essays on Jean Paul 
 Richter, Lessing, Herder, and other men of note. 
 But the chief of his efforts in this department is 
 his " Last Days of Immanuel Kant," nominally 
 translated from the German, but practically an 
 original work, and exhibiting all the most pictu- 
 resque and humorous qualities of his mind. 
 
 (2) Essays on Style. De Quincey's " didactic 
 essays" on literary craftsmanship include the 
 important articles on " Style " and " Rhetoric," 
 both largely historical, and the "Letters to a 
 Young Man whose Education has been Neg- 
 lected," which appeared in the " London Maga- 
 zine" in 1823, and called forth the humorous 
 " Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education 
 has been Neglected " from Charles Lamb. To- 
 gether with " Style " and " Rhetoric " may be 
 placed the kindred but slighter essays on " Lan- 
 guage " and " Conversation." 
 
 (3) Greek and Latin Classics. Under this 
 head the chief essays are those on "The Philo- 
 sophy of Herodotus," a fine vindication of the 
 old Greek historian as the great encyclopedist 
 of antiquity; " Plato's Republic," an attempt to 
 dispel the "superstitious reverence" by which 
 Plato's name is surrounded; and "Cicero," a 
 spirited defence of Caesar, one of De Quincey's 
 greatest idols, against Cicero's " blind hatred " 
 and unpatriotic misunderstanding. There are 
 also papers on "Homer and the Homeridae" and
 
 HIS WORKS 53 
 
 a number of other classical subjects, including an 
 ingenious paradox on " The Casuistry of Roman 
 Meals " (an attempt to prove that the Romans 
 had neither lunch nor breakfast), and a new 
 reading of "The Theban Sphinx" forms of 
 intellectual subtlety to which De Quincey was 
 partial. 
 
 (4) Theology. The leading works of this sec- 
 tion are " Miracles as a Subject of Testimony," 
 "Protestantism," and "On Christianity as an 
 Organ of Political Movement." There are also 
 paradoxical essays on " The Essenes," depicting 
 Essenism as a mere invention of the historian 
 Josephus, and on "Judas Iscariot," maintaining 
 that the ordinary conception of Judas's character 
 is erroneous, and that he was no traitor, but an 
 enthusiast who, believing in a temporal kingdom, 
 tried, in all fidelity, to precipitate his master into 
 action. 
 
 (5) Politics ana Political Economy. Ot the 
 political papers, which include "Dr. Samuel 
 Parr, or Whiggism in its Relations to Literature," 
 " A Tory's Account of Toryism, Whiggism and 
 Radicalism," and "The Political Parties of 
 Modern England," the first alone has permanent 
 interest, owing to its scathing castigation of Dr. 
 Samuel Parr, and especially its inimitable per- 
 sonal description of the gossiping old pedant 
 with the " infantine lisp," which has doomed the 
 unfortunate Doctor to an immortality of ridicule. 
 
 As a political economist, De Quincey, who was 
 a follower and profound admirer of Ricardo, 
 published the " Dialogues of Three Templars "
 
 54 F>E QUINCEY 
 
 (1824), the "Logic of Political Economy "(1844), 
 and short essays on " Malthus " and " The Mea- 
 sure of Value." His writings in this field are 
 chiefly remarkable for the extreme clearness and 
 beauty of language with which he expresses the 
 doctrines of a science which is not usually asso- 
 ciated with literary charms. 
 
 (6) Miscellaneous, In addition to the essays 
 mentioned above, there are a number of articles, 
 dealing with a variety of subjects, which can 
 hardly be classed under any particular head, yet 
 are in many cases very interesting and character- 
 istic, e.g., "On the Knocking at the Gate in 
 Macbeth," " Casuistry," " Toilette of the Hebrew 
 Lady," " On Suicide," " War," " National Tem- 
 perance Movements," etc. 
 
 III. Impassioned Prose. 
 
 There now remains the third and most im- 
 portant category of De Quincey's writings, that of 
 the prose poems, to which he refers in his gene- 
 ral preface as " a far higher class of composi- 
 tions," and as " modes of impassioned prose 
 ranging under no precedents in any literature"; 
 a claim to absolute originality which seems to 
 overlook the earlier work of Jean Paul Richter. 
 The " Confessions " and the " Suspiria de Pro- 
 fundis " are cited as leading examples of these 
 attempts " to clothe in words the visionary scenes 
 derived from the world of dreams," in which, it 
 will be observed, the personal note of self-reve- 
 lation is usually dominant. " The very idea of
 
 HIS WORKS 55 
 
 breathing a record of human passion," says De 
 Quincey, " not into the ear of the random crowd, 
 but of the saintly confessional, argues an im- 
 passioned theme: impassioned therefore should 
 be the tenor of the composition." 
 
 The " Confessions of an English Opium- 
 Eater," the work by which De Quincey first be- 
 came known, and by which he will be longest 
 remembered, was written in a little room at the 
 back of Mr. H. G. Bonn's premises, No. 4, York 
 Street, Covent Garden, and published in the 
 " London Magazine," under the signature 
 " X.Y.Z.," in September and October, 1821. But 
 here, at once, an important distinction must be 
 noted between this earlier form of the " Confes- 
 sions" re-issued as a small volume in 1822 and 
 the later, revised edition of 1856. In the former 
 case all the circumstances conspired towards the 
 shortening, in the latter case towards the lengthen- 
 ing, of the merely autobiographical (i.e. unim- 
 passioned) element in the story; for the com- 
 parative brevity demanded of the unknown writer 
 of articles which had to be brought within the 
 limited scope of a magazine, was exchanged, 
 thirty years afterwards, for the privileged talka- 
 tiveness of one who had gained a recognized 
 place in literature. As a result, we have what 
 may justly be regarded as not merely an earlier 
 and cancelled text, superseded by a more autho- 
 ritative one, but rather two separate and inde- 
 pendent versions, each possessing for the student 
 of De Quincey's genius a peculiar interest of its 
 own, and each deserving to be permanently en-
 
 56 DE QUINCEY 
 
 shrined in the body of his writings the one as 
 the more artistic and concentrated effort of his 
 prime, the other as the fuller but not less char- 
 acteristic expression of his old age. It is some- 
 what strange to find De Quincey speaking of the 
 earlier " Confessions " as in need of extensive 
 "correction and pruning"; for when the work 
 emerged from this process in 1856, it had actu- 
 ally trebled its size, such "pruning" as had in- 
 deed been done (and always with good effect) 
 being greatly outbalanced by the additional 
 matter that was imported, chiefly of the gossip- 
 ing kind. " It is almost re-written," said De 
 Quincey in a letter of 1855, "and there cannot 
 be much doubt that here and there it is enlivened 
 and so far improved. And yet, reviewing the 
 volume as a whole, greatly I doubt whether many 
 readers will not prefer it in its original fragmen- 
 tary state to its full-blown development." 1 Cer- 
 tainly many readers have so preferred it; yet 
 there is much, too, in the later version which no 
 lover of De Quincey would willingly have missed. 
 To the student, it is most instructive to collate 
 
 1 If any justification were needed for the separate 
 maintenance of the earlier text, it would be found in the 
 above passage. It is odd that Professor Masson, who, in 
 his edition of the complete works, has in many cases re- 
 versed De Quincey's judgment, should write as follows of 
 the " Confessions": " By his own act and deed the en- 
 larged edition of 1856 was intended to be the final edition, 
 superseding the other ; and by his intention we are bound 
 to abide." But such obligation, if binding in the case of 
 the "Confessions," must be binding in the other cases 
 also, and in most of them with much greater force.
 
 HIS WORKS 57 
 
 the two texts, and thus to compare the De Quin- 
 cey of 1821 with the De Quincey of 1856. 
 
 Reserving for fuller consideration in the next 
 chapter the story and purpose of the'," Confes- 
 sions," let us now pass on to the other instances 
 of De Quincey's " impassioned prose." 
 
 The " Suspiria de Profundis " (Sighs from the 
 Depths) are described as " A Sequel to the 
 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," and 
 in his preface to the first volume of the collected 
 works their author claims for them, prospectively, 
 an even greater merit; but unfortunately the 
 scheme which he made from time to time for a 
 complete series of the " Suspiria" was never 
 realized, and their history is in itself a striking 
 commentary on the difficult and confused con- 
 ditions under which he did his work. Com- 
 menced in " Blackwood " in March, 1845, the 
 publication of the " Suspiria " was abandoned 
 after a few months, though De Quincey still con- 
 tinued to nurse secret plans for its resumption, 
 and was in fact in the habit of mentally classing 
 under the general name of " Suspiria " any of his 
 shorter writings which partook of the phantasy 
 or dream. Then, when he was engaged in the 
 preparation of the earlier volumes of his collected 
 works, the exigencies of the hour on several oc- 
 casions impelled him to include in the " Auto- 
 biographic Sketches," or in the " Confessions," 
 short pieces such as " The Affliction of Child- 
 hood," or " The Daughter of Lebanon," which 
 should have formed part of the intended later 
 group of "Suspiria"; with the result that at his
 
 58 DE QUINCEY 
 
 death in 1859 his project was still unaccom- 
 plished and had to be carried out, as far as might 
 be, in a posthumous volume (1871), where six 
 " Suspiria "those that remained as yet uncol- 
 lected were brought together under that title. 
 But there were still more to follow; for in edit- 
 ing the " Posthumous Works," in 1891, Dr. Japp 
 was able to include five additional " Suspiria," 
 found among De Quincey's papers, and to give 
 a list of no less than thirty-two pieces, com- 
 pleted or uncompleted, which appear to have 
 been destined to form the material of the in- 
 tended volume. 
 
 It has been well observed by Dr. Japp that 
 " the master-idea of the ' Suspiria ' is the power 
 which lies in suffering to develop the intellect 
 and the spirit of man " ; an idea which is outlined 
 by De Quincey himself in more than one of these 
 prose-poems. In "The Vision of Life," for in- 
 stance, he tells how in his own youth there was 
 blended with his happiness an instinctive fore- 
 knowledge of the sorrows which time had in 
 keeping for him, and he holds that the true 
 " rapture of life " can only be attained by just 
 this poignant imaginative mingling of pleasure 
 and pain, by " the confluence of the mighty and 
 terrific discords with subtile concords." These 
 Sighs from the Depths are the impassioned ex- 
 pression of the " philosophic melancholy" (not 
 to be confused with joylessness or pessimism) 
 which was a part of De Quincey's temperament. 
 
 That the execution of the " Suspiria " was not 
 equal to their conception was avowed by the
 
 HIS WORKS 59 
 
 author himself, who pointed out the extreme dif- 
 ficulty that attends the writing of this impas- 
 sioned prose, " where a single false note, a single 
 word in a wrong key, ruins the whole music." 
 It has been said that the most famous and most 
 finished of the "Suspiria," to wit, " Levana and 
 Our Ladies of Sorrow," is " absolutely and by 
 universal admission the finest thing that ever 
 came from De Quincey's pen"; but while the 
 psychological importance and artistic beauty of 
 " Levana " will everywhere be recognized, we 
 cannot all subscribe to any such sweeping asser- 
 tion, for to some of us it will appear that the 
 most perfect of De Quincey's prose-poems are 
 to be sought less in these isolated and somewhat 
 abstract "Suspiria" than in the more moving, 
 because more human, reveries into which, in the 
 course of his " Confessions " and other writings, 
 he sometimes passes, quite naturally and spon- 
 taneously, as the pathos of the recorded incident 
 lifts him to more impassioned thought. With the 
 exception of" Levana," the "Suspiria " are rather 
 fragmentary, the most significant, perhaps, being 
 "The Palimpsest of the Human Brain," and 
 (among those posthumously published) the 
 strange phantasy entitled, " Who is this Woman 
 that beckoneth and warneth me from the place 
 where she is, and in whose Eyes is Woeful Re- 
 membrance?" 
 
 Far more memorable, however, than these 
 scattered torsos is that passionately conceived 
 and elaborately wrought masterpiece, " The Eng- 
 lish Mail Coach," which, though designed as one
 
 60 DE QUINCEY 
 
 of the "Suspiria,"was detached "for a momentary 
 purpose" and printed in " Blackwood" in 1849, 
 to reappear, five years later, in the fourth volume 
 of the Works. In his preface, De Quincey con- 
 descended to give a brief abstract of this prose- 
 poem, and of the inter-relation of its three parts; 
 for it appears that then, as now, it was a cause of 
 bewilderment to some of the critics. It stands, 
 indeed, among De Quincey's writings somewhat 
 as the " Epipsychidion " among Shelley's, a per- 
 petual joy and treasure to the esoteric few, but 
 a puzzle and stumbling-block to the many, who, 
 while praising the opening chapter on "The 
 Glory of Motion " a brilliantly-written account 
 of the English mail-coach system are apt to look 
 somewhat askance at " The Vision of Sudden 
 Death," and to shake their heads decidedly at the 
 concluding " Dream Fugue." Yet in truth there 
 is a very real harmony between the three sections, 
 the first of which, far from being the finest in 
 itself, is but introductory to the main theme 
 which is developed in the second viz.: that 
 " Vision of Sudden Death " of which De Quincey 
 was a witness, as he rode in the dead of night 
 on the Glasgow mail between Manchester and 
 Kendal while the third part, in which " the 
 actual scene, as looked down upon from the box, 
 was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and 
 changing as a musical fugue," is the crown and 
 consummation of the whole. 
 
 It has been said by Professor Masson that 
 " prosaically described, the paper is a recollec- 
 tion of a fatal accident by collision of the mail,
 
 HIS WORKS 6 1 
 
 in a very dark part of the road, with a solitary 
 vehicle containing two persons, one of them a 
 woman." That is certainly a prosaical descrip- 
 tion, but it is not quite correct; for (if we must go 
 into such matters) it is plain from De Quincey's 
 narrative that what he witnessed was a hair- 
 breadth escape from the " sudden death " which is 
 so wonderfully portrayed by him; and it was the 
 vision of that agony and that escape, with its 
 picture, again and again repeated, of the lady's 
 form "sinking, rising, raving, despairing," that 
 formed the subject of his dream. " A thousand 
 times," he says, " amongst the phantoms of sleep, 
 have I seen thee entering the gates of the golden 
 dawn seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despair- 
 ing; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have 
 seen thee followed by God's awful angel through 
 storms, through desert seas, through the dark- 
 ness of quicksands, through dreams and the 
 dreadful revelations that are in dreams ; only that 
 at the last, with one sling of His victorious arm, 
 He might snatch thee back from ruin, and might 
 emblazon in thy deliverance the endless resur- 
 rections of His love."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WRITINGS 
 
 THE juxtaposition in De Quincey's genius of 
 the imaginative and the critical element has 
 already been noted; in nearly all his chief writ- 
 ings we see, as his biographer, Dr. Japp (" H. A. 
 Page "), has pointed out, " the logical, or quanti- 
 tative faculty, working alongside the dreaming, 
 or purely abstractive faculty, without sense of 
 discord." His grave and stately phantasies are 
 relieved, here and there, by flashes of keenest 
 humour, while the critical essays, on their part, 
 have not a few passages interspersed of high 
 poetical power. But it will be generally agreed 
 that De Quincey's chief and final claim to a 
 place among English classics depends far less 
 on the analytical faculty, in which he has been 
 equalled or surpassed by many other writers, 
 than on the visionary and imaginative, in which 
 he has few rivals. His various works are valuable 
 mainly in proportion to the presence of this 
 quality; even his vast range of learning and his 
 discriminating judgment are of subsidiary im- 
 portance, but as a dreamer and prose-poet he 
 holds a throne from which he is not likely to be 
 deposed. 
 
 62
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 63 
 
 We have seen how the meditative mood, 
 strongly ingrained in his nature, was quickened 
 by the pathetic incidents of his youth, and how 
 the opium-eating habit, acquired in early man- 
 hood, intensified and coloured it. He had the 
 perception, which only great thinkers have, of 
 the deep hidden significances of life in all its 
 aspects and usages. His eye was extraordinarily 
 keen to mark those sublime phases of nature 
 which affect the human heart the unbroken 
 quietude of the early summer morning; the pomp 
 of the summer noon, suggesting solemn thoughts 
 of death; the "pensive and sympathetic sad- 
 ness " of the hours immediately succeeding to 
 sunset; the sense of pathos excited by the ap- 
 pearance of the earliest spring flowers, or by the 
 occasional brief resurrection of summer in the 
 closing autumn days. " It is all but inconceiv- 
 able," he says, "to men of unyielding and callous 
 sensibilities, how profoundly others find their 
 reveries modified and overruled by the external 
 character of the immediate scene around them." 
 Take, for example, the following passage from 
 the " Confessions " : 
 
 I have had occasion to remark, at various periods 
 of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, 
 and indeed the contemplation of death generally, is 
 (c<zteris paribus) more affecting in the summer than 
 in any other season of the year. And the reasons 
 are these three, I think : first, that the visible 
 heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, 
 and (if such a solecism may be excused) more in- 
 finite; the clouds, by which chiefly the eye ex- 
 pounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched
 
 64 DE QUINCEY 
 
 over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, 
 more massed, and are accumulated in far grander 
 and more towering piles ; secondly, the light and 
 the appearances of the declining and the setting 
 sun are much more fitted to be types and characters 
 of the infinite; and thirdly (which is the main 
 reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of 
 life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon 
 the antagonistic thought of death, and the wintry 
 sterility of the grave. . . . On these accounts it is 
 that I find it impossible to banish the thought of 
 death when I am walking alone in the endless days 
 of summer; and any particular death, if not actually 
 more affecting, at least haunts my mind more ob- 
 stinately and besiegingly in that season. 
 
 His ear, too, was almost preternaturally sensi- 
 tive to the influences of sound, whether in listen- 
 ing to the " pealing anthems " of some mountain 
 stream, or to the " silvery tinkle " of sheep-bells 
 on the Somersetshire hills, or to the thrilling 
 voice of Grassini, or to the melody of the Italian 
 language talked by Italian women in the gallery 
 of the Opera House, or to the music of Beet- 
 hoven, or to the " infinity," as he expressed it, 
 that is in the tones of the violin. Music was a 
 necessity of his nature; and impassioned danc- 
 ing, sustained by impassioned music, was the 
 most exalting scene which the world could offer 
 him, " capable of exciting and sustaining the veiy 
 grandest emotions of philosophic melancholy to 
 which the human spirit is open." 
 
 Again, what writer has noted with more pro- 
 found insight the grand and pathetic features of 
 modern life, the sense of mystery and immensity
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 65 
 
 suggested by a great human concourse, and the 
 magnetic attraction exercised on the surrounding 
 provinces by " the city no, not the city, but the 
 nation of London "? Or who has made us feel, 
 precisely as De Quincey has done, the romance 
 of travelling, the " glory of motion " as revealed 
 in the speed, picturesque surroundings, and per- 
 fect organization of the English mail-coach? Nor 
 is this peculiar gift of his genius shown only in 
 his elaborate dream-fugues and opium-visions, 
 but also in his record of many otherwise trivial 
 incidents in his early life, as, for instance, the 
 expectation of the post-chaise on a winter morn- 
 ing " the early breakfast long before the dark- 
 ness has given way, when the golden blaze of 
 the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, with 
 female ministrations of gentleness more touching 
 than on common occasions, all conspire to re- 
 kindle, as it were, for a farewell gleam, the holy 
 memorials of household affections." "All cir- 
 cumstances in travelling," he says, "all scenes 
 and situations of a representative and recurring 
 character, are indescribably affecting." Yet a 
 traveller himself De Quincey could hardly be 
 called. He had wandered much in his early days 
 about the coach-roads and by-paths of England 
 and Wales, but his knowledge of foreign lands 
 was derived wholly from books of travel, of 
 which he was a great reader. In this way his 
 mind had become familiar with those " sublime 
 natural phenomena" to which he often makes 
 reference the sandy deserts of Africa, the soli- 
 tary steppes of Asia, the silence of Lapland, the 

 
 66 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Canadian forests, or the gorgeous sunsets of the 
 West Indies. He seized with rapid intuition on 
 such majestic or picturesque features as struck 
 his fancy in reading, and reproduced them with 
 wonderful effect in the gorgeous imagery of his 
 dreams. 
 
 It is this power of suggesting analogies between 
 the realm of sense and the realm of spirit that 
 proclaims De Quincey one of the great mystics 
 of literature, and in spite of his lack of philo- 
 sophic steadfastness, makes his best writings im- 
 perishable. " Of this," he says, "let everyone be 
 assured that he owes to the impassioned books 
 which he has read many a thousand more of 
 emotions than he can consciously trace back to 
 them. Dim by their origination, these emotions 
 yet arise in him, and mould him through life like 
 forgotten incidents of his childhood." A great 
 portion of his own writings belongs essentially 
 to this class. 
 
 But he is very far from being a sublime dreamer 
 only; for side by side with the gravity of his 
 most impassioned thought there lies a strong 
 logical power, which recalls the reader, now and 
 again, from the phantasies of dreamland to the 
 actualities of life, much in the same way as the 
 knocking at the gate in " Macbeth," according 
 to De Quincey's own interpretation, serves to re- 
 establish in the minds of the audience the exist- 
 ence of the world in which they live, after a 
 parenthesis of the world of darkness. The wide 
 scope of his genius is one of the first points to 
 arrest attention, From earliest youth he had
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 67 
 
 read books of all sorts with insatiable eagerness, 
 and aided by a marvellous memory he thus accu- 
 mulated a vast store of knowledge on a number 
 of subjects, and being possessed also of an un- 
 failing critical instinct he was able to use his 
 encyclopedic learning with judgment and effect. 
 Whether recording personal studies and anec- 
 dotes, or giving his views on some abstruse 
 matter of theology or political economy, or 
 throwing light on some point of classical scholar- 
 ship which had escaped the grammarians them- 
 selves, or expounding the mysteries of the secret 
 societies and " dark sciences " of the middle ages, 
 or discoursing on casuistry, or on the laws of 
 rhetoric and style, or introducing English readers 
 to German literature in any and all of these 
 subjects he was equally at ease. Had he lived 
 six centuries earlier he would have been a mighty 
 sage or alchemist; living in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, he was the high-priest of magazine writers, 
 and found a ready medium for his oracular utter- 
 ances in the pages of "Blackwood" and "Tail." 
 How prodigious his memory was may be 
 judged from his habit of writing on complex 
 subjects when he had no access to libraries; as 
 in the case of " The Caesars," which was written, 
 he tells us, in a situation which denied him the 
 use of books, or when, in referring to Godwin's 
 " Caleb Williams," he stated the outline of the 
 plot thirty-five years after he had read the story. 
 But when it comes to poetical quotations, no 
 memory not even that of a De Quincey is to 
 be trusted, and a scrutiny of his excerpts from
 
 68 DE QUINCEY 
 
 Wordsworth and other poets will reveal some 
 startling variations from the original text. 
 
 There is, and probably always will be, a differ- 
 ence of opinion as to the quality of De Quincey's 
 humour; for while some of his critics are inclined 
 to value it very highly, others will allow him 
 credit for no more than a " sarcastic pungency" 
 of a second-rate kind. As humorist, he certainly 
 appears in a character which might seem some- 
 what to conflict with that of an opium-eating 
 visionary; for his humour, far from being pensive 
 or subdued, is keen, bold, and at times almost 
 irrepressible, harping persistently on the subject 
 of its merriment, and returning to it again and 
 again with manifest delight. This mirthful spirit 
 is at its best in such essays as " Murder con- 
 sidered as one of the Fine Arts," " Sortilege and 
 Astrology," and " Coleridge and Opium-Eating," 
 but it will be found scattered throughout his 
 writings, and now and then degenerating into 
 something like mere badinage and horse-play. 
 Such cases, however, are the exception ; for as a 
 rule De Quincey's humour is not only delightful 
 in itself, but does good service by acting as a 
 foil and relief to his higher imaginative qualities. 
 
 It was as an anecdotist that De Quincey most 
 often allowed his sense of humour to run away 
 with him, and (in odd contrast with his extreme 
 considerateness in other relations) gave offence 
 to the subjects of his playful but rather merciless 
 feat's of portraiture. Thus, while we would not 
 willingly lose that story of the walk with Words- 
 worth, in which it was brought home to De
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 69 
 
 Quincey's mind that, however fine the poet's ap- 
 pearance in some respects, " the Wordsworthian 
 legs were certainly not ornamental," or that 
 caustic report of an imaginary conversation be- 
 tween the opium-famished Coleridge and the 
 hired man who by his own bidding had been 
 placed at the door of the druggist's shop to pre- 
 vent his entrance, we cannot but feel a little 
 aghast at the unreserve of the narrator. But De 
 Quincey's stories must not be taken too seriously, 
 for they are brimming over with the exaggeration 
 of his fanciful humour. "All anecdotes," he 
 fears, " are false. I am sorry to say so, but my 
 duty to the reader extorts from me the disagree- 
 able confession, as upon a matter specially in- 
 vestigated by myself, that all dealers in anecdotes 
 are tainted with mendacity. Rarer than the 
 phoenix is that virtuous man (a monster he is 
 nay, he is an impossible man) who will consent 
 to lose a prosperous story on the consideration 
 that it happens to be a lie." 
 
 It has sometimes been suggested that De 
 Quincey might have written a great historical 
 work, as, for instance, on the Roman Empire; 
 and it appears that a history of England in twelve 
 volumes was one of his latest aspirations. It is 
 difficult, however, to believe that he was the right 
 person for such a task, for in the first place he 
 had neither the patience and accuracy of research 
 which are indispensable to the historian, nor any 
 real belief in the substantial truth of history, 
 which, as he thought, " being built partly, and 
 some of it altogether, upon anecdotage, must be
 
 70 DE QUINCEY 
 
 a tissue of falsehoods." That it would have been 
 vain to expect strict historical impartiality from a 
 writer of De Quincey's temperament may be in- 
 ferred from his remarks on the rights and wrongs 
 of Richard Bentley's long struggle against Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, where, after stating his be- 
 lief that Bentley was in the right and the College 
 in the wrong, he adds : " But even if not, I would 
 propose that at this time of day Bentley should 
 be pronounced right, and his enemies utterly in 
 the wrong. Whilst living, indeed, or whilst sur- 
 viving in the persons of his friends and relations, 
 the meanest of little rascals has a right to rigor- 
 ous justice. But when he and his are bundled 
 off to Hades, it is far better, and more consider- 
 ate to the feelings of us public, that a little dog 
 should be sacrificed than a great one ; for by this 
 means the current of one's sympathy with an 
 illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstructions." 
 This is doubtless said partly in fun, yet it is typi- 
 cal of De Quincey's bias, and it suggests alarm- 
 ing thoughts as to the possible fate of the " little 
 dogs " of history at the hands of so accommo- 
 dating a writer. De Quincey himself divided 
 history into three classes, the narrative, the philo- 
 sophic, and the scenical, and it is to the third of 
 these that his own sketches for the most part be- 
 long. He seized unerringly on the picturesque 
 characters and the striking scenes; and it is this 
 treatment that lends so great a charm to his best 
 historical essays, such as " The Revolt of the 
 Tartars," or "Joan of Arc." 
 
 The key to a right understanding of De Quin-
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 71 
 
 cey's spirit both in religion and politics, philo- 
 sophy and criticism, is not difficult to discover. 
 The venerable and the picturesque these were 
 the two qualities that most strongly influenced 
 him, and enlisted his sympathies most frequently, 
 but not invariably, in the constitutional cause. 
 His mind, like that of Sir Thomas Browne, " al- 
 most demanded mysteries," and he held that " an 
 intellect of the highest order must build upon 
 Christianity." He joined in the royalist senti- 
 ment that the Puritan creed was " not a religion 
 for a gentleman, because all sectarianism must 
 appear spurious and mean in the eye of him who 
 has been bred up in the grand classic forms of 
 the Church of England or the Church of Rome." 
 His politics, for the same reason, were a sort of 
 transcendental Toryism, but in spite of his regard 
 for rank, and his veneration for solemn cere- 
 monial, there are many signs in his writings of 
 an admiring regard for any picturesque elements 
 in the Radicalism which he denounced. He 
 warmly defended the characters of Milton and 
 Cromwell from the aspersions of royalist writers, 
 and argued in his essay on "The Falsification of 
 History" that in the seventeenth century he 
 would not make the same admission in his own 
 age democratic and popular politics were iden- 
 tical with patriotism. So, too, as concerns what 
 has been called his " John Bullism," it is true 
 that his attitude towards foreign nations, especi- 
 ally towards France, is sometimes rather insular; 
 yet he could do justice to the great events of 
 French history, and he points out the folly of
 
 72 DE QUINCEY 
 
 the strictures passed by the Recluse, in Words- 
 worth's "Excursion," on the supposed failure of 
 the Revolution. " Whereas, in fact," he cries, 
 " it has succeeded; it is propagating its life; it is 
 travelling on to new births conquering and yet 
 to conquer." 
 
 In like manner, in his literary criticisms, there 
 was usually a sure and instant recognition, 
 superior to any personal ties or prejudices, of 
 great and genuine qualities. He read and ad- 
 mired Wordsworth many years before the world 
 had discovered him; and though deeply antago- 
 nistic to Shelley's social creed, he not only appre- 
 ciated his high poetic genius, but understood, 
 what at that day very few critics could under- 
 stand, the profound sincerity of his character. 
 Taken as a whole, his many verdicts on thinkers 
 and writers, past and present, were singularly just 
 and discriminating; and when, in editing his 
 collected works, he was able to take a retrospect 
 of his criticisms, he had the satisfaction in some 
 instances, as in that of his scathing article on Dr. 
 Samuel Parr, of pointing to a prophecy fulfilled. 
 But there were a few cases, notably that of his dis- 
 paragement of Goethe, where he must have felt 
 that his earlier judgment had been in error. 
 
 It was, presumably, his veneration for the 
 pomps and pageantries of life that led him to 
 write in defence of such hoary evils in them- 
 selves, one would have thought, most antagonistic 
 to his gentle nature as war and duelling. Of all 
 romances, the most unbelievably romantic seemed 
 to him to be the abandonment of warfare, and he
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 73 
 
 feared that any compact of nations for that end 
 would be " the inauguration of a downward path 
 for man"; in like manner he defended the duel 
 as "a direct product of chivalry," safeguarding 
 the principle of honour. We may smile at this; 
 yet in another direction we find De Quincey's 
 intense faith in the dignity of mankind ranging 
 him not only among the reformers, but in a 
 position far in advance of many democrats of to- 
 day on the principle " that all corporal punish- 
 ments whatsoever, and upon whomsoever in- 
 flicted, are hateful, and an indignity to our 
 common nature, which (with or without our con- 
 sent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer." 
 
 Thanks be to God, he says, that in this point 
 at least, for the dignity of human nature, amongst 
 the many, many cases of reform destined eventually 
 to turn out chimerical, this one, at least, never can 
 be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows 
 more intellectual, the power of managing him by 
 his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt 
 of all appeals to his mere animal instincts of pain, 
 must go on part passu. 
 
 It has been pointed out by Dr. Japp, in his 
 biography of De Quincey, that his democratic 
 sentiments, in this and other respects, were 
 largely due to his contact with the working 
 classes, from whom literary men for the most 
 part stand aloof. Little liking as he had for 
 modern democracy, his personal sympathies were 
 at all times warm and sincere, for owing to his 
 own acquaintance with poverty and suffering he
 
 74 DE QUINCEY 
 
 was quite free from the least taint of Pharisaism. 
 Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, this 
 was his watchword in all personal intercourse, 
 whatever medieval Toryism he might preach in 
 his politics; and there are few nobler passages 
 in English literature than those which show De 
 Quincey in this most human aspect, whether 
 comforting the friendless child in the deserted 
 house in Greek Street, or pacing Oxford Street 
 in company with the outcast Ann, or haunting 
 the London markets on a Saturday night and 
 advising some poor family as to the best mode 
 of laying out their scanty wages. How deeply he 
 felt for the sorrows of the poor may be seen 
 from his remark in his old age: "All that I have 
 ever had enjoyment of in life, the charms of 
 friendship, the smiles of women, and the joys of 
 wine, seem to rise up and reproach me for my 
 happiness when I see such misery, and think 
 there is so much of it in the world." In one 
 passage of his works he deprecates the brutal 
 spirit which can look " lightly and indulgently 
 on the afflicting spectacle of female prostitution 
 as it exists in London and in all great cities"; 
 in another he rejoices at the interference of 
 Parliament to amend the " ruinous social evil " 
 of female labour in mines. This noble pity for 
 suffering humanity was one of the most striking 
 features of De Quincey 's character, and ought 
 not to be overlooked (as it usually is) by those 
 who lay stress on his lack of the " moral " ele- 
 ment. It was much more than a sentimental 
 mood in him; it lay constantly at the base of
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 75 
 
 his thoughts, and his nature was, in this sense, 
 a profoundly moral one. 
 
 Towards the lower animals, too, there is a con- 
 siderable vein of tenderness in De Quincey's 
 writings, though of zoology he knew little. It has 
 been remarked that he is fond of using simili- 
 tudes drawn from animal life; but this know- 
 ledge was derived mostly from book-lore, as 
 when, in his account of the exhibitions in the 
 Roman amphitheatre, he enumerates with much 
 zest the strange animals, " specious miracles of 
 nature brought together from arctic and from 
 tropic deserts," then first presented to the gaze 
 of the Roman people. He candidly avows that 
 "grosser ignorance than his own in most sec- 
 tions of natural history is not easily imagined"; 
 and when, in the Appendix to his " Confessions," 
 he wrote a beautiful and pathetic account of the 
 death of a little bird, which had been given to 
 one of his children by a neighbour, he added 
 that he could not " ornithologically describe or 
 classify" the bird, beyond a belief that it be- 
 longed to the family of finches, " either a gold- 
 finch, bullfinch, or at least something ending in 
 inch" But we recall with pleasure the passage in 
 which he confesses his strong liking for the 
 society of cows as a refuge from that of bores and 
 Philistines, and owns himself " not ashamed to 
 profess a deep love for these quiet creatures " ; 
 nor can we forget his reference to the ill-treat- 
 ment of cats, that " the groans and screams of 
 this poor persecuted race, if gathered into some 
 great echoing hall of horrors, would move the
 
 76 DE QUINCEY 
 
 heart of the stoniest of our race." Evidently the 
 sense of pathos which he felt so strongly in the 
 word " pariah " did not relate only to the suffer- 
 ings of the human. 
 
 Let us now turn to a consideration ot De 
 Quincey's style. The close interdependence of 
 thought and form is insisted on in his own essay 
 on " Style," where he approvingly quotes Words- 
 worth's remark that style is not the dress but the 
 incarnation of thought, and concludes that "in 
 what proportion the thoughts are subjective, in 
 that same proportion does their very essence 
 become identical with the expression, and the 
 style becomes confluent with the matter." Cer- 
 tainly De Quincey's own style is the perfect 
 counterpart of his intellect; there is the same 
 maturity about it from the first (he did not begin 
 to write till he was at his prime); the same state- 
 liness of tone balanced by the same logical 
 accuracy. Language he regarded as a precious 
 thing, "an exquisitely beautiful vehicle for the 
 thoughts," and he deplored the "defects in pre- 
 cision" which he asserted could be found on 
 every page of prose even of the masterpieces of 
 English literature; for which reason he thought 
 no labour too great in the elaboration of his 
 essays. Though not in the strict sense a poet, 
 having even in his youthful days discovered that 
 poetry was not his natural vocation, he none the 
 less devoted a poet's care to the structure of his 
 sentences, and felt all a poet's regard for the 
 sanctity of his mother-tongue. " If there is one 
 thing in this world," he says, " which, next after
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 77 
 
 the flag of his country and spotless honour, 
 should be holy in the eyes of a young poet, it is 
 the language of his country." It is said that he 
 had a strange habit of smoothing and cleaning 
 the greasy Scotch paper-money, and of polishing 
 silver coinage before he parted with it a fas- 
 tidiousness which may be regarded, perhaps, as 
 typical of the indefatigable care lavished on his 
 writings before he gave them currency. He had 
 known an author, he tells us (presumably with 
 reference to himself), " so laudably fastidious in 
 this subtle art as to have recast one chapter of a 
 series no less than seventeen times; so difficult 
 was the ideal or model of excellence which he 
 kept before his mind." What sheer pain he suf- 
 fered from hearing language distorted, may be 
 guessed from his whimsical account of how he 
 was affected by the monstrous word " anteriorly," 
 once and once only encountered. "We heard 
 it," he says, "as we reached the topmost stair 
 on the second floor, and, without further struggle 
 against our instincts, round we wheeled, rushed 
 down forty-five stairs, and exploded from the 
 house." 
 
 The secret of De Quincey's style, then, lies in 
 its fitness and lucidity; it conveys precisely the 
 sense that is intended, and attains its effect far 
 less by rhetorical artifice than by an almost fault- 
 less instinct in the choice and use of words; as 
 Wilson said of it, " the best word always comes 
 up." When his theme is solemn, his language is 
 solemn also ; when the mood changes, there is a 
 corresponding change in the style; and to this
 
 78 DE QUINCEY 
 
 sensibility is due the rare intellectual pleasure 
 that we feel in reading him. I say sensibility, 
 because it is necessary to point out that there is 
 much more in the form of De Quincey's writings 
 than mere external beauty; there is very true and 
 deep feeling underlying and moulding it. A 
 clarified style such as his silvery as his own 
 voice is indeed the expression of a considerate 
 nature, of one whose imaginative sympathy en- 
 ables him to understand his readers' position as 
 well as his own and to adapt himself to their 
 case; nor is it fanciful to suppose that De 
 Quincey's style, no less than his character, was 
 matured and humanized by the tragic experiences 
 of his youth and by his familiarity so unusual 
 among literary men with the lot of the common 
 people. "The market and the highway," he 
 says, "are rich seed-plots for the sowing and 
 reaping of many indispensable ideas." 
 
 Let us take as an example of De Quincey's 
 use of that " elaborate stateliness," of which, 
 provided that the occasion be suitable, he ex- 
 pressly approves in his Essay on " Rhetoric," 
 the following passage from his reminiscences of 
 one of his Grasmere friends, the unfortunate 
 Charles Lloyd: 
 
 Charles Lloyd never returned to Brathay after he 
 had once been removed from it ; and the removal 
 of his family soon followed. . . . But often and 
 often, in years after all was gone, I have passed old 
 Brathay, or have gone over purposely after dark, 
 about the time when, for many a year, I used to go 
 over to spend the evening; and seating myself on a
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 79 
 
 stone by the side of the mountain river Brathay, 
 have staid for hours listening to the same sound to 
 which so often Charles Lloyd and I used to hearken 
 togetherwith profound emotion and awe the sound 
 of pealing anthems, as if streaming from the open 
 portals of some illimitable cathedral ; for such a 
 sound does actually arise, in many states of the 
 weather, from the peculiar action of the river Brathay 
 upon its rocky bed; and many times I have heard 
 it, of a quiet night, when no stranger could have 
 been persuaded to believe it other than the sound 
 of choral chanting distant, solemn, saintly. . . . 
 Since the ruin or dispersion of that household, after 
 the smoke had ceased to ascend from their hearth, 
 or the garden walk to re-echo their voices, often- 
 times, when lying by the river side, I have listened 
 to the same aerial saintly sound, whilst looking back 
 to that night, long hidden in the frost of receding 
 years, when Charles and Sophia Lloyd, now lying 
 in foreign graves, first dawned upon me, coming 
 suddenly out of rain and darkness; then young, 
 rich, happy, full of hope, belted with young children 
 (of whom also most are long dead), and standing 
 apparently on the verge of a labyrinth of golden 
 hours. 
 
 Next let us quote, in contrast, a typical instance 
 of De Quincey's humorous style, from a passage 
 of which Coleridge, or rather one of Coleridge's 
 puppets, was the victim. The reference is to the 
 succession of bores and nonentities whom Cole- 
 ridge was apt to set up and worship as original 
 thinkers. 
 
 First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. 
 Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon dull? Fishy were 
 his eyes, torpedinous was his manner; and his main
 
 8o DE QUINCEY 
 
 idea, out of two which he really had, related to the 
 moon from which you infer, perhaps, that he was 
 lunatic. By no means. It was no craze, under the 
 influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was 
 an idea of mere hostility to the moon. In Madras 
 had Dr. Andrew lived. The Madras people, like 
 many others, had an idea that she influenced the 
 weather. Subsequently the Herschels, senior and 
 junior, systematized this idea; and then the wrath 
 of Andrew, previously in a crescent state, actually 
 dilated to a plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland 
 people (for at the Lakes it was we knew him) ex- 
 pounded his condition to us by saying that he was 
 "maffled"; which word means "perplexed in the 
 extreme." His wrath did not pass into lunacy; it 
 produced simple distraction; an uneasy fumbling 
 with the idea like that of an old superannuated 
 dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of 
 teeth. In this condition you will judge that he was 
 rather tedious; and in this condition Coleridge took 
 him up. 
 
 Comparing the two extracts quoted above, we 
 are struck at once by their entire dissimilarity in 
 tone the long, solemn, slow-winding, dirge-like 
 sentences in which the tragedy of Charles Lloyd 
 is narrated, contrasting with the sharp, short, 
 stabbing epigrams which dispose of Dr. Andrew 
 Bell. Yet, as the mood takes us, we read either 
 passage with equal contentment, because in both 
 the style exactly harmonizes with the thought. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that De 
 Quincey's artistic sense and grammatical accu- 
 racy, strict as he was in theory, were never at 
 fault. Some readers, perhaps, will think that his 
 frequent inversion of words became almost an
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 81 
 
 affectation, as when he describes opium as "an 
 engine so awful of consolation and support," or 
 tells us, in explanation of his first use of the 
 drug, that " simply as an anodyne it was, under 
 the mere coercion of pain the severest " a man- 
 nerism of which numberless examples might be 
 culled from his writings. He must plead guilty, 
 too, to a common but careless use of the English 
 participle which it is strange to find in s great 
 a master of language; as may be seen in the 
 following sentence from which the subordinate 
 parts are omitted: "I remember even yet that 
 when first arrayed, at four years old, in nankeen 
 trousers, all my female friends filled my pockets 
 with half-crowns " a remark which, while testi- 
 fying to the generosity of the ladies, seems to 
 leave open to grave misconstruction both their 
 age and their costume. 
 
 A more serious, because a more frequent 
 blemish in De Quincey's style is his great dis- 
 cursiveness, the outcome of the immense wealth 
 of knowledge and anecdote with which his mind 
 was filled, and which he was too often tempted to 
 disburse. "The body has an awfu' sight o' words," 
 was the remark of a Scotch cook, who had her 
 orders direct from him; and if he used circum- 
 locution in the ordering of his dinner, far wider 
 was the flight of his fancy in the writing of his 
 works. Thus in the middle of his chapter on 
 Southey we find embedded the story of De 
 Quincey's adventure with the "man mountain," 
 and in the same way we are called off from a 
 dissertation on Coleridge to hear the tragic tale 
 F
 
 82 DE QUINCEY 
 
 of the Beauty of Buttermere. It is somewhat 
 amusing to find him, in his Essay on " Style," 
 insisting on the " vast importance of compres- 
 sion"; yet there is truth in his plea that " mo- 
 derate excursions have a license," and we may 
 comfort ourselves with the thought that, as he 
 elsewhere remarks, "a digression is often the 
 cream of an article." The same might be said of 
 the instructive footnotes which he plentifully 
 scattered over his pages; they contain a rich 
 store of wide and multifarious knowledge. 
 
 De Quincey has been blamed for the number 
 of Latin words that are found in his writings; 
 but here he acted deliberately and on principle; 
 for, as he points out, in defending Wordsworth 
 from a similar rebuke, though the Saxon part of 
 our language is the right vehicle for the element- 
 ary feelings, the abstract conceptions, as in medi- 
 tative poetry and philosophic prose, demand the 
 prevalence of the Latin. " Long-tailed words in 
 osity and ation \ " he retorts. " What does that 
 describe? Exactly the Latin part of our language. 
 Now, those very terminations speak for them- 
 selves. All high abstractions end in ation ; that 
 is, they are Latin, and just in proportion as the 
 abstracting power extends and widens, do the 
 circles of thought widen, and the horizon or 
 boundary melts into the infinite." 1 
 
 De Quincey's chief exemplars in style were 
 Sir Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor, the two 
 
 1 For a fuller discussion of De Quincey's style, the 
 reader is referred to Professor Minto's ' ' Manual of English 
 Prose Literature."
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 83 
 
 great masters to whom he awards the spolia opima 
 of English prose literature. The only writer of his 
 own period to whom he bears affinity is Cole- 
 ridge; and even here the similarity, though very 
 striking as regards certain features of life and 
 character, does not extend to the general manner 
 of thought and expression. Readers of his bio- 
 graphical essay must feel that much of what he says 
 of Coleridge's dreamy nature and dilatory habits 
 would apply equally to himself; and in both cases 
 the use of opium brought at once a weakness 
 and a strength. The same resemblance may be 
 traced in the prodigious memory, great conversa- 
 tional powers, and general intellectual scope of 
 the two thinkers. De Quincey, as he himself 
 remarks, " read for thirty years in the same track 
 as Coleridge that track in which few of any age 
 will follow us, such as German metaphysicians, 
 Latin schoolmen, thaumaturgic Platonists, religi- 
 ous mystics." Finally, the same reproach has 
 been urged against both, of having wasted their 
 fine powers in desultory tasks, and of having 
 left no single " great work " as their monument. 
 But what does this charge mean? There is a 
 very true and important distinction, drawn by 
 De Quincey himself, between the " literature of 
 knowledge," whose function is merely to teach, 
 and the " literature of power," which is able also 
 to move. It is to the latter class that De Quincey's 
 masterpieces belong; and though their bulk is 
 not great, they may justly claim a place among 
 the supreme achievements of our literature. We 
 may surmise that he was thinking partly of his
 
 84 DE QUINCEY 
 
 own case, when, in an article on Professor Wil- 
 son, he defended him from this same charge of 
 desultory writing. He admits that by steadier 
 application his friend might have produced an 
 enormous and systematic book; but then he re- 
 members the Greek proverb : " Big book, big 
 nuisance," and concludes that the Professor did 
 wisely in leaving his works in detached papers, 
 instead of " conglutinating them into one vast 
 block." 
 
 It is true that in his highly-coloured picture of 
 " the pains of opium " De Quincey in one pass- 
 age attributes to opium the failure of his desire 
 to construct a great philosophical work, which 
 was to have been entitled, " De Emendatione 
 Humani Intellects "; but we may be pardoned 
 for doubting whether his genius was really suited 
 to a labour of this kind, or whether such a work, 
 if ever accomplished, would have been half as 
 valuable as the " Confessions of an English 
 Opium-Eater," or the "Suspiria de Profundis"; 
 for " great works " are not to be measured by the 
 number of their pages or the ponderous array of 
 their doctrines. Let us, therefore, not grieve 
 overmuch for the loss of the " De Emendatione 
 Humani Intellectus," for we may be assured that 
 in his impassioned prose De Quincey left the 
 best monument of which he was capable, and if 
 it were through opium that he expressed himself 
 in this form, instead of in a philosophical treatise, 
 we should have to admit that literature owes 
 something to opium. Most great writers, how- 
 ever, have a way of thus musing on some phan-
 
 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 85 
 
 torn unaccomplished work; witness the "Eureka" 
 of Edgar Poe, and the "Complete Theory of 
 Mind," with which Shelley hoped to enrich the 
 philosophic world. Those who condemn De 
 Quincey because he threw his writings into short 
 papers rather than bulky volumes should remem- 
 ber Addison's satire on the tendency to value 
 books by their size alone the author of a folio 
 taking precedence of all others. It would be 
 only by the adoption of such a criterion as this, 
 that De Quincey's best writings could be ruled 
 out of the category of great works.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 " THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM- 
 EATER " 
 
 HAVING now viewed the leading facts of 
 De Quincey's life, the general order of his 
 works, and his most striking characteristics of 
 thought and style, it remains for us to make a 
 more detailed examination of his recognized 
 masterpiece, which of all his writings is the one 
 that most closely reveals him to his readers. Let 
 us first note that De Quincey's "Confessions of 
 an English Opium-Eater" are not concerned 
 wholly or mainly with opium. That opium plays 
 a great and most fascinating part in the work is 
 indisputable, and it is likely enough that apart 
 from that somewhat morbid element in the story 
 enhanced by the suggestive title public in- 
 terest would not have been captivated in any- 
 thing like the same degree, a fact of which the 
 author was doubtless conscious when he wrote 
 it. Nevertheless it is clearly stated by De Quin- 
 cey himself that, in his own design of the book, 
 the importance which attaches to opium was but 
 subsidiary to a higher purpose. " The object of 
 that work," he says, " was to reveal something of 
 86
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 87 
 
 the grandeur which belongs potentially to human 
 dreams. . . . The Opium Confessions were written 
 with some slight secondary purpose of exposing 
 the specific power of opium upon the faculty of 
 dreaming, but much more with the purpose of 
 displaying the faculty itself." 
 
 We began by describing De Quincey as the 
 master-dreamer of the nineteenth century, and it 
 would be difficult to overrate the significance 
 attached by him to that phantasmal part of man's 
 nature, which to the generality of men is a mat- 
 ter of mere wonder or unconcern. The faculty 
 of " dreaming splendidly," he remarks, is a rare 
 one, and owing to the " fierce condition of eter- 
 nal hurry," in which we now live, there is little 
 opportunity to develop it; yet "the machinery 
 for dreaming planted in the human brain was not 
 planted for nothing." Dreams, according to De 
 Quincey's belief, are the gates of the infinite. 
 " The dreaming organ, in connection with the 
 heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the magni- 
 ficent apparatus which forces the infinite into the 
 chambers of a human brain, and throws dark 
 reflections from eternities below all life upon the 
 mirrors of that mysterious camera obscura the 
 sleeping mind." 
 
 We must remember, therefore, in reading the 
 " Confessions," that the dreams therein narrated 
 are not merely incidents, however grand and 
 terrific, in the opium-eater's autobiography, but 
 the very raison d'etre of his story, to which the 
 whole course of his experiences, including the 
 tremendous struggle with the " mighty drug," is
 
 88 DE QUINCEY 
 
 but introductory and subservient. In De Quin- 
 cey's words: 
 
 The work itself opened with the narration of my 
 early adventures. These, in the natural order of 
 succession, led to the opium as a resource for heal- 
 ing their consequences; and the opium as naturally 
 led to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of 
 presenting the facts, what stood last in the succes- 
 sion of development stood first in the order of my 
 purposes. 
 
 /. Introductory Narration. DeQuincey starts, 
 then, with the inquiry so often addressed to him 
 how was it that he became an opium-eater 
 and devotes by far the greater portion of the 
 book to answering that question. 1 It was, he 
 passionately insists, "a sudden overmastering 
 impulse, derived from bodily anguish," that drove 
 him to the use of the drug; and with much 
 wealth of illustration and sarcasm he rebuts 
 Coleridge's unfriendly suggestion that he had 
 sought the pleasures of opium as a mere volup- 
 tuary. Physical pain in the first instance, and 
 then the " settled and abiding darkness " that 
 brooded over his life as a result of his youthful 
 sufferings these he tells us, were the true cause 
 of his opium-eating, and therefore the history of 
 these sufferings is essential to his task. 
 
 In great detail, but with a richness of fancy 
 and phrasing which makes each detail impressive, 
 he proceeds to tell the story of his early quarrel 
 
 1 The differences between the earlier and the later text 
 of the " Confessions " have already been noted. It is the 
 later and fuller text that is here followed.
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 89 
 
 with his guardians, and the circumstances which 
 led first to his unwilling entry at Manchester 
 Grammar School, and then to his fatal elope- 
 ment from the place. To a psychologist of De 
 Quincey's temperament there was, even in his 
 boyhood, something peculiarly moving in a fare- 
 well; and here, as in other instances, he lingers 
 over the recollection of every incident of his de- 
 parture. Then the die is cast, and we see him 
 on the second evening approaching Chester (his 
 mother's residence) on foot, and before his eyes 
 " an elaborate and pompous sunset hanging over 
 the mountains of North Wales." 
 
 A master of all artistic effects, De Quincey 
 was especially skilled in his presentment of con- 
 trasts; and few things in the "Confessions" are 
 more suggestively beautiful than the serene pas- 
 toral episode of his summer in Wales, preceding 
 the dark and terrible winter that awaited him in 
 London, and culminating in that calm, pensive, 
 ghost-like November day, when he set out on his 
 ill-starred journey: 
 
 So sweet, so ghostly, in its soft, golden smiles, 
 silent as a dream, and quiet as the dying trance of 
 a saint, faded through all its stages this departing 
 day, along the whole length of which I bade fare- 
 well for many a year to Wales, and farewell to 
 summer. In the very aspect and the sepulchral 
 stillness of the motionless day, as solemnly it wore 
 away through morning, noontide, afternoon, to meet 
 the darkness that was hurrying to swallow up its 
 beauty, I had a fantastic feeling as though I read 
 the very language of resignation when bending be- 
 fore some irresistible agency. And at intervals I
 
 9 o DE QUINCEY 
 
 heard in how different a key! the raving, the 
 everlasting uproar of that dreadful metropolis, 
 which at every step was coming nearer, and beckon- 
 ing (as it seemed) to myself for purposes as dim, 
 for issues as incalculable, as the path of cannon- 
 shots fired at random and in darkness. 
 
 Not less wonderful is the description of the 
 night of storm that followed, as he waited at a 
 Shrewsbury inn for the mail-coach that was 
 thence to carry him to his destination : 
 
 For nearly two hours I had heard fierce winds 
 arising ; and the whole atmosphere had by this 
 time become one vast laboratory of hostile move- 
 ments in all directions. Such a chaos, such a dis- 
 tracting wilderness of dim sights, and of those 
 awful " sounds that live in darkness," never had I 
 consciously witnessed. Rightly, and by a true in- 
 stinct, had I made my farewell adieus to summer. 
 All through the day, Wales and her grand mountain 
 ranges Penmaenmawr, Snowdon, Cader Idris 
 had divided my thoughts with London. But now 
 rose London sole, dark, infinite brooding over 
 the whole capacities of my heart. Other object, 
 other thought, I could not admit. Long before 
 midnight the whole household (with the exception 
 of a solitary waiter) had retired to rest. Two hours, 
 at least, were left to me, after twelve o'clock had 
 struck, for heart-shaking reflections. . . . The un- 
 usual dimensions of the rooms, especially their 
 towering height, brought up continually and ob- 
 stinately, through natural links of associated feel- 
 ings or images, the mighty vision of London waiting 
 for me afar off. An altitude of nineteen or twenty 
 feet showed itself unavoidably upon an exaggerated 
 scale in some of the smaller side-rooms, meant 
 probably for cards or for refreshments. This single
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 91 
 
 feature of the rooms their unusual altitude, and 
 the echoing hollowness which had become the ex- 
 ponent of that altitude this one terrific feature (for 
 terrific it was in the effect), together with crowding 
 and evanescent images of the flying feet that so 
 often had spread gladness through these halls on 
 the wings of youth and hope at seasons when every 
 room rang with music: all this, rising in tumultuous 
 vision, whilst the dead hours of night were stealing 
 along all around me, household and town, sleeping 
 and whilst against the windows more and more 
 the storm outside was raving, and to all appearance 
 endlessly growing, threw me into the deadliest 
 condition of nervous emotion under contradictory 
 forces, high over which predominated horror re- 
 coiling from that unfathomed abyss in London into 
 which I was now so wilfully precipitating myself. 
 
 It has been the lot of not a few writers who 
 have made some mark in literature to record 
 their after-impressions of an early struggle with 
 poverty and loneliness; but there is an almost 
 unique charm and tenderness about this portion 
 of De Quincey's narrative. Intent on the business 
 which had brought him to London, to raise a 
 sum of 200 on personal security from the 
 Jewish money-lenders, he is kept on the tenter- 
 hooks of crafty delays until his small store of 
 guineas and of hopes is almost exhausted; 
 yet now, at the very time when his personal 
 fortunes are at the lowest, his innate sense of 
 humanity is seen at its highest and best. Two 
 incidents in this period stand out conspicuous 
 both for the light they throw on this most 
 honourable trait in De Quincey's character, and
 
 92 DE QUINCEY 
 
 for the imperishable record which he has given 
 them in the "Confessions" his befriending of 
 the little servant girl in the half-deserted house 
 in Greek Street, where he was himself allowed a 
 nightly shelter by the goodwill of the Jew's 
 agent and attorney, and his still more memorable 
 affection for the unfortunate Ann. 
 
 Towards nightfall I went down to Greek Street ; 
 and found, on taking possession of my new quarters, 
 that the house already contained one single inmate 
 a poor, friendless child, apparently ten years old; 
 but she seemed hunger-bitten; and sufferings of 
 that sort often make children look older than they 
 are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had 
 slept and lived there alone for some time before I 
 came; and great joy the poor creature expressed 
 when she found that I was in future to be her com- 
 panion through the hours of darkness. The house 
 could hardly be called large that is, it was not 
 large on each separate storey; but, having four 
 storeys in all, it was large enough to impress vividly 
 the sense of its echoing loneliness; and, from the 
 want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a pro- 
 digious uproar on the staircase and hall; so that, 
 amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and hunger, the 
 forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more 
 from the self-created one of ghosts. Against these 
 enemies I could promise her protection ; human 
 companionship was in itself protection; but of other 
 and more needful aid I had, alas ! little to offer. 
 We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of law-papers 
 for a pillow, but with no other covering than a large 
 horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we dis- 
 covered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a small piece 
 of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which 
 added a little to our comfort. The poor child crept
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 93 
 
 close to me for warmth, and for security against her 
 ghostly enemies. . . . Apart from her situation, she 
 was not what would be called an interesting child. 
 She was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, 
 nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank 
 God ! even in those years I needed not the em- 
 bellishments of elegant accessories to conciliate my 
 affections. Plain human nature, in its humblest 
 and most homely apparel, was enough for me; and 
 I loved the child because she was my partner in 
 wretchedness. 
 
 In later years, as he tells us, he made vain 
 efforts to trace the companions of his vigils the 
 " friendless child " of Greek Street, and (" with 
 far deeper earnestness and far deeper sorrow ") 
 the outcast but "noble-minded" Ann, with whom, 
 during his weary waiting in London, he so often 
 paced the "never-ending terraces" of Oxford 
 Street. "I feel no shame," he says, "nor have 
 any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then 
 on friendly and familiar terms with many women 
 in that unfortunate condition"; and he grate- 
 fully records how on one occasion, when he had 
 fainted on the steps of a house in Soho Square, 
 the girl's devotion had saved his life : 
 
 O youthful benefactress ! how often in succeeding 
 years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of 
 thee with grief of heart and perfect love how often 
 have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of 
 a father was believed to have a supernatural power, 
 and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of 
 self-fulfilment, even so the benediction of a heart 
 oppressed with gratitude might have a like pre- 
 rogative; might have power given it from above to
 
 94 DE QUINCEY 
 
 chase, to haunt, to waylay, to pursue thee into the 
 central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were 
 possible) even into the darkness of the grave, there 
 to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace 
 and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation ! 
 
 The end of the story of Ann is the end of 
 De Quincey's homeless wandering in London. 
 The Jews having at last so far relented as to 
 promise the advance of the money if he could 
 induce his friend the young Earl of Altamont 
 (formerly Lord Westport) to guarantee the pay- 
 ment, he set out on a visit to Eton for this pur- 
 pose, having arranged to meet Ann on his return ; 
 but at the appointed time and place he sought 
 for her in vain. 
 
 All was in vain. To this hour I have never heard 
 a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles 
 as most men meet with in this life, has been my 
 heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must 
 have been sometimes in search of each other, at the 
 very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths 
 of London ; perhaps even within a few feet of each 
 other a barrier no wider, in a London street, often 
 amounting in the end to a separation for eternity ! 
 During some years I hoped that she did live ; and 
 I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of 
 the word myriad, I must, on my different visits to 
 London, have looked into many myriads of female 
 faces, in the hope of meeting Ann. I should know 
 her again amongst a thousand, and if seen but for 
 a moment. Handsome she was not ; but she had a 
 sweet expression of countenance, and a peculiarly 
 graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have 
 said, in hope. So it was for years ; but now I should 
 fear to see her; and her cough, which grieved me
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 95 
 
 when I parted with her, is now my consolation. 
 Now I wish to see her no longer, but think of her, 
 more gladly, as one long since laid in the grave 
 in the grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen ; taken 
 away before injuries and cruelty had blotted out and 
 transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities 
 of ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun. 
 
 Then we read of the sudden return to his 
 relatives at Chester; and with a word of fare- 
 well to Oxford Street, that " stony-hearted step- 
 mother," and a reference to the strong presenti- 
 ment which, even then, was pointing his thoughts 
 to Grasmere, to be the scene in later years of so 
 many mingled sorrows and consolations, the first 
 part of De Quincey's " Confessions " comes to a 
 close. How the calamities of his novitiate in 
 London "had struck root so deeply in his bodily 
 constitution that afterwards they shot up and 
 flourished afresh " in his subjection to opium 
 is the subject of the remaining sections of his 
 story. 
 
 The attempts made by some critics to impugn 
 the truthfulness of De Quincey in these matters 
 and to represent the incidents narrated in the 
 " Confessions " as largely fictitious, have been as 
 unsuccessful as they were ungenerous. " From 
 the very first," he asserted, " I had been faithful 
 to the most rigorous law of accuracy"; and this 
 statement has been confirmed, in all essential 
 points, by later investigation. 1 His wonderful 
 memory enabled him, though writing many years 
 
 1 See the "De Quincey Memorials," edited by Dr. 
 A. H. Japp, ii, 269-271.
 
 96 DE QUINCEY 
 
 after the events, to record his actual experiences 
 as they happened. 
 
 //. The Pleasures of Opium. After relating 
 the circumstances of his first recourse to opium, 
 at the time of profound depression, and the suc- 
 ceeding " resurrection, from its lowest depths, of 
 the inner spirit," De Quincey launches into a 
 discussion of the general effects of opium, as 
 contrasted with those of wine, and insists that 
 whereas wine "calls up into supremacy the 
 merely human, too often the brutal, part of man's 
 nature, the opium-eater feels that the diviner 
 part of his nature is paramount that is, the 
 moral affections are in a state of cloudless sere- 
 nity, and high over all is the great light of the 
 majestic intellect." The " pleasures " of opium, 
 as De Quincey presents them, are not sensual 
 but intellectual, and minister not to the intellect 
 only, but to the moral and benignant instincts 
 of the heart. To illustrate this, he gives examples 
 of the increased sensibility which he derived 
 from the use of opium during the period of his 
 visits from Oxford to London between 1 804 and 
 1809, and again at a later date in his Grasmere 
 cottage. 
 
 The first passage describes the pleasures of 
 opium and music in combination : 
 
 Tuesday and Saturday were for many years the 
 regular nights of performance at the King's Theatre 
 (or Opera House); and there it was in those times 
 that Grassini sang; and her voice (the richest of 
 contraltos) was delightful to me beyond all that I 
 had ever heard. Yes; or have since heard; or ever
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 97 
 
 shall hear. . . . Thrilling was the pleasure with 
 which almost always I heard this angelic Grassini. 
 Shivering with expectation I sat, when the time 
 drew near for her golden epiphany ; shivering I rose 
 from my seat, incapable of rest, when that heavenly 
 and harp-like voice sang its own victorious welcome 
 in its prelusive threttdnelo threttdnelo. . . . And 
 over and above the music of the stage and the 
 orchestra, I had all around me, in the intervals of 
 the performance, the music of the Italian language 
 talked by Italian women for the gallery was usually 
 crowded with Italians and I listened with a pleasure 
 such as that with which Weld, the traveller, lay and 
 listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian 
 women ; for, the less you understand of a language, 
 the more sensible you are to the melody or harsh- 
 ness of its sounds. 
 
 Next among his opium- joys he places the 
 Saturday night rambles, when, at this season 
 " for the chief regular and periodic return of rest 
 to the poor," he would sally forth, without notic- 
 ing the direction, to the markets of London, to 
 be a spectator, and, so far as might be, a partner 
 of the humble domestic scenes with which he 
 sympathised : 
 
 Many a family party, consisting of a man, his 
 wife, and sometimes one or two of their children, have 
 I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways 
 and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or 
 the price of household articles. Gradually I became 
 familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their 
 opinions. . . . Whenever I saw occasion, or could 
 do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined 
 their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter 
 in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was 
 G
 
 98 DE QUINCEY 
 
 always received indulgently. If wages were a little 
 higher, or were expected to be so if the quartern 
 loaf were a little lower, or it was reported that onions 
 and butter were falling I was glad; yet, if the 
 contrary were true, I drew from opium some means 
 of consolation. . . . Some of these rambles led me 
 to great distances ; for an opium-eater is too happy 
 to observe the motion of time. And sometimes, in 
 my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical 
 principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and 
 seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, in- 
 stead of circumnavigating all the capes and head- 
 lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came 
 suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, alleys 
 without soundings, such enigmatical entries, and 
 such sphinx's riddles of streets, without obvious out- 
 lets or thoroughfares, as must baffle the audacity of 
 porters, and confound the intellects of hackney 
 coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, 
 that I must be the first discoverer of some of these 
 terrce incognita, and doubted whether they had yet 
 been laid down in the modern charts of London. 
 
 At this period, he tells us, it was to the markets, 
 and theatres, and crowded quarters of London 
 that the opium-spell led him ; but in a later phase 
 of his dallying with the drug he surrendered 
 himself to " those trances, or pro foundest reveries, 
 which are the crown and consummation of what 
 opium can do for human nature " : 
 
 At that time I often fell into such reveries after 
 taking opium ; and many a time it has happened to 
 me on a summer night when I have been seated 
 at an open window, from which I could overlook 
 the sea at a mile below me, and could at the same 
 time command a view of some great town standing
 
 99 
 
 on a different radius of my circular prospect, but at 
 nearly the same distance that from sunset to sun- 
 rise, all through the hours of night, I have continued 
 motionless, as if frozen, without consciousness of 
 myself as of an object anywise distinct from the 
 multiform scene which I contemplated from above. 
 Such a scene in all its elements was not unfre- 
 quently realised for me on the gentle eminence of 
 Everton. Obliquely to the left lay the many-lan- 
 guaged town of Liverpool; obliquely to the right, 
 the multitudinous sea. The scene itself was some- 
 what typical of what took place in such a reverie. 
 The town of Liverpool represented the earth, with 
 its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out 
 of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in ever- 
 lasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded over by 
 dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind, 
 and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed 
 to me as if then first I stood at a distance aloof 
 from the uproar of life ; as if the tumult, the fever, 
 and the strife, were suspended; a respite were 
 granted from the secret burdens of the heart ; 
 some sabbath of repose, some resting from human 
 labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the 
 paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in 
 the grave ; motions of the intellect as unwearied as 
 the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm ; 
 tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but 
 as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; 
 infinite activities, infinite repose. 
 
 Again the scene is changed, and we see De 
 Quincey at the height of his contentment at 
 Grasmere in 1816 the year of his marriage 
 which, in its comparative freedom from the 
 tyranny of opium, stood " as a parenthesis be- 
 tween years of a gloomier character, "a "year of
 
 ioo DE QUINCEY 
 
 brilliant water, set, as it were, and insulated in 
 the gloomy umbrage of opium." After digressing 
 to narrate the famous incident of the Malay a 
 visit received by him in his wayside cottage from 
 a swarthy eastern seafarer, whose fierce outlandish 
 appearance, sharply contrasting with the fair 
 English face of the servant-girl who announced 
 him, took powerful hold of the opium-eater's 
 fancy and played a great part in his subsequent 
 dreams he proceeds to give us his crowning 
 picture of happiness, as realized in " the interior 
 of a scholar's library, in a cottage among the 
 mountains, on a stormy winter evening, rain 
 driving vindictively and with malice aforethought 
 against the windows, and darkness such that you 
 cannot see your own hand when held up against 
 the sky." 
 
 Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, 
 eighteen miles from any town ; no spacious valley, 
 but about two miles long by three-quarters-of-a- 
 mile in average width the benefit of which pro- 
 vision is that all the families resident within its 
 circuit will compose, as it were, one larger house- 
 hold, personally familiar to your eye, and more or 
 less interesting to your affections. Let the mountains 
 be real mountains, between three and four thousand 
 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 succes- 
 sion of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around 
 the windows, through all the months of spring, 
 summer, and autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 101 
 
 roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, 
 not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn ; but winter, 
 in its sternest shape. This is a most important point 
 in the science of happiness. And I am surprised to 
 see people overlook it, as if it were actually matter 
 of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, 
 is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I 
 put up a petition, annually, for as much snow, hail, 
 frost, or storm of one kind or other, as the skies can 
 possibly afford. Surely everybody is aware of the 
 divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside 
 candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair 
 tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample 
 draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are 
 raging audibly without. 
 
 " And at the doors and windows seem to call 
 As heaven and earth they would together mell ; 
 Yet the least entrance find they none at all ; 
 Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall." 
 
 Castle of Indolence. 
 
 The " fair tea-maker " in the above passage is 
 De Quincey's wife, the "M " to whom he 
 several times alludes with grateful affection in 
 the course of the " Confessions." " Paint her 
 arms like Aurora's," he adds, "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." It was M who was to tend 
 and aid him during his "dread contests with 
 phantoms and shadowy enemies," to act as his 
 amanuensis when he wished to record his
 
 102 DE QUINCEY 
 
 thoughts, and to save his " whole domestic eco- 
 nomy " from falling into " irretrievable confu- 
 sion." 
 
 ///. The Pains of Opium, Passing over the 
 dissertation on the medicinal properties of opium 
 with which this last chapter of the "Confessions" 
 commences, we are brought to the final scene of 
 DeQuincey's terrible prostration during the years 
 that immediately succeeded his marriage. New 
 and unsuspected symptoms had now begun to 
 assert themselves. At night, when he lay awake 
 in bed, " vast processions " moved visibly before 
 him "in mournful pomp"; and in his sleep a 
 theatre seemed to be opened and lighted up, 
 " which presented nightly spectacles of more 
 than earthly splendour." A funereal melancholy 
 brooded over him ; the sense of space and time 
 was amplified to an extent which became tor- 
 ture; while the minutest incidents of his early 
 life were revived and re-enacted. Then, finally, 
 " the tyranny of the human face began to unfold 
 itself." The Malay, "a fearful enemy for months," 
 nightly transported the dreamer into grotesquely 
 frightful surroundings of Asiatic scenery; then 
 Egypt added her monstrous symbols to the scene, 
 and the " cursed crocodile " was the agent of un- 
 speakable horror. 
 
 Let us quote, as final specimens of his ghostly 
 experiences, the two dreams which De Quincey 
 has placed at the end of his " Confessions," 
 doubtless because he felt (as most of his readers 
 will feel) that they mark the very highest point 
 of his impassioned prose.
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 103 
 
 I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May ; 
 that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in 
 the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, 
 at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay 
 the very scene which could really be commanded 
 from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and 
 solemnised by the power of dreams. There were 
 the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at 
 their feet ; but the mountains were raised to more 
 than Alpine height, and there was interspace far 
 larger between them of savannahs and forest lawns ; 
 the hedges were rich with white roses ; and no 
 living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the 
 green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly repos- 
 ing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round 
 about the grave of a child whom I had once ten- 
 derly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little 
 before sunrise, in the same summer when that child 
 died.' I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I 
 said to myself, " It yet wants much of sunrise; and 
 it is Easter Sunday ; and that is the day on which 
 they celebrate the first-fruits of Resurrection. I will 
 walk abroad ; old griefs shall be forgotten to-day : 
 for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, 
 and streich away to heaven ; and the churchyard is 
 as verdant as the forest lawns, and the forest lawns 
 are as quiet as the churchyard ; and with the dew I 
 can wash the fever from my forehead ; and then I 
 shall be unhappy no longer." I turned, as if to open 
 my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the 
 left a scene far different ; but which yet the power 
 of dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene 
 was an oriental one ; and there also it was Easter 
 Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a 
 
 1 The reference is to the death of little Kate Words- 
 worth in 1812.
 
 io 4 DE QUINCEY 
 
 vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the 
 horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city an 
 image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in child- 
 hood from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a 
 bow-shot from me, upon a stone, shaded by Judean 
 palms, there sat a woman ; and I looked, and it 
 was Ann ! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly ; 
 and I said to her at length, " So, then, I have found 
 you at last." I waited ; but she answered me not a 
 word. Her face was the same as when I saw it 
 last; the same, and yet, again, how different ! Seven- 
 teen years ago, when the lamp-light of mighty Lon- 
 don fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed 
 her lips (lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted !), 
 her eyes were streaming with tears. The tears were 
 now no longer seen. Sometimes she seemed altered ; 
 yet again sometimes not altered ; and hardly older. 
 Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity 
 of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some 
 awe. Suddenly her countenance grew dim; and, 
 turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours roll- 
 ing between us ; in a moment all had vanished ; 
 thick darkness came on ; and in the twinkling of an 
 eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamp- 
 light in London, walking again with Ann just as 
 we had walked, when both children, eighteen years 
 before, along the endless terraces of Oxford Street. 
 Then suddenly would come a dream of far differ- 
 ent character a tumultuous dream commencing 
 with a music such as now I often heard in sleep 
 music of preparation and of awakening suspense. 
 The undulations of fast-gathering tumults were like 
 the opening of the Coronation Anthem ; and, like 
 that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement, 
 of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of in- 
 numerable armies. The morning was come of a 
 mighty day a day of crisis and of ultimate hope 
 for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse,
 
 "THE CONFESSIONS" 105 
 
 and labouring in some dread extremity. Some- 
 where, but I knew not where somehow, but I knew 
 not how by some beings, but I knew not by whom 
 a battle, a strife, an agony, was travelling through 
 all its stages was evolving itself, like the catas- 
 trophe of some mighty drama, with which my sym- 
 pathy was the more insupportable from deepening 
 confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, 
 and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in 
 dreams where, of necessity, we make ourselves 
 central to every movement) had the power, and yet 
 had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, 
 if I could raise myself to will it ; and yet again had 
 not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics 
 was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. 
 " Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay in- 
 active. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. 
 Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier 
 cause, than ever yet the sword had pleaded or 
 trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; 
 hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innumerable 
 fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause 
 or the bad ; darkness and lights ; tempest and 
 human faces ; and at last, with the sense that all 
 was lost, female forms, and the features that were 
 worth all the world to me; and but a moment 
 allowed and clasped hands, with heartbreaking 
 partings, and then everlasting farewells ! and, with 
 a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the 
 incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of 
 Death, the sound was reverberated everlasting 
 farewells ! and again, and yet again reverberated 
 everlasting farewells ! 
 
 And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, " I 
 will sleep no more ! " 
 
 In conclusion a word must be said about De 
 Quincey's forerunners and successors (if any) in
 
 106 DE QUINCEY 
 
 this realm of visionary thought. Jean Paul Rich- 
 ter alone preceded him as a prose artist in the 
 imagery of dreams, and of followers in the same 
 style he has had but few. The " Confessions," 
 indeed, have been paraphrased by De Musset 
 and Baudelaire, and we may here and there trace 
 De Quincey's influence in the weird nocturnes 
 of Poe, and still more plainly in the sombre 
 "Phantasies" of James Thomson; while in poetry 
 if the comparison of verse with prose be here 
 admissible there was a still closer kinship be- 
 tween De Quincey's dream-fugues and such night- 
 inspired rhapsodies as Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" 
 and "The Pains of Sleep." 1 But when all is 
 said, it must be owned that, in this kingdom of 
 dreamland, the author of the " Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater " remains almost without 
 predecessor or posterity, without companion or 
 rival our one acknowledged interpreter of the 
 mystic and the sublime. 
 
 1 There may be found, too, in a comparatively recent 
 but almost unknown book of verse, the " Phantasmagoria" 
 of John Barlas ("Evelyn Douglas"), a most imaginative 
 expression' of that sense of the strange solemnity of 
 China and the Orient as "the seat of awful images and 
 associations," which is so characteristic of De Quincey's 
 "Confessions."
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST 
 
 I. DE QUINCEY'S WORKS 
 
 "The Confessions of an English Opium- 
 Eater." Taylor and Hessey, London, 1822. 
 Second edition, with Appendix, 1823. [Of the 
 many reprints of these Confessions, in their 
 original form, the best is that edited by Dr. 
 Richard Garnett, and published by Messrs. 
 Kegan Paul and Co., in 1891. 
 
 " Klosterheim, or The Masque." Edinburgh, 1832. 
 "The Logic of Political Economy." Edinburgh, 
 
 1844. 
 
 "Works of Thomas de Quincey." Ticknor 
 and Fields. Boston, 1851-1855. 22 vols. [The 
 original American edition. It has since been 
 superseded by the " Riverside Edition," m 1 2 
 vols., published by Messsrs. Houghton and 
 Mifflin, Boston and New York, 1877.] 
 
 "Selections Grave and Gay, from Writings 
 Published and Unpublished, by Thomas De 
 Quincey." James Hogg, Edinburgh, 1853-1860. 
 14 vols. [The original British edition, supervised 
 by De Quincey himself.] 
 
 " The Works of Thomas De Quincey." Adam 
 and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1862-1871. 164 
 
 107
 
 io8 DE QUINCEY 
 
 vols. [A re-issue of the first Edinburgh edition, 
 with additional matter. A fifteenth volume was 
 added in 1863, and a sixteenth in 1871.] 
 
 "The Collected Writings of Thomas De 
 Quincey." New and Enlarged Edition. By David 
 Masson. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 
 1889, 1890. 14 vols. [The standard edition of 
 De Quincey, based on the earlier Edinburgh 
 and Boston editions, and incorporating various 
 magazine articles not previously collected, with 
 prefaces, notes, and illustrations.] 
 
 "The Uncollected Writings of Thomas De 
 Quincey," with a Preface and Annotations by 
 James Hogg, London, 1890. 2 vols. 
 
 "The Posthumous Works of Thomas De 
 Quincey." Edited, with Introduction and Notes, 
 by Alex. H. Japp, LL.D., 1891-1893. 2 vols. 
 
 II. BIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES 
 
 " Thomas De Quincey, his Life and Writings." 
 By H. A. Page [Alex. H. Japp]. London, 1877. 
 2 vols. [The standard Biography of De Quincey. 
 A revised edition in one volume was published 
 in 1890.] 
 
 " De Quincey." By David Masson. London, 
 1 88 1. [English Men of Letters Series.] 
 
 " Personal Recollections of Thomas De Quin- 
 cey." By John Ritchie Findlay. Edinburgh,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST 109 
 
 "De Quincey Memorials." Being Letters and 
 other Records now first published. Edited by 
 Alex. H. Japp, LL.D. London, 1891. 2 vols. 
 
 "De Quincey and his Friends." Personal 
 Recollections, Souvenirs and Anecdotes. Writ- 
 ten and Collected by James Hogg. London, 
 1895. [Contains numerous records of De Quin- 
 cey, including the Rev. Francis Jacox's " Recol- 
 lections"; "Thomas Papaverius," by Dr. Hill 
 Burton; and Dr. Shadworth Hodgson's article 
 on "The Genius of Thomas De Quincey."]
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Affliction of Childhood," 
 
 13. 4if 57- 
 
 Anecdotes, 68, 69. 
 Animals, love of, 75, 76. 
 Ann of Oxford Street, 17, 
 
 74, 93-95, 104- 
 "Autobiographic Sketch- 
 es," 13, 29, 38, 41. 
 
 Bath Grammar School, 14. 
 Bell, Dr. Andrew, 79, 80. 
 Bentley, Richard, 51, 70. 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 27- 
 29, 37, 44, 57, 60, 67. 
 
 " Caesars, The," 49. 
 
 Carlyle, quoted, 24. 
 
 Classical studies, 14, 15, 
 18, 52. 
 
 Classification of De Quin- 
 cey's writings, 36-40. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 19, 20, 
 29, 42, 46, 69, 79, 88; 
 compared with De Quin- 
 cey, 83, 1 06. 
 
 " Coleridge and Opium- 
 Eating, 46. 
 
 " Confessions of an Opium 
 Eater," 22, 55-57, 86 et 
 seq.; veracity of, 95, 96. 
 
 Corporal punishments, 42, 
 73- 
 
 De Quincey, Elizabeth, 13 ; 
 "Pink," 14, 42; Wil- 
 liam, 14. 
 
 De Quincey, Mrs. See 
 Simpson. 
 
 Discursiveness, 8l, 82. 
 
 Dove Cottage 19, 27, 100, 
 IOI. 
 
 Dreaming faculty, 13, 25, 
 32, 87. 
 
 Edinburgh, residence at, 
 26, 27, 30, 33, 35. 
 
 " English Mail Coach, 
 The," 29, 59-61. 
 
 Findlay, J.R., quoted, 31, 
 35- 
 
 German Literature, 1 8, 51, 
 52. 
 
 Goethe, 29, 72. 
 
 Grasmere, 18-20, 27, 35, 
 95, 99; "Early Memo- 
 rials," 42. 
 
 Greek Street, Soho, 17, 74, 
 
 92, 93- 
 Greenhay, 12, 14. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 20, 43. 
 Hodgson, Dr. Shadworth, 
 quoted, 32.
 
 INDEX 
 
 in 
 
 Hogg, James, SOM., 31, 
 
 34- 
 Hood, Thomas, 22, quoted, 
 
 23- 
 
 Humanity of De Quincey, 
 
 26, 73-76, 78, 91-93. 
 97- 
 
 Humour, 44-47,68, 69, 79, 
 80. 
 
 Infinite, The sense of, 12, 
 25, 87. 
 
 Japp, Dr. Alex. H. ("H. 
 
 A. Page"), 58, 62, 73, 
 
 95 n. 
 "Joan of Arc," 29, 51. 
 
 "Kant, Last days of," 52. 
 " Klosterheim," 28, 47. 
 
 Lake District, 18, 19; 
 
 " Lakes and Lake 
 
 Poets," 29. 42, 43. 
 Lamb, Charles, 19, 22, 43, 
 
 52. 
 
 Lasswade, cottage at, 30. 
 Latin words, use of, 82. 
 "Levana and Our Ladies 
 
 of Sorrow," 59. 
 Literary criticism, 72. 
 " Literature of Power," 38, 
 
 51, 66, 83. 
 Lloyd, Charles, 20, 43, 78, 
 
 79- 
 
 "London Magazine," 22, 
 
 24, 52, 55- 
 Lothian Street, Edinburgh, 
 
 31. 33, 35- 
 Malay, The, 100, 102. 
 
 Manchester Grammar 
 
 School, 16, 89. 
 Masson, Professor D., 38- 
 
 40, 47, 56., 60. 
 Milton, 51, 71. 
 Mitford, Miss, quoted, 31. 
 ' ' Murder considered as one 
 
 of the Fine Arts," 28, 44- 
 
 46. 
 Music, love of, 64, 96, 97. 
 
 Nature, influence of, 12, 
 63, 64. 
 
 Opium-Eating, 21, 22, 29, 
 
 30, 86, 88, 96-99, 102. 
 Oxford, 1 8, 41. 
 
 " Page, H. A." (See Japp, 
 A. H.) 26 n. 
 
 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 53, 72. 
 
 Penson, Colonel, 16. 
 
 Politics, 53, 71. 
 
 Political Economy, 53, 54; 
 " Logic of Political Eco- 
 nomy," 28, 54. 
 
 Pope, 29, 51. 
 
 " Portrait Gallery," 43, 44. 
 
 " Revolt of the Tartars," 
 
 29, 5- 
 
 "Rhetoric," 29, 52, 78. 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 52, 54, 
 
 1 06. 
 
 "Scenical" method, 50, 
 
 70. 
 
 Shakespeare, 29, 51. 
 Shelley, 24, 43, 44, 60, 72, 
 
 85- 
 Simpson, Margaret, (Mrs.
 
 112 
 
 INDEX 
 
 De Quincey), 20, 25 ., j 
 
 28, 101, 102. 
 "Sortilege and Astro- | 
 
 logy," 46, 47. 
 Southey, 20, 29, 42. 
 "Spanish Military Nun," 
 
 29, 47. 49. 
 
 Style, 76-78, 8l, 82 n. ; 
 
 Essay on, 29, 52. 
 " Suspiria de Profundis," 
 
 29, 57-59- 
 
 Tail's "Edinburgh Maga- 
 zine," 29, 37, 48, 67. 
 Theological views, 53, 71. 
 Travelling, romance of, 65. 
 
 Wales, De Quincey's so- 
 journ in, 16, 17, 89-91. 
 "\Valladmor,"47. 
 " Walking Stewart," 43. 
 "Westmorland Gazette," 
 
 22, 44. 
 
 Westport, Lord, 15, 94. 
 Wilson, Professor, 20, 26, 
 
 44, 77, 84. 
 Woodhouse, R., quoted, 
 
 24. 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 19, 
 
 25, 27. 
 Wordsworth, William, 19, 
 
 20, 25-29, 42, 51, 68, 
 
 69, 72, 76. 
 
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