of our own which, it is said, holds of the German school, there is something most poisonous to all that in this country has been named virtue, and still more to the distinctions of conduct which religion makes"; and again, "I don't think it will much mend the matter when you get her introduced to von Schiller and von Goethe and your other nobles of German literature. I fear Jane has dipped too deep into that spring already, so that unless. some more solid food be afforded I fear she will escape altogether out of the region of my sympathies and the sympathies of honest, home-bred men". This is amusing enough. But it was not insincerity; it was the real feeling of a large body of the English people. 2 Of the men writing at that time, only Coleridge and Southey would have carried authority. But Southey had no interest in German literature and Coleridge was intellectually dead; so that De Quincey had no worthy competitor except Carlyle. One can easily understand therefore, how his voice might have weight; that as Carlyle says, he "passed for a mighty seer in such things". The two had a large field before them, unexplore das yet by English readers. Richter, Herder, Kant, the Romanticists were almost mere names; and for De Quincey at least, there was German research to reveal to his countrymen. We find therefore among his writings a score of essays and translations, 3 of every type, drawn from all sources and written in all moods. and styles. Many of these papers show the same remark 3 1 J. A. Froude; Thomas Carlyle. A History of the First Forty Years of his Life. 1795–1835. 2 Vols. London 1882. Vol. I, 135. 2 Froude, Early Life I, 396. able mastery of facts as the essay called The Caesars, which, De Quincey assures us, was written without a reference. It may not be absolutely scholarly; but the mere knowledge there, gathered from every source, the minuteness of his information, the power of combination is nothing short of marvelous, when we consider that the whole was a feat of memory. Many of these German studies, too, were written in haste and with no books at hand, for the journals and reviews. Under these circumstances it would be manifestly unfair to judge them in the strictest way. Most of them make no pretensions to scholarship; they are confessedly popular. They are the "Tummel-Platz" for all De Quincey's hobbies and humors; much is mere whim and caprice, and momentary opinion; often he docs not rise above the level of literary gossip. Yet there is, perhaps, material enough to decide many questions in connection with De Quincey. He has been the subject of much indiscriminate praise and blame; he has been called a great scholar; he was in his time, among certain classes, somewhat famous in philosophy and metaphysics; he has been celebrated for the truth of his literary instinct and has passed as a "great seer" in many things. A study of these essays may add little or nothing to our appreciation of German literature, but it may perhaps fix more clearly the literary character of De Quincey himself. II. THE PERSONALITY OF DE QUINCEY. To understand De Quincey's judgments of German literature, we must consider his character and education; we must in a measure understand his mind. De Quincey describes himself as one whose tastes and pleasures had been from youth up intellectual. So they were in a high sense; nor were they merely literary. Political Economy at one time roused his mind from the stupor of opium. He had a profound interest in pure philosophy and history, in curious scholarship of many kinds, in theology and matters of state; his tastes were wellnigh universal. His mind was also singularly inventive; he had a remarkable power of memory and rapid combination; in his own words "a logical instinct for feeling in a moment the secret analogies or parallelisms that connected things else apparently remote". 1 Yet his talent was in no considerable sense creative; his learning various as it was, had no principle of organization; the philosophical work, which he once planned, as well as the Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Political Economy remained a fragment. He possessed further a peculiar keenness of analysis and the skill of an exact 1 Works III, 332. 1 logician; but it savors often of mere intellectual shrewdness. Carlyle named it "wire drawn". Yet in the most mechanical processes of his mind there is often something fantastic and volatile; often in the exercises of the pure intellect, he yields to the play of his humor and• caprice; although, as in his Logic of Political Economy, he can be purely systematic, there is something uncertain in his talent; he turns with such facility to any subject from gold-hunting in California to the Homeric question, from Murder as a Fine Art to the Philosophy of History. Taken as a whole his work gives the impression of a brilliant mind at play, delighting in a kind of intellectual gymnastic. He calls himself a "philosophical voluptuary"; and there is something in the remark. With all his universal interest and curiosity, De Quincey works not so much to accomplish as to feel his mind alive. He requires intellectual activity as a nervous physical organization requires motion; but it is rarely a fixed and certain process, and always far more a receptive than a creative one; he is interested, he is stimulated by new ideas from without; he loves his own meditation; but his first impulse is not to compose and create. Further, except in purely theoretical or speculative questions, De Quincey is impatient of scepticism; it is a necessity of his nature to believe. It is difficult for him, therefore, to treat many questions dispassionately, to see them apart from his own hopes and desires. In fact, although De Quincey was a constant student and had read so much, although his intellectual interests were so wide, 1 Works VIII, 245. cf. Masson's Life, p. 136; 'His main interest in life was that of universal curiosity, sheer inquisitiveness and meditativeness about all things whatsoever'. his mental sympathies were far narrower. Dr. Johnson was in some respects no more hampered by tradition and education than De Quincey. He could never escape from the prejudices of church or party and the rooted conventions of England; and thus, although he apprehends new ideas so quickly, he refuses or fears to accept them in their full significance. Though all interest him, he can form no new standard of judgment. For this reason he did not feel the agitation of the new movement as most of his contemporaries did. Southey and Wordsworth even, staid and conservative as they afterwards became, were deeply stirred by the hopes of the French Revolution; Byron and Shelley were its literary expression in England. But to De Quincey its whole idea was absolutely strange; the trend of his mind had been fixed very early; his whole attitude toward society was the product of an older time. As a consequence there is little development in De Quincey's thought. His faculties do not even seem to sharpen. He accumulates great stores of knowledge, but hey do not in a corresponding measure expand his view. He looks at many things, but the measure of his eye remains the same. 1 De Quincey's deepest interest was for pure literature and he was particularly sensitive to the beauty of certain kinds of poetry and style. His tastes were classical and English. For the French literature, especially for the French drama he had little sympathy. The English poetry he regarded as finer than any other. In the Greek literature he cared especially for the tragic drama and there most of all for the Antigone. He liked the simple and 1 S. H. Hodgson, On the Genius of De Quincey in De Quincey and his Friends, p. 356. |