De Quincey's admirers were themselves ignorant of the subject. Men who were at home in German literature were not so lightly impressed. Henry Crabb Robinson, although a friend of De Quincey, never refers to his opinions. Carlyle had no respect for his judgment. It is interesting, however, to note that De Quincey first led Carlyle to read Jean Paul. "Perhaps it was little De Quincey's reported admiration of Jean Paul - Goethe a that first put me upon mere corrupted pigmy to him — trying to be orthodox and admire. I dimly felt poor De Quincey who passed for a mighty seer in such things, to have exaggerated, and to know, perhaps, but little of either Jean Paul or Goethe." De Quincey, although the two later became friends, seemed to Carlyle essentially a small man. 1

If De Quincey was of any service to the study of German literature in England, it was in the way of stimulating interest and curiosity. Even De Quincey's most friendly critics do not claim any final value for his work in this field. Prof. Masson (De Quincey, p. 162) admits that the paper on Goethe (in the Britannica) exhibits De Quincey "at about his very worst; for, though raising the estimate of Goethe's genius that had been announced in the earlier critical paper on his Wilhelm Meister, it retains something of the malice of that paper". That De Quincey should have recognized the value of Kant at all is, in Prof. Masson's opinion, worthy of credit. The translation of Kant's Idea of a Universal History he calls a

1 Froude, Early Life I, 396. See also Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle, Edited by J. A. Froude. 2 Vols. London 1881. II, 315 ff.

2 Christoph on the other hand speaks in warm terms of De Quincey's interpretation of German literature and culture.

feat in itself. Prof. Minto writes thus: "A word on his estimates of foreign writers. His exposure of weak points in such universally established names as Homer, Plato, Cicero and Goethe, is set down to no higher motive than a love of paradox, a passion for inspiring wonder. Of this every reader must judge for himself. Only when we criticise the criticisms of De Quincey, we must have in mind the unparalleled extent of his reading. This unique preparation for valuing literary powers entitles him to be criticised with reverence and modesty." Mr. Hodgson thinks it ungenerous to undervalue De Quincey's papers on Kant. "The deadness of those times to those matters was far greater than the deadness of the present time, great as that is; and in England at least I do not know of any one who did more than De Quincey to kindle a genuine interest in them." Mr. Leslie Stephen (Fortnightly Review, March 1871) on the other hand has no patience. with De Quincey's philosophical pretensions; his criticisms of German metaphysics are, in Mr. Stephen's opinion, little better than "a collection of contemptuous prejudices".. From our study of the subject we are more inclined to agree with Mr. Stephen than with Prof. Minto. De Quincey's knowledge of German literature was entensive, his interest in it was true and lasting; but he had no feeling for its deepest motives, no sense for its reality. Nor did he approach it in a spirit of true criticism; what he writes is clever; it has perhaps at times some discrimination and insight; but it is often mere opinion and facile judgment, capricious and prejudiced. Nor is it always based on knowledge; it is interesting perhaps,

p. 48.

1 Manual of Prose Literature. Edinburgh and London, 1886,

but it is not criticism. De Quincey was not fitted by nature to interpret a new intellectual movement. His interests in literature were not deep enough, his scholarship not sufficiently earnest. 1

This paper may, however, contribute to a clearer knowledge of the talents and claims of De Quincey. He has received much blind praise and blame. A critic in the North Brit. Review (Aug. 1863) places him among the first fifty writers of the world. The Quarterly for July 1861 uses the following language: "A great master of English composition; a critic of uncommon delicacy; an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions; a philosophic inquirer, second only to his first and sole hero De Quincey has departed from us full of years, and left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic rigour of his logic, form a combination which centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study as one of the marvels of English literature." Archdeacon Hare calls De Quincey "the greatest logician of our times". Even Mr. Saintsbury is full of praise for his philosophical talent. "The inability to undertake sustained labor. deprived us of an English philosopher who would have stood as farabove Kant in exoteric graces, as he would have stood above Bacon in esoteric value." With this opinion we cannot agree. That De Quincey had great interest in philosophical questions; that he was fond of reasoning, that he had a talent for metaphysics is one thing; but

1 Marie Gothein, William Wordworth, seine Werke, sein Leben, seine Zeitgenossen. Halle 1893, I, 199 ff. This writer speaks of De Quincey's "geistigem Hochmuth", his English feeling and his orthodoxy as causes which made it impossible for him to understand German literature.

to call him, in any true sense of the word, a philosopher is impossible after a study of his relation to Kant. His reason was not sufficiently independent of his desires and emotions; he was too wilful. To excuse him, as Mr. Hodgson does, on the ground that he approached such matters from the standpoint of his inherited beliefs, is natural and right; but it is only another way of saying that De Quincey's mind was not in any large sense philosophical.

Nor can we give such unlimited praise to De Quincey's critical work as many do. Mr. Hodgson writes: "No one touches and lays bare the inmost heart of a subject like De Quincey. You are not kept at the surface or delayed with commonplaces." "A clear, subtil, and penetrating intelligence is employed, not without humour in exhibiting and unfolding the essential characters of whatever subject he takes in hand....... If you want any of those subjects which he has treated shown to you as in a magician's glass, its core laid bare, its relations to kindred subjects, kindred subjects, and its bearing on human nterest unfolded ...... then take up a volume of De Quincey." "Do I then reckon on a long-lived popularity for De Quincey's writings? I certainly do. And why? To say it in one word, because of the total absence from them of the sophistry of their period." Mr. Japp in replying to the strictures of Mr. Stephen writes: "Did he ever read Klosterheim? Did he ever read the Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy? Did he ever read the article on Casuistry, the essay on Milton versus Southey and Landor,

or the biographies of Goethe and Schiller from the Encyclopædia Britannica, more especially the passage in the former dealing with Goethe's childish skepticism; and

does he hold that his criticism, here given as exhaustive, exhaustively applies to them?" 1

We confess, that we cannot understand such criticisms as these. We find on the contrary that we are kept at the surface" and "delayed with common-places”. We do not find "the core laid bare", nor the relations of a subject to human interests fully grasped. We do not find these writings free from sophistry. The biographies of Goethe and Schiller are as slight and superficial work, both in knowledge and in treatment, as one could well find in an author of De Quincey's reputation. That De Quincey had critical talent of a very high order we have no disposition to deny. His insight is often sure and clear; his tastes were for the most part sound; but he had little reserve, little balance. He says somewhere that he wrote as he thought, in a kind of audible soliloquy. This may be true; but it is not the method of a critic of the first rank. In these papers on German literature there is little that has weight; much of it is personal and irresponsible. Henry Crabb Robinson says in his diary (II, 216): "All that De Quincey writes, is curious, if not valuable." That is as high praise as De Quincey's criticism of German literature deserves.

On the other hand there is no reason to dismiss De Quincey's work contemptuously as a writer in the Athenaeum does (Dec. 17, 1859): "Death has brought a close to the sad and almost profitless career of the English Opium-Eater. ...... Of all his writings, and all of them are steeped in egotism, The Confessions' are the most characteristic. In their elegance of diction, playfulness of style, subdued pedantry and utter shamelessness, the

1 Page's Life II, 150.