austere in English poetry, Wordsworth for example, the grandeur and pomp of Milton's verse, and the same qualities in the prose of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne. Apart from the beauty of form which he found in these last three authors, he delighted in the peculiar quality of their imagination. The exaltation of the emotions, the continued suggestion of meanings and feelings far remote, the gradual lifting of the whole mind into a sense of sublimity, vastness and awe this he enjoyed perhaps more than anything else in poetry.

We have seen the impression made upon him by Wordsworth's couplet:

"Itwas a banner broad unfurl'd,

The picture of that western world."

But perhaps this feeling reaches its highest expression in his description of the Greek drama,' which he compares to sculpture. "What we read in sculpture is not absolutely death, but still less is it the fullness of life. We read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life that is thrown to an infinite distance. . . . It affects us profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on the other hand, the breathing life life kindling, trembling, palpitating that life which speaks to us in painting, this is also the life that speaks to us in English tragedy.... Even the catastrophes how different! In the Greek we see a breathless waiting for the doom that cannot be evaded, waiting, as it were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inexorable rising of a deluge; in the English it is like a midnight of shipwreck from which up to the last and till the final ruin comes, there still survives the

1 Works X, 375.

a

sort of hope that clings to human energies." The single phrase, "the solemnity of a life that is thrown to an infinite distance", shows perfectly the way a thing affects De Quincey; it is a mere abstraction; but it has the vividness of actual sensation; it has form and perspective and the clearness of vision.

It is in this realm of pure imagination that De Quincey's appreciation is most vivid and characteristic; but it would be unfair to deny other tastes to De Quincey; for although his mind was first of all philosophical and literary, he did not always conceive a thing in a purely logical or imaginative way. Scholar though he was, with all his love for the esoteric and curious, with all his pleasure in pure logical effects, he had always something of the practical nature of his countrymen, their impatience of that which is removed from the broad channels of human interest. No one thing in literary history had so deeply impressed him as the moral grandeur of Milton. He was always looking for it elsewhere, and measuring other things by it. His natural sympathies too, were strong; the deep feelings which belong to all men were by no means dulled in him; his heart was simple as a child's. He was fond of Chaucer, and valued his sentiment more than that of Homer; he recognized instinctively the sincerity and truth of Wordsworth's early poems; and all that was deepest in his own sympathies and thoughts, enriched by the full wealth. of his imagination, found expression in his memories of Ann, the girl of the London streets. And yet, all in all, we feel that the rhetorical faculty is De Quincey's distinctive trait. He is primarily a man of letters; indeed, he concerns himself so often with merely rhetorical questions, with delicate distinctions and refinements of style;

his instinct is so keen for rare beauty of form and rhythm, for the effect upon the purely imaginative sense, that he seems often a mere literary connoisseur. He is far more than that; his intellectual tastes are in the highest degree manly and sound; and yet, most great literature has a deeper value than he gives it. The distinction, for example, between the "Literature of Knowledge” and the "Literature of Power" is in almost the highest degree valuable; but a criticism that deals almost exclusively with such questions, that has little feeling for the great natural causes beneath a literary movement, that is concerned, in short, with anything less than the essential significance and vital human character of it, lacks the highest quality. De Quincey was toward few poets so sympathetic as toward Wordsworth. Yet in his essay, William Wordsworth, he busies himself with Wordsworth's good fortune in money matters and the description of the poet is little more than pleasant gossip. It is only fair to say that the paper pretends to little more. Yet when he takes up in another essay the work of Wordsworth, he is concerned for the most part with the following: Wordsworth's diction; the question whether or not Wordsworth deals with the subjects of joy and grief; the politics of the Wanderer in the Excursion; an analysis of the defects in the plan of that poem; and Wordsworth's observation of clouds and twilight. A single paragraph describes the deeper character of Wordsworth.4

1 Works XI, 54 ff.

2 Works II, 229 ff.

2

3 On Wordsworth's Poetry. Ib. XI, 294 ff.

3

4 Perhaps the best examples of De Quincey's criticism are the papers on Theory of Greek Tragedy (X, 342 ff.) and The Antigone of

One sees constantly this capriciousness in the selection of facts and examples. De Quincey is easily attracted by the fantastic or mysterious, by anything whimsical or peculiar. Sometimes he descends even to a petty strain, as when he says of Plato, "This sentence of exile against the poets we can not but secretly trace to the jealousy of Plato".1 With De Quincey's evident simplicity of character in many ways, and his severe reverence for truth, it is unfortunate that he is so ready to suspect the purposes of anyone. Heq uestions the sincerity of Plato and accuses Kant of the most cringing hypocrisy.

It is plain that from such a mind we are not to expect the highest kind of interest in a foreign literature. De Quincey's work will have no such significance, for example, as that of Carlyle, not merely because his nature was intrinsically smaller, but because his interest was not so vital. Carlyle found in German literature the answers to questions that he had striven with all his powers to solve; what he writes of Goethe or of Novalis has thus the truth of actual experience. De Quincey's attitude is far more that of the professional student and man of letters. He watches the literary agitation of Germany with the greatest interest; yet of the profound character of the movement, of the significance of the ideas which were stirring there, of the efforts of mind. and spirit that culminated in Faust, De Quincey has no suspicion. He has answered those questions in his own way; his thoughts have already taken form.

Sophocles (X, 360 ff.). Parts of these deal with formal or secondary matters, but at times they are far more.

1 Works VIII, 60.

As an example of De Quincey's lack of insight cf. Works IV, 396 ff.

III. DE QUINCEY'S VIEW OF GERMAN CULTURE

AND HIS CRITICISM

OF THE GENERAL LITERATURE OF GERMANY.

It is impossible in studying De Quincey's view of German culture not to recognize traces of the prejudice and condescension with which, at that time, even the best English opinion often approached anything foreign. De Quincey knew German literature much too well to hold it in contempt. But he is first of all an Englishman; he admires vehemently all that Englishmen admire in character and manners; it is impossible for him to be in sympathy with much in a foreign society, and he approaches it now and then with an air of superiority. One feels that De Quincey often judges things too readily, with too much offhand facility; that he has never seriously attempted to escape from his native sympathies and training. In reading him, one must always remember too his love of pointed and witty effect, the pleasure he has in whimsical exaggeration, in following the caprice and humor of the moment. There is much therefore of purely momentary interest, which does not at all express his real critical view; much too is of the most fragmentary and trivial character and rests on no surer ground than opinion.