politeness one of that class now, unfortunately, in its decadence, namely, the "Gentlemen of the old-school." His affections were deep, tender, and enduring; consequently, he had troops of friends. Thomas De Quincey was, undeniably, one of the greatest masters of the English Language, who have committed thought to writing. In addition to his happy choice of words, fitting the thought to a hair's breadth, there is a striking peculiarity in his style, which can be best explained by himself. He says, "A sentence, even when insulated and viewed apart for itself, is a subject for complex art: even so far it is capable of multiform beauty, and liable to a whole nosology of malconformations. But it is in the relation of sentences, in what Horace terms their "junctura," that the true life of composition resides. The mode of their nexus, - the way in which one sentence is made to arise out of another, and to prepare the opening for a third, — this is the great loom in which the textile process of the moving intellect reveals itself and prospers. Here the separate clauses of a period become architectural parts, aiding, relieving, supporting each other. But how can any ap proach to that effect, or any suggestion of it, exist for him who hides and buries all openings for parts and graceful correspond. ences in one monotonous continuity of period, stretching over three octavo pages? Kant was a great man, but he was obtuse and deaf as an antediluvian boulder with regard to language and its capacities. He has sentences which have been measured by a carpenter, and some of them run two feet eight by siz inches. Now, a sentence with that enormous span is fit only for the use of a megatherium or a pre-Adamite. Parts so remote as the beginning and the end of such a sentence can have no sensible relation to each other; not much as regards their logic, but none at all as regards their more sensuous qualities, -rhythmus, for instance, or the continuity of metaphor. And it is clear that, if the internal relations of a sentence fade under the extravagant misproportion of its scale, a fortiori must the outer relations. If two figures, or other objects, are meant to modify each other visually by means of color, of outline, or of expression, they must be brought into juxtaposition, or at least into neighborhood. A chasm between them so vast as to prevent the synthesis of the two objects in one co-existing field of vison, interrupts the play of all genial comparison. Periods, and clauses of periods, modify each other, and build up a whole then, only, when the parts are shown as parts, cohering and conspiring to a common result. But if each part is separately so vast as to eclipse the disc of the adjacent parts, then substantially they are separate wholes, and do not coalesce to any joint or complex impression. It is certain that style, or (to speak by the most general expression) the management of language, ranks amongst the fine arts, and is able therefore to yield a separate intellectual pleasure quite apart from the interest of the subject treated. So far, it is already one error to rate the value of style as if it were ne cessarily a dependent or subordinate thing. On the contrary, style has an absolute value, like the product of any other exquisite art, quite distinct from the value of the subject about which it is employed, and irrelatively to the subject; precisely as the fine workmanship of Scopas the Greek, or of Cellini the Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, whether embodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory or golden vase. Style has two separate functions-first, to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities. Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment but oftener from original perplexities inverting its very nature. Upon the style it is that these perplexities greatly depend for their illumination." This wonderful "illumination" is cast by De Quincey's own น 66 We suppose style over every topic it touches, like the brilliant illumination of a great city, for some national jubilee. And how various and how dissimilar were these topics, - War, Religion, History, Political Economy, Philosophy, Biography, Romance, Dreams, Murders, Opium-eating! Of his Dreams, one of his most acute and discriminating critics* says: it will be agreed that there is nothing in our language to be compared with De Quincey's Dreams; nay, to speak of comparison is inadmissible, for they are absolutely alone. To the Dream Fugue,' founded on the 'Vision of Sudden Death,' we point with calmest assurance, as illustrating our general remark, The wondrous picture has the vividness and truth of reality." "Taken in connection with the incident which was its occa sion; considered as a poetic idealization of reality, and an effort of linguistic power; tried by the severe rules of Art, as demanding the very highest manifestation of order and harmony possible by man, we think we could maintain against all comers that this is, for its size, the noblest production in English prose." "We think it were difficult," says Bayne, "to match in our whole late literature, the pathetic effect realized in his paper on the Maid of Orleans. And who does not see that, besides all else of instruction and of consolation which arises from the pyres of the martyrs of Christianity, besides the deathless lessons of courage, of devotion, of purest holiness which they convey, there is also in the legacy of the fathers to the human race, that, by sympathizing sorrow over their woes each gene ration is elevated, and humanized and ennobled. This great lesson De Quincey has embodied with an almost unexampled felicity in his paper on Joan of Arc.” In every mind where pathos is found, there too will be found its antipode, humor. This was eminently true of De Quincey. His quaint and original humor excites a quiet smile in the midst * Peter Bayne. of his gravest writings. Even his exquisite taste did not prevent an occasional ebullition of this humor— manifestly out of place. With his brilliant imagination, subtile mysticism, extensive erudition, it surprises us to find that he possessed the analytic faculty, in an eminent degree. "My proper vocation," he says, "as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding." De Quincey has given so much of his outer and his inner life in his multitudinous pages, that little is left to be added by future biographers. He has portrayed himself with candor and openness, without extenuation, and almost without apology. We recognize it, if not as a photograph, yet, as a true, unidealized likeness of Thomas de Quincey. |