PREFACE.

THE writings of Thomas de Quincey occupy more than a score of volumes.

Comparatively few persons have leisure for the pereusal of so many miscellaneous works by the same author; yet, all who pretend to a knowledge of English Literature should be familiar with the chefs-d'œuvre of De Quincey-one of the greatest masters of the English Language.

His autobiography, scattered through many volumes, is here collected and so arranged as to give a complete view of his early life and his peculiar character. The other selections from his various works, furnish striking examples of the pathetic and the humorous, the quaint and the ludicrous, the serious and the sublime. The miscellaneous nature of De Quincey's writings renders them specially fit for this kind of eclecticism. It is hoped that the present volume will prove an acceptable addition to our current literature, and induce a desire for a still farther acquaintance with the elegant author.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE

OF

DE QUINCEY'S LIFE AND WRITINGS.

GREAT men seldom appear in the literary hemisphere isolated,

"Like a star

When only one is shining in the sky,"

but in brilliant clusters, as in the Augustine age, and in the reign of Elizabeth of England. Such a constellation loomed above the horizon of England near the close of the last century, and shed its effulgence over more than half of the present century.

Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Landor, Rogers, Macaulay, De Quincey, (and may we not add our own Irving?) with others of less magnitude, formed this Orionlike constellation, with its attendant Hyades and Pleiads.

All-all have set, excepting the octogenarian, Walter Savage Landor.

Thomas de Quincey was one of the last survivors of this glorious band. He died at Edinburgh, December 8, 1859.*

* De Quincey left five children. Two sons; one, a Captain in the army, in India; the other, a physician in Brazil. Of his three daughters, the eldest, Mrs. Robert Craig, and the youngest, (unmarried), were with their father at the time of his decease. The other daughter was with her husband, Colonel Baird Smith, in India.

His last illness was of short duration. For a long time, however, the earthly tenement had seemed too slight to hold the restless, powerful mind within its narrow bounds. That mind retained its vivid perceptions and its characteristic capaciousness and acuteness till his last fatal illness. Strange that a life held by so frail a tenure should have been continued beyond the threescore and ten years allotted to man!

For some years past De Quincey had secluded himself from general society, finding solace and occupation among the mute companions of his library. Occasionally, he went from Lasswade, his home, to Edinburgh, and there he had remained for some months previous to his decease.

De Quincey was, by temperament, exceedingly susceptible to all external impressions; indued with a delicate sensibility that thrilled in sympathy with human joy and human woe, as the Eolian harp responds to the lightest breeze, passing over its vibratile chords.

Though saddened by the keen sufferings and sorrows of early life, he cast no gloom over the social circle. Even in later years, he was the promoter of innocent mirth, and charmed with his delightful conversation an admiring circle of friends, young and old.

In his conversation, De Quincey avoided that usurpation which he so frequently and so severely denounces.

Conversation," says some one, "should be like an Orchestra, where every player has his own part to perform." The conversational "Orchestra" in which De Quincey was a performer must have demanded of him a frequent solo. In addition to his remarkable responsiveness, his boundless field of illustration, his felicitous language, his exquisite taste, his aërial fancy, and his odd humor, gave to his conversation its irresistible charm.

His manners were polished and refined; yet conciliatory and cordial. Towards women, especially, he was chivalrous in his

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,

in which

"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 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 approach to that effect, or any suggestion of it, exist for him who hides and buries all openings for parts and graceful correspondences 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 six 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