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He must be instructed in his course, but the instruction reveals more difficulties than it removes, and there is much doubt and discussion, which Papaverius at once clears up as effectually as he had ever dispersed a cloud of logical sophisms; and this time the feat is performed by a stroke of the thoroughly practical, which looks like inspiration --- he will accompany the forlorn traveller, and lead him through the difficulties of the way for have not midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with all its intricacies? Roofed by a huge wideawake, which makes his tiny figure look like the stalk of some great fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimensions in his hand, away he goes down the wooded path, up the steep bank, along the brawling stream, and across the waterfall-and ever as he goes there comes from him a continued stream of talk concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and other kindred matters.

"Those who knew him a little might call him a loose man in money matters; those who knew him closer laughed at the idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other

like responsibility with his nature. You might as well attack the character of the nightingale, which may have nipped up your five-pound note and torn it to shreds to serve as nest-building material. Only immediate craving necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledgment of the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilized society: and only while the necessity lasted did the acknowledgment exist. Take just one example, which will render this clearer than any generalities. He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission—a process in which he often endured impediments, -he repre

sents, with his usual silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the realm,the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment

in possession of a document which he is prepared to deposit with the lender, — a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable, possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spread it out a fifty-pound bank note!

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sums of money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use; and, with more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the bank-note, might he inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been entirely a stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to him at the time when the exigency occurred to him, he had just succeeded in negotiating a loan of twopence.

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The learned world may fairly be divided into those who return the books borrowed by them, and those who do not. Papaverius belonged decidedly to the latter order. A friend addicted to the marvellous boasts that, under the pressure of a call by a public li

brary to replace a mutilated book with a new copy which would have cost thirty dollars, he recovered a volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a person especially bribed, and authorized to take any necessary measures, insolence and violence excepted - -but the power of extraction that must have been employed in such a process excites very painful reflections. Some legend, too, there is of a book creditor having forced his way into the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of ruffle work inner wall of volumes, with their edges outward, while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian sheepskin and the aristocratic Russian, were squeezed into certain tubs,1 drawn from the washing establishment of a confiding landlady. It is said he once gave in

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copy' written on the edges of a tall octavo, Somnium Scipionis; and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the letterpress Latin and the manuscript English. All these things were the types of an intellectual vitality which de

1 The reader familiar with De Quincey's writings will be reminded of the " Sortilege in behalf of the Glasgow Athenæum."-Ed.

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spised and thrust aside all that was gross or material in that wherewith it came in contact. Surely never did the austerities of monk or anchorite so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar nature removed them. from him. It may be questioned if he ever knew what it was to eat a good dinner,' or could even comprehend the nature of such a felicity. Yet in all the sensuous nerves which connect as it were the body with the ideal, he was painfully susceptible. Hence a false quantity or a wrong note in music. was agony to him."

A reminiscence harmonizing with this is from Mrs. Gordon's life of her father, Professor Wilson, the Christopher North of Blackwood, with whom De Quincey was especially intimate.

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"I remember his coming to Gloucester Place one stormy night. He remained hour after hour, in vain expectation that the waters would assuage and the hurly burly cease. There was nothing for it but that our visitor should remain all night. The Professor ordered a room to be prepared for him, and they found each other such good company that this accidental detention was prolonged,

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