The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 1

PREFACE

'The last fruit off an old tree!' This, in the words of Walter Savage Landor, is what I have now the honour to set before the public in these hitherto 'Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey.'

It was my privilege to be associated intimately with the Author some thirty to forty years ago—from the beginning of 1850 until his death in 1859.1 Throughout the whole period during which he was engaged in preparing for the Press his Selections Grave and Gay, I assisted in the task.

Of the singularly pleasant literary intercourse of that memorable time I have given some reminiscences in Harper's Magazine for this month. I may yet combine in a Volume with these some amusing, scholarly letters in my possession, and a Selection of Papers from the original sources, which I feel warranted, by the Author's own estimate, in calling De Quincey's Choice Works. Meantime, in dealing with the various Essays and Stories here gathered together, I limit myself to such notes as are necessary to point out the special circumstances under which some of the papers were written; in others the nature of the evidence I have found as to the indisputable authorship.

My special opportunities, derived from constant companionship and the continuous discussion with De Quincey of matters concerning his writings, gave me the key to some of the admirable papers here reprinted. It also entitles me to say, that he would have included a number of them in his Collected Works alongside the Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), had he lived to continue his labours.

When we find that most part of the Suspiria—perhaps the highest reach of his intellect in impassioned power—did not appear in the Selections at all, the reader will at once understand that, in the Author's own opinion, the Essays and Stories now first collected, were neither less dignified in purpose nor less finished in style than those which had passed under his hand in the fourteen volumes he nearly completed. Rather like the Suspiria, some of these papers were reserved as material upon the revision of which his energy might be fitly bestowed when health would permit.

The interesting papers which appeared in Tait's Magazine are all duly vouched for in that periodical. I have not touched any of the autobiographical matter which appeared in Tait,—the Author having recast that as well as the Sketches from Childhood, published in The Instructor in the 'Autobiographic Sketches' with which he opened the Selections. The Casuistry of Duelling, indeed, appeared in Tait as part of the Autobiographic Series, but, practically, it stood as an independent paper. The touching personal passage in this article reveals the misery caused by the unbridled scurrility of certain notorious publications of the last generation.

The paper on The German Language appeared in Tait in June 1836, and the Brief Appraisal of Greek Literature in December 1838 and June 1839.

Two long and valuable papers on Education; Plans for the Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers, which appeared in The London Magazine for April and May, 1824, were duly authenticated by the following characteristic letter from De Quincey to Christopher North. It appears in Professor Wilson's Life, written by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon:—

'London, Thursday, February 24th, 1825.

'My dear Wilson,

'I write to you on the following occasion:—Some time ago, perhaps nearly two years ago, Mr. Hill, a lawyer, published a book on Education, detailing a plan on which his brothers had established a school at Hazlewood, in Warwickshire. This book I reviewed in the London Magazine, and in consequence received a letter of thanks from the Author, who, on my coming to London about midsummer last year, called on me. I have since become intimate with him, and, excepting that he is a sad Jacobin (as I am obliged to tell him once or twice a month), I have no one fault to find with him, for he is a very clever, amiable, good creature as ever existed; and in particular directions his abilities strike me as really very great indeed. Well, his book has just been reviewed in the last Edinburgh Review (of which some copies have been in town about a week). This service has been done him, I suppose, through some of his political friends—(for he is connected with Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, old Bentham, etc.),—but I understand by Mr. Jeffrey. Mr. Hill, in common with multitudes in this Babylon—who will not put their trust in Blackwood as in God (which, you know, he ought to do)—yet privately adores him as the Devil; and indeed publicly too, is a great prôneur of Blackwood. For, in spite of his Jacobinism, he is liberal and inevitably just to real wit. His fear is—that Blackwood may come as Nemesis, and compel him to regorge any puffing and cramming which Tiff has put into his pocket, and is earnest to have a letter addressed in an influential quarter to prevent this. I alleged to him that I am not quite sure but it is an affront to a Professor to presume that he has any connection as contributor, or anything else, to any work which he does not publicly avow as his organ for communicating with the world of letters. He answers that it would be so in him,—but that an old friend may write sub rosa. I rejoin that I know not but you may have cut Blackwood—even as a subscriber—a whole lustrum ago. He rebuts, by urging a just compliment paid to you, as a supposed contributor, in the News of Literature and Fashion, but a moon or two ago. Seriously, I have told him that I know not what was the extent of your connection with Blackwood at any time; and that I conceive the labours of your Chair in the University must now leave you little leisure for any but occasional contributions, and therefore for no regular cognizance of the work as director, etc. However, as all that he wishes—is simply an interference to save him from any very severe article, and not an article in his favour, I have ventured to ask of you if you hear of any such thing, to use such influence as must naturally belong to you in your general character (whether maintaining any connection with Blackwood or not) to get it softened. On the whole, I suppose no such article is likely to appear. But to oblige Hill I make the application. He has no direct interest in the prosperity of Hazlewood; he is himself a barrister in considerable practice, and of some standing, I believe; but he takes a strong paternal interest in it, all his brothers (who are accomplished young men, I believe) being engaged in it. They have already had one shock to stand: a certain Mr. Place, a Jacobin friend of the School till just now, having taken the pet with it—and removed his sons. Now this Mr. Place, who was formerly a tailor—leather-breeches maker and habit-maker,—having made a fortune and finished his studies,—is become an immense authority as a political and reforming head with Bentham, etc., as also with the Westminster Review, in which quarter he is supposed to have the weight of nine times nine men; whence, by the way, in the "circles" of the booksellers, the Review has got the name of the Breeches Review.' … [The writer then passes on to details of his own plans and prospects, and thus concludes.]

'I beg my kind regards to Mrs. Wilson and my young friends, whom I remember with so much interest as I last saw them at Elleray.—I am, my dear Wilson,

'Very affectionately yours,

'Thomas De Quincey.'

In approaching the consideration of other papers said, in various quarters (with some show of authority) to have been written by De Quincey, it was necessary to act with extreme care. One was a painstaking list on the whole, but very inaccurate as regards certain contributions attributed to De Quincey in Blackwood. I have had the kind aid of Messrs. Blackwood in examining the archives of Maga to settle the points in question.

I was puzzled by some papers in The London Magazine set down as De Quincey's contributions in a memorandum said to have been furnished by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, its Publishers. The Blackwood blunders made me very sceptical. There was one story in particular—the long droll one of Mr. Schnackenberger; or, Two Masters to one Dog, about which I remained in doubt.

I had a faint recollection that one day De Quincey dwelt on the merits of 'Juno,' and owned the story when he was discussing 'bull-dogs.'

By the way, he was rather fond of 'bull-dogs,' and had some good anecdotes about them. It was a kind of pet-admiration-horror which he shared with Southey, on account of the difficulty in making a well-bred bull-dog relax his grip. Some member of the canine 'fancy' down at the Lakes had given them a so-called infallible 'tip' for making a bull-dog let go. I am sorry to say I have quite forgotten this admirable receipt. To be sure, one ought never to forget such valuable pieces of information. So I thought one day lately before the muzzling order came into force, when a bloodthirsty monster,—a big, white bull-dog, sprang suddenly at me in Cleveland Gardens. Instantly there flashed the thought—what was it that De Quincey recommended? A lucky lunge which drove the ferule of my umbrella down the brute's throat fortunately created a diversion, and allowed a little more time for the study of the problem. Perhaps I will be pardoned this digression, as it affords an opportunity of recording the fact that De Quincey and Southey both looked up to the bull-dog as an animal of very decided 'character.'

I was loth to abandon Mr. Schnackenberger, but unwilling to lean too much on my somewhat hazy remembrance. It seemed almost hopeless to obtain the necessary evidence. Messrs. Taylor and Hessey were long dead, and after groping about like a detective, no one could tell me what had become of the records of The London Magazine. Suddenly there came light in October last. I ascertained that a son of one of the Publishers is the Archdeacon of Middlesex, the Venerable J. A. Hessey, D.C.L.

I stated the case, and the worthy Archdeacon came most kindly and promptly to my assistance. As a boy he remembered De Quincey at his father's house, and recollected very well reading Mr. Schnackenberger. He informed me, 'I was greatly interested in the [London] Magazine generally, so much so, that, at my father's request, I copied from his private list, and attached to the head of each paper the name of the Author.... This interesting set came to me at my father's death.'

Dr. Hessey had subsequently presented the series to his old pupil, Mr. William Carew Hazlitt (by whose courtesy I have been able to examine it)—'the grandson of William Hazlitt, who was a frequent writer in the Magazine, and an old friend of my father. I thought he would like to possess it, and that it would thus be in fitting hands. I should not have parted with it in favour of any but a man like Mr. Hazlitt, who was sure to value it.'

As these valuable annotations of the Archdeacon ramify in various directions—touching as they do the contributions of many brilliant men of that period—it may not be amiss (as a possible help to others in the future) to add a few more decisive words by Dr. Hessey:—

'If any papers are not marked (he refers only to those volumes actually published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey) it was because they were anonymous, or because, from some inadvertency, they were not assigned in my father's list. So far as the record goes, it may be depended upon.'

By its help I was able to fix the authorship by De Quincey of (1) The Dog Story—translated from the German, (2) Moral Effects of Revolutions, (3) Prefigurations of Remote Events, (4) Abstract of Swedenborgianism by Immanuel Kant.

Another perplexing element was the letter written by De Quincey to his uncle, Colonel Penson, in 1819 (Page's Life, vol. i. p. 207), wherein reference is made to certain contributions to Blackwood's Magazine and The Quarterly Review.

The archives of Maga I find go back only as far as 1825. As to The Quarterly Review, I have Mr. Murray's authority for stating that De Quincey never wrote a line in it. Whether any contributions were ever commissioned, paid for, and afterwards suppressed, I have been unable to ascertain. As a matter of fact, the Schiller Series referred to in the letter to Colonel Penson was never reviewed in The Quarterly at all.

De Quincey as a Newspaper Editor forms the subject of a Chapter in Page's Life. Some extracts are there given from cuttings out of The Westmorland Gazette found amongst the Author's Papers. This editorship (1818-19) was of short duration, and pursued under hostile circumstances, such as distance from the Press, &c., which soon led to De Quincey's resignation. I had hoped to add some further specimens of the newspaper work, but have not, as yet, obtained access to a file of the period. In any future edition I may be able to add this in an Appendix.

The Love-Charm.—In spite of the marvellous tenacity of De Quincey's memory, even as to the very words of a passage in an Author which he had, perhaps, only once read, there were blanks which confounded himself. One of these bore on his contributions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Mr. Fields had been so generally careful in obtaining sufficient authority for what he published, in the original American edition, that De Quincey good-humouredly gave the verdict against himself, and 'supposed he must be wrong' in thinking that some of these special papers were not from his pen. Still,—he demurred, and before including them in The Selections Grave and Gay, it was resolved to institute an inquiry. Accordingly, about 1852, I was deputed to interview Mr. Charles Knight, and request his aid. My mission was to obtain, if possible, a correct list of the various contributions to the Quarterly Magazine, including this Love-Charm.

Mr. Knight, Mr. Ramsay (his first lieutenant, as he called him), and myself all met at Fleet Street, where we had the archives of the old Quarterly Magazine turned up, and a list checked. I lately found this particular story also referred to circumstantially in the annexed paragraph contained in Charles Knight's Passages of a Working Life (Thorne's re-issue, vol. I. chap. x. p. 339).

'De Quincey had written to me in December 1824, in the belief that, as he expressed it, "many of your friends will rally about you, and urge you to some new undertaking of the same kind. If that should happen, I beg to say, that you may count upon me, as one of your men, for any extent of labour, to the best of my power, which you may choose to command." He wrote a translation of The Love-Charm of Tieck, with a notice of the Author. This is not reprinted in his Collected Works, though perhaps it is the most interesting of his translations from the German. In this spring and summer De Quincey and I were in intimate companionship. It was a pleasant time of intellectual intercourse for me.'

There is no doubt The Love-Charm would have been reprinted had the Author lived to carry the Selections farther.

The curious little Essay On Novels,—written in a Lady's Album, had passed out of Mr. Davey's hands before I became aware of its existence. The facsimile, however, taken for The Archivist, by an expert like Mr. Netherclift, shows that it is, unquestionably, in the handwriting of De Quincey. I have been unable to trace the 'Fair Incognita' to whom it was addressed.

The compositions which were written for me when I edited Titan, and which I now place before the public in volume form, after the lapse of a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'), demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to the Selections Grave and Gay.

Titan was a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an enlarged form of The Instructor. I had become the acting Editor of its predecessor, the New Series of The Instructor, working in concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this New Series there appeared from De Quincey's pen The Sphinx's Riddle, Judas Iscariot, the Series of Sketches from Childhood, and other notable papers.

At that time I was but a young editor—young and, perhaps, a little 'curly,' as Lord Beaconsfield put it. De Quincey, with a truly paternal solicitude, gave me much good advice and valuable help, both in the selection of subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of handling them. The notes on The Lake Dialect, Shakspere's Text and Suetonius Unravelled, were written to me in the form of Letters, and published in Titan.

Storms in English History was a consideration of part of Mr. Froude's well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir in the literary world, and profoundly impressed De Quincey.

How to write English was the first of a series projected for The Instructor. It never got beyond this 'Introduction,' but the fragment contains some matter well worthy of preservation.

The circumstances attending the composition of the four papers on The English in India and The English in China, I have explained at some length in the introductory notices attached to them.

And now for a confession! The 'gentle reader' may, perhaps, feel a momentary inclination to blame me when I reveal, that I rather stood in the way of some brilliant articles which were very seriously considered at this period.

De Quincey was eager to write them, and I should have been glad indeed to have had them for Titan, but for a fear of allowing the Author to wander too far from the ever-present and irksome Works. Any possible escape—even through other downright hard work, from this perplexing labour was joyfully hailed by him as a hopeful chance of obtaining a prosperous holiday.

For a little I wavered under the temptation (Reader,—was it not great?)—the idea of having a little relaxation which would permit some, at least, of these well-planned papers to be written. But I was keenly alive to the danger which overtook us at last. We are daily reminded that 'art is long and life is short.' I had already saved the Works from being strangled at their birth in a legal tussle with Mr. John Taylor.2 My Father was at my elbow anxiously inquiring about the progress of the 'copy' for each succeeding volume. There were eager friends also, on both sides of the Atlantic, pressing resolutely for it. So—prudence prevailed, and we held as straightly on our way as the Author's uncertain health would permit.

Thus it came to pass, dear Public, that you lost some charming essays, while you gained the fourteen volumes of the Selections which the Author all but completed.

Wherefore, seeing that you may possibly expect it of me to make some use of my rare opportunities by doing whatever I can in these matters, 'before the night cometh,'—I have prepared this book—ohne hast, ohne rast.

I cannot close these few pages better than by quoting some strong, just, sympathetic words which appeared in two great reviews—one American, the other British.

The North American Review said:—

'In De Quincey we are struck at once by the exquisite refinement of mind, the subtleness of association, and the extreme tenuity of the threads of thought, the gossamer filaments yet finally weaving themselves together, and thickening imperceptibly into a strong and expanded web. Mingled with this, and perhaps springing from a similar mental habit, is an occasional dreaminess both in speculation and in narrative, when the mind seems to move vaguely round in vast returning circles. The thoughts catch hold of nothing, but are heaved and tossed like masses of cloud by the wind. An incident of trivial import is turned and turned to catch the light of every possible consequence, and so magnified as to become portentous and terrible.'

'A barren and trivial fact, under the power of that life-giving hand, shoots out on all sides into waving branches and green leaves, and odoriferous flowers. It is not the fact that interests us, but the mind working upon it, investing it with mock-heroic dignity, or rendering it illustrative of really serious principles; or, with the true insight of genius, discovering, in that which a vulgar eye would despise, the germs of grandeur and beauty; the passions of war in the contests of the rival factions of schoolboys, the tragedy in every peasant's death-bed.'

'De Quincey constantly amazes us by the amount and diversity of his learning. Two or three of the minor papers in the collected volumes are absolutely loaded with the life spoils of their author's scholarship, yet carry their burden as lightly as our bodies sustain the weight of the circumambient atmosphere. So perfect is his tact in finding, or rather making a place for everything, that, while inviting, he eludes the charge of pedantry.'

'It is scarcely to be expected that one who tries his hand at so many kinds of pencraft should always excel; yet such is the force of De Quincey's intellect, the brilliancy of his imagination, and the charm of his style, that he throws a new and peculiar interest over every subject which he discusses, while his fictitious narratives in general rivet the attention of the reader with a power not easily resisted.'

The Quarterly Review said:—

'De Quincey's style is superb, his powers of reasoning unsurpassed, his imagination is warm and brilliant, and his humour both masculine and delicate.'

The writer continues:—

'A great master of English composition, a critic of uncommon delicacy, an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions, a philosophic inquirer—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 vigour 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.'

A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST PRETENSIONS: