THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

(1785-1859).

ONE of the masters of English prose writing is Thomas De Quincey, and there are few volumes that I would more unhesitatingly recommend to the student ambitious of acquiring a good style than the most of his. His writings are both instructive and delightful, and cover a wide range of thought and scholarship. His subjects are of the most diverse kinds, while the under-current of reference and allusion carry one into regions of rarest learning. He had read widely over a vast extent of out-of-the-way literature, and his capacious memory furnished it forth to him at command. From childhood he had a passion for reading, and his knowledge is better entitled to the name of encyclopedia than that of any other modern person I know of, save, perhaps, Macaulay and William Hamilton. And yet he never wrote anything of great length-no extended work. His novel occupies barely half of one of 185

the duodecimo volumes into which his works have been collected. His writings are almost altogether magazine articles and were written to provide a livelihood. He did not commence authorship until he was thirty-five, and then only because his income from his father's estate failed him, through the wrong-doing of a trustee. For forty years he continued to write for the magazines and reviews of his time, and it is these supposed ephemera that have made him one of the chiefs of English literature. It was not until near the close of his life that these widely scattered articles were collected into volumes, the first step in that direction having been taken by the American publisher, James Ticknor Fields.

In the year 1821 an article appeared in the London Magazine, entitled "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," that attracted wide attention. The London was the chief rival of Blackwood in those days and had a notable corps of contributors. Some of the last minor poems of John Keats appeared in it, and a series of essays under the signature of "Elia" were very popular. Hazlitt was a contributor, and Barry Cornwall. A young humorist, Thomas Hood, by name, was a sort of assistant editor and was becoming known for writings both grave and gay.

Thomas Griffith Wainwright, prisoner and forger, whose miserable and despicable career ended many years later in a convicts' hut in Australia, contributed articles on "The Fine Arts," and altogether it was a remarkably well sustained and brilliant magazine. In this galaxy De Quincey soon became a bright particular star, and was a constant contributor while the magazine lasted, which was only a few years. "The Confessions" made the world acquainted with his name, for it was a self revelation only surpassed by those of Montaigne and Rousseau. It was published anonymously, but the wide spread curiosity and the unusual demand for more, forbade that the authorship should long remain a secret. The signature of "The Opium Eater" was thenceforward an attraction. Most assuredly here was no common writer, for whatever the topic, it was treated with superlative skill. His articles were therefore in demand, but his peculiar habits and disposition made him but a fitful writer, and an altogether unreliable contributor. When the London failed, he was attracted to Blackwood; the editor, Professor Wilson, being his warm personal friend. In one of the "Noctes," Wilson calls him "a man of a million," and in another, where De Quincey was supposed to be a guest at one of

those Ambrosian feasts which Wilson's imagination has made famous, Christopher North rises and says: "Gentlemen, I propose in one sentence, with all the honors, the health of Thomas De Quincey-a person of the highest intellectual and imaginative powers-a metaphysician, logician and a political economist of the first order a profound and comprehensive scholar a perfect gentleman and one of the best of men." A note states that the health was drunk with " prodigious acclamation." A response from "The Opium Eater" follows in which De Quincey's manner and style are hit off in the happiest manner. "The Confessions are based upon fact though in certain details somewhat embellished. De Quincey was the son of a Manchester merchant, who died when the boy was seven years of age—he was born in 1785. He was small and delicate, petted by every one except his mother and elder brother, who so tyrannized him that when the latter died at the age of sixteen, De Quincey expressed his profound relief at his escape from the yoke. The mother simply failed to understand her sensitive child.

He was brought up among books and was well taught from the beginning, but the restraints of school and home were irksome to him and at the

age of seventeen he ran away to London. The story of his wanderings and destitution in the inhospitable streets of the cruel city, of his rescue by the unhappy girl only more unfortunate than himself, and of his return home, makes one of the most graphic and pathetic passages in "The Confessions." And this is representative of his long career. At intervals he would disappear from home and family and friends--a strange, restless being, impatient of the restraints of social life. He resided for several years at Oxford, where he gained a high reputation for scholarship, and he next appears in the North of England lake region, where he became the friend of Wordsworth, Wilson, Southey, and other residents of that famed locality. There he married and settled down in a cottage, and there he commenced his literary career. It was at Oxford he acquired the opium habit, and he relates that in the course of a few years he could take eight thousand drops, or seven wine glasses of laudanum in a day. This allowance, after a fearful struggle, he largely reduced, but the habit remained with him all his life. That under such circumstances he wrote so much and so well, is as strange as many of the other incidents in his strange career.

He has two styles of writing; one familiar and