concerned by their indiscreet revelations. They have now the interest of other indiscreet revelations; but it is impossible to acquit De Quincey either of indiscretion or of a certain spitefulness. Miss Martineau speaks of his conduct to Wordsworth, who seems to have dropped the acquaintance, with a severity which is only not justifiable because De Quincey was hardly a responsible being, and shows irritability rather than malice. Family troubles now fell upon him. His youngest son, Julius, died at the age of four in 1833; his eldest, William, who had shown remarkable promise, in his eighteenth year, of a brain disease, in 1835; and his wife in 1837. The loss was the more severe as his eldest daughter was still very young. She developed, however, premature thoughtfulness, and became an able manager of the household. De Quincey himself, finding that the children disturbed him by their noise, took separate lodgings for himself at 42 Lothian Street, kept by two sisters, Mrs. Wilson and Miss Stark. In 1840 he took a cottage at Mavis Bush, Lasswade, where his three daughters became permanently settled, two of his sons entering the army, and a third becoming a physician. De Quincey frequently lived with them, but he also led a more or less independent existence, taking lodgings and making temporary sojourns in various places. For some years after his wife's death he relapsed into opium excesses. He speaks of three previous periods of such indulgence, in the years immediately preceding, in those immediately succeeding, his marriage, and in London during 1824–5. In 1844, after prolonged sufferings, he made a great and final effort. In June 1844 he succeeded in reducing his daily dose to six grains, and, according to his daughter, never much exceeded that amount afterwards (Page, i. 330). He had handed over the management of money matters to his daughter, and had no further trouble, except from his persistent extravagance. He was given to a ‘wanton charity,’ so that his presence at home was the ‘signal for a crowd of beggars,’ who borrowed babies or otherwise played upon his sympathies (ib. i. 362). He had a morbid value for papers, which accumulated until he was ‘snowed up.’ When crowded out of his lodgings by such a catastrophe, he simply locked the door and went elsewhere. Conscientious landladies were overwhelmed with the responsibility thus imposed upon them, while others took advantage of the deposits in their care to extort money. Six of these storehouses existed at the time of his death, an arrangement involving considerable expense. An accident to such an accumulation at Lasswade nearly led to the burning down of the house. He has given a humorous description of the normal state of his papers in his paper on ‘Sortilege and Astrology.’ The charm of his conversation and his gentle courtesy attracted many friends, upon whom he would sometimes drop in accidentally and then stay for weeks. From March 1841 to June 1843 he was at Glasgow, where he stayed with Professor Lushington and with Professor Nichol, in whose astronomical researches he was interested, and where he afterwards took lodgings, retained until 1847, but ‘snowed up’ as usual by piles of books and papers. He was there for some months in 1847. In spite of his strange shiftlessness and habits of procrastination, made worse by the chaos in which he had to search for documents, he continued to do some literary work. From 1837 to 1841 he contributed papers to Blackwood. He wrote biographies of Shakespeare, Pope, and others for the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ In 1844 he published ‘The Logic of Political Economy.’ He contributed to ‘Tait's Magazine’ during 1846 and 1847. After this period he became acquainted with Mr. James Hogg, who projected a collected edition of his works. Seven volumes of collected works had been published in America during 1851–2 by J. T. Fields, who visited De Quincey in the autumn of 1852, and liberally gave him a share of the profits. Mr. Hogg now induced him to revise a collected edition, which appeared between 1853 and 1860. De Quincey added many passages, writing at the same time a few articles for ‘Hogg's Instructor,’ which appeared in ‘Autobiographic Sketches,’ and afterwards in ‘Titan,’ a periodical also published by Hogg. De Quincey's notes to Hogg during the process (printed by Mr. Page) reveal constant difficulties caused by the hideous jumble of his papers and records, and at the same time an amiable desire to accept full responsibility for his shortcomings. He was pathetically and conscientiously anxious to obviate the consequences of his infirmities. To be nearer the press, he settled in his old lodgings at Lothian Street, where his landlady, Mrs. Wilson, and her sister, Miss Stark, attended him with the greatest kindness, but was frequently with his family at Lasswade, from which he could walk into Edinburgh. At the age of seventy he was still an active walker, and considered fourteen miles a day as a proper allowance. He would climb a hill ‘like a squirrel,’ discoursing upon German literature, and distancing a younger companion (Page, ii. 31).
His eldest daughter married in 1853, and settled in Ireland, where he paid her a visit
