of readers and admirers, as they are safe to do in those of a third and fourth. The risk of their not reaching on through succeeding time arises from their diffuseness their power is weakened by their volume.
De Quincey has fully defined his own position and claim to distinction in the preface to his collected works. These he divides into three classes : "first, that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader," such as the Narratives, Autobiographic Sketches, &c. ; "second, papers which address themselves purely to the under standing as an insulated faculty, or do so primarily," such as the essays on Essenism, the Caesars, Cicero, &c. ; and finally, as a third class, " and, in virtue of their aim, as a far higher class of compositions," he ranks those "modes of impassioned prose ranging under no prece dents that I am aware of in any literature," such as the Confessions and Suspiria de Profundis. The high claim here asserted has been so far questioned; and short and iso lated examples of eloquent apostrophe, and highly-wrought imaginative description, have been cited from Rousseau and other masters of style ; but De Quincey s power of sustaining a fascinating and elevated strain of " impassioned prose " is allowed to be entirely his own. In this his genius most emphatically asserts itself; if it be not admitted that in that dread circle none durst walk but he, it will be without hesitation conceded that there he moves supreme. Nor, in regard to his writings as a whole, will a minor general claim which he makes be disallowed, namely, that he " does not write without a thoughtful consideration of his subject," and also with novelty and freshness of view. " Generally," he says, " I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the merit of rectification applied to absolute errors^ or to injurious limitations of the truth." Another obvious quality of all his genius is its overflowing fulness of allusion and illustration, recalling his own description of a great philosopher or scholar " Not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men s bones into the unity of breathing life." It is useless to complain of his having lavished and diffused his talents and acquirements over so vast a variety of often comparatively trivial and passing topics, in stead of concentrating them on one or two great subjects. The world must accept gifts from men of genius as they offer them ; circumstance and the hour often rule their form. Those influences, no less than the idiosyncrasy of the man, determined De Quincey to the illumination of such matter for speculation as seemed to lie before him ; he was not careful to search out recondite or occult themes, though these he did not neglect, a student, a scholar, and a recluse, he was yet at the same time a man of the world, keenly interested in the movements of men and in the page of history that unrolled itself before him day by day. To the discussion of things new, as readily as of things old, aided by a capacious, retentive, and ready memory, which dispensed with reference to printed pages, he brought also the exquisite keenness and subtlety of his highly analytic and imaginative intellect, the illustrative stores of his vast and varied erudition, and that large infusion of common sense which preserved him from becoming at any time a mere doctrinaire, or visionary. If he did not throw himself into any of the great popular controversies or agitations of the day, it was not from any want of sympathy with the struggles of humanity or the progress of the race, but rather because his vocation was to apply to such incidents of his own time, as to like incidents of all history, great philosophical principles and tests of truth and power. In politics, in the party sense of that term, he would probably have been classed as a Liberal Conservative or Conservative Liberal at one period of his life perhaps the former, and at a later the latter. Originally, as we have seen, his surroundings were somewhat aristocratic, in his middle life his associates, notably Wordsworth, Southey, and Wilson, were all Tories ; but he seems never to have held the extreme and narrow views of that circle. Though a flavour of high breeding runs through his writings, he has no vulgar sneers at the vulgar. As he advanced in years his views became more and more decidedly liberal, but he was always as far removed from Radicalism as from Toryism, and may be described as a philosophical politician, capable of classification under no definite party name or colour. Of political economy he had been an early and earnest student, and projected, if he did not so far proceed with, an elaborate and systematic treatise on the science, of which all that appears, however, are his fragmentary Dialogues on the system of Ricardo, which John Ramsay M Culloch pronounces " unequalled for brevity, pungency, and force." But political and eco nomic problems largely exercised his thoughts, and his historical sketches show that he is constantly alive to their interpenetrating influence. The same may be said of his biographies, notably of his remarkable sketch of Dr Parr. Neither politics nor economics, however, exer cised an absorbing influence on his mind, they were simply provinces in the vast domain of universal specula tion through which he ranged " with unconfined wings." How wide and varied was the region he traversed a glance at the titles of the papers which make up his collected or more properly selected works (for there was much matter of evanescent interest not reprinted) sufficiently shows. He was equally at home in all provinces, though never exerting his great powers so as to make himself paramount in any. Surprising as his literary achievements are, his capabilities were still greater ; and the general survey leaves the impression of regret that, doing so much so well, he did not do more, or did not less better. Some things in his own line he has done perfectly ; he has written many pages of magnificently mixed argument, irony, humour, and elo quence, which, for sustained brilliancy, richness, subtle force, and purity of style and effect have simply no parallels ; and he is without peer the prince of dreamers. The use of opium no doubt stimulated this remarkable faculty of reproducing in skilfully selected phrase the grotesque and shifting forms of that "cloudland, gorgeous land," which opens to the sleep-closed eye ; but the faculty itself was a speciality of hi. u constitution, coloured by the quality of his genius, and enriched by the acquisitions of his intellect.
To the appreciation of De Quincey the reader must bring an imaginative faculty somewhat akin to his own a cer tain general culture, and large knowledge of books, and men, and things. Otherwise much of that slight and delicate allusion that gives point and colour and charm to his writings will be missed; and on this account the full enjoyment and comprehension of De Quincey must always remain a luxury of the literary and intellectual. But his skill in narration, his rare pathos, his wide sympathies, the pomp of his dream-descriptions, the exquisite playfulness of his lighter dissertations, and his abounding though deli cate and subtle humour, commend him to a larger class. Though far from being a professed humourist a character he would have shrunk from there is no more expert worker in a sort of half-veiled and elaborate humour and irony than De Quiucey ; but he employs those resources for the most part secondarily. Only in one instance has he given himself up to them unreservedly and of set pur pose, namely, in the famous Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts, an effort which, admired and admirable though it be, is also, it must be allowed, some what strained. He was a born critic and dreamer, a
