Grave and Gay," is appropriate and significant—for in pathos and humour both the author excels: to adopt Wordsworth's language,
Caverns there are within his mind which sun
Can never penetrate, yet wants there not
Rich store of leafy arbours where the light
May enter in at will.
In part these miscellanies are to be viewed as entirely new; "large sections having been intercalated in the present edition, and other changes made, which, even to the old parts, by giving very great expansion, give sometimes a character of absolute novelty." Mr. de Quincey proposes to group the collected articles under three general heads—first, a class "which proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest;" secondly, those papers which address themselves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or do so primarily (including, ex. gr., the essays on the Essenes, the Cæsars, Cicero, &c.); and thirdly, a far higher class of compositions in virtue of their aim, "modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents" in any literature, viz., the "Confessions," and the Suspiria de Profundis. The present volume is autobiographical, dating from the "Affliction of Childhood" in its earliest germ, onwards to the experiences of fervid youth. Nothing can surpass the touching power, the profound grandeur, the psychological interest of this extraordinary narrative—unless it be its sallies of superlative fun, its mirthful originalities of mood and manner. There are "bits" of magnificent prose that stand alone for splendour of diction and passion of sentiment in the English language. We have no space for quotation at this late period—no opportunity to show how the future Opium-eater was initiated, yet an infant, in premature spiritual conflict, and in the stern habit of thoughts that lie too deep for tears—or how an elder brother ruled the nursery with a sway of which the present chronicle gives the most ludicrous record imaginable—or how the autobiographer was introduced to the warfare of a public school, how he entered the world, how he bivouacked in the "nation of London," and pilgrimised amid the beauties and strifes of Ireland. But we could not forbear the utterance of a most cordial welcome to this volume,
A parti-coloured show of grave and gay,
Solid and light,
which we trust the "leafy month of June" will cause to be known and read of all men. On a future occasion we hope to indite a paper on the Pathos and Passion, as already we have on the Humour, of Thomas de Quincey,[1]—and for such an essay the present tome will present ample scope and verge enough, and to spare.
- ↑ New Monthly Magazine, October, 1852.
