every syllable with reality—a passionate memorial of harrowing experiences—than which we remember no passage more painfully characteristic, more idiosyncratically pathetic, more wildly wailing, in all the writings of Thomas de Quincey. He has been speaking of the impression produced by the love of woman—there recurs to him, in thus speaking, an echo of "young, melodious laughter"—he recals "years through which," he piteously says, "a shadow as of sad eclipse sate and rested upon my faculties; years through which I was careless of all but those who lived within my[1] inner circle, within 'my heart of hearts;' years—ah! heavenly years!—through which I lived, beloved! with thee, to thee, for thee, by thee! Ah! happy, happy years! in which I was a mere football of reproach, but in which every wind and sounding hurricane of wrath or contempt flew by like chasing enemies past some defying gates of adamant, and left me too blessed in thy smiles—angel of life!—to heed the curses or the mocking which sometimes I heard raving outside of our impregnable Eden; … as much abstracted from all which concerned the world outside … as though I had lived with the darlings of my heart in the centre of Canadian forests, and all men else in the centre of Hindostan" ….. "O heart, why art thou disquieted? Tempestuous, rebellions heart! ah, wherefore art thou still dreaming of things so long gone by? of expectations that could not be fulfilled, that, being mortal, must, in some point, have a mortal taint! Empty, empty thoughts! vanity of vanities! Yet no, not always; for sometimes, after days of intellectual toil, when half the whole world is dreaming—I wrap my head in the bed-clothes, …. and then through blinding tears I see again that golden gate; again I stand waiting at the entrance; until dreams come that carry me once more to the Paradise beyond."[2]
Shall we comment on this outburst, in our puny right of criticaster? Pshaw, criticaster! add not thereto, lest thou diminish from it. Or indite a peroration to this paper?[3] Pshaw, criticaster! forget thy puling self; and if thy hands are not to thine eyes, lay thy hands upon thy mouth.
- ↑ Greatly would this extract gain in import by our supplying the context. But, apart from the limits of space, from which we have allowed so many preceding extracts to suffer, this context involves distressing associations, now connected with the illustrious dead.
- ↑ Lake Reminiscences. (1839.)
- ↑ Limits de jure, already de facto transgressed, forbid absolutely the insertion we had meditated of other and miscellaneous illustrations of the Opium-eater's pathos. An interesting example of his singular capacity of grief, and of giving sorrow words (in impassioned review), we can now only refer to, in his story of the early death of Catherine Wordsworth, and its stunning effect on himself, making him "like one," in Shelley's words,on the child's new-made grave. Let the reader who would follow up the subject, examine (among the papers we had marked for extract) "The Household Wreck" (1838), parts of "Joan of Arc" (1847), and the "Nautico-Military Nun of Spain" (1847), the introduction to the entry on Sir William Hamilton (1852), &c., besides the "Suspiria," the "Lake Reminiscences," and the opening volume of the collected (or rather selected) works, now in coarse of publication. The second volume of which is due this present month (August).
"Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law,
And in despair had cast him down to die,"
