No more signal service, during the last half century, has been rendered
to the lovers of genuine books, than the collection and republication of
the fragmentary writings of Thomas de Quincey. Cast, for the most part,
upon the swollen current of periodical literature, at the summons of
chance or necessity, during a career protracted beyond the allotted
threescore years and ten, the shattered hand of the Opium Eater was
powerless to arrest their flight to silence and forgetfulness;
increasing remoteness was daily throwing a deeper shadow upon ancient
landmarks, and consequently upon the possibility of their recovery. When
Mr. de Quincey was urged to attempt the collection himself, his emphatic
reply was: 'Sir, the thing is absolutely, insuperably, and forever
impossible. Not the archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary,
durst attempt any such thing!' From that quarter, then, nothing could be
expected; but the intervention of other parties averted a catastrophe
melancholy to contemplate--restoring to us a vast body of literature,
unique in character and supreme in kind. We do not pretend that De
Quincey has yet been awarded by any very general suffrage the foremost
position among modern _littérateurs_; we expect that his popularity will
be of slow growth, and never universal. Universal popularity a writer of
the highest talent and genius can never secure, for his very loftiness
of thought and impassioned eccentricity cut him off from the sympathy,
and hence from the applause, of a vast section of humanity. But when
contemporary prejudice and indifference shall clear up, and the question
be summoned for final arbitration before the dispassionate tribunal of
the future, we suspect that the name of Thomas de Quincey will head the
list of English writers during the last seventy-five years. If we should
apply to our author the rule which he remorselessly enforces against Dr.
Parr, that the production of a complete, first-class work is the only
absolute test of first-class literary ability, our position would be
untenable, for it is notorious that De Quincey's writings are entirely
fragmentary. But it will never do to lay down a canon of that sort as
the basis of calculation in estimating the intellectual altitude of
literary men. The wider the field the greater the scope for grandeur of
design and the pomp of achievement; but it is seldom that a writer who
can produce an essay of the highest order cannot also meet successfully
the demands of a more protracted effort. Narrowness of bounds, want of
compass for complete elaboration, is often no slight obstacle. The more
minute the mechanism, the more arduous the approach to perfection. The
limits of the essay are at best cramped, and the compression, the
adjusting of the subject to those limits, so that its character and
bearings may be naturally and perspicuously exhibited, imply no ordinary
skill. Besides, the advisability, or rather the possibility of
undertaking a literary work of the first magnitude is dependent not less
upon circumstances beyond the range of individual control than upon
intellectual capacity.
In asserting for De Quincey the leading position among the writers of
this century, we are clothing him with no ordinary honors--honors which
no man can rightfully enjoy without mental endowments at once multiform
and transcendent. Our age thus far has been prolific in genius,
inferior, indeed, to no other, except, perhaps, the Elizabethan; and,
even here, inferior only at two points, tragedy and that section of
poetry in which alone is found the incarnation of the sublime--the
divine strains of John Milton. But in range of achievement our epoch has
scarcely a rival. Mighty champions have arisen in almost every
department of letters, and it is plain that, amid merits so divergent
and wide removed, we can justly ascribe absolute precedence to no man
without establishing, at the outset, a standard of ideal excellence,
and by that adjusting the claims of all competitors.
We may remark, then, in general, that few first-class writers have
appeared who did not require as a condition of success varied and
profound learning. Kant, indeed, won immortality by the efforts of blank
power. It is said that he never read a book; so wonderful was his
synthetical and logical power, that if he could once discover the
starting point, the initial principles of a writer, there was no
occasion for his toiling through the intermediate argumentation to reach
the conclusions--he grasped them almost intuitively, provided, of
course, the deductions were logical. But even Kant, had his acquaintance
with the literature of metaphysics been more extensive, would have
avoided many errors, as well as the trouble of discovering many truths
in which he had been long anticipated. Herder thought that too much
reading had hurt the spring and elasticity of his mind. Doubtless we may
carry our efforts to excess in this direction as well as any other, by
calling into unduly vigorous and persistent action the merely receptive
energies of the mind. Perhaps this was the case with Herder, as the
range of his reading was truly immense; but if so, it argues with fatal
effect against his claims to the highest order of intellect; if the
weight of his body was too great for his wings, there lurked somewhere a
sad defect. In the vast plurality of cases success lies in, and is
graduated by, the intensity of mental reaction upon that which has been
acquired from others. The achievements of the past are stepping stones
to the conquests of the present. New truths, new discoveries, are old
truths, old discoveries remodelled and shifted so as to meet the view
under a different angle; new structures are in no proper sense
creations, but mainly the product of a judicious eclecticism. Sir
William Hamilton was a vast polyhistor long before he could be called a
philosopher, or even thought himself one. Researches the most persistent
in nearly every department of letters were with him the indispensable
prelude to his subsequent triumphs.
But all this is simply conditional. What, then, are the powers which
nature alone can bestow? What must she have done before the highest
results can arise from literary effort, however immense the compass of
our information? There must be powerful analytic and discursive ability,
combined with a commensurate reach of constructive and imaginative
capacity. An intellect thus endowed, approaches the perfection of our
ideal. If one of these elements is deficient, we shall lack either depth
or brilliance, acuteness or fancy; our structures may be massive,
titanic, but hostile to the laws of a refined taste; colossal and
dazzling, but too airy and unsubstantial except for the few who are
'With reason mad, and on phantoms fed.'
Before some such ideal tribunal as this let us summon the aspirants to
the dictatorial honors which seem to have slumbered since the day of Dr.
Johnson, and arbitrate their claims.
Who shall combat the succession of Thomas de Quincey to this vacant
throne? Shall it be Coleridge, 'the noticeable man with large, gray
eyes,' or the stately Macaulay, or Carlyle, with his Moorish dialect and
sardonic glance, or hale old Walter Scott, or Lamb, or Hazlitt, or
Christopher North? The time was when Coleridge's literary fame was
second to that of no other man. But he has suffered a disastrous
eclipse; it has been articulately demonstrated that the vast body of his
most valuable speculations, both in the department of philosophy, and
also in that of poetry and of the fine arts generally, were so
unblushingly pirated from Schelling and other German writers, that all
defence, even that which was merely palliative, has signally failed.
That fact silences absolutely and forever his claim. Nor can the
pretensions of Macaulay or Carlyle be tolerated; in neither of them is
found in any marked degree what has been aptly called 'double-headed'
power--in neither are combined the antagonistic resources of profound
thought and brilliant imagination. Macaulay, unapproachable in the
delineation of character and in the mastery of stately narrative, seems
to be shorn of his wonted power in the presence of the higher
philosophical and moral questions--the flight that is elsewhere so bold
and triumphant, droops and falters here. As for Carlyle, to say nothing
of other faults, we vainly search his writings for anything positive; he
is a blank destroyer, breathing out everlasting denunciation and regret.
No man can possess the highest order of talent or genius whose powers
are essentially negative. Mere demolition--demolition which is not the
first step in the advance of reform and reconstruction, the preliminary
removal of ancient rubbish for the erection of newer and nobler
structures--is worse than futile. But we will not pursue farther this
phase of our subject. We take our stand upon the position, and think it
can be maintained against all comers, that these writers, and others
which might be named, although supreme in certain departments, fail in
_range_ of power; in other words, that they have specialities outside of
which they attain no remarkable excellence. Scott, for instance, is
unsurpassed in the drama of fiction; but in the more transcendent sphere
of poetry his success is open to a very serious demur. But how is the
case with De Quincey? Did he ever write a poem? No; but he was
nevertheless a poet of the first rank. Did he ever publish a treatise on
metaphysics? No. His great work 'De Emendatione Humani Intellectus,' was
never completed, but he was, notwithstanding, an acute philosopher. The
author of no complete history, he was not the less a divine master of
historic narration, grave or gay, sententious or impassioned. No one is
more profoundly convinced than ourselves that mere rhetorical
declamation, and the sepulchral voice of fulsome eulogy can never
establish claims of such vast magnitude. What has Mr. de Quincey
achieved, what range of capacity has he exhibited in the memorials he
has left behind, in the grand conceptions that have arisen upon his
mind, whether completely projected into the sphere of tangible reality
or not?--these are the crucial questions upon which hang for him the
trophies of renown or the dark drapery of oblivion.
Every person who is competent to form an opinion on the subject, very
readily allows that political economy, so infinite and subtile are the
forces that enter into its shifting phenomena, is a science of no slight
complexity, and that the successful unveiling of its disordered tissue
demands, in the first instance, the highest intellectual acuteness and
profundity. We here encounter the same obstacles as in metaphysics,
except that in the one case the phenomena investigated are subjective,
in the other objective. Both conditions have peculiar advantages; both
are open to peculiar difficulties, which it is unnecessary to discuss at
present. But the power which can grapple successfully with the vexed
complications of the one will be no less potent in piercing those of the
other; acuteness of analysis, sleepless insight, subtile thought, ample
constructive or synthetic ability, these are the only endowments out of
which any original success can arise in either case. What has Mr. de
Quincey achieved for the science of political economy? We might answer
by asking, What has Mr. Ricardo achieved in that department? Ricardo and
De Quincey had independently arrived at the same conclusions on the
subject at about the same time. The fact that Ricardo first proclaimed
to the world his revolutionary doctrines of rent and value has won for
him the lion's share of the applause they compelled; but that rendered
De Quincey's independent conclusions none the less real discoveries,
subtracted nothing from the aggregate of his real merit. The vast
obstacles which lay in the path of these discoveries can never be fully
appreciated, until we apprehend, to some extent, the apparently hopeless
and inextricable confusion with which the whole subject was at that time
invested: out of the blackness of darkness, out of the very heart of
chaos and anarchy rose two mighty luminaries, that have been polar
beacons to all subsequent explorers. De Quincey's writings on political
economy are partially fragmentary; that is, they do not exhaust the
subject as a whole, although thoroughly probing several capital points
upon which the entire subject turns. Sometimes he ostensibly limits
himself to elucidating and defending Ricardo's views; but the discussion
is conducted with so much ease and force and fertility of resources,
disclosing at times a depth of insight far outstripping that of his
pretended master, that we cannot resist the conclusion that the
doctrines which he defends are in fact discoveries of his
own--discoveries which, finding himself anticipated in their
publication, he generously turns to the advantage of his fortunate
rival. Although De Quincey gravely assures us that in his opinion
Ricardo is a 'model of perspicuity,' we suspect that few will agree with
him, as his thought is always subtile and sometimes perplexed; but De
Quincey--while not at all inferior in acuteness and power of thought, in
perception of shy differences and resemblances between contrasted
objects, winning at this point even the praise of John Stuart Mill--in
elasticity, force, and elegance of style, infinitely surpasses the whole
race of political economists. We know of nothing throughout the vast
range of economic investigation more admirable, being at once clear and
conclusive, simple and profound, culminating in the utter razing and
dismantling of the Malthusian theory, than the discussion of value in
the 'Templars' Dialogues.' There is no faltering, no hesitation, no
discursiveness; the arrow flies swiftly and fatally to the mark. It is
not possible, or desirable, at the present time, to discuss minutely De
Quincey's achievements as exhibited in his 'Logic of Political Economy'
and 'Templars' Dialogues:' in these works he laid the foundation of a
colossal structure, which the distraction of nervous misery never
allowed him to complete. He had laboriously gathered the materials out
of every nation and tongue; he had painfully perfected the vast design;
but, when standing on the very verge of triumph, he was doomed to see
life-long hopes extinguished forever, success slipped from his nerveless
grasp in the moment of victory. Surely he might join in the passionate
lament:
'I feel it, I have heaped upon my brain
The gathered treasures of man's thought in vain.'
The subjects which De Quincey has critically investigated are very
numerous, and it cannot be expected that our limits will permit any
exhaustive enumeration of them. We propose to select a few of the more
prominent, which will serve as exponents of the whole.
De Quincey's views on war will doubtless be astounding to most persons
who have never given the subject any very particular attention. Deluded
by the false doctrines of peace societies, they doubtless regard war as
an evil, at once inhuman and unnecessary. Altogether hostile to this
idea is the position of De Quincey; he solemnly declares that war
neither can be abolished nor ought to be. 'Most heartily,' says he, 'and
with my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with Wordsworth in his grand
lyrical proclamation of a truth not less divine than it is mysterious,
not less triumphant than it is sorrowful, namely, that among God's
holiest instruments for the elevation of human nature is 'mutual
slaughter' among men; yes, that 'Carnage is God's daughter.'' 'Any
confederation or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the
inauguration of a downward path for man.' 'There is a mystery in
approaching this aspect of the case which no man has read fully. War has
a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has
as yet been deciphered. To execute judgments of retribution upon
outrages offered to human rights or to human dignity, to vindicate the
sanctities of the altar and the sanctities of the hearth--these are
functions of human greatness which war has many times assumed, and many
times faithfully discharged. But behind all these there towers dimly a
greater. The great phenomenon of war it is--this, and this only--which
keeps open in man a spiracle--an organ of respiration--for breathing a
transcendent atmosphere, and dealing with an idea that else would
perish--viz., the idea of mixed crusade and martyrdom, doing and
suffering, that finds its realization in such a battle as that of
Waterloo--viz., a battle fought for interests of the human race felt
even where they are not understood; so that the tutelary angel of man,
when he traverses such a dreadful field, when he reads the distorted
features, counts the ghastly ruins, sums the hidden anguish, and the
harvests
'Of horror breathing from the silent ground,'
nevertheless, speaking as God's messenger, blesses it, and calls it very
good.'
Startling as these assertions may appear at first sight, they are,
notwithstanding, profoundly philosophical; all history proclaims their
solemn truth--is, in fact, totally inexplicable and confused on any
other supposition. History is by no means merely biography condensed;
far from it; biography is concerned with the shifting and ephemeral
career of individual men; but history, far transcending that lowly
sphere, records the revolution and progress of principles; these succeed
each other in everlasting succession, like the revolution of day and
night; and individuals rise into importance only as they stand related
to, are the agents of, this progress. The future is forever supplanting
the present; the feud is immortal--the antagonism inevitable; if effete
ideas and principles, which have accomplished their mission, refuse to
retire and peaceably give place to their legitimate successors, conflict
arises of necessity--a conflict in which the usurper must finally
triumph, or the wheels of human progress will be effectually blocked.
War, then, is necessary to the advance of humanity. Although De Quincey
discerns the absolute extinction of war only at the 'infinite and starry
distance of the Millennium,' still, as its enginery is becoming more and
more destructive, its danger and expense increasing, as the progress of
civilization is gradually effacing the darker stains from human society,
and luring it from the path of violence by the charm of luxurious
repose, the necessity of war will gradually disappear--its total decline
approach. We would remark in passing that De Quincey is altogether too
captious in his criticisms upon French ideas of war. So far as the
majority of men are concerned, whether Englishmen or Frenchmen, little
pain is taken to search out the philosophy of events. But Cousin, in his
'Course of History,' has asserted, even more peremptorily than De
Quincey himself, the divine mission of war. He essentially declares that
carnage is always and of necessity God's daughter: to this extreme
doctrine Mr. de Quincey would doubtless demur, averring that 'by
possibility' such _might_ not be the case.
Still profounder insight is disclosed in the article on 'Christianity as
an Organ of Political Movement.' It was a chance perusal of this essay
that first turned our attention to De Quincey's writings, and we
involuntarily exclaimed, as did he when first falling upon Ricardo's
work, 'Thou art the man!' The object in view is to distinguish
accurately between the Christian and pagan idea of religion. There has
been great confusion on this point. What is involved in the term
religion as used by a Christian? According to De Quincey there are four
elements: 1st. A form of worship; 2d. An idea of God; 3d. The idea of a
relation subsisting between God and His creatures; 4th. A doctrinal
part. Now, of these cardinal elements, only one, that of worship, was
present in pagan religions, and even this was so completely distorted,
arose from impulses so utterly despicable, as to be positively immoral
in its tendencies. The gods were, to their worshippers, dreadful
realities--monsters of crime, at once powerful and vindictive--the very
footballs of unhallowed passion; hence worship was not the result of
love or reverence, or even of a regard to future interests, but it was
simply an expedient to shun danger immediately behind--a mock truce
between immortal foes, which either party might violate at pleasure.
'Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was
cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless
of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.' Even in
the most solemn mysteries no such thing as _instruction_ was known--'the
priest did not address the people at all.' Hence all moral theories, all
doctrinal teaching was utterly disjoined from ancient religions--that
was resigned to nature--and, consequently, powerless alike to instruct
men or command their respect, they had no inherent, self-sustaining
energy, but were built upon a mere impulse, and that impulse was the
most abject terror. Where, then, lurks the transcendent power of
Christianity as an organ of political movement? Simply in the fact that
it brings men into the most tender and affecting relations with God,
and, over and above this, that it rests upon a dogmatic or doctrinal
basis. These features were never suspected even as possible until
Christianity revealed them. Hence Christianity 'carried along with
itself its own authentication; since, while other religions introduced
men simply to ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment or
material for their intellect, Christianity provided an eternal
_palæstra_, or place of exercise, for the human understanding vitalized
by human affections: for every problem whatever, interesting to the
human intellect, provided only that it bears a moral aspect, immediately
passes into the field of religious speculation. Religion had thus become
the great organ of human culture.' Of this profound distinction De
Quincey was the original discoverer.
It is known, of course, to every literary person, that Bentley attempted
to _amend_ Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and that, on the whole, he made a
very signal failure. It has been a matter of great surprise on the part
of many, that one who is so confessedly superior in the criticism of
classical poetry, whose ear was so exquisitely sensitive and accurate
when awakened by ancient lyres, should prove himself such a driveller in
the presence of the grandest cathedral-music of modern times. Coleridge
took occasion to observe that it was only our ignorance that prevented
Bentley's emendations and innovations from appearing as monstrous and
unnatural in the poetry of the ancients as in that of John Milton. The
charge appears very plausible and damaging at first sight. We notice it
in order to exhibit De Quincey's marvellous sagacity in detecting the
true relation of things: he utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by
simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient
poetry was darkly austere and practical; the imagination was fettered by
a grim austerity; the merely passionate--that which proceeds from the
sphere of the sensibilities alone--finds no resting place in its vast
domain; but in the poetry of Milton the element of passion is
triumphant; hence Bentley, with his icy, critical, matter-of-fact
temperament, could never appreciate Milton's majestic flights. We cannot
refrain from quoting, at this point, De Quincey's acute and beautiful
parallel between Grecian and English tragedy:
'The kind of feeling which broods over the Grecian tragedy, and to
court which the tragic poets of Greece naturally spread all their
canvas, was more nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than of
life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and religious
horror investing the Greek theatre. But to my own feeling the
different principle of passion which governs the Greek conception
of tragedy, as compared with the English, is best conveyed by
saying that the Grecian is a breathing from the world of sculpture,
the English a breathing from the world of painting. What we read in
sculpture is not absolutely death, but still less is it the fulness
of life. We read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the
sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life that is
thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the feature of
sculpture which seems most characteristic: the form which presides
in the most commanding groups 'is not dead, but sleepeth:' true;
but it is the sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from
the bonds of time and space, and (as to both alike) thrown (I
repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite. It affects us
profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on the other hand, the
breathing life--life kindling, trembling, palpitating--that life
which speaks to us in painting--this is also the life that speaks
to us in English tragedy. Into an English tragedy even festivals of
joy may enter; marriages, and baptisms, or commemorations of
national trophies: which, or anything _like_ which, is incompatible
with the very being of the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity
of gloom; in the English what light alternating with depths of
darkness! The Greek, how mournful; the English, how tumultuous!
Even the catastrophes how different! In the Greek we see a
breathless waiting for a doom that cannot be evaded; a waiting, as
it were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inexorable
rising of a deluge: in the English it is like a midnight of
shipwreck, from which, up to the last and until the final ruin
comes, there still survives the sort of hope that clings to human
energies.'
It is not to be expected that we can fully traverse and explore this
vast section of De Quincey's writings; that would be a task beyond our
present resources; and, consequently, we are compelled to pass unnoticed
keen dissections of history; ingenious, although sometimes untenable,
theories regarding the Essenes, the supposed expressions for eternity in
the Scriptures, the character of Judas Iscariot, the doctrine of demons,
the principles of casuistry, style, and rhetoric; the discussions of
various points in philosophy and logic; the prodigality of erudition
displayed in the articles on Plato, Homer, Dinner Real and Reputed,
Bentley; the transcendent critical skill revealed in the little paper
entitled 'The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,' in the essays on
Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Lamb, and others; the minute dissections
of feeling and passion scattered broadcast throughout his writings. We
shall content ourselves with merely adducing another illustration of our
author's extremely speculative and metaphysical cast of mind, and then
close this section of the review. This is taken from that touchingly
beautiful chapter in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' entitled 'The
Afflictions of Childhood.' De Quincey, even in his childhood, was
profoundly sensitive, and capable of forming the most ardent
attachments. Tender and absorbing was the love which had sprung up
between himself and his sister Elizabeth; she was the joy of his
life--she was supreme in his affections. At the age of nine years she
suddenly sickened and died; De Quincey, although younger by three years,
was overwhelmed with unspeakable agony. When his sister had been dressed
for the grave, he stole silently and alone into her chamber to look once
more upon her beautiful face, to kiss once more her sweet lips: while
standing by the bedside he is suddenly struck down in a trance, and his
description of the scene is one of the noblest prose poems in the
English language. But even here, amid the absorbing disclosures of a
frantic sorrow, when the mighty swell of passion had reached its
culmination, and a solemn Memnonian wind, 'the saddest that ear ever
heard,' began to arise, and the seals of a heavenly vision were about to
be unloosed--even here he pauses, philosophically to 'explain why death,
other conditions being equal, is more profoundly affecting in summer
than in other parts of the year'!
We have said that De Quincey was an eminent master of the historic art.
His power in this direction is signally displayed in his account of 'The
Household Wreck,' 'The Spanish Nun,' 'The First Rebellion,' and the
'Flight of a Tartar Tribe.' 'The Household Wreck' is a powerful and
dramatic narrative, but the plot is somewhat confused; on the whole, it
is decidedly inferior to the 'Spanish Nun.' The nun is a _bona-fide_
historical personage, and her career is delineated with surprising
effect. She was the daughter of a Spanish hidalgo, who pitilessly
carried her in infancy to the Convent of St. Sebastian, where she
remained until the age of fifteen; the quietude of that cloistered life
her stormy spirit could no longer brook; she eloped, assumed male
attire, became the page of a nobleman, at whose house she saw that 'old
crocodile,' her father, who was now searching with mock solicitude for
his absconded daughter; exposure was imminent; no safety remained until
the ocean divided her from Spain, and her plans were formed at once; the
nun embarked for South America, doubled Cape Horn, was shipwrecked on
the coast of Peru; finally arrived at Paita; killed a man in a street
encounter; escaped death only by promising to marry a lady who had
fallen in love with her; once again there was no security but in flight;
she joined a cavalry regiment commanded by her own brother, to whom she
was unknown; him she unwittingly killed in a midnight duel; then follow
the terrific passage of the Andes, the fearful tragedies at Tucuman and
Cuzco, her return to Europe in compliance with royal and papal commands;
she approaches the port of Cadiz; myriads upon myriads line the shore
and cover the houses to catch a glimpse of the martial nun; cardinals
and kings and popes hasten to embrace her; the thunders of popular
welcome arise wherever she appears; but the nun finds no rest; terrific
memories rankle in her bosom, and blast her repose; again she embarks
for America; but then, how closed that career, so tragically
tempestuous? The nun reached Vera Cruz; she took her seat in the boat to
go ashore; no more is known; her fate is concealed in impenetrable
mystery; 'the sea was searched for her--the forests were ransacked. The
sea made no answer--the forests gave up no sign.' These incidents, which
are historical verities, are wrought up into a narrative of absorbing
power.
In De Quincey's brief sketch of the 'First Rebellion' are found some
graphic historical paintings. The following is his description of the
panic at Enniscorthy, at the moment when the rebels had carried the
place by assault:
'Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features
in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy,
all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as a
centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly
retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the
rebel pikes and bayonets, and fierce faces already gleaming through the
smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the
thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of
escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and
what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of
fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble
hatred of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic
wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs,
and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal
degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or
stealthy, according to the temper and means; volleying pursuit; the very
frenzy of agitation under every mode of excitement; and here and there,
towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme
over all lower passions.'
* * * * *
There is a species of narrative in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' of a
somewhat different cast from that which we have been contemplating, less
grand and passionate, perhaps, but more tender and exquisite--overspread
with a quieter and mellower humor. We refer to the account of his
brother William. He was a youth of the stormiest nature, a genuine
cloud-compeller, forever raising storms and whirlwinds merely for the
pleasure of directing them; 'haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably
active; fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe; but also full of
quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and in default of any other
opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon his own shadow for
presuming to run before him when going westward in the morning; whereas,
in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to keep
deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the author
of its existence.' He hated books, except those which he chanced to
write himself; he was especially great on the subject of necromancy; was
even the author of a profound work, entitled 'How to Raise a Ghost, and
when You have Got Him Down, how to Keep Him Down.' 'To which work, he
assured us, that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a
foot and a half long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix
treated of the Red Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of
_mittimus_ for ghosts that might be refractory, and probably a riot act
for any _émeute_ among ghosts;' for he often gravely affirmed that a
confederation, 'a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place among
the infinite generations of ghosts against the single generation of men
at any one time composing the garrison of death.' Deeming this subject
too recondite for his juvenile audience, he dropped it, and commenced a
course of lectures upon physics. 'This undertaking arose from some one
of us envying or admiring flies for their power of walking upon the
ceiling. 'Poh!' said he, 'they are impostors; they pretend to do it, but
they can't do it as it ought to be done. Ah! you should see _me_
standing upright on the ceiling, with my head downward, for half an hour
together, and meditating profoundly.' My sister Mary remarked that we
should all be very glad to see him in that position. 'If that's the
case,' he replied, 'it's very well that all is ready except as to a
strap or two.' Being an excellent skater, he had first imagined that, if
held up till he had started, he might then, by taking a bold sweep
ahead, keep himself in position through the continued impetus of
skating. But this he found not to answer; because, as he observed, 'the
friction was too retarding from the plaster of Paris; but the case would
be very different if the ceiling were covered with ice.' But as it was
_not_, he changed his plan. The true secret, he now discovered, was
this: he would consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would
make an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a
top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion
of the human top would overcome the force of gravitation. He should, of
course, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis--perhaps he
might even dream upon it; and he laughed at 'those scoundrels, the
flies,' that never improved in their pretended art, nor made anything of
it. The principle was now discovered; 'and, of course,' he said, 'if a
man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from doing so
for five months?' 'Certainly, nothing that I can think of,' was the
reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled upon the
five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The apparatus for
spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would not work--a
fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On reconsidering
the subject, he announced, to the disappointment of some among us, that,
although the physical discovery was now complete, he saw a moral
difficulty. It was not a _humming_ top that was required, but a _peg_
top. Now, in order to keep up the _vertigo_ at full stretch, without
which, to a certain extent, gravitation would prove too much for him, he
needed to be whipped incessantly. But that was what a gentleman ought
not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly on the legs by any grub
of a gardener, unless it were Father Adam himself, was a thing that he
could not bring his mind to face.' Attempted improvements in the art of
flying, which, he alleged, was then 'in a condition disgraceful to
civilized society;' the composition and exhibition of that bloody
tragedy, 'Sultan Amurath;' the conduct of a protracted war which arose
out of a fancied insult from a factory boy, whom, surveying with intense
disdain, 'he bade draw near that he might 'give his flesh to the fowls
of the air!'' the government of the imaginary kingdom of
'Tigrosylvania'--occupied the attention of this hundred-handed youth
until his death, at the age of sixteen--all of which is narrated with
unequalled pathos and humor. But there is still another section of the
narrative art, yet more sublime and unapproachable, where De Quincey
stands alone--the section in which are recorded his dreams. These are
without a rival or even a precedent in the English language; nay, purely
impassioned prose as 'The Confessions' and 'Suspiria de Profundis' is
scarcely to be found in any language; but the narration of dreams, while
exposed to all its difficulties, is invested with superadded
difficulties, arising from the shifting, visionary character of the
world in which its scenes are laid, 'where a single false note, a single
word in a wrong key, will ruin the whole music.' De Quincey's habit of
dreaming was constitutional, and displayed itself even in infancy. He
was naturally extremely sensitive, and of a melancholy temperament; he
was so passionately fond of undisturbed repose, that he willingly
submitted to any amount of contempt if he could only be let alone; he
had that weird faculty which is forever peopling the darkness with
myriads of phantoms; then came the afflictions of childhood--that night,
which ran after his footsteps far into life--and finally came opium,
which is a specific 'for exalting the dream scenery, for deepening its
shadows, and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful
realities:' all these allied characteristics and circumstances, combined
with his vast intellectual capacity, imparted to De Quincey's dreams a
terrific grandeur. They were sometimes frightful, sometimes sublime, but
always accompanied by anxiety and melancholy gloom. 'I seemed,' says he,
'every night to descend--not metaphorically, but literally to
descend--into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from
which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by
awaking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because
the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting,
at least, to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be
approached by words.' De Quincey's most elaborate dreams are: 'The
Daughter of Lebanon,' 'Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,' 'The Vision of
Sudden Death,' and 'Dream Fugue.' The last named is the most perfect in
its conception, the most powerful in its execution. It is too long to
quote, too sublime to be marred by abbreviation. If any one desires to
see what can be done with the English language in an 'effort to wrestle
with the utmost power of music,' let him read that dream. We shall,
meanwhile, present one from the year 1820, and leave the reader to
form his own estimate of it:
'The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in
dreams--a music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music
like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_,
gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing
off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a
mighty day--a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature,
then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread
extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by
some beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was
conducting--was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music,
with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion
as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I
had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the
power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again I had not
the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the
oppression of inexpiable guilt. 'Deeper than ever plummit sounded,'
I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some
greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet
the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden
alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable
fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad;
darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and, at last, with
the sense that all was lost, female forms and the features that
were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and
clasped hands, and heartbreaking partings, and then--everlasting
farewells! and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when
the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of
death--everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again
reverberated--everlasting farewells!'
O mighty magician!
In point of style and general method of treating subjects, De Quincey's
greatest faults are pedantry and discursiveness. Of the former we have
no defence to make; we think that, in writing avowedly for the public,
and not for any particular class, the use of technical terms merely
because they are technical, and of learned terms merely because they are
learned, is a positive blemish. But still greater offence is given to
many readers by the _occasional_ practice of discursiveness; we employ
the epithet intentionally, for the habit is by no means so inveterate as
many seem to suppose. Yet even where it is most triumphant, there is,
nevertheless, a goal to be reached--a goal which will finally be
reached, despite interminable zigzags and 'harsh angles.' This
peculiarity was, doubtless, in a great degree occasioned by the use of
opium. Opium, even amid the very delirium of rapture it produces, nay,
in consequence of that delirium, is hostile to strictly logical thought;
the excitation approaches the character of an intuition; the glance,
however keen and farsighted, is not steady; it is restless, fitful,
veering forever with the movements of an unnatural stimulation; but when
the exaltation has subsided, and the dread reaction and nervous
depression succeeded, this result is intensified a hundred fold, and
gradually shapes itself into a confirmed habit. Even if the use of opium
was positively beneficial to the intellect, still its dreadful havoc
with the physical system would far more than outweigh its contributions
in that direction. But, so far is that from being the truth in the case,
that opium, at best, has only a revealing, a disclosing power; it
cannot, even in the lowest sense of the term, be called a creative
lower. Let a man dream dreams as gorgeous as De Quincey's, it does not
at all follow that he can write like De Quincey; as related to
literature, the grandeur of dreams depends absolutely upon the dreamer's
mastery of the narrative art, which the dreaming faculty itself does not
either presuppose or bestow. But, over and above all this, universal
experience has declared that the use of opium is fatally hostile to any
very protracted mental power. It ravages the mind no less fearfully than
it does the body--precipitates both in one common ruin; by it ordinary
men are speedily degraded to hopeless impotence, and the most mighty
shorn of half their power--a swift-pursuing shadow closes suddenly and
forever over the transient gleam of unnatural splendor. These
considerations account in part for De Quincey's discursiveness, but
perhaps not wholly. Discursiveness is not without its beauties. We
believe in logic, but still it is pleasant, at times, to see a writer
sport with his subject, to see him gallop at will, unconfined by the
ring circle of strict severity. Nor is this all. Possibly the apparent
discursiveness may be only the preliminary journeying by which we are to
secure some new and startling view of the subject. Perhaps you may
consider these initial movements needlessly protracted and fatiguing;
but trust your guide; whatever your private opinion, at the time, may
be, he will never miss the road, and when at last you are in the proper
position for observation, the thrill of unwonted pleasure will swallow
up all memory of former efforts and former misgivings. Occasionally such
is not the case; for instance, in the papers on Sir William Hamilton.
They are three in number. Nearly half of the first is taken up in
describing the difficulties under which the writer suffers of
communicating with his publishers; the nervous maladies that torment his
happiness; the limits of time and space so narrowly circumscribed. The
same strain is taken up in the second paper. We have short dissertations
on the deadly 'hiatus in the harness which should connect the
pre-revolutionary with the post-revolutionary commonwealths of England;'
on the adjective _old_, and the aged noun _civilation_; then comes a
general belaboring of athletes and gymnasts, at which point Sir William
fairly emerges into view; suddenly our author seems to recollect that
his space is fast diminishing, and concludes to 'take a rise out of
something or other' at once; sets down Sir William as a genuine
logician, and immediately commences the consideration of several ancient
word puzzles, one of which is stated in a very business-like manner:
'Vermin in account with the divine and long-legged Pelides.' Logic is
pretty uniformly the subject of the third paper, and no inferior
acquaintance with the topic is displayed; but we see very little of Sir
William Hamilton in this miscellaneous collection. But unpardonable
wandering is of extremely rare occurrence; and, on the whole, the evils
of discursiveness are altogether outweighed by the positive advantages
and beauties to which we have referred. To this characteristic trait
must be added another--the dramatic and cumulative manner in which the
subjects discussed are treated. That gives to De Quincey's style
increased power and increased beauty; artistic symmetry is superinduced
upon solid excellence. This peculiarity is especially noticeable in
narratives where the element of horror is central, as in 'The Avenger.'
The gentle whisper rises, gradually and by insensible degrees, to the
awful voice of the thunderbolt. The prelude is calm enough, sweet
enough, but soon the music ascends to a fiercer key; the plot darkens;
the crisis gathers; louder and more tumultuous waxes the fiendish
tumult, until all lesser passions are swallowed up, and the empire of a
blank, rayless revenge is triumphant; we are spellbound amid the
successive stages of the demoniac tragedy; we start up convulsively, as
from the horrors of nightmare, at its ghastly catastrophe. But, over and
above all this, in that melody, in that music of style, which exalts
prose to the dignity of poetry, De Quincey is absolutely without a
rival. Read the 'Confessions,' or the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' or the
touching tribute to the Maid of Orleans, and all doubt upon that point
will disappear. Besides, over the surface of his writings there ripples
a quaint, genial humor, which is, for the most part, kept within the
limits of propriety by an exquisite taste. In marked contrast to many of
our most illustrious writers, De Quincey always exhibits a profound
respect for Christianity. Listen to his indignant rebuke of Kant, who,
in his work on 'Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason,' had
expressed opinions so utterly atheistical as to draw forth severe
menaces from the reigning King of Prussia, Frederic William the Second:
'Surely, gray hairs and irreligion make a monstrous union; and the
spirit of proselytism carried into the service of infidelity--a youthful
zeal put forth by a tottering, decrepid old man, to withdraw from
desponding and suffering human nature its most essential props, whether
for action or suffering, for conscience or for hope, is a spectacle too
disgusting to leave room for much sympathy with merit of another kind.'
Finally, we love De Quincey for his abhorrence of all knavish or
quackish men, and his deep respect for human nature. We suspect that but
few dignitaries of the past ever received so sound a 'knouting' as did
that 'accursed Jew' Josephus, at his hands; nor do Grotius and Dr. Parr
fare much better. He believes Josephus to be a villain, Grotius and Dr.
Parr literary impostors, and he strips off their masks in a very summary
manner. But with the trials, the struggles, the miseries of humanity, no
man more profoundly sympathizes than Thomas de Quincey. 'Oftentimes,'
says he, speaking of the daily police reports, 'oftentimes I stand
aghast at the revelations there made of human life and the human heart;
at its colossal guilt, and its colossal misery; at the suffering which
oftentimes throws a shadow over palaces, and the grandeur of mute
endurance which sometimes glorifies a cottage.' How touching is his
memorial of those forlorn twin sisters, who 'snatched convulsively at a
loving smile, or loving gesture, from a child, as at some message of
remembrance from God;' how tender his tribute to 'poor Pink;' how
affecting his devotion to unhappy Ann, whom, in the strength of his
gratitude, he could 'pursue into the darkness of a London brothel, or
into the deeper darkness of the grave'!
But we must close. We have found De Quincey a subtile philosopher, a
mighty master of the historic art, a prose poet of unrivalled splendor.
To powers so versatile and extraordinary, combined with learning so
profound, and a style of such matchless brilliance, we believe that no
other writer of the present age can lay any great claims. Still we take
our leave of that eccentric, storm-tossed man of genius with feelings of
profound regret. Great as his contributions to literature are, he
_might_ have done vastly more. But nervous maladies blasted his hopes,
overthrew his colossal designs, and he evermore drifts down the ages a
wreck--splendid, brilliant, the admiration of all beholders--but none
the less a wreck.
'FEED MY LAMBS.'