These articles recovered from the MSS. of De Quincey will, the Editor
believes, be found of substantive value. In some cases they throw
fresh light on his opinions and ways of thinking; in other cases they
deal with topics which are not touched at all in his collected works:
and certainly, when read alongside the writings with which the public
is already familiar, will give altogether a new idea of his range
both of interests and activities. The 'Brevia,' especially, will
probably be regarded as throwing more light on his character and
individuality--exhibiting more of the inner life, in fact--than any
number of letters or reminiscences from the pens of others would be
found to do. It is as though the ordinary reader were asked to sit
down at ease with the author, when he is in his most social and
communicative mood, when he has donned his dressing-gown and
slippers, and is inclined to unbosom himself, and that freely, on
matters which usually, and in general society, he would have been
inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have
him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest
that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical
or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the
books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent
anecdote, or _bon-mot_, or reflecting on the latest accident or
murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in style in magazine or
newspaper.
It must not be supposed that the author himself was inclined to lay such
weight on these stray notes, as might be presumed from the form in which
they are here presented. That might give the impression of a most
methodic worker and thinker, who had before him a carefully-indexed
commonplace book, into which he posted at the proper place his rough
notes and suggestions. That was not De Quincey's way. If he was not one
of the wealthy men who care not how they give, he was one who made the
most careless record even of what was likely to be valuable--at all
events to himself. His habit was to make notes just as they occurred to
him, and on the sheet that he chanced to have at the moment before him.
It might be the 'copy' for an article indeed, and in a little square
patch at the corner--separated from the main text by an insulating line
of ink drawn round the foreign matter--through this, not seldom, when
finished he would lightly draw his pen; meaning probably to return to it
when his MS. came back to him from the printer, which accounts, it may
be, in some measure for his reluctance to get rid of, or to destroy,
'copy' already printed from. Sometimes we have found on a sheet a dozen
or so of lines of a well-known article; and the rest filled up with
notes, some written one way of the paper, some another, and now and then
entangled in the most surprising fashion. In these cases, where the
notes, of course, were meant for his own eye, he wrote in a small
spidery handwriting with many contractions--a kind of shorthand of his
own, and very different indeed from his ordinary clean, clear, neat
penmanship. In many cases these notes demanded no little care and
closeness in deciphering--the more that the MSS. had been tumbled about,
and were often deeply stained by glasses other than inkstands having
been placed upon them. 'Within that circle none dared walk but he,' said
Tom Hood in his genially humorous way; and many of these thoughts were
thus partially or wholly encircled. Pages of articles that had already
been printed were intermixed with others that had not; and the first
piece of work that I entered on was roughly to separate the printed from
the unprinted--first having carefully copied out from the former any of
the spidery-looking notes interjected there, to which I have already
referred. The next process was to arrange the many separate pages and
seeming fragments into heaps, by subjects; and finally to examine these
carefully and, with a view to 'connections,' to place them together. In
not a few cases where the theme was attractive and the prospect
promising, utter failure to complete the article or sketch was the
result, the opening or ending passages, or a page in the middle, having
been unfortunately destroyed or lost.
So numerous were these notes, so varied their subjects, that one got
quite a new idea of the extreme electrical quality of his mind, as he
himself called it; and I shall have greatly failed in my endeavour in
the case of these volumes, if I have not succeeded in imparting
something of the same impression to the reader. Here we have proof that
vast schemes, such as the great history of England, of which Mr. James
Hogg, senr., humorously told us in his 'Recollections' ('Memoir,' ch.
ed., pp. 330, 331), were not merely subjects of conversation and jest,
but that he had actually proceeded to build up masses of notes and
figures with a view to these; and various slips and pages remain to show
that he had actually commenced to write the history of England. The
short article, included in the present volume, on the 'Power of the
House of Commons as Custodian of the Purse,' is marked for 'My History
of England.' Other portions are marked as intended for 'My book on the
Infinite,' and others still 'For my book on the Relations of
Christianity to Man.' One can infer, indeed, that several of the
articles well-known to us, notably 'Christianity as an Organ of
Political Movement,' for one, were originally conceived as portions of a
great work on 'Christianity in Relation to Human Development.'
It is thus necessary to be very explicit in stating that, though these
notes are as faithfully reproduced as has been possible to me, the
classification and arrangement of them, under which they assume the
aspect of something of one connected essay on the main subject, I alone
am responsible for; though I do not believe, so definite and clear were
his ideas on certain subjects and in certain relations, that he himself
would have regarded them as losing anything by such arrangement, but
rather gaining very much, if they were to be given at all to the public.
Several of the articles in this volume suggest that he also contemplated
a great work on 'Paganism and Christianity,' in which he would have
demonstrated that Paganism had exhausted all the germs of progress that
lay within it; and that all beyond the points reached by Paganism is due
to Christianity, and alone to Christianity, which, in opening up a clear
view of the infinite through purely experimental mediums in man's heart,
touched to new life, science, philosophy, art, invention and every kind
of culture.
Respecting the recovered 'Suspiria,' all that it is needful to say will
be found in an introduction special to that head, and it does not seem
to me that I need to add here anything more. In every other respect the
articles must speak for themselves.