memorable argument against miracles. There are few better arenas for
intellectual combats, and De Quincey has in it an unusual opportunity
for display. He is obviously on his mettle. He comes forward with a
whole battery of propositions, carefully marshalled in strategical
order, and supported by appropriate 'lemmas.' One of his arguments,
whether cogent or not, is that Hume's objection will not apply to the
evidence of a multitude of witnesses. Now, a conspicuous miracle, he
says, can be produced resting on such evidence, to wit, that of the
thousands fed by a few loaves and fishes. The simplest infidel will, of
course, reply that as these thousands of witnesses cannot be produced,
the evidence open to us reduces itself to that of the Evangelists. De
Quincey recollects this, and replies to it in a note. 'Yes,' he says,
'the Evangelists certainly; and, let us add, all those contemporaries to
whom the Evangelists silently appealed. These make up the "multitude"
contemplated in the case' under consideration. That is, to make up the
multitude, you have to reckon as witnesses all those persons who did not
contradict the 'silent appeal,' or whose contradiction has not reached
us. With such canons of criticism it is hard to say what might not be
proved. When a man with a great reputation for learning and logical
ability tries to put us off with these wretched quibbles, one is fairly
bewildered. He shows an ignorance of the real strength and weakness of
the position, which, but for his reputation, one would summarily explain
by incapacity for reasoning. As it is, we must suppose that, living
apart from the daily battle of life, he had lost that quick instinct
possessed by all genuine logicians for recognising the vital points of
an argument. A day in a court of justice would have taught him more
about evidence than a month spent over Aristotle. He had become fitter
for the parade of the fencing-room than for the real thrust and parry of
a duel in earnest. The mere rhetorical flourish pleases him as much as a
blow at his antagonist's heart. Another glaring instance in the same
paper is his apparent failure to perceive that there is a difference
between proving that such a prophecy as that announcing the fall of
Babylon was fulfilled, and proving that it was supernaturally inspired.
Hume, without a tenth part of the logical apparatus, would have exposed
the fallacy in a sentence. Paley, whom he never tires of treating to
contemptuous abuse, was incapable of such feeble sophistry. De Quincey,
in short, was a very able expositor; but he was not, though under better
discipline he might probably have become, a sound original thinker. He
is an interpreter, not an originator of thought. His skill in setting
forth an argument blinds him to its most palpable defects. If language
is a powerful weapon in his hands, it is only when the direction of the
blow is dictated by some more manly, if less ingenious, understanding.
Let us inquire, and it is a more delicate question, whether he is better
qualified to use it as a plaything. He has a reputation as a humorist.
The Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is probably the
most popular of his writings. The conception is undoubtedly meritorious,
and De Quincey returns to it more than once in his other works. The
description of the Williams murders is inimitable, and the execution
even in the humorous passages is frequently good. We may praise
particular sentences: such as the well-known remark that 'if a man once
indulges himself in murder, he comes to think little of robbing; and
from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking; and from
that to incivility and procrastination.' One laughs at this whimsical
inversion; but I don't think one laughs very heartily; and certainly one
does not find, as in really deep humour, that the paradox is pregnant
with further meaning, and the laugh a prelude to a more melancholy
smile. Many of the best things ever said are couched in a similar form:
the old remark that the use of language is the concealment of thought;
the saying that the half is greater than the whole, and that two and two
don't always make four, are familiar instances; but each of them really
contains a profound truth expressed in a paradoxical form, which is a
sufficient justification of their extraordinary popularity. But if every
inversion of a commonplace were humorous, we should be able to make
jokes by machinery. There is no humour that I can see in the statement
that honesty is the worst policy, or that procrastination saves time;
and De Quincey's phrase, though I admit that it is amusing as a kind of
summary of his essay, seems to me to rank little higher than an
ingenious pun. It is a clever trick of language, but does not lead any
further.
Here, too, and elsewhere, the humour gives us a certain impression of
thinness. It is pressed too far, and spun out too long. Compare De
Quincey's mode of beating out his one joke through pages of laboured
facetiousness, with Swift's concentrated and pungent irony, as in the
proposal for eating babies, or the argument to prove that the abolition
of Christianity may be attended with some inconveniences. It is the
difference between the stiffest of nautical grogs and the negus provided
by thoughtful parents for a child's evening party. In some parts of the
essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English
author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in
the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at
Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but
one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so
exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself unpleasantly
obvious at many points of his writings. He seems to fear that we shall
find his stately and elaborate style rather too much for our nerves. He
is conscious that, as a great master of language, he can play what
tricks he pleases, without danger of remonstrance. And therefore, he
every now and then plunges into slang, not irreverently, as a vulgar
writer might do, but of malice prepense. The shock is almost as great as
if an organist performing a solemn tune should suddenly introduce an
imitation of the mewing of a cat. Now, he seems to say, you can't accuse
me of being dull and pompous. Let me quote an instance or two from his
graver writings. He wishes to argue, in defence of Christianity, that
the ancients were insensible to ordinary duties of humanity. 'Our wicked
friend Kikero, for instance, who _was_ so bad, but _wrote_ so well, who
_did_ such naughty things, but _said_ such pretty things, has himself
noticed in one of his letters, with petrifying coolness, that he knew of
destitute old women in Rome who went without tasting food for one, two,
or even three days. After making such a statement, did Kikero not tumble
downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a
public meeting,' &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of
Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about 'three of
his legs!' Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs
in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly
funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as
follows:--'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy
tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any
situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one
knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph,
happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a
malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike
badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my
mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and
those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English
language at his command, must probably have been encountering an
inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton
sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of
Roman Meals, as an illustration of the way in which a story ought not to
be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme
length, protects it from quotation.
It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy
of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should
condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the
greatest masters of the humorous:--'The gyration within which his
(Lamb's) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always
the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat
itself, it does not propagate itself.' And he goes on to connect the
failing with Lamb's utter insensibility to music, and indifference to
'the rhythmical in prose composition.' The criticism is a fine one in
its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey's shortcomings in
Lamb's peculiar sphere. De Quincey's jokes are apt to repeat and
prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the
delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic,
half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey's more elaborate style.
Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be
predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in
the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle's
writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by
subsequent analysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this
lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quincey's
writing. When he tries overt acts of wit, he becomes simply vulgar; when
he directly aims at the humorous, we feel his hand to be rather heavy;
but he is occasionally very happy in that ironical method, of which the
Essay on Murder is the most notorious specimen. The best example, in my
opinion, is the description of his elder brother in the Autobiographical
Sketches. The account of the rival kingdoms of Gombroon and
Tigrasylvania; of poor De Quincey's troubles in getting rid of his
subjects' tails; of his despair at the suggestion that by making them
sit down for six hours a day they might rub them off in the course of
several centuries; of his ingenious plan of placing his unlucky island
at a distance of 75 degrees of latitude from his brother's capital; and
of his dismay at hearing of the 'vast horns and promontories' which run
down from all parts of the hostile dominions towards his unoffending
little territory, are touched with admirable skill. The grave, elaborate
detail of the perplexities of his childish imagination is pleasant, and
at the same time pathetic. When, in short, by simply applying his usual
stateliness of manner to a subject a little beneath it in dignity, he
can produce the desired effect, he is eminently successful. The same
rhetoric which would be appropriate (to use his favourite illustration)
in treating the theme of 'Belshazzar the King giving a great feast to a
thousand of his lords,' has a certain piquancy, when for Belshazzar we
substitute a schoolboy playing at monarchy. He is indulging in a
whimsical masquerade, and the pomp is assumed in sport instead of in
earnest. Nobody can do a little mock majesty so well as he who on
occasion can be seriously majestic. Yet when he altogether abandons his
strong ground, and chooses to tumble and make grimaces before us, like
an ordinary clown, he becomes simply offensive. The great tragedian is
capable on due occasion of pleasant burlesque; but sheer unadulterated
comedy is beyond his powers. De Quincey, in short, can parody his own
serious writing better than anybody, and the capacity is a proof that he
had the faculty of humour; but for a genuine substantive joke--a joke
which, resting on its own merits, instead of being the shadow of his
serious writing, is to be independently humorous--he seems, to me at
least, to be generally insufferable.
De Quincey's final claim to a unique position rests on the fact that his
'impassioned prose' was applied to confessions. He compares himself, as
I have said, to Rousseau and Augustine. The analogy with the last of
these two writers would, I should imagine, be rather difficult to carry
beyond the first part of resemblance; but it is possible to make out a
somewhat closer affinity to Rousseau. In both cases, at least, we have
to deal with men of morbid temperament, ruined or seriously injured by
their utter incapacity for self-restraint. So far, however, as their
confessions derive an interest from the revelation of character,
Rousseau is more exciting almost in the same proportion as he confesses
greater weaknesses. The record of such errors by their chief actor, and
that actor a man of such singular ability, presents us with a strangely
attractive problem. De Quincey has less to confess, and is less anxious
to lay bare his own morbid propensities. His story excites compassion;
and, as in the famous episode of 'Anne,' attracts us by the genuine
tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He was free from the errors which
make some of Rousseau's confessions loathsome, but he was also not the
man to set fire, like Rousseau, to the hearts of a whole generation. His
narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to
shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is
that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very
assignable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally
without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and
went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of
extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's
comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating.
Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in
their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his
autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts passed through his mind of
composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more
wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he
never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of
such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen
of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the
story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of
Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in
a much greater influence upon the thought of the age, but almost
equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of
opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it
might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation
is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pass by. When thousands
of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing
very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead
of by gin.
From De Quincey's writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with
an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral
strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness
retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too
rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of
philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course
no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand
alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He
was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if
Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his
imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He
shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the
answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries
of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between
the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes,
and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on
which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own
opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant's writings,
and had studied Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about
concepts and categories and schematisms without losing his head amongst
those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to
destroy all proofs of the existence of God, and then, by introducing the
practical reason, to set the existence of God beyond a doubt. He fancied
that he was able to translate the technicalities of Kant into plain
English; and he believed that when so translated, they would prove to
have a real and all important meaning. If German metaphysics be a
science, and not a mere edifice of moonshine; and if De Quincey had
really penetrated the secrets of that science, we have missed a chance
of enlightenment. As it is, we have little left except a collection of
contemptuous prejudices. De Quincey thought himself entitled to treat
Locke as a shallow pretender. The whole eighteenth century was, with one
or two exceptions, a barren wilderness to him. He aspersed its
reasoners, from Locke to Paley; he scorned its poets with all the
bitterness of the school which first broke loose from the rule of Pope;
and its prose-writers, with the exception of Burke, were miserable
beings in his eyes. He would have seen with little regret a holocaust of
all the literature produced in England between the death of Milton and
the rise of Wordsworth. Naturally, he hated an infidel with that kind of
petulant bitterness which possesses an old lady in a country village,
who has just heard that some wicked people dispute the story of Balaam's
ass. And, as a corollary, he combined the whole French people in one
sweeping censure, and utterly despised their morals, manners,
literature, and political principles. He was a John Bull, as far as a
man can be who is of weakly, nervous temperament, and believes in Kant.
One or two illustrations may be given of the force of these effeminate
prejudices; and it is to be remarked with regret that they are
specially injurious in a department where he otherwise had eminent
merits, that, namely, of literary criticism. Any man who lived in the
eighteenth century was _primâ facie_ a fool; if a free thinker, his case
was all but hopeless; but if a French free thinker, it was desperate
indeed. He lets us into the secret of his prejudices, which, indeed, is
tolerably transparent in his statement that he found it hard to
reverence Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a
'liberal man,' he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could
he 'think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever
disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher,
unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be
sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes,
Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious
exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies.
'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant
preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for
half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution,
because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of
Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England.' To do
him justice, De Quincey admits, in another passage, that this ridicule
of a poor man for sacrificing his interests to his principles was not
quite fair; but then Whiston was only an Arian. When Priestley, who was
a far worse heretic, had his house sacked by a mob and his life
endangered, De Quincey can scarcely restrain his exultation. He admits
in terms that Priestley ought to be pitied, but adds that the fanaticism
of the mob was 'much more reasonable' than the fanaticism of Priestley;
and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to
be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare
to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at
command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; 'it may chance that on
this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he
is many years deader.' What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics
fare little better. Fox's eloquence was 'ditch-water,' with a shrill
effervescence of 'imaginary gas.' Burnet was a 'gossiper, slanderer, and
notorious falsifier of facts.' That one of his sermons was burnt is 'the
most consolatory fact in his whole worldly career;' and he asks, 'would
there have been much harm in tying his lordship to the sermon?' Junius
was not only a knave who ought to have been transported, but his
literary success rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither
'sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation.' Johnson, though the best
of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton
with foolish harshness. Therefore 'Johnson, viewed in relation to
Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man.'
Let us turn to greater names. Goethe's best work was 'Werther,' and De
Quincey is convinced that his reputation 'must decline for the next
generation or two, until it reaches its just level.' His merits have
been exaggerated for three reasons--first, his great age; secondly, 'the
splendour of his official rank at the court of Weimar;' thirdly, 'his
enigmatical and unintelligible writing.' But 'in Germany his works are
little read, and in this country not at all.' 'Wilhelm Meister' is
morally detestable, and, artistically speaking, rubbish. Of the author
of the Philosophical Dictionary, of the 'Essai sur les Moeurs,' of
'Candide,' and certain other trifles, his judgment is that Horace
Walpole's reputation is the same in kind, as the _genuine_ reputation of
Voltaire: 'Both are very splendid memoir writers, and of the two, Lord
Orford is the more brilliant.' In the same tone he compares Gibbon to
Southey, giving the advantage to the latter on the score of his poetical
ability; and his view of another great infidel may be inferred from the
following phrase. One of Rousseau's opinions is only known to us through
Cowper, 'for in the unventilated pages of its originator it would have
lurked undisturbed down to this hour of June, 1819.'