Beauties selected from the writings of Thomas De Quincey

Front matter

BEAUTIES SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1866. Entered, according to Act os Congress, in the year 1862, by TlCKNOR AND FIELDS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CONTENTS DE QUINCEY'S EARLY LIFE. Fags L The De Quinceys 13 II. Childhood 15 III. Introduction to the World of Strife ... 30 IV. I am Introduced to the Warfare of a Public School 41 V. I Enter the World 47 VL The Nation of London 63 VII. Dublin .... .63 Vill. Premature Manhood ....... 67 IX. The Runaway 90 X. The Priory Ill XI. Oxford i-'O XII. Opium 131 XIII. First Plunge into Authordom .... 142 XIV. My Home 144 DREAMS. Introductory Notice ........ 147 Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow .... 157 The Daughter of Lebanon . . .... 167 The Vision of Sudden Death 175 Dream Fugue 198 NARRATIVES.

The Spanish Nun 211 The Easedale Romance CONTENTS. ESSAYS. Page 9Q7 Joan of Arc The Palimpsest . 33° Conversation ™" CRITIQUES AND REMINISCENCES. Shakspeare 357 Milton 359 Wordsworth 362 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 871 The Ancient Mariner 374 Southey ■. 376 Chari.es Lamb . . 379 Sir Humphry Davy 387 Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Hannah More .... 389 Sir William Hamilton 392 DETACHED GEMS

Preface

. The writings of Thomas de Quincey occupy more than a score of volumes. Comparatively few persons have leisure for the pe reusal of so many miscellaneous works by the same au thor ; yet, all who pretend to a knowledge of English Literature should be familiar with the chefs-d'œuvre of De Quincey — one of the greatest masters of the English Language. His autobiography, scattered through many volumes, is here collected and so arranged as to give a com plete vie' f his early life and his peculiar charac ter. Tkto otlwr selections from his various works, furnish striking Tramples of the pathetic and the humorous, the quaint and the ludicrous, the serious and the sublime. The miscellaneous nature of De Quincey's writings renders them specially fit for this kind of eclecticism. It is hoped that the present volume will prove an acceptable addition to our cur rent literature, and induce a desire for a still farther acquaintance with the elegant author.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE OF DE QUINCEY'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. Great men seldom appear in the literary hemisphere isola ted, " Like a star When only one is shining in the sky," but in brilliant clusters, as in the Augustine age, and in the reign of Elizabeth of England. Such a constellation loomed above the horizon of England near the close of the last century, and shed its effulgence over more than half of the present cen tury. Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Lan dor, Rogers, Macaulay, De Quincey, (and may we not add our own Irving?) with others of less magnitude, formed this Orion like constellation, with its attendant Hyades and Pleiads. All — all have set, — excepting the octogenarian, Walter Savage Landor. Thomas de Quincey was one of the last survivors of this glorious band.

He died at Edinburgh, December 8, 1859.* *De Quincey lest five children. Two sons; one, a Captain in the army, in India; the other, a physician in Brazil. Of his three daughters, the eldest, Mrs. Robert Craig, and the youngest, (unmarried), were with their father at the time of his decease. The other daughter was with her husband, Colonel Baird Smith, in India. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. His last illness was of short duration. For a long time, how ever, the earthly tenement had seemed too slight to hold the restless, powerful mind within its narrow bounds. That mind retained its vivid perceptions and its characteristic capaciousness and acuteness till his last fatal illness. Strange that a life held by so frail a tenure should have been continued beyond the threescore and ten years allotted to man !

For some years past De Quincey had secluded himself from general society, finding solace aud occupation among the mute companions of his library. Occasionally, he went from Lass wade, his home, to Edinburgh, and there he had remained for some months previous to his decease. De Quincey was, by temperament, exceedingly susceptible to all external impressions ; indued with a delicate sensibility that thrilled in sympathy with human joy and human woe, as the Æolian harp responds to the lightest breeze, passing over its vibratile chords. Though saddened by the keen sufferings and sorrows of early life, he cast no gloom over the social circle. Even in later years, he was the promoter of innocent mirth, and charmed with his delightful conversation an admiring circle of friends, young and old. In his conversation, De Quincey avoided that usurpation which ho so frequently and so severely denounces.

" Conversation," says some one, "should be like an Orches tra, where every player has his own part to perform." The conversational "Orchestra" in which De Quincey was a per former must have demanded of him a frequent solo. In addition to his remarkable responsiveness, his boundless field of illustration, his felicitous language, his exquisite taste, his aerial fancy, and his odd humor, gave to his conversation its irresis tible charm. His manners were polished and refined ; yet conciliatory and cordial. Towards women, especially, he was chivalrous in his INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. IX politeness — one of that class now, unfortunately, in its deca dence, — namely, the " Gentlemen of the old-school." His affections were deep, tender, and enduring ; consequently, he had troops of friends. Thomas De Quincey was, undeniably, one of the greatest masters of the English Language, who have committed thought to writing.

In addition to his happy choice of words, fitting the thought to a hair's breadth, there is a striking peculiarity in his style, which can be best explained by himself. He says, — "A sentence, even when insulated and viewed apart for itself, is a subject, for complex art : even so far it is capable of multiform beauty, and liable to a whole nosology of malconfor mations. But it is in the relation of sentences, in what Horace terms their "junctitraf that the true life of composition resides. The mode of their nexus, — the way in which one sentence is made to arise out of another, and to prepare the opening for a third, — this is the great loom in which the textile process of the moving intellect reveals itself and prospers. Here the separate clauses of a period become architectural parts, aiding, relieving, supporting each other.

But how can any ap proach to that effect, or any suggestion of it, exist for him who hides and buries all openings for parts and graceful correspond ences in one monotonous continuity of period, stretching over three octavo pages? Kant was a great man, but he was obtuse and deaf as an antediluvian boulder with regard to language and its capacities. He has sentences which have been measured by a carpenter, and some of them run two feet eight by six inches. Now, a sentence with that enormous span is fit only for the use of a megatherium or a pre-Adamite. Parts so re mote as the beginning and the end of such a sentence can have © © no sensible relation to each other ; not much as regards their logic, but none at all as regards their more sensuous qualities, — rhythmus, for instance, or the continuity of metaphor.

And it is clear that, if the internal relations of a sentence fade under 1* X INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. the extravagant misproportion of its scale, a fortiori must the outer relations. If two figures, or other objects, are meant to modify each other visually by means of color,* of outline, or of expression, they must be brought into juxtaposition, or at least into neighborhood. A chasm between them so vast as to pre vent the synthesis of the two objects in one co-existing field of vison, interrupts the play of all genial comparison. Periods, and clauses of periods, modify each other, and build up a whole then, only, when the parts are shown as parts, cohering and con spiring to a common result. But if each part is separately so vast as to eclipse the disc of the adjacent parts, then substan tially they are separate wholes, and do not coalesce to any joint or complex impression.

It is certain that style, or (to speak by the most general ex pression) the management of language, ranks amongst the fine arts, and is able therefore to yield a separate intellectual pleasure quite apart from the interest of the subject treated. So far, it is already one error to rate the value of style as if it were ne cessarily a dependent or subordinate thing. On the contrary, style has an absolute value, like the product of any other ex quisite art, quite distinct from the value of the subject about which it is employed, and irrelatively to the subject ; precisely as the fine workmanship of Scopas the Greek, or of Cellini the Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, whether em bodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory or golden vase. Style has two separate functions — first, to brighten the in telligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding ; secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities.

Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment but oftener from original perplexities inverting its very nature. Upon the style it is that these perplexities greatly depend for their illumination." This wonderful " illumination " is cast by De Quincey's own INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. XI style over every topic it touches, like the brilliant illumination of a great city, for some national jubilee. And how various and how dissimilar were these topics, — War, Religion, History, Political Economy, Philosophy, Biography, Romance, Dreams, Murders, Opium-eating ! Of his Dreams, one of his most acute and discriminating critics* says : — " We suppose it will be agreed that there is nothing in our language to be compared with De Quincey's Dreams ; nay, to speak of comparison is inadmissible, for they are absolutely alone.

To the ' Dream Fugue,' founded on the 'Vision of Sudden Death,' we point with calmest assurance, as illustrating our general remark, — The wondrous picture has the vividness and truth of reality." " Taken in connection with the incident which was its occasion ; considered as a poetic idealization of reality, and an effort of linguistic power ; tried by the severe rules of Art, as demanding the very highest manifestation of order and har mony possible by man, we think we could maintain against all comers that this is, for its size, the noblest production in English prose." "We think it were difficult," says Bayne, "to match in our whole late literature, the pathetic effect realized in his paper on the Maid of Orleans. And who does not see that, be sides all else of instruction and of consolation which arises from the pyres of the martyrs of Christianity, besides the deathless lessons of courage, of devotion, of purest holiness which they convey, there is also in the legacy of the fathers to the human race, that, by sympathizing sorrow over their woes each gene ration is elevated, and humanized and ennobled.

This great lesson De Quincey has embodied with an almost unexampled felicity in his paper on Joan of Arc." In every mind where pathos is found, there too will be found its antipode, — humor. This was eminently true of De Quincey. His quaint and original humor excites a quiet smile in the midst * Peter Bayne. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. of his gravest writings. Even his exquisite taste did not pre vent an occasional ebullition of this humor — manifestly out of place. With his brilliant imagination, subtile mysticism, extensive erudition, it surprises us to find that he possessed the analytic faculty, in an eminent degree. " My proper vocation," he says, " as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic under standing." De Quincey has given so much of his outer and his inner life in his multitudinous pages, that little is left to be added by future biographers.

He has portrayed himself with candor and openness, — without extenuation, and almost without apology. We recognize it, if not as a photograph, yet, as a true, unideal ized likeness of Thomas de Quincey. DE QUINCET'S EARLY LIFE: GATHERED FROM HIS VARIOUS WRITINGS. I 13 THE DE QUINCEYS. This family, which split into three national divisions, — English, French, and American, — was originally Norwegian ; and in the year of our Christian era One Thousand spoke the most undeniable Norse. Through out the eleventh century, the heads of this family held themselves in readiness to join any likely leader ; and did join William the Norman. This Norwegian family having assumed a territorial denomination from the district or village of Quincey, in the province now called Normandy, transplanted themselves to England ; where, and subsequently by marriage in Scotland, they ascended to the highest rank in both kingdoms, and held the highest offices open to a subject.

Early in the seventh century, when it seemed likely that the interests of a particular family would be entangled with the principles at issue, multitudes became anxious to evade the strife by retiring to the asylum of forests. Amongst these was one branch of the De Quinceys. Enamored of Democracy, this family, laying aside the aristocratic De attached to their name, settled in New-England where they subsequently rose, through long public services, to the highest moral rank — as measured by all possible expressions of public esteem that are consistent with the simplicities of the great BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. republic. Mr. Josiah Quincy, as head of this distinguished family, is appealed to as one who takes rank by age and large political experience, with the founders of the American Union. Another branch of the same family had, at a much earlier period, settled in France.

Finally, the squires and squireens natually remained in England. The last of them who enjoyed any relics, whatever, of that ancient territorial domain, was an elder kinsman of my father. I never had the honor of seeing him ; in fact, it was impossible that I .should have such an honor, since he died during the American war, which war had closed, although it had not paid its bills, some time before my birth. He enacted the part of squireen, I have been told, creditably enough in a village belong ing either to the county of Leicester, Nottingham, or Rutland. With his death, a new era commenced for this historical family, which now, (as if expressly to irritate its ambition) finds itself distributed amongst three mighty nations, — France, America, and England, and precisely those three that are usually regarded as the leaders of civilization.

CHILDHOOD. My father was a merchant ; not in the sense of Scot land, where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive-; that is,*he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other ; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other. He died at an early age, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened estate producing exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year. Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative, — whilst he was still living, — he had an income very much larger, from the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life as it exists in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent English family of that class — opulent though not emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate — the domestic economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corre sponding orders in foreign nations.

We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur — "Give me neither poverty nor riches " — was realized for us. That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were to see models of good BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity ; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet — that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special com memoration — that I lived in a rustic solitude ; that this solitude was in, England that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church. ********* The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed my second year ; namely, first, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason — that it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum ; and, secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early in the spring, of some cro cuses.

This I mention as inexplicable : for such annual resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some higher change, and therefore in connection with the idea of death ; yet of death I could, at that time, have had no experience whatever. CHILDHOOD. 17 This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters — eldest of three then living, and also elder than myself — were summoned to an early death. The first who died was Jane, about two years older than myself. She was three and a half, I one and a half, more or less, by some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. So passed away from earth one of those three sisters that made up my nursery playmates ; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality.

Yet, in fact I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away ; but perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance ! Gracious immu nity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength ! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again — crocuses and roses ; why not little Jane ? Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur, — thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonishment of science, — thou next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery ; and the night, which for me gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at this » BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 18 day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else I should have been.

Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken, — pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to my dawning fears the secret shadow of death, — by what mysterious gravitation was it that my heart had been drawn to thine ? "Love, the holy sense, Best gift of God, in thee was most intense. It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of that sickness which carried off my leader and com panion. She (according to my recollection at this moment,) was just as near to nine as I to six. And per haps this natural precedency in authority of years and judgment, united to the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascina tions of her presence. I grieved that my sister should lie in bed ; I grieved still more to hear her moan.

But all this appeared to me no more than as a night of trouble, on which the dawn, would 'soon arise. 0 moment of darkness and delirium, when the elder nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister must die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it " can not be remembered."* Itself, as a remem bcrable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was as I reeled under the revelation. I * " I stood in unimaginable trance And agony which can not be remembered." — Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse. CHILDHOOD. 19 wish not to recall the circumstances of that time, when my agony was at its height, and hers, in another sense, was approaching. Enough it is to say that all was soon over ; and the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me sor rowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation.

On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scru tiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me I had never heard of feelings that take the name of " sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, even in a child, hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house was large enough to have two staircases ; and by one of these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet, (for the ser vants dined at one o'clock), I could steal up into her chamber. I imagine that it was about an hour aftei high noon when I reached the chamber door ; it was locked, but the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls.

Then, turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved, and the back was now turned towards myself. Nothing met my eyes but one large window, wide open, through which the sun of midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, tho sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity ; and it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pa thetic of life and the glory of life. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure ; there the angel face ; and, as people usually fancy, it was said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead, indeed, — the serene and noble forehead, — that might be the same ; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, — could these be mistaken for life ?

Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never ending kisses ? But so it was not. I stood cheeked for a moment ; awe, not fear, fell upon me ; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow — the saddest that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon summer days, when the sun js about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell : it is in this world the one great audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life have I happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances — namely, when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day. Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Æolian into nation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a CHILDHOOD. trance fell upon me.

A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever ; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and ever. Frost gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me ; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them ; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept — for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession ; and when I woke, found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed. I have reason to believe that a very long interval had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind.

When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied «o) on the stairs. I was alarmed ; for, if any body had detected me, means would have been taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me ; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for ever ; tainted thus with fear was that farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that could not be healed. At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief, that grasped at what it could not obtain, tho faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess.

And I recall at the present moment one instance of that sort which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church : it was a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries,* organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of " all sick persons and young children," and that he would " show his pity upon all prisoners and captives," I wept in secret ; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld.

The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass ; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man. Tliere were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man. * " Galleries." — These, though condemned on some grounds by the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless this one advantage — that, when the height of a church is that dimension which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and inter pret that height. CHILDHOOD. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce, insulting faces.

There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass was wncolored, white, fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky : were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains ; and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious reason, could not suddenly release them from their pain ; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds ; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of the air ; slowly, also, his arms descended from the heavens, that he and his young children, whom in Pal estine, once and for ever, he had blessed, though they must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the sooner.