shame, the human heart, when circumstantially made acquainted with its silent records of suffering or temptation, yearns in love or in forgiveness to breathe a solemn Requiescat! How much more, then, over the grave of a benefactor to the human race! But it is a natural feeling, with respect to such a prayer, that, however fervent and sincere, it has no perfect faith in its own validity, so long as any unsettled feud from ancient calumny hangs over the buried person. The unredressed wrong seems to haunt the sepulchre in the shape of a perpetual disturbance to its rest. First of all, when this wrong has been adjudicated and expiated, is the Requiescat uttered with a perfect faith in itself. By a natural confusion we then transfer our own feelings to the occupant of the grave. The tranquillization to our own wounded sense of justice seems like an atonement to his: the peace for us transforms itself under a fiction of tenderness into a peace for him: the reconciliation between the world that did the wrong and the grave that seemed to suffer it is accomplished; the reconciler, in such a case, whoever he may be, seems a double benefactor-to him that endured the injury-to us that resented it; and in the particular case now before the public we shall all be ready to agree that this reconciling friend, who might have entitled his work Vindicia Oliverianæ, has, by the piety of his service to a man of exquisite genius, so long and so foully misrepresented, earned a right to interweave forever his own cipher and cognisance in filial union with those of OLIVER GOLD

SMITH.

POSTSCRIPT1

THE article on Goldsmith was one which on any spontaneous impulse I should not have written, as I could not write on that theme with sincere cordiality or with perfect charity; consequently not with perfect freedom of thought.

Do I then question the true and unaffected merit of Goldsmith in that natural field upon which his happy genius gave him a right to succeed? Not at all. Within a humble province the genius of Goldsmith seems to me exquisite. Especially his Vicar of Wakefield in its earlier part,—¿.e. in its delineation of the vicar's simple household when contemplated through the eyes of the vicar himself, unconscious of the effect from his own peculiar mode of delightful egotism, -has always struck me as inimitable; not so, I confess, in the coarser scenes of the latter half. But, for my own part, I had always borne a grudge to Goldsmith on behalf of Shakspere, whom so deeply and so deliberately he had presumed to insult,—once in a travelling scene in the Vicar, but once also in a mode less casual and direct. None of us would make it a reproach to a slight and graceful champion that he had not the powers for facing a Jupiter; but, if he himself insisted on affronting this Olympian antagonist, he must not complain that the consequences were defeat to himself, and disgust spreading widely through the circles of those that otherwise would have been his friends. My little paper took the shape of a critique upon Mr. Forster's elaborate

1 What is here printed as a "postscript" appeared as a portion of De Quincey's "Preface to Vol. V of his Collected Writings,-in which Vol. V the reprint of the Goldsmith paper was included.-M.

VOL. IV

Y

and splendid review of Goldsmith's life and literary career. To Mr. Forster I owe a large apology for having so inadequately reported the character and qualities of his Vindicia Oliveriana. This failure was due to a deep-seated nervous derangement, under which at that time, and for years previously, I had been suffering. But neither ill health, nor resentment in the interest of insulted Shakspere, was suffered for a moment to colour the expression of my respectful gratitude to Goldsmith. Yet some readers will say, Would it not have been better frankly to explain the ground of my secret irritation? No: because the express purpose of Mr. Forster's book had been to offer a homage of retribution to the injured memory of Goldsmith; and I, sympathising on deep grounds of justice and rightful indignation with that honourable purpose, assumed, as it were, on behalf of our common sentiments, the character of a judicial advocate, or even for the moment of a eulogist. I, adopting in the main, as a junior counsel, the views and feelings of my leader, was not at liberty in that situation to break the continuity of the potent reaction on behalf of Goldsmith which Mr. Forster's earnest researches were fitted to evoke. I was not at liberty to disturb by any murmur of dissent the reader's paternal sympathy with the general

movement.

THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT1

I TAKE it for granted that all people of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant, however little their taste or their opportunities may have brought them acquainted with the history of Kant's philosophical opinions. A great man, though in an unpopular path, must always be an object of liberal curiosity. To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant is to suppose him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, though in reality he should happen not to regard Kant with interest, it would still be amongst the fictions of courtesy to presume that he did. On this principle I make no apology to any reader, philosophic or not, Goth or Vandal, Hun or Saracen, for detaining him upon a short sketch of Kant's life and domestic habits, drawn from the authentic records of his friends and pupils. It is true that, without any illiberality on the part of the public, the works of Kant are not, in this country, regarded with the same interest which has gathered about his name; and this may be attributed to three causes :

1 This paper appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine for February 1827, as part of a series which De Quincey had begun under the general title "Gallery of the German Prose Classics, by the English Opium-Eater." The preceding figure in the gallery had been Lessing, represented critically; and Kant followed in this more biographical guise. Considerable changes were made in the paper when De Quincey reprinted it in 1854 in the third volume of the collective edition of his writings.-M.

first, to the language in which those works are written 1; secondly, to the supposed obscurity of the philosophy which they deliver, whether inalienable, or due to Kant's particular mode of expounding it; thirdly, to the unpopularity of all speculative philosophy whatsoever, no matter how treated, in For it was a significant conscious dignity which,

1 "The language," &c. :-viz. German. fact-significant of that great revolution in early in the eighteenth century, had begun to dawn upon the German race that Leibnitz, the forerunner of Kant, holding the same station in philosophy for the fifty years between 1666 and 1716 which Kant held for the fifty years between 1750 and 1800, wrote chiefly in French; and, if at any time not in French, then in Latin; whereas Kant wrote almost exclusively in German. And why? Simply because all the sovereign princes in Germany, that found nothing amiss in German dollars and crowns, drew their little Aulic machineries in so servile a spirit of mimicry from France that the very breath of their nostrils was the foul, heated atmosphere of Versailles, "laid on " (as our water companies say) at second-hand for German use. The air of German forests which once Arminius had found good enough, the language of Germany that Luther had made resonant as a trumpet of resurrection-these were not superfine enough for the Serenissimi of Germany. Even Fritz the unique (Friederich der Einziger),—which was the German name, the caressing name, for the man whom in England we call the great king of Prussia, -the hero of the Seven Years' War, the friend and also the enemy of Voltaire, in this respect was even more abject than his predecessors. But, if he did not alter, Germany did. The great power and compass of the German language, which the vilest of anti-national servilities obscured to the eyes of those that occupied thrones, had gradually revealed themselves to the popular mind of Germany, as it advanced in culture. And thence it happened that Kant's writings were almost exclusively in German; or, if in any case not in German, then in Latin, but Latin only upon an academic necessity. This prosperity, however, of the German language proved the misfortune of Kant's philosophy. For many years his philosophy was accessible only to those who read German, an accomplishment exceedingly rare down to the era of Waterloo; or, if in any quarter not rare (as amongst the travelling agents of great commercial houses that exported to Germany, and amongst the clerks of bankers), not likely to be disposable for purposes of literature or philosophy. Since then Kant has been translated into Latin-viz. by Born, whose version I have not seen; and, as respects Kant's cardinal work, admirably by Phiseldek, a Danish professor; and it is possible by others unknown to myself. He has also been translated into English; but, if the slight fragment once communicated to myself were at all a fair representative specimen of the prevailing style, not in such English as could have much chance of winning a favourable audience. To do that, however, it may be said, would be beyond all powers that ever yet were lodged in any language wielded by any artist. And, if so,