Christchurch, who was one of the examiners, went down to a gentleman, then resident at Worcester College and well acquainted with De Quincey, and said to him, 'You have sent us to-day the cleverest man I ever met with; if his viva voce examination to-morrow correspond with what he has done in writing, he will carry everything before him.' To this his friend made answer that he feared De Quincey's viva voce would be comparatively imperfect, even if he presented himself for examination, which he rather doubted. The event justified his answer. That night De Quincey packed up his things and walked away from Oxford; never, as far as we can ascertain, to return to it. Whether this distrust of himself was well founded, or whether it arose from the depression by which his indulgence in opium was invariably followed, we cannot tell. So early even as his Oxford days, De Quincey, we are told, was incapable of steady application without large doses of opium. He had taken a large dose on the morning of his paper work, and the reaction that followed in the evening would, of course, aggravate his apprehensions of the morrow. Be that as it may, he fairly took to his heels, and so lost the chance, which, with every drawback, must have been an extremely good one, of figuring in the same class-list with Sir Robert Peel, who passed his examination in Michaelmas, 1808, which was, no doubt, the era of De Quincey's singular catastrophe.

It appears from De Quincey's own language that he never so much as saw Shelley, who came to Oxford shortly after the event last recorded; and subsequently lived near De Quincey for a while in the Lake country. But the year 1809 was memorable for his introduction to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey. The most lifelike sketches of these celebrated men with which we are acquainted are to be found in his pages. We have not space for the description of his first meeting with Coleridge, but our readers will thank us for reproducing the following critique of his conversation :

'Coleridge led me to a drawing-room, rang the bell for refreshments, and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there would be a very large dinner party on that day, which perhaps might be disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but if not, he would assure me of a most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him under all aspects to think of declining the invitation. That point being settled, Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that, having been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, suddenly recovers its volume of waters and its mighty music, swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most

novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical that it was possible to conceive. What I mean by saying that his transitions were "just" is by way of contradistinction to that mode of conversation which courts variety through links of verbal connexion. Coleridge, to many people, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to wander the most, when, in fact, his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest: viz. when the compass and huge circuit by which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into remote regions before they began to revolve.'

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At this time De Quincey had reason to believe that the object of his enthusiastic admiration was uneasy in his domestic relations, and harassed by pecuniary troubles. It was ordinary man who, out of his small patrimony, deducted 5007. for the relief of distressed genius. In this generous action De Quincey was actuated by the purest artistic love of genius and literature. It could scarcely be said that Coleridge was in the ordinary sense of the word an object of charity. Could he have forced himself to work, a plentiful income was before him. But there is no danger that such men will ever find too many sympathisers. It is good that now and then the experiment of De Quincey should be tried, and the only cause for regret is that in this particular case the service appears to have been wasted. Coleridge never recovered a healthy state of either mind or body. And his benefactor is willing to suppose that his donation came too late to undo the effects of previous anxiety, and the indulgences to which it had conduced.

We shall not pause over the characteristic and interesting, but doubtless well-known portraits of the two other Lake poets which conclude the autobiographic sketches. We must hasten to complete that period of his own life which is contained within these and the Confessions,' which is apparently all that he desired to lay before the public. Within a year of his leaving Oxford we find him established as Wordsworth's successor in the Grasmere Cottage, of which he continued the tenant for about twenty years. In 1816 he married; and in 1821 he created his first great sensation by the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.' In 1829 he quitted Grasmere, and resided after that year principally at Glasgow and Edinburgh. The latter part of his life, it would appear, presented no features of special interest. Considering his early habits and infirmities, we may well be surprised at his longevity; for he had exceeded his seventy-fourth year by near four months when he expired at Edinburgh on the 8th of December, 1859.

In speaking of his early infirmities we allude, of course, pri

marily to his use of opium, but subordinately to that affection of the liver which he thinks stimulated his indulgence in a pleasure originally discovered by accident. It was in 1804, when on a visit to London in vacation time, that he first took opium for the toothache. That he afterwards continued it for the mere pleasure which it afforded him he does not deny; for the sake of having 'his moral affections in a state of cloudless serenity, and high over all the great light of the majestic intellect.' It was not till the year 1817 that he began to take the drug in quantities which produced his dreams, though he acknowledges that for eight out of the previous thirteen years his use of it had amounted to an abuse. At length his nightly visions became so insupportable that he determined to overcome the habit. After a desperate struggle he did at length triumph; but long after the indulgence was renounced the peculiar effects continued.

'One memorial of my former condition nevertheless remains; my dreams are not calm: the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not departed; my sleep is still tumultuous; and like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)

"With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms."

Although these particular consequences disappeared, it is probable that De Quincey's mind never wholly recovered from the effects of his eighteen years' indulgence. He himself says, half jocularly, but apparently quite truly, that it is characteristic of the opium-eater never to finish anything. He himself never finished anything, except his sentences, which are models of elaborate workmanship. But many of his essays are literally fragments, while those which are not generally convey the impression of being mere prolegomena to some far greater work of which he had formed the conception only. Throughout his volumes, moreover, we find allusions to writings which have never seen the daylight. And finally, there is 'The Great Unfinished,' the 'De Emendatione Humani Intellectûs,' to which he had at one time devoted the labour of his whole life. It is in fact the one half-melancholy reflection which his career suggests, that a man so capable as he was of exercising a powerful influence for good upon the political and religious thought of the present age, should have comparatively wasted his opportunities, and left us his most precious ideas in the condition of the Sibyl's leaves after they had been scattered by the wind. Hence those who approach him with any serious purpose are only too likely to come away disappointed. It is therefore rather on his style, at once complex

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and harmonious, at once powerful and polished, than on the substance of his works, that his posthumous fame will be dependent. The extraordinary compass and unique beauty of his diction, accommodating itself without an effort to the highest flights of imagination, to the minutest subtleties of reasoning, and to the gayest vagaries of humour, are by themselves indeed a sure pledge of a long if not undying reputation. Yet the profundity of separate remarks, opening to us for the moment entirely new views of the most important subjects, combined with the evident conscientiousness with which his volumes teem, make us still look wistfully at the glittering fragments, and long to ascertain if they cannot be made to yield a theory. one who is ascending a lofty eminence thickly clothed with wood, and feels sure from occasional intervals that a glorious prospect lies beneath him, could he only obtain a clear view from some commanding point; so in reading the works of this extraordinary man we are for ever expecting new and splendid results to burst upon us at the end of each discourse, and each time are obliged to content ourselves with the hope that they lie a little further on.

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We will endeavour, therefore, to lay briefly before our readers the various fields of thought which De Quincey traverses, satisfied that they cannot follow in his footsteps without gain of some sort, whether in the shape of mere amusement, of valuable suggestions, or familiarity with exact logic. De Quincey has classified his own works under the three heads of amusing, didactic, and imaginative. To us, however, the title chosen by the publisher seems to offer a more convenient division. By separating his writings into 'grave and gay,' we arrive more easily at the prominent characteristics of his mind, at the same time that we shall be able to get an equally clear conception of what he has accomplished in literature. The majority of his serious works may be brought under the three heads of religious, historical, and critical. There are many, however, which reject this classification, and to those we suppose we must assign the title of miscellaneous; and here we may take the opportunity of saying that it is not everything which is included within these fourteen volumes that was worth reprinting. De Quincey, indeed, never wrote nonsense. But his love of mere composition, which must have been very strong in one who composed so variously and so admirably, has led him on many occasions into dissertations of unnecessary length, while the seclusion in which he lived would now and then cause him to attach rather too much importance to his own impressions, reminiscences, and emotions. For these reasons we think the 'Selections' might be made a good deal more select with great advantage to the public and gain to De Quincey's reputation;

putation; while, if any competent gentleman would undertake the task of rearranging and indexing them, so as to bring closer together all that relates to the same subject, and give us a chance of referring to particular passages without a three days' search, a still further benefit would be conferred upon both author and reader.

Of the essays which we style religious the general tone is that of a moderate High Churchman, but of one, nevertheless, who in any theological controversy would choose to take his own ground. With the evangelical clergyman of the period it was not in his nature to sympathise. Both the doctrines and the manners of that school were repulsive to him. But he seems to have been perfectly indifferent to many points which in the Anglo-Catholic theory are essentials. Episcopacy he upheld because it was practically the best form of Church government for England. Of baptismal regeneration he thought so little that he actually had a dispute with Wordsworth as to whether it was the doctrine of the English Church or not. Nor was he convinced until Dr. Christopher Wordsworth the elder, whom they appointed arbiter, assured him there could be no doubt about the matter. Even then, however, he fidgeted under the burden of the discovery, and prophesied that before long that very question would agitate the Church of England to the centre; a prediction verified afterwards by the now halfforgotten Mr. Gorham. On the question of inspiration his views were in accordance with the most advanced English Churchmen of the present day. He seems to have thought there was a good deal in Newman's theory of development, not as tending to favour Romanism, but as helping to harmonize Scripture with modern thought. He appears to mean that concurrently with the progress of mankind both in knowledge and civilization will the truths of the Bible become clearer; and he instances the difference of our own interpretation of Scripture texts upon witchcraft and slavery from that of former generations. If we ever thought that Scripture enjoined us to burn or drown any poor old woman against whom her neighbours had a grudge, or that it sanctioned the sale and purchase of human beings and their consequent treatment like beasts, why may we not be under equal delusion upon certain other points now? But the successive disappearance of errors before the gradual advance of truth is development; and De Quincey accordingly believed that more of it was probably in store for us.

In all the cardinal doctrines of Christianity De Quincey was a steadfast believer. His reply to Hume upon miracles, though very short and perhaps very little known, well deserves the attention of Vol. 110.-No. 219.

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