tion of general principles in the presence of conflicting obligations, it is quite clear that casuistry must have its wholesome as well as its pernicious uses. But it is the extreme difficulty of working it without mischief to ordinary minds, that has probably effected its disgrace, and that operates as a bar to its revival. The 'Letters to a Young Man' constitute an able treatise on the philosophy of education, and are remarkable for containing that fine distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power which he first drew out in one of his articles on Pope. For the sake of such among our readers as may not recollect exactly what it is that we are alluding to, we may explain that by the literature of knowledge is meant books which communicate facts, and survive only while those facts are living, or while the mode of communication is not superseded by another; and that by the literature of power is meant books which live by their own inherent merit. Newton's 'Principia' is taken as a type of the one class, Homer's Iliad' of the other; the deduction being that it is only this latter which has any real value in the highest branch of education. The reader may compare with this a somewhat analogous passage in Johnson's 'Life of Milton,' where he verges closely upon enunciating the same principle, and does arrive at the same conclusion, though by a process less subtly critical.

6

In conclusion, we have to notice his essays on Political Economy. These are contained in a paper denominated 'Dialogues of Three Templars,' which forms part of the present Selections; and also in a separate volume, entitled the 'Logic of Political Economy.' These essays are commentaries illustrative, confirmatory, and supplementary, of Mr. Ricardo; and we believe we may say that they are universally acknowledged by scientific economists to display a thorough mastery of the subject.

It is in some of these last-mentioned essays that De Quincey especially displays one leading characteristic of his mind, namely, a passion for penetrating to the realities of things. This, as we shall have occasion to show presently, was at the bottom of his political creed. We will here give some specimens of it in relation to literature. The first is a comparison between the Greek and Hebrew languages:

'It cannot be necessary to say that from that memorable centre of intellectual activity have emanated the great models in art and literature, which, to Christendom, when recasting her mediæval forms, became chiefly operative in controlling her luxuriance, and in other negative services, though not so powerful for positive impulse and inspiration. Greece was, in fact, too ebullient with intellectual activity -an activity too palestric, and purely human-so that the opposite.

pole.

pole of the mind, which points to the mysterious and the spiritual, was, in the agile Greek, too intensely a child of the earth, starved and palsied; whilst in the Hebrew, dull and inert intellectually, but in his spiritual organs awake and sublime, the case was precisely reversed. Yet, after all, the result was immeasurably in favour of the Hebrew. Speaking in the deep sincerities of the solitary and musing heart, which refuses to be duped by the whistling of names, we must say of the Greek that-laudatur et alget he has won the admiration of the human race, he is numbered amongst the chief brilliancies of earth, but on the deeper and more abiding nature of man he has no hold. He will perish when any deluge of calamity overtakes the libraries of our planet, or if any great revolution of thought remoulds them, and will be remembered only as a generation of flowers is remembered; with the same tenderness of feeling, and with the same pathetic sense of a natural predestination to evanescence. Whereas the Hebrew, by introducing himself to the secret places of the human heart, and sitting there as incubator over the awful germs of the spiritualities that connect man with the unseen worlds, has perpetuated himself as a power in the human system: he is co-enduring with man's race, and careless of all revolutions in literature or in the composition of society. The very languages of these two races repeat the same expression of their intellectual differences, and of the differences in their missions. The Hebrew, meagre and sterile as regards the numerical wealth of its ideas, is infinite as regards their power; the Greek, on the other hand, rich as tropic forests, in the polymorphous life, the life of the dividing and distinguishing intellect, is weak only in the supreme region of thought.'-ix. 80.

. The second is from the Letters to a Young Man,' and expresses, in our opinion, a literary truth as novel as it is important:—

"The Roman mind was great in the presence of man, mean in the presence of nature; impotent to comprehend or to delineate the internal strife of passion, but powerful beyond any other national mind to display the energy of the will victorious over all passion. Hence it is that the true Roman sublime exists nowhere in such purity as in those works which were not composed with a reference to Grecian models. On this account I wholly dissent from the shallow classification which expresses the relations of merit between the writers of the Augustan period and that which followed, under the type of a golden and silver age. As artists, and with reference to composition, no doubt many of the writers of the latter age were rightly so classed; but an inferiority quoad hoc argues no uniform and absolute inferiority; and the fact is, that, in weight and grandeur of thought, the silver writers were much superior to the golden. Indeed, this might have been looked for on à priori grounds; for the silver writers were more truly Roman writers from two causes: first, because they trusted more to their own native style of thinking, and, looking less anxiously to Grecian archetypes, they wrote more naturally, feelingly, and originally; secondly, because the political cir

cumstances

cumstances of their times were advantageous, and liberated them from the suspicious caution which cramped the natural movements of a Roman mind on the first establishment of the monarchy. Whatever outrages of despotism occurred in the times of the silver writers were sudden, transient, capricious, and personal, in their origin and in their direction: but, in the Augustan age, it was not the temper of Augustus, personally, and certainly not the temper of the writers leading them to any excesses of licentious speculation, which created the danger of bold thinking. The danger was in the times, which were unquiet and revolutionary. The struggle with the republican party was yet too recent; the wounds and cicatrices of the State too green; the existing order of things too immature and critical: the triumphant party still viewed as a party, and for that cause still feeling itself a party militant. Augustus had that chronic complaint of a "crick in the neck," of which later princes are said to have an acute attack every 30th of January. Hence a servile and timid tone in the literature. The fiercer republicans could not be safely mentioned. Even Cicero it was not decorous to praise; and Virgil, as perhaps you know, has, by insinuation, contrived to insult his memory in the Eneid. But, as the irresponsible power of the emperors grew better secured, their jealousy of republican sentiment abated much of its keenness. And, considering that republican freedom of thought was the very matrix of Roman sublimity, it ought not to surprise us, that as fast as the national mind was lightened from the pressure which weighed upon the natural style of its sentiment, the literature should recoil into a freer movement, with an elasticity proportioned to the intensity and brevity of its depression. Accordingly, in Seneca the philosopher, in Lucan, in Tacitus, even in Pliny the Younger, &c., but especially in the two first, I affirm that there is a loftiness of thought more eminently and characteristically Roman than in any preceding writers: and in that view to rank them as writers of a silver age, is worthy only of those who are servile to the commonplaces of unthinking criticism.'-xiv. 66.

We have now come to the conclusion of that section of his writings which is embraced under the title of Grave.' It remains to say a few words upon the humorous and witty side of his character. Articles which are almost exclusively humorous are "The Casuistry of Roman Meals,' Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts,' and 'Orthographic Mutineers.' But it is needless to say that almost all his writings, upon whatever topic, are plentifully besprinkled with a comic element. Modern Greece, for instance, and Secret Societies, are full of excellent fun. De Quincey's humour, however, is all his own. We know no writer

by likening him to whom we should convey any clearer idea to our readers of what it is really like. It is not sarcastic like Mr. Thackeray's, nor grotesque like Mr. Dickens's, nor sly like Sir Walter Scott's, nor boisterous like Professor Wilson's.

Quincey

Quincey has few long reaches' of humour. He delights rather in the middle of some perfectly serious disquisition or sober narrative to surprise you with a sudden piece of extravagance, uttered with perfect gravity, and calculated altogether to elude the notice of many simple-minded people. In speaking of the use of dumb-bells, for instance, as a capital exercise, he alludes to their capability of being turned into weapons of offence, as in the case of the unfortunate William Weare, who was destroyed. by this means, for which, says he, the late Mr. Thurtell is to be commended. I mean,' he adds, 'for his choice of weapons, for in that he murdered his friend he was to blame.' Speaking of the annoyance which he suffered from the farmers' dogs, when travelling as a pedestrian in Cumberland, he says:

66

Many have been the fierce contests in which we have embarked; for, as to retreating, be it known that there (as in Greece) the murderous savages will pursue you-sometimes far into the high road. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense of our own wrong, and finally of our rights. Come," we used to say, "this is too much; here at least is the King's highway, and things are come to a pretty pass indeed, if we, who partake of a common nature with the King, and write good Latin, whereas all the world knows what sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you." Non usque adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c.'-xiv. 299.

In criticising Walter Savage Landor for his innovations in spelling, De Quincey supposes that when at school Landor, known to be exceedingly pugnacious, was in the habit of settling all cases of disputed orthography by a stand-up fight with the

master :

Both parties would have the victory at times; and if, according to Pope's expression, "justice rul'd the ball," the schoolmaster (who is always a villain) would be floored three times out of four; no great matter whether wrong or not upon the immediate point of spelling discussed. It is in this way, viz. from the irregular adjudications upon litigated spelling which must have arisen under such a mode of investigating the matter, that we account for Mr. Landor's being sometimes in the right, but too often (with regard to long words) egregiously in the wrong. As he grew stronger and taller, he would be coming more and more amongst polysyllables, and more and more would be getting the upper hand of the schoolmaster; so that at length he would have it all his own way; one round would decide the turn-up; and thenceforwards his spelling would become frightful.'— xiv. 95.

Of his own initiation into the art he tells us that he made it through the medium of Entick, famous for the outlandish words which he introduced into his dictionary.

'Among

'Among the strange, grim-looking words, to whose acquaintance I was introduced on that unhappy morning, were abalienate and ablaqueation-most respectable words, I am fully persuaded, but so exceedingly retired in their habits, that I never once had the honour of meeting either of them in any book, pamphlet, journal, whether in prose or numerous verse, though haunting such society myself all my life.'-xiv. 96.

We might multiply these instances to any extent, and especially out of the article upon Murder. But this is the best known of all De Quincey's works to the general public; and we prefer to take instances with which they are probably less familiar. The above extracts are sufficient to give them the flavour of De Quincey's humour. But inasmuch as its chief merit frequently consists in the mode of its introduction, we could not do full justice to it without quoting entire essays.

Such is a brief outline of De Quincey's contributions to Theology, to History, and to Belles Lettres, and of his other miscellaneous writings. If it has occasionally partaken rather more than we could desire of the nature of a catalogue, it was because we desired that nothing should be wanting to show the extraordinary breadth of his sympathies, and the equally wonderful versatility of his intellectual powers. We trust that these qualities, together with his incisive logic, his rare delicacy of discernment, his imagination, and his humour, have now been made sufficiently apparent to justify us in adding his name to the stars of English literature.

But such being the case, it becomes interesting and important to obtain a whole view of the man, and to put our readers on their guard against his faults, as well as to awaken them to his merits. Now one fault De Quincey had, and we must add to a very considerable extent. That was, a love of paradox; a propensity which has vitiated some of his most valuable literary judgments, and has, we believe, deterred not a few readers from prosecuting their acquaintance with his works. The essay in which this fault is perhaps most conspicuous is that upon Pope; and leaving out of question two out of the three charges which are brought against him, we propose to say a few words upon the third, which is, that Pope was not truly a satirist, and that his moral indignation was affected. The other two charges are both parts of the one great question of Pope's 'correctness,' which we shall not discuss in this place; partly because to do so would exceed our limits; partly because the objection is not peculiar to De Quincey.

Pope then, we are to understand, was no satirist.

Pope had neither the malice (except in the most fugitive form)